Based on fieldwork in Ngxingxolo in 1997-1998, this study highlights some of the key changes that have taken place in the way rural livelihoods have been made in Mooiplaas location, situated 45 km... Show moreBased on fieldwork in Ngxingxolo in 1997-1998, this study highlights some of the key changes that have taken place in the way rural livelihoods have been made in Mooiplaas location, situated 45 km outside the city of East London in the Eastern Cape Province (South Africa). In line with developments elsewhere in Africa, there has been an accelerated shift away from agrarian lifestyles in the rural Eastern Cape, especially since the 1970s. The process of de-agrarianization has occurred more rapidly in South Africa than elsewhere in Africa and can be traced back to the country's early industrialization and the subsequent emergence of the migrant labour system that integrated rural populations into a subcontinental capitalist economy. The working lives of most absent migrants was focused on effecting savings in the city in order to create a rural resource base that could sustain them in retirement. To achieve this men needed women to stay at home in the countryside and work for the 'umzi' (rural homestead). Return migration, regular remittances and immobility of rural women were the key aspects that kept the agrarian economy going in Mooiplaas. In the late 1980s and 1990s the economic and social situation in Mooiplaas changed because of young men and women leaving the village for the city. Without a ready supply of young male and female labour and a serious drought to contend with, the agricultural output of households fell sharply. By the 1990s, pensions and welfare payments had replaced male remittances as the main source of income in Mooiplaas. As the final control of household income increasingly shifted from men to women, there was a shift in household investment from cattle, conceptualized as men's animals, to poultry, which were regarded as women's animals. Show less
De eerste democratische algemene verkiezingen in Zuid-Afrika in 1994 na de afschaffing van de apartheid wekten ook hoge verwachtingen wat betreft een nieuw buitenlands beleid, in het bijzonder ten... Show moreDe eerste democratische algemene verkiezingen in Zuid-Afrika in 1994 na de afschaffing van de apartheid wekten ook hoge verwachtingen wat betreft een nieuw buitenlands beleid, in het bijzonder ten aanzien van de buurlanden en de overige landen in Zuidelijk Afrika. Een terugblik na vijf jaar leert dat het land de rol van vooruitstrevend politie-agent, vredestichter en economische katalysator in Afrika niet heeft waargemaakt. Het ethisch idealisme heeft in het buitenlands beleid plaatsgemaakt voor een politiek van realistisch eigenbelang. Voorbeelden zijn de agressieve economische expansie, wapenexport en militaire interventie in Lesotho. De rol bij vredesmissies in Afrika was tot dusver zeer bescheiden. Een assertiever buitenlands beleid kan echter dezelfde irritatie oproepen als economische expansie. Inbedding in de SADC verdient de voorkeur, maar helaas bleek het veiligheidsorgaan van de SADC (Organ on Politics, Defence and Security) tot dusver machteloos. Show less
Drawing on research findings emanating from the De-Agrarianisation and Rural Employment (DARE) Research Programme, coordinated by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, this paper compares changing... Show moreDrawing on research findings emanating from the De-Agrarianisation and Rural Employment (DARE) Research Programme, coordinated by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, this paper compares changing economic and social patterns in a wide variety of rural settlements in sub-Saharan Africa. Recently emerged or refashioned income diversification tendencies are highlighted and linked to the blurring of strong rural-urban contrasts. After a schematic consideration of continental trends, followed by a more detailed examination of rural livelihood patterns, the author teases out some of the major tensions embedded in the broad-based reorientation of rural livelihoods, leading to a discussion of how effective current government and donor policies are in addressing this rural transformation. The conclusion returns to the issue of sub-Saharan Africa's 'betwixt-and-between' status (the balancing act of African rural dwellers caught in between farm and nonfarm, family and individual, and rural and urban contrasts), arguing that the uncertainty could be alleviated with a more directional policy approach, an approach that facilitates provisioning of rural households and communities local-level, daily needs, and strengthens public policy, training facilities and infrastructure for future occupational diversification and specialization. Show less
Dijk, R.A. van; Rouveroy Van Nieuwaal, E.A.B. van 1999
This chapter presents an extended case study of the personal experiences of a young Kalanga woman in Francistown, Botswana, as she moves from village girlhood to incipient urban consumerism. After... Show moreThis chapter presents an extended case study of the personal experiences of a young Kalanga woman in Francistown, Botswana, as she moves from village girlhood to incipient urban consumerism. After describing the urban setting of Francistown and the expansion of the town's residential space under the Self-Help Housing Agency (SSHA) project in the 1980s, the author relates the story of Mary's transition from village to urban life, with its vastly increased levels of commodity consumption. He describes her initial rural-orientated identity embodying the productive and reproductive tasks defined for women in a village setting, the conflictive character of her village-oriented ties in the domain of kinship and, to a lesser extent, organized Christian religion, her tentative adoption of a new, socially negotiable identity through new aspirations based on the selection of a different reference group (urban female workmates and co-tenants), her learning of the role of "modern, urban consumer", her definition of a career goal, and her budgetary strategies (rotating credit or 'motshelo', and hire purchase). The narrative is based on participant observation and interviews over a period of five years from 1988. Show less
The upsurge in nonagricultural income diversification which has taken place on the African continent during the last fifteen years represents large-scale agrarian labour displacement within an... Show moreThe upsurge in nonagricultural income diversification which has taken place on the African continent during the last fifteen years represents large-scale agrarian labour displacement within an accelerated process of depeasantization. The literature's current preoccupation with market response and prescriptive behaviour based on Western norms and formal economic models clouds perception of what is actually taking place. The confusion begins with limiting the focus to the household as the unit of analysis while tacitly assuming that such households operate within a clearly delineated formal/informal/peasant three-sector economy. One by one, the components of the three-sector model are changing; national economies represent an amalgam of these three sectors into one 'formless' sector. This paper presents colonial and postcolonial perspectives on the African rural labour question, specifically with respect to Tanzania, in order to lend historical depth and sociopolitical dimension to the current focus on income diversification. To ground the analysis, case study observations are presented from four Tanzanian villages: two situated in the Mbeya region and two in Iringa region. The new 'sustainable rural livelihoods' (SRL) approach is a response to the complexity of rural livelihoods and their growing nonagricultural character. Show less
Although ECOWAS was never intended as a regional security structure and its official mandate lies primarily in the economic realm, ECOWAS has developed a high profile with regard to cooperation on... Show moreAlthough ECOWAS was never intended as a regional security structure and its official mandate lies primarily in the economic realm, ECOWAS has developed a high profile with regard to cooperation on political and security issues. This has come about primarily through the intervention, under ECOWAS auspices, in the Liberian civil war. Although this intervention was protracted and controversial and suffered numerous setbacks, the countries responsible managed to see it through. The result was that the intervention force Ecomog (ECOWAS Cease-fire Monitoring Group) stayed in Liberia and finally was able, in 1997, to put a peaceful end to the civil war by way of internationally supervised elections. This study analyses ECOWAS's intervention in the Liberian civil war, with an emphasis on its role as a multilateral, third party actor. The chapters deal successively with the institutions involved in the Liberian operation; the mandates concerned and the working methods employed by, or in the cadre of, ECOWAS; and the actual practice of the intervention. The final chapter extrapolates, from Ecomog's vicissitudes, certain key factors that conditioned its successes and failures Show less
The papers collected in this volume were first presented at a conference on 'Globalization, development and the making of consumers: what are collective identities for?' which was held in The... Show moreThe papers collected in this volume were first presented at a conference on 'Globalization, development and the making of consumers: what are collective identities for?' which was held in The Hague, The Netherlands, on 13-16 March 1997. The papers are concerned with the challenge to the development paradigm presented by its potential submersion within processes of economic globalization. The following chapters are on Africa: The accountability of commodities in a global marketplace: the cases of Bolivian coca and Tanzanian honey (Alberto Arce, Eleanor Fisher) - The Pentecostal gift: Ghanaian charismatic churches and the moral innocence of the global economy (Rijk van Dijk) - 'Progress' as discursive spectacle: but what comes after development? (David Mills on Uganda) - Christian mind and worldly matters: religion and materiality in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast (Birgit Meyer) - Mary's room: a case study on becoming a consumer in Francistown, Botswana (Wim van Binsbergen) - Second-hand clothing encounters in Zambia: global discourses, Western commodities and local histories (Karen Tranberg Hansen) - Globalization and the making of consumers: Zambian kitchen parties (Thera Rasing) - African corruption in the context of globalization (Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan) - Market expansion, globalized discourses and changing identity politics in Kenya (Andreas van Nahl) - The production of translocality: initiation in the sacred grove in southern Senegal (Ferdinand de Jong) - The production of 'primitiveness' and identity: Surma-tourist interactions (Jan Abbink) - Anthropology, identity politics, consumption and development in post-apartheid South Africa (P.A. McAllister) - Rural democratization in Zanzibar: the 1995 general elections (Greg Cameron). Show less
This bibliography is a listing of all materials that have ever been published or written on the subject of urban agriculture in Africa up to 1998. It records all books, chapters in books,... Show moreThis bibliography is a listing of all materials that have ever been published or written on the subject of urban agriculture in Africa up to 1998. It records all books, chapters in books, discussion and conference papers, periodical literature and all types of academic theses, dissertations and unpublished documents. The bibliography contains 526 entries organized in six chapters, namely Africa general, Northern Africa, Western Africa, Eastern Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa. Apart from Chapter 2, which contains the entries dealing with Africa in general, the five regional chapters are organized alphabetically according to the respective countries in each region. Show less
This chapter first discusses the nature of religious pluralism in Mali, highlighting some of the practices that many Muslims find objectionable and that, therefore, are a major source of tension... Show moreThis chapter first discusses the nature of religious pluralism in Mali, highlighting some of the practices that many Muslims find objectionable and that, therefore, are a major source of tension between Islam and Muslims, on the one hand, and traditional religions and their practitioners, on the other. The author then considers the proselytization activities of one of Mali's most celebrated, contemporary Muslim religious leaders, Sidy Modibo Kane (1925-1996), examining the actual mechanisms of his campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s to spread Islam among non-Muslims and to extirpate allegedly un-Islamic practices, most notably spirit possession, as well as some of the intended and unintended consequences of such proselytization efforts. Show less
Haan, L.J. de; Quarles van Ufford, P.; Zaal, F. 1999
Ondanks economische hervormingen sinds circa 1980 en politieke sinds 1989/1990 lijden vele Afrikaanse landen nog steeds aan wanbeheer van de overheidssector. Vaak krijgt de koloniale geschiedenis,... Show moreOndanks economische hervormingen sinds circa 1980 en politieke sinds 1989/1990 lijden vele Afrikaanse landen nog steeds aan wanbeheer van de overheidssector. Vaak krijgt de koloniale geschiedenis, met kunstmatige grenzen en overdracht van staatsinstellingen, de schuld van uitblijven van "goed bestuur". De notie van een Afrikaanse Renaissance gaat uit van de gedachte van wedergeboorte van Afrikaanse waarden om het continent nieuw leven te geven. Dit opstel houdt dit denkbeeld van onderdrukking van een authentieke Afrikaanse staatsinrichting kritisch tegen het licht. Juist bestudering van de koloniale geschiedenis leert dat het koloniaal bestuur vaak inheemse regeringsvormen gebruikte. Er kwam wel politieke schaalvergroting, maar geënt op lokale samenlevingen. Politieke systemen van inheemse origine zijn speelveld van de informele of schaduwpolitiek die de huidige politiek in Afrika voor een groot deel bepaalt. Maar er bestaat geen wezenlijk of werkelijk, tijdloos, Afrika. Dit hardnekkig geloof in Afrikaanse authenticiteit is in feite een Westers cliché, dat veronderstelt dat Afrika een geschiedenis heeft met weinig betekenis. Westerse clichés als Afrikaanse identiteit en authenticiteit kwamen ook Afrikaanse machthebbers soms goed uit. Er zijn geen politieke systemen die authentiek Afrikaans zijn, maar er zijn wel systemen die een geschiedenis in Afrika hebben. Show less
