Africa Today articles from December 2002

Africa Today archives from December 2002

Politics and constitution-making in Francophone Cameroon, 1959-1960.
December 22, 2002... This essay examines politics in Francophone Cameroon and its impact on the making of the Cameroonian constitution of 1960. Politics in Francophone Cameroon was characterized by violence, bloodshed, and the suppression of civil liberties. This...

Coalition building, election rules, and party politics: South African women's path to parliament.
December 22, 2002... This paper argues that pre-transition mobilization by South African women fostered post transition success in constitutional mandates, party politics, and office holding. Informed by examples of failed postliberation gender movements in...

A participatory approach for local peace initiatives: the Lodwar Border Harmonization Meeting.
December 22, 2002... Long-term, low-intensity conflicts are pervasive in many pastoralist areas in the Horn of Africa. As international development agencies have sought strategies for improving livelihoods in these areas, their attention has been increasingly drawn...

Globalization and the South African transformation: the impact on social policy.
December 22, 2002... In analyzing the ANC's postapartheid macroeconomic and industrial policies alongside ideologies about the role of states and markets in fostering developmental goals, this paper argues that globalization has had a profound impact on the social...

Educational partnerships and democratic education in Namibia.
December 22, 2002... This case study discusses the path toward the development of a democratic partnership between a Namibian college of education and four schools in the local educational area. It describes the initial educational conditions in post-independent...

Adam, Kanya. 2000. The Colour Of Business: Managing Diversity In South Africa.
December 22, 2002... Basel: P. Schlettwein Publishing. 9.15 pp. In The Colour of Business: Managing Diversity in South Africa, Kanya Adam offers a timely although troubling assessment of the implications of affirmative action in South Africa. She finds that...

Arnold, Guy. 2000. The New South Africa.
December 22, 2002... New York: St. Martin's Press. 196 pp. $65.00 (cloth). Reviewing this book early in 2003 leaves me regretful of the long lead time for the publication and reviewing of books intended to be timely. Guy Arnold, a capable journalistic...

Chinosole. 2001. African Diaspora & Autobiographics: Skeins Of Self And Skin.
December 22, 2002... San Francisco State University Series in Philosophy, 11. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. 208 pp. $29.95 (cloth). Chinosole's book has a preface, nine chapters (each devoted to an author or a book), a conclusion, a selected bibliography of...

Connah, Graham. 2001. African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective.
December 22, 2002... Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 340 pp. $64.95 (cloth); $22.95 (paper). This is the second edition of a watershed title first published in 1987. The phrase African civilizations was not in regular usage only fifteen years ago, and...

Guimaraes, Fernando Andersen. The Origins of the Angolan Civil War: Foreign Intervention and Domestic Political Conflict.
December 22, 2002... London: Macmillan, 9,001. xvi + 9,50 pp. List of Tables. Abbreviations. Notes. Bibliography. The book is easy to read. The structure of the text is well laid out. The narrative of each chapter is prefaced with a set of provocative nuggets...

Gurr, Ted Robert. 2000. People Versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century.
December 22, 2002... Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press. 399 pp. This book is the sequel to Ted Gurr's highly acclaimed 1993 work, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Politics, which studied ethnic conflict around the...

Hansen, Karen Tranberg. 2000. Salaula: the World of Secondhand Clothing And Zambia.
December 22, 2002... University of Chicago Press. 257 pages + notes, references, and index. $52.50 (hardback); $22.50 (paper). No one who has spent time in Africa can have failed to notice the intensive use of secondhand clothing, extending everywhere across...

Mbaku, John Mukum. 2000. Bureaucratic and Political Corruption in Africa: the Public Choice Perspective.
December 22, 2002... Malabar, Fla.: Krieger Publishing. 222 pp. This is a thought-provoking book, which advances the debate about corruption in Africa. Its approach is interdisciplinary and wide-ranging. It expands Mbaku's earlier analyses of corruption,...

Olupona, Jacob K., ed. African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings, and Expressions.
December 22, 2002... World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest, volume 3. New York: Herder and Herder, Crossroad Publishing Company. 2000. xxxvi + 476 pp. $35.00. This book consists of twenty articles, eleven of which relate to African...

Spear, Thomas, and Isaria N. Kimambo. eds. 1999. East African Expressions of Christianity.
December 22, 2002... East African Studies Series, Oxford: James Currey. Athens, Ohio: University Press. xii + 340 pp. This addition to the East African Studies series, which has made its mark among Africanists with the publication of Berman and Lonsdale's...

Van Dijk, Rijk, Ria Reis, and Marja Spierenburg, eds. 2000. The Quest For Fruition Through Ngoma: The Political Aspects of Healing in Southern Africa.
December 22, 2002... Oxford: James Currey. 172 pp. $44.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). Outside the pages of Current Anthropology or the more public dustups over Captain Cook or the Yanomami, it is often difficult to find sustained, accessible, productive (not to...

Wertheim, Albert. 2000. The Dramatic Art of Athol Fugard: From South Africa to the World.
December 22, 2002... Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 273 pp. From his first play, No-Good Friday (1958), to the present, Athol Fugard has been relentless in using his talent to affirm the good and condemn the bad. His genius, however, lies in his art....

Books received.
December 22, 2002... Allen, Denise Roth. 2002. Managing Motherhood, Managing Risk: Fertility and Danger in West Central Tanzania. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ardener, Shirley, ed., with commentaries. 2002. Swedish Ventures in Cameroon, 1883-1923:...