Stephen Ellis

Worlds of power : religious thought and political practice in Africa

With Christian revivals (including Evangelicals in the White House), Islamic radicalism and the revitalisation of traditional religions it is clear that the world is not heading towards a community of secular states. Nowhere are religious thought and political practice more closely intertwined than in Africa. African migrants in Europe and America who send home money to build churches and mosques, African politicians who consult diviners, guerrilla fighters who believe that amulets can protect them from bullets, and ordinary people who seek ritual healing: all of these are applying religious ideas to everyday problems of existence, at every level of society. Far from falling off the map of the world, Africa is today a leading centre of Christianity and a growing field of Islamic activism, while African traditional religions are gaining converts in the West. One cannot understand the politics of the present without taking religious thought seriously. Stories about witches, miracles, or people returning from the dead incite political action. In Africa religious belief has a huge impact on politics, from the top of society to the bottom. Religious ideas show what people actually think about the world and how to deal with it. Ellis and Ter Haar maintain that the specific content of religious thought has to be mastered if we are to grasp the political significance of religion in Africa today, but their book also informs our understanding of the relationship between religion and political practice in general.

Religion and politics in Sub-Saharan Africa

There is a thriving literature of religious tracts in Africa. The few formal bookshops, and the far more numerous market-stalls and itinerant hawkers who sell books, offer for sale pamphlets and popular works on religious subjects in every country of the continent, it would seem. Some are theological inquiries into aspects of the Bible or the Koran. Others contain moral lessons derived from these sacred books. Perhaps the most common category, however, is testimonies of personal religious experiences. Much of this literature hardly makes its way outside Africa and is only rarely to be found in even the finest Western academic libraries. The most puzzling genre, at least for anyone educated in modern Western academies of learning, is that of the numerous works on witchcraft and other perceived forms of evil, sometimes in the form of a description of a personal journey into a world of spirits. While many pious works on Christianity on sale in Africa are authored by American evangelicals and published in America, popular books on witchcraft and mystical voyages are almost invariably written by Africans and published locally. Similar material is circulated through churches, sometimes in the form of video recordings. This is also true of African-led churches in the diaspora, among African communities on other continents. It is impossible to know with certainty how many people give any credence to stories like these, but the indications are that very many do so. Not only do pamphlets describing mystical journeys appear to circulate in large numbers, but such accounts may clearly be situated within an older tradition of stories about witchcraft and journeys into the underworld which is to be found in collections of folklore and even in the literature of high culture. Studies of churches and of healers in almost any part of Africa indicate that incidents of perceived witchcraft and of shamanism or near-death experiences are relatively common, and probably have been for as long as it is possible to trace. Such evidence may be drawn not just from studies of the pentecostal churches which have attracted so much scholarly interest of late, but also of many other sorts of church including African independent congregations, of Muslim communities and of indigenous religious traditions. Thus, the popular literature written by people who claim to have experienced spiritual journeys or to have expert knowledge of witchcraft is not, we believe, an ephemeral genre but rather represents a modern form of an important tradition of mysticism in Africa.

Of elephants and men: politics and nature conservation in South Africa

South Africas policy of destabilisation of neighbouring countries was closely associated with the rise of South Africa as a leading middleman in the international ivory trade. South African‐based traders, acting in partnership or with protection from officers of the South African Military Intelligence Directorate, imported raw ivory from Angola, Mozambique and points further north and re‐exported it to markets in the Far East. This was a source of income both for the South African secret services and for individuals associated with them. The same trade routes were also used for trade in other goods, including rhino horn, drugs, gems, currency and weapons. This was not only as a means of earning money but also a technique of destabilisation in itself. The extent of South Africas involvement in this trade, although suspected by some conservationists, was difficult to prove and did not form the target of any concerted campaign by the leading conservation groups world‐wide. In this respect, the strength of ...

WRITING HISTORIES OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICA

This essay argues that historians need to engage with the history of contemporary Africa both as a way of throwing new light on Africas more remote past and as a way of understanding the present. It considers how a new generation of works on Africas contemporary history might be written. Most of the examples chosen concern Africa south of the Sahara, but some of the remarks may also apply to North Africa. The essay briefly discusses some of the techniques used in writing contemporary history before going on to examine particular themes that could be addressed in regard to Africa. The second half of the essay concerns the sources that historians of contemporary Africa have at their disposal. Here it is argued that, although sources are abundant, they are not always of a type that historians feel comfortable in using. This may have an effect on the way historians insert Africa in the time-scales generally used in world history, just as it is having an effect on the way in which Africans tend to think of themselves in relation to their own past. Notes, ref., sum

Religion and politics: taking African epistemologies seriously

Religious modes of thinking about the world are widespread in Africa, and have a pervasive influence on politics in the broadest sense. We have published elsewhere a theoretical model as to how the relationship between politics and religion may be understood, with potential benefits for observers not just of Africa, but also of other parts of the world where new combinations of religion and politics are emerging. Application of this theoretical model requires researchers to rethink some familiar categories of social science.

The historical significance of South Africa's third force

Accounts of South Africas transition from apartheid differ markedly in the role they attribute to violence. The most influential narratives of negotiations tend to portray the violence of the transition period, including that perpetrated by those networks within and without the security forces which have become known collectively as the Third Force, as a reaction to events, doomed to failure and rather disconnected from the main narrative of history. Newly available evidence shows the degree to which the Third Force was integrated into the policy of the National Party over a long period, and played a crucial role in determining the nature and outcome of constitutional negotiations in 1990–1994. The consequences of the tactics used by the Third Force, and the legacy of the war for South Africa in general, continue to have an important influence on politics and on society. Analysis of contemporary South Africa can benefit from consideration of the manner in which politics, military activity and crime becam...

Africa Now: People, Policies, and Institutions

Part One States and citizens: Africa in perspective nationalism, ethnicity and democracy youth and violence movements of religious renewal building public morality. Part Two Institutions and policies: the institutional foundations of growth formal and informal economic activities the diversity of adjustment in agriculture constraints on manufacturing production an agrarian continent in transition. Part Three Africa in the world: the crisis of the state regional integration the politics of aid effectiveness some legal aspects of migration Africas future and the world.

THE OKIJA SHRINE: DEATH AND LIFE IN NIGERIAN POLITICS *

The Nigerian police discovered dozens of corpses at a shrine in Anambra State, in southeastern Nigeria, in 2004. There were suggestions in the many newspapers covering the story that these were evidence of what Nigerians call ‘ritual murders’. In fact, the corpses almost certainly were of people who had died elsewhere and been removed to the shrine only subsequently. However, the revelation that senior political figures had attended the Okija shrine and sworn oaths there drew attention to an informal politics in which traditional shrines credited with powers of life and death may play an important role, of interest even to national politicians. Discerning why this is so entails considering the long-term effects of the colonial policy of Indirect Rule and the subsequent development of a clandestine political system in which local religious institutions sometimes play an important role.

Tom and Toakafo: The Betsimisaraka Kingdom and State Formation in Madagascar, 1715-1750

The monarchies and other polities of precolonial Madagascar exerted a strong influence on each other. For this reason, in recent years it has become more interesting to trace their inter-relationship than to emphasize their autonomy. The Betsimisaraka kingdom, which flourished on Madagascars east coast in the early eighteenth century, has generally been regarded as a polity standing rather outside the mainstream of state formation in Madagascar, not least because of the identity of its founder, the son of an English pirate. Research in European and South African archives demonstrates the close connection between the Betsimisaraka kingdom and the Sakalava kingdom of Boina.

The genesis of the ANC's armed struggle in South Africa 1948-1961

Revelations made by veterans of the period, and the opening of various archives, have thrown significant new light on the origins of Umkhonto we Sizwe. It is now clear that the South African Communist Party (SACP) was the first component of the congress alliance to decide to launch an armed struggle against the apartheid state, in late 1960, having consulted the Chinese leader Mao Zedong in person. Only later was the issue debated in the senior organs of the African National Congress and other allied organisations. It has also become apparent that the first commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe, Nelson Mandela, was a member of the SACP. The main thrust of these observations is to demonstrate the degree to which the start of the armed struggle in South Africa was inscribed in the politics of the Cold War.