The Freedom Front Plus: an analysis of Afrikaner politics and ethnic identity in the new South Africa

From the perspective of conflict analysis the main feature of contemporary South Africa is the absence of political violence. Yet it would be naive to think that the new political context is blissful to the point that ethnic tensions or anxieties do not exist. Certainly, for some groups, South Africa is not a place where ethnicity is no longer significant or politically relevant. This article explores contemporary issues relevant to Afrikaner politics and ethnicity in terms of concerns which have been voiced by its political organ – the Freedom Front Plus. The research findings point to the incompleteness of the process of conflict transformation in the country and identify certain factors that have given rise to a mood of alienation among some Afrikaners. Political and cultural disenchantment is manifested in a desire for territorial separatism. By exploring the Afrikaner perspective as it is articulated by the party, this article provides insight into the problems that surround inter-group reconciliation and nation-building in the country.     

Religion,identity and politics in Tanzania

In Samuel Huntington's world of hostile civilisations, Tanzania would fall into the category of a torn country, a battle ground for the forces of African, Western and Islamic meta-cultures to expand their influence. On the surface, this might seem the case. Tanzania is an impoverished country where the benefits of economic liberalisation have reached only a narrow stratum and the fruits of political liberalisation are yet to be seen, placing severe strain on national social cohesion. There is certainly a possibility that pent up economic and political frustrations could be channelled into religious extremist movements. However, religion has not served as a primary fault-line for sustained political violence and conflict, although there are signs that this might be changing. In this paper we argue that uncovering and analysing these relationships elucidates how cross-cutting cleavages complicate the mobilisation of individuals and organised groups based on identity, not only in Tanzania, but in other societies as well.     

State,identity, and the politics of music: Eurovision and nation-building in Azerbaijan

Albeit often – and fairly – degraded in the world of high culture as a populist and politicized representation of music, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) – by sheer virtue of the populist and politicized nature of its essence – stands among the most consequential cultural encounters to which post-independence Azerbaijan has been exposed, in that the extent to which Baku's victory in the ESC-2011 – and the further developments this victory has generated – can potentially impact on, and contribute to, the very process of nation-building and national identity formation, with which this post-Soviet Muslim-majority country is currently struggling, is unparalleled by any of the state's earlier encounters of the kind. This paper focuses on, and examines, four intimately related ways in which the ESC and Azerbaijan's successful involvement with the latter worked to interfere with the country's nation-building: as a dubious factor in the evolution of the Western sense of self among Azerbaijanis; as a unifying force within the structure of the country's rapidly maturing civil society; as a medium working to open up a channel through which Western popular cultural elements could interfere with the evolving dynamics of, and work to globalize, indeed de-endogenize, indigenous Azerbaijani culture, on one hand, and unify the discursive realm within which the country's cultural domain is to further evolve, on the other; and, finally, as an important element serving to decouple the evolving processes within the country's cultural domain from the unfolding dynamics of conflict settlement and hence conducive to the diversification of public discourse in Azerbaijan.     

The politics of HIV/AIDS in South Africa: government action and public response

A decade ago it seemed likely that African governments would be destabilised by the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This article tests some of the presumptions in such forecasting with an examination of the South African case. It begins with an assessment of the effects on the public health system of the South African government’s efforts to cope with the illness. Efforts to implement universal treatment of people who are HIV-positive appear to have strengthened government, while the costs have been affordable. The efforts have extended the embrace of the public health system and prompted the engagement of civil society in policy formation and implementation. Survey evidence suggests that the government has gained public approval and that its health service delivery has become more socially accountable. Civil protest to engender political reforms in the treatment of AIDS patients has enhanced the role of constitutional checks on executive authority.     

Corruption and identity politics in divided societies

Corruption is a major problem for populations in various parts of the world. This article argues that to understand the problems and dynamics of corruption, we need to understand how discourses and practices of corruption (and anti-corruption efforts) are intertwined with the construction and contestations of identity. Identity politics is a salient feature in peaceful political struggles, as well as in contemporary armed conflicts, which are often characterised by the politicisation of collective identity (ethnic, national, religious) for the violent pursuit of power. The article outlines and discusses four ways in which identity politics and corruption intersect. First, it points to the often blurred lines between private and collective benefit from corruption, revealing the implications of group identity for how corruption is conceptualised. Second, it shows how corruption may exacerbate grievances along identity lines. Third, it highlights how corruption can be used strategically in identity-based conflicts. Finally, it explores how corruption may encourage cross-ethnic solidarity and mobilisation that defy conflict divides.     

Historiography and the politics of land,identity, and belonging in the twentieth-century North Caucasus

Intercommunal, socio-economic, and political relations in the North Caucasus have historically revolved around access to this mountain region’s prized pasturage and scarce farmland. Given the centrality of the land question in the North Caucasus, it is unsurprising that historiography on land relations in the region has been highly politicized. This article examines how indigenous writing on the history of land relations in the central Caucasus – a region inhabited by today’s Kabardians, Balkars, Ossetians, Ingushes, and Karachais, and dominated by the princely confederation of Kabarda before the tsarist conquest – has been subject to wide revision in response to changes in local and national political dynamics and the emergence of ethnicized identity politics. In the late-imperial and early Soviet periods, Karachai, Balkar, and Ossetian elites-cum-historians, writing for an audience of imperial policy-makers, crafted histories to influence state policies toward land reform. By the 1930s, historians from the region tailored their histories of land relations to the prerogatives of Soviet nationality policies. The ideas contained in these histories impacted the construction of national identities in the Soviet period. Post-Soviet Karachai and Balkar intellectuals, seeking to establish new post-colonial national histories for their peoples, have reinterpreted the history of land relations in order to depict their ancestors as independent of Kabarda’s land-based dominance. This revisionism is part of the struggle of the Karachais and Balkars against their historiographical erasure, which was a product of the exclusion of the Karachais and Balkars from the family of Soviet nations during their deportation and exile to Central Asia from 1944 to 1957 and their subsequent political and cultural marginalization.     

The new diplomacy of the South: South Africa,Brazil, India and trilateralism

In the aftermath of 9/11 surely of great significance is the reassertion of the South – North divide as a defining axis of the international system. In this context the emergence of a coterie of Southern countries actively challenging the position and assumptions of the leading states of the North is an especially significant event. The activism on the part of three middle-income developing countries in particular—South Africa, Brazil and India—has resulted in the creation of a ‘trilateralist’ diplomatic partnership, itself a reflection of broader transformations across the developing world in the wake of globalisation. This article will examine the rise of the co-operative strategy known as ‘trilateralism’ by regional leaders within the South. Specifically it will look at the relationship between emerging regional powers in the context of multilateralism, as well as at the formulation and implementation of trilateralism. As with previous co-operative efforts in the developing world, the prospects of success are rooted in overlapping domestic, regional and international influences on South African, Brazilian and Indian foreign policies. The article will conclude with an assessment of these influences over the trilateral agenda.     

Sexuality,identity and dissidence: new scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa

In this review essay, I consider three recent monographs on sexuality and sexual cultures in Africa. Each of these three books grapple with the “problem orientation” of scholarship on African sexuality, in which sexuality is conceptualised primarily with reference to AIDS, homophobia and violence. The authors move beyond this problem orientation through a common concern investigating the poles of “modernity” vs “tradition”, “global” vs “local” and “authentic” vs “imported” as these concepts are deployed by activists, policymakers, and ordinary people talking about sex. All three authors also engage the question of how and why social changes happen, treating sexual identities and practices as dynamic, emergent phenomena.     

Cossack identity in the new Russia: Kuban Cossack revival and local politics

This article deals with the problem of contemporary Cossack identities, and discusses the question of popular support for the Kuban Cossack organisation in the southern Russian region, Krasnodar krai. In the early 1990s the Cossack movement gathered between 3.5 and 5 million people, and constituted a significant political movement in post-Soviet Russia. Today, the movement's political force has weakened. In this article it is argued that one important reason for this is the tension between the urban based, official Cossack politics, and the constructions of Cossack identity in rural Cossack settlements (stanitsas). It is further argued that this tension is produced by the Cossacks' historically changing relation towards the state.     

Democracy and the politics of power alternation in Africa

Namibia's Nujoma, Zambia's Chiluba, Algeria's Bouteflika, Togo's Eyadema, Cameroon's Biya, Nigeria's Obasanjo, Niger's Tandja and Uganda's Museveni have all to varying degrees attempted to subvert the democratization process in their respective countries. These however are only a small selection of an increasingly similar pattern of action by incumbents in Africa. What is most troubling to democratic transitionists is a concerted effort by these leaders to curtail their fledgling democracies in the name of their continued ‘service’ to the people. This paper seeks to examine what has enabled an increasing number of African leaders to negate power alternation in favour of open-ended tenures otherwise ‘presidential careerism’. The article argues that while most of these states have been cited for embarking on some semblance of democratic rule, their rulers have utilized their weak democratic institutional structures, co-opted the elite and rallied the ‘mob’ to commit democracy ‘infanticide’.     

Party identity change in post-communist politics: the cases of the successor parties in Hungary, Poland and Russia

In recent years much has been written on the communist successor parties. Although much of the existent work focuses on the electoral performance of these parties or has described, in great detail, the development of single parties, this paper evaluates the utility of theories of party identity change in application to the successor parties. As an initial exploration we investigate the successor parties' programs before and after the initial competitive parliamentary elections in Hungary (in 1990), Poland (in 1991) and Russia (in 1993) to determine the extent to which poor electoral performance in initial competitive elections compelled the successor parties to alter their political identities.