Editorial

Abstract

Former national liberation movements (NLMs) in government deserve to be studied on their own and not simply treated as a component of a country’s democracy. Wherever they have managed to seize political power and control over the state, they end up aptly documenting the “limits to liberation” (Melber 2002, Southall 2007, Blaauw and Zaire 2023). Once noted for their opposition to unfairness and oppression, they tend to mutate into authoritarian organisations that are obsessed with control and motivated by material privilege which together culminate in a predatory preoccupation with greed for the benefit of new elites. The newly established ‘democratic’ power structures, touted as a contrast to the settler-colonial structures of institutionalised racism, tend to do the opposite and benefit some at the expense of too many.