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

fight against discriminatory measures and to ensure the rights and protection of people belonging to national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities. Minority claims are drawing on the Internet to reach a wider audience as assisted by influential neo-liberal rhetoric of human rights.⁶ The result as Richard Werbner observed is “human rights discourse, tied to advocacy for multiculturalism.”⁷

Since states are historically predatory and those in the minority are often the pawn of those who control power (usually the majority), those at risk have many times resorted to violence to resolve the problems that have emerged out of the ethnic composition of many African states. In the aftermath of colonialism, Africa faced a minority problem that loomed large in the face of ethnic politics. This problem was visible in many countries in Africa with ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, most of which had no long claim to a unified national culture. Despite the attempts to manage the multiple ethnicities present in Africa and preserve African states, the goal has often been overshadowed by the campaign of minorities to protect their rights and increase their visibility in national life. Groups have also resorted to acts of genocide to deal with the minority/majority crisis that deviled many societies. Indeed, “Genocides do not just happen,” argues John Packer and Erik Friberg, rather “they are preceded by social developments and structures that divide societies and provoke violence. The roots of future conflict are inherent in systematic and systemic discrimination and policies of exclusion, disregard and humiliation—if not repression or oppression.”⁸ The Rwanda genocide a decade ago, the ethnic divisions that led to Kenya's worst outbreak of violence since independence, and the first black-on-black mass killings in postcolonial Africa during the Nigerian civil war with secessionist Biafra reveal the realities of the minority/majority problems in Africa. They further reveal the crisis of the modern state in Africa that is deeply rooted in the contradictions and legacies of colonialism.

However, “unlike the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights…and the