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The Management of Educational Crises in Côte d'Ivoire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Since the attainment of formal political independence in the early 1960s, African leaders have been grappling with the problem of how to manage domestic political conflicts in such a way that their resolution will facilitate, rather than undermine, the maintenance of incumbent régimes. This task, never easy in the best of circumstances, has become even more daunting in recent years as the ongoing economic crisis has deprived most African states of the resources necessary for the continued use of co-optation as the most effective technique for dealing with critics who have their own political aspirations. A further complication is that the ‘frustrations of independence’ have eroded the prestige and personal legitimacy that was once enjoyed by the generation of anti- colonial leaders partly as a result of what might be described as the ‘elder tradition’ in African political culture.1

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Page 639 note 1 For more on leadership traditions in Africa, see Mazrui, Ali A. and Tidy, Michael, Nationalism and New States in African from About 1935 to the Present (London, 1984), ch. 11.Google Scholar Also Ajayi, J. F. Ade, ‘Expectations of Independence’, in Daedalus (Cambridge, Mass.), III, 2, Spring 1982, pp. 19.Google Scholar

Page 639 note 2 See McGowan, Pat and Johnson, Thomas H., ‘African Military Coups d'sÉtat and Underdevelopment: a quantitative historical analysis’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 22, 4, 12 1984, pp. 633–66,Google Scholar and ‘Sixty Coups in Thirty Years: further evidence regarding African military coups d'état’, in Ibid. 24, 3, September 1986, pp. 539–46.

Page 639 note 3 This has implications for the various efficiency norms that characterise African politics. See Claude Ake, ‘Explanatory Notes on the Political Economy of Africa’, in Ibid. 14, 1, March 1976, pp. 1–23.

Page 640 note 1 For illuminating exceptions, see Cohen, Michael A., Urban Policy and Political Conflict in Africa: a study of the Ivory Coast (chicago, 1974),Google Scholar and The Myth of the Expanding Centre–Politics in the Ivory Coast’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 11, 2, 06 1973, pp. 227–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 640 note 2 See Zolberg, Aristide, ‘Political Generations in Conflict: the Ivory Coast case’, in Hanna, William John et al., University Students and African Politics (New York and London, 1975), pp. 103–33.Google Scholar

Page 640 note 3 Snyder, Glenn H. and Diesing, Paul, Conflict Among Nations: bargaining, decision making and system structure in international crises (Princeton, 1977), ch. 1.Google Scholar

Page 641 note 1 ‘Ivory Coast: Houphouët's critic’, in West Africa (London), 16, 05 1983, pp. 1164–5.Google Scholar

Page 642 note 1 Ibid. p. 1164.

Page 642 note 2 The chronology of events has been established as a result of the author's discussions with students in Abidjan during February 1982, and later checked against Mortimer, Robert A., ‘Succession and Recession’, in Africa Report (New Brunswick), 0102 1983, pp. 47.Google Scholar

Page 643 note 1 ‘Ivory Coast: Houphouët's critic’, loc. cit. pp. 1164–5.

Page 644 note 1 The author's observations in Abidjan during September 1984 of changes in the housing conditions of secondary-school teachers who had been evicted the previous year from state housing.

Page 644 note 2 ‘Ivory Coast Strikers Bow to Pressure’, in Africa News (Durham, N.C.), 20, 19 05 1983, p. 2.Google Scholar

Page 644 note 3 Cf. Snyder and Diesing, op. cit.

Page 645 note 1 Legum, Colin, ‘The Year of the Students: a survey of the African university scene’, in Legum, , (ed.), Africa Contemporary Record: annual survey and documents, 1971–9172 (London and New York, 1972), p. A3.Google Scholar

Page 646 note 1 See Cohen, , Urban Policy and Political Conflict in Africa, pp. 115–82, for details about the situation in the late 1960s.Google Scholar

Page 647 note 1 Ibid. pp. 138–9.

Page 648 note 1 Gaulle, Charles de, The Edge of the Sword (New York edn., 1960), pp. 41–2 and 57–8.Google Scholar

Page 649 note 1 In the Cabinet reshuffle of November 1983, General Oumar Ndaw was made Minister of Internal Security, and a new portfolio was created, Rural Development and Civil Defence, headed by Vally Gilles Laubhouet, the son of an old ally of Houphouët-Boigny.

Page 650 note 1 See Mortimer, ‘Sucession and Recession’, loc. cit.

Page 652 note 1 Unless otherwise indicated, all references are based on the author's notes in Abidjan on Houphouët-Boigny's televised broadcast to the nation on the final day of the proceedings, 2 March 1982.

Page 652 note 2 The foreign-policy implications of these convictions are explored in Daddieh, Cyril Kofie, ‘Ivory Coast’, in Shaw, Timothy M. and Aluko, Olajide (eds), The Political Economy of African Foreign Policy: comparative analysis (New York, 1984), pp. 122–44.Google Scholar

Page 654 note 1 Doyle, Mark, ‘Ivory Coast: Houphouët's swan-song?’, in West Africa, 25 07 1983, pp. 1700–1.Google Scholar

Page 654 note 2 Post, Ken, The New States of West Africa (Baltimore, 1964), pp. 80–1.Google Scholar

Page 655 note 1 Mortimer, ‘Succession and Recession’, p. 7, and ‘Ivory Coast: Houphouët's critic’.

Page 655 note 2 Legum, ‘The Year of the Students’, p. A4.

Page 656 note 1 As if to underscore the centrality of such return visits to the countryside, the leaders of the party often follow-up televised rebuttals of the opposition by making tours of the interior in order to ‘remain in contact with masses’.

Page 657 note 1 De Gaulle, op. cit. p. 59.

Page 657 note 2 Doyle, ‘Houphouët's swan-song’, p. 1701.

Page 657 note 3 Although a number of persons have been heavily criticised and indicated by the Commission, there are lingering suspicions that the members did not go far enough for fear of implicating the President himself. On the continuing tensions between the authorities and secondary-school teachers, see Doucet, Lyse, ‘Ivory Coast–Teachers Defy Keita’, in West Africa, 29 10 1984, p. 2185.Google Scholar

Page 658 note 1 See Hanna, William John, Judith Lynne Hanna, and Vivian Zeitz Sauer, ‘The Active Minority’, in Hanna et al., op. cit. pp. 90–1.Google Scholar