By-passing “Tradition,” Governmental Norms, and Global North Saviourism: Talking with Zachariah Mampilly About Rural Protest in Africa

How have young people in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo invented new forms of radicalism in response to the impact of new flows of foreign investment and the inability of normal national and international politics to serve their needs and interests? Zachariah Mampilly explains how rural and urban spaces have seen a complex transit of peoples and funds that complicate politics, and emergent forms of radical activism have taken root and spread in many African countries. These forms display important re-imaginings of power sharing and revolutionary praxis.

Zachariah Mampilly is the Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, CUNY and a member of the doctoral faculty in the Department of Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the Co-Founder of the Program on African Social Research. Previously, he was Professor of Political Science and Director of the Africana Studies Program at Vassar College. In 2012/2013, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is the author of Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War  (Cornell U. Press 2011) and with Adam Branch, Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change (African Arguments, Zed Press 2015).  He is the co-editor of Rebel Governance in Civil Wars  (Cambridge U. Press 2015) with Ana Arjona and Nelson Kasfir; and Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory (Praeger 2011) with Andrea Bartoli and Susan Allen Nan. His writing has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The Hindu, Africa's a Country, N+1, Dissent, Al Jazeera, Noema, The Washington Post and elsewhere.