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The Shackled Continent Africas Past P...
Brief Summary
Africa is the only continent to have grown poorer over the last three decades. Why? The Shackled Continent, Robert Guest's fascinating first book, seeks to diagnose the sickness that continues to hobble Africa's development. Using reportage, first-hand experience and economic insight, Robert Guest takes us to the roots of the problems.
Two fifths of African nations are at war, AIDS has lowered life expectancy to as young as forty years old and investment is almost impossible as houses that could be used as collateral do not formally belong to their owners.
Most shocking of all is the evidence that the billions of dollars of aid, given to Africa has had little perceptible effect on the poor The Shackled Continent offers, sometimes controversially, explanations for this state of affairs. In this magnificent and engaging book, Robert Guest provides an invigorating history and an inspired commentary on the enigma of modern Africa.
ISBN:9780330419727
Author:Robert Guest
Age of Iron
Brief Summary
In Cape Town, South Africa, an old woman is dying of cancer. A classics professor, Mrs. Curren has been opposed to the lies and brutality of apartheid all her life, but has lived insulated from its true horrors.
Now she is suddenly forced to come to terms with the iron-hearted rage that the system has wrought. In an extended letter addressed to her daughter, who has long since fled to America, Mrs. Curren recounts the strange events of her dying days. She witnesses the burning of a nearby black township and discovers the bullet-riddled body of her servant's son.
A teenage black activist hiding in her house is killed by security forces. And through it all, her only companion, the only person to whom she can confess her mounting anger and despair, is a homeless man, an alcoholic, who one day appears on her doorstep. Brilliantly crafted and resonant with metaphor, Age of Iron is "a superbly realized novel whose truths cut to the bone."
ISBN:9780140275650
Author:J.M. Coetzee
Africas Agitators Militant Anti-Colon...
Brief Summary
Africa's 'Agitators': Militant Anti-Colonialism in Africa and the West, 1918-1939.
Recounts the opposition to British and French rule practiced by Africans living on the continent and by European anti-colonialists and members of Black Diaspora.
This book covers campaigns waged by an early incarnation of African National Congress and other groups in South Africa who fought against legal and other aspects of white minority rule.
ISBN:9780231700566
Author:Jonathan Derrick
Acts of faith
Brief Summary
Philip Caputo’s tragic and epically ambitious new novel is set in Sudan, where war is a permanent condition. Into this desolate theater come aid workers, missionaries, and mercenaries of conscience whose courage and idealism sometimes coexist with treacherous moral blindness.
There’s the entrepreneurial American pilot who goes from flying food and medicine to smuggling arms, the Kenyan aid worker who can’t help seeing the tawdry underside of his enterprise, and the evangelical Christian who comes to Sudan to redeem slaves and falls in love with a charismatic rebel commander.
As their fates intersect and our understanding of their characters deepens, it becomes apparent that Acts of Faith is one of those rare novels that combine high moral seriousness with irresistible narrative wizardry.
ISBN:9780375725975
Author:Philip Caputo
Fighting for Peace in Somalia A Histo...
Brief Summary
Fighting for Peace in Somalia: A History and Analysis of the African Union Mission (AMISOM), 2007-2017
Fighting for Peace in Somalia provides the first comprehensive analysis of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), an operation deployed in 2007 to stabilize the country and defend its fledgling government from one of the world's deadliest militant organizations, Harakat al-Shabaab.
The book's two parts provide a history of the mission from its genesis in an earlier, failed regional initiative in 2005 up to mid-2017, as well as an analysis of the mission's six most important challenges, namely, logistics, security sector reform, civilian protection, strategic communications, stabilization, and developing a successful exit strategy. These issues are all central to the broader debates about how to design effective peace operations in Africa and beyond.
AMISOM was remarkable in several respects: it would become the African Union's (AU) largest peace operation by a considerable margin deploying over 22,000 soldiers; it became the longest running mission under AU command and control, outlasting the nearest contender by over seven years; it also became the AU's most expensive operation, at its peak costing approximately US$1 billion per year; and, sadly, AMISOM became the AU's deadliest mission.
Although often referred to as a peacekeeping operation, AMISOM's troops were given a range of daunting tasks that went well beyond the realm of peacekeeping, including VIP protection, war-fighting, counterinsurgency, stabilization, and state-building as well as supporting electoral processes and facilitating humanitarian assistance.
ISBN:9780198724544
Author:Paul D. Williams
The Rise of the BRICS in Africa
Brief Summary
The Rise of the BRICS in Africa: The Geopolitics of South-South Relations
A little over a decade ago Africa was being spoken of as the 'lost' or 'hopeless' continent in the media. Now it has some of the fastest growing economies in the world, in large part because of the impacts of a group of large developing countries - the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
In this first book to be written about the BRICS as a collective phenomenon, Carmody reveals how the BRICS powers' engagements with Africa, both individually and collectively, are often contradictory, generating new inequalities and potentialities for development.
Crucially, Carmody shows how the geopolitics of the BRICS countries' involvement in Africa is impacted by and impacts upon their international relations more generally, and how the emergence of these economies has begun to alter the very nature of globalization, which is no longer purely a Western-led project.
A path-breaking examination of Africa's changing role in the world.
ISBN:9781780326047
Author:Padraig Carmody
Somalia in Transition Since 2006
Brief Summary
This book picks up where its predecessor, Somalia between Jihad and Restoration, left off, examining international efforts to stabilize war-torn Somalia. It analyzes major political events in Somalia in the years since 2006, examining opportunities for restoration of the country based on the United Nations-backed plan known as the "Roadmap for the End of the Transition," improved security conditions, and international economics and financial support.
The author notes that the time of transition may be over, according to the timetable of the United Nations, but it is clear that the work of transformation is just beginning. In considering whether political and social chaos in Somalia is ending, Shay sees two possible futures. One possibility is the establishment of a reform government that unifies Somali society; another is continued strife that accelerates Somalia’s descent into the endless violence of a failed state.
Shay believes the international approach to Somalia requires a thorough reassessment. He argues it has been limited to two Western priorities—terrorism and piracy—while largely ignoring domestic issues of critical concern to Somalis. As a result, many Somalis have come to view those participating in the international effort as a foreign occupation.
ISBN:9781412853903
Author:Shaul Shay
Happiness by Aminatta Forna
London. A fox makes its way across Waterloo Bridge. The distraction causes two pedestrians to collide--Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist there to deliver a keynote speech. From this chance encounter, Aminatta Forna's unerring powers of observation show how in the midst of the rush of a great city lie numerous moments of connection.
Attila has arrived in London with two tasks: to deliver a keynote speech on trauma, as he has done many times before; and to contact the daughter of friends, his "niece" who hasn't called home in a while. Ama has been swept up in an immigration crackdown, and now her young son Tano is missing.
When, by chance, Attila runs into Jean again, she mobilizes the network of rubbish men she uses as volunteer fox spotters. Security guards, hotel doormen, traffic wardens--mainly West African immigrants who work the myriad streets of London--come together to help. As the search for Tano continues, a deepening friendship between Attila and Jean unfolds.
Meanwhile a consulting case causes Attila to question the impact of his own ideas on trauma, the values of the society he finds himself in, and a grief of his own. In this delicate tale of love and loss, of cruelty and kindness, Forna asks us to consider the interconnectedness of lives, our co-existence with one another and all living creatures, and the true nature of happiness.
Sweet Medicine by Panashe Chigumadzi
Brief Summary
Sweet Medicine is the story of Tsitsi, a young woman who compromises the values of her Catholic upbringing to find romantic and economic security through otherworldly means.
The story takes place in Harare at the height of Zimbabwe’s economic woes in 2008.
The book is a thorough and evocative attempt at grappling with a variety of important issues in the postcolonial context: tradition and modernity; feminism and patriarchy; spiritual and political freedoms and responsibilities; poverty and desperation; and wealth and abundance.
ISBN:9781928337126
Author:Panashe Chigumadzi
Refilwe by Zukiswa Wanner
Brief Summary
A take on the traditional German tale Rapunzel in a Southern African setting.
Zukiswa Wanner brings young readers a retelling of the classic fairy tale, Rapunzel, with a uniquely South African twist. Refilweis the story of the dreadlocked beauty who is stuck in a cave on top of a mountain awaiting her prince, Tumi.
This take on the classic tale will have the children chanting, "Refilwe, Refilwe let down your locks . . . So I can climb the scraggy rocks!” Based on the original version but reimagined for African children, the tale is enriched with magical illustrations by Tamsin Hinrichsen that will keep all children entranced and foster in them a love of reading.
ISBN:9781431400980
Author:Zukiswa Wanner
The Dying Sahara US Imperialism and T...
Brief Summary
In The Dark Sahara (Pluto, 2009), Jeremy Keenan exposed the collusion between the US and Algeria in fabricating terrorism to justify a new ‘Saharan front’ in Washington’s War on Terror. Now, in The Dying Sahara, he reveals how the designation of the region as a ‘Terror Zone’ has destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of innocent people.
Beginning in 2004, with what local people called the US ‘invasion’ of the Sahel, The Dying Sahara shows how repressive, authoritarian regimes - cashing in on US terrorism ‘rents’ - provoked Tuareg rebellions in both Niger and Mali. Further, he argues that US activity has unleashed a new, narco-trafficking branch of Al-Qaeda.
Keenan's chillingly detailed research shows that the US and its new combatant African command (AFRICOM) have created instability in a region the size of Western Europe.
ISBN:9780745329611
Author:Jeremy Keenan
The Gardens of Light by Amin Maalouf
Brief Summary
This is the story of Mani, a forgotten figure, but whose name is yet, paradoxically, on everyone's lips.
When using the words "Manichean" or "Manichaeism" one rarely thinks Mani, painter, doctor and Eastern philosopher of the third century, called "the Buddha of Light" by the Chinese and "the apostle of Jesus" by the Egyptians.
His tolerant and humanist philosophy wanted to reconcile the religions of his time. It earned him persecution, torment and hatred...
ISBN:9781566562485
Author:Amin Maalouf
Selected Writings and Speeches of Mar...
Brief Summary
One of the most important and controversial figures in the history of race relations in America and the world at large, Marcus Garvey was the first great black orator of the twentieth century. The Jamaican-born African-American rights advocated dismayed his enemies as much as he dazzled his admirers. Of him, Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "He was the first man, on a mass scale and level, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny, and make the Negro feel that he was somebody.”
A printer and newspaper editor in his youth, Garvey furthered his education in England and eventually traveled to the United States, where he impressed thousands with his speeches and millions more through his newspaper articles. His message of black pride resonated in all his efforts.
This anthology contains some of his most noted writings, among them "The Negro’s Greatest Enemy,” "Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World," and "Africa for the Africans," as well as powerful speeches on unemployment, leadership, and emancipation.
Essential reading for students of African-American history, this volume will also serve as a useful reference for anyone interested in the history of the civil rights movement.
ISBN:9780486437873
Author:Marcus Garvey
Morality for Beautiful Girls
Brief Summary
At the end of Tears for the Giraffe, the previous novel in the series, Precious Ramotswe is engaged to Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, the No 1. Ladies’ Detective Agency is firmly established, and all seems to be well. But now, as Morality for Beautiful Girls begins, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, the hard-working, generous-hearted mechanic and owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, is behaving strangely.
He is uninterested where once he was enthusiastic, full of self-reproach where once he was confident. In short, he is depressed, so much so that he cannot continue to run his business. To make matters worse, the detective agency, despite its success and high reputation, is losing money. Mma Ramotswe’s assistant Mma Makutsi is eager for a promotion, and there are now two orphan children whom Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni must raise.
Drastic measures are called for: a merger and major reorganization. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency closes its offices, moves into a small building adjoining the garage, and Mma Makutsi serves as acting manager of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, as well as assistant detective, while Mr J.L.B. Matekoni is resting. And in truth the two businesses are not so different. People bring their cars in to have the mystery of their malfunction solved much in the same way people bring in their personal problems to have the detectives diagnose and fix them.
A Government Man, convinced his new sister-in-law is out to kill his younger brother, enlists Mma Ramotswe’s services, and while she is working on that case, the director of a beauty pageant asks Mma Makutsi to help him find one "good girl” who will not bring disgrace to the pageant and to Botswana, (no small task, as it turns out).
As always with the Precious Ramotswe novels, however, the story of how people live—how they treat each other, how deeply they empathize with others, and how well they respect the customs and morality of Africa—is the real story. And with the ever-engaging Mma Ramotswe at the center of the novel, observing, commenting on, and indeed influencing the world around her, this story comes vibrantly and unforgettably to life.
ISBN:9781400031368
Author:Alexander McCall Smith
Foreign Intervention in Africa From t...
Brief Summary
Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror.
Foreign Intervention in Africa chronicles the foreign political and military interventions in Africa during the periods of decolonization (1956-1975) and the Cold War (1945-1991), as well as during the periods of state collapse (1991-2001) and the "global war on terror" (2001-2010).
In the first two periods, the most significant intervention was extra-continental. The United States, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and the former colonial powers entangled themselves in countless African conflicts. During the period of state collapse, the most consequential interventions were intra-continental.
African governments, sometimes assisted by powers outside the continent, supported warlords, dictators, and dissident movements in neighboring countries and fought for control of their neighbors' resources.
The global war on terror, like the Cold War, increased the foreign military presence on the African continent and generated external support for repressive governments. In each of these cases, external interests altered the dynamics of Africa's internal struggles, escalating local conflicts into larger conflagrations, with devastating effects on African peoples.
ISBN:9780521709033
Author:Elizabeth Schmidt
Barracoon the story of the last slave...
A major literary event: a never-before-published work from the author of the American classic, Their Eyes Were Watching Godwhich brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade—illegally smuggled from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.
In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, to interview ninety-five-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.
In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life.
During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past—memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilde, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.
Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon brilliantly illuminates the tragedy of slavery and one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.
When Hoopoes Go To Heaven
Brief Summary
Ten-year-old Benedict is feeling happy. His family's new home in Swaziland has the most beautiful garden in the whole entire world, teeming with insects, frogs and his favorite cinnamon-colored birds.
Here, crouched in the cool shade of the lucky-bean tree, it's easy to forget the loneliness that comes from his siblings playing without him, easy to stop himself fretting about how to fix his Mama's failing cake-baking business. Of course, there are many things in Africa that cannot be put right by a boy who isn't yet big.
But in Benedict's wonder-filled world, even the ugliest situation has a certain magic. Warm, funny and brimming with life, Where Hoopoes Go to Heaven paints a fresh and compelling picture of life in Swaziland that will capture your imagination and restore your faith in humanity.
ISBN:9780857894106
Author:Gaile Parkin
Police in Africa The Street Level View
Brief Summary
State police forces in Africa are a curiously neglected subject of study, even within the study of security issues and African states. This book brings together important new work on the subject from a group of criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and others, who have engaged with police forces across the continent and the publics with whom they interact to provide street-level perspectives from below and inside Africa's police forces.
The collection is in three parts; first it considers historical trajectories and particular configurations of police power within wider political systems, then examines the 'inside view' of police forces as state institutions -the challenges, preoccupations, professional ethics and self-perceptions of police officers, and finally looks at how African police officers go about their work, in terms of everyday practices and engagements with the public, and the meanings that are construed in the course of doing so.
The studies span the continent from South Africa to Sierra Leone, and illustrate similarities and differences in Anglo- phone, Francophone and Lusophone states, post- socialist, post-military and post-conflict contexts, and amid both centralization and devolution of policing powers, democratic transitions and new illiberal regimes; keeping a strong ethnographic focus on ordinary police officers and police work at their core.
ISBN:9781849045773
Author:Jan Beek, Mirco Gopfert, Olly Owen and Jonny Steinberg
Me Against My Brother At War in Somal...
As a foreign correspondent, Scott Peterson witnessed firsthand Somalia's descent into war and its battle against US troops, the spiritual degeneration of Sudan's Holy War, and one of the most horrific events of the last half century: the genocide in Rwanda.
In Me against My Brother, he brings these events together for the first time to record a collapse that has had an impact far beyond African borders.
In Somalia, Peterson tells of harrowing experiences of clan conflict, guns and starvation. He met with warlords, observed death intimately and nearly lost his own life to a Somali mob. From ground level, he documents how the US-UN relief mission devolved into all-out war - one that for America has proven to be the most formative post-Cold War debacle.
In Sudan, he journeys where few correspondents have ever been, on both sides of that religious front line, to find that outside "relief" has only prolonged war. In Rwanda, his first-person experience of the genocide and well-documented analysis provide rare insight into this human tragedy.
Filled with the dust, sweat and powerful detail of real-life, Me against My Brother graphically illustrates how preventive action and a better understanding of Africa - especially by the US - could have averted much suffering. Also includes a 16-page color insert.
To Be Young Gifted and Black
Brief Summary
This is the story of a young woman born in Chicago who came to New York, won fame with her play, A Raisin in the Sun–and went on to new heights of artistry before her tragic death.
In turns angry, loving, bitter, laughing, and defiantly proud, the story, voice, and message are all Lorraine Hansberry’s own, coming together in one of the major works of the black experience in mid-century America.
ISBN:9780451159526
Author:Lorraine Hansberry