The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, 52) Paperback

Late one night in July, 1963, a South African police unit surrounded the African National Congress headquarters in Rivonia and arrested a group of Movement leaders gathered inside. Eventually eight of them, including Nelson Mandela, who was already serving a sentence, Walter Sisulu, Dennis Goldberg, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoledi, Andrew Mangeni, and Ahmed Kathrada, were convicted of sabotage and, on June 12, 1964, sentenced to life in prison. Soon, these men became widely known as the “Rivonia Trialists.” Despite their imprisonment, the Trialists played active roles in the struggle against South Africa’s racist regime. Instead of being forgotten, as apartheid officials had hoped, they became enduring symbols in a struggle against injustice and racism.
Kathrada and his colleagues were classified as high security prisoners, segregated from others and closely watched. Every activity was regulated and monitored. Among the many indignities visited upon them, the prisoners were prohibited from keeping copies of incoming and outgoing correspondence. Kathrada, or “Kathy” as he is known, successfully hid both.
     Letters From Robben Island contains a selection of 86 of the more than 900 pieces of correspondence Ahmed Kathrada wrote during his 26 years on Robben Island and at Pollsmoor Prison. Some were smuggled out by friends; others were written in code to hide meaning and content from prison censors. These are among his most poignant, touching, and eloquent communications. They are testimonies to Kathrada, his colleagues, and to their commitment to obtaining human dignity and freedom for all South Africans.

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.

The Cry of the Go-Away Bird’ is the debut novel from Andrea Eames. It revolves around Elise, a white Zimbabwean girl living through her teens on the eve of the Mugabe-sponsored farm invasions at the beginning of this century. The author herself grew up in Zimbabwe before moving to New Zealand with her family at the age of seventeen and there is a strong sense of memoir and personal experience in the novel, which has both positive and negative effects on the narrative.

The main character is drawn very effectively. The natural anxieties felt when emerging into an adult world are uncannily accurate, and allow the reader to relate to Elise and her family as their experiences later become more extreme. However, sometimes the story is so personal that it verges on one-sided. There is more variety, and a more complex array of emotions and motivations among the white characters than the black ones. The black characters are unfathomable and often sinister. Perhaps this is how Elise really sees them, but the novel could have perhaps painted a more complex picture for the reader of the spectrum of attitudes surrounding these massive social upheavals.

Eames makes various attempts to describe the fragile nature of race relations in post-independence Zimbabwe. Often she succeeds admirably, as when Elise’s parents invite a black farm-worker and his wife over for dinner in an effort to make friends. The awkwardness felt by all is palpable and it is a fine piece of writing. Eames clearly has a talent for describing a society in microcosm. There are examples of Eames’ considerable powers of observation elsewhere in the book too. Of the ‘Bush War’ (or War of Independence) it is said, The war felt like a death in the family – someone whose name was never mentioned, who was cut out of photographs. Of Mugabe, Elise says, He was like a hated Headmaster, overbearing and incompetent, towards whom you felt a kind of loyalty. This metaphor demonstrates that Eames is certainly able to express complicated emotions in a clear and artful manner.

There are, however, times in the novel when the writing fails in this respect. Sentences such as We were Whites, and nothing else and The air between us was a different colour, are clumsy and blunt, and have a taste of bitterness that the story does not benefit from.

The action in the novel is heavily weighted towards the last half, when the actual farm invasions and killings of farmers are taking place. In these pages the book does become compelling. Eames successfully renders the panicked atmosphere of a rapidly crumbling way of life, and the events feel both real and shocking.

Overall, though well written, the novel is trying to tell too many stories in too many ways. Elise’s story is cut-off by the dramatic political events occurring, but those events appear as from nowhere and lack real context. The book is still worth reading for a glimpse into this interesting and unfamiliar world, but there may be better novels to come from Andrea Eames.

This book harnesses the collective wisdom of African Psychiatry and therefore serves as a departure point for ongoing efforts to refine practice in accordance with the best practice and local needs. There are a number of chapters dedicated to a range of conditions, covering the most prevalent as well as some emerging conditions ranging from HIV related psychopathology to eating disorders. Additionally, the book provides a focus on a related and pertinent Sub-specialist field – that of neuropsychiatry. There is a chapter devoted to child and adolescent psychiatry – a sub-specialist area that is sorely underserviced. The elderly too are not forgotten in this book. Whilst much is spoken of the youth, it is well to consider the ageing members of society. Psychiatry and the law have also been adequately tackled through a chapter on forensic mental health. The book is a ‘must-read’ for academicians, researchers and practitioners in different areas of mental health. Postgraduate students pursuing various aspects of mental health, undergraduate medical students and diploma medical students will find this book quite ideal.

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.