LEI_F_09 Political populism in Southern Africa

Objectives/ Research Questions

This project contributes to the contextualization of the debate on social cohesion, which is strongly focused on Germany, and thus to Cluster 3 of the RISC research programme. It compares recent right and left populist campaigns using three examples from Southern Africa (Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe). These campaigns seem to be staged by national liberation movements in power in order to preserve their political dominance and to distract from the effects of kleptocracy and nepotism of the post-colonial political elites. Right-wing populist discourses of those in power mostly use patriotic and heroic historical narratives and thus reify a widespread “big man syndrome”, while pseudo-left-wing populist discourses address the (unequal) distribution of social wealth in the former settler societies in Southern Africa (labour, land, and capital) and thus mobilize voters in the short-term. It is often parties that have splintered off from the long-standing governing parties in the dominant one-party states (such as the Economic Freedom Fighters [EFF] in South Africa) that make use of left populist discourses.

These attempts to create (questionable) social cohesion are contrasted with sociopolitical attempts to build social cohesion, which have been very pronounced over the past 25 years, at least in South Africa. After the overcoming of apartheid, the question arises of how the state can use sociopolitical means to create national identity and to foster cohesion in a racially segregated society.

Thematic relation to social cohesion

The project contributes to a global mapping of populism by examining the contested establishment of social cohesion in three case studies in Southern Africa. It will also investigate whether these are comparable or relatively clearly distinguishable phenomena. Furthermore, it is important to determine the extent to which populisms in different regions of the world communicate with or learn from each other. The project works on a comparative basis and makes an important contribution to the development of a typology of global variants of populism.