The recent moral panic in Cameroon about a supposed proliferation of “homosexuality” is related to a special image of “the” homosexual as un Grand who submits younger persons, eager to get a job, to anal penetration, and are thus corrupting the nation. This image stems from the popular conviction that the national elite is deeply involved in secret societies like Freemasonry or Rosicrucianism. The tendency to thus relate the supposed proliferation of homosexuality in the postcolony to colonial impositions is balanced by other lines in its genealogy—for instance, the notion of “wealth medicine,” which Günther Tessmann, the German ethnographer of the Fang, linked already in 1913 to same-sex intercourse. This complex knot of ideas and practices coming from different backgrounds can help us explore the urgent challenges that same-sex practices raise to African studies in general. The Cameroonian examples confuse current Western notions about heteronormativity, GLBTQI+ identities, and the relation between gender and sex. Taking everyday assemblages emerging from African contexts as our starting point can help not only to queer African studies, but also to Africanize queer studies. It can also help to overcome unproductive tendencies to oppose Western/colonial and local/ traditional elements. Present-day notions and practices of homosexuality and homophobia are products of long and tortuous histories at the interface of Africa and the West.

This article argues for the continued merits of research with rural, long-marginalized peoples, including those whose fervent invocations of ethnic difference—such as Maasai—make many scholars and politicians nervous. Their perspectives “from the margins” offer key theoretical and political insights into this complicated place we call “Africa” by challenging grand narratives of modernization, “Africa rising,” and supposedly “universal” ideas of progress and justice. They also defy enduring stereotypes about the passivity and ignorance of rural peoples. I argue, in other words, for the value of both seeing and theorizing Africa from the margins.

This article examines the puzzle of the nonescalation of electoral violence. Drawing on evidence from Kenya’s Coast and Rift Valley regions, the article argues that land narratives along the coast create few motives for people to participate in electoral violence because residents do not link their land rights with electoral outcomes. Politicians thus have far less power to use land narratives to organize violence. Two factors help account for this regional variation between the Rift Valley and the Coast: the strength of the political patron and the proportion of “outsiders” relative to “insiders.”

Politicians often foment violence before elections to reduce competitiveness and, hence, increase their chances of winning. Given that fear and intimidation may be used to prevent voters from casting their ballots, many case studies, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggest that electoral violence has a suppressive effect on voter turnout. However, until now there has been no large-scale, multi-year analysis on the effect of pre-election violence on one of its primary targets, voter turnout. Looking across sub-Saharan Africa, and more specifically at Kenya, this article examines the influence of pre-election violence on voter turnout and finds, in the aggregate, no significant effect. Nevertheless, electoral violence may be used to depress turnout, to mobilize supporters, or to punish victors. It is a persistent trend in sub-Saharan Africa and one that threatens to undermine democratic development.

In postcolonial Africa, the military has become an actor in politics, often in ways that can be described as unprofessional. This paper focuses on the manner in which the Zimbabwean National Army (ZNA) has become heavily politicized since independence, directly supporting the regime of President Robert Mugabe while denigrating the opposition political party. The military metamorphosed, to all intents, into an extension of President Mugabe’s political party, the ZANU-PF. I argue that even though the military is expected to subordinate itself to a civilian government, the ZNA is highly unprofessional, in- and outside the army barracks. The ways in which politics came to be mediated by army generals, as “war veterans” serving in the military, directly influenced not only how soldiers who joined the army in postindependence Zimbabwe were promoted and demoted, but how they lived their lives as soldiers in the army barracks. This article is based on fifty-eight life histories of army deserters living in exile in South Africa.

Over the years, literary scholars have engaged in heated debates on the role literary artists should play in society. In the African context, this debate has been championed by scholars such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Chinua Achebe, and Okot p’ Bitek, among others. The central bone of contention has always been the question of self-narration. How should African writers narrate the African story (-ies) against the backdrop of slavery, colonialism, and neoliberal imperialism? In the context of these debates, this article seeks to read A Fine Madness by the Zimbabwean writer Mashingaidze Gomo (2010) as a socially and politically engaged text.

The Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) missionaries equated urbanity with moral contagion, to which those with slave status were especially vulnerable. To the former slaves who came into contact with the mission, the growing commercial center of Zanzibar, and the coastal cultures it was associated with, were not only enticing, but also crucial to social and economic mobility. The mission’s ex-slaves rarely enjoyed a special advantage though their connection to missionaries. Even for the missionaries’ most treasured dependents, the advantages were ambiguous. However, the mission did facilitate the making of strong cohorts and ease the transition to town living.

This article examines the transformations to urban social stratification in Angola during the last decades. The analysis is centered on the indicators of social difference throughout these years: the racial criteria of the colonial times; the political precedence in the first years after independence; and the multi-criteria of the postwar period. Based on research conducted before and after the end of the civil war in 2002, the article explores the construction and reconfiguration of urban society today, providing evidence of increased social mobility—despite the poverty and deeper inequalities—and of the importance of economic and residential criteria.

While salsa dance is popularly, and now globally, understood to be a symbol and expression of Latin identity, its adoption in non-Latin contexts has produced new meanings and cultural configurations. This is particularly the case in West Africa, where salsa is not only catching on among urban youth, but is becoming understood and approached from an African perspective. This article explores the ways in which salsa dance in Ghana serves as an innovative, embodied expression of a contemporary, pan-African identity. This is seen in Ghanaian dancers’ ideological reinvigoration of salsa’s African history and in the physical incorporation of local styles and presentations. Salsa in Ghana is recast through global networks, which in turn contributes to its global character while refashioning it to better suit local motives and desires. Thus, rather than emphasizing salsa’s African roots alone, dancers in Ghana equally engage with the complex routes of the dance.