Showing papers in "African Studies Review in 2011"

Informal Economies and Urban Governance in Nigeria: Popular Empowerment or Political Exclusion?

Abstract: This article examines how popular organizational strategies and coping mechanisms affect broader trajectories of urban governance in contemporary Africa. Does the proliferation of informal livelihood networks and associations foster economic empowerment and popular political participation, or do these informal processes breed poverty and organizational chaos? This article explores the link between popular organizational strategies and structural outcomes, focusing on how institutional process and power relations shape the access of the poor to resources and decision-making structures in decentralizing urban environments. Case studies from Nigeria trace how liberalization has fragmented informal organizational strategies into networks of accumulation and survival that tend to marginalize the interests of the poor within informal enterprise associations. Distinctive political strategies of informal enterprise associations are analyzed to show why dynamic informal organization is unable to break through the barriers of social and legal marginalization that trap the urban poor in cliental forms of political incorporation. This suggests that "social capital" within the informal economy may fail to improve popular political representation and governance outcomes even in contexts of decentralization. Resume: Cet article examine la maniere dont les strategies populaires organisationelles et les mecanismes de gestion des problemes impactent les trajectoires plus larges de la gouvernance urbaine en Afrique contemporaine. Est-ce que la proliferation de reseaux informels d'echanges et d'organisations dans les milieux urbains pauvres incitent a une prise de pouvoir economique et a une participation populaire ou bien est-ce qu'elles perturbent le developement institutionnel et amenent la pauvrete, le conflit social et le chaos ? Au dela des analyses circulaires reliant les strategies populaires et la gouvernance urbaine, cet article explore le lien entre les strategies populaires et les resultats structurels, se concentrant sur la maniere dont le processus institutionnel et les relations de pouvoir faconnent l'acces des populations defavorisees aux ressources et aux structures decisionnelles dans les environnements urbains de l'Afrique. Les etudes de cas au Niger retracent le processus selon lequel la liberalisation a fragmente les strategies organisationnelles informelles en reseaux d'accumulation et de survie qui tendent a marginaliser les interets des pauvres a l'interieur d'entreprises associatives informelles. Les strategies politiques distinctes des associations parimoniales et modernistes sont analysees pour montrer comment le capital social des acteurs economiques informels est incapable de traverser les barrieres de la marginalisation sociale et economique qui les enferment dans des formes clienteles politisees. Ainsi les niveaux eleves d'organisation informelle et de "capital social" pourraient etre la cause du manque de representation politique et d'une gouvernance ineffective.

Insights from the cocoa regions in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana: rethinking the migration-conflict nexus

Abstract: Although many scholars have noted the salience of mobility throughout the African continent, there has been little systematic investigation into the link between migration and conflict. Most scholarship has tended to see migration as primarily a by-product of conflict and not as a security issue in its own right. In analyzing and contrasting the different migration–conflict trajectories across two similar case studies—Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana—this article attempts to develop an empirically informed theoretical framework for understanding the nexus between migration and conflict in Africa and to shed light on key intervening variables linking migration processes with violent outcomes.

The Informal Sector in Jinja, Uganda: Implications of Formalization and Regulation

Abstract: This article examines two policies targeting the informal open-air market and fishing sectors in Jinja, Uganda. The informal sector has grown to become a significant source of livelihood for people in growing cities such as Jinja. At the same time, development policies have become increasingly concerned with encouraging formalization as well as the participation of local stakeholders in governance and decision-making. While there has been much debate about the potential impacts of formalizing previously informal, unregulated, unpermitted activities, the implications of these policies for informal vendors and fishers have received less attention. Despite their promises of addressing previous marginalization, the patterns of participation and formalization enforced by these two policies in Uganda have reduced the control of these individuals over their own livelihoods, as well as intensifying contestations of local authority and jurisdiction over resources. Resume: Cet essai examine deux mesures ciblant le marche ouvert informel et les secteurs de la peche a Jinja, en Ouganda. Le secteur informel est devenu une source importante de revenus pour les gens dans les villes en croissance comme Jinja. Simultanement, les efforts de regulation ainsi que la participation d'actionnaires locaux sont devenus une priorite de developpement et de planification politique. Bien qu'il y ait eu beaucoup de debats concernant les consequences potentielles sur le marche de la regulation d'activites au prealable non regulees ou autorisees, les implications pour les commercants et les pecheurs non regules n'ont pas ete considerees avec autant d'interet. En depit des promesses de prise en compte des problemes anterieurs de la marginalisation, les modes de formalisation et de participation regules par ces mesures ont reduit le controle que ces individus peuvent avoir sur leurs moyens d'existence et leur futur. Ces mesures ont aussi fait augmenter les contestations de l'autorite locale et de la juridiction des ressources. Informal sector activity has consistendy accelerated in Uganda since the era of colonial rule, and now accounts for 90 percent of nonagricultural labor (World Bank 2009). Over the last hundred years unregulated, unpermitted open-air market vending and small-scale fishing activities have been important to Jinja's economic life, but they also have been consistendy criminalized, therefore marginalizing vendors and fishers and excluding them from formal governance processes. More recendy, "participatory" policies such as the open-air market formalization scheme and the 2004 National Fisheries Policy in Uganda have been aimed at increasing formal inclusion and political participation of open-air market vendors and fishers engaged in the informal sector. Despite promises of addressing previous marginalization, these two policies targeting informal sectors in Jinja have contributed to undesirable outcomes for vendors and fishers such as reduced control of their own livelihoods, and they have also intensified conflict over local authority and jurisdiction over resources. Located on the northern shore of Lake Victoria, Jinja has become the second largest urban area in Uganda and a major hub for agriculture and fish trade. The city's streets, marketplaces, and small harbors are filled with people earning a livelihood from self-initiated, unregulated, often illegal strategies. They have been drawn to the informal sector because it often offers economic flexibility in the context of volatile agrifood markets, direct bargaining power, less vulnerability in the global commodity chains, and better returns from their invesunents in productive resources such as fishing gear and market stalls as well as personal investments of time and labor. The open-air markets formalization scheme and the 2004 National Fisheries Policy (NFP) were promoted as ventures that would contribute to the prosperity and well-being of vendors and fishers by increasing their participation in the formal economy and giving them increased representation in local governance. …

The Politics of Government Expenditures in Tanzania, 1999-2007

Abstract: What allocation strategy do hegemonic party regimes pursue in order to increase their level of electoral support? Although the literature has established that targeting resources to marginally supportive districts is the most effective distributive strategy for competitive democracies, it has not been possible to make a clear prediction about the best strategy for hegemonic party regimes. This article seeks to address this puzzle by examining the patterns by which expenditures were distributed by the Tanzanian ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), across the country's 114 mainland districts from 1999 through 2007. Overall, this study finds that CCM targeted expenditures toward those districts that elected the party with the highest margin of victory. Resume: Quelle strategie d'allocation de fonds les regimes de gouvernement hegemonique utilisent-ils en vue d'augmenter leur niveau de soutien electoral? Bien que les etudes sur le sujet aient montre que l'envoi des ressources disponibles vers des circonscriptions marginalement favorables etait la strategie de repartition la plus efficace pour les democraties competitives, il n'a pas ete possible de faire une prediction claire pour determiner de meme la meilleure strategie de soutien des regimes de gouvernement hegemonique. Cet essai aborde les enjeux de ce puzzle en examinant les modes de repartissement des ressources mis en place par le parti dirigeant tanzanien Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) a travers les 114 circonscriptions du pays entre 1999 et 2007. Globalement, cette etude evalue que le CCM a concentre ses ressources sur les circonscriptions dans lesquelles le parti avait ete elu avec la plus grande marge de victoire.

Africa: Unity, Sovereignty and Sorrow

Abstract: Pierre Englebert. Africa: Unity, Sovereignty and Sorrow. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009. xiv + 301 pp. Tables. Figures. Notes. Acronyms. Bibliography. Index. $65.00. Cloth. $26.50. Paper. Why don't things fall apart, at least when the "things" in question are African states? Or for some of those states, why don't they disappear, why do they still matter, even when they have fallen apart - imploded or virtually stopped providing any services or functions that are expected of even the most minimal of polities? Since Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg's seminal article "Why Africa's Weak States Persist" (World Politics 35 [1], 1982), scholars have had to face these questions. A recent entrant is Pierre Englebert, whose Africa: Unity, Sovereignty and Sorrow teems with insights and arguments about how states in Africa "simultaneously display decay and stability, weakness and resilience" (3). Not only wide-ranging in terms of the examples on which it draws, the book shows the author's deep familiarity with the issues and intelligence at work in the way he connects his cases to the categories that illuminate his key analytical concerns. This is a smart and engaging book, one from which you are constandy learning, whether nodding along in agreement or at times arguing back. As many readers will recall, the core of the Jackson-Rosberg thesis (almost thirty years old now) was that African states persist because the basis of their statehood, and the reproduction of it, was juridical - i.e., sanctified by international law as part of the decolonization process. In spite of lacking the empirical attributes of statehood - either in terms of monopolizing legitimate violence or of reciprocally delivering on their side of the social contract - African states did not disappear because the international norms of recognition wouldn't let them. They continued, in spite of their lack of "state-ness," at least as this quality has been imagined in other parts of the world. There was always something intuitively right about the thesis; it almost read like common sense. But there was also something that did not quite satisfy, and Englebert has articulated it well. What is the mechanism, he asks, that turns the juridical quality of states into the actual reproduction of state boundaries and institutions? Why do even opponents of the ruling elites of African states, and so many citizens who fail to benefit from state policies and practices, contribute to the reproduction of states rather than attempting secession or otherwise establishing their own autonomous polities? Englebert righdy argues that one cannot answer this question simply by reference to international law. This book thus focuses on how juridical matters connect with socioeconomic and political structures on the ground as well as what is in the heads of African citizens - their strategies, identities, imaginations, and emotions. For Englebert, this connection is the relationship between sovereignty (i.e., international sovereign recognition) and the domestic politics of what he calls "legal command," defined as "the capacity to control, dominate, extract, or dictate through law." Legal command, conferred by international sovereignty, is "what endures of African statehood in times of weakness or failure" (62). The most banal bureaucratic procedures are thus implicated not only in the reproduction of power, but also in the idea of what power looks like and does. Englebert recounts traveling to a rebel-controlled part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and being asked to produce a document authorizing his travel: "I was perplexed that rebel authorities cared for an order of mission from the government they were fighting and whose legitimacy they were challenging, and I kept arguing that I was not on a mission from the government, so how could I produce such a document? For her part, the airport security agent was equally perplexed by my attempt at free movement without some authorization from someone" (69). …

Revisiting 'Mandingization' in coastal Gambia and Casamance (Senegal): four approaches to ethnic change

Abstract: "Mandingization," the gradual process of cultural change whereby Jola peoples of the Casamance region of southern Senegal are becoming more like their Mandinka neighbors, is analyzed in this article as comprising four distinguishable processes: ethnogenesis, ethnocultural drift, ethnic osmosis, and ethnic strategizing. By distinguishing among these four processes and analyzing their interaction, we can understand the dynamics of Mandingization more clearly and also derive insights for understanding ethnic change generally. The current moment of ethnic change in The Gambia includes a resurgence in Karon Jola ethnic identity, but we need to view this process as contingent, not yet accomplished, and a challenge to the pattern of Mandinka dominance in a time of broader social change. Resume: La "mandingisation" est le processus graduel de changement culturel par lequel le peuple Jola de la region du Casamance dans le sud du Senegal devient de plus en plus similaire a ses voisins les Mandinka. Ce processus est analyse dans cet article dans l'ensemble de ses quatre formes: ethnogenese, courant ethnoculturel, osmose ethnique, et elaboration de strategies ethniques. En distinguant ces quatre processus et en analysant leur interaction, on peut mieux comprendre les dynamiques de la "mandingisation" et aussi en tirer des conclusions applicables au changement ethnique en general. L'evolution ethnique presente en Gambie inclut une resurgence de l'identite ethnique Karon Jola, mais il est necessaire de considerer ce processus comme une contingence pas encore aboutie, ainsi qu'un obstacle a la tendance dominante de l'ethnie Mandinka dans un contexte plus large de changement social.

The Participation of SADC and ECOWAS in Military Operations: The Weight of National Interests in Decision-Making

Abstract: Over the last decade, African regional organizations have gained considerable scope in peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Two subregional organizations in particular, ECOWAS and SADC, have gathered significant experience in military interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Lesotho, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This article assesses the decision-making processes of both organizations ahead of the interventions and concludes that African states participate in military interventions for reasons of national and personal interests rather than humanitarian reasons or out of a primary interest in preserving regional stability. The article draws from extensive fieldwork in four African countries.

Oil and the Production of Competing Subjectivities in Nigeria: "Platforms of Possibilities" and "Pipelines of Conflict"

Abstract: This article examines how multinational corporations, recognizing the symbolic value of oil pipelines, flow stations, and platforms as ancestral promises of wealth to subject populations, work with NGOs and communities (sometimes in collaboration with the latter, but sometimes in a more adversarial manner) in setting up governance structures that often compete with, and sometimes oppose, the state in struggles over territorial control and resource extraction. These forms of contestations, it argues, create new sites of power in which NGOs aid multinational oil corporations in negotiating new sites of governance that in themselves create new structures of power. Resume: Cet article examine comment des societes multinationales, reconnaissant la valeur symbolique des oleoducs, des stations d'ecoulement et des plateformes comme des promesses ancestrales d'enrichissement pour les populations locales, creent des partenariats avec des communes et ONG pour mettre en place des structures de gouvernement qui rivalisent, et parfois s'opposent a l'etat, dans les luttes pour le controle du territoire et l'extraction des ressources. Ces formes de contestation, selon nous, creent des nouvelles zones de pouvoir dans lesquelles les ONG aident les societes multinationales du petrole a negocier des nouvelles zones de gouvernement, qui en elles-memes, creent des nouvelles structures de pouvoir. On February 11, 2008, Tell Magazine, one of Nigeria's leading news magazines organized a conference in Abuja, the federal capital, with the tide "50 Years of Oil in Nigeria." Organized as a celebration of a half-century of oil production in the nation, and focusing on the great benefits that oil exploration had brought to Nigeria, the conference was attended by representatives of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, AGIP, TotalFinaElf, and all other major players in the oil industry, as well as then Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, himself from die Niger Delta, and governors of the Niger Delta states of Bayelsa, Delta, and Edo.1 But while the conference was a great spectacle announcing a major milestone in the history of Nigeria, many communities of the Niger Delta were oblivious of the celebration. With the advent of oil exploration in 1956, a thriving agrarian economy in the Niger Delta declined, giving way to oil pipelines, flow stations, and platforms. Today, farmers are deprived of what they consider their land and natural resources by legal institutions and ordinances of the state such as the Land Use Act of 1978 and the Petroleum Act of 1969, which transfer ownership to the federal government of Nigeria. Currendy, as this article shows, community members in many parts of the Niger Delta see oil prospecting, flow stations, pipelines, and platforms as symbols of the ancestral promises of wealth through oil exploration. In many ways, however, the wealth is exclusively symbolic rather than material. Many Niger Delta communities view oil as a resource that was divinely ordained by their ancestors. For example, the Ugbos and Ijaws explicidy connect their history of migration with "oil wealth," and many of my Ugbo and Ijaw informants told me that their ancestors were led to their present locations because of ancestral myths that promised an abundance of natural resources, including oil.4 These communities view the Nigerian state as an impediment to the realization of these ancestral promises, because they perceive the state as operating in alliance with multinational corporations that exploit the oil resources for their own profit. This situation has led to conflict on several levels, including various claims and counterclaims over ownership of land and natural resources. While the laws assert clearly that state and local governments own the land, communal landholding still persists in many parts of Nigeria (see Renne 1995). This has led to a situation in which multinational corporations, in many cases, negotiate both with the state ana with communities - and even with family members - in areas where they explore for oil. …

Update on the women's movement in Botswana: have women stopped talking?

Abstract: Across Africa in the early twenty-first century, autonomous women's movements have transformed the political landscape. With their support, African women are lobbying for constitutional reforms, entering political office in unprecedented numbers, and initiating legislation to expand women's rights. African women's movements have been emboldened by changes in international and regional norms concerning women's rights and representation, a new availability of resources to enhance women's status, and in many places, an end to conflict. In Botswana, the 1980s and 1990s were a period of heightened women's mobilization. Led by the women's organization Emang Basadi, the women's movement accomplished many significant victories, including winning a landmark citizenship case, prompting a comprehensive review of laws to identify instances of gender discrimination, issuing the first women's manifesto in Africa, and organizing workshops for political parties and women candidates. Some scholars have suggested that Emang Basadi's work was responsible not just for increasing women's representation in parliament, but also for broadening democracy in Botswana. Since 2010, however, a once vibrant women's movement has gone quiet. This article seeks to understand this development and to explore how the movement might be revitalized. The article concludes by drawing comparisons with other women's movements in the region and suggesting that the women's movement in Botswana, like others in the region, may be, in the words of one scholar, "in abeyance." Resume: A travers l'Afrique du debut du vingt-et-unieme siecle, les mouvements feministes autonomes ont transforme la scene politique. Grâce a leur soutien, les femmes africaines font du lobbying pour obtenir des reformes constitutionnelles. Elles s'engagent en nombres records dans les milieux politiques et amorcent des projets de legislation pour les droits des femmes. Les mouvements feministes africains ont ete encourages par l'evolution des normes internationales et regionales concernant les droits et la representation des femmes, ainsi qu'une accessibilite nouvelle des ressources pour ameliorer le statut des femmes et, dans, plusieurs regions, pour mettre fin aux conflits. Au Botswana, les annees 80 et 90 furent une periode d'accentuation de la mobilisation des femmes. Mene par l'organisation feministe Emang Basadi, le mouvement a obtenu plusieurs victoires importantes, dont un proces decisif sur un cas de citoyennete entrainant une revision complete des lois afin d'identifier des cas de discrimination sexiste. Il en a resulte le premier manifeste feministe d'Afrique, et des ateliers de sensibilisation pour les partis politiques et les candidates feminines. Certains universitaires ont indique que les efforts de Emang Basadi avaient conduit non seulement a l'augmentation de la representation feminine au Parlement, mais egalement a un elargissement de la democratie au Botswana. Depuis 2010 en revanche, le mouvement feministe auparavant si actif est devenu silencieux. Cet essai cherche a comprendre cette evolution, et a explorer les moyens de revitaliser ce mouvement. L'argument se conclut par des comparaisons avec d'autres mouvements feministes de la region, et la suggestion que le mouvement feministe au Botswana, comme d'autres dans la region, pourrait etre, selon les mots d'un specialiste, "en suspens." Across Africa in the early twenty-first century, autonomous women's movements have transformed the political landscape. With their support, African women are lobbying for constitutional reforms, entering political office in unprecedented numbers, and initiating legislation to expand women's rights. African women's movements have been emboldened by changes in international and regional norms concerning women's rights and representation, a new availability of resources to enhance women's status, and, in many places, an end to conflict (Tripp et al. 2009). In Botswana, the 1980s and 1990s were a period of heightened women's mobilization. …

Do Ethnic Groups Retain Homogenous Preferences in African Politics? Evidence from Sierra Leone and Liberia

Abstract: It is frequently argued that ethnic groups across Africa retain homogenous preferences stemming from a sense of collective identity and shared destiny, and that they unvaryingly prefer the same outcomes in zero-sum competitions for scarce resources. This article presents results from comparative field surveys examining these claims in Sierra Leone and Liberia following postconflict elections. In contradiction with conventional expectations, the results show corroboration on several issues across voters from several ethnic groups as well as heterogeneity in preferences among voters from the same ethnic groups in both countries. The implications for democratization and conflict resolution in Africa are discussed. E-mail: fbatty@colgate.edu Resume: On avance souvent que les groupes ethniques a travers l'Afrique conservent des preferences d'homogeneite provenant d'un sens d'identite collective et d'une destinee partagee, et qu'ils favorisent les memes opinions dans la concurrence pour les ressources limitees. Cet article presente les resultats de sondages comparatifs mettant en question ces affirmations en Sierra Leone et au Liberia, a la suite du vote d'elections apres un conflit. Contre toute attente, les resultats montrent un esprit de collaboration sur plusieurs questions entre les membres d'ethnies differentes, ainsi que des differences d'opinion entre les membres des memes ethnies, dans les deux pays. Cet article aborde les implications de la democratisation et des processus de resolution des conflits en Afrique.

Modern Media and Culture in Senegal: Speaking Truth to Power

Abstract: In a You Tube video, a young man performs a satirical poem about Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. The author brilliantly sums up Wade's tenure in one minute. He compares the president to “a rat's hole” and makes fun of his physical features while emphasizing many ways in which Wade has failed the nation. Some viewers thought the performance was disrespectful of the president, and others feared for the author's safety. This article argues that although the World Wide Web gives voice to African youth, it can be a dangerous space, especially for artists. The viewers' negative comments and their concern for the author's life is a modern response to his art and a consequence of its presentation on the Internet. If viewed through the lenses of traditional Wolof oral forms, however, the poem's harsh rhetoric takes on less controversial meanings that the viewers did not seem to understand.

Pride and Shame in Ghana: Collective Memory and Nationalism among Elite Students

Abstract: Based on an original dataset of university students, this article investigates Ghanaian collective memories of past events that are sources of national pride or shame. On average, young elite Ghanaians express more pride than shame in their national history, and they report shame mostly over actions that caused some physical, material, or symbolic harm. Such actions include not only historic events and the actions of national leaders, but also mundane social practices of average Ghanaians. Respondents also report more "active" than "receptive" shame; that is, they are more ashamed of events or practices that caused harm to others and less ashamed about events in which they were the "victims." We advance the idea of a standard of "reasonableness" that Ghanaians apply in their evaluation of events, behaviors, or circumstances: they apply contemporary standards of morality to past events, but they temper their judgment based on considerations of whether past actions were "reasonable" given the power and material imbalances at that time. Ghanaian students identify strongly with both national and pan-African identities, and they frequently evoke their international image to judge a national event as either honorable or shameful. Ethnicity can be one factor in an individual's judgment of precolonial events, whereas political party affiliation is the stronger predictor of attitudes toward postindependence events. Resume: En se basant sur des archives originales rassemblees par un corps etudiant, cet article enquete sur la memoire collective ghaneenne d'evenements passes qui sont source soit de fierte soit de honte pour la nation. On decouvre que en moyenne, les jeunes Ghaneens expriment plus de fierte que de honte en ce qui concerne leur histoire nationale, et qu'ils eprouvent plus de honte pour les evenements qu'ils ont provoques que pour les evenements dont ils ont ete victimes. Nous soutenons l'idee que les Ghaneens appliquent a leur jugement du passe un standard rationnel calque sur des standards contemporains de moralite, mais que leur evaluation est biaisee par des considerations liees au pouvoir et aux inegalites materielles actuels. Les etudiants Ghaneens s'identifient fortement aux identites nationales et panafricaines, et ils evoquent souvent une image internationale pour juger un evenement national comme honorable ou honteux. L'ethnicite peut etre un facteur dans le jugement individuel d'evenements precoloniaux, tandis que l'affiliation a un parti est le facteur le plus determinant dans l'evaluation d'evenements ayant eu lieu apres l'independance. Enfin, nous avons decouvert que la jeunesse Ghaneenne ressentait des sentiments de fierte ou de honte non seulement envers des dirigeants nationaux et des evenements historiques, mais egalement envers les comportements du peuple ghaneen lui-meme.

The History and Legacy of the Asaba, Nigeria, Massacres

Abstract: In early October 1967, four months into the Nigerian Civil War, federal troops massacred hundreds in Asaba, a town in southeast Nigeria on the west bank of the Niger. While ethnically Igbo, Asaba was not part of Igbo-dominated Biafra. Through the reconstruction of this event, the article fills a significant gap in the historical record and contributes to the discussion on the impact of traumatic memory at the local and national levels. It also suggests that the Asaba massacres speak to larger issues of potential reconciliation that extend beyond Asaba and Nigeria. Resume: Au debut du mois d'Octobre 1967, quatre mois apres le commencement de la guerre civile au Niger, les troupes federales ont massacre des centaines de personnes a Asaba, un bourg au sud est du Nigeria sur la rive ouest du Niger. Bien qu'ayant une majorite ethnique Igbo, Asaba n'appartient pas geographiquement au Biafra, domine par les Igbos. Avec la reconstruction de ce massacre, cet article comble un vide significatif dans les archives historiques et contribue a la discussion sur l'impact de la memoire traumatique au niveaux local et national. Il indique egalement que le massacre d' Asaba recouvre des questions plus larges de reconciliation potentielle s'etendant au-dela d'Asaba et du Nigeria. On the afternoon of October 5, 1967, four months into the Nigerian Civil War over the secession of the predominantly Igbo region east of the Niger River, Nigerian federal troops entered Asaba, a town on the west bank of that river. As one witness recalled, We had been expecting their arrival with fear and trembling since Biafran troops started withdrawing on the third of October. We remembered vividly the fate of our people in Northern Nigeria in May, July and September 1966 and the threat that Ibos were going to be wiped out. When the Federal troops arrived some people had fled across the Niger, some into the bush but some remained in their homes, waiting for what fate would bring.* When the troops appeared, the worst fears of the ten thousand townsfolk were realized. Over the next few days, up to one thousand Asabans died at the hands of the federal soldiers, the majority in a single, systematic massacre of men and boys on October 7. The killings at Asaba, as well as smaller events at other towns in the Midwest, remained little known outside Igbo communities for many years, largely because they went unreported in the press at the time and subsequently received scant attention in histories of the Civil War. Our goal here is to reconstruct the history of the events, primarily using survivor accounts in the absence of other primary documents. We suggest that a fuller accounting of the Asaba massacres not only fills a significant gap in the historical record, but also helps us understand more completely the subsequent development of the Civil War. In particular, we argue that the unsuccessful Biafran incursion west of the Niger, and the subsequent atrocities committed against civilians by federal troops, became a major factor in confirming the rhetoric of genocide that hardened Biafran resolve and disastrously prolonged the war. In addition, our work will contribute to scholarship on the impact of traumatic memory at the local and national levels. Background to the Civil War Although a full history of the Nigerian Civil War is beyond the scope of this article, a brief overview is needed to place the Asaba events in context. The origins of the war lie in the country's colonial past. Starting at the end of the nineteenth century and over a period of forty years, the British took control of previously independent territories with distinct languages, religions, and customs, from the Bight of Benin along the coast, to the fringes of the Sahara Desert in the north. In 1914 the Colonial Office decided to amalgamate this complex ethnic mosaic into a single entity called "Nigeria" by joining the British colony of Lagos with the Protectorates of Southern Nigeria and Northern Nigeria. …

Agrarian Populism in Colonial and Postcolonial Malawi

Abstract: This article analyses continuity and change of the agrarian doctrine in colonial and postcolonial Malawi. It engages in a classic debate about images and polices concerning African farming. The article argues that the agrarian doctrine must be related to the broader notion of agrarian populism, more specifically to Chayanov's notion of the logic of the peasant family farm. Employing this broader approach allows a striking continuity of the agrarian doctrine to be revealed. Calls for changes of local institutions did not signify attempts to promote rural transformation, but contained strategies to increase the economic independence of the precapitalist family farm.

New World Disorder: Black Hawk Down and the Eclipse of U.S. Military Humanitarianism in Africa

Abstract: This article argues that Ridley Scott's film Black Hawk Down (2001) may be seen with the benefit of historical hindsight as a portrait of the fear of imperial overreach and failure as written through the psyche of elite U.S. soldiers. In Black Hawk Down, Mogadishu and its denizens are made to stand in for the worst fears of the American military and the civilian policy-making establishment: the city, and, by extension, urban Africa, is represented as a feral zone in which the U.S. military's unmatched firepower and technology are overwhelmed in densely populated slums. The Mog, as the film's Special Forces troops call the city, is a ramshackle megacity whose residents are armed to the teeth with the military detritus of the Cold War. Mogadishu thus embodies the new Heart of Darkness, a stateless urban world of vicious Hobbesian war of all against all. This view of Africa as the vanguard of anarchy is shared by a significant segment of the elite in the global North, who see the criminalization of the state in Africa as a direct threat to U.S. interests. If, as these analysts hold, it is from such feral zones that future threats to American society are likely to originate, then potent new weapons systems must be developed to deal with this racialized new world disorder. This article unpacks the ahistorical character of such self-serving representations of urban Africa, underlining the extent to which policies pursued during the Cold War and neoliberal era by powers such as the U.S. have helped to create the conditions that Black Hawk Down represents in such spectacular excess. Resume: Cet essai soutient que le film de Ridley Scott Black Hawk Down (2001) peut etre considere, grâce a un recul historique a propos, comme un portrait de la crainte de l'ambition et de la defaite imperiale percue au travers de la psychologie de l'elite militaire americaine. Dans le film Black Hawk Down, Mogadishu et ses habitants sont destines a incarner les pires craintes de l'armee americaine et de l'establishment politique civil. Par extension, l'Afrique urbaine est representee comme une zone sauvage dans laquelle la puissance militaire et technologique a priori inegalee des americains est submergee dans les bidonvilles surpeuples. Dans le film, la ville ou le "Mog" comme l'appellent les troupes des forces speciales, est une mega cite delabree dont les residents sont armes jusqu'aux dents avec les detritus militaires de la Guerre Froide. Mogadishu incarne ainsi le nouveau "Coeur des Tenebres," un monde urbain apatride en guerre a la Thomas Hobbes, de "tous contre tous." Cette perception de l'Afrique comme avant-garde anarchique est partagee par une partie importante de l'elite des pays du Nord, qui considerent la criminalisation de l'etat en Afrique comme une menace directe contre les interets americains. Si, comme l'indiquent ces analystes, les futures menaces contre la societe americaine sont censees provenir de ces zones sauvages, alors de nouveaux systemes d'armement doivent etre concus pour faire face au desordre racialise de ce nouveau monde. Cet essai devoile le detail des aspects non historiques de ces representations partiales de l'Afrique urbaine, soulignant de quelle maniere les mesures prises pendant la Guerre Froide et la periode neoliberale par une puissance telle que les Etats Unis ont participe a creer les conditions representees avec un exces si spectaculaire dans le film Black Hawk Down. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a special screening of the soon-to-be-released film Black Hawk Down was held for a group of military and civilian leaders that included prominent neoconservative hawks such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of the Army Thomas E. White, and the Iran/Contra perpetrator Oliver North. Ridley Scott, the movie's director, informed his eminent authence that he had made the film to clear up the idea that the military had "messed up in Somalia" (Burlas 2002). …

The Radical Press and Security Agencies in Nigeria: Beyond Hegemonic Polarities

Abstract: The dominant trend in the literature on civil society in Africa, particularly in the context of undemocratic regimes, assumes that civil society activists (including progressive, radical, or guerrilla journalists) are committed only to counteracting the preeminence of a repressive state. Within such a paradigm, evidence of collaborations between agents of the state and elements within civil society-particularly in the interest of advancing political liberation, democracy, justice, and equity-tend to be understated, if not erased altogether. Based on ethnographic details of secret collaborations between the Nigerian security agencies and radical journalists in the fight against military fascism, this article argues that the commonly assumed division between the state and the media is in fact breached regularly in practice. Such evidence should draw scholarly attention to a largely neglected area of research on state-media relations in Africa: the penetration of the apparatuses of power and repression by their targets and victims. Resume: La tendance dominante dans la litterature existante sur la societe civile en Afrique, particulierement dans le contexte des regimes non democratiques, suppose que les activistes civils (y compris les journalistes progressistes, radicaux, ou de la guerilla) sont engages seulement dans la lutte contre l'etat et ses actes de repression. Dans un tel paradigme, l'evidence de collaboration entre des agents de l'etat et des civils - en particulier pour faire progresser la liberation politique, la democratie, la justice et l'egalite - a tendance a etre minimisee, voire passee sous silence. Apres examen de rapports detailles sur des collaborations secretes entre des membres de la securite nigerienne et des journalistes radicaux dans la lutte contre le fascisme militaire, cet article soutient que la division presumee entre l'etat et les medias est en fait rompue regulierement dans la pratique. Une telle evidence devrait attirer l'attention des erudits vers un sujet de recherche largement neglige sur les relations entre l'etat et les medias en Afrique: la penetration des appareils du pouvoir et la repression perpetuee par leurs cibles et victimes. In the literature on the media and democracy in Africa, there is a great deal of evidence, and even praise, for the role of the media (including progressive, radical, and guerrillajournalists) in breaking what Kasoma (1995:543) called "the mytii" that dictatorial regimes in Africa are "invincible and could not be criticised" and for creating a forum for promoting dissent against the established order. Examples of countries where this has been evident include Nigeria, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana.1 However, in the analyses on the adversarial relationship between the state and the media, few scholars have focused direcdy on the security/ intelligence network. Even tiiough the secret world of security agents is often a prominent subject of interest in studies of state-sponsored repression, it is often subsumed under the rubric of "government" or die "state" in studies of state-media relations and in the larger scholarship on democracy or personal rule in Africa. And some of the works on Africa that refer to the security/intelligence network in the context of democracy and state-civil society relations, as well as the specific literature on state-media relations, also tend to concentrate on the roles these agencies play in suppressing democratization.2 At the same time, while the scholarly literature continues to expand the focus on the role of the media in Africa's democratic struggle, and the literature on civil society also has had a lot to say about the media in Africa in die last two decades, the dominant strand assumes that civil society - in the dominant associational sense in which it is often expressed in the literature (see Obadare 2005) - exists basically to counteract the preeminence of the state. …

The Rise of African Studies (USA) and the Transnational Study of Africa

Abstract: Among Africanists, one of the remarkable events of 1957 was the founding of the African Studies Association. Commentaries on the association's history are slight and understandably celebratory. Exploration of archival and related sources, however, reveals considerable uncertainty and struggle over the construction of the field in the 1950s and 1960s. Those sources range across changing continental, colonial, and racial boundaries and reveal racialized relationships among U.S. scholars and especially foundation officials, British scholars and colonial officials, and, in unexpected ways, scholars in Africa and particularly South Africa. This essay traces the interplay of these forces and the demise of the transnational study of Africa in this period—and points briefly toward today's uncertain future for the study of Africa.

Raoul Peck's Lumumba and Lumumba: La mort du prophète: On Cultural Amnesia and Historical Erasure

Abstract: This article examines two films by Raoul Peck— Lumumba : La mort du prophete (1992) and Lumumba (2000) that offer vastly divergent methods for remembering, memorializing, and meditating on the life and death of Patrice Lumumba Peck succeeds in creating films that do more than preserve or resuscitate a historical record The earlier film in particular performs analytic historical work as it delves into the conflicted historical record in which Lumumba is remembered Peck uses an experimental and confrontational approach to reveal the ongoing forms of cultural censorship that have attempted to erase Lumumba and his legacy Resume: Cet essai examine deux films de Raoul Peck— Lumumba : La mort du prophete (1992) et Lumumba (2000) qui offrent deux methodes completement differentes pour rememorer, commemorer, et mediter sur, la vie de Patrice Lumumba Peck reussit a creer des films qui font plus que preserver ou ressusciter un document historique Le film anterieur en particulier met en scene un travail d'analyse historique tout en se plongeant dans les archives conflictuelles exposant les souvenir de Lumumba Peck utilise une approche experimentale et de confrontation pour reveler les formes de censure culturelle ayant tente d'effacer Lumumba et son heritage

Farm Intensification and Milk Market Expansion in Meru, Tanzania

Abstract: In Meru, Tanzania, technological and institutional change has turned milk into one of the most reliable and important sources of income for smallholder households. Decades of increased population density have caused land scarcity, leading smallholders to intensify their farming methods and land use, including introducing stall-fed exotic breeds of dairy cows. Meanwhile, a growing urban and rural demand has resulted in a significant market expansion for milk and increasing cash incomes for smallholders. Both farm intensification and market expansion are bottom-up processes of change driven primarily by smallholders. These factors make the livestock sector in Meru an interesting example of broad-based agricultural development.

"A School in the Interior" African Studies: Engagement and Interdisciplinarity

Abstract: This article explores the intellectual traditions of African studies, focusing on the central principles of interdisciplinarity and commitment to social and racial justice. Tracing the origins of the field to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Africanist intellectuals such as Edward Blyden, it investigates these traditions historically and in the context of contemporary practice. Against the backdrop of concerns for the future of area studies, the author finds a vibrant field-both inside and beyond its traditional boundaries. Resume: Cet article explore les tradtions intellectuelles du domaine des Etudes Africaines, en se concentrant sur les principes cles de l'interdicsciplinarite et de l'engagement sur les principes de justice sociale et raciale. En retracant les origines de ce domaine d'etudes aux intellectuels de la fin du 19ieme siecle et du debut du 20ieme siecle tels que Edward Blyden, cette etude examine ces traditions d'un point de vue historique et aussi dans la perspective des pratiques contemporaines. Dans le contexte de la mise en question des domaines d'etudes a identite geographique delimitee, l'auteur decouvre un domaine d'etude plein de vitalite, de meme a l'interieur qu'a l'exterieur de ses frontieres traditionnelles. Editors' note: The following article is a slightly revised version of the Presidential Address delivered at the fifty-third Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco in 2010. On June 26, 1903, Edward Blyden, the preeminent intellectual of the Black Atlantic, presented an address to the African Society in London titled "West Africa before Europe" (Blyden 1905:127-28). By Blyden's own account this was a momentous occasion. In the third year of the Society's existence, he was the first person of African descent invited to speak to a meeting of the members. At this annual meeting the African Studies Association, which is dedicated to the theme of diaspora, it is particularly appropriate that we should return, after more than a century, to Blyden's words and to the circumstances of his lecture. He was, after all, quintessentially a person of the diaspora. In the introduction to the collection of Blyden's lectures that includes this 1903 address, the Ghanaian barrister and scholar Casely Hayford describes Blyden as almost uniquely "universalist" in the sense that he truly spoke for Africans everywhere and that in contrast to most of the black intellectuals of that era had developed an "African school of thought" in which the measure of progress was derived not from white culture but from African culture (Blyden 1905;ii).1 Blyden was at that time a very well-known figure in opinion-making circles. As most Africanists are aware, he was born in the West Indies, and in 1850, at the age of eighteen, in search of advanced education, he immigrated to Liberia. During the course of a remarkable career as a clergyman, teacher, government official, diplomat, journalist, and writer in Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, he traveled widely in West Africa, the Middle East, America, and Europe.2 Blyden had been among the founders of the African Society and served initially as a vice president. Given that he was also the author of one of the best known studies of African societies, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, first published in 1887, as well as numerous articles on a range of African topics, it was therefore predictable that Blyden would be invited to speak.4 But it was also somewhat surprising. He was, after all, an African man, asserting his intellectual authority during a period of rapid imperial expansion and of intensifying racism. In his remarks he alluded to this contradiction - noting that the Society was very much a part of Britain's imperial impulse while repeatedly invoking his own impressive resume and network of contacts. The First Africanists What, then, did Edward Blyden have to say to the African Society in 1903 that would be of interest to us today? …

Humanitarian Obstruction as a Crime Against Humanity: The Example of Sudan

Abstract: Widespread military violence, much of it targeting civilians, accelerated dramatically this past June in the Soutfi Kordofan region of Sudan, and as of September 1 it had spread to Blue Nile State. Like much of Sudan, South Kordofan and Blue Nile are a highly combustible mix of etiinic animosities, tortured history, and great numbers of heavily armed men (see Small Arms Survey 2011). South Kordofan has the added misfortune of being the Khartoum regime's only oil-producing state following the independence of South Sudan on July 9, 2011. But while geographically in northern Sudan, much of Blue Nile and South Kordofan - and virtually the entire Nuba Mountains area in the center of South Kordofan - identifies with the South culturally, politically, and militarily. Tens of thousands of Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers are from the Nuba and southern Blue Nile; they refuse to be sent back to the South or disarmed - and if pushed by Khartoum, they will fight to save their lands and cultural heritage. The SPLA-Nordi is now a distinct entity, and considers itself and its political counterpart (the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North) as fighting an aggressive tyranny in their homelands. This is not hard to understand, particularly in the case of the Nuba. In the 1990s, during die first military action undertaken by the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party, the African people of the Nuba were nearly annihilated; hundreds of thousands were killed or displaced from their fertile lands. Though not a widely known event, there is almost no dissent among students of Sudan that this episode of ethnically targeted destruction was in fact genocide. And one of its most notorious and consequential features was a total embargo on humanitarian aid to the region for much of the 1990s, even as South Sudan was the fitful beneficiary of the U.N. umbrella effort known as "Operation Lifeline Sudan." This embargo is of central concern here, given the horrific human suffering and destruction that followed direcdy from it. Khartoum's more recent military offensive in South Kordofan and Blue Nile extends die offensive begun on May 20 in die contested border region of Abyei (which lies immediately to the south of South Kordofan). Only belatedly has the international community acknowledged that the incident cited by Khartoum as casus belliwas merely a pretext and that the attack was premeditated. The same is true of the regime's assault in South Kordofan, where on June 5 tanks and military equipment began to pour into Kadugli, die state capital. Within days widespread and clearly planned military actions were underway, again pitting Arab militias and Khartoum's regular armed forces against the African populations of the region, in particular those of the Nuba Mountains. In Kadugli there were authoritative reports of house-to-house searches for Nuba, who were then piled into catde trucks - or summarily executed. Roadblocks reminiscent of Rwanda in April 1994, and serving the same purpose, were also widely observed. Satellite imagery confirmed the existence of mass graves, as did eyewitness accounts from the ground collected by U.N. human rights investigators (who were shordy thereafter expelled by Khartoum). The presence in Kadugli of a U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) peacekeeping team did nothing to deter violence, or even protect African Nuba people who sought protection within the U.N. compound. Moreover, all of South Kordofan is within reach of Khartoum's major military air base at el-Obeid, which is just to the north. This has meant a constant aerial assault on civilian and humanitarian targets, especially in the Nuba Mountains - a continuation of the pattern I've analyzed and detailed for die past thirteen years (see Reeves 2011). The aerial offensive in South Kordofan has been extensive and concerted, and the clear goal has been to eliminate the troublesome populations of the Nuba once and for all. …

Autochtonie, Libéralisation Politique, et Construction d'une Sphère Publique Locale au Cameroun

Abstract: Cette etude porte sur les luttes hegemoniques entre deux communautes ethniques, les Mbo et les Bamileke a Santchou au Cameroun de l'Ouest, avec comme enjeu le partage des postes politiques locaux de cette localite, gage de la representation politique. Dans cet arrondissement, ces postes (maire, depute, etc.) etaient sous le parti unique l'apanage de la minorite ethnique mbo (majoritaire dans cet arrondissement mais minoritaire dans l'ensemble du departement a dominante bamileke). Dans ce contexte de monolithisme ou etait exclu tout dissentiment, les Bamileke avaient fini par interioriser ce package deal qui frisait l'apathie politique. Avec le multipartisme et la democratisation ou les maires sont dorenavant elus et non plus nommes, une incertitude a plane sur cet acquis politique des Mbo. Nonobstant cette incertitude, ceux-ci ont reussi a conserver ce poste de maire en s'octroyant tout aussi automatiquement bien d'autres postes politiques. Cependant, contrairement a la periode du parti unique, la situation creee par la liberalisation politique a offert aux Bamileke un espace public pour discuter dorenavant de l'allocation des postes politiques locaux et de manifester leur desaccord a cette hegemonie, ce qui leur permet de manifester ainsi leur citoyennete. Cette etude souligne a la suite d'Habermas et bien d'autres auteurs comme Cottereau qu'il faut parler d'espaces publics, au pluriel, et non d'un seul espace public pour mettre en contexte la dynamique interne des cultures populaires productrices de spheres publiques sub-culturelles ou des lieux d'emergence d'une democratie deliberative. Abstract: This study focuses on the hegemonic struggles between two ethnic communities, the Mbo and the Bamileke, in Santchou, West Cameroon. At issue is the sharing of political roles in this locality, which point to issues of political representation. In this district, these roles (mayor, representative, etc.) were under the single party rule of the ethnic minority Mbo, who are a majority in this area but a minority in the rest of the district, where the Bamileke are the majority. In this monolithic context, where all protests were banned, the Bamileke had given up and accepted this arrangement. With the advent of the multiparty system and democracy, in which mayors are now elected and no longer simply nominated, uncertainty has been hovering over this political stronghold of the Mbo. Nevertheless, the Mbo have been able to hold onto the post of mayor and acquire other political posts as well. However, unlike during the single party era, the situation created by the political liberalization has offered to the Bamileke a public space where they can discuss the allocation of local political positions, and manifest their disagreement with the hegemonic trend. In the footsteps of Habermas and many other authors such as Cottereau, this study underlines the need to talk about public spaces in a plural form, instead of a single public space, in order to put in context the internal dynamics of popular cultures engendering subcultural public spheres or places of emerging democracy.

Tensions and Reversals in Democratic Transitions: The Kenya 2007 General Elections (review)

Abstract: POLITICS, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND GLOBALIZATION Karuti Kanyinga and Duncan Okello, eds. Tensions and Reversals in Democratic Transitions: The Kenya 2007 General Elections. Nairobi: Society for International Development, in conjunction with the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi, 2010. 709 pp. Notes. Paper. No price reported. Kenya's December 27, 2007, election was tragic. Alarm over faulty counting, followed by a rushed and private swearing in of the sitting president, Mwai Kibaki, led to violence that was at once spontaneous and planned and involved considerable killing by police. About thirteen hundred people died and more than a half million were displaced. The collapse of the election and deep distrust among major politicians left no legitimate authority in place and even gave rise to imagined secession. It took a mediation effort by Kofi Annan, backed by the African Union and other donors, to fashion an agreement ending the violence and mandating a coalition government. This is a big book of more than seven hundred pages with eighteen lengthy, theoretically engaged, and well-referenced essays. There are editorial mistakes, but they are not significant diversions. The authors, who represent a variety of disciplines, are almost all Kenyan scholars. The essays speak more to the nature of Kenyan politics that led up to the election with the near collapse of the state, and less to the violence itself. As a result, they are an important contribution to understanding the election crisis and its aftermath, and to the broad study of Kenyan politics and democratization. The volume asks important questions. What happened and why? Why did democratic practice both include some and dangerously exclude others? These are big questions even for a sizeable volume that, mercifully in my view, does not try to impose all-too-tidy answers. But it does make suggestions, and the organization of the volume indicates where to look for answers-political economy history, social structure, the nature of political parties, religious institutions, local politics, electoral rules, popular culture, the media, the role of money in elections, the character of rising preelection tensions and violence, gender and the struggle of female politicians, and power-sharing in the aftermath of the violence. The volume singles out promises that were not kept as an important cause of the breakdown. The 2002 election brought Mwai Kibaki to power with a wide margin, a reform mandate, and a broad-based coalition including the Luo leder Raila Odinga. At the time the Gallup International Annual End of Year Survey found Kenyans to be the most optimistic people in the world. But the optimism faded as Kibaki and his allies marginalized Odinga, condoned grand corruption, failed to deliver a promised new constitution devolving authority and diminishing presidential powers, and sidelined a truth and reconciliation process. Although economic growth occurred, the vast majority saw few benefits. Kibaki was elected as leader of a nation desperately seeking rebirth, but the regime retreated into a perceived Gikuyu ethnic cabal that fanned ethnic distrust as the 2007 election approached. The volume has two important accomplishments, and while neither is earth-shaking or new, they provide necessary orientation for the study of Kenyan politics. First, it reminds us that change is constant. Kenyan politics is a moving target, although hemmed in by structural realities. Second, it suggests that voters are tuned in to both matters of ethnicity and patronage and to local issues and perspectives that are not necessarily imposed from above by national politicians and institutions. In their fine introductory essay, Karuti Kanyinga, Duncan Okello, and Akoko Akech argue that the 2007 electoral disarray must be understood against a background of structural problems with deep histories. But the editors and chapter authors also depict a political system in motion, if often in contradictory directions. …

Silence, Disobedience, and African Catholic Sisters in Apartheid South Africa

Abstract: This article considers the choices made during the apartheid era by Catholic sisters who were members of one of the largest orders for African women, the Montebello Dominicans, based in KwaZulu-Natal, and one of the smallest orders, the Companions of Saint Angela, based in Soweto, the sprawling African township to the southwest of Johannesburg. The Montebellos took an apolitical stance and embraced "silence," but they could not avoid the political tensions that defined KwaZulu-Natal. The Companions became activists, whose "disobedience" brought them into direct confrontation with the state. History, region, ethnicity, and timing help explain what it meant for African women religious to be apolitical, and what it meant to be politicized, in the context of state repression so effective that every action could be interpreted as a political act. Resume: Cet article evalue les choix des soeurs catholiques pendant l'Apartheid, qui etaient membres d'un des plus grands ordres pour les africaines, les dominicaines de Montebello, basees dans le KwaZulu-Natal, ainsi que l'un des ordres les plus petits, les compagnes de St Angela a Soweto, le township tentaculaire du sud ouest de Johannesburg. Les soeurs de Montebello resterent neutres politiquement, et adopterent un statut "silencieux," tout en ne pouvant eviter les tensions politiques qui regnaient dans le KwaZulu-Natal. Les compagnes s'engagerent alors politiquement, et leurs actes d'insubordination les pousserent a un etat de confrontation directe avec l'etat. Le contexte historique, regional et ethnique, ainsi que l'epoque permettent de comprendre la signification d'un choix de neutralite ou d'engagement pour les religieuses africaines, dans un etat de repression si percutante que tout acte risquait d'etre interprete comme un acte politique. On a street corner in Johannesburg's city center in September 1977, a sobbing white woman embraced Sr. Mary Modise, the newly elected moderator general of the Companions of Saint Angela, a Catholic religious order for African women. "They have killed him," the woman cried to the sister, who was readily identifiable by her religious habit. "Who has been killed?" Modise inquired. "Steve Biko," the woman answered. Recalling the incident almost thirty years later, Modise admitted that, ironically, despite the Companions' experience of oppression and the sisters' growing activism, she had not known who Biko was (Modise 2005).1 Steve Biko's death in police custody followed the June 1976 uprising of schoolchildren in Soweto, the large African township outside of Johannesburg. Students demonstrated to protest the inferior education mandated by the apartheid state, and the Soweto uprising marked the beginning of what was essentially a low-grade civil war in South Africa. Black residential areas were heavily patrolled by police, resisters were jailed and tortured, and freedom of speech and assembly were severely restricted. Biko had been an outspoken advocate of the ideology of Black Consciousness, "in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers round the cause of their subjection-the blackness of their skin-and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude" (Thompson 2000:212). Black Consciousness may have played a role in inspiring the 1976 demonstrations, though how deeply students or Catholic religious women-black or white-understood the subtleties of Biko's philosophy, which was not fundamentally antiwhite, is open to question. Black activists on the ground reacted not to ideology, but to the embrace of blackness in opposition to whiteness (see Tlhagale 2005; Malueke 2008:116-17). Sr. Mary Modise was not alone in her ignorance. In his history of the Catholic Church under apartheid, David Ryall (1998:182-86) identified four "radical black clergy and religious." Three were priests: Fr. Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, a leading exponent of so-called liberation theology who served as secretary general of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference (SACBC); Fr. …

Democracy and Peace in the Age of Globalization: Old Problems, New Challenges for Africa

Abstract: This article considers the impact of globalization on peace and democracy, especially in Africa. Peace is essential for orderly life and democracy is the paramount political value of our epoch. Are democracy and globalization compatible? They can be under certain conditions. Can globalization guarantee peace? Yes, if it can help in addressing the problems of poverty. The Constitutive Act of African Union enjoins African leaders to promote and protect human and peoples' rights and to consolidate democratic institutions and culture. It also requires the promotion of peace, security and stability in the continent. The conclusion: Globalization must be controlled and global institutions democratized. Resume: Cet essai considere l'impact de la globalisation sur la paix et la democratie, en particulier en Afrique. Le principe de paix est essentiel pour une vie ordonnee et la democratie est une valeur politique d'une importance capitale a notre epoque. La democratie et la globalisation sont-elles compatibles ? Elles peuvent l'etre sous certaines conditions. La globalisation peut-elle garantir la paix ? Oui, si elle peut aider a diminuer les problemes de pauvrete. L'Acte de Constitution de l'Union Africaine intime aux dirigeants Africains de promouvoir et de proteger les droits de l'homme et des peuples, et de consolider les institutions democratiques et culturelles. Il implique egalement la promotion de la paix, la securite et de la stabilite sur le continent. En conclusion, la globalisation doit etre controlee, et les institutions globales doivent etre democratisees. Editors' note: The following article was originally delivered as the 2010 Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola Lecture at the fifty-third Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association in San Francisco. Introduction African countries have recently experienced a constitutional renaissance, unencumbered as they now are by the historical burden of colonial rule and by the pressures emanating from Cold War politics. This experience affecting Africa coincided with developments in Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet era, essentially involving democratic transition from Soviet style one-party autocracy. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 coincided with - some might even think that it caused - popular movements demanding democratic transition in much of Africa. And constitutional engineering became the principal method of achieving democracy. As someone who teaches comparative constitutional law, and who has also been involved in constitution drafting and consulting, I am keenly aware of the place of constitutionalism in democratic transition; indeed, constitutionalism is the foundation of democracy. I will return to the subject of democracy later; and now a word on the companion concept of peace, the other subject of my address. Peace has been a precious commodity throughout human history; so much so, that in many languages peace is a common form of greeting. In recent times, peace has been joined by democracy and other core values, to be incorporated in the constitutional system. It is therefore of interest to ask: what has been the impact of globalization on these two core values, especially in Africa, a continent plagued with conflict and dictatorial regimes? Globalization's Source and Impact For some years now, scholars and practitioners have been arguing about the meaning and impact of globalization. To some it is the salvation of humanity, holding the key to universal prosperity and peace. Others fault it as the source of the major problems of our time - as a disruptive force, exacerbating peoples' problems, causing environmental devastation, destroying native cultures, and widening the gap between rich and poor at the national level as well as globally. It should be remembered that globalization is the product of a long historical process, spurred by the human urge to acquire more knowledge of what lies beyond the known boundary, as well as by the will to expand and acquire more resources. …

The Crown and the Pen: The Memoirs of a Lawyer Turned Rebe

Abstract: MEMOIRS AND BIOGRAPHY Bereket Habte Selassie. The Crown and the Pen: The Memoirs of a Lawyer Turned Rebel. Trenton, N.J., and Asmara, Eritrea: The Red Sea Press, 2007. 350 pp. Index. $29.95. Paper. The memoir is an underdeveloped genre in Africa. Some might wonder whether many Africans live a life worth recording, since we are often condemned to be the object rather than agent or author of history. Those Africans who do manage to make history - or play a significant part in it - sometimes feel better off not telling their stories, particularly while they are still alive, often for understandable reasons. And tiiose who make history may indeed not have the time to record it. Bereket Habte Selassie has overcome these impediments in writing The Crown and the Pen. In writing a memoir, an author sometimes fall victim to the temptation of stretching the truth, exaggerating one's role in historical events, or trying to anticipate or preempt criticism from imagined skeptical readers. One finds in Selassie's memoir ample expressions of these challenges, and how he tries to overcome them. Like all good memoirs, The Crown and the Pen tells the story of the roads traversed by a dynamic and brilliant man, from his early childhood to the moment of his induction into the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). The historically important story, therefore, is interspersed with die mundane personal one, the politically trenchant observations with the casual remarks, the extraordinary details with the commonplace, and so forth. But the author deftly makes smooth transitions from one part of the story to another, holding a reader's attention. In a relatively short period, Selassie succeeded in vertical penetration of the citadels of power; he was at the center of Ethiopian politics both during the imperial rule and in the early part of the military regime. He met with prominent African leaders, too, from Patrice Lumumba, Milton Obote, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda and Emperor Haile Selassie to Aman Andom and Mengistu Haile Mariam. He also had encounters with freedom fighters and theorists such as Frantz Fanon. Selassie rose and fell in the royal politics of Ethiopia, as symbolized in his ascendancy to the position of attorney-general and his relegation later to the mayoralty of the provincial town of Harar. But given his encounters more than once with deadly threats, one conclusion that can be drawn from die book is that he was not only a crafty son of Eritrea, but also an incredibly lucky one. …

When Rustling Became an Art: Pilane's Kgatla and the Transvaal Frontier 1820-1902 (review)

Abstract: Fred Morton. When Rustling Became an Art: Pilane's Kgatla and the Transvaal Frontier 1820-1902. Claremont, S.A.: David Philip Publishers, 2009. xxx + 314 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. R230.00 Paper. Centered on the largest chiefdom of the western Transvaal, this well-written and densely researched book covers far more ground than its modest tide suggests. This history of the BaKgada chiefdom encapsulates the experience of the people of the wider region from the turmoil of the 1820s through the South African War of 1899-1902. Morton's claim that catde rusding was the central BaKgada strategy of survival asserts a continuity not only of literal behavior, but also of the mindset and mentality of the chiefs and their followers. Following disruption in the 1820s, Chief Pilane regathered his BaKgada followers, developed trade relations to Delagoa Bay and to the south, and voluntarily entered into a subordinate tributary relationship with AmaNdebele Chief Mzilikazi. After Boer setders laid claim to the land, chiefs like Pilane received access to land in exchange for military support. When Kgamanyane, who succeeded his father in 1848, sought better land in 1861 , he relocated his capital to a farm, Saulspoort, then held by die future president of die South African Republic (ZAR), Paul Kruger. Kgamanyane gained catde spoils through service on Boer commandoes in which Boers, including Kruger, also took women and children as captive laborers. Kgamanyane 's praises record that although he led his forces on commando under Kruger's command, including against Moshoeshoe and the BaSotho in 1865, they only feigned loyalty and withheld effective support in batde, secredy celebrating Boer casualties that they may have even helped to inflict. Although Morton eschews theoretical forays, it is clear that neither "hegemony" as overwhelming European power nor as unconscious consent to a new Western mindset and perception of the "taken for granted" was ever achieved. The missionaries who arrived among the BaKgada from the early 1860s were deeply dependent on the chiefs, and only managed to convert an insignificant handful of people during the remaining decades of the century; die pragmatically motivated conversion of Chief Linchwe in 1892 required that he divorce two of his three wives, but most local rituals persisted in a Christianized form, and at least into the early twentieth century the "colonization of consciousness" never occurred among the BaKgada. The BaKgada reestablished their capital at Mochudi within the borders of modern Botswana at die invitation of the BaKwena chief Sechele, after Kruger sent the veldkornet (local official) to inflict a public beating on Kgamanyane in 1870 for refusing to supply unpaid laborers, and called a meeting at which the chief believed their guns were to be confiscated. …