Abstract

The resurgence of nationalist sentiments, from the United States to Europe as well as Africa has fuelled rising political divisions, the drift towards insularity and many other manifestations that threaten cohesion between and within different states across the world. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a renewed scholarly engagement of the concept of nationalism with a view to gaining new understandings as well as thinking through how best its fallouts are to be managed. This paper engages Karl Popper’s views on nationalism within the context of its current manifestation, as well as from a postcolonial perspective. The paper argues that certain forms of nationalist rhetoric affirm Popper’s concerns about the potential dangers inherent in a form of group solidarity that labels others as different. It argues further however, that Popper’s liberal analysis failed to distinguish between anti-colonial nationalism and its dangerous variants. The paper offers a critique of the liberal denouncement of nationalism and defends anti-colonial nationalism as a necessary tool of self-assertion against the discriminatory and exploitative realities of imperialism, whose effects are still manifest in many postcolonial states. The paper concludes by exploring suitable approaches to the management of nationalist impulses in postcolonial African states confronted with group conflicts.