African StudiesPub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1932417
H. Simelane, M. Sihlongonyane
{"title":"A Comparative Analysis of the Influence of Traditional Authority in Urban Development in South Africa and Eswatini","authors":"H. Simelane, M. Sihlongonyane","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1932417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1932417","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Scholars have tended to overemphasise the influence of the colonisers. This precludes an analysis of the ability of indigenous populations to resist, reimagine and remake colonial visions of urban life. However, Tom Goodfellow and Stefan Lindemann (2013) have observed a widespread ‘resurgence’ of traditional authorities in Africa since the 1990s – meaning indigenous political structures have recently experienced a revival (Englebert 2002; Foucher & Smith 2011; Ubink 2008a). Chimhowu (2019, 898) writes, ‘Typical reform countries like Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Zambia have built this into their reforms’. This article explores the institution and influences of chiefs in both South Africa and Eswatini. It looks at the historical relationship between chieftaincy and the urban, and explores factors that have implications for the future of urban governance in the two countries. The article examines the ways in which chieftaincy influences over urban life have both subverted and been subverted by the colonial project in the two countries. The authors argue that while many of the categories and divisions of (settler) colonial rule are still visible in the two countries, the traditional authorities have engaged in local practices that reimagine and remake urban life, centred on the role of chieftaincy. These practices are made visible mostly on the urban peripheries, which have absorbed a large proportion of the poor since the end of the colonial era.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"153 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1932417","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48472952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1911623
I. Fuseini
{"title":"Navigating Traditional and Modern Institutions in City Governance: The Role of Chieftaincy in Spatial Planning in Tamale, Ghana","authors":"I. Fuseini","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1911623","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1911623","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT At a time of intensifying urbanisation in Ghana, ineffective spatial planning is one of the symptomatic challenges of urban growth in the country. In the Ghanaian context, traditional authorities (chiefs) play a disproportionate role in urban land management due to the fact that a vast proportion of the country’s land is held in customary tenurial arrangements. The role of the traditional authorities in (urban) land management is given legal status by national constitutional provisions that recognise chiefs as fiduciaries of the land held under customary tenure. The state-supported customary land secretariats (CLSs) perform these responsibilities in conjunction with the local government structures. They are largely being operationalised through urban land-use planning. However, the complex factors and processes of rapid urban growth have had unintended consequences. These include increased urban land values, speculative and informal land markets, and overlapping governance/power structures. The outcome has been the reported commodification and administration of urban land by chiefs for personal gain. These complex processes evolve at the intersection of traditional and modern governance structures which are opportunistically interpreted and applied to achieve certain ends. This article demonstrates how these changes in customary land administration are evolving in Tamale, Ghana. Qualitative interviews were undertaken with participants from relevant statutory land sector institutions, local government officials and traditional authorities. Using the lens of urban governance and planning practices, the article explores the outcomes of chief-led spatial planning and customary land administration practices and associated land markets in Tamale. These are social, economic and spatial inequalities, as well as urban governance challenges.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"230 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1911623","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43250988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1906205
E. Pinard
{"title":"The Consolidation Of ‘Traditional Villages’ In Pikine, Senegal: Negotiating Legitimacy, Control and Access to Peri-Urban Land","authors":"E. Pinard","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1906205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1906205","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the actors, everyday practices and norms involved in the production of peri-urban land in the prolongation of ‘traditional villages’ in Pikine, Senegal. It refers to the conception of governance in African cities as the outcome of daily transactions and negotiations between various institutions and inhabitants, and of adaptations to changing socio-economic and political conditions. Using the case of two recent neighbourhoods located on the urban periphery, the article documents planning processes in which traditional authorities and local institutions collaborate to craft new land subdivision and regulation practices in order to develop and control the territory. It argues that traditional authorities need to create new alliances with municipal actors and share the benefits of land allocation. However, traditional authorities manage to sustain their influence and governance capacity through the possible negotiation and exception of the application of regulation practices. The article contributes to studies on urban governance in Africa on two fronts. First, it challenges normative assumptions about the absence or weakness of planning practices and regulatory power pertaining to peri-urban areas. Second, by shining light on the particular logic of land allocation, claims and authority, the article deepens our understanding of neo-customary land delivery systems, and their spatial and social consequences.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"172 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1906205","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46570195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1940843
Ntombini Marrengane
{"title":"Local Governance and Traditional Authority in the Kingdom of Eswatini: The Evolving Tinkhundla Regime","authors":"Ntombini Marrengane","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1940843","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1940843","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Landmark constitutional and local government reforms have reshaped local governance in the Kingdom of Eswatini, formerly the Kingdom of Swaziland, since the promulgation of the first post-independence constitution in 2005. After more than 30 years of suspended constitutional rule under the leadership of the Ngwenyama (the Lion) and King governed by the Swazi system of traditional authority, a critical step has been taken to define and regulate the dual system of authority, constituted of administrative local government and traditional leaders. However, the legacy of the long-established bifurcated system of local governance has proven challenging to overcome. This article presents a view of the Kingdom of Eswatini from the perspective of local administration, which at present maintains two systems of governance – urban local government and the tinkhundla (traditional authority systems that operate the length and breadth of the country, including in urban areas). In the face of urbanisation, the administrative state has developed and modified its approach to urban management and engagement with traditional authorities over time. Drawing on a case study of the Mbabane upgrading and finance project, launched in 2005 and aimed at creating a ‘city without slums’, this paper analyses how local authorities in Eswatini responded to the imperative to engage with traditional authorities in the wake of unsuccessful and sustained efforts to bypass their influence. Three different strategies were adopted by the urban local authorities to effectively govern urban areas and manage the influence of traditional authorities. These shifting strategies reflect the evolving policy agenda at the urban scale in Eswatini and the limitations of a rigid bifurcated system in contemporary Swazi cities.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"249 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1940843","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45520940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1937057
C. Molebatsi, Seabo B Morobolo
{"title":"Reading the Place and Role of Endogenous Governance Structures in Modernist Physical Planning: The Case of the Bogosi and the Kgotla in Botswana","authors":"C. Molebatsi, Seabo B Morobolo","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1937057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1937057","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Drawing from the decolonial framework, this article reinterprets the place and role of two endogenous governance structures, namely bogosi and the kgotla, in modernist physical planning in Botswana’s urban villages. Through a historicised account we argue that both structures serve two incongruous roles – firstly, a provision of spaces for mobilisation for the re-inscription of the communal, and secondly, appropriation and co-optation pursuant of a state defined development agenda. The need to differentiate between these two contradictory roles is important in the search for inclusive human settlements in Botswana. The structures are drafted into the state-defined development agenda through appropriation and co-optation, whereas the re-inscription of the communal offers local communities space for pointing out alternatives to the state’s agenda. The article draws from what Nelson Maldonado-Torres (2007, 2) calls ‘a decolonial turn’ in theory and critique. The decolonial turn is critical of Western structures of knowledge and their tendency to suppress non-Western forms of knowledge (Winkler 2018). When applied to the urban space, the decolonial framework points to the existence of other knowledges that shape human settlements in the Global South. It is posited that these knowledges shape the nature of resistance to planning initiatives considered unjust by local communities. Despite unrelenting co-optation and appropriation by modernist governance structures, interventions by bogosi and the kgotla continue to provide viable institutional guidance to planning in urban villages. In unison with the decolonial, this paper calls for the recognition of the critical role played by bogosi and the kgotla in the emergence of alternative urbanisms in Botswana.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"134 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1937057","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47173975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1940098
Ntombini Marrengane, Lindsay Sawyer, D. Tevera
{"title":"Traditional Authorities in African Cities: Setting the Scene","authors":"Ntombini Marrengane, Lindsay Sawyer, D. Tevera","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1940098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1940098","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This special issue on the role of traditional authorities in African cities highlights critical debates about governance and urban development on a fast-urbanising continent. The six articles in this issue focus on the following: (1) the roles of traditional authorities as custodians of the values of society; (2) the roles of traditional leaders as moral authorities; (3) the modern chieftaincy as an invention of the colonial state; (4) the ‘unrelenting co-optation and appropriation’ of traditional governance structures by the state; and (5) the stretching of pre-colonial narratives to justify the legitimacy of traditional leadership and its control of community resources. The special issue features contributions from Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana and Eswatini, providing a rare comparison between cases from Southern and West Africa.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"125 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1940098","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41450010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1920365
Gabin Korbéogo
{"title":"Traditional Authorities and Spatial Planning in Urban Burkina Faso: Exploring the Roles and Land Value Capture by Moose Chieftaincies in Ouagadougou","authors":"Gabin Korbéogo","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1920365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1920365","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In terms of urban spatial planning, decentralisation and urban growth make it necessary to rethink the sources of legitimacy, agreements and conflicts relating to the actors’ strategies for land access in Ouagadougou. By localising the power and land management in local arenas (municipal territories and neighbourhoods), the decentralisation policy – that has promoted the participatory approach – and legal pluralism have exacerbated land-use competition. Institutional change and competition over land have reactivated the authority of the Moose traditional authorities in the urban development (‘lotissement’), as well as facilitating land value capture by them. In the urban land configuration, grassroots groups refer to competing normative repertories (legal/official versus traditional/local) to negotiate access to land for housing. This proves that traditional chiefs and state institutions were in tandem in the political-administrative management of urban development in Ouagadougou. However, facing the limits of the institutional hybridity and their correlative unsatisfied demand, grassroots people have empowered locally accountable representatives to fight for their land rights. With the growing influence of civil society organisations in urban politics, the domination of the public and traditional authorities is in flux. Based on qualitative empirical research, this article shows that the dynamic interplay between bureaucratic institutions, traditional authorities and grassroots organisations is contributing to reshape governance systems, as well as the construction of statehood in Burkina Faso.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"190 - 206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1920365","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47668610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-02-24DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0219
E. Frankema
{"title":"Economic History","authors":"E. Frankema","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780199846733-0219","url":null,"abstract":"The study of Africa’s economic past has experienced phases of growth and decline. In the 1960s to 1980s scholarly interest in African economic history surged. Major themes, such as slavery and the slave trades, agricultural development, colonial economic policy, demography, poverty, and growth and structural change, invited discussion and sometimes heated debate. Dependency and Marxist perspectives dominated the literature of the 1970s and 1980s and the influential “formalist-substantivist” debate within economic anthropology addressed the validity of Western, capitalist models of rational economic behavior to study non-Western or non-capitalist societies. The early literature did much to recover the making by Africans of their own economic histories, including in internal trade (and commodity currencies) before colonial rule, and in researching the initiative/agency of Africans in expanding agricultural production for the market, especially in West Africa from “legitimate commerce” onward. It also laid the foundation for quantitative approaches, which are currently expanding in many directions. Growing numbers of historians from Africa, Europe, and North America inspired the foundation, in 1974, of the field journal African Economic History, published by the African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin. In the 1990s the field coped with diminishing interest, and Marxist perspectives lost terrain. Many of the leading scholars of the “first generation” retired or branched off into other emerging fields, such as global history. Historians in the United States turned their backs on number-crunching economic historians. The field may also have suffered from rising pessimism concerning Africa’s economic future. Whatever the causes, the fading attention given to African economic history occurred at a time when Africans themselves were overcoming a period of intensive political and economic distress (see Hopkins 2009, cited under The “New” African Economic History). The foundation of the African Economic History Network in 2011 marked a renaissance within African economic history that became evident in the late 2000s. Scholars of The “New” African Economic History developed new quantitative and comparative approaches, using new data sources. They tended to make lesser use though of anthropological approaches and the rich ethnographic literature of Africa than earlier scholarship had done. Methodologically, the field saw a divide between scholars who combine the qualitative and quantitative approaches common in economic history and a new branch—often referred to as “historical economics”—that leans strongly toward the methods of applied economics, with an increasing emphasis on “causal identification.” Chances that the current wave of interest in the economic past of Africa will wither away again appear much lower these days. International development agencies are focusing increasingly on sub-Saharan Africa as the front line in their fight agai","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45646673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1889357
Christopher Williams
{"title":"Alfred Nzo: Reassessing a Misunderstood Minister","authors":"Christopher Williams","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1889357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1889357","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Alfred Nzo served as the newly democratic South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1994 and 1999. His tenure was widely criticised. Nzo was described as ineffectual and inert by the media, opposition parties and even by some within his own African National Congress. These criticisms have been unquestioningly absorbed by historians and foreign policy scholars, and now constitute a cornerstone of the conventional wisdom regarding the Mandela Administration’s foreign policy. This article draws on a range of interviews with officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs to provide an alternative portrait of the Foreign Minister. While rarely animated, many DFA officials recall Nzo as accessible and closely attuned to the critical international issues confronting South Africa. The article concludes by considering the methodological missteps that contributed to misunderstanding Nzo, and reflects on the difficulties of personality-driven political analysis.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"21 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1889357","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46769515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
African StudiesPub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2021.1894092
A. Landman
{"title":"Dr Vera Bührmann (1910–1998): From Volksmoeder to Igqira? A Popular Myth Re-examined","authors":"A. Landman","doi":"10.1080/00020184.2021.1894092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2021.1894092","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 1975, at the age of 65, Dr Maatje Vera Bührmann began a decade-long cross-cultural psychiatry research project in the former Ciskei in which she used a Jungian framework to explicate the methods of a Xhosa igqira (healer). From this work, for which she continues to be widely lauded in some circles, a mythology arose which portrays her as an exemplar of someone who transcended the racial politics of the radical Afrikaner nationalism she had embraced in the 1940s. In this article I present evidence from her writings and associated archival sources that challenges this view.","PeriodicalId":51769,"journal":{"name":"African Studies","volume":"80 1","pages":"60 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00020184.2021.1894092","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46658925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}