Lars Buur

Introduction: vigilantism and the policing of everyday life in South Africa

Since the emergence of People Against Gangsterism And Drugs (PAGAD) and Mapogo a Mathamaga 1 in 1996, media, law enforcement and some research‐based NGOs (see for instance Pigou et al. 2001) have s...

New Sites of Citizenship: Recognition of Traditional Authority and Group-based Citizenship in Mozambique *

Since the General Peace Accord of 1992, Mozambique has embarked on a protracted process of democratic decentralisation. The Municipal Law 2 of 1997 made provision for elected local governments in 33 urban municipalities, but not in rural areas. Instead, in the latter a little over 4,000 ‘community authorities’ have been recognised since 2002 following the passing of Decree 15 of 2000. This article examines the implementation and consequences for rural citizenship of this Decree of official recognition to traditional authorities, ‘secretários de bairro’ and other local leaders. Focusing particularly on traditional authorities, we argue that the Decrees community approach to representation both establishes new sites for the production of citizens and institutes a kind of group-based citizenship. It does this by incorporating the rural population into the nation state, not on the basis of the individual membership in the polis, but of membership in a territory-based community. Contrary to recent scholarly celebration of group-based citizenship as representing the accommodation of claims by marginalised groups from ‘below’, the Mozambican case provides an example of group-based citizenship as a ‘top-down’ strategy of the state to regulate and control rural territories and populations. We explore the political implications of this strategy and critically assess how the promise of increased participation of rural communities is being accompanied by a specific Frelimo-state version of the ideal moral citizen community. Criteria of inclusion and exclusion draw on war rhetoric from the 1980s, which presents the governing Frelimo party as pro-development and the opposition party, Renamo, and its supporters as aiming to destroy the positive gains achieved since the end of the civil war.

The politics of industrial policy: ruling elites and their alliances

Economic transformation is driven by successfully implemented industrial policy, but industrial policy is inherently political. We cannot understand why some governments pursue and implement industrial policy better than others without understanding its politics. This article addresses the conditions under which industrial policies are successfully implemented. It presents an analytical approach to understanding why some ruling elite-capitalist alliances lead to better economic outcomes than others. Sub-Saharan African countries present a particular puzzle, given their low productive capabilities and the relatively small number of successful productive sectors. The article examines the most successful productive sectors in Mozambique and in Ghana in order to illuminate the conditions under which such alliances occur and their specific characteristics and outcomes.

Introduction: Traditional Authority and Democratization in Africa

The ambiguous nature of the relationship between traditional leaders and postcolonial states has been a recurring theme in sub-Saharan Africa since the achievement of independence.1 This is due in part to colonial systems of governance, which, through a combination of direct and indirect forms of rule, incorporated traditional leaders as an extension of colonial regimes in order to extract human and natural resources and curb organized resistance (Mamdani 1996; van Nieuwaal and van Dijk 1999; Ray and van Nieuwaal 1996; Mbembe 2001). Although some traditional leaders had assisted liberation struggles across the continent, postcolonial governments mainly saw them as repressive collaborators of the colonial masters and as impediments to the modernization and nation-building projects of the 1960s and 1970s. While not all postcolonial governments officially banned traditional leaders altogether, as Tanzania and Mozambique did, for example, the overwhelming majority comprehensively curtailed their legal powers in local governance, often limiting their role to cultural and spiritual activities (von Trotha 1996: 81).2

Strategic privatisation: rehabilitating the Mozambican sugar industry

This article argues that the rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique cannot be understood without including the active role played by the state and government. It focuses on key aspects of why and how the Mozambican sugar industry was rehabilitated after 1996 with and through foreign direct investments. It challenges the externalist literature on Mozambique that has commonly argued that all policy decisions are enforced by the pressure of well-meaning donors and/or ignorant international financial institutions preparing the ground for large international corporations through neoliberal policies, privatisation and structural adjustment programmes. There can be no doubt that donors in general, international financial institutions, and international capital have had and continue to have considerable influence over economic and industrial policy in Mozambique, but externalist accounts of various persuasions have limitations and tend to present accounts of the Mozambican state and government solely as victims instead of active players.

An uneasy marriage: non-state actors and police reform

This article looks at the inclusion of non-state actors in security sector reform (SSR) programming, specifically when efforts are made to strengthen local-level security through police reform. It explores how the role of non-state actors has been conceptualised vis-à-vis the role of states as providers of security and justice in fragile state settings. It is argued that even though the central role of non-state actors in SSR in general and policing in particular has increasingly been acknowledged, the imperative of state building, which continues to structure SSR, makes non-state actors as providers of security at the local level an uneasy bedfellow. Based on experiences around police reform in sub-Saharan Africa, Sierra Leone in particular, the article illustrates how key personnel and advisers in police programming are aware of the importance to engage communities and develop context-specific programmes, but fall back on state-centric approaches. As will be outlined, there are many reasons for this, including the political context in which SSR is undertaken, pressure to achieve results and the like.

Everyday policing and the occult: notions of witchcraft, crime and “the people”

Informal or communal forms of policing — those we term “everyday” in the Introduction to this volume — draw their legitimacy from two primary sources: they detect, investigate and adjudicate crime, including what falls between the civil and the private domain, and they represent and protect those people ignored by the state and ravaged by criminals. However, two different versions of “the people” seem to exist: on the one hand, “the people” incapable of protecting themselves and, on the other, “the people” who inspire deep fear and anxiety. More than anywhere else, these anxieties crystallise in the fear of the uncontrollable mob. It is this ambivalence between “the people” and “the mob” that is the subject of the following analysis. We will explore how formations of everyday policing — and other representatives of public authority — attempt to manage and control the people they claim to represent and protect. Reference to occult powers, which has emerged in our fieldwork around a variety of different focuses, provides a useful point of departure for understanding the divergent qualities of the “people” and the “mob”.

The Economics and Politics of Local Content in African Extractives: Lessons from Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique

Extractive foreign direct investment (FDI) is heralded as the new development opportunity in Africa. A key precondition for FDIs contribution, however, is that foreign investors create ‘local content’ by linking up to the local economy. Consequently, African host governments are contemplating ways in which they can promote local content. This paper examines local content policies and practices in three African countries – Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique – all countries with huge expectations for extractive based economic development. It is found that in spite of high ambitions and strong expectations, local content is limited, shallow and inefficient. The paper explores why local content apparently is so difficult to achieve in these African countries. It is argued that conventional economic explanations, focusing on market failures and weak institutions, are partial at best and therefore must be complemented with political explanations. Hence, it is proposed that local content practices in the three countries can be understood partly as the results of ruling elites’ efforts to build and maintain stable political coalitions.

Democracy & its Discontents: Vigilantism, Sovereignty & Human Rights in South Africa

This article argues that due to the particular position of crime in South Africa, the resurgence of vigilantism needs to be re-evaluated in light of the countrys attempt at institutionalising human rights as the new societys founding values. Because many township dwellers see vigilantes as their protection against crime, vigilantism should be seen as a criticism of and a comment on human rights as the new expression of the countrys most intimate values. The article begins by introducing an ethnographic case study of a vigilante group from Port Elizabeths townships, which has become incorporated as an official ‘Safety and Security’ structure under the Community Policing Forum. The article suggests that fighting crime relates to wider questions of the perceived need for discipline and corporal punishment in response to the erosion of social authority.

Traditional Authority in Mozambique: The Legible Space between State and Community

This chapter explores the recent state recognition of traditional authority in postwar Mozambique in general and discusses in particular how legislation was implemented in the former rural war zones and opposition strongholds of Sussundenga District, Manica Province. The context for this recognition of traditional authority emerged from a dominant political concern on how to proceed with decentralization in rural areas of postwar Mozambique. In accordance with postwar constitutional commitments to introduce democratic decentralization, a system of locally elected governments (municipios) was approved by Law 2 of 1997. In 1998 this law provided for democratic elections in thirty-three urban municipios. As a consequence, the rural areas, where approximately half the population lives, were deprived of the right to vote for their own local representatives. Instead, legislation addressing decentralization in the rural areas has been confined to deconcentration of the local state administrative system and the formal recognition of community authorities as a result of Decree 15 of 2000.