ISBN 9789956763399
Pages 388
Dimensions 234 x 156mm
Published 2016
Publisher Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon
Format Paperback

What Colonialism Ignored

'African Potentials' for Resolving Conflicts in Southern Africa

edited by Sam Moyo, Yoichi Mine

As Julius Nyerere once noted, Africa has largely been the continent of peace, though this fact has not been widely publicised. In reality, Africa possesses dynamic potentials for resolving contradictions and violent ruptures that colonial authorities, post-colonial states and global actors have failed to capture and capitalise upon. Drawing on the everyday experience of rural and urban people in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Zambia, this book brings into conversation leading Japanese scholars of Southern Africa with their African colleagues. The result is an exploration in comparative perspective of the fascinating richness of bottom-up 'African potentials' for conflict resolution in Southern Africa, a region burdened with the legacy of settler capitalism and contemporary neoliberalism. The book is a pacesetter on how to think and research Africa in fruitful collaboration and with an ear to the nuances and complexities of the dynamic and lived realities of Africans.

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Reviews

“Reading this book invites one to put to center-stage contextualized hitherto underrated values of African Potentials in consideration of conflict resolutions and co-existence. A very good narrative for those seeking a non-romanticized critique of African Potentials in addressing the challenge of releasing potentials of people’s agency for solving Africa’s problems.”

Edward K. Kirumira, Principal, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University, Uganda

“Based on historical analysis and ethnographic accounts from Southern Africa, this book sheds light on the abilities of the African people to devise effective solutions to their problems such as conflicts.”

Yntiso Gebre, Associate Professor, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

“The book epitomizes a cooperative and constructive approach to contemplating Africa’s conflicts and tensions. It exudes the mutuality of exchange of ideas, offered from equal grounding, which is important for true scholarship, and which is worth emulating.”

Kennedy Mkutu, Associate Professor, United States International University, Kenya

About the Editors

Sam Moyo

The late Sam Moyo is Executive Director of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies (AIAS), Harare, and former President of the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA, 2009–11). He was a research professor at the Zimbabwe Institute of Development Studies, and taught at the University of Zimbabwe, and has served on the boards of various research institutes and non-governmental organizations. He is currently Editor of Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy (Sage India). He has published widely in academic journals and is the author and editor of several books, including: The land question in Zimbabwe (SAPES, 1995), Land reform under structural adjustment in Zimbabwe (Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2000), Reclaiming the Land (Zed Books, 2005), African land questions, agrarian transitions and the state (Codesria 2008); Land and sustainable development in Africa (Zed Books, 2008), Reclaiming the Nation (Pluto Press, 2011), and The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era (Pambazuka, 2011).

Yoichi Mine

Yoichi Mine is Professor at the Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University, Japan. His major research fields are human security, human development, transnational migration, comparative history and African area study. He has published several award-winning Japanese books on development and conflict resolution in Africa, and his works in English include a co-edited volume: Preventing Violent Conflicts in Africa: Inequalities, Perceptions and Institutions (Palgrave, 2013). He is Secretary General of the Japan Association of Human Security Studies and Visiting Fellow at JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) Research Institute.

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