Minorities and the State in Africa By Michael U. Mbanaso and Chi ...

the work ethic, and the racial hierarchy in many colonial societies in Africa.

Throughout Africa, colonial governments notoriously pursued ethnic, “divide-and-rule” policies in order to both minimize resistance and help populate their respective bureaucracies, often privileging minority groups at the expense of numerically dominant populations.

Some of the papers in this volume explore these phenomena in different parts of Africa in the colonial period and their legacy in the postcolonial period. In Zimbabwe, where group or ethnic identity has remained a major hurdle to social, economic, and political integration, Ivan Marowa examines the experiences of the Tonga people, a minority that has historically suffered marginalization, first by the colonial government that forcibly relocated them from the Zambezi River and valley and currently by the Zimbabwean state. Marowa explores the historical relationship that existed between the Tonga and the colonial government before and after the Kariba hydroelectric project, explains the continued gulf between the Tonga and the Zimbabwean government, and highlights the memories of the Tonga's historical existence and the marginalization they have endured over the years. Such are the challenges that the Tonga face, and these have taunted their relationship with the state as ex-pressed in their alleged vote for the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), since 2000.

As in many other countries in Africa, the contestation for power and resources has culminated in deteriorating relationships between the state and some that have been classified as minorities. On the diamond mines of the Portuguese colony of Angola, however, it was the concessionary mining company, Diamang, that assumed this role while the colonial state advocated for a more level playing field. Todd Cleveland's chapter examines the unique role played by the Portuguese mining company the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang) and the intervention of the Portuguese colonial state in the sharpening of ethnic difference in Angola diamond mines. The indigenous populations squarely in the middle of this state-company dispute were the preponderant Chokwe and the smaller number of Baluba who crossed