Eritrea's Nation and State-building: Re-assessing the impact of 'the struggle'

In the April 2003 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Robert Kaplan describes Eritrea as 'newly independent, sleepily calm and remarkably stable'. Electricity is said to fail infrequently, corruption is rare, theft and crime almost unheard of, reflecting, Kaplan claims, 'a surprisingly functional social order' Eritrea is said to have 'achieved a degree of non-coercive social discipline' by implication, unusual for Africa. The country's political culture is described as 'an almost Maoist degree of mobilization and an almost Albanian degree of xenophobia.' In this account, Eritrea is an exotic specimen, not quite African, atypical in almost all respects. But is Eritrea accurately reflected or understood in this account? Is Eritrea really as isolated and marginal as this suggests? Is its development agenda and state-building project that divergent from elsewhere? Kaplan hints that Eritrea's sense of nationhood - 'rare in a world of nation-states rent by tribalism and globalisation' - exists despite globalisation. But this is in complete contrast to current research which emphasizes that 'transnationalism does not necessarily operate in opposition to nationalism but can at times work to reinforce it'. In contrast, Kaplan's article takes as read the official account of Eritrean nationalism, emphasizing that it is a product not simply of its history, but also of its having been isolated and alienated from international and regional influences: 'we Eritreans are different from our neighbours'.

Inclusion and exclusion: NGOs and politics in Zimbabwe

The thesis explores the changing relations between the Zimbabwean state and local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) after independence. It focuses on debates over the role of NGOs in democratization in developing countries, using Zimbabwe as an example. The thesis argues that the study of democratization is best accomplished through detailed empirical case studies, relying on historical narratives and participant-observation research. Such research reinforces our understanding of democratization as a complex and dynamic process.The thesis proposes a framework for understanding state and society relations in Zimbabwe, emphasizing the ruling party’s use of coercive and consent-generating mechanisms to establish hegemony over the new nation. It examines the changing relationship between NGOs and the state after independence, when the ruling party’s efforts to include most groups within its nationalist coalition extend to NGOs. Case studies of NGO coalitions show how activist NGOs fail to mobilize others owing to the unwillingness of many NGOs to challenge the ruling party’s control over policy-making.The establishment of the National Constitutional Assembly by some NGOs, churches and trade unionists set the stage for an increasingly tense engagement between NGOs and the state after 1997. The constitutional debate opened up the public sphere in new ways. As the ruling party attempted to retain control over the political sphere and the constitutional debate, NGO politics became increasingly polarized. The emergence of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, and the prominence of NGO activists within its leadership, led to further conflict. After losing the February 2000 constitutional referendum, the regime sanctioned violent attacks on white farmers, businesspeople, and NGOs. While the ruling party attempted to shore up its support through nationalist rhetoric and financial incentives, groups perceived to oppose the state were excluded and vilified

Ggantija and ta’ Marziena : preservation and presentation of Gozo’s neolithic heritage

In lieu of the recent dwindling numbers of tourists flocking to Malta annually, The Malta Tourism Authority and Heritage Malta are emphasizing the need to attract “quality tourists” to the Maltese islands. Malta’s old image of “sun, sea, and sand” and four star hotels is slowly being replaced by cultural tourism, which involves reallocation of funding to develop and sustain cultural heritage sites for tourism. This paper presents two Neolithic temple sites in Gozo, Malta that lie at opposite ends of the preservation-presentation spectrum due to public interest and site accessibility. The first, Ggantija, is a UNESCO Heritage Site, and has seen extensive excavation, the artifacts of which are housed in the National Archaeology Museum in Valletta, Malta and in the Archaeology Museum in Victoria (Rabat), Gozo. The second, Ta’ Marziena , is located on privately owned farmland and has never been excavated. Additionally addressed is the impact of invented heritage on preservation by local villagers and New Age religionists, and the role of tourist photography and postcards in presentation. I propose a method of incorporating the several lesser Neolithic temple sites of Gozo into a cultural tourism route through the island.peer-reviewe

Scuba diving as Mediterranean Culture. Preservation and presentation of Gozo’s maritime heritage

Heritage Malta and the Malta Tourism Authority have recently endeavored to increase “quality tourism” in the Maltese Islands. One way of doing so is by encouraging cultural tourism in Malta and Gozo, and by preserving the maritime heritage of the islands by presenting Malta as a premier diving destination. This is in contrast to the “sun, sea, and sand” image that has disappointed recent tourism statistics in Malta. This study discusses the ways in which Gozitans are preserving their maritime heritage through diving and how they are presenting this avenue of heritage to the public and divers as potential tourists.peer-reviewe

Situated Transgressiveness: Exploring One Transwoman\u27s Lived Experiences Across Three Situated Contexts

This study investigates the lived experience of one transwoman, Claire, a public advocate and a manager with client services responsibilities. We examine Claire’s story in order to discuss how situated contexts, such as different roles, locales, and interactions, shape the way she experiences and perceives her trans body and gender identity. In particular, our analysis centers on how Claire’s lived experience of personal and professional life shift across three different situated contexts, each enabling and constraining opportunities for political transgression. Our findings contribute to existing conversations within queer theory, transgender, and organization studies by highlighting how situated contexts mediate the political potential of queer bodies at work. By developing the concept ‘situated transgressiveness,’ this article challenges notions of transgender as a stable, ideal disruptive category and advances a more contextually sensitive approach to understanding the contingency of transgender lives and politics. Such insights are important in facilitating more nuanced understandings of the situatedness of transgression and transgender bodies within work and professional settings

Post-liberation Politics: African Perspectives Examining the political legacy of struggle

This article examines the politics of African states in which insurgencies or liberation movements have taken control of the government. It examines the impact on governance of reforms introduced by these post-liberation regimes, their relations with traditional authorities and civil society and relationships within and between competing guerrilla movements. It also examines the nature of the state that emerges from this process. The ‘post-liberation’ state label is argued to be both meaningful and useful, as part of a larger project of exploring and explaining the post-colonial African state, highlighting debates about representation, citizenship and nation-building. While post-liberation regimes have advantages in implementing state building projects, they are also subject to contestation when the new state institutions and regime incumbents become too exclusivist or predatory

Democrats and Donors: Studying Democratization in Africa

Since the late 1980s, political scientists, donors, and development workers in East and Southern Africa have devoted much time and resources to the question of ‘democratization’. Yet, it is not clear how this concept of ‘democratization’ has helped us to understand African politics or if donor support for ‘democratization’ has been successful. There are both methodological and conceptual problems with the way democratization is used to explain processes as varied as the de-racialization of South Africa, the post-civil war effort to rebuild Mozambique, and the different patterns of change to multi-party politics in Kenya, Zambia and Malawi. Many accounts of these processes of democratizations are ahistorical, or decontextualised from the historical and cultural situations. Secondly, institutions which are thought to enable democratizations – like churches and NGOs – are poorly understood and little studied. Assumptions, rather than empirical evidence, dominate. Such partial understandings of the societies and institutions under observation leads to inappropriate policy responses by bilateral and multi-lateral donors eager to support ‘democratization’. In this paper, I explore the ways in which the development industry has adopted and used political science concepts of ‘democratization’ and ‘civil society’ and the problems inherent with this process. I focus on the role of local or ‘indigenous’ NGOs as recipients of donor aid and potential agents of democratization. In order to understand why NGOs are assumed to contribute to a process of ‘democratization’ we need to examine both what donors think NGOs are, and their relationship with the state, as well as how this plays out in practice. In particular, we need to examine the changes that have resulted from the increased resources made available to the NGO sector. A case study of a prominent Zimbabwean Human Rights NGO, ZimRights, will be used to illustrate the problems caused by growth and expansion. First however, I want to examine the methodology and conceptualization of ‘democracy’ as used by donors

Rocking the Boat? Church NGOs and Democratization in Zimbabwe

Historically, relations between church and state in independent Zimbabwe have tended to be cooperative and on-confrontational. However, in 1997 the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) initiated the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), leading to the government’s defeat in the first post-independence referendum and setting the stage for the violent elections of June 2000. Nevertheless, as the NCA developed the strength and capacity which enabled it to challenge the status-quo, the ZCC withdrew. As a key-player said ‘… as churches we had to take issues that don’t raise too much dust or rock the boat too much, but the boat was rocking.’ This suggests that although the church may play a critical role in opening up space for debate, the state may still co-opt and weaken churches and other groups, in its effort to retain hegemony. Churches and church-NGOs relate ambiguously to both the state and to society – in both colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe – and remain vulnerable to political, economic, and social pressures. Theories of democratization – and in particular the role played by churches and NGOs – must begin to recognize the complexity and ambiguity of state-society relations as detailed in this study

Born powerful? Post-Liberation Politics in Eritrea and Zimbabwe

The paper is a comparative analysis of post-liberation politics in Zimbabwe and Eritrea. It proposes that insufficient attention has been paid to the impact of negotiated transitions and inherited state forms in analysing Southern African post-liberation states. The Eritrean case, which is relatively little-known, reveals the significance of the negotiated transitions and the inherited state institutions (or the lack thereof), in addition to the history and weight of the armed struggle and nationalist politics. While there are many similarities between the two states, both during the liberation war and after, relations between state and society have been markedly different