This book contains chapters on education leadership, management and governance in relation to schools in South Africa supplemented with a chapter on gender issues in Zimbabwe. It has been fifteen years since a new Constitution dawned, which promised a society based on the people of South Africa, that recognised the injustices of the past and would be built on fundamental human rights and justice for all no matter their race, ethnicity, or economic power. South Africa has moved a long way in developing a democratic society. The emergence of this book is the result of a collaborative effort of people with diverse cultural, social and ethnic roots, who share a common belief in the development of a just and equal society, and who share a specific interest in developing schools as a fundamental element in developing this equal and just society.

This handbook was conceived upon a realisation that while education systems in African countries share many commonalities because of a common history, there was paucity of shared literature regarding school leadership in those systems. Scholars and students of Educational Leadership and Management have for many decades relied, in fact over-relied on literature from Europe, North America and Australia. The dilemma is that literature from the latter regions of the world cannot and will not tell Africa's story to the full. In many an education system, sound leadership is the missing link not only in the running of the education systems but the entire states. In seeking to deeply understand and address this leadership conundrum, it is imperative that African scholars tell their own African 'stories' by way of generating cutting-edge literature in that regard, particularly empirical evidence. This handbook is a one-stop platform on which readers including under- and postgraduate students of education, novice and seasoned researchers in the field of educational leadership and management, education policy makers and non-governmental organisations have an opportunity to consume empirical evidence by African scholars on aspects of school leadership in Africa. Students of comparative education will also find this collection very useful. Non-governmental organisations may find this handbook quite revealing in terms of some of the common issues emerging that may be worth investing funds into. A typical example of such themes is the development of school leaders. Authors were invited to write on a school leadership matter they considered topical in their country. Each author did not have any knowledge about what others were writing about their own countries. Therefore the handbook is a collection of topics unique to a country according to the author in question. Therefore even where the chapter titles may sound similar, the content in each case is contextually different. Context is very important all cases when we seek to understand and write about any subject. This collection is rich in contexts from East, Central, North, West and Southern Africa. Thus, this handbook is ideal in every University Faculty of Education library, in the shelves of education policy makers and in the hands of all those who are passionate about advancing educational leadership on the African continent and the scholarship of this field worldwide.