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In 1994, the chapter of African history under European control came to a close with the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Since then, in the minds of many Africans and non-African observers, the movement for liberation of African indigenous peoples has become largely a subject of history, rather than a matter of current relevance. However, the language of indigenous peoples' politics and indigenous rights never is entirely out of date in post-colonial Africa, and it has become increasingly relevant as conditions progress today. Now, as part of the general discussion of indigenous politics, "indigenization" has been emphatically asserted as a term of relevance for southern African states.
The broad questions on indigenous peoples' rights that drive the agenda of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples usually involve complaints of mistreatment at the hands of state authorities. This issue of the Fourth World Bulletin includes three such cases, in Nigeria, Kenya and Sudan, where that kind of mistreatment is in question. However, in Africa today, the concept of "indigenization" has acquired currency in reference to the right of the state itself to limit or terminate alien economic control. The thesis extends from European colonialism and the African liberation movements that colonialism caused. Now, Arabs and Indians, as well as Europeans, are identified as alien oppressors. In the current reference, alien control is perceived as narrowly economic, rather than the total control that European colonialists enforced militarily.
Meanwhile, African "indigenization" policies today have also acquired a second point of reference with important implications for the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples. Today, due to the indigenization policy at work in Zambia, there is currency to the idea that African indigenous peoples, not states, have rights to control their own particular territories and resources, and by extension, their own destinies, as well.
This brief article discusses, first, the broader indigenization policy questions of southern African states, with emphasis on developments in Zimbabwe and Tanzania. Then, the article focuses on the indigenization question that is embraced today by the government of Zambia, which has recently granted specific indigenous rights to the Nkoya people. These two versions of indigenization serve to demonstrate the multiple dimensions of indigenous peoples' politics in Africa today.
Fourth World Bulletin • Spring/Summer 1996
Copyright © 1996 by the Fourth World Center
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