Bücher veröffentlicht von CODESRIA

This study of the town of Beitbridge on the Zimbabwe/South African border shows how neoliberalism, prevaricated by HIV/AIDS, has brought about far-reaching social change in the country, and unprecedented levels of poverty and social precariousness. It argues that these circumstances have led to insecurities in identity and 'insider-outsider' sociological configurations, and to identity politics assuming a role in the desperate and unprecedented struggles over access to resources.

Despite its crucial role in the Ugandan economy, labour power has rarely been studied by social scientists. In particular, the real life experience of workers as they interact with both capital and the state has been ignored. This huge gap is redressed in this study by Ugandan authors at the Centre for Basic Research in Kampala. It provides a detailed analysis of rural Ugandan labour today. The violent imposition of colonial taxes in Uganda at the turn of the nineteenth century changed village life irrevocably by introducing a cash-based economy. Subsistence farming was superseded by the need to generate income. At the same time, the arrival of technology separated villagers into classes and redefined gender roles. Studies range from salt winners inside Katwe National Park, to the degradation and explicit oppression of dairy farmers in Kigezi and the life of fisherpeople near Lake Victoria, giving an in-depth description of the human experience of wage labour. Three village case studies complete the analysis.

Eighteen of Africa's most distinguished scholars have contributed to this major and timely work, including Claude Ake, Archie Mafeje, Ali Mazrui, Issa Shivji and Joseph Ki-Zerbo. As a first step towards greater consideration of the nature of the research environment in Africa and to reflect on the social and material context of research as an intellectual activity, CODESRIA co-organised a major conference on academic freedom and research in Africa in Kampala in 1990. A selection of the conferencepapers are contained in this volume. The papers cover the relationship of capital and the state to academic freedom, the historical processes which have shaped intellectuals in Africa, issue of autonomy and democracy andthe question of funding relationships, and the difficulty of alliances that question the right to independence. The book is divided into fivesections: Reflections; Methodological Perspectives; Global Influences andLocal Constraints; Intelligentsia and Activism; and Organizing Academics.

When, why and how can religion and culture be both sources, and places of expression for fundamentalisms, particularly in relation to politics? Those are the central questions asked throughout this book alongside a discussion on the result when religion, strenthened by culture, is used as a political tool to access moral and social power. Cultural and religious messages often form the basis of decisions, laws and programs made in politics, and have a direct effect on society in general, and on women and gender relations in particular. The various forms taken by fundamentalisms in some African countries and the contexts under which they have emerged, the ways in which they (re)shape identities and relationships between men and women are also analysed in this book. These fundamentalisms are frequently sources of concern in social debates, in feminist and feminine organizations as well as in academia and politics. The manipulation of cultures and religions are becoming progressively political, and consequently can cause social discrimination, or even physical, moral, and symbolic violence.

The book, made up of three parts, covers a wide spectrum of political economy issues on post-apartheid South Africa. Although the text is mainly descriptive, to explain various areas of the political economy of post-apartheid South Africa, the first and the last parts provide illuminating insights on the kind of society that is emerging during the twenty-one years of democracy in the country. The book discusses important aspects of the political history of apartheid South Africa and the evolution of post-apartheid society, including an important recap of the history of southern Africa before colonialism. The text is a comprehensive description of numerous political economy phenomena since South Africa gained its political independence and covers some important themes that have not been discussed in detail in other publications on post-apartheid South Africa. The book also updates earlier work of the author on policy and law making, land and agriculture, education and training as well as on poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa thereby providing a wide-ranging overview of the socio-economic development approaches followed by the successive post-apartheid administrations. Interestingly, three chapters focus on various aspects of the post-apartheid South African economy: economic policies, economic empowerment and industrial development. Through the lens of the notion of democratic developmental state and taking apartheid colonialism as a point of departure, the book suggests that, so far, post-apartheid South Africa has mixed socio-economic progress. The author's extensive experience in the South African government ensures that the book has policy relevance while it is also theoretically sound. The text is useful for anyone who wants to understand the totality of the policies and legislation as well as the political economy interventions pursued since 1994 by the South African Government.

This book presents a comparative history of slavery and the transition from slavery to free labour in Zanzibar and Mauritius, within the context of a wider comparative study of the subject in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Both countries are islands, with roughly the same size of area and populations, a common colonial history, and both are multicultural societies. However, despite inhabiting and using the same oceanic space, there are differences in experiences and structures which deserve to be explored. In the nineteenth century, two types of slave systems developed on the islands - while Zanzibar represented a variant of an Indian Ocean slave system, Mauritius represented a variant of the Atlantic system - yet both flourished when the world was already under the hegemony of the global capitalist mode of production. This comparison, therefore, has to be seen in the context of their specific historical conjunctures and the types of slave systems in the overall theoretical conception of modes of production within which they manifested themselves, a concept that has become unfashionable but which is still essential. The starting point of many such efforts to compare slave systems has naturally been the much-studied slavery in the Atlantic region which has been used to provide a paradigm with which to study any type of slavery anywhere in the world. However, while Mauritian slavery was 100 per cent colonial slavery, slavery in Zanzibar has been described as 'Islamic slavery'. Both established plantation economies, although with different products, Zanzibar with cloves and Mauritius with sugar, and in both cases, the slaves faced a potential conflictual situation between former masters and slaves in the post-emancipation period. Another interesting focus in this book is the largely un-researched subject of female slaves. In Zanzibar, the privileged role of the suria whose status was defined by Sharia law was explored; and in Mauritius, the manumission of female slaves was explored as they formed the majority among manumitted slaves. The book will certainly prove helpful to those involved in comparing the Atlantic slave system with that of the Indian Ocean for the better understanding of both.

This book is the outcome of a South-South conference jointly organized by the Asian Political and International Studies Association (APISA), the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Dakar, Senegal, May 2012. The conference was organised in response to the financial crisis of 2008 which started in the United States and Europe, with reverberating effects on a global scale. Economic problems emanating from such crises usually leave major social and structural impacts on important sectors of the society internationally. They affect living standards and constrain the well-being of people, especially in poor countries. Persistent problems include high unemployment, increased debt and low growth in developed countries, as well as greater difficulties in accessing finance for investment in the developing world. There is a need for countries in the South to examine the available options for appropriate national and regional responses to the different problems emanating from the economic crisis. This book attempts to provide ideas on some strategic responses to the disastrous impact of the crisis, while keeping in mind the global common interest of the South. It is hoped that the book will contribute significantly towards the agenda to rethink development and the quest for alternative paradigms for a just, stable and equitable global political, economic and social system. A system in which Africa, Asia, and Latin America are emancipated from the shackles of hegemonic and anachronistic neoliberal dictates that have nothing more to offer than crises, vulnerabilities and dependency.