South Africa's 'Border War' provides a timely study of the 'war of words' waged by retired South African Defence Force (SADF) generals and other veterans against critics and detractors. The book explores the impact of the 'Border War' on South African culture and society during apartheid and in the new dispensation and discusses the lasting legacy or 'afterlife' of the war in great detail. It also offers an appraisal of the secondary literature of the 'Border War', supplemented by...

Composing Apartheid is the first book ever to chart the musical world of a notorious period in world history, apartheid South Africa. It explores how music was produced through, and was productive of, key features of apartheid’s social and political topography, as well as how music and musicians contested and even helped to conquer apartheid. The collection of essays is intentionally broad, and the contributors include historians, sociologists and anthropologists, as well as ethnomusicolog...

For much of its time in power, the National Party government was shored up by the direct involvement of its security forces. Ordinary citizens had no idea that their taxes were being used to fund unorthodox and even illegal operations, ranging from international propaganda campaigns to local death squads. From the dreaded Security Branch, the sinister Civil Cooperation Bureau, the aptly named BOSS and the ubiquitous front companies set up to bypass an arms embargo and economic sanctions, S...

What really happened during South Africa’s military involvement in Angola? Did the military leaders always see eye to eye with the politicians – and with each other? Was South Africa responsible for the death of Mozambican President Samora Machel? What was the extent of South Africa’s nuclear programme? How did South Africa’s military machine deal with the end of apartheid? Based on interviews with the former generals of the South African Defence Force, Days of the Generals addresses these...

Present Imperfect asks how South African writers have responded to the end of apartheid, to the hopes that attended the birth of the 'new' nation in 1994, and to the inevitable disappointments that have followed. The first full-length study of affect in South Africa's literature, it understands 'disappointment' both as a description of bad feeling and as naming a missed appointment with all that was promised by the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid Struggle (a dis-appointment). Att...

This classic book is a powerful indictment of contemporary attitudes to race. By accusing British intellectuals and politicians on both sides of the political divide of refusing to take race seriously, Paul Gilroy caused immediate uproar when this book was first published in 1987. A brilliant and explosive exploration of racial discourses, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack provided a powerful new direction for race relations in Britain. Still dynamite today and as relevant as...

This handbook brings together an international team of scholars from different disciplines to reflect on African popular cultural imaginaries. These imaginaries – in the sense of cultural productions, contexts, consumers, producers, platforms, and the material, affective and discursive resources they circulate – are influential in shaping African realities. Collectively, the chapters assembled in this handbook index the genres, methods, mediums, questions and encounters that preoccupy prod...

Popular culture in Africa is the product of everyday life: the unofficial, the non-canonical. And it is the dynamism of this culture that makes Africa what it is. In this book, Karin Barber offers a journey through the history of music, theatre, fiction, song, dance, poetry, and film from the seventeenth century to the present day. From satires created by those living in West African coastal towns in the era of the slave trade, to the poetry and fiction of townships and mine compounds in S...

This ground breaking new work draws together a cross-section of South African scholars to provide a lively and comprehensive review of the under-researched area of heritage practice following the introduction of the National Heritage Resources Act.Looking at the daily heritage debates, from naming streets to projects such as the Gateway to Robben Island, Desire Lines addresses the innovative strategies that have emerged in the practice of defining, identifying and developi...

Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis is a pioneering effort to insert South Africa’s largest city into urban theory, on its own terms. Johannesburg is Africa’s premier metropolis. Yet theories of urbanization have cast it as an emblem of irresolvable crisis, the spatial embodiment of unequal economic relations and segregationist policies, and a city that responds to but does not contribute to modernity on the global scale. Complicating and contesting such characterizations, the co...

Mzo Sirayi has embarked on a highly impressive and daring enterprise with theunfl inching boldness of a scholar who is driven by a passionate pursuit to set therecord straight. He manages to pull no punches and make no apologies by being trueto his convictions, especially within the context of a new South Africa. The bookadopts a largely historicized, critical and analytical perspective, which strikinglyapproximates that of postcolonial theory.Owen...

Hip Hop Africa explores a new generation of Africans who are not only consumers of global musical currents, but also active and creative participants. Eric Charry and an international group of contributors look carefully at youth culture and the explosion of hip hop in Africa, the embrace of other contemporary genres, including reggae, ragga, and gospel music, and the continued vitality of drumming. Covering Senegal, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and South A...