ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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	Abstracts

A theory of human life for citizenship and civil society
by
Victor Adefemi Isumonah
Dept. of Political Science, P.O. Box 20359, U.I. Post Office, University of Ibadan, IBADAN, Nigeria

Human rights discourse about Africa wrongly focuses on episodes rather than situations behind them (Shivji, 1989). Similarly, human rights activists have focused on the atrocities of the state rather than their sources just as there is undue emphasis of the generalized Western individualistic based conception of rights on the role of the state instead of the social structures in providing rights (Kothari, 1995). On the other hand, the question of African concept of human rights in the individualist and group or communalist debate (Dyke, 1977; Howard, 1990; Osaghae, 1997) has tended to distract from the correspondence between the conception of citizenship and rights. Such focuses on episodes and thematic conceptual dimensions lead to wrong solutions being not derived from the understanding of the actual problem. Thus, it is important to give consideration to Brugger's (1996) submission that a theory of rights is needed side-by-side a theory of citizenship if we are to understand why one state engages in the massive violation of the rights of its people while another does not. The proper starting point is not focus on the abuses of human rights but why they happen. As such, the concept of citizenship of each of the above examples of states is the appropriate point to commence enquiry if major and consistent action flows from perception, that is, the realm of motivation. The question to ask about the state that violates the rights of its people is, what is the concept of people or citizens of the rulers. Put differently, how does the governing elite view their people? Not to be mistaken, all states violate the rights of their citizens for political reasons. For example, a Russian can travel out of Russia only after about ten years since resigning a post in a strategic resource or scientific discovery centre. This is a violation of a citizen's right based on inter-state competition for supremacy. There are violations of rights, usually massive, that serve sectional interests, specifically, the interests of the wielders of state power. These are the ones that draw the attention of concerned people, organizations, and states and need to be understood why they happen. The typical African political class remains the same since independence. It simply inherited the oppressive colonial system and thus has not and does not attempt to change it. If this political class, the bourgeoisie, "did not fight the colonial system in order to change it but merely to inherit it" (Ake, 1996:23), it behooves us to understand the concept of citizenship that directed the actions of the colonial masters toward the colonized peoples, which has been carried over into post-independence Africa by most of its rulers. (Mamdani, 2002) How did the inheriting of the oppressive colonial system take place? The answer to this question is crucial to an understanding of the concept of citizenship of African rulers, which directs the way they treat their people. In turn, the understanding of the concept of citizenship or peoplehood of African rulers helps toward the understanding of the development of civil society in Africa. The assumption here being that a listening state is necessary for the development of a vibrant civil society. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the masses are still struggling for recognition as citizens, being very much like the subjects of the colonial state. Human rights abuses, which stunt the growth of civil society, can best be understood within this framework. All too often, the debate on the civil society in Africa has engaged in whether it exists and the conclusion that it does not, derived from the comparison of features of western and African societies rather than the roots of these features. No serious effort has been made to establish the African state's concept of people or citizen for understanding why it engages in the massive violation of the rights of this people. In other words, no serious effort has been made to probe into the feeling and thinking of African rulers, which are reflected in their actions that are read very simply as human rights abuses. What value does the African state place on the life a fellow African particularly the masses? How do African rulers view dangerous situation and threat to lives of the masses? Answers to these questions will be provided through a human life theory the proposed paper seeks to develop. This theory would help an international audience see the advantages, which the peoples of the developed countries enjoy and the disadvantages being endured by the peoples of the underdeveloped countries especially those under very selfish and insensitive rulers in Africa as it reflects on the status of civil society in different countries of the world. Empirical material for the theory will be drawn from the policies and reactions of developed and underdeveloped economies to conditions that threaten the lives of their citizens. It submits that it should not, as so far done in the human rights, citizenship and civil society discourses, be taken for granted that all those conferred with citizenship by the constitution or some other legal instrument are in every state and then used as platform for assessing the status of civil society.

Date received: October 6, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # camm-29.