Despite growing interest in party politics in Africa, the activities and roles of African opposition parties are still underexplored, especially in the context of one-party-dominant ‘hybrid’ regimes where they are allowed to operate but face a myriad of constraints. In these settings, opposition parties face a common dilemma: having to participate in the regime’s institutions and protest against them at the same time. Existing frameworks fail to provide a full and accurate picture of how opposition parties can erode the incumbent’s dominance and promote regime change. This article offers a novel functional framework, drawing from comparative research in Burkina Faso and Uganda. It identifies a set of three functions that opposition parties perform within a hybrid regime: denunciation, mobilization of dissent, and succession signalling. Understanding opposition parties’ functions in a hybrid regime through this alternative framework enables us to reconcile the seemingly contradictory behaviour of opposition parties that work both within and against the status quo and to better evaluate their role in this setting.
{"title":"Opposition in a hybrid regime: The functions of opposition parties in Burkina Faso and Uganda","authors":"Eloïse Bertrand","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adab023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adab023","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Despite growing interest in party politics in Africa, the activities and roles of African opposition parties are still underexplored, especially in the context of one-party-dominant ‘hybrid’ regimes where they are allowed to operate but face a myriad of constraints. In these settings, opposition parties face a common dilemma: having to participate in the regime’s institutions and protest against them at the same time. Existing frameworks fail to provide a full and accurate picture of how opposition parties can erode the incumbent’s dominance and promote regime change. This article offers a novel functional framework, drawing from comparative research in Burkina Faso and Uganda. It identifies a set of three functions that opposition parties perform within a hybrid regime: denunciation, mobilization of dissent, and succession signalling. Understanding opposition parties’ functions in a hybrid regime through this alternative framework enables us to reconcile the seemingly contradictory behaviour of opposition parties that work both within and against the status quo and to better evaluate their role in this setting.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48546192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For 40 years, Nigeria has separated its citizens into two categories, ‘indigenes’ and ‘non-indigenes’. Indigene citizens can trace their genealogical roots back to a community in a locality. All local governments (LGs) in Nigeria issue certificates of indigene, which give access to the job market and university. This issuance of certificate of indigene has received scant academic attention despite the centrality of the indigeneity issue in Nigeria. In the two last decades, issuing certificates has become part of the political tensions and mass violence in Plateau State (Jos) as politicians and bureaucrats have transformed certificates to exclude most of the population from the local citizenship. Through an ethnographic approach, this article explores how a politics of suspicion can contribute to the growing literature on legal identification. Focusing on local authorities helps in understanding the centrality of suspicion in the making of new undocumented citizens which are not minority groups (foreigners, migrants and asylum seekers) usually targeted by national authorities. The complicated procedures to get certificates and the production of fake ones are an outcome of this politics of suspicion. The article also shows that a locally paper-based bureaucracy could expand at the same time as—and while being disconnected from—biometric identification.
{"title":"Undocumented citizens and the making of ID documents in Nigeria: an ethnography of the politics of suspicion in Jos","authors":"Laurent Fourchard","doi":"10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB022","url":null,"abstract":"For 40 years, Nigeria has separated its citizens into two categories, ‘indigenes’ and ‘non-indigenes’. Indigene citizens can trace their genealogical roots back to a community in a locality. All local governments (LGs) in Nigeria issue certificates of indigene, which give access to the job market and university. This issuance of certificate of indigene has received scant academic attention despite the centrality of the indigeneity issue in Nigeria. In the two last decades, issuing certificates has become part of the political tensions and mass violence in Plateau State (Jos) as politicians and bureaucrats have transformed certificates to exclude most of the population from the local citizenship. Through an ethnographic approach, this article explores how a politics of suspicion can contribute to the growing literature on legal identification. Focusing on local authorities helps in understanding the centrality of suspicion in the making of new undocumented citizens which are not minority groups (foreigners, migrants and asylum seekers) usually targeted by national authorities. The complicated procedures to get certificates and the production of fake ones are an outcome of this politics of suspicion. The article also shows that a locally paper-based bureaucracy could expand at the same time as—and while being disconnected from—biometric identification.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"120 1","pages":"511-541"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46997373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Urban renewal is central to ‘world-class’ city aspirations on the African continent: demolitions and evictions exemplify the power of the state to restructure urban space, prioritizing elite forms of accumulation and enforcing aesthetic norms of cleanliness, order and modernity. The ubiquity of world-class city-making has been taken by urban studies scholars as evidence of African leaders’ converging on a unitary aspirational urban imaginary. This article contends that the concept of world class should instead be understood as a key terrain on which African governments’ distinctive and diverse ideational ambitions are expressed. In Oyo State, southwest Nigeria, vernacular political traditions—in this case Yoruba cultural nationalism centred on the ideas of Obafemi Awolowo—were deployed by the state governor to legitimize urban renewal. Drawing on the Yoruba notion that elitism can be ‘generalized’, the cultivation of globalized urban forms was not only a project of becoming ever more homogenously ‘international’ but a historically grounded aspiration to become ever more essentially Yoruba. Thus, beyond commonalities across the discourses used to legitimize neoliberal urban development—world class, international and global—these universal sounding imaginaries may at the same time express much more particularistic political projects.
{"title":"Urban renewal in Ibadan, Nigeria: World class but essentially Yoruba","authors":"P. Roelofs","doi":"10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Urban renewal is central to ‘world-class’ city aspirations on the African continent: demolitions and evictions exemplify the power of the state to restructure urban space, prioritizing elite forms of accumulation and enforcing aesthetic norms of cleanliness, order and modernity. The ubiquity of world-class city-making has been taken by urban studies scholars as evidence of African leaders’ converging on a unitary aspirational urban imaginary. This article contends that the concept of world class should instead be understood as a key terrain on which African governments’ distinctive and diverse ideational ambitions are expressed. In Oyo State, southwest Nigeria, vernacular political traditions—in this case Yoruba cultural nationalism centred on the ideas of Obafemi Awolowo—were deployed by the state governor to legitimize urban renewal. Drawing on the Yoruba notion that elitism can be ‘generalized’, the cultivation of globalized urban forms was not only a project of becoming ever more homogenously ‘international’ but a historically grounded aspiration to become ever more essentially Yoruba. Thus, beyond commonalities across the discourses used to legitimize neoliberal urban development—world class, international and global—these universal sounding imaginaries may at the same time express much more particularistic political projects.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43276495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The next factory of the world: How Chinese investment is reshaping Africa","authors":"Qiyuan Jiang","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adab016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adab016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/afraf/adab016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46035665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Women’s rights are being enshrined in African constitutions today to an unprecedented extent. African countries have on average more constitutional provisions addressing women’s rights than any other region of the world. This longitudinal cross-national study shows that constitutional reforms in African contexts are increasingly evident in the areas of gender equality, customary law, discrimination, violence against women, gender quotas, and citizenship rights, and they sometimes reflect gender-inclusive language. By analysing a novel data set of constitutional reforms across all African countries over 68 years (1951–2019), this article identifies four critical junctures when the adoption of women’s rights reforms arose, namely (i) after independence, particularly in Muslim-majority countries; (ii) after political opening in the 1990s; (iii) after the end of major civil conflicts; and (iv) after the 2011 Arab uprisings. At each juncture, women’s movements capitalized on political openings to advance constitutional reforms that are unmatched on a global scale. This article goes beyond the existing explanations of cumulative gains, international influence, diffusion, learning, and borrowing to show that a ‘critical junctures’ approach may help explain when, why, and how women’s rights reforms occur in constitutions.
{"title":"Women’s rights and critical junctures in constitutional reform in Africa (1951–2019)","authors":"Kaden Paulson-Smith, A. Tripp","doi":"10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB019","url":null,"abstract":"Women’s rights are being enshrined in African constitutions today to an unprecedented extent. African countries have on average more constitutional provisions addressing women’s rights than any other region of the world. This longitudinal cross-national study shows that constitutional reforms in African contexts are increasingly evident in the areas of gender equality, customary law, discrimination, violence against women, gender quotas, and citizenship rights, and they sometimes reflect gender-inclusive language. By analysing a novel data set of constitutional reforms across all African countries over 68 years (1951–2019), this article identifies four critical junctures when the adoption of women’s rights reforms arose, namely (i) after independence, particularly in Muslim-majority countries; (ii) after political opening in the 1990s; (iii) after the end of major civil conflicts; and (iv) after the 2011 Arab uprisings. At each juncture, women’s movements capitalized on political openings to advance constitutional reforms that are unmatched on a global scale. This article goes beyond the existing explanations of cumulative gains, international influence, diffusion, learning, and borrowing to show that a ‘critical junctures’ approach may help explain when, why, and how women’s rights reforms occur in constitutions.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47621593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This research note explores the ethical and methodological implications of using drones for ethnographic research at events that involve simultaneous activities and/or large crowds and large spaces. Based on the methodological challenges of collecting visual data using cameras in the case of royal funerals in Ghana, this note argues that the aerial viewpoint provided by drones could transform visual data collection by capturing sophisticated views of multiple events happening at the same time. However, it also identifies ethical and methodological challenges of using drones and argues that it could obscure the understanding of sociocultural complexities. This research note contributes to our understanding of visual methodologies by highlighting how drone technology extends and complicates current understandings and debates on the use of photographs and films in ethnography.
{"title":"Multiplicity and simultaneity in ethnographic research: Exploring the use of drones in Ghana","authors":"E. Adotey","doi":"10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This research note explores the ethical and methodological implications of using drones for ethnographic research at events that involve simultaneous activities and/or large crowds and large spaces. Based on the methodological challenges of collecting visual data using cameras in the case of royal funerals in Ghana, this note argues that the aerial viewpoint provided by drones could transform visual data collection by capturing sophisticated views of multiple events happening at the same time. However, it also identifies ethical and methodological challenges of using drones and argues that it could obscure the understanding of sociocultural complexities. This research note contributes to our understanding of visual methodologies by highlighting how drone technology extends and complicates current understandings and debates on the use of photographs and films in ethnography.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43311549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Gallagher, Dennis Larbi Mpere, Yah Ariane Bernadette N'djoré
There are striking differences between state buildings in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and in how citizens living in each country’s capital city think and talk about them. In this article, we explore the degree to which these buildings illustrate very different ideas of statehood in West Africa. We draw on art theories from West Africa to argue that architectural aesthetics rest on juxtapositions of beauty and the sublime and we suggest ways these help establish state meaning. We then apply our aesthetic approach to citizens’ evaluations of their state buildings in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and illustrate how differently the approach plays out, in Ghana where the state emerges as acclimatized and relatively robust and in Côte d’Ivoire where the state emerges as idealized and fragile.
{"title":"State aesthetics and state meanings: Political architecture in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire","authors":"J. Gallagher, Dennis Larbi Mpere, Yah Ariane Bernadette N'djoré","doi":"10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 There are striking differences between state buildings in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and in how citizens living in each country’s capital city think and talk about them. In this article, we explore the degree to which these buildings illustrate very different ideas of statehood in West Africa. We draw on art theories from West Africa to argue that architectural aesthetics rest on juxtapositions of beauty and the sublime and we suggest ways these help establish state meaning. We then apply our aesthetic approach to citizens’ evaluations of their state buildings in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire and illustrate how differently the approach plays out, in Ghana where the state emerges as acclimatized and relatively robust and in Côte d’Ivoire where the state emerges as idealized and fragile.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43433329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Livestock owners, elites and non-elites alike, from different parts of Namibia fence in land that belongs to the indigenous San people who collectively manage their land as a conservancy. Fencing violates the Communal Land Reform Act of 2002. The conservancy started a lawsuit in August 2013 with reference to this Act to remove the fences and end the illegal occupation of land. The High Court ruled in 2016 in favour of the conservancy, but the fences have not been removed and more illegal settlers have settled in the conservancy. We conceptualize and analyse the act of fencing as land grabbing but argue simultaneously that the legal battle of the conservancy is more than a struggle for justice. The case unfolds as an ontological struggle between actors, their institutions and respective policies and discourses, pivoting on conflicting visions of modernities of (rural) development in Tsumkwe West. The wider significance beyond N≠a Jaqna is that the core of struggles about land and rights in situations of land grabbing is whose modernity counts. The court case has also paved the way for conservancies and other resource communities to become involved in dealing with land issues and contesting the multiple meanings of land.
{"title":"Fighting fences and land grabbers in the struggle for the Commons in N≠a Jaqna, Namibia","authors":"Christa van der Wulp, P. Hebinck","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adab017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adab017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Livestock owners, elites and non-elites alike, from different parts of Namibia fence in land that belongs to the indigenous San people who collectively manage their land as a conservancy. Fencing violates the Communal Land Reform Act of 2002. The conservancy started a lawsuit in August 2013 with reference to this Act to remove the fences and end the illegal occupation of land. The High Court ruled in 2016 in favour of the conservancy, but the fences have not been removed and more illegal settlers have settled in the conservancy. We conceptualize and analyse the act of fencing as land grabbing but argue simultaneously that the legal battle of the conservancy is more than a struggle for justice. The case unfolds as an ontological struggle between actors, their institutions and respective policies and discourses, pivoting on conflicting visions of modernities of (rural) development in Tsumkwe West. The wider significance beyond N≠a Jaqna is that the core of struggles about land and rights in situations of land grabbing is whose modernity counts. The court case has also paved the way for conservancies and other resource communities to become involved in dealing with land issues and contesting the multiple meanings of land.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41346425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The path to genocide in Rwanda: Security, opportunity, and authority in an ethnocratic state","authors":"T. Bouwknegt","doi":"10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1093/AFRAF/ADAB015","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46747493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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