Böcker utgivna av Langaa RPCID

This book aims to expand on the notion of being, becoming, and being-becoming that manifests across the literature of liminality, crossroads and borderlands. Looking to overcome the limitations of these grounding concepts, the metaphor of the shadowlands is proposed. Moving away from dualities and binaries, challenging the spatial metaphors, which imply clear and defined boundaries and spring from an objective construction of 'reality', and coping with the idea of incompleteness, unfinishedness, are the challenges of the shadowlands. Through the prism of this newly conceptualised analytical and epistemological tool, the authors intend to grasp a fresh understanding of the processes of being, becoming and being-becoming in both their singular and multiple manifestations. As an epistemological concept, the shadowlands imply that anthropologists must not only identify these uncanny spaces of junction in their research, but also shadowlands in the ethnographic papers that they produce. In addition to a better understanding of the continuous fabrication of temporalities and being-becoming, the concept puts into perspective the discipline of anthropology itself. Throughout the chapters, the different authors permit to grasp the various applications of the shadowlands, allowing to project the concept in particular contexts and through specific angles of analysis.

The Tragedy Of The Stupid Nation retraces three decades of political instability during which the people of the Central African Republic suffered from several waves of violence that lead to the breakdown of the social cohesion between the different communities (first along ethnic, then along religious lines). This book is a personal and collective account of the massacres, looting and fleeing and an indictment of misgovernance, nepotism and political inequality. The consequences of which are, too often, carried by the population. Combining different literary genres, Max-Landry Kassaï gives the reader an appreciation of what it is to come of age in the Central African Republic.

Bill F. Ndi's Sacred Songs is a collection of 95 sonnets deeply rooted in the tradition of spiritual testimony of faith. The personae in the poems are a creed of believers who are never far away from their God to whom be all glory. These poems are all in praise of the works of the Almighty God in the life of all. Bill F. Ndi in his characteristic simplicity and songlike style stays close to his humanist vision, and socio-political anguish, which he skillfully weaves in spirituality. Tacitly assuming responsibility for his foibles as human, the poet forfeits every other hard-to-overcome obstacle of divine nature, into the hands of God Almighty. This collection embraces, in a refreshing way, biblical precepts of freedom as well as contemporary social, economic, political, and even philosophical notions of freedom and oppression. This is a pleasurable collection to read in its entirety; it is a man's sobering reflection on and of the divine.

In South Africa issues of identity remain a pressing concern and preoccupation. For some, the experience of feeling that one does not belong in South Africa, especially among Africans and African descendants, appears to be intensifying. In this first collection of poems, Rosabelle Boswell speaks of the many places in which ordinary Africans born outside of South Africa try to achieve belonging. They do so in the family context, the backyard, language, the meeting, familiar landscapes and dreams. The poems also foreground the tumult of emotions that rise from the experience of exclusion and the results of pressure when one must conform. There is panic and dislocation, desperation, fear and sense of marginality when one’s work and achievements are reduced to whether one is born in South Africa or not. According to the poet, in such a context, one can only achieve true freedom from the tyranny of belonging by psychologically walking away from the expectations of those in power and putting oneself in a ‘clearing’ where flexibility, openness and newness reside. The forest of expectations remains, but we can achieve temporary respite from it by walking away now and again. The collection spans two years of writing identity in a different form, poetry.

In 2005, a United Nations study reported that half of the world's languages (estimated at 6,000) would disappear by the end of this century. A third of these endangered languages are in Africa where, according to the same study, nearly 250 languages have disappeared in the last century. Language is the heart, identity, storage system for the collective and unique memory and experience of every culture, people, including their natural habitat. Loss of language means loss of the ability to retain and pass on not just a belief system but also invaluable knowledge to future generations.This English-Lekongho/Lekongho-English Dictionary is a modest first attempt to minimize the envisaged sad phenomenon of language loss. Nkongho-Mbo people speak Lekongho, one of the five variants of the Mbo language of the Mbo ethnic group of Cameroon, with their ancestral home in the Kupe Muanenguba Administrative Area of the South-west Region. With this book, the authors' fervent hope is that there will no longer surface any justification to continue to refrain from speaking Lekongho on a daily basis. This effort will help to regionalize, nationalize and internationalize the Lekongho language since Nkongho people are spread all over the country, Africa and the world.

The subject of real estate is increasingly becoming important, especially in the countries of the developing world. States and governments realise that real estate is a corner stone of socio-economic development. Real estate development contributes immensely to the gross physical capital formation. Its formation, construction and ancillary sectors contribute to the employment, infrastructure development and gross domestic product. The main challenges about real estate is about where to develop it, how to develop it, how to manage and compute valuations about it. Such are the issues discussed in this volume. The book draws on Zimbabwe as a case study, to demonstrate the critical aspects that define theory and real estate practice in various contexts - national, regional and international.

Born Nude is philosophical poetry that explores myriad themes, from equality to humility and environmental consciousness. It is divided into chapters that pinpoint specific areas of interest. The author delves into human weaknesses and strengths based on nature and nurture. He invites the reader to contemplate the ephemeral nature of all things material, and how to nurture oneself into a higher order and loyalty of being human. The volume's satirical tone is critical of the destructive sterility of zero-sum games of superiority and dominance. It treats as anathema exploitation based on contrived hierarchies of gender, geography, politics and the geopolitik of the modern world.

The ever growing disparity in living standards between the developed and developing polities constitutes a striking feature of life on Planet Earth. This publication is an attempt to highlight some of the factors dividing the worlds apart. A new North-South synergy is needed in creating a balanced world at peace with itself. As long as more than half-the population of the world go to bed hungry there can be no peace. A sting rich world and a sting poor world cannot cohabit peacefully. How to build a more equitable and balanced world is the challenge facing us. We need to embrace and practice our long-aged concepts of 'ubuntu', 'harambee' and 'batho pele' among others in creating, and consolidating the new world order. Africa is underdeveloped. It requires serious structural modification in our current mindset, thinking and actions which calls for total involvement of every citizen. The ideas advanced in this book are strategies and pathways for dealing with the problems of poverty, corruption, the distribution of power, deterrence, good governance, health, human capacity building and the challenge of bringing about a systemic structural-functional governance construct for the African continent.

Kenya's nationalism during the colonial period was marked by two main characteristics that feature in this book. First, the struggle for independence that was mainly characterized by the claim for land that had been taken away by the colonizers. Second was the struggle for autonomy and self-determination, mainly through political resistance. The authors in this book analyse historical trajectories of Kenya's nationalism trends while highlighting the role of political leaders, large as well as small ethnic groups, perennial conflicts, community as well as religious leaders, among others. The discussions demonstrate that quest for a national identity that is inclusive at all levels - whether politically, economically, religiously and ethnically - has marked Kenya's struggle for nationalism, sometimes leading to violence, especially during election periods, national unity through political coalitions and reconciliation, as well as institutional reforms. In conclusion, the authors demonstrate that while Kenya is gradually advancing towards national cohesion, there are still many challenges yet to be surmounted.

This book focuses on the work of one of the leading African scholars on the land question and agrarian transformation in Africa-Sam Moyo. It offers a critical discussion, in conversation with Sam Moyo, of the land question and the response of African states. Since independence, African states have been trying to address the colonial legacy on land policy and governance. After six decades of formulating and implementing land reforms, most countries have not succeeded in decolonising approaches to land policy and the administrative framework. The book brings together the broader debates on the implications of decolonisation of Africa's land policy. Through case studies from several African countries, the book offers an empirical analysis on land reforms and the emerging land relations, and how these affect land allocation and use, including agricultural production. Most of the chapters discuss how the unresolved land question in post-colonial Africa impacts on agricultural production and rural development broadly. The failure to decolonise colonial land policy and the imported tenure systems has left post-colonial African states dancing to two tunes, resulting in schizophrenic land and agrarian policies. The book demonstrates that the failure by African states to reconcile imported and indigenous land tenure systems and practices is evident in the deliberate denigration of customary tenure. It is also evident in the rising land inequality and the neglect of the agricultural sector, the small-scale and subsistence sub-sectors in particular.

Highlighting the problematiques of working with a narrow version of greenhouse effects or global warming, this book posits the theory of necroclimatism that encompasses broader versions of greenhouse effects and global warming. Conceiving cultures, societies, moral sensibilities, epistemologies, polities, economies, legal systems and religions of the formerly colonised peoples as greenhoused and entrapped in the heat of global apartheid and neo-colonialism, the book refuses to be confined to the pufferies of physical conceptualisations of greenhousing and global warming. Underlining the supposed disposability and dispensability of colonised peoples, the notion of necroclimatism explicates ways in which some people suffer various forms of death, which have increasingly become a feature of global apartheid and neo-colonialism that are cast in spectral sacrificial logics. Deemed to constitute disposable bodies, disposable cultures, disposable polities, disposable societies, disposable epistemologies, disposable religions, disposable laws and disposable economies, the sacrificed are, in the age of climate catastrophism, once again reminded that they 'have duties to die', to become extinct in order to save the global spaceship that is sinking due to climate change and global warming.This book therefore argues that in a sacrificial world (dis)order, binaries between humans and animals, good and evil, moral and immoral, the dead and the living necessarily vanish in the nefarious logic of what marks the era of climate catastrophism and the attendant necroclimatism. The book further argues that a sacrificial world (dis)order is necessarily a posthumanist and postanthropocentric world (dis)order, which should be never granted space in African worlds and even beyond. The book thus, raises fundamental questions for African anticipatory regimes, and for this reason it is handy for scholars in political science, sociology, social anthropology, development studies, environmental studies, agricultural studies, legal studies, food science, geography, religious studies and decolonial fields of studies.

This is a thought-provoking original book, based on a wealth of empirical case studies of how Zimbabwe experienced illegal economic sanctions. It is a study of how the humanly constructed obstructions - from external remittances/finance flows into the country to finance embargos or total financial blockages - are deliberately created by so-called 'powerful' governments to deal with an 'errand' country. The infamous Zimbabwe Democracy Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (ZDERA) is part of a raft of punitive measures and discourses that the USA, UK and Europe used to make the economy, in the words of US's Chester Crooker "scream". It is the same 'powerful' countries who allow their Multinational Corporations to loot while they impose sanctions against African governments and their peoples to make them scream.The book is an insightful contribution on Africa's contemporary post-colonial liberation politics of development economics. It focuses on Zimbabwe as a synthesis of microcosmic study that provides accessible in-depth analysis of key aspects of sanctions as a weapon of control wielded by the so-called 'powerful' governments of the Global North. Zimbabwe was clobbered with post-independence economic sanctions after its land reform programme, which benefitted its mostly colonially dispossessed African citizens. The land reform was intended as a reversal of colonial injustice and a counter restitutive measure against imperialism.The book invites the reader to see power differently: as compassion and the capacity to right past wrongs by protecting all and sundry from inequality and poverty. Sanctions, even when called targeted, are non-discriminatory as they affect ordinary citizens with the same ferocity and savagery as against intended target, albeit often missing the target. Sanctions are lethal. Sanctions are a graveyard for the poor, weak and vulnerable. This is an idea of power that the Global North failed to grasp when they decided to punish the Mugabe government for daring to contemplate justice and restitution.

"In this poetry collection, Mbuh Mbuh Tennu offers a virulent indictment of the multifarious faces of pain which have lent a dystopian colouring to "our" world. These poems are all at once, songs of lament, regret, defiance and protest. The idea of naming which is a central motif underscores the dangers of being foreign named; which implies being claimed and owned - and more importantly the imperative of self-naming - to claim a name and to own that name; to self-define and to defy attempts to contravene this. This is a collection for our time; our timelessness. It is an urgent, reflective and incisive call to stay awake and be actors of our history." - Blossom Ngum Fondo, Associate Professor, University of Maroua

At the heart of 21st century discourses are questions of whose lives may matter more than others. While the debates themselves are not new, the #hashtags they are linked to and the media through which concerns around moralities of living together are expressed allow for debates to reach large numbers of people in accelerated, individualised and accessible ways. The new media have been powerful in (re)igniting debates and (re)activating demands for social change. Yet, the focus of ubiquitous #hashtags on binary positions may render it easy to neglect their nuances and facets. In recognition of grey-zones, contradictions and ambiguities, this ethnography focuses on a suburb of Cape Town, Observatory, and its recently revived Neighbourhood Watch as an urban renewal project and attempt to decrease notions of vulnerability to crime and violence. In Observatory - considered to be liberal and bohemian by its inhabitants - the framing of topics within the Neighbourhood Watch group often take on an abstract, intellectualised form. Nevertheless, the group with its rather clashing ideals is grounded in and fuelled by recycled crime stories as well as snapshots of suspected criminals that continue to reappear via various social media channels. Individual experiences, stories and inner conflicts of local Neighbourhood Watch members are at the centre of this exploratory engagement with how fear becomes embodied, everyday practice and the ways in which desires for relationality and spatial exclusivity become entangled in a place where every life matters only in principle.

Violence in its various proportions, genres and manifestations has had an enduring historical legacy the world over. However, works speaking to approaches aimed at mitigating violence characteristic of Africa are very limited. As some scholars have noted, Africans have experienced cycles of violence since the pre-colonial epoch, such that overt violence has become banalised on the African continent. This has had the effect of generating complex results, legacies and perennial emotional wounds that call for healing, reconciliation, justice and positive peace. Yet, in the absence of systematic and critical approaches to the study of violence on the continent, discourses on violence would hardly challenge the global matrices of violence that threaten peace and development in Africa.This volume is a contribution in the direction of such urgently needed systematic and critical approaches. It interrogates, from different angles and with inspiration from a multidisciplinary perspective, the contentious production and resilience of violence in Africa. It calls for a paradigm shift - an alternative approach that forges and merges African customary dispute resolution and Western systems of dispute resolution - towards a framework of positive peace, holistic restoration, sustainable development and equity. The book is a welcome contribution to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.

The emergent so-called "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is regarded by some as a panacea for bringing about development to Africans. This book dismisses this flawed reasoning. Surfacing how "investors" are actually looting and plundering Africa; how the industrial internet of things, the gig economies, digital economies and cryptocurrencies breach African political and economic sovereignty, the book pioneers what can be called anticipatory economics - which anticipate the future of economies. It is argued that the future of Africans does not necessarily require degrowth, postgrowth, postdevelopment, postcapitalism or sharing/solidarity economies: it requires attention to age-old questions about African ownership and control of their resources. Investors have to invest in ensuring that Africans own and control their resources. Further, it is pointed out that the historical imperial structural creation of forced labour is increasingly morphing into what we call the structural creation of forced leisure which is no less lethal for Africans. Because both the structural creation of forced labour and the structural creation of forced leisure are undergirded by transnational neo-imperial plunder, theft, robbery, looting and dispossession of Africans, this book goes beyond the simplistic arguments that Euro-America developed due to the industrial revolutions.

"Don't sit on your stool, watching life go by," insists Soutcho Lydie Touré. In this collection of reflections written over a decade, she explores insecurities and vulnerabilities, with which many a reader will relate. She shares about loneliness and feeling different and goes on to ponder everyday life in "Politicking" and "VDN" - a memorable highway in Dakar which pedestrians must cross "under the mocking smile of the sun." Touré draws on experiences and insights from her life betwixt and between West Africa and North America. In her verses, spiced with nature, color, joy, humor and fantasy, questions and answers compete equally for the reader's attention. A veritable source of confidence in the force of life and love. Confidence that makes one grow wings.