Download or read book A Sweet Footed African James Jibraeel Alhaji written by Jibraeel Alhaji and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2014-10-06 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Sweet-Footed African captures the sense of being James Jibraeel Alhaji; the milestones and challenges of his life and his reconciliation with emotions, decisions and circumstances of the past, and hopes for the future. James Jibraeel Alhajis life is characterized by a diversity of personal ambitions, family commitments and economic motives, which lead him from his home in Cameroon to Cape Town, South Africa. The story situates the context of decisions that characterize the so-called quest for greener pastures, examining personal opportunities, triumphs and challenges before and beyond life as an immigrant in South Africa. The story explores what it means to move and to be mobile in Africa, the networks that fulfil and sustain mobile Africans during times of uncertainty, and the lineage to home that remains eternally active.

Download or read book A Sweet Footed African James Jibraeel Alhaji written by Alhaji, James Jibraeel and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Sweet-Footed African captures the sense of being James Jibraeel Alhaji; the milestones and challenges of his life and his reconciliation with emotions, decisions and circumstances of the past, and hopes for the future. James Jibraeel Alhaji's life is characterized by a diversity of personal ambitions, family commitments and economic motives, which lead him from his home in Cameroon to Cape Town, South Africa. The story situates the context of decisions that characterize the so-called quest for greener pastures, examining personal opportunities, triumphs and challenges before and beyond life as an immigrant in South Africa. The story explores what it means to move and to be mobile in Africa, the networks that fulfil and sustain mobile Africans during times of uncertainty, and the lineage to home that remains eternally active.

Download or read book African Virtues in the Pursuit of Conviviality written by Gebre,Yntiso Gebre,Yntiso and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African societies have rich histories, cultural heritages, knowledge systems, philosophies, and institutions that they have shaped and reshaped through history. However, the continent has been repeatedly portrayed negatively as plagued by multitudinous troubles: famine, conflict, coup, massacres, corruption, disease, illiteracy, refugees, failed state, etc. Even worse, Africans are often viewed as incapable of addressing their problems on their own. Based on such erroneous perspectives and paternalism, exogenous solutions are prescribed, out of context, for African problems. This book sheds light on the positive aspects of African reality under the key concept of African potentials. It is the product of sustained consultation over a five-year period between seasoned African and Japanese anthropologists, sociologists and scholars in other areas of African studies.

Download or read book RhodesMustFall written by B. Nyamnjoh and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2016-04-18 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book on rights, entitlements and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa shows how the playing field has not been as levelled as presumed by some and how racism and its benefits persist. Through everyday interactions and experiences of university students and professors, it explores the question of race in a context still plagued by remnants of apartheid, inequality and perceptions of inferiority and inadequacy among the majority black population. In education, black voices and concerns go largely unheard, as circles of privilege are continually regenerated and added onto a layered and deep history of cultivation of black pain. These issues are examined against the backdrop of organised student protests sweeping through the countrys universities with a renewed clamour for transformation around a rallying cry of Black Lives Matter. The nuanced complexity of this insightful analysis of the Rhodes Must Fall movement elicits compelling questions about the attractions and dangers of exclusionary articulations of belonging. What could a grand imperialist like the stripling Uitlander or foreigner of yesteryear, Sir Cecil John Rhodes, possibly have in common with the present-day nimble-footed makwerekwere from Africa north of the Limpopo? The answer, Nyamnjoh suggests, is to be found in how human mobility relentlessly tests the boundaries of citizenship.

Download or read book C est l homme qui fait l homme written by Francis B. Nyamnjoh and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2015 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea that human beings are inextricably bound to one another is at the heart of this book about African agency, especially drawing on the African philosophy Ubuntu, with its roots in human sociality and inclusivity. Ubuntu’s precepts and workings are severely tested in these times of rapid change and multiple responsibilities. Africans negotiate their social existence between urban and rural life, their continental and transcontinental distances, and all the market forces that now impinge, with relationships and loyalties placed in question. Between ideal and reality, dreams and schemes, how is Ubuntu actualized, misappropriated and endangered? The book unearths the intrigues and contradictions that go with inclusivity in Africa. Basing his argument on the ideals of trust, conviviality and support embodied in the concept of Ubuntu, Francis Nyamnjoh demonstrates how the pursuit of personal success and even self-aggrandizement challenges these ideals, thus leading to discord in social relationships. Nyamnjoh uses a popular Ivorian drama with the same title to substantiate life-world realities and more importantly to demonstrate that new forms of expression, from popular drama to fiction, thicken and enrich the ethnographic component in current anthropology.

Download or read book Incompleteness Mobility and Conviviality written by Francis Nyamnjoh and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to the Jensen Memorial Lectures 2023 is an invitation to take incompleteness seriously in how we imagine, relate to and seek to understand a world in perpetual motion. Despite our instinct for and obsession with completeness, we are constantly reminded that the sooner one recognises and provides for incompleteness and the conviviality it inspires as the normal way of being, the better we are for it. Fluidity, compositeness and the capacity to be present in multiple places and forms simultaneously in whole or in fragments are core characteristics of reality and ontology of incompleteness. How would we frame our curiosities and conversations about processes, relationships and phenomena with an understanding of the universality of incompleteness and mobility? West and Central Africa, for example, are regions where it is commonplace to embrace and celebrate incompleteness in nature, the suprasensory, human beings, human actions, human inventions and human achievements. The lectures indicate how we could draw inspiration in this regard to inform current clamours for decolonisation and the growing ambivalence about rapid advances in digital technologies (artificial intelligence (AI) in particular), as well as with twenty-first century concerns about migrants and strangers knocking at the doors of opportunities we feel more entitled to as bona fide citizens and insiders. The lectures draw on the writings of Amos Tutuola as well as from popular ideas of personhood and agency in Africa, to make a case for sidestepped and silenced traditions of knowledge. They highlight Africa’s possibilities, prospects and emergent capacities for being and becoming in tune with the continent’s creativity and imagination. They speak to the nimble-footed flexible-minded frontier African at the crossroads and junctions of myriad encounters, facilitating creative conversations and challenging regressive logics of exclusionary claims and articulation of identities and achievements. The traditions of knowledge discussed in these lectures do not only speak to Africans, but to the world, as the philosophies explored have universal application. “The crucial anthropological question of relationality and othering is at the heart of this original and enlightening book. Nyamnjoh cautions the missionaries of decoloniality against the risk of substituting one illusion of completeness with another. For him, incompleteness is the basis of any healthy exchange. He therefore recommends embracing the universality of incompleteness in motion and taking seriously an ancestral tradition of self-extension through creative imagination in this anxious age of artificial intelligence. Forcefully argued and abundantly substantiated – with finesse and laughter that run through it – this book will be a milestone by making us rediscover the demands and the magic of fieldwork.” Prof. Dr. Mamadou Diawara, Goethe University, Frankfurt/Main Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt/Main Point Sud, Bamako, Mali

Download or read book Informal Entrepreneurship and Cross Border Trade between Zimbabwe and South Africa written by Chikanda, Abel and published by Southern African Migration Programme. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zimbabwe has witnessed the rapid expansion of informal cross-border trading (ICBT) with neighbouring countries over the past two decades. Beginning in the mid-1990s when the country embarked on its Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), a large number of people were forced into informal employment through worsening economic conditions and the decline in formal sector jobs.

Download or read book Not My Time to Die written by Mukagasana, Yolande and published by Huza Press. This book was released on 2019-06-28 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yolande Mukagasana is a Rwandan nurse and mother of three children who likes wearing jeans and designer glasses. She runs her own clinic in Nyamirambo and is planning a party for her wedding anniversary. But when genocide starts everything changes. Targeted because she’s a successful woman and a Tutsi, she flees for her life. This gripping memoir describes the betrayal of friends and help that comes from surprising places. Quick-witted and courageous, Yolande never loses hope she will find her children alive. "This book was one of the first literary testimonies that I read in French about Rwanda. I found it profoundly moving — both realistic and introspective. Thanks to this beautiful translation, it is at long last available to the English-speaking public." Véronique Tadjo "Reading Yolande Mukagasana’s book in French at the age of fifteen changed my life. I realized that genocide is not a mass crime but a single murder repeated hundreds of thousands of times. With this testimony the genocide is no longer just a historical event, it is instead the story of a woman, a mother, a Tutsi. And this is what makes Yolande’s account universal." Gaël Faye

Download or read book Flame and Song written by Kabali-Kagwa, Philippa Namutebi and published by Modjaji Books. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PKK’s soul-warming memoir tells of a life enriched by song, literature, food and spirituality at the heart of a loving family. Born into a newly independent Uganda, she grew up in a volatile political landscape but never lacked the inspiration and protection of generations of friends and relatives. Her story travels from her expansive childhood homes in Uganda, to the novelties of living in Addis Ababa, before settling in Cape Town, her current home. But no matter how far her journeys take her, it’s clear that home is not only about places but people.

Download or read book The Secret World of Shlomo Fine written by Smythe, K.M.R. and published by AmaGugu Publishers. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: K.M.R Smythe grew up in Rhodesia Her family lived in the grounds of Ingutsheni Mental Hospital in Bulawayo from 1953-1971 where her father worked as a psychiatrist. As a child she grappled with many frightening situations and found strength and self-belief by becoming a successful tennis player. The Secret World of Shlomo Fine is an exploration of concealment and prejudice on many different levels. It is a story about an isolated and isolating experience inside one of the largest lunatic asylums built during British colonial rule in Africa. The book raises questions about the role that psychiatry holds in the Western imagination as accepted wisdom for healing human distress. What took place at Ingutsheni - first under British colonial rule, followed by UDI and the leadership of Ian Smith - needs to be more widely known. Similar institutions were built throughout the Empire, and many still exist throughout the world.

Download or read book Mean Streets written by Crush, Jonathan and published by Southern African Migration Programme. This book was released on 2015-11-16 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book powerfully demonstrates that some of the most resourceful entrepreneurs in the South African informal economy are migrants and refugees. Yet far from being lauded, they take their life into their hands when they trade on South Africa's "mean streets". The book draws attention to what they bring to their adopted country through research into previously unexamined areas of migrant entrepreneurship. Ranging from studies of how migrants have created agglomeration economies in Jeppe and Ivory Park in Johannesburg, to guanxi networks of Chinese entrepreneurs, to competition and cooperation among Somali shop owners, to cross-border informal traders, to the informal transport operators between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the chapters in this book reveal the positive economic contributions of migrants. these include generating employment, paying rents, providing cheaper goods to poor consumers, and supporting formal sector wholesalers and retailers. As well, Mean Streets highlights the xenophobic responses to migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and the challenges they face in running a successful business on the streets.

Download or read book Roaming Africa written by van Reisen, Mirjam and published by Langaa RPCIG. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when digital innovation meets migration? Roaming Africa considers how we understand modern-day mobility in Africa, where age-old routes strengthen the resilience of people roaming the continent for livelihoods and security, assisted by mobile communication. Digital mobility expands connectivity around the world, and also in Africa. In this book, the authors show that mobility, resilience and social protection in the digital age are closely related. Each chapter takes a close look at the migration dynamics in a specific context, using social theory as a lens. This book adopts a critical perspective on approaches in which migration is regarded merely as a hazard. Edited by distinguished scholars from Africa and Europe, this volume, the second in a four-part series Connected and Mobile: Migration and Human Trafficking in Africa, compiles chapters from a diverse group of young and upcoming scholars, making an important contribution to the literature on migration studies, digital science, social protection and governance.

Download or read book Incompleteness Donald Trump Populism and Citizenship written by B. Nyamnjoh and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of how Donald J. Trump, his populist credentials notwithstanding, borrows without acknowledgment and stubbornly refuses to come to terms with his indebtedness. Taken together with mobility and conviviality, the principle of incompleteness enables us to distinguish between inclusionary and exclusionary forms of populism, and when it is fuelled by ambitions of superiority and zero-sum games of conquest.

Download or read book A Person My Colour written by Dahlmanns, Martina and published by Modjaji Books. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "If you are tired of hearing about ‘whiteness’, and if you think racism exists in the hearts of evil others, or you believe that having a black friend unshackles you from racism’s hold, I dare you to read this book." - Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela Martina Dahlmanns, the daughter of parents who grew up in the shadow of post-war Germany, an adoptive mother of children who are black, and a member of a dialogue group of black and white women, urgently questions the very depths of what it means to be white in South Africa today. Her deeply personal memoir is unsettling because of what it reveals simultaneously about the enduring impact of inherited privilege and the repercussions of disadvantage Her book is unsettling, precisely because of what it reveals simultaneously about the enduring impact of inherited privilege and the repercussions of disadvantage. But it is Dahlmanns’ dialogue with Tumi Jonas—whose own reflections appear in the last section of the book—that reveals so much of what’s possible, yet potentially destructive, in relationships between black and white South Africans today.

Download or read book Problematizing the Foreign Shop written by Gastrow, Vanya and published by Southern African Migration Programme. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small businesses owned by international migrants and refugees are often the target of xenophobic hostility and attack in South Africa. This report examines the problematization of migrant-owned businesses in South Africa, and the regulatory efforts aimed at curtailing their economic activities. In so doing, it sheds light on the complex ways in which xenophobic fears are generated and manifested in the country’s social, legal and political orders. Efforts to curb migrant spaza shops in South Africa have included informal trade agreements at local levels, fining migrant shops, and legislation that prohibits asylum seekers from operating businesses in the country. Several of these interventions have overlooked the content of local by-laws and outed legal frameworks. The report concludes that when South African township residents attack migrant spaza shops, they are expressing their dissatisfaction with their socio-economic conditions to an apprehensive state and political leadership. In response, governance actors turn on migrant shops to demonstrate their allegiance to these residents, to appease South African spaza shopkeepers, and to tacitly blame socio-economic malaise on perceived foreign forces. Overall, these actors do not have spaza shops primarily in mind when calling for the stricter regulation of these businesses. Instead, they are concerned about the volatile support of their key political constituencies and how this backing can be undermined or generated by the symbolic gesture of regulating the foreign shop.

Download or read book Riding the Samoosa Express written by Zaheera Jina and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Riding the Samosa Express is a collection of life stories exploring issues of marriage, love, loss, family life, culture, religious beliefs, suburban life, local and international politics, freedom and education among other important issues faced by professional and well-educated Muslim women who have not been held back by global stereotypes.

Download or read book My Mother My Madness written by Colleen Higgs and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-10 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A woman reluctantly takes on the responsibility of putting her eccentric rebellious mother into a retirement home, and managing her care. She has her own daughter to raise and nurture, a marriage and a business to hold together, and her own psychological troubles due in good part to how she was mothered. my mother, my madness is Colleen Higgs's diary of her mother's last ten years. It is at once funny, harrowing, mundane, chaotic, and full of insight. It is a rich and moving story which unfolds through its characters like a novel.