ECAS 2013

This paper analyses Tanzania's evolution of political legitimacy in the post independence state. It argues that for Tanzania examining the capacity of the regime to build and retain legitimacy offers a better explanation of Tanzania's dominant party system (CCM have dominated Tanzania politics since independence) than that offered by the literature on neo-patrimonialism or hybrid regimes. The paper lays out the trajectory of the regime legitimacy narrative in Tanzania, which was mediated by Ujamaa, the experiment in African socialism, which was adopted in 1967 and lasted for two decades. It traces the development of the 'legitimacy' narrative deployed by CCM through four cycles of multiparty elections held in Tanzania since 1995. The paper seeks to explain why these four elections, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 have all been won by CCM the regime party albeit with varying levels of popular support in the absence of significant manipulation of the electoral process. It is the argument of this paper that the policies of Ujamaa produced important legacy for regime legitimacy narrative deployed by the dominant party as it provided important elements that continued to bind the Tanzanian people as a political community. The paper observes that regime even though it failed to live up to the values and ethics of the idealised political community, and indeed to its own legitimacy narrative it still positioned itself within the framework of that narrative and has been able to use this legitimacy narrative that to date the opposition has not been able to successfully counter.

The Mozambican liberation struggle (1964-1974) fought mostly in the province of Cabo Delgado, in Northern Mozambique, left strong memories and became a part of the imagination around the creation of the nation. Part of the population of Cabo Delgado joined Frelimo and fought the Portuguese, while others stayed in Portuguese controlled areas, or escaped to Tanzania. The different experiences of the war are alluded to at present and suggest explanations for past and present group dynamics. The diverse experiences of/responses to colonialism are linked with legitimacy and belonging to the nation and with territorial claims. Nearly 50 years after the beginning of the struggle, and with large numbers of the population being too young to remember it, recreating and narrating the struggle has become an important part of remembering, re-telling and passing on of national and local history to the younger generation. The representation of the past has often excluded/silenced alternative perspectives and experiences of those who did not take part in the struggle. Recounting this history is loaded with claims to legitimacy, and weaves in memories and competing experiences of the past.

Based on fieldwork conducted in Northern Mozambique, drawing on participant observation and extensive interviews with Makonde veterans (male and female) of the liberation struggle, and with Mwani who lived in Portuguese controlled towns, I will discuss the importance of memory and story-telling and the different narratives that people create. I will also address tensions surrounding questions of belonging linked with claiming or refusing ownership of local histories.

As the demographic of the powerful has shifted in South Africa, the terms of grassroots political legitimacy have become increasingly complex to navigate. Patronage, in particular, has come to play a major role in the influence and appeal of the African National Congress and its tripartheid affiliates.

This paper considers the shifts of political legitimacy in the face of patronage, particularly for young people; for whom politics is often a complex navigation of ideology versus basic employment. What is becoming increasingly evident, is an ideological turn away from the delegitimised ex-liberation party's current condition as hegemonic ruler and wielder of state resources, and rather an attempt at a historicized rationalisation of a purer politics set at period before their birth (and within a liberation or struggle frame)

Political 'ideas' therefore become divorced from current youth realities, not by practice but rather by time.

This paper departs from the deliberations of two young communist league activists in Khutsong, South Africa, whose political trajectories have shifted from that of grassroots, highly legitimised 'leaders of the people' in the four year long violent protests of Khutsong against the state; to self-proclaimed coopted employees of the ruling party. It is to political narraitves of the past that these activists have turned to attempt to re-legitimise their choices and clarify their ideological waverings. Specifically, this paper tracks the ways in which young people have taken to a kind of nostalgia and reimagining of the past to afford legitimacy to a very complex political present.

This paper examines the languages of politics in post-war Angola, with an emphasis on how different versions of the past are promoted by the government and by its opponents to justify rival political claims. During the war, the MPLA as a single party articulated an anti-colonial discourse that cast its opponents as imperialist proxies and enemies of Angola. Since the war ended, the ruling party has revived this nationalist discourse, asserting itself as solely responsible for bringing peace to Angola through its military victory over the UNITA rebel movement. Infrastructure development is presented as part of the same process of delivering peace, through repairing damage done by UNITA. This is accompanied by an ideology of order that casts any kind of opposition as disruptive and potentially dangerous.

As parliamentary opposition has struggled to find its role in a dominant-party system, the most direct challenge to the MPLA has come from outside of electoral politics. Here a new impetus has been provided by the coming of age of a generation of activists whose political consciousness has been shaped after the end of the war. This civic movement, rooted in the present rather than in the past, makes its claims by insisting on a contract between state and citizens. Nevertheless, challenging the official versions of history and asserting alternative claims about events that took place before the span of their own memories has become a central part of the common discourse that activists articulate in contesting the government's legitimacy.

On September 23, 2011, opposition Patriotic Front (PF) candidate, Michael Sata, was declared winner of the Zambian presidential elections, after defeating nine other contestants including incumbent Rupiah Banda of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), which had ruled Zambia since 1991. Although Banda emerged victorious in most of the rural constituencies, Sata swept nearly all the urban centres, reflecting disparities in strategies of mobilisation and a divide in interests between the rural and urban electorate. At the heart of the campaigns, especially in urban areas, was the unresolved question of the growing presence of Chinese investment and population in the country.

This paper examines the politics leading up the last election in Zambia, and explores the strategies that rival leaders employed to mobilise political support and enhance their electoral appeal. It argues that the outcome of the election was as much a result of the nature of political campaigning and significance of individual political leadership in relation to the immediate concerns of the day as it was a reflection of the enduring significance and consequences of the interaction between Zambia's integration into the global economy and local politics.

The changing patterns of internal migration illuminate some of the huge changes in South Africa's rural regions. Industrial decline in the 1980s was accompanied by a wane in older patterns of labour migration, where men once journeyed between rural homes and the industrial city; more fluid patterns of mobility emerged, spanning small towns and peri-urban areas, travelled by more equal numbers of men and women. At the same time (and particularly after 1994) rural households relied increasingly less on the wages remitted by male workers and more on government grants and pensions. This paper explores how the increasing weight of government expenditures infused the burgeoning, multi-directional flows of trade, transport in the densely settled rural and peri-urban areas of KwaZulu Natal. By capturing these flows the African National Congress extended their reach over rural KwaZulu Natal, wresting the province from their rivals in the Inkatha Freedom Party. Intriguingly, this was not the triumph of a centralised, nationalist government over a schismatic regionalist party; instead, the key provincial ANC leaders (many of whom were former migrant trade unionists) operated through decentralised networks and spoke the language of local identity.

Zimbabwe's main opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the country's military have staked competing claims to political legitimacy since 1999. The MDC views itself as successor to what it considers a failed post-independence nationalist project. This view has been met with resistance from the military, which regards itself as the rightful heir to political authority, owing to the participation of its leadership in the 1970s liberation war. Drawing on interviews with military and opposition elites this paper critically unpacks these claims to political legitimacy and examines the implications for civil-military relations in Zimbabwe.