African history Books

Book Synopsis"White Hunters" is the story of 70 years of African adventure, danger and romance. It recreates the legendary big-game safaris led by Selous and Bell and the daring ventures of early hunters into unexplored territories.

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Book SynopsisThis book is an introduction to the war machine of New Kingdom Egypt from c. 1575 bc1100 bc. Focuses on the period in which the Egyptians created a professional army and gained control of Syria, creating an Empire of Asia. Written by a respected Egyptologist. Highlights new technological developments, such as the use of chariots and siege technology. Considers the socio-political aspects of warfare, particularly the rise to power of a new group of men. Evaluates the military effectiveness of the Egyptian state, looking at the logistics of warfare during this period. Incorporates maps and photographs, a chronological table, and a chart of dynasties and pharaohs Trade Review"For anyone interested in Egyptian military history, and wanting to learn more than the simple dry facts and the well-known major battles, then this book is an absolute must. The author is to be congratulated on this major contribution to our knowledge of warfare in ancient Egypt, presented in a very readable book, suitable for the beginner as well as the real enthusiast." Ancient Egypt "A very handy and innovative introduction on the war machine of New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1550-1070 BC)... shows a thorough familiarity with the ancient sources and relevant literature on military topics, ancient and modern... Spalinger's book is a stimulating and highly competent study no one who deals with New Kingdom warfare should overlook." Bryn Mawr Classical ReviewTable of ContentsList of Figures viii List of Maps x Acknowledgements xi Preface xiii Chronology xvi 1 Prelude to New Kingdom Warfare 1 2 The System of Early Dynasty XVIII: Technological and Physical Constraints 32 3 Southern and Northern Expansion 46 4 Social and Religious Implications of the New Military system 70 5 The Battle of Megiddo and its Result 83 6 The Pharaoh on Campaign: Ideal and Real 101 7 The Later Military Situation in Asia and at Home 110 8 Egyptian Imperialism and Thutmose III 130 9 Dynasty XVIII: Warfare and Economy 140 10 The Amarna Letters and War 160 11 The Influence of the Egyptian Military from Late Dynasty XVIII to Dynasty XIX 169 12 Early Dynasty XIX 187 13 To Kadesh and After 209 14 Merenpath and Ramesses III 235 15 Egypt on the Defensive 249 16 The Social System of the Military in the Ramesside Period 264 General Bibliography 278 Index 282

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Book SynopsisNever before has such damning evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity been revealed in the midst of a conflict. As civil war raged in Syria, we owe the disclosure of this evidence to one man. He goes under the codename of Caesar. This military police photographer was required to document the murder and torture of thousands of Syrian civilians in the custody of the Assad regime. Over the course of two years he used a police computer to copy the photos, and in 2013 he risked his life to smuggle out 53,000 photos and documents that show prisoners tortured, starved and burned to death. In January 2015, in the American magazine Foreign Affairs, President Bashar al-Assad claimed that this military photographer didn’t exist. “Who took the pictures? Who is he? Nobody knows. There is no verification of any of this evidence, so it’s all allegations without evidence.” Caesar exists. The author of this book has spent dozens of hours with him. His testimony is extraordinary, his photos shocking. The uncovering of the workings of the Syrian death machine that underpins his account is a descent into the unspeakable. In 2014 Caesar testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and his testimony provided crucial evidence for a bipartisan bill, the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, that was presented to Congress in 2016. Caesar’s photos have also been shown in the United Nations Headquarters in New York and at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. For the first time, this book tells Caesar’s story.Trade ReviewThe winner of the Geschwister Scholl Prize"The images conjure memories of some of history's worst atrocities."The New York Times"The Syrian defector known as 'Caesar'… helped expose some of the worst war crimes of our generation."The Washington Post"Shocking evidence of torture out of Assad's dungeons" The Guardian"Caesar has offered us a glimpse of another Holocaust, occurring today, right under our noses, and we looked away."The Times Table of Contents Prologue Locations where the witnesses of this book were detained List of Syrians who bear witness in this book Foreword – Steven Heydeman Preface 1. Revelation. Testimony. Accusation 2. Profession Corpse Photographer 3. The Routine Turns to Horror 4. The Archives of Death 5. Communities and Religions 6. Caught in the Crossfire 7. With the Families of the Disappeared 8. A Duty to Get Out Alive 9. The Failure of Gradual Diplomacy 10. Testimony in Washington Appendices Acknowledgements Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisExploring Religion in Ancient Egypt offers a stimulating overview of the study of ancient Egyptian religion by examining research drawn from beyond the customary boundaries of Egyptology and shedding new light on entrenched assumptions. .Trade Review“This book provides a new and rather different view of religious practice amongst the ancient Egyptians, drawing on an extensive range of texts, artefacts, contextual information, and anthropological approaches from outside Egypt.” (Ancient Egypt, 1 April 2015)Table of ContentsPreface vi 1 Belief without a Book 1 2 Finding the Sacred in Space and Time 38 3 Creating Sacred Space and Time: Temple Architecture and Festival 80 4 Chaos and Life: Forces of Creation and Destruction 110 5 Being Good: Doing, Saying, and Making Good Possible 150 6 Being Well 177 7 Attaining Eternal Life: Sustenance and Transformation 201 Bibliography 238 Index 256

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Book SynopsisSwahili was once an obscure dialect of an East African Bantu language. Today more than one hundred million people use it: Swahili is to eastern and central Africa what English is to the world.Trade Review“The story of Swahili is one of globalization, cosmopolitanism, and creolization over the past 500 years. This book will stand on the shelf next to works such as Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic and Abdul Sheriff’s Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Cosmopolitanism, Commerce and Islam.”

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Book SynopsisThomas Hendriks examines the rowdy environment of industrial timber production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to theorize the social, racial, and gender power dynamics of capitalist extraction.Trade Review“Offering a rare look at the everyday lives of the people who live in and around Congolese timber labor camps, Thomas Hendriks draws out the continuities and discontinuities of racialized colonial extraction. Artfully written, Rainforest Capitalism will make a major contribution to theories of capitalism, race, and sexuality.” -- Jessica M. Smith, author of * Mining Coal and Undermining Gender: Rhythms of Work and Family in the American West *“In this fresh and captivating book, Thomas Hendriks offers precious insights into the precarity of logging in the Congolese rainforest. His lively ethnography demonstrates that the analysis of neoliberal capitalist extraction should address not only labor and political economy but also memory, affect, sexual desire, and racial fetishism. His sophisticated theoretical framework allows him to capture the fleeting character of logging and brings together forestry, anthropology, and queer studies in visionary ways that will inspire many scholars.” -- Peter Geschiere, author of * Witchcraft, Intimacy, and Trust: Africa in Comparison *"Based on a lengthy period of ethnographic research, this book is a lively, readable account of life in a logging camp, and the author makes a useful, thought-provoking contribution to the literature on power, capitalism, gender, sexuality, and race/racism in anthropology, African studies, and related fields. . . . Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- E. E. Stiles * Choice *“Thomas Hendriks’ compelling book is an intricate tale of felled trees and their capitalist value, of the inhabitants of logging camps such as Congolese labourers and expat managers, but also of jobseekers, traders, prostitutes, farmers, and smugglers. Rainforest Capitalism is eloquent and captivating.” -- Rachel Spronk * African Studies Review *Table of ContentsNote on Anonymity ix Note on Photography xi Prologue xv Acknowledgments xxi Introduction. Thinking with Loggers 1 1. Awkward Beginnings 29 2. Forest Work 48 3. Remembering Labor 75 4. Sharing the Company 98 5. Out of Here 120 6. A Darker Shade of White 143 7. Cannibals and Corned Beef 161 8. Men and Trees 187 9. Women and Chainsaws 207 Conclusion. Capitalism and Ecstasis 230 Epilogue 249 Notes 253 References 263 Index 285

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Book SynopsisMaking and Unmaking Public Health in Africa explores how medical professionals and patients, government officials, and ordinary citizens approach questions of public health as they navigate contemporary landscapes of NGOs and transnational projects, faltering state services, and expanding privatization.Trade Review“The essays are in the very best tradition of medical anthropology: they display intimate political engagement, are genuinely comparative, speak to each other, and…accessibly written. …The volume opens up new vistas on public health, and challenges what we take for granted.” * African Affairs *“Public health in Africa—as elsewhere—is no longer strictly public. Public and private providers are involved in national and transnational partnerships that divide responsibility for health and welfare among a number of agencies and actors. These clear and powerful essays set out this new landscape, exploring how medical professionals and patients, government officials and citizens approach questions of health. This text is required reading for anyone interested in contemporary Africa.”“[The chapters] provide a fascinating range of ethnographically rich and theoretically subtle accounts of and insights into the diverse and often ambiguous practices of ‘public health’ across Africa. …One of the most impressive things about this volume is its integration and coherence…The result is a landmark publication that I believe will become a key text of enduring value – particularly to scholars and practitioners in the fields of public health, global health, and medical anthropology – but also to a much wider audience within and beyond anthropology.” * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *“A powerful and complex picture of what ‘public health’ is in Africa today as commitments to national health systems are being reshaped through the dramatic rise of ‘global health.’ This set of ethnographically rich and historically sensitive essays illustrates the forms of inequality that structure efforts to building health care institutions and that configure debates over who is responsible for the health and care of particular individuals. It is a must read for both Africanists interested in medicine and public health professionals who care about Africa.”“This volume contributes significantly to the rapidly developing scholarship of public health and global health in African contexts, considered either as a collection of excellent chapters or taken as the sum of its parts. … [It] is also book-ended with trenchant, provocative commentaries on the operative theories and current practices of public health in Africa.…Making and Unmaking Public Health in Africa is an ideal fit for teaching the history or anthropology of public health at the undergraduate or graduate level.” * Social History of Medicine *“Though the historical and anthropological literature on public health in Africa has tended to focus on the ‘health’ part of the equation, the chapters in this volume interrogate the meaning of the ‘public’ aspect.…Prince and Marsland argue that in recent years ‘widening global and national inequalities and the emptying out of the public as an inclusive terrain’ has led to a shift in health care provision to ‘the arena of the market and of nongovernmental and transnational organizations’ in most African settings. Individual chapters examine how Africans across the continent interpret and negotiate this chaotic, fractured terrain in a variety of contexts… Recommended.” * Choice *“Any medical anthropologist who works in Africa will want this book in a nearby library. Those of us who study African biomedicine and biomedical research, whether anthropologists or historians, will find it particularly valuable. …As a whole, this excellent collection enlarges the scope of public health and challenges readers to think deeply about who is responsible for African health—and for the many threats to it.” * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *“This superb new edited volume is extraordinarily timely and important.” * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *Table of Contents* Acknowledgments * Introduction Situating Health and the Public in Africa Historical and Anthropological Perspectives RUTH J. PRINCE * Part I WHOSE PUBLIC HEALTH? * One The Peculiarly Political Problem behind Nigeria's Primary Health Care Provision MURRAY LAST * Two Who Are the "Public" in Public Health? Debating Crowds, Populations, and Publics in Tanzania REBECCA MARSLAND * Three The Qualities of Citizenship Private Pharmacists and the State in Senegal after Independence and Alternance NOEMI TOUSIGNANT * Part II REGIMES AND RELATIONS OF CARE * Four Regimes of Homework in AIDS Care Questions of Responsibility and the Imagination of Lives in Uganda LOTTE MEINERT * Five "Home-Based Care Is Not a New Thing" Legacies of Domestic Governmentality in Western Kenya HANNAH BROWN * Six Technologies of Hope Managing Cancer in a Kenyan Hospital BENSON A. MULEMI * Part III EMERGING LANDSCAPES OF PUBLIC HEALTH * Seven The Publics of the New Public Health Life Conditions and "Lifestyle Diseases" in Uganda SUSAN REYNOLDS WHYTE * Eight Navigating "Global Health" in an East African City RUTH J. PRINCE * Nine The Archipelago of Public Health Comments on the Landscape of Medical Research in Twenty-First-Century Africa P. WENZEL GEISSLER * Bibliography * Contributors * Index

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Book SynopsisIn the struggle against apartheid, one often overlooked group of crusaders was the coterie of black lawyers who overcame the Byzantine system that the government established oftentimes explicitly to block the paths of its black citizens from achieving justice.Now,

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Book SynopsisThe horrific tragedies of Central Africa in the 1990s riveted the attention of the world. But these crises did not occur in a historical vacuum.Trade Review“This collection is a fitting survey of a career dedicated to understanding the history of a place that came to dominate the world’s attention for a short period and the drifted back under the radar. The Land Beyond the Mists showcases some of the most innovative work in the field of African History in essays that explore the history of Rwanda, most importantly is western marches, and other pre-twentieth states of the Great Lakes region.”“The Land beyond the Mists is far more than a ‘must read’ for everyone interested in the history of Central Africa. It powerfully demonstrates the achievements of Africanist historiography over the last four decades and represents historical work at its best: empirically based, methodologically sophisticated, locally informed, broadly inclusive.” * African Studies Review *“The Land Beyond the Mists serves as a fitting testament to a distinguished career of scholarship devoted to unearthing overlooked perspectives into the deep past of an often neglected area of the continent.” * Journal of African History *“Newbury's essays … provide sophisticated approaches to understanding the recent troubled trajectory of the Kivu Rift Valley. … (A) rich collection that traces (Newbury’s) personal intellectual journey as much as it explores the tortuous history of the land beyond the mists.” * Africa: The Journal of the IAI *

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Book SynopsisLooks at the vernacular cosmopolitanism of a group of jazz players in Ghana, who have traveled widely, played with American jazz greats, and blended Coltrane with local instruments and philosophy. This book describes their cosmopolitan outlook as an accoustemology, a way of knowing the world through sound.Trade Review"How to evoke the brilliant insight and empathy of Steven Feld's acoustemological memoir of music and musicians in Accra? To start, imagine E. T. Mensah, Shirley Temple, John Coltrane, and Ludwig van Beethoven riding (quasi-legally) in the back of a vividly motto-festooned Ghanaian trotro truck, cool-running a memory-drenched, complexly overlapping soundscape of highlife evergreens, Afriphonic jazz hollers, hallelujah choruses, ratcheting sewer toads, and honking India-rubber bulb horns. Centered on the voices, stories, and ambitions of a compelling cast of characters—Ghanaian musicians whose diversely linked experiences chart the layered, contradictory flows and deep reefs of globalization—Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is a fundamental and stimulating contribution to the literature on musical cosmopolitanism and the study of contemporary urban culture in Africa.”—Christopher Waterman, Dean, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture"Steven Feld has written an astonishing book: at once a sweetly told adventure story, biographies of some very important but virtually unknown African musicians, a shrewd look at the world we live in and think we know, and hidden within it all, a sly critique of the history of jazz."—John F. Szwed, Director, Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University“[A] vital statement about the infinitely nuanced nature of cultural exchange between Africa and America, and how our fullest understanding of jazz history might be furthered by enquiries like this.” -- Kevin Le Gendre * Jazzwise *“A successful fusion of anthropology and aesthetics that illuminates the musical and cultural links—and differences—between African and American jazz, this is also a fascinating memoir of one person’s attempt to understand the urban culture of Ghana in an age of globalization.” * Publishers Weekly *“Feld reveals the high degree of cosmopolitanism in jazz-pop related musics and the huge role that race and class play in constraining the players. Deciphering the intertextuality of African American life and music requires an expert like Steven Feld. He has done a masterful job.” -- Philip K. Bock * Journal of Anthropological Research *“In addition to his effective usage of the storytelling mode, Feld provides an exemplary illustration of the seamless integration of multiple roles as a documentary filmmaker, musician, anthropologist, historian, and tour promoter. . . . Feld realizes that not all Ghanaians would view these musicians as cosmopolitans, but that fact seems to actually reinforce his discussion of the discourse on cosmopolitanism and its relationship to race, class, and other structures of power. Indeed, he opens many doors for his readers and tells us stories of why these types of music making are important beyond Ghana. He leads us to a more refined understanding of cosmopolitanism, not to provide a series of answers, but to provoke in each of us more thoughtful questions about our music, our research, and ourselves.” -- Dave Wilson * Ethnomusicology Review *“The chapters in which Feld listens and retells the stories of these mercurial musicians are compelling, and throw up original and profound material. . . . Feld is brilliant at articulating the multiple overlapping narratives and experiences that both obfuscate and animate diasporic dialogues, and in that process his book attains its own world-historical significance.” -- Tony Herrington * The Wire *“This fascinating book opens up jazz from the African perspective. Whether he’s discussing with Nortey the Africanization of his saxophone and his absolute dedication to the music of John Coltrane or explaining Ghanaba’s musical relationship with Max Roach, Feld brings a full picture to the broadening cultural aspects of Africans playing their own type of jazz.” -- Jon Ross * DownBeat *“With rich and diverse examples, Feld demonstrates the pervasiveness of cosmopolitan outlooks among jazz musicians in Accra, whether mobile or immobile, socially powerful or powerless, rich or poor… Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is an important theoretical intervention in ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ and a powerful narrative about jazz as an African diasporic art form from the standpoint of musicians in Accra.” -- Stephen Hager * Notes *“Jazz Cosmopolitanism is a lively and important book, one that uses the vehicles of dialogue and sound to unearth the complex cultural and political dynamics that connect a group of urban Africans to the diaspora and wider world. It is a fun, invigorating, and worthwhile read. . . . Jazz Cosmopolitanism is a book that continues to resonate when finally put down. I highly recommend picking it up.” -- Nate Plageman * Journal of African History *“A thoroughly humane and endearing narrative account of Feld’s attempt in Ghana, encumbered by the title ‘prof,’ recording and photographic equipment, a car, and many of the resources one expects from a citizen of the wealthiest nation on earth,to try and engage with and understand Accra’s musical landscape and especially those aspects of it which relate to jazz. It’s a joy to read. . . .” * African Jazz *“Feld’s brilliant work should have a broad impact and appeal, offering significant contributions and interventions to interdisciplinary discourses on jazz, Ghanaian music, cosmopolitanism, as well as (urban) Africa and its diaspora.” -- Paul Schauert * African Music *“An absolute delight. . . . Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra will not only become one of the most important studies in jazz scholarship; it will also provide a provocative indication of where and how culturally oriented music studies might develop.” -- Ronald Radano * Journal of Popular Music Studies *“A text to listen to... Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra is a prime example of substantial academic research presented in an accessible way.... With his combination of academic depth, collaborative approach, and aesthetic sensibility in this book, as in his other work, Steven Feld is a guiding light for us all: musicians, filmmakers, anthropologists in Ghana and further afield.” -- Helena Wulff * Visual Anthropology Review *Table of ContentsOpus xi Four-Bar Intro "The Shape of Jazz to Come" 1 Vamp In, HeadAcoustemology in Accra: On Jazz Cosmopolitanism 11 First Chorus, with TranspositionGuy Warren / Ghanaba: From Afro-Jazz to Handel via Max Roach 51 Second Chorus, Blow FreeNii Noi Nortey: From Pan-Africanism to Afrifones via John Coltrane 87 Third Chorus, Back InsideNii Otoo Annan: From Toads to Polyrhythm via Elvin Jones and Rashied Ali 119 Fourth Chorus, Shout to the GroovePor Por: From Honk Horns to Jazz Funerals via New Orleans 159 Head Again, Vamp OutBeyond Diasporic Intimacy 199 "Dedicated to You" 245 Horn Backgrounds, Riffs Underneath 249 Themes, Players 299

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Perhaps no religion has been more maligned and misrepresented than Vodu, Vodún, Vaudou, or Voodoo. Spirit Service engages the top scholars of Vodún in the world to capture the diversity and vitality of this quintessential African religion in a single volume, while at the same time offering a timely and vigorous counternarrative and testament to the Black religious imagination in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Indeed, Spirit Service is a tour de force in scale and scope, examining themes as important as they are riveting—art, performance, ritual, healing, resistance, funerary rights. Each treatment captures a complexity of the whole that is Vodún—highlighting the profound ways in which this religion has continued to adapt, rebuild, and reclaim all that is African religion. A must-read for students of African studies, history, religious studies, anthropology, and performance studies."—Nwando Achebe, Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History, Michigan State University"The religious systems known as Vodu, Vodún, Vaudou, Voodoo, Gorovodu, and more have never been so thoroughly explored, interpreted, interrogated, and esteemed as by the writers of this lavish collection. The fourteen chapters in this volume provide extraordinarily diverse descriptions and narratives that allow readers to understand in abundant detail how Vodún (etc.) is not a single religion, but rather a vast global proliferation of sacred beliefs and practices that are in many ways related to one another, yet significantly different from place to place and through different historical periods. Readers will appreciate not only the diversity of forms and intentions of spirit service, but also that of the writers' relationships to their subjects, their closeness to the rituals or their more scientific distance, their identification (or not) with the community they study, their attention to performance, passion, aesthetics, rapture; and finally to political issues, class and race, state intervention, colonialism and its violence. This collection is an excellent and necessary addition to anthropology, history, and religious studies courses on Haiti, Voodoo in the U.S., African cultures, world religions, religious ritual and performance, art, and more."—Judy Rosenthal, Professor Anthropology Emeritus, University of Michigan, Flint"An impressive overview of Beninese Vodún and Haitian Vodou, this volume explores their various manifestations on both sides of the Atlantic. The essays in this anthology examine Vodún and Vodou's common history, their integration in their respective communities, their encounter with Christianity and Islam, and their remarkable adaptability to various social and economic changes. The Middle Passage and chattel slavery, and of late the migration of Vodún and Vodou to many parts of the world has transformed their sacred traditions to produce a multiverse of symbolic forms and has altered their beliefs and ritual practices. The authors examine the current forms of Vodún and Vodou as well as their continuity and discontinuity with their past. Vital for historians of religion, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists, this book is likely to be an authoritative collection of essays and an important resource for scholarly research for years to come."—Leslie G. Desmangles, Professor Religious Studies Emeritus, Trinity CollegeTable of ContentsIntroduction, by Christian Vannier and Timothy R. LandryPart I: Encounter1. Vodou Genesis: Africans and the Making of a National Religion in Saint-Domingue, by Terry Rey2. Universalism and Syncretism in Beninese Vodún, by Douglas J. Falen3. Crossing Currents: Gorovodu and Yewevodu in Contemporary Togo, by Eric James Montgomery4. A Prayer for a Muslim Spirit: Islam in Gorovodu, by Christian Vannier5. Where Have All the Ounsi Gone?, by Karen Richman6. Sailing between Local and Global: Vodou in the Modern and Contemporary Arts of Haiti, by Natacha Giafferi-DombrePart II: Engagement7. Taking Hold of a Faith, by Jeffrey E. Anderson8. The Physic(s)ality of Vodún and the (Mis)behavior of Matter, by Venise N. Adjibodou9. Vodou Skins: Making Bodily Surfaces Social in Haitian Vodou Infant-Care, by Alissa M. Jordan10. Spirited Forests and the West African Forest Complex, by Timothy R. Landry11. Vodou, an Inclusive Epistemology: Towards A Queer Eco-Theology of Liberation, by Nixon Cleophat12. Necroscape and Diaspora: Making Ancestors in Haitian Vodou, by Elizabeth McAlister13. Conclusion: Global Vodún and Vodou: Encounter and Engagement, by Eric James Montgomery and Timothy R. LandryIndex

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Book SynopsisLonglisted for South Africa's 2022 Sunday Times Non-fiction Award Definitive and gripping narrative history of the Communist Party of South Africa. Renowned historian Tom Lodge has written an immensely readable and compelling sweep of history, spanning continents and the last hundred years, producing the first comprehensive account of the South African Communist Party in all its intricacies. Taking the story back to the party's pre-history in the early 20th century reveals that it was shaped by a range of socialist traditions and that their influence persisted and were decisive. The party's engagement in popular front politics after 1935 has been largely uncharted: this book supplies fresh detail. In the 1940s the author shows how the party became a key actor in the formation of black working-class politics, and hitherto unused archival materials as well as the insights from an increasingly candid genre of autobiographies make possible a much fuller picture of the secret party of 1952 to 1965. Despite its concealment and tiny numbers, its intellectual impact on black South African mainstream politics was considerable. On the exile period, the author examines the activities of the party's recruits and more informal following inside South Africa, as well as the scope and nature of its broader influence. In 1990, a year in which global politics would change fundamentally, South African communists would return to South Africa to begin the work of reconstructing their party as a legal organisation. Throughout its history, the party had been inspired and supported by the reality of existing socialism, state systems embracing half of Europe and Asia, in which the ruling group was at least notionally committed to the building of communist societies. With the fall of Eastern European regimes and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, one key set of material foundations for the party's programmatic beliefs crumbled and its most important international alliances in the global socialist community in Eastern Europe and Russia would end. Finally, Lodge brings the story up to date, assessing the degree to which communists both inside and outside government have shaped and influenced policy in successive ANC-led administrations, particularly during the popular resistance to apartheid during the 1950s, which was underpinned by the party's systematic organisation in the localities that supplied the ANC with its strongest bases. Jacana: Africa, IndiaTrade ReviewTom Lodge's in-depth, scholarly work is a landmark achievement. -- Jeremy Cronin * Journal of Asian and African Studies *Lodge provides a richly detailed history of the party's vicissitudes and victories; individuals - their ideas, attitudes and activities - are sensitively located within their context ... Without doubt, this book will become a central text for students of communism in South Africa, of the party's links with Russia and the socialist bloc, and of the Communist Party's changing relations with African nationalism - before, during and after three decades of exile. * BBrief *Probably no-one else other than Tom Lodge, who is so thoroughly versed in the details as well as the grand trajectory of the popular struggles against colonialism and apartheid in South Africa could have written what will become the gold standard of histories of the South African Communist Party (SACP). ... Apart from anything else, it is quite simply a gripping read. ... Lodge's ability to combine survey of grand direction, debate with other historians, and intimate detail of the party's ups-and-downs, shifts and survival against odds is truly exemplary. -- Roger Southall * Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa *'A master of the historical yarn, Tom Lodge tells the amazing story of the enigmatic, resilient and chameleonic South African Communist Party. Detailed, meticulously researched and a page turner, the book effortlessly navigates the twists and turns of the red road travelled by idealists and realists who found themselves members of a party that sought to build a society run by workers. Why was the party leadership unable or unwilling, over a century of political activity, to fly the red flag consistently high and instead chose to tie the fate of the vanguard of the working class to that of a nationalist movement, the African National Congress? What are the chances of the party realising its supreme goal of a socialist society given the current situation? These are the questions that Lodge deftly and incisively addresses through a close and critical study of all the scholarly sources and his own independent research. This book is arguably the definitive history of the SACP to date. A must-read for all militants, historians and those interested in understanding the continued influence of the party in South African politics.' * Dr Trevor Ngwane, University of Johannesburg *'Red Road is a fascinating and dispassionate history of "the party" and its role in the South African liberation struggle. Lodge tackles the big questions without flinching, while also capturing the nuances of a complex context. He presents a detailed and integrated narrative of a century of struggle, which does not shy away from the many controversies involved.' * Professor Janet Cherry, Nelson Mandela University *A magisterial account, not just of the South African Communist Party, but of a current of thinking and acting that did so much to shape political struggles in South Africa for a century.' * Jonny Steinberg, Yale University *'Lodge provides a richly detailed history of the party's vicissitudes and victories; individuals - their ideas, attitudes and activities - are sensitively located within their context; the text provides a fascinating sociology of the South African left over time. Lodge is adept at making explicit what the key questions and issues are for different periods; and he answers these with analyses and conclusions that are judicious, clearly stated and meticulously argued. Without doubt, this book will become a central text for students of communism in South Africa, of the party's links with Russia and the socialist bloc, and of the Communist Party's changing relations with African nationalism - before, during and after three decades of exile.' * Professor Colin Bundy, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford *Table of ContentsPreface 1. Just like Russia: Revolutionary Socialists in the Cape and the Transvaal, 1890-1921 2. CPSA: Early History, 1921-1926 3. Native Republic, 1927-1932 4. Factions and Fronts, 1932-1939 5. Patriotic Unity: The Communist Party of South Africa during the 1940s 6. Secret Party: South African Communists between 1950 and 1965 7. Out of Africa, 1965-1977 8. Mayibuye iAfrika, 1977-1990 9. Post-Communism and the South African Communist Party

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Book Synopsis'Long before the friends of African freedom began to agitate for black freedom, the enslaved themselves had created their own strategies of resistance. In time, their defiance was to prove the crucial final factor in bringing down slavery itself.' James Walvin, in Freedom

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A compelling historical reconstruction…. [A]n analysis distinguished by its utter respect for the specificity of historical experience."—Irene Grendzier,The Nation"Mahmood Mamdani's powerful new volume challenges the established wisdom of Africanists concerning the European colonial impact on Africa and Africa's postcolonial settlement…. [I]mpressive."—Robert L. Tignor,American Historical Review"This book explores a provocative and original thesis about African politics, with the vigor and rigor that readers of Professor Mamdani's earlier work will expect. Anyone who cares to understand the state in contemporary Africa—anyone who wants to understand the current situation on the continent at all—would do well to read this new book. Whether you agree or disagree, this is a book to learn from."—Kwame Anthony Appiah"Mahmood Mamdani is one of the most original thinkers writing about Africa today. His skills in comparative analysis and conceptual refinement are strikingly illustrated in this volume."—Ali A. Mazrui, Institute for Global Studies, SUNY–Binghamton"Citizen and Subjectis going to be a verynecessarybook. Mamdani's exposition, of a rare clarity, offers us a broadness of vision based upon experience and knowledge always informed by his profound perceptiveness."—Breyten Breytenbach, South African writer

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Book SynopsisIn Rage and Carnage in the Name of God, Abiodun Alao examines the emergence of a culture of religious violence in postindependence Nigeria, where Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions have all been associated with violence. He investigates the root causes and historical evolution of Nigeria’s religious violence, locating it in the forced coming together of disparate ethnic groups under colonial rule, which planted the seeds of discord that religion, elites, and domestic politics exploit. Alao discusses the histories of Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions in the territory that became Nigeria, the effects of colonization on the role of religion, the development of Islamic radicalization and its relation to Christian violence, the activities of Boko Haram, and how religious violence intermixes with politics and governance. In so doing, he uses religious violence as a way to more fully understand intergroup relations in contemporary Nigeria.Trade Review"Throughout this insightful book, [Alao] explores both post-independence Nigeria’s history and the global religious movements in their connection with religious violence. ... The book will be useful for students, researchers, policymakers and anyone who is interested in understanding the religious violence in Nigeria beyond the narratives that are common in the media." -- Adeyemi Balogun * Religion *"Abiodun Alao’s book is an interesting contribution to the literature on religious violence in Nigeria – a country where religious and ethnic divides come into play at all times. ... It offers a compelling explanation of the dynamics as well as the divergence between Christianity, Islam, and traditional religion in Nigeria. This book will definitely open up more discussions and debates on religiously motivated violence in Nigeria." -- Zainab Mai-Bornu * Religion, State & Society *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Of Nigeria, Religion, and Violence 1 1. Religion and Nigerian Society 19 2. Islam and Violence in Nigeria 45 3. Christianity and Violence in Nigeria 77 4. Traditional Religions and Violence in Nigeria 101 5. Boko Haram and the New Phase of Violence 115 6. National Politics, Intergroup Relations, and Religious Violence in Nigeria 153 7. The Economics of Religious Violence in Nigeria 189 8. Nigeria's Religious Violence in the Context of Global Politics 207 Conclusion: The Impossibility of the Best and the Unlikelihood of the Worst 225 Notes 239 Bibliography 267 Index 285

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Book SynopsisDynasties Intertwined traces the turbulent relationship between the Zirids of Ifriqiya and the Normans of Sicily during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In doing so, it reveals the complex web of economic, political, cultural, and military connections that linked the two dynasties to each other and to other polities across the medieval Mediterranean. Furthermore, despite the contemporary interfaith holy wars happening around the Zirids and Normans, their relationship was never governed by an overarching ideology like jihad or crusade. Instead, both dynasties pursued policies that they thought would expand their power and wealth, either through collaboration or conflict. The relationship between the Zirids and Normans ultimately came to a violent end in the 1140s, when a devastating drought crippled Ifriqiya. The Normans seized this opportunity to conquer lands across the Ifriqiyan coast, bringing an end to the Zirid dynasty and forming the Norman kingdom of ATable of ContentsIntroduction: Writing the History of the Zirids and Normans 1. Geographic Orientations and the Rise of the Fatimids 2. The Contest for Sicily in the Eleventh Century 3. Commerce and Conflict from 1087 to 1123 4. The End of the Emirate and the Beginning of the Kingdom 5. The Norman Kingdom of Africa 6. The Fall of Norman Africa and the Legacy of Zirid-Norman Interactions Epilogue

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Book SynopsisCan't!’ is not a word in Chaplin’s vocabulary. From humble beginnings he realised that the only way to change his world was to act ? a philosophy that has stood him good stead ever since, first with a 26 year-career in banking from which he took the bold step to establish the South African Ubuntu Foundation.Trade ReviewKevin stands tall as one of South Africa’s most visionary, selfless and unifying leaders. Brett Tollman, Chief Executive, The Travel Corporation I know Kevin to be a very determined and solution-driven person, who through commitment and very astute managerial skills, was able to ensure that the Amy Foundation would survive and thrive. Ahmed Kathrada, political activist, Rivonia trialist, ANC MPTable of ContentsForeword; Preface; 1. My early childhood; 2. Upon finishing school; 3. Joining Barclays Bank and early married life; 4. Semi-grating to Johannesburg; 5. Shifting landscapes; 6. Four years to turn the tide in Cape Town; 7. Inspiring mentors; 8. Corporate Social Investment/Responsibility (CSI/CSR); 9. To leave or not to leave; 10. The calling of Ubuntu – ‘that which unites’; 11. My four-point SA Ubuntu business plan; 12. Musings of a keynote speaker; 13. Amy Biehl Foundation on the horizon; 14. Leaping to the rescue; 15. From fairways to staffing; 16. Hosting Ubuntu festivals; 17. Creating sustainability by diversifying income; 18. New name, new logo; 19. Making the impossible, possible; 20. Current Amy Foundation programmes; 21. When bad things happen to good people – how to not only survive but thrive again; 22. Ukuhamba kukubona – Travel opens a window to the world; 23. EAICY board adventures; 24. Combating racism and anti-semitism; 25. Building international partnerships; 26. Keeping my dreams alive; In Conclusion; Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisThe top-secret archives of the apartheid government are slowly becoming public, including information aboutPrisoner 913: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. In this book, the authors draw on a secret apartheid-era archive to reconstruct the history we thought we knew. The archive reveals the truth of the months that lead to Nelson Mandela's release.

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Book SynopsisAn in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuriesIn My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a four-hundred-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Parker considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time. From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, Parker shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world's moTrade Review"[A] bold, sweeping analysis of the actions of the living in commemorating the dead over several centuries of Ghana’s history." * Choice Reviews *

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Book SynopsisA brief yet lively introduction to antiapartheid activist Steve Biko, this biography argues that Biko was the most important political figure to have emerged in South Africa between Nelson Mandela's arrest in the early 1960s and his release in 1990. Written by some of the leading experts in their fields, this informative and accessible volume demonstrates just how fundamental Biko was to the transformation of South Africa in the second half of the 20th century—and how relevant he remains today. The book covers his life and thought, his influence and his legacy, as well as the impact Biko had on the Black Power movement.

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Book Synopsis"After existing orally for hundreds of years, Sunjata was written down in the 20th century. David Conrad, who recorded a new version of the epic, has now crafted a prose translation that preserves the oral flavor of live performance. The result is a captivating work of literature that will finally give the story of Sunjata its well-deserved place among the great epics of world literature." —Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard UniversityTrade Review"Conrad's translation seems to me much clearer and more accessible than Niane’s 1965 rendering. In addition, Conrad's notes are exceedingly useful. His maps, and his notes on the maps, are terrific. "The Sunjata epic speaks to the founding of the great empire of Mali. The introduction situates the epic in the world of the Mande, as a people, culture, and group of languages; it also provides the context for the epic, and explains the meaning of a "bard," origin mythologies, linkage with a founding ancestor, as well as events and their cosmic interpretations. "[In this translation we can hear] a powerful griot voice, chanting about histories, singing about heroes and genealogies, and reciting poetry on memories, all accomplished in ways to give us an expansive entry into the past of a world that forcefully speaks to the present, inviting wonder and imagination about the possibilities for a greater future." —Toyin Falola, University of Texas Austin, and author of A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt"This new prose translation has preserved both the literary aesthetic and the intimacy of a griot performance, while at the same time creating a very readable text. To me, this prose translation is–in spite of absence of some songs typical for the Sunjata narrative–an excellent visualization in print of a performance of the Sunjata epic, in all its complexity. . . . I believe wholeheartedly that this prose translation will reveal to [readers] the beauty of one of the greatest works of mankind." —Jan Jansen, University of Leiden, in Canadian Journal of African Studies"Conrad's translation seems to me much clearer and more accessible than [previous] renderings. In addition, Conrad's notes are exceedingly useful. His maps, and his notes on the maps, are terrific. "The Sunjata epic speaks to the founding of the great empire of Mali. Conrad’s Introduction situates the epic in the world of the Mande, as a people, culture, and group of languages; it also provides the context for the epic, and explains the meaning of a ‘bard,’ origin mythologies, linkage with a founding ancestor, as well as events and their cosmic interpretations. "[In this translation we can hear] a powerful griot voice, chanting about histories, singing about heroes and genealogies, and reciting poetry on memories, all accomplished in ways to give us an expansive entry into the past of a world that forcefully speaks to the present, inviting wonder and imagination about the possibilities for a greater future." —Toyin Falola, Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, The University of Texas at Austin

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Book SynopsisThis seminal book reveals how black labour was exploited in twentieth-century South Africa, the human costs of which are still largely hidden from history. It was the people of southern Mozambique, bent double beneath the historical loads of forced labour and slavery, then sold off en masse as contracted labourers, who paid the highest price for South African gold. An iniquitous intercolonial agreement for the exploitation of ultra-cheap black labour was only made possible through nightly use of the steam locomotive on the transnational railway linking Johannesburg and Lourenço Marques. These night trains left deep scars in the urban and rural cultures of black communities, whether in the form of popular songs or a belief in nocturnal witches' trains that captured and conveyed zombie workers to the region's most unpopular places of employment. By tracing the journeys undertaken by black migrants, Charles van Onselen powerfully reconstructs how racial thinking, expressed logistically, reflected the evolving systems of segregation and apartheid. On the night trains, the last stop was always hell.Trade Review'The great master of social history, van Onselen, provides us an unsurpassable lesson in the commodification and disposal of human life.' -- James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University'Fierce and lyrical, furious and humane, this is the work of a master historian.' -- Professor James Campbell, Department of History, Stanford University‘Occasionally, social history research shines a piercing light on the entanglement of transport and society. Van Onselen’s dazzling study of just one train route is about journeys loaded with fear, loathing and contempt. The Night Trains is a devastating account of human burden and wreckage.’ -- Gordon Pirie, African Centre for Cities, UCT‘If you have never known about the fourteen-coach up-train 804 and the down-train 307, and their cargo of Mozambican men in cattle wagons, shuttling between Ressano Garcia, in Mozambique, that captured source of mine-bound labour, and Booysens railway station in Johannesburg, that mining hub in Southern Africa hungry for cheap labour, you are now about to know. You will know about colonial visions and the brutal mining origins of South African capitalism. It is an effect that will never let go of you. And then you will ask: where is South Africa today; where is it going? And you will ponder for a long time.’ -- Prof Njabulo S Ndebele, Chairman of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town‘The place of technology in social affairs is never neutral. But some are less neutral than others. Writing with deep empathy and evocation for the ordinary people in history for which he has become so uniquely capable, Charles van Onselen tells the story of the role of the locomotive in regimenting, deceiving, ensnaring, holding, destroying, indeed sucking in and puffing out, the thousands of Mozambican miners who came to work the mines of South Africa in the early 20th century. Nelson Mandela named his Presidential residence in Pretoria Mahlamba Ndlopfu (Tsonga for ‘new dawn’) in honour of the people of Southern Mozambique who made (some in) South Africa prosper. Charles van Onselen documents why.’ -- Wilmot James, Visiting Professor at Columbia University and author of Our Precious Metal: African labour in South Africa’s Gold Industry 1970-1990

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Book SynopsisMorgan Tsvangirai's dramatic political battle with Zimbabwe's dictatorial monolith Robert Mugabe stands as one of the most intriguing and important world events of recent times--this is his autobiography From village life as the son of a humble carpenter to struggling for power with Mugabe as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, this is Morgan Tsvangirai's amazing story. Once an avid supporter of Mugabe's party Zanu-PF, Tsvangirai grew to detest their violence and oppression, leading him to found the Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai deployed basic but effective tools of national resistance with clear vision and exceptional courage, despite multiple arrests and severe beatings. His successful formation of a coalition government kept alive Zimbabwe's hopes of peace and democracy, establishing Tsvangirai as a luminary in a continent all too often known for bloody leadership.Trade Review"I obviously have extraordinary admiration for the courage and the tenacity that the Prime Minister has shown in navigating through some very difficult political times in Zimbabwe. . . . I'm grateful to him for his leadership, for his courage, and I'm looking forward to being a partner with him in the years to come." --President Barack Obama, June 2009

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive history of the Seychelles, this volume traces its periods of colonisation by France and Britain, the immobile years of the twentieth century, the granting of independence in 1976, and the social changes precipitated by tourism in the late-1990s.Trade Review'Scarr has produced an extremely readable book on the history of the Seychelle islands. ... He has also masterfully captured the capriciousness of the Seychelles elite ... under colonial rule.' - African Affairs

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive exploration, spanning 1,300 years, of the art and culture of the Sahel region of Africa This groundbreaking volume examines the extraordinary artistic and cultural traditions of the African region known as the Sahel (“shore” in Arabic), a vast area on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert that includes present-day Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad. This is the first book to present a comprehensive overview of the diverse cultural achievements and traditions of the region, spanning more than 1,300 years from the pre-Islamic period through the 19th century. It features some of the earliest extant art from Africa as well as such iconic works as sculptures by the Dogon and Bamana peoples of Mali. Essays by leading international scholars discuss the art, architecture, archaeology, literature, philosophy, religion, and history of the Sahel, exploring the unique cultural landscape in which these ancient communities flourished. Richly illustrated and brilliantly argued, Sahel brings to life the enduring creativity of the different peoples who lived, traded, and traveled through this crossroads of the world.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (January 29–May 10, 2020)Trade Review“Take[s] seriously the task of rewriting history [and] rather than focusing on trade itself, centres on the vibrant eponymous region”—Andrew Sears, 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual

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Book SynopsisIdentifying with Nationality traces the advent of modern citizenship to multinational, transimperial settings such as turn-of-the-century colonial Alexandria, where ordinary people abandoned old identifiers and grasped nationality as the best means to access the protections promised by expanding states.Trade ReviewWhat nationality are you? In his stunning book, Will Hanley follows this modern question deep into the social existence of ordinary Alexandrians, demonstrating the contradictory effects of its imposition. The results open a portal, not simply on a unique city in the tumultuous years between Ottoman rule and Egyptian semi-sovereignty, but also on a pivotal global experience that historians have missed. In this lucidly written and well-researched book, Hanley rewrites the history of international law and intervenes brilliantly in multiple literatures. A must-read. -- Samuel Moyn, Harvard University, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal WorldHanley's book is a superb historical and sociolegal account of the rise of nationality—the universal regime of legal identification that captures what is unique about the modern world. Along the way, Hanley vividly captures the loss of another world: of concrete and heterogeneous forms of life that sought protection in other networks of affiliation. I recommend this remarkably researched and beautifully written book to scholars in Middle Eastern studies, and also to anyone who is thinking about a key characteristic of our world—the persistence of statelessness. -- Samera Esmeir, University of California, BerkeleyIdentifying with Nationality is a magisterial investigation into Alexandria's diverse population, which comprised interwoven European, colonial, local, imperial, and national entities. Will Hanley examines this patchwork setting, clarifies that nationality at the end of the nineteenth century was a European privilege, and explores the process by which it would become what it is today: the most fundamental human right. An illuminating masterpiece. -- Patrick Weil, vsiting professor of law and Oscar M. Ruebhausen Distinguished Senior Fellow, Yale UniversityWith its close and textured descriptions and analysis, Hanley’s book sheds important new light on the social history of an important port city. . . . Anybody who is interested in late Ottoman Egypt will find it impossible to ignore this book. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *The arguments that this book advances are elegantly constructed and undergirded with brilliant research. They are made even more impressive by writing that shows real élan. Hanley’s work offers a major contribution to Egyptian and Ottoman history that should also be required reading for historians of Europe and the wider Mediterranean. -- Alex Chase-Levenson * English Historical Review *An extremely original and illuminating study. It opens up an entirely new field of historical research exploring the construction of modern human frameworks of identity in Egypt and the Middle East. . . . Hanley's attention to both the particular and the global, to the national and the transnational/international, makes his book an indispensable work, not only for students of the Middle East, but also for anybody interested in the formation of modern nationality, nationalism, and citizenship. * International Journal of Middle East Studies *Groundbreaking. . . . Richly detailed and beautifully written. . . . Hanley sheds new light on the origins and spread of the nation-state system in the Mediterranean world. * Review of Middle East Studies *An outstanding study of the imposition of nationality in imperial Alexandria. Highly recommended. * Choice *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsList of TablesAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Nationality GraspedPart I: Settings1. Vulgar Cosmopolitanism2. KeywordsPart II: Means3. Papers4. Census5. Money6. MarriagePart III: Other Nationalities7. Europeans8. Foreigners9. Protégés10. Bad Subjects11. Ottomans12. LocalsEpilogue: Egyptians in a World of Universal NationalityNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisAs a boy growing up in 1970s Johannesburg Mark Gevisser would play 'Dispatcher', a game that involved sitting in his father's parked car (or in the study) and sending imaginary couriers on routes across the city, mapped out from Holmden's Register of Johannesburg. As the imaginary fleet made its way across the troubled city and its tightly bound geographies, so too did the young dispatcher begin to figure out his own place in the world. At the centre of Lost and Found in Johannesburg is the account of a young boy who is obsessed with maps and books, and other boys. Mark Gevisser's account of growing up as the gay son of Jewish immigrants, in a society deeply affected - on a daily basis - by apartheid and its legacy, provides a uniquely layered understanding of place and history. It explores a young man's maturation into a fully engaged and self-aware citizen, first of his city, then of his country and the world beyond. This is a story of memory, identity and an intensely personal relationship with the City of Gold. It is also the story of a violent home invasion and its aftermath, and of a man's determination to reclaim his home town.

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Book SynopsisApartheid, ironically, provided Grant Farred with the optimal conditions for thinking. He describes South Africa’s apartheid regime as an intellectual force that, “Made thinking apartheid, more than anything else, an absolute necessity.” The Perversity of Gratitude is a provocative book in which Farred reflects on an upbringing resisting apartheid. Although he is still inclined to struggle viscerally against apartheid, he acknowledges, “It is me.” Unsentimental about his education, Farred’s critique recognizes the impact of four exceptional teachers—all engaging pedagogical figures who cultivated a great sense of possibility in how thinking could be learned through a disenfranchised South African education.The Perversity of Gratitude brings to bear the work of influential philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. The book tackles broad philosophical concepts—transgression, withdrawal,Trade Review“Farred offers readers who dare a perverse anthropology of ‘the surprising intellectual processes that were put into motion precisely because of the violence that the apartheid regime intended its policies to enact on the disenfranchised mind.’ Both loving tribute to his intellectual influences and unsparing theorizing of the conditions of his education, Farred brings apartheid thinking, as a ‘primal scene,’ home to Heidegger and Derrida. Relentless in its audacity, dizzying in its intellectual reach and range, this book thinks—with rigor, ferocity, and grace—the unthinkable.”—Dana D. Nelson, Nancy Perot Chair of English and Professor of American Studies at Vanderbilt University, and author of Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People“Existential, confessional, deconstructive, self-reflexive, linguistically fraught, restlessly philosophic, The Perversity of Gratitude is autopoetic theorizing at its best, connecting worldliness with self, the word with the world, and meditative serenity with political turbulence. Grant Farred’s situated and grateful thinking transforms the ugly and given context of apartheid into a rich pretext for the only kind of learning that is worth the effort: learning against the grain.”—R. Radhakrishnan, Distinguished Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of History, the Human, and the World Between

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Book SynopsisThe Lower !Garib, or Orange River flows through the historical Namaqualand and since 1990 has formed the international border between Namibia and South Africa. The contributors to his volume focus on this hardly discussed stretch of the Orange River to understand the region's social history, geography, and economy. It brings together scholars from Namibia, South Africa, and overseas, as well as the knowledge and analysis from people living in the region. In concise chapters and short portraits, they discuss the region's past and present from a variety of perspectives.

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Book SynopsisIn his annual presidential address on 8 January 1986, ANC president Oliver Tambo called on South Africans to make apartheid ungovernable through armed action and militant struggle. But unknown to the world, on that very day, the quiet-spoken mathematics teacher and aspirant priest turned reluctant revolutionary had also set up a secret think tank in Lusaka, which he named the Constitution Committee, giving it an ‘ad hoc unique exercise’ that had ‘no precedent in the history of the movement’. Knowing that all wars end at a negotiating table, and judging the balance of forces to be moving in favour of the liberation movement, Tambo wanted the ANC to hold the initiative after the fall of apartheid. Assisted by Pallo Jordan, he instructed his new think tank to formulate the principles and draft the outlines of a constitution that could unite South Africa when the time came to talk in the fledgling days of freedom and democracy. The seven-member team, including Albie Sachs, Kader Asmal and Zola Skweyiya, started deliberating and reporting to Tambo. In correspondence, they typically addressed him as ‘Dear Comrade President’. Drawing on the personal archives of participants, Dear Comrade President explains how the purposeful first steps were taken in the making of South Africa’s Constitution. Why and how did this process happen? What were the first written words? When and where were they put on paper? By whom? What values did they espouse? And how did the committee’s work fit into the broader struggle? This book answers these questions in new, paradigm-shifting ways.

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Book SynopsisIn the timber plantations in northeastern South Africa, laborers work long hours among tall, swaying lines of eucalypts, on land once theirs. In 2008, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, timber corporations distributed hot cooked meals as a nutrition intervention to bolster falling productivity and profits. But life and sustenance are about much more than calories and machinic bodies. What is at stake is the nurturing of capacity across all domains of life—physical, relational, cosmological—in the form of amandla. An Nguni word meaning power, strength or capacity, amandla organizes ordinary concerns with one’s abilities to earn a wage, to strengthen one’s body, and to take care of others; it describes the potency of medicines and sexual vitality; and it captures a history of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle for freedom. The ordinary actions coordinated by and directed at amandla do not obscure the wounding effects of plantation labor or the long history of racial oppression, but rather form the basis of what the Algerian artist Kader Attia calls repair. In this captivating ethnography, Cousins examines how amandla, as the primary material of the work of repair, anchors ordinary scenes of living and working in and around the plantations. As a space of exploitation that enables the global paper and packaging industry to extract labor power, the plantation depends on the availability of creative action in ordinary life to capitalize on bodily capacity. The Work of Repair is a fine-grained exploration of the relationships between laborers in the timber plantations of KwaZulu-Natal, and the historical decompositions and reinventions of the milieu of those livelihoods and lives. Offering a fresh approach to the existential, ethical and political stakes of ethnography from and of late liberal South Africa, the book attends to urgent questions of postapartheid life: the fate of employment; the role of the state in providing welfare and access to treatment; the regulation of popular curatives; the queering of kinship; and the future of custom and its territories. Through detailed descriptions, Cousins explicates the important and fragile techniques that constitute the work of repair: the effort to augment one’s capacity in a way that draws on, acknowledges, and reimagines the wounds of history, keeping open the possibility of a future through and with others.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Repair and the Question of Capacity | 1 1 Labor Power and Amandla | 37 2 The Plantation and the Making of a Labor Regime | 58 3 The Game of Marriage | 88 4 Repair and the Substance of Others | 115 5 In the Vicinity of the Social | 144 Conclusion: The Work of Repair | 181 Acknowledgments | 197 Notes | 201 Bibliography | 277 Index | 319

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Book SynopsisFrom one of Africa’s most influential and eloquent essayists, a posthumous collection that highlights his biting satire and subversive wisdom on topics from travel to cultural identity to sexuality“A fierce literary talent . . . [Wainaina] shines a light on his continent without cliché.”—The Guardian“Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. . . . Africa is to be pitied, worshipped, or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.”Binyavanga Wainaina was a pioneering voice in African literature, an award-winning memoirist and essayist remembered as one of the greatest chroniclers of contemporary African life. This groundbreaking collection brings together, for the first time, Wainaina’s pioneering writing on the African continent, including many

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Map of Cited Departure Points and Stepping Stones of Suez Canal Migrants Introduction 1 • A Universal Meeting Point on the Isthmus of Suez 2 • Like a Beehive: Race and Gender on the Suez Worksites 3 • A Semilawless Borderland: The Presence of These People Could Bring Evil 4 • Entertainment in Port Said, a Sink of Immoral Filth Conclusion: It Would Be Wonderful If It Were Not Unhappy Postscript Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWriter Tanya Zack and photographer Mark Lewis offer a stunning portrait of Johannesburg and personal stories of its residents, showing how its urban transformation occurs not in a series of dramatic, widescale changes but in the everyday lives, actions, and dreams of individuals.Trade Review"These pieces are sometimes sad, sometimes inspiring, and add up to a complicated picture of a city of contradictions. . . . Wake Up, This Is Joburg tells its range of interesting stories well, through on-the-ground reporting, with ample interviews and context, letting a variety of people around Johannesburg talk about both the struggles and successes of everyday life in the inner city." -- Jeff Fleischer * Foreword *"Wake Up, This Is Joburg effectively frames Johannesburg as one of the continent’s most important entrepôts where people journey from various nodes of the country and continent to earn a decent living. Rather than criminalise their activities, these stories provoke readers to ‘wake up’ and pay attention to those who make this city a fascinating but enigmatic place to live." -- Denise L. Lim * Urban Studies *"There is rich nuance in Tanya Zack’s flowing, sensitive narrative and Mark Lewis’s striking photography. The stories they tell are deeply human and individualised, yet cleverly interwoven within Johannesburg’s broader racial, social and economic anomalies. . . . This is an extraordinary book, with beautiful, powerful photographs and a sensitive, robust and accessible narrative. It provides a fresh perspective on life, struggle, survival, creativity and uniqueness in one of Africa’s major cities." -- Chris Heymans * litnet *"As a collection of salient imagery and anecdotes, the book is a poignant refutation of the cultural anger gripping White South African communities, and a visually arresting plea to recognise the city as an important cosmopolitan hub. As South Africa’s metropoles continue to undergo major political change, Wake Up, This Is Joburg is a critical reminder that it is the barriers to integration constructed by the white political class that have created the country’s political woes." -- Joe Konieczny * Visual Studies *Table of ContentsForeword. True Places / Achal Prabhala ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1. S’kop 27 2. Tony Dreams in Yellow and Blue 53 3. Inside Out 81 4. Zola 115 5. Good Riddance 143 6. Tea at Anstey’s 175 7. Bedroom 211 8. Master Mansions 241 9. Johannesburg. Made in China 271 10. Undercity 305 References 337 Index 339

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Book SynopsisThis book reads like a war-time thriller.We hear for the first time from internationalists who secretly worked for the ANC''s armed wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), in the struggle to liberate South Africa from apartheid rule. They acted as couriers, provided safe houses in the neighbouring states and within South Africa, helped infiltrate combatants across borders, and smuggled tonnes of weapons into the country in the most creative of ways.Driven by a spirit of international solidarity, they were prepared to take huge risks and face danger which dogged them at every turn. At least three were captured and served long terms of imprisonment, while others were arrested and, following international pressure, deported.They reveal what motivated them as volunteers, not mercenaries, who gained nothing for their endeavours save for the self-esteem in serving a just cause.Against such clandestine involvement, the book includes contributions from key role players in

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Book SynopsisNew oral histories from Black Namibian and Angolan troops who fought in apartheid South Africa's security forces reveal their involvement, and its impact on their lives, to be far more complicated than most historical scholarship has acknowledged.In anticolonial struggles across the African continent, tens of thousands of African soldiers served in the militaries of colonial and settler states. In southern Africa, they often made up the bulk of these militaries and, in some contexts, far outnumbered those who fought in the liberation movements' armed wings. Despite these soldiers'' significant impact on the region's military and political history, this dimension of southern Africa's anticolonial struggles has been almost entirely ignored in previous scholarship.Black troops from Namibia and Angola spearheaded apartheid South Africa's military intervention in their countries' respective anticolonial war and postindependence civil war. Drawing from oral Trade Review“Lennart Bolliger’s exceptionally well-researched monograph on the experiences of Black African soldiers who fought in the war for Namibian independence on the side of apartheid South Africa makes a major contribution to our knowledge of that war and of what happened to those who fought in it. Apartheid’s Black Soldiers is essential reading for anyone concerned with the history of the liberation of Southern Africa and the region’s postliberation politics.” -- Chris Saunders, professor emeritus of historical studies, University of Cape Town“Lennart Bolliger’s book explains with admirable clarity the vexed, troubling history of African soldiers who fought in Southern Africa’s ‘un-national wars’ against liberation armies engaged in the long struggle against colonialism and apartheid. Drawing on a rich collection of oral interviews with the soldiers themselves, Apartheid’s Black Soldiers refuses any easy readings of these soldiers‘ motivations. Instead, Bolliger situates soldiers within the local, regional, and transnational contexts of their recruitment, their basic economic needs, and their interpretations of the immediate political and military circumstances engulfing them. As a result, this book offers key new perspectives on African soldiers who are often described as ‘sellouts’ but whose motivations were far more complicated than that.” -- Michelle R. Moyd, author of Violent Intermediaries: African Soldiers, Conquest, and Everyday Colonialism in German East Africa"Bolliger pays close and careful attention to the military cultures of the different units that made up South Africa’s counterinsurgency spearhead. He also attends to the afterlives of apartheid’s Black soldiers, showing the complex ways they have found a political voice in contemporary Namibia and tried to eke out an existence on the margins of South African society—or on the battlefields of Africa’s never-ending wars. This is an important book, and it will add immeasurably to our understanding of war in southern Africa.” -- Jacob S. T. Dlamini, author of Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National ParkTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction. Un-national Soldiers in Southern Africa during and after Decolonization 1. “The Ovambos Did Not Take Part in the War against the Germans”: Fractures and Divisions in Colonial Namibia and Southern Angola 2. “We Live between Two Fires”: The Reasons for Joining the Apartheid Security Forces in Northern Namibia, 1975–89 3. “The War Was Very Complicated”: The Formation and Development of 32 Battalion, 1975–84 4. “Every Force Has Its Own Rules”: The Military Cultures of South Africa’s Security Forces in Namibia and Angola 5. “Dictation Comes from the Victor”: The Postwar Politics of Black Former Soldiers in Namibia, 1989–2014 6. “We Are Lost People”: Citizenship and Belonging of Black Former Soldiers in South Africa, 1989 to the Present Conclusion: Un-national Wars of Decolonization and Their Legacies Notes Note on Interviews Conducted by the Author Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis book critically opens new pathways for de-colonial scholarship and the reclamation of indigenous self-definition by women scholars. Indigenous peoples around the world are often socially egalitarian and gender equal, matricentric, matrifocal, matrilineal, less violent, beyond heteronormative, ecologically sensitive, and with feminine or two-gender deities or spirits, and more. Bernedette Muthien has contributed to several publications over the years, while June Bam has made numerous key contributions in the field of rethinking and rewriting the African past more generally. In this book, indigenous women write their own herstory, define their own contemporary cultural and socio-economic conditions, and ideate future visions based on their lived realities. All chapters herstoricise the accepted 'histories' and theories of how we have come to understand the African past, how to problematise and rethink that discourse, and provide new and different herstorical lenses, philosophies, epistemologies, methodologies and interpretations. In a first of its kind in Africa and the world, this collection of essays is written by, with and for indigenous southern African women from matricentric societies.

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Book SynopsisEmerging in the late nineteenth century and gaining currency in the 1930s and 1940s, Afrikaner nationalist fervour underpinned the establishment of white Afrikaner political and cultural domination during South Africa's apartheid years. Focusing on manifestations of Afrikaner nationalism in paintings, sculptures, monuments, buildings, cartoons, photographs, illustrations and exhibitions, Troubling Images offers a critical account of the role of art and visual culture in the construction of a unified Afrikaner imaginary, which helped secure hegemonic claims to the nation-state. This insightful volume examines the implications of metaphors and styles deployed in visual culture, and considers how the design, production, collecting and commissioning of objects, images and architecture were informed by Afrikaner nationalist imperatives and ideals. While some chapters focus only on instances of adherence to Afrikaner nationalism, others consider articulations of dissent and criticism. By 'troubling' these images: looking at them, teasing out their meanings, and connecting them to a political and social project that still has a major impact on the present moment, the authors engage with the ways in which an Afrikaner nationalist inheritance is understood and negotiated in contemporary South Africa. They examine the management of its material effects in contemporary art, in archives, the commemorative landscape and the built environment. Troubling Images adds to current debates about the histories and ideological underpinnings of nationalism and is particularly relevant in the current context of globalism and diaspora, resurgent nationalisms and calls for decolonisation.Table of Contents Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction Chapter 1 The Trajectory and Dynamics of Afrikaner Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: An Overview – Albert Grundlingh Part 1: Assent and Dissent through Fine Art and Architecture Chapter 2 Afrikaner Nationalism and Other Settler Imaginaries at the 1936 Empire Exhibition – Lize van Robbroeck Chapter 3 From Volksargitektuur to Boere Brazil: Afrikaner Nationalism and the architectural imaginary of modernity, 1936-1966 – Federico Freschi Chapter 4 Afrikaner Identity in Contemporary Visual Art: A Study in Hauntology – Theo Sonnekus Part 2: Sculptures on University Campuses Chapter 5 ‘It Is Not Even Past’: Dealing with Monuments and Memorials on Divided Campuses – Jonathan D. Jansen Chapter 6 Knocking Jannie off his Pedestal: Two Creative Interventions to the Sculpture of J H Marais at Stellenbosch University – Brenda Schmahmann Part 3: Photography, Identity and Nationhood Chapter 7 Celebrating the Volk: Photographs of the Voortrekker Monument’s 1949 Inauguration by the State Information Office – Katharina Jörder Chapter 8 Reframing David Goldblatt, Re-thinking Some Afrikaners ¬– Michael Godby and Liese van der Watt Part 4: Deploying Mass Media and Popular Visual Culture Chapter 9 The becoming girl: Anton van Wouw’s Noitjie van die Onderveld, Afrikaner Nationalism and the Construction of the Volksmoeder Discourse – Lou-Marié Kruger Chapter 10 Cartoons, Intellectuals, and the Construction of Afrikaner Nationalism – Peter Vale Chapter 11 Manifestations of Militarisation: Visual Narratives of the Border War in 1980s South African Print Culture – Gary Baines Contributor biographies Index

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Book SynopsisIsabel Hofmeyr traces the relationship between print culture, colonialism, and the ocean through the institution of the late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British colonial custom houses, which acted as censors and pronounced on copyright and checked imported printed matter for piracy, sedition, or obscenity.Trade Review“As we have come to expect from Isabel Hofmeyr, Dockside Reading is dazzlingly creative, intellectually playful, and immaculately crafted. This is a brilliant history of the ideas and textual forms that emerged from the damp crates that customs officials scoured at the water’s edge for signs of contamination. Setting sail from South Africa, ranging across the world’s oceans, this is a quietly revolutionary, fully aquatic literary history for our times.” -- Sunil Amrith, Dhawan Professor of History, Yale University“What happens to books when they cross borders? Isabel Hofmeyr sets her radically new history of literature not in the library but at the dock. In pages where authors and scholars are upstaged by censors, customs officers, and even dockhands, she challenges literary critics to think beyond the text as a static entity tied to a single nation or a single landmass. This is that rare book that will make it impossible to continue doing business as usual—for literary critics, for legal scholars, and for book historians.” -- Leah Price, author of * What We Talk about When We Talk About Books: The History and Future of Reading *“Hofmeyr addresses themes that acknowledge but transcend the particularities of place, revealing instead the connecting threads that bind disparate parts of the world together.” -- Dane Kennedy * International Journal of African Historical Studies *“Hofmeyr’s scholarship is exemplary in its marriage of evocative detail with magisterial overview. She gives a compelling account of how customs procedure developed and changed over the course of almost a century. . . . She teaches us a new way to read.” -- Matthew P.M. Kerr * Modern Language Review *"[Hofmeyr's] work sheds important light on the interdependency between reading practices and the book as object. . . . Hofmeyr deftly interweaves her research into customs documents with environmental and postcolonial theory, animating what is usually perceived as a dull or colorless archive through semantic resignification." -- Neelam Srivastava * Journal of Postcolonial Inquiry *"In her stimulating investigation, Dockside Reading, Isabel Hofmeyr offers a fresh perspective on book history in the British Empire." -- Katharine Anderson * Journal of British Studies *"Hofmeyr has produced a remarkable volume combining elements of both historical and 'literary' scholarship. It is a must read for those who study English Literature, the British Empire, the history of material culture, and international trade transactions of both human and non-human 'cargo.'” -- Paul Chiudiza Banda * African Studies Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Hydrocolonialism: The View from the Dockside 1 1. The Custom House and Hydrocolonial Governance 27 2. Customs and Objects on a Hydrocolonial Frontier 39 3. Copyright on a Hydrocolonial Frontier 49 4. Censorship on a Hydrocolonial Frontier 63 Conclusion. Dockside Genres and Postcolonial Literature 77 Notes 85 Bibliography 103 Index 117

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