He needed to hear Africa speak for itself after a lifetime of hearing Africa spoken about by others Electrifying essays on the history, complexity, diversity of a continent, from the father of modern African literature. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

This volume addresses the ways the 'native labour' question in the Portuguese late colonial empire in Africa became a recurrent topic of international and transnational debate and regulation after the Second World War. As other European colonial empires were tentatively transforming their labour and social policies in the aftermath of the war, the Portuguese Empire in Africa resisted significant changes in this domain, preserving a strict dual labour regime. As a result, a growing number of individuals, networks and institutions abroad engaged with labour and social realities in Portuguese African colonies, giving origin to a series of instances of denunciation of labour-related abuses. Portuguese authorities responded to these initiatives by selectively engaging with international norms, languages and mechanisms. However, as global decolonisation gained momentum, international and transnational events and processes would significantly constrain Portuguese imperial and colonial decision-making procedures, with the aim of retaining the empire. Therefore, the 'native labour' question became in its own right a crucial political and diplomatic element of the broader struggles over the meaning of Portuguese imperial legitimacy. As this volume argues, these historical processes are critical to properly understanding the history of Portuguese late colonialism and its protracted trajectory of decolonisation.

In the global context of the Cold War, the relationship between liberation movements and Eastern European states obviously changed and transformed. Similarly, forms of (material) aid and (ideological) encouragement underwent changes over time. The articles assembled in this volume argue that the traditional Cold War geography of bi-polar competition with the United States is not sufficient to fully grasp these transformations. The question of which side of the ideological divide was more successful (or lucky) in impacting actors and societies in the global south is still relevant, yet the Cold War perspective falls short in unfolding the complex geographies of connections and the multipolarity of actions and transactions that exists until today. Acknowledging the complexities of liberation movements in globalization processes, the papers thus argue that activities need to be understood in their local context, including personal agendas and internal conflicts, rather than relying primarily on the traditional frame of Cold War competition. They point to the agency of individual activists in both "Africa" and "Eastern Europe" and the lessons, practices and languages that were derived from their often contradictory encounters. In Southern African Liberation Movements, authors from South Africa, Portugal, Austria and Germany ask: What role did actors in both Southern Africa and Eastern Europe play? What can we learn by looking at biographies in a time of increasing racial and international conflict? And which "creative solutions" need to be found, to combine efforts of actors from various ideological camps? Building on archival sources from various regions in different languages, case studies presented in the edition try to encounter the lack of a coherent state of the art. They aim at combining the sometimes scarce sources with qualitative interviews to give answers to the many open questions regarding Southern African liberation movements and their connections to the "East".

Chinua Achebe and the Igbo-African World: Between Fiction, Fact, and Historical Representation explores Chinua Achebe's literary works and how they communicated the Igbo-African world to readers. Engaging in the politics of representation, Achebe sought to demystify deterministic views of race and cultural ethnocentrism. While his books and commentaries have been very influential in shaping a unique and multifaceted view of the African world, some scholars have challenged Achebe's representations of historical reality. Through in-depth analyses of his writing, contributors examine the interpretations Achebe imposed on African culture and history in his texts. The chapters cover Achebe's engagement with critical issues like historical representation, gender relations, and indigenous political institutions in a changing society. Throughout, contributors present new ways for understanding Achebe's literary works and show how his work draws from African historical reality and identity while challenging Western epistemological hegemony.

Born To Kwaito considers the meaning of kwaito music now. ‘Now’ not only as in ‘after 1994’ or the Truth Commission but as a place in the psyche of black people in post-apartheid South Africa.

This collection of essays tackles the changing meaning of the genre after its decline and its ever-contested relevance. Through rigorous historical analysis as well as threads of narrative journalism Born To Kwaito interrogates issues of artistic autonomy, the politics of language in the music, and whether the music is part of a strand within the larger feminist movement in South Africa. Candid and insightful interviews from the genre’s foremost innovators and torchbearers, such as Mandla Spikiri, Arthur Mafokate, Robbie Malinga and Lance Stehr, provide unique historical context to kwaito music’s greatest highs, most captivating hits and most devastating lows. Born To Kwaito offers up a history of the genre from below by having conversations not only with musicians but with fans, engineers, photographers and filmmakers who bore witness to a revolution.

Living in a place between criticism and biography, Born To Kwaito merges academic theories and rigorous journalism to offer a new understanding into how the genre influenced other art forms such as fashion, TV and film. The book also reflects on how some of the music’s best hits have found new life through the mouths of local hip-hop’s current kingmakers and opened kwaito up to a new generation.

The book does not pretend to be an exhaustive history of the genre but rather a present-active analysis of that history as it settles and finds its meaning.

In the midst of apartheid in South Africa, journalist Maurice Hommel documented the cruel injustices and tensions running rampant within the country. What he saw forever impacted his life.

"Conversations and Soliloquies" presents a collection of Hommel's essays and articles from the last fifty-five years, documenting and analyzing South African history during and after apartheid. Over time, the essays illuminate, in sometimes graphic detail, the anti-apartheid struggle that defined South Africa for decades.

Beginning with the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, Hommel delves into the bloody history of apartheid and traces how it pervaded every segment of society. His interviews with prominent South Africans, including Desmond Tutu and Neville Alexander, offer intimate glimpses into the thoughts of those working for change. In addition, stark photographs capture the emotions of the time.

In its breadth of historical perspectives, this collection is a significant contribution to an understanding of South Africa's evolution to a nonracial, nonsexist, democratic country. Although lingering prejudices and smoldering resentments remain, Hommel carries an unshakable optimism of South Africa's enormous potential. "Conversations and Soliloquies" captures that hope.

Over the past few decades South African historiography has begun to recover from its previous Eurocentric bias to reflect the realities of a multiracial society. Most of the various non-white groups which form part of the population of the country have begun to receive closer attention, but two have still been largely neglected - the Korana, who no longer exist as an identifiable group, and the related Griquas, who still form a largely recognisable people with a sense of their own identity. In an attempt to help recover something of the Griqua past, the author has compiled a collection of official and semi-official documents emanating from the Philippolis Captaincy, which has been published by the Van Riebeeck Society under the title Griqua Records - the Philippolis Captaincy, 1826–1861. In order to put to use the large amount related material he has collected which could not be used in this work, as well as the knowledge of the subject he has acquired in the course of his research, he has now written what may be described as an accompanying socio-cultural and historical survey of the Captaincy, consisting mainly of precis of and quotations from contemporary non-Griqua sources. The author here describes fully for the first time the rise, development and collapse of the Philippolis Captaincy, and gives a detailed account of its organisation and administration and the lives of its inhabitants.

“How did we move from the inspiring moments of Nelson Mandela’s release after 27 years of incarceration, and the euphoria of our first democratic elections in 1994, to State Capture and the disaster of Jacob Zuma’s reign – a controversial President with over 800 charges of corruption pending? More importantly, what can we as a nation do about it? These are big issues – but Neil Wright does not pull any punches in bringing them out in the open and is not shy to give his opinions and possible solutions. His core message is that for true transformation to happen, it has to happen from the inside out, not imposed from the top down. By embracing the concept of “One Race, the Human Race, Now!” South Africans have the chance to emerge from present challenges and finally shake off the shadow of our divided past.”

From 1927-1948, the Universal Ethiopian Students' Association (UESA) mobilized the African diaspora to fight against imperialism and fascist Italy. Formed by a group of educated Africans, African-Americans, and West Indians based in Harlem and shaped by the ideals of Ethiopianism, communism, Pan-Africanism, Black Nationalism, Garveyism, and the New Negro Movement, the UESA sought to educate the diaspora about its glorious African past and advocate for anti-imperialism and independence. This book focuses on the UESA's literary organ, The African, mapping a constellation of understudied activists and their contributions to the fight for Black liberation in the twentieth century.

Max Esser was an adventurous young merchant banker, a Rhinelander, who became the first managing director of the largest German plantation company in Cameroon. This volume gives a vivid account of the antecedents and early stages as experienced and described by Esser. In 1896 he ventured, with the explorer Zintgraff, into the hinterland to seek the agreement of Zintgraff's old ally, the ruler of Bali, for the provision of laborers for his projected enterprise. The consequences, many optimistically unforeseen, are illustrated with the help of contemporary materials. Esser's account is preceded by a look at his and his family's connections, added to by an account of newspaper campaigns against him, and completed by an examination of his Cameroon collection, which he gave to the Linden Museum in Stuttgart.

Applies new approaches to the study of a small, densely populated region of West Africa, integrating them into a regional history that analyzes interactions between localities and the modern state. Constructions of Belonging provides a history of local communities living in Southeastern Nigeria since the late nineteenth century, examining the processes that have defined, changed, and re-produced these communities. Harneit-Sievers explores both the meanings and the uses that the community members have given to their particular areas, while also looking at the processes that have shaped local communities, and have made them work and continue tobe relevant, in a world dominated by the modern territorial state and by worldwide flows of people, goods, and ideas. Axel Harneit-Sievers is a Research Fellow at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies, and Director ofthe Nigeria Office of the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Lagos.

Swaziland-recently renamed Eswatini-is the only nation-state in Africa with a functioning indigenous political system. Elsewhere on the continent, most departing colonial administrators were succeeded by Western-educated elites. In Swaziland, traditional Swazi leaders managed to establish an absolute monarchy instead, qualified by the author as benevolent and people-centred, a system which they have successfully defended from competing political forces since the 1970s. This book is the first to study the constitutional history of this monarchy. It examines its origins in the colonial era, the financial support it received from white settlers and apartheid South Africa, and the challenges it faced from political parties and the judiciary, before King Sobhuza II finally consolidated power in 1978 with an auto-coup d'etat. As Hlengiwe Dlamini shows, the history of constitution-making in Swaziland is rich, complex, and full of overlooked insight for historians of Africa.

This book provides a social interpretation of written South African translation history from the seventeenth century to the present, considering how trends involving various languages have reflected ideologies and unequal power relations and focusing attention on translation's often hidden social operation. Translation is investigated in relation to colonial mercantilism, scientific knowledge of extraction, Christian missionary conversion, Islamic education, various nationalisms, apartheid oppression and the anti-apartheid struggle, neoliberalism, exclusion and post-apartheid social transformation by employing Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. This book will be an essential resource for scholars, graduate students, and general readers who are interested in or work on the history and practice of translation and its cultural agents in the South African context.

In The Last Great Safari: East Africa in World War I, military historian Corey W. Reigel explores a fascinating and misunderstood theater of operations in the history of the First World War. Unprepared for the Great War, colonial units combined modern industrial weapons and equipment with traditional African methods to produce a hybrid force. Throughout The Last Great Safari, Reigel challenges myth after myth. Were really one million Allied soldiers pulled up from Europe to toil in the tropical sun only to fall victim to local diseases? Did the Germans truly become masters of guerrilla warfare and humiliate the British Empire in what appeared a David versus Goliath conflict? Reigel brings together traditional military studies and African history to explore the myths, fables, and stereotypes that have long characterized examinations of this topic, from questions as to how German East Africa contributed to the fate of the war to claims respecting significant diversion of resources. Racism played a significant role in then prevalent definitions of what constituted military success and in how Africans and Indians were recruited, holding more sway in the minds of white armies as a success factor than differences in weapons. Reigel points out how modern methods of medicine and transportation ultimately failed, only to be replaced by a hybrid of industrial Europe and traditional African solutions for dealing with an especially difficult climate. In the end, when necessity came to outweigh then current ideas of professionalism did German forces outfight their opponents. The Last Great Safari: East Africa in World War I will interest students of military history, African studies, and World War I, as this tale of colonial warfare within a war of attrition shaped part of Africa's colonial future.

Think that Ancient Egypt is just a load of old obelisks? Don't bet your afterlife on it. Ancient Egypt should be deader than most of our yesterdays. After all it was at its height 5,000 years ago. Yet we still marvel at its mummies and ponder over its pyramids. It's easy to forget these people once lived and laughed, loved and breathed ...though not for very long. These were dangerous days for princes and peasants alike. In Ancient Egypt - a world of wars and woes, poverty and plagues - life was short. Forty was a good age to reach. A pharaoh who was eaten by a hippo ended up as dead as a ditch-digger stung by a scorpion. Unwrap the bandages and you'll find that the Egyptians' bizarre adventures in life were every bit as fascinating as the monuments they left to their deaths.

Togo's history from precolonial times to the present is one of a struggle for identity and leadership. A territory relatively untouched by neighboring pre-colonial empires was colonized by both the Germans and the French, and even before independence Togo was shaped by the struggle for political control by prominent families. Since the 1990s, widespread political movements have striven to unseat the ruling Gnassingbe family, in power for more than 50 years, only to be repressed by the military or thwarted at the ballot box. Economically more prosperous compared to many of the other countries in the West African region, Togo has diversified its economy from an early dependence on phosphates, and has navigated trade and foreign relations remarkably well for a country of only 7 million people, with a territory less than a quarter the size of neighboring Ghana. With at least 30 ethnic groups and wide array of languages, religions and cultural traditions, Togo is representative of the rich diversity of contemporary Africa, and a vibrant illustration of the dual quest for development and democracy that characterizes the West African region. The fourth edition of Historical Dictionary of Togo contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and a dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced dictionary entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Togo.

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history.
The Dark Princess is a story of magical love and radical politics, a romance facing obstacles in a white-dominated world. Du Bois's allegorical tale follows Mathew Townes from his political disillusionment to his association with a powerful and seductive revolutionary leader, Kautilya, the princess of the Tibetan Kingdom of Bwodpur. With Dark Princess, Du Bois explores the color line from a fantastical angle while inserting his signature sociological style. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and an introduction by Homi Bhahba, this edition is essential for anyone interested in African American history.

Nigeria's democratisation efforts since attaining political independence from Britain have been tumultuous and have spanned over three successive republics. A persistent bug decimating Nigeria's democracy and repeatedly leading to military coups has been brazen electoral violence perpetrated by the nation's political elite. Nigeria's 2019 Democratic Experience analyses and explains what went wrong in Nigeria's experiment with democracy. Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation and the world's seventh most populous nation, also contributes 70% of West Africa's population. She is sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer and has remained Africa's largest economy by GDP since 2014. The country has hundreds of diverse ethnic nationalities and languages grouped into 36 states (or federating units) and an independent federal capital territory. Though recognized as Africa's largest democracy, her democratisation process since the 1960s has remained tumultuous with massive electoral violence and political intolerance. This repeatedly compelled the military to intervene in the nation's political history in the years 1966, 1983 and 1985. It is these developments that provided the motivation for this volume to capture for posterity the conduct of the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria.

6 symbols with an ancient past: the scarab beetle, cobra goddess Renenutet, falcon god Horu; vulture goddess Nekhbet, the Eye of Horus, and Amun, "the king of gods," depicted as a ram.

This edited volume encompasses a range of themes and approaches relevant to the field of South African history today, as viewed from the perspective of practicing historians at the cutting edge of research in the discipline. The collection features the historians offering critical reflection on the theoretical and methodological aspects of their work. This involves them both looking back at the inherited historiographical tradition in the respective areas of their research, while also pointing forwards to possible future directions for scholarly engagement. -- .