Issue 137 of the journal starts with a very timely ‘exercise in contemporary history’ that pieces together recent (2012) events in Mali, prior to the military intervention of France in January 2013. This account is particularly informative since it brings together the insights of eight authors: Baz Lecocq, Gregory Mann, Bruce Whitehouse, Dida Badi, Lotte Pelckmans, Nadia Belalimat, Bruce Hall and Wolfram Lacher. Their unique collaboration demonstrates that the Malian crisis must be understood first and foremost as rooted in domestic and regional politics, and second, by the ways in which Mali and the wider Sahara are themselves shaped by regional and international political factors.
Ernest Harsch's paper goes further back in time, to reflect on the legacies of the late Thomas Sankara who became a revolutionary leader of the West African state of Upper Volta, renamed Burkina Faso in 1984. Indeed this piece is published on the thirtieth anniversary of the Sankara regime's coming to power and for this reason invites further reflection. The Burkinabè revolution was proclaimed by Sankara after a successful coup on 4 August 1983. At the age of 34, Sankara set about transforming the small and rural economy of Burkina Faso. Soon Sankara's image was seen on the walls of student radicals around the world, his name a watchword for a new revolution. Sankara raged against the injustices of global power and sought to transform the lives of the poor through programmes of mass immunisation, extending primary education and health care. Derided by his opponents, who saw him as a stooge of Cuba and the Soviet Union, Sankara still divides international opinion. Sankara's assassination in 1987 remains divisive in Burkina Faso. For a generation Sankara became the leading proponent of a renewed independence, which would refuse the old relationships with the ex-colonial power. He was determined to become a model of incorruptibility. Refusing any of the trappings of power, accepting neither the ministerial limousines nor air conditioning, when he was murdered he left a car, four bicycles and a fridge. But the world's poorest president was caught in the vice of global power and by his own top-down approach to the ‘revolution’. Thirty years after the August coup in 1983, the Burkinabè revolution remains elusive, expressing the complex nature of the relationship between the West and Africa, and the crucial agency of the Burkinabè elite.
Patricia Daley's contribution offers a new perspective on the legitimation of foreign intervention for readers of ROAPE. Focusing on celebrity activism, Daley provides a cogent critique of the role of celebrities in the commodification of humanitarian intervention. The article draws on recent high-profile celebrity campaigns that include Bono (Product RED), George Clooney (Save Darfur Campaign/United to End Genocide and the Satellite Sentinel Project), 50 Cent (Street King energy drink), Ben Affleck (Eastern Congo Initiative) and Invisible Children (Kony2012). Daley uses these cases to argue that celebrity activists are part of new and significant networks that promote consumer capitalism, commodify humanitarianism and depoliticise humanitarian crises.
Paris Yeros' paper on Zimbabwe's labour movement is the second of a two-part contribution (Part I, published in 136, was concerned with the period 1990–1995). In this second part, Yeros continues his re-evaluation of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), focusing on the period 1995–2000. His analysis raises important questions about the ZCTU's trajectory during this turbulent period for Zimbabwe, and of course for its future.
Joseph Yaro's contribution provides rare insight into the contemporary changes taking place in northern Ghana's traditional institutions. Based on primary research in six traditional authorities, Yaro documents the ways in which local elites – mostly chiefs and elders – are accelerating processes of accumulation and dispossession through the selling of subjects' land.
Godwin Onuoha's paper takes us to Nigeria, and an examination of the ‘cultural repertoires’ practised by neo-Biafran separatist Igbo groups. His analysis of the everyday ways in which these groups remake ‘Biafra’ through the circulation of memories and symbols such as the Biafran flag and anthem on everyday consumer goods demonstrates the intertwining of the ‘culture of politics’ and the ‘politics of culture’ in the making of ethno-nationalist projects.
The final paper by Daniel Agbiboa turns to questions of oil, environmental security and popular resistance in the Niger Delta. Agbiboa's contribution is to evaluate the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme, a contentious project aiming to exchange arms for financial inducement. He concludes that in practice the amnesty has served to secure oil and gas production in the Delta rather than to address the militants' grievances.