Spanish influenza remains a touchstone for pandemics. Fear of a coming influenza pandemic has led a number of commentators to draw parallels with the Spanish flu of 1918-1920. However, the... Show moreSpanish influenza remains a touchstone for pandemics. Fear of a coming influenza pandemic has led a number of commentators to draw parallels with the Spanish flu of 1918-1920. However, the majority of observers have chosen to base their findings on data from comparatively accessible North American and Northern European sources, and have excluded African data. This absence of African data has not prevented them from making bold statements about Africa's future. In response to these statements, the present paper draws attention to the social impact of Spanish influenza in Africa, thereby emphasizing the importance of the pandemic for Africa's history in the first half of the 20th century and suggesting further research opportunities. The paper also shows that there is ample material available which would allow for the development of the arguments made by those who choose to exclude African data from their analyses. In particular, the paper uses a sample of material gleaned from the National Archives in Kew to illustrate the course of the Spanish influenza pandemic in three of Britain's West African colonies - Sierra Leone, Gambia, and Nigeria. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
Focusing on the relationship between people and transport, this paper presents an overview of the manner in which transport was organized before and after the introduction of the motor vehicle in... Show moreFocusing on the relationship between people and transport, this paper presents an overview of the manner in which transport was organized before and after the introduction of the motor vehicle in what has become the central African State of Zambia. It describes the forms of human muscle powered transport that existed prior to the introduction of mechanized transport, such as portage and waterborne transport, as well as the use of animal traction outside the tsetse fly belts. It further deals with the use of steam (trains), bicycles, and motorcycles before discussing the implications of the introduction of motor vehicles for central African societies. The paper concludes that Zambian rural impoverishment in the course of the 1920s and 1930s was a consequence of a change in the modes of transport and the collapse of long-distance trading networks based on human labour power. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
The rich corpus of material produced by anthropologists of the Rhodes Livingstone Institute (RLI) in Lusaka has come to dominate our understanding of Zambian societies and Zambia's past. The RLI... Show moreThe rich corpus of material produced by anthropologists of the Rhodes Livingstone Institute (RLI) in Lusaka has come to dominate our understanding of Zambian societies and Zambia's past. The RLI was primarily concerned with the sociocultural effects of migrant labour. This paper argues that the anthropologists of the RLI worked from within a paradigm that was dominated by the experience of colonial conquest in South Africa. RLI anthropologists transferred their understanding of colonial conquest in South Africa to the Northern Rhodesian situation, without ever truly analysing the manner in which colonial rule had come to be established in Northern Rhodesia. As such the RLI anthropologists operated within a flawed understanding of the past. The paper argues that a historical paradigm of colonial conquest that was applicable to the South African situation came to be unquestioningly applied to the Northern Rhodesian situation. It concludes that current historiography dealing with the colonization of Zambia between 1890 and 1920 is seriously flawed and needs to be revised. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
Most research on urban agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa has concentrated on farming by individual urban households, while farming by urban institutions has been largely overlooked. Probably the... Show moreMost research on urban agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa has concentrated on farming by individual urban households, while farming by urban institutions has been largely overlooked. Probably the most prevalent and important type of institutional urban agriculture is school farming, the focus of this paper. The authors examine school farming and school feeding in Nakuru town in Kenya on the basis of a survey among primary and secondary schools carried out in June 2006. A largely structured questionnaire was used to obtain data on school characteristics, school farming activities, and school feeding practices. Moreover, anthropometric data were gathered for all class 1 primary school pupils. The study shows that school farming is very common in Nakuru town. Almost all primary and secondary schools are engaged in flower gardening and tree growing, over half of the schools practise crop cultivation and a number of schools keep some livestock. The majority of crop-cultivating schools also have a school feeding programme. Two 'success stories' demonstrate that schools in Nakuru can reach a high degree of self-sufficiency for their feeding programmes. Factors contributing to this success are the availability of land and water, and external support for school farming. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
The African continent and its people occupy a 'subaltern' position in global politics where voices from the African continent remain on the peripheries of global governance. Since the United... Show moreThe African continent and its people occupy a 'subaltern' position in global politics where voices from the African continent remain on the peripheries of global governance. Since the United Nations Human Rights Council, set up in 1996, is envisaged to be a forum for dialogue on thematic issues on all human rights, Africans need to seize the opportunity to be heard, rather than remaining as a problem to be solved. This paper presents three key arguments that need to be taken into account during the process of the remaking of the world order and re-creation of a new global governance architecture. Firstly, it raises the key issue of the African continent and the African people being perceived as a problem to be solved rather than a voice to be heard within global politics. Secondly, it makes a case for the use of oral history as an ideal medium to bring the voices of the subaltern to the notice of the Human Rights Council and as a key methodology in the current endeavour to understand different situations of human rights violations. In particular, it examines three cases where oral history was utilized to highlight human rights issues, including one instance where oral testimonies led to the crafting of a democratic freedom charter (in South Africa). Thirdly, the paper grapples with the question of whose values and whose voice should underpin the universal human rights discourse and global governance. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
The launch of the Native Club in 2006 in South Africa as a new forum for the black intelligentsia provoked widespread debate from the academic and political fraternity that even implicated... Show moreThe launch of the Native Club in 2006 in South Africa as a new forum for the black intelligentsia provoked widespread debate from the academic and political fraternity that even implicated President Mbeki as the brains behind the project. The debates revolved around key and sometimes sensitive issues of race, citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, the limits and dangers of neoliberalism, as well as the dangers and limits of populist African nationalism. The politics and debates sparked by the Native Club also resonate with current crises within the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance and the second decade of South African democracy punctuated with a popular sense of betrayal. Currently the Native Club is housed under the roof of the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA) in Pretoria (Tshwane). This working paper takes a politico-historical approach in its endeavour to understand and define the essence of the Native Club, going beyond the surface media exchanges that have characterized its launch, grounding the debate in earlier debates over race, class and the national democratic revolution to reveal the historical 'rootedness' of nativism and populism. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
Compared to other rural women, a high proportion of female wageworkers in rural Mozambique are divorced, separated or widowed. The paper explores the factors underlying this difference and... Show moreCompared to other rural women, a high proportion of female wageworkers in rural Mozambique are divorced, separated or widowed. The paper explores the factors underlying this difference and establishes a significant relationship between labour market participation and female divorce or widowhood. The association is likely to work in both directions. Moreover, contrastive exploration suggests that divorced/separated women differ from non-divorced women in many other important respects: They tend to get access to better jobs; also, divorced and separated mothers are remarkably good at investing in their daughters' education compared to other mothers and to male respondents. The paper concludes by stressing the limits of regression techniques in teasing out causation and the interactions between variables, and by suggesting that policies to increase female access to decently remunerated wage employment could make a substantial difference to the welfare of very poor rural women in Africa and their children. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
This work examines the political intrumentalization of culture and history as embodied in a 'Big Man', an Ur-agent that over-represents the cultural whole. It examines how the elites within a... Show moreThis work examines the political intrumentalization of culture and history as embodied in a 'Big Man', an Ur-agent that over-represents the cultural whole. It examines how the elites within a specific ethnocultural group - the Yoruba of Nigeria - represent and re-present themselves as agents, using the specific instance of the 'Cult of Awo' (Obafemi Awolowo), the late politician regarded as the modern 'avatar' of the Yoruba. It focuses primarily on how the burial and the statue of the late leader were used to emphasize his centrality in Yoruba politics, by exploring 'the form and meaning of the aura around a dead' hero. The work examines the monumentalization of Awo, how his life and death are interpreted, and are used to articulate Yoruba collective political vision and future - both materially and symbolically. While the death of Awo in 1987 provided a platform for a struggle by the elite associated with him to project themselves in his image as worthy successors - thereby creating internal struggles for supremacy - the controversy surrounding the destruction of his statue in 2003, happening at a point when those opposed to Awo were canvassing the 'end of (the Awo) era', also provides a context for examining the agency of Awo, in material and symbolic terms, in Yoruba politics. [ASC Leiden abstract] Show less
