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Africa: Books New & Notable
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Dec 20, 2012 (121220)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
This annual books issue contains 22 books that have come
to my attention that seemed to me to be of particular
interest. It's hardly a systematic selection, and I've
only read a couple of them so far. But they cover a wide
range of topics, and I think most AfricaFocus readers will
find at least of a few ot them well worth their time.
The featured recommendation is Sarah Lefanu's S is for
Samora: A Lexical Biography of Samora Machel and the
Mozambican Dream. Anyone familiar with Mozambique will
enjoy this uniquely organized biographical reflection. And
anyone interested in the complexities of liberation
struggles and post-liberation disappointments will find in
it a wealth of insights.
Also of particular interest, although not specifically on
Africa, is Joseph E. Stiglitz's The Price of Inequality. I
include it, despite its focus primarily on inequality in
the United States, because of my conviction that the
policy of the United States and other rich countries
towards global inequality and issues on other continents
is influenced first of all by the shape of values and
policies applied at home. I can't comment on his
recommendations on the way forward, since I have yet
reached that chapter. But his diagnosis is clear-minded
and devastating.
If you are a subscriber to AfricaFocus and have had a book
published in 2012 that is not included below, or want to
recommend a book highly to other AfricaFocus readers,
please send in information on the book so that I can add
it to the web version of this Bulletin.
I haven't had time this year to do much additional work on
the AfricaFocus Bookshop page, but you will still find
many interesting books, by country and by topic, at
http://www.africafocus.org/books/afbooks.php
Year-End Break
AfricaFocus will be taking a year-end break beginning with
this issue, and will resume publication in mid to late
January. The AfricaFocus website (http://www.africafocus.org), Google Plus page
(http://www.africafocus.org/googleplus), Facebook page
(http://www.facebook.com/AfricaFocus), and Twitter feed
(https://twitter.com/africa_focus)will continue to be
updated.
Thanks much to those AfricaFocus subscribers who have sent
in voluntary subscription payments during the year to
support this work. If you haven't done so and are able and
willing to send in your support, you can contribute online
or get a form to send in a check at
http://www.africafocus.org/support.php
Best wishes to all for the holidays and the new year.
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++
Books New and Notable
Note: Unless otherwise noted, the brief descriptions of
the books below are taken from the publisher's
description.
Featured Recommendation
Lefanu, Sarah. S is for Samora: A Lexical Biography of
Samora Machel and the Mozambican Dream. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0231703368
Samora Machel led FRELIMO, the Mozambican Liberation
Front, to victory against Portuguese colonialism in 1974,
and the following year became independent Mozambique s
first President. He died eleven years later in a
mysterious plane crash. Drawing on stories, speeches,
documents, and the memories of those who knew him, this
biography presents the many different faces of the man
Nelson Mandela called a true African revolutionary .
Machel was a trained nurse who became a consummate
military strategist, a farmer's son with the diplomatic
skills first to tread the tightrope between China and the
Soviet Union and then to charm Margaret Thatcher, a man
of the people who found himself utterly alone, a dedicated
seeker of peace who never saw anything but war. The book
examines the discourse of equality, liberty and
comradeship that flourished during the 1960s and 1970s in
the liberation struggles of the countries of southern
Africa, in the face of the dominant rhetoric of the cold
war. It meditates on the different languages through which
the Mozambican dream was articulated: the linguistic
currencies of anti-colonialism, of anti-racism, and of
Marxism-Leninism, while exploring the gaps between then
and now, between Mozambicans and the western idealists who
wanted to be part of their new society, and between the
polyglottal Mozambicans themselves.
New and Notable
[* indicates book by a subscriber to AfricaFocus
Bulletiin]
Abiodun Alao. Mugabe and the Politics of Security in
Zimbabwe. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?077354044X
In 1980, the newly independent and democratic Zimbabwe was
a beacon of hope in a troubled region. Three decades
later, Zimbabwe became the focus of international
attention for very different reasons: acrimonious racial
relations, controversial elections, economic hardship, and
military intervention in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. Mugabe and the Politics of Security in Zimbabwe
argues that this unfortunate transition is intrinsically
linked to the ways in which President Robert Mugabe used
the politics of domestic and external security for his own
gain. Abiodun Alao presents a comprehensive study of
defence institutions, domestic security policy, and
external use of military force during Mugabe's decades of
rule.
Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke
Sinwell, and Bongani Xezwi. Marikana. Johannesburg, South
Africa: Jacana Media, 2012.
http://tinyurl.com/crlyvcr
This unique book provides rich details and tells of police
murders, sadness, bravery and pride. Royalties from this
book will go to families of Marikana victims through a
trust fund held by the South African Council of Churches.
* Dorina A. Bekoe, ed. Voting in Fear: Electoral Violence
in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of
Peace, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1601271360
Eighteen African countries held presidential, primary, or
legislative elections in 2011. Elections in eleven of
these countries were marked by violence that ranged from
low-level intimidation and harassment to more intensely
violent displacement and death. In "Voting in Fear" nine
contributors offer pioneering work on the scope and nature
of electoral violence in Africa; investigate the forms
electoral violence takes; and analyze the factors that
precipitate, reduce, and prevent violence. The book breaks
new ground with findings from the only known dataset of
electoral violence in sub-Saharan Africa, spanning 1990 to
2008.
Huw Bennett. Fighting the Mau Mau. The British Army and
Counter-Insurgency in the Kenya Emergency. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1107656249
For the first time Huw Bennett examines the conduct of
soldiers in detail, uncovering the uneasy relationship
between notions of minimum force and the colonial
tradition of exemplary force where harsh repression was
frequently employed as a valid means of quickly crushing
rebellion. Although a range of restrained policies such as
special forces methods, restrictive rules of engagement
and surrender schemes prevented the campaign from
degenerating into genocide, the army simultaneously
coerced the population to drop their support for the
rebels, imposing collective fines, mass detentions and
frequent interrogations, often tolerating rape,
indiscriminate killing and torture to terrorise the
population into submission.
* Bond, Patrick. The Politics of Climate Justice: Paralysis
Above, Movement Below. Durban, South Africa: University of
KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2012
This is an indispensable book for anyone who seeks to
understand world leaders' responses to climate change
through the United Nations' Conference of the Parties
(COP). Politics of Climate Justice provides the vital
background and theoretical context to what happened at the
COPS in Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban. It explores
the favored strategies of key elites from the crisisridden
global and national power blocs, including South
Africa, and finds them incapable of reconciling the threat
to the planet with their economies' addiction to fossil
fuels. Finally, the book reveals sites of climate justice
and interrogates the new movement's approach
Jason Brownlee. Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.Egyptian
Alliance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1107677866
When a popular revolt forced long-ruling Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak to resign on February 11, 2011,
U.S. President Barack Obama hailed the victory of peaceful
demonstrators in the heart of the Arab World. But
Washington was late to endorse democracy - for decades the
United States favored Egypt's rulers over its people.
Since 1979, the United States had provided the Egyptian
regime more than $60 billion in aid and immeasurable
political support to secure its main interests in the
region: Israeli security and strong relations with Persian
Gulf oil producers. During the Egyptian uprising, the
White House did not promote popular sovereignty but
instead backed an "orderly transition" to one of Mubarak's
cronies. Even after protesters derailed that plan, the
anti-democratic U.S.-Egyptian alliance continued. Using
untapped primary materials, this book helps explain why
authoritarianism has persisted in Egypt with American
support, even as policy makers claim to encourage
democratic change.
Neil Carrier and Gernot Klantschnig. Africa and the War on
Drugs. London: Zed Books, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1848139667
'In a world in which progress on addressing the global
illicit drug problem is non-existent, this important
volume seeks to move the discourse on drug flows and use
in sub-Saharan Africa from a domain tightly controlled by
the punitive language and narrow mind frames of the U.S.-
driven war on drugs towards a more nuanced, balanced,
research-based and both historically and culturally
informed perspective. Thus, it is a breath of fresh air
for an arena of contemporary social life dominated by
failed policy, preconceived ideas, human rights
violations, and lack of rigorous on-the-ground research.
Patterns of drug use in Africa have been changing, and
certainly the globalization of illicit drugs is part of
this story, but, as this volume effectively demonstrates,
it is on a small part of a much more complex narrative.'
Professor Merrill Singer, Department of Anthropology,
University of Connecticut Storrs
Claremont Chung, ed. Walter A. Rodney: A Promise of
Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1583673288
The life of the great Guyanese scholar and revolutionary
Walter Rodney burned with a rare intensity. His most
famous work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, is a
mainstay of radical literature. Not content merely to
study the world, Rodney turned to revolutionary politics
in Jamaica, Tanzania, and in Guyana. This book presents a
moving and insightful portrait of Rodney through the words
of academics, writers, artists, and political activists
who knew him intimately or felt his influence. These
informal recollections and reflections demonstrate why
Rodney is such a widely admired figure throughout the
world, especially in poor countries and among oppressed
peoples everywhere.
Farah, Nuruddin. Crossbones. New York: Penguin Books.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0143122533
A dozen years after his last visit, Jeebleh returns to his
beloved Mogadiscio to see old friends. He is accompanied
by his son-in-law, Malik, a journalist intent on covering
the region's ongoing turmoil. What greets them at first is
not the chaos Jeebleh remembers, however, but an eerie
calm enforced by ubiquitous white-robed figures bearing
whips. Meanwhile, Malik's brother, Ahl, has arrived in
Puntland, the region notorious as a pirates' base. Ahl is
searching for his stepson, Taxliil, who has vanished from
Minneapolis, apparently recruited by an imam allied to
Somalia's rising religious insurgency. The brothers'
efforts draw them closer to Taxliil and deeper into the
fabric of the country, even as Somalis brace themselves
for an Ethiopian invasion. Jeebleh leaves Mogadiscio only
a few hours before the borders are breached and raids
descend from land and sea. As the uneasy quiet shatters
and the city turns into a battle zone, the brothers
experience firsthand the derailments of war.
* Joseph Hanlon, Jeannette Manjengwa, and Teresa Smart,
eds. Zimbabwe Takes Back Its Land. Sterling, VA: Kumarian
Press, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1565495209
The news from Zimbabwe is usually unremittingly bleak.
Perhaps no issue has aroused such ire as the land reforms
in 2000, when 170,000 black farmers occupied 4,000 white
farms. A decade later, with production returning to former
levels, the land reform story is a contrast to the
dominant media narratives of oppression and economic
stagnation. Zimbabwe Takes Back it Land offers a more
positive and nuanced assessment of land reform in
Zimbabwe. It does not minimize the depredations of the
Mugabe regime; indeed it stresses that the land reform was
organized by liberation war veterans acting against
President Mugabe and his cronies and their corruption. The
authors show how "?ordinary" Zimbabweans have taken charge
of their destinies in creative and unacknowledged ways
through their use of land holdings obtained through land
reform programs.
Harper, Mary. Getting Somalia Wrong: Faith and War in a
Shattered State. London: Zed Books, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1842779338
Somalia is a comprehensively failed state, representing a threat to
itself, its neighbours and the wider world. In recent
years, it has become notorious for the piracy off its
coast and the rise of Islamic extremism, opening it up as
a new 'southern front' in the war on terror. At least
that is how it is inevitably portrayed by politicians and
in the media. Mary Harper offers the first comprehensive
account of the chaos into which the country has descended
and the United States' renewed involvement there. In doing
so, Harper argues that viewing Somalia through the prism
of al-Qaeda risks further destabilizing the country and
the entire Horn of Africa, while also showing that though
the country may be a failed state, it is far from being a
failed society.
Lindsey Hilsum, Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of
Revolution. New York: Penguin, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?159420506X
Over a quarter century, the renowned British international
correspondent Lindsey Hilsum has covered crisis and
conflict around the world. In February 2011, at the first
stirrings of revolt, she went to Libya, and began to
chronicle the personal stories of people living through a
time of unprecedented danger and opportunity. She reported
the progress of the revolution on the ground, from the
conflict of the early months, through the toppling of
Gaddafi???s regime and his savage death in the desert. In
Sandstorm, she tells the full story of the events of the
revolution within a rich context of Libya???s history of
colonialism, monarchy and dictatorship, and explores what
the future of Libya holds.
Honwana, Alcinda. The Time of Youth: Work, Social Change
and Politics in Africa. Sterling, VA: Kumarian press, 2012
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1565494725
Argues that most young Africans are living in 'waithood',
a period of suspension between childhood and adulthood.
Failed neo-liberal economic policies, bad governance and
political instability have caused stable jobs to
disappear. Without jobs that pay living wages, these young
people cannot support families, thus becoming fully
participating members of society. As this limbo becomes
pervasive and prolonged, waithood in Africa becomes
seemingly permanent, gradually replacing conventional
adulthood. And with the deepening of the world economic
crisis, youth in Europe, North America and other parts of
the world face the same crisis of joblessness and
restricted futures. Draws on in-depth interviews in four
countries: Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia.
Keable, Ken, ed. London Recruits: The Secret War Against
Apartheid. London: Merlin Press, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0850366550
This is the story of the foreign volunteers and their
activities in South Africa, how they acted in defiance of
the Apartheid government and its police on the
instructions of the African National Congress. Many
volunteers were Young Communists, some were recruited from
the IS, others were Trotskyists or independent socialists;
from the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the USA, they
all volunteered and took amazing risks. With an
introduction by Ronnie Kasrils a foreword by Z. Pallo
Jordan.
Lapsley, Michael and Stephen Karakashian. Redeeming the
Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1570759928
In 1990, Fr Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest and
monastic from New Zealand, exiled to Zimbabwe because of
his anti-apartheid work in South Africa, opened a package
and was immediately struck by the blast of an explosion.
The bomb -suspected to be the work of the apartheid-era
South African secret police - blasted away both his hands
and one of his eyes. His memoir tells the story of this
horrendous event, backing up to recount the journey that
led him there - particularly his rising awareness of the
radical social implications of the gospel and his
identification with the liberation struggle - and then the
subsequent journey of the last two decades. Returning to
South Africa, Lapsley saw a whole nation damaged by the
apartheid era. So he discovered his new vocation - to
become a wounded healer, drawing on his own experience to
promote the healing of other victims of violence and
trauma.
Sarah Markes, Hafiz Juma, and Karen Moon. Street Level:
Drawings and Creative Writing Inspired by the Cultural and
Architectural Heritage of Dar Es Salaam. Dar es Salaam:
Mkuku na Nyota, 2011.
http://tinyurl.com/c47tu6b
Street Level was selected as 2012 Honor Book for Older
Readers by the Children's Africana Book Award program,
affiliated with the African Studies Association. The
introduction to this extraordinarily beautifully
illustrated book gives a fascinating overview of the
history and architectural heritage of Dar es Salaam, and
an insight into the efforts of those seeking to preserve
it. The book captures 'fragments of the atmosphere, the
sun bleached charm and the dynamic energy' of Dar es
Salaam. Generic class and concrete skyscrapers are
replacing human sized old Dar, and the frenzy to modernise
shows little sign of abating. The city's cultural and
historic memory is being erased by property development
and its profits for the few. Through her drawings, the
artist has recorded the vanishing city centre. She gives
portraits of its colourful and dynamic people: living,
going about their business, worshipping and gathering in
its age old restaurants and tea rooms to spend time as
generations have done so before. An important part of the
book is short pieces of prose and poetry by some of the
best creative writers in Dar today.
* Guy Martin. African Political Thought. New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1403966346
Designed to be used as a textbook, this book is organized
thematically as a comprehensive overview of both
indigenous and modern African political thought. Focusing
on individual political thinkers/activists and beginning
with indigenous African political though, the book
successively examines African nationalism, African
socialism, populism and Marxism, Africanism and panAfricanism,
concluding with contemporary perspectives on
democracy, development and the African state.
* Elizabeth Schmidt. Foreign Intervention in Africa: From
the Cold War to the War on Terror. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0521709032
Foreign Intervention in Africa chronicles the foreign
political and military interventions in Africa during the
periods of decolonization (1956-1975) and the Cold War
(1945-1991), as well as during the periods of state
collapse (1991-2001) and the "global war on terror"
(2001-2010). In the first two periods, the most
significant intervention was extra-continental. The United
States, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and the former
colonial powers entangled themselves in countless African
conflicts. During the period of state collapse, the most
consequential interventions were intra-continental.
African governments, sometimes assisted by powers outside
the continent, supported warlords, dictators, and
dissident movements in neighboring countries and fought
for control of their neighbors' resources. The global war
on terror, like the Cold War, increased the foreign
military presence on the African continent and generated
external support for repressive governments. In each of
these cases, external interests altered the dynamics of
Africa's internal struggles, escalating local conflicts
into larger conflagrations, with devastating effects on
African peoples.
Joseph E. Stiglitz. The Price of Inequality: How Today's
Divided Society Endangers Our Future. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0393088693
I include this, despite its focus primarily on inequality
in the United States, because of my conviction that the
policy of the United States and other rich countries
towards global inequality and issues on other continents
is influenced first of all by the shape of values and
policies applied at home. I can't comment on his
recommendations on the way forward, since I have yet
reached that chapter. But his diagnosis is clear-minded
and devastating.
* Totten, Samuel. Genocide by Attrition: The Nuba
Mountains of Sudan. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction
Publishers, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1412847508
Genocide by Attrition provides a solid sense of
antecedents to the genocidal actions in the Nuba
Mountains. It introduces the main actors, describes how
the Nuba were forced into starvation by their government,
and tells how those who managed to survive did so. The
interviews provide in-depth stories and revelatory
information about what Totten characterizes as genocide by
attrition. Among the themes that link most of the
interviews are: the discrimination against and
disenfranchisement of the Nuba by the government; the
destruction of villages and farms; and the impact of the
forced starvation. The book also documents the anger and
frustration of the Nuba Mountains people at being left out
of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between the
South and the North, and their ongoing fear that the
government might once again carry out a genocidal assault
against them.
Carl Watts. Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of
Independence: An International History. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1403979073
"Carl Peter Watts has written a remarkably wide-ranging
and lively analysis of the international repercussions of
Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in the
mid-1960s. Drawing on archives from a number of countries
and applying international relations theories as well as a
sound historical grasp, he questions a number of
assumptions about the crisis, arguing that UDI could have
been avoided and that, once it took place, the British
government could have ended it by using military force." -
John Young, Professor of International History, University
of Nottingham
Additional Suggestions Received from Readers since Dec. 20
* Donna Katzin. With These Hands. New York: Mignon Publications, 2011.
Order through
http://www.sharedinterest.org
Since 1994, Shared Interest has worked with remarkable
"everyday" people on the front lines of building a new
South Africa�with their own hands. Shared Interest�s partners,
friends, and colleagues generously entrusted their
tragedies and aspirations, challenges and dreams,
in pursuing the Herculean day-to-day work
of reconstructing their lives, communities,
and nation. These poems and photographs honor the mothers
and fathers who brought South Africa this far.
Mary Ndlovu, Against the Odds: A History of Zimbabwe
Project. Harare, Zimbabwe: Weaver Press, 2012.
http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?1779221681
The Zimbabwe Project Trust, a child of the war, came home,
and its director, Judith Todd, started mapping the route
that it would follow for the next thirty years.
ZimPro - as it came to be known - began its work with
ex-combatants, assisting with their education, skills
training and co-operative development, and producing a
news bulletin. In terms of funding, courage, and creative
programming, it became a giant in the country's development
landscape, but it has had to negotiate many political,
financial and philosophical minefields on the way.
Against The Odds offers a rare insight into workings of
an NGO on the frontline. With a cast of larger-than-life
characters, it also offers a drama of Zimbabwe's first
thirty years and provides insights and lessons which
will benefit everyone concerned with development, and
provide historians with another important lens through
which to view the past.
Abebe Zegeye. Mulatu Astatke: The Making of
Ethio Jazz. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2012.
http://www.africaworldpressbooks.com/servlet/Detail?no=1011
Mulatu was the first Ethiopian jazz music-maker to study
abroad and thus be exposed to Western musical trends.
When he returned to Addis Ababa he pursued his
dream of drawing on the musical heritage of his
homeland -- a heritage that has been buffeted by
Ethiopia�'s turbulent history -- to produce a unique,
compelling blend of music: 'Ethiopian sounds with a
twist�'. In the late 1960s, his Ethio jazz introduced,
among other new ideas, the Afro-Latin soul where he
played conga, piano, vibraphone and innovative musical
arrangements. These included compositions of popular
Ethio jazz music which took on a modern, funk,
jazz-infused quality that soon had recording
companies knocking at his door.
Contains a CD and DVD!
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