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This is a timely book on the contemporary African priesthood. Just as in other parts of the globe, the African priesthood currently faces a serious crisis of identity. The unfolding crisis puts stress on the clerics and augments the tension with lay people. The model of the Church-as-Family of God opted for by the Church in Africa is a new milestone that puts pressure on Catholic priests to define their role in the new context. The identity and image of priests need to be specified as lay ministries render the Church active from the grassroots. Reflection about the ministry of the clergy in Africa is urgent, and indeed it is an important aspect of enculturation. Nyenyembe demonstrates an admirable capacity to situate his rich theological reflections in an African context.
Bernard Nsokika Fonlon, 1924-1986, rose from humble origins to become one of Cameroon's most famous sons. He was a scholar, a poet, a politician, a philosopher, a man of action and a man of courage. He was never too busy to see someone who was troubled, never too tired to take up the case of the oppressed or the downtrodden. He was a man who could communicate, with style, in half a dozen world languages but who could also use Pidgin English if it meant putting his listeners at ease. He was a man who moved in opulent circles but who collected for himself not money but the hearts of those who got to know him. It is easy to use superlatives of someone like Bernard Fonlon, easy to make him sound like a sage or a saint; it is less easy to describe the humour and the courtesy and the gentleness that irradiated all that he said and did. This book describes briefly the life and times of a man whose story incorporates the history of a young nation and whose autobiography, The Pathfinder, has all the excitement of an adventure novel. We could use a lot of words and still not get to the heart of the matter because ordinary words are for ordinary men and Bernard Fonlon was unique. To those who knew him, no introduction is necessary; to those who did not know him, no short introduction is enough. Bernard Fonlon did not leave a worldly legacy to his family and friends and country. He left much more. He left ideas that can never be buried and ideals that will challenge new generations.
Writing Therapy
(2010)
Writing therapy is a varied collection of poems of a brisk, forward taste. The poet uses her poems as a form of expression of the harmonies and tensions that reassure and perturb the mind, heart and Spirit. This is a canvas of emotional expression from the frustration of the African youth to the declaration of the feminist, the desolation of the lovelorn and finally the weathered contentment of the Christian believer!
Pieces of Silver
(2010)
Rosi-Daniela Kouoh, a female Divisional Officer newly appointed to Njopongo, steps into office at a time when preparations for elections in the Riders Union sows panic in the hearts of the town's barons and a tragic road accident ignites feelings of vengeance and survival. In order to determine the root-cause of the rising tension and build a platform for lasting calm and justice, she gets two men out of police custody; Sadi, a loser and bitter father of an unborn child, and Esingi, a daring, retired streetboy and chauffeur to the powerful Lord Mayor and business tycoon. This is the thrilling tale of a woman determined to purge her town of injustice, corruption and greed. It is also the story of the niece of the Lord Mayor torn between family loyalty and her love for a poor bus driver.
This book discusses the social and political consequences of the economic and financial crisis that befell African economies since the 1980s, using as case study the plantation economy of the Anglophone region of Cameroon. The focus is thus on recent efforts to liberalize and privatize an agro-industrial enterprise where overseas capital and its domestic partners have converged, the consequent modes of production and labour, and the alternatives proposed and resistance generated. The study details how the unprecedented crisis caused great commotion in the region, and presented a serious challenge to existing theories on plantation production and capital accumulation. The crisis resulted in the introduction of a number of neoliberal economic reforms, including the withdrawal of state intervention and the restructuring, liquidation and privatisation of the major agro-industrial enterprises. These reforms in turn had severe consequences for several civil-society groups and their organisations that had a direct stake in the regional plantation economy, notably the regional elite, chiefs, plantation workers and contract farmers. On the basis of extensive research in the Anglophone Cameroon region, Konings shows that these civil-society groups have never resigned themselves to their fate but have been actively involved in a variety of formal and informal modes of resistance.
Laughing Store is just what we need in times of troubles and uncertainties such as these. A book of humour from an acclaimed master of laughter, it lifts our hearts and raises our spirits. Jokes that touch about every domain of existence - from sex to religion, from births to deaths, from politics to the beer parlour, from the courtroom to the hospital. And most important of all, conceived in the supremely original Cameroonian flavour of jokes.
This book was first published as a two-part essay in 1965 and 1967 in ABBIA - Cameroon Cultural Review - under the title 'Idea of Culture'. Its main argument is that indigenous Africans cultures must be the foundation on which the modern African cultural structure should be raised; the soil into which the new seed should be sown; the stem into which the new scion should be grafted; the sap that should enliven the entire organism. This culture, the object of imperialist mockery and rejected, needs rehabilitation. However, such rehabilitation of African culture cannot be a mere archaeological enterprise. It will not answer to dig up the past and live it as it was. Not only is African culture not without its imperfections, times change and African culture must adapt itself, at every turn, to the changing times. In restoring African culture, it is imperative to steer clear of two extremes: on the one hand, the imperialist arrogance which declared everything African as only fit for the scrap-heap and the dust-bin, and, on the other hand, the overly enthusiastic and rather naive tendency to laud every aspect of African culture as if it were the quintessence of human achievement.
Here is a collection of sixty-two beautifully crafted poems on some of the deepest of human emotions. They celebrate love, constancy, beauty, marriage, birth and death; in the poems are hailed intellectual labour, leadership and duty. Occasionally, the poet depicts the states of his mind against the backdrop of nature, interfusing description, memory and meditation in a manner essentially romantic. The best in Ambanasom's poetry is matter and manner combined. The striking force of the poems lies in the intriguing relationship between romanticism and romance. Ambanasom's romanticism is concerned with the concept of nature as a universal being or a cosmic entity, nostalgia, the attempt to link his childhood with the present and the future, and the response to nature at different levels of his development. The poet also demonstrates a penchant for rural subject matter, places and people. In the poet of romance there is a more direct expression of basic human emotions, in particular of love that is enchanting, possessing, seductive, and alluring. We find in the poems, love that is reciprocal and imbued with constancy and understanding.
The New World Order Ideology expressed in the form of neoliberal globalization has been used by numerous politicians, scholars and media men through the ages. It refers to a worldwide conspiracy to effect complete and total control over the planet through money farming. This book examines the case of Africa put directly on the chopping board as client states by this ideology - when less hampered by idealistic slogans as human rights, raising living standards and democratization - to better the achievement of the agenda of the money farmers whose goal is to establish government by loan operations. The money farmers' strategy, as in credit card companies, is to lend as much as the subject target can borrow and still pay fees, charges and interest payments. This means to encourage them to borrow, loan after loan, consolidate all other loans and keep lending - up until the crop of foreign exchange seems in jeopardy. The ideal from the Lending Agency viewpoint is to get an African country maxed out on loans to the point that it actually operates all of its government and the nation on LOANS. Once that goal is achieved, you basically have a never ending crop of FOREIGN EXCHANGE from helpless and hopeless African governments and people. Here is Tatah Mentan at his trenchant best!
This is an original and innovative study of mobile phones in Africa from a theological perspective. The First and the Second Special Assemblies for Africa of the Synod of Bishops, held in Rome in 1994 and 2009 respectively, made an urgent appeal to the Church in Africa to employ various media forms of social communications for evangelization and the promotion of justice and peace. Evidently, electronic media are now increasingly used for evangelization across Africa. The proliferation of the mobile phone in Africa is a most welcome development to this end. On the basis of a thorough review of the growing literature on the mobile phone and the cultures it inspires, Goliama highlights the ambivalent nature of mobile cultures for the Roman Catholic Church's evangelization mission in Africa. He argues not only for the continued merits of face-to-face communication for the Church's pastoral approach in the African context. He points to how this could be enriched by a creative appropriation of the mobile phone as a tool for theological engagement, in its capacity to shape cultures in ways amenable to the construction of a Cell phone Ecclesiology. Such emergent mobile cultural values include the tendency of mobile users to transcend social divides, to promote social interconnectedness, and to privilege the question 'where are you?'. This informed and well articulated exploration of Cell phone Ecclesiology is thus envisaged to aid the Church in Africa to wrestle more effectively with challenges that diminish human life and promote instead qualities that are life-affirming to all categories of people in the Church and society.
Toil and Delivery
(2010)
Bill NDI's Toil and Delivery can be as playful and loaded as the clues in a cryptic crossword puzzle, which is to say that they are marked by a strange, energetic hybridity. They occupy a dynamic space between nursery rhyme and visionary Romantic verse, between the colloquial and the archaic, between postmodernity and anachronism. They are local and global, political and personal, Western and non-Western. With experiences traversing both Africa and the West, Bill F. NDI is one of those poets who gives meaning to the word globalisation. He embraces poetry as a material act in a troubled world, with poetry's power conveyed with typical irony.
In the olden days, after a day's work in the farms, children and parents returned home feeling worn out. As a sort of evening entertainment, children of the same family, compound or village then gathered round a story-teller to listen to folk tales and riddles. This was common in every African home. The listeners participate with joy by joining in the songs and choruses. Sometimes the children were given the opportunity to tell stories that they had known while the adult story-teller listened attentively in order to add more details where necessary. In telling these stories and riddles, children were expected to learn something through all those activities connected with the customs, environment, language and religious practices of their people. This book provides children with stories, riddles and some proverbs that parents ought to have told their children at home but have failed because of their present day busy schedules. Teachers will fill that vacuum at school as they guide the children in reading the stories, riddles and proverbs in their second language-English. As an instructional tool, this collection will foster literacy, promote cultural awareness and create situations where learners share with one another their personal experiences and traditions.
Patrick Tataw Obenson, alias Ako-Aya, the rabid critic, social crusader and witty journalist, all rolled up in one, was indeed a popular and widely admired pioneer in daring journalism and social commentary in Cameroon. Little wonder that when he died, he left behind countless painful hearts and many questions on the lips of his admirers. As a man of the people, the fallen hero of Cameroon's Fleet Street shared his experiences, be they good or bad, with his readers. He was a virile critic even of the sordid things in which he himself secretly indulged. Obenson's mind was open, and through his popular newspaper column - Ako-Aya - he exposed society and social action in all their dimensions. He had an axe to grind with all perpetrators of social vices, especially those of them that infringed on the rights of the common man. He gave them a good fight, using his newspaper as his only weapon - a weapon which could not be neutralized even by the most affluent nor the most coercive leadership. And he did so with nerve and valour and venom. Only Tataw Obenson could spit out really scathing pieces of satire, aimed directly at the highest governing authorities of his society. Only Obenson could make allusions even to his own apparently ugly self. Only he could be liberal and honest enough to confess how he boarded a taxi and later bolted without paying the driver. Only Obenson was able to foresee his imminent demise from the face of the earth and literarily wrote his own epitaph
This book addresses the key issues of reinstating the veritable nature of African values and most specifically those of the Bamilikes that had been discarded since Western Christianity came into contact with black Africa considered animist. This task is warranted by the malaise experienced in churches by some African Christians. This is further made necessary and even pressing by the sense failure that the first wave of evangelisation, which has proven incapable of incorporating the Words of God in the African religious belief systems. This analysis takes into account the exigencies of the present context. The media as well as educated men talk ceaselessly of globalisation and the global village. The question we should be asking is to know if globalisation can be attained without due consideration of African values. This work aims at showing the scientific, sociological and cultural bases of African values so far castigated by colonial discourse. One of the ways to make this known is to expose it, analyse it and show its importance at various levels.
The Earth Mother
(2010)
The fight against evil remains at the core of this play, pitting Kamsi and her supporters against a few daring councillors. Skilfully scripted by a renowned actor and playwright, this drama exposes the alliances and explosive tensions in Nyong village overwhelmed by unseen but supposedly harmful forces. Spiced with witty proverbs and humour, The Earth Mother will not fail to thrill its readers.
Strange Passion
(2010)
In Strange Passions John Ngong Kum Ngong's vocation and prime obsession remain constant - the soul of the nation. Passion, the central symbol in this collection is the patriotic sentiment in its various manifestations. As a self-conscious artist, Ngong summons his audacious technical dexterity to sublimate the sauciness characteristic of his style and direct it towards ideological ends. The significance of his contribution is as much in the urgency, originality and authenticity of his message as in the full range and complexity of his style, and the depth and density of his thoughts.
A remarkable feature of the collapse of the British Empire is that the British departed from almost every single one of their colonial territories invariably leaving behind a messy situation and an agenda of serious problems that in most cases still haunt those territories to this day. One such territory is the Southern British Cameroons. There, the British Government took the official view that the territory and its people were 'expendable'. It opposed, for selfish economic reasons, sovereign statehood for the territory, in clear violation of the UN Charter and the norm of self-determination. It transferred the Southern Cameroons to a new colonial overlord and hurriedly left the territory. The British Government's bad faith, duplicity, deception, wheeling and dealing, and betrayal of the people of the Southern Cameroons is incredible and defies good sense. Ample evidence of this is provided by the declassified documents in this book. Among the material are treaties concluded by Britain with Southern Cameroons coastal Kings and Chiefs; and the boundary treaties of the Southern Cameroons, treaties defining the frontiers with Nigeria to the west and the frontier with Cameroun Republic to the east. The book contains documents that attest to the Southern Cameroons as a fully self-governing country, ready for sovereign statehood. These include debates in the Southern Cameroons House of Assembly; and the various Constitutions of the Southern Cameroons. The book also reproduces British declassified documents on the Southern Cameroons covering the three critical years from 1959 to 1961, documents which speak to the inglorious stewardship of Great Britain in the Southern Cameroons. This book removes lingering doubts in some quarters that the people of the Southern Cameroons were cheated of independence. Its contents are further evidence of their inalienable right and sacred duty to assert their independence. No one who reads this book can possibly be indifferent to the just struggle of the Southern Cameroons for sovereign statehood.
What a Next of Kin!
(2010)
This psycho-anthropological and socio-cultural novel logically and succinctly x-rays the foundations and raison d'être of patriarchy through the implied questions - Is wealth the basis of patriarchy? Have women any role in the system? And how far can a patriarch protect his lineage from alien blood? The extremely wealthy father of eight daughters protagonist Ndi, says yes, to the first question; no, to the second; and in the third questions he says, through dogged pursuance of looking for a male heir by any means; but his lone son whom he unknowingly begot in a remote village in his early life and whom he accidentally stumbled upon and adopted as his heir in his odyssey of looking for a male heir through a series of marriages, says no, to the first question; yes, to the second and to the third question, he says fate is the umpire; and succeeds in convincing his father that he is right.
How else does the ramified phenomenon of greed (corruption, nepotism, extreme self-aggrandizement, megalomanic tendencies etc) become nefarious to both the physical and mental worlds of a people either individually or collectively? It brings about a retrogressing, catabatic state in their evolution in both regards, eating back into the socio-economic and political set up of a given society as well as unquestionably impairing the mindset of its people.
Bill NDI's Bleeding Red: Cameroon in Black and White is another masterpiece from a poet with a deeply political vision. This collection of poems with Cameroon as the particular focal point is a paragon of socio-political and cultural alertness in verse that will get every reader on their toes. Bill NDI's world is fraught with topsy-turvydom. It is a world darkened by experience and a keen sense of the wrongs plaguing his beloved country. He points out, without preaching, where it all went wrong, how it can, or what it will take to, be redeemed. The acerbity of Bill NDI s criticism runs from the very first poem of the collection 'Anthem for Essingang' through The Promise to the very last one 'Papa Ngando Yi Mimba for Camelun'. What a clime characterised by a 'clan of mbokos, clan of bandits' It is just natural that as they perpetrate 'death and sadness' in his beloved fatherland, nothing but 'disgrace', 'great shame', and 'repudiation' awaits them for evermore.
Each of the essays in this book is marked by a certain simplicity and clarity, a seriousness tinged with humour, masking a profundity that are unmistakably characteristic of Godfrey B. Tangwa alias Rodcod Gobata, one of the leading critical minds amongst Cameroonians. The essays are centred on the theme of democracy and meritocracy which the author believes to be the pre-conditions for genuine development in Africa. The immediate focus of these essays is Cameroon, a country remarkable for experimenting with French/English bilingualism and for having a political dictatorship which claims, wrongly or rightly, to have transformed itself into a democracy; but they are equally relevant to other countries in Africa and beyond. Each of the essays stands alone but they are all telling various aspects of the same story from various angles at various times using different modes of expression. Anyone who seeks a glimpse of understanding of the trouble with Africa and particularly with Cameroon, 10 years into the 21st century, would read this book with great profit.
We henceforth would open our eyes, as obscene dancers of moving kidneys, as songs burning with sexual aches, alarm bells in the stomach of emptiness, today constitute our revolution. For Ada Bessomo, Obili, a residential area in Yaounde, capital of Cameroon, is the epitome of bitterness itself. How does one, in such a context, reconcile self esteem, a recollection of better days and love for a country that flexes its muscles against your breath, almost as if to test your patience, to suffocate its very future?
The following pages, initially prepared for limited circulation in 1961, contain brief extracts and summaries of those parts of Eugen ZintgraffÍs book Nord-Kamerun (1895), of most interest concerning the colonial Bamenda and Wum Division. ZintgraffÍs book, the first by a European about the Grassfields, has not been translated and is hard to get second-hand. In using these notes the following points should be borne in mind: ZintgraffÍs knowdie;ledge of Bali (Mungaka) and Hausa was very slight, and his discussions of character, motives and political institutions are consequently superficial and open to criticisms. He had no means of checking what he was told, or thought he was told. He had no previous knowledge of any similar culture and no training in ethnographical method. He was, however, a good observer, and his descriptions of tools, dress, weapons and the like, can be regarded as fairly reliable. Finally, it must be remembered that Zintgraff wrote the book to justify his own actions and to support that small but influential section of public opinion in Germany which favoured rapid imperial expansion. A full account of the actions and motives of ZintgraffÍs opponents in the Kamerun Governdie;ment and in the Colonial Bureau of the German Foreign Office has not been written: we only have one side of the story. But there are some suggestive points made in RudinÍs Germans in the Cameroons and others referred to in these notes. What is perhaps most striking about ZintgraffÍs account is the fact that the people of the Western Grassfields were not so isolated from one another or their neighbours as might be thought. A network of trade-friendships covered the country and big men exchanged gifts over long distances. These links must be set beside the insedie;curity due to raids and slave-catching, and are well worth investigation.
We Get Nothing from Fishing : Fishing for Boat Opportunities Amongst Senegalese Fisher Migrants
(2010)
The world is regularly confronted on television and in other mass media with dramatic images of African boat migrants. Seemingly desperate, these Africans, most of them males, are willing to risk a perilous journey at sea, hoping for a better life in Europe. And, even worse, hundreds more are believed to die each year, swallowed up anonymously by the choppy waters off Africa's coast. This book focuses on fishermen who have played a pivotal role in boat migration from Senegal to Spain's Canary Islands, advancing various reasons for the fishermen's prominent role. Besides their long history of migration, their proven experience with navigating, their family's push and investment, their perceptions and ideologies about Europe, there is also their growing marginalization as a result of the deepening crisis in the Senegalese fishing sector and the inadequate policies of the Senegalese government that prevents them from having good prospects of improving their standards of living. The book provides deep insights into the meaning of boat migration, and on the effects of success or failure on the migrants and their families. It goes beyond the usual economic explanations to convincingly situate boat migration within the long-standing West African culture of migration, and highlight the significance of socio-cultural and political factors. Among the fascinating findings are the perception of migration as status enhancing and a rite de passage in the Senegalese fishing communities, and the profound roles of the extended family, social networks and, above all, religion, especially the widespread influence of the marabout. The importance of information and communication technologies in sustaining transnational networks is equally highlighted.
Snatched from the Grave
(2010)
Black Caps and Red Feathers
(2010)
In Black Caps and Red Feathers the reader is taken into Creature's subconscious on the garbage heap where he is tenant, and where he recounts his multitudinous and gruesome experiences in Traourou's underground prisons. Ancestral Earth, set within a traditional African background, indicts Akeumbin, the king and custodian of the earth of Allehtendurih, who is caught in the dilemma of stopping a plague caused by the reckless exploitation of the earth and showing affection for his fiftieth bride. In compliance with the Princes of Earth, the women who are the principal victims, bring pressure to bear on the King who condescends to the urgency of appeasing the Ancestral Earth. The common denominator in both plays is communal grudge against irresponsible leadership and its fallouts of indiscriminate victimization that allow for the anticipation of a new or renewed consciousness.
Education of the Deprived is a perceptive socio-artistic examination of the key works of some major writers of Anglophone Cameroon literary drama today. For over two decades now socio-political developments in Cameroon, including the liberalization of the press, have led to an unprecedented proliferation of political, journalistic and imaginative writings. Availing themselves of their new-found freedom of expression, Cameroonians in general are forcefully articulating their views more than even before, and creative writers, in particular, are artistically recording intimate and painful experiences in the on-going endeavour to make sense of the socio-political environment; they are mapping out, through images and symbols, the peculiar contour of the collective Cameroonian soul. What observers have noticed, with regard to Anglophone Cameroon imaginative writing, however, is that there are few significant critical works to match the burgeoning creative literature. While in the 1970s there was a cry concerning the scarcity of imaginative works by Anglophone Cameroonians, the complaint now, at the turn of the 21st century, is that there is a dearth of critical literature capable of catapulting, on to the international literary scene, the Anglophone Cameroon literature being written. This book covers both traditional and modern drama as written by Anglophones, lays bare the technical differences between the two dramatic traditions, and brings out the central themes developed by these committed dramatists.
Anxiety in Mosaic
(2010)
Anxiety In Mosaic is a sum up of a man's fears and hopes into a volume of poetry; anxieties that span a cross section of the human phenomena of greed (in ramifications) and the resultant socio-political, economic and environmental consequences; the repercussions of worsted governance, feminist, ecological, emigrational and imperialist concerns, presented from the perspective of a philosophical questioning. The charm of these thoroughly vocal, finely-crafted poems not only lie in the quasi-compendious multiplicity of subject matter but also in their creative and innovative re-chartings.
The Moogo, the region of the Moose - known as 'Mossi' in ancient literature-occupies the entire central zone of Burkina Faso. It is divided into several kingdoms, the principal one comprising today's capital of Ouagadougou. Along with the singing griots, the evening storytellers pass on the ancestral word during the evening gatherings where they provide the group with models to follow. The folktale is the most appropriate form for teaching young children to express themselves, to structure their thoughts, and to reason. The tales portraying familiar animals will be reserved for the group of youngest children. The legendary gluttony and foolishness of Mba-Katre, the hyena, in contrast with the cunning and finesse of Mba-Soamba, the hare, will interest above all children from 10 - 12 years of age. The stories describing the origin of things, the reason for various social taboos, the legitimacy of social functions and structures, as well character flaws that need correcting, are reserved as a priority for adolescents.
The Crabs of Bangui
(2010)
Every man lives for himself, using his freedoms to attain his personal aims, and feels with his whole being that he can at any moment perform or not perform this or that action. The higher a man stands in the social scale, the more connections he has with others and the more power he has over them, the more conspicuous is the predestination and inevitability of every act he commits. Upon this philosophy, a former banker, Hansel Bolingo, suddenly finds [or makes] himself the regional representative of a Chinese firm that deals in crabs in Bangui. This catapults him into a position of instant wealth. His mouth-watering affluence draws immediate attention while his hypnotic powers cause hundreds of [not-so-honest]citizens to clamour for shares from which he builds up a huge fortune. But he soon discovers that he cannot deceive everybody all the time.
A Practical Guide to Understanding Ciyawo has been developed over fourteen years and systematically explains for the novice the important aspects of Ciyawo grammar for effective communication. A practical grammar guide, the instruction is accessible, giving the basics of pronunciation, to building verb tenses, to ways of combining the different elements of the language in order to form sentences.
This book contains a major research into, and deep investigation of Basotho language oral poetry in Lesotho at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The classical form, the dithoko, which was inspired by tribal wars or battles fought by the Basotho, is explored fully, but the absence of wars, and urbanisation with the economic and social imperatives of modernism, have inspired new forms of poetry. The new forms include dithoko, i.e. 'praise poetry'; the difela, 'mine workers' chants', and the diboko, the latter which as 'family odes', are still performed in rural areas. The research work involved the live performances of 33 diroki, i.e. poets, watched and recorded in their natural environments. The investigators were led by the late Professor Abiola Irele, then of Ohio State University.
This volume presents comprehensive case studies on various topics in Religious Studies. It aims at bringing about the dynamics of change and innovations that characterise the study of religions in contemporary Nigerian society. The work focusses on Biblical Studies, Church History, Islamic Studies and African Traditional Religions.
Comparative Historical and Interpretative Study of Religions, is a historical and interpretative study of religions. The work provides a thorough methodological discussion on specific themes, historical figures and movements in Religious Studies. It delves into other themes such as the concepts of God, spirits, mysterious forces, pollution and ritual symbolism. The reference to the Urhobo is a clear demonstration of current efforts by scholars in this area of study to de-emphasise the old forms of generalisation to greater differentiation. This approach provides new impetus for meaningful interpretation and comprehensive examination of the various themes in the light of current scholarhip. Also fundamental an analysis of the methodological problems in the study of African traditional religions. Some remedies which are intended to open new avenues for researchers are highlighted.
This work provides an overview of Nigerian Christianity. it covers issues such as Pentecostalism, Charismatism, gender dynamics, Muslim-Christian relations, and the arts and performance in Christian traditions as they are transforming contemporary Nigerian society. While focussing on contemporary Christianity, these essays also reflect on Nigeria's history and cultural traditions. Understanding and interpreting the events covered in the essays will enable us to envision the nation's future.
The Beauty I Have Seen. A Trilogy comprises three phases in a poetic journey, ranging from the poet (here called a minstrel) as a public figure, a traveller and observer of humanity, to one grounded in the landscape and fate of his native land. In the various sections of 'The Beauty I have Seen', 'Doors of the Forest' and 'Flow and other Poems', Tanure Ojaide expresses multifarious experiences, private and public, that capture the poet's sensitive life in sensuous images. In these poems that flow like a narrative, form and content fuse into a mature poetic voice at once passionate and restrained, relaxed and poignant.
Issues in African Literature
(2010)
The multitudinous nature of African literature has always been an issue but really not a problem, although its oral base has been used by expatriate critics to accuse African literature of thin plots, superficial characterisation, and narrative structures. African literature also, it is observed, is a mixed grill: it is oral; it is written in vernacular or tribal tongues; written in foreign tongues English, French, Portuguese and within the foreign language in which it is written, pidgin and creole further bend the already bent language giving African literature a further taint of linguistic impurity. African literature further suffers from the nature of its 'newness' and this created problems for the critic. Because it is new, and because its critics are in simultaneous existence with its writers, we confront the problem of 'instant analysis'. Issues in African Literature continues the debate and tries to clarify contemporary burning issues in African literature, by focussing on particular areas where the debate has been most concerned or around which it has hovered and been persistent.
This book publishes Martin Legassick's influential doctoral thesis on the preindustrial South African frontier zone of Transorangia. The impressive formation of the Griqua states in the first half of the nineteenth century outside the borders of the Cape Colony and their relations with Sotho-Tswana polities, frontiersmen, missionaries and the British administration of the Cape take centre stage in the analysis. The Griqua, of mixed settler and indigenous descent, secured hegemony in a frontier of complex partnerships and power struggles. The author's subsequent critique of the 'frontier tradition' in South African historiography drew on the insights he had gained in writing this dissertation. It served to initiate the debate about the importance of the precolonial frontier situation in South Africa for the establishment of ideas of race, the development of racial prejudice and, implicitly, the creation of segregationist and apartheid systems. Today, the constructed histories of 'Griqua' and other categories of indigeneity have re emerged in South Africa as influential tools of political mobilisation and claims on resources.
Windhoek in the early 1960s: the 34-year-old politician Clemens Kapuuo knocks at the door of the senior advocate Israel Goldblatt to solicit advice regarding the myriad of difficulties encountered by Africans daily under the apartheid regime. An unusual relationship and friendship develops, one that transcends the racial divide in this South African-governed Territory and will last for nearly 10 years. Meeting in Goldblatt's chambers, at his home and in the Old Location, other participants in the consultations included the veteran politician Chief Hosea Kutako and a group of younger nationalists, among them Rev. Bartholomews Karuaera and Levy Nganjone. Through Kapuuo, Goldblatt also met Kaptein Samuel Witbooi and counselled the long-term prisoner from Caprivi, Brendan Simbwaye. Israel Goldblatt's notes on these meetings were discovered after his death and form the core of this book. They are complemented by additional biographical information about his interlocutors, and annotations that place his notes in their historical and political context. Illustrated with many photographs, this publication pays tribute to Israel Goldblatt and the Namibian nationalists who attempted to build bridges where apartheid entrenched racism and suspicion.
This study explores the service-citizenship nexus in Nigeria, using the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme as an empirical backdrop. It attempts to understand the relationship between civic service and citizenship on the one hand, and it examines the question as to whether youth service promotes a sense of citizenship and patriotism on the other. In the relevant studies on service and sociology, the assumption that service is antecedent to, and impacts positively on citizenship, is taken for granted. However, conclusions from this study call for an urgent rethinking of this wisdom. Using data from open-ended interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions, the study traces the ways in which political dynamics in Nigeria have affected the implementation of the NYSC programme. The study articulates allegiance to national ideals as an essential foundation for creating and nurturing citizenship. Although it upholds the potential of national service as a tool for national integration, this research cautions against unalloyed faith in its presumed agency, arguing that the limitations imposed by the prevailing socio-political ecology should not be ignored.
Reforming the Malawian Public Sector argues that the new public management model that Malawi, like most African countries, adopted under the influence of donor organisations has not led to the intended development. The book examines decentralisation, performance contracting, and public-private partnerships as key aspects of the reforms and comes to the conclusion that at best, it can be argued that the failures have been due to poor implementation and this could be attributed to the fact that the process was led by donors who lacked the necessary institutional infrastructure. The book uses the 2005/6 fertiliser subsidy programme, which the government embarked on despite donor resistance that it went against market models, but which turned out to be overwhelmingly successful to demonstrate the state's developmental ability and potential. This volume is essential reading for academics, students, and practitioners seeking a deeper understanding of public administration, management, policy, development and governance in Africa and the rest of the developing world. The book is dedicated to the memory Guy Mhone, a Malawian, who was among Africa's leading scholars in public administration and governance. His works focused mainly on public sector reforms and development.
To many young people, the term sport has an exhilarating ring; to many older persons, it signifies recreation and leisure. From colonial times, it has been viewed as a means of social control. Increasingly, it is being touted by governments and donor agencies as a self-evident tool of Africa's development. How accurate are these individual, romantic and moral notions of sport? In this volume, eleven African scholars offer insightful analyses of the complex ideological and structural dimensions of modern sport as a cultural institution. Drawing on various theories and cross-cultural data, the contributors to this volume highlight the various ways in which sport norms, policies, practices and representations pervasively interface with gender and other socially constructed categories of difference. They argue that sport is not only a site of competition and physical recreation, but also a crossroad where features of modern society such as hegemony, identities, democracy, technology, development and master statuses intertwine and bifurcate. As they point out in many ways, sport production, reproduction, distribution and consumption are relational, spatial and contextual and, therefore, do not pay off for men, women and other social groups equally. The authors draw attention to the structure and scope of efforts needed to transform the exclusionary and gendered nature of sport processes to make them adequate to the task of engendering Africa's development. Gender, Sport and Development in Africa is an immensely important contribution to current debates on the broader impacts of sport on society. It is an essential reading for students, policy-makers and others interested in perspectives that interrogate the grand narratives of sport as a neutral instrument of development in African countries.
The events of May 2008 in which 62 people were killed simply for being 'foreign' and thousands were turned overnight into refugees shook the South African nation. This book is the first to attempt a comprehensive and rigorous explanation for those horrific events. It argues that xenophobia should be understood as a political discourse and practice. As such its historical development as well as the conditions of its existence must be elucidated in terms of the practices and prescriptions which structure the field of politics. In South Africa, the history of xenophobia is intimately connected to the manner in which citizenship has been conceived and fought over during the past fifty years at least. Migrant labour was de-nationalised by the apartheid state, while African nationalism saw the same migrant labour as the foundation of that oppressive system. Only those who could show a family connection with the colonial and apartheid formation of South Africa could claim citizenship at liberation. Others were excluded and seen as unjustified claimants to national resources. Xenophobia's conditions of existence, the book argues, are to be found in the politics of post-apartheid nationalism where state prescriptions founded on indigeneity have been allowed to dominate uncontested in conditions of an overwhelmingly passive conception of citizenship. The de-politicisation of an urban population, which had been able to assert its agency during the 1980s through a discourse of human rights in particular, contributed to this passivity. Such state liberal politics have remained largely unchallenged. As in other cases of post-colonial transition in Africa, the hegemony of xenophobic discourse, the book contends, is to be sought in the specific character of the state consensus.
Bulozi under the Luyana Kings : Political Evolution and State Formation in Pre-Colonial Zambia
(2010)
Bulozi under the Luyana Kings is a study of the Lozi Kingdom in Western Zambia in the pre-colonial period. The study traces the origins of the Luyana and the Lozi people; the founding of the Luyana Central Kingship and the invasion by the Makololo in the mid-nineteenth century; and ends with the study of the Lozi response to European intrusion at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bulozi under the Luyana Kings was first published in 1973 by Longman, London. After wide consultations at home and abroad, the book is now republished in its original form.
Strengthening popular participation in the African Union : a guide to AU structures and processes
(2010)
The African Union (AU) has committed to a vision of Africa that is 'integrated, prosperous and peaceful - driven by its own citizens, a dynamic force in the global arena' (Vision and Mission of the African Union, May 2004). This guide is an effort to take up the challenge of achieving this vision. It is a tool to assist activists to engage with AU policies and programmes. It describes the AU decision-making process and outlines the roles and responsibilities of the AU institutions. It also contains a sampling of the experiences of those non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that have interacted with the AU.
Uganda's broadcast media landscape has witnessed tremendous growth in recent years. While the public broadcaster remains the dominant national player - in terms of reach - in both radio and television, commercial broadcasters have introduced a substantial level of diversity in the industry. Public broadcasting faces serious competition from the numerous private and independent broadcasters, especially in and around the capital Kampala and major urban centres. In fact, the private/commercial sector clearly dominates the industry in most respects, notably productivity and profitability. The public broadcaster, which enjoys wider geographical coverage, faces the challenge of trying to fulfil a broad mandate with little funding. This makes it difficult for UBC to compete with the more nimble operators in the commercial/private sector. Overall, there appears to be a healthy degree of pluralism and diversity in terms of ownership.
Since the collapse of apartheid, there have been major increases in migration flows within, to and from the Southern African region. Cross-border movements are at an all-time high across the region and internal migration is at record levels. The implications of greater mobility for areas of origin and destination have not been systematically explored. Migration is most often seen as a negative phenomenon, a result of increased poverty and the failure of development. More recently, the positive relationship between migration and development has been emphasised by agencies such as the Global Commission on International Migration, the Global Forum on Migration and Development, the United Nations Development Programme and the African Union. The chapters in this publication are all based on primary research and examine various facets of the relationship between migration, poverty and development, including issues that are often ignored in the migration-development debate like migration and food security and migration and vulnerability to HIV. The book argues that the development and poverty reduction potential of migration is being hindered by national policies that fail to recognise and build on the positive aspects and potential of migration. As a result, as these studies show, migrants are often pushed to the margins where they are forced to 'survive on the move'. Their treatment violates labour laws and basic human rights and compromises the potential of migration as a means to create sustainable livelihoods, reduce poverty and food insecurity, mitigate the brain drain and promote the productive use of remittances. This book shows that migrant lives and livelihoods should be at the centre of international and African debates about migration, poverty and development.
Social Accountability in Africa: Practitioners' Experiences and Lessons is a collection of case studies from Africa on social accountability. This collection attempts to build a consolidated body of knowledge on social accountability efforts across the continent. The case studies are diverse and present unique approaches to how social accountability strategies and interventions are implemented within different countries. The book is written by practitioners, for practitioners, providing first hand experience of designing and implementing social accountability initiatives and the challenges, methods and successes each one presents.
The relationship between migration, development and remittances in Lesotho has been exhaustively studied for the period up to 1990. This was an era when the vast majority of migrants from Lesotho were young men working on the South African gold mines and over 50 percent of households had a migrant mineworker. Since 1990, patterns of migration to South Africa have changed dramatically. The reconfiguration of migration between the two countries has had a marked impact on remittance flows to Lesotho. The central question addressed in this report is how the change in patterns of migration from and within Lesotho since 1990 has impacted on remittance flows and usage.