| Chapter : | Introduction |
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receiving income or predatory relationships when there are incentives for cashing in on the short-term. Some see it differently, suggesting that “ethnic diversity does not cause violence; rather, ethnic diversity and violence are joint products of state failure. Their relationship is contingent, the argument suggests; it occurs when political order erodes and politicians forge political organizations in the midst of political conflict.13
The peculiar nature of the state in Africa and the institutional structures within which they operate creates opportunities for human rights abuse and minority agitation. E. Ike Udogu's contribution to the volume presents an overview of the human rights question of minorities in Africa, focusing on some of the most cogent examples of human rights abuse in contemporary Africa. He traces these problems to the historical experience of colonialism, arguing that Africa's human rights problems of minority groups are in many ways analogous to those in Europe and elsewhere. He links the ethno-political problems in Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, the Sudan, and Nigeria and the infringements upon the human rights of minority groups in these areas to the legacies of colonialism. Indeed, separatist movements, internal/irredentist wars, and political unrest in many countries in Africa flow in part from this source. The chapter addresses the issue of the violation of human rights of minority groups focusing on the Ogonis of Nigeria and the Batwas and Bambutis of the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Congo-Brazzaville within the broader discourse and theories of human rights.
Beyond the dichotomous concepts of majority-minority groups or dominant-subordinate groups employed by social scientists to discuss relations in multiethnic societies are groups that stood between these two groups in social status and economic role. These groups, or what scholars refer to as “middleman minorities,” complicate the direct interplay of indigenous minorities and the state in the sociopolitical and economic structures of modern Africa.14 The economic, cultural, and political position of trading and business minorities such as South Asians in East Africa, who control most of the trade and businesses, and the Lebanese in West Africa creates a unique kind of minority in Africa as elsewhere and has fueled antagonistic tendencies as well as ethnic hatred for these economically dominant