This book examines the role of tradition and discursive knowledge transmission on the formation of the 'ulama', the learned scholarly class in Islam, and their approach to the articulation of the Islamic disciplines. This book argues that a useful framework for evaluating the intellectual contributions of post-classical scholars such as Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Dardir involves preserving, upholding, and maintaining the Islamic tradition, including the intellectual "sub-traditions" that came to define it.

From Cabinda in Angola to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, 4 Reconnaissance Regiment conducted numerous clandestine seaborne raids during the Border War. They attacked strategic targets such as oil facilities, transport infrastructure and even Russian ships. All the while 4 Recce’s existence and capability was largely kept secret, even within the South African Defence Force.

With unparalleled access to previously top secret documents, 50 operations undertaken by 4 Recce, other Special Forces units and the South African Navy are described here in Iron Fist From The Sea. The daunting Operation Kerslig (1981), in which an operator died in a raid on a Luanda oil refinery and others were injured, is retold in spine-tingling detail. The book reveals the versatility and effectiveness of this elite unit and also tells of both the successes and failures of its actions. Sometimes missions go wrong, as in Operation Argon (1985) when Captain Wynand Du Toit was captured. This fascinating work will enthrall anyone with an interest in Special Forces operations.

Iron Fist From The Sea takes you right to the raging surf, to the adrenalin and fear that is seaborne raiding.

Sankara's legacy, unclear as it may be, still lives and he remains immensely popular. If you travel through Africa his image is unmistakable. His picture, with beret and broad grin, is pasted on run-down taxis and is found on the walls of local bars. Internationally Sankara is often referred to as the `African Che Guevara' and like his South American counterpart; it is his perseverance, dedication and incorruptibility that appeal to the imagination. Voices of liberation: Thomas Sankara starts with a comprehensive timeline covering Thomas Sankara's life and major events in the history of the continent and region. His Life section provides the most critical and fraternal assessment of the 1980s radical experiment within the broader history of the country, the region and continent. His Voice section succinctly provides a selection of Sankara's speeches, broadcasts and interviews and gives us insight to his outlook on the world. His Legacy section combines an almost poetic tribute to the flawed through heroic period of Sankara's `revolution' with an incredibly relentless and honest analysis. This is done through the story of last year's uprising against Compaore - with haunting lessons for South Africa. The Postscript is an indispensable update to the extraordinary events in Burkina Faso during 2015, chiefly the resistance to the coup in September. The authors look at Sankara's influence on the popular movements and its wider significance for Africa.

'Walvin synthesises this complex global history with skill and ingenuity. Freedom is beautifully written and clearly organised . . . thought-provoking, rich in detail and imbued with an emotional intelligence that pushes us to imagine what slave life meant, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' J. R. Oldfield, University of Hull, Family & Community History, Vol. 22/3, October 2019 'A wide-ranging history of resistance during the Atlantic slave trade that reminds us how captives fought their miserable fates every step of the way.' David Olusoga, BBC History Magazine 'A sobering reminder of the trade's cruelty and scope . . . but also, through resistance, rebellion and riots, the power of individual people to change the world against the odds.' History Revealed In this timely and very readable new work, Walvin focuses not on abolitionism or the brutality and suffering of slavery, but on resistance, the resistance of the enslaved themselves - from sabotage and absconding to full-blown uprisings - and its impact in overthrowing slavery. He also looks that whole Atlantic world, including the Spanish Empire and Brazil. In doing so, he casts new light on one of the major shifts in Western history in the past five centuries. In the three centuries following Columbus's landfall in the Americas, slavery became a critical institution across swathes of both North and South America. It saw twelve million Africans forced onto slave ships, and had seismic consequences for Africa. It led to the transformation of the Americas and to the material enrichment of the Western world. It was also largely unquestioned. Yet within a mere seventy-five years during the nineteenth century slavery had vanished from the Americas: it declined, collapsed and was destroyed by a complexity of forces that, to this day, remains disputed, but there is no doubting that it was in large part defeated by those it had enslaved. Slavery itself came in many shapes and sizes. It is perhaps best remembered on the plantations - though even those can deceive. Slavery varied enormously from one crop to another- sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, cotton. And there was in addition myriad tasks for the enslaved to do, from shipboard and dockside labour, to cattlemen on the frontier, through to domestic labour and child-care duties. Slavery was, then, both ubiquitous and varied. But if all these millions of diverse, enslaved people had one thing in common it was a universal detestation of their bondage. They wanted an end to it: they wanted to be like the free people around them. Most of these enslaved peoples did not live to see freedom. But an old freed man or woman in, say Cuba or Brazil in the 1880s, had lived through its destruction clean across the Americas. The collapse of slavery and the triumph of black freedom constitutes an extraordinary historical upheaval - and this book explains how that happened.

How did South Sudan become one of the most striking examples of state-building failure and state collapse after years of international support? What went wrong in the state-building enterprise? How did external intervention overlap and intertwine with local processes of accumulation of power and of state formation? This book addresses these questions analysing the intersection between international and local actors and processes. Based on original ethnographic and archival data, it provides a unique account of how state-building resources were captured and manipulated by local actors at various levels, contributing to the deepening of ethnic fragmentation and the politicization of ethnicity.

Divided by the Word refutes the assumption that the entrenched ethnic divide between South Africa’s Zulus and Xhosas, a divide that turned deadly in the late 1980s, is elemental to both societies. Jochen Arndt reveals how the current distinction between the two groups emerged from a long and complex interplay of indigenous and foreign born actors, with often diverging ambitions and relationships to the world they shared and the languages they spoke.

The earliest roots of the divide lie in the eras of exploration and colonization, when European officials and naturalists classified South Africa’s indigenous population on the basis of skin color and language. Later, missionaries collaborated with African intermediaries to translate the Bible into the region’s vernaculars, artificially creating distinctions between Zulu and Xhosa speakers. By the twentieth century, these foreign players, along with African intellectuals, designed language-education programs that embedded the Zulu-Xhosa divide in South African consciousness.

Using archival sources from three continents written in multiple languages, Divided by the Word offers a refreshingly new appreciation for the deep historicity of language and ethnic identity in South Africa, while reconstructing the ways in which colonial forces generate and impose ethnic divides with long-lasting and lethal consequences for indigenous populations.