Post-colonial struggles for a democratic Southern Africa

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Post-colonial struggles for a democratic Southern Africa is written by Carolyn Bassett and published by Taylor & Francis. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 1317430204 (ISBN 10) and 9781317430209 (ISBN 13).

National liberation, one of the grand narratives of the twentieth century, has left a weighty legacy of unfulfilled dreams. This book explores the ongoing struggle for legitimate, accountable political leaders in postcolonial Southern Africa, focussing on dilemmas arising when ex-liberation movements form the governments. While the spread of multi-party democracy to most countries in the region is to be celebrated, democratic practice often has been superficial - a limited, elitist politics that relies on the symbols of the liberation struggle to legitimate de facto one-party rule and authoritarian practices. Using country cases from Tanzania, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia, the collection explores three subthemes relevant to postcolonial governance in Southern Africa: how the struggle for liberation shapes the character of political transformation, the nature of rule in one-party dominant states headed by former liberation movements, and the processes of governance and resistance in post-liberation contexts. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.