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'.

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

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

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

Going it alone: opposition politics in Zimbabwe

Say "opposition party" in Zimbabwe and people either laugh or cry. There has been little opposition in Parliament since the 1987 ZANU-ZAPU Unity Accord. This alliance gave ZANU-PF virtually complete control of Zimbabwean political space. To date, few opposition parties have shown any potential for mounting a concerted challenge to ZANU(PF). They are widely perceived as weak and having little grass-roots support. The recent phenomenon of "independent" candidates contesting power in local elections, however, suggests that the situation may be changing. As we shall see, through skilled use of the courts and Zimbabwe's electoral laws and constitution, opposition politicians - loosely organized as the Movement of Independent Candidates (MIC) - have begun to challenge the ruling party's monopoly on political access, making incremental gains in `leveling' the political arena. At the same time, the long-term prognosis for a more democratic and pluralistic Zimbabwean polity is unclear for reasons which shall be discussed in this article

Past the Kalashnikov: Youth, Politics and the State in Eritrea

The paper examines the politics of the National Union of Eritrean Youth and Students (NUEYS), University students, and National Service. It proposes that these cases provide a useful perspective from which to think critically about state-society relations in Eritrea. Like other post-liberation states Eritrea has faced two ‘transitional’ challenges: how to transform a colonized and war-stricken economy and how the former liberation movement should relate to the citizens of the new state. While Eritrea’s solutions have been similar to those of other newly independent African states, they have also had distinctive features. The goal of this paper is to consider the particular dynamics of Eritrean politics through an examination of the relationship between youth and the state, which is not merely typical of state-society relations, but constitutive of Eritrean identity and nationalism

THE STATE OF NGOS IN ZIMBABWE: HONEYMOON OVER?

After independence, many of Zimbabwe's NGOs benefited from their close links with the government. Even now most would probably describe their relationship with the state as cooperative. It is still de rigeur, certainly, to invite a Cabinet Minister, MP or party functionary to open workshops, conferences, and meetings. Beyond the symbols, however, there is also the hard fact that the state remains the dominant player, encouraging a positive working relationship when it serves its purposes while obstructing any NGOs that are perceived to be problematic

‘Make Sure They Count Nicely This Time’: The Politics of Election Observing in Zimbabwe

This paper examines the controversy surrounding Zimbabwe’s elections in 2000 and 2002. It situates these elections against Zimbabwe’s experiences of elections since 1980. It argues that the conditions for this controversy emerged from the institutions and practices that developed in Zimbabwe from the time of independence. At the same time, election observers – influenced both by criticism of earlier observation missions in Africa and international policy concerns – were positioned to make an example of the Zimbabwe elections. The Zimbabwe elections became an international crisis point not because of observer reports or electoral fraud, but because of the politics surrounding Zimbabwe’s relations with the outside world

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”

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