This collection, arranged and edited by Beverly G. Hawk, examines media coverage of Africa by American television, newspapers, and magazines. Scholars and journalists of diverse experience engage in debate concerning U.S. media coverage of current events in Africa. As each African crisis appears in the headlines, scholars take the media to task for sensational and simplistic reporting. Journalists, in response, explain the constraints of censorship, reader interest, and media economics. Hawk's book demonstrates that academia and the press can inform each other to present a fuller and more sensitive picture of Africa today.

This volume will be of interest to scholars and practitioners in African studies, African politics, journalism, and international relations.

Forests have been at the fault lines of contact between African peasant communities in the Tanzanian coastal hinterland and outsiders for almost two centuries. In recent decades, a global call for biodiversity preservation has been the main challenge to Tanzanians and their forests.
Thaddeus Sunseri uses the lens of forest history to explore some of the most profound transformations in Tanzania from the nineteenth century to the present. He explores anticolonial rebellions, the world wars, the depression, the Cold War, oil shocks, and nationalism through their intersections with and impacts on Tanzania's coastal forests and woodlands. In "Wielding the Ax," forest history becomes a microcosm of the origins, nature, and demise of colonial rule in East Africa and of the first fitful decades of independence.
"Wielding the Ax "is a story of changing constellations of power over forests, beginning with African chiefs and forest spirits, both known as "ax-wielders," and ending with international conservation experts who wield scientific knowledge as a means to controlling forest access. The modern international concern over tropical deforestation cannot be understood without an awareness of the long-term history of these forest struggles.

This book is about the Egyptian people's 2011 Revolution for freedom, justice, and human dignity, and its aftermath. The Revolution succeeded in toppling the authoritarian Mubarak regime in less than three weeks. It was then co-opted by the Muslim Brotherhood through Egypt's first free and fair elections in 2012, which was in turn crushed in 2013 by a popularly supported military regime whose practices of repression negatively impacted the justice system and human rights. The problems facing the country and its people are daunting, particularly economic, demographic, and social pressures. The contextual analysis of these and other historic and contemporary issues give the reader a comprehensive understanding of what has occurred in the last five years and an insight into where the country is heading. Even though the Revolution has been suppressed and the promise of democracy shunted aside, the majority of the Egyptian people continue to hope for the unachieved dreams of social justice, human dignity, and freedom. Egypt's geopolitical importance makes it indispensable to the stability of the Middle East, and thus important to the world.

This book completes a trilogy by the anthropologist Wendy James. It is a case study of how the Uduk-speaking people, originally from the Blue Nile region between the 'north' and the 'south' of Sudan, have been caught up in and displaced by a generation of civil war. Some have responded by defending their nation, others by joining the armed resistance of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and yet others eventually finding security as international refugees in Ethiopia, and even further afield in countries such as the USA. Sudan's peace agreement of 2005 leaves much uncertainty for the future of the whole country, as conflict still rages in Darfur. The Uduk case shows how people who once lived together now try to maintain links across borders and even continents through modern communications, and where possible recreate their 'traditional' forms of story-telling, music, and song.

Why did the Armenian genocide erupt in Turkey in 1915, only seven years after the Armenian minority achieved civil equality for the first time in the history of the Ottoman Empire? How can we explain the Rwandan genocide occurring in 1994, after decades of relative peace and even cooperation between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority? Addressing the question of how the risk of genocide develops over time, On the Path to Genocide contributes to a better understand why genocide occurs when it does. It provides a comprehensive and comparative historical analysis of the factors that led to the 1915 Armenian genocide and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, using fresh sources and perspectives that yield new insights into the history of the Armenian and Rwandan peoples. Finally, it also presents new research into constraints that inhibit genocide, and how they can be utilized to attempt the prevention of genocide in the future.

This study critically examines for the first time the unlikely friendship between apartheid South Africa and non-white Japan. In the mid-1980s, Japan became South Africa's largest trading partner, while South Africa purportedly treated Japanese citizens in the Republic as honorary whites under apartheid. Osada probes the very different foreign policy-making mechanisms of the two nations and analyzes their ambivalent bilateral relations against the background of postcolonial and Cold War politics. She concludes that these diplomatic policies were adopted not voluntarily or willingly, but out of necessity due to external circumstances and international pressure.

Why did Japan exercise sanctions against South Africa in spite of their strong economic ties? How effective were these sanctions? What did the sensational term honorary whites actually mean? When and how did this special treatment begin? How did South Africa get away with apparently treating the Japanese as whites but not Chinese, other Coloureds, Indians, and so forth? By using Japan's "sanctions" against South Africa and South Africa's "honorary white" treatment of the Japanese as key concepts, the author describes the development of bilateral relations during this unique era. The book also covers the fascinating historical interaction between the two countries from the mid-17th century onward.

This collection of essays contextualises the discourse on Ubuntu within the wider historical framework of postcolonial attempts to re-articulate African humanism as a substantial philosophy and emancipatory ideology. As such, the emergence of Ubuntu as a postcolonial philosophy is posited as both a function of and a critical response to Western modernity. The central question addressed in this book is: Was Ubuntu's emancipatory potential confined to and perhaps exhausted by South Africa's transition to democracy or does the notion of our 'shared humanity', as theorised in Ubuntu discourse, still have relevance for our urgent need to imagine South Africa's post-nationalist and post-neoliberal future? The contributions in this volume address this question from the perspective of a wide range of disciplines, including political philosophy, African history, gender studies, philosophy of law and cultural studies. Leonhard Praeg is associate professor and Siphokazi Magadla is a lecturer and PhD candidate, both in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. Contributors: Danielle Bowler, Ama Biney, Ezra Chitando, Drucilla Cornell, Katherine Furman, Lewis R. Gordon, Ilze Keevy, Siphokazi Magadla, Leonhard Praeg, Mogobe B. Ramose, Issa Shivji

The height of colonial rule on the African continent saw two prominent religious leaders step to the fore: Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and Abel Muzorewa in Zimbabwe. Both Tutu and Muzorewa believed that Africans could govern their own nations responsibly and effectively if only they were given the opportunity. In expressing their religious views about the need for social justice each man borrowed from national traditions that had shaped policy of earlier church leaders. Tutu and Muzorewa argued that the political development of Africans was essential to the security of the white settlers and that whites should seek the promotion of political development of Africans as a condition of that future security. Desmond Tutu and Abel Muzorewa were both motivated by strong religious principles. They disregarded the possible personal repercussions that they might suffer as a result of their efforts to alter the fundamental bases of their colonial governments. Each man hoped to create a new national climate in which blacks and whites could cooperate to build a new nation. Each played a part in eventual independence for Zimbabwe in 1980 and for South Africa in 1994. Mungazi's examination of their efforts reveals how individuals with strong convictions can make a difference in shaping the future of their nations.

In the post-Cold War era, religion and religious extremism has been the cause of most violent conflicts, thereby posing one of the major security challenges confronting the world and, in recent years, the stability and security of the African continent. Unfortunately, some states targeted by terrorist insurgencies, including Nigeria and Kenya, have been reactive, adopting coercive responses rather than proactive long-term measures to address the factors and drivers of religious extremism in a comprehensive and sustained manner. Confronting Islamist Terrorism in Africa: The Cases of Nigeria and Kenya addresses the fragility of state institutions in terms of their ability and capacity to manage diversity, corruption, inequality, human rights violations, environmental degradation, weak security, and judicial problems, as well as the current security challenges in Africa. It also serves as an indispensable comparative study evaluating the similarities and differences in two nations' approaches to the war on terror in Africa.

The most comprehensive, profound, and accurate book ever written in the history of modern Sudan, Integration and Fragmentation of the Sudan: An African Renaissance, is an encyclopedia of ancient and modern history as well as the politics of Sudan. It is a library of data that discusses Sudan from its economic, political, and social standpoint since the Arab discovery and use of the term Bilad es Sudan up through the modern republic of the Sudan after which South and North Sudan collided in 1947. Although written to correct fabrications, this book is a foundation on which future Sudans shall live on. It is full of useful information that discusses and provides feasible solutions to the fundamental problem of the Sudan that ruptured the country from the Berlin Conference to the post-independence era. For centuries, Sudanese and the international community have been fed with idealistic information as if Sudan started with the coming of the Arabs in the fourteenth century. This persisted due to the lack of resources and formal education among African natives. Khartoum's unreasonable diversion of genuine history is one among the many causes of mistrust and division in Sudan. The indigenous Africans found themselves peripheral to Khartoum where economic and political power is concentrated. Integration and fragmentation of Sudan: An African Renaissance is a great source of knowledge for the public and students of Sudanese politics. With the referendum and popular consultation approaching, this book is a head-start for the marginalized Black Africans to make an informed decision between oppression and liberty. Examples and testimonies provided in the text are reasons for the affected regions to permanently determine their future. For freedom diehards this book lays the foundation on which to celebrate the birth of Africa's newest sovereign nation along the Nile River.

This book maintains that South Africa, despite the official end of apartheid in 1994, remains steeped in the interstices of coloniality. The author looks at the Black Nationalist thought in South Africa and its genealogy. Colonial modernity and coloniality of power and their equally sinister accessories, war, murder, rape and genocide have had a lasting impact onto those unfortunate enough to receive such ghastly visitations. Tafira explores a range of topics including youth political movement, the social construction of blackness in Azania, and conceptualizations from the Black Liberation Movement.

Gathering oral stories and visual art from both sides of the Atlantic, Istwa across the Water stitches together fragmented parts of the African diaspora. Toni Pressley-Sanon challenges the tendency to read history linearly and recovers the submerged histories of Haiti through alternative methods rooted in the island's spiritual and cultural traditions. Using the Vodou concept of marasa, or twinned entities, this book takes parts of Dahomey (the present-day Benin Republic) and the Kongo region-from where many Haitians are descended-as Haiti's twinned sites of cultural production. It draws on poet Kamau Brathwaite's idea of tidalectics, the back-and-forth movement of ocean waves, as a way to look at cultural exchange. Above all, it searches out the places where history and memory intersect, expressed by the Kreyol term istwa, offering a bold new approach for understanding Haitian histories and imagining Haitian futures.

Infused with colour, scenes from the Anglo-Boer War suddenly come to life in this striking collection of colourised photos from one of the biggest conflicts on South African soil.

The Anglo-Boer War, or South African War, pitted the two Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State against British imperial might. The effects of this devastating war on the political, economic and social landscape were felt long after its end. The Boer War in Colour contains many iconic photos from the war, as well as several previously unpublished images.

Over the past 120 years, hundreds of books on the Anglo-Boer War have been published, but this will be the first to show this conflict in full colour – introducing a fresh perspective and transforming it into living history.

In Once Upon a Time in Biafra, the prolific Nigerian historian Onianwa Oluchukwu Ignatus has produced an unprecedented study of prominent individuals from across the globe who visited the Republic of Biafra and Federal side of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970. This innovative new study contributes much to restoring the memory of the civil war, which has faded in recent decades. There is no better way to take a glimpse of how life was in Biafra as well as the Federal side of the war other than a careful study of reports of those who visited these troubled areas. Apart from those who were on ground and participated actively in the civil war, the reports of those who visited war territories offer another major source for historians to understand wartime life experiences on both sides. Individual reports analyzed in this book include reports presented to both the British and United States governments, some official visitors sent by their nations and others invited guests of either the Biafran government or the Federal military government of Nigeria. They included parliamentarians, journalists, medical personnel, government officials, and religious leaders, among others. Reportage about life on both sides of the Nigerian Civil War, particularly in Biafra, is striking commentary on wartime experiences that have become part of the historiography and memory of the Nigerian Civil War. As Ignatus explains, these experiences of foreigners have helped to define the legacies of that conflict with regard to individual contributions and the roles of both civilians and military personnel. Observation of everyday life serves as a way of understanding how people lived and adapted to conflict situations, and offers an equally worthy guide for efforts towards healing the war's enduring wounds.

This book is the first English translation of Felice di Michele Brancacci's diary of his 1422 mission to the court of Sultan Al-Ashraf Seyf-ad-Din Barsbay of Egypt. Following the purchase of Port of Pisa in 1421, and the building of a galley system, Florence went on to assume a more active role in Levant trade, and this rich text recounts the maiden voyage of the Florentine galleys to Egypt. The text portrays the transnational experiences of Brancacci including those between the East and West, Christians and Muslims, and the ancient and modern worlds. The accompanying critical introduction discusses the unexpected motifs in Brancacci's voyage, as well as tracing the aftershocks of what was a traumatic Egyptian experience for him. It shows that this aftershock was then measured, captured, and memorialized in the iconic image of Tribute Money, the fresco he commissioned from Masaccio, on his return to his own world in Florence.

This book explores British post-colonial foreign policy towards Kenya from 1963 to 1980. It reveals the extent and nature of continued British government influence in Kenya after independence. It argues that this was not simply about neo-colonialism, and Kenya's elite had substantial agency to shape the relationship. The first section addresses how policy was made and the role of High Commissions and diplomacy. It emphasises contingency, with policy produced through shared interests and interaction with leading Kenyans. It argues that British policy-makers helped to create and then reinforced Kenya's neo-patrimonialism. The second part examines the economic, military, personal and diplomatic networks which successive British governments sustained with independent Kenya. A combination of interlinked interests encouraged British officials to place a high value on this relationship, even as their world commitments diminished. This book appeals to those interested in Kenyan history, post-colonial Africa, British foreign policy, and forms of diplomacy and policy-making.