A discussion of political and religious crisis in Africa, this book covers such topics as democratic transition, good governance, civil society and the African renaissance. Elias K. Bongmba proposes humanistic interventions centred on the recovery of interpersonal relations and seeks to understand the ongoing struggles in Africa.

This book is a clarion call for African renaissance informed by African spirituality. It develops the vision that Africans can be the same in the process of change. Africans have to coincide with their ways of perceiving values, and to retrieve their identity wiped out by regrettable historical events. Even in this involvement of revalorisation of their stifled ways, Africans have to be aware of the fact that history has evolved and new human environments are taking place. Any attempt to recover African personality involves a triple necessity. First, to remember the past, second, to analyse critically what Africans have inherited from their past, and lastly, to project new ways and means for a genuine renaissance, free from alienation and exploitation. Bin-Kapela sees in Cultural hermeneutics an appropriate philosophical method to achieve this end of recognising and projecting African spirituality as a universal value.

In this book, Jeremiah I. Dibua challenges prevailing notions of Africa's development crisis by drawing attention to the role of modernization as a way of understanding the nature and dynamics of the crisis, and how to overcome the problem of underdevelopment.

Religion has played a major role in both the division and unification of peoples and countries within Africa. Its capacity to cause, and to heal, societal rifts has been well documented. This book addresses this powerful societal force, and explores the implications of a theology of reconstruction, most notably articulated by Jesse Mugambi. This way of thinking seeks to build on liberation theology, aiming to encourage the rebuilding of African society on its own terms. An international panel of contributors bring an interdisciplinary perspective to the issues around reconstructing the religious elements of African society. Looking at issues of reconciliation, postcolonialism and indigenous spirituality, among others, they show that Mugambi’s cultural and theological insight has the potential to revolutionise the way people in Africa address this issue. This is a fascinating exploration of the religious facets of African life. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of religious studies, theology and African studies.

Beginning from the understanding that it is imperative today to develop new concepts for the thinking of an emancipatory politics on the African continent (Fanon), this book proposes to focus on dialectical thought as the core subjective feature of all emancipatory political experiments on the African continent in particular. It traces a dialectical thinking to its origins in Ancient Egypt that arguably influenced Plato, and notes its opposition to the idea of representation in state politics during various historical sequences right up to the present. Starting from the fundamental conception that all people are capable of universal thought, and that an idea of universal humanity is central to popular thought during experiences of collective emancipatory struggle, the argument traces and analyses a number of emancipatory historical political sequences and their attendant contemporary narratives. Currently it is proposed to include: 1) the Ancient World: Ancient Egypt (The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant - 4000 BCE) and Plato (as read by Alain Badiou); 2) Pre-colonial Africa and resistance to slavery: the Donsolu Kalikan (in the Manden/Mali, 1222), the Antonian Movement (in Kongo, 1684-1706) and its continuation in the Lemba Movement, and the Haitian Revolution (undertaken by slaves from Africa); 3) The National Liberation Struggles of the 1960s as thought by Fanon and Cabral; and 4) The mass popular struggles in South Africa during the 1980s. The core of the political dialectic in each case differs and creates, during a limited sequence, what can be called a subjective political singularity that always combines dialectically a particular thought of resistance emanating from its specific social location with one of universal humanity during what is a process exceptional to hegemonic social relations. It is further argued that whereas the political dialectic is not a given feature of African cultures as such, the latency of universalistic conceptions of humanity is identifiable within many African cultures. This means that rather than having to be invented ex nihilo, conceptions of the human universal in Africa have the potential to be (re-)activated in practice. Ato Sekyi-Otu and Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba are discussed as major contemporary African dialectical thinkers. Coming to the present period, the book elaborates a theory of neo-colonial state politics through unpacking the core idea of representation and the absence of popular sovereignty. It is argued that the neo-colonial character of the state must be understood beyond binaries but rather, following Gramsci, as structured by objective dialectical relations characterising fundamentally distinct modes of rule. This objective dialectic is assessed, in addition to Gramsci, through a discussion of a number of well-known contemporary thinkers of the dialectic (Lenin, Mao, Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Carchedi, Anderson, etc). These modes of rule enable the neo-colonial state to reproduce itself and social relations in conjunction with popular responses to such rule. Differing modes of state rule are identified and the formation of distinct domains of politics corresponding to them and founded on different forms of representation are elucidated. These domains amount to three types: 1) civil society; where the state rules through a relation of citizenship and the right to rights); 2) uncivil society (where the right to rights is inexistent and thus state violence is dominant); and 3) traditional society (where the state rules through custom and tradition itself the object of struggle). Using various cases from Africa, contradictions and struggles within each of these domains are analysed and the potential to draw on latent cultural conceptions of universality (when in existence) is discussed.In this manner both the dialectic of emancipation and the character of state power are thought conjointly and dialectical thinking is opposed to the idea of representation in politics as well as in social science. The concepts and categories used are explained in a simple manner understandable by all. Finally and as a kind of concluding argument, it is proposed to rethink the idea of representation through a critical engagement with the political practices of what could be called the "heroic figures of liberation". This will be undertaken via an assessment of the politics of Toussaint Louverture and Nelson Mandela in particular regarding the "colonial question" as identified by Aimé Césaire.

In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Mawuko-Yevugah explores the challenges of political reform and democratic governance in Africa at the beginning of the 21st Century, focusing largely on Ghanas experience. The inspiration for the title of the collection, AFRICAN TIME, comes from Kwame Nkrumahs pan-African optimism as well as from recent discourses around African Renaissance, Africas Century, Africa Rising, etc. At Ghanas founding in 1957, Nkrumah proclaimed: Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up to the total liberation of the African continent. Today, from now on, there is a new African in the worldThat new African is ready to fight his own battles and show that after all, the black man is capable of managing his own affairs. That historic declaration, Mawuko-Yevugah argues, did not only set the tone and direction for Ghanas pan-African foreign policy but it has also made the country a reference point for Africas postcolonial tragedy in the form of political instability and economic decay. Exploring Ghanas recent strides in democratic consolidation within the context of fresh attempts to reinvent pan-Africanism and mainstream good governance on the continental development agenda, this book offers incisive, critical and a rare reflection on the changing landscape of contemporary African politics and governance through the eyes of a political journalist.

Placed in the same context as volume one, volume two of the Fifth Congress Proceedings of the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa is focused on political and economic reforms, and transformations and gender issues. The papers included are: culture and productivity, the welfare state on trial, civil service reform in Uganda, traditional leaders in the decentralised process civil society, indigenous populist institutions and implications for political reforms in Uganda,the nature of economic reforms in Tanzania and Botswana, tradition and modernity in our times, economic liberalisation and civil society in Sudan, pauperisation of the middle class in Sudan, authoritarian populism and democratisation in Ethiopia, the political economy of democratisation in Swaziland, political culture and the limits if institutional reforms,incorporating women in development, the participation of women inpolitical activities in Africa, economic structural adjustment programmes in Zimbabwe - their impact on the gender dimensions, the effects of structural adjustment programmes on women's health in Kenya, gender sensitivity and development in health policies, poverty and food nsecurity in Tanzania.

Consciencism Philosophy and Ideology for de-colonisation Kwame Nkrumah Kwame Nkrumah here sets out his personal philosophy,

The Coming African hour is not a slogan, nor wishful thinking. It is a conclusion that derives from an insightful analysis of the current situation pertaining on the continent. Several African scholars, coming from different regions and academic backgrounds are elaborating ideas and arguments in order to explain the constraints and to illustrate the opportunities. The result of that scientific gathering is a book that synthesizes and renews the reflections on development. What is at stake is not to be pessimistic or optimistic about Africa. The epistemological challenge is to understand what is going on. By focusing on converging and diverging African realities, on the issues of state, civil society, gender and development strategies, the authors of the book show under which conditions the African hour is coming. At that level, the commitment for political science meets the commitment for Africa. The main success of this book is to overcome the preconceived ideas and self-fulfilling prophecies about Africa. Here, the analysis avoids the trap of indulgence; then hope is based on truth. Consequently, the coming African hour is not inescapable: it is, as analyzed, a possibility that its achievement depends on institutional, human, political, social and economic factors.

Revisiting long-standing debates to shed new light on the transition from apartheid, Hart provides an innovative analysis of the ongoing, unstable, and unresolved crisis in South Africa today and suggests how Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution can do useful analytical and political work in South Africa and beyond.