Understanding and Overcoming Xenophobia: A One Day Colloquium - Presentation by Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba

A Masterclass with Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba

Pan-Africanism in the 21st Century

Mbongi A NsiI: A New Possible Way Of Organizing Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo

MBONGI A NSI: A NEW POSSIBLE WAY OF ORGANIZING POLITICS IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO by TigersEye99

African Studies in Social Movements and Democracy

Edited by Mahmood Mamdani, Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba

Trade unions, burial societies, students, religious and gender movements, riots and mafias. Not to mention class. The kaleidoscope of African social movements is complex and broad. But their histories have strong common threads - the experience of past oppression and the constant struggle for an identity that will encompass survival. How have they contributed to the nature of African civil society and the formation of democracy? The chapters are a living dialogue on the interpretation of these movements, and a critical and analytical appraisal of the African intellectual heritage itself. The book brings together a vast array of writers and topics from all over Africa - from bread riots in Tunisia, Communist Parties in Sudan, the "Kaduna Mafia" in Nigeria, burial societies in Zimbabwe, and the working class in Algeria.

Experiences of Democracy in Africa: Reflections on Practices of Communalist Palaver as a Method of Resolving Contradictions

This article by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba originally appeared in Philosophy and Social Action XI (3) 1985, and has been edited for clarity. You can read it below, or click here to download it in PDF format.

Discussions about democracy in Africa, the lack of it or the need for it, have become rather fashionable. Radical intellectuals (Marxist or not) are demanding democracy—often understood as a multi-party system, i.e., as a formal political scheme—to be authorized by the existing one-party state—through which people will “participate” in the decision-making of the entire country, society and people. In this perspective, democracy is seen or viewed from the point of view of the dominant/ruling classes. It is a modification of a form of class rule which is being demanded, i.e., a form of association or partnership to the possible sharing in the class interests rather than a construction of community solidarity geared towards restricting the ruling class.

Mahmood Mamdani's 'Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, politics, and the War on Terror'

a review by Mandisi Majavu, LibCom (There is more writing by Mandisi Majavu here and two interviews with Ernest Wamba dia Wamba here.) 

In 2002, Mamdani wrote an essay entitled 'Making sense of political violence in Africa', in which he argued that to distinguish between cultural and political identities is to differentiate between self-identification and state-identification. He further pointed out that to historicise political identity through linking it to political power, is to acknowledge that all political identities are historically transitory and all require a form of the state to be reproduced. Furthermore, "when the raw material of political identity is drawn from the domain of culture, as in ethnic or religious identity, it is the link between identity and power that allows us to understand how cultural identities are translated into political identities and thus to distinguish between them" (p. 7).