Afrika-Studiecentrum Series

This study about David Livingstone is different from all other publications about him. Here, Livingstone is not the main topic of interest; the focus of the author is on nutrition and health in pre-colonial Africa and Livingstone is his key informant.
David Livingstone and the Myth of African Poverty and Disease is an unusual book. After a close examination of Livingstone’s writings and comparative reading of contemporary authors, Sjoerd Rijpma has been able to draw cautious conclusions about the relatively favourable conditions of health and nutrition in southern and central Africa during the pre-colonial period. His findings shed new light on the medical history of Sub-Saharan Africa. The surprise awaiting travellers in and also before 19th century Africa was that the inhabitants of the interior, even the ‘slaves’, were healthier and better fed than many of their contemporaries in Europe’s Industrial Revolution.

“An impressive piece of scholarship, truly forensic in its close reading and re-reading of Livingstone’s published works and those of other travellers during the same era, clearly a labour of love which has taken years to complete” (Joanna Lewis).

Private wildlife conservation is booming business in South Africa! Nick Steele stood at the cradle of this development in the politically turbulent 1970s and 1980s, by stimulating farmers in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) to pool resources in order to restore wilderness landscapes, but at the same time improve their security situation in cooperative conservancy structures. His involvement in Operation Rhino in the 1960s and subsequent networks to save the rhino from extinction, brought him into controversial military (oriented) networks around the Western world. The author’s unique access to his private diaries paints a personal picture of this controversial conservationist.

The voices of orphans and other vulnerable children and young people and of their carers and professional development workers are documented and analysed to both criticise the inadequacies of current social development work and to create a new, alternative theory and practice of project management in Zimbabwe and southern Africa. This is the first extensive and intensive empirical study of Zimbabwean orphans and other vulnerable children and young people. Chronically poor children and their carers can be corrupted or silenced by management systems which fail to recognise their basic human needs. Resilience in the face of such adversity is celebrated by the dominant project management ideology and practice but is a major barrier to achieve genuine sustainable improvements in the lives of vulnerable children. We propose a new person-centred project management approach aimed at delivering comprehensive services for orphans, which explicitly recognises the needs of orphans and other poor children to be fully socially, politically and economically included within their communities and which avoids the reinforcement of power based inequalities and their unacceptable consequences. The moral bankruptcy of much social development work in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Southern Africa is described and we delineate an alternative project management policy and practice.

This book is based on iterative multi-sited ethnography at Merrivale farm, Tavaka village, and various sites in South Africa. The author reveals how the dynamics generated by fast-track potentially offer new development opportunities – specifically for women. The findings challenge existing expert notions and opinions about women’s rural land use, livelihoods, and rural development. The book examines how negotiations and bargaining by women with family, state, and traditional actors have proved useful in accessing land in Mwenezi district, Zimbabwe. The hidden, complex, and innovative ways adopted by women to access land and shape livelihoods based on transitory mobility are examined. The role of collective action, conflicts, conflict resolution, and women’s agency in overcoming the challenges associated with trading in South Africa are examined within the ambit of the sustainable livelihoods framework, a gendered approach to land reform and social networks analysis.

Ordinary social violence, - i.e. recurrent mental or physical aggression occurring between closely related people - structures social relationships in Africa, and in the world. Studies of violence in Africa often refer to ethnic wars and explicit conflicts and do not enter the hidden domain of violence that this book reveals through in-depth anthropological studies from different parts and contexts in Africa. Ordinary violence has its distinctive forms embedded in specific histories and cultures. It is gendered, implicates witchcraft accusations, varies in rural and urban contexts, relates to demographic and socio-economic changes of the past decades and is embedded in the everyday life of many African citizens. The experience of ordinary violence goes beyond the simple notion of victimhood; instead it structures social life and should therefore be a compelling part of the study of social change.

In The Objects of Life in Central Africa the history of consumption and social change from 1840 until 1980 is explored. By taking consumption as a vantage point, the contributions deviate from and add to previous works which have mainly analysed issues of production from an economic and political perspective. The chapters are broad-ranging in temporal and geographical focus, including contributions on Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Angola. Topics range from the social history of firearms to the perception of the railway and include contributions on sewing machines, traders and advertising. By looking at the socio-economic, political and cultural meaning and impact of goods the history of Central Africa is reassessed.

The past several decades have witnessed a rise in foreign and domestic investments in Africa’s arable land. While such land projects are currently the focus of widespread media and scholarly interest, the role of the state in driving, negotiating and facilitating these acquisitions deserves closer attention. This book analyzes how state land policies, stakeholder interactions and privatization schemes interact to facilitate large-scale land acquisitions. It includes a study of the various forms of state intervention, the influence of foreign agencies, governments and private entities, and a look at how states interact with local populations. The inclusion of case studies in settings throughout the African continent should attract the interest of both an academic and non-academic readership.

For a long time, Africa has 'lagged' behind global advances in transparency, but there are now significant developments on the continent. In a ground-breaking book, Access to Information in Africa brings together for the first time a collection of African academics and practitioners to contribute to the fast-growing body of scholarship that is now accumulating internationally. This is therefore an African account of progress made and setbacks suffered, but also an account of challenges and obstacles that confront both policy-makers and practitioners. These challenges must be overcome if greater public access to information is to make a distinctive, positive contribution to the continent’s democratic and socio-economic future. This book offers a necessarily multi-dimensional perspective on the state of ATI in African jurisdictions and the emerging, new praxis - a praxis that will entail a genuine domestication of the right of access to information on the continent.

This book engages with contemporary African human rights struggles including land, property, gender equality and legal identity. Through ethnographic field studies it situates claims-making by groups and individuals that have been subject to injustices and abuses, often due to different forms of displacement, in specific geographical, historical and political contexts. Exploring local communities’ complexities and divided interests it addresses the ambiguities and tensions surrounding the processes whereby human rights have been incorporated into legislation, social and economic programs, legal advocacy, land reform, and humanitarian assistance. It shows how existing relations of inequality, domination and control are affected by the opportunities offered by emerging law and governance structures as a plurality of non-state actors enter what previously was considered the sole regulatory domain of the nation state.

The Sawaba movement and its rebellion in Niger are a totally neglected subject. Klaas van Walraven traces this story from a social history perspective, placing an entire generation of activists, removed from the official record, back into mainstream Nigérien history. Representing a genuine social movement, Sawaba formed Niger’s first autonomous government under French suzerainty. Overthrown by the Gaullists and persecuted, it attempted a comeback with a guerrilla campaign (1960-1966), which ended in failure and led to the movement’s destruction.
The Yearning for Relief – based on numerous interviews with survivors and a vast range of archival sources, including France’s secret service – is essential reading for the reappraisal of Niger’s history and the role of militant nationalist movements in the decolonisation of French West Africa.

COSATU's Contested Legacy provides a fresh and up-to-date analysis of trade unionism in contemporary South Africa by focusing on the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the largest and most powerful federation. Drawing on quantitative data from four time series surveys of union members over a period of sixteen years, the authors present rigorous and authoritative analyses that shed light on the dilemmas and opportunities facing trade unionism today. The volume shows how various sections of the trade union movement grapple with these dilemmas and contest with one another to chart a future trajectory for trade unionism.

Studies of cultural tourism and indigenous identity are fraught with questions concerning exploitation, entitlement, ownership and authenticity. Unease with the idea of leveraging a group identity for commercial gain is ever-present. This anthology articulates some of these debates from a multitude of standpoints. It assimilates the perspectives of members of indigenous communities, non-governmental organizations, tourism practitioners and academic researchers who participated in an action research project that aims to link research to development outcomes. The book’s authors weave together discordant voices to create a dialogue of sorts, an endeavour to reconcile the divergent needs of the stakeholders in a way that is mutually beneficial. Although this book focuses on the ≠Khomani Bushmen and the Zulu communities of Southern Africa, the issues raised are ubiquitous to the cultural tourism industry anywhere.

In this book, Francis expands and redefines the approach to the problematic of a comprehensive framework for the study of political elites through an interrogation of political elite formation in the African context of the Provincial Legislature of KwaZulu-Natal. The result is an empirically rich and detailed study of the realization, accumulation and exercise of institutionalized political power. Political elite agency shapes, enables and undermines political institutions and is dependent on a multiplicity of currencies including social and political capital and patterns of culture, respect and institutional capacity. Studies of political elites must now consider not whether elite values, attitudes and patterns of political etiquette penetrate political institutions, but rather how they do so.

Much has been written about anti-apartheid resistance by the marginalized people of South Africa, as well as its violent repression by security forces in urban areas (e.g. Sharpeville massacre; Soweto riots). Very little attention has been paid to resistance by rural people. The Mpondo Revolts, which began in the 1950s and reached a climax in 1960, rank among the most significant rural resistances in South Africa. Here Mpondo villagers emphatically rejected the introduction of Bantu Authorities and unpopular rural land use planning that meant loss of land. The volume presents a fresh understanding of the uprising; as well as its meaning and significance then and now, particularly relating to land, rural governance, party politics and the agency of the marginalized.

Building on the foundational work of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, the essays contained in Living the End of Empire offer a nuanced and complex picture of the late-colonial period in Zambia. The present volume, based on untapped archival material and sources that have emerged in recent years, throws new light on some of the historical trajectories that the teleological gaze of nationalist scholars tended to ignore or belittle. By bringing to view the deep-rooted tensions underlying the Zambian nationalist movement, the painful dilemmas faced by chiefly and religious institutions, and the contradictory experiences of European and Asian minorities, Living the End of Empire draws inspiration from – and contributes to – a growing literature that is concerned with the study of social, political and cultural forces that did not readily fit into the then dominant narratives of united anti-colonial struggles.

Social scientists examining contemporary Africa take considerable pains to resist portraying Africa as nothing more than a land of victims unable to escape historical cycles of war, exploitation and tyranny. However, children are still frequently conceptualised as passive actors, mere extensions of adult societies and receptors of culture. The authors in this volume argue that children are dynamic contributors to the shaping of contemporary Africa. Through novel and unorthodox ethnographic research methods, each chapter provides insights into children’s perspectives on kinship, work, caring, health, migration and conflict, shedding light on children’s views and the vital roles they play in the emerging Africa of tomorrow.

This book deals with the relation between the Malian state and the Tuareg people in the late 20th century, which has been characterized by three violent uprisings against Malian authority by Tuareg nationalists: between 1963 and 1964, between 1990 and 1996, and again between 2006 and 2009. In presenting a detailed history of this conflict between an African state and a people inhabiting it involuntarily, a number of social and political tensions are brought to the fore which haunt all of the Sahel today: the heritage of slavery, local and European concepts of race and the racialisation of social and political relations, colonial rule, the inchoate process of decolonisation, and the presence of competing nationalist forces in one postcolonial state.

The history of development cooperation has attracted very little research to date. This volume offers an innovative interpretation by considering the history of SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, which has been in existence for over forty years now. Through SNV’s history, an analysis emerges of the role of the Netherlands in development cooperation and the attitudes of Dutch society towards it over the last fifty years as well as the changing ideas, practices and policies in development work more generally.
The views and expectations of (former) SNV staff and those of local participants who were ultimately to benefit from the development activities were the focus of this historical research. This has resulted in a socio-cultural history ‘from below’ rather than a dry description of the organisation’s administrative changes and formal bureaucratic structures.

Under the aegis of the post-apartheid government, much emphasis has been placed on the transformation and democratisation of the heritage sector in South Africa since 1994. The emergent new landscape of memory relies heavily on commemorative monuments, memorials and statues aimed at reconciliation, nation-building and the creation of a shared public history. But not everyone identifies with these new symbolic markers and their associated interpretation of the past. Drawing on a number of theoretical perspectives, this book critically investigates the flourishing monument phenomenon in South Africa, the political discourses that fuel it; its impact on identity formation, its potential benefits, and most importantly its ambivalences and contradictions.

In the Shadow of Good Governance traces the implementation of the good governance agenda in Malawi from the loan documents signed by the representatives of the government and the Bretton Woods institutions to the individual experiences of civil servants who responded in unforeseen ways to the reform measures. Ethnographic evidence gathered in government offices, neighbourhoods and the private homes of civil servants living in Malawi’s urban and peri-urban areas undermines the common perception of a disconnect between state institutions and society in Africa. Instead, the book presents a comprehensive analysis of civil servants’ attempts to negotiate the effects of civil service reform and economic crisis at the turn of the 21st century.

Descriptions of the late 1800s landscape in the Ovambo floodplain in north-central Namibia closely match the area’s late 1900s appearance, suggesting that little change occurred between the pre-colonial baseline and the postcolonial outcome. Yet, paradoxically, colonial conquest, population pressure, biological invasions, new technology, and economic globalization caused both dramatic deforestation and reforestation in less than a century. The paradox stems from the fact that the prevailing global environmental models obscure and homogenize the process of environmental change: different and contradictory interpretations are dismissed as alternative readings or misreadings of the same process. Deforestation and Reforestation, however, argues that the paradox highlights the need to reframe environmental change as plural processes occurring along multiple trajectories that may be dissynchronized and asymmetrical.

Overexploitation of natural resources is often associated with poverty among local populations. A multi-disciplinary team studied artisanal fishers along the Kenyan coast on the Indian Ocean. The main focus of the research was on income diversification of fishers, the pressure on marine resources and the relation between the two. Income diversification did not reduce the pressure on the marine environment. Rather, indications are that many part-time fishers are entering the profession. Moreover, fishers with alternative employment stayed in-shore and used damaging gear more often. Policies to stimulate employment opportunities for coastal communities cannot be expected to lessen the pressure on marine resources and need to be planned carefully in terms of industry location, labour requirements and degree of coastal pollution.

In the early 1900s the motor-vehicle (car, bus, lorry or motor-cycle) was introduced in sub-Saharan Africa. Initially the plaything and symbol of colonial domination, the motor-vehicle transformed the economic and social life of the continent. Indeed, the motor-vehicle is arguably the single most important factor for change in Africa in the twentieth century. A factor for change that thus far has been neglected in research and literature. Yet its impact extends across the totality of human existence; from ecological devastation to economic advancement, from cultural transformation to political change, through to a myriad of other themes. This edited volume of eleven contributions by historians, anthropologists and social and political scientists explores aspects of the social history and anthropology of the motor-vehicle in Africa.

In contrast to the rich tradition of academic analysis and understanding of the pre-colonial and colonial history of Zambia, the country’s post-colonial trajectory has been all but ignored by historians. The assumptions of developmentalism, the cultural hegemony of the United National Independence Party’s orthodoxy and its conflation with national interests, and a narrow focus on Zambia’s diplomatic role in Southern African affairs, have all contributed to a dearth of studies centring on the diverse lived experiences of Zambians. Inspired by an international conference held in Lusaka in August 2005, and presenting a broad range of essays on different aspects of Zambia’s post-colonial experience, this collection seeks to lay the foundations for a future process of sustained scholarly enquiry into the country’s most recent past.

This book contributes to academic debates on knowledge. A resettlement area with people resettling from different agro-ecological regions with different knowledge and approaches to agriculture and farming provides a fascinating area to investigate how knowledge is produced and socialised. The fact that the resettlement scheme became a melting pot of different knowledge makes the term ‘local’ problematic yet farmers still use and produce knowledge that is considered ‘local’. Of interest is how the gender dynamics, politics, power, conflicts, resistance, religious beliefs and government policies impact on farming knowledge and on farming in general. This book unravels how local knowledge makes use of scientifically based state organised interventions. The book is of interest to policy makers and anyone involved in development studies.

This book focuses on achieving a better understanding of the implications of international migration for national development from the perspective of the sending countries (with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa). More specifically, the purpose of this volume is to explore (1) current perceptions - as seen from the perspective of the countries of origin - of the links between international migration and national development, and (2) current trends in policy making aimed at minimising the negative effects, while optimising the development impact. What are the dominant views and policy initiatives in the different countries of sub-Saharan Africa? It is concerned with the question of how a coherent international migration policy can contribute to the fight against poverty. In the book, update information is given of migration-development nexus in various countries, including Senegal and Burkina Faso, Botswana and Mozambique, Nigeria and Kenya . Attention is additionally paid to Mexico, the Philippines and the People's Republic of China.

Drawing on original data, secondary literature, aerial photographs and archives, this book analyzes changes in the use of the landscape and the nature of rural livelihoods in two South African villages. Taking an interdisciplinary approach on how livelihoods and landscapes in the Eastern Cape link the text provides a comprehensive study of the patterns of land use over time. Three separate chapters focus on cropping and cultivation practices, livestock and foraging as well as the gathering of wild plants. The book gives a vivid picture of the social dynamics and the interaction between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’. It depicts the steady deterioration in agricultural production and the corresponding increase in dependence on social grants and wages. Despite this trend remnants of a peasantry do exist.

This ethnographic study reveals how financial self-help groups (burial societies and credit groups) are islands of hope for Xhosa migrants living in the townships and squatter camps of Cape Town, South Africa. Many are caught up in a sea of insecurity, unemployment, murder, rape, AIDS, and social conflict, entangled with apartheid politics as well as post-apartheid development. Particularly women create these de-politicized social spaces to feel secure and trusted, and know that money is subject to their control. This intimate account challenges romanticized views on urban poverty and solidarity groups. It explores the anxiety among members, the fragility of trust and solidarity, as well as the emergence of conflicts with kin, household members, and neighbours, over desperately needed money.