ABSTRACT
The inherited colonial legacy, predicated on Westphalian sovereign statehood, is often 'blamed' for much of the crisis of nation building and division of African peoples into non-viable entities called states. The state system not only provides an important insight into the actual working of international and domestic politics, but is also the main actor in the public domain in Africa. The application of the different approaches and conceptions of the state in Africa has been problematic. According to Clapham, the attributes ascribed to states by the mythology of statehood do not reflect the reality of statehood in Africa. European colonialism and its legacies bequeathed African 'proto-states', a crumbling foundation for the creation of a post-colonial political order. Cold War politics conferred on post-colonial African states a disproportionate level of juridical statehood compared to the domestic reality. In the struggle to control state power and consolidate regime survival, political authority in post-colonial Africa became increasingly personalised rather than institutionalised.
