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Representing research from east, central, west, and southern Africa, Engaging Children and Youth in Africa provides a well-balanced analysis of on-the-ground data with methodological and phenomenological issues that abound in much of research in Africa today. With an introduction that charts out some of the most critical approaches in African-centred research on children and youth, contributors to this volume give the reader a glimpse of the product of engaged research that places children and youth at the centre of analysis. The authors follow recent studies that have insisted on seeing African childhood and youth beyond constraining Western notions of vulnerability or innocence, to capture the ways in which recent advances in technology, the intensification of global processes, and continued weakening of the nation-state have not only contributed to new ways of being children and youth but how they have also provided a new lens through which to study social change.
The Forest: An African Traditional Definition seeks to provide the conservationist with some basic ideas as to which cultural areas to explore. It utilises illustrative African cultures: from ecologically and culturally rich forest zones of Cameroon which has earned the description of Africa in miniature due to its diversity; and representativeness of ecological and cultural landscapes that reflect the continent. These aim to direct the conservationist to the appropriate beliefs and customs that could be exploited in favour of conservation. There is no overemphasising that most, if not all, African cultures have at least some rudimentary aspects of conservation in the modern sense. These aspects constitute the strong colours that could be used to create an indelible picture of the importance of conservation on the continent.
When Africa stumbled into independence in the 1960s, the blossoming of newspapers of nearly every political persuasion was widely hailed as a critical stepping stone toward true multiparty democracy. However, rather than marking a clean break with an authoritarian past, the era of multiparty politics in Africa has been a time of increased hardship and repression for journalists who dare criticize powerful incumbents. Media repression continues to rise. After decades of retreat, authoritarian regimes are using social media and other sophisticated systems in a new era of repression to thwart democracy and trample human rights. For consecutive decades, the state of freedom has declined - more people in more places face more repression. While systemic torture in war-torn Somalia and the return of a military dictatorship in Egypt captured headlines, there is also widespread, insidious and 21st-century style surveillance elsewhere with abuse or imprisonment or both of political activists. For the media to play its role as priests of democracy, Tatah Mentan maintains that media freedom must be rigorously defended as integral to the democratic way of life.
This Book is the outcome of a long project begun thirty years ago. It is a book on the makings of pan-Africanism through the predicaments of being black in a world dominated by being white. The book is a tribute and celebration of the efforts of the African-American and African-Caribbean Diaspora who took the initiative and the audacity to fight and liberate themselves from the shackles of slavery. It is also a celebration of those Africans who in their own way carried the torch of inspiration and resilience to save and reconstruct the Free Humanism of Africa. As a story of the rise from the shackles of slavery and poverty to the summit of Victors of their Renaissance Identity and Self-Determination as a People, the book is the story of African refusal to celebrate victimhood. The book also situates women as central actors in the Pan-African project, which is often presented as an exclusively masculine endeavour. It introduces a balanced gender approach and diagnosis of the Women actors of Pan-Africanism which was very much lacking. The problem of balkanisation of Africa on post-colonial affiliations and colonial linguistic lines has taken its toll on Africa's building of its common identity and personality. The result is that Africans are more remote to each other in their pigeon-hole-nation-states which put more restrictions for African inter-mobility, coupled by education and cultural affiliations, the communication and transportation and trading networks which are still tied more to their colonial masters than among themselves. This book looks into the problem of the new wave of Pan-Africanism and what strategies that can be proposed for a more participatory Pan-Africanism inspired by the everyday realities of African masses at home and in the diaspora. This book is the first book of its kind that gives a comprehensive and multidimensional coverage of Pan-Africanism. It is a very timely and vital compendium.
Despite all the talk about African renaissance, much of the continent is plagued by poverty and instability. To break out of that cycle, the guardians of African heritage (the old independence freedom fighters turned political leaders and their successors) and much of Afrocentric literature rightly promote African ideas and solutions for African problems. While the idea in itself is noble, the danger is for Africa to close itself off and ignore 'outside' technical and intellectual innovations that it desperately needs to advance further. Africa through Structuration Theory - ntu joins the discourse by attempting to restore intellectual freedom and convincingly defends structuration theory not only as the way forward for Africa but also as a legitimate African concept. It is innovative, refreshing and deserves to be heard across the world and appreciated especially by African graduates, current and future leaders of various African institutions or businesses, non-Africans who might hesitate to refer to such a theory when trying to understand and deal with African problems and the wider public who constitute the audience for this book.
Flashlight on Drama and Film succinctly describes how to use drama to afford target audiences opportunities to analyse environmental situations, presented through drama, with a view to enabling them to make informed decisions and take responsible actions in similar situations in the real world. This constitutes the guiding principle of Drama for Situation Analysis (DRASA), with Flashlight on Drama and Film as its training guide.in the drama effort. The guide is divided into three parts. Part One looks at the development of the play script from the research stage. Part Two describes the stages involved in interpreting a play, including the skills, techniques and terminology of acting, from a simple definition of drama. Part Three gives a rundown of the stages in rehearsing and presenting a play, either as stage drama or film production.
Milestones in Green Transition and Climate Compatible Development in Eastern and Southern Africa
(2015)
It is widely recognised that climate change poses significant serious threats to sustained economic growth and agricultural development, poverty reduction, food security and political stability globally. Nowhere are these challenges more marked than in Africa where two-thirds of all available land is classified either as desert or dry land, in relation to which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2013) has classified the continent as the most vulnerable to climate change variability. This anthology is a product of a call from OSSREA to collate evidence based researches in a book in a bid to assess how far countries in eastern and southern Africa are implementing the UNFCCC, Rio+20, Agenda 21 and other global and Africa-wide decisions concerning the need to address climate change. This will contribute to post-2015 development agenda for sustainable development goals (SDGs), in which climate change and disaster risk reduction will be priority areas of focus. We hope this book will serve as a valuable tool for experts, advisers and policymakers in pursing effective green growth policies and practices and achieving climate compatible development and in doing so inspire readers to choose a more sustainable pathway for humanity. It will also help in looking at climate change as both a challenge and opportunity for development. Further, this book aims at stimulating more research in climate compatible development and climate financing which have put most countries at crossroads.
The Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in Eastern and Southern Africa have been at the forefront to developing new energy policies and programmes aimed at reaching the UN goal of Ensuring Access to Clean Energy for All by 2030. In the year 2006, the East African Community passed the EAC Strategy to Scale Up Access to Modern Energy Services, committing its Member States to reach the UN goal of -access to all- by 2030. The Inter-governmental Authority for Development adopted its Environmental and Natural Resources Policy in 2007 which includes issues of renewable energy. The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa launched its Model Energy Programme in 2012, followed the same year by its comprehensive baselines database on renewable resources covering all its Member States. In the year 2009, the African Union General Assembly at its 12th Ordinary Session adopted the Policy on 'Scaling Up Renewable Energy in Africa'. The regional policies have been domesticated by Member Sates of the RECs. Although their targets are very ambitious, implementation programmes launched at national level are robust and producing results. Both in the policies and implementation programmes, gender issues have, however, not featured prominently. Noting this deficit, the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa called for researchers to assess the extent to which energy policies in Eastern and Southern Africa have taken gender issues on board. This book is the product of that project. It has ten chapters that investigated the gender-energy nexus in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Swaziland, Sudan and Kenya. The book will prove useful to all policy makers, researchers and analysts who may be interested in strengthening the gender content of the programmes as we move towards 2030. We believe it triggers and helps policy makers and researchers to create platforms to use its findings, and those of others, to see how in gender terms those at the bottom of the energy access pyramid can be factored into these programmes, to make sure they are not left behind.
The Rwandan justice system know as Gacaca, originally preserved by word of mouth was revived, documented, tested and used successfully to handle millions of legal cases in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. This monograph begins by depicting the general picture of customary law and ponders on the practical challenges in the production of the modern Gacaca law in three versions: Kinyarwanda, French and English. The author demonstrates that translation involves language use and transfer, as well as communication within a cultural setting. The book amply demonstrates that linguistic, textual, contextual and cultural cues in translation should not be downplayed. It also shows that the cultural turn in translation has transformed and re-conceptualised the translation theory to integrate non-western thought about translation discipline since time immemorial. A major theme within the book is that teranslation as a mediating form between cultures and contexts should not overlook cultural differences because language is a marker of identity.
The volume constitutes Klaus Fiedler's crowning contribution to scholarship. Essays in the first half of the book focus on Malawian Christianity and how contrasting Powers, Gospel and Secular, engage each other, creating social, political and cultural conflict in the process. In the second half, Fiedler examines general missiological themes. These essays provide a broader missiological background, offering a theoretical framework necessary for appreciating the essays in the first half. He concludes with a chapter that reviews selected seminal books on themes under study. Throughout the volume Fiedler applies the 'restorationist revival theory' he constructed in The Story of Faith Missions, an earlier 1994 work putting emphasis on non classical missions and churches, not systematically covered in earlier scholarship. This volume, the first of its kind on Malawian Christianity, will long remain an indispensable text for those interested in Missiology and Malawian Christianity.
Re-Viewing Resistance in Namibian History brings together the work of experienced academics and a new wave of young Namibian historians - architects of the past - who are working on a range of public history and heritage projects, from late nineteenth century resistance to the use of songs, from the role of gender in SWAPO's camps to memorialisation, and from international solidarity to aspects of the history of Kavango and Caprivi. In a culturally and politically diverse democracy such as Namibia, there are bound to be different perspectives on the past, and history will be as plural as the history-tellers. The chapters in this book reflect this diversity, and combine to create a remarkable collection of divergent voices, providing alternative perspectives on the past. Re-Viewing Resistance in Namibian History writes 'forgotten' people into history; provides a reading of the past that reflects the tensions and competing identities that pervaded 'the struggle'; and deals with 'heritage that hurts'.
Bites of Insanity
(2015)
In this collection of poems Nsah Mala casts a critical compassionate gaze at the predicaments in the lives of present day Cameroonians. The poet lambasts power abuse in Cameroon and Africa. He decries the lost glory of traditional values sacrificed at the altar of ingratiation and materialism. Insalubrities are condemned, ignorance and its ramifications satirised, and wanton destruction of the environment indicted. With a fascinating richness of imagery, Mala conveys the disillusionment, bitterness and traumas of ordinary Cameroonians - young and old - debased with impunity by the lethal and sterile grip on power of the high and might. The moral depravity and human frailties mused about in this exceptionally compelling collection have no room in Mala's paradise of Cameroon.
Unmasking Social Science Imperialism : Globalization Theory As A Phase Of Academic Colonialism
(2015)
Contemporary social science is a product of the capitalist world-system and Eurocentrism is constitutive of the geoculture of this system characterized by the parochiality of its universalism, assumptions about the superiority of Western civilization and imposition as the sole theory of global progress. The creation of these structures of knowledge, specifically the institutionalization of the social sciences, is a phenomenon that is inextricably linked to the very formation and maturation of Europe's capitalist world system or imperialism. There is therefore nothing that is natural, logical, or accidental about the institutionalization of the social sciences. These Europeanized structures of knowledge are imposed ways of producing knowledge of the world. This Eurocentrism of social science has justifiably come under increasingly vigorous scrutiny, especially in the period since 1945 with the formal decolonization of Africa, Asia, and much of the Caribbean. This book forcefully argues that if social science is to make any progress in the twenty-first century, it must overcome its Eurocentric heritage that has distorted social analyses and its capacity to deal with the problems of the contemporary world and embrace other non-Western funds of knowledge production.
Society, Women and Literature in Africa explores the ideological, literary, political, cultural and ethical issues related to feminist writing. She discusses how contemporary African writers have tried to counteract men?s false assumptions about sex, love, society, fecundity and womanhood, and further details how African writers have responded to the demands of feminism. ?Woman?s Cross Cultural Burden in the selected works of West African Female writers? explores the recurrent themes of motherhood, polygamy, abandonment and widowhood in the works of Nwapa, Emecheta, Alkali, Aidoo and Mariama Bâ. In ?Prostitution: A Metaphor for the Degradation of Womanhood in Bode Osanyin?s the Noble Mistress?, the author approaches the subject of woman degradation in society from the perspectives of comprehensive research and an in-depth referencing. ?Gendered Social Division of Labour in the African Novel? explores the theme of unfairness, of institutionalized differentiation in the African novel. It reveals the total emasculation of woman in patriarchy and her desire to be liberated from male-annexation. ?The Prison World of Nigeria Woman: Female Reticence in Sefi Attah?s ?Everything Good Will Come?, the author explores the dimensions of ?gender silences?. She shows how woman?s voice has been stolen in patriarchy, thus rendering her a social and political mutant. ?Womanhood as a Metaphor for Sexual Slavery in Nawal El Saddawi?s Woman at Point Zero? underscores that in patriarchy a woman is educated to make an object of herself for male pleasure. She is excluded from politics as a result of religion. ?The Ugly Face of Ghana in the New Millennium: Alienation of Children in Amma Darko?s Faceless? is a stylistic study of the consequences of globalization in postindependent Ghana. In ?The Theme of Dispossession in A.N Akwanya?s the Pilgrim Foot?, the author examines the myriad perspectives of dispossession and the dispossessor.
This is a commemorative volume devoted to the late Professor Willfried F. Feuser, a literary icon and a comparatist of no mean repute. Though German by origin, Professor Feuser showed great concern to the Africanist agenda of self-realisation, and therefore devoted the greatest part of his productive academic life to the cultural revival and socio-economic emancipation of Africa and the Diaspora through his scholarly publications. This book contains 20 essays on a wide range of issues in literary criticism.
African Short Stories: Vol 2
(2015)
Bequeathing an enduring tenet for the creative enterprise, African Short Stories vol 2 boldly seeks to upturn the status quo by the art of narration. Whether they are stories of the whistle blower estranged and yet sounding the warning for heaven and earth to hear, or a ragtag army fleeing in the wake of a monstrous reptilian onslaught upon her peace, there pervades a sense of ultimate victory in this collection. We can feel the gentle kick of a baby in the womb of a maiden in desperation, or we can muse at the two adolescent genii on the trail of their dreams from the sunset of mutual deceit into the daylight of true becoming. Victory is laid out in that awesome kindness of a total stranger which affirms the divinity latent in even our most harrowing existence. With thirty five stories in two parts these literary experiments compel attention to the courageous hearts and minds that brighten the African universe of narration. Their vibrant notes coming from all corners of north, west, east and south fill us with encouragement and optimism for the contemporary short fiction in Africa.
In twenty-five chapters this book covers phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The chapters are organized in four discrete parts: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. They are uneven in terms of scope covered, length, the density of their contents and their degrees of difficulty. Each chapter ends with ?Some References? relevant to both the topic(s) treated in the chapter, in Igbo linguistics, and in general linguistics.
This commemorative volume is the 12th edition in the Nigerian Linguists Festschrift Series devoted to Professor (Mrs.) Appolonia Uzoaku Okwudishu. The majority of the papers were presented at the 27th Annual Conference of the Linguistic Association of Nigerian (CLAN) which was held at the Benue State University, Makurdi, Nigeria, and the 26th CLAN which was held at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The title derives from the theme of the 27th CLAN: Language Endangerment: Globalisation and the Fate of Minority Languages in Nigeria. A large number of the papers address the major theme of the conference, while the balance address various aspects of Nigerian linguistics, languages, communication, and literature. Fifty-one papers are included, ranging from sociolinguistics through applied linguistics to formal areas of linguistics which include phonology, morphology and syntax of Nigerian languages. Papers on language endangerment and language revitalisation strategies for safeguarding the vanishing indigenous tongues of Nigeria are the major focus, and the book serves as important reference material in various aspects of language and linguistic studies in Nigeria.
NEW BLACK AND AFRICAN WRITING Vol. 2 is our concluding edition of a series that has featured many critical entries and reviews on canonical African fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction. This second edition explores intricacies of relationships and associations, the recurrent tropes for the interpretation and understanding of historical connections, and the shaping of thought brought into fictional and cultural renditions that are evolving and continually reassessed although around the periphery of older canons. The quest for a meaningful heuristic for approaching contemporary arts is almost totally redefined by the contributions of eminent scholars of our time whose balancing and correspondence create room for complementarity of values and toward cultural understanding and value appreciation in contemporary society.
In literature the ambiguous portraiture of female characters by some male writers and the phallic nature of men's writings have proved a matter of concern to female writers in Africa. For decades within African writing the issue of silencing was interrogated particularly as it addressed the muting and marginalisation of black women by male writers through the script of patriarchy which men follow. In this series we continue the literary and dramatic tradition of feminist concern for women's issues and we review novels, plays and poetry which demonstrate a commitment to exploring the challenges facing modern women in changing times and excerpting the issues of gender, feminism, identity, race, history, national and international politics specifically as they affect women. Female Subjectivities collectively answers the need to question and adumbrate the possibilities of literary revisions, showing what it would mean to revise even the Feminist psychoanalyst in a discourse on the subjectivity of women of colour.
This study of oral tradition in African literature is borne from the awareness that African verbal arts still survive in works of discerning writers and in the conscious exploration of its tropes, perspectives, philosophy and consciousness, its complementary realism, and ontology, for the delineation of authentic African response to memory, history and other possible comparisons with modern existence such as witnessed in recent developments of the African novel. In this series we have strived to adopt innovative and multilayered perspectives on orality or indigeneity and its manifestations on contemporary African and new literatures. These studies use multi-faceted theories of orality which discuss and deconstruct notions of history, truth-claims and identity-making, not excluding gender and genealogy (cultural and biological) studies in African contexts.
Crossing Borders showcases intellectual attempts to commit the process of African interrogation of postcoloniality and postmodernity to the exploration of perspectives on black identities and interactions of contemporary cultural expressions beyond the borders of Africa and across the Atlantic. We have particularised on theoretical and critical perspectives that show how the controversial influence of westernisation of Africa has demanded remedial visions and counteractive propositions to the cycle of abuses and fragmentation of the continent. We have consequently distilled some very significant historic and informative insights on modern African and black literary traditions methodically espoused to articulate the greater unity in the diversities, fusions and hybrids that have been embedded in the external and subjective realities of our universe.
This edition commits to the depths of black identities in modern black texts. The cultural reclamation of an African origin and/or roots as tied to the solemn remembrance of the Ancestor has demanded the intense attention of enlightened black writers for the social and psychic revaluation of their generation and others that follow. In this series we further examine the status of the oral performer in African traditional societies which encouraged a wide range of human expression to create identity for members of the community Africa -and we have proposed a challenge to sustain the methods of creative transmission through the continuing presence of these African performers who are living proofs of the survival of her oral traditions, especially in the propulsion of communicative action and the communicative strength of men, women and children in the community.
This collection of essays documents the growth of African history as a discipline at the University of Basel since 2001. It thus pays tribute to fourteen years of research and teaching by Patrick Harries at the Department of History and the Centre for African Studies Basel. The Festschrift covers a broad range of topics from mine labour to missionary endeavour and the production of knowledge, reflecting some of his core research interests. The contributions engage with Patrick Harries' oeuvre with reference to the authors' own scholarship or vice-versa. Some directly address his publications while others take his teaching, correspondence, remarks or intellectual life more broadly as a point of reference. They all pay tribute to a brilliant and inspiring scholar, a great teacher and a kind person.
South Africa is an example of a relatively successful political transition. Nevertheless, the first democratic elections in 1994 did not change the systemic and structural inequalities, the socioeconomic legacies of discrimination or the alienation of the different population groups. At the centre of this study is the transformation potential of two formerly white neighbourhoods in Johannesburg - Norwood and Orange Grove. Both neighbourhoods have experienced considerable demographic changes and the various population groups differ in terms of their expectations and their willingness to adjust to the changes provoked by the transition. At the local level, patterns of discrimination and oppression continue. Spaces, opportunities and leverage of social networks engaged in the community are influenced by the resources people are able to access. Moreover, cooperation is contested in a context of pervasive inequality because there is no incentive for privileged groups to change arrangements that benefit them. In this context of conflicting interests and unequal access to power and resources, decentralisation and the promotion of participatory structures in local communities are a problem and the reliance on local networks as agents of development is questionable.
National Culture in Post-Apartheid Namibia : State-sponsored Cultural Festivals and their Histories
(2015)
National Culture in Post-Apartheid Namibia' addresses the challenges of creating a 'national' culture in the context of a historical legacy that has emphasised ethnic diversity. The state-sponsored Annual National Culture Festival (ANCF) focuses on the Kavango region in north-eastern Namibia. Akuupa critically examines the notion of Kavango-ness as a colonial construct and its subsequent reconstitution and appropriation. He analyses the way in which cultural representations are produced by local people in the postcolonial African context of nation building and national reconciliation by bringing visions of cosmopolitanism and modernity into critical dialogue with the colonial past. Competing cultural festivals are used as celebratory social spaces in which performers and local people participate whilst negotiating a sense of national belonging in an ongoing tension between the need to celebrate diversity, yet strive for unity. This is the first study to discuss the comprehensive role played by those cultural festivals, which were organised in the ethnic homelands during the time Namibia fell under South African control.
The book highlights, the gradual change in the status of the land and relationships with land in Mali in general and in the Niger river basin in particular. It is suggested that despite these inevitable transformations, institutional reforms need to be measured. They must be done in a prudent, methodical way with patience and determination while taking into account certain realities to mitigate its impact on the rural populations.
CODESRIA, UNFEMMES and UNESCO, partner in research, the results of which for Senegal are set out in this book. It has been found that, despite their demographic weight, women are still marginalized in key sectors of the economy. Compared to men, they are less educated (often for cultural reasons), less paid, more likely to work in the informal sector, with a higher level of vulnerability and vulnerability. Faced with neoliberal globalization, they are the greatest victims of economic, financial and political crises. At the sociopolitical level, they continue to be subjected to multiple and multifaceted violence and are still very little involved in making decisions governing their lives and their society. Moreover, the social division of labor in households reinforces, more than ever, the invisibility of the tasks linked to their role of reproduction.
Contributions collected here discuss the experiences of the citizens of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe, and suggest some answers to the challenges they face. Each of the authors presents studies that carefully examine the situation and the political, social and economic context suggest that the progress made in recent decades in women's rights and empowerment, democratic governance, Human rights, access to employment, education and health, are still very modest on the long journey our countries must make to win the welfare of citizens. Therefore imperative that dynamic and competent social movements favour process processes and more effective and sustainable development.
This book brings together contributions on the challenges of the environment, agriculture and cross-border migrations in Africa; key areas that have become critical for the continents development. The central theme running through these contributions is that Africas development challenges can be attributed to its human and natural ecology. Contrasted with the Cold War epoch, current developments have ushered us into a world of long and uncertain transitions characterized by a search for new pathways including investment in large-scale agriculture by big finance, attempts to revitalize existing agriculture and reworking of social policy. A major twist relates to environmental questions, especially climate change and its global effects, leading to all forms of cross-border migrations and the emergence of new areas of strategic interest such as sub-regional developments as in the Gulf of Guinea. This book provides some intellectual clues on how to interpret these emerging predicaments and chart a way forward into a new era for Africa.
This book is the outcome of a South-South conference jointly organized by the Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA), the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Dakar, Senegal, May 2012. The conference was organised in response to the financial crisis of 2008 which started in the United States and Europe, with reverberating effects on a global scale. Economic problems emanating from such crises usually leave major social and structural impacts on important sectors of the society internationally. They affect living standards and constrain the well-being of people, especially in poor countries. Persistent problems include high unemployment, increased debt and low growth in developed countries, as well as greater difficulties in accessing finance for investment in the developing world. There is a need for countries in the South to examine the available options for appropriate national and regional responses to the different problems emanating from the economic crisis. This book attempts to provide ideas on some strategic responses to the disastrous impact of the crisis, while keeping in mind the global common interest of the South. It is hoped that the book will contribute significantly towards the agenda to rethink development and the quest for alternative paradigms for a just, stable and equitable global political, economic and social system. A system in which Africa, Asia, and Latin America are emancipated from the shackles of hegemonic and anachronistic neoliberal dictates that have nothing more to offer than crises, vulnerabilities and dependency.
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of the twenty-first century. Anthropogenic activities, such as fossil fuel consumption and other activities focused on enhancing economic growth, have been identified as the main drivers of changes in the environment that defy planetary boundaries. The transgression of planetary boundaries has profound implications for practically all biophysical and human systems and their impact could also be related to the exacerbation of existing problems such as land tenure insecurity, poverty and inequality, marginalization of poorer populations, climate induced migration, and resource wars or conflicts. From a global South perspective, research on the multifaceted nature of climate change is thus necessary and appropriate, including the analysis of socioeconomic, political and cultural aspects. This book is an outcome of the Comparative Research Workshop on 'Inequality and Climate Change: Perspectives from the South' of the South-South Collaborative Programme of CLACSO-CODESRIA-IDEAS. It gathers a diversity of case studies from the South with ample biophysical differences and particular social and cultural realities. As such, it is a fresh contribution offering a vantage point from which to examine some of the current perspectives on inequality and climate change.
The variety of land questions facing Africa and the divergent strategies proposed to resolve them continue to evoke debates. Increasingly, in response to the enduring problems of land tenure, there are land movements of all shapes and orientations, some reformist and others quite revolutionary in their agenda. However revolutionary, land movements have tended to ignore the land tenure interests of women, pastoralists, youth and indigenous people. Several of these longstanding and emerging issues in land tenure include the role of the state in land tenure reforms; urban land questions, the nature of land struggles and improvements; and, the impact of land tenure developments on particular social groups and countries. An overarching concern is the extent to which land rights are being commodified, through the conversion of land held under customary tenure systems into marketised systems. The consequences of this include growing land concentration, land tenure insecurities, diminishing access to land by various sections of society, including the poor, women and less dominant ethno-religious groups. This volume brings together different studies on Africa's land questions exploring emerging land issues on the continent in terms of the wider questions of development, citizenship, and democratisation. The chapters discuss the land question through a variety of themes. Some focus on the agrarian aspects of the land questions, while others elucidate the urban dimensions of the land question.
Many African countries achieved independence from their colonisers over five decades ago, but the people and the continent largely remain mere spectators in the arena of their own dance. The post-independence states are supposed to be sovereign, but the levers of economic and political powers still reside in the donor states. Not in many fora is the complex reality that defines Africa more trenchantly articulated than in imaginative literature produced about and on the continent. This is the crux of the essays collected in African Literature and the Future. The book reflects on Africa's past and present, addressing anxieties about the future through the epistemological lens of literature. The contributors peep ahead from a backward glance. They dissect the trend and tenor of politics and their impact on the socio-cultural and economic development of the continent as portrayed in imaginative writings over the years. One salient feature of African literature is the close affinity between art and politics in its polemics. This is well established in all the six essays in the book as the authors stress the interconnections between literature and society in their textual analyses. On the whole, there is an overwhelming feeling of angst and pessimism, but the authors perceive a glimmer of hope despite daunting odds, under different conditions. Thus, they depict the plausible fate of Africa in the twenty-first century, as informed by its ancient and recent past, gleaned from primary texts.
The Crises of Postcoloniality in Africa is an assemblage of transdisciplinary essays that offer a spirited reflection on the debate and phenomenon of postcoloniality in Africa, including the changing patterns and ramifications of problems, challenges and opportunities associated with it. A key conceptual rhythm that runs through the various chapters of the book is that, far from being demised, postcoloniality is still firmly embedded in Africa, manifesting itself in both blatant and insidious forms. Among the important themes covered in the book include the concepts of postcolonialism, postcoloniality, and neocolonialism; Africas precolonial formations and the impact of colonialism; the enduring patterns of colonial legacies in Africa; the persistent contradictions between African indigenous institutions and western versions of modernity; the unravelling of the postcolonial state and issues of armed conflict, conflict intervention and peacebuilding; postcolonial imperialism in Africa and the US-led global war on terror, the historical and postcolonial contexts of gender relations in Africa, as well as pan-Africanism and regionalist approaches to redressing the crises of postcoloniality.
Teacher education is vital for the realization of a nation's development aspirations. The conception, incubation and delivery of any national development policy, as well as the reform and implementation of extant policies, are driven by the quality of teachers and their products within a functional educational system. Indeed, national and global models of development, including the millennium development goals revolve round the frames of quality education, beginning with teacher education. It is therefore important to have functional teacher education systems in Africa to help its citizens explore the networking of the world as a global village. This is achievable through a systematic mobilization of national resources and visible commitment to the development of a modernized cadre of scientific and technological manpower. This book, Teacher Education Systems in Africa in the Digital Era is a rich exposition of theories and praxes essential for the development of teacher education in Africa. The book has immense benefits for teachers, teacher trainers, funding agencies, other stakeholders and policy makers.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, CODESRIA, held its 13th General Assembly, 5-9 December 2011, in Rabat Morocco. The theme of the scientific conference was: 'Africa and the Challenges of the Twenty-first Century'. Some of the reasons that influenced the choice of this theme were to do with how Africa should position itself in the new global political and economic order in the context of an increasingly complex neoliberal globalisation. Changes in intercultural relations at the global level, climate change, poverty, rapid urbanisation, the ICTs revolution, the emergence of a multi-polar world and the phenomenon of emerging powers of the South are some of the realities of our world that are widely and extensively discussed by both academics and policy-makers. This book contains the statutory lectures of the 13th General Assembly. Each one speaks to major challenges that African and the Global South are facing in this second decade of the Twenty-first Century: neoliberal globalisation, capital flight, the land question, gender relations, with a particular focus on matriarchy; and universalism.
This book is about how work enters and affects the lives of children in Africa, taking for granted neither the traditional values surrounding children's work, nor the international standards against it. Many African societies nurture their children on the ingrained notion that children must work as part of their process of growing up. Children participate in their families and communities through the work they do in the house and in whatever else their families do. Such views are, however, antithetical to the dominant views in Europe and North America which see childhood as a time of freedom from responsibility and economic activity. These views have become so popular with the elites in other countries to the extent that they now drive international campaigns against 'child labour', and have been incorporated into what are now considered universal international standards and conventions. This book was conceived within the framework of the CODESRIA tradition of taking African perspectives seriously and not allowing social research in Africa to become subservient to values from outside. African scholars remain keenly aware of the need not to isolate themselves from developments in the wider world, which could lead to stagnation. This book, through empirical observation of the lives of African children, the work they do, its place in their lives, and what the children say about it, proposes new perspectives towards a new understanding of this complex stage of human development. Work is not simply about the right to income: work provides identity and status in society, and participation in the community. People relate to one another through work. Those who do not work are often without status and are at the periphery of society. One of the major ways in which this book differs from most of the available literature is in the understanding it brings to the problem of 'child labour'. There are economic reasons why children may need an income of their own. There is the demographic fact that the proportion of children to adults in low-income countries is nearly double that in high-income societies. This book attempts to demonstrate that work is both necessary and beneficial in terms of a child's development to become a full, responsible, and respectable member of society.
Regional Economic Communities : Exploring the Process of Socio-economic Integration in Africa
(2015)
This book examines how the existence of overlapping regional institutions has presented a daunting challenge to the workings of various Regional Economic Communities (RECs) on the African continent. The majority of the African countries are members of overlapping and, sometimes, contradictory RECs. For instance, in East Africa, while Kenya and Uganda are both members of EAC and COMESA, Tanzania, which is also a member of the EAC, left COMESA in 2001 to join SADC. In West Africa, while all former French colonies belong to ECOWAS, they simultaneously keep membership of UEMOA, an organization which is not recognized by the African Union (AU). Such multiple and confusing memberships create unnecessary duplication and dims the light on what ought to be priority. Various chapters in this book have therefore sought to identify and proffer solutions to related challenges confronting the workings of the RECs in different sub-regions of the African continent. The discourses range from security to the stock exchange, identity integration, development framework, labour movement and cross-border relations. The pattern adopted in the book involves devolution of related discussions from the general to the specific; that is, from the continental level to sub-regional case studies.
The agrarian reform dynamics in southern Africa have to be understood within the framework of colonial land policies and legislation that were designed essentially to expropriate land and natural resource property rights from the indigenous people in favour of the white settlers. Colonial land policies institutionalised racial inequity with regard to land although conditions are not homogeneous there are broad themes that cut across the southern Africa region. Colonialism dispossessed and impoverished the people by taking away the most productive lands. Neoliberal globalization has undermined the people's wellbeing through direct influences on agriculture and rural economies in conjunction with policies promoted by national governments and international agencies. Another shared feature is to be found in the high rates of unemployment, poor returns to small-scale agriculture, lack of access to social services such as health and education all of which serve to erode existing livelihood activities and perpetuate relative and absolute poverty in rural areas.
Call it a difficult night
(2015)
I was grateful for the death sentence the doctors gave me. It meant no more words, no more summons ringing out in hallucinations and fevers, an end neat as the edge of the world, where the sun drops into the sea. I walked through the world saying goodbye with a clean heart. They hollowed my bones for flight. My life moves in me there, urgent as air. There is language that comes up spare and bright as bone from a break. It stands beneath us like rock in the place where there is nothing else left. It is the language of nothing more.
BILAKHULU! : Longer Poems
(2015)
VONANI BILA was born in 1972 in Shirley village, Limpopo, where he still lives. He is the author of five books of poems in English and eight story-books for newly literate adult readers in Sepedi, Xitsonga and English. Bila is a driving force in South African poetry - founding editor of the Timbila poetry journal, publisher of Timbila books and founder of Timbila Writers' Village, a rural retreat centre for writers. Married with three children, he teaches in the Department of English Studies at the University of Limpopo, and in the MA in Creative Writing at Rhodes University.
Worldwide, in Africa and in South Africa, the importance of the doctorate has increased disproportionately in relation to its share of the overall graduate output over the past decade. This heightened attention has not only been concerned with the traditional role of the PhD, namely the provision of future academics; rather, it has focused on the increasingly important role that higher education - and, particularly, high-level skills - is perceived to play in national development and the knowledge economy. This book is unique in the area of research into doctoral studies because it draws on a large number of studies conducted by the Centre of Higher Education Trust (CHET) and the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST), as well as on studies from the rest of Africa and the world. In addition to the historical studies, new quantitative and qualitative research was undertaken to produce the evidence base for the analyses presented in the book. The findings presented in Doctoral Education in South Africa pose anew at least six tough policy questions that the country has struggled with since 1994, and continues to struggle with, if it wishes to gear up the system to meet the target of 5 000 new doctorates a year by 2030. Discourses framed around the single imperatives of growth, efficiency, transformation or quality will not, however, generate the kind of policy discourses required to resolve these tough policy questions effectively. What is needed is a change in approach that accommodates multiple imperatives and allows for these to be addressed simultaneously.
The search for answers to the issue of global sustainability has become increasingly urgent. In the context of higher education, many universities and academics are seeking new insights that can shift our dependence on ways of living that rely on the exploitation of so many and the degradation of so much of our planet. This is the vision that drives SANORD and many of the researchers and institutions within its network. Although much of the research is on a relatively small scale, the vision is steadily gaining momentum, forging dynamic collaborations and pathways to new knowledge. The contributors to this book cover a variety of subject areas and offer fresh insights about chronically under-researched parts of the world. Others document and critically reflect on innovative approaches to cross-continental teaching and research collaborations. This book will be of interest to anyone involved in the transformation of higher education or the practicalities of cross-continental and cross-disciplinary academic collaboration. The Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) is a network of higher education institutions from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Universities in the southern African and Nordic regions that are not yet members are encouraged to join.
Few African countries provide for an explicit right to a nationality. Laws and practices governing citizenship effectively leave hundreds of thousands of people in Africa without a country. These stateless Africans can neither vote nor stand for office; they cannot enrol their children in school, travel freely, or own property; they cannot work for the government; they are exposed to human rights abuses. Statelessness exacerbates and underlies tensions in many regions of the continent. Citizenship Law in Africa, a comparative study by two programs of the Open Society Foundations, describes the often arbitrary, discriminatory, and contradictory citizenship laws that exist from state to state and recommends ways that African countries can bring their citizenship laws in line with international rights norms. The report covers topics such as citizenship by descent, citizenship by naturalisation, gender discrimination in citizenship law, dual citizenship, and the right to identity documents and passports. It is essential reading for policymakers, attorneys, and activists. This third edition is a comprehensive revision of the original text, which is also updated to reflect developments at national and continental levels. The original tables presenting comparative analysis of all the continent's nationality laws have been improved, and new tables added on additional aspects of the law. Since the second edition was published in 2010, South Sudan has become independent and adopted its own nationality law, while there have been revisions to the laws in Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles, South Africa, Sudan, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child have developed important new normative guidance.
With reportedly over USD50 billion lost annually through graft and illicit practices, combating corruption in Africa has been challenging. However, laws and policies at the continental, regional and national levels have been promulgated and enacted by African leaders. These initiatives have included the establishment of anti-corruption agencies mandated to tackle graft at national level, as well as coordinate bodies at regional and continental levels to ensure the harmonisation of normative standards and the adoption of best practices in the fight against corruption. Yet, given the disparity between the apparent impunity enjoyed by public servants and the anti-corruption rhetoric of governments in the region, the effectiveness of these agencies is viewed with scepticism. This continent-wide study of anti-corruption agencies aims to gauge their relevance and effectiveness by assessing their independence, mandate, available resources, national ownership, capacities and strategic positioning. These surveys include evidence-based recommendations calling for stronger, more relevant and effective institutions that are directly aligned to regional and continental anti-corruption frameworks, such as the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (AUCPCC), which the three countries in this current report ? Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda ? have all ratified.
Witch Girl
(2015)
This is modern Lusaka, Zambia, where the line between magic and religion is blurred, the arcane and the mundane muddle and nothing is what it seems. Luse is a sharp street child combing the gang-ridden city in a desperate search for Doctor Georgia Shapiro who she hopes can offer her a way back into her once-bright past. The doctor is trying to unravel the mystery of a friend's sudden death while attending to the AIDS crisis laying waste to the country around her. Meanwhile The Blood Of Christ Church and its enigmatic leader Priestess Selena Clark gain popularity with their murky promises of salvation and violent clandestine rituals. A small silver box links them in ways they cannot foretell. It will force Luse and Georgia to question who they trust, who they are and for whom they fight. Tanvi Bush's Witch girl is a crime thriller that juggles the past and the present effortlessly, blending AIDS activism, witchcraft, religious extremism and romance to create a well-paced narrative. Luse is so feisty, charming and resourceful that you'll miss her after you finish the book.
The Chameleon House
(2015)
The short story - the perfect fit for modern attention spans - is finally receiving the attention it deserves. It started in 2013, when Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Lydia Davis the Man Booker International Prize. In 2014, both the Mail and Guardian Literary Festival in Johannesburg and the Open Book Festival in Cape Town featured panel discussions on short stories. The literary establishment, it seems, has finally caught up with readers' hunger for these contained, miniature worlds. Into this mix comes the fresh, new voice of South African writer Melissa de Villiers, with her debut collection, The Chameleon House. In her powerfully condensed, poetic style, De Villiers manages to say a lot with few words. Often it's what remains unsaid that tells us the real story. The Chameleon House is a remarkable debut by a voice to keep both ears open for. The collection demonstrates that no matter where in the world we find ourselves, our hearts are never far from home.
UnSettled and other stories
(2015)
There is a grand piano delivered to the wrong Sea Point address. There is Toby the dog whose casual disappearance leads to the discovery of a world as unlikely as a helpful man. There are Isabelle and Hester, both travelling on the same train, but moving in opposite directions. There are the school girls who smoke through Die Stem during a Republic Day Celebration. There is Adeela longing for OK Bazaars, Boxing Day, and groenboontjie bredie; Lilly who knows too little of her mother's past and Elizabeth who is desperate to shed hers. Who can say why Eleanor married the man she did, or why she took the long sea journey south? Who can say where Sue's been, or who the vark lilies are for? Who believes it when told, 'It's for your own good'? Whether drawn from the distance of history or located in contemporary Cape Town, these eight stories create a tender and luminous account of just how extraordinary the everyday life of women can be.