Ronald Elly Wanda - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ronald Elly Wanda

Epiphany, Nov 1, 2019

This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007... more This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007 and 2017. The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative practices, as well as seeking to establish the role that Mount Elgon's Residents Association (MERA) played in peacebuilding. The study adopts the theoretical work of Johan Galtung's conflict analysis model and John Paul Lederach's conflict transformation work on peace-building. The study reveals a yawning need for younger community members to be more involved in peace-building activities in the Mt Elgon area. It further reveals that community members aged between 35 and 54 years strongly believe that their traditional culture and indigenous practices are central to their peace-building efforts in their locality. The study found a majority of community members felt that their involvement has played an important role in disarming local militia groups and in peace-building. Overall, the community strongly pointed at land and "dirty politics" as issues being at the forefront of community conflict in Mt. Elgon.

Epiphany, Dec 30, 2015

In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is... more In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is the highest goal of political life. Yet for most folks in Africa it is injustice instead that continues to dominate political debate. This article uses the epistemology of Afrikology to advance the African cultural understanding of "equality" to argue that this is a crucial tenet in appreciating the interpretation that African communities give to the concept of justice and the subsequent social dislocation that can be found in the use of Amartya Kumar Sen's Capabilities approach (

Uchenie zapiski Instituta Afriki RAN

The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative... more The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative practices and seeks to establish the role that Mount Elgon’s Residents Association played in peace-building in the area. The study adopts the theoretical work of Johan Galtung’s conflict analysis model and John Paul Lederach’s conflict transformation work on peace-building. The study reveals a yawning need for younger community members to be more involved in peace-building activities in the Mt Elgon area. It further reveals that community members aged between 35 and 54 years strongly believe that their traditional culture and indigenous practices is central to their peace-building efforts in their locality. The study found out that a majority of community members felt that their involvement has played an important role in disarming local militia groups and in peace-building. Overall, the community strongly pointed at land and “dirty politics” as issues being at the forefront of communit...

Contemporary Political Theory, 2015

Interactive Democracy's central vision is for maximally local, democratic communities, which are ... more Interactive Democracy's central vision is for maximally local, democratic communities, which are linked by transnational institutions, to build up interactive democratic representation and participation in decisions that affect them. To realize this vision, Gould engages with a broad sweep of topics and approaches, including social ontology of human rights and democracy, Habermasian discourse ethics, care ethics, the importance of gender equality, recognition justice, cosmopolitanism, solidarity, emergent technology, humor as cross-cultural understanding and more. Gould reviews and expands many ideas from other books and articles for the purpose, making the text useful both for newcomers and those familiar with her earlier work. A theme running through these diverse topics is the idea of communitieswhat they are, and what ethical relations between and within them look like. This aspect of the book is not as highlighted as some others, but it is necessary for all stages of Gould's argument, and her work on it is a valuable contribution to social and political philosophy. Therefore, it is worth focusing on for this review. The book argues that communities are necessary for human agency. Full agency involves 'not only the capacity for choice, but also a process of the development of capacities and the realization of long-term projects over time, as well as the cultivation of relationships' (p. 16). Developing capacities and realizing complex, temporally distant projects (and of course developing relationships) make this version of agency presuppose interdependency among individuals. These relations form a community character for those agential projects the book describes as 'common activities' or 'joint activities' (p. 16). As Gould says, 'In these cases, the activity is oriented to shared ends or goals, and the social group is understood as constituted by individuals in the relations rather than as existing holistically above or beyond them' (p. 16). These communities of shared projects and goals develop 'power-with,' which Gould quotes Amy Allen to define as a capacity of a group 'to act together for the attainment of a common or shared end or series of ends' (cited on p. 185). Voluntary formation of these communities is 'probably a normative desideratum' (p. 233), but not necessary.

The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 2013

Introduction Natural resources supply raw material for getting the work of the world done. Cultur... more Introduction Natural resources supply raw material for getting the work of the world done. Cultural resources organize co-operation among people for getting the work of the world done. --Dani Nabudere, 2006 The foundation of this article is the timeless supposition that we are culturally more together than we are alone. Our theme aims to explore the practicalities of culture in peace creation, and in the workings of Afrikology as an epistemology in East African communities, or to put it simply, Afrikology and cultural clusterism in action to ask what are the operational aspects of Afrikology, and what is the DNA composition of the cultural clusters in Mount Elgon cross-border communities of East Africa (Mount Elgon is a volcanic mountain on the border of eastern Uganda and western Kenya, hence, the oldest and largest solitary volcano in East Africa)? To begin with, the first articulation of Afrikology declares that: "it is a true philosophy of knowledge and wisdom based on Afri...

Introduction Let it be impossible that anything should be done which is unknown to the nation--pr... more Introduction Let it be impossible that anything should be done which is unknown to the nation--prove to it that you neither intend to deceive nor to surprise--you take away all the weapons of discontent. The public will repay with usury the confidence you repose in it (Bentham, 1839) There is an old saying in my ancestral locality of Mt. Elgon that "Judges put on their trousers one leg at a time, just like everybody else." If I understand this slightly sexist statement correctly, it refers to the ineradicable subjectivity brought to the legal system by the very fact of the judge's humanity. From it, we can adduce examples of commonsense justice and its negative counterpart, irresponsible judicial meddling. The post-election violence (PEV) of 2008 that mostly shaped the current 2010 Constitution was largely blamed on judicial meddling by the executive. As the country marks five years of its current Constitution, there is growing interest in the cultural interpretations ...

Journal of Pan African Studies, Dec 1, 2013

The New Black Magazine, 2020

Msingi Afrika Magazine, 2020

Msingi Afrika Magazine, 2020

On the haze of an early Kitengela morning in April, my son and I stood at our garden staring at o... more On the haze of an early Kitengela morning in April, my son and I stood at our garden staring at our kale plants. It was a therapeutic experience, more so given the partial lockdown regime triggered by the latest global pandemic that has suffocated social life throughout the world. At the garden, I took time and considered Sir Robert Robinson"s observations that "plants are not animals". A proclamation that may appear too obvious at inception, but very often the techniques used to protect plants from extinction, which maybe useful for humanity at this moment, are based on methods developed for animals. In my view, it is the rich classes in our so called "modern societies" including here in Africa, whose universal thirst for private profit has led them to neglect and exploit the ecosystem to the extent of breaking the unity and interdependence of an otherwise coherent natural system that has led to the current deadly outbreak of a virus we do not yet have a cure for. It is important for us to realise that the ecosystem is built on geological formations and the living forms that inhabit it are a single community of interconnected beings which includes the sun, the moon, the stars, plants, animals and humans who exist together as a compact unity. And as argued in agricology, my subject focus in this discussion, each mode of existence of each of these entities has its unique rights and functions within the totality and each is able to contribute to the existence of the other in a mutual supporting manner that benefits our planet. Phenotypic Plasticity At the garden, I remember asking my young son what a plant was, to which he replied that it was "a green, rooted to the spot, veggie that comes from a seed". In agricology, we learn that if plants were not able to take the energy from the sun and use it to mix together air, water and soil, we simply would not be here. In other words, humanity cannot survive without nature nor can nature exist without humanity. There is as such a co-relationship between them and this co-relationship needs to be restored through a circular global agricological system. Moreover, the fact that plants are rooted to the spot, as suggested by my son earlier, is of profound importance

Msingi Afrika Magazine, 2020

This decade has begun with a growing air of frenetic activity that has engulfed Britain"s capital... more This decade has begun with a growing air of frenetic activity that has engulfed Britain"s capital, London, triggered perhaps by the growth in volume and acceptability of xenophobic discourses on migration, and on foreign nationals including refugees in social and print media. Needless to say, British politics has for decades been infused with hostility to migrants, with both left and right governments pushing scapegoating narratives. The ructions in Westminster at the end of January 2020 when Britain finally exited the European Union took on historic proportions that saw the British pound fall as well as a rapid rise of death threats to ethnic minorities, all the while politicians have continued to quote poetry with a Powellian racial inflection. On the same note, and not to my surprise, while ethnic minorities make up 14 % of Britain"s population, a sizable number of black people amounting to 73 % in total, voted for Britain to remain in the EU, as did 67 % of Asian voters. The figure was 53 % of whites who voted in favour of Britain to leave the EU. Since the UK"s exit was finally approved by the EU in January, it"s safe to say that as far as race, culture and justice are concerned, things appear murkier than ever. For me, the recent past has seen me more concerned with quarrels, battles, conflicts and at times controversies concerning African people in Africa and elsewhere in the diaspora. More specifically, I have found myself actively engaged in opposing those who attack Africans and attempt to belittle or deny the value and importance that Africans have made to humanity. In today"s Britain, under the aegis of Brexit, for instance, these attacks have come most frequently from those within the world of learning as well as the mass media corpus who uphold the misplaced claim that White is right and Black is wrong. These media cluster, appear to agree with one of Britain"s foremost cultural scholar Paul Gilroy"s hitherto hypothetical proposition that "race is an unhelpful fiction best set aside and kept out of respectable politics".

MSINGI AFRIKA MAGAZINE, 2020

I begin this brief deliberation on the political thought of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in a manner mo... more I begin this brief deliberation on the political thought of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in a manner most unoriginal-by pointing a finger at the academic community in Africa at large. I want to shout out loud from the onset that we must come to terms with the inescapable violence that continues to characterise the political intercourse between Europe and Africa. I am certainly not the first writer to express this frustration and undoubtedly won"t be the last. Thinkers such as Nabudere, Anta Diop, Shivji, Ramose, Mutunga, Masolo, Bitek, Mudimbe and others have made similar pleas in the recent past that African scholars must pursue knowledge production that can renovate African culture, defend the African people"s dignity and civilisational achievements and contribute afresh to a new global agenda that can push us out of the political crisis of modernity as promoted by the European enlightenment. Such knowledge, for instance, as demonstrated by Nyerere through Ujamaa, must be relevant to the current needs of the masses, which can then be used to bring about positive social transformation of our present plight. As a new decade dawns, we are living at dangerous times. All over the world today, political leaders and citizens alike are developing thick skin by routinely rationalizing cruelty, exclusion and by engaging in habits that inculcate the systemic suppression of "others". These are dangerous times because individuals are becoming smart and slick when it comes to disguising instances of dispossession, making it look normal. These are dangerous times because we are counting massive accumulation by a few as the solution to the massive dispossession of many especially here in Africa.

Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies, 2019

This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007... more This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007 and 2017. The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative practices, as well as seeking to establish the role that Mount Elgon's Residents Association (MERA) played in peace-building. The study adopts the theoretical work of Johan Galtung's conflict analysis model and John Paul Lederach's conflict transformation work on peace-building. The study reveals a yawning need for younger community members to be more involved in peace-building activities in the Mt Elgon area. It further reveals that community members aged between 35 and 54 years strongly believe that their traditional culture and indigenous practices are central to their peace-building efforts in their locality. The study found a majority of community members felt that their involvement has played an important role in disarming local militia groups and in peace-building. Overall, the community strongly pointed at land and "dirty politics" as issues being at the forefront of community conflict in Mt. Elgon.

In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is... more In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is the highest goal of political life. Yet for most folks in Africa it is injustice instead that continues to dominate political debate. This article uses the epistemology of Afrikology to advance the African cultural understanding of " equality " to argue that this is a crucial tenet in appreciating the interpretation that African communities give to the concept of justice and the subsequent social dislocation that can be found in the use of Amartya Kumar Sen's Capabilities approach (

Epiphany, Nov 1, 2019

This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007... more This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007 and 2017. The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative practices, as well as seeking to establish the role that Mount Elgon's Residents Association (MERA) played in peacebuilding. The study adopts the theoretical work of Johan Galtung's conflict analysis model and John Paul Lederach's conflict transformation work on peace-building. The study reveals a yawning need for younger community members to be more involved in peace-building activities in the Mt Elgon area. It further reveals that community members aged between 35 and 54 years strongly believe that their traditional culture and indigenous practices are central to their peace-building efforts in their locality. The study found a majority of community members felt that their involvement has played an important role in disarming local militia groups and in peace-building. Overall, the community strongly pointed at land and "dirty politics" as issues being at the forefront of community conflict in Mt. Elgon.

Epiphany, Dec 30, 2015

In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is... more In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is the highest goal of political life. Yet for most folks in Africa it is injustice instead that continues to dominate political debate. This article uses the epistemology of Afrikology to advance the African cultural understanding of "equality" to argue that this is a crucial tenet in appreciating the interpretation that African communities give to the concept of justice and the subsequent social dislocation that can be found in the use of Amartya Kumar Sen's Capabilities approach (

Uchenie zapiski Instituta Afriki RAN

The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative... more The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative practices and seeks to establish the role that Mount Elgon’s Residents Association played in peace-building in the area. The study adopts the theoretical work of Johan Galtung’s conflict analysis model and John Paul Lederach’s conflict transformation work on peace-building. The study reveals a yawning need for younger community members to be more involved in peace-building activities in the Mt Elgon area. It further reveals that community members aged between 35 and 54 years strongly believe that their traditional culture and indigenous practices is central to their peace-building efforts in their locality. The study found out that a majority of community members felt that their involvement has played an important role in disarming local militia groups and in peace-building. Overall, the community strongly pointed at land and “dirty politics” as issues being at the forefront of communit...

Contemporary Political Theory, 2015

Interactive Democracy's central vision is for maximally local, democratic communities, which are ... more Interactive Democracy's central vision is for maximally local, democratic communities, which are linked by transnational institutions, to build up interactive democratic representation and participation in decisions that affect them. To realize this vision, Gould engages with a broad sweep of topics and approaches, including social ontology of human rights and democracy, Habermasian discourse ethics, care ethics, the importance of gender equality, recognition justice, cosmopolitanism, solidarity, emergent technology, humor as cross-cultural understanding and more. Gould reviews and expands many ideas from other books and articles for the purpose, making the text useful both for newcomers and those familiar with her earlier work. A theme running through these diverse topics is the idea of communitieswhat they are, and what ethical relations between and within them look like. This aspect of the book is not as highlighted as some others, but it is necessary for all stages of Gould's argument, and her work on it is a valuable contribution to social and political philosophy. Therefore, it is worth focusing on for this review. The book argues that communities are necessary for human agency. Full agency involves 'not only the capacity for choice, but also a process of the development of capacities and the realization of long-term projects over time, as well as the cultivation of relationships' (p. 16). Developing capacities and realizing complex, temporally distant projects (and of course developing relationships) make this version of agency presuppose interdependency among individuals. These relations form a community character for those agential projects the book describes as 'common activities' or 'joint activities' (p. 16). As Gould says, 'In these cases, the activity is oriented to shared ends or goals, and the social group is understood as constituted by individuals in the relations rather than as existing holistically above or beyond them' (p. 16). These communities of shared projects and goals develop 'power-with,' which Gould quotes Amy Allen to define as a capacity of a group 'to act together for the attainment of a common or shared end or series of ends' (cited on p. 185). Voluntary formation of these communities is 'probably a normative desideratum' (p. 233), but not necessary.

The Journal of Pan-African Studies, 2013

Introduction Natural resources supply raw material for getting the work of the world done. Cultur... more Introduction Natural resources supply raw material for getting the work of the world done. Cultural resources organize co-operation among people for getting the work of the world done. --Dani Nabudere, 2006 The foundation of this article is the timeless supposition that we are culturally more together than we are alone. Our theme aims to explore the practicalities of culture in peace creation, and in the workings of Afrikology as an epistemology in East African communities, or to put it simply, Afrikology and cultural clusterism in action to ask what are the operational aspects of Afrikology, and what is the DNA composition of the cultural clusters in Mount Elgon cross-border communities of East Africa (Mount Elgon is a volcanic mountain on the border of eastern Uganda and western Kenya, hence, the oldest and largest solitary volcano in East Africa)? To begin with, the first articulation of Afrikology declares that: "it is a true philosophy of knowledge and wisdom based on Afri...

Introduction Let it be impossible that anything should be done which is unknown to the nation--pr... more Introduction Let it be impossible that anything should be done which is unknown to the nation--prove to it that you neither intend to deceive nor to surprise--you take away all the weapons of discontent. The public will repay with usury the confidence you repose in it (Bentham, 1839) There is an old saying in my ancestral locality of Mt. Elgon that "Judges put on their trousers one leg at a time, just like everybody else." If I understand this slightly sexist statement correctly, it refers to the ineradicable subjectivity brought to the legal system by the very fact of the judge's humanity. From it, we can adduce examples of commonsense justice and its negative counterpart, irresponsible judicial meddling. The post-election violence (PEV) of 2008 that mostly shaped the current 2010 Constitution was largely blamed on judicial meddling by the executive. As the country marks five years of its current Constitution, there is growing interest in the cultural interpretations ...

Journal of Pan African Studies, Dec 1, 2013

The New Black Magazine, 2020

Msingi Afrika Magazine, 2020

Msingi Afrika Magazine, 2020

On the haze of an early Kitengela morning in April, my son and I stood at our garden staring at o... more On the haze of an early Kitengela morning in April, my son and I stood at our garden staring at our kale plants. It was a therapeutic experience, more so given the partial lockdown regime triggered by the latest global pandemic that has suffocated social life throughout the world. At the garden, I took time and considered Sir Robert Robinson"s observations that "plants are not animals". A proclamation that may appear too obvious at inception, but very often the techniques used to protect plants from extinction, which maybe useful for humanity at this moment, are based on methods developed for animals. In my view, it is the rich classes in our so called "modern societies" including here in Africa, whose universal thirst for private profit has led them to neglect and exploit the ecosystem to the extent of breaking the unity and interdependence of an otherwise coherent natural system that has led to the current deadly outbreak of a virus we do not yet have a cure for. It is important for us to realise that the ecosystem is built on geological formations and the living forms that inhabit it are a single community of interconnected beings which includes the sun, the moon, the stars, plants, animals and humans who exist together as a compact unity. And as argued in agricology, my subject focus in this discussion, each mode of existence of each of these entities has its unique rights and functions within the totality and each is able to contribute to the existence of the other in a mutual supporting manner that benefits our planet. Phenotypic Plasticity At the garden, I remember asking my young son what a plant was, to which he replied that it was "a green, rooted to the spot, veggie that comes from a seed". In agricology, we learn that if plants were not able to take the energy from the sun and use it to mix together air, water and soil, we simply would not be here. In other words, humanity cannot survive without nature nor can nature exist without humanity. There is as such a co-relationship between them and this co-relationship needs to be restored through a circular global agricological system. Moreover, the fact that plants are rooted to the spot, as suggested by my son earlier, is of profound importance

Msingi Afrika Magazine, 2020

This decade has begun with a growing air of frenetic activity that has engulfed Britain"s capital... more This decade has begun with a growing air of frenetic activity that has engulfed Britain"s capital, London, triggered perhaps by the growth in volume and acceptability of xenophobic discourses on migration, and on foreign nationals including refugees in social and print media. Needless to say, British politics has for decades been infused with hostility to migrants, with both left and right governments pushing scapegoating narratives. The ructions in Westminster at the end of January 2020 when Britain finally exited the European Union took on historic proportions that saw the British pound fall as well as a rapid rise of death threats to ethnic minorities, all the while politicians have continued to quote poetry with a Powellian racial inflection. On the same note, and not to my surprise, while ethnic minorities make up 14 % of Britain"s population, a sizable number of black people amounting to 73 % in total, voted for Britain to remain in the EU, as did 67 % of Asian voters. The figure was 53 % of whites who voted in favour of Britain to leave the EU. Since the UK"s exit was finally approved by the EU in January, it"s safe to say that as far as race, culture and justice are concerned, things appear murkier than ever. For me, the recent past has seen me more concerned with quarrels, battles, conflicts and at times controversies concerning African people in Africa and elsewhere in the diaspora. More specifically, I have found myself actively engaged in opposing those who attack Africans and attempt to belittle or deny the value and importance that Africans have made to humanity. In today"s Britain, under the aegis of Brexit, for instance, these attacks have come most frequently from those within the world of learning as well as the mass media corpus who uphold the misplaced claim that White is right and Black is wrong. These media cluster, appear to agree with one of Britain"s foremost cultural scholar Paul Gilroy"s hitherto hypothetical proposition that "race is an unhelpful fiction best set aside and kept out of respectable politics".

MSINGI AFRIKA MAGAZINE, 2020

I begin this brief deliberation on the political thought of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in a manner mo... more I begin this brief deliberation on the political thought of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in a manner most unoriginal-by pointing a finger at the academic community in Africa at large. I want to shout out loud from the onset that we must come to terms with the inescapable violence that continues to characterise the political intercourse between Europe and Africa. I am certainly not the first writer to express this frustration and undoubtedly won"t be the last. Thinkers such as Nabudere, Anta Diop, Shivji, Ramose, Mutunga, Masolo, Bitek, Mudimbe and others have made similar pleas in the recent past that African scholars must pursue knowledge production that can renovate African culture, defend the African people"s dignity and civilisational achievements and contribute afresh to a new global agenda that can push us out of the political crisis of modernity as promoted by the European enlightenment. Such knowledge, for instance, as demonstrated by Nyerere through Ujamaa, must be relevant to the current needs of the masses, which can then be used to bring about positive social transformation of our present plight. As a new decade dawns, we are living at dangerous times. All over the world today, political leaders and citizens alike are developing thick skin by routinely rationalizing cruelty, exclusion and by engaging in habits that inculcate the systemic suppression of "others". These are dangerous times because individuals are becoming smart and slick when it comes to disguising instances of dispossession, making it look normal. These are dangerous times because we are counting massive accumulation by a few as the solution to the massive dispossession of many especially here in Africa.

Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies, 2019

This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007... more This article analyses community participation in peace-building in the Mt Elgon area between 2007 and 2017. The article assesses the use of indigenous methods of conflict resolution embedded in restorative practices, as well as seeking to establish the role that Mount Elgon's Residents Association (MERA) played in peace-building. The study adopts the theoretical work of Johan Galtung's conflict analysis model and John Paul Lederach's conflict transformation work on peace-building. The study reveals a yawning need for younger community members to be more involved in peace-building activities in the Mt Elgon area. It further reveals that community members aged between 35 and 54 years strongly believe that their traditional culture and indigenous practices are central to their peace-building efforts in their locality. The study found a majority of community members felt that their involvement has played an important role in disarming local militia groups and in peace-building. Overall, the community strongly pointed at land and "dirty politics" as issues being at the forefront of community conflict in Mt. Elgon.

In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is... more In the crowded argumentative space of political philosophies, it is often alleged that Justice is the highest goal of political life. Yet for most folks in Africa it is injustice instead that continues to dominate political debate. This article uses the epistemology of Afrikology to advance the African cultural understanding of " equality " to argue that this is a crucial tenet in appreciating the interpretation that African communities give to the concept of justice and the subsequent social dislocation that can be found in the use of Amartya Kumar Sen's Capabilities approach (