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Books > Humanities > History > African history > General
In 1894 Jesus appeared in a dream to Rainisoalambo during a period of intense national crisis shortly before the French colonial invasion of Madagascar. An educated member of the southern highlands aristocracy, Rainisoalambo was also a traditional medicine man who had fallen into grave difficulty. Being stricken with a case of then-rampant leprosy, his business had vanished and he and his family were starving. In this vision, Jesus told Rainisoalambo to put away his sampy, the small idols and charms he used for his traditional divining and healing. When he awoke, he found that he was healed. He quickly got rid of his charms and began a new life of fervent prayer, witnessing to his neighbors about what had happened, and reading the gospels with new eyes, as current reality rather than ancient reports of the far-away dealings of the white man's god. A group of believers soon gathered around him. Within a year of intense activity they had formally organized themselves at Soatanna into what we would now call a base community, the Disciples of the Lord. Their simple rules called them to lives of economic sharing and self-sufficiency, cleanliness and orderliness in their persons, houses, and lands, learning to read the Bible, daily communal prayers and study, and sending out apostles and evangelists to establish other such households and communities. This was the beginning of what is now called the Fifohazana, or Awakening. More than a century later the movement comprises several tobys, or base communities, following the appearance of several more prophets, female and male, and their miracle-working. The members of the movement, or mpiandry, live throughout the island, some in the tobys butmost in the cities and villages as members of a variety of churches. The Fifohazana continues to stress spiritual healings, exorcisms, personal service to the poor and sick, cleanliness, prayer, Bible study, and witnessing. This volume provides the reader with a very clear understanding of what the Fifohazanamovement is all about historically, theologically, in terms of the main characters involved, its tremendous contributions to what a Christian healing ministry might ideally be, and as it relates to the larger world of church and society. The book is strengthened by the contributions of a diverse international group of scholars and participants in the movement. This has fostered the creation of an authentic piece of research, which combines the actual voices of participants within the movement itself along with the perspectives of scholars, who analyze the movement from the external periphery. This is the first book-length treatment of the Fifohazana in English. Editor Cynthia Holder Rich has gathered contributions from authors from five countries, including several members of the movement, to offer several perspectives onto the history and current life of the movement. Articles include analysis of major movement leaders, the place of healing in the movement, history of the conflict between the missions and the movement, the significance of oral expression in proclamation and as a means of revival, the role of women as leaders in the movement, and theological issues. The Fifohazana is one of the most intriguing current instances of indigenous Christianity in the world. While the movement has greatly evolved and changed in over a century, Jesus continues to appear and raise up newleaders. Various branches of the movement have developed a variety of institutions, but the movement has not lost its power of transformation and change. The Fifohazana: Madagascar's Indigenous Christian Movement is an important volume for research libraries, universities, African studies institutions and theological schools.
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".
A century ago, one of the five most recognizable names in the world was arguably that of Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal Republic-a small Southern African country inhabited by a white tribe-who took on the overwhelming superiority of the mighty British Empire in defense of his people's sovereign independence. It was a David and Goliath story. As most of the world-including the US-cheered the Boers on, they fought a desperate war to the bitter end (1899-1902) against colonialism, until their country lay smoldering in ruins and an estimated 27, 929 Boer women and children, as well as an untold number of blacks, had died in British concentration camps.Yet within little more than half a century, those same Afrikaners had squandered their political capital and gone from being the world's favorite underdog to one of the most reviled names in history. Their subsequent social engineering project known as apartheid became an abhorrent concept in the eyes of the international community. Bernard Botes Kruger is a fifth-generation descendant of the wartime president, Paul Kruger. He is an Afrikaner who lived most of his life in the turmoil and conflict that has dominated his country's history. His new historical novel, A Battlement of Spears, tells the remarkable story of how not only the Afrikaners, but also the many other former sovereign nations within the redrawn borders of the postwar South Africa struggled to come to terms with a common identity, often with devastating consequences. "What cruel twist of tectonic irony caused the deepest scar on the earth's surface across the face of that continent that would also suffer the most appalling of human tragedies?" the author asks. Set against the backdrop of the timeless mountain called in Zulu uKhahlamba (Barrier of Spears), a dramatic geographic boundary that divided nations throughout history, A Battlement of Spears is an epic story spanning twenty-four years and two continents, of two young men with similar interests but vastly different cultural backgrounds who become unlikely friends. In a tragic series of events they will discover what sacrifices are exacted from those who would dwell in the symbolic no man's land of the summit, where fog often obscures the vision and deprivation dulls the senses, until it becomes all too easy to drift into hostile territory or stumble into the jaws of the precipice. In the process they will become separated, spending a lifetime before finding each other again a world away, on a different continent. But in the course of their respective journeys, they will also learn that barriers are not always what they seem, and that choices are sometimes inevitable, with far-reaching consequences. In that hauntingly beautiful land it is never merely about survival, but about the things that make it truly worthwhile, such as loyalty, friendship and honor, regardless of the price. Written in a style that endeavors to entertain while enlightening the uninformed about South Africa's long road to democracy, the book provides extensive background explanations (yes, footnotes) to those interested in the historical, anthropological or linguistic aspects of a 'rainbow nation, ' which today recognizes eleven official languages and several royal families, besides a multitude of unofficial languages and dialects. And while A Battlement of Spears is a work of fiction, based, according to the author, on "countless true stories," it becomes evident within the first few pages that many of the events portrayed are too detailed and specific not to have been experienced by someone. Some elements of the story are unmistakably autobiographical, but much of it simply represents the collective consciousness of a people struggling to find solutions.
Poverty-related problems facing Africa are not only overwhelming but are also monumental and worrisome. Some of Africa's poverty problems are self-inflicted and have increasingly become systemically chronic, while others are externally instigated. This book focuses on an aspect of those problems that are principally internal to Africa--the issue of corruption. The book picks out Zambia as a case study. Thus, the efficacy of the legal and institutional framework for fighting corruption in Zambia is examined. As an authoritative text on Zambian jurisprudence, this book brings out critically and analytically incisive legal perspectives. The book also makes reference to closely related developments in other jurisdictions. Weaknesses in the legal and institutional framework in Zambia are identified, and the book spells out proposals to strengthen the framework. "The book is an excellent attempt to set the record straight on the otherwise often confusing present situation in Zambia vis-a-vis the established legal and institutional mechanisms, which sometimes appear to compete against each other. This seems to work against the very raison d'etre or objective for which they were instituted. The book attempts to provide some solutions on how this could be avoided or overcome. ... It is a highly recommended work for people in other countries, especially developing ones, who are also involved in the fight against corruption to draw lessons from Zambia's attempt to rid itself from this scourge." - Dr. Mpazi Sinjela, LL.B (UNZA), LL.M, JSD (Yale) Dean, WIPO Worldwide Academy; Professor, (Visiting), Lund University and Raoul Wallenberg Institute (Sweden); Co-Director and Professor, Masters Degree Program in Intellectual Property, University of Turin, (Italy)
Based on a series of detailed case studies, this book presents the history of genocide in Africa within the specific context of African history, examining conflicts in countries such as Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Rwanda, and Sudan. Why has Africa been the subject of so many accusations related to genocide? Indeed, the number of such allegations related to Africa has increased dramatically over the past 15 years. Popular racist mythology might suggest that Africans belong to "tribes" that are inherently antagonistic towards each other and therefore engage in "tribal warfare" which cannot be rationally explained. This concept is wrong, as Timothy J. Stapleton explains in A History of Genocide in Africa: the many conflicts that have plagued post-colonial Africa have had very logical explanations, and very few of these instances of African warring can be said to have resulted in genocide. Authored by an expert historian of Africa, this book examines the history of six African countries-Namibia, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Nigeria-in which the language of genocide has been mobilized to describe episodes of tragic mass violence. It seeks to place genocide within the context of African history, acknowledging the few instances where the international legal term genocide has been applied appropriately to episodes of mass violence in African history and identifying the many other cases where it has not and instead the term has been used in a cynical manipulation to gain some political advantage. Readers will come to understand how, to a large extent, genocide accusations related to post-colonial Africa have often served to prolong wars and cause greater loss of life. The book also clarifies how in areas of Africa where genocides have actually occurred, there appears to have been a common history of the imposition of racial ideologies and hierarchies during the colonial era-which when combined with other factors such as the local geography, demography, religion, and/or economics, resulted in tragic and appalling outcomes. Provides an unprecedented comprehensive history of genocide in Africa that will serve students of history, war and society, and genocide as well as general readers Covers Africa's most infamous genocides as well as lesser-known cases of large scale atrocities Addresses events that are contested as genocides in Africa in recent history, including the Nigerian Civil War as well as events in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo Examines the historical context for each of these events to clearly explain how they occurred
This open access book demonstrates how data quality issues affect all surveys and proposes methods that can be utilised to deal with the observable components of survey error in a statistically sound manner. This book begins by profiling the post-Apartheid period in South Africa's history when the sampling frame and survey methodology for household surveys was undergoing periodic changes due to the changing geopolitical landscape in the country. This book profiles how different components of error had disproportionate magnitudes in different survey years, including coverage error, sampling error, nonresponse error, measurement error, processing error and adjustment error. The parameters of interest concern the earnings distribution, but despite this outcome of interest, the discussion is generalizable to any question in a random sample survey of households or firms. This book then investigates questionnaire design and item nonresponse by building a response propensity model for the employee income question in two South African labour market surveys: the October Household Survey (OHS, 1997-1999) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS, 2000-2003). This time period isolates a period of changing questionnaire design for the income question. Finally, this book is concerned with how to employee income data with a mixture of continuous data, bounded response data and nonresponse. A variable with this mixture of data types is called coarse data. Because the income question consists of two parts -- an initial, exact income question and a bounded income follow-up question -- the resulting statistical distribution of employee income is both continuous and discrete. The book shows researchers how to appropriately deal with coarse income data using multiple imputation. The take-home message from this book is that researchers have a responsibility to treat data quality concerns in a statistically sound manner, rather than making adjustments to public-use data in arbitrary ways, often underpinned by undefensible assumptions about an implicit unobservable loss function in the data. The demonstration of how this can be done provides a replicable concept map with applicable methods that can be utilised in any sample survey.
The socio-political context of Egypt is full of the affectual burdens of history. The revolutions of both 1952 and 2011 proclaimed that the oppressive, colonial past had been overthrown decisively. So why has the oppression perpetrated by previous regimes been repeated? What impact has this had on the lives of 'ordinary' citizens? Egyptian Revolutions looks at the impact of the current events in Egypt on citizens in relation to matters of belonging, identification and repetition. It contests the tendency within postcolonial theory to understand these events as resistance to Western imperialism and the positioning of activists as agents of sustainable change. Instead, it pays close attention to the continuities from the past and the contradictions at work in relation to identification, repetition and conflict. Combining postcolonial theory with a psychosocial studies framework it explores the complexities of inhabiting a society in a state of conflict and offers a careful analysis of current theories of gender, religion and secularism, agency, resistance and compliance, in a society riven with divisions and conflicts.
Selena Axelrod Winsnes has been engaged, since 1982, in the translation into English, and editing of Danish language sources to West African history, sources published from 1697 to 1822, the period during which Denmark-Norway was an actor in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It comprises five major books written for the Scandinavian public. They describe all aspects of life on the Gold Coast Ghana], the Middle Passage and the Danish Caribbean islands US Virgin Islands], as seen by five different men. Each had his own agenda and mind-set, and the books, both singly and combined, hold a wealth of information - of interest both to scholars and lay readers. They provide important insights into the cultural baggage the enslaved Africans carried with them to the America's. One of the books, L.F.Rmer's A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea was runner-up for the prestigious international texts prize awarded by the U.S. African Studies Association. Selena Winsnes lived in Ghana for five years and studied at the University of Ghana, Legon. Her mother tongue is English; and, working free-lance, she resides premanently in Norway with her husband, four children and eight grandchildren. In 2008, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters for distinguished scholarship by the University of Ghana, Legon
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.
Dr Jacob Chikuhwa continues with his academic analysis of both the political and economic developments in Zimbabwe. Supported by well researched historical narrative and economic data, Zimbabwe: The End of the First Republic examines the triumphs and tribulations of the Zimbabwean national project leading to the adoption of a home-grown constitution and the July 31, 2013 elections. Although the war of liberation led to Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, it has not established democracy, functioning health and education systems and equal opportunities for Zimbabweans. What Zimbabweans experience is decay of infrastructure with very little in the state coffers despite abundant natural resources. The theme on economic performance focuses on numerous failed economic blueprints that began with the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme during the early 1990s. The haphazard land-reform programme and the exploitation of mineral resources take centre stage. While Zimbabwe is poised to supply 25% of world diamond output, the way tenders are being awarded for the diamond mining has highlighted the need for accountability and transparency. Before the coalition government was formed in 2009, the country had gone from being one of Africa's strongest economies to one of its weakest - as Zimbabweans grappled with hyperinflation, mass unemployment and widespread poverty. Although the Short Term Emergency Recovery Programme brought some semblance of economic stability, the way indigenisation and economic empowerment are being carried out make investors shun the southern African country. Chikuhwa's economic study focuses on how corruption and a lack of transparency and accountability in Zimbabwe's governance have intensified social problems, crime and poverty, and have alienated the IMF and World Bank as well as potential foreign investors. This study, rich in statistical data and heartfelt commentary, will serve as a useful introduction for those studying Zimbabwe's recent history and economic development and entrepreneurs looking for investment opportunities.
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.
Churchill's personal account of the first five months of the Second Boer War; including the Relief of Ladysmith, and Churchill's capture and dramatic escape from the Boers.
Napoleon's Egyptian adventure by an Egyptian historian
Building Colonialism draws together the relationship between archaeology and history in East Africa using techniques of artefact, building, spatial and historical analyses to highlight the existence of, and accordingly the need to conserve, the urban centres of Africa's more recent past. The study does this by exploring the physical remains of European activity and the way that the construction of harbour towns directly reflects the colonial mission of European powers in the nineteenth century in Tanzania and Kenya. Based on fieldwork which recorded and analysed the buildings and monuments within these towns it compares the European creations to earlier Swahili urban design and explores the way European commercial trade systems came to dominate East Africa. Based on the kind of Urban Landscape Analyses carried out in the UK and Ireland, Building Colonialism looks at the social and spatial implications of the towns on the Indian Ocean coast which contain centres of derelict and unused buildings dating from East Africa's nineteenth-century colonial era. The book begins by concentrating upon towns in Tanzania and Kenya which were the key entry points into Africa for the nineteenth-century colonial regimes and compares these to later French and Italian colonies and discusses contemporary approaches to the conservation of colonial built heritage and the difficulties faced in ensuring valid participatory protection of the urban heritage resource. |
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