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| Title: | Uncertain citizens: Herero and the new intercalary subject in postcolonial Botswana |
| Author: | Durham, Deborah |
| Book title: | Postcolonial subjectivities in Africa |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Pages: | 139-170 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Botswana |
| Subjects: | Herero popular participation traditional rulers |
| Abstract: | This chapter argues that the most profound, lasting and pervasive reality of postcolonial subjectivity in Africa is the sense of uncertainty. Ironically, this sense of uncertainty may be particularly strong in States where democracy and economic promise have been relatively successful. This uncertainty manifests itself in the small corners of people's everyday life and in the larger issues of social change that are sweeping the continent. The chapter focuses on the moral and political discourses around the failure of a Herero candidate to be appointed to chiefly office despite winning an election in one of Botswana's biggest railway towns, the ethnically diverse 'urban village' of Mahalapye. The failure was interpreted in terms of suspected tribalist sentiment, party politics, the rhetoric of liberal individualism and achievement, civic nationalism and the power of a bureaucratic imaginary. Running throughout the evaluations were different and complementary discourses on 'representation' and electoral politics that give form to Botswana's 'paternalistic democracy' at the end of the 20th century. The chapter argues that Mahalapye Herero agency is hybridized between a strongly asseverated liberalism and the renewed relevance of group experiences. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
