citizen and subject, mahmood mamdani

(7): apartheid was but an idealized form of rule that the British and French had pioneered--institutional segregation (indirect rule) [doctrine of difference, which aimed at evolution of separate institutions appropriate to the African spirit]

(8): three questions

1. to what extent was structure of power in contemporary Africa shaped in the colonial period rather than the anticolonial revolt?
2. was not racial domination mediate through ethnically organized local powers?
3. is it not the burden of protest to transcend these differences without denying them

(8-9): four objectives

1. question the writing of history by analogy
2. to establish that apartheid was the generic form of the colonial state in AFrica
3. to underline the contradictory character of tthnicity
4. the deracilization of the bifurcated State does not bring with it democratization

(9): critique of dependency theory as a 'unilinear social science' [the charges made in this section feel misplaced]

(12-13): history by analogy versus history as a process [but supposition of universalism? by straddling abstract universalism and intimate particularism, you have an easy answer--but are you really willing to find yourself in the 'middle' on the question of speaking across contexts, etc?]

(16): direct rule -- europe's initial response to the problem of administering colonies; civilizing mission; an unmediated despotism (favored by settler, agrarian capital--which wanted land and free labour)

(17): indirect rule -- mode of domination over a free peasantry; land remained customary; market restricted to products of labour; a legal dualism; a mediated despotism (favored by mining, finance and commerce--which wanted a docile-ish labour force, i.e., migrants)

(18): indirect rule was also a response to resistance, of course

(19-21): four moments

1. the colonial State -- protector of the society of the colons
2. the anticolonial struggle
   
3. independence -- tended to deracialize the State, but not civil society (affirmative action)
4. collapse of embryonic civil society

(22): importance of land being defined as a customary holding, which had three effects

1. African was containerized as a tribesperson
2. colonial powers seized upon the most authoriatarian/monarchical of existing traditions--an ideological construct that mirrored their own practices
3. the Native Authorities were marked by force to an unusual degree--after all, their ultimate authority was the central civil power (a decentralized despotism)

(24): this form of rule/State shaped the nature of resistance that it provoked (peasant insurrectionists fought against a State-enforced version of the customary)

(26): the conservative States removed the sting of racism but kept the Native Authorities intace; the radical States tried to eliminate the Native Authorities but tightenened central control over these communities, intensifying extra-economic pressures on the peasantry

(28): in South Africa, because of the relative strength of industrialization/civil society, the creation of the bifurcated State required an above-average level of force

(29): strong industrialization also meant that cities were the site of struggle

(29-): five developments led to 1994

1. shift to apartheid rule in late 40s -- forced removals
2. this notwithstanding, proletarianization and urbanization continued
3. decade of peace ended in 1973 and 1976
4. original social base was migrant labour--but by 1990, rural migrants appeared as country bumpkins
5. struggle reached a stalemeate by mid-1980s

(31): the struggle lacked a perspective with which to understand urban-rural tensions [voluntarist?]

(37): 'cotton famine' --> colonization [not really situated in the context of the 'great depression', but idea is there]

(38): indirect rule in equatorial Africa was the legacy of the Asian experience and the experience of 19th c. Africa

(39): customary was neighter arbirarily invented nor faithfully reproduced

(39): key--'colonial notion of precolonial was a reflection of the decentralized despotism it was striving to create'

(43): key--colonial period brought the village-based despot, shorn of rule-based restraint, into existence -- no longer were peers or the people a 'check' on their authority

(48): from multiple to singularly despotic -- colonialism built on the 19th century conquest states

(49): importance of 1857 as a pivot, from civilizing mission to Native Authority

(50): what was distinctive, about colonialism, was the newfound 'scope of the customary'

(54): the 'Cheif' as petty legislateor, administrator, judge, policeman

(57) the American car and pilgrammage to Mecca

(59): exactly--indirect rule as colonialism's foot-soldiers run amok

(61): gave rise to a bifurcated reality -- with customary law on the one sdie, and modern law on the other

(67-68, 102): both political resistance and economic reasons (solution to labour problem, for mines) play their role in the fashioning of indirect rule in South Africa [even settlers can get on board, once they've expanded and are looking for 'tribal stability']

(100): apartheid was an attempt to 'freeze' detrabilization, which threatened to destabilize the National Party gov't

(109): the legal dualism was, of course, a reflection of the dual forms of power

(110): two ways in which this was different

1. previously autonomous social domains came within the scope of the NA's authority
2. any challenge to chiefly power would have to reckon with the clout of the central authority

(130): minmalist reforms (Chad, CAR, Zaire, Togo, Kenya, Nigeria) vs. maximalist reforms (Neiger, Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania)

(135-136): imp--radical regimss as the 'inheritors' of the colonial tradition of rule by decree [problem of the alternative--too easy a critique, here, to say some form of democratic negotiation would have been 'better'. but that doesn't mean, of course, that the centralizing position is defensible, either]

(139): three distortions, the NA brought

1. notion of community rights very one-sided -- couldn't recognize multiple rights in land
2. hitherto rural powers were confused with proprietary rights
3. migrants/strangers were no longer allowed access to the land

(141): straight line from the permanent Settlement to the Buganda Agreement of 1900, which sought to create a landed aristocracy

(143): again, settler capitalists were checked by (1) peasant resistance; (2) strategy of other fractions of capital (example, here, of the Mau Mau)

(144): coercion was central to the customary

(145-146): comment on dependency theory--the 'deepening' of markets (all that dependency theorists see), but customary authority also gave some of these peasants independent access to the means of subsistence

(148-165): importance of 'unfree labour'