Political Science, Africa

To Speak and Be Heard
Seeking Good Government in Uganda, ca. 1500–2015
By Holly Hanson

Through detailed archival research, Hanson reveals the origins of Uganda’s strategies for good government—assembly, assent, and powerful gifts—and explains why East African party politics often fail.

To Speak and Be Heard
Seeking Good Government in Uganda, ca. 1500–2015
By Holly Hanson

Through detailed archival research, Hanson reveals the origins of Uganda’s strategies for good government—assembly, assent, and powerful gifts—and explains why East African party politics often fail.

Kwame Nkrumah
Visions of Liberation
By Jeffrey S. Ahlman

This new biography of Kwame Nkrumah (1909–72), Ghana’s first president, demonstrates how his accomplishments extend well beyond his role in Ghanaian decolonization, state-building, and the promotion of pan-Africanism to include his broader anticolonialist work toward an independent, unified Africa.

Chris Hani
By Hugh Macmillan

Chris Hani was one of the most highly respected leaders of the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, and uMkhonto we Sizwe. His assassination in 1993 threatened to upset the transition to democracy but also prompted an intervention by Nelson Mandela, which accelerated the process. This biography provides a concise presentation of this iconic political leader’s life.

Mozambique’s Samora Machel
A Life Cut Short
By Allen F. Isaacman and Barbara S. Isaacman
· Foreword by Albie Sachs

From his anti-colonial military leadership to the presidency of independent Mozambique, Samora Machel held a reputation as a revolutionary hero to the oppressed. Although killed in a 1987 plane crash, for many Mozambicans his memory lives on as a beacon of hope for the future.

South Africa’s Suspended Revolution
Hopes and Prospects
By Adam Habib

South Africa’s Suspended Revolution tells the story of South Africa’s democratic transition and the prospects for the country to develop a truly inclusive political system. Beginning with an account of the transition in the leadership of the African National Congress from Thabo Mbeki to Jacob Zuma, the book then broadens its lens to examine the relationship of South Africa’s political elite to its citizens.

Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa
Edited by Devon Curtis and Gwinyayi A. Dzinesa
· Foreword by Adekeye Adebajo

Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa is a critical reflection on peacebuilding efforts in Africa. The authors expose the tensions and contradictions in different clusters of peacebuilding activities, including peace negotiations; statebuilding; security sector governance; and disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration.

Ethnic Federalism
The Ethiopian Experience in Comparative Perspective
Edited by David Turton

Since 1991, Ethiopia has gone further than any other country in using ethnicity as the fundamental organizing principle of a federal system of government. Ethnic Federalism closely examines aspects of the Ethiopean case and asks why the use of territorial decentralism to accommodate ethnic differences has been generally unpopular in Africa.

Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa
Edited by Bruce Berman, Dickson Eyoh, and Will Kymlicka

The politics of identity and ethnicity will remain a fundamental characteristic of African modernity. For this reason, historians and anthropologists have joined political scientists in a discussion about the ways in which democracy can develop in multicultural societies.

Multi-Party Politics in Kenya
The Kenyatta and Moi States and the Triumph of the System in the 1992 Election
By David Throup and Charles Hornsby

This book uses the Kenyan political system to address issues relevant to recent political developments throughout Africa.The authors analyze the construction of the Moi state since 1978. They show the marginalization of Kikuyu interests as the political economy of Kenya has been reconstructed to benefit President Moi’s Kalenjin people and their allies. Mounting Kikuyu dissatisfaction led to the growth of demands for multi-party democracy.The

Freedom in Our Lifetime
The Collected Writings of Anton Muziwakhe Lembede
By Anton Muziwakhe Lembede
· Edited by Robert R. Edgar and Luyanda ka Msumza

When a group of young political activists met in 1944 to launch the African National Congress Youth League, it included the nucleus of a remarkable generation of leaders who forged the struggle for freedom and equality in South Africa for the next half century: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Jordan Ngubane, Ellen Kuzwayo, Albertina Smith, A. P. Mda, Dan Tloome, and David Bopape. It was Anton Lembede, however whom they chose as their first president.

Religion and Politics in East Africa
The Period since Independence
Edited by Hölger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle

Religious activities have been of continuing importance in the rise of protest against postcolonial governments in Eastern Africa. Governments have attempted to “manage“ religious affairs in both Muslim and Christian areas. Religious denominations have acted as advocates of human rights and in opposition to one-party-state regimes. Islamic fundamentalism changed with the ending of the Cold War.

Allies in Adversity
The Frontline States in Southern African Security, 1975–1993
By Gilbert M. Khadiagala

One of the fundamental questions in Africa’s search for meaningful political and economic integration is how small states with limited resources promote change in their regional neighborhoods. This study looks at Africa’s Frontline States—Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—to assess their role in southern African security since the 1970s.

A Trumpet from the Housetops
The Selected Writings of Lionel Forman
By Lionel Forman
· Edited by Sadie Forman and André Odendaal

Lionel Forman died in Cape Town in 1959 at the age of 31. His death occasioned a massive outpouring of grief amongst both black and white opponents of apartheid. At his funeral, Albie Sachs referred to his ‘questing, penetrating mind… He stood way out front, beckoning us onwards.’ The author Lionel Abrahams wrote, ‘If any great number of men lived such lives, the world’s needed revolutions would be automatically accomplished.’

Learning from Robben Island
Govan Mbeki’s Prison Writings
By Govan Mbeki
· Introduction by Colin Bundy
· Foreword by Harry Gwala

In the late fifties and early sixties, Govan Mbeki was a central figure in the African National Congress and director of the ANC campaigns from underground. Born of a chief and the daughter of a Methodist minister in the Transkei of South Africa in 1910, he worked as a teacher, journalist, and tireless labor organizer in a lifetime of protest against the government policy of apartheid. Over two decades of imprisonment on Robben Island did not consign him to obscurity.

Uganda Now
Between Decay and Development
Edited by Hölger Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle

Can the revolutionary government of Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement put Uganda back on the road from decay to development?These informed assessments put the present situation in context. The contributors assembled as Museveni’s guerrillas were launching their final bid for power. They have finalized their contributions in the light of the Museveni government’s initial period of power.Contributions

Defense Legislation and Communal Politics
The Evolution of a White South African Nation as Reflected in the Controversy over the Assignment of Armed Forces Abroad, 1912–1976
By Kenneth W. Grundy

In many ways the defense posture of a state (which may, of course, be aggressive) stands as hard evidence of its ruling elite’s self-image and perception of its territorial mission. As a component of foreign policy, defense policy may also be viewed as instrumental to domestic configurations of power. Thus it is the purpose of this paper to examine various features of South African defense legislation as they have evolved since 1912.