The Dialectics of Citizenship and Ethnicity in Guinea

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Periodical article

Title:	The Dialectics of Citizenship and Ethnicity in Guinea
Author:	Groelsema, Robert J.
Year:	1998
Periodical:	Africa Today
Volume:	45
Issue:	3-4
Pages:	411-421
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Guinea
Subjects:	ethnicity nationality Law, Human Rights and Violence Politics and Government Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/4187236
Abstract:	This article argues that citizenship rights, by virtue of their association with the 'amoral' civic public domain, are being ignored at a potentially high cost to the success of democratic reforms in Africa. In particular, failure to apply constitutionally guaranteed principles of liberal citizenship may lead to the politics of exclusion and the denial of equal access to resources and to positions of authority and leadership at the highest levels. The article highlights this issue through an examination of citizenship in Guinea, with special emphasis on the popular politics of Guinea's major ethnic groups - Malinke and Peul - in the 1990s. In the First Republic (1958-1984) there were two significant developments for citizenship: Malinke gains made under Sékou Touré, and persecution of the Peul. After Touré's death in April 1984 control over the civic public changed hands. Members of Lansana Conté's Susu ethnic group began obtaining positions in the public bureaucracy. The 1993 presidential campaign, Guinea's first multiparty competition since independence, became a focal point for ethnic citizenship. Notes, ref.