Most of the recent literature on democratisation in Africa has paid insufficient attention to popular understandings of democracy and the local reception of democratic practices. This article examines the articulation of the concept of democracy with existing socio-political conceptions in contemporary Buganda. The standard translation of the word ‘democracy’ into Luganda tends to assimilate it to a local political cosmology which emphasises the values of justice, civility and open communication between rulers and subjects, and involves a conception of sociopolitical hierarchy modelled on the system of clans and kingship. Key ideological features of this conception include its construction from the bottom up, the singularity of power, regulated competition and nested solidarities. Such liberal democratic practices and institutions as elections, political parties and representation are not part of the local definition of democracy. In fact, political parties are widely condemned as antithetical to democratic governance. At a more pragmatic level, however, some of the democratisation initiatives of the current Ugandan government have given rise to a new popular allegiance to democratic elections. These reforms are unusual in that they resonate significantly with local political values and conceptions. The article suggests that more attention should be devoted to the coherence of democratisation initiatives with local socio-political conceptions.

Achille Mbembe's ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’ has become a canonical contribution to the literature on postcolonial African politics, yet the piece has also proved difficult to digest and build upon. This article focuses on Mbembe's thesis that postcolonial rulers and subjects share an ‘aesthetics of power’, involving ceremonialism and an emphasis on bodily functions and metaphors. It attempts to disentangle Mbembe's insights into such political dispositions from the state-centrism and radical pessimism of his account by examining its analytical indeterminacies and critically re-evaluating his theoretical deployment of Bakhtin. It then develops an alternative Bakhtinian approach to Mbembe's problematic through an analysis of the public staging of political relations in Buganda (Uganda). The standardised ceremony staged by local communities in Buganda to welcome visiting dignitaries—a ceremonial form here designated ‘political hospitality’—projects and enacts legitimate relations of reciprocity and communication between rulers and subjects through performative prestation and the giving and eating of food. It thus lends itself to political ceremonialism and the elaboration of corporeal political metaphors without entailing the pathologies that Mbembe (mis)identifies as intrinsic to such dispositions and discourses. The distorted magnification of this ceremonial pattern by the national state does contribute to the state–society impasse that preoccupies Mbembe. Yet, contrary to Mbembe's bleak vision, such local idioms also provide resources for popular critical consciousness and, thus, some grounds for cautious optimism regarding the postcolonial African political predicament.

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