This article analyses contemporary Eritrea's acute crisis within the framework of the theory of anomie. It is based on the hypothesis that militarisation, forced labour, mass exodus and family disintegration can be interpreted as the consequences of two incompatible norm and value systems: the collectivist, nationalistic and militaristic worldview of the former liberation front and ruling party People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), and the traditional cultural system of Eritrea's society. In 2002 the regime introduced an unlimited ‘development campaign’, thereby forcing large parts of the society to live as conscripts and perform unpaid labour. This has caused a mass exodus of young people and a rapid process of family disintegration. The article is based on empirical fieldwork and evaluates the ongoing developments which have led to rapid economic decline and the destabilisation of the entire fabric of society.

How do government policies and practices affect struggles over collective identity and struggles over land? Examining the interconnections among collective identity struggles, land struggles and state policies and practices in post-apartheid South Africa, this paper argues that the government's contradictory policies and ambivalent practices have aggravated collective struggles over the boundaries of belonging. Specifically, the differing definitions of community set forth in traditional leadership, land tenure and land restitution policies exacerbate existing divisions among ‘communities’ concurrently subject to these policies and create practical policy dilemmas for decision-makers. This paper illustrates the interplay between public policies and collective identity struggles through close examination of struggles among the Barokologadi ba ga Maotwe, a so-called traditional community. The Barokologadi case underscores the necessity of attending to these interactions.

Recent studies of indigeneity in Africa have highlighted the problematic nature of the concept in a continent where it is difficult to determine which groups have temporal priority in a given location. These studies have suggested, with varying degrees of criticism, that indigeneity in Africa is a strategic identity deployed to attain a special status and associated benefits, often to remedy past harms. This article agrees that indigeneity is an act of positioning, but suggests that in the Kenyan context it can be deployed in another way as well, that is, as an act that seeks equal rather than special positioning within the dominant population. In this case indigeneity is not a special ‘slot’ but rather the norm. The article illustrates this by drawing on research with the Nubian community of Nairobi who seek to shed their ethnic stranger status and instead position themselves as indigenous to Nairobi in order to access the same quality of citizenship as that enjoyed by Kenya's ‘42 tribes’.

Research on power-sharing in Africa remains silent on the effects of national peace agreements on the sub-national level. Conversely, most armed conflicts originate and are fought in (or over) specific areas. A plausible hypothesis would be that for power-sharing to have the desired pacifying effect throughout the national territory, it needs to be extended to the local level. Based on fieldwork in six former hotspots in Liberia, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) we find that there is hardly any local content, including local power-sharing, in national agreements. However, contrary to our hypothesis, neither local content (inclusion of actors or interest) nor local-power-sharing (either introducing a local power balance or monopoly) are indispensable to effectively bring about local peace, at least in the short-term. On the contrary, it might even endanger the peace process. The importance of the sub-national level is overestimated in some cases and romanticised in others. However, the history of spatial-political links, centralised policies, and the establishment of local balances or monopolies of power ultimately play an important role.