Stephen Elli
Biographic Data
| ID | 102456 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen Elli |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen |
| FAMILY NAME | Elli |
| SIGNATURE | ELLI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | African Studies Centre |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4728-703X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 85 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 495 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 85 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
La saison des pluies
Cet article analyse l’influence de l’héritage français sur la science politique africaine. Il s’agit, à travers l’exemple du Cameroun, de comprendre le processus d’ancrage de la science politique française dans les pays de l’Afrique subsaharienne. Comment comprendre le rapport entre le legs français et la science politique africaine ? Quel est l’impact de cet héritage sur le développement de la discipline en Afrique ? Comment la science politique…
Africa’s Wars of Liberation
This chapter offers some preliminary reflections on the ways in which scholars have considered African wars of liberation. It discusses a tendency on the part of historians to interpret violent resistance struggles in Africa as episodes in some ultimately teleological process, liberating Africans progressively from colonial, neo-colonial or national oppression. Yet given the disappointing results of each of these successive "liberations", there a…
Witch-Hunting in Central Madagascar 1828–1861Madagascar 1828–1861
This chapter tells the story of a poison ordeal administered en masse by the Imerina state in nineteenth century Madagascar. The chapter proceeds in two stages: first by describing "witchcraft" or mosavy as a category of local religious thought and then by analyzing its relation to and role in larger social processes, which included political centralisation, massive population movements, war, disease and state decay. It argues that the great witc…
The Political Elite of Imerina and the Revolt of the Menalamba . The Creation of a Colonial Myth in Madagascar, 1895–18981Madagascar, 1895–1898
This chapter provides a painstaking reconstruction of the revolt of the Menalamba in the two years following the French invasion of Madagascar in 1895, one of the most puzzling and fascinating of all resistance movements. The most mysterious aspect of the rising has always been the question of who, if anyone, was its leader. Using previously unopened archives, the chapter tells the story of the French suppression of the uprising and prosecution o…
The Occult Does Not Exist
In recent years, it has become common for academic writers to use "the occult" as an analytical category to which various types of mystical belief and activity that are quite widespread in Africa are assigned. This includes those often described as "magic" and "witchcraft". It is notable that all these concepts generally go undefined. The present article argues that much of the current academic vocabulary used to describe and analyze the invisibl…
Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa
This essay argues that historians need to engage with the history of contemporary Africa both as a way of throwing new light on Africa's more remote past and as a way of understanding the present. The paper discusses two types of problems involved in such an enterprise. The first is the identification of the most fruitful themes for investigation. The second is the sources that may be used.
Religion and Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa
This chapter argues that religion and politics are both systems of ordering the power inherent in human society, in the process of which elements of authority and hierarchy tend to emerge. As such, religion and politics are closely related. In the modern Western tradition these two systems of harnessing or manipulating power have been subject to sharp organizational and intellectual distinctions which conform to the separation of politics and rel…
Nelson Mandela, the South African Communist Party and the origins of Umkhonto we Sizwe
On 16 December 1961, an underground army commanded by Nelson Mandela,known as Umkhonto we Sizwe, publicly announced its presence in South Africa with a series of bomb explosions and the publication of a manifesto. Umkhonto we Sizwe was later adopted by the African National Congress as its armed wing, run jointly by the South African Communist Party (SACP). This article, using newly opened archives, demonstrates the degree to which Umkhonto we Siz…
Iranian Nuclear Aspirations and Strategic Balancing in the Middle East
With a few notable exceptions, \n1 it has become almost conventional wisdom to assume that a \nnuclear Iran is bad for its immediate neighbors, the wider Middle East region, and even the \nworld.2 Such logic suggests that even an Iran with a nascent nuclear program would be \nemboldened in its meddling in Middle Eastern geopolitical affairs, present a serious, perhaps \nexistential, threat to Israel and others, and could potentially lead to a nuc…
Author's Response
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Does organized crime exist in Africa
There is increasing international concern about the growth of organized crime in Africa. Important criminal organizations and professional criminals are present in Africa, but we argue that the term “organized crime” is not a very useful description of their activity, since what we are actually witnessing is a reformulation of politics and crime into networks that transcend the state/non-state boundary in ways that are hardly subsumed in standard…
Face to face with England’s libel laws
The English law of libel, which is intended to protect people against publication of scurrilous and unjustified attacks against them, can be used by those rich enough to pay for expensive legal services as a means of intimidating researchers. In practice, it has a restrictive effect on the freedom of expression of researchers into current affairs. This article relates the author’s own experience of being sued for libel by the former President of …
Religion and Politics in Africa
This chapter contains sections titled: What is Religion? Historical Concepts of Power Religion, Politics, and National States Contemporary Writing on Religion and Politics The Way Forward
External Mission
Nelson Mandela's release from prison in February 1990 came a few days after the removal of the ban on the African National Congress (ANC); founded a century ago and outlawed in 1960, the ANC had transferred its headquarters abroad and opened what it termed an External Mission. For the 30 years following its banning, the ANC had fought relentlessly against the apartheid state. Finally voted into office in 1994, the ANC today regards its armed stru…
Politics and Crime
Some 20 years ago, I coauthored a book on the history of the SACP and ANC in exile at a time when rather little information was available on the inner workings of the Alliance. This article looks back at the core argument of the book, Comrades against Apartheid, and considers some new themes from the history of the exile period that have become more prominent in retrospect
Landscape of Memory
The Mutual Assimilation Of Elites
The territory that became internationally recognized as the Republic of Liberia from 1847 appears to have a long history of initiation societies that predates the modern state. The most famous such society is the men's society, Poro, that has been widespread in the north of the country since before the republican period. Initiation societies were used by politicians and officials of the Republic of Liberia during the twentieth century as part of …
The Genesis of the ANC's Armed Struggle in South Africa 1948-1961
Revelations made by veterans of the period, and the opening of various archives, have thrown significant new light on the origins of Umkhonto we Sizwe. It is now clear that the South African Communist Party (SACP) was the first component of the congress alliance to decide to launch an armed struggle against the apartheid state, in late 1960, having consulted the Chinese leader Mao Zedong in person. Only later was the issue debated in the senior o…
The Occult Does Not Exist
In recent years, it has become common for academic writers to use ‘the occult’ as an analytical category to which are assigned various types of mystical belief and activity that are quite widespread in Africa, including those often described as ‘magic’ and ‘witchcraft’. It is notable that all these concepts generally go undefined. The present article argues that much of the current academic vocabulary used to describe and analyse the invisible wo…
Africa's Religious Resurgence and the Politics of Good and Evil
At a time when ‘development’—the notion that bureaucratic, secular government will lead to unprecedented prosperity—has for many lost its appeal, religion provides alternative ways of organizing society and politics and of thinking about the world
Market Hegemony and Economic Theory
It is central to standard economic theory that people act on their interests. People are interested in a variety of things, so a range of values should influence market behavior. When engaged in commerce, however, people generally act for personal gain; the influence of other values usually just disappears in the marketplace. What is missing from the standard account is that people often act on proper subsets of their interests. Economics can, ho…
The Okija Shrine
The Nigerian police discovered dozens of corpses at a shrine in Anambra State, in southeastern Nigeria, in 2004. There were suggestions in the many newspapers covering the story that these were evidence of what Nigerians call ‘ritual murders’. In fact, the corpses almost certainly were of people who had died elsewhere and been removed to the shrine only subsequently. However, the revelation that senior political figures had attended the Okija shr…
Tom and Toakafo
The monarchies and other polities of precolonial Madagascar exerted a strong influence on each other. For this reason, in recent years it has become more interesting to trace their inter-relationship than to emphasize their autonomy. The Betsimisaraka kingdom, which flourished on Madagascar's east coast in the early eighteenth century, has generally been regarded as a polity standing rather outside the mainstream of state formation in Madagascar,…
Religion and politics
Religious modes of thinking about the world are widespread in Africa, and have a pervasive influence on politics in the broadest sense. We have published elsewhere a theoretical model as to how the relationship between politics and religion may be understood, with potential benefits for observers not just of Africa, but also of other parts of the world where new combinations of religion and politics are emerging. Application of this theoretical m…
La criminalisation de l'Etat en Afrique
Fraudes et trafics en grand, exploitation sauvage des ressources, économie de pillage, privatisation des institutions, criminalisation des pratiques du pouvoir, multiplication des milices armées, extension de la guerre... L'Afrique noire semble sur la pente d'une criminalisation préoccupante de l'état. Loin des tabous et des anecdotes stéréotypées, s'appuyant sur une connaissance vivante et fine des processus économiques, culturels, politiques et…
Of elephants and men
South Africa's policy of destabilisation of neighbouring countries was closely associated with the rise of South Africa as a leading middleman in the international ivory trade. South African-based traders, acting in partnership or with protection from officers of the South African Military Intelligence Directorate, imported raw ivory from Angola, Mozambique and points further north and re-exported it to markets in the Far East. This was a source …
Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa
This essay argues that historians need to engage with the history of contemporary Africa both as a way of throwing new light on Africa's more remote past and as a way of understanding the present. The paper discusses two types of problem involved in such an enterprise. The first is the identification of the most fruitful themes for investigation. The second is the sources that may be used
Religion and politics in Sub-Saharan Africa
There is a thriving literature of religious tracts in Africa. The few formal bookshops, and the far more numerous market-stalls and itinerant hawkers who sell books, offer for sale pamphlets and popular works on religious subjects in every country of the continent, it would seem. Some are theological inquiries into aspects of the Bible or the Koran. Others contain moral lessons derived from these sacred books. Perhaps the most common category, ho…
Tuning in to Pavement Radio
n\tThis article describes a phenomenon known all over Africa, for which there is no really satisfactory term in English but which is summed up in the French term 'radio trottoir', literally 'pavement radio'. It may be defined as the popular and unofficial discussion of current affairs in Africa, particularly in towns. Unlike the press, television or radio, pavement radio is not controlled by any identifiable individual, institution or group of pe…
Research on Sub-Saharan Africa's Unrecorded International Trade
JCAS) of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).The purpose of New Directions is to open or re-open a field of African studies which has been neglected or in which not enough new work has been done.Thus, it is intended as a forum for challenging rather than surveying research agendas and received wisdoms that have shaped understandings about Africa.The Committee seeks papers that are empiri…
The Role of Religion in Development
Rumour and power in Togo
The article describes some of the main political events which took place in Togo in mid to late 1991, at a time when the power of President Gnassingbe Eyadema was facing more serious opposition than at any time since his assumption of the presidency twenty-four years earlier, and examines how these events were represented in popular discussion in Lome. By analysing some aspects of the power struggle in that period, and popular perceptions of them…
Worlds of Power
The Occult Does Not Exist
In recent years, it has become common for academic writers to use ‘the occult’ as an analytical category to which are assigned various types of mystical belief and activity that are quite widespread in Africa, including those often described as ‘magic’ and ‘witchcraft’. It is notable that all these concepts generally go undefined. The present article argues that much of the current academic vocabulary used to describe and analyse the invisible wo…
Religion and politics
Religious modes of thinking about the world are widespread in Africa, and have a pervasive influence on politics in the broadest sense. We have published elsewhere a theoretical model as to how the relationship between politics and religion may be understood, with potential benefits for observers not just of Africa, but also of other parts of the world where new combinations of religion and politics are emerging. Application of this theoretical m…
The Mask of Anarchy
Liberia 1989–1994 a Study of Ethnic and Spiritual Violence
n\tThis article deals with the civil war which broke out in Liberia on 24 December 1989, when 100 or more fighters claiming allegiance to the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), led by Charles Taylor, advanced over the border from C“te d'Ivoire to attack the town of Butuo in Nimba County. The article examines how Liberia descended into conflict and why it took such violent form. It surveys the political and military events that took place…
Madagascar
Journal Article Madagascar: Politics, Economics and Society Get access Madagascar: Politics, Economics and Society, by Maureen Covell. Francis Pinter, London, 1987. xxii+187pp. £24.50 hardback, £7.95 paperback. ISBN 0 86187 426 9 and 0 86187 427 7. STEPHEN ELLIS STEPHEN ELLIS Africa ConfidentialLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 87, Issue 348, July 1988, Page 468, https://doi.or…
The historical significance of South Africa's third force
Accounts of South Africa's transition from apartheid differ markedly in the role they attribute to violence. The most influential narratives of negotiations tend to portray the violence of the transition period, including that perpetrated by those networks within and without the security forces which have become known collectively as the Third Force, as a reaction to events, doomed to failure and rather disconnected from the main narrative of his…
Tom and Toakafo
The monarchies and other polities of precolonial Madagascar exerted a strong influence on each other. For this reason, in recent years it has become more interesting to trace their inter-relationship than to emphasize their autonomy. The Betsimisaraka kingdom, which flourished on Madagascar's east coast in the early eighteenth century, has generally been regarded as a polity standing rather outside the mainstream of state formation in Madagascar,…
The Mask of Anarchy
The Mask of Anarchy
The Okija Shrine
The Nigerian police discovered dozens of corpses at a shrine in Anambra State, in southeastern Nigeria, in 2004. There were suggestions in the many newspapers covering the story that these were evidence of what Nigerians call ‘ritual murders’. In fact, the corpses almost certainly were of people who had died elsewhere and been removed to the shrine only subsequently. However, the revelation that senior political figures had attended the Okija shr…
The Anc in Exile
Journal Article THE ANC IN EXILE Get access STEPHEN ELLIS STEPHEN ELLIS Stephen Ellis was Editor of Africa Confidential and has recently become Director of the African Studies Centre, Leiden. He gave this talk to The Royal African Society in 1990, and is currently writing a book on the subject. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 90, Issue 360, July 1991, Pages 439–447, https://doi.org/…
How to Rebuild Africa
THIS PAST March, a UN panel revealed that Liberian officials had signed a secret contract with an obscure European company, giving it a virtual monopoly on mining diamonds in the troubled country even though Liberia has been banned by the UN from selling its diamonds since 2001. The arrangement, it was disclosed, had involved members of the new transitional government operating under the (supposed) scrutiny of a large UN mission. The discovery sh…
Briefing
n\tThe US war on terrorism and preparations for war against Iraq have enormously increased the strategic value of West African oil reserves. This comes at a time when there have been massive new discoveries in offshore waters. This article focuses on the increased US interests in West African oil. It exposes the African oil lobby in Washington and describes a new form of public-private partnership between the World Bank Group, the government of C…
Does organized crime exist in Africa
There is increasing international concern about the growth of organized crime in Africa. Important criminal organizations and professional criminals are present in Africa, but we argue that the term “organized crime” is not a very useful description of their activity, since what we are actually witnessing is a reformulation of politics and crime into networks that transcend the state/non-state boundary in ways that are hardly subsumed in standard…
Armes mystiques
La guerre de 1989 à 1997 au Liberia a constitué un observatoire des pratiques de violence, y compris dans le domaine de l'invisible. Certaines techniques utilisées par les guerriers, telles l'utilisation d'amulettes ou les pratiques d'anthropophagie, ont été qualifiées par les Libériens de « sorcellerie ». Ce terme semble avoir changé de sens au fil du xx e siècle. Cet article étudie ces changements et montre comment la constitution d'un pouvoir …
An insider's account of the South African security forces’ role in the ivory trade
Since the late 1980s evidence has been emerging in support of rumours of South African involvement in the southern African ivory trade from the mid-1960s onwards. There is some evidence that, from the early mid-1970s, elements of the South African government and its security forces began actively to encourage their allies in Rhodesia, Mozambique and Angola to acquire ivory and sell it through South Africa. The first really authoritative evidence …
Le commerce international informel en Afrique sub-saharienne
The Sub-Saharan Africa's Unrecorded International Trade. Somme Methodological and Conceptual Problems. - Africa's informal economies have grown so extensive that it is no longer possible to regard them as marginal to formal economies nor only as factors of local importance. Moreover the label "informai" itself is only one of several adjectives on offer, ail of them to some extent inexact, to describe movements of goods and services which are not …
The political elite of Imerina and the revolt of the Menalamba
One of the most puzzling and fascinating of all resistance movements is that known as the revolt of the menalamba . It occurred over a wide area of central Madagascar, mostly in the kingdom of Imerina, in the two years following the French invasion of Madagascar in 1895. The most mysterious aspect of the rising has always been the question of who, if anyone, was its leader. The official version, that reported by the French government in Madagasca…
Omaly Sy Anio (Hier et Aujourd'hui)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Rising of the Red Shawls
This book examines the rising of the menalamba, the Red Shawls, against French colonial rule in Madagascar in the 1890s. Using the words of the Malagasy themselves and the archives of the Malagasy kings and queens, as well as European records, it tells from the inside the story of an Afro-Asian society at a moment of crisis. In the century before the French conquest, rising tensions between modernising kings, self-seeking Christian oligarchs and …
The Rising of the Red Shawls
Spirit Possession and Healing in Modern Zambia
This article is based on research into the healing ministry of Monsignor Emmanuel Milingo, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Lusaka from 1969 to 1983. On the basis of an analysis of a collection of some 250 letters written to the Archbishop in 1979 and 1980 by people in need of spiritual healing or guidance, it examines the relationship between spirit possession and the request for healing and social class, Christianity, urban life, ethnicity, and gen…
Madagascar
Journal Article Madagascar: Politics, Economics and Society Get access Madagascar: Politics, Economics and Society, by Maureen Covell. Francis Pinter, London, 1987. xxii+187pp. £24.50 hardback, £7.95 paperback. ISBN 0 86187 426 9 and 0 86187 427 7. STEPHEN ELLIS STEPHEN ELLIS Africa ConfidentialLondon Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 87, Issue 348, July 1988, Page 468, https://doi.or…
Les prolongements du conflit israélo-arabe en Afrique noire
The extention of the Arab-Israeli conflict : the case of Sierra Leone. Like other Black African states, Sierra Leone has been affected by the extension of the conflicts in the Middle East. Lebanese and Iranian Shiites on the one hand, and Israël on the other, are engaged in a struggle for influence in which the state of Sierra Leone has been involved in spite of itself. Even though it somewhat benefits from this situation, it is obviously a victi…
Tuning in to Pavement Radio
n\tThis article describes a phenomenon known all over Africa, for which there is no really satisfactory term in English but which is summed up in the French term 'radio trottoir', literally 'pavement radio'. It may be defined as the popular and unofficial discussion of current affairs in Africa, particularly in towns. Unlike the press, television or radio, pavement radio is not controlled by any identifiable individual, institution or group of pe…
Un complot colonial à Madagascar
Books reviewed
Albie Sachs, Protecting Human Rights in a New South Africa (Oxford University Press: Cape Town, 1990) vii + 208pp, £5.99 pbk. Mike Robertson, ed., Human Rights for South Africans (Oxford University Press: Cape Town, 1990), x + 254pp., £7.95 pbk. Sheridan Johns and R. Hunt Davis, Jr. Mandela, Tambo and the African National Congress: The Struggle against Apartheid 1948–1990. A Documentary Survey (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1991),…
The Anc in Exile
Journal Article THE ANC IN EXILE Get access STEPHEN ELLIS STEPHEN ELLIS Stephen Ellis was Editor of Africa Confidential and has recently become Director of the African Studies Centre, Leiden. He gave this talk to The Royal African Society in 1990, and is currently writing a book on the subject. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 90, Issue 360, July 1991, Pages 439–447, https://doi.org/…
Comrades against Apartheid
Modernization in Madagascar - Bible et pouvoir à Madagascar au XIXe siècle. Par Françoise Raison-Jourde. Paris
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Défense d'y voir
The politisation of nature conservation. Certain elements of the south african security forces have exploited the natural resources to profit the strategies of political destabilization and enrichment. They have thus succeeded in establishing highly developed networks of contreband of valuable natural products «ivory, gems, rhinoceros horns and drugs» serving to finance military aid delivered by South Africa and aimed at inforturing and strengthe…
Rumour and power in Togo
The article describes some of the main political events which took place in Togo in mid to late 1991, at a time when the power of President Gnassingbe Eyadema was facing more serious opposition than at any time since his assumption of the presidency twenty-four years earlier, and examines how these events were represented in popular discussion in Lome. By analysing some aspects of the power struggle in that period, and popular perceptions of them…
Mbokodo
n\tUsing four official investigations by the ANC into human rights abuses perpetrated by the organization during its years in exile, as well as a number of other sources, this article summarizes what has been established concerning the ANC's security apparatus in the 1980s, and in particular its response to indiscipline, espionage and widespread criticism by rank and file members of its armed wing, 'Umkhonto we Sizwe', in the period 1981-1984. Th…
Comrades against Apartheid
Of elephants and men
South Africa's policy of destabilisation of neighbouring countries was closely associated with the rise of South Africa as a leading middleman in the international ivory trade. South African-based traders, acting in partnership or with protection from officers of the South African Military Intelligence Directorate, imported raw ivory from Angola, Mozambique and points further north and re-exported it to markets in the Far East. This was a source …
An insider's account of the South African security forces’ role in the ivory trade
Since the late 1980s evidence has been emerging in support of rumours of South African involvement in the southern African ivory trade from the mid-1960s onwards. There is some evidence that, from the early mid-1970s, elements of the South African government and its security forces began actively to encourage their allies in Rhodesia, Mozambique and Angola to acquire ivory and sell it through South Africa. The first really authoritative evidence …
Liberia 1989–1994 a Study of Ethnic and Spiritual Violence
n\tThis article deals with the civil war which broke out in Liberia on 24 December 1989, when 100 or more fighters claiming allegiance to the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), led by Charles Taylor, advanced over the border from C“te d'Ivoire to attack the town of Butuo in Nimba County. The article examines how Liberia descended into conflict and why it took such violent form. It surveys the political and military events that took place…
Africa after the Cold War
The state-system of Africa is still essentially the one created by the colonial powers and passed on intact at independence. But the political economy of these states - the substance of political life within fixed territorial boundaries - is changing very profoundly as a result of the breakdown of the style of government of recent decades and the decline of economies based on the export of primary commodities. The political economy which is emerg…
Research on Sub-Saharan Africa's Unrecorded International Trade
JCAS) of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).The purpose of New Directions is to open or re-open a field of African studies which has been neglected or in which not enough new work has been done.Thus, it is intended as a forum for challenging rather than surveying research agendas and received wisdoms that have shaped understandings about Africa.The Committee seeks papers that are empiri…
Africa Now
Part One States and citizens: Africa in perspective nationalism, ethnicity and democracy youth and violence movements of religious renewal building public morality. Part Two Institutions and policies: the institutional foundations of growth formal and informal economic activities the diversity of adjustment in agriculture constraints on manufacturing production an agrarian continent in transition. Part Three Africa in the world: the crisis of the…
Le commerce international informel en Afrique sub-saharienne
The Sub-Saharan Africa's Unrecorded International Trade. Somme Methodological and Conceptual Problems. - Africa's informal economies have grown so extensive that it is no longer possible to regard them as marginal to formal economies nor only as factors of local importance. Moreover the label "informai" itself is only one of several adjectives on offer, ail of them to some extent inexact, to describe movements of goods and services which are not …
Africa Now
Political science (74 works) · Law (51 works) · Sociology (47 works) · History (42 works) · Politics (32 works) · Law (28 works) · History (26 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Economics (20 works) · African history and culture studies (17 works)