Where is Uhuru? : reflections on the struggle for democracy in Africa / Issa G. Shivji ; edited by Godwin R. Murunga.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shivji, Issa G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Africa--Politics and government.

Africa.

Politics and government.

Physical Description:

vi, 246 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Pambazuka Press, 2009.

Summary:

The neoliberal project, led by the IMF and World Bank, promised to correct many of the distortions in the African postcolonial environment. It pledged to engineer liberalisation and expand democratic space through competitive multiparty elections. For a people who had suffered years of statism, these promises were persuasive. Indeed, they accorded this project a level of legitimacy it otherwise would not have enjoyed. However, several decades down the line, Issa G. Shivji aptly asks, Where is Uhuru?

Few people, if any, can testify to the success of the envisaged reforms. Instead, neoliberalism failed to guarantee a sustainable basis for freedom, rights and prosperity. These essays show that the reform period opened the continent to greater privation by a more emboldened local political class who, under pressure from or by acquiescing to foreign imperialist forces, undermined the struggles for democratic transformation and economic empowerment.

Whether one is examining the rewards of multiparty politics, the dividends from a new constitutional dispensation, the processes of land reform, women's rights to property, or the Pan-Africanist project for emancipation, Shivji illustrates how all these have suffered severe body blows. Shivji not only calls for a new, Africa-centred line of thinking that is unapologetic of the continent's right to self-determination, but through these essays sets out examples of how such thinking should proceed. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Contested Terrain of Democratic Politics 7

1 Critical elements of a new democratic consensus in Africa 8

2 Good governance, bad governance and the quest for democracy in Africa: an alternative perspective 20

3 Towards a new democratic politics 30

4 Democratic village governance: a contested terrain 40

Part 2 The State of the Debate on Constitutionalism 49

5 Three generations 0f constitutions and constitution-making in Africa 50

6 Towards a new constitutional order: the state of the debate in Tanzania 64

7 Federalism, constitutionalism and the crisis: democracy and the Tanzania union 79

8 Constitutional limits on parliamentary powers 93

Part 3 Land: A Terrain of Democratic Struggles 105

9 Land tenure problems and reforms in Tanzania 106

10 Grounding the debate on land: the National Land Policy and its implications 124

11 Reflections on the issue of women and land 139

Part 4 Intellectuals, Biographies and Reminiscences 149

12 From neoliberalism to Pan-Africanism: towards reconstructin an Eastern African discourse 150

13 Walter Rodney - a revolutionary intellectual 159

14 National autonomous development in the thought of Edward Moringe Sokoine 167

15 The life and times of Babu: the age of liberation and revolution 183

Part 5 Pan-Africanism or Imperialism? 195

16 Pan-Africanism or imperialism? Unity and struggle towards a new democratic Africa 196

17 Globalisation and popular resistance 208

Part 6 Empire's Lawlessness 221

18 Law's empire and empire's lawlessness: beyond the Anglo-American law 222.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [229]-240) and index.

ISBN:

9781906387464

190638746X

OCLC:

501320073

Publisher Number:

99942585251