Africa
Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century – review
In Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century, Portia Roelofs critiques conventional Western ideas of “good governance” imposed in Africa, and specifically Nigeria, through fieldwork and historical analysis. Stephanie Wanga finds the book a grounded and nuanced argument for alternative, locally shaped and socially embedded models of governance.
Good governance: a phrase laden with meaning and history. Good governance in Africa? Even more trouble at hand. Colonial and neocolonial projects in Africa have been justified in the name of good governance. However, to assume a sense of foreboding when one hears the phrase “good governance” is also to assume – and even to locate – its meaning in a particular provenance. This is exactly what Portia Roelofs, in her book Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century, wants to trouble.
The author wants to draw out a re-conception of good governance: namely, as conceived of by everyday people rather than, say, the World Bank or other institutions whose projected definitions come with immense repercussions.
Roelofs, a lecturer in politics at King’s College London, has spent time in Nigeria, including undertaking research in the universities of Ibadan and Maiduguri. It is from her fieldwork in Nigeria that she wants to draw out a re-conception of good governance: namely, as conceived of by everyday people rather than, say, the World Bank or other institutions whose projected definitions come with immense repercussions. To do so, this work “places the voices of roadside traders and small-time market leaders alongside those of local government officials, political godfathers and technocrats…[theorising] ‘socially embedded’ good governance.” Using this method, she defends the argument that “power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable”, in opposition to those who cast social embeddedness as sullying politics and leaving room for all the varied forms of corruption that may hinder good governance.
If society and social demands might be seen as an enabler of corruption […] the necessary flip side is that it can also represent a constraint on the actions of those in power.
Indeed, Roelofs extends Peter Ekeh’s erudite analysis (in Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa) of a “third space” that defies the binaries of political science’s beloved public and private spheres. Ekeh presented a space from which Nigerian (and wider African) politics could be more fruitfully analysed, a space that was “neither absolutely rational-bureaucratic public authority [nor]…patrimonial authority conceived as the personal or individual authority of a Big Man’s private household”. Roelofs presents evidence that “points towards the existence of more social forms of governance which are neither personalistic […] nor ethnic, but speak to a more general sociality”, which provides the basis for the notion of governance that is “both public and yet includes some social elements and the further possibility that this may constitute good governance”. If society and social demands might be seen as an enabler of corruption (something that is not, the author reminds us, a uniquely African problem), the necessary flip side is that it can also represent a constraint on the actions of those in power. In fact, the insistence on detaching the state from its societal embeddedness increases the opacity and unaccountability of the state.
Roelofs’ methodology may be controversial to those devoted to hyper-abstraction, but for those of us who theorise as we live rather than save theory for the books, good governance must always be socially embedded. However, Roelofs is engaging with real biases that run deep in both political theory and development studies, and that have had immense consequences. As she writes, “While personal contact between voters and politicians is pathologized in scholarly analysis of Africa, it is celebrated by political scientists working in Western democracies.” Social-embeddedness has been a kind of dirty word in a lot of the mainstream writing on African politics – it is this entanglement of the political with the social that causes diagnoses such as “the cancer of corruption” and other terms that pathologise African politics every which way.
This is a book that is quite close to me in terms of method, as a person who roots herself primarily in political theory but believes ardently in the ways other methods and sources, including history and fieldwork, must educate political theory. Along with this, the book is supposed to demonstrate “the associated possibilities for decolonising the study of politics”. One might question the extent to which this book rigorously engages this latter goal, but it continues in the tradition of thinkers including Thandika Mkandawire (to whom the book is dedicated) and others like Ndongo Samba Sylla and Leonce Ndikumana.
Roelofs contests the dominant World Bank discourse on good governance that is projected as universally accepted and uncontroversial. She proposes an alternative mode of governance whereby the people decide for themselves the terms of engagement – something that the World Bank has in multiple, egregious ways denied the continent. This very act is noteworthy – the “problem” of African politics has been repeatedly deemed “too embedded in social and material relations”, leading to the oft-cited ills of neopatrimonialism, corruption, etc.
Roelofs is self-conscious of her position as a white woman trying to turn the tables on colonial, trope-filled discourse and asks for thoughts on how such a move might be more conscientiously made.
However, though this goal of challenging what good governance means is named explicitly at the outset, it would have been useful to see the precise ways in which the book operates as a (potentially) decolonial act. Roelofs is self-conscious of her position as a white woman trying to turn the tables on colonial, trope-filled discourse and asks for thoughts on how such a move might be more conscientiously made. Indeed, many have questioned how “Africanists” – often white, often working outside the continent – have positioned themselves at the centre of changing tides in African political discourse. The racial blindspots (or worse) underlying African Studies must be called out alongside those of the financial institutions; the neocolonial project is a concert of efforts.
The author hints at this issue, but often in diplomatic terms. As Robtel Neajai Pailey writes, one needs to “speak into existence the proverbial elephant in the room of development: race”. However, one must balance this move with the recognition that all of us, including white academics, are responsible for taking the decolonial bull by the horns – that one must not shirk responsibility via the false generosity of “making space” for “people of colour”. The hard work of taking responsibility and being responsible must be consciously and explicitly engaged.
Another danger the book sometimes falls into is to play up the narrative of what Africa can teach the world.
Another danger the book sometimes falls into is to play up the narrative of what Africa can teach the world. This viewpoint is problematic in that it may suggest a need to peg the meaningfulness of work done in Africa to its importance for the Big Bad West (and elsewhere). The greater purpose may instead be to unearth meanings that only have value locally, to study Africa for its own sake, and not for the West’s education. The question of where meaning should be focused relates to Toni Morrison’s observations on racism as a distraction. This burden leaves a person desperately trying to prove that they, too, are worthy; that they, too, have important things to show the world, unaware that by that very token they are upholding a particular standard of worthiness.
Despite this, Roelofs’ book serves as both rigorous, extended analysis of the good governance discourse and a worthwhile historical introduction to the troubles that have besieged state-making in Africa. Roelofs keenly dissects several key historical moments in Nigeria to tease out how they theoretically shape contemporary understandings of good governance.
Roelofs’ book serves as both rigorous, extended analysis of the good governance discourse and a worthwhile historical introduction to the troubles that have besieged state-making in Africa.
To this end, she writes about how good governance in Nigeria is often tied to the person (and myth) of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who, to some, was the best President Nigeria never had. However, there is more to the picture than the “modernising, elite-led, progressive” elements that epitomise notions of good governance in Nigeria and that Awolowo represented. Working through the contested ideas that surround good governance, Roelofs comes up with what she calls the “Lagos model”. This is a homegrown approach, made of a shared set of reference points acting as a yardstick against which governance is evaluated. Roelofs names the reference points as “an epistemic claim to enlightened leadership, a social claim to being embedded in one’s constituency and a material claim about the sharing of resources”. Roelofs shows that the ideas of good governance grounded in epistemic superiority were in tension with more populist visions that emphasised the need for satisfying short-term economic desires and connecting with leaders. From this dialectic “a full and rounded picture of legitimate leadership as containing epistemic, social and material aspects” emerges. The struggle to balance each of these three aspects is what produces good governance, and the gaps in managing the give and take across the three is what gives various kinds of actors, nefarious and otherwise, entry to “fix” what appears broken.
Overall, the book is accessible and unpretentious, even while quite history-heavy. Though it may lack the poetry and passion of a Mudimbe or Mbembe, its appeal to democratise understandings of good governance demands the reader’s engagement reckon. It is a refreshingly democratic take on what it means to govern well, by rooting the definition in what everyday people in a specific context truly seek.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Tolu Owoeye on Shutterstock.
The Politics of Time: Imagining African Becomings – review
The Politics of Time: Imagining African Becomings, edited by Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr, stems from the second “Workshops of Thought” held in Dakar in 2017, which brought together African and diasporic intellectuals and artists to discuss topics from decolonisation to political transformation. Engaging variously and critically with African life and thought, Camila Andrade finds this interdisciplinary volume a vital tool for reimagining the continent’s future.
What word or image comes to mind when you think about Africa? What academic and non-academic texts reflect (on) the African reality? Are they by African writers living on the continent or diaspora? The Politics of Time: Imagining African Becomings, edited by Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr, makes it possible to reflect on themes pertinent to the African experience that create future and imaginary possibilities beyond the stereotypes attributed to Africa.
Considering Africa involves grappling with a diverse, dynamic and thriving continent, with significant economic growth and a growing youth population. It also involves analysing its problems – such as the levels of inflation, the impacts of climate change, hunger and malnutrition – that have coincided with young post-independence states. It is noteworthy, not to mention ironic, that terms such as “failed states” and “Frankenstein states” are used considering that these African states entered the international scene at a radical disadvantage after being exploited by their former colonisers. From this historical scenario, it is essential to analyse the continent’s past and repoliticise time. And as Mbembe, Sarr and the authors in this volume demonstrate, this endeavour is crucial in the context of conceptualising Africa’s future.
It is essential to analyse the continent’s past and repoliticise time. And as Mbembe, Sarr and the authors in this volume demonstrate, this endeavour is crucial in the context of conceptualising Africa’s future.
The book’s title presents a reflection on the possibilities of plural times, since “[…] we are witnessing the emergence and crystallisation of a new cycle in the redistribution of power, resources, and value” (ix) in the world, as Mbembe and Sarr argues in the preface. There are different moves at a multiplicity of speeds, continuities and ruptures in time, which lead us to think about future possibilities for Africa. “Imagining African becomings” means recognising its past, understanding its present and conjecturing possibilities for the future. The continent has been gaining space in the international arena, whether by acting in international organisations, through the African Union and its regional economic zones, or by its individual state roles. Therefore, Mbembe and Sarr claim that “Africa is not merely the place where part of the planet’s future is currently playing itself out. Africa is one of the great laboratories from which unprecedented forms of today’s social, economic, political, cultural, and artistic life are emerging” (viii).
The book is divided into six parts, in addition to the preface, bringing together intellectuals from different areas who adopt different lenses on Africa’s history and future possibilities, both academic and non-academic, covering law, literature, anthropology and others. The sections comprise 20 chapters with fundamental and urgent themes, such as the movement of people, migration, religion, the African diaspora, African futures and decolonial African education.
The book is the result of “The Workshops of Thought” (Les Ateliers de la Pensée) held in Dakar in 2017, an initiative created by the editors to unite intellectuals to think about plural perspectives of Africa’s realities and its possible futures
The book is the result of the second “Workshops of Thought” (Les Ateliers de la Pensée) held in Dakar in 2017, an initiative created by the editors to unite intellectuals to think about plural perspectives of Africa’s realities and its possible futures. The first session, held in October 2016, produced the volume To Write the Africa World, of which The Politics of Time is a companion. The Ateliers initiative demonstrates the vitality of intellectuals in African Studies, especially those working in Africa and its diaspora, who aim to deconstruct myths about Africa and go beyond that with “[…] the freedom to imagine alternatives” (135), as Françoise Vergès offers in the chapter “Un/learning”.
The chapters are developed based on the guiding question of how to envision a politics of time in contemporary conditions (ix). Other relevant questions are posed for reflection throughout the chapters, such as: “How might one transform the present and the past into a future? How might one produce a bifurcation in the real? Imagine other African possibilities? […] These, we suspect, have been the questions at the heart of the modern study of Africa and its diasporas” (x-xi).
Reflecting on possible futures also involves the decolonisation of knowledge; that is, thinking about practices, methodologies and objectives that prioritise the needs of the African continent. Universities and other educational apparatuses are not neutral: they were and continue to be instruments of (neo)colonising ideals. It is important to have an education that frees the body and mind and that goes beyond the reproduction of Eurocentric models that elide realities not found in Western universality. As Souleymane Bachir Diagne argues in the chapter, “From Thinking Identity to Thinking African Becomings”, “Today, the principal form of Eurocentrism is not one culture’s assertion that its values can dictate the norms that all others must follow. It is, rather, the form that grants the West the exorbitant privilege of being the only culture capable of reflecting critically of itself” (8).
Imagining possible futures for Africa also involves having different narratives and a plurality of stories. It requires us to rethink political models and the nation-state model itself, imported by colonisation. As Felwine Sarr argues in the chapter, “Reopening Futures”,
“It is about leaving behind the Eurocentrism tied to linear, progressive schemas of History, and of dropping Europe’s master-narrative, whose model the world’s other peoples are condemned to adopt or unhappily repeat. It is about accepting the plurality of collective ways of being, the multitudinous forms of societal life, the diverse modalities for producing being that we call cultures – and it is about accepting the possibility of there being many worlds within the world” (119).
In Amefrica Ladina we are also undergoing a decolonisation of knowledge, and it is vital to exchange ideas and methods with our peers in the Global South on how we can envision prosperous futures.
In the chapter “Weaving, a Craft for Thoughts”, Jean-Luc Raharimanana reminds us that “Successive centuries of domination block the free narration of our relations with the world, but, in the end, those times were unable to efface us from the society of the Living [des Vivants]. Africa is here; Africa is in us” (49). As part of the African diaspora, geopolitically located in the Global South (Brazil), the connection between Africa and its diaspora caught my attention throughout the article, understanding the role of the latter in terms of society, development, history and ancestral connectivity. In Amefrica Ladina we are also undergoing a decolonisation of knowledge, and it is vital to exchange ideas and methods with our peers in the Global South on how we can envision prosperous futures.
In thinking through the means of creating these futures, the book becomes a fundamental tool for intellectual emancipation about and for Africa. It provides a rich overview of the ideas and challenges for thinking about multiple Africas contemporaneously. Just as the African Union’s Agenda 2060 presents its vision as “an Africa for Africans and by Africans”, The Politics of Time inspires us to go beyond a static future premeditated by outsiders, instead imagining utopian futures that can become realities.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Main image: Red Block, 2010 by Ghana born artist El Anatsui, on show at The Broad, Los Angeles; October 2022. Credit: █ Slices of Light 
█▀ ▀ ▀ on Flickr.
How Southern Africa’s Elephants Bounced Back
The sun is setting above the horizon in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, but it’s still 40°C (104°F). A large group of elephants has just arrived at a lagoon to refresh themselves and get their daily dose of water: Drink up 200 liters each, and they are good to go. They frolic a little in the water and then set off to search for leaves and grass in the parched savannah, only to be replaced by another herd with many young calves.
While most species’ populations are decreasing, elephants in southern Africa are doing well. A newly released study of 103 elephant populations from Tanzania southwards — the most comprehensive ever — finds that conservation has halted the decline of savannah elephants in southern Africa over the last 25 years. To be more precise, as of 2020, the elephant population had rebounded to the same number as in 1995: 290,000. The scientists found that large, well-protected areas connected to other protected areas are far better than isolated “fortress” parks at maintaining stable populations.
Even though these outer areas don’t have the same level of protection so animals face a higher risk of dying, they are vital corridors that allow the elephants to migrate back and forth when core areas are too crowded or when facing threats such as poaching or unsuitable environmental conditions.
The post How Southern Africa’s Elephants Bounced Back appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
The Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization – review
In The Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization, Jonathan Silver explores infrastructural evolution in the Global South, extrapolating from case studies in urban sub-Saharan Africa. Taking a broad interdisciplinary view, the book effectively shows how technology, inequality, climate change and private versus public investment shape contemporary infrastructural landscapes, writes Dagna Rams.
When delving into developmental reports about infrastructure in Africa, one stumbles upon assessments that it is “lagging behind” or “missing”. While it might be easy to point to “infrastructural gaps” and sigh at the scale of what is to be done, it is more difficult to understand what is actually happening, why, and with what consequences. Jonathan Silver’s Infrastructural South: Techno-Environments of the Third Wave of Urbanization is the author’s attempt to conceptualise African infrastructures, focusing on the abundance of processes on the ground. Silver pays attention to the private investment being pumped into the continent, the government’s infrastructural spending, and the multiple individual and collective efforts to make the city work. The book is panoramic, using case studies from sub-Saharan urban Africa to extrapolate to the “Global South”. Its value comes from explaining how key trends such as growing inequalities, climate change and digital economies affect infrastructures, creating new path dependencies embedded in their material networks.
[The book’s] value comes from explaining how key trends such as growing inequalities, climate change and digital economies affect infrastructures
What is “third wave urbanisation” and what forms of infrastructures does it give rise to? What are the “techno-environments”? And how far does the “infrastructural south” reach? The jargon already present in the title foretells the author’s commitment to pair analysis with the coinage of new terms – at least one in almost every chapter. Their persuasiveness depends on their usefulness and ability to travel to other contexts far and wide.
Silver appropriates “third-wave urbanism” for the African context. Geography scholars might associate the term with its use to describe urbanisation propelled by the “knowledge” or “cognitive-cultural” economy – a process that moves cities away from their industrial past towards gentrification, impersonal office buildings and consumption based on lifestyle. Although never fully spelled out, the book tacitly situates the third wave after the colonial city-making which created racial and territorial divisions within cities (first wave?) and the independence-era modernisation and industrialisation that saw the building of some public housing (second wave?). The third wave is characterised by a dizzyingly rapid rise of the urban population amid the demise of the hitherto limited opportunities within the public and industrial sectors. The cities are landscapes of manifest inequality, most starkly between informal labour and the elites connected to extractive industries. Given the preponderance of these urban trends across the continent, the author sets out to explore the infrastructural outcomes they bring forth, or the condition of the “Infrastructural South”.
Private cities of Appolonia City outside Accra and Eko Atlantic outside Lagos […] represent new transfers of capital – from Asia and Russia – and ‘start again’ urbanisation for the ‘middle class’
The “Infrastructural South” is foremost characterised by different “techno-environments,” that is, infrastructural worlds characterised by distinct technological arrangements that alter environments. The most extreme examples of such “techno-environments” are the uncompleted but already materially present private cities of Appolonia City outside Accra and Eko Atlantic outside Lagos. They represent new transfers of capital – from Asia and Russia – and “start again” urbanisation for the “middle class”, promising a lack of congestion and reliable infrastructure. In contrast to these – still only – fantasies, ever more urban residents club to sprawling suburban neighbourhoods where houses precede infrastructure, and the latter is left for the people to figure out. “Techno-environment” is a useful coinage, especially amid climate change, when the extent to which people can harness the environment for their own projects or be exposed to its whims creates new social distinctions and a looming “eco-segregation” (56). Besides these, the book covers other transversal trends such as the development of “corridors” to increase infrastructural efficiency around areas of direct relevance to extractive industries or “disruptions,” that is, infrastructures created by technologies imposing new designs like Uber or harnessing what exists with the aim of making it more efficient like creating an app for booking an existing bus service.
The “Infrastructural South” is a condition that can be found anywhere
Though case studies from sub-Saharan Africa and three cities – Accra, Cape Town and Kampala – form the backbone of this study, the author emphasises that the “Infrastructural South” is a condition that can be found anywhere. To that point, the final pages look at the water pollution in Flint, Michigan and Camden, New Jersey as examples of the “Infrastructural South”. Here, like in other places visited in the book’s pages, much more is happening than a simple lack of money that drives a lack of infrastructure. For example, schools are given funding to buy bottled water for pupils to compensate for polluted tap water, and though fixes such as this are meant to be temporary, they create lasting path dependencies. Only some of the problems get addressed and the outcomes are variable (eg, while at school, kids do not drink polluted water, but may do so at home, especially if their parents are poor). The “Infrastructural South” is thus a condition of half-measures, half-funded, half-improvements that outsource ever more responsibilities onto the people and the private sector, undermining the promise of a “public” commonly associated with infrastructural investment.
The undeniable strength of the book is its ability to identify infrastructural trends and point in the direction of new research paths
The undeniable strength of the book is its ability to identify infrastructural trends and point in the direction of new research paths. Given the book’s reliance on case studies from the anglophone world, and specifically, destinations that attract financial capital such as Accra or Cape Town, there is also an important question about how the trends it identifies play out in other parts of the continent. In addition, the book strikes me as a particularly suitable introduction to the topic of infrastructure in urban Africa for interdisciplinary contexts, especially where students have had less exposure to post-colonial theory or critical urban studies.
Because of the broad scope of the research, the examples it uses – waste companies, public toilets, electricity solutions, private cities, and corridors – are outlined rather than explored in depth. The methodology relies on reports in the public domain and short visits to different infrastructural sites. The author states in relation to each visit whether he gave notice or arrived spontaneously, suggesting that the latter allowed him to pierce through appearances. One aspect in which the book leaves a reader wanting is with regards to the many people – infrastructure users and workers – who populate the pages: they are mentioned by first name alone and we learn very little about them other than the fact that their utterances support the author’s arguments. Given the number of people mentioned, I had a sense that the “Infrastructural South” is populated by crowds from Ablade Glover’s paintings – a multitude who are seen from enough of a distance to appear to be speaking in one voice, which does not chime with the picture of infrastructural inequalities and individualised strife otherwise represented in the author’s theory.
The durability of infrastructure means that it can have the power to define cities for years to come
The durability of infrastructure means that it can have the power to define cities for years to come, just as inequalities solidified in colonial infrastructures have defined contemporary urban fabric. Likewise, decisions made today can alter urban maps in ways that will be difficult to undo – a proposition that is especially consequential in the context wherein climate change preparedness plans emphasise the importance of resilience and adaptability. Infrastructures matter. As Silver’s book warns, it is important to interrogate whether the infrastructures touted, established and planned are meant to connect or disconnect urban populations, whether the material arrangements they create are based on solutions that see into the future of the public or fixes that favour private investment. The resounding worry of the book is that the latter is likelier, and that tendency is not only prevalent in urban Africa or even the Global South, but the world over.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: Kehinde Temitope Odutayo on Shutterstock.
‘Untold Damage to the UK’s Reputation’: Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights Slams the Rwanda Bill
Parliament’s most senior human rights committee condemns today the Government’s Rwanda Bill as “fundamentally incompatible with the UK’s human rights obligations.”
The Joint Committee on Human Rights – composed of MPs and peers – effectively rejects the bill in its entirety proposing no amendments after a line-by-line examination of all the clauses.
The report is published on the day the House of Lords starts its detailed examination of the bill which is expected to give a very rough ride to the government and the Prime Minister for introducing it as an emergency measure.
The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill facilitates the removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda. It was proposed by Rishi Sunak after the Supreme Court rejected Rwanda as a safe country and the European Court of Human Rights stopped a flight going to Rwanda last year.
The bill strips out virtually all protection for asylum seekers and immigrants who arrive illegally in the UK in boats across the Channel under the UK’s own Human Rights Act. It severely limits the courts to hear appeals against deportation, allows ministers and civil servants to ignore directions from the European Court of Human Rights and orders the courts to treat Rwanda as a safe country under a new treaty with the UK.
The committee is “particularly alarmed” at the disapplication of part of the Act that allows authorities to ignore human rights granted under the European Convention of Human Rights which the UK is a signatory.
Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Joanna Cherry QC MP said:
“This Bill is designed to remove vital safeguards against persecution and human rights abuses, including the fundamental right to access a court. Hostility to human rights is at its heart and no amendments can salvage it.
“This isn’t just about the rights and wrongs of the Rwanda policy itself. By taking this approach, the Bill risks untold damage to the UK’s reputation as a proponent of human rights internationally.
“Human rights aren’t inconvenient barriers that must be overcome to reach policy goals, they are fundamental protections that ensure individuals are not harmed by Government action. If a policy is sound it should be able to withstand judicial scrutiny, not run away from it.”
The report is backed by the majority of the committee’s members who include Baroness Kennedy, Baroness Lawrence, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Labour MP for Streatham and Lord Alton.
Still, three of the committee’s Conservative members rejected the report’s findings by voting against clauses in the report. They are Jill Mortimer, MP for Hartlepool, who won the “Red Wall” seat in a by-election during Boris Johnson’s premiership; Lord Murray of Blidworth, a former Home Office minister and Baroness Meyer, the widow of Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to the United States. But they did not go as far as producing their own minority report to contradict the main report’s findings.
The committee is sceptical of the claims by the government that Rwanda is safe and that in practice asylum seekers sent there will be protected even if their claims to be allowed to enter the UK are rejected. The bill says they will be safe there but the committee and the Lords committee that examined international treaties could not find the mechanism to protect them.
The report is most scathing about the damage to Britain’s standing and reputation by passing the law saying it is “in jeopardy”.
“If the UK enacts legislation that fails to respect its own international human rights commitments it will seriously harm its ability to influence other nations to respect the international legal order.”
It also raises the issue of whether the action by the government over Rwanda undermines the Good Friday agreement and the Windsor agreement in Northern Ireland. This has been raised by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission which says the agreement says Northern Ireland has to follow the European Convention on Human Rights and immigrants must have access to the courts.
The Government denies the agreement is so far-reaching. The committee is not satisfied and asks for ministers to lay a report before Parliament on this before the bill reaches the Report stage in the Lords.
First Sub-Saharan Ethics Center Approaches 5th Anniversary; Seeks Funds for Conference
EthicsLab, a research center in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, is organizing a conference in celebration of its upcoming fifth anniversary, and has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help people attend it.
Created in 2019 and based at the Catholic University of Central Africa, EthicsLab (previously) is the first ethics center in sub-Saharan Africa. Its mission, in part, is
to amplify the African perspective on global and regional challenges, and to build connections between African scholars and scholars from other regions of the world. EthicsLab offers scholarships to young African philosophers, organizes academic conferences, and organizes debates on challenges facing Africa. It also organizes a summer school, the Yaoundé Seminar, which has become an international institution.
The conference will take place in June of 2024. It’s aim is to “bring together a large group of scholars from Africa and the rest of the world.” The organizers say,
The conference aims to provide an opportunity for academics from all over the world to engage with many of the talented scholars from across the African continent, and vice versa. In our view, there is far too little interaction of this kind, and the conference represents one way in which EthicsLab is aiming to facilitate more of it.
The fundraiser is “primarily to fund travel and accommodation expenses for philosophers based in Africa to attend the conference,” says one of the conference organizers, Brian Berkey (University of Pennsylvania). Funds will also be used to help keep EthicsLab in operation.
You can check out and contribute to the fundraiser here.
The post First Sub-Saharan Ethics Center Approaches 5th Anniversary; Seeks Funds for Conference first appeared on Daily Nous.
Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan – review
In Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan, Naomi Pendle dissects the interactions between Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities amid national and international peacebuilding efforts, exploring the role of spiritual culture and belief in these processes. Based on extensive ethnographic and historical research, the book offers valuable insights for scholars and policymakers in conflict management and peace-building, writes Nadir A. Nasidi.
Spiritual Contestations: The Violence of Peace in South Sudan. Religion in Transforming Africa Series, Vol. Number: 12. Naomi Ruth Pendle. James Currey. 2023.
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The history of South Sudan includes a series of protracted conflicts and wars, which have attracted the attention of many researchers covering their socio-economic and political dimensions. Following in this vein, Pendle’s Spiritual Contestations explores the interactions between Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities within the context of national and international peace-making processes. This also includes the role of the clergy and traditional rulers in such processes, which is complicated by politics, sentiments, and the urge to profit from the South Sudan’s protracted conflicts. Pendle also assesses the experiences of ordinary South Sudanese people in peace-making, including their everyday peace-making meetings. The book is divided into three sections and 14 engaging chapters based on the author’s ethnographic and historical research conducted between 2012 and 2022 among the Nuer- and Dinka-speaking peoples.
Pendle’s Spiritual Contestations explores the interactions between Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities within the context of national and international peace-making processes
Chapter one describes the historical evolution of the hakuma (an Arabic-derived, South Sudanese term for government) in the 19th century and the physical violence which South Sudan has experienced through its mercantile and colonial history, as well as many years of war that influenced contemporary peace-making. It also shows how the hakuma claimed “divine” powers (as a result of god-like rights the government arrogated to itself). Chapters two, three, four and five discuss the contemporary making of war and peace, oppositions to the Sudan government’s development agenda, the 1960s and 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement and South Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. These chapters also examine the Wunlit Peace Meeting, which was a classic example of what the author calls “the ‘local turn’ in peace-making whereby international actors championed ‘local’ forms of peace-making” (35-119).
Chapter seven largely focuses on the escalation of violence in Warrap State as a result of having an indigenous hakuma alongside ever-evolving ideas of land, property, resources, and cattle ownership. Chapters seven to fourteen then focus on the proliferation of peace meetings in Gogrial and the cosmological crisis brought by the years of war (which involves the disruptions or perceived threats to cosmic order and by overarching beliefs about the universe held by the Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities), a crisis which was met with a proliferation of prophets. This section also covers wars in South Sudan since 2013, the prevalence of revenge in giving meaning to armed conflicts, the post-2013 power of the Nuer prophets, the post-2013 era in Warrap State, and the role of the church in South Sudan’s peacekeeping through the activities of Dinka priests who are popularly known as the baany e biith.
Although the title of the book appears oxymoronic, the author argues that peace remains violent when understood in a context wherein the methods employed to establish or foster peace involve force, suppression, and coercion
Although the title of the book appears oxymoronic, the author argues that peace remains violent when understood in a context wherein the methods employed to establish or foster peace involve force, suppression, and coercion. This is especially true in the context of South Sudan’s “unsettled cosmic polity”; a polity characterised by periods of questioning, restructuring or conflict in response to perceived disruptions of cosmic order and balance, which further push the boundaries of contemporary discourse on the meaning and conceptualisation of peace and peace-making (179-189).
The author further explains how […] religious connotations are used to contest the moral logic of government, particularly in the rural areas of South Sudan
Pendle bases her arguments on the “eclectic divine” and religious influences among communities located around the Bilnyang River system. The author further explains how these religious connotations are used to contest the moral logic of government, particularly in the rural areas of South Sudan. Through this means, the author clarifies how religion and religious assertions shape the peoples’ social and political life. This includes issues such as spiritual and moral contestations, as well as the making and unmaking of norms within the “cultural archive” (including traditional, economic and historical recollections) that reshape the violence of peace, feuds, and its associated political economies. She advances this argument in her study of conflicts over natural resources and cultural rights that are understood as cosmological occurrences by the people of South Sudan, the meanings of war and peace, and the assertion of power within these events.
Pendle states that to understand the real politics and violence of peace-making, one must also understand ‘how peace-making interacts with and reshapes power not only in everyday politics’, but also ‘in cosmic polities’
Pendle states that to understand the real politics and violence of peace-making, one must also understand “how peace-making interacts with and reshapes power not only in everyday politics”, but also “in cosmic polities” (75-99). Looking at the nature of human societies, she concludes that they are largely hierarchical, mostly located within the purview of a cosmic polity that is populated by “beings of human attributes and metahuman powers who govern the people’s fate” (7).
Basing her arguments on Graeber and Shalins’ research, Pendle observes that South Sudanese society’s secular governments and self-arrogating divine powers can pass for a cosmic polity. It is within this context that the South Sudanese Arabic term for government, ‘hakuma’ operates; the term refers not only to government, but to a broad socio-political sphere including foreign traders and slavers.
Pendle also documents the various ways in which South Sudanese people use cultural symbols, rituals, norms, and values, as well as theology, to contest ‘predatory power and to make peace’
Pendle also documents the various ways in which South Sudanese people use cultural symbols, rituals, norms, and values, as well as theology, to contest “predatory power and to make peace” (75). Examples include the Dinka use of leopard skin (which is used for conflict resolution between two warring factions), cultural diplomacy through festivals, as well as the ceremonial blessings of cattle as a symbol of wealth.
The book is not without flaws. The author often oscillates between the use of ordinal and cardinal numbers when a chapter is mentioned Even if this is done for convenience, it is at the expense of chronology and consistency. Although written in plain and straight-to-the-point language, the author’s use of compound-complex sentences throughout the book makes it difficult for readers to comprehend easily.
Considering the ongoing conflicts and wars in and around the South Sudan region, Pendle’s Spiritual Contestations is a timely work. Using a close analysis, the author provides incisive insights into the changing nature of wars and conflicts, as well as the violence of peace among the Nuer- and Dinka-speaking communities. The book is a significant resource for scholars in the field of conflict management and peace-building, international organisations, policymakers and anyone interested in considering the interplay of religion, governance, tradition, peace-making, and conflict management.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Richard Juilliart on Shutterstock.
Government funding pro-Israel ‘charity’ to fight support for Palestinians in schools
‘Solutions not Sides’ literally ‘both-sidesing’ Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing – but has been linked to pro-Israel lobby and receives most funding from UK government and lobby groups
The UK government and pro-Israel lobby groups are funding a UK-registered charity to indoctrinate schoolchildren against recognition of Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
‘Solutions not Sides’ (SNS) has received increasing amounts of cash to carry out literal ‘bothsidesing’ of the grossly asymmetrical situation in Palestine, treating Israel’s occupation, apartheid, oppression and now mass-murder of Palestinians as equivalent to Palestinian resistance.
The charity’s website claims to run a ‘non-partisan programme’ to ‘prepare students to make a positive, solutions-focused contribution to debates on Israel-Palestine’. However, its ‘Mission & Values’ page states that it opposes ‘advocacy’ and ‘partisan solidarity'(!) a value that rules out support for the Boycott Divestment and sanctions campaign, rejects ‘blame culture’ and believes that:
both sides bear responsibility for bringing about a resolution to the conflict.
Israel is currently engaged in mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians and is making plans for the deportation of Gazan Palestinians to Egypt, the Congo and other African destinations. It faces allegations brought before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa of what experts consider to be a ‘textbook case’ of genocide. The victims of war crimes clearly do not ‘bear responsibility’ for ending the crimes – and minimising Israel’s guilt for its illegal actions and Palestinian suffering while treating Palestinians’ acts of resistance as equivalent is inherently partisan. In this context, the group’s claim to be fighting Islamophobia as well as antisemitism looks like mere window dressing.
According to Palestine is still the issue and 5Pillars, SNS has its origins in – and receives around thirty percent of its funding from – ‘One Voice’, a billionaire-funded pro-Israel lobby group. SNS has been backed by pro-Israel groups, as well as figures well-known from their eager participation in smears of the left.
An attempt by Palestine Declassified to visit the SNS office to obtain comment on analysis of SNS’s activities found that no one was based at the charity’s registered address. It did not respond to the programme’s requests for comment.
Campaigners are asking teachers and parents to complain to schools urgently if this group is brought in.
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Israel planning to transfer Palestinians to Congo
Ethnic cleansing plans outed further but still ignored by western ‘mainstream’ media
Image: ActionAid
Israel is negotiating with Congo – it is unclear from reports which of the two neighbouring Congos – and other African nations to transfer the Palestinian people, according to reports in the Times of Israel and its sister site Zman Israel.
Both the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) regularly see serious human rights violations, including massacres. A 2022 US Department of State report on human rights in the Republic, which is commonly known as Congo Brazzaville after its capital city to distinguish it from its neighbour – states that:
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest or detention; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference
and more.
In the DRC, human rights groups have noted massacres and other human rights violations. Amnesty International said in 2022 that the DRC:
continued to experience serious human rights violations, including mass killings in the context of armed conflict and inter-communal violence, a crackdown on dissent and ill-treatment of detainees. People from regions affected by armed conflict, including eastern DRC, were particularly affected amid mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian crisis. The authorities continued to show a lack of political will to hold the perpetrators of human rights violations to account. The right to education was violated.
The Times quoted a ‘senior’ security cabinet source and comments by Israeli minister Gila Gamliel:
Israeli officials have held clandestine talks with the African nation of Congo and several others for the potential acceptance of Gaza emigrants.
“Congo will be willing to take in migrants, and we’re in talks with others,” a senior source in the security cabinet tells [journalist] Shalom Yerushalmi.
Yerushalmi quotes Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel saying at the Knesset yesterday: “At the end of the war Hamas rule will collapse, there are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely dependent on humanitarian aid. There will be no work, and 60% of Gaza’s agricultural land will become security buffer zones.”
The UK government has disgraced itself by continued attempts to transfer desperate refugees to Rwanda, attempts continually blocked by the courts – but the Israeli regime was the first to do it, sending around 4,000 Black refugees fleeing war in Eritrea and Sudan to Rwanda between 2013 and 2018 before discontinuing what it called ‘voluntary’ departure – similar to the ‘voluntary emigration’ euphemism it uses for its ethnic cleansing plan, alongside ‘humanitarian migration’.
Israel has an appalling record toward Black people, even Black Jews – and last year threatened to deport them, too. The SAGE Race & Class Journal notes that:
Ethiopian Jews who have been brought into Israel in several mass transfer operations, have found themselves relegated to an underclass. They are not only racially discriminated against in housing, employment, education, the army and even in the practice of their religion, but have also been unwittingly used to bolster illegal settlements.
Now, as well as the already-outed plan to force huge numbers of Palestinians out of Gaza into the Egyptian desert, Israel is actively working on plans to force more out of the Middle East altogether and into Africa. The Israeli regime’s war crimes continue to pile up.
Despite the similarities with the UK’s racist government, at the time of writing the UK’s so-called ‘mainstream’ media have not reported Israel’s plan – as has been the case with much of Israel’s racism and criminality.
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Belly Woman: Birth, Blood and Ebola: The Untold Story – review
In Belly Woman: Birth, Blood and Ebola: The Untold Story, Benjamin Black gives a first-hand account of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and the efforts of communities and healthcare workers to save the lives of pregnant women at risk. Black’s gripping exposé indicts the slow and inadequate response by international health agencies and argues for better-resourced healthcare systems, better reproductive healthcare for women and valuing local expertise to prevent future epidemics, writes Susannah Mayhew.
Belly Woman: Birth, Blood and Ebola: The Untold Story. Benjamin Black. Neem Tree Press. 2023.
Find this book:
Belly Woman: Birth, Blood and Ebola, the Untold Story has the fluidity and compulsion of a novel while providing fascinating insights into frontline action and research on the effects of Ebola on pregnant women and how to protect them. Written by obstetrician gynaecologist and aid advisor Benjamin Black, the book arises from his years spent with Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) before, during and after the devastating Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone between 2014-2016. Structured in three parts, it first takes us through the desperate early months of epidemic response in which healthcare staff charted unknown territory as they managed the “mindboggling” (77) complexities of caring for pregnant women with Ebola. We then return to Sierra Leone a few months later to an improving situation in which Ebola in pregnancy could safely be managed, but local learning was ignored by international responders (who had eventually arrived). Finally, as the epidemic declines, we witness the ongoing post-Ebola tragedy of maternal death.
The book is both a powerful story of how medics of all nationalities strived to save lives against the odds and a deeply personal, sharply political book about the existing inadequacies of women’s reproductive healthcare which were tragically magnified during Ebola.
The book is both a powerful story of how medics of all nationalities strived to save lives against the odds and a deeply personal, sharply political book about the existing inadequacies of women’s reproductive healthcare which were tragically magnified during Ebola. The book swings back and forth in time as Black juxtaposes his London experiences of maternal care, particularly during Covid, with the raw accounts of actions in Sierra Leone. This sets the desperate inadequacies of facilities in Sierra Leone in stark relief against the smooth functioning, highly resourced facilities of the UK. It also highlights, in both situations, the dangerous consequences of arrogance when it drives decision-making by those in positions of political and medical power. The lived experiences of Black’s narrative provide a quietly damning judgement on the world’s response to Ebola and the ubiquitous failure to listen to and learn from those in the frontlines of crisis response – both medics and ordinary citizens.
The lived experiences of Black’s narrative provide a quietly damning judgement on the world’s response to Ebola and the ubiquitous failure to listen to and learn from those in the frontlines of crisis response – both medics and ordinary citizens.
Part one of the book plunges us into the thick of the epidemic as local and international staff struggle to the point of frustrated exhaustion to deal with the pace and scale of an epidemic which “should never have exploded […] It had all happened in slow motion and was totally predictable”, yet the world ignored it – “I felt like we were screaming into a vacuum.” (166). Black gives us rich insight into the extent of grass-roots medical efforts in responding to the disease and gathering hitherto undocumented data on the impact of Ebola on pregnancy. He reveals a world in which “[r]oulette, not medicine, became the order of the day” (40) with staff operating in an ethical “no-man’s land” (65). They faced daily dilemmas: what do you do with a pregnant woman in critical condition who might have Ebola but without immediate obstetrics intervention would not survive the time it took to get the Ebola test-result back? Frontline doctors kept their own notes and shared their own learning, creating some of the first (and only) research on how Ebola affects pregnant women and their unborn foetuses, and how to manage such pregnancies safely.
Frontline doctors kept their own notes and shared their own learning, creating some of the first (and only) research on how Ebola affects pregnant women and their unborn foetuses
The slowness and inadequacy of the international response to the West Africa Ebola epidemic is well known, but the book still shocks with its detail of the nature and consequences of the wider response. Seven months after the first officially diagnosed case the international “cavalry” arrive, prompted by concerns of a risk to global health security, and ironically but predictably “in synchronicity with declining transmission” (210). In Part Two Black describes the shameful in-fighting between international responders desperate to make their mark and claim territory. He and his colleagues in the field joked darkly of “Ebola tourists”, the “EOAs (Experts On Arrival)” (181) and the “hot-headed rigidity and lack of pragmatism” of the UK military response (215) all of whom sometimes put patients at risk despite available lessons that could have avoided this.
The WHO ignored local learning and produced guidelines for the Ministry of Health that directly undermined the management of pregnant women post-Ebola, and failed again to listen when frontline MSF doctors voiced their concerns.
Even in the final throes of the epidemic (Part Three), when so much should have been learned, there are distressing illustrations of the power of arrogance. The WHO ignored local learning and produced guidelines for the Ministry of Health that directly undermined the management of pregnant women post-Ebola, and failed again to listen when frontline MSF doctors voiced their concerns. This lead directly to unnecessary deaths before the guidelines were finally repealed – truly, “Egos can kill” (324). This approach that discounts local knowledge has been seen repeatedly, including in Democratic Republic of Congo’s biggest Ebola outbreak just two years later despite attempts to improve feedback from communities, and in the UK’s own Covid response as lessons were “forgotten, wilfully ignored or recycled for the next emergency” (239). The damage that ignoring important lessons can do is agonisingly exposed in the many unnecessary deaths of pregnant women that Black describes. He notes that though experimental drugs and vaccines were promising, they could not “replace basic hygiene, health promotion and community engagement” (167) – and to achieve this trust in health workers is key.
Trust in healthcare cannot be built by a ‘revolving door’ of international medical health workers and ‘experts’; it is built through local health staff working tirelessly on the ground
Although not explicit in the book, the breakdown of trust has longstanding repercussions that echo through the book’s narratives of both Ebola and UK Covid responses. Trust in healthcare cannot be built by a “revolving door” (9) of international medical health workers and “experts”; it is built through local health staff working tirelessly on the ground: “As the outside world, with all its resources and capability, held back in fear and self-protectionism, these individuals stood firm, and […] played a part in saving us all.” (159). Yet, these people were largely ignored when the world was congratulating itself on saving the day (329), though some, like Black’s trusted local colleague Morris, gave their lives.
During the epidemic, pregnancy was seen as an explosive risk […] but afterwards, maternal mortality and morbidity – like much of women’s health – were too often invisible
The question of how to tackle the underlying “protracted health crisis” (113) of high maternal mortality rates haunts the third part of the book. Black and his colleagues were acutely aware that, “[t]he end of Ebola was not the end of the emergency, just as the start had never been the beginning.” (316). During the epidemic, pregnancy was seen as an explosive risk (a potential “Ebola bomb” ch.25), but afterwards, maternal mortality and morbidity – like much of women’s health – were too often invisible so “if you didn’t look for it, you didn’t see it, and if you didn’t see it then there was no emergency” (254). This meant that even MSF’s hierarchy failed to acknowledge the absolute necessity of supporting family planning as a critical preventive measure for high-risk pregnancy and maternal death.
There is an urgent need to rethink humanitarian approaches in light of Black’s insights, to humbly learn from and work with frontline responders to strengthen health systems and protect the health of all women and young children.
Following Ebola, Sierra Leone overtook Sudan and Chad to suffer the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. The colonial and neo-colonial legacy of aid-dependent, resource-poor health systems unable to respond to major shocks like Ebola undoubtedly contributed to this protracted health crisis, but arguably the superiority mindset of many international responders compounded and perpetuated it. There is an urgent need to rethink humanitarian approaches in light of Black’s insights, to humbly learn from and work with frontline responders to strengthen health systems and protect the health of all women and young children. In making this case, Belly Woman is an extraordinary book – a visceral, harrowing but ultimately life-affirming read.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Samenwerkende Hulporganisaties on Flickr.