Citizen and Subject Quotes

“When it came to federalism, however, there were different types. Regional (territorial) federalism has been the characteristic form in the West: the United States, Canada and so on. Ethnic federalism, in contrast, has been an African development following the Nigerian post-civil war constitution of the mid-1970s. It followed the logic of colonial indirect rule. As an expression of self-determination, ethnic federalism acknowledges the ethnic group—and not the population of a region—as the political self with the right to self-determination. The general principle is: for each ethnic group, a homeland. And inside each homeland, customary rights for members of the ethnic group indigenous to that homeland. In Ethiopia too, as had been in colonized Africa, those residing in the homeland but ancestrally not of it, were disenfranchised. This legal innovation turned ethnic difference into a source of advantage for those acknowledged in law as indigenous and discrimination against those who were not. The politicization of ethnicity created an enfranchised majority alongside disenfranchised minorities in each homeland. This is what C&S termed tribalism, the inevitable consequence of indirect rule.”
― Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism