Africans in Exile

Description

The enforced removal of individuals has long been a political tool used by African states to create generations of asylum seekers, refugees, and fugitives. Historians often present such political exile as a potentially transformative experience for resilient individuals, but this reading singles the exile out as having an exceptional experience. This collection seeks to broaden that understanding within the global political landscape by considering the complexity of the experience of exile and the lasting effects it has had on African peoples. The works collected in this volume seek to recover the diversity of exile experiences across the continent. This corpus of testimonials and documents is presented as an "archive" that provides evidence of a larger, shared experience of persecution and violence. This consideration reads exiles from African colonies and nations as active participants within, rather than simply as victims of, the larger global diaspora. In this way, exile is understood as a way of asserting political dissidence and anti-imperial strategies. Broken into three distinct parts, the volume considers legal issues, geography as a strategy of anticolonial resistance, and memory and performative understandings of exile. The experiences of political exile are presented as fundamental to an understanding of colonial and postcolonial oppression and the history of state power in Africa.

CONTENTS

Foreword: Holger Bernt Hansen

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Nathan Riley Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance, Reconstructing the Archive of Africans in Exile

Part One: The Legal Worlds of Exile

1. "Wayward Humours" and "Perverse Disputings" / Ruma Chopra

2. From Bandits to Political Prisoners: Detention and Deportation on the Sierra Leone Frontier / Trina Leah Hogg

3. The Path of Extinction: The Double Exile of Alfa Yaya and the Penal Regime in French Colonial Africa / Nathan Riley Carpenter

4. Reforming State Violence in French West Africa: Relegation in the Epoch of Decolonization / Marie Rodet and Romain Tiquet

5. A Kingdom in Check: Exile as a Strategy in the Sanwi Kingdom, C / Thaïs Gendry

6. "As if I were in Prison" / Brett Shadle

Part Two: Geographies of Exile

7. In the City of Waiting: Education and Mozambican Liberation Exiles in Dar es Salaam, 1960-1975 / Joanna T. Tague

8. Amilcar Cabral and the Bissau Revolution in Exile: Women and the Salvation of the Nationalist Organization in Guinea, 1959-1962 / Aliou Ly

9. Brothers in the Bush: Exile, Refuge, and Citizenship on the Ghana-Togo Border, 1958-1966 / Kate Skinner

10. A Cold War Geography: South African Anti-Apartheid Refuge and Exile in London, 1945-94 / Susan Dabney Pennybacker

11. The French Trials of Cléophas Kamitatu / Meredith Terretta

Part Three: Remembering and Performing Exile

12. Forced Labor and Migration in São Tomé and Príncipe / Marina Berthet

13. Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba and the Poetics of Exile / Sana Camara

14. The Legacy of Exile: Terrorism in and outside Africa from Osama bin Laden to Al-Shabaab / Kris Inman

15. Reconstructing Slavery in Ohioan Exile: Mauritanian Refugees in the United States / E. Ann McDougall

16. A Nation Abroad: Desire and Authenticity in Togolese Political Dissidence / Benjamin N. Lawrance

Epilogue: From Exile with Love / Baba Galleh Jallow

Afterword: Worlds and Words of Migration: Exile in African History / Emily S. Burrill

Notes on Contributors

Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• HISTORY
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Histoire
• África
• Decolonization
• General officer
• Slavery
• History of Africa
• Anthropology
• General
• Africa
• Migration

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 10 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253038104
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AFRICANS IN EXILE
FRAMING THE GLOBAL BOOK SERIES
The Framing the Global project, an initiative of Indiana University Press and the Indiana University Center for the Study of Global Change, is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Hilary E. Kahn and Deborah Piston-Hatlen, Series Editors
Advisory Committee
Alfred C. Aman Jr.
Eduardo Brondizio
Maria Bucur
Bruce L. Jaffee
Patrick O Meara
Radhika Parameswaran
Richard R. Wilk
AFRICANS IN EXILE
Mobility, Law, and Identity
Edited by Nathan Riley Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Nathan Riley Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Carpenter, Nathan Riley, editor, author. | Lawrance, Benjamin N. (Benjamin Nicholas), editor, author.
Title: Africans in exile : mobility, law, and identity, past and present / edited by Nathan Riley Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2018. | Series: Framing the global book series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018023836 (print) | LCCN 2018029497 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253038111 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253038074 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253038081 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Exiles-Africa-History. | Exile (Punishment)-Africa-History. | African diaspora.
Classification: LCC JV8790 (ebook) | LCC JV8790 .A668 2018 (print) | DDC 304.8096-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023836
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
Exile is not the end of life, but just a new beginning.
-Simon Gikandi, Washington, DC, December 2016
Contents
Foreword by Holger Bernt Hansen
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Reconstructing the Archive of Africans in Exile
Nathan Riley Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance
Part I: The Legal Worlds of Exile
1 Wayward Humours and Perverse Disputings : Exiled Blacks and the Foundation of Sierra Leone, 1787-1800
Ruma Chopra
2 From Bandits to Political Prisoners: Detention and Deportation on the Sierra Leone Frontier
Trina Leah Hogg
3 The Path of Extinction: The Double Exile of Alfa Yaya and the Penal Regime in French Colonial Africa
Nathan Riley Carpenter
4 Reforming State Violence in French West Africa: Relegation in the Epoch of Decolonization
Marie Rodet and Romain Tiquet
5 A Kingdom in Check: Exile as a Strategy in the Sanwi Kingdom, C te d Ivoire, 1915-1920
Tha s Gendry
6 As If I Were in Prison : White Deportation and Exile from Early Colonial Kenya
Brett L. Shadle
Part II: Geographies of Exile
7 In the City of Waiting: Education and Mozambican Liberation Exiles in Dar es Salaam, 1960-1975
Joanna T. Tague
8 Amilcar Cabral and the Bissau Revolution in Exile: Women and the Salvation of the Nationalist Organization in Guinea, 1959-1962
Aliou Ly
9 Brothers in the Bush: Exile, Refuge, and Citizenship on the Ghana-Togo Border, 1958-1966
Kate Skinner
10 A Cold War Geography: South African Anti-Apartheid Refuge and Exile in London, 1945-1994
Susan Dabney Pennybacker
11 The French Trials of Cl ophas Kamitatu: Immigration Politics, Leftist Activism, and Fran afrique in 1970s Paris
Meredith Terretta
Part III: Remembering and Performing Exile
12 Forced Labor and Migration in S o Tom and Pr ncipe: Cape Verdean Exile in Poetry and Song
Marina Berthet
13 Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba and the Poetics of Exile
Sana Camara
14 The Legacy of Exile: Terrorism in and outside Africa from Osama bin Laden to al-Shabaab
Kris Inman
15 Reconstructing Slavery in Ohioan Exile: Mauritanian Refugees in the United States
E. Ann McDougall
16 A Nation Abroad: Desire and Authenticity in Togolese Political Dissidence
Benjamin N. Lawrance
Epilogue: From Exile with Love
Baba Galleh Jallow
Afterword: Worlds and Words of Migration: Exile in African History
Emily S. Burrill
Exiles by Abena P. A. Busia
Contributors
Index
Foreword
T HIS VOLUME IS the first of its kind to introduce exile as the major theme when analyzing political developments in Africa during colonial and postcolonial times. Not only do the introduction and the sixteen chapters add new dimensions to the concept of exile and its use as a political tool, but they provide us with new interpretations and a better understanding even of well-known histories and well-researched crisis situations.
After reading this volume I was struck by how political exile has deeply affected Uganda over the centuries, even to the present day. This collection really stimulated my thinking about recasting Ugandan history in light of exile as a vehicle of power beginning with the early colonial encounter and continuing up into the postcolonial present. The brief survey I provide here of eight examples from Uganda where exile has been used as a political tool with dramatic and lasting effect foreshadows exile s remarkable impact as demonstrated in the various chapters in this volume, stories that span the length and breadth of African time and place.
Hardly had the British government in 1894 accepted the area west and north of Lake Victoria as a new protectorate and enrolled it in the colonial empire before it was faced with Uganda s perpetual challenge: how to turn this highly heterogeneous area with arbitrary boundaries into a functional state. Not least of the challenges was the presence of a number of kingdoms with their traditional rulers as heads of well-established hierarchies. When the colonial administration was faced with a rebellion from the Kabaka (king) of the leading kingdom Buganda they quickly turned to exile as a way of solving the crisis, and Kabaka Mwanga was deported to the Seychelles. Yet the amenities which were to be provided for him during his exile became a matter of controversy: Anglican missionaries strongly opposed the government s concession of permitting four girls as his companions. Only after a compromise allowing Mwanga to be accompanied by two girls could he be sent into exile.
The Buganda issue haunted the British administration throughout the colonial period, and it came to a head in 1953 when, during the initial negotiations for Uganda s independence, the then Kabaka Mutesa demanded secession and the full independence of Buganda. In response, the Governor returned to an old tool and deported the Kabaka to the United Kingdom. Once again a controversy regarding the amenities of exile unfolded as the missionaries opposed the Kabaka being accompanied by any women other than his lawful wife. Local protests enjoined the administration to allow the Kabaka to return after two years, and as independence arrived in 1962, Buganda achieved a federal status in the new constitution.
Still, Buganda s status within Uganda kept simmering, and when Kabaka Mutesa in 1966 demanded that all government institutions should vacate Buganda soil within a few weeks, the Prime Minister Milton Obote ordered the army, then under the command of the well-known General Idi Amin, to occupy Buganda and deport the Kabaka to a remote prison. He had a narrow escape and fled-this time quasi-voluntarily-into exile in London, where he later died.
It is an irony of history that the two people who forced Kabaka Mutesa into exile both suffered the same fate. In 1971 Idi Amin staged a military coup and installed himself as president forcing Milton Obote to go into temporary exile in neighboring Tanzania. Eight years later Obote retaliated and was reinstalled as president assisted by the Tanzanian army and Ugandan guerrillas-a significant deviation from the exile phenomenon as narrated in the chapters in this collection. Idi Amin was granted protection by Saudi Arabia where he was kept under house arrest for some years, dying in exile in 2003. President Yoweri Museveni refused permission for him to return, and he was buried in Jeddah in a simple grave.
For Obote his return from Tanzanian exile was but a short respite. During his second term, one of his ministers, Yoweri Museveni, shifted camps into the opposition and was forced to live in exile in Sweden. But it became a kind of migratory exile as Museveni regularly returned to Uganda to lead the ongoing guerrilla war that resulted in his rise to the presidency and in 1985 the second, and final, exile of Milton Obote, this time in Zambia.
Since then there has been no reason for Museveni to return into exile, and he is now in his fifth term as the President of Uganda. He has, however, been faced with the still very topical issue in Uganda, the status of the kingdoms. Although their functions are strictly limited by the constitution, he has restored most of them by allowing the enthronement of their kings. As a token of good will, he granted Buganda permission to repatriate the body of the late Kabaka Mutesa from London and lay it to rest