A Continent Gone Wrong

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arbitrary violations of traditional boundaries by European administrators set blacks against blacks. Kenya's 1952 Mau Mau uprising began as a rebellion against British colonial'rule, which had designated fertile highland areas for white settlement. The struggle quickly turned into a civil war between Kikuyu rebels and loyalists. In the ensuing four years, more than 11,000 blacks were killed, most of them Kikuyu. By contrast, only 95 whites died. A little more than a decade later, when it seemed possible that a young Luo labor leader named Tom Mboya could succeed Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta, the younger man was assassinated. His killers were widely assumed to be hard-core Kikuyu loyalists.

In all but a handful of African countries, tribal loyalties still predominate, especially in rural areas where nationalist sentiment has not penetrated. Zaïre has 200 different tribes speaking some 75 languages, from the Pygmies in the east to the Baluba, Batetela and Bassongo-Meno in the interior. In Burundi, the minority Tutsi tribe had subjugated the majority Hutu (85% of the population) for centuries. During three months in 1972, an estimated 200,000 Hutu were slaughtered after being blamed for an abortive coup. More than a decade earlier, in neighboring Rwanda, the Hutu (89% of the population) had overthrown their Tutsi masters, killing 100,000. The bloodiest war in postcolonial Africa was fought from 1967 to 1970, when the predominantly Ibo region of southeastern Nigeria seceded and formed the independent state of Biafra. The civil war cost at least 1 million lives before Biafra was brought back under Nigeria's control.

Such explosions of tribal violence are often cited as justification for the frequent emergence of one-party states in Africa. The latest example may be Zimbabwe. After a bloody seven-year civil war that ended white rule in what was then Rhodesia, majority Shona tribesmen loyal to

Robert Mugabe and Ndebele fighters led by Joshua Nkomo reached a shaky accord to rule independent Zimbabwe. But not long after Mugabe was elected Prune Minister in 1980, tribal enmity resurfaced. Since then the Shona-dominated army and security police have killed an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Ndebele. Nkomo fled to London last March, although he returned to Zimbabwe in August.

Riven by tribal factionalism since independence, Nigeria established a deliberate policy aimed at breaking down old tribal hostilities. Before the U.S.-style Nigerian constitution was suspended following General Buhari's coup, a presidential candidate needed to win a plurality in national elections and at least 25% of the vote in two-thirds of the country's 19 states. The system was imperfect, but in two free elections Nigerian voters cast their ballots across tribal lines.

Rapid urbanization has hastened the process of detribalization, but this has created an entirely new set of problems. Attracted by the often spurious promise of wealth in Africa's burgeoning cities, hundreds of thousands of Africans have deserted their native villages. In 1950, only three African cities had populations of more than 500,000; now there are 29. Many African sociologists see the phenomenon as a primary cause of social disintegration; young Africans in particular discard tribal values and disciplines for an urban-centered culture of Coca-Cola and transistor radios. For many Africans