The problems of ethnic cultural politics are at the root of cohesion and effective governance in the modern nation state. The state in pre-colonial Africa deployed the oral/performative forms to achieve incorporation, because it facilitated knowledge about the everyday social life of a people and how meanings are negotiated. The question is how does the recourse to specific cultural practices affect the discourses of social inclusion and equality in the multiethnic and multicultural modern nation state? Indeed, how have African intellectuals, politicians, activists and artists critiqued...