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Accepted Paper:
Who welcomes whom? Staging the politics of celebration on the Namibia-Zambia border
Wolfgang Zeller (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents a situational analysis of the opening ceremony for a road bridge across the Zambezi at the Namibian and Zambian border checkpoint Wenela, in order to investigate the political relations between the leadership of the former Lozi Kingdom and the Zambian central government.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents a situational analysis of the opening ceremony in May 2004 for a road bridge across the Zambezi in the no-man's land between the Namibian and Zambian border checkpoint Wenela, in order to investigate the political relations between the leadership of the former Lozi Kingdom and the Zambian central government. It argues that both parties attempted to use the border location as a stage to publicly portray themselves as the hosts of the event. This has deep and contentious historical and political roots in claims made by the Lozi leadership since the transition towards Zambian independence in 1964 and which have more recently manifested dramatically in renewed attempts by the Lozi leadership in Zambia's Western Province to secede from the rest of Zambia.
The bridge opening ceremony was attended by the presidents of the two countries, a high-level Lozi delegation, a large print and broadcast press corps, several thousand borderland inhabitants as well as the author.
The paper draws on and seeks to contribute to the Africanist literature on the history and politics of public performances of state authority.
Borders show business: performing states in the borderlands
Session 1