African Elites Research Articles

Interrogating Ethnic Stacking: The Uses and Abuses of Security Force Ethnicity in Sudan

ABSTRACT African elites commonly recruit co-ethnic soldiers into state security institutions, a practice known as ethnic stacking. Ethnic stacking has recently received considerable attention from scholars and been linked to authoritarian repression, coups, and political violence. This article employs evidence from Sudan to argue that ethnic stacking is not one coherent tactic but several, and can manifest across multiple identities, multiple institutions, and at different points in the security force hierarchy. Moreover, the effects of ethnic stacking can be mediated by which institutions are stacked and whether stacking is restricted to the leadership or encompasses an entire security force.

Research for Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st Century

This paper posited that although the first Sub-Saharan African University was established in 1827, university research has yielded little significant result within the African space. A few reasons have been advanced to explain the situation. First, African universities have capacity to admit only 7% of qualified candidates. Secondly, Africa has not demanded solutions for its socio-economic challenges from African universities. Thirdly, African elites still hope that the operationalisation of the concept of globalisation will take care of the socio-economic development needs of Africa. The paper also identified the absence of additional pathways to education, unemployment and livelihood issues, an unorganised informal sector and a city life that is unresponsive to citizens’ efforts towards survival as a few of the challenges currently bedevilling the ordinary African person. These challenges speak to what may be viewed as compelling research agendas that promise to positively impact the development of Sub-Saharan Africa. The solutions that would most suitably address these concerns need to be derived from the wealth of knowledge (both traditional and modern) that can be adapted to the specific social, economic, environmental and psychological conditions of Africa. Key Words : Research agenda, Universities, unorganised informal sector, livelihoods, sustainable development

Mandela and the Left

Drawn into the Communist Party’s social circles through friendships during the 1940s, Mandela became increasingly interested from 1952 onwards in the party’s doctrines and in the Marxist canon that informed their premises. His first encounters with Communists were at a time when the party was beginning to develop its strategic justification for aligning itself with African nationalism, a development that would prompt Communists to begin recruiting and extending their influence among the middle-class African elite. This article explores the implications of Mandela’s association with South Africa’s Communist left. It reviews the evidence that points to his membership of the party at the end of the 1950s. It explores the party’s purpose in drawing Mandela into its embrace and considers the ways in which Mandela’s political thinking and actions may have been shaped by his proximity to South African Communists between 1952 and 1962. Whether Mandela actually thought of himself at that time as a communist is open to question. Through the 1950s and later, he remained receptive to a range of political ideas and captive to none.

‘Fate Worse than’ artificial borders is the insidious African elite politics: the Somali case

ABSTRACTThe debate centred on the artificial nature of colonial political bounders in Africa and their enduring legacy continues. What is not directly addressed by this literature is the parallel and, even more, destructive political-economic culture left behind by colonial rule, reified by factions of the political elite in Africa, and that appears to be on the march in several parts of the continent. This paper examines the long-term consequences of political ethnicity and corruption in inducing new boundaries within the nation and that is ominously undermining the vitality and further development of civic political culture in the continent. Somalia, arguably the most culturally homogenous nation-state in the continent, provides historical evidence to sustain the argument.

Power Plays and Balancing Acts: The Paradoxical Effects of Chinese Trade on African Foreign Policy Positions

There has been substantial focus on China’s influence in Africa in recent years. Some argue that China’s growing economic ties with African states have increased its political influence across the continent. This article examines whether trade with China leads African states to adopt more similar foreign policy preferences to China in the United Nations. We examine foreign policy similarity using voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly and country statements in the United Nations General Debate. The analysis demonstrates that more trade with China has paradoxical effects on foreign policy positions of African states—it leads them to align more closely with US foreign policy positions in the United Nations, except on human rights votes. Our findings suggest that African states are engaged in balancing behavior with external powers whereby African elites seek to play off rival powers against one another in order to strengthen their own autonomy and maximize trade.

Frantz Fanon, Alienation and Freedom. Edited by Jean Khalfa and Robert J. C. Young. Translated by Steven Corcoran

This collection is the English translation of a French volume published in 2015. The relative speed with which the translation has appeared gives some sense of the urgency and relevance of its contents. In a time of renewed racial antagonisms and neo-colonial interventions globally, Frantz Fanon’s existing published work had already regained some of its status as an unavoidable point of reference for discussions of race and colonialism and their psychological effects. The publication of his voluminous unpublished works — around half his entire œuvre — promises to reinforce that status and further emphasize the piercingly prescient quality of the work as a whole. Previously inaccessible or considered lost, the writings here range from plays to psychiatric essays and political pieces. The editors have done exemplary work in locating the various pieces, finding, for example, scientific articles, Fanon’s 1951 dissertation in psychiatry, editorials from hospital newspapers, and other manuscripts and fragments that together show how his psychiatric thought influenced his political thinking, and vice versa. Fanon’s conviction that psychiatric questions needed to be considered in relation to the body and its freedom to move, and to social and spatial relations, loses none of its pertinence and potential when applied to contemporary situations. Theatre specialists will be able to apply these ideas to the two plays, and to the broader field of performance studies, in which Fanon is already an important theoretical reference. His plays bear the imprint of Aimé Césaire’s language, and the theatre of Paul Claudel and Jean-Paul Sartre, the latter being a particularly strong influence on Fanon’s thought. The political writings reveal a worldly thinker, rooted in the Algerian struggle but with his eye cast critically on Europe and its neo-colonial impulses. He is no less critical of new African elites and their ties to the former colonial powers. He turns back to the Caribbean only rarely, notably in an essay on the Federation of the West Indies entitled, hopefully, ‘In the Caribbean, Birth of a Nation?’ It is striking that his native Martinique merits only a cursory, dismissive mention: ‘They trusted the “France of the Liberation” to fight against the political-economic power of the “sugar plantocracy”’ (p. 588), he writes, distancing himself from the fate of his island. The book does not so much introduce a new Fanon, as shine a broader, fuller light on the elements that were always there in his published works: the acute intelligence, the unerring critique of colonialism, and his concern for its psychological effects. Steven Corcoran provides exemplary translations. For someone who lived only thirty-six years, Fanon has already had a remarkable intellectual afterlife. This hugely important collection will ensure that his legacy will endure, proliferate, and be an essential point of reference for any reader interested in the complex, profound, ongoing effects of colonialism and racism.

Adapting a Business Elite to Global Regimes of Financial Control: Analysis of Illicit Financial Flows from Africa

The article analyzes the problems associated with the illicit financial outflow from Africa and provides a critical analysis as well as the author’s own estimates of the amounts of funds illegally funneled from African countries to foreign jurisdictions. The paper points out significant discrepancies in quantitative estimates of the volume of illegal financial flows from different countries between the estimates UNECA, that of a number of NGOs specializing in this subject matter and the author’s own calculations based on the Direction of Trade Statistics database of the International Monetary Fund and completed according to the methodology and formulas used by The High Level Panel (HLP) on illicit financial flows of the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The article systematizes and categorizes the fundamental causes, driving forces and motives that lead to the illicit outflows of capital from African countries and investigates common mechanisms and schemes of unlawful transborder transfers of funds. The publication exposes a key role of African business elites and corrupt officials in the steadily growing illegal export of capital from Africa, as well as sanctions and other restrictive measures that are taken in the world in order to prevent the widespread export of funds of illicit origin from Africa.

Troubling stereotypes: South African elite disability athletes and the paradox of (self-)representation.

Despite the increasing prominence of competitive disability sport, the literature on the experiences of disabled athletes, particularly in low- and middle- income countries, is sparse. We aimed to describe the participation experiences of a group of athletes in competitive disability sport in South Africa, as well as exploring the ways they talk about issues of identity and self-representation in the context of elite disability sport. Data were collected via in-depth, semistructured interviews with a purposefully sampled group of 22 athletes competing at a national level. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Participants reported that disability sport is personally transformative and that sport allows them to experience their bodies as capable and to feel a sense of pride. Participant narratives reinforced supercrip discourses and both reproduced stereotypes and challenged them. Participants experienced pride and social inclusion by reproducing aspects of supercrip discourse. The findings imply that participating in competitive disability sport can reinforce stereotypes about disability by strengthening supercrip discourses while simultaneously providing a context for internal personal transformation and private political struggles.

Explaining Judicial Authority in Dominant-Party Democracies: The Case of the Constitutional Court of South Africa

Why do authoritative constitutional courts sometimes thrive even in dominant-party regimes? This article identifies as a key determining factor the constitutional entrenchment of wealth redistribution via private corporate equity transfers. Since the policy threatens private capital, the dominant party would want to avoid massive capital flight by credibly committing to a restrained practice of indirect expropriation through an authoritative constitutional court that can apply a brake to the policy when it goes too far. The analysis is based on an in-depth case study of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. The empirical research includes conducting an expert survey on judicial appointments that tests a crucial observable implication of the theory, as well as performing process tracing that involves interviewing South African business elites.

‘Does Africa not deserve shiny new cities?’ The power of seductive rhetoric around new cities in Africa

This paper explores the emerging new master-planned city-building trend on the African continent. Situating our research within urban policy mobilities literature, we investigate the ‘Africa rising’ narrative and representation of Africa as a ‘last development frontier’ and ‘last piece of cake’, an imaginary that provides fertile ground for the construction of new cities. Building upon research on the practices of ‘seduction’ that facilitate urban policy circulation, we argue for the relevance of critically examining elite stakeholder rhetoric to understand the relative ease with which the new city development model is being promoted in Africa. We investigate the enablers, advocates and boosters of new cities, represented mainly by states, corporations, non-profits and consultants to render visible the complex networks of relations and private interests that support and enable the creation and circulation of the new cities model in Africa. We also analyse the pervasive ‘right to development’ argument among African elites, which precludes criticism of new city ventures and circulates problematic assumptions about modernity and development. We conclude by discussing how stakeholder rhetoric limits the range of urban visions that are put into circulation and mobilized for Africa’s urban future.

Sam Michael Tucker

The middle of three sons, Sam Michael Tucker was born in Benoni, South Africa, in 1926 to Harry and Ray Tucker, who had arrived there with their families from Lithuania...

Political systems and underdevelopment in Africa (1957-2010)

Africa is a creation of European powers following the scramble and partition of the continent by major European powers. The Berlin conference of 1884-1885 made it mandatory for these powers to provide effective administrative machinery in their areas of influence. At inception, each of them adopted separate system of administration ranging, from Indirect rule, Assimilation and Association policies. The emergence of Educated African Elites and its attendant Nationalistic feelings and agitation for independence led to various constitutional conferences both in Europe and in Africa. These led to the adoption of various Administrative system ranging from federalism, Regionalism,parliamentary and unitary systems of Government. From 1957, Independent African countries retained these system of Government institutionalized by their colonial masters. Some of these system of Government was strange to Africa since it was not based on their custom and tradition. These adopted system of Government has led to ethnicity, election violence, sit tight syndrome, military dictatorship, corruption and civil unrest. This paper examined in details the different system of Government across Africa since 1957. The paper critically assessed the level of underdevelopment across Africa as a result of these adopted system of Government. The paper also proffered solutions toAfrica current underdeveloped state.Key Words: Exploitation, kingdom, political system, underdevelopment

A Tussle for Decolonization of the Mind: Representation of the Whiteman in “A Grain of Wheat”

<p><em>The main aim of this paper is to critically examine the representation of the Whiteman (the colonizer) in the African prose narrative context and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s “A Grain of Wheat” specifically. The thrust has emerged from the main concepts of the binary opposites postulated by the critic Franz Fanon regarding the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Hence, the postcolonial theory is adopted as a literary analytical theoretical framework in this paper, for it works as a boundary line that explicates such texts. Via a close analysis of the selected text based on the tenants of postcolonialism, orientalism, Occidentalism its concluded that A Grain of Wheat is one of the literary texts that represents African elites’ tussle for decolonizing the mind. </em></p>

Whipping boys: South Africa’s limited reform of judicial corporal punishment in the 1960s and 1970s

ABSTRACTIn 1995, South Africa’s Constitutional Court banned judicial corporal punishment of juveniles and soon thereafter legislation ended it for adults as well, marking an end to a practice that had been widespread since colonial times. During the apartheid period there was first a sharp rise in the use of judicial corporal punishment, contra the recommendations of the 1947 Landsdown Commission, and then a gradual decline after 1965, when legislation restored judicial discretion in cases where whipping had been mandatory since the early 1950s. The 1976 Viljoen Commission recommended a number of reforms, partially implemented in subsequent legislation, but continued to endorse the practice for young males. Using court cases, parliamentary debates and the commission reports, this article explores the motivations for redirecting and somewhat restraining apartheid’s whip hand at the height of the system of white supremacy, in the 1960s, and following the 1976 reappearance of a widespread popular challenge spearheaded by youth. Official discussions indicate a tension between aspiring to meet the standards of what South African elites called ‘civilised’ countries and recognition of the state’s need to enforce masculine discipline in what they termed South Africa’s ‘special’ situation of white rule over a black majority termed ‘primitive’. This article will explore the ambivalent reformist tendencies of the apartheid state at its height, while also analysing the gendered and generational hierarchies and tensions inherent in the application of this form of punishment exclusively to boys and young men.

Gatekeepers of financial power: from London to Lagos

The main premise of this paper is that, until recently, African elites did not regulate or control financial flows moving across the continent. They were not financial gatekeepers. In Africa Since 1940, Cooper identified African elites as gatekeepers regulating access to resources and opportunities passing through strategic sites. This paper makes a case for revision of existing notions of the gatekeeper state in an ongoing effort to (re)negotiate the continent’s colonial past through two new arguments. The first is that financial power was never located at a ‘peripheral’ African gate, but resolutely held onto within leading financial centres, circumventing any opportunity for African elites to control financial flows. Failure to distinguish between types of flows distorts analysis of African political economic power under colonialism. It is only in the post-2000 period, that we see powerful African states driving the integration of African markets into the global financial system. The second argument is that these African goals to control financial flows correspond more to ‘gateway’ strategies than to gatekeeper. Drawing on the case of Lagos, I demonstrate how this ‘gateway’ concept better captures trans-scalar processes of new financial clustering in Africa’s emerging markets than a concept associated with ‘gates’ under Empire.

The Pitfalls of National Consciousness as Depicted in Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong�o

The paper provides insights into how national consciousness is eroded in post-colonial Africa with reference to Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiongo and the impact of this erosion on the marginalized, largely impoverished masses, who continue to live on the periphery of society. The African elite (bourgeoisie), who are the new rulers after colonialism, become so obsessed with their own material enrichment and their new found power, that the imagined state, for which so many had fought and sacrificed their lives, becomes a mere pipe dream. It is with this background in mind that the paper intends to examine how the pitfalls of national consciousness highlighted by Fanon in his text The Wretched of the Earth find resonance in Ngugis non-fiction work Matigari and the crucial issues that the text raises in terms of how the new rulers abuse their power and the mechanisms that they implement to entrench their authority. Through Ngugis use of the fictional protagonist Matigari, we are taken on a journey that unearths the rampant corruption and brute force of the regime as they strive to annihilate any opposition that dare question their abuse of power.Keywords: Post-colonialism, National consciousness, Othering, Oppressive regime

THE PITFALLS OF NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS DEPICTED IN MATIGARI BY NGUGI WA THIONG’O

The paper provides insights into how national consciousness is eroded in post-colonial Africa with reference to Matigari by Ngugi wa Thiong’o and the impact of this erosion on the marginalized, largely impoverished masses, who continue to live on the periphery of society. The African elite (bourgeoisie), who are the new rulers after colonialism, become so obsessed with their own material enrichment and their new found power, that the ‘imagined state’, for which so many had fought and sacrificed their lives, becomes a mere pipe dream. It is with this background in mind that the paper intends to examine how the pitfalls of national consciousness highlighted by Fanon in his text ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ find resonance in Ngugi’s non-fiction work Matigari and the crucial issues that the text raises in terms of how the new rulers abuse their power and the mechanisms that they implement to entrench their authority. Through Ngugi’s use of the fictional protagonist Matigari, we are taken on a journey that unearths the rampant corruption and brute force of the regime as they strive to annihilate any opposition that dare question their abuse of power. Keywords : Post-colonialism, National consciousness, Othering, Oppressive regime _________________________________________ DOI > https://doi.org/10.24071/joll.2018.180102

Case report: mechanisms of HIV elite control in two African women

BackgroundThe majority of people living with HIV require antiretroviral therapy (ART) for controlling viral replication, however there are rare HIV controllers who spontaneously and durably control HIV in the absence of treatment. Understanding what mediates viral control in these individuals has provided us with insights into the immune mechanisms that may be important to induce for a vaccine or functional cure for HIV. To date, few African elite controllers from high incidence settings have been described. We identified virological controllers from the CAPRISA 002 cohort of HIV-1 subtype C infected women in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, two (1%) of whom were elite controllers. We examined the genetic, clinical, immunological and virological characteristics of these two elite HIV controllers in detail, to determine whether they exhibit features of putative viral control similar to those described for elite controllers reported in the literature.Case presentationIn this case report, we present clinical features, CD4+ T cell and viral load trajectories for two African women over 7 years of HIV infection. Viral load became undetectable 10 months after HIV infection in Elite Controller 1 (EC1), and after 6 weeks in Elite Controller 2 (EC2), and remained undetectable for the duration of follow-up, in the absence of ART. Both elite controllers expressed multiple HLA Class I and II haplotypes previously associated with slower disease progression (HLA-A*74:01, HLA-B*44:03, HLA-B*81:01, HLA-B*57:03, HLA-DRB1*13). Fitness assays revealed that both women were infected with replication competent viruses, and both expressed higher mRNA levels of p21, a host restriction factor associated with viral control. HIV-specific T cell responses were examined using flow cytometry. EC1 mounted high frequency HIV-specific CD8+ T cell responses, including a B*81:01-restricted Gag TL9 response. Unusually, EC2 had evidence of pre-infection HIV-specific CD4+ T cell responses.ConclusionWe identified some features typical of elite controllers, including high magnitude HIV-specific responses and beneficial HLA. In addition, we made the atypical finding of pre-infection HIV-specific immunity in one elite controller, that may have contributed to very early viral control. This report highlights the importance of studying HIV controllers in high incidence settings.

Who is in the ‘‘We’’? Interrogating the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and Youth Political Participation

Most analyses of the African Union (AU) have focused on the politics of the state and the presidents. There are very few analyses that have focused on aspects such as youth development. The point of departure for this article therefore, is youth development. I argue that although the youth were always part of important historical developments in Africa, they remain on the periphery. In recent times, particularly since the transformation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) into the AU in the 2000s, the youth development agenda has begun to receive the attention at policy level. In 2015 the AU, through Agenda 2063 went a step further by including youth development into mainstream continental policy frameworks. While we welcome all these developments it has emerged that the continent remains hesitant in the area of youth development. Where the AU and its member states have adopted the discourse of youth inclusion—in cases where youth political participation is often limited, such efforts are not met with fitting institutional and practical policy arrangements. The article posits that the African elite is in for a rude awakening as we have witnessed—since 2011—given the discovery by the African youth of new methods of political participation in post-colonial Africa. The article advocates for the adoption of the African community outlook to youth state policy, argues for the youth to be linked to the project of economic freedom, and implores the African elite to embark on the decolonial project to resolve the bearing coloniality of being, power and knowledge.

Describing the Politics of Sovereignty in Postcolonial Africa: Rereading Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's <em>Matigari</em> and Alobwed'Epie's <em>The Death Certificate</em>

The 1960s in Africa are usually described by historians and political scientists as the era of the "wind of change" because it was during this period that most African countries gained political independence from their colonial masters. In fact, this "wind of change" gave African countries the legitimacy and legality to be the custodians of their own progress and destiny. However, the African continent since then has been a furnace for social revolution, ethnic conflict, and martial dissension. The reasons for this political uproar in most postcolonial African states are wide and varied. However, a principal reason is that the ruling African elites have confiscated the sovereignty of the postcolonial African state for their own individual benefits thereby leaving the masses in desperate conditions. This tragic situation is reflected in the literary and cultural discourses of post-1960 Africa as seen in the novels of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Alobwed'Epie. Using Ngũgĩ's Matigari and Alobwed'Epie's The Death Certificate, this article analyzes the relationship between postcolonial African citizens and their political leaders and also shows how these leaders manipulate the dynamics of political or sovereign powers to the detriment of development in their societies. The article supports the view that the political leadership of the postcolonial fictional states, as seen in the novels, is the archetype of the misuse and abuse of state power in contemporary Africa. Using social semiotics as a theoretical paradigm, the paper affirms that postcolonial Africa is unprogressive, fragmented, and dismembered because of the mismanagement of political power for personal aggrandizement. This mismanagement of state powers has exacerbated the politicization of ethnicity in postcolonial Africa and is also responsible for the political tyranny, corruption, and ethnic conflict for which most contemporary African states have been noted.