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This article explores the production of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity in South Africa. Centred around the private sphere of the braai, the article draws on discursive psychology to investigate the participants' dilemmas and struggles over their identity as Afrikaners, South Africans, and Africans, and the ways in which these identities are being redefined. The ‘backstage’ talk that is usually reserved for fellow whites or Afrikaners illustrates a clear difference between public and private constructions of Afrikaner identity. While the participants rejected many stereotypes of Afrikaner identity, they simultaneously recycled key discourses underlying apartheid ideology, particularly discourses of black incompetence and whites under threat. Participants generally claimed status as ‘Africans’ but strongly resisted assimilation with ‘Africa’ or a broader African identity. The article concludes that the construction of the Afrikaner community as embattled and systematically oppressed might provide powerful support for extremism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the history of Somalis in Kenya. It argues that the precarious citizenship status of Kenyan Somalis is rooted in the institutionalization of state power in Kenya and the ways in which social relations have mediated that power. It focuses on a screening exercise organized by the Kenyan government in 1989 to differentiate citizens from non-citizens. Somalis deemed non-citizens were detained and deported while those declared citizens were granted pink ‘certificates of verification’. The exercise was framed as a response to disorder and insecurity in northern Kenya – problems blamed on the increased presence of ‘aliens’ from Somalia. The 1989 screening is a useful lens for understanding how the institutions of the Kenyan state have negotiated and produced citizenship. First, the screening shows how citizenship is an arena for both inter- and intra-ethnic competition; the way specific social relations are embedded within the structures of the state affects the distribution of rights and resources among different groups of citizens. Second, the organization of the screening reveals that public debates about citizenship in Kenya have not just been about drawing lines between insiders and outsiders, but about which insiders belong to which territorial spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within the literature on Ghanaian partisanship, a healthy debate has arisen between those viewing Ghana's two dominant parties as cleaved along socioeconomic lines and those suggesting that this cleavage runs along ethnic lines. Using election results, constituency maps, census data, and a survey of voters' `cognitive shortcuts', this article weighs in with the debate. The findings suggest that ethnicity matters in Ghanaian elections far more than socioeconomic variables. The findings do not, however, lead easily towards the gloomy predictions that often accompany ethnic politics. The relation- ship between ethnicity and partisanship in Ghana is far more complex. Data presented here suggest that Asante and Ewe voters are likely to vote for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC), respectively, regardless of the candidates they select. Voters of other ethnic backgrounds, who make up the vast majority of Ghanaian voters, view the dominant parties as representative of Asante and Ewe interests but do not themselves vote as a block and base their evaluations of the `Asante' and `Ewe' parties ultimately on things other than ethnicity. It is this latter group of voters that makes Ghanaian elections unpredictable and discourages politicians from turning national votes into a zero-sum ethnic censes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]