African Interest

Brief Summary After six years in England, Rachel has returned to Kenya and the farm where she spent her childhood, but the beloved home she’d longed for is much changed. Her father’s new companion—a strange, intolerant woman—has taken over the household. The political climate in the country grows more unsettled by the day and is approaching the boiling point. And looming over them all is the threat of the Mau Mau, a secret society intent on uniting the native Kenyans and overthrowing the whites. As Rachel struggles to find her place in her home and her country, she initiates a covert relationship, one that will demand from her a gross act of betrayal. One man knows her secret, and he has made it clear how she can buy his silence. But she knows something of her own, something she has never told anyone. And her knowledge brings her power. ISBN:9780399158254 Author:Jennifer McVeigh

Brief Summary The African continent exceeds in size and natural resources the combined territories of Europe, the United States and China. Yet most Africans must struggle for bare survival. The authors of this book s chapters describe different African countries experiences, underscoring the need to use law to transform Africa s inherited institutions. Chapter 2 outlines institutionalist legislative theory and methodology as a guide for designing laws to achieve good governance and people-oriented development. Raymond Atuguba describes how, for almost half a century after independence, Ghana s police force still mainly buttressed elite state power. Atuguba and his colleagues, working through the Legal Resources Centre, eventually hope to propose legislation to promote all Ghanaians welfare. Teodosio Uate s chapter demonstrates how, despite a 1997 law calling for citizen engagement in environmental protection, the inherited drafting system had thwarted the drafters attempts to prescribe clearly and precisely what officials must do to realize popular participation. Neva Makgetla describes South Africa s post-apartheid governmental efforts to restructure the massive inequalities imposed by the preceding regime. Inherited administrative institutions too often excluded from decision-making the new government s core constituencies the working people, the unemployed, and the poor in general Lucian Ng andwe justifies his proposed law to establish a Zambian Commission on Law and National Integrated Development. That Commission would conduct research and design and submit bills, accompanied by reports of the facts logically-organized, to demonstrate, that those bills detailed provisions would facilitate transformation of the inherited institutions that today perpetuate Zambia s poverty, vulnerability and poor governance. ISBN:9781592214716 Author:Ann Willcox Seidman

Brief Summary Clara Usiskin has spent eight years investigating the 'War on Terror' and its effects in the East and Horn of Africa, documenting hundreds of cases of rendition, secret detention and targeted killings. As a result of her work exposing abuses carried out by regional governments and their international partners, Clara was deported from Kenya and Uganda and is currently persona non grata in both countries. Her book sets out the historical background to today's covert war, including the early Somali jihads and British repression in colonial Kenya, through to the 1998 US Embassy Bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and President Clinton's early rendition programme. America's Covert War in East Africa then looks at the US Military's new Africa Command, with its emphasis on counterterrorism, alongside increasing use of targeted killings by security forces in the region, and continued renditions and secret detention. Finally, Usiskin investigates the shorter and longer term consequences of such intensive militarisation, and the proliferation of surveillance and other technologies of control in East Africa and its surrounding waters, focusing in particular on their impact on vulnerable ethnic and religious groups in a highly volatile region. ISBN:9781849044134 Author:Clara Usiskin

Brief Summary The truth about about the Trial of Jomo Kenyatta by Rawson Macharia ISBN:9789966498236 Author:Rawson Macharia

Brief Summary They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers "The ultimate focus of the rest of my life is to eradicate the use of child soldiers and to eliminate even the thought of the use of children as instruments of war." —Roméo Dallaire In conflicts around the world, there is an increasingly popular weapon system that requires negligible technology, is simple to sustain, has unlimited versatility and incredible capacity for both loyalty and barbarism. In fact, there is no more complete end-to-end weapon system in the inventory of war-machines. What are these cheap, renewable, plentiful, sophisticated and expendable weapons? Children. Roméo Dallaire was first confronted with child soldiers in unnamed villages on the tops of the thousand hills of Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. The dilemma of the adult soldier who faced them is beautifully expressed in his book's title: when children are shooting at you, they are soldiers, but as soon as they are wounded or killed they are children once again. Believing that not one of us should tolerate a child being used in this fashion, Dallaire has made it his mission to end the use of child soldiers. In this book, he provides an intellectually daring and enlightening introduction to the child soldier phenomenon, as well as inspiring and concrete solutions to eradicate it. ISBN:9780307355775 Author:Romeo Dallaire

Brief Summary Chinua Achebe renowned as Africa's most famous novelist and author who died in Boston, USA, on 21st March 2013 at the age of 82. He is recognized as the founding father of Modern African writing in English. The publication of his first novel Things Fall Apart not only contested European narratives about Africa but also challenged traditional assumptions about the form and function of the novel. His literary life spanned over fifty years, from the publication of Things Fall Apart (1958) to There Was A Country (2012), his memoir of the Nigerian Biafran war in the 1960s. His first novel, Things Fall Apart - a classic of 20th century fiction has been translated into over 50 languages and sold millions of copies all over the world. Before Achebe came on the world literary scene in the late 1950s, African literature was considered by the rest of the world and more sadly, by many educated Africans themselves, as a quixotic enterprise, in which dark forests and evil spirits held all the shares. Achebe was not only an accomplished writer but also a man who was close to his readers and had the precious gift of being a great communicator and storyteller of African realities. His legacy as one of Africa's most vocal voices against the ravages of colonialism and its long-term effects on Africa will endure through his writings for generations to come. This volume is a fitting memorial to his legacy. Achebe was the conscience of Africa - his death gives new significance to his writing, anchoring his activism and his literary legacy in eternity. He will be remembered internationally as one of Africa's greatest writers. ISBN:9780956930767 Author:Nana Ayebia Clarke and James Currey