Farms to factories to fractionalisation
GUEST POST: Understanding industrialisation and assimilation in Africa
Africa is often considered the most ethnically diverse continent, with most countries lacking an ethnic majority and home to dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of ethnic groups. Africa is also the least industrialised continent, with low levels of urbanisation and non-agricultural employment. If these two facts are discussed together – which is rare – the common assumption is that Africa’s ethnic diversity has caused low levels of industrialisation, which fits more broadly into the literature about how ethnic diversity is bad for economic development.
The main impetus for my new book, Industrialization and Assimilation: Explaining Ethnic Change in the Modern World, is to show that industrialisation actually has a significant effect on ethnic diversity. In it, I build upon social science scholarship that emphasised the role industrialisation and capitalism can play in generating social change, both in terms of class formation (for Karl Marx) and the creation of national identities (for Ernest Gellner). In both cases, social identities can seen as having instrumentalist value, whereby individuals choose their identities by the benefits they bring. The process of industrialisation generates a shift from economies based on the control of rural agricultural land to ones based on labour in urban areas. This shift thus generates incentives for individuals to shift their primary ethnic identification from more narrow rural ethnic identities towards broader urban ethnic identities as a means to make ends meet in modern industrial society, leading societies to become more homogenous as they industrialise.
In the book, I use a variety of qualitative and quantitative data. Here I focus on the three countries of South Africa, Uganda and Botswana as they demonstrate three different experiences with industrialisation and ethnic change. In the South African case, industrialisation began with the discovery of diamonds and gold in the late 19th century, which led to a massive rise in the demand for cheap indigenous labour. However, a reluctance by black Africans to work for low wages led to increasing amounts of oppression to compel local men to migrate to the mines. Yet the effect of this forced migration was an increase in inter-ethnic solidarity among African workers – such that there was a ‘general fusion of the hitherto antagonistic tribes’ – as officials in the British War Office put it – that had the potential to threaten white minority rule.
The result was various efforts by the white elite to disrupt broader identity formation among black South Africans, including the use of fixed-term contracts and the design of hostels like prisons. Mine managers deliberately recruited workers from different areas in order to create an ethnically diverse workforce, with the miners governed by their own ethnically specific induna (middle managers) and housed along ethnically segregated lines to prevent workers’ solidarity. Finally, in 1948, white voters elected the pro-segregation National Party to power, which began to formalise the system of apartheid that instituted the use of pass laws and promoted African residence in separate rural tribal Bantustans. At the high point of apartheid in the 1960s and 1970s, the government forcibly resettled at least two million Africans, including both Africans removed from inner cities to far-distant townships and a large number of ‘surplus’ or ‘idle blacks’ taken from cities back to their tribal homelands.
All of these measures were moderately successful in preventing inter-ethnic solidarity in opposition to the apartheid regime, at least initially. However, Africans continued to migrate to cities both because of the poor living conditions in the Bantustans (which had low-quality land and no industries to speak of) and due to the demand for labour in the non-mining industrial and service sectors. Attempts by the apartheid regime to replicate the ethnically segregated nature of the Bantustans and mining hostels in the townships through a system of indirect rule failed, leading to military rule by the apartheid state. Trade unions like the National Union of Mineworkers – whose leader was the current President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa – were instrumental in defusing the ethnic tensions that arose within the segregated mining hostels and breaking the power of the ethnic induna through the creation of elected committees in the mines. The efforts of the white minority to prevent inter-ethnic solidarity and identity formation among black South Africans ultimately failed with the election of the ANC to power in the 1994 elections under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.
South Africa thus represents a case where industrialisation generated inter-ethnic solidarity despite government efforts to the contrary. Another African case of industrialisation leading to ethnic assimilation has taken place across the border in Botswana, which was one of the least industrialised and urban countries in the world upon independence in 1966. However, the discovery of diamonds in the 1960s generated a huge structural transformation of the country, such that Botswana had both the highest GDP per capita growth rate and the highest rate of urbanisation in the world between 1965 and 1995. The Botswanan diamond industry is controlled by Debswana, which is 50% owned by the government of Botswana and 50% owned by De Beers; it is now the second-largest employer in the country after the government and is the largest producer of diamonds in the world by value.
The transformation of Botswanan society that the diamond industry has wrought has had large effects on ethnic identity in Botswana. Botswana was historically split between members of the Batswana ethnic majority – who were also subdivided into their own tribes or merafe – and members of other minority ethnic groups like the Babirwa, Bapedi, Kalanga and San. As elsewhere in Africa, membership of such groups was tied up with specific livelihoods, such that the Herero worked with livestock, the Hambukushu and Yeyi in fishing and basket weaving, for example. However, these ethnic boundaries and differences began to break down when members of these groups migrated to urban areas and began working in the formal economy, such that, as the Botswanan sociologist Onalenna Selolwane has put it, younger generations of minority communities now adopt ‘the dominant ethnic Tswana identity’ as their own. As another academic has written, ‘the urban experience has contributed to the creation of a unifying national identity’ in Botswana, a point backed up by surveys which show an increasing number of Botswanans both identifying with the Batswana minority and refusing to identify with any ethnic group, instead claiming that they ‘do not think of themselves in these terms’.
While Botswana did not experience apartheid, there is evidence that the government has hindered rather than helped the process of ethnic homogenisation. Botswana is one of only three countries in Africa that has a House of Chiefs as its upper house of parliament, with automatic seats granted to members of traditional chiefs from the eight principal Batswana tribes but none to the smaller Batswana tribes or other minorities. The ongoing controversy over this institutionalised discrimination led to the creation of a constitutional commission in 2000 to reform the institution, which generated a huge amount of political division in the country and remains a point of dispute to the present day. Numerous Botswanan governments have also been poor at promoting nation-building in various ways, including by not promoting literature and publishing in Setswana.
The Botswana experience, therefore, demonstrates how industrialisation can generate ethnic homogenisation despite, not because of, government policies. In contrast, however, my third and last case of Uganda shows how a lack of industrialisation can lead to increased levels of ethnic fractionalisation. Like many other African post-colonial states, Uganda has not experienced industrialisation and thus continues to maintain high levels of agricultural employment and low levels of urbanisation despite some attempts at economic reform. Thus, according to one recent analysis, “economic liberalism has triggered rapid growth with no fundamental socio-economic transformation.” Uganda also has high levels of ethnic diversity, even by African standards, with the largest ethnic group comprising less than 25% of the population.
The consequence of low levels of industrialisation in Uganda has been to increase the relative importance of control over rural land. As elsewhere in Africa, land in Uganda has historically been linked to ethnicity, due in part to colonial policies of indirect rule, which granted access to local land only to members of ethnic groups that were considered indigenous to specific areas. Attempts at land tenure reform have been minimal in Uganda, meaning land continues to be politically salient at the local level. Numerous examples thus exist where ethnic conflict has erupted over the control of government land, which has been decentralised to district governments, with the consequence that local elections can often turn violent. For instance, the election for district chairperson in Kibaale district in central Uganda in 2002 led to several murders when it transpired that a winner was a member of an ethnic group that was not native to the district, leading the President of Uganda to negate the election to calm the situation.
The creation of new districts and thus new ethnic majorities at the local level who could dominate the allocation of land has also led to conflict in Uganda. In eastern Uganda, the division of Tororo district led to clashes between members of the Japadhola and Iteso ethnic groups over which new district would control the former district capital. A similar conflict erupted in western Uganda when splitting up Kabarole district led to conflict between members of ethnic minorities and the Batoro ethnic group, whose members worried that they would no longer be able to control land policies in the new districts.
The way ethnicity is publicly discussed in Uganda also indicates how a lack of industrialisation has failed to alter ethnic identification. In contrast to Botswana, where many citizens recognise ethnic identities as fluid and changeable and are thus critical of attempts to codify ethnicity, the 1995 Ugandan constitution provides a list of ‘indigenous communities’, which is often used to legitimate claims to land ownership against so-called ‘foreigners’. Which groups are listed in the constitution has been continuously debated for the past 30 years, with nine new groups added in 2005 and members of other groups petitioning to have their group added.
The Ugandan case thus demonstrates how a lack of industrialisation leads to both heightened ethnic salience and even increased levels of ethnic conflict over land. Taken together, the South African, Botswanan and Ugandan examples show considerable variation in African experiences with industrialisation and ethnic homogenisation. They also provide evidence for two of the key ‘takeaway’ points from my book, namely that governments have less power in their ability to direct and shape identities than is broadly assumed, and that industrialisation can have significant effects on society that are often missed in discussions around development policy.
‘Farms to factories to fractionalisation’ was first published on Our Long Walk. Support more such writing by signing up for a paid subscription. The image was created with Midjourney v5.2.
Great post. Definitely learned a lot in the political angle but I think my main issue is that I think you are conflating industrialization with higher incomes. When I think of the word "industrialization" I think of developing more industries. Or going from primary industries(farming, fishing, mining) to secondary (manufacturing).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_sector_of_the_economy#:~:text=The%20primary%20sector%20of%20the,%2C%20fishing%2C%20forestry%20and%20mining
Botswana has higher incomes but it still isn't "industrialized". Botswana's main export with the firm De Beers is diamond mining which is still the primary sector.
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/bwa
But Botswana doesn't have a developed aerospace, electronics, manufacturing, or even component manufacturing industry. To me, Botswana is just a richer natural resource exporter because it made the decision to continue joint ventures with Debeers instead of fully nationalizing diamonds which led to government looting of diamond revenue like Sierra Leone under Siaka Stevens