Young men at a roadblock check crossers’ scruffy papers. ‘Your ID’, yells a youngster. ‘I am not a Tutsi’, ripostes a woman with a baby on her back. ‘Have you seen your nose?’, demands a boy. Seconds later, a gang batters the lady to the ground, with machetes and sticks, because ‘she is a Tutsi warrior’. The next scene in Netflix’s ‘The World’s Most Wanted’ displays an avenue littered with corpses. Episode two of the series, about Rwandan businessman Félicien Kabuga, explains the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in the naivest terms: ‘It began when members of the Hutu tribe began slaughtering members of the minority Tutsi tribe’. Arrested in May 2020, Kabuga may be the last alleged génocidaire to be tried before a United Nations tribunal. But his criminal trial on charges of controlling a radio station that promoted Hutu Power ideology, and creating and supporting Interahamwe...

Sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa: Problems, perspectives, and prospects Sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa: Problems, perspectives, and prospects, edited by Jennifer L De Maio, Suzanne Scheld, and Mintesnot Woldeamanuel. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. v + 196 pp. £66 (e-book). ISBN 978 1 4985 7396 2. £69 (hardback). ISBN 978 1 4985 7395 5. Sabine I Franklin Sabine I Franklin Westminster Business School w1577261@my.westminster.ac.uk Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 120, Issue 479, April 2021, Pages 325–327, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adab006 Published: 31 March 2021 Article history Accepted: 05 March 2021 Published: 31 March 2021

Abstract Equatorial Guinea is not only one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes but also a striking case of regime and leader survival. This small, oil-rich state and personalist regime defies conventional wisdom because it is both far more resilient and faces far fewer threats from within the regime and from opposition political parties than other resource-rich states. But how does the regime manage to survive? This study argues that four key mechanisms interact to explain Equatorial Guinea’s record of authoritarian survival. Firstly, co-optation (via patronage, party, and cabinet appointments) which President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and the regime party—Partido democrático de guinea ecuatorial—have used to build internal cohesion and fragment opposition. Secondly, the crafting of restrictive institutional rules (party and electoral laws) that, combined with informal rules, aim to protect the regime’s interests and make participation in political opposition more costly. Thirdly, the use of (selective and diffuse) repression to shield the regime and shrink the living space of challengers. Finally, the regime’s international linkages and projection to gain credibility and offset pressure for change. We argue that autocrats’ survival depends on their ability to play a strategic two-level game: domestic and international.

ABSTRACT Political parties use different methods—such as holding rallies, door-to-door canvassing, and distributing gifts—to mobilize voters during election campaigns across Africa. But how do parties choose which approach to use in each constituency? We propose that parties prefer to hold rallies in core constituencies, and to use targeted strategies—canvassing and handouts—in swing and opposition districts. However, opposition parties may not have sufficient resources to pursue such a strategy. Ruling parties have the dual advantage of being in a strong financial position, and having the ability to target core voters with state benefits between elections. Using post-election survey data from Ghana’s 2012 election, we show that the ruling party canvassed the most in districts where they were electorally weak and concentrated rallies in their home constituencies. In contrast, the opposition party focused all of its efforts in its home districts. The results highlight how incumbency status shapes parties’ campaign behaviour. They also suggest that ruling parties can combine core and swing voter targeting in different stages of the electoral cycle.

Abstract This article offers a survey of political dynamics surrounding the issue of presidential term limits in a large sample of Sub-Saharan African countries over a long period of time. It examines empirically how political regimes have dealt with this issue by observing or circumventing limits, and it links these developments with the democratic quality in the countries at the time they occurred. Beyond legal texts, this study examines the empirical reality of term limits. It finds that effective term limits are less prevalent in practice than in constitutional texts. This is followed by an analysis of the incumbency bias, showing that incumbents who run often win at the election, but that transfers of power are more frequent in the absence of an incumbent. The article then considers the cost-benefit analyses leaders engage in when deciding to stay or to go, as well as the risks of overstaying. Domestic protest and international pressure generally have a limited impact on this choice. The article finally makes clear that political paths across Africa are very divergent, a feature also seen in the longevity of presidents.

On 7 March 1985, the railway workers of Sudan’s north-eastern town of Atbara took to the streets to protest against the rise in the price of basic foods decreed by the regime of President Jafa’ar Nimeiri.1 These protests continued for two and a half weeks before the outbreak in Khartoum of the main Intifada, which toppled Nimeiri, his ruling party, and his main state security service. On 19 December 2018, similar protests against rising food prices erupted once again in Atbara, and spread to the rest of the country much more rapidly. As in 1985, these protests have shifted from their early focus on the cost of bread toward a resolutely political emphasis on the toppling of the President Umar al-Bashir and his ruling National Congress Party—hence the slogan ‘tasgut bas’, or ‘just go’. At time of writing, the uprising has lasted just over two months, far longer than those that unseated Sudan’s last two military regimes in 1964 and 1985, which needed just 5 and 11 days, respectively, to bring down the government. It is less Khartoum focused than the previous movements,2 as demonstrated by the prominence of the hashtag ‘cities of Sudan rise up (mudun al-Sudan tantafid)’. This not because the previous uprisings did not witness substantial regional revolt, for they certainly did,3 but because the rise of social media activism has enabled dissent to spread from regional cities such as Atbara to Khartoum and elsewhere much more speedily.

Ebenezer Obadare (obadare@ku.edu) is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas and Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa. His latest book is Pentecostal republic: Religion and the struggle for state power in Nigeria (Zed Books, London, 2018). December is typically a month of fevered agitation in Nigeria. It is, for one thing, a month motorists have come to associate with fuel shortages, owing to industrial action by the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), bottlenecks integral to the structure of oil distribution in the country, or sometimes a combination of both. December 2018 was different. Absent the usual petro-agony, the public was held in thrall by the allegation levelled by Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group claiming to champion self-determination for the Igbo, that the man Nigerians have been ‘looking at on the television’ is not President Muhammadu Buhari, but his genetically modified doppelganger, one ‘Jubril al Sudaniya from Sudan’.1 Mr Kanu, who has been a thorn in the Buhari administration’s flesh since its inauguration in May 2015, first made this bizarre claim in September 2017, and the fact that it did not gain traction until a year later – and even so only following multiple reaffirmations – may be attributed in part to its sheer outlandishness. Be that as it may, such was the speed at which the rumour had gained ground that President Buhari, addressing a gathering of Nigerians in Poland, had to categorically affirm that he was not dead and had not been replaced by a Sudanese look-alike. The statement later released by his aides titled: ‘It’s the real me, President Buhari responds to cloning allegation’ merely added a touch of farce to a bizarre episode.2

Abstract Zimbabwe’s catastrophic cholera outbreak of 2008/09 resulted in an unprecedented 100,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths. In the aftermath of the epidemic, questions of suffering and death and of rescue, relief, and rehabilitation have persisted in on-going processes of meaning-making through which people come to terms with the epidemic as a ‘man-made’ disaster. Based on extensive fieldwork, I examine the views of residents in Harare’s high-density townships that were epicentres of the disease. I argue that cholera was experienced by township residents as many crises at the same time. It was not only a public health crisis but also a political–economic crisis, a social crisis as well as a crisis of expectations, history and social identity. As such, I argue that the cholera outbreak was intensely generative of political subjectivities that reveal important shifts in the fraught relations between state and society in Zimbabwe’s urban politics. Finally, I argue that the government’s perceived causal role in, and failure to respond to, the cholera outbreak occasioned intense public outrage among township residents, which speaks to a much deeper aspiration for substantive citizenship based on political rights, social recognition, and access to high-quality public services delivered by a robust, responsible state.

Social network approaches have much to offer for the study of African politics. This research note explores the tensions and benefits of using social networks as metaphor or as method, and highlights the types of questions network research can address. We discuss sources of network data, key features of the graphical perspective and basic vocabulary, and the difference between analyzing individual networks and full systems. Three social network analysis (SNA) concepts—centrality, brokerage, and multilevel networks—indicate theoretic spaces for qualitative and quantitative synergies. The note also raises practical considerations and ethical challenges for conducting network research in fieldwork settings, drawing on a collaborative project in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. In conclusion, we encourage layering disciplines and mixing methods to more fully understand how networks shape social life in Africa.