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| 1 |
ID:
191641
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| Summary/Abstract |
Using court records of legal disputes over transfers of land, this article explores the way transfers of landed property have impacted social relationships and the governance of land rights in Ghana in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As urbanization, commercial agriculture, and natural resource extraction pushed up the value of land, disputes over land ownership have multiplied. In adjudicating such disputes, courts are often confronted with claims based on unverifiable oral histories invoking events of the distant past. Rather than simply dismiss such forms of evidence as hearsay, judges have often supplemented them with documentary and/or oral evidence on recent histories of land use. By doing so, they have tended to sustain customary forms of ownership, effectively recognizing the authority of landholding collectivities such as families and stools alongside that of individual owners. In effect, they are inferring ownership from land use, inverting the standard economic argument.
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| 2 |
ID:
191639
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| Summary/Abstract |
Despite increasingly programmatic politics and competitive elections, political clientelism remains an enduring feature of African politics. More so, while politicians rarely deliver on political promises, citizens continue to demand and participate in patron–client relations. While moral economy and instrumentalist accounts offer insight into the puzzling persistence of political clientelism, we offer an additional framework based on demands for social recognition. Beyond expectations of materialist exchange or the performance of cultural norms, citizens expect their political leaders to recognize them as dignified human beings and members of an identity group. Drawing on evidence from three diverse African contexts—urban Ghana, rural Senegal, and coastal Kenya—we argue that citizens engage in political clientelism as a vehicle for demanding three dimensions of social recognition: (i) To be seen and heard by leaders, (ii) to be respected as agents in the political process, and (iii) to be politically included and protected from harm. By providing new insights into the enduring logics of clientelism, citizen strategies amidst unequal power relationships, and the role of emotions in democratic politics, we aim to reconcile existing approaches and bring them into a more unified framework.
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| 3 |
ID:
191640
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| Summary/Abstract |
Deputy President William Ruto’s victorious presidential campaign in Kenya’s 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the ‘hustlers’, young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto’s campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards ‘populism’ in Africa, transmuting ethno-nationalist identities into class-based ones. However, whilst Ruto’s campaign capitalized on rising prices to devastating political effect, he also channelled discontent with the Jubilee government and its unmet promises of shared prosperity. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in central Kenya’s Kiambu region since 2017, this article understands Ruto’s victory not through the lens of ‘hustler populism’ but rather as an anti-Jubilee ‘backlash’. Ruto’s campaign took advantage of Uhuru Kenyatta’s personal unpopularity as voters increasingly questioned the nature of ‘dynastic’ authority and ‘state capture’, seeking to punish Uhuru personally for his failures to create prosperity in the region whilst enriching himself at their expense. Elaborating on these tensions, the article points towards broken ‘moral economies’ between voters and politicians as a vital field of research.
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| 4 |
ID:
191644
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| Summary/Abstract |
When Ugandan parliamentarians passed a new Anti-Homosexuality Bill in March 2023, they reportedly did so under pressure from, and with the enthusiastic support of, religious leaders.1 In other African countries, too, recent legal and political struggles around LGBTIQ rights often feature religious leaders as key actors in campaigns that incite hate speech against, and contribute to the marginalization of, LGBTIQ communities and actively support or promote anti-LGBTIQ legislation and policies.2 Given this situation, it is easy to view religious leaders as drivers of what has been described as the ‘homophobia spectacle’ that can be witnessed across the continent.3 Even in countries that recently decriminalized same-sex relationships, such as Botswana, church pastors continue to argue that homosexuality is ‘against Christianity’ and therefore ‘should not be allowed in this country’.4 Within international Christian bodies, such as the worldwide Anglican Communion, African church leaders are often associated with anti-LGBTIQ stances.5 For instance, early in 2023, the Anglican churches in Uganda and Kenya strongly rebuked the Church of England for its decision to allow for the blessing of same-sex unions.
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| 5 |
ID:
191642
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| Summary/Abstract |
In response to debates around land grabbing, the international community has increasingly developed and promoted global governance norms and guidelines for more responsible land investments. This concern on the part of the international community has particularly taken hold in Sierra Leone—in a post-war context, in which international donor agencies are already steering much of the country’s politics. Yet, despite the enormous influence of international guidelines and the actors promoting their use, there is a spatial variation in the conformity to and effectiveness of such norms in cases of land investments. While some projects seem to resemble ‘showcases’ for their exemplary use, these guidelines seem to be absent in other projects. This article analyses the political economy of customary land tenure, land investments, and international ‘soft laws’ in Sierra Leone. Based on 6 months of fieldwork in Sierra Leone in 2019, I compare several cases of large-scale land investments. I argue that there are important variations in the customary tenure system in the degree to which political authority over land is centralized in the authority of the paramount chief or is devolved to landholding families. This, I suggest, holds important implications for the uptake of global norms for ‘responsible’ investments.
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| 6 |
ID:
191643
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| Summary/Abstract |
Do racial identities determine voting behaviour in post-apartheid South Africa? To address this question, we draw from a representative sample of 3,905 registered voters in five metropolitan municipalities: Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town, and Nelson Mandela Bay. Our findings are mixed. On the one hand, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote for the African National Congress, whereas Coloured, Indian, and especially white voters were more likely to vote for the Democratic Alliance. This contrast comes into particular focus when we examine how voters acted over the course of a three-election period. On the other hand, race was far from a guaranteed predictor, not the least because many chose to abstain from voting—a trend that extended, though unevenly, to all racial groups. Importantly, though, the electorate did not split between party loyalists and consistent abstainers. Instead, fluidity predominated: About half of the electorate changed positions between elections, either by switching between parties or between voting and abstaining. Our findings thus demonstrate what we call ‘racialized fluidity’: Many voters are changing their voting decision from one election to the next, but in the aggregate, racial identity remains correlated with voting decisions.
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