Bücher veröffentlicht von Daraja Press

Lenin150 (Samizdat) aims to contribute to the re-kindling of the communist attractor by engaging, in the spirit of critical solidarity, with Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in the year of his 150th anniversary. Conceived out of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, the book brings together contributions from all continents, ranging in style from the academic to the lyrical. As such, these compelling, and in some cases absolutely urgent, appropriations of (the spectre of) Lenin aspire to be of considerable use-value for the struggles ahead.

The pamphlet begins with two letters written by Paul the Apostle in which Christianity first acquires a universal address. The new religion came to exclude people who were not Christians from the count of the human. This became explicit around a thousand years later when Pope Urban II authorised the First Crusade. In 1492 planetary history was split in to two. Muhammad XII of Granada conceded defeat to Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic monarchs of Portugal and Spain, who went on to expel the Jews from the territory under their control. Europe became a Christian project. In the same year Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean and Europe also became an imperial project with a planetary reach. The origins of the racial ideology can be seen in this period, in which ideas about religion came to be entangled with fantastical ideas about the imagined purity of blood. But it was in the English colony of Virginia in the seventeenth century that the legitimation for the exclusion from the count of the human began to move from claims made in the name of religion to claims made in the name of science. This is the point at which modern racism, rooted in the appearance of the body, began to cast its malignant shadow across the planet. The author argues that the struggle to put an end to the epoch of world history that opened in 1492 will require new ideas, and new practices. It follows the Caribbean tradition that runs from Aimé Césaire to Frantz Fanon and Sylvia Wynter in affirming the need for a counter-humanism, a radical humanism, a humanism that, in Césaire''s famous phrases, is "made to the measure of the world". There is a need for a shift in the ground of reason towards the lived experience and struggles of people rendered, in Wynter''s phrase, as ''pariahs outside of the new order''.This pamphlet is part of the Thinking Freedom series published by Daraja Press.

This book marks the 25th anniversary of the execution of Nigerian activist and written Ken Saro-Wiwa. The 21 essays, by international contributors, and 42 poems by new and established poets, are inspired by his ideals and activism.The volume includes contributions by people intimately connected with Saro-Wiwa. His brother Dr Owens Wiwa recounts how his older brother awakened and nurtured his awareness of the tremendous damage Royal Dutch Shell was doing to their homeland, in collaboration with the then Nigerian military government. His firsthand account of the brutality of the military government and its impact; his unsuccessful efforts to save the life of his brother; his time in hiding and subsequent escape, with his family, from Nigeria and his efforts to retrieve the remains of his brother for burial, makes for very moving reading. Likewise, Noo Saro-Wiwa shares her story of growing up in England with strong links to family in Nigeria, and the trauma of hearing of her father''s execution while at University. Maynooth University, where the editor works as Deputy Librarian, holds the death row correspondence from Ken Saro-Wiwa to Sister Majella McCarron. McCarron provides two personal essays. One, a reflection on the events that shaped her work with Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria and her subsequent efforts to save the lives of the Ogoni 9: the second essay explores her experience as a table observer of the Shell to Sea campaign, which strove to have gas, discovered off the west coast of Ireland, refined at sea rather than inland.The damage that Shell has caused in Ogoni and the issue of redress are topics addressed in essays by experts including Mark Dummett, of Amnesty International, who investigated how Shell and other oil companies have caused or contributed to human rights abuses through their operations in the Niger Delta. Daniel Leader, a barrister and partner at Leigh Day''s international law department, the firm who have led a number of ground breaking human rights cases, including a series of cases against Shell on behalf of Nigerian communities, explores the issue of legal redress. Architect, environmental activist, author and poet Nnimmo Bassesy''s wide ranging essay presents Saro-Wiwa as activist and writer and creator of the Ogoni Bill of Rights, against the backdrop of the UNEP report of the Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland, which recorded that drinking water in Ogoni had benzene, a carcinogen, at over 900 times the level permitted

This book collects four decades of writings on dialectics, a number of them published here for the first time, by Kevin B. Anderson, a well-known scholar-activist in the Marxist-Humanist tradition. The essays cover the dialectics of revolution in a variety of settings, from Hegel and the French Revolution to dialectics today and its poststructuralist and pragmatist critics. In these essays, particular attention is given to Lenin''s encounter with Hegel and its impact on the critique of imperialism, the rejection of crude materialism, and more generally, on world revolutionary developments. Major but neglected works on Hegel and dialectics written under the impact of the struggle against fascism like Lukács''s The Young Hegel and Marcuse''s Reason and Revolution are given full critical treatment. Dunayevskaya''s intersectional revolutionary dialectics is also treated extensively, especially its focus on a dialectics of revolution that avoids class reductionism, placing gender, race, and colonialism at the center alongside class. In addition, key critics of Hegel and dialectics like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard Rorty, are themselves analysed and critiqued from a twenty-first century dialectical perspective. The book also takes up the dialectic in global, intersectional settings via a reconsideration of the themes of Anderson''s Marx at the Margins, where nationalism, race, and colonialism were theorized alongside capital and class as key elements in Marxist dialectical thought. As a whole, the book offers a discussion of major themes in the dialectics of revolution that still speak to us today at a time of radical transformation in all spheres of society and of everyday life.

A wave of mass protest movements has spread across North Africa and West Asia, including Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. The mass protests have much in common, from opposing authoritarian regimes and worsening economic situations to demanding radical changes in social relations. Despite their similarities, each protest movement operates under different conditions that cannot be ignored. The specific historic, political and economic contexts of each country have determined who the key actors of the uprisings are and their location across old and new divides. This book elaborates on these similarities and differences to paint a clearer picture of these movements and draw out lessons to inform future struggles.

There has been a rise in the use of strategic litigation related to seeking equality for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons. Such developments are taking place against the backdrop of active homophobia in Africa. The law and the general public should, argues the author, treat LGB persons in the same way that heterosexuals are treated. In the past two decades,30 strategic cases have been fi led by LGB activists in the Common Law African countries, namely in Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. While the majority of the cases have been successful, they have not resulted in significant social change in any of the countries. On the contrary, there have been active backlashes, counter-mobilisations, and violence against LGB persons, as well as the further criminalisation of same-sex relations and constitutional prohibitions on same-sex marriages in some of the jurisdictions. The author argues that activists in Common Law Africa have to design LGB strategic litigation in such a way as to fi t within the actual social and political conditions in their countries if strategic litigation is to spur social change.

THESE LETTERS AND poems are invaluable fragments of a living conversation that portrays the indomitable power in humans to stay alive in the face of certain death. Reading through the treasure trove of the letters and poems compiled here as The Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa evoked such intense memories of his resolute struggles against an oil behemoth and a deaf autocratic government. His crusade frames one of the most tumultuous periods of Nigeria's history; his tragic story evokes anger and demands action to resolve the crises that first led the Ogoni people to demand that Shell clean up Ogoni or clear out of the territory. It was his leadership, in great part, that forced Shell out of Ogoni in January 1993. The letters are a testament of hope. Being one side of robust conversa­tions between two persons that many would find unlikely as close friends, we learn the lessons that indeed 'friends love at all times and brothers (and sisters) are born for adversity', as a proverb in the Bible states. This is where we must applaud Sister Majella McCarron for preserving and making pub­lic these letters that Ken Saro-Wiwa wrote to her between 20 October 1993 and 14 September 1995. The collection includes essays by the three editors, select bibliography and recommended resources.

The USA is divided around the wall President Trump wants to build along the Mexican border. Europe has long answered this question at its own southern border: put up that wall but don't make it look like one. Today the EU is trying to close many deals as it can with African states, making it harder and harder for refugees to find protection and more dangerous for labor migrants to reach places where they can earn an income. But this is not the only effect: the more Europe tries to control migration from Africa, the harder it becomes for many Africans to move freely through their own continent, even within their own countries. Increasingly, the billions Europe pays for migration control is declared as official development assistance (ODA), more widely known as 'development aid, supposedly for poverty relief and humanitarian assistance. The EU is spending billions buying African leaders as gatekeepers, including dictators and suspected war criminals. And the real beneficiaries are the military and technology corporations involved in the implementation.

Under-Education in Africa: From Colonialism to Neoliberalisma collection of edited essays on diverse aspects of educational systems that were written over a period of four and a half decades. With the focus on Tanzania, they cover education in the German colonial era, the days of Ujamaa socialism and the present neo-liberal times. Their themes include social function of education, impact of external dependency on education, practical versus academic education, democracy and violence in schools, role of computers in education, effect of privatization on higher education, misrepresentation of educational history, good and bad teaching styles, book reading, the teaching of statistics to doctors and student activism in education. Two essays provide a comparative view of the situation in Tanzanian and the USA. Deriving from the perspective of an activist educator, these essays connect the state of the education system with the society as a whole, and explore the possibility of progressive transformation on both fronts. They are based on the author's experience as a long term educator, original research, relevant books, newspaper reports and discussions with colleagues and students. The author is a retired Professor of Medical Statistics who has taught at colleges and universities in Tanzania and at universities in USA and Norway.

These poems by Issa Shivji, lawyer, activist and Tanzanian public intellectual, were written at different times in different circumstances. They give vent to personal anguish and political anger. Mostly originally written in Kiswahili, and here accompanied by English translations, they are intensely personal and political. Poems are clustered under several headings to provide a context. The first Shivji combines personal agony at the loss of comrades and friends with poems about love and affection for living one. The second is about robberies of freedom, resources, and dignity and the loss of justice under neoliberalism. The third section, entitled Hopes and Fears, comprise short poems tweeted over the last five years expressing despair, fear and hope in the human capacity for freedom. The last section are poems, concerned with Shivji's period in South Africa in 2018, reflect on the emergence of neo-apartheid with its wanton and shameless exploitation of the majority.

Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi is an assemblage of original some 200 poems written by 127 established and emerging African writers. While some of the poets celebrate Pius Adesanmi, who died in the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight on March 10, 2019, others philosophically reflect on existence, mortality, immortality and/or offer hope for the living. In this memorably textured collection, the poets—who knew (or did not know the poet)—exorcise the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with passion.“This historic collection of poems by esteemed and budding writers from across the African continent and beyond seeks to confront the ephemerality of life with the permanence of art; it is a testament to the power of poetry to turn grief into art. As WH Auden would have said, these poems start the healing fountains in the deserts of the mourning heart.” —Harry Garuba, Professor and poet, University of Cape Town, South Africa.“Richly evocative and engaging, this powerful collection of poems from the heart is a magnificent tribute that emblazons the essence of Pius Adesanmi—joy, love, laughter, wit, brilliance, erudition, nomadism, commitment—whose life was a long poem of peerless beauty; a melodious song of the breeze and birds of the savannah; an elegant dance to the rhythms of Africa; a resplendent sun that refuses to set..” —Obioma Nnaemeka, Chancellor’s Professor, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA, and President, Association of African Women Scholars (AAWS).“Wreaths for a Wayfarer is written in divinely eloquent verses—to drums, gongs, flutes and songs—by citizens of the world of words, in whose hearts the Wayfarer lives. It is an assemblage of kindred tongues creating and recreating a new future from an unrelieved past and denounced present—around the archetypal wayfarer. This collection . . . is a rare accomplishment. I doubt if this can be surpassed. I may have, but I cannot recall it, of a single volume thrust upon my hapless laps . . .with such a climate of paradoxes—a synthetic Mass of threnody, elegy, requiems and hope, rebirth and redemption around a single living-dead—Pius Adebola Adesanmi. Igi dagbara j’eno otin (A lone log that brews a pot of corn wine to intoxicating ferment…)” —Olu Obafemi, Professor of English and Dramatic Literature, Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL), and recipient of the Nigeria National Order of Merit (NNOM). 

Africa Matters: Cultural politics, political economies, & grammars of protest provides a sampling of some of these insightful articles from the first five issues of Nokoko, bringing together some of the pieces that for the editorial board of the journal are particularly perspicacious in their analysis and resonant in their crafting. Like expressions associated with the Ga word, Nokoko has brought something new, novel, if not surprising and interesting, to the wider publics. It supports a wider commitment to bring a range of views and voices in and on “Africa,” some of who are just emerging, all of whose insights are fresh and challenging. Grouping twelve articles in three sections of this book permits a new dialogue to emerge around the key themes of cultural politics, political economies and grammars of protest. Their intersection here provides a sharp spotlight on some of the seams, knots, and contestations of varied “matters” of import for many Africans in the twenty-first century.As a verb, the authors contribute to teasing out the varied ways “Africa” is increasingly important in economies, politics, and daily lives for many outside of the continent of Africa even if, perversely, there is a deeper sense of abjection, of rejection by their governments and corporations and deep neglect by those in the Global North and international institutions, by more and more within different parts of Africa.In its nounal form, the book’s chapters trace some of the forms, objects, and lives of differently constituted groups, polities and communities within African and its diasporas. The Africa matters here range from fashion to literature, entrepreneurs to monetary policy, regional administrative bodies to feminist movements, cellphones to cinema, xenophobic violence to political activism.The first section of the book explores different dimensions of cultural politics, some of the symbolic significations and sentiments that help motivate, rationalize, dissemble, and constitute the debates, and socialities from the murmurings and rumours careening down proverbial radio trottoir to the boardrooms of banks, from state prisons to international development donor workshops.This is followed by a section that examines the weight of political economy, the political formations, the power dynamics, and the economic drives and inequalities constituting many of the valuations of the “worth” of African matters for differently positions actors, companies, policy-makers, and opinion-shapers.While the chapters in the previous two sections show Africans on the continent or the diaspora generating cultural forms for various audiences on the scale of the person or the globe, engaging in debates, carrying out entrepreneurship, engaged in bureaucratic maneuverings, avoiding terror, and the like, the chapters in this final section address specific politic actions. Attending to the specific grammars of protest in particular historical moments, they show how different Africans are generating specific confrontations with power, with specific examples coming from Kenya and from South Africa.

A suicide bombing is being planned in Manchester, UK. Behind it lie Saleem Khans vivid memories - some full of regret and yearning, other humorous and yet others overshadowed by the surreal brutality of the war.In the 60s, he leaves his lover, his job as a teacher and his home in the rural Pakistan and travels to Bradford, a town seething with racism where Asians are Pakis and their labour is cheap. He finds a job working in a mill on an all-Asian night-shift, becomes an active trade unionist and when the mills close down, he drives a taxi. He gives up his religion and eventually falls in love with an English woman.But in the 1980s Pakistan draws him back. Now regarded as a smart abroadi, he gets involved as the English-speaking partner in his cousins transport business. When a truck driver he knows, does not return to base, he sets out to find him and unwittingly gets drawn across the border and into the killing fields of Afghanistan. Here, among Russian soldiers, Saudi Arabian Sheikhs, American Pirs, prostitutes and the holy warriors of the Mujahadeen, who take their orders and weapons from the United States, he meets Gulzarina, the woman whose life and experiences in a war without end allow him to finally make sense of his own.

One brother goes missing in action in Afghanistan, the other falls in love with an Afghan girl in England.Bitter divisions engulf an English town where young Muslims oppose the British army's presence in Afghanistan, whilst white youth condemn the Muslims as traitors.To the disgust of his white friends, 17-year-old Jake Marlesden, whose brother is missing in action in Afghanistan, is in love with Leila Khan, an Afghan. When Jake tries to find out what happened to his brother, neighbour turns against neighbour and lover against lover.Leila joins young Muslims protesting against the returning bodies of dead British soldiers, and Jake stands with the families of the soldiers. The lovers fall apart.But far off events, and sinister forces at home, bring the lovers together again in a journey in which they will not only discover themselves, but also heal the wounds of their families and friends.Youre Not Here is the sequel to the award-winning novel Youre Not Proper.

The essays here contribute to developing and deepening an understanding of the ecological challenges ravaging Nigeria, Africa and our world today. They illustrate the global nature of these terrors. These essays are not meant just to enable for coffee table chatter: they are intended as calls to action, as a means of encouraging others facing similar threats to share their experiences.Set out in seven sections, this book of 54 essays deals with deep ecological changes taking place primarily in Nigeria but with clear linkages to changes elsewhere in the world. The essays are laid out with an undergird of concerns that characterise the author's approach to human rights and environmental justice advocacy. The first section rightly presents broad spectrum ecological wars manifesting through disappearing trees, spreading desertification, floods, gas flaring and false climate solutions.The second section zeroes in on the different types of violence that pervade the oil fields of the Niger Delta and draws out the divisive power of crude oil by holding up Sudan as a country divided by oil and which has created a myriad of fissures in Nigeria. The exploitation of crude oil sucks not just the crude, it also sucks the dignity of workers that must work at the most polluting fronts.Section three underscores the need for strict regulation of the fossil fuels sector and shows that voluntary transparency templates adopted by transnational oil companies are mere foils to fool the gullible and are exercises in futility as the profit driven corporations would do anything to ensure that their balance sheets please their top guns and shareholders. The fourth section builds up with examples of gross environmental misbehaviours that leave sorrow and blood in a diversity of communities ranging from Chile to Brazil and the United States of America.Section five of the book is like a wedge in between layers of ecological disasters and extractive opacity. It takes a look at the socio-political malaise of Nigeria, closing with an acerbic look at crude-propelled despotism and philanthropic tokens erected as payment for indulgence or as some sort of pollution offsets.The closing sections provide excellent analyses of the gaps and contortions in the regulatory regimes in Nigeria. It would be surprising if these were not met with resistance on the ground.These essays provide insights into the background to the horrific ecological manifestations that dot the Nigerian environment and the ecological cancers spreading in the world. They underscore the fact there are no one-issue struggles. Working in a context where analyses of ecological matters is not the norm, decades of consistent environmental activism has placed the writer in good stead to unlock the webs that promote these scandalous realities.

Tishio la Ukombozi examines the role of the Umma Party of Zanzibar and its leader in the turbulent years of the Zanzibar revolution of the 1960s that was perceived in those Cold War years as a threat to the interests of the US and Europe. Based on declassified US and British documents, in-depth interviews and information released by WikiLeaks, Amrit Wilson offers an insightful and compelling analysis of the struggle against neo-colonialism as it played out in Zanzibar and what is now Tanzania. She introduces the reader to the movement that built unity across ethnic divisions and could have brought about the revolutionary transformation of Zanzibar and beyond. The book considers the contemporary relevance of such struggles in the context of the ';War on Terror' in East Africa.';Amrit Wilson has tapped a wide range of sources to tell a story of Zanzibar in modern times. As interesting as the narrative she puts together is the vantage point from which she tells it. This book deserves a wide audience.' Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University, and Director, Makerere Institute of Social Research, Kampala, UgandaKitabu hiki kinaturudisha katika kipindi cha kusisimuwa cha miaka ya vita baridi, kipindi ambacho, sambamba na kipindi cha leo, madola ya kibeberu yamekuwa yakifanya njama za kubadilisha serikali zilizokuwepo na kuziweka madarakani zile zenye kufuata amri. Kwa kutumia kumbukumbu za picha za Johari, nyaraka za siri za Marekani na Uingereza, pamoja na mahojiano ya kina, kitabu kinatowa uchambuzi juu ya nafasi na satwa ya Chama cha Umma Party nchini Zanzibar na kiongozi wake mwenye upeo mkubwa wa mambo, Mwanamapinduzi mfuasi wa Itikadi ya Karl Marx, Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu. Kwa kuangalia kwa njia ya uwiano wa mifano inayokwenda sambamba ya wahka wa Marekani kuhusu Uchina ya Kikomunisti katika miaka ya 1960 na woga walionao hivi sasa kuhusu ushawishi wa Uchina, kitabu kinatafakari juu ya mivutano mipya iliyopo katika kupigania rasilmali za Afrika, kuundwa kwa kikosi cha AFRICOM, na jinsi Wanasiasa wa Afrika Mashariki wanavyoshiriki katika kuimarisha udhibiti wa Marekani katika nchi zao, na ';Vita dhidi ya Ugaidi' katika ukanda wa Afrika Mashariki hivi sasa.