The editors of a new dictionary of African politics used social media to crowdsource slang
In Benin, for example, switching parties is called “transhumance”, a term that normally describes the migration of cattle-herders. In Ghana “skirt-and-blouse voting” means picking a president from one party and a member of parliament from another. The opposite is “three-piece-suit voting”, when Kenyans back the same side throughout., a dance used in South Africa to protest against apartheid. A quieter method is the, where people in French-speaking Africa shut down the city by staying at home.
Why so much talk of corruption? Partly because it is a real problem; partly because Africans, like outsiders, stereotype the continent, says Sa’eed Husaini, a Nigerian, one of the dictionary’s editors. But then America, with its gerrymandering and pork-barrel spending, has a rich political vocabulary. Maybe it is just that the sharpest practices all over the world inspire the most creative wordplay.
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