Africa Today articles from June 2002

Africa Today archives from June 2002

Introduction to women, language, and law in Africa II: gender and relations of power.
June 22, 2002... Women in most African societies are routinely engaged in work that provides support and sustenance for themselves and their children, yet restrictions based on the structure of power relations often limit their access to resources. Though well...

Women's rights as human rights: women in law and development in Africa (WiLDAF).
June 22, 2002... In recent years, "women's rights as human rights" has emerged as a new transnational approach to demanding women's empowerment. This article explores the advantages and limitations of such an approach to women's activism in Africa through a...

True survivors: East African refugee women.
June 22, 2002... In this paper, I explain the process asylum seekers from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Somalia went through when they applied for asylum in Malawi between 1997 and 1999. I describe how international conventions concerning...

The power of participation: language and gender in Tanzanian law reform campaigns.
June 22, 2002... Over the last decade, donor nations have focused considerable proportions of their development funding for Africa on "democratization" projects. (1) As part of this initiative, Tanzania has experienced a remarkable growth of diverse projects on...

Kamuzu's Mbumba: Malawi women's embeddedness to culture in the face of international political pressure and internal legal change.
June 22, 2002... The case of Malawi shows that while legal reform, transition to political pluralism, and adoption of the language of international human rights may facilitate the formation of a constitution that guarantees and respects all people's human...

Justice and power in the adjudication of women's property rights in Uganda.
June 22, 2002... This article challenges the notion that women who derive their primary rights from land are unable to use the legal system to assert or protect their property rights. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in southern Uganda, I suggest that female...

Women's strategies for customary land access in Swaziland and Malawi: a comparative study.
June 22, 2002... In most African countries, the land-access and use rights of rural populations have been undergoing considerable changes in recent years, primarily due to informal developments in customary land law at the village level and formal legislative...

Christie, Kenneth. 2000. The South African Truth Commission.
June 22, 2002... New York: St. Martin's Press. 215 pp. In the two and a half years in which South Africa's traumatic past was meticulously documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), remarkable and dramatic stories unfolded at hearings...

Dunn, Kevin C., and Timothy M. Shaw, ed. 2001. Africas's Challenge to International Relations Theory.
June 22, 2002... Houndmills, U.K.; and New York: Palgrave. 242 pp. The best way to understand this collection of essays is in terms of Africa's marginality and in Africanists' effort to demonstrate that despite this marginality Africa is important. Why...

Du Toit, Pierre. 2001. South Africa's Brittle Peace: the Problem of Post-Settlement Violence.
June 22, 2002... Houndmills, U.K.; and New York: Palgrave 222 pp. Studies of South Africa's transition have proliferated in recent years, seeking explanations for the collapse of apartheid, for the actors and issues animating the miraculous political...

Ellis, Stephen. 1999. The Mask of Anarchy: the Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War.
June 22, 2002... New York: New York University Press. 311 pp. Stephen Ellis has written a dense and fascinating book, perhaps an obligatory read for anyone desiring to understand the basic events leading to the current Liberian situation, or to comprehend...

Kalley, Jacqueline A. 2001. South Africa's Treaties in Theory and Practice.
June 22, 2002... Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. 859 pp. There is a certain irony in the substance of this book: before 1994, the idea that South Africa had treaties was both irrelevant and bad humor. As an outlaw nation, these treaties would have been...

Schatzberg, Michael. 2001. Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, Family, Food.
June 22, 2002... Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 292 pp. During this reviewer's first prolonged stay in Gabon, the rationale behind the choice of articles published in state-operated newspapers and segments presented on the national television...

Stora, Benjamin. 2001. Algeria, 1830-2000: a Short History.
June 22, 2002... Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 283 pp. Benjamin Stora has based his lean-bodied analysis of Algerian history--from the French conquest to the present--on a lifetime of engaged scholarship. Influenced, but not compromised, by...

Tshosa, Onkemetse. 2001. National Law and International Human Rights Law: Cases of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
June 22, 2002... Aldershot, Eng., and Burlington, Vermont.: Ashgate Publishing. 317 pp. Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe have in common that they all inherited from the South African Republic (or the old Cape Colony in the case of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) the...

Vera, Yvonne. 2002. Without a Name and Under the Tongue.
June 22, 2002... New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 234 pp. Yvonne Vera has been a leading light in Zimbabwean letters for more than a decade, beginning with the 1992 publication of her collection of short stories, Why Don't You Carve Other Animals? Now...

Books received.
June 22, 2002... Adebajo, Adekeye. 2002. Liberia's Civil War: Nigeria, ECOMOG, and Regional Security in West Africa. Boulder: Lynne Reinner. Askew, Kelly, and Richard R. Wilk, eds. 2002. The Anthropology of Media: A Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell...