Review

Author(s): Stephen N. Ndegwa

Review by: Stephen N. Ndegwa
Source: Africa Today, Vol. 45, No. 2, The Future of Democracy in Kenya (Apr. - Jun., 1998), pp.
264-266
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4187223
Accessed: 16-01-2016 14:57 UTC

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264 Book Reviews

tionship between the local and the global; other contributors,particularly

Diawara, Jewsiewicki, and Waterman,also give such issues considerable
attention. Nonetheless, this volume suffers from the exclusion of work on
the African reception of imported popular culture. Not only do such
"imports"frequently become interwoven into indigenous popularforms, as
many of the essays in this volume point out, but such texts are also remade
by the African audiences who consume them, becoming meaningful in rich-
ly local and particularways. JonathanZilberg's 1995 essay on the populari-
ty of country music in Zimbabwe (which Barber mentions), provides one
example of this reclamation,but there are many others to consider.1
These are relatively minor complaints. Indeed, it is a measure of the
success of this book that my main criticism is to wish that it included more
essays. Moreover, it is successfully designed in that all of the exclusions
that I have questioned are discussed intelligently by the editor in the intro-
duction. This is a book that should find its way into many syllabuses and
onto the bookshelves of Africanist scholars in many disciplines. Its publica-
tion marks a key turningpoint in scholarship on the cultures of contempo-
raryAfrica.

Note

1. Jonathan Zilberg, "Yes, It's True: Zimbabweans Love Dolly Parton,"

Journal of Popular Culture 29, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 111-126.

TimothyBurke
SwarthmoreCollege

Mahmood Mamdani, CITIZEN AND SUBJECT: CONTEMPORARY

AFRICA AND THE LEGACY OF LATE COLONIALISM (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), xii + 353 pages, cloth $55.00,
paper $19.95.

n Citizen and Subject, Mamdani explores two issues of paramount

importance to democratizationin Africa: "how power is organized and
how it tends to fragment resistance in contemporary Africa" (p. 3). He
splendidly illustrates the continuity between the colonial and the postcolo-
nial state with regard to individual rights and obligations. Mamdani also
explains why attempts at democracy, in both its liberal and its popular ver-
sions, have been thwarted.Finally, he argues that the colonial authoritarian
state has endured, especially through the preservation of a "decentralized
despotism"in local administration-the inheritorof the indirect-ruleinstru-
ments of colonial authority.

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 Book Reviews 265

In eloquent prose, Mamdaniasserts that the genius of indirect rule was

to create two categories of peoples: the citizen and the subject. He elabo-
rates this thesis in the four chaptersthat make up the first part of the book.
In the second part, he explores the problem this bifurcation of peoples
poses for democratic movements, with chapters focusing on the Republic
of South Africa and central and eastern Africa. For instance, Mamdani
recounts with compelling evidence the transformationof precolonial tradi-
tional authority,whose power was clearly checked throughvarious mecha-
nisms. During the colonial period these mechanisms were underminedwith
the introductionof indirect rule. As a result, the traditionalchiefs' powers
were augmented in two ways: first, the powerful colonial state backed
them; second, it made the chiefs accountable to the state, rather than to
their members. This strategy unraveled the mechanisms and social struc-
tures that had served to balance precolonial power relationships between
individual citizens and those in positions of authority. For example, the
public assembly, once the veritable center of decisionmaking processes and
of proclaiming citizenship, "was turnedinto a forum where decisions were
announcedbut not debated"(p. 46).
Mamdani'srich analysis of various contexts-ranging from Uganda to
South Africa-exposes the division between citizen and subject, as well as
its continuity from the colonial to the postcolonial era. He convincingly
argues that colonial rule was significant in creating segregation based not
simply on race but also on spatially defined rights. While the urbanites
received expansive rights, the rural dwellers were grantedfewer rights and
were held to extensive obligations. Although he makes few references to
the heritage of liberal thought anchoredin Westernhistory, Mamdaniclear-
ly privileges liberal citizenship sought by urbanite Africans in indepen-
dence movements that, once achieved, subjugatedrural dwellers to recon-
stituted native authorities. This ultimately evolved into the "decentralized
despotism" (p. 57) in which the postcolonial civil service enunciated (as its
precursorhad) the powers and privileges of the state and its urbanclasses,
while turning the peasantry into subjects in the hinterland.The contempo-
rary postcolonial state in Africa is thus "a regime of compulsions" (pp. 144
and 178)-both political compulsions rooted in the colonial and postcolo-
nial state's usurpationof citizen rights in pursuit of indirect rule, as well as
the more recent economic compulsions arising out of structuraladjustment
programs.In this context, Mamdaniconcludes, democratizationin Africa is
likely to be elusive unless the fundamentalnatureof the state as a regime of
compulsions is transformed:

Confined to civil society, democratization is both superficial and explo-

sive: superficial because it is interpretedin a narrowly formal way that
does not address the specificity of customary power . . . and explosive
because, with the local state intact as the locus of decentralizeddespotism,
the stakes in multipartyelections are high. (p. 289)

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266 Book Reviews

This book is especially illuminating because Mamdani's explanations,

rather than stressing a major ideological drive, emphasize historical rela-
tions, deliberate actions, and constrainedchoices in the creation of institu-
tions of indirectrule. Mamdani'sdiscussion not only challenges established
notions of the separate experiences of indirect and direct rule, but it also
gives specificity to the widely held notion of colonial authoritarianism's
continuation in the postcolonial era. Somewhat controversially, he offers
apartheid as a variant and exemplar of how indirect rule emphasizes the
distinction between urban dwellers as citizens and homelands dwellers as
subjects. Less clearly and perhapsless originally, Mamdanialso offers cri-
tiques of the literatureon the hegemonic state and on the prevalentthesis of
civil society as a possible source of deliverance from postcolonial despo-
tism.
This reviewer has a few quibbles with some of the book's arguments.
Although Mamdanishows enviable facility in delivering his argumentwith
evidence from the broad strokes of history or specific situations from far-
flung comparative cases (South African townships, western Uganda, and
many others in between), readers unfamiliar with the specific events
referredto may be at a loss in evaluating his arguments.In a few places, the
intent or significance of specific critiques pursued by the author seem tan-
gential, especially when they are brief and disconnected from the rest of the
text. For example, the rhetorical questions and the reference to Afro-pes-
simism that open the conclusion are not helpful, given the cogency of the
rest of the book.
Overall, however, Citizen and Subject is an impeccably clear treatise.
Mamdani's arguments will be of interest to Africanists in various disci-
plines (especially history and political science), and the argumentsshould
invite a rethinking of some of the major notions relating to the colonial
experience and its consequences for the state in Africa. In particular,
Mamdani's thesis and the emerging scholarship on citizenship in Africa
should offer helpful avenues toward a reexamination of democratization
and the enduring problem of the relationship between authority and indi-
viduals in postcolonial Africa. Mamdani's book is the most significant
articulationto date of the citizenship thesis in Africa, and surely will be one
of the most importantbooks in African Studies this decade.

StephenN. Ndegwa
College of Williamand Mary

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