Giving Africa voice within global governance: oral history, human rights and the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council

The African continent and its people occupy a 'subaltern' position in global politics where voices from the African continent remain on the peripheries of global governance. Since the United Nations Human Rights Council, set up in 1996, is envisaged to be a forum for dialogue on thematic issues on all human rights, Africans need to seize the opportunity to be heard, rather than remaining as a problem to be solved. This paper presents three key arguments that need to be taken into account during the process of the remaking of the world order and re-creation of a new global governance architecture. Firstly, it raises the key issue of the African continent and the African people being perceived as a problem to be solved rather than a voice to be heard within global politics. Secondly, it makes a case for the use of oral history as an ideal medium to bring the voices of the subaltern to the notice of the Human Rights Council and as a key methodology in the current endeavour to understand different situations of human rights violations. In particular, it examines three cases where oral history was utilized to highlight human rights issues, including one instance where oral testimonies led to the crafting of a democratic freedom charter (in South Africa). Thirdly, the paper grapples with the question of whose values and whose voice should underpin the universal human rights discourse and global governance. [ASC Leiden abstract]ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

Tracking the historical roots of post-apartheid citizenship problems: the Native Club, restless natives, panicking settlers and the politics of nativism in South Africa

The launch of the Native Club in 2006 in South Africa as a new forum for the black intelligentsia provoked widespread debate from the academic and political fraternity that even implicated President Mbeki as the brains behind the project. The debates revolved around key and sometimes sensitive issues of race, citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, the limits and dangers of neoliberalism, as well as the dangers and limits of populist African nationalism. The politics and debates sparked by the Native Club also resonate with current crises within the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance and the second decade of South African democracy punctuated with a popular sense of betrayal. Currently the Native Club is housed under the roof of the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) in Pretoria (Tshwane). This working paper takes a politico-historical approach in its endeavour to understand and define the essence of the Native Club, going beyond the surface media exchanges that have characterized its launch, grounding the debate in earlier debates over race, class and the national democratic revolution to reveal the historical 'rootedness' of nativism and populism. [ASC Leiden abstract]ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

Giving Africa voice within global governance: oral history, human rights and the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council

The African continent and its people occupy a 'subaltern' position in global politics where voices from the African continent remain on the peripheries of global governance. Since the United Nations Human Rights Council, set up in 1996, is envisaged to be a forum for dialogue on thematic issues on all human rights, Africans need to seize the opportunity to be heard, rather than remaining as a problem to be solved. This paper presents three key arguments that need to be taken into account during the process of the remaking of the world order and re-creation of a new global governance architecture. Firstly, it raises the key issue of the African continent and the African people being perceived as a problem to be solved rather than a voice to be heard within global politics. Secondly, it makes a case for the use of oral history as an ideal medium to bring the voices of the subaltern to the notice of the Human Rights Council and as a key methodology in the current endeavour to understand different situations of human rights violations. In particular, it examines three cases where oral history was utilized to highlight human rights issues, including one instance where oral testimonies led to the crafting of a democratic freedom charter (in South Africa). Thirdly, the paper grapples with the question of whose values and whose voice should underpin the universal human rights discourse and global governance. [ASC Leiden abstract]</p

Tracking the historical roots of post-apartheid citizenship problems: the Native Club, restless natives, panicking settlers and the politics of nativism in South Africa

The launch of the Native Club in 2006 in South Africa as a new forum for the black intelligentsia provoked widespread debate from the academic and political fraternity that even implicated President Mbeki as the brains behind the project. The debates revolved around key and sometimes sensitive issues of race, citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, the limits and dangers of neoliberalism, as well as the dangers and limits of populist African nationalism. The politics and debates sparked by the Native Club also resonate with current crises within the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance and the second decade of South African democracy punctuated with a popular sense of betrayal. Currently the Native Club is housed under the roof of the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) in Pretoria (Tshwane). This working paper takes a politico-historical approach in its endeavour to understand and define the essence of the Native Club, going beyond the surface media exchanges that have characterized its launch, grounding the debate in earlier debates over race, class and the national democratic revolution to reveal the historical 'rootedness' of nativism and populism. [ASC Leiden abstract]</p

Ethnicity or tribalism? : The discursive construction of Zimbabwean national identity

In Zimbabwe any attempt to discuss ethnicity risks being labelled as ‘tribalism’ and, therefore, divisive to a supposedly ‘united nation.’ But what is ethnicity? This paper will attempt to discuss this issue, with particular focus on its intersection with nationalism and the construction of national identity. It will illuminate the liminal process of the ‘criminalisation of ethnicity’ through some moves aimed at blocking open discourse on ethnicity as a form of identity. Furthermore, the paper illustrates how Zimbabwe’s Shona-dominated nationalist discourses tend to follow the social constructivist path, which publicly dismisses the existence of ethnicity while clandestinely embracing it for dubious political purposes. In the process, the paper will also challenge the Eurocentric-theoretical perspectives underlying the normative engagement of ethnicity within the political and culturalist perspectives in Africa for presenting ethnicity as retrogressive and divisive. It is further argued that the scarcity of indigenous theoretical lenses of understanding ethnicity, exacerbated by grotesque forms of nationalism, as seen in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa sustains the suppression of ethnic minority voices and the shrift dismissal of their issues as peripheral or regional. This lack of proper vent has thus led to the continued resurgence of violent ethnic upheavals across the African continent.Peer reviewe