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This work has two major objectives. First, it examines the various aspects of the involvement of the military as governors in the politics of African states. Second, it offers some suggestions on ways in which constitutional and political strategies can be used to control the military's recurrent intervention in politics in Africa. Unlike other publications on the military and politics in Africa which focus on one or two aspects of the involvement of the military in African politics, this study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the various aspects of military intervention. It aims to provide insights into the military's role in African politics from initial intervention to the performance of military regimes, as well as to disengagement, reengagement, consolidation and finally, the offering of ways to control the problem of intervention. This analysis provides an opportunity for the reader to examine the problem in a sequential and systematic manner. ... Read more

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In the pursuit of policies and approaches that would sustain and accelerate economic development after the declared departure of colonial powers, African governments set up parastatals to serve as conduit for economic development through which governments could deliver services to the general populace. However, there is evidence that most parastatals do not utilize resources efficiently; instead, they impose heavy burdens on public resources and distort their use in the economy. Given the shortcomings of parastatals, in the 1980s, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), USAID, and other international donor agencies came to Africa with a philosophy of privatization. These multi-national corporations and donor agencies discretely advocated the overhauling of parastatals but the suggested processes and methods to this end were vague. Nonetheless, the arm-twisting strategies of multi-national corporations and international donors forced African governments to succumb to the philosophy of privatization. Unfortunately, in general, the philosophy, policies and practices of privatization operated to the economic detriment of African countries. Thus, as pursued in this text, it is actively compelling that the process of privatization be examined critically, considering advantages and disadvantages as well as the economic profitability for countries in sub-Saharan Africa. ... Read more

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Within the international community there is a growing awareness of the need for a broader and deeper understanding of the relationship between governments and farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. Nowhere in the agricultural sector is this awareness growing more rapidly than in the seed sub-sector. Here the quest for alternatives to the large-scale government seed supply organizations of the 1970s and 1980s is becoming more urgent in the face of Africa's stagnating crop yields and mounting food deficits. This book presents the results of the first study to investigate the African seed sector in detail. ... Read more

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"... Meli combines the insights of an insider with sound scholarship." -- Patrick O'Meara

"Meli's book is a welcome addition to the literature on South Africa." -- L. E. Meyer, Choice

"... the book is written in a sober, matter-of-fact style with a minimum of invective and rhetoric. Packed with quotations and thoroughly annotated, it appeals to reason more than the emotions and deserves to be taken seriously as history rather than dismissed as propaganda or myth making." -- The New York Review of Books

"This book is clearly the most important one written on South Africa during the last decade." -- Nature, Society, and Thought

"... made the case for the ANC's central role as South Africa's historic movement for economic justice as well as racial and political democracy." -- Journal of African History

In this history of the African National Congress, Francis Meli demonstrates that the party is central to the future of South Africa. British, American, and other Western governments have finally recognized that no South African settlement is possible without dealing with the ANC.

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Locating Africa on the global stage, this book examines and compares external involvement in the continent, exploring the foreign policies of major states and international organizations towards Africa. The contributors work within a political economy framework in order to study how these powers have attempted to stimulate democracy, peace and prosperity in the context of neo-liberal hegemony and ask whom these attempts have benefited and failed. ... Read more

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Africa has witnessed a number of transitions to democracy in recent years. Coinciding with this upsurge in democratic transitions have been spectacular experiences of social disintegration.An alternative to discourses of the “failed” and “collapsed” state in Africa is an approach that takes seriously the complex historical processes underlying the political development of individual nation states. The chapters in this volumethrow light on the ways in which violence, political culture, and development have interacted in recent African history. ... Read more

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Laying Ghosts to Rest offers a penetrating look at the South African transition and what is wrong with it. In her characteristic forthright style, Dr Ramphele's new book offers both indictment and inspiration. She touches upon: the distrust between South Africa's people, incomplete reconciliation and violent crime, the failure of schools and the government's skills programme to educate South Africans, globalisation and how South Africa is failing to fill its place in Africa and the world, the costs of BEE and 'transformation' in the private sector and in government, problems of leadership in South Africa. ... Read more

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Informed exploration of the challenges facing South Africa
Villagers in small South African towns know that to exorcise the troublesome spirits of the departed they must address their ghosts. So, too, Mamphela Ramphele - physician, educator, author and activist - forthrightly wrangles with the ghosts that still plague South Africa 14 years after apartheid. In this 2008 book, Ramphele thoughtfully and critically examines four major issues that are thwarting her country's progress: "racism, ethnic chauvinism, sexism and authoritarianism." She knows well of what she writes. As a founding member of the 1970s Black Consciousness Movement led by Stephen Bantu Biko, she stood at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid, suffering imprisonment and banishment. getAbstract recommends her book as a sometimes searing but always forceful and unstinting appraisal of what South Africa must accomplish to realize fully its long-denied promise of equality and freedom. ... Read more

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In the first compilation of 85 front-line photographs since the press ban, a racially mixed group of 21 South African photographers, at great personal and professional risk, dare to expose the current crisis in dramatic human terms. ... Read more

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Many people, both in South Africa and abroad, hoped that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1996 would uncover the hidden history of South Africa's apartheid past. It is a widely propagated myth that it did so. In fact, most of the thirty-three-year mandate of the Commission was ignored. Behind a façade of time constraints and managerial short comings, some intended investigations never proceeded, others were bungled. Most importantly, no serious examination was made of the system that gave rise to some of the most horrific, racist social engineering of modern times.

Unfinished Business pulls back the curtain on the "political miracle" of the new South Africa to reveal some of the real stories in its past: how the Afrikaner Broederbond operated, the murderous activities of the South African security forces in Transkei, the citation of De Klerk as a defendant in a civil action for murder at exactly the moment he was traveling to Oslo to collect a Nobel peace prize, and many others.

Seeking to probe where the Commission failed or feared to tread, this books asks how long South Africa's miracle might be expected to last. ... Read more

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Face The Facts
If you think that post-apartheid South Africa has "buried" the past and is moving toward a brighter future....think again. This book confirms what I feared ever since the TRC was announced. So many unanswered questions...so much unfinished business. If you care anything at all about South Africa....read it...read it...read it.

HONESTY notjust "TRC"
"How come you had to tell me that?" -Bob Dylan
READ IT AND WEEP! But ..."You gotta have a bullet-proof soul."
-Shadea. GO AHEAD...READ IT: "You shall know the truth...and the truth shall make you free." -Bible. Then, let us do the right thing...finally: REPARATIONS; LAND&WEALTH REDISTRIBUTION; RESTORATIVE JUSTICE! Let's not let the work of these two BRAVE WARRIORS be wasted for a moment. Not one word. Not one moment. "GO AHEAD ... READ IT! And,then...WORK4AZANIA...AZANIA...This is where we shall meet! Some day. Maybe one-day-sooner due to our attention to the "Unfinished Business" of South Africa and the world community envisioned by Bell and Ntzebeza.
Meet me there. -Azaniaphile ... Read more

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This book is the third in CARAD's publication series on Strategic Policy Studies on State, Democracy Governance and Management. The second series is on "State-Building and Democracy in Africa: A Comparative and Development Approach". These series seek to contribute to the ongoing debate on Democratisation, Governance and Development since the collapse of the Communist System and Africa's Lost Decades of the 1980s. The subject of a 'developmental state and the challenges of governance' remains topical, and is hoped the views expressed here puts the various issues firmly at the centre of the debate, calling for transparency, social justice, the rule of law and accountability agenda that sows the seeds of a genuine renewal of state and society's role in embodying and shaping democracy on the African continent. There is need for building capacities for sustainable development to bring Africa in line with global development. ... Read more

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This authoritative publication by the official historian, the late Sir Brooks Richards, vividly describes and analyses the clandestine naval operations that took place during World War II. The account has been made possible through Sir Brooks' access to closed government archives, combined with his own wartime experiences and the recollections of many of those involved.

In addition to operations off French North Africa this second volume also includes descriptions of operations in the Adriatic around Italy. More than half of the 390 operations in Italian and adjacent waters were carried out by Italian vessels with Italian crews. It was a contribution to the Allied war effort which ought not to be forgotten. ... Read more

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This book addresses the manifestations of power dynamics in negotiations between international organizations operating at the global level (e.g., the World Bank, WTO, and UNESCO) and international organizations operating at the regional level (e.g., NEPAD, SADC, and AAU). It further addresses how these dynamics influence the educational autonomy of governments in the region. Although it focuses on Southern Africa, the principles drawn and the models developed therein can contribute to a better understanding of inter-organizational interactions in other regions of the world. This study also illuminates specific and general instances of power dynamics, which resulted in models and categories of power that are useful to inform a wide variety of academic disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. The RIF model (Regimes as Intermediate Factors) adds to the regime formation discourse by providing a visual representation of the complex role of regimes as intermediate between a system's power structure and the negotiations and decision-makings that occur within the system. The NSPD model (Necessary and Sufficient conditions plus Properties and Dimensions) provides a tool with which to engage in basic conceptual analysis. The FET model (Filter Effect Theory) adds to the periphery-center discourse by providing a visual representation of the interactions between Global International Regimes, Regional International Regimes, and Local Governments in relation to the code of international negotiations. The SRHP model (Schematic Representation of Hermeneutical Power) adds a discourse of hermeneutical proximity-distance in areas concerned with textual interpretation. Collections in African studies, education, and political science will find this book to be a valuable addition. ... Read more

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Armed Conflict in Africa offers a multidisciplinary look at the causes and remedies of armed conflict in Africa. It contains a collection of essays written by leading African Studies scholars and designed for both the student and practitioner alike. ... Read more

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A Widerand Brighter View ofWarfare in Africa

Here is a welcome book that provides a wider and brighter view of changes in the frequency and savagery ofarmed conflict in contemporary African nations, and on efforts to resolve those conflicts, than we usuallyget from novelists, journalists, and politicians. The book has nine chapters of carefully-edited, first-rate, scholarly papers that were first presented at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies in North Carolina. The chapters by Ali A. Mazrui, Julius E. Nyang'oror, Claude E. Welch Jr., and Rene Lamarchand are bound to raise a few eyebrows and provoke debate. The Sudan receives special attention in many of the chapters, and appropriately so. Editors Pumphrey and Schwartz-Barcott charitably have included maps, copies of key documents, and several appendices (including an impressively comprehensive and useful "A Chronology of Armed Conflict: Prehistory to Present") that alone would make this book a good value for any library and scholar's wallet, purse, or credit card. ... Read more

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For twenty years an acclaimed correspondent on PBS's The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and the winner of two Emmys and two Peabody Awards (for her coverage of Africa), Charlayne Hunter-Gault here offers a fresh and surprisingly optimistic assessment of modern Africa, revealing that there is more to the continent than the bad news of disease, disaster, and despair.
Blending personal memoir with sterling reportage and astute analysis, Hunter Gault presents an Africa we rarely see. She looks first at South Africa, contrasting the country she first encountered as a young reporter--when she personally witnessed the brutality of apartheid--with the black-led, multiracial society of today, a nation undergoing one of the most radical social and economic experiments in modern times. She acknowledges the great imbalance in income in modern South Africa (where upwards of 30 to 40 percent of blacks are unemployed) and describes the ravaging effect of AIDS on the nation, but she also underscores the nation's commitment to affirmative action, describes how South African universities have opened their doors to black students, and debunks many of the myths about the violence of South African society. Likewise, Hunter-Gault looks at the continent-wide efforts to promote "an African Renaissance," illuminating the political and economic conditions in Rwanda, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Angola, and Sierra Leone. Finally, the book describes the challenges of reporting on the much-maligned continent and the efforts of African journalists to tell their own story.
A compelling book on a topic of vital importance, New News Out of Africa promises to re-define what is news about this vast and complex continent.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Not what you're expecting
I found this book in the library under "African news".

Although I was expecting an analysis of news representation of Africa, I was sorely disappointed. Even from a qualitative analysis point, this book does nothing but fan the flames of discordance in a still recovering country while showing what a fantastic job the author did of interviewing various high-profile names.

Even while she attempts to disregard and prove otherwise the "dark continent" and "jungle-filled" myths of Africa, she does nothing but exacerbate these in the first few pages. She mentions that she was, with her family holidaying in the Eastern Cape, right in the middle of "a real jungle, in Africa!"

Jungles? In the Eastern Cape? In South Africa? Really? I'm surprised you didn't see tigers there while you were at it.

Cheerful and interesting at times, Hunter-Gault's book is unfortunately let down by the, as another reviewer stated, "I Factor". The book is written singularly through the lens of her one-sided viewpoint and should not be presented or expected to be a discourse analysis of international news. If anything, it supports and adds to the stereotype the American is attempting to dissolve.

Enjoyable if you know nothing about Mother Africa, a really awful and incensing read if you've ever lived in Africa - south or otherwise.

fash shipping
the book arrived very fast and in the condition as described. would definitely do business with again!

A snapshot
Charlayne Hunter-Gault provides a snapshot of life in Africa, from the perspective of someone who has lived and breathed news coverage on the continent for decades. Yes, the book is heavy on South Africa, but as the powerhouse of Africa and the launching point for most of her work, it makes the book more personal and anecdotal - a plus from my perspective.

She is a journalist questioning her industry's poor coverage of the continent -- that is the heart of the book. It is not meant to be an academic book or the definitive word on Africa. New News presents a moment in time. She addresses the sad fact that most Westerners have a severely skewed perspective of the continent, largely due to doomsday media coverage.

New News was a modest attempt to give some balance to what Hunter-Gault calls the four D's of the African Apocalypse. Yes, I would like to read more, but was grateful for the 100-some pages of honest, first-hand analysis.

Hunter-Gault Delivers with "New News"
Veteran journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault hits the nail on journalism's head with her latest book, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance.Hunter-Gault, who up until recently was the Johannesburg Bureau Chief for CNN, gives her take on media coverage of Africa.Half of the book is dedicated to her work experience in both pre- and post-apartheid South Africa, while the rest of the book examines what she calls the renaissance occurring in postcolonial Africa with the help of enterprising African journalists.If one only depended on Western media for news about the continent, they would conclude that the only things happening in Africa are war, famine and AIDS.This
Afro-pessimism is further compounded by patronizing celebrities and Live 8 concerts that claim to be "saving" Africa.While she agrees that atrocities, such as the HIV pandemic and the Darfur genocide should be covered, Hunter-Gault feels that this should be balanced out with the new news about the politicians and activists making a positive impact on the atrocities."Recalling the old/bad news and putting it in context must also be a part of our new news mission if there is to be any hope of the past instructing the future," she says.Hunter-Gault cites the rise in democratic elections, and, thus, more democratic leaders around the continent as part of the new news.The reporter also recognizes being an African American and a woman has also helped her to "come in right" or fairly report news about Africa.A must read for all journalism students and those who care about Africa's future.

Excellent Overview Of Africa's Current Progressive Trend
NEW NEWS shows us that there is, in fact, good news coming out of Africa.

This new book by Charlayne Hunter-Gault provides a lively overview of the political, economic and social progress occurring in many African countries in recent years.

Hunter-Gault, who has lived in South Africa for the past decade, personalizes the narrative with her own firsthand stories as a black female American journalist covering African events for CNN, NPR and the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.She frequently contrasts her African experiences with her life in the pre-Civil Rights American South.(As a young woman in 1961, Hunter-Gault famously integrated the University of Georgia amid racial taunts, personal threats, and student riots.)Hunter-Gault's personal anecdotes are perhaps the most compelling part of NEW NEWS.

For those seeking to understand where Africa has been in recent years, and where one hopes it will continue to go, NEW NEWS is an excellent start. ... Read more

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This ground-breaking volume provides a comprehensive review of public sector reforms and the impact of these reforms on the management of the civil service and the political-administrative interface. The focus is a study of how public sector reforms have impacted upon the executive arm of government with reference to developed and developing countries. South Africa, a country which has undergone an enormous amount of reforms, is used as a case study to highlight how public sector reforms have impacted upon the executive arm of government. The book therefore provides an insight into the functioning of government, the relationship between politicians and senior civil servants and an analysis of contemporary public management in a changing global context. It will prove invaluable for a broad range of people studying or working in the field of governance, public management, public administration, development studies and international relations. ... Read more