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rfmcdonaldIn linking to Carol Off's disturbing Walrus Magazine article, Pearsall Helms observes that pre-existing cleavages, between the largely Muslim interior and the Christianized/pagan coastal south, lie at the root of ivoirité's radical challenge.
He is right in that the state frontiers of post-colonial Africa had been drawn on the basis of historical and ethnographic boundaries instead of colonial-era internal borders, African states might indeed have been more durable. Perhaps: Ivoirité did begin as a movement aimed not against the Muslims of Côte d'Ivoire's north, but rather against the immigrants from Côte d'Ivoire's pays limitrophes, attracted by Côte d'Ivoire's post-independence prosperity and welcomed by an establishment that knew the country just didn't have enough labourers to take advantage of the boom of the 1960s and 1970s. To the extent that it's aimed against the very people once welcomed as necessary to the fulfillment of Côte d'Ivoire's post-colonial mission, ivoirité is profoundly reactionary, opposed to the most basic requirement of a prosperous economy, an adequate supply of labour. Hobbesian civil war is eminently traditional.
It would be wrong to assume that this divide must have ended in the current failed-state situation. Yugoslavia remained quiet and peacefully multiethnic well into the 1980s despite the terrible carnage of 1941-1945; Malaysia remains peaceful and decidedly despite the bloody 1968 riots. Ivoirité, for that matter, is a recent development. Why did the peaces of Côte d'Ivoire and Yugoslavia dissolve terribly while Malaysia's has been strengthened? The first two states were unlucky enough to happen onto strategies for economic development that were dead ends, while the third was decidedly lucky. If only the 1980s had been as good a decade for Côte d'Ivoire as the 1970s, even half as good. Perhaps Abidjan could still be called the Paris of Africa without the listener having to interpolate irony.
[T]he Ivory Coast, like much else of West Africa, has a lot of problems between its mostly-Muslim north and its mostly-Christian south...why in God's name can't anyone with any power admit that the continuation of the utterly irrational national boundaries first drawn up by European hands plays a huge role in the region's problems?
He is right in that the state frontiers of post-colonial Africa had been drawn on the basis of historical and ethnographic boundaries instead of colonial-era internal borders, African states might indeed have been more durable. Perhaps: Ivoirité did begin as a movement aimed not against the Muslims of Côte d'Ivoire's north, but rather against the immigrants from Côte d'Ivoire's pays limitrophes, attracted by Côte d'Ivoire's post-independence prosperity and welcomed by an establishment that knew the country just didn't have enough labourers to take advantage of the boom of the 1960s and 1970s. To the extent that it's aimed against the very people once welcomed as necessary to the fulfillment of Côte d'Ivoire's post-colonial mission, ivoirité is profoundly reactionary, opposed to the most basic requirement of a prosperous economy, an adequate supply of labour. Hobbesian civil war is eminently traditional.
It would be wrong to assume that this divide must have ended in the current failed-state situation. Yugoslavia remained quiet and peacefully multiethnic well into the 1980s despite the terrible carnage of 1941-1945; Malaysia remains peaceful and decidedly despite the bloody 1968 riots. Ivoirité, for that matter, is a recent development. Why did the peaces of Côte d'Ivoire and Yugoslavia dissolve terribly while Malaysia's has been strengthened? The first two states were unlucky enough to happen onto strategies for economic development that were dead ends, while the third was decidedly lucky. If only the 1980s had been as good a decade for Côte d'Ivoire as the 1970s, even half as good. Perhaps Abidjan could still be called the Paris of Africa without the listener having to interpolate irony.
