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To understand the policy environment within which refugees establish and operate their enterprises in South Africa's informal sector, this report brings together two streams of policy analysis. The first concerns the changing refugee policies and the erosion of the progressive approach that characterized the immediate post-apartheid period. The second concerns the informal sector policy, which oscillates between tolerance and attempted destruction at national and municipal levels. While there have been longstanding tensions between foreign and South African informal sector operators, an overtly anti-foreign migrant sentiment has increasingly been expressed in official policy and practice. This report describes the strategies being used to turn South Africa into an undesirable destination for refugees, including the setting up of additional procedural, administrative and logistical hurdles; the undercutting of court judgments affirming the right of asylum-seekers and refugees to employment and self-employment; ensuring that protection is always temporary by making it extremely difficult for refugees to progress to permanent residence and eventual citizenship; and restricting opportunities to pursue a livelihood in the informal sector. The authors conclude that the protection of refugee rights is likely to continue to depend on a cohort of non-governmental organizations prioritizing migrant livelihood rights and being willing and able to pursue time-consuming and costly litigation on their behalf.
The Heart of Jacob
(2017)
Jacob prospers as a moneylender and pig merchant by taking advantage of other peoples misfortunes. But when he seeks to exploit the famine afflicting his village Tounga by lending money at high interest rates to poor villagers, he does not reckon what a sacrilege his pigs would commit which give the people an opportunity to feast on his own misfortune. When this happens community gives way to individual desires, and the stomach dictates to the head what it should think and believe in. Reason bends to absurdity and custom bows to bizarre novelty. Life explodes into a sinister mess that points to only one outcome: Jacob and societys ultimate ruin.
My Head Master
(2017)
I first time I saw the man who became my headmaster was when he rode his motorcycle past our house in Tyosa. He was a huge, dark, hairy man with big eyeballs that looked like they could see through anything and often saw through everything. His eyes were so frightening to me that I always trembled whenever he turned them on me. Not only were the eyeballs big, he had a way of baring them in the most frightening manner when he focused them on you. Older people said his father Akut was nicknamed Akut the owner of frightening eyes for pretty much the same reason. His eyeballs were said to be so big as to scare away birds whenever he entered the forest. Some people said they scared away chickens too. So he was called Akut the owner of frightening eyes.... But Akuts son was headmaster and no one dared pass his nickname to his son though he had passed his frightening eyes to the son. No one dared sing songs behind him the way children used to sing behind Akut his father Passing through and growing up in school with Akuts son as the Headmaster, and what it took to grow up in a closely-knit community through the eyes and memory of a pupil is a story that has to be told, the story of any pupil. And this is the story
Women in Islam explores the complexities of gender relations in Muslim communities in the Horn of Africa and beyond, engaging critically with the social, political and cultural challenges associated with the intersection of Islam and gender. With an eclectic selection of essays, academic papers, opinion pieces and personal narratives punctuated with poetry and art, the journal seeks to spark creative and forward-looking discussions on how to effectively improve the status of women in Muslim societies. Women in Islam is published annually by SIHA, the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa. Issue Three of Women in Islam includes investigations of social issues, profiles of inspiring women, book and film reviews, poetry, and opinion pieces. The dossier on 'Living With Religious Militancy' explores women's experiences in contexts of conflict and extremism, with articles on the dilemma of female political Islamists, a gender-segregated community in Eastern Sudan, and women of Boko Haram. Other articles include stories of Sufi women, the experience of female convert to Islam, Ziba Mir-Hosseini's quest for equality in Islamic law, and reviews of Wadjda and Timbuktu.
This poetry anthology offers a feast and face of poetry as it currently is in Uganda. It is all encompassing and presents a variety of writers ranging from seasoned voices to new ones of great promise. The voices are adventurous, reflective, provocative and even sassy. The poets explore with passion diverse themes from the private to the public realm reassuring the reader that poetry is about everything and is perhaps everything. The pages of this anthology pulsate with rhythmic variations that give unexpected pleasure and provoke the reader to be exceptionally alert. This is a welcome and priceless addition to Uganda Poetry Anthology 2000.
In 1996 President Nelson Mandela described Professor Ali A. Mazrui (1933-2014) as 'an outstanding educationist and freedom fighter.' In 2002 the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan referred to Professor Mazrui as 'Africa's gift to the world.' Author of more than 35 books and hundreds of articles, Professor Mazrui was an African scholar who had treated with uncommon verve and flair a wide-range of themes that included globalization, the triple heritage, peace, and social justice. This volume engages with some of those themes that excited his mind for over six decades. The multidisciplinary essays seek to underline the highlights of Mazrui's intellectual journey and attest to the fact that he was public intellectual par excellence. Indeed, in 2005, he was named one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world. This book is a product of a symposium held from 15 to 17 July 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya. The symposium was jointly organized by the Twaweza Communications, Nairobi, Kenya, and the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (State University of New York at Binghamton) which Ali Mazrui created and presided over as the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities from 1991 to 2014.
In der Moderne verändert sich der Umgang mit heiligen Texten und damit auch die traditionelle Praxis des Kommentars. Einerseits werden solche Texte nun auch wissenschaftlich und kritisch kommentiert, andererseits leben religiöse Kommentarformen auch in säkularen Kontexten fort: etwa in der Dichtung, der Philosophie oder der Philologie. Der Kommentar war lange der Königsweg der Auseinandersetzung mit klassischen, kanonischen und als "heilig" verstandenen Texten. Weil das Verständnis von Schriftlichkeit entscheidend davon geprägt ist, wie man Texte kommentiert, ist die Geschichte des Kommentars zentral, um die Entstehung der modernen säkularen Textkultur zu verstehen. Der Band fragt, wie die Kommentierung religiöser Texte unter den Bedingungen der Säkularisierung noch möglich ist. Er beleuchtet Denkfiguren und Textpraktiken, mit denen säkulare Texte sakralisiert werden und wie jene Verschiebungen unser Verständnis von Kommentar verändern.
Despite sustained continental and national struggles for autonomy, sovereignty and independence in postcolonial Africa, the continent is increasingly embattled by the forces of globalisation which threaten African identity that is at the core of African struggles for continental and national unity. Situating the debates in the contemporary discourses on decoloniality, global consumerism, global food apartheid and the challenges and prospects of the emergent sharing economies, this book critically examines the importation, use and implications of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other such non-food products on African bodies, institutions and cultures. The book poses questions about how Africa can be decolonised both politically and in terms of global food apartheid and the dehumanising importation and use of 'foreign' non-food products, some of which militate against the ethos of [African] identity, Renaissance and indigeneity. On note, the book urges the African continent to ensure the safety of imports ensuing from the global flows and circulations that are mired in the resilient invisible global matrices of power.
There are milliards of off beam assumptions that Africa will always remain immobile in development of whatever type. This pseudo take has mainly been propounded by Western thinkers in order to dubiously make Africans internalise and reinforce this flimsy and flimflam dependency. Africa needs to embark on paradigm shift; and tweak and turn things around. Africa has what it take to do so quickly, especially now that new economic powers such as China and India are evolving as counterweight to the West. Shall Africa use these new economic forces to its advantage based on fair and win-win cooperation? To do so, Africa must make sure that it does not slink back into business as usual vis-a-vis beggarliness, dependence, frailty, gullibility, made-up backwardness, monkey business, and pipedreams, not to mention the nasty and narcissistic behaviours of its venal and navel-gazing rulers. Verily, Africa needs, inter alia, to use its God-given gifts, namely, immense resources, young population, abundance of vast and unexploited amounts of land. Equally, Africa must, without equivocation, invest copiously and earnestly in its people, the youth in the main. Most of all, Africa needs to shy away from all colonial carryovers and encumbrances. This volume shows many ways through and by which Africa can inverse the current imbroglio-cum-no-go it faces for the better; and thereby actualise the dream of being truly independent and prosperous.
Labour migration from Malawi to South Africa is a 'century-old phenomenon'. It dates as far back as the 1880s following the establishment of diamond and gold mines. In the period up to the 1980s, this migration took either formal or informal nature whereas in the post-1990 period it became exclusively informal, popularly known as selufu in Malawi. This book is an attempt to shed light on both forms of migration over time. By using the case of Mzimba, one of the major labour migration districts in Malawi, Perspectives of Labour Migration shows that migration, especially in the post-1990 period, remains a preoccupation of the different categories of both men and women in selected areas in the country. A cross-section of Malawians continue to regard emigration to South Africa as a means to an end: a way of fulfilling their heart-felt and life-time goals at household and societal levels. Because of their distinguished and unparalleled determination, these labour migrants continue to flock to South Africa in the midst of such challenges as xenophobia, crime, arrests and deportations. The book advances the argument that Malawian labour migrants are purposive and rational human beings who are ready to overcome these challenges, at times using the most improbable means, for example, through the use of mankhwala gha mwabi (luck medicine).
Knell.Ashes.Seppuku
(2017)
A delinquent son, a barren woman, troubled marriages, a reunion between old childhood friends, and all manner of family drama. This novel's sudden twists and turns have all the makings of a relatable African saga. Tinashe is an intelligent and vibrant young man who is sent to the city of Gweru to further his education at Midlands State University by his father. He is staying with his aunt Margaret who is always fighting with her son Cephas. Tinashe is looking forward to enjoying life and having a great time in the city but things do not seem to be in parallel with his expectations. He later realises this when he is wrongly accused of murdering his aunt, Margaret.
This project come out from our need to harness voices in Africa and Latin America, giving these voices an opportunity to converse, argue, synthesize, agree, and share ideas on the craft of writing, on life, on being and on thinking for the benefit of all. It was also an opportunity to create literary friendships and contacts between these two great regions. Generally, Latin America and Africa still have a lot of stories to share among themselves and with the rest of the world. There are still very strong untapped storytelling traditions in these continents. The stories in this volume are selected from an amazing range of entries to a call for contributions to an anthology on experimentation. It is hoped this robust selection will serve a wide variety of tastes in both Spanish and English, and that the book will open dialogue and the sharing of ideas between the two regions and the whole world. This is an invaluable contribution on many fronts.
This book critically examines the relevance of the increasingly popular theories on relationality by interfacing those theories with the African [Shona] modes of engagement known as chivanhu [often erroneously narrowly translated as tradition]. In other words, the book takes seriously concerns by African scholars that much of the theories that have been applied in Africa do not speak to relevance and faithfulness to the continent. Situated in a recent Zimbabwean context marked by multiple crises producing multiple forms of violence and want, the book examines the relevance of relational ontologies and epistemologies to the everyday life modes of engagements by villagers in a selected district. The book unflinchingly surfaces the strengths and weaknesses of popular theories while at the same time underlining the exigencies of theorising from Africa using African data as the millstones. By meticulously and painstakingly unpacking pertinent issues, the book provides unparalleled intellectual grit for the contemporary and increasingly popular discourses on (de-)coloniality and resilience in relation to the African peoples and their [often deliberately contested] environments, past, present and future. In other words, the book loudly sounds the bells for the battles to decolonise and transform Africa on Africa's own terms. This is a book that would be extremely useful to scholars, activists, theorists, policy makers and implementers as well as researchers interested not only in Africa's future trajectory but also in the simultaneities of temporalities and worlds that were sadly overshadowed by colonial epistemologies and ontologies for the past centuries.
The volume draws from René Devischs encounters with groups in southsaharan Africa, primarily. The author had the privilege to immerse himself, around the clock, in the Yakaphones activities and thoughts in southwest DR Congo from 1972 to 1974, and intermittently in Kinshasas shanty towns, from 1986 to 2003. The author first examines what sparked his choice to come to Congo, and then to pursue research among the Yakaphones in the borderland with Angola. He then invites us to follow the trajectory of his plural anthropological view on todays multicentric world. It leads us to his praise for honorary doctor Jean-Marc Elas work. He then examines the proletarian outbursts of violence that rocked Congos major cities in 1991 and 1993. These can be read as a settling of scores with the disillusioning colonial and missionary modernisation, along with president Mobutus millenarian Popular Movement of the Revolution. Furthermore, after considering the morose reduction of a major Yaka dancing mask into a mere museum-bound curio in Antwerp, the book unravels the Yakaphones perspectives on spirits and sorcerys threat. It also analyses their commitment to classical Bantu-African healing cults, along with their parallel consulting physicians and healers. By sharing the Yakaphones life-world, the analysis highlights their body-group-world weave, interlaced by the principle of co-resonance. A phenomenological and perspectivist look unfolds the local actors views, thereby disclosing the Bantu-African genius and setting for a major reversal of perspectives. Indeed, seeing 'here' from 'there' allows the author to uncover some alienating dynamics at work in his native Belgian Flemish-speaking culture. To better grasp the realm of life beyond the speakable and factual reasoning, the approach occasionally turns to the later Lacans focus on the unconscious desire, the body and its affects. The book addresses students and researchers in the humanities and, more broadly, all those immersed in the heat of the encounter with the culturally different.
Migration from Malawi to South Africa : A Historical and Cultural Novel ; Real-life Experiences
(2017)
Since the discovery and exploitation of minerals like gold, diamond and copper in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Malawi has played the role of a labour supplier. Malawians were attracted by the relatively higher wages obtaining in the South African mines up to the period of the decline in mine migrancy at the end of the 1980s. Following this decline, a cross-section of Malawians continued to emigrate to South Africa to seek various jobs in the burgeoning informal sector and also for trade purposes. Migration from Malawi to South Africa sheds light on the problems that labour migrants and traders encounter as they are 'toing' and 'froing' between Malawi and South Africa in pursuit of their respective goals. It shows that migration, which initially was exclusively done for wage employment, is becoming more complex by the day. This is a result of the infusion of elements of commercial migration, smuggling and human trafficking. The book advances the argument that the numbers of migrants to South Africa increased in the post-1994 period partly as a result of mal-administration by the successive democratically-elected governments in Malawi. This development weakened Malawi's otherwise promising economy and impoverished the rural masses. The book 'sees' forlorn hope in the future of labour migrants and traders, unless the Malawi Government starts to genuinely have the welfare of the populace at heart! The book is relevant and accessible to policy-makers, university and college students interested in migration studies, general readers and migrants, themselves.
This book weaves together a rich tapestry on football fandom in Zimbabwe. Based on empirical research focusing on the different dimensions of fan practices and experiences, the book is the result of multiple fieldwork processes with fans in Zimbabwe spanning a period of eight years including desk research, interviews, observation, focus group discussions and netnography. It demonstrates the nexus between social identities and supporting a sports team, highlighting that there are deeper underlying meanings and assumptions to one's support of a sporting team. Manase Chiweshe highlights the various nuances of supporting football clubs. This book provides an alternative way to understanding communities and how sport can be viewed as a serious lens into societal organisations. It offers important insights into how Zimbabweans are also engaged in leisure activities and that play is also part of their life worlds. Given the major focus on poverty, disease and conflict, African stories of intimate play and enjoyment tend to be sidelined. Soccer has the power to bring together or divide communities. In many an African context, just as in Zimbabwe, everyday ethnic and religious rivalries are played out through football matches. It is thus important to capture this space and use football as a way to heal historic and deep-seated conflicts.
This is a book on the state of social anthropology as an academic discipline in contemporary Zimbabwe. The authors are frustrated and disheartened by a problematic visibility and sluggish growth of the discipline in the country. The book makes an important claim that the future and vibrancy of anthropology in Zimbabwe, lies in how well anthropologists in the country and in the diaspora are able to join efforts in articulating, debating and enhancing its relevance and vitality. The book provides critical overview and nuanced analyses of the role and continued relevance of the discipline in reading and interpreting the social unfolding of everyday life and dynamism. It is a vital text for understanding and contextualising histories and trends in the development of social anthropology in Zimbabwe and how anthropologists in the country navigate the tumultuous waters and struggles that have engrossed the discipline since colonial times. The book has the capacity to generate added insights and influence national, continental, and global debates and trends in the field.
One of the fundamental challenges in deconstructing, rethinking and remaking the world from a Pan African vantage point is that some captives have tended to delight in the warmth of the [imperial] predator's mouth. In other words, some captives forget that the imperial predator's mouth gets warm because empire is eating and heating up from prey on the continent. (De-)Militarisation, Transnational Land Grabs and Restitution in an Age of the New Scramble for Africa: A Pan African Socio-Legal Perspective is a book that knocks on key aspects relating to land, militarisation, a PostAfrican World Order and a chaotic Post-God World Order, which require critical scholarly and policy attention in the quest to free Africa from centuries-old imperial depredations. The book carefully navigates the imperial entrapments which are designed to focus African attention only on decolonising African minds without also engaging in the [imperially more unsettling] decolonisation of African materialities.
Poverty remains a thorny and topical challenge and research topic to scholars and researchers on African development. Scholars in the Global North have since the Second World War sought to research poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, postulating what they think are the major causes of insipid and abject poverty in the continent, but with little or no success on how to solve the poverty enigma. Sadly, little research and homework have been done by scholars in context (in Africa) on why there seems to be more production rather than eradication of poverty and vulnerability in Africa and among Africans. This book is born out of the realisation for the need for both scholars on the ground and outside Africa to earnestly interrogate and reflect on the poverty situation that continues to haunt the people of Africa and rattle the conscience of the world at large. With contributors from across the continent and beyond, the volume offers a balanced and rigorous, multi-faceted analysis of Africa's poverty and vulnerability from a rich tapestry of perspectives. The volume is handy to scholars and students in the fields of African and development studies, as well as to students of Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science and Policy Studies.
African societies have rich histories, cultural heritages, knowledge systems, philosophies, and institutions that they have shaped and reshaped through history. However, the continent has been repeatedly portrayed negatively as plagued by multitudinous troubles: famine, conflict, coup, massacres, corruption, disease, illiteracy, refugees, failed state, etc. Even worse, Africans are often viewed as incapable of addressing their problems on their own. Based on such erroneous perspectives and paternalism, exogenous solutions are prescribed, out of context, for African problems. This book sheds light on the positive aspects of African reality under the key concept of 'African potentials'. It is the product of sustained consultation over a five-year period between seasoned African and Japanese anthropologists, sociologists and scholars in other areas of African studies.
Through multiple points of resistance, The Repressed Expressed underscores how hard it is to build a community in any nation with no beneficial qualities of hope and transparency. This informative collection of essays highlights that wherever stability and order are lacking, the universal appeal is to express that which is suppressed. Also, like a map or guidebook, The Repressed Expressed indicates how people in such geographical prisons strive to transform their agitation into spiritual and political pathways, free of pain and hurt from, and anger towards a dirty and corrupted world. It thus, underpins discord and brings to the fore the authority's penchant for heaping abuse upon those caused to live in fear. In short, The Repressed Expressed is an impressive compilation of literary evidence informing scholarship on opinions and beliefs relating to repression, its expression, and the immeasurable associated cost.
How come Africa is so underdeveloped when it is one of the richest continents on earth? The present volume is an attempt to theorise Africas [under-]development with a view to providing a sustainable, enduring framework of operations that will arrest the predicament of the continent while taking it forward from its current passivity. The volume rethinks and re-imagines a number of externally imposed problematic mechanisms used (un-)consciously in Africa, with the intention of raising awareness and fostering critical thinking in scholars of African development. The book is a pacesetter on how to think and research Africas [under-]development. It is also an invaluable asset for social scientists, policy makers, development practitioners, civil society activists and politicians.
At the end of his tether, Solomon Wenku contemplates a life gone awry amid widespread postcolonial squalor. Tani enters his life supposedly as a contrast to his encroaching existential gloom only to speed up the pace of his total collapse. Sanya Oshas cult novel beams a searchlight on what it feels like to survive personally and collectively in unyielding tropical malaise. This web of a narrative pits the rural versus the urban, tradition against modernity with a gallery of immortal characters and with a yearning that sings lushly of freedom.
Poetry is fragments of music thrown into the air. The primary job and aim of a poet is to create these musical notes, to play these musical notes, and the wind will take these fragment notes, sounds, musics into the ears of listeners. Zimbolicious Poetry Anthology, Volume 2 is one of those winds among many others. As we all are aware of, when the wind travels it has no boundaries, it collects, it deposits, it mixes things up; you never know where that leaf you see the wind carrying will eventually be deposited, is there another wind, another element that is going to move that leaf to another place... We firmly believe it is a good wind. It will be able to push our poetry making in Zimbabwe into other frontiers. Zimbolicious Poetry Anthology, Volume 2 continues from where we left off with the first Zimbolicious Poetry Anthology we created in 2016. In this Volume 2, we have 77 poems from 30 poets and translators, which include among others; experienced poets, academic poets, street poets, emergent poets, beginning poets, all telling stories associated with what all these poets refer to as home, that is, Zimbabwe. It is an ongoing debate on what is Zimbabwe, what we want our Zimbabwe to be socially, culturally, politically, thus we allowed every opinion space in this anthology, whether us editors agree with them or not. We have poets tackling issues to do with poetry, writing in general, art, place, identity, tradition, struggle, culture, gender, collective understanding, religion, individual, human rights and love, among others.
'Magnus Opus: A Tribute to Ntarikon is a scathing indictment of the political status quo in the Republic of Cameroon where the ruling party, the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), rides roughshod over the populace. In this long poem, Vakunta cries out poignantly against social dystopia and the deplorable moments lived by members of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) at Ntarikon Park on May 26, 1990. One cannot read this poem without feeling the despair and helplessness experienced by members of this political party as they were maimed, killed and reminded that the future holds no good for them. The prosody and semantics of the poem amplify the ontological angst experienced by Cameroonians on a daily basis.' Kashama Mulamba, Ph.D, Professor of English and French, Olivet Nazarene University, USA
This book is a pacesetter in matters of mining and the environment in Africa from multidisciplinary and spatio-temporal perspectives. The book approaches mining from the perspectives of law, politics, archaeology, anthropology, African studies, geography, human ecology, sociology, history, economics and development. It interrogates mining and environment from the perspectives of customary law as well as from the perspectives of Euro-modern laws. In this sense, the book straddles precolonial, colonial and postcolonial mining and environmental perspectives. In all this, it maintains a Pan-Africanist perspective that also speaks to contemporary debates on African Renaissance and to the unity of Africa. From scrutinising the lived realities of African miners who are often insensitively and unjustly addressed as illegal miners, the book also interrogates transnational mining corporations; matters of corporate social responsibility as well as matters of tax evasions by transnational corporations whose commitment to accountability to African governments is questioned. With both theoretical chapters and chapter based on empirical studies on mining and the environment across the African continent, the book provides a much needed holistic, one stop shop for scholars, activists, researchers and policy makers who need a comprehensive treatise on African mining and the environment. The book comes at the right time when matters of African mining and environment are increasingly coming to the fore in the light of discourses about the new 21st century scramble for African resources, in which big transnational corporations and nations are jostling to suck Africa dry in their race to control planetary resources. It is a book that speaks to contemporary broader issues of (de-)coloniality and transformation of African minds and African environmental resources.
Contemporary scholarly discourses about decolonising materialities are taking two noticeable trajectories, the first trajectory privileges establishing connections, relationships and associations between human beings and nature. The second trajectory privileges restoration, restitution, reparations for colonial dispossessions, lootings and disinheritance. While the first trajectory presupposes that colonialism was merely about separation, alienation, and disconnections between human beings and nature, the second trajectory stresses the colonialists dispossession, disinheritance and privations of Africans. Drawing on contemporary discourses about materialities in relation to semiotics, (non-)representationalism, rhetoric, ecocriticism, territorialisation, deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, translation, animism, science and technology studies, this book teases out the intellectually rutted terrain of African materialities. It argues that in a world of increasing impoverishment, the significance of materialities cannot be overemphasised: more so for the continent of Africa where impoverishment materialises in the midst of resource opulence. The book is a pacesetter in no holds barred interrogation of African materialities.
For centuries the continent of Africa has been characterised by negative images such as poverty, disease and conflicts. Today, however, the People's Republic of China's growing presence in Africa, particularly with regards to China-Africa business relations, brings new vitality to the continent. This new movement is not a windfall but rather obtained through the hard work of both African and Chinese people at various levels. Narrating on daily experiences of Chinese merchants and their vivid interactions with people in Botswana, this book decodes the frustrating while rewarding process through which China-Africa relations have been maturing on the grass-roots level. This book not only presents insights and suggestions to both Botswana and Chinese policy makers interested in understanding their constituents' everyday interactions with each other, but also offers readers interested more broadly in contemporary Chinese experiences in Africa a fascinating glimpse into these cross-cultural encounters. This book is an original and pioneering study of issues that resonate in almost every African country which has responded to a growing Chinese presence. It argues that as the process of globalisation permeates the everyday lives of people, each individual is empowered to be an 'ambassador' in shaping international relations.
The book examines the nexus between youth conflict and the occult drawing its insights from the oil-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria. It sees the occult represented by the Egbesu deity in this conflict as a form of religious belief imbued in this case with the powers of good. Thus, the religious occult is regenerated and re-energised as an idiom of justice and fairness within the Nigerian state by militant youth fighting the forces of the Nigerian state. Ingeniously, the young men simply dug into the cultural repertoire of the people for a hitherto popular expression of justice and perceived source of potency which they felt would not only provide spiritual protection but also pander to the popular imagination of justice. Even against the background prevalent Christianity, the Egbesu does not generate tension in beliefs but responds to the critical exigency of the immediate socio-political milieu of the people.
It Does Matter To Listen is a collection of short anecdotal pieces of writings, spanning different subject areas - including politics, leadership and management - with the purpose of counselling and edifying the present and future generations. It is a must-read for anyone interested in how to go about business in everyday life, at home, at work and during leisure.
In this collection, Doh straddles the Atlantic with voices that doubt, question, and lament the black predicament; voices that evoke the wisdom of Africa's cultural values in a manner reminiscent of the continent's orality. Like the echoing of the talking drums in the forests and the savannahs, these voices acknowledge the challenges and vexing truths of the hour: the plight of a people that have been buffeted repeatedly by waves of invasion, deceit, and betrayals, yet against which onslaught they remain standing, frighteningly tall in dignity and integrity.
In view of the resilience of Africa's underdevelopment, what do Africans make of their determined aspirations for development? The continent of Africa has constantly drawn global attention, most especially for both human and natural evils. Underdevelopment, it appears, is one of the most eminent threatening evils. It has plunged and promises to maintain the majority of Africa in abject poverty, insecurity, and vulnerability. What perpetuates the ghost and gory of underdevelopment in Africa, despite a proliferation of development rhetoric and initiatives? How do ordinary Africans react to repeated talk and claims of development with little evidence of transformation for the better in their material circumstances? This book interrogates the tenacity of underdevelopment amid calls for Africa to rise from its slumber and reclaim its position in global affairs as the mother continent of humankind. It contributes to the ongoing debates on why Africa remains trapped in the clutch of underdevelopment many decades after the purported end of colonialism. The book comes at a critical time in human history; a time when the talk on Africa's [under-]development is louder due to the ravages of economic downturns and dysfunctional conflicts. It poses a challenge to development practitioners, civil society activists, statesmen, economists, political scientists and theorists to rethink and reconsider their role as technocrats, experts and ambassadors of positive change in Africa and the world beyond.
How really worth are the African endogenous knowledge and know-how? Why and how can we promote this inheritage, while the so-called western scientific model looks like the best means of knowing and mastering the world? This book answers these questions by examining ifa, a West-African system of knowledge and practices which a narrow knowledge reduces to a fanciful divinatory art, an art then logically 'perceived as inconsistent and theoretically useless'. Yet, more than a divinatory art, ifa, when we submit it to analysis, appears to be an organized set of knowledge and researches, a science in the making. What makes us really think that way is the intellectual vocation that defines ifa, the rigor of the logical operations that it implies and which recalls in one way or the other the game of implicit mathematics, the objectivity requirement which is valued by the actors of the system and rests on a genuine critical tradition. This opinion is also based on the weight of myths upon which ifa rests and which constitute an important granary where a prominent set of knowledge is packed. Beyond the establishment of the consistency and the limitations of ifa, this book has strived to define a 'method' of examination and validation of the knowledge which has emerged out of the official scientific system. In fact, the questions which arise from it are finally intended to give a new foundation to philosophy of sciences and to epistemology.
Radical land reform programmes generate changes in agrarian structures and capital accumulation trajectories in the countryside. This book examines how capital accumulation is being reshaped by changing financing and marketing of agricultural commodities and presents an emerging Quadi-PMMR-model agrarian structure composed of the poor, middle, middle-to-rich peasants and some rich capitalists with a growing middle scale farmer base constituting two thirds of the rural population in Zimbabwe. This evidence based assessment, 15 years after the FTLRP, sheds light on policy outcomes and impacts on communities, revealing the changing production, marketing, capital accumulation and class formation tendencies across Zimbabwe's settlement models and agro-ecological settings. The book fuses the reliance on agrarian political economy lenses and factor component analysis to reveal the dynamics of agrarian change and to explore the dialectic between production and circulation and between the centre and periphery in exceptional fashion that expands our understanding of Zimbabwe's agrarian transition.
Yves R. Simon (1903-1961), one of the greatest contemporary philosophers, gives a modern formulation for many classical philosophical concepts such as authority, the common good, and natural law. These topics have received extensive attention from scholars. Simon also discusses the nature of human virtue, moral and intellectual, but this topic has been less studied until now. The idea of virtue, and in our case virtue in political life, runs through Simon's works. Through a close study of Simon's works and the relevant secondary literature, this book explores Simon's definition of virtue in order to highlight its originality, and show how he weaves the need for it into the fabric of three facets of political life, namely, the common good, the virtue of the ruler and the ruled, and the law. These ideas are important for the ruler-ship of any country and especially of developing nations which are populated by sit-tight dictators. Philosophy can be dry and abstract, yet in this case we deal with one of its more practical manifestations.
The Ways We Stretch Toward One Another is a collection of essays on the work of Pamela Reynolds. The essays take cues from Reynolds decades-long contributions to the field of anthropology in different ways. The authors weave Reynolds groundbreaking scholarship on the anthropology of childhoodof labour, of family, of resistance, justice, war and sufferingthrough the terms of their own work, in places and contexts that may at first appear quite distant from the villages of Zimbabwe and townships of South Africa that feature in Reynolds ethnographies. The Ways We Stretch Toward One Another is about anthropologists stretching in thought and practice toward one another, between generations, toward the people encountered in the field, through worlds entered and past, and how, in turn, these worlds lean into our own. At the core of each essay is a question about how we learn, how we pass lessons on, how we assume the mantle of anthropology for understanding the contemporary worldsomething that often requires folding intellectual friendships into the tools of our practice. The Ways We Stretch Toward One Another demonstrates how a master anthropologist has come to shape the priorities of others, in terms that are both creative and aware. Contributors: Thomas Cousins, Stefanos Geroulanos, Todd Meyers, Pamela Reynolds, Fiona Ross, and Vaibhav Saria; and a Foreword by Francis B. Nyamnjoh
The book consists of novel and empirical research in broad areas of technology and curriculum in selected African countries. The central theme of the book is technology and the higher education curriculum. The book consists of case studies from selected African countries, namely, Lesotho; Namibia; Kenya; South Africa; Zimbabwe; Tanzania and Nigeria. These studies confirm that in this contemporary digital era, educational technology is playing an increasingly important role. It has become so ubiquitous and fundamental in the teaching and learning. Higher education sectors across the continent are increasingly compelled to use educational technology to keep up with needs of 21st century students who want to be afforded opportunities to be able to learn in real time, anytime, and on their own terms using opportunities for creative innovation made possible by new information and communication technologies.
This book comprises 19 creative non-fiction pieces and essays centred around the topics of language, thought, art and existence seen through the prism of practising artist in contemporary Africa. The collection continues with Zimbabwe's Tendai Mwanaka's creative non-fiction ideology of presenting non-fiction in a creative, fresh, easy reading, simple language. With most of the essays driven by personal stories, the author ably renders them accessible to a wide spectrum of readers from the scholarly to the journalistic and the general. The pieces are grouped according to the topics, with the language essays starting the book, followed by thought, existential, and art essays. In tune with the adage the personal is political, Mwanaka lets the personal drive these essays as he tries to investigate and conversationally navigate his thoughts, beliefs, feelings and experience on language, existence and art. This is an invaluable contribution to the academic establishment, social theorists, linguists, literary theorists, journalists, activists and the general readership.
This book is a biography based on a qualitative ethnographic study of adaptation to climate by Mr Zephaniah Phiri Maseko, an award-winning smallholder farmer from Zvishavane, rural Zimbabwe. Ethnographic data provides insight and lessons of Mr Phiri Maseko and other farmers' practices for rethinking existing strategies for adaptation to climate change. The concept of adaptation is probed in relationship to the closely related concepts of vulnerability, resilience and innovation. This study also explores the concept of conviviality and argues that Mr Phiri Maseko's adaptation to climate hinges on mediating barriers between local and exogenous knowledge systems. The book argues that Mr Phiri Maseko offered tangible adaptive climate strategies through his innovations that 'marry water and soil so that it won't elope and run-off but raise a family' on his plot. His agricultural practices are anchored on the Shona concept of' hurudza'(an exceptionally productive farmer). This book explores the concept and practices of 'uhurudza,'to suggest that the latter-day 'hurudza' (commercial farmer)'as embodied by Mr Phiri Maseko offers an important set of resources for the development of climate adaptation strategies in the region. This study of smallholder farmers' adoption of innovations to climate highlights the 'complex interplay' of multiple factors that act as barriers to uptake. Such interplay of multiple stressors increases the vulnerability of smallholders. The study concludes by arguing that in as much as the skewed colonial land policy impoverished the smallholder farmers, Mr Phiri Maseko nonetheless redefined himself as a latter-day 'hurudza and thus breaks free from the poverty cycle by conjuring ingenious ways of reducing vulnerability to climate. The book does not suggest that Mr Phiri Maseko's innovations offer a silver bullet solution to the insecure rural livelihoods of smallholder farmers; nevertheless, they are a source of hope in an environment of uncertainty. His steely tenacity in the face of a multi-stressor environment is to be treasured.
Barbed Forest
(2017)
Ivory Stars is Tanzanias first ever all-girls football team, but what makes this team even more unique is that they are people with albinism. Disregarded by society, the team is determined to show the world that they wont be held back. As International Albinism Awareness Day approaches, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro would defy stereotypes and prove that they are extraordinarily capable. Join Tatu, the team leader, and the Ivory Stars on their quest to reach the summit of the highest peak in Africa. Find out whether their determination will meet the challenges ahead. How will they manoeuvre through the twists and turns that lie in wait for them? What would it mean for them if they failed?
Reading these tales from Northern Malawi readers come close to watching an original performance and the tales and the songs encapsulate the essence of Malawian culture. The authors presentation, using performance directions, allows the reader to see and hear old Nyaviyuyi as she, through word, voice, tone and gesture, mocks nosy wives, and celebrates the devotion of friendship and parental love. The author has made a further contribution to the topic by including musical notations for the songs.
Democracy and Education in Namibia and beyond debates the educationdemocracy nexus in Namibia and the southern African context. It defines and explores the meaning of democracy and related concepts. It also looks at what democracy means in the context of human rights and access to education. The ten chapters in this collection interrogate the strengths and limitations of education as an instrument of social change and question whether or not the Namibian educational objectives and practices do develop and help to sustain a democratic culture in Namibia. The authors in the collection have drawn material from their own teaching and research experience across the fields of education and social science in Namibia and beyond, and present their findings in a pedagogical framework suitable as a challenging text for tertiary students. At a time when education is in crisis, especially in South Africa where strident calls for free tertiary education and Africanisation of the curriculum are spreading like wildfire, this book gives scholarly insight into the history and social conditions that gave rise to our current predicament.
Otuzo twOvaherero
(2017)
Otuzo twOvaherero provides valuable information on Ovaherero patriclans and records folklore and praise poems in Otjiherero. Previously, these did not exist in written form. The book attempts to preserve these oral traditions before they disappear. It aims to restore pride to the Ovaherero, particularly in patrilineages that were displaced by the Ovaherero-German war of 1904-1907. Otuzo twOvaherero is structured around the Ovaherero patrilineal descent system (otuzo) which is the basis of the Ovaherero religion Oupwee. The surnames and homesteads that belong to the same patrilineage are grouped together under each patriclan to help the reader to easily trace the homesteads that belong to one patriclan (and thus have a common ancestry). The distinct features of each patriclan are specified in terms of totems, taboos, patriclans which collaborate, and praise poems of homesteads. All the patriclans and praise poems in this book were collected from Ovaherero communities living in Namibia. The author uses the term Ovaherero to include the various groups which speak the common language Otjiherero and which include the Ovahimba, Ovaherero, Ovatjimba and Ovambanderu. This book has the potential to promote unity within the Ovaherero community by showing how families are connected in lineages which trace back centuries.
The Lie of the Land
(2017)
The Lie of the Land is a novel set against the background of the German colonial wars in Namibia in the early 1900s. The central character is an academic in linguistics who occasionally acts as a British agent. He is a cynical, private individual who sees himself as a neutral observer but is eventually forced to take sides when he witnesses the atrocities of the Herero and Nama genocide and, above all, meets a young Nama woman who enchants him. The novel explores the shifting nature of the oppressor and the oppressed. Despite the unfolding tragic events, the story is lightened by surprising bursts of humour, and is ultimately a love story.
A New History of Tanzania
(2017)
Tanzania, the land and the people have been subject of a great deal of historical research, but there remains no readily accessible and concise history of the country. The aim of this volume is to fill that void. A New History of Tanzania takes its name from a lecture series introduced at the University of Dar es Salaam by Professor Isaria Kimambo in 2002. Prior to that, a book titled, A History of Tanzania, had been published in 1969 by East African Publishing House in Nairobi for the Tanzania Historical Association. That book is currently out of print and this is not a reprint. In this book, Prof. Kimambo has been joined by two other colleagues; Prof. Gregory H. Maddox of Texas Southern University, Houston (USA) and Salvatory S. Nyanto, a Tanzanian, Lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam, and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iowa (USA); together they have produced an outline history of Tanzania that covers all important aspects from antiquity to the present that is different from and richer than its predecessor. Sources from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, biology, genetics and oral tradition have been used to produce this excellent book.
Although there have been a number of studies on Black resistance, very few of these have focused exclusively on such a wide range of resistance campaigns and strategies within a single volume. One of the central arguments of this study is that from as early as the sixteenth century, when Europeans attempted to systematically exploit Africans, Black people have engaged in a variety of organised and sustained resistance campaigns to assert their independence and identity. This book examines some of the different strategies employed by Black people in Africa and the Diaspora in response to European domination and exploitation. Drawing upon research from scholars based at the University of Cape Coast in Ghana and the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, this collection of original essays, covers the academic disciplines of African and Caribbean history, literature, politics and psychology. Despite these different approaches, the consistent theme throughout, centres on the strategies employed by Black people to resist European domination and oppression, by fighting for their freedom at every possible opportunity, whether they were in Africa, Britain or the Caribbean.
'It is my duty to take the message of revolt to other[s]. is is the only way to liberate the victims of suffering and slavery,' Nazmi Durrani quotes W.L. Sohan in this book. Resistance to imperialism in pre-independence Kenya by progressive South Asian Kenyans propelled the Kenyan liberation struggle to new heights. They were active in almost every field, from publishing progressive newspapers to supplying arms and material to Mau Mau. Liberating Minds consists of biographies of progressive South Asian Kenyans written by Nazmi Durrani. Originally published in Gujarati in the 1980s, they are available here in English for the first time, together with the original Gujarati. Also included is Naila Durrani's 1987 conference paper, 'Kenya Asian Participation in People's Resistance,' while Benegal Pereira introduces Eddie H. Pereira (1915-1995) and his resistance letters to the Colonial Times Newspaper.
Eni and Other Poems
(2017)
Eni kaleidoscopically unveils human intrigues, predicaments and woes. It brings into sharp focus the most dreaded products of cruel oppression, exploitation, and destructionthe worst forms of human degradation and sufferings. However, it also sheds beams of hope, celebrating optimism in the struggle and eventually opening the curtain to the stage of victory of the oppressed and impoverished under the shameless sky.