Nordiska Afrikainstitutet i Uppsala har udgivet følgende nye bøger om det sydlige Afrika i perioden oktober-december 2003
1) Henning Melber (Ed.): Re-examining Liberation in Namibia. Political Culture since Independence
2) Henning Melber (Ed.): Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa. The unfinished business of democratic consolidation
3) Kenneth Good: Bushmen and Diamonds. (Un)civil Society in Botswana
Bøgerne kan bestilles via e-mail [email protected]
website www.nai.uu.se
Henning Melber (ed.) Re-examining Liberation in Namibia
Political Culture since Independence, 187 pp, 200 sv.kr. (20 Euro)
Published by the Nordic Africa Institute, Oct. 2003
Keywords: Namibia, Independence, Liberation, Political Culture, Reconciliation, Post-colonialism, Human Rights
The emerging trends in Namibias political culture offer reason for concern. The different chapters in this stock taking volume suggest in different ways that the long struggle for national liberation and human rights has not been followed by a process towards genuine democracy and tolerance.
An introductory chapter examines the consolidation of political power and control by the former liberation movement SWAPO. Other chapters offer case studies on SWAPOs ideology prior to Independence, a comparison of constitutional developments in Namibia and Zimbabwe, an overview on minority rights and policies concerning indigenous people and a case study on cultural policy with regard to music.
Analyses also cover the issue of the SWAPO ex-detainees, a critical reading of the Namibian Presidents biography and an exploration of the institutionalised public memory. The book ends with an essay challenging the limited tolerance currently existing in post-colonial Namibia.
The contributors are mainly from Namibia or Southern Africa and have a long-term commitment to the struggle for national liberation and democracy. The editor, Henning Melber, had joined SWAPO in 1974. He was Director of the Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit in Windhoek between 1992 and 2000 and has been Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute since then.
Contents:
William Heuva. Voices in the Liberation Struggle: Discourse and Ideology in the SWAPO Exile Media
Sufian Hemed Bukurura. Between Liberation Struggle and Constitutionalism: Namibia and Zimbabwe
Clement Daniels. The Struggle for Indigenous Peoples Rights
John S. Saul-Colin Leys. Truth, Reconciliation, Amnesia: The ex-Detainees Fight for Justice
Christopher Saunders. Liberation and Democracy: A Critical Reading of Sam Nujomas Autobiography
Reinhart Kössler. Public Memory, Reconciliation and the Aftermath of War: A Preliminary Framework with Special Reference to Namibia
Minette Mans. State, Politics and Culture: The Case of Music
Andre du Pisani. Liberation and Tolerance
Henning Melber (ed) Limits to Liberation in Southern Africa
The unfinished business of democratic consolidation. 180 sv.kr. (18 Euro) (applicable in Europe only) , 231 pp. Published by HSRC Press, Cape Town, October 2003, with financial support from the Nordic Africa Institute
Have the former liberation movements in Southern Africa, now executing political power as governments, neglected their commitment and sensitivity to human rights issues and democratic values? Is authoritarianism built into the armed struggle for liberation and-or the structures of a post-colonial social transformation process? Or is it inherited from the nature of colonial systems? Or is liberal democracy as such inherently elitist?
A thought provoking collection of essays on these and related issues presents case studies on Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa, to explore post-colonial political realities in the Southern African region. Published by the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa, with financial support from the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, the volume enters a new arena of discourse.
The authors show how the former liberation movements in Southern Africa tend to become authoritarian and elitist governments who reward party loyalty and are hostile to outsiders. These movements have in varying degrees deviated from their originally-declared democratic aims as well as largely abandoned their once-sacrosanct goal of socio-economic transformation aimed at reducing inherited imbalances in the distribution of wealth.
Following an introductory overview by the editor, Kenneth Good argues that the predominant party systems in southern Africa through the 1990s produced a high degree of non-accountability of political elites who were bent mainly on the retention of their power.
Dealing with urban governance and electoral democracy in Zimbabwes capital Harare, Amin Kamete looks at efforts by the party in power to win back the constituency and how, having failed, the government has systematically set about disenfranchising the urban electorate.
Complementing this case, Suzanne Dansereau examines the role of the Zimbabwean labour movement in its resistance to the ZANU-PF government under Robert Mugabe.
In a chapter on Botswana, Ian Taylor looks at the Botswana Democratic Partys (BDP) single party domination, and notes that despite of a high degree of legitimacy, the policies of BDP have also generated profound inequalities and vast differences in the life chances within the social formation.
Francis Nyamnjoh offers a re-conceptualisation of democracy and liberation by highlighting the role of chieftaincy as a mediating agency between tradition and modernity. In an ongoing process of power brokerage, the dichotomy between citizen and subject remains a matter of negotiation.
With particular reference to Lesotho, Roger Southall analyses two competing paradigms of legitimacy in southern Africa: the (predominant) paradigm of liberation is authoritarian in nature and glorifies the ruling party. In contrast, the paradigm of democracy stresses the right to rule by reference to securing a mandate from the people by means of clean and popular elections.
In the case study on Namibia, Henning Melber highlights the increasingly authoritarian tendency within SWAPOs political rule, which signals a deterioration of the democratic and human rights culture proclaimed at Independence. While spawning a new elite, the post-colonial transformation offers less in the way of meaningful socio-economic change then the colonised majority was made to believe.
Martin Legassick critically explores the impact of the armed struggle for democratic South Africa. He particularly questions certain decisions taken by the ANC in relation to the tactics and strategy for the conduct of that struggle and the further implications of the choices made. He argues that these decisions have not produced a true national and social liberation process, but instead opted for reformist approaches.
Raymond Suttner focuses on largely hidden practices, traditions and cultures (including belief systems) among the rank and file of the ANC in exile. He investigates how these experiences generated conflicts and tensions, which have been played out in the post 1994-era.
In the concluding chapter, Christa Johnson traces the influence of vanguardism within the South African liberation movement in general and the ANC in particular. She draws attention to the shortcomings of a political strategy based on the applied strategy and concept.
Most of the contributors are rooted in the Southern African region. They took actively part in the liberation processes or followed them in supportive positions. The book is the result of a research network on “Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa”, initiated during 2001. The project coordinator and editor Henning Melber, a former SWAPO activist, is Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute.
Kenneth Good: Bushmen and Diamonds. (Un)civil Society in Botswana. 40 pp, 100 sv.kr. (10 Euro). Published by The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, Nov 2003. Keywords: Botswana, Politics, Democracy Diamonds, San, Human rights
Botswanas democracy is often considered to be a comparatively advanced and positive example of an African state in terms of political culture and the notion of good governance. Focussing on the particular situation of the Bushmen-San as a marginalized minority denied citizens rights, this paper challenges the assumption that the countrys current political and socio-economic system is, in fact, exemplary.
Bushmen are the indigenous people region, and one of the largest ethnic minorities in the country. They are, nevertheless, the poorest of the poor in Botswana, the only citizens without secure land rights, experiencing injustice and discrimination on a routinised basis.
Since 1997, and with particular speed through 2002, Bushmen or San or Basarwa, they are a people without a self-given name, have been removed from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana where their ancestors have lived for a millennium or more. Simultaneously with these coerced removals, diamond-mining exploration leases have rapidly spread across the Reserve. Diamonds have already been found at Gope inside the Reserve, and mining will follow dependant on the world market.
History indicates that coerced re-location occurs in colonial and quasi-colonial situations, to those who have few or no human rights. Enforced removals and routinised injustice are thus testaments to the frailities of democracy in Botswana; a society, which has a political system, which is no imagined shining light in Africa, but represents an authoritarian and elitist model of a barely functioning electoralism.
Civil society is small and weak, and in a dependant relationship with the government. When an outside advocacy group does speak out, as Survival International has done with its campaign on diamonds of despair, the government reacts with shock and horror. The society is without a struggle culture, and suffers from the battered wife syndrome. Unless a group agitates strongly about a problem it will not become an issue for debate in society.
Bushmen and democracy are thus closely inter-linked in Botswana, and improvements for the one require developments in the other, and vice versa.
The author has on previous occasions presented and published related analyses within the research network on “Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa”, which is currently coordinated through the Nordic Africa Institute. This publication is another result of the collaboration within this project.
Kenneth Good is Professor in the Department of Political and Administrative Studies at the University of Botswana in Gaborone. His interests focus on the state in relation to development and class formation, democratisation and corruption/mismanagement. He has published widely in scholarly journals and books.
