Madams and maids in Southern Africa: coping with uncertainties, and the art of mutual zombification

Drawing largely on a just completed empirical study this paper argues that like elsewhere in Africa & the world, maids in South Africa & Botswana, notably migrant maids from Zimbabwe, are subjected to the vicissitudes of ultra-exploitation. They, like their employers are all concerned with the uncertainties that plague their lives. Although employers are assumed to be in positions of power, their reality is often more nuanced & prone to constant negotiations with & concessions to maids. At one level, their own preoccupation with avoiding uncertainties by maintaining whatever advantages they can cultivate implies that vis-a-vis their maids, the employers cannot always afford to enjoy the benefits of being in control. Structural inequalities notwithstanding, mutual zombification seems to be the order of the day between maids & madams

The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon

The root of the 'anglophone problem' in Cameroon may be traced back to 1961, when the political elites of two territories with different colonial legacies - one French and the other British - agreed on the formation of a federal State. Contrary to expectations, this did not provide for the equal partnership of both parties, let alone for the preservation of the cultural heritage and identity of each, but turned out to be merely a transitory phase to the total integration of the anglophone region into a strongly centralized, unitary State. Gradually, this created an anglophone consciousness: the feeling of being marginalized by the francophone-dominated State. In the wake of political liberalization in the early 1990s, anglophone interests came to be represented first and foremost by various associations and pressure groups that initially demanded a return to the federal State. It was only after the persistent refusal of the Biya government to discuss this scenario that secession became an overt option with mounting popularity. The government's determination to defend the unitary State by all available means, including repression, could lead to an escalation of anglophone demands past a point of no return. Notes, refASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

Institutional Review: Open Access and Open Knowledge Production Processes: Lessons from CODESRIA

It is common in discussions of open access to limit the issue to publications and dissemination. This conflates accessibility with recognition and representation, and supposes that competing and conflicting knowledge systems and ideas would be equally available and affordable if room were created for multiple channels of accessibility. Such enthusiasm and euphoria, while understandable, do not adequately account for the prevalent power relations that structure knowledge production into interconnecting hierarchies at local and global levels. CODESRIA has some lessons to draw on from its experience of the past 37 years – lessons about the need to privilege and prioritise recognition and representation of the perspectives, epistemologies, and contextual and methodological diversity that inform knowledge production globally and locally; and lessons about the need to widen our understanding and discussion of ‘open access’ to go beyond just enabling access to knowledge and research results through a multiplicity of dissemination possibilities. It is important to discuss opening access up to different races, places, spaces, cultures, classes, generations, disciplines and fields of study. This review presents CODESRIA, and its ever-evolving publications and dissemination policy, as a possible model to inform and inspire institutions interested in a comprehensive idea of open access in an interconnected world of local and global hierarchies, where producing and consuming difference is part and parcel of everyday life

‘Our Traditions are Modern, Our Modernities Traditional’: Chieftaincy and Democracy in Contemporary Cameroon and Botswana

In this paper, I have argued that, instead of being pushed  aside by the modern power elites – as was widely predicted both by  modernisation theorists and their critics – chieftaincy has displayed  remarkable dynamics and adaptability to new socio-economic and  political developments, without becoming totally transformed in the  process. Chiefdoms and chiefs have become active agents in the quest  by the new elites for ethnic, cultural symbols as a way of maximising  opportunities at the centre of bureaucratic and state power, and at the  home village where control over land and labour often require both  financial and symbolic capital. Chieftaincy, in other words, remains  central to ongoing efforts at developing democracy and accountability  in line with the expectations of Africans as individual ‘citizens’ and  also as ‘subjects’ of various cultural communities. The paper uses  Cameroon and Botswana as case studies, to argue that the rigidity and  prescriptiveness of modernist partial theories have left a major gap in  scholarship on chiefs and chieftaincy in Africa. It stresses that studies  of domesticated agency in Africa are sorely needed to capture the creative  ongoing processes and to avoid overemphasising structures and  essentialist perceptions on chieftaincy and the cultural communities  that claim and are claimed by it. Scholarship that is impatient with  the differences and diversities that empirical research highlights,  runs the risk of pontification or orthodoxy. Such stunted or reductionist  scholarship, like rigid notions of liberal democracy, is akin  to the behaviour of a Lilliputian undertaker who would rather trim a  corpse than expand his/her coffin to accommodate a man-mountain,  or a carpenter whose only tool is a huge hammer and to whom every  problem is a nail.

Autochtonie, démocratie et citoyenneté en Afrique

Le discours de l'autochtonie se généralise sur le continent africain et donne parfois lieu à des mises en actes tragiques (expulsions, pogroms et génocides). Cette évolution est curieusement liée à la démocratisation et aussi au retour de l'autoritarisme, l'autochtonie devenant alors un enjeu politique (Qui vote où ? Qui a le droit d'être candidat ?). Elle accompagne aussi un certain moment économique, celui de la mondialisation et du désastre économique qui voit s'aviver la concurrence entre citoyens pour l'accès à certains biens publics (école, santé…). Malgré ses effets destructeurs, il n'est toutefois pas encore exclu que, comme à Athènes, elle ne se révèle le germe d'une future citoyenneté.[Autochthony, democracy and citizenship in Africa] - The discourse on autochthonous communities has become a generalized phenomenon on the African continent, often giving rise to atrocities (expulsions, pogroms, genocide). Quite curiously, this development is linked to democratization as well as the return to authoritarianism, with autochthony becoming the high stakes of the political game (Who votes where? Who has the right to candidacy?). Autochthony is also characteristic of a particular economic moment, which can be abbreviated as globalisation and the economic crisis that has provoked intense competition between citizens for access to certain public goods (school, health). Despite its destructive effects, it is not impossible that, as in Athens, autochthony proves to be the seed of future forms of citizenshi