Social movements and the working class in Africa -- An epoch of uprisings : social movements in postcolonial Africa, 1945/98 -- Cracks in the monolith : social movements in post-apartheid South Africa -- Social movements after the transition : choiceless democracies? -- Frustrated transitions : social movements, protest, and repression in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland -- Social forums and the World Social Forum in Africa.

Three leading Africa scholars investigate the social forces driving the democratic transformation of postcolonial states across southern Africa. Extensive research and interviews with civil society organizers in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and Swaziland inform this analysis of the challenges faced by non-governmental organizations in relating both to the attendant inequality of globalization and to grassroots struggles for social justice. Peter Dwyer is a tutor in economics at Ruskin College in Oxford. Leo Zeilig Lecturer at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of democracy in Africa and explains why the continent's democratic experiments have so often failed, as well as how they could succeed. Nic Cheeseman grapples with some of the most important questions facing Africa and democracy today, including whether international actors should try and promote democracy abroad, how to design political systems that manage ethnic diversity, and why democratic governments often make bad policy decisions. Beginning in the colonial period with the introduction of multi-party elections and ending in 2013 with the collapse of democracy in Mali and South Sudan, the book describes the rise of authoritarian states in the 1970s; the attempts of trade unions and some religious groups to check the abuse of power in the 1980s; the remarkable return of multiparty politics in the 1990s; and finally, the tragic tendency for elections to exacerbate corruption and violence.

Hundreds of thousands of people living in Africa find themselves non-persons in the only state they have ever known. Because they are not recognised as citizens, they cannot get their children registered at birth or entered in school or university; they cannot access state health services; they cannot obtain travel documents, or employment without a work permit; and if they leave the country they may not be able to return. Most of all, they cannot vote, stand for office, or work for state institutions. Ultimately such policies can lead to economic and political disaster, or even war. The conflicts in both Ct̥e d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of Congo have had at their hearts the very right of one part of the national population to share with others on equal terms the rights and duties of citizenship. This book brings together new material from across Africa of the most egregious examples of citizenship discrimination, and makes the case for urgent reform of the law.

"Cutting-edge."--Patrick Bond "This fascinating book fills a vacuum that has weakened the believers in Marxist resistance in Africa."--Joseph Iranola Akinlaja, general secretary of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, Nigeria "[An] excellent collection."--Socialist Review "Read this for inspiration, for the sense that we are part of a world movement."--Socialist Worker (London) "Grab this book. Highly recommended."--Tokumbo Oke, Bookmarks This collection of essays and interviews studies class struggle and social empowerment on the African continent. Employing Marxist theory to address the postcolonial problems of several different countries, experts analyze such issues as the renewal of Islamic fundamentalism in Egypt, debt relief, trade union movements, and strike action. Includes interviews with leading African socialists and activists. With contributions from Leo Zeilig, David Seddon, Anne Alexander, Dave Renton, Ahmad Hussein, Jussi Vinnikka, Femi Aborisade, Miles Larmer, Austin Muneku, Peter Dwyer, Trevor Ngwane, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Tafadzwa Choto, and Azwell Banda. Leo Zeilig coordinated the independent media center in Zimbabwe during the presidential elections of 2002 and, prior to this, worked as a lecturer at Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. He then worked for three years as a lecturer and researcher at Brunel University, moving later to the Center of Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg. He has written on the struggle for democratic change, social movements, and student activism in sub-Saharan Africa. Zeilig is co-author of The Congo: Plunder and Resistance 1880-2005.

Extracting profit explains why Africa, in the first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, has undergone an economic boom. This period of “Africa rising” did not lead to the creation of jobs but has instead fueled the growth of the extraction of natural resources and an increasingly-wealthy African ruling class.

Are there social, political and cultural factors in Africa which aspire to the continuation of patrimony and conspire against economic development? In association with the International African Institute North America: Indiana U Press

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.

A Coretta Scott King Award winner that is more timely than ever—excellent narrative nonfiction that's "history at its best."* Like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, Now Is Your Time! explores American history through the stories of the people whose experiences have shaped and continue to shape the America in which we live. History has made me an African American. It is an Africa that I have come from, and an America that I have helped to create. Since they were first brought as captives to Virginia, the people who would become African Americans have struggled for freedom. Thousands fought for the rights of all Americans during the Revolutionary War, and for their own rights during the Civil War. On the battlefield, through education, and through their creative genius, they have worked toward one goal: that the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness be denied no one. Fired by the legacy of these men and women, the struggle continues today. "Portrays the quests of individual Africans against the background of broader historical movements. Instead of a comprehensive, strict chronology, Myers offers, through freed slave Ibrahima, investigative reporter Ida Wells, artist Meta Warrick Fuller, inventor George Latimore, artist Dred Scott, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and others, history at its best—along with deeper understanding of past and contemporary events. Readers will grasp reasons behind incidents ranging from bewildering Supreme Court decisions to the historical need for the black extended family. Intriguing and rousing." (Publishers Weekly starred review*). Walter Dean Myers was a New York Times bestselling author, Printz Award winner, five-time winner of the Coretta Scott King Award, two-time Newbery Honor recipient, and the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Maria Russo, writing in the New York Times, called Myers "one of the greats and a champion of diversity in children’s books well before the cause got mainstream attention."

Global imperial designs, which have been in place since conquest by western powers, did not suddenly evaporate after decolonization. Global coloniality as a leitmotif of the empire became the order of the day, with its invisible technologies of subjugation continuing to reproduce Africa’s subaltern position, a position characterized by perceived deficits ranging from a lack of civilization, a lack of writing and a lack of history to a lack of development, a lack of human rights and a lack of democracy. The author’s sharply critical perspective reveals how this epistemology of alterity has kept Africa ensnared within colonial matrices of power, serving to justify external interventions in African affairs, including the interference with liberation struggles and disregard for African positions. Evaluating the quality of African responses and available options, the author opens up a new horizon that includes cognitive justice and new humanism.