Contenu du sommaire : Fin de règne au Gabon

The tale of an easy victory: the 2009 presidential campaign in Gabon
Omar Bongo's death left Gabon in an unprecedented political situation : after 42 years in power, President Bongo died without having designated any successor. This article looks at the Gabonese political life in the immediate post-Bongo period (mourning, elections' preparation, announcement of candidates, presidential campaign) and describes the practical details of father-to-son transition from June to September 2009.

Electoral practices and oligarchic process: a view from the 2006 general elections in Gabon
Democratisation processes which took place in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s have brought a proliferation of elections. Gabon has been part of this trend. Since 1990, the country has organized about ten electoral competitions (presidential, general, local or referendum). Focusing on the 2006 general elections, this article analyses electoral behaviours in Gabon. It describes how these behaviours are structured by a political culture largely based on redistribution and nepotism, which has turned the selection of political personnel into an oligarchic process.

Kongossa politics : the passion for rumour in Libreville as a mode of political participation
Rumours about people's lives and politics are rife in Libreville. This article looks at favourable conditions for the development of rumour in the current political climate, which is dominated by the coming back of a single-party system and the end of a reign which are stirring up a war of succession. The article also looks at the effect of rumour on the political landscape as a symbolic battleground where rumouring has become a form of political participation which includes common people. Rumour appropriates places of sociability and delegitimizes the enunciation of politics performed by official sites. The encounter of political elite and the people in these places mitigates the social gap that separates them. Exchanging rumours is thus a way to deny unequal power relationships.

The flesh and its secret : transfiguring fetishes and undermining the symbolic in Gabon
In 2002 and 2007, while local and national politicians campaigned in southern Gabon, the provincial town of Mouila debated passionately over a monument dedicated to a local genie, the mermaid Murhumi. Combining the repertoire of the Virgin Mary and Christian calvaries, of Mami Wata and commodities, of clanic competitions and human sacrifice, Murhumi confirms the enduring power of fetishes in the Gabonese struggles for power and goods. More importantly, the article argues that colonialism introduced a new symbolic uncertainty in the ways in which people imagine the relationships between material goods, the power of the fetishes and the visual images that represent them.

Between citizenship, autochthony and race : the national preference in postsocialist Tanzania
The politics of belonging in which the “origins” constitute the main criterion of citizenship have been recently developing all over Africa. Tanzania is no exception. Since the 1990s, the will to introduce new economic indigenisation measures, also known as economic preference, has contributed to reproduce a long-term process of racialisation of the Asian communities and the supposedly only autochthonous black African majority. Such demands for a preferential treatment, fostered by economic changes and political contention, produce a political narrative of the revenge and come to modify the criteria and boundaries of citizenship.

In Benin Republic, the Ouidah 92 festival has triggered off a process of commodification of memories in which international, governmental and private initiatives compete with one another. From the analysis of a feud over the succession of the Vodun cult chief in the town of Ouidah, the author shows how Vodun cults participate in this struggle over the slavery's memory.

Venturers and forgotten people of international migration. New and old sub-Saharan migrants in MoroccoSeen as the favorite transit space for people from sub-Saharan Africa, Morocco has become a place of mixing and recasting of old and new migrations. Settling and mobility of migrants are not opposed but combined. The different situations met by migrants not only generate divides as well as forms of solidarity, they also interrogate the very notion of “migration of transit”. These new configurations along the migratory routes raise interesting issues for the sociology of migration. How Morocco as an intermediate space on these routes makes sense for migrants ? And how migrants keep on mobilising resources for departure ?

The 2009 general elections in Malawi : political parties challenged by independent candidates
Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika was reelected in 2009, within a context of proliferation of independent candidatures for the presidential and general elections. This phenomenon may raise doubts about the role of political parties as key instruments of electoral competition. Nevertheless, outcomes show that political parties are-healthier than ever as they have achieved to exclude external agents from the electoral field : independent candidates' carrier and success remain strongly influenced by their ability to remain part of the party system.