The Continuing Struggle for National Liberation in Zaïre

1979 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nzongola-Ntalaja

The purpose of this article is to elucidate the factors underlying the rise of political opposition against the régime of Mobutu Sese Seko, and this should help clarify the background to the Shaba wars of 1977–8. The major argument is that these factors are intimately related to two major aspects of a continuous political crisis in Zaïre today, namely: the democratic struggle against Mobutu's dictatorship and reign of terror, and the popular movement for a ‘second independence’. In order to substantiate this argument, the article traces the growth of organised opposition to four interrelated phenomena: (1) the ideological split in the anti-colonial nationalist movement between ‘radicals’ and ‘moderates’, (2) the leadership struggle among the moderates themselves, (3) the neo-colonial character and tasks of the post-colonial state, and (4) the autocratic nature of Mobutu's oppressive rule.

Author(s):  
إبراهيم محمد زين

الملخّص يهدف هذا البحث لبيان أن السبيل الناجح لمواجهة الإرهاب الدولي المعاصر الملتبس بدعاوي الجهاد الإسلامي وإحياء دولة الخلافة الإسلامية هو التركز على معاني الأمن الفكري والروحي في الإسلام وهذا الاتجاه في المباحثة يُعيد النظر في طرائق قضايا الجهاد ويميز بين ما هو عقائدي ومرتبط بنظام الإسلام الكلي وبين ما هو من مجال حروب الفتنة والصعلكة.  الكلمات المفتاحيّة: الجهاد، حروب الصعلكة، حروب الفتنة، الأمن الروحي والفكري.              Abstract This study focuses on the most effective way of combating global terrorism that utilizes the banner of Jihad and restoration of the Khilafa system of governance. It should be emphasized that there is a dire need for a new line of investigation concerning the issue of Jihad that pays more attention to both spiritual and intellectual security systems in Islam. This requires a distinction to be made between what is universalistic in the Islamic system and what is particular. In this regard one has to differentiate between acts of just war and those of economic or sedition wars. Keywords: Jihad, economic war, sedition war, spiritual-intellectual security system.


Africa ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 558-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Fanthorpe

The chiefdoms of Sierra Leone are institutions of colonial origin but nevertheless continue to serve as local government units in the post-colonial state. The prevailing view among scholars is that these institutions have little basis in indigenous political culture, and have furthermore become breeding grounds of political corruption. This view has tended to elide anthropological analysis of internal chiefdom politics. However, it is argued in this article that such conclusions are premature. With reference to the Biriwa Limba chiefdom of northern Sierra Leone, it is shown that historical precedent, in many cases relating to prominent political figures of the late nineteenth century, continues to serve as a primary means of ordering local rights in land, settlement and political representation. This phenomenon is not a product of innate conservatism but emerges rather as a pragmatic response to the persistent failure of successive Sierra Leone administrations to extend modern measures of citizenship to the bulk of the rural populace. Rights and properties have become progressively localised in villages originally registered for tax collection in the early colonial era. Here one finds one of the most telling legacies of the British policy of indirect rule in post-colonial Sierra Leone.


2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (127) ◽  
pp. 343-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Wheatley

In early August 1910 readers of Reynolds’s Newspaper, a radical weekly journal noted as much for its detailed coverage of divorce court proceedings as for its political radicalism (and in 1911 one of the ‘immoral’ English Sunday papers targeted by Irish ‘vigilance committees’), may have perused the weekly political column written by T.P. O’Connor. ‘T.P.’, the M.P. for Liverpool Scotland, was anything but a disinterested columnist, and with John Redmond, John Dillon and Joseph Devlin formed the inner leadership of the Irish Parliamentary Party and Ireland’s nationalist movement.Throughout the political crisis of early 1910 O’Connor had been the main London-based conduit for communications between the Irish Party and Asquith’s cabinet, and in particular Lloyd George and the Liberal chief whip, the Master of Elibank. The outcome of the January 1910 general election, which had given the balance of power in the House of Commons to the Irish nationalists, and John Redmond’s use of that power to force Asquith to act to end the veto powers of the House of Lords over parliamentary legislation, had enhanced both Redmond’s status in Ireland and the importance of home rule as an issue that had to be resolved.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fahreen Alamgir ◽  
George Cairns

Purpose – This paper aims to discuss the discourse of globalisation and its implications in the case of state-owned jute mills (SOJMs) in the post-colonial state of Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach – The authors draw upon a critical debate on the concept of globalisation and critical political economy to revisit the country’s historical, political, social and cultural construction to discuss conditions of its conformity within the global order. Additionally, the perspective of subaltern studies underpins discussion of the context of the post-colonial state. Findings – A schematic analysis of the context surfaces issues that underpin the process of “truth production” and that have contributed to global integration of the Bangladesh economy. We consider how this discourse benefits some people, while over time, the majority are dislocated, excluded and deprived. Hence, this discourse denotes a territorial power of globalism that leads us to conceptualise Bangladesh as a neo-colonial state. Originality/value – Through a case study of SOJMs, this paper contributes to discussion on the essence and implications of the globalisation discourse and on how its methods and techniques reinforce hegemony in the name of development and sustainability in the forms of liberalisation, democratisation and good governance in a state like Bangladesh.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELEANOR NEWBIGIN

AbstractStudies of the post-colonial state have often presented it as a structure that has fallen under the control of self-interested sections of the Indian elite. In terms of citizenship, the failure of the state to do more to realize the egalitarian promise of the Fundamental Rights, set out in the Constitution of 1950, has often been attributed to interference by these powerful elite. Tracing the interplay between debates about Hindu property rights and popular support or tolerance for the notion of individual, liberal citizenship, this paper argues that the principles espoused in the Fundamental Rights were never neutral abstractions but, long before independence, were firmly embedded in the material world of late-colonial political relations. Thus, in certain key regards, the citizen-subject of the Indian Constitution was not the individual, freed from ascriptive categories of gender or religious identity, but firmly tied to the power structures of the community governed by Hindu law.


2006 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-334
Author(s):  
Edmund F. Wehrle

America's Miracle Man in Vietnam presents a prime example of the controversial new cultural trend in U.S. diplomatic history. On the surface, the author's depiction of the process whereby Ngo Dinh Diem became America's candidate to head the new country of South Vietnam is familiar (see, for instance, George Herring, America's Longest War, Temple University Press, 1986, 50–69). Echoing others, Jacobs argues that the U.S. promotion of Diem ultimately led to severe setbacks in Southeast Asia. So blatant were Diem's flaws, Jacobs insists, virtually any prescient observer could have predicted his unsuitability to lead nascent South Vietnam. Diem had no political base, was “undeniably an autocrat,” and appeared to be an eccentric loner by virtually all accounts (38). Once in office, Diem predictably launched his “reign of terror and error,” alienating legions of his countrymen and strengthening his opposition, which emerged officially as the National Liberation Front in 1960 (17).


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hio Tong Wong ◽  
Shih-Diing Liu

Situated in Hong Kong’s post-colonial context of political crisis, this article attempts to investigate the unfolding of cultural activism during the Umbrella Movement occurred in 2014. This 79-day occupy protest, triggered by the government’s restriction on universal suffrage, has released protesters’ creative potentials in performing their struggles through a variety of aesthetic forms and practices. Questioning the traditional way of conceiving protest movement in terms of violent confrontations with government or instrumentalism, this article addresses the performative role of cultural activism which has been largely ignored in the study of Hong Kong protest movement. Rather, we argue that the creative practices enacted during the Umbrella Movement constitute in themselves the message that contains its own politics and grammars. These practices have constructed the meaning of the movement through naming, and have created the collective joy and identity among participants in the formation of movement solidarity. This article suggests that cultural activism is the spirit and soul of the Umbrella Movement, which has opened up a temporary yet crucial political space for democratic struggle.


1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-24
Author(s):  
Allen Isaacman

On June 25, 1975, Mozambique became independent. The transfer of power from Portugal to FRELIMO (The Mozambican Liberation Movement) marked the first phase of national liberation. FRELIMO, unlike many nationalist movements whose exclusive concern was to capture the colonial state, emphasized that independence marked only the beginning of a longer process to dismantle exploitative institutions and transform basic economic and social relationships. The new era of “People’s Democratic Revolution” based on socialist principles envisioned “the construction in Mozambique of a society ... where the material living conditions of the people are constantly improving and where their social needs are increasingly satisfied.”


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