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The debate on the existence of African philosophy has taken central stage in academic circles, and academics and researchers have tussled with various aspects of this subject. This book notes that the debate on the existence of African philosophy is no longer necessary. Instead, it urges scholars to demonstrate the different philosophical genres embedded in African philosophy. As such, the book explores African metaphysical epistemology with the hope to redirect the debate on African philosophy. It articulates and systematizes metaphysical and epistemological issues in general and in particular on Africa. The book aptly shows how these issues intersect with the philosophy of life, traditional beliefs, knowledge systems and practices of ordinary Africans and the challenges they raise for scholarship in and on philosophy with relevance to Africa.
This is an engaged and extremely well-informed book on business and business ethics in a society with political and social-economic crises. As an engaging and engaged effort to bring a nexus between business ethics and business practices in any human society, the book invites the reader to partake in pressing debates on business ethics in times of crisis. The book provides a much needed interdisciplinary approach and marshals an extraordinary array of social and intellectual resources that positively inspire business people and business making. It is wholesome and systematic in its articulation of the political and social forces that shape and are shaped by business. Additionally, it gives the reader a guided tour into the fascinating creativity that shapes and characterises business culture in contemporary Zimbabwe.
This is a vivid, thought-provoking and fascinating text on some contentious issues in contemporary medical ethics. The book acknowledges the contribution of 'African tradition' and Western scholarship to the development of medical ethics as a university discipline. It questions the lack of consensus around such biomedical issues as euthanasia and traditional medicine. In many countries, the failure has resulted in public outcries. Its thrust centres on the nexus of practice and theory, and the importance of pragmatism and critical questioning in dealing with different cases on and around biomedicine. Its virtue is its significant shift from the traditional positions on selected biomedical issues to a more rigorous, pragmatic and critical questioning and understanding of the reasoning and positions of all involved and/or affected parties.
This is a dense, erudite collection of finely crafted poems that powerfully reflect on vices such as war, bad governance, deforestation, dissipation, greed, oppression and cruelty. The poems also tackle other important phenomena of life such as love, anxiety, weather, time, politics, morality, economics, justice, culture and the environment. The virtue of these finely tuned poems does not only lie in their philosophical questioning, but their artistic merit and audacious reflection of issues pertinent in human life of all ages. While some of the poems provoke amusement and others tears, the corpus of the collection educates through entertainment. The poetry penetrates into the greater depths of the public's psyche to appraise, query, empty and expose their concerns in such a manner that should hopefully make those who cause or ignite human tribulations to rethink their actions and those haunted by the same to stay vigilant.
This is a comprehensive study and erudite description of the struggle of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems in an Age of Globalization, using in particular eighty-four children's traditional games in south-eastern Zimbabwe. The book is an informative and interesting anthropological account of rare African children's games at the risk of disappearing under globalization. The virtue of the book does not only lie in its modest philosophical questioning of those knowledge forms that consider themselves as superior to others, but in its laudable, healthy appreciation of the creative art forms of traditional literature that features in genres such as endangered children's traditional games. The book is a clarion call to Africans and the world beyond to come to the rescue of relegated and marginalized African creativity in the interest of future generations.
Nemeso - a four eyed man-lived in southeastern Zimbabwe in the mid-17th century. Stories about him are widely known by the Duma in southeastern Zimbabwe as he left a legacy, a delicious dish - of edible stinkbugs locally named harurwa. These insects, believed to be a gift to Nemeso by the ancestors, thrive in a grove (jiri) where no one has been allowed to meddle since the time of Nemeso, the medium through whom the stinkbugs were gifted to the living by the living-dead. The insects are a source of livelihood for the Duma people and for people beyond, and serve as a drive for forest conservation in the area. The wealthy stories of Nemeso's life have been passed on through oral tradition. This book, generated from an ethnographic reconstitution in southeastern Zimbabwe, documents the stories in a lively and fascinating thirst quenching manner.
This is an eloquent, engaged and extremely well informed narrative of the environmental and natural resource conservation and management issues in Mozambique. While the topics in this volume are diverse, they are all explicitly designed to move beyond the routinized blame of natural resource mismanagement and environmental degradation on local communities, and to rethink ecosystem destruction, land degradation and natural resource over-exploitation in Africa and beyond. Never losing sight of the major causes of environment and resource mismanagement in Mozambique, the book advances the thesis that environment and resource problems are a result of compound factors such as poor governance, poverty, corruption, low education levels, and disregard of endogenous conservation epistemologies. A combination of all these factors makes the whole terrain of conservation even more complicated than ever; hence the need for urgent action by all social actors. This is a valuable book for environmental conservationists, land resource managers, social ecologists, environmental anthropologists, environmental field workers and technicians, practitioners and students of conservation sciences.
In spite of its surging popularity with scholars and environment conservation and management aid experts, scientific environmental epistemology does not seem to be the answer to the forestry and environmental problems that Africa is facing. Due to the lasting impacts of colonialism and therefore Western scientism on Africa, at the core of the conservation dilemma lies the conflict between scientific conservation epistemologies and 'local'/'indigenous' conservation epistemologies with the latter being the locals' potential workable solution to the environmental problems haunting the continent. It is in view of these circumstances that this book was born. The book is a clarion call for the revival and reinstitution of indigenous conservation and management epistemologies, not as a challenge to Western scientific conservation epistemologies, but to complement efforts by Western science in easing the tapestry of environmental problems that haunt Africa and the rest of the world. This is a valuable book for environmental conservationists, land resource managers, political/social ecologists, environmentalists, environmental anthropologists, environmental field workers and technicians, and practitioners and students of conservation sciences.
In Nzarayapera's village, famine and hunger strike as rain could not fall. The sky remains blue with scorching heat that leaves no creature desiring to move on with life. Chief Nzarayapera and his councillors believe this scourge is a curse from the ancestors. They think of holding a ceremony to mollify the ancestors and petition rain. The ceremony is held, but nothing happens except that hunger and famine strike even harder. This sets a fertile ground for conflict between traditionalists, Christians and scientists who lay blame on one another and take turns to intercede for the people. What comes out of this conflict only requires you to read Rain Petitioning for yourself. Equally there to awaken your curiosity is Step Child, the second play in this collection.
The Clash of the Titans and Other Short Stories is a sundry, marvellous collection of short stories that reflect and capture diverse life experiences. Mabeza and Mawere offer with great dexterousness a snapshot, richness, and practical potentialities of childhood to adulthood experiences in shaping, inspiring and influencing moral rectitude, industriousness and determination. This is an incisive and invigorating exposé steeped in candour and earnestness. For aficionados of creative writing, cognoscenti, students and instructors of English Literature, this is a collection to enjoy and cherish.