Research Africa News: October 29th, 2019
The Socialist Agronomist Who Helped End Portuguese Colonialism
AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER KARIBE MENDY
Before his assassination in 1973, Amílcar Cabral was one of Africa’s leading anti-colonialists — a brilliant agronomist and socialist whose leadership of the armed struggle against Portuguese rule brought the empire to its knees.
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Scholarship offers driving China’s soft-power play in Africa
Jevans Nyabiage,, 28 Sep, 2019
Since the late 1990s, Beijing has chalked up a broad list of successes in Africa, driven by a “going global” strategy that encourages domestic enterprises to invest more abroad. Under that plan of action, China in 2009 toppled the United States to become Africa’s biggest trading partner.
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Letter from Africa: How not to mangle African sports stars’ names Ade Daramy, 23 October 2019
As I watched coverage of the World Athletics Championships in Qatar, like most Africans, it was a case of tutting: “Oh, no, not again…” when someone from the continent was victorious. This was not because I did not glory in their performance but because of how their name was mangled beyond recognition in the commentary and medal ceremonies. Many non-African commentators seem to have a particular thing against West African names, as these seem to be the ones that come in for the most savaging.
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The rising popularity of African art has led to a growing market for forgeries
Gerard de Kamper, October 23, 2019
The art world has been dealing with fakes for more than 2,000 years, with perhaps the most notorious case being the forgeries of Dutch master Johannes Vermeer’s paintings by artist Han van Meegeren during the Second World War. A dishonest scrivener covertly changed the US Constitution’s impeachment clause Now African art is becoming a larger and larger target. Fakes are flooding the South African market and while a range of artists is affected, it’s mostly the black modernists (1960-1990) whose legacy is suffering.
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NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Administrative Law: Cases and Materials
[القانون الإداري: قضايا ولوازم]
Author: Collins Parker
Administrative Law: Cases and Materials is an important and comprehensive contribution to the legal literature on Namibian law. It will contribute to the development of Namibia’s jurisprudence. Experienced author and judge of the Namibian High Court, Dr Collins Parker discusses key principles of administrative law applicable to Namibia under the common law as developed and broadened by article 18 of the Namibian Constitution. To support propositions of law discussed in the text, he presents carefully selected extracts of judgments delivered in important cases. The book offers a rich source of judicial pronouncements as precedent that are not readily available to many students and teachers of law. The selected cases are from the superior courts in Namibia, South Africa, England, and Canada, all common law countries. There are also footnote references to cases from other common law countries like India, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Practitioners of law at the Bar or on the Bench, law researchers and other professionals in public authorities, including parastatals, private companies and other ord this book useful in the performance of their professional tasks.
Publisher: University of Namibia Press, Namibia, 2019
The Women Went Radical: Petition Writing and Colonial State in Southwestern Nigeria, 1900-1953
[عندما تمردت النساء]
Author: Mutiat Titilope Oladejo
Woman in twentieth century colonial Africa experienced a loss of power in their social-economic status. The Women Went Radical provides a narrative of radical expressions extracted from the numerous petitions written to advance and advocate the cause of Yoruba women through individual and collective action. This analyses the impact and implication of petition writing on the administration of traditional and modern governments in colonial Yorubaland. The political context accurately projects the roles of women in influencing, resisting, negotiating and counteracting policies within the political system. The research argues that petition writing is a form of politics and radicalism that is not limited to national issues but also to their manifestation from the actions of the citizens—that is ‘politics from the grassroots’.
Publisher: BookBuilders Editions Africa, Nigeria, 2019
Amílcar Cabral A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary
[أميلكار كابرال: قائد ثوري من أنصار الرابطة الأفريقية]
Author: Peter Karibe Mendy
Amílcar Cabral was an agronomist who led an armed struggle that ended Portuguese colonialism in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. The uprising contributed significantly to the collapse of a fascist regime in Lisbon and the dismantlement of Portugal’s empire in Africa. Assassinated by a close associate with the deep complicity of the Portuguese colonial authorities, Cabral not only led one of Africa’s most successful liberation movements, but was the voice and face of the anticolonial wars against Portugal. A brilliant military strategist and astute diplomat, Cabral was an original thinker who wrote innovative and inspirational essays that still resonate today. His charismatic and visionary leadership, his active pan-Africanist solidarity and internationalist commitment to “every just cause in the world,” remain relevant to contemporary struggles for emancipation and self-determination. Peter Karibe Mendy’s compact and accessible biography is an ideal introduction to his life and legacy.
Publisher: Ohio University Press 2019
In The Heat of Africa’s Underdevelopment: Africa at the Crossroads -Time to Deliver
[في صميم النضال من أجل التقدم في أفريقيا: أفريقيا في مفترق الطرق]
Author: John W. Forje
The ever-growing disparity in living standards between the developed and developing polities constitutes a striking feature of life on Planet Earth. This publication is an attempt to highlight some of the factors dividing the worlds apart. A new North-South synergy is needed in creating a balanced world at peace with itself. As long as more than half-the population of the world go to bed hungry there can be no peace. A sting rich world and a sting poor world cannot cohabit peacefully. How to build a more equitable and balanced world is the challenge facing us. We need to embrace and practice our long-aged concepts of ‘ubuntu’, ‘harambee’ and ‘batho pele’ among others in creating, and consolidating the new world order. Africa is underdeveloped. It requires serious structural modification in our current mindset, thinking and actions which calls for total involvement of every citizen. The ideas advanced in this book are strategies and pathways for dealing with the problems of poverty, corruption, the distribution of power, deterrence, good governance, health, human capacity building and the challenge of bringing about a systemic structural-functional governance construct for the African continent.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019
Terry Adkins Infinity Is Always Less Than One
[تيري آدكنز: في حتمية اللامتناهي]
Author: Gean Moreno and Alex Gartenfeld
One of the great conceptual artists of the twenty-first century, Terry Adkins (1953–2014) was renowned for his pioneering work across mediums, from sculpture, drawing, and site-specific installation to photography, video, and performance. Terry Adkins: Infinity is Always Less Than One accompanies the first institutional posthumous exhibition of Adkins’s sculptural production. While Adkins is often recognized for his musical and performative practice, this exhibition focuses on his complex memorials and monuments to historical figures. The exhibition showcases four of his major series, dedicated to four distinct figures: Bessie Smith, John Brown, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jimi Hendrix. These series are presented alongside a group of early sculptures to reveal the development of the Adkins’s mature practice.
Publisher: A Publication of ICA Miami Distributed by Duke University Press, 2019
Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Decolonisation of Africa
[داغ همرشولد : الأمم المتحدة ، وإنهاء الاستعمار في أفريقيا]
Author: Henning Melber
Dag Hammarskjold was such a dynamic secretary-general that for years, the motto about him was simply “Leave it to Dag.” Only the second person to hold that post when he was elected, Hammarskjold did a great deal to shape perceptions of the UN. Consequently, evaluations of his legacy have tended to run the gamut, from extremely positive to bitingly critical. This book looks at Hammarskjold’s legacy. Melber offers no apology when he states that he deeply admires Hammarskjold, though he does also clarify that Hammarskjold was imperfect. Moreover, while Hammarskjold was a person of deep integrity, his life nevertheless reveals many of the shortcomings of the UN and the difficulty of forcing the great powers to accept justice for the Global South.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2019
The Unfamous Five
[الأشرار الخمسة]
Author: Nedine Moonsamy
Seeking adventure during the school holidays, five teenagers from the Indian suburb of Lenasia accidentally witness a violent crime that has a lasting impact on their lives. Starting in June of 1993, the novel follows the Five through the next decade as they confront, both as individuals and as a group, questions of who they are, who they are allowed to be, and who they are expected to be in the New South Africa. They must query what role they will allow tradition, ancestry, sexuality, skin colour, love, money and culture to play in their lives as they attempt to forge new paths, sometimes stumbling along the way, but always willing to give one another a helping hand.
Publisher: Modjaji Books, South Africa, 2019
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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.
