Postcolonial Africa Research Articles

Greying mutuality: race and joking relations in a South African nursing home

AbstractThis article describes how residents and staff of an eldercare and Alzheimer's home in a small South African town joke with each other. Residents are mostly white and staff mostly black, but there are exceptions, and both groups are multilingual. Jokes between the two groups in the home are racialized, if not sometimes racist, in light of historical and contemporary post-apartheid socio-political and economic circumstances. Yet the relations between these two groups are forged mostly in joking about residents’ diminished cognitive and bodily abilities, staff work, multilingualism and interpersonal ties. In describing joking encounters in three ethnographic scenes, the article traces the ways in which age and race combine in institutionalized relationships of dependency to innovate social theory about human mutuality from the vantage point of multiracial, multicultural, postcolonial Africa.

Postcolonial Africa: problems and prospects

The article considers the problems of transition of African states to the south of Sahara from the position of the “hopeless continent” to the economic rise and raises the questions of conformity with these changes. The author gives special attention to the consequences of decolonization, the functioning of modern political institutions, the actions of the elite, the migration issues, labor discrimination of African migrants in Europe, and the aftereffect of economic presence of China in African countries. The author draws attention to the fact that the so-called raise had already been experienced by the Africal continent. Since the acquisition of independence, many texts have been published including scientific articles, describing Africa “on the rise”. However, in unfavorable conditions resulting from the policies of colonial powers, African states can’t overcome the lingering crisis due to internal reasons. Political elites are pursuing their policies for the convenience of former colonial powers rather than of their own state. The author’s personal attendance at the economic forum within the Russia-Africa summit helped collect unique materials and expert opinions of political and public leaders of African States about topical problems. The author analyzes the consequences of decolonization and the activities of modern “partners” and concludes that, in a time of resource shortage experienced by many countries, African states to the South of Sahara will face even more serious economic, ecological and social problems. Based on its past, Africa should find its own development path and protect its own interests and values. During the development of state and national strategies, a special role should be given to the issues of education, as it is the basis for the formation of human values and worldview for the future.   

Steve de Gruchy’s theology and development model

The article sets out to demonstrate that Steve de Gruchy’s model of Theology and Development (T&D), as opposed to Theologized Development or Developmental Theology, is a creative and an authentic paradigm which is in continuum with African Theology of Reconstruction (ATOR) and other theological initiatives in postcolonial Africa. As a post-colonial and/or post-apartheid theologian, De Gruchy addresses cutting-edge issues facing our contemporary society such as health, poverty, environment, sustainable livelihoods, the South-North divides, fair trade, the racial equation, the reconstruction of our social consciousness; and indeed, the changing circumstances in post-colonial (south) Africa. In its methodology, the article also hypothesizes that Development and Reconstruction are two sides of the same coin, with one clear motif, though with some distinctions. It then goes on to point out the possibility that the Leadership and Development programme that was started by Klaus Nürnberger at the then University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, logically preceded de Gruchy’s Theology and Development (T&D) programme which continues to date, despite his demise in 2010. On the whole, the T&D and ATOR are largely seen as livelihoods theologies “from the other side of the river” that are geared towards sustainable living, especially with reference to the African context in the 21st century. Steve de Gruchy’s contribution to development studies is certainly critical considering that he published extensively on the same; and even headed the Theology and Development programme at the then University of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal). His approach turns out as the beacon that maps the way out as we focus on sustainable development and the post-colonial reconstruction of Africa.

BETWEEN DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL POLITICS: THE DETERMINANTS OF ERITREA’S SUCCESSFUL SECESSION

Contrariamente à vasta maioria de Estados africanos, que adquiriram independência por meio de processos de descolonização de potências coloniais europeias, a Eritreia obteve a condição de Estado independente ao se retirar formalmente de um Estado africano soberano já estabelecido. Tal evento representa um desenvolvimento político memorável na África pós-colonial devido a ao menos duas razões: (i) foi a primeira vez que um movimento de secessão obteve sucesso na sua busca por independência; (ii) a luta por independência ocorreu em meio a um contexto continental particularmente hostil ao surgimento de novos Estados. Baseando-se em fontes de dados qualitativos secundários, o presente estudo examina a secessão da Eritreia contra o pano de fundo acadêmico que enfatiza o contexto social, político e econômico no qual as lutas secessionistas ocorrem. Argumenta-se que a secessão bem-sucedida da Eritreia se baseia na intersecção entre a política doméstica e a política global, combinando fatores como as históricas e legais reivindicações por autodeterminação territorial da região, as políticas de alienação do Estado de origem, a efetividade das estratégias operadas pelos movimentos de secessão, o fim da Guerra Fria, bem como o papel de apoio desempenhado pela superpotência vitoriosa do referido conflito. O estudo também adiciona novas e sistemáticas contribuições ao debate acerca dos determinantes para a secessão bem-sucedida na África pós-colonial.

Social Media and Xenophobic Solidarity in Post-colonial Africa

In recent times, there is a resurgence of aggressive consciousness by citizens of most African countries, firmly fashioned and sustained through social media. Social media in this way effectively play roles of mobilizing and (re)constructing national identities and solidarities in ways that citizens regularly enter into violent confrontations with foreign nationals, often stereotyped as threats to the prosperity of citizens. In some African countries, executive orders have been given by heads of government that saw the vicious expulsion of millions of foreign nationals. With the advent of distance-and time-shrinking information and communication technologies, social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and WhatsApp are relied upon in rousing support for national interests and in-group solidarity. Through a systematic review of national immigration policies and content analysis of Facebook newsfeeds in selected countries of East/Central, West and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Nigeria, Somalia, Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa), this paper examines how social media strengthen in-group solidarities with the attendant consequences of loss of lives, properties, and inter-state diplomatic relations in postcolonial Africa. The paper concludes that while encouraging freedom of expression within the continent, social media also bolster freedom to hate as both citizens and foreign nationals become more distrustful of one another, thereby exacerbating competition, rivalry and xenophobia. As citizens exercise their right to voice their opinions, they also actively dehumanize foreign nationals. The paper recommends that kin and friendship networks should become the sphere within which interventions for antixenophobia campaigns occur in post-colonial Africa, as these hold the social capital to bridge the divide between citizens and foreign nationals in attempts to achieve peaceful co-existence.

Restructuring the African Identity through Language-An Analysis of Achebe's Linguistic Tools in Things Fall Apart

The article discusses Achebe's intentions while writing his novel Things Fall Apart, his choice of language and vocabulary in the novel and essentially, the linguistic choices he makes while writing his African narrative in the English language. Growing up in pre and post-colonial Africa, Achebe had a first-hand experience of the turmoil that his people went through at the hands of the Europeans and how there was a gradual but continuous subjugation of the native at the hands of the colonizer. This experience shaped his African narrative and gave him a better insight into the mind-set of the African individual. He recognised the growing importance of English in his Nigerian community and saw the changes that it brought about in Africa; and wanted to use it as a realistic concept for his novel. Achebe's use of English language is refashioned by a blending with the indigenous languages. He brought in a wide range of Igbo vocabulary and loan words to his writing style as well as a third person narrative voice to give his readers a realistic perception of Nigerian life. The plot construction of Achebe is the extrinsic structure by which he showcases the different responses to the influence of English and European colonialism in Africa.

Review of Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War by Kristen Ghodsee (Duke University Press)

Kristen Ghodsee’s Second World, Second Sex recovers the historical legacy of women from the Eastern bloc and post-colonial Africa as political activists for women’s rights and diplomats for socialist and non-aligned nations during the UN Decade for Women, 1975-1985. Second World, Second Sex challenges the conventional wisdom of three-wave feminist history by documenting the critical interventions made by women in service of a vision of equality that was always already intersectional, and that refused to separate women’s issues from questions of neo-colonialism, racism, and economic re-distribution. It offers a helpful and instructive reminder of socialist feminism’s rich and global history of organization and action, a history that was created and fought for in large part by alliances of women from non-aligned and socialist countries during the Cold War and whose memory is all too often erased from dominant Western histories of the women’s movement.

The skewed social image of white South Africans in Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist

-In this article he examines the social identity crisis of White South Africans in Nadine Gordimer’s “The Conservationist”. Gordimer describes the psychology, social deformities and human distortions of the repressed white people in post-colonial South Africa. At that time, white South Africans were tortured by colonial guilt and racial contradictions. While recognizing the culture of their European ancestors, they wanted to integrate into the black South African society. This paper analyzes the decline of South African white identity and the phenomenon of white exodus from the perspective of the protagonist’s thoughts and behaviors, and combines the political and social problems during those days.

A Step Closer: Economic Integration and the African Continental Free Trade Area

Post-colonial Africa views economic integration as an endogenous means for attaining self-reliant, sustainable development. Working under various regional and sub-regional economic institutions, states elaborated several norms in search of legitimacy in economic competence. However, several political and economic pathogens, including weak institutions, have blighted those efforts. This paper interrogates the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA or CFTA), which is the latest attempt to reboot the integration drive and achieve sustainable development. The CFTA seeks to create a geographic zone where goods and services will move freely among member states by removing trade distortions and boosting factor mobility, competition, and investment. After a rigorous analysis of the relevant normative instruments and examining the vertical and horizontal relationship between the CFTA and regional economic communities (RECs)/member states, the paper articulates some objective criteria for measuring the CFTA’s effectiveness. It concludes that, if faithfully implemented, the CFTA could maximize utility and increase welfare. For the analysis and conclusions, the paper deploys principles of public international law as well as economic theories, with a blend of political and moral philosophy.

Who governs? Religion and order in postcolonial Africa

This article explores how mutually productive intersections between religion and governance constitute international political order in sub-Saharan settings. Asking ‘who governs’, I propose religion–governance entanglement as a means of analysing these intersections and rethinking governance, order and religion in Africa. Existing literatures typically characterise the public reliance on religious actors and institutions as being part of a uniquely ‘post-secular’ moment in contemporary world politics or a wider ‘post-Westphalian’ shift in modern governance. Enduring dynamics between postcolonial states and the Global North problematise these framings. In sub-Saharan Africa, religion has a protracted history in postcolonial hybrid governance, overlapping the regional presence of international non-govermental organisations following decolonisation. Using the example of South Sudan, I build on recent analyses of religious-political activities that leave their collective implications under-theorised.

Interrogating traditionalism: gender and Swazi Culture in HIV/AIDS policy

ABSTRACT Since the late twentieth century, HIV/AIDS-related global public health discourses in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) have been driving cultural change there. Cultural change refers to local critical consciousness about the value of the royalist state’s traditionalist policies and projects that get branded as a ‘Swazi Culture’. Using feminist discourse analysis of health policy documents, supplemented by ethnographic insights, this article shows how global health discourses addressing the epidemic are critical of traditionalism predominately on grounds that it creates harms and transmission risk in gender- and sexual-based violence and inequalities for women. This criticism echoes a longer history of external interrogations of local sociocultural practices, today including kingship, as a gendered problem for health, a move that simultaneously interrogates state traditionalism but, in turn, solidifies the state’s own cultural reifications. More broadly, this case shows how gender and sexuality reshape relationships between nation-states, health systems, and culture in postcolonial Africa.

Leadership and Statebuilding in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Cameroon

Changing perceptions of security threats post the 9/11 attacks in the United States of America saw the advancement of the idea that international security depended upon fixing fragile states. Based on this premise, statebuilding was constructed as a viable approach to building peace. The normative frameworks associated with peacebuilding have however, gradually given way to a narrow focus on institution building as statebuilding. In pursuing this approach, it is the case that the leadership of these processes is often underemphasised. This article interrogates the impact of this dominant narrative on states that are perceived to be peaceful. By bridging scholarship on the concepts of leadership and statebuilding generally, as well as scholarship on Cameroon’s statebuilding process specifically, this article demonstrates that even for states that are not in conflict, periodic statebuilding is a useful requirement. This article departs from narrowly conceived ideas of leadership and statebuilding and brings into focus the role of leadership as a process in statebuilding practises in Africa. Based on the theoretical discussions and the empirical findings, this article demonstrates that leadership and statebuilding are mutually constitutive processes and leadership is the strongest single driver of an effective statebuilding process.

Material deceptions and the qualities of time

Material deceptions and the qualities of time

West Africa’s First Coup: Neo-Colonial and Pan-African Projects in Togo’s “Shadow Archives”

Abstract:This article is an historical analysis of West Africa’s first coup. Starting from contemporary accounts of the 1963 assassination of president Sylvanus Olympio of the Republic of Togo, and the overthrow of his government, the article identifies three competing explanations of events. It follows these three explanations through Togo’s “shadow archives,” asking how and why each of them was taken up or disregarded by particular people at particular moments in time. The article develops a new interpretation of West Africa’s first coup, and outlines its implications for the study of national sovereignty, neo-colonialism, and pan-African solidarity in postcolonial Africa.

Affective registers of postcolonial crisis: the Kampala Tank Hill party

AbstractA drinking party in 1963 precipitated a crisis over newly independent Uganda's sovereignty and the respectability of a new postcolonial ruling elite. Under Kampala's multiracial veneer in the early 1960s lurked bawdy British youth culture and radical African youth politics. When Europeans at a party in the elite suburb of Tank Hill allegedly mocked African aspirations for urban respectability and political sovereignty, UPC (Uganda Peoples Congress) Youth Wing activists used the affair to elicit public expressions of anger at the collusion of conservative politicians and racist former colonizers. Prime Minister Milton Obote attempted to channel that anger into nationalist unity but soon found common cause with British diplomats in expelling intemperate youth from Uganda's governing bureaucracy. The affair points to both the power and the limits of the affective politics of decolonization as well as the relationship between youth wings and the politics of respectability in early postcolonial Africa.

Struggle to Liberate a Nascent Nation from the Corrupt Native Ruling Class and Create a Distinctive Postcolonial Identity: A Case Study of Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People

This paper investigates Achebe’s portrayal of postcolonial African society in his postcolonial novel A Man of the People with its societal struggles. A newly emerged native middle class played a somehow contradictory role as a social element in two different phases of colonialism, that is, colonial and postcolonial Africa. Initially, their discontent with the governance of colonial powers was principally voiced by this native class. However, the same social class reigned over these nascent African countries after independence. This privileged section of postcolonial native society replaced the ‘European’ masters in the native political power equation and kept intact the traumatic master-slave narrative of the colonial period. This research addresses the question of how Achebe is astounded by the degree of corruption, treachery and pretence of native politicians who governed the postcolonial African nations. It further expands on how Achebe, in this novel, puts in a conscious effort to create a distinctive African identity by eradicating these socio-political ills that were prevalent in postcolonial native society. A Man of the People depicts the disturbing influence of colonial experience on native people in postcolonial period and this paper aims to show how Achebe skilfully puts forward his belief in the role of national intelligentsia in the development of a new nation, as he thinks that it can significantly help in putting an end to this suppression of common men by creating a unique African identity across the world. Achebe’s belief that mass uprisings by native intellectuals could be the best way to free native countries of the postcolonial era from dishonest native politicians has been a major finding in this research paper, as this novel transpires.

Prosperity gospel and the culture of greed in post-colonial Africa: Constructing an alternative African Christian Theology of Ubuntu

Christianity in post-colonial Africa is highly influenced and shaped by the prosperity message. The popular and materialistic gospel is sweeping across the continent like a gale-force wind, which is irresistible. Previous studies on prosperity gospel have indeed defined the concept as a global phenomenon and in an African context. This study is an interdisciplinary reflection on prosperity gospel and the culture of greed in post-colonial Africa. The study proposes the African Christian Theology of Ubuntu as an alternative to prosperity gospel. Ubuntu is prescribed here as an antidote to the culture of greed in prosperity gospel because it is a theology of life, care, solidarity, economic justice, hope and accompaniment. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The paper challenges previous missiological perspectives on prosperity gospel and the culture of greed. The study proposes an African theology of Ubuntu as an alternative to prosperity gospel because it is a practical theology of life, care, solidarity, economic justice, hope and accompaniment.

DETERMINANTS OF SUCCESSFUL SECESSIONS IN POST-COLONIAL AFRICA: THE CASE OF SOUTH SUDAN

Desde o início das independências africanas nos anos 1960, diversos países vivenciaram rebeliões envolvendo grupos etno-linguísticos ou comunidades marginalizadas, que exigem a partição territorial de Estados existentes com o objetivo de constituir nações novas e independentes. Apesar da alta incidência de conflitos secessionistas no continente, apenas dois casos conseguiram com sucesso estabelecer novos Estados na África pós-colonial: Eritreia, em 1993, e Sudão do Sul, em 2011. A fundação do Sudão do Sul ocorreu em um contexto continental e global hostil à emergência de novos Estados. Tal evento deu início a um intenso debate na literatura a respeito dos fatores que melhor explicam a partição do país. Uma parte da academia sugere que fatores domésticos são cruciais no processo, enquanto outra defende serem fatores externos os decisivos para a separação. Este estudo oferece uma nova perspectiva ao debate argumentando que uma combinação entre fatores domésticos e externos foi decisiva para o sucesso da luta secessionista do Sudão do Sul. O artigo se baseia na análise qualitativa de fontes secundárias e representa uma contribuição única ao debate sobre os determinantes para as secessões bem-sucedidas na África pós-colonial.

Corruption and Its Implications for Development and Good Governance: A Perspective from Post-Colonial Africa

Abstract: One of the many impediments to a specific region, country and/or continents political, social and economic growth prospects is corruption, the aim of this paper is to unearth the drivers and consequences of corruption in post-colonial Africa. Corruption is a global phenomenon; however when observing global corruption statistics and/or trends, it seems to be more prominent in underdeveloped continents such as Africa. Corruption in Africa is purely driven by low levels of economic growth, bad governance structures weak constitutions political instability, high levels of poverty coupled with high and ever-increasing levels of unemployment. We argue that post the colonial era, there has been a rise of corruption activities within the continent where individuals including some African heads of states have looted the continent of its resources meant for the general populace. In this sense, corruption takes resources meant for the poor, limits foreign direct investments (FDI) and has severe effects on a continent that is already the least developed in the world.

Is Gabola a Decolonial Church or Another Trajectory of Freedom of Religion in Post-Colonial South Africa? Rethinking Ethical Issues in Religious Praxis

In this paper, I interrogated the Gabola church in terms of its origins, purpose and its distinctiveness as a postcolonial manifestation of freedom of religion in South Africa. I answered two questions, is Gabola church a representation of a decolonial church and could it be a manifestation of trajectories of the postcolonial ill-defined freedom of religion? In responding to these questions, I used decoloniality, a theory whose agenda among many others is geared to usher a future free from oppression, where all can participate in modernity and in postmodernity. Data was generated through participatory action research. The approach enabled us to unearth the theology of Gabola, philosophy and the gap they seek to fill in the religious space. Ten Gabola church members and five church members from a mainline Christian movement participated in this research. The findings indicated that Gabola church presents a new religious movement that is socially inclusive, that seeks to promote social justice and social transformation. On the other hand, the research revealed that the lack of a regulating body for religious movement is the reason for the rise of questionable movements such as Gabola, a serious threat in the praxis of the Christian faith. To this end, I concluded that while freedom of religion is a good idea in line with the decolonial move, there is a need for participative and collaborative regulation of religious movement to eliminate criminal elements that overshadowed the beauty of religion manifested through ‘unthinkable’ ethical irregularities.