This study provides a window into the lives of ordinary South Africans more than ten years after the end of apartheid, with the promises of the democracy movement remaining largely unfulfilled. Catherine Besteman explores the emotional and personal aspects of the transition to black majority rule by homing in on intimate questions of love, family, and community and capturing the complex, sometimes contradictory voices of a wide variety of Capetonians.

Ishmael Beah’s memoirs, A Long Way Gone, is an emergency one. Not only does Beah highlight the horrors of war that he went through in Sierra Leone, but he also reveals how gross and wasteful war is. Just like Grace Akallo’s Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children, Els De Temmerman’s Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda, John Bul Dau’s God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir, the documentary, The Lost Boys of Sudan, and the film, Blood Diamond, the children who are not killed during the war are turned into soldiers and indoctrinated in murderous violence. The gun is magnified. What starts as a war tactic eventually becomes deeply ingrained in children’s mind, the gun becomes not only a ‘vehicle’ to power but power itself.

Beah begins his story in an engaging but detached manner. News of war come to him as if the war is happening in a faraway and different land. Later, as fleeing refugees begin to spill into his town does Beah realise that the war is taking place in his country. Soon it ravages a substantial chunk including his home area and neighbouring towns. In an effort to escape, Beah ends up right in the arms of the rebels. He is forced to grow. He loses his childhood, his family, his friends and part of his dream. Throughout the war he carries remnants of his dream in his pocket—cassette tapes of rap music. In his mind are snapshots of the schools he would have gone to and the kind of hip-hop artist he would have become had war not destroyed the tapestry of his dreams. This is what becomes of Beah’s land: littered with bodies. “The flies are so excited and intoxicated that they fall on the pools of blood and die.”

Recently, the Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group in Bamenda has republished Francis Nyamnjoh’s first novel Mind Searching (2007 [1991]). After having read A Nose for Money (2006) which came with lightning and thunder, Mind Searching entered my mind as a thought provoking but gentle breath of air. The central theme in the two novels is the perverse functioning of the political system and its effects on the man in the street, in Mind Searching explicitly set in Cameroon, in A Nose For Money in the fictional Mimboland, a mirror of Nyamnjoh’s beloved and reviled Cameroon. Where the protagonist of Mind Searching, Judascious Fanda Yanda, is presented as a more or less virtuous man in most part of the book, Prospère, the protagonist of the second novel, is far more opportunistic right from the start. Although the idea that greed is stronger than anything else prevails in both novels, it is worked out in much more detail in A Nose for Money.

MIND SEARCHING

As the title Mind Searching suggests, the reader is presented with the detailed river of thoughts of Judascious Fanda Yanda. He is a young man, a pious Christian, living in Briqueterie, a poor neighbourhood of the capital. One of the persons who gives him a lot of food for thought is the very prosperous Honourable Vice Minister, who attends the same church as he does. Judascious Fanda Yanda knows that this minister rends nocturnal visits to a fortune teller behind his shack. When there is a baptism feast at the residence of the minister, Judascious Fanda Yanda decides to “capitalise” upon the piece of knowledge that he has (p.106) by telling the minister he knows all about his secret visits. It appears that this is the key to a better life, providing Judascious Fanda Yanda an entrance to the world of the well-to-do-people: It so happens that the Honourable V.M. gives him a job as his Private Secretary in exchange for keeping the secret. like At the end of the story, Judascious Fanda Yanda can be considered a successful young man, who has moved from the shacks of the neighbourhood Briqueterie to the upper-class quarter of Bastos.

Cinema in all its diversity will once again be celebrated at the 29th Durban International Film Festival which runs from 23 July to 3 August. Featuring more than 200 films from more than 95 countries, spread over more than 300 screenings at 26 venues across the city, the festival will bring together established masters of cinema and innovative new talents from around the world.

In a twist of realism, a new feature film, "Johnny Mad Dog", uses a cast of actual ex-child soldiers from Liberia to portray the violent lives of youth forced to participate in armed conflict. The original script was adapted from Emmanuel Dongala's acclaimed book "Johnny Chien Mechant". Johnny, 15, and his small commando unit comprised of young boys ages 6 to 15, rip through an unnamed African country, terrorising and slaying everything in their path.

On the heels of yet another G8 summit the global hand-wringing about the crisis of African development lumbers ahead with its parade of conferences, commissions and concerts proclaiming support for the poor from the seats of power. Conspicuously absent from the spectacle of solidarity is any acknowledgement of history. In fact, the discourse and politics of the West’s relationship with the African continent is deliberately, decidedly and dangerously a-historical.

Like the small boy watching the parade, who exclaims that the emperor has no clothes, Gerald Caplan has written a small but powerful book to expose this latest betrayal of Africa: the denial of context and history. A Canadian scholar and political activist with a life-long commitment to justice and African development, Caplan has made a much needed intervention in debates about Africa’s future. His book, The Betrayal of Africa, asserts that history matters, for understanding the present in which we live, and for finding ways forward to the future we desire.

Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits: An anthology
by Rasna Warah
Author House, 2008

There is a new, East African book, edited by the excellent Kenyan columnist Rasna Warah, that for us here in the region articulates postdevelopmentalist concerns from a more relevant, specific and local perspective – indeed, in exemplary fashion employing the sort of local and grassroots perspective that such thinkers and activists claim that classical developmentalism too frequently ignores.

Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits is an anthology that brings together some of the region’s best and best-loved writers, whose individual essays enable a kaleidoscopic view of developmentalism in East Africa, its discontents, its hubris, its smugness, its ability to kill through often genuine and well-meant kindness.

In it, as the editor states in her very accessible introduction, we find young and established writers who are, if you like, reformed developmentalists and former NGOers themselves, who are diasporans who can see the industry from the ‘external’ perspective of the donors, leftists who can penetrate the sinister economic motives behind certain forms of development, fiction writers who bring a knowing wit to the debate, investigative journalists who know how to hunt down and express the real suffering of individuals and communities. And the names of the writers are those we know, as East Africans, we can respect. Among others, we have Rasna Warah, Binyavanga Wainaina, Parselelo Kantai, Sunny Bindra, Onyango Oloo, Kalundi Serumaga, Issa Shivji and Firoze Manji.

*Stephen Derwent Partington, is the Kwani? poetry editor and a member of the Concerned Kenyan Writers Initiative.

*Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

This collection looks at the on-going significance of Black Consciousness, situating it in a global frame, examining the legacy of Steve Biko, the current state of post-apartheid South African politics, and the culture and history of the anti-apartheid movements.

A collection of cartoons from Francis Odupute from Nigeria

The Kanifing Court trying Dida Halake, former Managing Director of the Observer Company Limited, publishers of the pro-government Daily Observer newspaper, on June 25, 2008 granted him bail after almost two weeks in detention.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/385/49113noartist.jpgThe importance of appropriate communication was impressed upon Petra Rohr-Röuendaal while teaching in a Botswana squatter camp in 1976. The World Bank had decided to offer interest free loans to residents who wished to build themselves houses, and distributed a leaflet explaining the scheme. Sadly, few of its target audience were able to read it. On pointing this out to the World Bank, the author was commissioned to rectify the matter by producing an educational comic strip, which proved a great success. Since then she has produced a huge number of educational illustrations, run workshops, developed games and puppet shows, and has helped others to do the same.

‘Where there is no artist’ is a collection of over 1,200 drawings on a variety of development themes, mostly Africa based, which may be used free for education or non-profit making purposes. The book is aimed at fieldworkers, teachers, grassroots communities, anyone who needs to be able to create visual aids with very few resources or skills. It contains clear and simple instructions for how to use the drawings; how to copy them, how they may be used – for instance to create posters, games, flannel board figures or comic strips – all with an emphasis on community participation. In addition there is a section on how to draw, and some guidelines on techniques such as lettering and silk-screen printing. The drawings are engaging and skilled, and often humorous. For those with access to a computer the contents of the book are reproduced on two CDROMs, the images being in jpg format.

A valuable resource.

Practical Action Publishing
Available at

In 2006, Mimi Cherono Ng'ok, a young Kenyan-born photographer chose to document immigrants from different African countries living in Cape Town, South Africa. Her interest in this project was sparked by the attacks of the Somali community who were living in Cape Town in 2006.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the six-month prison sentences that a court in the southwestern city of Bulawayo passed on three South African drivers on 2 June for “unauthorised possession of TV broadcast equipment” and urges the judicial authorities to release them.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) are pleased to announce their joint initiative to host a major conference on the vexed question of the causes and consequences of corruption in Africa and to invite interested researchers and policy intellectuals to submit abstracts and paper proposals for consideration for presentation at the conference. The conference is one of the major activities being organized to mark the 50th anniversary of UNECA. It will be held at the United Nations Conference Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 29th to 31st October, 2008. The working languages for the conference would be English and French.

Beyond the Book: Integrating alternative media into publishing plans A participatory workshop at the Cape Town Book Fair (16 June 2008) for all people involved in generating, producing, distributing, promoting and using information for development.

This is an exhibition being organized by Communion and Liberation (CL), an
international Catholic organisation that has as part of its objectives the
promotion of culture and education. In Kenya, CL is affiliated to AVSI
Foundation, Companionship of Works Association (CoWA), St Kizito
Vocational Training Institute and Cardinal Otunga Secondary School among
others.

‘Why write a book about Somaliland, a lightly populated region on the edge of Africa which, if the international community had its wish, would be reincorporated into a federal Somali state?’ The author, Mark Bradbury, answers his own question by filling an important gap in the literature on Somali studies. The book, written by someone who has been deeply engaged with the region for many years, provides a comprehensive and inspiring account of how people in Somaliland and its diaspora ‘debated, defined and created a new polity’ in the aftermath of war, and in so doing challenged normative assumptions about what states look like and how they are built.

The book tells the story of the process of state-building in Somaliland from the start of European colonisation in the early 19th century to the holding of multi-party elections in September 2005. Two notable characteristics of the political system that has taken shape in Somaliland since it declared its independence from Somalia on 18 May 1991 are its fusion of modern and traditional forms of political organisation and its strong roots in society.

The Somali National Movement (SNM), which fought against Siad Barre’s regime in the north-west during the 1980s, published its political manifesto in 1981. It proposed ‘a new political system built upon Somali cultural values of cooperation rather than coercion’. This challenged the political orthodoxy of the time, as the author explains, because the clan was then regarded as incompatible with a unified, modern state. From 1988 a council of clan elders, or guurti, acted as an advisory body to the SNM’s central committee. After the war this evolved into the upper house of a bicameral parliament thus, uniquely in Africa, incorporating a traditional institution within the formal structure of the state.

Somaliland’s lack of international recognition, and the west’s preoccupation with events in the south of Somalia after the fall of Siad Barre, forced Somalilanders back on their own resources. The succession of clan conferences in the first half of the 1990s which cemented the peace and fashioned the new state were led by elders and financed from domestic or diaspora sources. This strengthened their legitimacy, as did the use of customary processes of dialogue and consensus-building and the highly visible nature of the discussions. With the country’s limited access to external aid and finance, funds from the diaspora have been essential to the survival of many families. They have also underpinned the rebuilding of public institutions, from universities to hospitals, and the regeneration of key sectors such as telecommunications and housing.

Support for the path Somaliland has taken is by no means universal, even within Somaliland. Despite his evident respect for what has been achieved, the author also makes an honest assessment of the shortcomings and challenges. The government’s detention of its critics, restrictions on the media, and use of emergency laws to prohibit public debate on sensitive issues (such as the prospects of reunification with Somalia) have been widely criticised both within and outside the country. Its writ barely extends over the eastern regions of Sool and Sanaag. Its finances remain highly dependent on tariffs on a single export (livestock). Neither the clan-based system of political representation nor the multi-party system which replaced it has so far shown much concern for the rights of women and minority groups. And what were once some of the system’s strengths are now showing signs of weakness: the moral authority of the guurti, for example, has been undermined by being institutionalised within government, leaving elders vulnerable to accusations of having a vested interest in the regime’s survival.

Nevertheless, throughout the 17 years since Somaliland revoked the 1960 Act of Union, its people have shown a remarkable level of political maturity. Three elections have been held since 2002: district, presidential and parliamentary. All were found by external observers to be reasonably free and fair, while power passed peacefully on the death of one president to another, even of a different clan. The ruling party won the presidential elections in April 2003 by a whisker – just 80 votes – and yet the party which was narrowly beaten into second place chose to contest the results (and eventually accept them) using constitutional means. The multi-party parliamentary elections in 2005 created a situation in which – uniquely in Africa, according to the author – the ruling party does not control the legislature. Although Somaliland slipped back into civil war between 1994 and 1996, on the whole the preference has been to resolve problems through dialogue rather than violence. Time and time again, religious leaders, civil society activists, elders, poets and businessmen have joined together to mediate between conflicting parties when the political system has reached an impasse. These achievements are rightly given their due recognition in this book.

The literature on the state often draws a distinction between juridical and empirical statehood. In the case of Somalia, it is the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu – the product of an externally driven process of negotiation, and now surviving only with the military support of Ethiopia and the West – that enjoys juridical statehood in the eyes of the international community. But it is Somaliland, unrecognised under international law, which has achieved the greater degree of empirical statehood, and it has done it with only a fraction of the resources that have been directed in search of peace and stability in the south. The comparison may not be entirely fair, given the differences in context, but as Mark Bradbury points out, the West’s line on Somalia – that the solution to its problems must lie with Somalis themselves (including the resolution of Somaliland’s current ‘diplomatic limbo’) – is rather undermined by its heavy-handed intervention against the Union of Islamic Courts. Bradbury does not use the word, but a fair degree of humbug has for a long time characterised the West’s dealings with Somalia/Somaliland.

In a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, two staff from the International Crisis Group commented on the distorted priorities of those crafting resolutions at the UN, seemingly more concerned with piracy off the Somali coast than with the suffering taking place on land. ‘Strange how an African country can be moving from prolonged chaos to violent collapse and no one in the world notices until a couple of European boats get seized by armed gunmen,’ they wrote. All too often the good news out of Africa receives similarly short shrift. The world is starting to wake up to what has been happening in Somaliland and to what its people have achieved on their own terms. This book will make a major contribution to that process of enlightenment.

Bradbury, M. (2008) 'Becoming Somaliland'. Progressio, in association with James Currey, Indiana University Press, Jacana Media, Fountain Publishers and East African Educational Publishers. Softback, 271 pages.

*Izzy Birch works for Fahamu

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

The struggle which culminated in the murder of Deyda Hydara, an ardent critic of the regime of President Yahya Jammeh, three years ago, has been given meaning with the launch of his biography in The Gambia. The book entitled: “A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara” focuses more on the life of the journalist, rather than his death. It was jointly published by Demba Ali Jawo, former Gambia Press Union (GPU) president and Aloa Ahmed Alota, a Nigerian journalist based in The Gambia and Editor at The Point Newspaper.

The Open Society Justice Initiative has released a new publication examining pretrial detention—the practice of jailing criminal suspects, sometimes for years, before trial—and efforts to reform its use. "The excessive use of pretrial detention violates human rights and harms all members of society," said Martin Schönteich, a senior legal officer for the Justice Initiative. "Treatment of pretrial detainees is often far worse than for those convicted of crimes, but because they are relatively transient population they receive very little attention."

The Network of African Freedom of Expression Organisations [NAFEO] is deeply concerned about the repression of freedom of expression, including artistic in Cameroon where two renowned musicians continued to linger in jail for singing songs criticising a recent constitutional amendment that allowed President Paul Biya unlimited terms of office.