Art in history, history in art: the Idoma ancestral masquerade as historical evidence

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 10

Decentralisation in Kenya : the governance of governors

Kenya's March 2013 elections ushered in a popular system of devolved government that represented the country's biggest political transformation since independence. Yet within months there were public calls for a referendum to significantly revise the new arrangements. This article analyses the campaign that was led by the newly elected governors in order to understand the ongoing disputes over the introduction of decentralisation in Kenya, and what they tell us about the potential for devolution to check the power of central government and to diffuse political and ethnic tensions. Drawing on Putnam's theory of two-level games, we suggest that Kenya's new governors have proved willing and capable of acting in concert to protect their own positions because the pressure that governors are placed under at the local level to defend county interests has made it politically dangerous for them to be co-opted by the centre. As a result, the Kenyan experience cannot be read as a case of ‘recentralisation’ by the national government, or as one of the capture of sub-national units by ‘local elites’ or ‘notables’. Rather, decentralisation in Kenya has generated a political system with a more robust set of checks and balances, but at the expense of fostering a new set of local controversies that have the potential to exacerbate corruption and fuel local ethnic tensions in some parts of the country

Building democracy from below : lessons from Western Uganda

How to achieve democratisation in the neopatrimonial and agrarian environments that predominate in sub-Saharan Africa continues to present a challenge for both development theory and practice. Drawing on intensive fieldwork in Western Uganda, this paper argues that Charles Tilly’s ‘democratisation as process’ provides us with the framework required to explain the ways in which particular kinds of association can advance democratisation from below. Moving beyond the current focus on how elite-bargaining and certain associational forms may contribute to liberal forms of democracy, this approach helps identify the intermediate mechanisms involved in building democracy from below, including the significance of challenging categorical inequalities, notably through the role of producer groups, and of building trust networks, cross-class alliances and synergistic relations between civil and political society. The evidence and mode of analysis deployed here help suggest alternative routes for supporting local efforts to build democracy from below in sub-Saharan Africa

Clientelism as civil society? Unpacking the relationship between clientelism and democracy at the local level in South Africa

This article, building on analyses from the global south, attempts to reframe democratic expectations by considering where previously maligned practices such as clientelism may hold moments of democracy. It does so by comparing the theory of civil society with that of clientelism, and its African counterpart neo-patrimonialism. It argues that clientelism as civil society may fulfil democratic tasks such as holding the (local) state accountable, strengthening civil and political liberties and providing channels of access for previously marginalised groups. Clientelism is not necessarily a reflection of imposed power relations but, at times, can demonstrate a conscious political strategy, to generate development, on the part of its protagonists.IS

Seeing Political Settlements through the City: A Framework for Comparative Analysis of Urban Transformation

This article proposes a new analytical framework for studying cities in the developing world based on the ‘political settlements’ approach. This has a dual purpose: to enrich comparative urban development research by bringing new theoretical ideas to bear on this field, but also to use capital cities as a lens to better understand national political settlements. The central argument is that urban built environments and their transformations in situations of late development reflect the workings of different varieties of clientelism, and by analysing the former we can better understand the latter. Specifically, issues such as the nature of urban land use and land allocation, the pace and form of construction, the effectiveness of environmental regulation and the provision of housing for different income groups are all revealing of political settlements and their broader development implications. The potential of this approach is explored through three narrative ‘sketches’ of contemporary urban development in Eastern Africa: the ‘city as marketplace’ (Kampala), the ‘city as expo’ (Kigali) and the ‘city as construction site’ (Addis Ababa). In presenting this framework, the article seeks to advance debate on methodological and analytical approaches to the study of both power relations and differential patterns of urban development

As esculturas cokwe como respostas às assimetrias civilizacionais

Fundada em 1917, a Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang) ocupava uma vasta região da Lunda Norte e Lunda Sul. Além das ações voltadas para a exploração de diamantes, essa empresa concessionária constituiu em 1936 o Museu do Dundo, um espaço destinado a colecionar objetos relacionados, sobretudo, aos povos que habitavam a sua área de atuação. Os objetivos cada vez mais ambiciosos e o receio da extinção de uma arte reminiscente do “tempo tribal” levaram o Museu do Dundo a organizar não apenas expedições de recolhas de objetos, mas também a contratar e manter “protegidos” em seus domínios escultores de madeira e de marfim a fim de evitar que as transformações ocasionadas pela situação colonial influenciassem os trabalhos desses homens. Este artigo tem como objetivo apresentar algumas reflexões sobre como os anseios fictícios do Museu em relação a esses escultores foram fundamentais para compreender as constantes tensões e dificuldades em enquadrar em seu espaço não apenas esses próprios homens, mas também as suas produções.The Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang) was founded in 1917 and occupied a vast region of Lunda’s north and south areas. Aside from the activities around diamond mining this concessionary company also created a museum in 1936. The Museu do Dundo (Dundo Museum) was a space dedicated to collect objects related to the inhabitants who lived in the area exploited by the company. The increasingly ambitious objectives of the Museum and the concern regarding the disappearance of a reminiscent art from “tribal times” resulted not only in the organization of collecting expeditions but also in the recruitment and “protection” of wood and ivory sculptors inside the company’s domains to avoid that their work were influenced by changes caused by the colonialism. The main objective of this paper is to present some considerations regarding how the museum’s fictitious expectations regarding these sculptors were crucial to understand the continuous tensions and difficulties faced to accommodate not only these men but also their work in its space

The isimodeni style: traditional beadwork, Zulu trinket or, South African sartorial tradition on Durban’s Golden Mile?

Beadwork is a well-documented aspect of the socio-political culture of isiZulu-speaking groupings in Southern Africa. Whilst scholarship on beadwork deals largely with the denotative and connotative value it offers wearers, this article’s contribution relates both to its commodification and apolitical value by confronting a general assumption that a beadwork style known as isimodeni (modern beadwork), produced as a trinket for tourists along Durban’s racially stratified Golden Mile since the 1960s, is an authentic representation of a Zulu material culture. The paper probes how traditional beadwork and rickshaw rides (with both highly decorated carts and pullers) were earmarked by tourism officials of the time as commodities that could serve a demand for colourful exoticism and accessible “Zulu” culture. Methodologically, the article draws on the visual analysis of beaded artefacts and photographs, in addition to ethnographic data derived from unstructured interviews with beadworkers on the Durban beachfront, to examine how a beadwork tradition transformed into a “Zulu” tourism commodity, and then transmuted into a nationalised form of ethnic identity and sartorial tradition