Violence was a structuring element of colonial systems. To subdue Africans, colonial states had to use violence, although they combined it with other strategies to control the colonized populations. In the post-colonial world, violence once again invaded the African continent, with wars, insurrectionary movements, revolts, dictatorships… The questions to be discussed at this roundtable are: what is the relationship between colonial and postcolonial violence? Are they violence of opposite sign or are there continuities? Is post-colonial violence a response to colonial violence? Is it possible to find any relationship between these violences and pre-colonial violence?
At the time of independence, the high level of violence surprised analysts and there was a tendency to consider colonial violence as a simple by-product of colonial problems. It was argued that ethnic, regional, religious, identity or class conflicts responded to logics developed during colonialism that would survive briefly with decolonization. In general, it was felt that there was a “structural violence” that survived the decolonization of the African continent. For some authors, even the explosion of violence experienced on the continent was only a phase of adaptation to the new status, which would have a transitory duration. Nevertheless, the violence has not stopped.
In any case, very different interpretations have been formulated. Lange and Dawson, for example, using a large statistical table, pointed out that there was no significant correlation between colonial violence and the existence of postcolonial conflicts.
Mahmood Mamdani dealt with the same issue from another perspective. Far from considering that all post-colonial violent phenomena were directly derived from colonial phenomena, he analyzed the identity conflicts that arose after independence, concluding that the logics of ascription were radically different in both periods, showing that African nation-states did not appear with colonization, but with independence.
Charles Tilly, on the other hand, did not place so much emphasis on state violence, but emphasized the role played in African conflicts by non-state forces, which developed repression to brutal levels. Tilly believes that the existence of organizations specialized in brutal repression has direct consequences on the level of violence, as long as there are no social control mechanisms that affect these organizations.
This panel will reflect on this issue, especially based on the case of Spanish colonialism in Africa. An attempt will be made to analyze whether the violence of the Macías regime in Equatorial Guinea (1968-1979) was a continuation of Franco’s colonial violence or whether it was a radically different type of violence. In addition, we will try to perceive to what extent certain procedures were a replica of colonial violence, which only affected the privileged of colonialism, or if the main victims of colonialism were also victims of macism. The reflections on colonial violence presented in the Guineo-Ecuadorian context by Celeste Muñoz and Gustau Nerín, and in the post-colonial context by Max Liniger-Goumaz, will be taken into account. On the Moroccan case, the works of Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste and José Luis Vilanova will be taken into account. For the Sahara, the texts of Alberto Lopez Bargados will also be used.
But the colonial and postcolonial reflection in the Equatoguinean case and in the Spanish framework is to be compared with other processes that have developed in other parts of the continent: Uganda, Angola… We want a reflection that goes beyond the Hispanic framework and that serves to analyze different types of colonialism in different African contexts.