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New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa casts a critical
look at Africa's rapidly evolving religious media scene. Following
political liberalization, media deregulation, and the proliferation
of new media technologies, many African religious leaders and
activists have appropriated such media to strengthen and expand
their communities and gain public recognition. Media have also been
used to marginalize and restrict the activities of other groups,
which has sometimes led to tension, conflict, and even violence.
Showing how media are rarely neutral vehicles of expression, the
contributors to this multidisciplinary volume analyze the mutual
imbrications of media and religion during times of rapid
technological and social change in various places throughout
Africa.
New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa casts a critical
look at Africa's rapidly evolving religious media scene. Following
political liberalization, media deregulation, and the proliferation
of new media technologies, many African religious leaders and
activists have appropriated such media to strengthen and expand
their communities and gain public recognition. Media have also been
used to marginalize and restrict the activities of other groups,
which has sometimes led to tension, conflict, and even violence.
Showing how media are rarely neutral vehicles of expression, the
contributors to this multidisciplinary volume analyze the mutual
imbrications of media and religion during times of rapid
technological and social change in various places throughout
Africa.
Drawing material from Sub-Saharan Africa's two most economically
successful nations, this book delves into the paradox of
accelerated flows of capital and information, and the social
closure and exploitation they generate when people cross national
borders. In both countries relative economic progress has lured
immigrants to seek a living, often as undocumented 'aliens'. The
reaction among ordinary Botswanans and South Africans has been a
heightened xenophobia that exploits and excludes. This book is an
incisive commentary on a globalizing world that reaches down into
the grassroots of southern Africa with consequences that have
received little attention. Nyamnjoh documents the new politics of
insiders and outsiders in these societies, delivering a telling
commentary on the global rhetoric of open societies in an era of
increasing closures and exclusions.
Life in Safang could not have been more idyllic for Ngoma and
Shaka, his elder sister. Under the wings of an attendant and
storytelling mother, they didn't miss the father they hadn't known.
Later on, in the alluvial valleys of Bonfuma and the lands beyond,
Ngoma experiences the thrills and challenges of schooling and being
schooled. Adolescents will appreciate his stories and struggles as
he tries to reconcile his village roots with the desire for a
modern education. He has special relationships with his
grandfather, stepfather and teachers, and becomes captain of the
college football team. But growing up with a sister does not make
him understand the subtleties and complexities of girls. Whether
Collette or Camille, they seem to be two sides of the same coin.
Ngoma successfully manoeuvres between the two, without the
slightest crisis, for a while. He seeks balance between God and
girls, work and pleasure, learning and mischief. While life can be
well salted, it can also be bitter. Jealousy rises and he discovers
who matters and who doesn't. His life brings together the
bearableness and unbearableness of belonging, of being in love and
being free, of...
Intimate Strangers tells the story of the everyday tensions of
maids and madams in ways that bring together different worlds and
explore various dimensions of servitude and mobility. Immaculate
travels to a foreign land only to find her fianc refusing to marry
her. Operating from the margins of society, through her own
ingenuity and an encounter with researcher Dr Winter-Bottom Nanny,
she is able to earn some money. Will she remain at the margins or
graduate into DUST - Diamond University of Science and Technology?
Immaculate learns how maids struggle to make ends meet and madams
wrestle to keep them in their employ. Resolved to make her
disappointments blessings, she perseveres until she can take no
more.
'We cannot imagine life now without a mobile phone' is a frequent
comment when Africans are asked about mobile phones. They have
become part and parcel of the communication landscape in many urban
and rural areas of Africa and the growth of mobile telephony is
amazing: from 1 in 50 people being users in 2000 to 1 in 3 in 2008.
Such growth is impressive but it does not even begin to tell us
about the many ways in which mobile phones are being appropriated
by Africans and how they are transforming or are being transformed
by society in Africa. This volume ventures into such appropriation
and mutual shaping. Rich in theoretical innovation and empirical
substantiation, it brings together reflections on developments
around the mobile phone by scholars of six African countries
(Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Sudan and Tanzania) who
explore the economic, social and cultural contexts in which the
mobile phone is being adopted, adapted and harnessed by mobile
Africa.
Married But Available ventures into a theme about which people say
as much as they withhold. It explores intersections between sex,
money and power, challenging orthodoxies, revealing complexities
and providing insights into the politics and economics of
relationships. During six months of fieldwork in Mimboland, Lilly
Loveless, a Muzungulander doctoral student in Social Geography,
researches how sex shapes and is shaped by power and consumerism in
Africa. The bulk of her research takes place on the outskirts of
the University of Mimbo, an institution where nothing is what it
seems. Through her astounding harvest of encounters, interviews,
conversations and observations, the reader gets a captivating
glimpse into the frailty and resilience of human beings and
society. Lilly Loveless comes out of it all well and truly
baptized. And so does the reader!
Dieudonnes life is spun from the threads of one of Africa's grand
moral dilemmas, in which personal responsibility is intertwined
with the social catharsis occasioned by ambitions of dominance and
ever diminishing circles. We encounter Dieudonne at the tail end of
his service as 'houseboy' to the Toubaabys, a patronising
expatriate couple. In the company of a lively assortment of
characters and luring music at the Grand Canari Bar, Dieudonne
recounts his life. As he peels layer after layer of his
vicissitudes, he depicts the everyday resilience of the African on
a continent caught in the web of predatory forces. Yet, this
enchanting failure also celebrates the infinite capacity of the
African to find happiness and challenge victimhood.
This book richly documents the battles fought by the Anglophone
community in Cameroon to safeguard the General Certificate of
Education (GCE), a symbol of their cherished colonial heritage from
Britain, from attempts by agents of the Ministry of National
Education to subvert it. These battles opposed a mobilised and
determined Anglophone civil society against numerous machinations
by successive Francophone-dominated governments to destroy their
much prided educational system in the name of 'national
integration'. When Southern Cameroonians re-united with La
Rpublique du Cameroun in 1961, they claimed that they were bringing
into the union 'a fine education system' from which their
Francophone compatriots could borrow. Instead, they found
themselves battling for decades to save their way of life. Central
to their concerns and survival as a community is an urgent need for
cultural recognition and representation, of which an educational
system free of corruption and trivialisation through politicisation
is a key component.
One day, Mama Ngonsu told her son: "Normally, a child grew up and
stayed around to help his parents. The world has changed, and
things are no longer as they used to be. Things must not be normal
all the time, otherwise life would not be life." When Emmanuel
Kwanga gets a University scholarship, he travels from the lake and
hills of Abehema to the Great City. Everyone in the village has
invested in him their hopes for the good life. When the life
they've imagined is cut short by the University guillotine,
Emmanuel Kwanga must struggle to make sense of what the good life
means - for himself and for Abehema - in a world where things are
no longer as they used to be. This novel is about coming of age and
coming to terms in Mimboland. It is also about the fragility of
life and the strength of the human spirit. The filth and screaming
splendor of the city and the perplexed tranquility of the village
are juxtaposed, as the tension and conviviality between tradition
and modernity are lived and explored. Roads and drivers, dreams and
public transport link different geographies. Faltering along or
speeding away, these spaces of risk, frustration and solidarity are
filled with popular songs as vehicles for understanding events and
relationships. With every crossing of the Pont de Maturite the
story flows, and its mysteries surge. In this novel, the worlds of
the living and the dead intermingle, as do the natural and the
supernatural, the visible and the invisible.
Childhood and growing up in Mimboland, Cameroon are infused with
fascinating stories and adventures. Discover life in Abakwa with
Tom and his friend, as they are chased through an orchard for
secretly harvesting avocadoes and mangoes. Smile as Mathias Chi's
overloaded canoe almost loses balance. Shiver as Roland runs
through the dark streets and bleeding corridors of Mvog Mvog. And
cry when Big Brother discovers how his siblings suffered when he
was away at school. What happens to Esther when she finds the
courage to make an announcement at the Abakwa Mountain Foot Radio
Station about her husband's disappearance? Will Prudencia and
Collette kill or give life? How does Prisca Lum deal with her dwarf
husband? Some characters will remind you of people you know - or
even of yourself. Drum beats and church bells, thunder and
lightning, princes and princesses, visions and deceptions fill the
pages. Discover your favorite stories waiting to be told and
retold, again and again.
"This play tackles the theatrically attractive but ethically
complex issue of Christian fundamentalism. Nyamnjoh, as a
sociologist is well qualified to explore the social problems and
psychological pressures which give rise to the born-again
phenomenon, and the strong appeal of fundamentalist religion. The
Convert, however is no schematic sociological tract. It deals with
the conflicting imperatives in 21st century West Africa, which push
ordinary people into extraordinary situations, and provides no easy
solutions to the issues raised. Although the play revolves around
the Ultimate Church of Christ and the four main characters affected
by it, the audience is given a deftly sketched picture of a corrupt
world beyond it, lacking in spiritual or community values. ..] The
characterization. is remarkable for its avoidance of any obvious
protagonist; the audience is allowed no clear character with whom
to identify. The four main characters . have both virtues and
flaws, each providing insights into ways the consumer-oriented
materialism of modern life impacts upon African spirituality and
community values." - David Kerr, Professor in Literature and Drama,
University of Botswana "At the core of the implicit philosophy in
Nyamnjoh's The Convert . is the theatrical manifesto that
contemporary society has not only to liberate itself, and its
productive powers from 'Pentecostal', freak religions and
distortion, it also has to liberate these same productive
capacities from their present prostration. There is a deep,
engaging humanism that pervades The Convert, but it is a humanism
emblematic, to speak analogously, of the Aeschylean variety." -
Bate Besong, Africa Review of Books.
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