8 January 2008
(Page 5 of 5)
In the early 1990s the violence spread to the Johannesburg area and often took the ethnic form of Zulu IFP followers vs. Xhosa ANC followers. Yet this was not an ancient tribal conflict either, since historically the independent Zulu and Xhosa nations never fought a war. Rather it was a modern, urban, politicized ethnic conflict.
On the one side, the IFP has continually stressed its version of Zulu identity. Also, since the ANC has followers in all ethnic groups, as the 1994 elections showed, neighborhoods with many Xhosa residents may have been specifically targetted in order to falsely portray the ANC as a "Xhosa" organization. On the other side, the ANC at the time tried to isolate the IFP in a way that many ordinary Zulu people saw as anti-Zulu, making them fearful. As has been recently confirmed, the apartheid regime's police and military were actively involved in covert actions to instigate the conflict.
The IFP relies heavily on symbols of "tradition." But to see that as making Zulu identity "tribal" obscures other realities: the IFP's modern conservative market-oriented economic policy; the deep involvement of all Zulu in an urban-focused economy, with half living permanently in cities and towns; the modern weapons, locations and methods of the violence, and the fact that even as the IFP won the rural vote in the most recent elections, a strong majority of urban Zulu-speakers voted ANC.
Case in Point: The Yoruba People
There are 20 million or more people who speak Yoruba as their mother tongue. Some 19 million of them live in Nigeria, but a growing diaspora are dispersed around Africa and around the world.
Yoruba-speaking communities have lived in other West African countries for centuries. Yoruba culture and religion have profoundly influenced the African diaspora in Brazil, Cuba and other New World countries, even among communities where the language itself is completely or partially forgotten.
Taking a quick look at linguistic or national communities of similar size, one can see that this is roughly equivalent to the total numbers of Dutch speakers (21 million, including Flemish speakers in Belgium). It is more than the total population of Australia (18 million) or the total number of speakers of Hungarian (14 million) or Greek (12 million).
Like parallel communities of Igbo-speakers (16 million) and Hausa-speakers (35 million), situated largely within but also beyond the borders of the state of Nigeria, the Yoruba people has a long and complex history which is hard to encompass within "tribal" images. There is a long artistic tradition, with terra-cotta sculpture flourishing in the Ile-Ife city state a thousand years ago. There is a common mutually understandable language, despite many dialects and centuries of political and military contention among distinct city- states and kingdoms. There is a tradition of common origin in the city of Ile-Ife and of descent from Oduduwa, the mythical founder of the Yoruba people.
Notably, Yoruba common language and culture predate any of the modern "nations" of North or South America. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Oyo kingdom ruled over most of Yorubaland, but included non-Yoruba speakers as well. Today that territory is within the nation of Nigeria, with borders created by European conquest. Yoruba identity does not coincide, then, with the boundaries of a modern nation-state. Its historical depth and complexity, however, is fully comparable to that of European nations or other identities elsewhere in the world that do.
Among Yorubas, a religious pluralism of traditional religion, Islam and Christianity has prevailed for more than a century, with political disputes rarely coinciding with religious divisions.
Ancestral cities or polities (ilu, comparable to the Greek polis) are a far more important source of political identity, along with modern political divisions.
In short, Yoruba identity is real, with substantial historical roots. But it corresponds neither to a modern nation-state nor to some simple version of a traditional "tribe." It coexists with loyalty to the nation (Nigeria for most, but many are full citizens of other nations), and with "home-town" loyalties to ancestral cities.
In determining what term to use in English, one cannot resort to the Yoruba language, which has no real equivalent for the English word "tribe." The closest are the words eniyan or eya, with literal translations in English as "part" and "portion." The term may refer to the Yoruba themselves, subgroups or other groups. In Yoruba, Hausa-speakers would be referred to as awon eniyan Hausa or awon Hausa, meaning "Hausa people." Non-Yoruba-speaking Nigerians of whatever origin may be referred to as ti ara ilu kannaa -- "those of the same country."
In English, no term actually fills in the complexity that is in the history and present reality so that outsiders understand it as do the people themselves. Terms such as "ethnic group" or simply "people," however, carry less baggage than "tribe," and leave room open for that complexity.
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