Botswana

Botswana is known to be Africa's oldest stable democracy. But its parliamentary system is still dominated by the executive and the political opposition remains weak.     

China in Africa: A relationship of (Un)equals in the developing world

The unveiling of the new Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Agreement in 2002 inaugurated new democratic institutional structures for SACU. The revised SACU Agreement provides for accession by new members. Although not new, the idea of expanding SACU has gained currency in recent years. It has been suggested that enlarging SACU could overcome the ‘spaghetti bowl’ problem of overlapping regional membership of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. In spite of its allure, however, enlarging SACU membership is likely to run into difficulties as negotiations about the common revenue pool and the common external tariff become bogged down by attempts to accommodate the needs and interests of countries at different levels of development. It would also spark debate about how the revenue-sharing formula should be restructured and extended to new members. Moreover, whether SACU can act as a driver of regional integration will depend on the extent to which South Africa, the regional power, can translate its hegemonic position into a leadership role.     

Living Beyond Apartheid: The Territorial Ethics of Reconciliation

This essay explores the ethical murkiness of interpersonal reconciliation in the post-liberation era, focusing on the problem of material, and specifically territorial, restitution—an aspect of justice which critics say was the missing component of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. A reading of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace alongside Bessie Head’s A Question of Power offers a window into the knotty relationship between reconciliation and redistribution, a relationship which, these novels insist, must be accounted for in reassessing directions for the future and defining new political horizons. Theories of post-apartheid interpersonal ethics, this essay argues, are incomplete and unachievable without a territorial dimension. While Coetzee shows territorial demarcations to be the silent shaper of human interaction and a constant snag in the fabric of the “new” South Africa, Head goes outside the boundaries of the apartheid state to envision the ethical restructuring of human relations through transformative practices of cooperative farming. While ethics is fundamentally about a relation to the other, these novels suggest that land distribution must be factored into the interpersonal equation.     

‘One step at a time’: An interview with Jean-Bertrand Aristide (former President of Haiti)

ABSTRACT

I am an African. I speak an African language.

Ngingum-Afrika. Ngikhuluma izilimi zase-Afrika. (isiZulu)

Ndingum-Afrika. Ndithetha ulwimi lwase-Afrika. (isiXhosa)

Mimi ni mAfrika. Nazungumza lugha ya waAfrika. (Swahili)

The sense of pride inherent in this statement belies the challenge that African languages face today. Multilingualism in African languages is not seen as a rich resource when confronted by the economic clout of English. A compromise is needed – one where the value of indigenous languages and that of English is recognised. A trained translator and interpreter is one such compromise, becoming the key link between African development and African achievement. For the non-English speaker, this link would enable understanding and, through it, knowledge and empowerment. With translation and interpretation, knowledge can come to every person at their level of understanding. This article argues that the training of the skilled translator and interpreter in an African language is the critical link in the development and achievement of the disadvantaged African person. Language now becomes a resource, affirming further that it is also language that provides pride in one's identity, hence … I am an African. I speak an African language.     

Cheikh Anta Diop: The social sciences,humanities, physical and natural sciences and transdisciplinarity

ABSTRACT

This article presents a critical exposition of the contributions of Cheikh Anta Diop to a scientific understanding of ancient African history, race, and the study of culture. It sets out the history of Diop's successful struggle against flawed Eurocentric scholarship which sought to deny the contributions of ancient black Egyptians to world civilisation. Diop's intellectual odyssey across physics, linguistics, through anthropology, ethnology, genetics and history is recounted here to demonstrate the limitations of mono-, inter- and multidisciplinarity and clearly identifies him as a pioneer of transdisciplinarity in the field of knowledge production.     

Race Revisited: Against a Cultural Construction bearing Significant Implications

Abstract

More often than not, academics of African descent—from the continent, the diaspora, or other parts of the world—have been trained in Western and Middle Eastern-oriented disciplines that espouse the race paradigm. Imbued with race theory, they seek spiritual, social, and political solutions to critical race issues, in some cases unwittingly maintaining the cultural structure of the dominant group from which the construct arises. This article highlights the creation of race and race identity by European, Indo-Aryan (white), and Middle Eastern (Semitic) men and women, sanctified by religious ideals that advanced their societies and stigmatised Africans, based on the melanin content of their skin. In these cultural orientations, the blackest-skinned women, men, and children are devalued, debased, and demonised. Race is used as a cultural strategy for fabricating human history and distinctions, shaping thinking, behaviours, and exploits that continue to have deleterious, far-reaching consequences for dark-skinned people across the world. In the light of this critical dilemma, and from an Afrocentric perspective, this article interrogates whether Black academicians in non-African and African cultures can shed the cultural constraints of race as identity, and understand the development of cultural identity as the basis of more progressive ideas regarding humanity.     

African Customary Law and Common Law in South Africa: Reconciling Contending Legal Systems

ABSTRACT

The multicultural fabric of contemporary South African society is the result of the interaction between various and differing historical narratives, each with their own knowledge system, which led to the emergence of legal pluralism. The common law and African customary law are the major legal systems. A historical- political construction of the common law indicates that it has been influenced by the dominant political power. From an historical perspective, the contraction and expansion of the common law is due to its continuous deconstruction, whereby new knowledge is introduced into the existing system. Section 173 of the Constitution of 1996 provides that the judiciary is now responsible for developing the common law. However, under the new constitutional dispensation, the reconstruction of African customary law that is now on an equal footing with the common law indicates that it is being remodelled to fit the mould of Western legal values. In order to achieve jurisprudential parity between the two systems, the humanistic values of ubuntu should be adopted to infuse African equity into the common law. The realisation of this objective is possible if an interpretative paradigm is recognised as a means of ameliorating the legalistic consequences of the prevalent positivist paradigm. Within an African Renaissance model, adherence to an interpretative paradigm would advance restorative justice, and curriculum transformation along with research and development that resonate African/South African values. This would instil new vigour into the law and the Constitution that is seemingly becoming stulted due to its adherence to Western values.     

State fragility in Africa: Methods chasing problems or problems chasing methods in political discourse?

Abstract

The article critiques the inadequacy of the conceptions and definitions of state fragility, failure and weakness in Africa. The dominant accounts of state failure, weakness and fragility tend to look at the superficial appearance and not at the multi-causal economic, political and discursive foundations of an African state. The article argues that a deeper and alternative discourse about state failure, fragility and weakness in Africa needs to address the basic question of what the character and nature of the African state are. The article broaches this question by analysing the conceptions of state failure, fragility and weakness, and then provides a comprehensive account of the character and nature of post-colonial states in Africa. The intention here is to show that the form and content of post-colonial states in Africa have been a contested and inadequately theorised phenomenon for many years.     

Towards understanding the contextual role of traditional leadership in the establishment of cyber communities amongst rural people in South Africa: The case of Dr J.S. Moroka Municipality

Abstract

ICT policies instituted over a number of years by the South African government have failed manifestly in establishing cyber communities amongst rural people in South Africa. The authors of this article argue that for rural South African communities to reap the benefits of ‘cyber citizenship’ and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) initiatives, it will be necessary for communities to enable themselves and to take ownership of initiatives to participate in the anticipated South African information society. The authors argue that the success of ICT4D initiatives depends very strongly on an understanding of the interaction of such initiatives with the social context at the local community level. One of the significant aspects of the social context at community level is the role of traditional leaders in these communities. This article examines the role of traditional leadership, with specific reference to the literature on traditional leadership in South Africa and the literature on the role of traditional leadership in ICT4D initiatives, as well as empirical findings from a case study that serves as an example of a ‘typical’ rural community in Mpumalanga, South Africa.     

Africa unknown: Addressing the effects of an alienating education amongst learners in South Africa

Abstract

The article argues for the Africanisation of the South African education system, most critically at high school and tertiary levels. Using both experiential and theoretical reasoning, it seeks to present a compelling argument for the value of teaching our children, using methodologies, examples and stories they can relate to. It argues that this relatability is what will best develop the cognition of learners and better equip them to turn knowledge into action. The South African education system has often been seen as lacking a critical thinking and problem-solving element, and the article argues that this limitation is embedded in the abstractness of our curricula. The article presents a short case study highlighting just how little about Africa some of our best learners know. It ends by offering practical suggestions about how the education system could incorporate critical African knowledge in its learning models.