African Structure Research Articles

The Western Democratic Model Facing African Political Cultures

Is there a contradiction between the socio-cultural requirements of the western democratic system and African social structures? To answer this question, this study aims to demonstrate that there are no fundamental contradictions between Africans and Westerners in terms of the democratic values to be promoted. Each people must be able to build its own model. In the first part, the study demonstrates the unsuccessful transposition of the Western democratic model to Africa. The cause is to be found in African practice, which reveals an institutional and legal duality that favors the cohabitation of legitimacies that come from the ballot box and those that do not, whose status differs and whose relationship with each other is confused and likely to provoke conflicts. This means that African democracy functions according to the Western colonial model, even if African social structures still function at the local level. The second part emphasizes the building of a true democracy through culture, whose value is recognized in the norms, institutions, rites and customs of a people. This promotion of positive African values and traditions suggests borrowing from the West only what is compatible with the deep nature of African civilization. This wise and realistic mix needs the unconditional support of the international community. We live in a time of struggle for values. All peoples, even those who were dominated, are trying to propose their values that they consider better.

Colonialism and the Development in Nigeria: Effects and Challenges

Colonization started around the 16th century and spread all around the world by the beginning of the twentieth century. By the mid-1960s, most colonized African states had gained independence. Decades after independence however, events in these countries suggests that the effects of colonialism have not left the independent countries specifically on the area of development. While many scholars have arguedfor and against the effects of colonialpowers on their respective colonies, this study focused on colonization as it relates directly on development in Nigeria. The study adopted a narrative and descriptive research design in order to depict the opinions represented in literature by scholars in an accurate way.The main findings of this Study are as follows: Firstly, although, colonialism laid the foundation of formal education in Nigeria, but when western education was introduced, it was not with the intention to engender development rather, it was introduced as a solution to language barriers experienced at the time as well as the need to be cost efficient by producing efficient locals that will take over positions of responsibilities occupied by subordinate Europeans. Secondly, colonialism encouraged and intensified tribalism, ethnicity and class struggle within Nigeria. Thirdly, the decolonization of Nigeria saw the assumption to power of leaders that are in tandem with colonial style of governance. This ensured the continuity of the colonial grip on the economy in spite of independence. Hence, development was not of interest and concern to both colonialists and the leaders' enthroned. What was of interest to the colonialists was how to administer and manage Nigeria in proxy and to the leaders that emerged, power andprivileges. Fourthly, colonialism was an economic, social and religious weapon which was used to subjugate and alter the African social structure and by extension, Nigeria's social structure. This was effectively achieved by substituting ancient norms, values andpractices with the ways of the colonial powers. Lastly, the provisions of the constitution that was forced on the Nigerian citizens are discriminative and what this constitutional provision achieved was the dissociation of Nigeria from her development needs. Keywords: Colonialism, Colonization, Development DOI : 10.7176/IAGS/70-02 Publication date :March 31 st 2019

Moderate Communitarianism and the Idea of Political Morality in African Democratic Practice

This paper explores how moderate communitarianism could bring about a greater sense of political morality in the practice of democracy in contemporary Africa. Moderate communitarianism is a thesis traceable to Kwame Gyekye, the Akan philosopher. This thesis is a moderation of the infl uence of the community in the Akan, an African social structure. In ensuring good political morality in the Akan, and therefore the African community, Gyekye proposes moral revolution over the enforcement of the law. I perform two main tasks in this article: (i) I reinforce the view that in a democratic framework (such as the framework within which many African states now fi nd themselves), moderate communitarianism offers lessons on political morality, and (ii) I challenge the notion that moral revolution has greater prospects for bringing about political morality than law enforcement.

P.R.I.D.E, Family Institution and Development of Democratic Values in Nigeria

Nigeria’s struggle for sustainable democracy and development has, like in most other African states, been characterised by ups and downs. While no single factor can give a holistic explanation of this development, the total neglect of the roles of traditional institutions particularly the family, offers a window through which the problem can be partly understood. To be sure, there is a pervasive failure to appreciate Africa’s indigenous way of life particularly the value it places on human dignity, accountability and control, which is to a reasonable extent more democratic than the imposed alien western-liberal democracy. The attempt to reclaim the past may have informed the emphasis placed on PRIDE (P-Patriotism, Resourcefulness, I-Integrity, D[1]Distinction, E-Enterprise) by the fledgling democracy in Nigeria. The central argument of the paper is that PRIDE can strengthen family institutions in contributing to the development of social capital, which is reportedly imbued with the capabilities to develop inbuilt mechanisms for engineering the process of sustainable development especially at the grassroots level. Despite inherent limits of both the social capital theory and family institutions in Nigeria occasioned largely by the fallouts of the structural adjustment programme, there is still some sense in trying to revive African social structures particularly family institutions to reposition democratic development. Reformative efforts should therefore be targeted at the base of the problematic by trying to rejuvenate family institutions in the effective discharge of their responsibilities towards the society at large. This calls for a sustainable process of socio-political reengineering and mobilisation by all democratic stakeholders– the state, political parties, civil society, mass media, etc.

TAKING DISADVANTAGE SERIOUSLY: THE ‘UNDERCLASS’ IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Inequalities are stark and obvious in post-apartheid South Africa. How to analyse inequalities, however, is far less clear. In Class, Race and Inequality in South Africa (Seekings and Nattrass 2005), we combined original analysis of quantitative data with critical use of a wide range of secondary historical, anthropological and sociological studies to examine both continuities and changes in the South African social structure over the second half of the twentieth century. Of the various arguments made in our book, the one that provokes the most criticism is our identification of an ‘underclass’ in post-apartheid South Africa. Focusing on this, Callebert (2014)1 argues that our analysis ‘assume[s] a fundamental divide in South Africa’s economy based on socio-economic exclusion’, ‘fail[s] to capture the many ways in which people cross these divides in making a living’ and has ‘problematic policy implications’. In his account, we offer a ‘bifurcated’ or ‘dualist’ analysis of the South African economy. ‘Access to formal sector jobs’ is the ‘new and fundamental divide that runs through South African society . . . . In this [that is, our] argument, being a labourer no longer puts one among the lower rungs of society, but is a privilege . . . .’ For Seekings and Nattrass, he writes, ‘the true socio-economic divide . . . is between those with and those without access to jobs and other income-earning opportunities’. We are guilty, it seems, of proposing not only that ‘the poor’ should become ‘low-paid labourers’, but that ‘non-unionized low-paid jobs’ should be created ‘at the expense of better-paid unionized employees’.2 Callebert’s article raises some important points, but it is based on a gross misrepresentation of our argument in Class, Race and Inequality. We do not present a ‘dualist’ or ‘bifurcated’ analysis of South African society. Our analysis of the class structure identified nine or ten classes, on the basis of occupation and earnings from wealth or entrepreneurial activity, not two as implied in Callebert’s charge of dualism. We combined these into three (not two) composite categories or strata (see Seekings and Nattrass 2005: 254, Figure 7.1; 337, Figure 9.4). Our ‘underclass’ formed one part of the poorest or most disadvantaged of these three strata. Moreover, this disadvantaged stratum comprised also what we called the

Microfinance and gender in the context of millennium development goals (MDGs) in Nigeria

Issues in client targeting are two in nature; gender targeting or poverty targeting (Brau and Woller, 2004). The nature of target to some extent will determine the ‘best practices’ in conjunction with local specific situation. In the first issue of gender targeting, the question has always been whether to lend to women or men in the context of which will give wider reach and benefit the society. This position was examined in the context of what are contained in recent literature with respect to microfinance activities in Nigeria using Chi-square non-parametric method of analysis to test the hypothesis differentials. It has, therefore, not been universally confirmed that extending microfinance to women alone or more than men will benefit the society more than otherwise. What has been observed was that giving more microfinance access to women will definitely empower them, but without examining the implication of that on the African social structure. Also when this is examined in context of targeting the poor, fundamental problem of still defining the purpose of microfinance as poverty alleviation is raised. This study recommends that gender distribution characteristics should not be a determinant of modus operandi of microfinance institutions in Nigeria, but rather the choice of poverty targeting, which is one of its target. Key words: Microfinance, gender, millennium development goals.

South Africa: The End of Apartheid & the Emergence of the ‘BEE Elite’

Recent South African policy making at the highest level has used the language of the developmental state. It has been used as a means of understanding and defining the purpose of ANC government. This article interrogates that concept, especially using the formation of an elite transcending the publicprivate sector divide and considering the concept of an ‘embedded elite’. In this light, the evolution of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) policies are drawn out and specific comparisons made between South Africa and Malaysia. While creating an elite may involve enriching a small number of black ANC supporters, it is probably a necessity given the propensities of what remains of the established ‘embedded elites’ of the past. It is questionable however, whether this new elite has the sense of direction in pursuit of an industrialising economic model or a broad social model to carry through envisioned changes. Nor are its instincts necessarily democratic. While under the direction of the ANC the South African social structure is shifting in important ways and different sectors of the black population clearly benefit, the majority are not actively involved in a process of transformation that would offer the possibility of radical improvements.

Land Tenure and the State in the Precolonial Sudan

Land Tenure and the State in the Precolonial Sudan Jay Spaulding and Lidwien Kapteijns Everyone knows that an agricultural country practices agriculture. Ouologuem Yambo, "1901" History is a form of reasoning about the human experience, in which one uses evidence derived from primary sources to test interpretive ideas. Both evidential corpus and conceptual architecture deserve most careful scrutiny. This study addresses both evidential and interpretive aspects of land tenure in the precolonial Sudan, a topic concerning which, at present, no historiographical orthodoxy prevails.1 The Sudan's place in the world is controversial, and there is disagreement concerning the choice of appropriate frames of reference for the conduct of comparative historical discourse.2 The very notion that "land tenure" is a fit concept for the analysis of Sudanese history is still a new and far from universally accepted idea.3 While considerable information about land tenure is available for some places and periods within the broad sweep of Sudanese history, wide empirical lacunae also exist. All this places a heavy burden upon the interpretive assumptions of practicing scholars. Arranging the Toolkit of Theory Theoretical statements may be ranked hierarchically on the basis of the scale of the problems they address.4 Satisfying historiography requires [End Page 33] the application of a level of theory appropriate to the scale of each situation to be analyzed. Low-level theory should not ordinarily be used to explain very large-scale historical phenomena (kingdoms are not routinely lost through the want of a horseshoe-nail), nor high-level theory very small ones (it was probably not the greenhouse effect that caused the plant in my window box to die last winter). Within the wider Africanist discourse, much discussion relevant to land tenure in the precolonial Sudan suffers from the misplaced application of otherwise-useful theoretical concepts to situations at a level to which they are ill-suited. While an exhaustive treatment of this topic lies beyond the scope of this essay, a series of illustrative examples may serve to demonstrate the problem. These examples will be arranged in ascending order of scale, corresponding in a heuristic sense to what the Marxian tradition terms forces, relations, and modes of production. The Problem of the Application of Low-Level Concepts to Large-Scale Historical Phenomena To cite the most obvious example, Jack Goody has maintained that a handful of low-level technological variables should be taken as major determinants of African social structure and historical process.5 Common sense supports Goody to the extent that significant changes must indeed have accompanied the introduction of ironworking or the camel, of animal traction or machine irrigation, of the broadsword, the horse, or the plow. But the claim that these traits, singly or in combination, define the meaningfully distinctive qualities of a society, let alone a reified "African society," is refuted concretely by the historical experience of the Sudanese kingdom of Sinnar: the more northerly provinces possessed and used all the technological items mentioned while the central and southern provinces, clearly by choice rather than ignorance or deprivation, did not.6 Similarly, the Sudan's four-thousand-year record of intermittent literacy in a wide variety of languages both native and borrowed vitiates by its very existence a questionable but popular school of thought that attributes very large and irreversible historical effects to the introduction of the written word.7 The point of this demonstration (aside from proving that Sudan's literature is not as widely known [End Page 34] among Africanists as it deserves to be), is to illustrate the limitations of social analysis based exclusively and superficially upon changes in a few selected forces of production alone. Land tenure is a concept that, at a minimum, should involve both human beings and land. By definition it cannot rightly be reduced to one variable. However, before leaving the realm of monocausal, materially grounded interpretations, it is worth noting that conventional liberal wisdom has undertaken to isolate land as a factor of production and then to remove it from the historical consideration of precolonial Africa by claiming it to be so abundant as to constitute "virtually a free good." As Goody expressed it, "land was not a very scarce...

MASS POLITICS, ELECTIONS AND AFRICAN SOCIAL STRUCTURE: BOTSWANA AND OTHER AFRICAN COUNTRIES

This paper deals with the relationship between mass politics, elections and African social structure, and draws examples from Botswana, Somalia, Algeria and other African countries. Mass politics and elections were introduced in Africa immediately after political independence. The paper argues that the African social structure was a stabilising factor in African countries if incorporated within modern political institutions as a separate entity with a certain extent of autonomy. The major problems that African countries are facing are political instability and economic dependency. Political and economic factors played an important role during the transition to democracy. Elections were not independent variables. Countries that maintained a certain amount of traditional structure were more likely to experience political stability than countries which failed to recognise traditional structures. Botswana since independence has experienced more political stability than countries such as Somalia and Algeria where traditional structures disappeared overnight. Countries with better economic management are also more likely to sustain political stability.

Forced Labour and Migration: Patterns of Movement within Africa

This work is a product of the Conference on Forced Labour and Migration held at Nuffield College Oxford England in February 1987. consists of 11 chapters by various authors on the causes and consequences of forced labor and labor migration in Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It examines forced labour within African societies; the contract labour system of Southern Africa; the take-over of land by white settlers; the impact of colonial capitalism; the role both of foreign companies and local labour recruiters; and it looks at the impact of labour migration on African social structures and the position of women. (EXCERPT)

From free labor to family allowances: labor and African society in colonial discourse

From the early 19th century, the European debate over the slave trade and slavery pioneered a new international discourse in which the concept of free labor defined a universalistic standard for the conduct of Europeans in colonies and non‐European societies. Implementing free labor, however, entailed a confrontation with the particular work culture and values of local communities, from ex‐slaves to independent peasants. This article examines the connection between imperial powers' critiques of each others' conduct—and the role of international fora in defining imperial morality—and their encounter with African social structures. Colonial states were inextricably drawn into confronting Africans as social beings: first in trying to induce them to become disciplined wage workers, then to contain the conflicts unleashed in places of work and urban residence. By the 1940s, this meant exporting to Africa European approaches to containing class conflict. Colonial cities became less the realm of the colonial expert and more that of the “industrial relations” specialist, who argued against migratory labor and in favor of taking Africans out of their cultural milieu and reproducing their families under the eyes of European welfare experts, even if this implied paying family wages or family allowances that exceeded the free market price of labor. Only with decolonization did France and Britain take themselves out of the social and political intimacy of the workers' milieu and participate in a new—or rather old—international discourse on the moral and social virtue of the free market.[labor, migration, reproduction, slavery, welfare, decolonization]

Apartheid en kapitalisme : Simbiose of disfunksionele verhouding?

The author refers to the fact that Marxist analyses have a way of promoting cynicism, and states that if one chooses to go through life armoured in illusion, this type of analysis should be avoided at all costs. He refers to a method of analysis which undertakes a thorough re-evaluation of South African history of the past century which uses, broadly speaking, insights based on Marxism. A discussion of this method forms the theme of this paper. This discussion centres on the Marxist typification of the South African social structure as a capitalist one with specific characteristics, and on the view of this approach which indicates the close relationship between capitalist development and political policies in the country. In the final analysis attention is directed to the need for taking serious note of this approach in terms of the fact that a Marxist approach can provide a valid perspective on South African history. There is also a need to take cognizance of this approach in view of the fact that this approach reflects the experience of a large part of the population. The author points out that the question as to whether apartheid and capitalism can be said to stand in a disfunctional relationship is seriously questioned, and he concludes by maintaining that a precondition for dialogue with all Blacks in South Africa is to be found in the necessity of gaining clarity about the validity of our own preconceptions.

South Africa: capital accumulation and violence

This article analyses the conditions of capital accumulation in South Africa, and seeks to explain the authoritarian and racially discriminatory features of the South African social structure in terms of (a) the specific historical processes of change (mercantile colonial conquest, primitive accumulation in mining and farming) and (b) the specific features of contemporary capitalism, notably the capital-intensive structure of industry. The authoritarianism embodied, for example, in the extra-economic coercion of black labour is seen as reflecting the circumstances of the struggle between capital and labour under conditions where capital-labour contradictions exist alongside the contradiction between South African capitalism and the ‘dependent’ societies it has preserved/recreated. The implications of this situation for strategies of socialist change are briefly evaluated.

Milieu urbain et recherche d'une identité culturelle : les lycéens de Fort-Archambault et d'Abéché (Tchad).

P. Teisserenc — Urban Milieu and Search for Cultural Identity: High-School Students in Fort-Archambault and Abeche (Chad). Reactions of school-children, in the upper grades of secondary education, to the culture conflict created by modem, western-type, urban-oriented education. Reconciliation and/or conflicts in world-view and explanation of natural phenomena. Choice/refusal of value Systems. Influence of African social structure and religion (moslems v. christians/pagans).

South Africa in a comparative study of industrialization

Summary The peculiarities of South African society, where class, ethnic, linguistic and national cleavages overlap, tend to obscure the process which have led to industrialization. This is unfortunate because a study of South African social structures may shed light on the wider problems of development. An attempt is made in the article to compare political and economic developments in South Africa with similar developments in Tsarist Russia, Imperial Germany and the American South. It is suggested, for example, that the German ‘marriage of iron and rye’ has a counterpart in the relationship between maize and gold in South Africa and that similar political consequences follow. The organization of the South African mining compound is considered, in its formulating effect upon the peculiar process of urbanization in South Africa. This particular form of urbanization has resulted in the creation of a very considerable surplus for investment, the implications of which are discussed.