What are the issues shaping contemporary African peasant movements? Are they fundamentally democratic or anti-democratic? Are they defensive and local in their organization and aspirations or should they be seen as taking a leading role in a wider process of economic, social, and political transformation? Are they in the state’s pocket or can they pose a threat to state power? And how do they fit in with other organs of African civil society, with overseas donor groups, and with imposed programs of structural adjustment?
In this collection of important new research findings from all corners of Africa these questions and others are addressed while adding another dimension to the democratization debate: what of the real grassroots, the majority of Africa that is rural? Are modern rural peasant movements relevant to the debate at all or do they still only engage in what has been called “the politics of everyday politics,” with the “weapons of the weak?”
Mahmoud Ben Romdhane & Sam Moyo
ISBN : 2-86978-111-3
CODESRIA 2002
Organizations in rural areas are formed for a wide variety of purposes and assume a multitude of roles. Their objectives may be economic, social, religious, mutual welfare or community integration. They may be homogeneous or heterogeneous, class-specific or multi-class; they may be formed on the basis of residence, or ethnic, kin or occupational affiliations. Organizations are often not bound by their expressed or unexpressed objectives: a religious organization may intervene in the economic or political sphere just as a « burial society » may extend itself to engage in welfare or investment activities. This flexibility - an element not frequently found in legally bound, modem organizations- is both a strength and a weakness.
Dessalegn Rahmato
ISBN 0850-2633
CODESRIA, 1991. 40 p.
(CODESRIA Working Paper, n° 1)