Aseka MahmoodMamdaniAnalysis 1997

Review: Mahmood Mamdani and the Analysis of African Society
Reviewed Work(s): Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late
Colonialism by Mahmood Mamdani
Review by: Eric Msinde Aseka, Bill Freund, Ran Greenstein, Ulf Himmelstrand, Martin
Legassick, Julius E. Nyang'oro and Eddie Webster
Source: African Sociological Review / Revue Africaine de Sociologie , 1997, Vol. 1, No. 2
(1997), pp. 96-144
Published by: CODESRIA
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487367
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
CODESRIA is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to African
Sociological Review / Revue Africaine de Sociologie
This content downloaded from

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
African Sociological Review 1,(2), 1997 pp.96-144.
REVIEW SYMPOSIUM
Mahmood Mamdani and the Anal

of African Society
Mahmood Mamdani. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Afr
Legacy of Late Colonialism. (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power
Kamapala, Fountain Publishers. Cape Town, David Philip. Ja
London. 1996.)
The appearance of this latest book by the Ugandan scholar Mahmood

has evoked much interest among students of African society. Combin
theoretical range with provocative theses regarding the impact of th
state in Africa (South Africa most emphatically included). Citizen an
is a work of synthesis with a purported relevance for the whole of s
Africa. In an attempt to further at least one of Mamdani's aims - th
of the various chasms between South Africa and the rest of the continent - the
African Sociological Review invited a number of well-known academics to
comment on the book. The responses of those who accepted the Review's
invitation follow.
Eric Msinde Aseka

Department of History
Kenyatta University
Nairobi
Kenya
Mamdani's notion of a theoretical impasse between modernists and communi

tarians, Eurocentricists and Africanists is posed not only in terms of the level
of practical politics but also in the perspectival sense. Does this not mark him
as an heir of the impasse philosophy in development theory?
The notion of beyond the impasse has bred a need for the so-called
postimpasse perspective which Hettne (1994) explores in the name of alterna
tive development. Latouche (1993) explores it in terms of postdevelopment
while Escobar (1995) explores it in terms of antidevelopment. There is no
question that the impasse and postimpasse, post-Marxist framework celebrates
and recognises cultural difference, diversity and choice. These are themes that
Citizen and Subject explores in various trajectories of thought.
Brass (1995) calls this brand of postmodernism nothing more than a mere
form of radicalised modernity. He traces Corbridge's efforts to rehabilitate
postmodernism with the impasse/post impasse problematic influenced by John
Roemer of the so-called Rational Choice Marxism. The way Mamdani takes

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
REVIEW SYMPOSIUM 97
on Goran Hyden's notion of the 'ca

that this notion is formulated by
explanation and concludes that Hyd
peasantry in Africa is captured and
ricisation of phenomena by lifting
perfidious. But is this not the same
val of the caricaturism of unilinea
Marxist discourses acknowledges
ralism?
The postmodernist cultural praxis
peasants to whom the village is not ju
and cultural unit possessing a stron
code. Is Mamdani's domain of the cu
state free from the trappings of th
Marxism of John Roemer which
passe/postimpasse problematic was a
with Althusserianism and Neo-Gramscianism.
In the USA, a new thrust of Rational Choice discourse was constituted as
New Political Economy whose adherents were Robert Bates, Samuel Popkin
and Donald Rothchild who exercised great influence on Goran Hyden. Bates
(1981) tries to make an attempt to relate peasant rationality to politics in his
study of failures of agricultural policies in postcolonial Africa. His Rational
Choice approach in Africa found students in Howard Stein, Ernest Wilson,
Catherine Boone and Mark Callagher. He was sceptical of the moral econo
mists and he challenged Goran Hyden's thesis of 'uncaptured peasants'. He
shared Popkin's view of the need to study the rationality of individual action.
Popkin (1979) emphasises that a peasant is a rational solver, with a sense of

both his own interests and of the need to bargain with others to achieve mutually
acceptable outcomes. As such theories of individual decision-making should
be applied to the villages to develop a deductive understanding of peasant
institutions and move the analysis back one step to the level of the individual.
Despite Goran Hyden's criticism of Bates' Rational Choice approach, he relies
heavily on the work of Bates. Citing it, he develops the concept of good
governance itself connoting the conscious management of regime structures
with a view of enhancing the legitimacy of the public realm. Mamdani may be
aware of this history.
Citizen and Subject while castigating the illogicalities of Goran Hyden's
thesis fails to give us the intellectual history in which Hyden's perspectival
impasse is located in the spirit of his edited work (see Mamdani 1995). The
choice theoretical approach is a tradition which inspired the California Series
on Social Choice and Political Economy whose editors are Brian Barry and
Samuel Popkin. A critique of this thinking was made by Mamdani in his 'A

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
98 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW I ,(2)
Glimpse of African Studies, made in the USA', where he dec

succumbing to the pressure of institutional ideologies.
But like the Rational Choice theoretical project, the moral ec
subaltern projects have been imported in Africa as bases of stud
peasant and workers movements by postmodernists. The moral
seen as a kind of consumer protection or enforcement by riots o
quest to maintain the paternalised model. It entails a claim to su
is backward looking and conservative. According to this mo
approach, the stereotypicality of postmodernism with regard to
question is given in terms of the assumption that peasants are
backward because they choose to be on the grounds of conserva
(Staniland 1985). This makes the operation of moral econom
resistance to be mediated in the form of popular culture. Is Mam
praxis epistemologically isolated from this postmodernist agenda
The moral economy project grew out of Rational Choice Marxis
the emergence a new thrust of Rational Choice discourse of John
Jon Elster (see Elster 1986), dosed with neo-classical welfare ec
Hobson, Pigou and Pareto. This American brand of Rational
discourse now constituted as New Political Economy whose adhe
Robert Bates, Samuel Popkin, Donald Rothchild, and Goran
written extensively on the peasantry in Africa. Mamdani has be
these works. Nevertheless, these works provided the planks of e
political conditionalities of S APs and multi-party blue-prints of acco
transparency and good governance for the World Bank and IMF
Elsewhere Mamdani (1996) adopts the subaltern project wh
with the same postmodernist baggage. The subaltern project
domestication of poststructuralism. In Citizen and Subject Mam
highly of poststructuralism. This explains his acceptance of th
notion elsewhere, a notion which describes history as critiqu
imperialism and imperialist knowledge as the subjects of this c
subaltern project began as an intervention in postcolonial Indian
effort to transform the very idea of history itself when the global
come together in the postcolonial scene of writing history. It conceiv
as a problem of method of studying popular culture. Has Mamdan
the trap of history as critique in an attempt to transform hist
sufficient philosophical retooling?
Is Mamdani's anti-analogical writing of history a manifestati
post-structuralist intellectual struggles? The postmodern junkin
after Heidegger, that Nietzschean and Husserlian phenomeno
project was the constitution of the subject in a new concept of be
way of the Nietzschean cultural imperialism. The putting of hist
freezer by poststructuralism and postcoloniality has proven to

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
REVIEW SYMPOSIUM 99
methodological perfidy, hence M

method.
Some methodological retooling took place to rehabilitate history after the
Heideggerian rejection of historicist ideas of history proved untenable. Ludwig
Wittgenstein with his emphasis on language and Walter Benjamin with his
notion of the importance of allegory and narratives in historical explanation
added even more dangerous leaven to the methodological lump (Aseka 1997a).
The reassertion of the place of narratives, metaphors which led Hannah Arendt,
Heidegger's student, to embrace historical imagination and the redemptive
power of narrative (which resonates in the postmodernist Frederic Jameson)
sparked off interesting quests in post-structural deconstructionists like Spivak
and Bhabha in India (Aseka 1997).
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a Marxist deconstructionist critic mooted the
subaltern tradition in an attempt to give voice to the colonial subjects or the
so-called Third World subalterns (Chakrabarty, 1991). In a project which later
finds an African contextualisation of poststructuralism in Mamdani's Citizen
and Subject and 'Genocide and the State' (see Mamdani 1996b) Spivak
attempts to capture the tension between the Western culture and colonised
subjects cultures in terms of what she calls voices of Resistance. To her, the
Subaltern speaks. The colonial subjects are positioned to speak from distinct
but complementary perspectives (see Wald, 1992).
The post-structuralist subaltern lexicon and the retooling of the historical
method in terms of Mamdani's fight against anthropologised history is an
attempt to restore historicity and agency to the subject without transcending
its historicisation of anthropology. He insists that history must be perceived as
a process (Mamdani 1996a) and rejects the tendency to lift a phenomenon out
of context and process thereby privileging the European historical experience
as the historical expression of the universal. This is true given that perceiving
the historical question from the standpoint of narratives and the identification
of the lineage of peasant narratives as discourse is sheer anthropologisation of
history. The post-structuralists cultural praxis reduces and undermines the
logic of historical thought. That is why he calls for a historical analysis to come
to grips with the claims that civil society exists as a fully formed construct in
Africa as in Europe (Mamdani 1996a).
However, one wonders: is ethnic identity the result of a historical process
or is it simply invented by statecraft or imagined by intellectuals? When is the
rural society civil society, peasant, ethnic or tribal? Whose project is the
modernisation in which national culture is explained? These questions are
relevant given that poststructuralism has greatly influenced gender studies and
the study of ethnicity (Frederiksen, 1994). Gender and ethnicity are perceived
as forms of identification alongside other overlapping, fluctuating, shifting and
mutually interlinked identifications such as class, language, religion and social
movement. The fragmentation entailed in this goes too far resulting in the

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
100 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 1 ,<2)
denial of significant structuring of power. Does this not lead to m

cism?
Doesn't Mamdani's fight against unilinearity and the logic of cause and
effect pose grave perspectival difficulties? Is history not both a process and
condition? Every condition bears a dynamic which makes it amenable to the
process of change and every process has the capacity and propensity to generate
multi-directional social changes. The trajectory of each instance of change is
historically significant. The divergence or convergence of social outcomes
depends on the nature of the social or physical media through which they are
mediated, translated or contested and forestalled.
The whole concept of ends and means validates the notion of interlinkages.
Social struggles and conflict are meaningless outside the logic of ends and
means, cause and effect. To deny the logic of cause and effect is to absolve
imperialism of the social impact of its politics in the colonial and postcolonial
eras. Mamdani's bifurcatory colonial policies were causative. The social
ramifications of policy cannot be wished away in a simplistic denial of the logic
of cause and effect.
In Mamdani's (1996a) own view, modern tribalism is more than a historical
phenomenon. It is a contradictory phenomenon which signifies both the form
of rule and the form of revolt against it. Implied in this are the historical
interlinkages that can be drawn which the sheer notion of conjuncture or
disjuncture is bound to miss. The colonial creation of a domain of the custom
ary provided by Mamdani vindicates the cause and effect logic even though
this sounds unpalatable to the poststructural orientation of Citizen and Subject.
Is Leroy Vail (1989) not right in talking about the creation of tribalism?
Without the logic of cause and effect how does one reasonably account for the
politicisation of ethnicity giving the state a fragile base? If ethnicity is a basic
political process how can one explain the spectacle of ethnic strife and tribalism
as concrete realities with the demonstrable capacity for political mobilisation
outside the logicality of cause and effect? How does he explain the ethno-pol
iticisation of the African society as a colonial project? How does he explain
the current call for démocratisation in Africa which is posed in terms of
expected goals of development if the logic of cause and effect is made
repugnant as post-structuralists would have us believe?
Hegemonic construction by the colonial state dealt with the ethnic question
in terms of the native problem. The anticolonial struggle was located in the
quest to eradicate colonial governance conceived in exclusivist terms. He
argues that to understand the form of state forged under colonialism, one has
to place at the centre of the analysis the riddle of the native question, in other
words the problematic of ethnicity. This ends up as a fallback into the
poststructural cultural praxis which needs to be interrogated.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
REVIEW SYMPOSIUM 101
References
Aseka, E.M. 1996. 'On Mamdani's State Power and Political Identity in Pre-Colonial
and Colonial Rwanda'. CODESRIA Bulletin No. 4.
Aseka, E.M. 1997a. 'Perspectival Conflicts in Africa: Understanding the Perfidy of

the Neo-Liberal Project in the Study Social Movements'. Proposed Lecture I,
CODESRIA Governance Institute 1997.
Aseka, E.M. 1997b. 'Reconceptualizing the Political Economy of Ethnicity in Africa'.

Proposed Lecture II, CODESRIA Governance Institute.
Aseka, E.M. 1997c. 'Ethnic Conflict and the Problematic of Governance'. Proposed
Lecture III, CODESRIA Governance Institute.
'Bates, R. 1981. Markets and States in Tropical Africa. Berkeley. University of
California Press.
Brass, T. 1995. 'Moral Economists, Sub-alterns, New Social Movements and the (Re-)
Emergence of a (post-) Modernised (Middle) Peasant', The Journal of Peasant
Studies, Nol,18(2).
Chakrabarty, D. 1991. 'History as Critique and Critique(s) of History', Economic and
Political Week, 14 September.
Escobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the
Third World. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
Elster, J. (ed.) 1986. Rational Choice. Oxford. Blackwell.
Frederiksen, B.F. 1994. 'Gender, Ethnicity and Popular Culture in Kenya', The
European Journal of Research and Development. Vol.6(2).
Hettne, B. 1994. 'The Future of Development Studies', in Forum For Development
Studies Nos. 1 and 2.
Latouche, S. 1993. In the Wake of the Affluent Society: An Exploration of the Post
Development. London. Zed Books.
Mamdani, M. 1990. 'A Glimpse at African Studies Made in the USA'. CODESRIA
Bulletin, No. 2.
Mamdani, M. 1996a. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of
Late Colonialism. London. James Currey.
Mamdani, M. 1996b. 'From Conquest to Consent as the Basis of State Formation:
Reflections on Rwanda', New Left Review No. 216.
Popkin, S. 1979. The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in
Vietnam. Berkeley. University of California Press.
Scott, J. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in
South-East Asia. New Haven. Yale University Press.
Staniland, M. 1985. What is Political Economy? A Study of Social Theory and
Underdevelopment. New Haven. Yale University Press.
Vail, L. (ed.) 1989. The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. London. James
Currey.
Wald, A. 1992. 'The Subaltem Speaks', Monthly Review.
Wood, E.M. 1989. 'Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle?' New
Left Review No. 111.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
102 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 1 ,(2 )
Bill Freund
Department of Economic History
University of Natal, Durban
South Africa
At the start of the current decade, the big buzz in African development debates
was démocratisation; an uneven but significant movement towards the démo
cratisation of African states seemed to be underway with considerable pressure
from the USA and the World Bank. One source of this book lay in a critique
of démocratisation as defined by liberals; Mahmood Mamdani has been an
important voice expressing skepticism about the depth, endurance and sophis
tication of this trend. Today there is not very much left of the démocratisation
initiative outside of South Africa, in particular of the formulaic chant for the
imitation of Western political institutions but Mamdani's exciting Citizen and
Subject emerges as a study of paradigmatic significance that will endure longer.
At the heart of Mamdani's argument about démocratisation lay the view that
the nature of the movement tended to confine it to the urbanised circuits where
some kind of civil society could flourish. Most Africans, however, live outside
of those circuits in a social world which is not genuinely 'traditional' but rather
what he calls a 'decentralised despotism' that has its origins in the colonial
period. Seen from the economic and administrative capital, colonial Africa was
a centralised and racist despotism even if it operated in the name of European
states that were themselves increasingly democratic in character. However, the
limited level of economic penetration, the absence of personnel, the need to
obtain some kind of local consent, resulted in the creation of a legal and
administrative framework in which so-called traditional authorities governed
a formally free peasantry from whom only a limited amount of land was
alienated and where access to land was granted through 'customary' channels.
Coercive labour systems together with intensifying cash needs pushed individ
uals out from this system into producing for a capitalist world economy but
security pulled them back again. The characteristic corresponding politics
which emerged was the 'creation of tribalism', the development of a recognis
able ethnic or tribal consciousness.
Thus far Mamdani coincides well with some of the best current writing on
colonial Africa, such as that of Lonsdale on Mau Mau and settler society in
Kenya, Phillips on what she calls the enigma of colonialism and, most recently,
Cooper's re-examination of labour and decolonisation. However in this book
he takes his argument through to the present. He argues that post-colonial
regimes failed to break the real distinction between citizen and subject (a
distinction which was a key legal concept in French and, by imitation, Por
tuguese, colonial policy). They retained a 'regime of differentiation' whilst
deracialising the colonial state; no thorough-going démocratisation of local
politics in the countryside took place. Conservative polities have rested on old

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
administrative structures, more or less

rivalries while radical states, such
zambique, attempted to change thin
ultimately unsuccessfully, through s
grasp of the need for transformation
If Jean-Francois Bay art is right in t
modernisation with a 'realist' under
twentieth century African politics i
rather to explain clientelism as the wa
with, and try to govern, the countr
has been met with violent resistance
resistance that cannot embody a ne
used as an explanation of the total c
such as Liberia or Somalia but, in m
increasingly disorientated and decen
state with no serious challenge. Fro
Mamdani also opens fresh ground. H
ket that has so influenced developm
writing of Berg and Bates is a false
intersected with the consequences fo
Mamdani, who is presently Profess
of Cape Town, has as one of his ambi
studies into the African whole. To be
Africa and especially the Shepstone sys
rule' and 'association' systems that w
throughout Africa. The contrasting sy
doors to African citizen participation
ous Africans were conquered in the
to dominate the peasant economy; by t
lost out as an alternative model. He
post-colonial African situation a der
certainly right that what was distincti
in racism or even (entirely) in the exp
in the continuation of a 'traditional ' s
of the black population outside the m
One quibble that one may have with
aspect of apartheid to the system and
did diminish as South Africa became
for the B antustans containing residen
inexorably declined. Mamdani obser
from the vantage point of Durban, the
a clientelist party, the Inkatha Freed
power strictly through the rural vote,

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
of Johannesburg from whence much of the terrible counter-revolut

violence of the time emanated. Today's perspective would perhaps be
different as a new order settles down. The survival of decentralised des
with a lot of encouragement from Pretoria, was a critical factor but it
unable to stop the momentum of the ANC for long. In Mamdani's ter
apartheid was effectively fought and undermined by those who suff
directly from the 'direct despotism' of the townships where attempt
assimilate rural forms of control collapsed early. From the current v
point, it is clear that the cities have won. Even in Kwa Zulu-Natal, the
Metropolitan government, dominated by the ANC, is beginning to lo
more dynamic as it is wealthier, than the IFP dominated provincial governm
The ANC in power certainly temporises with the world of pseudo-trad
authority in rural areas but there is some reason to hope that this surprisin
cautious and pragmatic regime will gradually impose the national lega
for land ownership and gender equality, amongst other key variables,
old Bantustans in time.
In the remainder of Africa, Mamdani considers a number of popular
movements with a rural base as challenging in an interesting way the regimes
of deracialised apartheid. With his Ugandan background, he focusses espe
cially on the long-standing Ruwenzururu movement in the south-western part
of that country and on the struggle of the National Resistance Army in the
Luwero Triangle during the 1980s which first brought Yoweri Museveni to
power. These are movements that at once challenged the inequities of the local
social order and the tyranny of a centralist state ruling by decree or through
corrupt patrimonial networks in the countryside. He sees them as innovative
and path-breaking if not without contradiction although the lack of a national
plan for democratising society in his view provided limits to their impact. This
line of argument is provocative, even inspiring but it remains sketchy. Skeptics
may feel that Mamdani underestimates the power in meaning and efficacy of
the social bonds that tie up rural African lives.
It is perhaps a particular irony of the present that precisely the champions
of multi-party democracy and 'civil society' of five to eight years ago are now
looking to the Rwandas, the Ugandas and the Eritreas as the new models for
Africa although the heritage of the Cold War makes such a shift difficult for
them (as well as their radical critics) to theorise. Perhaps considering this latest
development will be one factor as Mamdani continues to flesh out and expand
on the major ideas which should have a galvanising effect on the study of
contemporary African politics.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
Ran Greenstein
tducation rolicy Unit
University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa
Few books in recent times have aroused interest and have generated productive
debates in the fields of African and South African studies to the same extent
as Mahmood Mamdani's Citizen and Subject. Published only a year ago in
mid-1996, it has become a landmark study, the impact and import of which
extend well beyond the boundaries of the academic arena. In the short time
since his move to South Africa its author, currently the Director of the Centre
for African Studies at the University of Cape Town, has managed to begin the
task of re-orienting South African scholarship towards its African regional and
continental contexts, and re-positioning academic and intellectual life within
a new framework that is firmly grounded in the African environment.
The positive response to Mamdani's efforts is a testimony to the thirst felt
in some South African circles for more substantial and vibrant contacts with
the rest of the continent, a feeling reciprocated by African academics though
not always for the same reasons. The material advantages enjoyed by South
African institutions relative to those of most of their African counterparts
started drawing large numbers of academics to these shores well before the
demise of apartheid. With the political changes of the 1990s the attractions of
South Africa increased even further, notwithstanding the consistent cuts in
higher education budgets in the last few years which show every sign of
continuing into the short and medium-term future. With very few exceptions
though the impact of African scholars on the domestic scene has been minimal.
Perhaps the best known African academic in South Africa - a Nigerian
professor of literature at the University of the Western Cape - owes his fame
not so much to his considerable scholarly output as to his role in a highly
popular TV commercial. The reception of Mamdani and his work thus repre
sents a major step forward in the formation of intellectual links between
Africa-wide and South African based scholars and political analysts. It heralds
a new era of exchange and co-operation across the Limpopo in the spirit of the
book's objective 'to bring some of the lessons from the study of Africa to South
African studies and vice versa' (p.8).
That an attempt to forge such links is long overdue is a notion recognised
by many, though very few have taken this road so far. The course taken by
political developments in South Africa since the 1950s is chiefly responsible
for this state of affairs. The move by the apartheid government to deny
indigenous people any form of representation in the central structures of power,
and the reinforcement of white supremacy at a time it was beginning to crumble
elsewhere, can be contrasted with the trends towards decolonisation that
became evident in the rest of the continent. During the two decades following

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
106 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 1,(2)
the implementation of apartheid in South Africa African coun

marching forward to a future characterised by political indepe
though independence was accompanied by continued economic
and by other social problems, the specific problem of white dom
not among them. South Africa on the other hand was undergoin
conflict focused precisely on this issue, and it became clear that
emancipation would take a form that was bound to be different fro
in Africa. An analogy drawn at the time, primarily by the soc
relations literature popular in the 1960s, classified South Africa t
other societies that had substantial white settler populations, su
Algeria, British Rhodesia and Portuguese Angola. The demise of t
by 1980 seemed to have left South Africa alone in a state of inglorio
from its natural habitat, having more in common with the USA wit
of racial segregation and civil rights struggles, or with societies
political crises in the context of settler rule, such as northern
Israel/Palestine, than with any of its neighbours.1
And yet, with all the important ground covered by studies a
comparative lines as indicated above, a critical question was neg
majority of South Africans are indigenous Africans whose mode
and social organisation, cultures, identities, religions, languages,
artistic expression show significant affinities with those of th
neighbours. Colonial rule in South Africa was moulded by the im
challenges of rule over large populations whose ways of life exh
patterns to those found in other parts of the continent. Geogr
environmental challenges have also linked South Africa to its nei
in the sphere of economic organisation and development, in whic
capitalism is supposed to operate independently of consideration
the quest for profits, South African history has been given a spe
its African circumstances. That these African connections and a
not occupied a prominent role in academic work in South Africa
do with mere failure to recognise their existence. Rather it is th
agendas that dominate scholarly life, and the social and political
underpin them, that are central to our understanding of why
occupied a marginal analytical role. There is thus a need for a
shift in the conceptual and analytical relations between South Africa
at large.
Citizen and Subject is perfectly positioned to contribute to s
Standing at the intersection of African and South African stud
the intersection of global and local academic networks, in both t
personal terms, Mamdani produced a piece of work that is inf
analytical, descriptive and prescriptive. It is the first major study t
South Africa in a systematic manner as one among many Afri
facing the challenges of colonial rule and its post-colonial afte

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
such it opens new avenues of debate

scholarly agendas in years to come. Wh
open to challenges on a number of gro
this article, it is an important and just
Three main goals inform the book
contemporary African politics - modes
ance - by tracing their origins to the col
African experience within a Pan-Africa
the generic form of the African colonial
incorporate the lessons of democratic f
a progressive link between the urban a
are examined in a framework that insists
as a unit of analysis, looking at its exper
nor routine and banal, but rather as a p
that can be approached with universal
retain historical specificity and not obl
same time that it avoids becoming idio
to enter a dialogue with global scholar
The structure of state power in co
derived from the imperatives of dealin
colonial empires offered remarkably s
how to maintain foreign control over
under different names, the policy applied
was that of indirect rule. It consisted
rulers - Native Authorities - who exe
name of custom and tradition. Alongsi
controlled directly by the governmen
residing in the countryside were subjec
refers as decentralised despotism, bac
urban domination and civil society wer
from white settlers and officials - rural
and overall colonial rule thus was med
organised local powers. The co-existen
nation under a single hegemonic aut
bifurcated state.
Resistance to domination was natura
power it sought to displace. For most
cised by their local ethnically-defined Na
opposition to it was also ethnically and
was an urban affair that managed at tim
a string of ethnic civil wars - but was st
thus was simultaneously a dimension
well as of resistance to colonial rule. This

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
108 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 1 ,(2)
specific nature of the local state, which was organized not as a racial
denying rights to urbanized subjects, but as an ethnic power enforcing
on tribespeople' (p.21), and is one of the most enduring legacies of the
state.
As both power and resistance were structurally differentiated into urban and
rural dimensions in the colonial era, the post-colonial state could not be
reformed unless both dimensions were tackled together: the central state and
civil society had to be deracialised, and the local state and customary power
had to be democratised and detribalised. The first task was accomplished with
independence, through processes of Africanisation and indigenisation that
made urban residents citizens, but the second has been accomplished to date
only rarely, leaving most rural residents as subjects. The few attempts to
democratise the local state, most noticeably in Museveni's Uganda, have not
been accompanied by the formation of representative structures at the central
level.
At the root of Africa's contemporary political crisis, then, is this disjuncture
between the two processes. In particular, the failure to transform colonial
relations of domination in the countryside has proved a serious obstacle to
démocratisation as 'the Africa of free peasants is trapped in a nonracial version
of apartheid' (p.61); despite the euphoria of liberation, there is no reason to
suppose that South Africa will be immune to its harmful consequences. While
the political centre of gravity in South Africa is urban, and urban-based
movements played a crucial role in the demise of apartheid, the lack of attention
to rural power relations may prove the undoing of the considerable achieve
ments of the démocratisation process. The lessons of Africa are thus vital to
all those interested in preventing South Africa from embarking on the same
road towards democratic dissolution taken by many of its neighbours.
Mamdani's thesis as outlined above is clear, full of insights, theoretically
sophisticated, and powerfully argued. His argument for looking at South Africa
as one among many African societies and states facing similar problems and
opportunities - its unique racial structure notwithstanding - is particularly
welcome at the current conjuncture, as it offers a fresh perspective on the
challenges of development in the post-Cold War world. At the same time, the
thesis presents certain difficulties of a methodological, historical and theoreti
cal nature. It is to the exploration of these that I now turn.
Methodological Considerations
The most obvious feature of the book is that it works through a series of
dichotomies that are being marshalled forward only to be debunked by the
author as simplistic. While Mamdani criticises the common thinking about
Africa that uses such binary terms as pagan and religious, ritual and culture,
crafts and arts, vernacular and linguistic discourse, savage and civilised, his

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
own analysis proceeds through a ser

might be useful from the point of vie
ing crucial distinctions, but frequen
and organised to be entirely convinc
On one side of the debate on Africa's future we have Eurocentric modernists
who focus on civil society and the urban sector, they use a discourse of rights
and call for politically representative structures, they are proponents of modern
law, nationalism and direct their efforts at citizens. On the other side, we have
Afrocentric communitarians who focus on tribal communities and the rural
sector, they use a discourse of culture and call for politically participatory
structures, they are proponents of customary law, ethnicity and direct their
efforts at subjects. Once this elaborate binary structure is in place, Mamdani
steps in and proposes to transcend it by forging links across the divide. This
could be a sensible analytical strategy if this sharply-drawn divide was not
constructed by the author himself in the first place.
Each of the dichotomies above is problematic on its own, and the problem
is compounded when they appear in combination. Modernists do not necess
arily ignore culture and the need for meaningful participation in structures of
power, nor do communitarians necessarily uphold cultural specificity to the
exclusion of national identity and politically representative democracy.
Afrocentrists come in many varieties, the majority of whom do not posit the
tribe or the ethnic group as a focus of identity, nor do they adhere uncritically
to real or imagined traditions. Modem and customary laws can be combined
in different ways and their advocates do not usually see themselves as mutually
exclusive camps. Recent debates on the role of customary legal arrangements
and the formation of houses of traditional leaders in the framework of the new
constitution in South Africa (and Namibia before it) may not reflect the
situation in other parts of the continent; they demonstrate, however, that the
enormous diversity of attitudes towards the relations between 'modernity' and
'tradition' cannot be reduced to the stark choices of the 'either or' variety
attributed to them by the book.
The point here is not merely that reality always is infinitely more compli
cated than theoretical models. Of greater concern is the extent to which the
long series of binary oppositions displayed by the book tends to flatten
arguments - define problems, formulate questions, propose solutions - in ways
that are not conducive to addressing debates on their full complexity. The
question of custom and tradition in the making of the African state is an instance
of this approach, as will be argued in more detail later in this article.
A second methodological point is the tendency to conflate official decrees
with realities on the ground. Mamdani frequently quotes legislation and
regulations as evidence of colonial policies, without exploring the gap between
written laws and actual practice, and the range of adaptations of policy to local
constraints. For example, prohibitions on polygamy and the payment of

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
110 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 1 ,(2 )
bridewealth in the nineteenth-century southern African Boer republi

taken as if they were actually implemented (or even implementable), r
than having been no more than wishful thinking reflecting the puritan
the Republican legislatures (pp.91-2). They had no power to enforce th
regulations and there is little evidence that they made any effort to contro
matters. Official statements of intent are important, no doubt, but we have
distinguish, as the book does not always do, between policy as planned
policy as implemented. It is the latter that is of most importance, and legisl
in itself does not constitute evidence of it.
The third methodological point, related to the previous two, is the virtual
absence of intermediate space between the poles of domination and resistance,
manipulation and authenticity. Ethnicity and tribalism are seen as either
operating in the service of colonial and post-colonial domination, or as media
through which resistance to power is articulated. Most people, most of the time,
however, do not live at these poles, nor is their location between them always
important to our understanding of the roles custom and tradition play in their
lives. Rather, it is the dull compulsion of everyday realities, including but not
restricted to political relations, that shapes people's interests, modes of organi
sation, and identities. In focusing almost exclusively on moments of political
crisis - in the formation and dismantling of power - the book no more than
skirts the terrain on which most social interaction is conducted. This omission
hampers its ability to offer a comprehensive discussion of matters of social and
cultural interest that are of importance in themselves as well as in their
implications for political developments.
Custom and Tradition
Since the notions of customary power and decentralised despotism are crucial
to the book's thesis, it would be useful to address them in more detail here.
Mamdani argues that the colonial notion of the customary, which served as a
justification for the form of indirect rule imposed in Africa, does not reflect
the historical reality of pre-colonial traditions. Rather it is a manipulation of
elements that were selectively extracted from the legacy of the 19th-century
African conquest states, with their monarchical, patriarchal and authoritarian
orientation. It thus was an ideological construct rather than a true relic of an
untainted past: 'More than reflecting a slice of reality in the collage that was
nineteenth-century Africa, the colonial notion of the precolonial was really a
faithful mirror reflection of the decentralized despotism created under colonial
rule' (p.39). In other words, far from being the foundation for the system of
political tribalism, custom and tradition were created by it. They served to
sustain politically oppressive relations in the colonial period, and they continue
to do so in the post-colonial period as well.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
The colonised African, defined and

more fully encapsulated in customari
sor or, for that matter, any contemp
argues Mamdani, was the result of E
indigenous people in the most effecti
devised with regard to Africa and n
successful here, so much in fact that th
reinforced with the demise of colonialis
that facilitated the use of custom, t
reflected only the colonial mode of
African past?
Posing the questions above should a
in a wider theoretical framework de
colonial and the pre-colonial. Althoug
not invent tradition from scratch bu
extracted elements taken from the n
sequent account leaves the reader wit
been unilaterally imposed on their pe
no inputs of their own into the definit
taken into consideration any vie ws ' fr
strategies. In other words, the process
with no regard to the human and cul
implemented. If this was the case, o
resulted in such an effective and resi
peasants and other indigenous people
maintenance of tradition would make
Force has been used indeed to sustain
times, but we have to go beyond it to
Mamdani maintains that for peasant
and absolute, unchecked and unrestr
nonracial version of apartheid' (p.61 ). G
has given rise to intense social and p
unclear from this account why the s
in situations of acute crisis. Between
one hand and (possibly) false consciousn
from this perspective. To break out o
begin looking at the role of tradition
peoples' histories and identities.
Even if we adopt the notion that t
power, such an operation must resonate
affected by it, and incorporate some of
and where they are headed - in shor
effective. Otherwise, it would be no m

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
effort that would crumble whenever the repressive apparatus of

loosens its control. The illegitimacy of power would be transparent
ever ready to erupt. In the colonial Indian context this state of a
referred to as 'domination without hegemony', as Ranajit Guha o
tern Studies group put it. While this might apply to the relation
indigenous people and the colonial authorities in Africa, it is doubtf
the same would be true for their relations with the post-colonial i
authorities, whether in town or in country.
In this context it will be of great interest to study the recent event
(which have resulted in its transformation into the Democratic Republi
Congo), and more broadly in the Great Lakes region as a whole, t
well the model fits these developments. Under what conditions pow
illegitimate, what is the social basis of revolt, how urban, rural a
structures of power fit into the picture, and what impact do reg
international contexts have, are questions that pose a critical cha
explanatory frameworks. The book would provide useful answers,
but it would not capture the complexity of power relations with it
of all urban-based issues to the question of civil rights, and all ru
issues to the Native Authorities and their complicity with coloni
colonial exploitation. By denying the indigenous foundations o
tradition, and identity, the book ignores an important voice that go
making of power in Africa.2
The Powers of Colonialism
Perhaps part of the problem here is Mamdani's view of colonialism as an

all-powerful historical force that managed to eliminate or transform all that had
existed and mattered to people before it. It clearly was not merely an episode
in African history, nor was it compatible with the continuity of traditional
institutions under its rule, as the common Africanist wisdom of the 1960s had
it.3 Rather, like the Communist Manifesto's Bourgeoisie, which had pitilessly
torn asunder all motley pre-capitalist ties, Citizen and Subject's Colonialism
has swept all pre-existing powers before it to reshape African society and state
on new foundations. Unlike the bourgeoisie, though, colonialism was careful
not to create a world after its own image, but rather to entrench Africa's
difference to facilitate its rule. Of course, we know now that the extent of
penetration of capitalism, and the degree to which it had indeed obliterated al
that preceded it, have been uneven and have not resulted in that complete
transformation envisaged by Marx and Engels even by the late twentieth-cen
tury, let alone by mid nineteenth-century. The question then is if our view of
colonialism should be informed by this realisation.
Mamdani's answer is No. Whether it had been around for centuries with
relatively favourable demographic, economic and power relations vis-a-vis the

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
indigenous populations (as in southe

and west African coasts), or whether
areas in the interior of the contin
colonial mode of rule basically was
thus have not made much difference
faced with a diversity of pre-colon
and constraints at home, operating
tional scene, managed to produce a
the outcomes of the colonial encou
difficult claim to sustain; it could be
us today is whether African state
variants of the same social form, r
and trajectories.
In a study covering some similar
focus, Crawford Young argues th
legacies and indigenous traditions
political species with a singular his
this distinctive character are the sp
ruthlessness of the extractive action,
people into the labour market, the
crucial role of race in the colonial p
capacity to resist the cultural onsl
None of these factors was entirely un
they created a specific political trajec
code for the new states of Africa w
the womb of the African colonial s
combination of the colonial legacy,
the patronage system of political m
ism, state assault on a weakened civ
corruption.
Mamdani, in contrast to Y oung, adds an important distinction between rural
and urban modes of rule as a key to understanding both the colonial legacy and
post-colonial political realities. Both of them, however, focus almost exclu
sively on the impact of colonial policies and fail to recognise the capacity of
indigenous forces to absorb and thereby shape and modify colonial challenges,
rather than submit to or copy them wholesale. A different and more productive
approach to the relations between colonial and indigenous inputs is offered by
Terence Ranger who, in a self-critique of his own previous notion of the
invention of tradition, suggests multiple imaginations of power in tension with
each other, and a pluralism of voices 'before, during and after colonialism'5.
Taking this approach as a starting point, we can conceptualise African politics
today as a contested terrain in which elements of continuity and change with
the pre-colonial and colonial pasts, and multiple languages of power, compete

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
over legitimacy, authority and popular allegiance. From this per

cmcial point is to look at the articulation of voices from different b
rather than order them hierarchically or define some of them as
others. Tradition, tribalism, ethnicity and identity thus come into t
as undiluted relics of the past but as active forces, the roots of w
old but the relevance of which is contemporary.
The Politics of Ethnicity

The point raised above is relevant in particular to the last section of
Subject, that dealing with contemporary resistance. Mamdani a
power in colonial Africa and under apartheid shifted from the
language of race to the use of the language of tribe as a mode of
and control. The Native Authorities that were the effective powers a
of the local state made custom, tradition and tribalism the foundatio
rule. Resistance to that rule was inevitably confined to its param
therefore manifested itself as a series of ethnic civil wars. In the ca
Africa, Mamdani argues, the revolts of the 1950s and 1960s in
Sekhukhuneland and Pondoland, and later struggles against hom
orities in the 1970s and 1980s, were instances of this general tren
of all these as ethnic civil wars is problematic, however.
Mamdani's reluctance to explore the identity dimensions of eth
him see in it a political tool, a medium of oppression or emancipation
else. It is not clear what is specifically 'ethnic' - as opposed to loc
- in the peasant revolts he discusses. To justify this label, one must d
that they involved contestation over the meanings of ethnic or t
and its relations to other identities, the use of ethnic and traditi
the validity of customary law, the boundaries of the group, the
ethnic leadership, the need to change or stick with traditional w
over land and taxation do not become ethnic merely by the fact
circumscribed to a locality that was defined by the apartheid au
homeland, even if those involved were all ethnically similar. N
revolts encompassed members of the ethnic group beyond the b
the 'reserve', nor were all those who took part in them necessaril
ethnicity. To call the Pondoland revolt for example ethnic, Pondo ide
- in and outside of the reserve - would have to have been a centr
the revolt as far as the participants in it on all sides were concer
well have been the case, but no evidence to support this is provided
nor does it seem that the issue is considered to be of much impo
overall thesis.
The marginal role of identity from this perspective can be gau
by the discussion of the Ugandan National Resistance Army - N
217). The success of the NRA in forging an alliance between indi

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
of various ethnic groups and migran

basis of rights from the exclusive a
inclusive and generalisable one of lab
ethnicity to class. This apparently sim
it provides answers. How did they m
virtually every left-wing movement in
Did it only take a conscious decision
to work? If this was the case, why d
Can it be replicated everywhere at w
the strategy likely to work and what
facilitate it? Is ethnic identity an expe
once questions of land and labour be
almost universally prominent why doe
It is a further curious feature of th
South Africa, that the one case for w
most appropriate - the Kwazulu-Nat
the Rand in the early 1990s - is not an
with many other South African scho
had anything to do with Zulu ide
exclusively in terms of migrancy,
relations. The failure of township
unions to cater for the specific needs
what was the single most important
apartheid era.
The obvious methodological problem with this analysis is that one cannot
explain specific outcomes by using non-specific factors. Why did the conflict
affect Kwazulu-Natal only and not other parts of the country, subject to the
same social forces, and why did Zulu and not other migrants participate in the
conflict? Mamdani's answer is that the vibrancy of the rural economy of
Kwazulu, as compared to its demise elsewhere and in particular the Transkei,
is the reason why Zulu migrants feel most strongly about the need to retain
their dual basis in country and town. This explanation is not convincing. No
comparative data on agricultural viability in the various homelands is provided,
nor is it reasonable to treat diverse areas as Kwazulu, the Transkei and the
Northern Province as if they were internally undifferentiated. It is also not clear
why the question of the role of the Zulu king should occupy a prominent role
in the conflict and in the consciousness of its participants, if the 'real' issue
was hostel versus family accommodation. Further, for most of the period, with
the exception of 1990-92, rural Kwazulu has been at the centre of conflict -
how can the relations between hostel dwellers and township residents, then,
explain violence there? And how can it explain conflict in the Durban town
ships between established residents of different political persuasions? While
claiming to highlight the role of history and culture in political conflict, Citizen

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
and Subject falls prey to the same identity-avoidance syndro

afflicted South African scholarship for many years. Without in
ethnicity and identity into the analysis on their own terms - ra
proxies for other social forces - the value of analyses of this
continue to be limited.
Beyond the specific criticisms of aspects of the book, it must be reiterated
that even when its arguments can lead to disagreements, they are always
provocative, stimulating, and challenging. The test of all good scholarship is
not in providing definite answers to old questions, but in opening up new
questions, and pointing to avenues of investigation hitherto unexplored. This
test Citizen and Subject passes with distinction.
Looking at it from the perspective of scholarship in and on South Africa,
there is no doubt that the book is a significant contribution to debates on the
nature of the South African politics, in its apartheid and post-apartheid states.
By inserting South African debates into the field of study of Africa as a whole,
and by bringing some of the insights of African studies to the understanding
and analysis of South Africa, Mamdani has assisted in the academic and
intellectual reintegration of South Africa into its rightful place on the continent,
and in the liberation of its scholarship from the insularity that has characterised
it. It can only be hoped that he will continue to be making his impact felt on
the field in coming years.
Notes
1. For further discussion of comparative issues see R. Greenstein, 'Race, Identity,

History: South Africa and the Pan-African Context', in Comparative Perspectives
on South Africa, edited by R. Greenstein (Basingstoke, 1993).
2. For a historically-focused analysis of the relations between colonial and pre-co
lonial voices in an African context see Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: the
Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA,
forthcoming).
3. See J.F.A Ajayi, 'Colonialism: An Episode in African History', in P. Duignan and
L. Gann (eds), Colonialism in Africa, 1870-1960, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1969),
pp.497-509.
4. C. Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven,
1994), p. 283.
5. T. Ranger, 'The Invention of Tradition Revisited', in Legitimacy and the State in
Twentieth-Century Africa, edited by T. Ranger and O. Vaughan (Basingstoke,
1993), p.80.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
Ulf Himmelstrand
Department oj sociology
Box 821
S-751 08 UPPSALA
Sweden
Before I started reading the book under review, having it visibly placed on my
table for several days, I did not notice its rather abstract title at first, but only
the picture dominating its front cover - a ruler's tabouret of native African
design with two symbolic figures standing up to serve as a support for the back,
probably a rather uncomfortable support, and there below two miniature
soldiers with guns presumably watching over the feet of the ruler. Perhaps a
Yoruba or Bini design; I don't know and there is no indication in the book
about its origin. At the moment of writing this review I am located in the wintry
north of Sweden, without access to my personal library where I could have
checked the origin of what would seem to be a traditional royal stool.
My point in mentioning the fact that I noticed the title of the book under
review much later than the image on its front cover is simply that this is a book
which attempts to combine both vividly pictorial case studies and arousingly
descriptive documentation with the kind of abstract theoretical analyses asso
ciated with the two concepts in the title of the book. Once you open the book
and start reading it, the theoretical analysis focusing on the historical and
contemporary implications of the concepts of Citizen and Subject come to the
forefront. In fact the first introductory chapter of 34 pages summarises most
of the theoretical analysis of the book. This is done in a rather abstract manner
which occasionally makes for tough reading. But repeatedly the persistent
reader is rewarded with beautifully crisp and well stated sentences which
summarise the gist of the main argument. I will quote a few of those sentences
where they fit in most naturally in my attempt to summarise the main arguments
of the book.
First of all I will quote one of the questions which has guided the labours of
the author: 'To what extent was the structure of power in contemporary Africa
shaped in the colonial period rather than born of the anticolonial revolt?' This
question contains a pivotal historical distinction which has guided a great deal
of Mamdani's analysis - the distinction between what was created already in
the colonial period, and what emerged only in the struggle against colonialism.
Here another quote which also refers to this distinction: 'The form of rule
shaped the form of the revolt against it'. Colonial rule came first, and took the
form called 'indigenous rule' - particularly in the British colonies. Initiated in
India and in the colony of Natal it attained its fully-fledged form in equatorial
Africa and then spread to the north as well as back to the south, to South Africa
where it already had an ideological footing in the call for institutional segre
gation and Native Authorities - what soon became Apartheid. 'As a form of

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
rule, apartheid - like the indirect rule colonial state - fractured the r
ruled along a double-divide: ethnic on the one hand, rural-urban
hand'.
Indirect rule reinforced institutions of control that were ethnically, and in
some cases religiously bound, and thereby indirectly also the ethnic or religious
shape of resistance against such control. 'Ethnicity (tribalism) thus became to
be simultaneously the main form of colonial control over 'natives' and the form
of revolt against it'. What emerged in the struggle against colonialism and also
in later post-colonial developments was not shaped, primarily, in that struggle
itself but by the preceding patterns of colonial rule.
Mamdani questions the common tendency to look at Apartheid as an
instance of 'South African exceptionalism'. It is not Apartheid which makes
South Africa exceptional, Mamdani maintains - in spite of 'its particularly
cruel twist' in attempting 'artificially to deurbanize a growing African popu
lation' - but rather three or four other circumstances: its semi-industrialisation,
semi-proletarianisation, semi-urbanisation and the strength of its civil society,
both white and black. The sheer numerical size of the white-settler population
in South Africa and its civic organisation distinguishes it from settler minorities
elsewhere in Africa; and the strength of black civil society has manifested itself
not only in the every-day activities of trade unions but also in the urban
uprisings following in the wake of Soweto 1976 - a shift from the armed
struggle of exile-based forces to a popular struggle from within.
The strength of urban forces and civil-society based movements in South Africa meant
that unlike in most African countries, the center of gravity of popular struggle was in
townships and not against Native Authorities in the countryside. The depth of resistance
in South Africa was rooted in urban-based worker and student resistance, not in the
peasant revolt in the countryside. Whereas in most African countries the formation of an
indigenous civil society was mainly a postindependence affair, following the deracializ
ation of the state, in South Africa it is both cause and consequence of that deracialization.
(P-29)
But even if a deracialisation of the state is a necessary condition for

démocratisation, it is not a sufficient condition, according to Mamdani. What
he calls the 'bifurcated state', being a common feature of virtually all African
post-colonial situations, is one of the main impediments toward démocratisa
tion. The bifurcated state was generated by the ethnically and rural-urban
divisive colonial policy of the past, and its traces are still forcefully manifesting
themselves - in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent. The Natal and
Inkatha question is a case in point.
'It is precisely because the South African historical experience is different
that it dramatically underlines what is common in the African colonial experi
ence', according to Mamdani. When the South African regime faced a growing
urban revolt it tried to contain it, 'first by repackaging the native population
under the immediate grip of a constellation of autonomous Native Authorities

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
so as to fragment it, and then by pol

town so as to freeze the division be
the inter-ethnic and urban-rural t
appear as a main problem not only
The main theoretical conclusions
chapter would seem straightforwar
them here. After having laboured t
reader may ask why the author had
meandering, often quite abstract arg
- to reach those conclusions? My answ
of a true scholar not go straight to
There are many schools of African S
types of Africanists, both Western a
as those proceeding by historical a
liarities of African history, before an
is incumbent upon a true scholar to p
produced by those various schools.
various schools and approaches still
uncertain whether their weakness
death. Mahmood Mamdani has und
effort, and thereby demonstrated t
arrive at sound conclusions. In doin
closing his mind to approaches whi
like himself, leaning to the left. H
tives and paved his own way in a m
However, being trained, originall
predicaments by my colleagues an
Nigeria, about 30 years ago, I regre
of the most illuminating pieces wr
development of citizenship from t
namely the work of Peter P. Ekeh,
'Colonialism and the Two Publics i
parative Studies in Society and His
Public Realm and Public Finance in
Mamdani's own excellent papers
African Perspectives on Developme
Edward Mburugu (London: James
most interesting to read a few p
similarities and differences betwee
ethnicity and citizenship.
The main part of the book is divid
Power and Part II, The Anatomy of
explored historical documents from

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
in a most interesting and admirable way. The colonial politics

author calls 'decentralized despotism' is documented in grea
evolved within the framework of indigenous rule, so-called custo
Native Authorities. The emerging differences between conserva
cal African states after independence are discussed.
Glimpses of the weird humanity or brutality of colonial distri
ners are conveyed by extensive quotations from contemporary d
similarly the practices of the fused administrative and judicial powe
Authorities. These practices were severed not only from their origin
contexts, but also from judicial restraint. This restraint was lack
absence of precise and exhaustive rules of law. A respect, or mo
a fear for the colonially selected and appointed chief, or for the
law enforcer - often the same person - was the substance of soci
colonial conditions, according to Mamdani. Dispatching detailed
instructions to every local chief would have been too cumberso
relevant colonial officers; and chiefs were therefore left a lot of
interpret rules and instructions at their own discretion, to extr
tributes for themselves in addition to the salaries they earned from
state, and to punish deviants rather arbitrarily to maintain respect
authorities - as long as this 'indirect rule' did not appear as 'repu
white man. A lot of this is well known from previous publicati
authors, but here all this is neatly assembled not only under one cov
placed within a theoretical interpretation of convincing strength
After independence the power structures of conservative sta
Kenya and Uganda developed somewhat differently from radic
as Tanzania and Mozambique - to begin with. The decentralised
the conservative state was deracialised but still ethnically organ
the joint deracialisation and detribalisation of the radical states t
a centralised despotism, according to Mamdani. But centralised
despotism, being a more unstable power structure, has generated
decentralisation 'which - if pursued in the absence of democra
likely to lead to a despotism as generalized and as decentralized
the colonial period' (p. 137).
While I agree with Mahmood Mamdani's diagnosis on most po
I of his book, I am doubtful about the more general usefulness
of the term 'decentralized despotism' in interpreting the power
post-colonial, contemporary African states. I will return to this
comment on the last chapter of his book.
The last section of Part One presents a learned, well docu
systematic scrutiny of socio-economic aspects of African develo
indirect rule: pre-colonial 'communal' possession of land, alloca
for use but not for possession, colonial impositions of forced lab
larly in white-settler colonies - markets and the so-called free p

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
significance of tax policies in diffe

during and after colonialism, the li
theories, the differential effects of t
in Africa today etc. Typical of Mam
attitude to dependency theories. Ca
be seen at every step of its develop
relations in Africa predated colonia
markets for mass-consumption goods
- as long as they use domestic mat
political decisions.
I will leave Part II largely without
other face of tribalism' as seen in
with particular reference to Ugand
- 'the rural in the urban' - compri
any reader of the book will be glad t
Here only a few more general refl
he would prefer an analysis of peas
dismisses it'. This would seem to be a characteristic of Mamdani's current
approach, as compared with some of his earlier writing; he does not want to
take either side in the controversies found among Africanists. This does not
mean that he has moved to a middle-of-the-road position. To me his current
approach would rather seem to be more dialectical in the sense that he wants
to include both sides of a contradiction in his analysis.
According to Mamdani those who present one single aspect of reality as its
totality are involved in myth making. I think that Mamdani's broad-ranging,
inclusive approach in which he believes that we must appropriate the past 'as
a contradictory mix' is most fruitful in the current situation.
The final chapter of the book is a reflection on how the tensions of the
bifurcated state might be resolved so as to make a more full-grown democracy
possible. It starts with some very disturbing and provocative questions. A few
of them are worth quoting; 'Could it be that the African problem was not
colonialism but an incomplete penetration of traditional society by a weak
colonial state or deference to it by prudent but short-sighted colonizers? - is it
surprising that the two sides of the European mission - market and civil society,
the law of value and the rule of law - were neither fully nor successfully
transplanted in less than a century of colonialism? And that this fragile
transplant succumbed to caprice and terror on the morrow of independence? -
Generally emancipated from racism with the end of colonialism, did not Africa
once again come to be in the grip of a specifically African particularism:
tribalism, ethnic conflict, and primordial combat?'
As regards the last question Mamdani reminds us that ethnic identity and
separation were politically emphasised and enforced during the colonial peri
od, and then survived alien domination. Only by understanding fully the mode

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
of colonial penetration into Africa is it possible to move beyond its d

remnants, and to defeat so-called Afro-pessimism, according to
Here again the author calls upon the concept of decentralised de
explain the current situation. When the British outlawed the use
colonial policies after the First World War this only applied to
conduct, not to the Native Authorities and their use of naked for
understood as being 'customary' and in that sense legitimate
asserts that the locus of his analysis of démocratisation has been l
of accumulation than the mode of domination. To me there are definite links
between these two modes, not of causality but of functional design. The British,
the French and the Belgians were originally interested in Africa mainly because
of the more or less imagined or realistic opportunities of making money. But
this commercial interest could not be safeguarded without controlling and
ruling the African territories and peoples subjected to colonialism. Indirect rule
was the easiest and most efficient design since it placed a great deal of
responsibility, force and compulsion in the hands of 'customary' chiefs that
were not responsible to their people but only in a rather permissive way to the
colonial state.
Through this kind of decentralised despotism colonialists could pursue their
commercial interests virtually full-time without being disturbed extensively
with matters of rule. When indigenous rulers succeeded colonial 'indirect
rulers' after independence the new rulers also took over the power structure of
indirect rule, but obviously could not take over the mode of accumulation and
the commercial interests of the former colonialists.
Instead the mode of accumulation emerging among many if not all the new
rulers was cleptocracy, corruption, nepotism - with a continued decentralised
despotism now combined with centralised despotism to ward off disappoint
ments and protests from below. To my mind this new contradictory power
structure cannot be dissolved by exploring possibilities of democratising the
modes of centralised domination, or simply by reforming civil society. On this
latter point I agree with Mamdani. But I therefore cannot understand his
seeming rejection of the political economy approach to démocratisation in
favour of an analysis in terms of modes of domination.
To my mind it is necessary to combine these two modes of analysis in
political and economic practice. Rural production of goods needed in the home
markets of rural, semi-urban and urban areas - food, cotton, simple tools, wood
for carpentry, building materials etc. - must be provided with market-confor
ming incentives and transportation, politically decided, at the same time as
power structures must be reformed to join and perhaps federate rural and urban
interests, and to bring about the economic reforms of rural production sug
gested above. Some of these reforms have been suggested by Mamdani. But
without the driving force and common every-day experience of production,
marketing and reinvestment in production as well as in sustaining the environ

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
ment, I believe that attempts to democ

to become empty and failing. To my
participation, and local as well as ce
management of indigenous small-sca
into a vehicle of participation, and
democratic representative politics.
Having had an opportunity to discu
Mahmood in person, I doubt very
objections to these comments of min
tion of economic and political refor
must take on quite different forms
white-settler populations.
In the course of reflecting on the pro
in Mamdani's book pursues a most in
how to link the urban and the rura
representation and participation, cen
ciety and community. All in all this is
and well-written book yet to have b
African societies. In order for its thou
the academic community, and amon
continents, but also among African
trade-unionists and businessmen, I
extended, can be made more widely
Martin Legassick
Department of History
University of the Western
Bellville
South Africa
Mahmood Mamdani has written here a wide-ranging and thoughtful book.

Predominantly a work of synthesis and generalisation, it sheds new insights on
colonialism in Africa and its legacy. Drawing on extensive reading and
experience, it is immensely stimulating, with an exciting fluency of phrase: a
real tour deforce. In addition Mamdani conducted his own field research in
South African hostels to test provocative hypotheses thrown up by the general
argument.
His central argument is the bifurcated nature of colonial rule, which he
maintains was similar in form throughout the continent, whatever the nature
of the economy. There was an urban sphere of civil society, ' laced with racism'
(p. 19), and a rural sphere of 'indirect rule', of 'decentralised despotism', of the
'Native Authority', organised as 'an ethnic power enforcing custom on tribe
speople' (p. 21). Colonial rule, in other words based itself on enforced separ

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
ation of the urban (minority) from the rural (majority) and, within
one 'tribe' from another. Mamdani emphasises that South A
exception: that segregation and apartheid were 'uniquely African
thus welcomely draws South Africa into an Afrocentric analys
Rhodes lectures of 1929 on 'the native question', to which he was
by Ben Magubane, underline the connection.
Within this, his focus is on the rural, 'tribal' dimension of col
precisely because he believes that while independence has led to
sation of (urban) civil society, it has not achieved a thorough-goi
sation. In particular there has been a general failure to 'detribali
power' through dismantling and reorganising the local state. 'C
African states have made no attempt to displace 'tribalism'. 'Rad
states, which did, merely substituted centralised for decentralise
by replacing the chief by the single-party cadre, thus accentuat
between urban and rural. Post-colonial Africans remain divided between
(urban) 'citizens' and rural 'subjects'.
Through chapters 2-4 Mamdani nicely teases out the way in which the
colonial power fashioned the 'customary' into the 'all-embracing' (p. 110)
personal despotism of a chieftainship freed from all institutional constraints,
'closeting the subject population in a series of separate containers... each with
a customary shell guarded over by a Native Authority ' (pp.48-9,61).' Custom ',
he emphasises, was selectively fashioned to serve colonial interests. (There is
a revealing quote from a post-independence Swazi peasant: 'This is the custom
today, though not in the past', p. 172). Mamdani argues that for the British the
idea of 'indirect rule' was influenced by the experience of colonising India.
Prefigured in nineteenth-century Natal, and developed by Lugard, 'the practice
it summed up was not confined to the British colonies' (p.62; and see pp.82-7
for other colonies). He emphasises how the scope of the 'customary' was
widened from India to Africa to include the chief's control over allocation of
productive resources, particularly land, which was thus insulated from the
market ('communal tenure'). These limits on the sway of the market meant,
he argues, that 'nothing short of force' - exercised through the Native Auth
ority - 'could push labour and its products into the realm of the market' (p.52).
The 'free peasant' lived 'on the interstices of the market and direct compul
sions' (pp. 147,183). There was a 'web of exactions, ranging from forced labour
to forced crops to forced contributions to forced removals', which he describes
in a chapter, (p. 148) Though less extensively, forced labour, he maintains,
exists to this day. There is also a useful chapter on customary law and the
inadequate attempts at post-independence law reform.
The 'tribal' straitjacket of colonial rule, argues Mamdani, tended to con
strain the forms of rural resistance also to 'ethnic' boundaries. Peasant move
ments therefore, he maintains, could be progressive even while 'ethnic' in their
form - progressive in that they were attempting to democratise the local state

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
through an 'intra-tribal civil war.

in the Congo he gives instances fro
1950s and from post-independence
Implicitly at least, Mamdani ' s analy
idea of the 'national democratic st
world. His depiction of the (two-fo
state and the inability of post-colo
of Trotsky's notion of 'combine
entering late into the orbit of capi
nature of the undemocratic featur
specific history, of course. But for
passing of state power to a moveme
class - the only class with both the in
The forging of such a movement i
on 'linking the urban and the rural',
I might have some quibbles with Ma
for example, to see the late nineteent
directly from the abolition of slav
example: see pp.37-39. Is his depict
uniform, despite his qualificatio
comment on the detail of his swee
which I particularly want to pay a
trained as an 'Africanist') is his tre
First, some minor points on this. Th
Malay slaves' did not form a 'small
the early nineteenth century, but m
from Malaysia). Alfred Milner w
Africa, not colonial secretary (p
African mineworkers' strike (p.236
the 1960s, not the 1950s (with som
the 'armed fist' used to organise fo
to crush and ban the ANC and PAC
around. The so-called community
exist in the early 1970s (p.240), on
1970s; nor was there a strike wave
None of these points, however, de
said, I welcome Mamdani's attempt
Its form of rule does precisely corres
though 'internal colonialism' theor
explanatory power' (p.28) and does
He gives a good historical exposition
of rule. My only complaint at it, to p
Dubow, and does not refer to Mar

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
126 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 1 ,<2)
extent mechanically deterministic it does have important insight

Dubow in my view misses. Moreover Dubow entirely underestimate
of the Botha-Smuts government of 1910-1924 in constructing seg
failing, for example, to mention Smuts's important 1917 speech o
tion2, and leaving the impression that in this period Smuts was a
Mamdani tends to follow this line of argument (see, for example, p
Mamdani criticises as 'economistic' the perspective which analys
Africa purely as 'exceptional' because of the extent of its industr
urbanisation, and prpletarianisation, and which regards rural areas a
(pp.27-8). At the same time he is compelled to recognise the speci
South Africa in these features, giving rise to a strong civil society, bot
and black, and resulting in the waves of popular mass resistance eruptin
1973, with an urban centre of gravity, which have transformed the cou
what it is today. In contrast to elsewhere in Africa urban civil soci
majority. He is right, however, in maintaining that, as elsewhere i
movements within civil society 'lack an agenda for democratizing c
power gelled in indirect rule authorities'(p.31). Hence the survival o
and now the creation of a parliamentary House of Traditional Leade
an ANC government.
Mamdani sees the popular mass resistance which erupted in Sou
from 1973 as a 'departure of epochal significance' from the exile-
rilla-based 'armed struggle' (pp.232-3; cf pp. 14,30). Unfortunately h
develop this important and in my view essentially correct point (f
attempts of the ANC to connect the 'armed' and the 'mass' strugg
cally). In dealing with the resistance movement of workers and y
focuses on migrant labour - as the main form of labour shaped by s
and apartheid. He regards migrants as 'peasant workers' (p.219
peasants in an urban industrial setting' (p.219) rather than as prol
even when they have 'sub-economic, marginal or even non-existent
reserves ' (p.219) - because of the ' ideological baggage ' they carry to th
of 'customary patriarchal privilege' (p.219). He is right to highlight the
of migrancy on consciousness, but I would dispute whether this j
regarding migrant Workers as in part peasants. Moreover Mamdani
elaborate on the gender issues here of relevance: the fact that it is wom
remain in the rural area. One is tempted to regard the women, rather t
men, as peasants, except that the women are working land which
owned, then controlled by the men.
Mamdani's concern is how the migrant worker - 'in civil society b
civil society' - has linked to the urban resistance movement in Sout
He draws on recent research to highlight the role of migrants as th
edge' (p.226) in the rural resistance of the 1940s to early 1960
'betterment' schemes and Bantu Authorities - partly spurred by t
movement of the 1952 Defiance Campaign. Sometimes his sense of

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
logy goes awry. Thus we are told

flame of revolt remained smoulde
In fact rural revolt was crushed by
the role of migrants in the huge mov
the causes of the violence of the ea
He asks whether the state-sponsor
sociological alienation of hostel-dwe
improvement argument is adequate
while conceding a 'grain of truth' t
concerned to 'uphold the necessity
against 'the weight of material
research he courageously visited h
which allows him to present a vivid
hostels (pp.256-263).
He presents an argument with a c
too bald. The migrant workers brou
the urban' by being pioneers of the s
Rand, the Cape) (p.221, 234). The
energy', p.30; 'the most militant s
unions (p.235). The attempt of the
Riekert Commissions to separate m
because of union resistance (pp.221
unions, he then argues, 'The marc
African semiskilled labour and ma
union leadership began to reflec
deserted the hostels' (p.221, 246-7).
in the unions between migrants a
between them aggravated. The em
viewed as an enormous step forwa
workplace and community, is he
hostel-dwellers, because they were
munity' (pp.248-9). '[A]s they em
unions withdrew from hostels'
regarding the 'community' as 'the u
reserves' (p.221; see p.254) contribu
the 'real shift that took place from
the political displacement of migrant
of the broad movement against ap
influx control is regarded as a con
tensions 'by opening rural gates to
boycotts, starving the puppet townsh
of services in the hostels, further
(p.265). By the early 1990s, 'Zulu m

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
base of the independent union movement in the 1970s' were turning to

(p.222). The newly-unbanned ANC 'failed to appreciate migrant c
perspectives': its call for a conversion of hostels into family unit
like a death threat to their urban base' (pp.222; 266-7, 273, 284).
cites some work, particularly by Soweto-based students, to sugges
nued co-operative aspects of migrant-nonmigrant relations in the
(see pp.264-6). Nevertheless, he argues, all this led to the conflict
hostel-dwellers and permanent township residents.
Firstly, is not this picture of migrants disappearing from the in
trade unions - which Mamdani draws from writings by Mike Morr
Hindson, and Lauren Segal3 - rather overdrawn? He later cites intervie
Segal's article with hostel-dwellers in 1990. Though they feel that
organisers were not taking up issues of concern to hostel-dwellers
they remained members of unions (p.254).4 Moreover later research
indicates that hostels where there was a significant proportion of
bers tended to be 'low conflict' zones, again suggesting that host
remained members of unions.5 What may be at issue here by 1990
general question of the relation of union members to union leaders
racy in the unions, returned to below.
Secondly, is not the ignoring of the hostels by the political moveme
mid-1980s also rather exaggerated? Mamdani refers to the exp
Soweto 1976, when hostel-dwellers violently opposed the August (t
the September) general strike (pp.249-250). What was striking
revolutionary upsurge of 1984-6 was the complete absence of oppos
hostel-dwellers. Mamdani in fact concedes that in the epoch-mak
ber 1984 Transvaal general strike, migrant workers participated
says they had turned against the movement by 1986 (p.254). But e
state-supported vigilantes emerged towards the end of the 1984-6
was not predominantly from the hostels.
Mamdani also fails to recognise that (as in the 1950s) the urban in
of 1984-6 provoked a rural upsurge. The movement, he wrong
'remained a predominantly urban affair' (p.30); 'had yet to find a
the countryside' (pp.30,272). This rural movement took place pred
through the Northern Transvaal,6 though in some senses the tum of M
Kangwane to the ANC, the emergence of Holomisa, and the attem
in Bophuthatswana (between 1985 and 1990) all also reflected the s
rural-dwellers.7 The main agents of this rural upsurge seem to ha
youth, but migrants must have played some role.8 Certainly this
ment (contained partly within ethnic walls in Lebowa, Venda, Kw
etc) must have affected the consciousness of migrants and empow
It was a movement with the potential for 'democratising customary
Mamdani's terms) and hence of demolishing the mral pillars of apa
This made it a huge threat to the state.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
In Natal, in urban as well as rural are

took the form of an inter-black civ
the existing grip of Inkatha in town
upsurge in Natal also. This inter-blac
the Rand in the early 1990s. In m
regarding this war of the 1990s as
nent residents against the migrants
not from migrants in general, but f
by Inkatha as the most weighty elem
Other migrants were not involved in
The 1980s, particularly 1984-6, ope
revolution. The abolition of influx c
puts it at one point: see pp.222, 273)
between came the state's attempt at
emergency, with more than 25,000 det
had become too weak, even counter-
revolution: the black townships had
the counter-revolution 'deracialised
vigilantes. Buthelezi became 'vigilan
he had already built in KwaZulu - fo
to corral Zulu workers back into th
after the launch of COSATU, Inkath
in Natal. This war set Zulu agains
Mamdani - following Morris and Hi
pitted UDF-allied 'townships' again
(p.223). This in my view is to read t
there is little indication that UDF a
different types of dwelling.9
The initial instrument for taking the
1986 and 1990 was the Inkatha-linke
UWUSA, which attempted to infiltr
pound-based), on the basis of a few
would target worker-leaders for assass
fear. Hlobane colliery, Jabula Foods
this in 1987: only at Zincor was UW
ter of the Marxist Workers' Tenden
ated) was assassinated at Zincor by U
were other supporters by Inkatha
leadership did not do enough to com
its entry into factories by organising
futile court actions. Inkatha thus
presence in some compounds and ho

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
130 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW 1 ,<2 )
the unbanning of the ANC, Inkatha launched itself as the IFP and, with
violence erupted on the Rand.
Mamdani seems to imply that violence came initially from UDF
against hostel-dwellers: 'As it propelled forward a protracted urban
the community of the organized brooked no breach in the ran
oppressed. In the unfolding dialectic between resistance and r
though, those organized were better equipped for self-defense, a
unorganized were exposed to retaliation' (p.221). What time period
is referring to is unclear, but whether it is 1984-6, 1986-1990, or 1
incorrect. Certainly in 1990 the violence came initially from the ho
was a deliberate infiltration into them of martial elements from KwaZulu
organised by IFP leaders. It is also now clearer than when Mamdani wrote,
from evidence gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that the
IFP was not merely being condoned but massively armed ('equipped') by
agencies of the white state. All the past 'tensions' that existed between
hostel-dwellers and others in the townships created (as Mamdani recognises)
only a potential for conflict. It may be true that the unions and the UDF had
left a relative political vacuum in the hostels. The actuality of the violence, the
timing of it, the extent of the carnage that it caused, the blame for it, rests in
my view solely with Inkatha and the white state. Not only were not all migrants
involved, not even all Zulus on the Rand were involved on the side of the IFP
in the hostels. In particular migrants of other ethnic groups were driven out of
the hostels when the IFP came into them. The IFP did not so much find an
amenable social base in the hostels as shape residence in the hostels to provide
its base. And what the IFP actually represented in Gauteng as a whole can be
gauged from the 1994 election results: a mere 4.13% of the vote.10
Mamdani attaches particular responsibility to the ANC for the conflict for
raising the demand for converting the hostels into family accommodation.
Among others, he cites on this the secretary of the Transvaal Hostel Residents
Association, whom he interviewed, and which he claims by 1993 was seeking
autonomy from the IFP in the hostels. It was this ANC demand, says Mamdani,
which allowed the IFP to consolidate Zulu migrants to its support. Zulu
migrants, he argues (following in this an argument by A. Minnaar1 ') had more
adequate land in KwaZulu and thus were more attached to migrancy than were
land-starved Xhosas who brought their wives to town (p.276). Has anyone
done any research at the rural KwaZulu end to substantiate this idea, by the
way? And where do migrants from other areas, such as the Northern Transvaal,
fit into this argument? Moreover from elsewhere in Mamdani ' s book it appears
that the desire for at least some conversion into family accommodation came
from migrants as much as from 'township' dwellers: the experience of the
hostels in Alexandra for example (pp.271-2). S. Rubinstein, who studied a
hostel in Vosloorus, draws similar conclusions.12 Significantly, these hostels
were then in 'normal' conditions, i.e. free from IFP infiltration. Similarly, in

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
the Western Cape, the aim of the H

provision of family housing.13
Philemon Mauku was a supporter of th
ANC who lived in Nobuhle (M2) host
Stimulated by ACO, he organised the h
tee, and helped organise other hostels
comrade, a strong organizer', wrote M
'Then we drew up our demands about t
and challenged the councillors to respon
the IFP took over the Alexandra hostels
in them, and subsequently helped the c
the IFP, was caught by the police with
background in the hostels he fully end
to family accommodation, for both m
hostels had become nothing more than
bases from which to launch killings a
surrounded them. The ANC (and civics)
the distance of exile, but voiced dee
communities made numerous attempts
by brick. On one occasion, in Dobsonv
were prevented by state forces. It is t
explains what Mamdani cannot compr
(but see below) changing its position
accommodation to a 'flat call for an en
p.271). Secondly, in the words of Co
barbarous relic of apartheid, maintaini
proper accommodation with their familie
community of all nations.'16 Perhaps,
enough the option of continuing as a s
dated not in a segregated hostel, but inte
recognise the hostels as physical and t
system. Segal reports interviews with
cost of rent and the unavailability of hou
moving to the township.17 Of course the
ANC government does not permit build
townships, let alone in hostels.
Mamdani regards an agreement signed
Provincial Administration for 'upgradi
(p.271) as the catalyst of the violenc
(270-271) where he confuses 1991 and
March 1991, with a further war in Ma
the 'civic called upon councillors to res
(p.272). Mzwanele Mayekiso argues that

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
over the question of hostels at all, but because the agreement defeat
the key issue of the ownership of land on the East Bank, from whic
hoping to profit.18
Mamdani's source is the pro-Inkatha Gavin Woods who in fac
follows: 'The agreement provided for the phasing out of the blac
the township land to be transferred into the hands of the civic orga
for the integration of Alexandra with the neighbouring white
became clear to the hostel residents that such an "accord!agree
ultimately lead to the demolition of their hostel, as this was on
"demands" o/both the local ANC structures and the Alexandra
ation leader, Moses Mayekiso.'19 (My emphasis). Gavin Woods (a
in the words emphasised) tries to give the impression that the ag
with hostels, without directly saying so: Mamdani has however f
trap. What would answer the question is to look at an actua
agreement itself. However Gavin Woods refers to the Wee
interviews with hostel-dwellers as sources for his statements. The relevant
Weekly Mail reads as follows: 'The agreement - which was the first of its kind
in the country - provides for the phasing out of the black council, places
township land on the Far East Bank under the control of the civic organisation
for the first time and provides for the integration of Alexandra into a non-racial
local government structure with the surrounding white areas... Moses Mayeki
so, ACO chairman, says hostels do not feature in a major way in the agreement,
though it does provide loosely for the "upgrading and possible conversion" of
the existing hostels. No-one, says Mayekiso, is to be chased out of Alexandra.
"Even those who don't want to bring their families will be accommodated in
good housing," he says.' The agreement appeared, in other words, to provide
for options for migrants (contrary to what Mamdani maintains). The Weekly
Mail however adds 'Hostel inmates say that Mokoena [the mayor] addressed
them after the accord was signed and before the violence blew up, telling them
that the hostels were to be knocked down.'20 What this suggests is that it was
not the terms of the agreement itself, but how it was falsely presented to hostel
residents by Inkatha member Mokoena - in fact angry with the agreement for
other reasons - which was responsible for the violence. Inkatha, in other words,
was responsible.
Moreover, both Mamdani and Mayekiso state that Inkatha had initially tried
to gain access to the Alexandra hostels in October 1990, but had been repulsed
- because the hostels were organised. There is no evidence, from Mamdani, or
Mayekiso, or Philemon Mauku, that the hostels were any less organised when
Inkatha did succeed in taking them over in March 1991. 'They brought people
from all hostels in the Reef. They intimidated, killed, and expelled hostel
residents who disagreed...' said an observer quoted by Mamdani (p.270).
Surely this is strong evidence that it was by (locally) superior numbers with
superior firepower (along with lies) that Inkatha captured the hostel, not

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
through any particular alienation b

residents of Alexandra.
I have dwelt on the particular case of Alexandra because Mamdani does
also. But it does suggest flaws in the thrust of his argument.
The alienation of Zulu hostel-dwellers from the politics of the unions and
of the ANC may be only an expression of the changing character of social
relations in the unions and the political movement at the time. '[W]hen we
posed the question of COSATU's alliance with the ANC and the SACP' many
of the 19 interviewed by Segal's research project in 1990 said 'they saw the
activities of the union as being restricted to the workplace and thus they were
unaffected by, or saw no significance to this alliance.'21 The idea of an
'alliance' of COSATU with the ANC and SACP must have seemed very
abstract politics outside concrete connections which such an alliance could
have posed in struggle. The leaflet issued by COSAS for the November 1984
Transvaal general strike (quoted by Mamdani, pp.250-1) is very concrete in
character. It makes no assumptions of a common 'nationalist' interest between
black students and black workers but spells out the similarity of student and
worker social demands:
LIKE YOU WORKERS: we want democratic committees under our control (SRCs) to
fight for our needs...
LIKE YOU WORKERS demand free overalls and boots so we students demand free
books and schooling...
As the politics of the MDM (and ANC) and COSATU became increasingly
rarified towards the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s, those kind of
connections were no longer spelled out, but taken for granted. Coupled with
that, at least in COSATU, there was an increasing detachment of the leadership
from the rank and file. Not only hostel-dwellers but workers living in townships
also may have felt alienated from the leadership of their unions and from the
idea of the 'alliance', even while continuing to support the ANC in the
townships.
ThelFP's 'success' between 1986 and 1994, inside and outside Natal, rested
on weaknesses in the politics of the MDM/ANC and COSATU, no doubt. But
it also rested on its firepower and intimidation as much as on its rallying of
Zulu ethnic consciousness. As a vehicle of reaction, it halted the tide of
revolution and created a climate which made negotiations - with the com
promises they entailed - not only possible but seemingly necessary. Mamdani
is right in general to stress the role that political choice played in permitting
this to happen (if mistaken in details in my view). The IFP used its 'success'
also to entrench the monarchy and Zulu chieftainship. CONTRALESA and
other traditional leaders have used this as a stepping-stone to entrench chief
tainship throughout the country. This - as Mamdani argues - remains the
biggest obstacle to thorough-going démocratisation of the country (whatever

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
the justifications woven by ideologists of the ANC). The state form

has been (partly) deracialised, but not at all democratised. The ru
been aborted. Perhaps one can argue that this was one main pu
launching of IFP violence. Mamdani is right that the linking of
the rural in struggle for démocratisation of the South African s
crucial task on the agenda.
This is a book which stimulates one ' s thinking and for that reaso
that it will be widely read. It redefines the questions one asks ab
on the continent in an interesting and provocative way. However its
arguments are not completely sustainable in my view in those a
examined in more detail, and this may be more widely true. Still, un
is generated by the attempt to define new paradigms, even if they
on in the first instance.
Notes
1. He also talks of a 'specialized and ghettoized literature' on chiefship and rural

administration. This would presumably include Jack Simons, African Women:
their Legal Status in South Africa (1968), which he cites, a valuable book which
does examine the mode of colonial control in an 'internal colonialism' framework.
There is some préfiguration of Mamdani's argument in D. Kaplan, 'The South
African state: the origins of a racially exclusive democracy', Insurgent Sociolog
ist, 10, (1980).
2. S. Dubow, Racial segregation and the origins of apartheid in South Africa,
(1989); M. Lacey, Working for Boroko: the origins of a coercive labour system
in South Africa, (1981).
3. Mike Morris and Doug Hindson, 'South Africa: Political Violence, Reform and
Reconstruction', Review of African Political Economy, 53 (1992) which is a
revision of a report first circulated at the meeting of the Economic Trends Group
on 7/7/1991; L. Segal, 'The Human Face of Violence: Hostel Dwellers Speak',
Journal of Southern African Studies, 18, 1, March 1992 which follows the
Morris/Hindson analysis on this point.
4. What is striking in Segal's article, however, (and perhaps Mamdani's main point)
is the contrast of the situation in 1990 with that in the early 1980s when there was
an 'injection of factory floor cultural formations into hostel life', according to Ari
Sitas. In the factory also leadership 'cut across regionalism and ethnicity by
uniting producers at the point of production... legitimation shifted from the
gerontocracies to rank and file control, where elected representatives became the
new leaders, and public discussion on every issue entrenched itself as the public
form of decision-making.' If Sitas's characterisation is accurate and not romanti
cism, the 'economistic' FOSATU was having more effect in the hostels than the
'political unionism' of COSATU did later! See Segal, 'The Human Face...'
pp.203,206.
5. Chris de Kock et al, 'A quantitative analysis of some possible explanations for
the hostel-township violence' in A. Minnaar (ed), Communities in Isolation:
perspectives on hostels in South Africa, (1993), p.213. The researchers make clear
that they are referring to non-UWUSA trade unions.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
6. My knowledge of this derives larg

gence of protest politics in the North
UWC), a catalogue of such protest by
unfortunately not yet written up.
7. Lemmy Mdluli, 'Collaboration and res
Mabuza, the former chief minister o
explores aspects of the political evolu
8. SeeP.Delius, 'Migrants, comrades and
Transformation, 13, 1990.
9. J. Seekings in Indicator SA, 8,3,1991,
played no role in Natal. Morris and Hin
- but, in Natal, even this seems an exa
10. See R.WJohnson and L. Schlemm
(1996), p.379. The IFP got 173,903 vot
these were in Johannesburg (ibid, pp.
Isolation: perspectives on hostels in S
1985 census recorded 34% of the (2
speaking: clearly only a small proport
11. A. Minnaar (ed) Communities in Iso
12. S. Rubenstein, 'The story of a ho
Minnaar (ed) Communities in Isolation
hostels', Indicator SA, 8, 3, Winter 199
hostels to have them destroyed and b
township. Significantly, Vosloorus wa
was investigated by Ari Sitas: see for
to democracy: a case study of the impa
cultural formations on the East Rand
13. M. Ramphele, A bed called home, (1
14. M. Mayekiso, Township politics: civ
15. Philemon Mauku, 'Why I am in pris
Campaign, June 1992.
16. No 9, July/August 1992.
17. Segal, 'Human Face...', p.229.
18. M. Mayekiso, Township politics, pp
19. Gavin Woods, 'Hostel residents - a s
tive', in Minnaar (ed), Communities in
20. 'Fighting to stay at the bottom', W
Alex exploded', Weekly Mail, 15-21/3
policy regarding hostels, but mention
agreement for other reasons. Ironical
article headlined 'Historic accord a mod
Alexandra agreement!
21. Segal, 'Human Face...', p.204 quote

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
136 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW I ,<2)
Julius E. Nyang'oro
African and Afro-American studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
' Chapel Hill, NC 27599
United States of America
Introduction
In the past three decades, the study of politics in Africa, especially in the United
States, has been characterised by several stages. The first phase, roughly from
1960 to 1970, was characterised by the euphoria of independence which
celebrated the emergence of new nations in Africa. In most instances, the
possibility of maintaining pluralist (liberal) politics in the mould of the colonial
motherland was held quite high. The expectations of maintaining liberal
politics in the neo-colony was never seen as a contradiction. Indeed, in spite
of the short period in which nationalist politics had taken place and the
half-baked process of power transference to the neo-colony, somehow it was
assumed that things would work out anyway.
Thus in Uganda, for example, deep divisions - religious, class, ethnic, and
regional - which had been fostered and then bottled up by the colonial state
for a number of decades were supposed to work themselves out under a
sanitised political environment. Of course that was not to be. In the case of
Kenya, the earliest manifestation of liberal politics, i.e. multi-partyism, sur
vived for less than a year after independence when the Kenya African Demo
cratic Union (KADU), Daniel arap Moi's party, was merged into the Kenya
African National Union (KANU), the current ruling party. The contradictions
of Mau Mau notwithstanding, the merger at that time was seen as simply a
matter of post-colonial consolidation which had little to do with class or ethnic
configuration of the new ruling elite.
The second stage in the study of African politics can be termed the depend
ency stage, 1970-1985, when neo-colonialism as a concept held sway. Public
policy in Africa came to be seen as reflecting the dependent nature of the
economy thus shattering many of the illusions of the nationalist period,
1945-1960; and those of the early years of independence, 1960-1970. This
second stage also experienced the full maturation of authoritarian politics and
the steady decline of the economies in the sub-region.
The third stage, beginning in the late 1980s, has been characterised by a
transition from pure authoritarian, one-party and military governments to
governments that are elected through the ballot within multi-party political
systems. The economy in African countries has now been forced to 'liberalise'
and we now have the sway of the market as the allocator of resources in society,
at least in theory.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
Much of the transition in African

cial, characterised by a recycling of
reinventing themselves as the genu
parties that have emerged are led b
authoritarian regimes of the past. I
Tanzania, for example, Oscar Kambo
to try and lead the opposition. K
advocates of the single party in Tanz
leader of the opposition, Kenneth M
or the other been associated with regim
of these leaders into exile in recent
democrats is something that is yet t
that one of the reasons for the fail
Kenya to garner wide support, and
regime, is the authoritarian leadership
party. While it is true that Mr. Moi ' s
of defections from the opposition part
also true that the opposition has not g
trust it.
Thus what we have in Africa today is curiously similar to what was

experienced in the initial years of independence: an official commitment to
multi-partyism; a system of election supervision, which is internationally
driven; a general commitment to liberalisation of the economy; and essentially
the seeming capitulation and acknowledgment that capitalist ideology has
triumphed. Yet as one travels from one African country to another, there is a
sense that little transformation is taking place. Most of the institutional struc
tures which allowed for the vicious authoritarian politics of the 1970s and
1980s to be practiced are still in place: less accountability by the police, the
importance of local (ruling) party bosses and politically motivated policy and
economic decisions. As we begin to recycle the 1960s, Mamdani's new book
serves as a reminder and critique of this process. In essence, Mamdani argues
that what we have experienced in the last decade of 'the transition' is something
that has its origins in the colonial system; and that the politics of authoritarian
ism in Africa were to be expected, given the institutional adoption of the
colonial policy of a 'decentralized despotism'.
The Argument
Mamdani's argument is fairly straightforward: sub-saharan African countries
faced a three-fold challenge in the post-independence period. The first task was
that of decolonising the state, the need to establish legitimate, democratic
government. The second task was that of deracialising civil society. During
the colonial period, civil society had a particular racial character: white/Euro

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
138 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW I ,(2 )
pean. The third task was that of restructuring unequal external r

dependency. According to Mamdani, the central and critical task
decolonalisation. However, it was also the objective that met the l
It stands to reason then that progress towards decentralising civil
restructuring dependency relations was awfully inadequate. If any
gress on these two latter fronts has actually been reversing.
The key to Mamdani's argument is that indirect rule - 'dec
despotism', was a mechanism by which the colonial state devised
for control of 'native' populations. This mechanism was necessar
solved the problem of control by a minority (few Europeans in th
the majority. Even though indirect rule was not the only system of au
within the ambit of colonialism, it nonetheless was adopted:
Debated as alternative modes of controlling natives in the colonial period, d
indirect rule actually evolved into complementary ways of native control. Direc
the form of urban civil power. It was about the exclusion of natives from civil
guaranteed to citizens in civil society. Indirect rule, however, signified a ru
authority. It was about incorporating natives into a state-enforced customa
(Mamdani, 1996:p. 18)
At the time of independence, however, the new African governmen

of transforming the institutional structure of colonial rule actuall
with a classic non-democratic system of rule which had been th
the colonial state. What would démocratisation have entailed in th
context? Mamdani argues that:
It would have entailed the deracialization of civil power and the detribaliz
customary power, as starting points of an overall democratization that would
the legacy of a bifurcated power i.e. urban, European civil society vs. N
consistent democratization would have required dismantling and reorganizing
state, the array of Native Authorities organized around the principle of fusio
fortified by an administratively driven customary justice and nourished thro
economic coercion. (Mamdani, 1966:pp.24-25)
The post-colonial state either maintained the same structure if

conservative regime (Kenya) or moved towards more centralisatio
radical (Tanzania). In the case of South Africa, a country long ar
'different' or 'exceptional', Mamdani correctly argues that begin
British occupation of Natal, to the eventual practice of apartheid, d
despotism was always at play. A central tenet of Mamdani's trea
most of what was deemed 'traditional' or 'native' by colonialism w
invented by the colonials as they went along and encountered situ
required a quick response, and no local solutions existed. Thus wha
'native' and 'indirect rule', was largely a colonial invention. Furth
genius of the indirect rule was that it was mediated rule. It meant tha
rule was never experienced by the vast majority of the colonised as be

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
directly by others, but rather, the c

one of rule mediated through one's ow
Post Colonial Politics: Reaffirmation of Mamdani's Thesis
A cursory survey of post-colonial African politics quickly confirms Mamda

ni's thesis. Indeed, substantively what Mamdani argues is not necessarily new.
On the question of colonial creation of custom, Sally Falk Moore (1986)
demonstrated this in the case of the Chagga in Northern Tanzania; and on the
question of the colonial era and its significance for the post-independence era
Crawford Young (1994) did a masterful job in linking the behavior of the
colonial state and that of contemporary states. Like Mamdani, Young applies
a broader historical discourse comparing the African colonial state and the
colonial enterprise elsewhere. In Mamdani's case, the example of India fea
tures prominently in his analysis, especially in his demonstration that the
British having had a particular colonial experience in India, did not wish to
replicate it in Africa.
In my estimation, however, the significance of Mamdani's work lies in his
successful attempt at making a direct causal connection between the two
periods, and the nature of state behaviour. If indeed we accept the notion tha
there could not be democratic practice during colonialism, and if we proceed
to establish that the institutional basis of the post-colonial state did not change
with the transition from colonialism to independence, then we must conclude
that the post-independence state and politics could never be democratic. It also
means that the whole idea of liberal politics and ideals under the modernisation
school was grossly misplaced and indeed impossible to attain. The theorising
under modernisation (see, for example, Almond and Coleman, 1960) assumed
that multi-party ism or its variant would endure in Africa. Over the years,
however, it became obvious that this projected development was failing. The
patrimonialism thesis which Mamdani criticises became the fallback position
for earlier modernisation theorists. The essential critique of the patrimonial
thesis is simply that it lacks an historical perspective to the problems of
governance. Thus Mobutu's corruption, or Kenyatta's cronyism was viewed
devoid of the colonial connection. This omission according to Mamdani
accounts for the lack of explanatory power of the patrimonial thesis. It simply
describes, and does not explain the phenomenon at hand.
One thing that is curious about Mamdani's argument with regard to ap
proaches of development in Africa, is his claim that the political economy
approach is incapable of fully explaining 'the nature of struggle and of agency'
(p.23). Instead, Mamdani argues, 'one needs to understand the nature of power
The latter has something to do with the nature of exploitation but is not
reducible to it' (p.23). This is a strawman, and Mamdani should know it
because he creates it. Political economy as an approach is certainly broader

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
than simply looking at the nature of exploitation. If we are to

political economy in broader terms of class relations, resource di
power, then the nature of struggle and of agency need not be isolat
other issues which come under the general ambit of 'political ec
once that minor quibble about approaches to the African conditio
with, Mamdani's approach, I would argue in spite of his own deni
in the political economy tradition. Indeed it is this approach th
study so compelling and so timely, especially in this era of poli
tion in Africa.
Political liberalisation in sub-saharan Africa has come to be sy
multi-party elections, discussions of civil society and the obliga
tional supervision. But what may be lacking in the current disc
sustainability of the institutional framework of liberal politics i
have noted elsewhere (Nyang'oro, 1994 & 1996), the démocratis
in Africa, especially the liberal variety, cannot escape the realiti
economy. While liberal democracy may be the desired objective,
substructure which today is under the sway of structural adjustmen
the region, may not be strong enough to sustain the political struct
democracy. At least on this point both bourgeois and socialist
must agree. It is also, I think, the moral of the story in Mamdani's b
that is told elegantly and with tremendous powers of persuasion
References
Almond, Gabriel A. and James S. Coleman eds. 1960. The Politics of the Developing
Areas. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
Falk Moore, Sally. 1986. Social Facts and Fabrications: 'Customary Law' on Kili
manjaro, 1880-1980. New York. Cambridge University Press.
Mamdani, Mahmood. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy
of Late Colonialism. Princeton. Princeton University Press.
Nyang'oro, Julius E. 1994. 'Reform Politics and the Democratization Process in
Africa', African Studies Review, 37, 1 April.
Nyang'oro, Julius E. 1996. 'Critical Notes on Political Liberalization in Africa',
Journal of Asian and African Studies, 31, 1-2, June.
Young, Crawford. 1994. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New
Haven. Yale University Press.
Eddie Webster
Department of Sociology
University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa
Democratic transition has opened South African sociology to the global

community of social scientists. This has challenged the widespread view that

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
South Africa is sui generis, that the d

is such that the country cannot be
South African exceptionalism, nurt
an intellectual and political parochi
South African transition process.
Mamdani's recently published boo
notion of South African exceptiona
colonial and post-colonial experienc
of the obstacles to démocratisation
Mamdani identifies colonialism's
racial domination through tribady
racial identity in citizens and ethn
form of urban civil power. It was
freedoms guaranteed to citizens in
fied a rural tribal authority' (Mam
areas from urban ones, the colonial
By tapping authoritarian possibili
authoritarian bent, British indirect
for Africa, argues Mamdani: other
being the last. Apartheid, Mamdani
of the colonial state.
For Mamdani independence tende
society. Instead, historically accum
bedded and defended in civil society
of independence involved the dism
effect was to unify the victims of
which turned around the question
majority along ethnic lines. Thus b
intact, post independence Africa h
démocratisation'". (Mamdani:p.32
The book is divided into two part
Mamdani believes can only be under
colonising experience. At the centre
decentralised despotism. As its pionee
as less a territorial construct than a c
customary power was contained
juxtaposed received (modern) law w
Each tribe, it was argued, had its o
customary Native Authorities in the
of the central state. (Mamdani:p.
structure: peasants were governed
Native Authorities in the local state

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
142 AFRICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW I ,(2 )
vised by white officials deployed from a racial pinnacle at the cent

dani:p.287)
The second part of the book explores the emergence of oppositional move
ments from within the bifurcated state. Mamdani draws the bulk of his
argument from close observation and field research on rural movements in
Uganda (chapter 6) and urban movements in post-1973 South Africa (chapter
7). The conclusion is a complex one but at its core is an argument that reform
of the bifurcated state must link the urban and the rural 'and thereby a series
of related binary opposites such as rights and custom, representation and
participation, centralisation and decentralisation, civil society and community
- in ways that have yet to be done' (Mamdani:p.34).
Mamdani ends with two challenging methodological points. The first relates
to South African studies where he believes a shift is necessary 'from a focus
on the labor question to one on the native question.' (Mamdani:p.294) Apart
heid, he believes, needs to be understood as the outcome of an unending quest
for order in a setting both semi-industrial and colonial. But it is the colonial
context, he believes, that helps us most in understanding apartheid. The second
methodological point relates to those political scientists to the north of the
Limpopo who argue that the problem of Africa is the absence or weakness of
civil society institutions.
Both perspectives presume, Mamdani argues, rural areas to be residual and
both have failed to arrive at a political program that addresses the mode of
power containing rural populations on the continent. Instead of focussing on
the mode of exclusion and marginalisation, Mamdani's concern is with the
regime of custom into which the colonised were incorporated and through
which they were ruled. Any effective opposition, he concludes, must link the
rural and the urban in ways that have not yet been done.
Professor Mamdani has developed a provocative and highly original thesis
on African politics. His skills in political analysis are brilliantly demonstrated
in this fascinating book. The combination of historical knowledge, conceptual
rigour and contemporary political analysis is unique among African social
scientists. His detailed knowledge of Uganda and South Africa make the
second part of the book highly readable. Of special interest is his critique of
the concept of civil society, a concept that he believes, has been appropriated
by African political scientists in a surprisingly uncritical way.
The book is not a comprehensive account of African politics; the rich case
studies in the book are illustrative of an argument. At the centre of this
argument is a simple claim: South Africa is an African country with specific
differences. The coherence with which this claim is made makes this a highly
significant book. Mamdani's central notion of the 'bifurcated state' is a useful
way of understanding apartheid where whites were 'citizens' and given politi
cal and social citizenship, and blacks were 'subjects' and denied political and
social citizenship.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
But in locating South Africa in an A

sight both of the specificity of Sout
semi-industrialised countries. The sp
colonial history: a large settler po
dominant indigenous population. In
countries where settler populations w
or were historically small and of rec
independence, such as Algeria, Keny
The result of settler colonialism w
South Africa and the creation of a l
the driving force in anti-apartheid opp
the indigenous population were disp
land in the countryside was a way of r
years of capitalist development. It w
unemployment, old age and illness.
The commonality resides in South
country in transition from authoritar
countries that are closest to South Afr
Argentina, Spain, Korea, Taiwan, and
in particular Poland.
Mamdani criticises South African studies for its 'economistic' use of class.
While this is true of work done in the 1970s, contemporary social science
writing has abandoned the false dichotomy of race and class (Posel, 1983:
Wölpe, 1988). Indeed the intricate connections between class and community
have generated a substantial body of historical sociology in South Africa. A
recent example is Dunbar Moodie's recent evocative study of the interaction
between the world of work and life in the single-sex hostels built to house the
migrant workers on the South African gold mines (Moodie, 1995).
But Mamdani's critique does reopen a long-standing - and unresolved -
debate in South Africa sociology over the relationship between race, class and
gender. Influenced by post-structural writings, a new generation of sociologists
are revisiting these questions through an emphasis on race and other non-class
identities (Greenstein, 1996).
A final point; Mamdani comes close to blaming the African National
Congress (ANC) for the hostel violence that began in the Transvaal in 1990.
He argues that the ANC neglected hostel migrants and their interests and thus
left them open to mobilisation by Inkatha. But this neglects 'third force'
activities - on which we now have hard evidence from the Truth and Recon
ciliation Commission and various trials of Third Force personnel. The exten
sive use of covert force points again to the specificity of South Africa in Africa.
Mamdani was recently appointed to the chair of African Studies at the
University of Cape Town. South African studies has suffered deeply by its
enforced isolation from the rest of Africa. This book will make a major

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00
contribution in breaking down this barrier. By locating South A

common colonial experience it will also help us understand what
about South Africa.
References
Greenstein, Ran. 1997. 'Identity, Race, History: South Africa and the Pan African
Context' in Comparative Perspectives on South Africa, Greenstein, Ran (ed).
Basingstoke. MacMillan.
Moodie, Dunbar. 1995. Going for Gold. Berkeley. University of California Press.
Posel. D. 1983. 'Rethinking the "race-class" debate in South African Historiography',
Social Dynamics 9.
Seidman, Gay. 1994. Manufacturing Militance: Workers' Movements in Brazil and
South Africa, 1970-1985. Berkeley. University of California Press.
Wölpe, H. 1988. Race, Class and the Apartheid State. London. James Currey.

41.76.103.94 on Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:13:28 +00:00

Aseka MahmoodMamdaniAnalysis 1997

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Aseka MahmoodMamdaniAnalysis 1997

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Review: Mahmood Mamdani and the Analysis of African Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487367

This content downloaded from

Mahmood Mamdani and the Anal

The appearance of this latest book by the Ugandan scholar Mahmood

Eric Msinde Aseka

Mamdani's notion of a theoretical impasse between modernists and communi

This content downloaded from

on Goran Hyden's notion of the 'ca

Popkin (1979) emphasises that a peasant is a rational solver, with a sense of

This content downloaded from

Glimpse of African Studies, made in the USA', where he dec

This content downloaded from

methodological perfidy, hence M

This content downloaded from

denial of significant structuring of power. Does this not lead to m

This content downloaded from

Aseka, E.M. 1997a. 'Perspectival Conflicts in Africa: Understanding the Perfidy of

Aseka, E.M. 1997b. 'Reconceptualizing the Political Economy of Ethnicity in Africa'.

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

administrative structures, more or less

This content downloaded from

of Johannesburg from whence much of the terrible counter-revolut

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

the implementation of apartheid in South Africa African coun

This content downloaded from

such it opens new avenues of debate

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

own analysis proceeds through a ser

This content downloaded from

bridewealth in the nineteenth-century southern African Boer republi

Custom and Tradition

This content downloaded from

The colonised African, defined and

This content downloaded from

effort that would crumble whenever the repressive apparatus of

The Powers of Colonialism

Perhaps part of the problem here is Mamdani's view of colonialism as an

This content downloaded from

indigenous populations (as in southe

This content downloaded from

over legitimacy, authority and popular allegiance. From this per

The Politics of Ethnicity

This content downloaded from

of various ethnic groups and migran

This content downloaded from

and Subject falls prey to the same identity-avoidance syndro

1. For further discussion of comparative issues see R. Greenstein, 'Race, Identity,

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

But even if a deracialisation of the state is a necessary condition for

This content downloaded from

so as to fragment it, and then by pol

This content downloaded from

in a most interesting and admirable way. The colonial politics

This content downloaded from

significance of tax policies in diffe

This content downloaded from

of colonial penetration into Africa is it possible to move beyond its d

This content downloaded from