Part I

The idea of the Civil Secessions was one that had relevance within a very specific time and place in Africa and involved an ideological framework that no longer really exists. As such they are a concept that is no longer extant. This is not to say that they are no longer important to study— the absolute opposite in fact is true. The arc of the Civil Secessions, including their birth, their existence, and their extinction, does just as much to inform us about the historical dynamics of secession in Africa as any of the still-existent long-term conflicts or even the small ethnic separatist insurgencies still occurring on the continent. In fact, they may prove more informative by showing us, at a scale rarely matched since, the factors that have shaped the idea of secession and made it such a contentious and rare issue on the continent of Africa. As such, this overview will outline the general historical arc and characteristics of the Civil Secessions, allowing for a theoretical look at the context in which they occurred before giving way to the case studies of Katanga and Biafra that allow for specific exploration to be done.

History and Self-Determination

The central point in understanding the historical context of the Civil Secessions is the idea of self-determination and its evolution in the postwar world. Prior to the Second World War, the idea of self-determination had found limited support within the Great Powers that defined the international community. The rise of liberals such as US President Woodrow Wilson had helped define self-determination as an international goal, with his Fourteen Points being largely agreed to in principle by other global powers during the First World War. However, following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the turn to isolationism in the United States, the Fourteen Points, including their conception of self-determination, largely fell by the wayside. The idea re-emerged during the Second World War with the circulation of the Atlantic Charter, the formal statement of the Allies’ war goals. Among the shared listed goals of the United States and the United Kingdom was the statement that there would be no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people, a statement in support of self-determination. However, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was not pleased with such an inclusion, leading to significant questions as to whether all of these postwar goals would be pursued with equal vigour.

Following the end of the Second World War, the remaining powers were left uncertain where to proceed in terms of economic and diplomatic relations. While the majority of the developed world was rapidly framing itself into camps around the two rival superpowers of the United States and Soviet Union, it became obvious that the old interwar practices of closed borders and isolationism had been disastrous. It had not lessened the desperation of the Great Depression and had not prevented any power from becoming embroiled in the general conflict. As such, the idea of “interdependence” became the watchword in postwar diplomatic relations, and structures began to be put in place to facilitate the desirable international connections. While there were scattered organizations either still in existence following the collapse of the League of Nations, such as the International Labor Organization (ILO), or newer groups intended to facilitate the increasing interdependence of the states such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there still was no unified political instrument to bring these states together. It was in this context that the major international powers convened at San Francisco in 1945 and on 24 October formally signed into existence the United Nations, creating a political framework for the interactions of 50 of the 51 nations present at its drafting.1

The Charter of the United Nations was to prove a decisive document in the processes of both decolonization and secession in Africa. The former was specifically due to chapters I, XI, and XII. Chapter I, article 1 specifically spelled out the idea of Self-Determination, noting under the purposes of the United Nations the intentions “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.”2 Thus, the signatories of the new organization, including the major colonial powers such as Britain and France, were suddenly obliged to respect the ideology of self-determination being demanded by their colonized peoples. However, a small loophole was evident within the differentiations of chapters XI and XII. Chapter XII explicitly called for the UN to “promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence,”3 which would seem to call for decolonization in terms of the independence of the states involved. However, chapter XII only dealt with the trustee territories, which were those territories that were either Mandate Territories (which were generally those ex-colonies of Central Powers lost to the Allies in the First World War), those detached from the defeated Axis powers (as such mostly just Japanese-held islands), and those explicitly given to UN trusteeship by their colonial controllers.4 As to the remainder of the colonized world, these fell under chapter XI, which only stated the political goals as “to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement.”5 No mention of independence was given, simply the idea of self-governance. As such, there was the possibility of a much lengthier period of control by the former colonial powers.

However, the writing was increasingly on the wall as the colonies of Africa emerged from the Second World War with robust economies and an increasing awareness of their political situation. The populations of most colonies had been rising over the previous decades and had also been increasingly urbanizing. These trends helped foster increasingly educated and organized mass movements that would agitate for better living conditions, better labour conditions, and increasing access to political power. Following the war there were demonstrations and increasing attempts to claim the self-determination promised within the United Nations charter. The first regions of decolonization were the ex-Italian possessions in Libya and the Horn,6 with Tunisia and Morocco following shortly after. It was also in this early period that the Sudan was finally relinquished by Britain under pressure from the increasingly radical Egyptian government.7 However, the first real stone to fall in sub-Saharan Africa was Ghana, which, under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, asserted its self-determination over several years and finally claimed its independence on 6 March 1957.8 This was to prove a milestone in the minds of Africans, a moment when the most prominent spokesperson of Pan-Africanism emerged at the head of Africa’s first formally decolonized nation. Finally, a sub-Saharan country that was part of article XI and not article XII, one that had been a colony and not a mandatory territory, had been released after its own homegrown agitation and lobbying. After this the French Empire in Africa began to follow suit, with the autonomy and independence of its long-time colony in Guinea in 1958.9 Following these initial decolonizations, the floodgates truly opened in 1960, which has been dubbed the “Year of Africa” due to the independence granted to seventeen separate African states, including such notables as France’s Senegal, Britain’s Nigeria, and Belgium’s long-tormented Congo. In the decade following this massive step, the entire British African empire and the vast majority of the French colonies would gain their independence. By 1970 the only major formal colonial presence in Africa was the Portuguese, who under the Estado Novo fascist government founded by Antonio Salazar in the 1930s claimed that their holdings were not colonies at all but overseas provinces of Portugal proper.10 In this single decade the concept of self-determination was grasped as an essential right and advanced by the colonized African states until they were granted the control of their own political destinies.

Nature and Character of Civil Secessions

It is no coincidence that it was this same decade from 1960 to 1970 that spawned the Civil Secessions. These secessions attempted to follow the example of the decolonized states of Africa, claiming their right of self-determination to emerge as fully functioning states with international rights and recognitions. At the time this claim of statehood was not necessarily an impossible idea: the UN charter specifically stated that it recognized and supported the self-determination of peoples, with little specific definition of the term. Beyond this, there was at the time no specific mention that the already determined (and possibly illegitimate) political boundaries that had been in place since the Berlin Conference of 1885 were necessarily those of postcolonial Africa.11 As such, the general idea of the Civil Secessions was that the secessionist governed territories could and would fulfill the role of the state and in doing so gain the recognition required to join the international community while separating themselves from what they considered a disadvantageous (or even genocidal) connection with their previous colonial collective.

In each case it is clear that the Civil Secessionist conflict was about the secessionists attempting to maintain the theoretical and practical functions of their separated “proto-state” in the face of the aggressive actions of their previous host states to reintegrate them. In maintaining these functions, they hoped to both keep domestic legitimacy with their populations and gain the international recognition that would give them the material and diplomatic support they needed to complete their political and territorial separation from their host states. These theoretical and practical functions the secessionists were attempting to fulfill can be brought forth from a variety of texts delineating the concept of a state. An earlier definition works off the idea that “the State as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter relations with other states.”12 It was enough, then, that the states had seceded and had entered into attempted diplomatic relations; however, one can argue that the denial of formal recognition of the Civil Secessionist states meant they never fulfilled the full requirements of statehood, while the military struggle meant that one by one the other attributes were swept away.13

Perhaps a better delineation of the attributes giving legitimacy and existence to a state may be found in the more theoretical realm of academics such as Charles Tilly, Max Weber, Perry Anderson, Ali Mazrui, and Crawford Young. By linking their theories of the functions of a state together, we may get a list of attributes that a state fulfills. When taken together, these authorities’ concepts can be listed as follows:

1. A State defends its nationals or citizens from external enemies through the use of an effective army.

2. A State regulates crime and disorder through the use of a police force.

3. A State develops an effective civilian bureaucracy to administer the functions of the state.

4. A State raises revenue and creates an economic infrastructure to pay its army, its police force, and its civilian bureaucracy.

5. A State resolves disputes through a system of law and a judiciary that enforces the law.

6. A State creates laws through a legislative process.

7. A State provides public services such as safety, education, health care, transportation and roads, and postal service.

8. A State acquires and sustains political legitimacy, which allows the state to govern with lower attendant social costs.14

Given this list of attributes, one can easily see the structure of the Civil Secessions, leaving one to only conclude that the Civil Secessions indeed were attempts to declare a state and then garner recognition.

Of course, in attempting to create a politically separate but yet viable African state, the Civil Secessions created a series of parallel practices that let them fulfill these requirements of legitimacy both domestically and internationally. These practices were the separation of a pre-existing political unit that was both multi-ethnic and with assumed legal legitimacy for self-rule, that is, a historically justified civil nation; a leadership created out of the “New Men” of Africa, the Western-educated and wealthy bourgeoisie of the state; a standing professional army and/or gendarmerie; and conventional military tactics based around the taking and defending of territory. Each of these would in its own way parallel the existing African states and at the same time serve as an attempt to establish or maintain the new secessionist state.

In terms of standard African statehood, those states emerging from decolonization were granted legitimacy and recognition based on the same list of attributes enunciated above. Their borders were fixed by the earlier 1885 Berlin Conference, to which the majority of the newly independent states formally agreed in the mid-1960s. Within these borders was a multi-ethnic population, which was the only acceptable option in the postwar anti-nationalist ideology of the colonial powers. Their legislative processes, systems of taxation, and public services were all also inherited from their colonial structures and then built upon by their African administrations. Britain left parliamentary democracies and efficient civil services in states as diverse as Nigeria, Botswana, and Kenya. France left a legacy of republicanism and Gallic public service in their own former colonies as well as general regional structures of cooperation. While these were then altered or simply evolved under African leadership, at the time of decolonization, the states were defined by their inherited state functions. In addition, their formal separation was built upon the legal idea of the voluntary renunciation of colonial agreements and the idea that they now assumed their own rightfully self-determined autonomous statehood.

The Civil Secessionist States built along these same lines. While the decolonized African states inherited the colonial systems of governance, taxation, and public services, the Secessionist State inherited these attributes from its host state, usually in regional form. Katanga and Biafra had both had their own regional administrations reaching back into colonial days and thus had a legacy of these structures that allowed them to define their statehood.15 Beyond this they too defined themselves as a multi-ethnic Civil State, not a nation-state, on the assumption that a nation-state would not be granted recognition in the postcolonial Cold War environment they found themselves in.16 Lastly, to parallel the legitimacy of the accepted colonial boundaries, the new secessionist states needed their own accepted international boundaries. In their case they often argued historical precedent, such as in the case of Katanga’s separate administration from the rest of the Congo or the Sudan’s separate administration of the North and South.17 In each case the Civil Secessionist state attempted to assume the proper structure of African statehood and thereby also assume the acceptance given to the postcolonial African state.

Of course, these systems of taxation, legislation, and public works were not mechanical creations within the decolonized African state; they were run by the newly emergence professional African bourgeoisie, the “New Men” of Africa with Western educations. Kwame Nkrumah, whose efforts were pivotal in both the decolonization of Africa and the creation of a Pan-African identity, serves as a central example of these figures stepping into the leadership of these new states. At age seventeen he was already serving as a student teacher and by age twenty he had earned his teaching certificate at Achimota College.18 From here he pursued his studies in the United States, earning a bachelor of arts degree in economics and sociology from Lincoln College in 1939 at age thirty, a master’s of science degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942, and one in philosophy at the same university in 1943.19 While he did not earn any more advanced degrees, he completed the majority of his work for a doctorate of philosophy in Pennsylvania, read law at Gray’s Inn in London, and studied economics at the London School of Economics. He emerged as a well-rounded intellectual who then bent his intellect toward the nationalist movement in Ghana, eventually emerging as the leader of the Convention People’s Party (CPP),20 which would win the general elections in 1951 under colonial auspices and eventually emerge as the dominant party in independent Ghana.21

His story is echoed in the national leadership of other African states during the decolonization period. Jomo Kenyatta graduated from Thogoto Mission School in Kenya and eventually studied at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, completing graduate work in anthropology under the noted Professor B. Malinowski.22 After earning his master’s he stayed on as a teacher of the Kikuyu language and had his manuscript published as Facing Mount Kenya. It was while he was involved with his studies that he became increasingly tangled in Kenyan nationalist politics,23 eventually being jailed for his suspected connection with Mau Mau activities in 1952.24 When he was finally released from his detention in 1961 he was a national hero and emerged as the head of the Kenyan African National Union,25 which attained power in the 1963 general elections and went on to lead the Kenya during its emergence as an independent nation. Even Julius Nyerere, before emerging as the first president of Tanganyika (and then Tanzania), earned a master’s degree at Edinburgh College in 1952 before returning to spearhead the nationalist movement in his state.26 Throughout sub-Saharan Africa it was these Western-educated elites who emerged as the leaders of the nationalist movements and the administrators that ran the state following its independence.

Again paralleling the decolonized African states, the Civil Secessionist states’ systems of taxation, legislation, and public services were run by these “New Men,” who emerged first in the regional politics of their territory within the newly independent state. It was generally, then, these figures who took advantage of their regional authority to initially agitate for the secession of their region and its populace.27 With their elevated positions they were often in the best possible social situation to take advantage of these cleavages within society. When the secession was declared it was then these figures who were in positions of running the independent state and determining its structures. Of course, much as it was the Western-educated elites who agitated for and found legal and moral justifications for the decolonization of their states, it was then these regional “New Men” who discovered and advanced their own legal justification for the separation of their state. With the separation underway, this secessionist bourgeoisie took their traditional places in the positions of leadership and administration in their separatist proto-states and served as the most visible figures of the secessionist conflicts.28

In terms of a standing professional army, one was obviously necessary for the new African nations, and it often fulfilled the first and second functions of the state as given, as well as covering the Weberian base of a state monopoly on violence. These structures were, much like the other pieces of state apparatus, often inherited from the previous colonial regime.29 The Ghanaian Army, for example, was initially the Gold Coast Regiment of the Royal West African Frontier Force, although this in turn was descended from the earlier Gold Coast Constabulary. Formally incorporated under the Colonial Office in 1901, the Gold Coast Regiment served in the Yaa Asantewaa War, the First World War, and the Second World War with distinction before becoming the national armed forces of Ghana following independence.30 During the run-up to independence, its officer corps was increasingly “Africanized” to prepare the army for its new role, and access to formal military educational institutions such as Sandhurst in Great Britain or St. Cyr in France for the officers allowed for a new route for a rising military bourgeoisie. Analogous examples exist on the other side of the continent, where the militaries of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika were all members of the King’s African Rifles before independence and had given sterling service in the colonial as well as international conflicts.31 In both the East and West African forces, the soldiers were long-service professional soldiers who served their purpose well in terms of forming a stalwart, if later on politically volatile, military structure for the newly independent nations.

Again the Secessionist States copied these structures, forming their own professional standing militaries. While often these were initially created around a core of previously national forces that rallied to the secessionist cause, there were often insufficient numbers of these troops to truly maintain the security of their proto-state in the face of the aggressive reaction of their host state—and these initial forces were thus unable to fulfill the first function of the state. To supplement these forces the secessionist states resorted to a variety of initiatives. It was in the initial secessionist conflicts in Africa that mercenaries achieved a high profile.32 With a strong enough economic base, a secessionist state could hire itself a good number of foreign veterans of the various brushfire wars occurring across the globe to bolster its military capability. Another option would be the limited or wholesale recruitment of the secessionist state’s population.33 While this was of course dependent on the popularity of the secessionist leadership and the perceived legitimacy of the state, in the right circumstances it could provide a large number of motivated troops. The secessionist state would then mould this mixture into a distinct, professional, standing military to enforce the monopoly of violence for that state within its borders, fulfilling the function of a truly national military.

Lastly, this national military for the newly independent nations of Africa was intended to protect the territorial sovereignty of its home state. It was a military trained to be not only a visible symbol of the monopoly of violence that was embodied in the state but also one that could press the territorial claims of the state if needed. As such, these armies were trained primarily in conventional military tactics that called for the most resource-efficient methods of taking and holding territory as inherited from their colonial military doctrine. These same tactics served to prepare for an internal security role, something many of these forces undertook with regularity. Taken in combination with the general form of the inherited forces, that is, generally a core of light infantry with limited artillery and little to no air force or armoured arm, this meant that the African armies generally employed a limited, out-in-the-open campaign with little theoretical capacity to either outgun or outwit their opponents.34 Direct column marches and simple flanking manoeuvres were favoured on the strategic offensive, while digging in to fixed positions was generally preferred on the strategic defensive. These doctrines fit the limited manpower and resources of the inherited African militaries, allowing them to get the most out of a force that had been trained initially to both engage in limited external campaigns as a part of a larger whole and to serve as an oppressive force against their own populace. Simply put, the African armies were rarely a complete force meant for combined arms actions, and their tactical doctrine did not stray far beyond fundamental strategic considerations of deploying infantry to take-and-hold or to defend their home territory until such time as international aid could be deployed.35

As can be guessed, since the general conventional structure of the military was inherited by the secessionist region, its general tactical and strategic doctrine was inherited as well. Indeed, the two primary functions of the military were perhaps even more essential, as it was needed to both suppress dissident/loyalist elements within the newly independent state and defend the declared borders of their new country. With the necessity of recognition and therefore legitimacy in the eyes of the world, both of these goals were amplified tenfold. The suppression of dissident opinion both muffled the voice of and controlled the potential violence of disadvantaged groups within the new state.36 As both of these factors could lead to a denial of legitimacy in the world order, the military’s capacity to minimize them was key in the establishment of the secessionist state. In addition, as defined earlier, the state has to both have a defined territory and defend its nationals or citizens from external enemies, and if it is unable to do so, or as Weber would define it, if it is unable to maintain its monopoly on violence, then it loses its legitimacy as a state regardless. With this in mind, the tactical and strategic doctrine adopted was perhaps even under greater pressure to ensure the territorial integrity of the new state as well as safeguard the populace and (to the extent it was capable) their property. The inherited conventional tactics were thus infinitely more suited to the needs of the Civil Secessionist state than to the possibility of a guerrilla struggle.37

Why Civil Secessions?

By examining the arc of these early attempts at secession, it is then possible to see the influence that the initial wave of decolonization had upon them. The growing and increasingly urbanized and educated populations of colonial African states agitated for their right to self-determination. Following this the African states were granted recognition on the world stage as legitimate states based upon their possession of all the characteristics of a nation, embodied in their territorial existence, their multi-ethnic population, their educated administration, and their ability to defend their population and borders. With decolonization mandated by international law and the ascension of independent governments leading the existing states, there was no question of the emergence and acceptance of the postcolonial African states.

The Civil Secessions attempted to follow the same story and mirrored the actions of their decolonized host states. First, calling upon the same privilege of self-determination, the Civil Secessionist state declared itself separate from its original parent state, usually based upon a historic administrative division within the host itself. Then the Civil Secessionist state attempted to display all the characteristics of a fully functioning independent state: definitive territoriality, a heterogeneous population, educated and enlightened political leadership and administration, and a military or gendarmerie to secure the safety of their new borders and population. The assumption was that the seceding state, upon fulfilling all the necessary characteristics of a state and making the legal arguments for its existence to the world, would be granted the same legitimacy as its previous host state. And why not? In many cases these proto-states exhibited exceptional characteristics and had solid arguments favouring legal separatism if not outright secession. As will be seen, the same arguments that could be levelled to allow the Congo its independence would apply to secessionist Katanga: it shared a defined territoriality, it was home to a blended population of Africans and Europeans, and it had its own administration and military. In some cases, a secessionist power like Katanga could even claim a more able administration than its parent state!38 Of course, the parent state could not be counted on to simply accept the partition of its territory and the removal of its people and resources. The most common response for the parent nation would be to take aggressive action to prevent the secession, using their often superior military and international connections. In this case, the seceding state tended to put its faith in the idea that the logic of its self-determination would be apparent to the world and the international recognition it would garner would enable its survival and preservation.

While this seemed to be unassailable logic at the time, there arose a number of complications and counter-arguments over the course of the decade that would render the recognition or even forbearance of the secessionist state an impossibility. These complications would begin with the previously mentioned secession of Katanga from the Congo in 1960, where the existence of the secessionist state was dealt its first blows under international law due to the decision of the United Nations to classify Katanga as a security threat to the Congo as a whole.39 The position of the Civil Secessionist movement continued to erode with the formation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. The OAU not only then served as a buffer between the greater international community and African affairs but also roundly rejected any threats to the territorial integrity of the inherited colonial borders. The final death blow was evident in the case of Biafra, where the refusal of the vast majority of the international community to offer recognition of any kind doomed the philosophical underpinning of the “decolonization” model of the Civil Secession. This denial of international legitimacy, coupled with the displayed capability of Nigeria to deal with its own affairs, effectively destroyed any hope for the concept, and Civil Secessions have not been attempted since.40