Reviews

John Graversgaard reviews Two Paths Ahead by Shiraz Durrani for Countercurrents.

Goodwin Zainga reviews Churches of Christ: A History of the Restoration Movement in Malawi 1906-2011 by Mark Thiesen for Journal of African Christian Biography.

Sama Tah reviews A Time to Reconcile: A Play for Children by George Njimele for Batazia newsletter, Netherlands.

Emma Wild-Wood, University of Edinburgh, reviews A Malawi Church History, 1860–2020 by Kenneth R. Ross and Klaus Fiedler for the International Bulletin of Mission Research.

John Wilson reviews Brian Morris's Homage to Peasant Small Holders: Land and People of the Shire Highlands, Malawi for the Society of Malawi Journal.

A review extract of Langaa RPCIG's new title from Professor Robin Palmer, Faculty of Anthropology, Rhodes University, South Africa.

Tendai Mwanaka is a Zimbabwean writer, editor and publisher who has published 21 books and 23 curated anthologies. Perhaps his best-known anthologies are the Best New African Poetsanthologies that have provided a forum for poets across the African continent.

At the last count there were 48,400,000 fictional accounts on the theme of Colonialism globally.

The authors of this book paint a detailed and dispassionate yet wrenching picture of the painful and bloody transformation of Rhodesia into Zimbabwe in the period following the white leader Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence from Britain in 1965. Their main gift to historians is the wealth of information they provide, much of it hitherto unknown outside secret service circles, about how Rhodesia’s Special Branch, of which the authors themselves were two of the wiliest spooks, helped to keep the forces of African liberation at bay for so long.

Although typified in some blurbs as crime fiction, Mukuka Chipanta’s second novel is so much more than that: it is also a well-crafted historical novel.

"My Life, My Purpose is the memoirs of Tanzania’s third president, Benjamin Mkapa. President Mkapa takes the reader on a journey from his childhood in rural Mtwara to post-presidential semi-retire­ment. He is not reluctant to offer opinions on a range of topics along the way. "

Une Jeune Femme sur un Bateau Ivre : Agathe Uwilingiyimana du Rwanda is a poignant portrait by a loved one of a courageous, headstrong human being for whom “the word ‘abandonment’ was not part of her vocabulary”. She would go down with her “drunken boat.”

Overall, the book examines various political, economic, social and healthcare issues from interdisciplinary perspectives that pose a challenge to the Second Republic in Zimbabwe. By adopting historical and social perspectives, the various contributors to this monumental work traversed the effects of Mugabe’s legacy on the Second Republic

The story of Garfield Todd in Central Africa starts in 1934. At the age of 26 he and his 23- year old wife, Grace and their adopted daughter, Alycen, came from New Zealand to the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia to run the New Zealand Churches of Christ mission station at Dadaya in the Lundi Native Reserve near Shabani (Zvishavane).

Black South Africans have embraced European ideas, so why can’t citizenship be equally fluid?...Anthropologist Francis Nyamnjoh, a Cameroonian South African and a South African Cameroonian, sharply raises these and similar questions in his recently published book titled #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa – a must-read.

The message of this book is that against colonial oppression there was resistance, and `Liberating Minds` were the voices of activists and others who opposed British rule in Kenya

The essays in this book all touch on what I see as a particularly Tanzanian syllogism: Nyerere was all that was best about Tanzania in the past, while Tanzania remains all that its greatest son made it. Whether the conclusion of this logical expression is true or not, I expect that this volume is only the beginning of a much deeper study of the symbolic power of Nyerere-as­metonym-for-Tanzania, as well as a more wide-ranging consideration of his significance(s) in East Africa and further afield.

ONE OF THE MAIN surprises that followed Robert Mugabe’s overwhelming election victory (57 of the 80 seats open to Africans) in March 1980 was Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s decision to appoint the Oxfordshire-born President of the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU), Denis Norman, as the country’s first Minister of Agriculture

It is difficult not to be fascinated by the Hadza, speakers of a unique click language and one of the last remaining groups of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. It is easy to sympathise with their struggle to retain control over their customary lands in the Lake Eyasi basin, near Ngorongoro.

This book is for enthusiasts on development and the water sector in particular. Water governance, management and the water sector as a whole is gaining prominence in view of climate change and general competition for natural resources.

I have to confess that before reading this, I could only name three Cameroonian artists: Azante Spee, Angu Walters and Napoleon Bongaman. But thanks to this timely edition, I've been introduced to others; such as Koko Komegne, Pascal Kenfack and Goddy Leye. But let me begin my review, with the one that attracted me the most.

The short story collection Nothing to See Here (2015) is a literary house unto itself. Readers must not assume that these new stories will be like others. Each writer within Nothing to See Here (2015) dwells in a different house encased under one dome.

This is one of the best compilations of essays on Southern Africa I have read in a long time. Although a wide range of views are presented in 18 chapters by 19 writers (including the two editors), there is, as the title suggests, a common thread that runs through these essays

Mean Streets: Migration, Xenophobia and Informality in South Africa draws attention to the fact that some of the most resourceful entrepreneurs in the South African informal economy are migrants and refugees, despite the dangers they face in trading on the streets. Kate Dawson describes this as a landmark volume in the growing literature on African cities which brings into sharp focus the conceptual cornerstones of the subject

The authors of Malawi’s Lost Years (1964-1994), a long-term labour of love, are thereby on a mission. Veteran opponents of Banda’s, they seek to tell what they see as ‘the truth’ about his regime by documenting the testimony of those who suffered under it in myriad ways; and in so doing to denounce any rehabilitation as an insult to these ‘forsaken heroes,’ and a dangerous precedent for the future.

"This memoir is very much a personal journey seen from the eyes of an Asian growing up in Tanganyika/Tanzania during a period of great change. It pro­vides a rare glimpse of the Ismaili community and its cohesiveness. "

In his study based on a thorough investigation of colonial papers, minutes, memoranda, correspondence, and gazettes, Komla Tsey points to the historic roots of this tradition of corruption. The British engineers working in the Gold Coast put colonial interests and self-interest first; they got away with botched jobs and skull-duggery.

MANY have been wondering why South Africans insist on telling the story of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), in the heroic mode when, in truth, the country would be better served if the story were told in the tragic mode.

this volume represents a landmark contribution to our understanding of the Marange diamonds and where the missing billions might be "

The right strategy for cotton in Tanzania has been a key issue for the agricultural sector both before and after independence. The question is complex and many observers and participants have contributed analyses which were specific to their time.

This work is the result of government endeavors to examine the state of child affairs. On a statistical level, this book provides documented studies of the relations between children, families, and the various African governments.

Mkuki na Nyota’s 2016 edition of The Art of the Zaramo: Identity, Tradition and Social Change is a well-produced (and more affordable) paperback edition of Fadhili Mshana’s doctoral dissertation, which he completed in 1999 with the original title Art and Identity among the Zaramo of Tanzania (State University of New York at Binghamton)

Contrary to what is sometimes said, in South Africa the past is not past; it is still a strong presence in people’s lives. It is not possible to understand the present without understanding the past. Forgiving does not mean forgetting.