It's no longer a question of "if". As the morning of September 19, 2014 dawned, it became clear that in the Scotland Referendum on Independence the "No" vote had won a resounding victory. The outcome of the vote was greeted with delight by British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said that the victory margin of around 55%-45% had settled the issue "for a generation... perhaps for a lifetime". However, no longer another "if"!
In the next breath, Mr. Cameron immediately confirmed that the "No" vote, under no circumstances, will mean - "No" change! Mr. Cameron said he would ensure that the vows his government made during the referendum - about enhanced devolution of political powers to Scotland - (and to Wales?) and supported by all major British parties - Tories, Labour and Liberals alike - would be "honoured in full". A decisive new turning point has been reached in British history. For the conservative "Unionists" in Britain, the "No" vote success could ultimately become a Pyrrhic victory.
British politics, British identity, have definitely reached a new fluid situation - with more emphatic and competing interests and identities in the offing as well. Westminster Parliament is unlikely to survive as the sovereign for all what became known as the British Isles, and might wind up as a strictly English parliament. Devolution is about decentralization, not quite like federalization, but about pushing political powers out and down all the same.
Enhanced devolution is about transferring even more self-governing powers out and down. But where, when will it stop? Human nature being what it is, you give a little, and people will soon expect more. Ambitious politicians of a more specific regional kind, claiming historic identities, are already waiting in the wings, and not only in Scotland, and all anxious to build careers around more recent parliaments in Scotland, Wales - and the Catholic Irish now in the Stormont parliament in Northern Ireland can be expected to share the same appetites.
Count on it - for one, the British unitary state is moribund, and is heading in federal directions. Indeed, good riddance, because such will not only be more democratic, but also the better way to assure that a modicum of unity will survive in the United Kingdom. Future Scots, future Welsh, future Irish, if somewhat met half-way, are unlikely to pursue independent nationalist objectives with the same vehemence as their parents did, or as an earlier deeply offended Irish nationalist generation did, at one time part of the United Kingdom as well.
But also let's consider the Scotland referendum in terms of current European realities, the European Union, in which democracy is surely practiced but, foremost too, also still couched in terms of ongoing historic nationalist positions, and centred on the rights of identity-conscious cultural communities to keep a say in their own futures.
In today's European Union, the mood and political behaviours, the aspirations among Scots, Flemish, Catalans or Basques, make perfect sense. Considering the sentiments behind the European Union, European sentiment continues on a low flame. There is no desire for a European unitary super-state. None! When it counts, most people continue to feel strong about their own historic ethno-national or cultural identities. And the same are kept alive, defended and cultivated within their own territorial state surroundings, about being French, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, and the list is a long one - and why not recognize the same realities about the Flemish, Scots or Catalans as well?
That's the nature of the European Union, and of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Both structures tend to operate democratically, but also operate primarily along ethno-national and related federal lines. Within both arrangements, people protect their own turfs, with clearly marked fences in relation to good and helpful neighbours, but neighbours all the same, respected, but also to be kept at a definite distance. That's the nature also of the Swiss confederation.
In fact, it's human nature. I may like my neighbour's, but I don't expect them to run my side of the fence. Ethnic, national or cultural identity politics have never gone away in Europe, in fact, in the meantime, in view of democratic choice, with the help of modern media, ethno-national identity politics have only become more pronounced. And that same reality and sentiment has also been reconfirmed in the course of the Scotland Referendum - good neighbourly relations with the English, yes; ongoing economic interdependence like before, yes; even sharing the same Queen, but also clearly marked separate households, and distinctive approaches about how to shape one's future.
The same is the underlying operative principle for people within the European Union, where the majority 80 million Germans do not automatically call the shots for their 16 million or so Dutch neighbours, or for the fewer (5.5 million) Danes; or for the two million Slovenians, or the 1,260,000, roughly, Estonians; or the half-a-million or so Luxembourgers. Instead, strong federal fences, or ongoing quasi- sovereign states, and separate governments, continue to mark reality within the European Union. Any lessons in this?
Yes, many historic ethnically mixed centralist or unitary states have had their days - and under terms of democratic choice will make way for new more federal, more self-governing territorial arrangements. Remember one of America's most under-estimated presidents, Woodrow Wilson in his famous exhortation on February 11, 1918: "National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self-determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action."
Oh, yes, and since the proclamation by an American president of this new operative norm in international relations, the world has never been quite the same. And with the spread and strengthening of democratic reality throughout society, expect more, not less in the way of national aspirations on the part of identity-conscious historic populations, and increased pressures within their elite structures in the push for self-determination. And what about Africa in all this? Will Africa remain an exception to the communal cultural reality of most of humanity?
Genuine democracy is still a distant dream in Africa, nowadays still mostly especially a speaking platform, and with inter-ethnic, inter-communal animosity mostly wilfully ignored. The late President of Mozambique, Samora Michael, once said that "for the nation to live the tribe must die." Oh, yes, that's been tried in Africa and elsewhere! Nevertheless, history, recent and old, has revealed some clear political tendencies - in the Sudan, in Nigeria, in Ethiopia, in Kenya, in the south of Africa and more. And let's not forget how terribly wrong things went in Rwanda!
Et tu - South Africa? If ever a state was man-made, totally artificial, English-made, it was strictly territorially defined: "South Africa." Remember too, if ever any state was modelled after the old unitary United Kingdom, it was the British-built Union of South Africa, which, in turn, is almost totally reproduced as the current Republic of South Africa as well.
Only at the very last moment, running into potentially dangerous delays, to placate powerful older ethno-cultural or nation-like populations - Afrikaners and, oh yes, those Zulus - did the communist-drilled African National Congress (ANC), the representatives of the new people majority in South Africa - allow for an underpowered federal arrangement to slip into the new 1996 South African constitution.
But now, with the old United Kingdom unitary state definitely on its death bed, with the old Soviet Union deader than a dodo bird, with a new more democratic United Kingdom heading into the tolerance of more emphatically federal arrangements, what could happen in clearly multi-ethnic, historically and culturally hugely faulted South Africa?
Will political South Africa, whatever the global evidence, prove to be an exception to the rule, to what typically happens elsewhere in the world in culturally divided societies - Ukraine to United Kingdom? One of the effects of democracy in the British Isles, the future of the Scots will remain an interesting spectacle. But keep an eye out for certain democratic developments also in the South of Africa!
Joost Hensen, Universidade Lusófona do Porto
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