Contenu du sommaire : Parlements de la rue : Espaces publics de la parole et citoyenneté en Afrique

Governing through speech: street parliaments, oratory practices and political subjectivation in Côte d'IvoireIn the course of Côte d'Ivoire's crisis, an extensive network of street “parliaments” and “agoras” was created by nationalist youth. The article shows how these parliaments worked effectively as an apparatus where, beyond mobilizing citizens, young patriots (jeunes patriotes) asserted themselves as moral and political subjects, using oratory and hermeneutic skills to unveil the “truth” of the Ivoirian conflict. Their “professionalization” as orators was linked to a specific form of governamentality, where the uttering of truth was given a fundamental role in governing citizenry and producing subjectivity. The article closes with a brief reflection on the transformations undergone by this governamentality in the post-conflict context, once the “parliamentary” apparatus has been erased.

“Street debaters”: “standing up parliaments” and partisan mobilization in Kinshasa
The article focuses on a particular type of Kinshasa's “parlements-debout”, affiliated to Etienne Tshisekedi's Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS). Acting as orators, transmitting “information”, these “street Members of Parliament” play a key role in rallying new partisans, and assert themselves as citizens in a context in which the act of speaking out is intimately related to violence.

People's parliaments in Kenya: Public oral debate and political participation from the streets of Eldoret and Nairobi. Despite the adoption of a new constitution in 2010, the post-election violence surrounding the flawed 2007 General Elections have fuelled on-going debates in Kenya about a state of political crisis and fragile democracy. Comparing two street parliaments from Eldoret and Nairobi in the context of electoral failure and constitutional reform, this paper investigates dynamics of political participation from below. The street parliaments form arenas for oral debates where speakers and participants collectively engage in the intentional shaping of spaces of speech. Inspired by the work of Karin Barber, the paper uses her notions of “audiences” and “publics” as a lens for understanding debate and political participation in this particular context.

What “speaking in the grins” means: urban sociability, street politics and social reproduction in Ivory Coast. During the Ivoirian post-electoral crisis, many “grins de thés” (tea places), in which men usually gathered to discuss, got transformed into places of politization or even political enrolment in favor of the candidate Alassane Ouattara. These “positions in the street” are representative of mechanisms of political participation but also political constraint in Côte d'Ivoire, shaped by the micro-local interactions within Abidjan's neighbourhoods where moral economies and identities are being built and brought face to face.

Expressions of xenophobia in public meetings and construction of a community identity: the case of Yeoville, JohannesburgIn South African cities, civil society is extremely dynamic and public meetings are part of ordinary life, especially in low-income neighbourhoods. Since 1994 first democratic elections, such local meetings are increasingly becoming institutionalized. This paper analyses the form and stakes of public meetings in Yeoville, an inner city neighbourhood in Johannesburg, and stresses the crucial role played by local leadership in the construction of a local identity, in particular through their management of the public expression of xenophobia.

From laboratory to mirror: when Sub-Saharan Africa builds strategic Europe
Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged over the last ten years as a field of experimentation and a space to legitimate new European policies in the field of foreign, security and defence policies. Building the other while building oneself is the challenging game of the European Union (EU) in Africa. Unexpected forms of African resistances to Europe's ambitions, its agenda and hypothesis of action, have led to absurd results, revealing mistakes in conceptualization, processing and implementation of the EU's international action. Africa becomes the mirror of the EU.

The chief and the trash heap: waste management policy as a political arena and an attribute of power in CameroonIn Garoua and Maroua, North Cameroon, authorities maintain an ambivalent long-standing relationship with garbage. Waste piled up in specific places turns out over time to be an emblem, a source or a manifestation of political authorities' ability or inability to manage the town and the city-dwellers. The diachronic study of ways of perceiving and managing waste in this context are key to understand local political stakes and conflicts. It also highlights the essence of power, as it is conceived in these two mid-size African towns.