This is an important book for researchers and students of resources management, rural development, hydrology and African studies.

The nucleus of society is situated at the local level: in the village, the neighborhood, the city district. This is where a community first develops collective rules that are intended to ensure its continued existence. The contributors look at such configurations in geographical areas and time periods that lie outside of the modern Western world with its particular development of society and statehood: in Antiquity and in the Global South of the present. Here states tend to be weak, with obvious challenges and opportunities for local communities. How does governance in this context work? Scholars from various disciplines (Classics, Theology, Political Science, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human Geography, Sinology) analyze different kinds of local arrangements in case studies, and they do so with a comparative approach. The sixteen papers examine the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; its legitimization and the collective identity of the groups behind them; the relations to different levels of state governance as well as to other local groups. Overall, this volume makes an interdisciplinary contribution to a better understanding of fundamental elements of local governance and statehood.

Muhidin Maalim Gurumo and Hassan Rehani Bitchuka are two of Tanzania's most well-known singers in the popular music genre known as muziki wa dansi (literally, 'music for dancing'), a variation of the Cuban-based rhumba idiom that has been enormously impactful throughout central, eastern, and western Africa in the contemporary era. This interview-based dual biography investigates the lives and careers of these two men from an ethnomusicological and historical perspective. Gurumo had a career spanning fifty years before his death in 2014. Bitchuka has been singing professionally for forty-five years. The two singers, affectionately called mapacha ("the twins") by their colleagues, worked together as partners for thirty years from 1973-2003. This study situates these exemplary individuals as creative agents in a local cultural context, showcasing interviews, narratives, and nostalgic reminiscences about musical life lived under Colonialism, state Socialism, and current politics in the global neoliberal democratic milieu. The book adds to a growing body of work about popular music in Dar es Salaam and shines a light on these artists' creative processes, the choices they have made regarding rare resources, their styles and efficacy in conflict resolution, and their own memories regarding the musical art they have created.

This book chronicles how Zimbabwe's boom educational and health systems unravelled after independence in 1980 and how exuberance gave way to pessimism. The uncomfortable truth about how socialism lost its way and the dramatic reversal of fortune is told. No jobs were created for the school leavers, inflation went up and poverty started to creep in. The 1980s actually laid the foundations for the economic problems Zimbabwe now faces. Trapped in an ideological commitment to socialist enterprises, policy makers permitted accountability to slip, carried co-operatives further than they should have, and pandered to socialist greed with its corrupt tendencies. Zimbabwe: Beyond a School Certificate examines the relations between governance and discursive practices in the modern labour market: the role of institutions of learning and skills development, and the brain drain as creative and retrogressive forces in the economy; labour laws and the job market in a critical methodology for organisational research; and the health system and the poverty datum line as a measurement of the dynamics in industrial development. This is a genuinely authentic analysis based on statistical data which support the unfolding events in the southern African country. This book is useful for students (and lecturers alike) and donor agencies wanting to know more about Zimbabwe. Organisations helping to fight the HIV pandemic will also find the book a source of information.

Originally published in 1921. Leaves from the note-book of a district commissioner in British Somaliland. Author: Major H. Rayne, M.B.E., M.C. Language: English Keywords: Somaliland Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Routledge Library Editions: Slavery is a collection of previously out-of-print titles that examine various aspects of international slavery. Books analyse the Atlantic slave trade, and its effects on Africa; modern slavery around the world; slave rebellions and resistance; the Abolitionist movements; the suppression of the slave trade; slavery in the ancient world; and more besides. These writings form part of the vital research into slavery through the ages, and together form a succinct overview.

Gustavus Vassa was on the vanguard of the anti-slavery movement in England at the end of the eighteenth century. He provided a voice for people of African descent in the British Atlantic world. His Interesting Narrative has influenced countless works, both fiction and non-fiction.

The period 1823 to the present was an important phase in the standardisation of isiXhosa orthography. The early pioneers of a written form of isiXhosa experienced significant challenges in reducing this African language to writing, since there was no reference material other than that designed for the European languages. Over the years, the development of isiXhosa orthography has progressed considerably. However, various inconsistencies and anomalies remain that require the attention of African language specialists. This book provides comprehensive guidelines on important aspects of isiXhosa orthography such as word division, spelling and capitalisation. However, the authors' primary focus has been those challenging areas of standardisation which have not yet been attended to. This work will make an important contribution to the development of isiXhosa into a fully functional medium of teaching and learning in Higher Education, and facilitate the enhancement of its status as one of South Africa's official languages.

This book examines the active role played by Africans in the pre-colonial production of historical knowledge in South Africa, focusing on perspectives of the second king of amaZulu, King Dingane. It draws upon a wealth of oral traditions, izibongo, and the work of public intellectuals such as Magolwane kaMkhathini Jiyane and Mshongweni to present African perspectives of King Dingane as multifaceted, and in some cases, constructed according to socio-political formations and aimed at particular audiences. By bringing African perspectives to the fore, this innovative historiography centralizes indigenous African languages in the production of historical knowledge.

The first decades of the twentieth century were years of dramatic change in Zanzibar, a time when the social, economic, and political lives of island residents were in incredible flux, framed by the abolition of slavery, the introduction of colonialism, and a tide of urban migration. "Pastimes and Politics" explores the era from the perspective of the urban poor, highlighting the numerous and varied ways that recently freed slaves and other immigrants to town struggled to improve their individual and collective lives and to create a sense of community within this new environment. In this study Laura Fair explores a range of cultural and social practices that gave expression to slaves' ideas of emancipation, as well as how such ideas and practices were gendered.
"Pastimes and Politics" examines the ways in which various cultural practices, including taarab music, dress, football, ethnicity, and sexuality, changed during the early twentieth century in relation to islanders' changing social and political identities. Professor Fair argues that cultural changes were not merely reflections of social and political transformations. Rather, leisure and popular culture were critical practices through which the colonized and former slaves transformed themselves and the society in which they lived.
Methodologically innovative and clearly written, "Pastimes and Politics" is accessible to specialists and general readers alike. It is a book that should find wide use in courses on African history, urbanization, popular culture, gender studies, or emancipation.

Toda naci n est llamada a vivir un equilibrio entre la cultura y el progreso, a vencer la lucha del Posmodernismo y llegar a una renovaci n de sus estructuras. En este libro describo la historia del Pueblo Angolano partiendo desde su ra z cultural, de su dif cil lucha por su independencia, escurecida por la guerra civil y la llegada de los acuerdos de paz. Identifico algunos de los factores que han sido importantes en la b squeda profunda de realizar sus sue os de llegar a ser un pa?'s prospero y libre.

This book explores the life of Robert Lyall, surgeon, botanist, voyager, British Agent to the court of Madagascar. Born the year of the French Revolution, Lyall grew up in politically radical Paisley, Scotland, before studying medicine, in Edinburgh, Manchester, and subsequently St. Petersburg, Russia. His criticism of the Tsar and Russian aristocracy led to an abrupt departure for London where Lyall became the voice of liberalism and calls for political reform, before appointed British Resident Agent in Madagascar in 1827, representing the interests of the Tory establishment that he had hitherto so roundly castigated. However, Lyall discovered that the Malagasy crown had turned against the British alliance of 1820, his scientific pursuits alienated the local elite, and his efforts to re-establish British influence antagonized the queen, Ranavalona I, who accused Lyall of sorcery and forced him and his burgeoning family to leave for Mauritius where he died an untimely death, of malaria, in 1831.

Emerging African Voices is an excellent compendium of literary scholarship offering an assessment of the literary endeavors of the latest generation of select African writers. There exists an abundance of deft scholarship and critical analyses, even in the most recent publications by African and Western theorists, of the works of recognized African authors. However, it is sometimes difficult to access a variety of criticism for some more recent writers, those born just before, at, or just after the independence of many African nations. It seems that either almost all of the recent monographs continue to focus almost entirely on the well-established writers or they focus on one newer writer exclusively. This volume offers insightful general analysis and critical evaluation of new writers' works in order to showcase their contributions to the body of African literature. It examines nine contemporary writers whose works (written almost entirely in the colonial languages of English and French) in some way update and refocus African literature for the new century. The writers whose works are under discussion tackle some of the long-standing difficulties of the colonial project-assimilation, Manicheanism, and othering-in new ways while exposing the challenges and dysfunctions of a locale affected by globalization. During the last 60 years, African literature has been dynamically shaped by African history, especially the colonial exploits of Western nations. A clear and irrefutable raison d'etre for this volume is to probe the aims and intentions of these new voices. Seven chapters are devoted to writers of Nigerian descent with the balance dedicated to writers from Senegal and South Africa. Because of the multiplicity of experiences in their geographic locations in Africa and across the Diaspora as well as their encounters and capabilities related to their place in the contemporary world, these writers continue to break new ground in African literature. Their work reflects the times and places where they live and interact, and it is for this reason that their work will permanently occupy at key place in the evolution of African literature here at the beginning of a new century almost fifty years after independence.

In this study John Yoder chronicles the history of the Kanyok, a people from the southern savanna of Zaire, from before 1500 until their incorporation into the Congo Free State in the 1890s. By analyzing their oral histories, myths and legends, the author describes the political and cultural development of a people who, before 1891, had no written records, and accounts of whose past had previously been confined to the sketchy recitation of wars and succession struggles that characterize many existing books on pre-colonial African states. Yoder sets his work firmly within the larger context of the southern savanna by extending his investigations to the traditions of neighboring peoples, in particular to the Luba and the Lunda, whose empires once dominated the region. In this way he demonstrates how the same stories and ideas circulated over a vast area but were continually adapted to local circumstances. Yoder's history of the Kanyok of Zaire thereby forms the nucleus for a broader and more composite understanding of the entire region.

A great writer's take on the war of his time
Several famous British novelists at the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries departed from the kinds of books that had brought them fame to write factual accounts of the momentous events of their own times. Most were writers of historical fiction and some were enthusiastic collectors of military history and staunch supporters of British imperialism, so it was perhaps inevitable that they would write of the unfolding events of empire. Notable among these authors were Rudyard Kipling, John Buchan and the author of this Boer War history, the famous creator of Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. One might expect that Doyle would show a jingoistic bias towards all matters British and there certainly is an element of that within these pages, but in the main he took his role as historian seriously and produced a comparatively well balanced work on the Boer political position and their abilities as a military force. However, irrespective of perspective, Conan Doyle's book displays a reliable skill in penmanship that is both distinctive and entertaining. He began this substantial book while the war was being fought, but this edition represents its fourth and final edition completed in 1904 some time after the last shot had been fired. It comprehensively covers the entire conflict and the text includes five useful campaign maps. This is an essential addition to the library of the history of the Boer War as well as for those who simply enjoy Conan Doyle's craft. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

Lumumba-Kasongo examines those forces that contributed to the fate of multiparty democracy in Africa. The forces include the state, political parties, ethnicity, nationalism, religion, underdevelopment, and the global market.

Multipartyism in Africa is not necessarily democratic. However, the processes toward multipartyism can produce democratic discourses if they can be transformed by popular and social movements. As the author points out, almost all social classes have demanded some form of democracy. Yet the sociological meanings and teleological perspectives of those forms of democracy depend on an individual or group's economic and educational status. The dynamics of the global context, as reflected in the adoption of the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and the stability programs of the International Monetary Fund, are likely to produce non-democratic conditions in Africa. Lumumba-Kasongo challenges the existing paradigms on democracy and development, so the book is of considerable interest to scholars and policy makers involved with African politics and socio-economic development.

NIGERIAN WOMEN OF DISTINCTION, HONOUR AND EXEMPLARY PRESIDENTIAL QUALITIES; EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR ALL GENDERS The book identifies scores of Nigerian revered women who match the most dignified women world-wide. Their wonderful attributes can lead Nigeria to the 'Promised Land' sooner than expected if given equal leadership opportunities. They abound in all professions including those exclusively left for men and they perform with excellence. It highlights socio-political activism of Chief Abigail Olufunmilayo Ransom-Kuti (25/10/1900-13/4/1978); Chief Hannah Awolowo's successes and unflinching support for her husband's course, Chief Obufemi Awolowo, first Premier of Western Nigeria, her revered Yorubaland eldership; and unparalleled antecedents of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Professor Dora Akunyili; Chief Olubunmi Etteh, first female Nigerian House Speaker; Chief Farida Waziri, EFCC ex-Chairperson and many others comprising 190 Nigerian women (past and present) with great and wonderful antecedents. Behind successful men are great women. When women are trained, knowledge spreads and impacts entire community. Women have inherent powers of accomplishments, invincibility and indispensability. Ironically, physically and economically powerful male chauvinists think they control everything, but their wives or girl-friends really take charge and control everything remotely including the powerful men. Imagine the world without women; it will be dull, boring, wifeless, motherless, childless and uninteresting without love, care, romance, beauty, affection, attractiveness, happiness and child production. It condemns discrimination, domestic violence, women and child abuse world-wide. Women can lead exemplarily if given equal opportunities as men. GOD BLESS NIGERIAN WOMEN

Whispers from the depths is more than just the story of the building of the Kariba Dam in the mid-1950s. Built in just five years against overwhelming odds, the dam is a monument to engineering excellence. Shrouded in political undertones, the construction of the dam was vital for the hydro-electric power it would provide for Zambia’s burgeoning copper industry. Little thought, however, appears to have been given to the future of the human and animal populations who lived in the valley that would be inundated when the dam was completed. The question has to be asked: Was this awe-inspiring man-made creation achieved at too high a cost in terms of the human suffering and environmental devastation it caused? Central to the story of Kariba was the fate of the Tonga people who had for centuries lived in the Gwembe valley, due to be flooded when the sluice gates were finally closed to halt the flow of the mighty Zambezi River. Approximately 57 000 people were forced to move from their ancestral homes, abandoning family graves and spiritual sites to the depths of Kariba's water. They became a dispersed people who have never been able to reunite as a cohesive society, never again been able to live peacefully on the banks of the river which gave them life. Animals, too, perished in their thousands despite the gallant efforts of wildlife personnel who mounted a hastily planned rescue mission known as Operation Noah. Whispers from the depths gives a voice to the all but forgotten BaTonga. It celebrates their unique culture but deplores the price they paid for progress – a price from which they themselves derived no benefit whatsoever.