I think the cycle of violence is a challenge for post-colonial Africa. Colonialism first maintains the authority of the colonist through violence, eliciting submission from the colonized through the police and soldiers. But this means that the colonized can only free themselves by reversing the dynamic and themselves exercising violence against the colonist. The colonized learn violence from the colonist, and then use it against them. At the same time, after independence, the most powerful within the new nation may, like the old colonists, once against use violence to elicit the submission of the rural masses. Thus, the cycle begins again.