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| 1 |
ID:
185375
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent debates in post-genocide and post-war Rwanda have explored how official commemorations of the Genocide Against the Tutsi in many ways borrow and ‘mimic’ the Holocaust memory ‘paradigm’. The academic canon on post-1994 Rwanda focuses the mostly on politics around this official memory that has evolved into hegemonic memory and on how it has been mobilized to promote a selective memory of the past. However, there is little analysis of vernacular, bottom-up memory practices that have evolved alongside the official one. Using observation, semi-structured interviews, and secondary sources, this article examines vernacular memory practices of mourning the wartime missing in Rwanda. Through the concepts of ‘multidirectional’ and ‘traveling’ memory, this study examines how survivors of these interconnected violent histories that unfolded in two different countries claim multi-faceted Agaciro (dignity, self-respect, and self-worth) through two different memory approaches. The article argues that while actors in official memory approach claim Agaciro through borrowing from another global hegemonic memory, respondents in this study created vernacular avenues to remember their missing loved ones. The article finds that while hegemonic memory might appear to only compete with vernacular memory, there are also ‘knots’ that connect these two memory forms in Rwanda’s context and beyond. In its conclusion, the article proposes an Agaciro-centred approach to examine the relationships between official and unofficial memory practices that have been reenergized through protests both offline and online in Rwanda and beyond. The article contributes to scholarship on Rwanda’s post-genocide memory politics, transcultural memory, and decolonial perspectives on dignity.
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| 2 |
ID:
185376
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| Summary/Abstract |
A year out from the 2021 ugandan election, opposition supporters had a lot to worry about. After four straight presidential elections in which the non-incumbent vote was remarkably concentrated in the candidacy of Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), political developments were suggesting that this coalescence would not survive into the upcoming campaign season. At the centre of the FDC, Besigye’s long-time rival for the party nomination, Mugisha Muntu, finally concluded that his differences in approach with Besigye’s faction were too significant to be housed in one party, breaking off to form the Alliance for National Transformation with a few of his factional allies from the FDC.1 More significantly, however, the youthful and confrontational crowd that had been Besigye’s political base for years seemed to have a new champion: musician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known by his stage name Bobi Wine, who entered Parliament in a by-election in 2017. In the subsequent years, Bobi Wine’s political profile rose via several high-profile confrontations with the authorities, and, as the election approached, his brand clearly rivalled Besigye’s to a greater degree than any opposition figure to date.
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| 3 |
ID:
185377
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| Summary/Abstract |
The continuous publication over 120 years of African Affairs, originally the Journal of the African Society, provides an invaluable source for charting Britain’s shifting perceptions of and interaction with Africa. Though limited, its readership included many of those most closely involved in Britain with studying and engaging with Africa during the 20th century. The journal charts a significant change: from an initial curiosity about Africa that included Africans’ own perception of and writing about their world; through a period when imperial perspectives on how to rule and how to develop African colonies dominated; to a more academic analysis of the dynamics of independence and how independent African countries subsequently evolved; and finally to a growing engagement with African scholars themselves and African perceptions of the changes taking place on the continent. At each stage a number of themes emerge that illuminate our understanding of how Africa was seen and interpreted by the British and, latterly, by Africans.
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| 4 |
ID:
185374
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| Summary/Abstract |
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.
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| 5 |
ID:
185372
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| Summary/Abstract |
Existing electoral violence prevention programming does not sufficiently account for the incentives that compel political actors to use violence. When Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo defeated Ghana’s incumbent President, John Dramani Mahama, in December 2016, the transition was lauded for its orderliness and credited with furthering Ghana’s democratization. Many attributed the peaceful transfer of power to significant reforms undertaken by the electoral commission and the democratic values internalized by the candidates. However, we find that the reforms and personal attributes of the political actors were inadequate for resolving impasses that could have worsened the electoral environment. Our analysis reveals that interventions to prevent electoral violence must mitigate political actors’ incentives to use or tolerate violence in furtherance of their objectives. In Ghana, we find that back channel negotiations—coupled with identifying potential hotspots, early monitoring and observation, and conflict resolution mechanisms—created a robust electoral violence prevention framework that reduced tensions and produced a relatively peaceful political transition. Our findings advance existing theories and practices for preventing electoral violence, which emphasize capacity building, institutional reforms, and other technical approaches to managing elections. We conclude that directly engaging political actors is a critical component of preventing electoral violence in Africa.
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| 6 |
ID:
185373
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the purposes and drivers of handouts in party primaries in Malawi. We argue that existing explanations of handouts are incomplete because they are developed to identify dynamics in presidential or legislative elections. Rules of national elections are constitutionally protected, and their fairness is monitored by both local and international observers. In contrast, rules guiding candidate selection in parties are less institutionalized, and, in some contexts, such as Malawi, a secret ballot cannot be taken for granted. This underlines the need for empirical studies of the logic of handouts at the candidate selection stage to study how differences in institutional context affect the strategic choices behind engaging in the practice. We demonstrate why such an analysis needs to be informed by an in-depth knowledge about the party organizations in which the candidate selection process itself takes place. Through qualitative interviews with members of selectorates and party primary contestants, we find that the institutional environment affects the propensity to use handouts. Mechanisms such as leadership interventions and the opportunity to stand as independent candidates make primary outcomes less final. This reduces the authority of local party organizations to control candidate selection and appropriates the use of patrimonial strategies.
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| 7 |
ID:
185371
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| Summary/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.
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