The lecture, entitled “Revolution and its other in North Africa and the greater region: a view from the South”, will take place at 1 PM in the HUMA Seminar Room on UCT’s Upper Campus.

Event details

• Date: Thursday, 31 May 2012
• Time: 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM
• Venue: Seminar Room
  Institute for the Humanities in Africa (HUMA)
  Upper Campus
  University of Cape Town | Campus Map
• RSVP: Heather Maytham; 021 650 4592

Book details

• The Meanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne
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  EAN: 9780796922045
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• Language, Identity, Modernity: The Arabic Study Circle of Durban by Shamil Jeppie
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  EAN: 9780796921758
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However, the survival of this African heritage hangs in the balance with the recent taking of the city by Islamist rebels and their destruction of the tomb of a Sufi saint. Two recent articles in the Daily Maverick highlight the enormity of the danger to the manuscripts:

Historians’ worst fears are coming true as Timbuktu’s new rulers set fire to an ancient tomb, just one of the city’s many World Heritage sites. And this is just the beginning, says Ansar Dine, the Islamist group whose fundamentalist dogma threatens to destroy Africa’s most fabled city

• Complete article: Daily Maverick

As Timbuktu reels under rebel control, South Africa’s investment in the preservation and protection of ancient manuscripts has been significantly imperilled. A good few million rands were poured into the Timbuktu project, but it’s not the financial loss that will be felt most acutely

• Complete article: Daily Maverick

Book details

• The Meanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie, Souleymane Bachir Diagne
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796922045
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The Independent: Prof. Mamdani, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Burundi have troops in Somalia. It is the first time Kenya has troops in a foreign country. What do you think are the implications of militarisation of the region?

Mahmood Mamdani: Let us step back a little to understand the basic problem with the present strategy which is looking for a military solution in Somalia. The problem becomes clear if you look at Northern Uganda.

One of the biggest achievements of NRM was the use of a broad-base government for those who would give up armed struggle. Even leaders, not just remnants from the Idi Amin regime, but of the Obote II and Okello administrations, were welcome in the broad-base. But the NRM closed the door when it came to the political north. They refused a political solution when it came to the leadership of Alice Lakwena and Joseph Kony. The north could have its representatives in parliament but the NRM insisted that the solution for the region must be military. Uganda’s challenge today lies in finding a political solution to the Kony problem. Even when Kony has no more than a few hundred fighters around him, the LRA has become a justification for the entry of US forces in the region, leading to its militarisation.

• Complete interview: The Independent

Book details

• Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror by Mahmood Mamdani
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  EAN: 9780796922526
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• Scholars in the Marketplace: The dilemmas of neo-liberal reform at Makerere University 1989-2005 by Mahmood Mamdani
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  EAN: 9780796922144
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The Independent: The government has banned the civic pressure group known as Activists for Change. What do you think of this development?

Mahmood Mamdani: Activists for Change (A4C) organised themselves in response to the events in the Middle East and the Arab spring. They hoped to be catalysts of change in Uganda. Walk-to-Work was brilliant in its simplicity. It was brilliant in that it showed that government was unwilling to tolerate the very idea of protest. Government responded to it as if it was a threat to the security of the state which it obviously wasn’t. That kind of response played straight into the strategy of A4C, for the public was outraged that even a simple idea of walking as a mode of protest could invoke such a response from the state.

• Complete interview: The Independent

Book details

• Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror by Mahmood Mamdani
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796922526
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Scholars in the Marketplace: The dilemmas of neo-liberal reform at Makerere University 1989-2005 by Mahmood Mamdani
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796922144
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Mabin will deliver a seminar entitled “Think Metropole: Memory, citizenship and futures in Paris, São Paolo and Johannesburg” on 21 May.

The WISH seminars take place every Monday at 3:00 PM in the WISER Seminar Room. The paper will be made available on the Friday before the seminar and participants are required to read the paper prior to the event.

• Complete list of forthcoming seminars

Event details

• Date: Monday, 21 May 2012
• Time: 3:00 PM
• Venue: WISER Seminar Room
  Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research
  6th Floor, Richard Ward Building,
  University of the Witwatersrand East Campus | Campus Map
• Queries: info.wiser@wits.ac.za

Book details

• Capital Cities in Africa: Power and Powerlessness by Simon Bekker and Göran Therborn
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  EAN: 9780796923509
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Children in sub-Saharan Africa are highly aware of the sexualised world they live in and are at dire risk falling pregnant or contracting HIV/Aids or both as teenagers if they are treated as mere innocents, a recent Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and Cambridge University study has found.

And children themselves say they want to discuss sex — because they see evidence of it all around them in any case.

• Complete article: Mail & Guardian

Book details

• Old Enough To Know: Consulting Children About Sex and AIDS Education in Africa by Colleen McLaughlin, Sharlene Swartz, Susan Kiragu, Shelina Walli and Mussa Mohamed
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  EAN: 9780796923745
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McDonald’s endeavours to better define the meaning of “public” and to establish a set of criteria to measure the success of public services, are related in the book Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South, of which he is the co-author:

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Book details

• Alternatives to Privatisation: Public Options for Essential Services in the Global South edited by David A McDonald and Greg Ruiters
  EAN: 9780796923776
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The struggle to free South Africa from its apartheid shackles was long and complex. One of the many ways in which the apartheid regime maintained its stranglehold in South Africa was through controlling the freedom of speech and the flow of information, in an effort to silence the voices of those who opposed it.

United by the ideals of freedom and equality, but also nuanced by a wide variety of persuasions, the ‘voices of liberation’ were many: African nationalists, communists, trade-unionists, pan-Africanists, English liberals, human rights activists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims and Jews, to name but a few.

The Voices of Liberation series ensures that the debates and values that shaped the liberation movement are not lost. The series offers a unique combination of biographical information with selections from original speeches and writings in each volume. By providing access to the thoughts and writings of some of the many men and women who fought for the dismantling of apartheid, this series invites the contemporary reader to engage directly with the rich history of the struggle for democracy.

This volume presents a brief biography of Ruth First, followed by a selection of her writings as a political activist, scholar and journalist. The book presents a timeline summary of significant events in Ruth’s life within the context of major socio-political events of the time. It concludes with a reflection on her legacy from a current perspective and offers a further reading list.

Book details

• Voices of Liberation: Ruth First by Don Pinnock
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796923592
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Beginning with a comprehensive scoping of the theoretical literature on race and social difference, the book delivers a meticulous examination of how the ‘logic of race’ is played out in the lives of post-apartheid South African school students. Based in two decades of empirical research, this compelling and insightful analysis reveals how the ongoing preoccupation with race not only obscures but also prevents the evolution of new ways of understanding privilege and subordination.

We dream of a better world. The fundamental promise of education, the author argues, is to develop the capacity to make real, in our will and desire, this possibility. However, the dream can be fully realised only when the learnt prejudices and false certainties of race, gender and indeed all our unproblematised conceits about who and what we are, are unlearnt. Written by one of South Africa’s foremost theorists of school education, this book is as brave as it is challenging – an inspiring, essential read for education practitioners and students in particular, and social theorists more broadly.

Praise for Realising the Dream

“Realising the Dream is a pledge to a transformative agenda. It presents an unflappable belief in the possibility of change that attaches immense value to the premise embedded in the book’s subtitle Unlearning the logic of race… Soudien opines, rightly, that as a social construct ‘race’ is learned and therefore can be unlearned. That is the challenge of our times and a solace to W.E.B. du Bois’s famous lament that ‘the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line’. Realising the Dream is a must-read. Beyond reading, however, it also requires a commitment to personal transformation.” – Mokubung Nkomo, Director of the Centre for Diversity and Social Cohesion, University of Pretoria

“A sterling example of scholarship out-of-bounds precisely because it is grounded in lived reality. Crain Soudien enables movement from proscribed to capacious possibilities for personhood, sociality and for knowledge (un)making and sharing. From this place of ‘big mind’ he writes not only against but through ‘race’, piercing its countless mutations en route to wide-open anti-racial reasoning. Steeped in history, Soudien’s ‘new critical sociology’ walks with history into a possible future. Realising the Dream will have prize place on the shelves of readers interested in difference as a catalyst for – not a hindrance to – becoming more human. This work is saturated with an ethic of care and quiet defiance. It is both seminal and beautiful.” – Zimitri Erasmus, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town and Mandela Mellon Fellow at W.E.B du Bois Institute at Harvard

About the author

Professor Crain Soudien is formerly the Director of the School of Education at the University of Cape Town and currently a Deputy Vice-Chancellor. He has written over 120 articles, reviews, reports, and book chapters in the areas of social difference, culture, educational policy, comparative education, educational change, public history and popular culture. He is the co-editor of three books on District Six, Cape Town and another on comparative education, the author of The Making of Youth Identity in Contemporary South Africa: Race, Culture and Schooling,and the co-author of Inclusion and Exclusion in South African and Indian Schools. He was educated at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and holds a PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is involved in a number of local, national and international social and cultural organisations and is the Chairperson of the District Six Museum Foundation, a Board member of the Cape Town Festival, immediate Past-President of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and was the Chair of a Ministerial Committee on Transformation in Higher Education.

Book details

• Realising the Dream: Unlearning the logic of race in the South African school by Crain Soudien
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796923806
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The ancient African manuscripts of Timbuktu seem to have survived the capture of the city at the weekend by Tuareg and other rebels trying to topple the new military government of Mali. Rantobeng Mokou, SA’s ambassador to Mali, said last night he had spoken to people in Timbuktu who told him the rebels had stolen cars, money and other goods from the SA-sponsored library holding many of the manuscripts.

• Complete article: The Star

Book details

• The Meanings of Timbuktu by Shamil Jeppie and Souleymane Bachir Diagne
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9780796922045
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!