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Arguably, one of the most polarising figures in modern times has been Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the former President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. The mere mentioning of his name raises a lot of debate and often times vicious, if not irreconcilable differences, both in Zimbabwe and beyond. In an article titled: 'Lessons of Zimbabwe', Mahmood Mamdani succinctly captures the polarity thus: 'It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe… and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa.' This, together with his recent 'stylised' ouster, speaks volumes to his conflicted legacy. The divided opinion on Mugabe's legacy can broadly be represented, first, by those who consider him as a champion of African liberation, a Pan-Africanist, an unmatched revolutionary and an avid anti-imperialist who, literally, 'spoke the truth' to Western imperialists. On the other end of the spectrum are those who - seemingly paying scant regard to the predicament of millions of black Zimbabweans brutally dispossessed of their land and human dignity since the Rhodesian days - have differentially characterised Mugabe as a rabid black fascist, an anti-white racist, an oppressor, and a dictator. Drawing on all these opinions and characterisations, the chapters ensconced in this volume critically reflect on the personality, leadership style and contributions of Robert Mugabe during his time in office, from 1980 to November 2017. The volume is timely in view of the current contested transition in Zimbabwe, and with regard to the ongoing consultations on the Land Question in neighbouring South Africa. It is a handy and richly documented text for students and practitioners in political science, African studies, economics, policy studies, development studies, and global studies.

It is common knowledge that development without security is like a runaway horse. Yet, development in Africa has been plagued by insecurities since the extractive periods of slave trade and colonialism. In spite of political independence and the euphoria of sovereignty as states, Africa has failed to address insecurity, which continues to loom large and to threaten aspirations towards truly inclusive and sustainable development. A consequence has been Africa's development naivety vis-à-vis the monopolisation of development by the predatory elite actors of the global North and their local facilitators. To salvage the continent from such predation and the insecurities engendered requires novel and innovative imagination and praxis. This book draws from both the haunted landscapes and bitter memories of past exploitations and from the feeding of the insatiable North with African resources and humanity. It brings together essays by a concerned generation of scholars driven by the urgent need for radical decolonisation of African development and its legacies of insecurities. It is handy to students and practitioners in economics, policy studies, political science, development studies, global and African studies.

This book examines the 'glocalization' - the adaptation of a global telecommunication technology to local particularities - in West and Central Africa. Through case studies in Cameroon and Guinea, the research presented evinces how local agency leads to the appropriation of mobile telephony, and the extent to which telecommunication companies acculturate their marketing strategies to consumer preferences and local realities. The book interrogates the presumptive neutrality of technology and presents evidence of agency superseding supposedly fixed limitations of use for mobile phones. In opposition to the notion of an Africa 'lagging' behind, the book also nuances the development discourse so often associated with the 'leapfrog' and spread of mobile telephony south of the Sahara. Overall, this study highlights ways in which agency leads to modernity being refracted locally in West and Central Africa and reflects on the tension at play between 'globalizers' and 'globalized'.

The dynamic nature of Christianity has necessitated its movement from the cathedral to the mountain top. This has occasioned a proliferation of Prayer Mountains throughout Africa. In Yorubaland of southwestern Nigeria, Prayer Mountain is known as Ori-Oke. Like many communities in Africa, the Yoruba are confronted with fundamental challenges in life for which people do not rest until they find solutions. Within the praxis of Nigerian Christian lexicon Ori-Oke is synonymous with the enactment of a sacred space on a mountain top characterised by various prayer regimes, rituals, exorcism and religious practices, aimed at eliciting the help of the divine to alleviate the existential challenges of devotees.This book explores the resacralisation of space on the mountains, highlighting how humans and the divine interact in Yorubaland. It brings into conversation 35 empirically rich scholarly essays on the role of Ori-Oke to those seeking divine intervention in their lives. Today, Ori-Oke have become centres of pilgrimage as a result of the lived experiences of devotees, creating unique religious value quite distinct from the aesthetic value of these mountain tops. The spirituality of Ori-Oke is anchored on the absolute belief in God and the infusion of traditional African worldview sensibilities in religious rites and worship. Ori-Oke spirituality employs resources of Christian tradition, introduced by the formal agents of Christianity, synthesised with traditional culture, to develop a life based on the precepts of an African Christianity. The book is an intellectual discourse on Ori-Oke spirituality, reflecting its contemporary relevance in a context of religious innovation and competition.

Rolene Miller registered Mosaic, Training, Service and Healing Centre to empower abused women, and like a Mosaic 'to put the broken pieces of their lives together and make their lives more beautiful,'Womandla! Women Power! is an account of Mosaic's Community Workers' and Court Workers' lives, training and services and Rolene's writings describing the journey. Their humour and laughter is present whilst constantly moving through the difficult days at Mosaic.This book describes Mosaic's support from our caring God. It is a human story where honest values are realised and people's lives are changed forever. It is for readers who want to know the 'Herstory' of a ground-breaking and innovative Mosaic working with abused women for 25 successful years and still surviving today.'Womandla! Women Power!' belongs to everyone who in our patriarchal culture and society wants to prevent and stop Women Abuse and Domestic Violence and who needs to seriously and critically condemn it.

Right from the enslavement era through to the colonial and contemporary eras, Africans have been denied their human essence - portrayed as indistinct from animals or beasts for imperial burdens, Africans have been historically dispossessed and exploited. Postulating the theory of global jurisprudential apartheid, the book accounts for biases in various legal systems, norms, values and conventions that bind Africans while affording impunity to Western states. Drawing on contemporary notions of animism, transhumanism, posthumanism and science and technology studies, the book critically interrogates the possibility of a jurisprudence of anticipation which is attentive to the emergent New World Order that engineers 'human beings to become nonhumans' while 'nonhumans become humans'. Connecting discourses on decoloniality with jurisprudence in the areas of family law, environment, indigenisation, property, migration, constitutionalism, employment and labour law, commercial law and Ubuntu, the book also juggles with emergent issues around Earth Jurisprudence, ecocentrism, wild law, rights of nature, Earth Court and Earth Tribunal. Arguing for decoloniality that attends to global jurisprudential apartheid., this tome is handy for legal scholars and practitioners, social scientists, civil society organisations, policy makers and researchers interested in transformation, decoloniality and Pan-Africanism.

« La vérité blesse » ou encore « la vérité est une pilule amère à avaler » sont des adages depuis fort longtemps passés de mode. Cependant, dans La Logorrhée du poète ou l'Histoire des Camerouns en 33 gouttelettes, le poète évoque et symbolise d'une manière nouvelle et d'une esthétique fascinante le mal-vivre de Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia avec ses frères/voisins de la République du Cameroun. Le premier ayant choisi (en 1961) la fédération avec la République du Cameroun qui n'en voulut point au départ, s'en veut et pour ce, cherche à défaire cette relation sans fondement ni base. Ce vouloir étant accueilli par une brutalité sanguinaire et féroce n'a laissé à ce poète engagé que le choix d'exposer la laideur de la tyrannie, de la tuerie, de l'insouciance, et de l'hypocrisie de ceux sensés gouverner. Les sévices subis par le peuple du Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia semblent souligner la volonté du poète à faire valoir aux Ambazonians, leur droit de quête de liberté. Cette prise de position rappelle la perspective Sartrienne de l'engagement littéraire. Bref, ce recueil est riche sur le plan esthétique et aussi historique de fond en comble.

Words of wisdom within the African context, conjure the foundational thoughts of ancestors, thoughts which, today find themselves in the public sphere. With its focus on individual thoughts, this pan-African collection, among other things, amplifies the African-centred prism of knowledge as a collective creation, while stretching the boundaries of the concept of wisdom.They depict the intricate and unique African perception and relation to the universe. As Molefi K. Asante wonders, what could be any more correct for any people than to see with their own eyes? Collectively, these sayings constitute a pillar in the edification of a culture that departs from mere hearing, seeing and consumption to the creation of narratives and, hence, knowledge. They focus on the shared experiences and aspirations for freedom, a philosophical outlook heavily anchored on balance, as well as on community.Unfortunately, some are still tempted to dismiss words of wisdom as having no bearing on today's hi-tech and, even, post-modernist global village. Yet, if anything, these words have even more relevance in a cacophonic, estranged and even brutish world tightly in the grip of forces bent on twisting all thought processes toward a particular status quo.Each saying should be perceived as a coin - with two sides - and should, therefore, not be taken at face value. For, like virtue, each one is capable of turning into vice when stretched too far! As a vital prompt in the project of living, this collection proposes to the reader the advantage and a philosophy of balance as the worthwhile and healthy modus vivendi.

Poetic Blazons from Africa is an effort by the poet to bring into life the feelings and thoughts of a voice in agony. This effort takes the reader through pain that seems to come with every step that individual takes. The poet seems in tears as he traverses the rigours that characterize his terrain. Joy and happiness appear just remote though there are a fleeting moments of hope. The poet seems so drowned in choking pain that he appears to have failed to eliminate from childhood to the extent that at times he talks about his last lap as though he has already resigned on the purpose of living. His heart seems to have been jilted and he will not love again. Or would he?

This book offers an intriguing account of the complex and often contradictory relations between music and society in Freetown's past and present. Blending anthropological thought with ethnographic and historical research, it explores the conjunctures of music practices and social affiliations and the diverse patterns of social dis/connections that music helps to shape, to (re)create, and to defy in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown. The first half of the book traces back the changing social relationships and the concurrent changes in the city's music life from the first days of the colony in the late 18th century up to the turbulent and thriving music scenes in the first decade of the 21st century. Grounded in this comprehensive historiography of Freetown's socio-musical palimpsest, the second half of the book puts forth a detailed ethnography of social dynamics in the realms of music, calibrating contemporary Freetown's social polyphony with its musical counterpart.

Peace Mongers is much more than a collection or book of poems. It is the concretization of an indefatigable crusade for peace through lyricism that equally reads much more as a manifesto. The words, herein strung, dignify the victims of gratuitous violence, be it political, social, economic, or cultural. On the same scale the collection comes across as a virulent vilification of the perpetrators of acts of violence which to the poet is never justified. In short, Peace Monger is an ingenious and gleeful dissection of violence that plague humanity more than ever before and especially Ambazonia/Southern Cameroons.

It Does Matter To Listen is a collection of short anecdotal pieces of writings, spanning different subject areas-including politics, leadership and management-with the purpose of counselling and edifying the present and future generations. It is a must-read for anyone interested in how to go about business in everyday life, at home, at work and during leisure.

The underlying assumption of this work is that of all the epidemics afflicting Nigerian, and nay African people, ignorance is the most prevalent and deadliest. The book is split in two sections: The first is an inquiry into the nature and causes of corruption in nations and into corruption, while the second builds on the findings of the first and offers related essays and discussions of new findings, theories and concrete realities.

Whether Africa is developed or not, depends on how and what one addresses. Development is relative. Nonetheless, the fact is: Africa developed Europe; and thereby became underdeveloped. Addressed academically, the notion of development creates many questions amongst which are: Development in what? Whose development? Development for whom? Who defines development? In this volume, the development dealt with is polygonal; and touches on politico-economic sequels which also affect the social aspect. No doubt. Africa is abundantly rich in terms of resource and culture. Paradoxically, however, Africa is less developed economically compared to Europe thanks to the history of unequal encounters, among other reasons. We cannot emphasise enough the fact that Africa's underdevelopment is the price of the development of Europe which is based on historical realities gyrating around Europe's criminal past wherein slavery and colonialism enabled Europe to spawn its future capital and investment. How can anyone quibble about Europe's development resulting from perpetual plunderage of Africa with impunity committed by European treasure-hunting adventurers? This volume prescribes Africa's restorative recompense as the only way forward for the duo and the world.

One of the fundamental challenges in rethinking and remaking development in Africa from a Pan African perspective is that too much "mere talk" and "blame game" have played out at the expense of "real action". The blame game and mere talk on Africa's poverty and underdevelopment jam have remained printed in bold on the face of the continent, yet Africa's dire situation warrants nothing less than real emphatic action. This book focuses on the empirics of the production and reproduction of poverty and underdevelopment across Africa in a fashion that warrants urgent pragmatic policy attention and quest for workable homegrown solutions to persistent predicaments. The volume advances the need to recognise the realities of global inequalities and move swiftly in a most informed and transparent manner to address the poverty and underdevelopment conundrum. The book sets the tempo and pace on the need for praxis and pragmatism on the African situation. It is handy to students and practitioners in African studies, poverty and development studies, global studies, policy studies, economics and political science.

Poetic encounter: Rhapsodies from the South is compilation of poems by Southern African Writers from South Africa and Zimbabwe. The poems, were written not only to depict life but also tell tales of socio-political and economic history that Southern African people traversed from colonialism, apartheid to freedom. Therefore, readers from all walks-of-life can identify with themes such as apartheid, economic deprivation, religion and culture, love and so forth that are carefully ensconced in this compilation. The authors invite the readers, to not only indulge the lived injustice and violent nature of both our historic past and trajectory to the current state of affairs, but also appreciate, cry, smile and reminiscence about the life in general as encapsulated in this refreshing and aesthetic work of art - the poetic encounter.

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 celebrate vulnerability and insecurities. This book examines ways in which emergent technologies expose Africans and, more generally, peoples of the global south to political, economic, social, cultural and religious shocks occasioned by the coloniality of the global matrices of power. It notes that there is the use - by global elites - of technologies to incite postmodern revolutions designed to compound the vicissitudes and imponderables in the already unsettled lives of people north and south. Particularly targeted by these technologies are African and other governments that do not cooperate in the fulfilment of the interests of the hegemonic global elites. The book is handy to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.

For centuries the continent of Africa has been characterised by negative images such as poverty, disease and conflicts. Today, however, the People's Republic of China's growing presence in Africa, particularly with regards to China-Africa business relations, brings new vitality to the continent. This new movement is not a windfall but rather obtained through the hard work of both African and Chinese people at various levels. Narrating on daily experiences of Chinese merchants and their vivid interactions with people in Botswana, this book decodes the frustrating while rewarding process through which China-Africa relations have been maturing on the grass-roots level. This book not only presents insights and suggestions to both Botswana and Chinese policy makers interested in understanding their constituents' everyday interactions with each other, but also offers readers interested more broadly in contemporary Chinese experiences in Africa a fascinating glimpse into these cross-cultural encounters. This book is an original and pioneering study of issues that resonate in almost every African country which has responded to a growing Chinese presence. It argues that as the process of globalisation permeates the everyday lives of people, each individual is empowered to be an 'ambassador' in shaping international relations.