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Violence, Peace and Everyday Modes of Justice and Healing in Post-Colonial Africa
Violence in its various proportions, genres and manifestations has had an enduring historical legacy the world over. However, works speaking to approaches aimed at mitigating violence characteristic of Africa are very limited. As some scholars have noted, Africans have experienced cycles of violence since the pre-colonial epoch, such that overt violence has become banalised on the African continent. This has had the effect of generating complex results, legacies and perennial emotional wounds that call for healing, reconciliation, justice and positive peace. Yet, in the absence of systematic and critical approaches to the study of violence on the continent, discourses on violence would hardl...
Violence, Politics and Conflict Management in Africa
This volume critically interrogates, from different angles and dimensions, the resilience of conflict and violence into 21st century Africa. The demise of European colonial administration in Africa in the 1960s wielded fervent hope for enduring peace for the people of Africa. Regrettably, conflict alongside violence in all its dimensions – physical, religious, political, psychological and structural – remain unabated and occupy central stage in contemporary Africa. The resilience of conflict and violence on the continental scene invokes unsettling memories of the past while negatively influencing the present and future of crafting inclusive citizenship and statehood. he book provides fresh insightful ethnographic and intellectual material for rethinking violence and conflict, and for fostering long-lasting peace and political justice on the continent and beyond. With its penetrating focus on conflict and associated trajectories of violence in Africa, the book is an inestimable asset for conflict management practitioners, political scientists, historians, civil society activists and leaders in economics and politics as well as all those interested in the affairs of Africa.
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai's Legacy
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is arguably the most polarising figure and advocate of democracy and human rights in the history of opposition politics in Zimbabwe. He is as much a topic of debate in Zimbabwe and beyond as the late president Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Tsvangirai's legacy, like Mugabe's, remains indisputably controversial and conflicted. Broadly, the divided opinion on the Tsvangirai legacy can be represented, firstly, by those who argue that Tsvangirai was the champion of democracy and the face of the struggle for human rights in Zimbabwe. In this light, Tsvangirai has been variously described as a "selfless...people's hero", a "colossus of the struggle for democracy", "the commander ...
Underdevelopment, Development and the Future of Africa
In view of the resilience of Africa’s underdevelopment, what do Africans make of their determined aspirations for development? The continent of Africa has constantly drawn global attention, most especially for both human and natural evils. Underdevelopment, it appears, is one of the most eminent threatening evils. It has plunged and promises to maintain the majority of Africa in abject poverty, insecurity, and vulnerability. What perpetuates the ghost and gory of underdevelopment in Africa, despite a proliferation of development rhetoric and initiatives? How do ordinary Africans react to repeated talk and claims of development with little evidence of transformation for the better in their ...
Explaining Foreign Policy in Post-Colonial Africa
This book explores foreign policy developments in post-colonial Africa. A continental foreign policy is a tenuous proposition, yet new African states emerged out of armed resistance and advocacy from regional allies such as the Bandung Conference and the League of Arab States. Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan African country to gain independence in 1957. Fourteen more countries gained independence in 1960 alone, and by May 1963, when the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was formed, 30 countries were independent. An early OAU committee was the African Liberation Committee (ALC), tasked to work in the Frontline States (FLS) to support independence in Southern Africa. Pan-Africanists, in alli...
African Studies in the Academy
For a long time, African Studies as a discipline has been spearheaded by academics and institutions in the Global North. This puts African Studies on the continent at a crossroads of making choices on whether such a discipline can be legitimately accepted as an epistemological discipline seeking objectivity and truth about Africa and the African peoples or a discipline meant to perpetuate the North’s hegemonic socio-economic, political and epistemic control over Africa. The compound question that immediately arises is: Who should produce what and which space should African Studies occupy in the academy both of the North and of the South? Confronted by such a question, one wonders whether t...
Development Perspectives from the South
Not so long ago, The Economist described Africa as a hopeless continent. This damning description specifically referred to the development status of Africa. While the debate on the political and socio-economic [under-]development of Africa had been raging on prior to the Economist’s daring but controversial pronouncements, it intensified from thereon. Many concerned people from within the continent and elsewhere have reproved the proclamation but mainly in newspapers and the broadcast media. Not enough has been done by development scholars to critically reflect on the description and status of Africa’s development condition in a nuanced and systematic fashion. Yet, it is through incisive...
Rethinking Securities in an Emergent Technoscientific New World Order
The emergent technoscientific New World Order is being legitimised through discourses on openness and inclusivity. The paradox is that openness implies vulnerability and insecurities, particularly where closure would offer shelter. While some actors, including NGOs, preach openness of African societies, Africans clamour for protection, restitution and restoration. Africans struggle for ownership and access to housing, for national, cultural, religious, economic, and social belonging that would offer them the necessary security and protection, including protection from the global vicissitudes and matrices of power. In the presence of these struggles, to presuppose openness would be to celebra...
Myths of Peace and Democracy? Towards Building Pillars of Hope, Unity and Transformation in Africa
The myths of peace and democracy in Africa are at the heart of this volume. Democracy and peace have become buzz words across postcolonial Africa. The gospel of democracy and peace is preached by national governments and by civil society and international organisations alike. But to what extent are the ongoing sideshows and charades of quasi-oligarchies in Africa really democracy? What do ordinary Africans mean when they hunger and thirst for democracy and peace? Positive and noble as the loud sounding rhetoric about democracy and peace in Africa might seem, the reality of propaganda and dissemblance and of multi-dimensional violence are simply too overwhelming not to be disillusioning. This...
The Political Economy of Poverty, Vulnerability and Disaster Risk Management
Poverty remains a thorny and topical challenge and research topic to scholars and researchers on African development. Scholars in the Global North have since the Second World War sought to research poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, postulating what they think are the major causes of insipid and abject poverty in the continent, but with little or no success on how to solve the poverty enigma. Sadly, little research and homework have been done by scholars in context (in Africa) on why there seems to be more production rather than eradication of poverty and vulnerability in Africa and among Africans. This book is born out of the realisation for the need for both scholars on the ground and...
