Liberation and Democracy: Cases from Southern Africa

Abstract

During 2001, the Uppsala-based Nordic Africa Institute (established in 1962 as the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies) initiated its research project on 'Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa'.! This highlights processes of political and economic transformation, or the lack thereof, mainly but not exclusively under liberation movements which secured legitimate political power and came to occupy the state apparatus following independence (or, as in the case of South Africa, after the first democratic general elections). The social movements in control of the political sphere, reorganised as parties, have managed to consolidate their dominant positions and maintained control over the state apparatus by various means (though, as Zimbabwe suggests, not necessarily with an unlimited time frame). They have obtained the power of definition in the dominant political arena and occupy and control public discourse within their societies. Accordingly, they tend to operate with and along rather strict concepts of inclusion/exclusion in terms of the nation-building process.