Violence and the war of words: ethnicityv.nationalism in the Casamance

Abstract

Since 1982 the Mouvement des forces démocratique casamançais has been fighting for the independence of the Casamance region of Senegal. In 1989, when the Mouvement initiated a sustained military campaign, Senegal's official and independent press began to provide intensive coverage of its activities and objectives. This article documents the arguments for and against Casamançais independence as documented by Senegal's press in the year following the resurgence of this conflict. The Mouvement's leadership has consistently maintained that its efforts to win independence for the Casamance are legitimate because France created the Casamance. The French, it argues, never intended the Casamance to be administratively incorporated into Senegal. Conversely, those opposed to the Mouvement have attempted to delegitimise its activities by claiming that it represents the interests of the Jola, just one of the Casamance's many ethnic groups. It is argued that the Senegalese government and other opponents of the Mouvement have attempted to label the independence movement an ethnic movement because of a distinction in African political ideology between nationalism and ethnicity. According to this ideology, nationalism, and other legitimate forms of political mobilisation, should represent a plural constituency. Those that represent the narrow interests of a single ethnic group are not considered legitimate.