Hybrid social movements in Africa

Abstract

This essay identifies patterns in the organisation and character of social movements in Africa, drawing upon examples from sub-Saharan Africa and finding connections with the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings. It pays attention to historicising social movements, global linkages and the problem of sustaining change. Rather than defining social movements in an a priori manner, or generalising from definitions derived from the western societies, it explores their concrete meanings in Africa. Thus it aims to avoid both the ‘false negative’ of overlooking genuine African social movements and the ‘false positive’ of labelling movements in a misleading manner. It identifies constraints upon collective action in Africa, exploring the political dynamics which undermine the formation of durable and organised movements and limit their capacity to represent popular concerns.

Keywords:

• social movements
• Africa
• non-violence
• protests
• democratisation
• hybrid states

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the funders and participants in the workshop on ‘Social Movements and Political Change in Africa: Shaping Technologies for Change’, 14–15 June 2012. They also thank Tom Lodge for his comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

1. See Andersen (2011).

2. These seven included six in Kampala and one in a suburb, Masaka. There were two further related deaths in Gulu. Forty demonstrators were killed in 2009 (Human Rights Watch 2012).

3. For instance the Uganda Human Rights Commission (2011) reported stone-throwing and ‘provocation’ by protesters, while in Malawi, offices and vehicles of the ruling party were torched and shops looted (The Guardian 2011).

4. The volume of Review of African Political Economy in which Larmer (2010) writes is a significant effort to address this deficit.

5. This is not the dominant political logic in all states, each of which, as we have argued, are a unique hybrid blend. For instance, see Du Toit (1995) for insights into the distinctive characteristics of southern African states.

6. Scholars differ substantially on how the problem of accountability should be addressed. The Africa Power and Politics Programme identifies hybrid states and argues for the need to ‘go with the grain’ to produce accountability in such systems, but does not directly explore the potential role of social movements.

7. For instance in Zambia, the fall of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was influential because of his government's relationship with the Kaunda administration: the Romanian dictator's death was widely watched on television in public places and helped to underscore the Zambian regime's fragility.

8. A good example is the development of women's involvement, particularly in the aftermath of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1995.

9. As a contributor to the workshop ‘Social Movements and Political Change: Shaping Technologies for Change’, University of Limerick, 14–15 June, 2012, suggested, we may suspect them of reflecting and generating novel, perhaps more cosmopolitan, ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991).

10. See Bond, Desai, and Ngwane (2012) for an alternative formulation of the problem which explains the ways in which uneven and combined development counteract the possibility of a joined-up movement in the South African context and which illustrates ongoing conceptual and practical struggles to overcome this.