Anthills of the Savannah

When Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress declared victory over the bitter injustice of apartheid, some thought South Africa’s future was assured. But despite Mandela’s mission of reconciliation, rampant inequality remains; race relations are uneasy, violence is endemic and many in the ANC appear to have lost sight of the liberation ideals. With the election in 2009 of Jacob Zuma, a charismatic populist embroiled in scandal, uncertainty over the trajectory of the nation has only intensified.

South Africa now stands at a crossroads, and award-winning journalist Alec Russell draws on his deep knowledge of the country to tell us how it got there and to give us a compelling account, revised and updated for this edition, of the journey from Mandela to Zuma.

The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana’s coast between 1700 and 1807. Author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of southern Ghanaians as they became both victims of continuous violence and successful brokers of enslaved human beings. The era of the slave trade gave birth to a new culture in this part of West Africa, just as it was giving birth to new cultures across the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade pushes Asante scholarship to the forefront of African diaspora and Atlantic World studies by showing the integral role of Fante middlemen and transatlantic trade in the development of the Asante economy prior to 1807.

A gripping retelling of the legendary story of Livingstone and Stanley.

In 1866 Britain’s foremost explorer, Dr David Livingstone, went in search of the answer to an age- old geographical riddle- where was the source of the Nile? Livingstone set out with a large expedition, on a course that would lead through nearly impenetrable, unmapped terrain, and into areas populated by fearsome man- eating tribes. Within weeks his intended journey began to fall apart- his entourage deserted him and Livingstone vanished without trace into the African interior. He would not be heard from again for two years.While debate raged in England over whether Livingstone could be found in the unmapped wilderness of Africa, James Gordon Bennet, a brash young American newspaper tycoon, hatched a plan to capitalise on the world’s fascination with the missing legend. He commissioned his star reporter, Henry Morton Stanley (born John Rowlands in Wales!), to search for Livingstone. Stanley undertook his quest with gusto, filing reports that captivated readers and dominated the front page of the New York Herald for months.INTO AFRICA traces the journeys of Livingstone and Stanley in alternating chapters. Livingstone’s journey is one of trials and set- backs, that find him alone and depleted miles from civilisation. Stanley’s is an awakening to the beauty of Africa, the grandeur of her landscape and the vivid diversity of her wildlife. It is also a journey that succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, clinching his place in history with the famous question- ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ The first book to examine the extraordinary physical challenges, political intrigue and larger- than- life personalities of the Stanley- Livingstone story, INTO AFRICA is a fascinating window on the golden age of exploration and will appeal to everyone’s sense of adventure.

Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society is an academic journal on African literatures and societies dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social sciences, and cultural anthropology.

Demonstrates shortcomings in Western feminist conceptualizations, and shows how insights from African feminist thinking may enhance understandings of gender, both in and beyond Africa.

Winner of the 2012 gender research award KRAKA-prisen.
This book is about gender politics in Mozambique over three decades from 1975 to 2005. The book is also about different ways of understanding gender and sexuality. Gender policies from Portuguese colonialism, through Frelimo socialism to later neo-liberal economic regimes share certain basic assumptions about men, women and gender relations. But to what extent do such assumptions fit the ways in which rural Mozambican men and women see themselves? A major line of argument in the book is that gender relations should be investigated, not assumed, and that policies not matching people’s lives are not likely to succeed.
The empirical data, on which the argument is based, are first a unique body of data material collected 1982-1984 by the national women’s organization, the OMM [when the author was employed as a sociologist in the organization] andsecondly data resulting from more recent fieldwork in northern Mozambique.
Importantly inspired by African post-colonial feminist lines of thinking, the book engages in a project of re-mapping and re-interpreting ‘culture andtradition’. In this context, the book investigates in particular matriliny [c. 40 per cent of Mozambique’s population live under conditions of matriliny] and female initiation. The findings open new avenues for gender politics, and for rethinking sexuality and gender – in Africa and beyond.