The study is premised on a notion of 'African crisis'. Since the notion of crisis is multi-dimensional, hence susceptible to variable interpretations and emphases, the study posits and argues two interconnected hypotheses, thus operating within a finite investigative and interpretive framework It is hypothesised that a crisis of the state in Africa to a significant extent is a crisis in the spheres of political legitimacy and social cohesion. As both spheres fall within the operational ambit of ideology, the study examines the concept in some depth. In order to investigate the problematic of ideology in decolonising and postcolonial Africa, a distinction is made between ideology per se and phenomena and practices deemed ideological. During a process of exploring and analysing this distinction, cognisance is taken of the interface between ideology and social science paradigms. From this interface emerges the notion of an 'ideological paradigm'. Accordingly, it is hypothesised that two dominant paradigms in Cold War era Africa, namely, modernisation theory and scientific Marxism, are implicated in the crisis of the state. Included in this proposition is an argument that the application of exogenous developmental schematics in effect reproduced a colonial ethos inhospitable to endogenous innovation and initiative, not least in respect to the formulation and application of ideologies adequately congruent with - hence intelligible to - the lived worlds of Africans. Moreover, to the extent that the post Cold War era is characterised by the dominance of a neoliberal paradigm, this contention is of continuing relevance. The better to distinguish between an ideological paradigm and an ideology, the study investigates two significant departures from paradigmatic convention in decolonising Guinea-Bissau and postcolonial Tanzania. Both Amilcar Cabral and Julius Nyerere articulated and applied ideologies on the whole grounded more in local contexts than in exogenous paradigms. While Cabral's thesis is discussed at some length during the course of a literature review, Ujamaa in Tanzania comprises the dissertation's main case study. Tanzania is conceptualised as embarking on a post-independence quest for an inclusive epistemology on which to base an ideology at once locus-specific and informed by general tenets of human-centred socialism. From this quest emerged a national ethic that - in a post Cold War era - continues to influence state-societal relations in Tanzania, and thus has proven to be of lasting value. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017. / This study analyses the politics of liberation heritage in postcolonial southern Africa with special reference to Mozambique. The aim is to scrutinise the different ways in which liberation heritage discourse is used and mobilised to construct a range of socioeconomic and political values in the southern African region and to examine the processes of heritagization in Mozambique based on field observations at two national heritage sites: Chilembene and Matchedje. I adopt the conceptualisation of heritage as discourse and put the hegemonic Western heritage discourses into historical perspective in order to explore how this Western understanding of the past has influenced the official discourse and practice in southern Africa in both colonial and postcolonial periods. I argue that the process of re-appropriation and ‘mimicry’ which allow the perpetuation of Western paradigms in the conception of heritage result from a combination of geopolitical and socio-economic contexts and circumstances at play nationally, regionally and globally, combined with the strategies adopted by former national liberation movement’s ruling elites to pursue their own nationalist agendas related to state-crafting and nation-building. I also argue that the recent traction that has led to the institutionalisation of liberation heritage discourse in southern Africa, represents a specific way in which former national liberation movements, now in government, have tried to respond to changes in circumstances marked by an increasing contestation by the different social groups over the content of the official discourse of ‘the past’, based on selective memories of the liberation struggle, in an increasingly disputed multi-party democratic dispensation. To understand the politics of heritagization of the liberation struggle in postcolonial Mozambique, I look at FRELIMO’s efforts to undertake selective celebrations and to silence particular ‘pasts’ for particular ‘presents’ during the struggle years as well as through the different socio-political and economic contexts of the successive presidencies: Samora Machel (1975-86), Joaquim Chissano (-2004) and Armando Guebuza (-2014). By (1) addressing the question of why and how the heritagization of this particular category of the past (i.e. liberation heritage) accomplishes the reproduction of state power held by ruling elites of former national liberation movements, and by (2) illustrating the networks of meanings and practices on which liberation heritage rests, and by (3) analysing the socioeconomic, cultural and political work it does, this study contributes to the embryonic body of knowledge about heritage processes in southern Africa. / LG2017

The critical essay gained immense popularity in the sixties and seventies in the Maghrib as a way to depict national realities that had failed to live up to nationalist ideals. Their authors often shared similar attributes: young highly educated intellectuals, committed toward modernity and who steered clear of politics. Such was the case of Abdallah Laroui (born 1933) and Hichem Djaït (born 1935), two celebrated Maghribi thinkers of the post-1967 generation in Arab thought. Despite their different ideological positions, they share a similar trajectory and both wrote about the need for another Arab renaissance, in Laroui's La crise des intellectuels arabes (1974) and Djaït's La personnalité arabo-islamique (1974). The turn to critical writing is routinely dismissed for being secondary, for having a restricted audience and little political impact, yet it highlights well the Maghribi postcolonial intellectual's competing demands: to conform to an ideal representation of intellectual "commitment" through critical speech, and to secure national recognition and integration. As such, this thesis confronts the often-neglected impact of nationalism on intellectual conducts after independence around the impact of their disillusionment, and forces us to rethink critically notions of engagement, the role of intellectuals and postcolonial cultural productions that are current in Middle East studies, and problematically envisaged by postcolonial studies. These texts have been approached as dynamic objects responding to a set of questions in their time, to account for the materiality of thought production, mobilising David Scott's concept of the "problem-space of intellectual production" (1999). This thesis looks at Abdallah Laroui and Hichem Djaït's intellectual projects from 1965 to 1978, to study the genesis and aftermaths of their critical moment, focusing on their published writings (critical essays and academic studies), press and journal articles, interviews, and fictional texts from a later period, in Arabic and French. Their writings will be read alongside several cultural journals, newspapers and memoirs dealing with this period of the Maghrib's history to account for the processes of circulation and reception by relevant audiences.

The central question guiding this study is, how can Liberia's historical context of colonial state formation and reformation help explain public discourses surrounding gender violence in the postwar decade, 2003-2013? This question is addressed using original data from mixed qualitative methods including participant observation, visual methods, and semi-structured interviews. The research identifies narratives and meta-narratives produced by liberal institutions (including the Government of Liberia and international agencies), as well as informal discourses from adult Liberians of different backgrounds living in Greater Monrovia. Using critical discourse analysis, the argument identifies connections between the narratives that recur, the social realities they recall, and the power dynamics they perpetuate. These discourses are best understood in reference to liberal and colonial/imperial dynamics from Liberia's settlement period. Liberal institutions addressing gender violence in the postwar period face dilemmas in which universalist humanitarian ideals work in tandem with, and provide justification for, imperialism as a set of discursive and material relations. Nonelite Liberians instrumentalise and subvert both privileged donor discourses as well as long-standing colonial hierarchies of 'civilised' and 'country'. Additionally, the thesis examines how liberal institutions, traditional institutions, and Liberian citizens interact as agents of discursive construction. It will be shown that this pattern of discourse production is at times harmonious, as in the interactions around promoting male head-of-household responsibilities, and at other times adversarial, as in conflicts surrounding excision as an initiation practice for girls. Liberal institutions, non-elite Liberians, and traditional authorities both collude and compete in this era of dynamic normative contestation. Both the major discourses and the interactions that produce them can be explained in part by the liberal imperialism and its specific form of settler colonialism that propelled the founding and subsequent stages of state formation in Liberia. The consequences of that residual history indicate inherent - though, not irredeemable - structural limitations to a robust institutional response to gender violence. In this manner the study demonstrates the utility of historicising Liberia's contemporary gender violence discourses, and how doing so can address the longstanding bifurcation between rights and culture in international development and transnational feminist geography.

This thesis examines the political thought of Achille Mbembe. It deploys decolonial critical analysis to unmask traces of coloniality with regard to the African existential conditions foregrounded in the conception of the African subject, its subjection, and subjectivity. The theoretical foundation of this thesis is decolonial epistemic perspective—the epistemic intervention that serves as a lens to understand Mbembe’s work and—that is the theoretical foundation outside the Euro-North American “mainstream” canon foregrounded in coloniality. Decolonial epistemic perspective in this thesis is deployed to expose three kinds of coloniality in Mbembe’s work, namely: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge and coloniality of being. The thrust of this thesis is that Mbembe’s political thought is inadequate for the understanding of the African existential condition in that it does not fully take coloniality into account. In order to acknowledge the existence of coloniality through decolonial critical analysis, the political thought of Mbembe is examined in relation to modes of self-writing, power in the postcolony, the politics of violence in Africa, Frantz Fanon’s political thought, and the idea of South Africa as major themes undertaken in this thesis. Decolonial critical analysis deals with foundational questions that have relevance to the existential condition of the African subject and the manner in which such an existential crisis can be brought to an end. These foundational questions confront issues like—who is speaking or writing, from where, for whom and why? This thesis reveals that Mbembe is writing and thinking Africa from outside the problematic ontology of the African subject and, as such, Mbembe precludes any form of African subjectivity that challenges the Euro-North American canon. This then reveals that Mbembe is not critical of coloniality and this has the implications in that subjection is left on the wayside and not accounted for. Having explored the genealogy, trajectory and horisons of decolonial critical analysis to understand the political thought of Mbembe, this thesis highlights that it is essential to take a detour through the shifting of the geography of reason. Herein lies the originality of this thesis, and it is here that Africa is thought from within a standpoint of decolonial critical analysis and not Africa that is thought from the Euro-North American canon. Therefore, the shifting of the geography of reason is necessary for the authorisation of the subjectivity of the African subject in order to combat subjection. / Political Sciences / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Politics)

This thesis examines the political thought of Achille Mbembe. It deploys decolonial critical analysis to unmask traces of coloniality with regard to the African existential conditions foregrounded in the conception of the African subject, its subjection, and subjectivity. The theoretical foundation of this thesis is decolonial epistemic perspective—the epistemic intervention that serves as a lens to understand Mbembe’s work and—that is the theoretical foundation outside the Euro-North American “mainstream” canon foregrounded in coloniality. Decolonial epistemic perspective in this thesis is deployed to expose three kinds of coloniality in Mbembe’s work, namely: coloniality of power, coloniality of knowledge and coloniality of being. The thrust of this thesis is that Mbembe’s political thought is inadequate for the understanding of the African existential condition in that it does not fully take coloniality into account. In order to acknowledge the existence of coloniality through decolonial critical analysis, the political thought of Mbembe is examined in relation to modes of self-writing, power in the postcolony, the politics of violence in Africa, Frantz Fanon’s political thought, and the idea of South Africa as major themes undertaken in this thesis. Decolonial critical analysis deals with foundational questions that have relevance to the existential condition of the African subject and the manner in which such an existential crisis can be brought to an end. These foundational questions confront issues like—who is speaking or writing, from where, for whom and why? This thesis reveals that Mbembe is writing and thinking Africa from outside the problematic ontology of the African subject and, as such, Mbembe precludes any form of African subjectivity that challenges the Euro-North American canon. This then reveals that Mbembe is not critical of coloniality and this has the implications in that subjection is left on the wayside and not accounted for. Having explored the genealogy, trajectory and horisons of decolonial critical analysis to understand the political thought of Mbembe, this thesis highlights that it is essential to take a detour through the shifting of the geography of reason. Herein lies the originality of this thesis, and it is here that Africa is thought from within a standpoint of decolonial critical analysis and not Africa that is thought from the Euro-North American canon. Therefore, the shifting of the geography of reason is necessary for the authorisation of the subjectivity of the African subject in order to combat subjection. / Political Sciences / D. Litt. et Phil. (African Politics)

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