Penguin Books. Baltimore. 1961. African Series coll. David & Helen Kimble, eds. 217 p.
So far I have discussed African political parties in a somewhat general way, without attempting to differentiate within the genus. But it is evident that, just as African parties can come into being in a variety of different ways, so they can develop various forms of organization. And, while it is true that every party “is what it is and not another thing”, this emphasis on uniqueness is compatible with drawing certain broad distinctions between types. Such distinctions are, of course, neither exhaustive — other differentia could be found — nor wholly adequate when one comes to consider individual cases. Parties are too complex and too fluid to fit any given set of pigeon-holes.
What seems essential is to take account of differences in three major respects:
There is a striking difference in the scale of operations of the various African parties. For example, the former RDA, from 1946 to 1958, sought to function throughout the three million square miles of French sub-Saharan Africa with its population of approximately twenty-seven million, and claimed after the 1957 elections to be “in a position of almost complete control of Afrique Noire”.
This was as different from the Union Populaire de Bandiagara in Mali, or the Parti Travailliste Saloum-Saloum in Senegal, as an elephant is different from a bush-baby 38. It might even seem farfetched to label organizations of the latter type “parties”; but since they may contest, and sometimes win, elections, they cannot be ignored, At first sight, then, it might seem reasonable to distinguish between :
This kind of classification has clearly some validity. But it also raises difficulties. What, first, is meant by a “territorial party”? One might be inclined to answer: Any party whose organization is based on an area with a single government and a common administrative system, from the Gambia to the ex-Belgian Congo. Parties have in fact tended to take for granted these curiously assorted units into which Africa was partitioned by the colonial powers at the end of the nineteenth century — but not entirely so. Some African frontiers are clearly unstable: for example, the frontiers between Morocco, Spanish West Africa (including Ifni) and Mauretania; the frontiers within the former Federations of French West and French Equatorial Africa; the Cameroun-Nigeria frontier; the former Somalia-British Somaliland-French Somaliland frontiers (with implications for Ethiopia and Kenya). Hence Dr I. M. Lewis, in his useful classification of Somali political parties, does not make use of the category of “territorial parties” but distinguishes “national parties” from “clan” and “regional” parties. “National parties”, defined as parties whose “principal aim is to further a truly pan-Somali nationalism” — the Somali Youth League, for instance — are “inter-territorial parties” in my sense, since they may operate (legally or illegally) in any or all of the territories in which the Somali live. 80, 96
To a more limited extent Istiqlal in Morocco might be regarded as an inter-territonal party, since it seeks to unite the Moors of Mauretania and the Spanish Sahara with the Moroccans in a single Greater Moroccan State, and has organized clandestine branches in these so far “unredeemed” territories 11. Even the CPP of Ghana, which might seem to be a clear case of a territorial party, also exists among Ghanaians in partibus in fidelibus, in Monrovia, Liberia, for example. In Afrique Noire, the term “territorial party” is generally used to describe a party based upon one of the eight territories of the former French West African Federation, or upon one of the four territories of former French Equatorial Africa, or Togo, or Cameroun: for example, UPS in Senegal, PDG in Guinea, or UDDIA in the Congo Republic. But inmost cases such parties have had inter-territorial connexions — ups with PFA, or UDDIA with RDA, for example. Hence, here again, the distinction between territorial and inter-territorial parties is not rigorous, and cannot be so long as the frontiers of future African States are indeterminate; some parties combine both characteristics.
Further difficulties arise if one seeks any kind of precision with regard to “regional and ethnic parties”. There is the problem of the difference between what a party claims to be and what it really is, and between what it is at one period of its history and what it is at another. This is not, of course, a problem peculiar to Africa: the British Liberal Party once looked like a regional party, functioning in Wales and southwest England; and the ILP, after it split from the Labour Party, had the appearance of a predominantly Scottish party. The crucial question is, surely, whether a given party is in practice limited, as regards its appeal and its effective support, to the inhabitants of a particular region or the members of a particular linguistic or cultural group; or whether, while its main source of strength may lie in a particular region, or among a specific people, it none the less attempts to construct some kind of territorial organization.
In Nigeria it is understandable that the sheer size of the territory, its internal diversity, and the history and traditions of its component peoples — as well as the pattern of colonial institutions — should have tended to encourage the formation of parties with a distinct regional or ethnic basis. But it is possible here to differentiate between parties which are essentially ethnic — like the Idoma State Union; parties which are explicitly regional — like the N PC, NEPU, and the United Middle Belt Congress; and parties — of which NCNC and the Action Group are the only Significant examples — which, though they may appeal to regional and ethnic loyalties, seek to function on a territorial basis. This has been the case with the NCNC Since its foundation: it has been organized as a party in the Eastern and Western Regions, while operating in the Northern Region in alliance with NEPU, the Idoma State Union, and the “Moses Rwang Wing” of the UMBC 47. The Action Group, on the other hand, while it started life as a Western Region, predominantly Yoruba party, has since 1951 extended its organization into the Eastern Region, and has made great efforts to establish itself in the North — not only in Ilorin and the Middle Belt, but also in the main centres of Hausaland and Bornu. On these grounds both the NCNC and the Action Group can properly be described as “territorial” or “national” parties.
The same sort of criteria can be applied elsewhere. In the Sudan the Liberal Party (originally known as the Southern Party) was a regional party, making its appeal to the economically and educationally retarded, and predominantly non-Muslim peoples of the three southern provinces. So was the Hizbia Digil-Mirifleh, a major opposition party in Somalia, representing “the common cultural, economic, and territorial interests of the Digil and Rabanweyn, inhabiting the most fertile region of Somalia” 96. Differences in economic and social standards, whether resulting in a relatively favourable or unfavourable situation, clearly help to stimulate the formation of regional and ethnic parties. These may sometimes seek to avoid the appearance of a purely ethnic or regional appeal The NLM, though essentially an Ashanti party, described itself as national, and contested elections in some constituencies in southern Ghana. But parties of this type are distinguishable from political organizations, whether parties or congresses, which though territorial in intention have their basis among particular “advanced” peoples, e.g., the former Kenya African Union among the Kikuyu, the Uganda National Congress among the Baganda, or the Union Démocratique de Défense des Intérêts Africains among the Bakongo and related peoples.
The essential characteristic of the regional-ethnic parties is their particularism. They derive both their strength and their weakness from their appeal to a sense of group solidarity, which may — as in Ashanti — be rooted in history, but may also as in the southern Sudan — be a recent discovery. Other types of particularist party, which are strictly neither regional nor ethnic, can be assigned to the same general category: for example in Somalia where the ties of clanship have remained significant, there have been clan parties, “whose aim is to promote the interests of a particular agnatic group”, such as the Marrehaan Union or the Hawiye Party 96.
Confessional parties, parties that is to say based upon a common religious allegiance, constitute another sub-type. Here again, it is not always easy to draw the line between a thoroughgoing, avowedly confessional party — like the Gambia Muslim Congress or the former Moslem Association Party in Ghana — and a confessionally oriented party, like the predominantly Catholic Democratic Party in Uganda. As a rule, where confessional or cryptoconfessional parties emerge, it is in response to a definite sense of grievance, and to provide a channel for the realization of certain concrete demands, on the part of the community concerned. Thus such support as the Ghana MAP was able to attract lay primarily among the lumpen-proletariat inhabiting the zongos of Accra and Kumasi, including Muslim immigrants from the Northern Territories, Haute-Volta, and the Niger Bend, organized under semitraditional leaders, who wanted State-subsidized Islamic schools and better housing and living conditions 101, 108. Such parties, since they can seldom succeed in mobilizing more than a section of the community which they claim to represent, are almost doomed to be minor parties, extracting what concessions they can from the regime. No doubt some major territorial parties — PDG in Guinea, US in Mali, or SYL in Somalia, for example — have derived part of their dynamic from the way in which they have restated basic Islamic ideas, and appealed to a sense of Muslim solidarity. But Africans have, on the whole, been disinclined to give their allegiance to parties of an exclusively confessional type, whether Muslim or Christian.
As regards dwarf parties, all that needs to be said is that their dwarfishness can be of different kinds. Some dwarf parties like the former Anlo Youth Association in Ghana —restrict their appeal to a particular local group, in this case the Anlo Ewes. Thus dwarf parties may at the same time be tribal parties — like the former Ga Shifimo Kpee in Ghana, which was based ethnically on a section of the Ga people, and locally upon Accra 72. There are also dwarf parties — like some of those in Uganda — which claim to be territorial, but have not in practice succeeded in extending their organization beyond the chief urban centres, in this case Kampala. Others again are essentially “one-man shows” — like the Nigerian Dynamic Party, which provided a platform for the expression of Dr Chike Obi's interesting “Kemalist” ideology 56. On the whole such parties tend to be short-lived: the principle of the survival of the fittest stimulates the major parties to seek continually to enlarge their field of operations, and promotes the absorption or disintegration of dwarf parties. And, in general, territorial and interterritorial parties enjoy benefits of scale, financial resources, electoral effectiveness, and actual or prospective power, which give them an obvious advantage over regional, ethnic, clan, confessional, or local parties.
I use the term “élite parties” in preference to M. Duverger's “cadre parties” 1, largely because “élite” has become a reasonably familiar English word, whereas “cadre”, in so far as it means anything to English-speaking readers, suggests the “cadres” or trained militants of a Communist party. But I cannot pretend that I am altogether satisfied with the term “élite parties” since mass parties also have their “élites”. In any case, though the terms are unimportant, the distinction is fundamental for an understanding of the character and behaviour of African parties. It is a distinction which penetrates all aspects of party life the concept of membership, structure, discipline, leadership, methods of finance, basic activities, techniques, ideology. Though in a general way its validity has already been assumed, it needs further explanation at this point.
The essential characteristic of mass parties is that they seek to enrol the mass of the population as members, or at least supporters, of the party. “Elite parties”, on the other hand, consist essentially of a nucleus of persons enjoying status and authority within the existing social order — an élite of chiefs, religious leaders, or wealthy bourgeois — and depend largely upon established ties of obligation and loyalty between the “élite” and “the people”. To state the contrast in the simplest form, élite parties are content to reflect the structure of society as it is, or as it used to be; while mass parties attempt to impose their own new type of structure upon society.
This opposition presents itself particularly clearly in regard to the notion of party membership. In principle, élite parties do not have members. “The problem of the number of members belonging to the French Radical Socialist party is susceptible of no precise answer, simply because the problem itself is meaningless” 1. Where such parties do in fact make an effort to build up a card-holding, subscription-paying membership, it is usually through the influence of “the contagious pattern of mass parties. In French West Africa the leaders of some élite parties, such as the Parti Progressiste Soudanais, “at times attempted to sell membership cards after they saw the successful use of this money-raising technique by the leaders of the rival mass parties. But the cadre [élite] parties found few individual buyers for the cards, because the people who voted the party ticket did so out of a sense of loyalty, not to the party, but to the local notable who happened to represent the party” 38. For the mass parties, on the other hand, the idea of individual membership and individual commitment is fundamental; and this commitment is normally expressed through the purchase of a party card, even though card-buying may be spasmodic, and the collection of subscriptions irregular.
With this contrast in regard to the notion of membership goes a clear distinct, on of structure. “The mass party community became far more differentiated than the simple dual categories of leaders and voters — or patrons and clients — which characterized the cadre [élite] parties” 38. True, in the latter case there is differentiation within the leadership: but the party hierarchy reaches no further than the local notable — chief or village head, businessman or teacher — who is the party in his locality, potentially between elections, in actuality at election times. There are no organized channels of communication between the central nucleus of leading personalities and the mass of voters to whom it looks for support. But in the mass parties there are reasonably well defined degrees of participation and responsibility, and a recognizable chain of authority, leading down from the central executive and inner party directorate, through the regional leadership and local party officials, to the wider, more inclusive category of militants, “willing to devote time to party work and propaganda”; and, beyond these, to the party members, “who took the positive step of buying a party card”, and ultimately to the still larger body of sympathizers, “who attended mass meetings and voted the party ticket” 18.
In this respect the mass parties — Neo-Destour in Tunisia, UNFP and the old Istiqlal in Morocco, the PDG in Guinea, the CPP in Ghana, the SYL in Somalia — are organisms of a more highly evolved type, with their more articulated structure and their better developed communications system, than the more primitive élite parties. Hence they are more flexible, able to deal with a wider range of situations — legality or illegality, power or opposition — and to vary their strategies between the revolutionary and gradualist poles in response to variations in the political climate. In the internal struggle for power which develops during the period of decolonization élite parties tend therefore to lose ground to mass parties — as Vieux-Destour lost ground to Neo-Destour, the Parti Démocratique de l'Indépendance to Istiqlal, the various regional, ethnic, and Administration-supported parties to RDA, and UGCC to CPP.
From this fundamental structural difference other distinctions follow. Because mass parties, by their nature, seek to mobilize the mass of the population, they normally generate, or draw into partnership, allied organizations — women's and youth organizations and trade unions in particular; sometimes also farmers, and traders, associations, charitable and welfare organizations, sports clubs, theatrical companies, and independent schools (see pp. 117-24). Such groups serve a dual purpose: they enable the party to draw into its field of influence a larger body of people than those who are willing to accept the obligations — and sometimes risks — of party membership; and if, as in Tunisia and Morocco under the Protectorate, the mass party finds itself illegal, some at any rate of its organismes annexes may be left unmolested. Elite parties do not normally develop subsidiaries of this type.
Further, mass parties take the question of discipline seriously. To maintain this discipline they do not hesitate to suspend, expel, or demote those in positions of authority within the party hierarchy. The culprits may be not merely aberrant intellectuals, but entire “deviationist” factions — as the CPP publicly expelled the eighty “Independents” who stood in defiance of the party in the 1954 elections 55, and the RDA Comité de Coordination, at its Conakry conference in 1955, expelled its Senegal, Niger, and Cameroun sections, which had continued to adhere to the party's pre-1950 militant, Communist-inclined line 38. Elite parties are in no position to impose discipline of this kind; first, because they do not conceive of politics as a battleground, with the party as a semimilitary force; second, because their looser structure and more rudimentary communications system provide no mechanism by which deviant individuals or groups can be removed. If the local party representative disagrees with instructions from headquarters, he simply moves out, taking his “followers” with him. This is a potential danger, of course, for mass parties also; but the principle that the loyalty of the rank-and-file is given to the party, not to the local leadership, reduces the risks.
There is a similar contrast in regard to the main sources of party funds. Mass parties, especially when they are out of office, seek with varying degrees of success to finance themselves from the contributions of the mass of their members and supporters. As with European Socialist and Communist parties, this method of finance has an educational as well as an economic purpose: it strengthens the sense of personal commitment. The individual contributions may be of various kinds: regular monthly subscriptions (in the best organized mass parties); initial subscriptions, paid on admission to the party; “donations” at mass meetings and rallies; profits on party festivals and dances; special levies (including the regular deductions from the salaries of assemblymen and Ministers which several mass parties impose). Contributions in kind, as Dr. Schachter has rightly emphasized in the case of French West Africa, represent another important source of mass party income — “in the form of loaned cars and trucks, work without pay, communally built shelters, platforms and decorations for demonstrations, cloth for party insignia, music from amateur and professional musicians, rudimentary bridges and roads to facilitate communications” 38. These are some of the ways in which mass parties have been able to adapt African traditions of mutual help and collective enterprise for their own purposes.
Elite parties, on the other hand, are organizationally ill-adapted to tap such sources of funds on any scale. Hence they have usually been obliged to rely upon gifts — sometimes of a lavish kind — from wealthy individual patrons, or from corporate bodies 32, or, in French Africa, from the Administration and European firms. This tendency has, of course, been present in the case of some of the mass parties also. For example, the NLM, which had some of the characteristics of a mass party, and raised part of its funds from the sale of party cards, subscriptions, and donations, was at the same time heavily subsidized by the Asanteman Council 66. One consequence of this method of financing a party is that, almost inevitably, it gives the paymasters a measure of control over party policy.
Other contrasts can be traced. The leadership of the élite parties comes in the main from those who already enjoy authority — within the “modified-traditional” system, as chiefs or members of ruling families (the Sardauna of Sokoto, for example), or within the “modern” system, as professionals or men of property (in Ghana, Dr Danquah, or the late George Grant) or indeed in both. In such parties it is the dominant personalities whose authority gives weight and influence to the party. In the mass parties, on the other hand, it is the party that manufactures its own leaders: it is from the party, primarily, that they derive their status and authority; the élite to which they belong is an essentially new élite of professional politicians, with a background of agitation in student and youth orgartizations, trade unions, and the like. Where leaders of mass parties in fact belong to ruling families, or the older élites, they are usually at pains to point out, like Saifoulaye Diallo in Guinea, that they have “renounced their privileges in order to join the democratic camp” 125 — in other words, that they have exchanged the status of “personalities” for that of party militants.
With this difference is associated a contrast both of ideologies and of functions. Though the ideologies of mass parties may vary widely, they must be in some sense progressiste: that is, they must appeal to “the common man”; they must talk the language of “the people” 71, 72. Elite parties, on the other hand, are more liable to develop a “moderate”, or conservative, ideology; to emphasize order and stability, respect for tradition, the rights of “Natural Rulers” and established interests, the government of “the best”. From a functional standpoint, the mass parties are concerned to develop a multiplicity of activities — from running baby clinics to organizing a gendarmerie, a dance-band, or a burial club; while élite parties tend to be primarily — and sometimes exclusively — electoral associations, preoccupied with the periodic effort to secure, or retain, seats on local councils or parliamentary or ministerial office for their leaders?
In so far as the mass parties succeed in developing a form of organization which seeks to cater for the totality of human needs within which an individual's life can be entirely lived, which generates a warmth, an enthusiasm, and a sense of community of its own, they begin to acquire the characteristics of an “Order” (in M. Duverger's terminology), as contrasted with a mere “Association” 1. R. Rézette brings out this point very clearly, writing of IstiqIal in Morocco, at the stage of development which it had reached by the early 1950s:
The party militant, when he leaves his factory, his works, or his school, turns for relaxation to the party sports club, or takes part in the Scouts organization, or goes to watch the performance of a party-sponsored play. His wife, or wives, will often belong to a women's branch of the party; sometimes they will attend courses to assist the emancipation of women arranged by the party. If the militant is able to read and write, he will give evening courses in reading and writing to illiterate militants. If he is illiterate, he will attend such courses himself. The books used in these courses are banned in Morocco and are imported illegally from Egypt and the East — hence they are in short supply. Such leisure as is left to the militant he is likely to spend copying these books by hand, in order to pass them on to those with whom he is in contact? 37
Where the party came to play so many-sided and absorbing a part in the life of an individual, it tended to acquire the characteristics of an “Order” which was itself a quasi-religious community: not in the sense that the philosophy of Istiqlal was substituted for the philosophy of Islam (the two were in practice quite compatible), but that the brotherly ties of Istiqlal took the place of the brotherly ties of a Muslim tarīqa.
Dr David Apter, using somewhat different language, found essentially the same qualities present in the Ghana CPP in 1953:
The CPP is fraternal and open, intimate and tolerant. It is particularistic in its loyalties and universalistic in its recruitment. It rewards its friends and removes its enemies. It has diffuse purposes with as many different groups of people finding in it social, economic, or political success as is necessary to provide a mass following; yet it is specific in its political objectives. It is responsible to its local groups, tightly unified, a society of the elect to which many are elected 8.
The same kind of statement could certainly be made about the RDA in certain territories during particular periods — for example, in the Ivory Coast and Soudan from 1948 to 1950, or in Guinea from 1955 on. This tendency of the mass party to consider itself “a society of the elect” is reflected in its own specific external forms: its distinctive modes of dress, such as the black and white striped jellaba, the prison graduates' caps; its characteristic symbols, as the head of the party leader on badges and cloths; its cycle of folk-songs and ballads, hymns and prayers; its established dances, ceremonials, pilgrimages to the tombs of party saints and martyrs. The party-functioning-as-an-“Order” may itself be transient, associated with revolutionary or near-revolutionary phases of its history: “progressively the tension of the Order lessens and enthusiasm diminishes” 1. None the less it is another feature of the mass party, entirely lacking in the élite parties, that it should be capable, during phases of effervescence, of generating a totally satisfying way of life for its membership, of seeking to provide a total solution to their problems.
Clearly there are structural resemblances between African mass parties and parties of the Left in Europe. For this there are two good reasons. There is, first, a similarity of objectives. Just as the European Socialist or Communist Party aims — in principle, at least — “at the political education of the working class, at picking out from it an élite capable of taking over the government and the administration of the country” 1, so the African mass party aims at picking out from the indigenous, colonized community an élite capable of taking over government and administration. A successful mass party tends to become, in effect, a parallel, or shadow State, even before it has actually taken control of State power. Hence there are bound to be similarities between the types of organization required for these two tasks.
Second, the African mass parties have tended, particularly in the initial stages, to look to European Socialist or Communist parties as models for the construction of their own institutions. This process of institutional borrowing has naturally been eclectic. European models have been adapted, not copied. But, broadly speaking, in territories which have been within the French sphere of influence — Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Afrique Noire — mass parties have been mainly affected by the more rigid Communist, cellule-based, form of organization; while in territories within the British sphere the looser, Labour-Party-type, branch-based, model has predominated. Too much, however, should not be made of this distinction, since whether the basic unit of an African mass party describes itself as a cellule or a branch does not necessarily make much practical difference (see pp. 82-6). One must also take into account the influence of another quite different external model, the Egyptian Wafd, upon the organization of the mass parties of the Sudan, particularly the Ashiqqa-NUP.
It is worth while trying to indicate some of the stages through which parties can pass on the route from illegality to legality. There is, first, the party which is proscribed — both in law and in fact — and can therefore only exist as an underground, clandestine organization. This was the situation of Istiqlal in Morocco from December 1952 to 1955; of UPC in the French Cameroons after 1955; of the Sudan Movement for National Liberation (the Sudan equivalent of the Communist Party) from its foundation in 1944. And it is the situation of Sawaba in Niger at the present time. Second, there are parties which are formally illegal, but in practice permitted to enjoy a quasi-legal existence. This, roughly, was the position of Istiqlal from 1944 until its total suppression in December 1952: it “remained permanently on the margins of clandestinity; it was tolerated, but its illegal character from the standpoint of the Dahir regarding associations meant that it could be dissolved at discretion” 37. The Moroccan Communist Party is in a somewhat similar position at the present time. Third, there is the contrary situation, in which a party is formally legal, but is subject to such a degree of police persecution that it is obliged to develop some of the forms of organization and modes of operation of an underground party. An outstanding example of a party so situated was the RDA in the Ivory Coast during the repression of 1949-50 38, 111. But most of the mass parties have had an almost comparable experience at some stage of their histories. Fourth, there is the formerly illegal party which has achieved legality - e.g. Istiqlal and Neo-Destour after 1955. Fifth, there are parties which are legal, but whose position is not so secure that they can take their continuing legality for granted; I have in mind particularly opposition parties in States governed by a single dominant party — e.g. the United Party in Ghana.
Finally, there is the party which is not merely legal, but has become an integral part of the institutions of government, so that it could hardly be made illegal without some form of revolutionary upheaval, changing the basis of legitimate authority. This is to be more than legal; it is to be part of the established order of things, in something like the sense in which the British Conservative and Labour Parties are part of the established order of things. True, an established order may be upset, “by chance or nature's changing course untrimmed”; but, so long as it continues, such parties are sufficiently firmly rooted to have a reasonable expectation of surviving with it. This would seem to be the case with those dominant parties which have been in a position to provide a constitutional underpinning to their dominance, for example, Neo-Destour in Tunisia, the CPP in Ghana, PDG in Guinea.
In the flux of African politics qualities can change quite rapidly into their opposites. Thus in a year or so a party may traverse — like Istiqlal in 1955-6 — the whole route from total illegality to something approaching legitimacy; in a somewhat less spectacular way the CPP travelled, between January 1950 and February 1951, from a state of semi-clandestinity to ministerial office. The reverse process can also occur, as in the Sudan after the coup d'état of November 1958, where parties which had for the past five years been part of the legitimate apparatus of government found themselves suddenly illegal. Moreover, it is not only in a temporal context that the situation is fluid. A given inter-territorial party may at the same time be legal in one territory and illegal in another. This was formerly the situation of the SYL, which enjoyed power in Somalia, existed legally in British Somaliland, but operated under cover in Ethiopia and the Northern Province of Kenya 96. Even within a single State there may be degrees or shades of legality as between one region and another: to be a member of the Action Group in Ijebu-Ode is to belong to a powerful governing party; in Kano, on the other hand, it means adhering to a tolerated but suspect opposition.
Another complicating factor is the loose association that sometimes occurs between a legal mass party, employing constitutional methods, and a clandestine or semi-clandestine organization, more militant in outlook, committed to methods of direct action or violence (see pp. 125-33). A symbiotic relationship of this type existed in Algeria from 1949 to 1954 between the MTLD — itself a legal reconstruction of the old PPA, which had continued to operate underground through the period of the Second World War — and the clandestine, para-military group known as the Organisation Secrète 26. In a minor key, a somewhat comparable relationship existed during the years 1945-50 between the NCNC and the Zikist Movement, a militant youth association within the wider body, which was declared illegal in April 1950 15. According to some accounts the Kenya African Union, before its suppression in 1952, had similar connexions with a clandestine organization known as the “Forty Group” 36, 111. In such cases there may be little in the way of formal, organizational links between the legal party and the revolutionary group beyond the existence of a partly overlapping leadership.
What are the effects of illegality — total or partial, past, present, or prospective — on party structure and behaviour? Difficulties of investigation and lack of data make it impossible to pursue this question far. A few points, however, stand out. First, an illegal party is obliged to limit very strictly the number of members in its basic units; and, broadly speaking, the greater the degree of illegality, the more restricted the membership of the units. In the case of Istiqlal, for example, during its period of total illegality after the end of 1952, cellules generally consisted of from three to five members. This is a normal maximum in any genuinely underground party. Moreover, clandestinity meant a strengthening of vertical, to the exclusion of horizontal links within the party: that is to say, the cellule leader was in contact with the president, or secretary, of the section to which his cellule belonged, but lacked all contact with other cellules (usually between three and ten in all) forming part of the same section? 37 This again was a natural precautionary measure.
Second, illegality strengthens tendencies towards centralization and rigorous discipline. Orders coming down from the central or regional committees to the basic units have to be obeyed. As the “Internal Regulations for the use of FLN Militants” put it:
Once the meeting [of an FLN cellule] is open … each militant ceases to exist as a private person; he becomes an impersonal and anonymous being, speaking in the name of a movement within which he is merely a part, a wheel.… The meeting is essentially a working session, and cell members must regard themselves as being on the battlefield. 127
While the elective principle may be maintained, especially at the lower levels, there are obvious limits to its use, above all in conditions in which no general congresses can be held. At the higher levels the leadership tends to renew itself by the cooption of outstanding militants. Hence' in his account of Istiqlal, Rézette contrasts its “relatively democratic base” and its “autocratic centre” 37
Third, under conditions of illegality a party is obliged to develop a closed system of communications under its own exclusive control. Telecommunications and the post have, in the last resort, to be replaced by messengers on foot or on mule-back. Such a system can, as FLN experience has shown, be highly efficient in its own way. But it inevitably slows down the process of communication between the central leadership and the basic units, thus limiting in practice the degree of centralization which the illegal party is able to achieve. Fourth, illegality intensifies the distinction between the hard core of militants on the one hand — bound together by common ties of discipline, loyalty, and danger — and the mass of supporters and sympathizers on the other. Hence the party tends to develop the characteristics of an “Order” to a more marked extent than normally occurs under conditions of legality: it becomes in a more profound sense a “band of brothers”, an inner group of dedicated persons.
The transition from partial or total illegality to legality, or even to governing power, presents a party with difficult problems of adjustment: the process has been described as a “mutation”. The party becomes swamped with new members: Istiqlal, whose membership had not reached more than 100,000 in the period before 1955, estimated its members as 1,600,000 in the summer of 1956. The cellules are greatly enlarged; discipline is relaxed, and there are demands for “democratization” within the party; competing factions begin to assert themselves; and the party's main energies have to be transferred from terrorism and revolutionary activity to the maintenance of law and order, administration, and peaceful reconstruction. While Morocco and Tunisia are classic instances of thi s type of “mutation”, the process has occurred in a modified form elsewhere, e.g. in Ghana and in some of the territories of Afrique Noire.
Some parties may fail to solve the problems of reorganization which the transition from illegality to legality raises. Thus the split in Istiqlal in 1959 was partly caused by the failure of the party leadership to absorb the younger militants who had largely directed the revolution of 1953-5 79. In all cases, periods of illegality, near-illegality, and repression leave their marks upon a party long after the event. They affect, for example, the basis of classification of party members.
Thus in the Ivory Coast RDA there were the “martyrs”, who were imprisoned or otherwise suffered for the party cause [in the administrative repression of 1949-50]; the “strong” RDA militants, those generally considered to have passed difficult tests of loyalty, to have refused temptations — offers of promotion, money, cars, and so forth — which were officially offered to encourage them to change parties; the “soft” RDA members, those who during the repression retired from active politics, but did not resign; the RDA “traitors”, who left the party during the repression; the “ex-RDA-RDA”, who left the party, but returned to it afterwards; and lastly the “neo-RDA” who joined the RDA after, and were not involved in “the repression” e.g. the university students returned from Paris 38.
Thus it is important to understand, not only the present situation of a party in regard to legality and illegality, but also its past history.
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