Table of contents

Covers the history of the entire African continent, from prehistory to the present day A Companion to African History embraces the diverse regions, subject matter, and disciplines of the African continent, while also providing chronological and geographical coverage of basic historical developments. Two dozen essays by leading international scholars explore the challenges facing this relatively new field of historical enquiry and present the dynamic ways in which historians and scholars from other fields such as archaeology, anthropology, political science, and economics are forging new directions in thinking and research. Comprised of six parts, the book begins with thematic approaches to African history—exploring the environment, gender and family, medical practices, and more. Section two covers Africa’s early history and its pre-colonial past—early human adaptation, the emergence of kingdoms, royal power, and warring states. The third section looks at the era of the slave trade and European expansion. Part four examines the process of conquest—the discovery of diamonds and gold, military and social response, and more. Colonialism is discussed in the sixth section, with chapters on the economy transformed due to the development of agriculture and mining industries. The last section studies the continent from post World War II all the way up to modern times. Aims at capturing the enthusiasms of practicing historians, and encouraging similar passion in a new generation of scholars Emphasizes linkages within Africa as well as between the continent and other parts of the world All chapters include significant historiographical content and suggestions for further reading Written by a global team of writers with unique backgrounds and views Features case studies with illustrative examples In a field traditionally marked by narrow specialisms, A Companion to African History is an ideal book for advanced students, researchers, historians, and scholars looking for a broad yet unique overview of African history as a whole.

Timed perfectly for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, Chuck Korr and Marvin Close's More Than Just a Game tells the timeless true story of how political prisoners under apartheid found hope and dignity through soccer. In the hell that was Robben Island, inmates united courageously in an act of protest. Beginning in 1964, they requested the right to play soccer during their exercise periods. Denied repeatedly, they risked beatings and food deprivation by repeating their request for three years. Finally granted this right, the prisoners banded together to form a multi-tiered, pro-level league that ran for more than two decades and served as an impassioned symbol of resistance against apartheid. Former Robben Island inmate Nelson Mandela noted in the documentary FIFA: 90 Minutes for Mandela, "Soccer is more than just a game.... The energy, passion, and dedication this game created made us feel alive and triumphant despite the situation we found ourselves in."

In 1976, when he was imprisoned on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela secretly wrote the bulk of his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. The manuscript was to be smuggled out by fellow prisoner Mac Maharaj, on his release later that year. Maharaj also urged Mandela and other political prisoners to write essays on southern Africa’s political future. These were smuggled out with Mandela’s autobiography, and are now published for the first time, 25 years later, in Reflections in Prison. This collection of essays provides a unique ‘snapshot’ of the thinking of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and other leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle on the eve of the 1976 Soweto Uprising. It gives an insight into their philosophies, strategies and hopes, as they debate diversity and unity, violent and non-violent forms of struggle, and non-racism in the context of different interpretations of African nationalism. Each essay is preceded by a short biography of the author, a description of his life in prison, and a pencil sketch by a leading black South African artist. The collection begins with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a contextualising introduction by Mac Maharaj. These essays are far more than historical artefacts. They reveal the thinking that contributed to the South African ‘miracle’ and address issues that remain burningly relevant today.

This new study offers a fresh interpretation of apartheid South Africa. Emerging out of the author's long-standing interests in the history of racial segregation, and drawing on a great deal of new scholarship, archival collections, and personal memoirs, he situates apartheid in global as well as local contexts. The overall conception of Apartheid, 1948-1994 is to integrate studies of resistance with the analysis of power, paying attention to the importance of ideas, institutions, and culture. Saul Dubow refamiliarises and defamiliarise apartheid so as to approach South Africa's white supremacist past from unlikely perspectives. He asks not only why apartheid was defeated, but how it survived so long. He neither presumes the rise of apartheid nor its demise. This synoptic reinterpretation is designed to introduce students to apartheid and to generate new questions for experts in the field.

When Ahmed Kathrada was released from prison in 1989 together with Walter Sisulu and Raymond Mhlaba after serving twenty-six years of a life sentence, more than 5,000 people came to Soweto to give him and his colleagues a hero's welcome. A veteran of the anti-apartheid movement who was imprisoned with Nelson Mandela and other African leaders, Kathrada had been one of the famous Rivonia trial defendants and incarcerated as a political prisoner on Robben Island and at Pollsmoor prison. No Bread for Mandela is the gripping story of Kathrada's lifelong battle for justice in South Africa. At age seventeen, Kathrada left school to become a youth organizer for the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council and assisted with uniting various opposition groups under the leadership of the African National Congress. Arrested in 1963 at the age of thirty-four on charges of sabotage and conspiracy against the South African government, Kathrada was sentenced to life in prison. Although he, Nelson Mandela, and other African prisoners were serving the same sentence, under prison regulations of the apartheid regime, Kathrada, who is of Indian descent, received better treatment. Outraged at the inequities of apartheid and unwilling to concede defeat even in prison, Kathrada and his fellow prisoners continued the struggle for equality and justice. In prison, the most extreme form of protest and struggle was hunger strikes. Kathrada also was instrumental in organizing a covert communication network between prisoners in different sections of the prison and with the outside world. This riveting memoir, spanning the history of modern South Africa, sheds new light on the struggle against apartheid. No Bread for Mandela is the moving and insightful account of a man who served among a loyal cadre of the African National Congress and helped in shaping his country's history. Kathrada's life is an inspiration and a model for everyone who seeks peace, justice, and reconciliation.

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.

"We Are the Poors follows the growth of the most unexpected of these community movements, beginning in one township of Durban, linking up with community and labor struggles in other parts of the country, and coming together in massive anti-government protests at the time of the UN World Conference Against Racism in 2001. It describes from the inside how the downtrodden regain their dignity and create hope for a better future in the face of a neoliberal onslaught, and shows the human faces of the struggle against the corporate model of globalization in a Third World country."--Jacket.

This is a non-fiction book written as fiction, an harrowing task; the description of events are laid out differently than they happened; words and speeches have been changed to colourful words, meaning the same thing uttered by the non-actors inmates, words put into their mouths for effectiveness. All incidents, situations, conditions and confrontations are recognizable to inmates. The book Robben Island is not about geography or science; it is about struggle emotions, about how some could forgo the pleasures of a limited life, throw everything and answer the call for service, sacrifice and suffering for the liberation of mankind, to be cooped in Robben Island. A Sobukwe adage tells of a very lean hungry fox coming across a well-fed dog and ask asks something like this: dog where do we catch something to eat; the dog replied well I have plenty to eat where I come from, I am fed, come along with me. Along the way the fox notices a belt around the dogs neck and ask what this is on your neck? The dog replied I am being tied to a pole where I leave most times. Wow! the fox exclaimed: better hungry and free than plenty in bondage. By Robben Island we refer to the penal colony island where anti-colonial struggle heroes were imprisoned, from Makana the left-handed (Full name Makanda Nxele 1818) to Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe (1963 after serving 3 years from 1960). Robben Island more pronounced prisoner was Nelson Mandela. But most sad is fact that Robben Island held unsung heroes of the PAC who spent full life sentences in a bid to free South Africa from apartheid colonialism and racism. Prominent were Jafta Masemola, Ike Mthimunye, Philemon Tefo, Samuel ChipsChibane, John Nkosi, Dimake Pro Malepe. A 20 year full term is also Life sentence that happened to Johnson Mlambo. We lament the names of those others we could not mention here because the design for the unsung heroes is that is that their names disappear out of mind. Robben Island is now a tourist attraction whose design was to help ex-Robben Island prisoners out of poverty and settle back in society in the manner Americans take care of their veterans, and a trust was formed called Makana Trust; but endemic corruption prevents the Makana Trust from fulfilling that duty, as tourism in Robben island makes millions of money. And corruption or politics of the Makana Trust, whichever, prevented help from them republishing this book that was hailed by the late Eskia Mphahlele as the best to come out of Robben Island. And why not, I was a small fry in that conundrum.

Nelson Mandela is widely considered to be one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela's personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the postapartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency—a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power. An intimate journey from Mandela's first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations with Myself illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice. While other books have recounted Mandela's life from the vantage of the present, Conversations with Myself allows, for the first time, unhindered insight into the human side of the icon.