African Party Research Articles

The Independence of Cabo Verde: from the Diaspora to the Archipelago

Abstract The independence of Cabo Verde achieved on 5 July 1975 was not a straightforward process. From 1950s onwards, multiple anticolonial organizations having different ideas and interests challenged Portuguese colonial rule in the archipelago. Nonetheless, only the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde (PAIGC: Partido Africano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) was recognized as the representative of the populations and gained access to the negotiations with Portugal in 1974. This paper aims to contribute to a greater understanding of how the PAIGC became a leading organization in the negotiations for the independence of Cabo Verde, sidelining other actors with alternative views for the territory.

Capitalized rallies: Why campaigns costs are rising and rallies are hybridizing in Tanzania

Campaign costs have risen in Africa. I ask: what has driven this cost inflation? Studies of Western parties attribute it to campaign modernization as mediatization. Studies of African parties do not recognize this campaign advancement. They attribute these it to another cause: spiraling clientelism. I argue that there is a third, hitherto overlooked driver of such inflation and adaptation: the hybridization of rallies with capital-intensive practices. This capitalization of rally production amounts to an alternative form of campaign modernization which diverges from those found in the global north. I trace this process in Tanzania, but this theory has wider reach. Many African campaigns are rally-intensive and have fewer authoritarian retardants of party competition than Tanzania. This makes it likely that other countries’ experiences resembled or surpassed Tanzania’s in Africa and beyond. Altogether, I demonstrate that there is ongoing innovation at rallies which is driving significant rises in campaign costs.

Guinea-Bissau: 30 years of militarized democratization (1991–2021)

In Guinea-Bissau, democracy replaced a one-party dictatorship regime exercised by the African Party of Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde for 18 years. However, the governing powers have still not abandoned all authoritarian practices of the replaced regime, even three decades after the beginning of democratization process, as attested by the results of the present study. The power of the armed forces to determine the course of governance, more than democratically elected political representatives, is one example. The study qualitatively analyzes this complex sociopolitical context marked by coups d'état and military violence during the thirty years of democratization (1991–2021) using press sources, international organizations documents, and bibliographies. The discussion demonstrates how the armed forces held the real power in Guinea-Bissau and how dangerous is this reality to the democratization, in a country where political organizations, actors, and the military do not distance themselves from one another in the subversion of the democratic order.

Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961–1975 by Natalia Telepneva

<i>Cold War Liberation: The Soviet Union and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, 1961–1975</i> by Natalia Telepneva

Editor as Mediator: A Profile of Albert Cartwright in Early Twentieth Century South Africa

Editor as Mediator: A Profile of Albert Cartwright in Early Twentieth Century South Africa

A people power philosophy: republican ideology in opposition in Tanzania

ABSTRACT This article is about democratic political thought and African political parties. Studies judge that opposition speak about democracy, but rarely express democratic ideologies. This determination arises from democracy’s perceived hegemony. As democracy is accepted, opposition parties invoke democratic ideas without advocating them. I contest this line of argument. There are multiple visions of democracy. Therefore, whether or not democracy is hegemonic, not all arguments for and perspectives on it are. By omission, the literature on African parties has denied this variety in democratic thought and precluded the study of one variant of it in particular: republicanism. Republicanisms elevate domination and corruption as ills and advocate limiting state power and empowering citizens. I analyse the “people’s power philosophy” of leading Tanzanian opposition party, Chadema. It imagines a ruling party oligarchy which pursues its private interests through an interconnected system of domination and corruption. Chadema advocates a new constitution to undo that system: institutional reforms that limit state power and empower citizens. It claims that it can do so by overpowering the oligarchy in a popular struggle. It imagines struggle as the breaking of everyday dominance and therefore as emancipatory: a second liberation. I argue that this philosophy constitutes a republican-democratic ideology.

My experience with Paulo Freire's literacy method

The author presents a reflection on her work experience with Paulo Freire and his team in Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau. Still as an economics student in Lisbon, she remembers her literacy work with the Cape Verdean diaspora. As a member of PAIGC - African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, she would participate in the teams coordinated by Paulo Freire, always bearing in mind the complexity of literacy in these two new countries, which inherited a high level of illiteracy from the colonial period and as this would affect future public policies for Education. Keyword: Literacy; Paulo Freire; Cape Green; Guinea-Bissau, PAIGC;

Security as a campaign issue: programmatic mobilization in Burkina Faso’s 2020 elections

ABSTRACT Despite recent research suggesting that African parties engage with substantive issues more than was previously thought, the nature of issue mobilization and the drivers of programmatic appeals on the continent remain under-explored. This article analyses how presidential candidates addressed the issue of security during the 2020 election campaign in Burkina Faso – a country faced by a growing armed insurgency since 2016 – in order to understand the nature of these substantive appeals. Based upon the analysis of candidates’ manifestos, Facebook pages, media appearances, as well as direct observation of campaign meetings held in the thirteen regional capitals, we find that the crisis context favoured the mobilization of substantive issues related to security during the campaign. Furthermore, though all candidates addressed security in valence terms, opposition candidates also claimed controversial sub-issues in an attempt to use a broader range of campaign strategies than the incumbent. Finally, a specific question (whether to negotiate with armed groups or not) became a salient programmatic cleavage during the campaign, which can be explained by strategic choices made by opposition parties and the incumbent that contributed to the emergence of credible, coherent, and polarized policy options, providing real programmatic substance to the electoral campaign.

The Struggle for Independence in Guinea-Bissau

The realization of the process of armed struggle for national liberation in the so called Portuguese Guinea and, consequent unilateral proclamation of the State of Guinea-Bissau in September 1973 was possible from outside the Guinean borders, through an important and strategic contribution made by the Republic of Guinea- Conakry which in 1958 had already achieved national independence. This article intends to observe the capital of the neighboring Republic of Guinea as a symbolic structuring space in the construction of ideological antagonisms based on the sociocultural and political dispute around "unity and against unity" within the African Party for Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). The fundamental purpose is to understand the extent to which the environment generated in Conakry contributed to the cohesion or weakening of the recommended desiderates, but above all to the legacy of inherited conflicts that influenced the post-independence state building process in Guinea-Bissau. It is worth mentioning that the empirical framework is the PAIGC, the sociopolitical segments that make up its internal structure and other protagonists of the process.&#x0D; Keywords: Conakry, PAIGC, Unity and Conflicts, Guinea-Bissau.

From the Subcontinent with Love

Abstract “Africa weaves a magic spell around even a temporary visitor,” wrote the former Indian high commissioner to East and Central Africa, Apa Pant, in 1987, echoing the allure that the continent had over him and other fellow Indian diplomats. But the diplomatic roles of men like Pant and the history of Indian engagement with Rhodesia has not, until now, been explored. This article argues that the central role of India in the colonial world ensured that London reined in the white settler Rhodesian government from enacting discriminatory legislation against its minority Indian populations. After Indian independence in 1947, the postcolonial government shifted from advocating specifically for the rights of Indians overseas to ideological support for the independence of oppressed peoples across the British colonial world, a mission with which it tasked its diplomatic representatives. But after India left its post in Salisbury in 1965, Indian public rhetorical support for African nationalist movements in Rhodesia was not matched by its private support for British settlement plans that were largely opposed by the leading African political parties in the country, colored by private patronizing attitudes by India's representatives toward African nationalists and the assumption that they were not yet ready to govern themselves.

Smoke, Dust, and Blood

Smoke, Dust, and Blood

The Winning Party Platform: Voter Perceptions of Party Positions and Voting in Urban Africa

Previous literature suggests that some African parties employ non-valence positional issues in their party platforms and that this practice is more prevalent in some countries than in others; however, no quantitative research has analysed the electoral effects of non-valenced campaigns. How do African voters perceive parties’ policy positions? Who uses party platforms to choose candidates? Using data from an original survey experiment conducted in Nairobi, we examine voter perceptions of party platforms and their behaviour in the 2017 Kenyan presidential elections. We find that the opposition party’s clearer messaging helps average voters recognise and characterise the party, compared to the incumbent’s moderate policy stance. Moreover, while both parties’ policy positions positively affect voting, non-partisan voters are more likely to support a candidate advocating moderate policies. This implies an incumbency advantage: incumbents’ broad-appeal strategies help maximise their votes, whereas opposition parties have limited strategy options.

Non-cooperation with the International Criminal Court in gatekeeper states: Regime security in Deby’s Chad

If the International Criminal Court (ICC) manages to prosecute Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s former president, for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide it will be because the new Sudanese regime arrested and extradited him. African parties to the ICC, who had a legal duty to detain al-Bashir, avoided or refused this dramatic step and instead made a regional commitment to shield him. This article analyses the question of non-cooperation in relation to the most basic challenge facing African governments: their survival. Drawing on the notion of the ‘gatekeeper state’, it theorises three sources of regime security, which variously converge and conflict: border control, domestic alliances and international support. Cooperation with the ICC may yield international support, while contradicting or undermining border control and domestic alliances. A case study of Chad’s non-cooperation illustrates the framework and the dynamic interplay of the sources of regime security that cause shifts between cooperation and non-cooperation in African gatekeeper states. More generally, the article demonstrates the merits of analysing African non-cooperation in the context of a dynamic politics of regime survival.

Factions and Factionalism in South African Party Politics – Appraising (de)Merits

ABSTRACT Faction is an old age phenomenon world over. The democratic consolidation in South Africa post 1994 is close to three decades but did not escape factionalism. Does faction phenomenon bring about havoc, conflicts, splits, and instability corollaries or strengthen party politics in response to fulfilling the general will? In responding to this question, South African party politics and factional battles within the ruling party and other political formations are discussed as a case study to explore the merits and demerits of factions and factionalism. In doing this, a discourse analysis was undertaken to understand how faction phenomenon brings about complots or a positive change. The discourse analysed arrived to the conclusion that whilst factions are blatantly criticised for rearing havoc and instability in party politics as well as signs of split-offs and threats as demerits in South Africa, there are also inevitable trade-offs to be welcomed as merits to create opportunities to drive positive change within the broader party-political spectrum to strengthen participatory democracy and the multi-party system in South Africa.

Language and Discourse in Contemporary South African Politics: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This study analyses written and spoken corpora of three South African political party leaders (Jacob Zuma of the African National Congress [ANC], Mmusi Maimane of the Democratic Alliance [DA], and Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters [EFF]) in different discourse contexts. A mixed-methods approach was used to collect the data, while Critical Discourse Analysis and text analysis constituted the analytical framework. Twelve political-leader speeches (four each), three senior party official interviews, and seventeen focus group interviews with the voting public were explored as data. The findings established that each political leader had his own persuasive strategies and choice of words, usually aligned with his ideological and personal agenda, and that these political leaders were not entirely responsible for their speeches. The study concludes that these political leaders used and chose words strategically in their speeches to persuade and manipulate their audiences.

Transitions to democracy, institutional choices and party system stability: lessons from small African islands

ABSTRACT It is not easy to understand why some African party systems manage to stabilise while others remain fluid. This article argues that institutional choices made during democratic transition impact the likelihood of party system stabilisation. The experiences of Cabo Verde, Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe and Seychelles are compared; despite sharing many similarities (insularity, smallness, low ethnic diversity, authoritarian past, economic vulnerability and competitive elections), they differ substantively in terms of the patterns of interparty competition. It is shown that stabilisation is likely if party elites are able to control the rules of the game during the transition to democracy. A strategic choice of the party law, electoral system and executive system helps structure interactions over time and reduce uncertainty in electoral competition. The findings highlight the need to further explore the ‘black box’ of democratic transitions, and the role of agency in political outcomes in Africa.

FEDERATION, PARTNERSHIP, AND THE CHRONOLOGIES OF SPACE IN 1950s EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA

AbstractThis article assesses the relationship between the imposed Central African Federation (1953–63) and the ways in which East and Central African thinkers and leaders conveyed and pursued the possibilities of decolonization. Existing literature on federalism in twentieth-century Africa fails to place regional projects in dialogue, studying in isolation East Africa and Central Africa, ‘utopian’ and oppressive regionalisms. But such clear dividing lines were not articulated in the four discursive ‘sketches’ of East and Central Africa that this article brings to light: those of anti-Federation organizations in Nairobi and Ndola in 1952; students at Makerere College (Kampala) in 1953; mobile Malawian activists in regional and pan-African forums around 1955–8; and East African party publicity representatives around 1958–60. At each of these critical moments, thinkers creatively constructed various relationships between geographical space and chronological change, through the lens of a broader, interdependent East and Central Africa, as a means to fend off perceived threats to a precarious advancement towards a democratic future. Attending to the evolution of these ideas shows not only how the Central African Federation placed material constraints on regional solidarity, but how ‘thinking regionally’ could support the case for national borders, even before decolonization.

Választások és politikai szereplők a Dél-afrikai Köztársaságban

After the wasted decade of the Zuma presidency, Cyril Ramaphosa promised a renewal in South Africa in 2018. The post-state capture condition of the former economic and moral champion of the continent did not favor to regain either the confidence of the voters or of the investors. While the country had been prepairing for the sixth free general elections (25 years after the fall of the apartheid-regime), most of the domestic socio-economic problems remained unsolved. Inequality, unemployment, education, corruption, land reform and provision of public services are still the most important topics of the public talk and determined the focus of the campaign. The publication introduces the party structure of the country, the leaders of the biggest South African parties, what is more the causes and the consequences of the sixth consecutive success of the African National Congress (ANC). The article includes an analysis of the results of the national and provincial elections and beside the electoral analysis the author tries to introduce the dynamics of power within the factions of the ruling African National Congress party, adding an outlook on the members of the new Ramaphosa Cabinet. Last but not least the publication describes the most important authorities and bodies who tackle the thriving corruption in the ANC and in the subsystems of the state.

The Withdrawal of African States from the ICC: Good, Bad or Irrelevant?

Since 2009, there has been a serious antiparathesis between the African Union (AU) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), which, according to the AU, has principally concerned unjustified ICC prosecutions against African dignitaries. This has led certain African ICC parties to announce their withdrawal from it, while the AU adopted the so-called ‘ICC Withdrawal Strategy’ in January 2017. This article analyses the background to and the content of the antiparathesis, it examines the consequences of the African parties’ withdrawal from the ICC as regards the large-scale impunity in Africa, and it proposes the creation of ICC regional circuit chambers as a possible solution to realign relations between the AU and the ICC. Specifically, the proposal suggests the creation of several ICC regional circuit chambers, each being responsible for the alleged crimes committed in the territory of ICC parties belonging to a specific continent. Pertinent solutions to the institutional and practical issues arising from this proposal are offered.

Sofia Pomba Guerra: uma feminista na Imprensa Moçambicana dos anos 1930

This article deals with the intervention of Sofia Pomba Guerra in the Mozambican press in the 1930s, through the newspapers O Emancipador and Noticias. It was the beginning of the activism course that would lead her later to take a leading role in the opposition to Salazar’s dictatorship in Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea, and to provide an important support to the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Active agent in the defence of women, of their social and political integration, the young Sofia will carry out a press campaign for the right to work and economic equality between men and women. Marked by her time and social condition, she will raise questions in the colonial press that until then were delegated to the masculine speech, which allows us to hypothesize its importance in taking to herself spaces of controversy as a woman and feminist.