The Last Defenders of the Laager

The Last Defenders of the Laager
Author: Dickson Mungazi [Deceased]
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1998-05-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

When the Afrikaners (Boers) migrated northward from the Cape to escape British rule, they enountered the Zulu people. To protect their claims, the Boers formed the laager, a circle of wagons. As years passed, the laager acquired wider political dimensions and became a symbol of Afrikaner determination to survive under hostile conditions. Ian D. Smith, last colonial leader of Zimbabwe from 1964 to 1979, and F. W. de Klerk, the last white president of South Africa from 1988 to 1994, were the last defenders of the laager on the African continent. Rising nationalism and the devastation of civil war would eventually force these leaders to abandon the colonial systems that they had inherited from their predecessors. The study details the origins and development of the laager system in Africa. It discusses how and why previously successful tactics to maintain the system would fail amidst the rising African nationalism of the late 20th century. The focus of each of the eight chapters alternates between Smith and de Klerk and examines the efforts of each to overcome unanticipated challenges.

The Last British Liberals in Africa

The Last British Liberals in Africa
Author: Dickson Mungazi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 314
Release: 1999-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1567508693

A study of the clash of two traditions, British liberalism and African nationalism, and an examination of how Michael Blundell in Kenya and Garfield Todd in Zimbabwe used their liberal backgrounds to further the future of their adopted countries, despite threats and detention. Both Blundell and Todd believed that political leaders had a responsibility to serve the needs of the people as a condition of national development. By the time each came to power, European colonization had had a profoundly negative effect on the lives of Africans; Blundell and Todd sought to correct this by putting their positive views of Africans into practice. While colonial governments designed strategies for controlling Africans to serve political and economic interests at home in Europe, Africans themselves established their own effective strategy, not only to ensure their survival in the colonial setting, but also to initiate a process for the restoration of their sense of self. Michael Blundell and Garfield Todd, with their liberal beliefs, served as excellent allies in this period of a rising African consciousness. Using sources obtained in Kenya and Zimbabwe over the past 15 years, this work examines democratic traditions that have survived tumultuous times in recent years.

The 20th Century A-GI

The 20th Century A-GI
Author: Frank N. Magill
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1426
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136593349

Each volume of the Dictionary of World Biography contains 250 entries on the lives of the individuals who shaped their times and left their mark on world history. This is not a who's who. Instead, each entry provides an in-depth essay on the life and career of the individual concerned. Essays commence with a quick reference section that provides basic facts on the individual's life and achievements. The extended biography places the life and works of the individual within an historical context, and the summary at the end of each essay provides a synopsis of the individual's place in history. All entries conclude with a fully annotated bibliography.

Life Writing and the End of Empire

Life Writing and the End of Empire
Author: Emma Parker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2024-03-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350353809

The dismantlement of the British Empire had a profound impact on many celebrated white Anglophone writers of the twentieth century, particularly those who were raised in former British colonial territories and returned to the metropole after the Second World War. Formal decolonisation meant that these authors were unable to 'go home' to their colonial childhoods, a historical juncture with profound consequences for how they wrote and recorded their own lives. Moving beyond previous discussions of imperial and colonial nostalgia, Life Writing and the End of Empire is the first critical study of white memoirists and autobiographers who rewrote their memories of empire across numerous life narratives. By focussing on these processual homecomings, Emma Parker's study asks what it means to be 'at home' in memories of empire, whether in the settler farms of Southern Rhodesia, or amidst the neon lights of Shanghai's International Settlement. These discussions trace the legacies of empire to the habitations and detritus of everyday life, from mansions and modest railway huts, to empty swimming pools, heirlooms, and photograph albums. Exploring works by Penelope Lively, J. G. Ballard, Doris Lessing, and Janet Frame, this study establishes new connections between authors usually discussed for their fiction, and who have been hitherto unrecognised as post-imperial life writers. Offering close, sustained analysis of autobiographies, memoirs, travel narratives, and autofictions, and identifying new subgenres such as 'speculative life writing', this book advances rich new readings of autobiographical narrative. By tracing the continuing importance of colonialism to white subjectivity, the role of imperial memory in Britain, and the ways that these unsettling forces move beneath the surface of modern and contemporary literature, this study offers new conceptual insights to the fields of life writing and postcolonial studies.

In the Footsteps of the Masters

In the Footsteps of the Masters
Author: Dickson Mungazi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2000-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313002142

The height of colonial rule on the African continent saw two prominent religious leaders step to the fore: Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and Abel Muzorewa in Zimbabwe. Both Tutu and Muzorewa believed that Africans could govern their own nations responsibly and effectively if only they were given the opportunity. In expressing their religious views about the need for social justice each man borrowed from national traditions that had shaped policy of earlier church leaders. Tutu and Muzorewa argued that the political development of Africans was essential to the security of the white settlers and that whites should seek the promotion of political development of Africans as a condition of that future security. Desmond Tutu and Abel Muzorewa were both motivated by strong religious principles. They disregarded the possible personal repercussions that they might suffer as a result of their efforts to alter the fundamental bases of their colonial governments. Each man hoped to create a new national climate in which blacks and whites could cooperate to build a new nation. Each played a part in eventual independence for Zimbabwe in 1980 and for South Africa in 1994. Mungazi's examination of their efforts reveals how individuals with strong convictions can make a difference in shaping the future of their nations.

Discourse, normative change and the quest for reconciliation in global politics

Discourse, normative change and the quest for reconciliation in global politics
Author: Judith Renner
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2018-02-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1526130629

This book offers a new and critical perspective on the global reconciliation technology by highlighting its contingent and highly political character as an authoritative practice of post-conflict peacebuilding. After retracing the emergence of the reconciliation discourse from South Africa to the global level, the book demonstrates how implementing reconciliation in post-conflict societies is a highly political practice which entails potentially undesirable consequences for the post-conflict societies to which it is deployed. Specifically, the book shows how the reconciliation discourse brings about the marginalisation and neutralisation of political claims and identities of local post-conflict populations by producing these societies as being composed of the ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ of past human rights violations which are first and foremost in need of reconciliation and healing. This book will interest students and teachers of transitional justice and international relations.

Negotiated Revolutions

Negotiated Revolutions
Author: George Lawson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2017-03-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351915495

Straightforward histories of post-revolution States have all too often failed to provide sufficient context to rescue revolution, both as concept and practice, from the misplaced triumphalism of the contemporary world. In Negotiated Revolutions George Lawson marks a definitive departure in the study of radical political and socio-economic change, presenting a unique comparative analysis of three transformations from authoritarian rule to market democracy. Through the lens of international sociology the book critically considers the large scale processes of social and political revolution, bringing three apparently distinct transformations, from seemingly disparate authoritarian regimes and geographies, under a common rubric. With unique and novel conceptual analysis the book accurately locates both the potential and actuality of radical change in contemporary world affairs, processes usually mistakenly subsumed under the general framework of 'transitology'.

Built on the Ruins of Empire

Built on the Ruins of Empire
Author: Blake Whitaker
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 070063312X

During the Cold War the British government oversaw the transition to independence of dozens of colonies. Often the most challenging aspect of this transition was the creation of a national army from colonial forces. In Built on the Ruins of Empire, Blake Whitaker examines this process in Kenya and Zambia and how it set the course for the creation of the army in Zimbabwe. He also looks at three themes as they intersect in African military history: British decolonization, race relations, and the Cold War. While the transition to independence was a difficult process in places such as Ghana and Nigeria, it was compounded by the racial tensions in Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. All three were settler colonies home to a sizable community of white Europeans who controlled the levers of power and economic prosperity. Built on the Ruins of Empire focuses on the difficulties that arose in creating a cohesive and apolitical military force in these racially charged Cold War environments and demonstrates that the challenges faced by the British training missions in Kenya and Zambia taught London important lessons about the emerging postcolonial world. Whitaker uniquely analyzes the successes and failures of the British military assistance programs and their quest to solidify British influence while examining how Britain’s position and influence in the wider world was fading just as Zimbabwe was achieving independence.

The New A-Z of Empire

The New A-Z of Empire
Author: C. Brad Faught
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2011-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0857720015

The British Empire, especially in its late-Victorian heyday, spanned the world and linked a quarter of world's population to Britain through a shared, official, allegiance to the Crown. In the long history of empires the British imperial state was among the most powerful ever and a major global player. "A New A-Z of Empire" catches the current burgeoning interest in empires and covers over 400 years of British imperial history from the founding of the East India Company in 1600, to the 'First' and 'Second' British Empires, the time of 'High Empire' following the War of American Independence, the unprecedented expansion of the 'Scramble' for Africa, the development of Dominion Status and the history - often turbulent - of decolonization and the growth of Commonwealth. The 400-plus entries include a rich panoply of individuals, territories, treaties, politics, the law, diplomacy, war and peace, administration, business and commerce, exploration, literature, art, literature and scholarship. Readers will find a mine of fascinating factual information, in concise form, with expert historical assessment, cross-referencing between entries and suggestions for further reading. The valuable time-line is essential to pick through the long period of complex history and links to key web resources are provided. "A New A-Z of Empire" is an indispensable tool for the scholar and student, and for the general reader interested in the rich history of the British Empire: a story of obscure foundation leading to dominance over a huge swathe of the globe, now represented by mere pinpricks on the world map.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being
Author: Rory Pilossof
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2012-04-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1779221975

The history of colonial land alienation, the grievances fuelling the liberation war, and post-independence land reforms have all been grist to the mill of recent scholarship on Zimbabwe. Yet for all that the countrys white farmers have received considerable attention from academics and journalists, the fact that they have always played a dynamic role in cataloguing and representing their own affairs has gone unremarked. It is this crucial dimension that Rory Pilossof explores in The Unbearable Whiteness of Being. His examination of farmers voices in The Farmer magazine, in memoirs, and in recent interviews reveals continuities as well as breaks in their relationships with land, belonging and race. His focus on the Liberation War, Operation Gukurahundi and the post-2000 land invasions frames a nuanced understanding of how white farmers engaged with the land and its peoples, and the political changes of the past 40 years. The Unbearable Whiteness of Being helps to explain why many of the events in the countryside unfolded in the ways they did.