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DR Congo Most Popular

The Invention of Africa

What is the meaning of Africa and of being African? What is and what is not African philosophy? Is philosophy part of Africanism? These are the kind of fundamental questions which this book addresses.
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Most Popular South Africa

Down Second Avenue

Nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1969, Es’kia Mphahlele is considered the Dean of African Letters and the father of black South African writing. Down Second Avenue is a landmark book that describes Mphahlele’s experience growing up in segregated South Africa. Vivid, graceful, and unapologetic, it details a daily life of severe poverty and brutal police surveillance under the subjugation of an apartheid regime. Banned in South Africa after its original 1959 publication for its protest against apartheid, Down Second Avenue is a foundational work of literature that continues to inspire activists today.
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Most Popular Mozambique

The struggle for Mozambique

This is the story of a country’s struggle for independence , one that would last nearly fourteen years.

During this time, the people of Mozambique tried every means possible to free themselves from Portuguese colonial rule . Ultimately , they entered into a violent conflict that eventually led to freedom . Key to their success was the Mozambique Liberation Front ( or FRELIMO ) and its first leader Eduardo Mondlane.
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Most Popular South Africa

The Soul of the White Ant

In his fascinating investigations into the psyche of the ants, their strangely rich inherited memory of instinct, Marais makes challenging assertions about the group soul of the termite colony – the cause and result of the termites’ ceaseless, automatic activity for their community. His extraordinary theory is that the termite colony is, in fact, a separate composite animal at a certain stage of its development.
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Most Popular South Africa

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

The famously taciturn South African president reveals much of himself in Long Walk to Freedom. A good deal of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island by South Africa’s apartheid regime. Among the book’s interesting revelations is Mandela’s ambivalence toward his lifetime of devotion to public works. It cost him two marriages and kept him distant from a family life he might otherwise have cherished. Long Walk to Freedom also discloses a strong and generous spirit that refused to be broken under the most trying circumstances–a spirit in which just about everybody can find something to admire.
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Most Popular Uganda

Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism

In analyzing the obstacles to democratization in post- independence Africa, Mahmood Mamdani offers a bold, insightful account of colonialism’s legacy–a bifurcated power that mediated racial domination through tribally organized local authorities, reproducing racial identity in citizens and ethnic identity in subjects. Many writers have understood colonial rule as either “direct” (French) or “indirect” (British), with a third variant–apartheid–as exceptional. This benign terminology, Mamdani shows, masks the fact that these were actually variants of a despotism. While direct rule denied rights to subjects on racial grounds, indirect rule incorporated them into a “customary” mode of rule, with state-appointed Native Authorities defining custom. By tapping authoritarian possibilities in culture, and by giving culture an authoritarian bent, indirect rule (decentralized despotism) set the pace for Africa; the French followed suit by changing from direct to indirect administration, while apartheid emerged relatively later. Apartheid, Mamdani shows, was actually the generic form of the colonial state in Africa.
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Most Popular Nigeria

Beyond the Masks

Psychology has had a number of things to say about black and coloured people, none of them favourable, and most of which have reinforced stereotyped and derogatory images. Beyond the Masks is a readable account of black psychology, exploring key theoretical issues in race and gender. In it, Amina Mama examines the history of racist psychology, and of the implicit racism throughout the discipline. Beyond the Masks also offers an important theoretical perspective, and will appeal to all those involved with ethnic minorities, gender politics and questions of identity.
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Most Popular South Africa

The Country of my Skull

Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country–one of spectacular beauty and promise–come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors?

To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha’s extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey.
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Burkina Faso Most Popular

History of black Africa: From yesterday to tomorrow

History of black Africa: From yesterday to tomorrow 
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Kenya Most Popular

Facing Mount Kenny

Facing Mount Kenya is a central document of the highest distinction in anthropological literature, an invaluable key to the structure of African society and the nature of the African mind. ‘Facing Mount Kenya’ is not only a formal study of life and death, work and play, sex and the family in one of the greatest tribes of contemporary Africa, but a work of considerable literary merit. The very sight and sound of Kikuyu tribal life presented here are at once comprehensive and intimate, and as precise as they are compassionate.
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