Religion and Human Rights

Journal of Church and State, 2013

Literator, 2017

In this article, I explore a range of intersections between the ideological-material legacies of a dictatorial regime and representations of female sexuality in Malawian fiction. I am particularly interested in using literary narratives to examine how fiction writers explore the congruencies and disjunctures amongst outright political dictatorship and the impact on bodies and behaviours of state-inflected institutions such as ‘the family’, along with discourses such as gender, culture and religion that are commonly mobilised in the service of national identity. Focusing on Tiyambe Zeleza’s Smouldering Charcoal and James Ng’ombe’s Sugarcane with Salt, I investigate how the authors’ portrayal of female sexuality contest at the same time as they reproduce received, normative ‘truths’ about female sexualities. By focusing on female sexual agency, desire and pleasure, this article also examines class-inflected intergenerational differences between women’s conceptualisations of female sex...

Women's Studies Quarterly, 1997

Paul Tiyambe Zeleza "Why not leave this country, even Africa, to trial and error?" he said slowly, uncomfortably. "This is only my opinion. I don't think I approve of dictatorship in any form, whether for the good of mankind or not. Even if it is painstakingly slow, I prefer a democracy for Africa, come what may. "-Makhaya in Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather "In many countries, one hasn 't rights; but neither does one really have them in Western Europe or North America although one is made to believe one does.. .. Democracy is the instrument with which the elites whip the masses anywhere; it enables the ruling elite to detain some, impoverish others, and makes them the sole proprietors of power. Who knows what is good for the people? Who knows whom the people love most? Who knows best what the people need?"-Zeinab in Nurrudin Farah, Sardines "Tomorrow it would be the workers and the peasants leading the struggle and seizing power to overturn the system and all its prying bloodthirsty gods and gnomic angels, bringing to an end the reign of the few over the many and the era of drinking blood and feasting on human flesh. Then, only then, would the kingdom of man and woman really begin, they enjoying and loving in creative labour. "-Akinyi in Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Petals of Blood This content downloaded from 41.89.4.30 on Thu, 16 Mar 2017 05:34:38 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Women 's Studies Quarterly 1 997: 3 &4 11 clear from the media that the current struggles and t democracy have been dazzling and messy, their results and unpredictable, yielding both successes and defeat to the future and compromises with the past, heroism hope and pessimism. Already, the euphoria that was so beginning of the decade-inspired by the release of Ne the electoral defeats of Benin's Mathieu Kerekou and Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda, and the flight of Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mari and Somalia's Siad Barre-has been tempered by the return Kerekou and the attempted return of Kaunda, not to mention t ambiguous transition of Kenya, the aborted transition of Burundi, th terror in Nigeria, the rise of religious fundamentalism in Algeria and the Sudan, and the continuing nightmare of Angola, Liberia, Soma and Rwanda. All these conflicting realities and possibilities have given rise to intense and agonizing debates on the forces that are driving this new "wind of change" and, more importantly, to controversies about the social basis of the democratic movements and about the concept of democracy itself, its meanings and trajectories. To some, democracy is coterminous with the pluralism of periodic electoral contests, with efficient governance. To others, democracy must be conceived in broader, more generous and more complex terms, beyond the political domain, beyond the trappings of "multipartyism"; it must be seen as a project for collective freedom and empowerment and as the agent of Africa's regeneration in all spheres-political, economic, cultural, and moral. This paper seeks to examine the conflicting visions of democracy from the different perspectives of three writers: Bessie Head, Nurrudin Farah, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o.1 These writers are products of, and write on, different political formations, so that they offer quite diverse and complex visions of democracy. Head, the South African exile who migrated to Botswana, typifies the Southern African condition, the complex interplay of migration and the constructs of race, nationality, and gender. Also, Botswana is one of the few African countries that has maintained a liberal parliamentary system since independence. Through Head the attributes and limits of this system are thrown into sharp relief. Farah 's Somalia is a unique African country in that its people share the same nationality, language, and religion. Its intense internal divisions and its collapse in the early 1990s, therefore, raise fundamental questions about the articulation of nationhood and statehood in this era of resurgent nationalisms. Moreover, Somalia's official ideology has swung the ideological pendulum of postcolonial Africa: from "scientific socialism" to alliance with the West and fun

Interdisciplinary journal of African and Asian Studies (IJAAS), 2020

The African continent has proven to be quite dynamic in the political space. Indeed, since the wave of colonial rule swept over the continent and with the eventual realization and acquisition of self governance across member states, Africa and her leaders have become major players in the scheme of things. Through an elongated period of experimentation plagued by military coups, corruption, underdevelopment, exploitation by foreign powers and so on, the continent has continued the evolve and has remained quite dominant on the world stage.The discourse of power politics and the concept of Tyranny in Africa form the Anchor hold for this study. Over time, African playwrights and indeed Theatre scholars have continued to replicate what could be termed as the "African situation" through literary works and plays and this has in no small measure aided in the reawakening of the average African to the reality of the power struggle in the African political arena as well as the dynamics or lack thereof of adequate leadership within the ruling class. The qualitative research method is adopted for this study. This includes in-depth content analysis and review of related literature for proper data evaluation and interpretation. Sanya Dosunmu's God's Deputy is utilized as the primary source of analysis. The study finds among others that more work should be done by Theatre practitioners in reevaluating systems of governance through their art as this would help in creating needed awareness and engender communal participation in the discourse of politics.

Politique Africaine, 2023

This book is part of a series entitled “The African World Histories”. It presents a new approach to teaching and learning for courses in African history and African studies, and also seeks to offer a new interpretation of African and global experiences from the pers- pectives of Africans who lived through them. In general, the book addresses the problem of authoritarianism in Africa by focusing on three topics: repression, resistance, and the power of ideas.

Peter Lang eBooks, 2018

An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org Cover image: Commemorative wraps (pagnes) printed on wax fabric in the 1960s depicting Ahmed Sekou Touré. Made in England for the Guinean market. Courtesy of Thomas Miles. The fabric exemplifies the reproduction of authoritarian imagery critiqued by Achille Mbembe and discussed in Part I of this volume.

Peter Lang International Academic Publishers eBooks, 2018

Since the rise to power of autocratic leaders across Africa in the early years of independence, artists, filmmakers, novelists, poets, photographers and song-writers have been preoccupied with the compelling figure of the dictator, placing him at centre stage in their work. Their concern with the question of dictatorship requires little speculation, for African dictators and their regimes have defined the postcolonial period in Africa. Within a decade of independence, nearly all African states had evolved into dictatorships or single-party regimes, and the consequences of their autocratic regimes are still felt across the African continent today. Christopher Miller points to the irony that, having demanded nationhood, Africans found themselves subject to nationalism of quite a different sort: 'The arbitrary borders between African states, which had been ignored or critiqued […] by the theory of Pan-African nationalism, were reasserted as the armatures of a more familiar state nationalism at the service of new elites' .1 However, in his study of writing and authority in Latin American literature, Roberto González Echevarría reminds us that 'It is not simply a matter of arguing that, since there have been and still are dictators […] literature ought to reflect that fact' .2 Instead, he contends, power and rhetoric are bound up and cannot exist independently of one another. The Latin American dictator novel has received considerable critical attention, with some critics asserting it as a genre that is 'specific' to Latin 1 Christopher Miller, 'Nationalism as Resistance and Resistance to Nationalism in the Literature of Francophone Africa' ,

South African Journal of International Affairs, 2021

Africa: Repression, resistance, and the power of ideas Written by Cliff (Ubba) Kodero This PDF is auto-generated for reference only. As such, it may contain some conversion errors and/or missing information. For all formal use please refer to the official version on the website, as linked below.

E-International relations , 2020

Review-Authoritarian Africa: Repression, resistance, and the power of ideas Written by Cliff (Ubba) Kodero This PDF is auto-generated for reference only. As such, it may contain some conversion errors and/or missing information. For all formal use please refer to the official version on the website, as linked below.