In Africa 83(4) (November 2013), Harri Englund discussed several recent books on Zambia published preceding the country’s fiftieth independence anniversary. His article explored the ways in which recent publications by Zambian and Zambianist authors have launched a fresh research agenda, and he focused in particular on the scholarly engagement with liberalism. Below, we publish responses from David M.Gordon, Bizeck Jube Phiri and Giacomo Macola, whose work was discussed in this article, and a comment by James Ferguson on more scholarly directions

Bizeck Jube Phiri

Carmody

Chipungu

Colson

David M. Gordon

Ellis

Englund

Gewald

Giacomo Macola

Hofmeister

James Ferguson

Kanduza

Macmillan

Phiri

Scott

Vickery

Gordon, David M.

Phiri, Bizeck Jube

Macola, Giacomo

Ferguson, James

Kent Academic Repository

Kent Academic RepositoryFull text document (pdf)Copyright & reuseContent in the Kent Academic Repository is made available for research purposes. Unless otherwise stated allcontent is protected by copyright and in the absence of an open licence (eg Creative Commons), permissions for further reuse of content should be sought from the publisher, author or other copyright holder. Versions of researchThe version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.EnquiriesFor any further enquiries regarding the licence status of this document, please contact: researchsupport@kent.ac.ukIf you believe this document infringes copyright then please contact the KAR admin team with the take-down information provided at http://kar.kent.ac.uk/contact.htmlCitation for published versionGordon, David M. and Phiri, Bizeck Jube and Macola, Giacomo and Ferguson, James  (2014)'Debating 'The Rediscovery of Liberalism' in Zambia: Responses to Harri Englund.   Africa, 84 (4).   pp. 658-667.  ISSN 0001-9720.DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972014000527Link to record in KARhttp://kar.kent.ac.uk/44371/Document VersionAuthor's Accepted ManuscriptDEBATING µZAMBIA: THE REDISCOVERY OF LIBERALISM¶: RESPONSES TO HARRI ENGLUND  In Africa 83(4) (November 2013), Harri Englund discussed several recent books on Zambia published preceding the country¶s fiftieth independence anniversary. His article explored the ways in which recent publications by Zambian and Zambianist authors have launched a fresh research agenda, and he focused in particular on the scholarly engagement with liberalism. Below, we publish responses from David Gordon, Bizeck Jube Phiri and Giacomo Macola, whose work was discussed in this article, and a comment by James Ferguson, offering a more general view on the scholarship Englund inspires. <LINE SPACE>The new historiography of Zambia comes of age with Harri Englund¶s perceptive and stimulating review article. In the hands of a distinguished anthropologist, this diverse and, in some respects, analytically undeveloped body of literature prompts a whole range of fresh questions about history, culture, politics and religion. So tempting is this opportunity to continue with the conversation that I see no reason to be drawn into sterile personal or disciplinary polemics. Instead, inspired by Englund¶s gentle jibe about µneoliberal¶ Tonga-speakers (p. 676), I propose to supplement my book¶s understanding of the relationship between Harry Nkumbula¶s political agenda and his key constituents¶ civic thought. The purpose of these further reflections on the intersections between high and popular politics in southern Zambia is to adumbrate the argument that the political commitments of both past and present observers of Central African social realities might have led them to downplay unduly the significance of individualism among the subjects of their work. In the concluding section of my short discussion, I will use my reading of the mainsprings of Bantu Botatwe political behaviour to contribute to another arena of controversy touched upon in Englund¶s essay: the imbrications of politics and religion in contemporary Africa.  Speaking in the Zambian National Assembly in 1968, Edward Mungoni Liso, Nkumbula¶s alter ego and the most faithful interpreter of his thought at the time, questioned the foundations of Republican President Kaunda¶s µHumanism¶ by stressing that in the Southern Province, µ³WKHSDUWRI=DPELDWKDW,FRPHIURP´¶, µ³DFKLHYHPHQW... was far more respected than anything else even than the man ... [I]n our society we did not regard everybody as equal. Even up to the present moment, Sir, at home a poor man is looked down in pure village life´¶ (quoted in Macola 2010: 118). Three years earlier, Maxwell Beyani, another member of Nkumbula¶s opposition party, the ANC, had described his Tonga constituents as µ³KDUGZRUNHUV>ZKR@ZDQWWRVSHQGPRVWRIWKHLUWLPe improving their way of life. ... [T]hey hate interference which does not lead to prosperity´¶ (quoted in Macola 2010: 117).  Views of this nature suggest that, beginning in the middle decades of the twentieth century, a deep, centuries-long history of µstatelessness¶ (Colson 1962: chapter 7; De Luna 2012; but cf. O¶Brien 1983) or political fragmentation (Fielder 1965: 30±41) and a much more recent history of comparatively successful involvement in market production (Vickery 1986) were leading to the emergence of norms of social behaviour that it is difficult not to qualify as µindividualist¶. Built around the celebration of self-reliance, autonomy and personal enterprise, this world view was shared by both µrich¶ and µpoor¶ Tonga-speaking peasants (who ± as Momba [1989: 331±2, 346] clarified ± were not separated by differential access to the means of production and cannot therefore be rightly described as forming separate, antagonistic classes). This ± I am persuaded ± lay at the very heart of the political philosophy of Nkumbula and his party in the aftermath of the emergence of UNIP. If liberal thought ± as Englund argued in his review article and elsewhere (2006; 2011) ± has always oscillated between the poles of rights and freedom on the one hand, and duties and equality on the other, by the time their alliance with the ANC crystallized, Bantu Botatwe opinion-makers (often the better-off peasants) were strongly leaning towards the former bundle of concepts. Their impermeability to offers of state patronage, I argue, is to be understood in this light. While the adjective µneoliberal¶ is plainly inappropriate to describe this set of aspirations and concerns, one ought not to shy away from pointing to the possibility of their serving to energize such free-market, non-redistributive political projects as were espoused by Nkumbula. Influences from below, not least from smallholding farmers, work across the political spectrum and do not necessarily take the form that engagé social scientists might view as being desirable. This, after all, is the reason why orthodox Marxists have often regarded the µpetty bourgeoisie¶ with µcontempt¶ (Scott 2012: 86±7, 94±5). If an anachronistic definitional game is to be played, I would rather describe the Bantu Botatwe of the Southern Province as µright-leaning anarchists¶ instead of µneoliberal¶. µRight-leaning¶ because the defence of private property and individual initiative were the organizing principles of their µcultural citizenship¶, a neat expression I borrow from Scott (2012: 90); µanarchists¶ because the claims of the state ± be it colonial, post-colonial or, indeed, pre-colonial ± were their ultimate bête noire. Pace Scott, however, these cultural inclinations do not appear to have been accompanied by a similarly profound attachment to ideas of µmutuality¶. My reading of Bantu Botatwe motives and commitment to the protection of their autonomy vis-à-vis the state is entirely secular. This, of course, is not to deny the sincerity of both their old and new religious allegiances from the early twentieth century (see, for example, Carmody 1992; Colson 2006), but it is to argue that such allegiances scarcely impinged on their oppositional political positioning in nationalist and contemporary Zambia. Instead of attempting to parry the charge of reductionism, I will end by pointing to a slightly disconcerting parallel between the nationalist historiography that revisionists have attempted to take to task and the more recent, and self-consciously cutting-edge, scholarship of which Gordon¶s work (2012) represents such a distinguished example. The function attributed to religion in early, nationalist-inflected studies of African resistance during the Scramble was obvious enough: it was the world of the spirits and their mediums that provided that principle of inter-ethnic unity that was required if µprimary¶ resisters were to be legitimately portrayed as the precursors of later decolonization movements (Ranger 1968; Cobbing 1977; Beach 1979; Ellis 2000). Now that this epistemological responsibility has been lifted from the shoulders of the spirits, only their ostensible timelessness ± and related exoticizing effects ± remain. Yet there simply is no need to invoke supernatural forces to explain what, to the southerners who suffered for them, were, at heart, political choices rooted in civic concerns that were themselves interwoven with historical forces and economic circumstances. The Tonga-speaking peasants who followed Nkumbula through thick and thin paid a price in foregone patronage for their principled stance; their province still bears the hallmarks of its long history of opposition to the dominant political dispensation. Viewing them as only partly responsible for their own destiny diminishes the morality of their choices. We have Englund to thank for taking the debate on religion and politics to another level in the new historiography of Zambia. References Beach, D. N. (1979) µ³&KLPXUHQJD´WKH6KRQDULVLQJRI±97¶, Journal of African History 20 (3): 395±420. Carmody, B. P. (1992) Conversion and Jesuit Schooling in Zambia. Leiden: Brill. Cobbing, J. (1977) µThe absent priesthood: another look at the Rhodesian risings of 1986±1987¶, Journal of African History 18 (1): 61±84. Colson, E. (1962) The Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia: social and religious studies. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ² (2006) Tonga Religious Life in the Twentieth Century. Lusaka: Bookworld Publishers.  De Luna, K. M. (2012) µHunting reputations: talent, individuals, and community in precolonial South Central Africa¶, Journal of African History 53 (3): 279±99. Ellis, S. (2000) µAfrica¶s wars of liberation: some historiographical reflections¶ in P. Konings, W. van Binsbergen and G. Hesseling (eds), Trajectoires de Libération en Afrique Contemporaine: hommage à Robert Buijtenhuijs. Paris: Karthala. Englund, H. (2006) Prisoners of Freedom: human rights and the African poor. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.  ² (2011) Human Rights and African Airwaves: mediating equality on the Chichewa radio. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press. Fielder, R. J. (1965) µSocial change among the Ila-speaking peoples of Northern Rhodesia with particular reference to their relations with the Primitive Methodist Mission¶. MA thesis, University of Manchester. Gordon, D. M. (2012) Invisible Agents: spirits in a Central African history. Athens OH: Ohio University Press. Macola, G. (2010) Liberal Nationalism in Central Africa: a biography of Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Momba, J. C. (1989) µThe state, rural class formation and peasant political participation in Zambia: the case of Southern Province¶, African Affairs 88 (352): 331±57. O¶Brien, D. (1983) µChiefs of rain ± chiefs of ruling: a reinterpretation of pre-colonial Tonga (Zambia) social and political structure¶, Africa 53 (4): 23±42. Ranger, T. O. (1968) µ&RQQH[LRQVEHWZHHQ³SULPDU\UHVLVWDQFH´PRYHPHQWVDQGmodern mass nationalism in East and Central Africa¶, Journal of African History 9 (3): 437±53; 9 (4): 631±41. Scott, J. C. (2012) Two Cheers for Anarchism: six easy pieces on autonomy, dignity, and meaningful work and play. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Vickery, K. P. (1986) Black and White in Southern Zambia: the Tonga plateau economy and British imperialism, 1890±1939. New York NY: Greenwood Press. GIACOMO MACOLA University of Kent at Canterbury and Centre for Africa Studies, University of the Free State G.Macola@kent.ac.uk   

'Debating 'The Rediscovery of Liberalism' in Zambia: Responses to Harri Englund

In Africa 83(4) (November 2013), Harri Englund discussed several recent books on Zambia published on the eve the country’s fiftieth independence anniversary. His article explored the ways in which recent publications by Zambian and Zambianist authors have launched a fresh research agenda. This round-table includes responses from David M. Gordon, Bizeck Jube Phiri and Giacomo Macola, whose work was discussed in this article, and a comment by James Ferguson

Macola G

Gordon D M

Phiri B J

Fergsuon J

Archivio della ricerca- Università di Roma La Sapienza

‘Debating “The Rediscovery of Liberalism” in Zambia: Responses to Harri Englund’

Crossref

Africa

DEBATING ‘THE REDISCOVERY OF LIBERALISM’ IN ZAMBIA: RESPONSES TO HARRI ENGLUND

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/3322C6E0ACB18E2B63F30FABCBEA1189/S0001972014000527a.pdf/div-class-title-debating-the-rediscovery-of-liberalism-in-zambia-responses-to-harri-englund-div.pdf

'Debating 'The Rediscovery of Liberalism' in Zambia: Responses to Harri Englund

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Kent Academic Repository

Archivio della ricerca- Università di Roma La Sapienza

Crossref