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Browsing Journal Articles by Publication Type "Book Review"
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- ItemRestrictedAskari: a story of collaboration and betrayal in the anti-apartheid struggle by Jacob Dlamini (review)(2016) du Toit, AndréWith the publication of Jacob Dlamini’s Askari the historiography of the South African post-apartheid transition has – in its own good time – come of age. Building on Dlamini’s first book, Native Nostalgia (2009), it also announces the arrival of perhaps our first major post-apartheid historian.
- ItemOpen AccessBook review of Shaping the African Savanna by Michael Bollig(2022-03-01) Hoffman, M TBook details Bollig, M, Shaping the African Savannah: from Capitalist frontier to Arid Eden in Namibia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2020. 404 pages, hardback, ISBN 9781108488488
- ItemRestrictedBook Review: Capitalizing China(2014-01) Schrire, RobertChina’s economic boom took many analysts by surprise because of its deviation from conventional growth theory. This volume, featuring papers from a conference co-hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the American National Bureau of Economic Research, makes a significant contribution to our knowledge. Unlike most writings on China, it is based upon a detailed analysis of rich and extensive empirical data. Although most of the contributors are US-based or -educated, the volume contains a refreshing range of views and arguments.
- ItemRestrictedBook Review: The Scramble for Africa in the 21st Century: From the Old World to the New(2012-12) Duthie, Shawn RobertIn this follow-up to their previous collaboration The Scramble for Africa in the 21st Century: A View from the South, Harry Stephan and Michael Power have produced an updated look at the continent. The newest edition follows the same structure and argument as the 2006 edition, but tells of an Africa that has witnessed major changes over the past five years. Stephan, a University of Cape Town-based academic and manager of a large company, and Power, a global strategist at Investec, South Africa, are more than suited to the challenge of producing a book of this nature, given their experience in the business world, which no doubt improves the analysis of the relevant theories of African political economy.
- ItemRestrictedThe Challenge of African Democracy(2008) Reddy, ThivenORDINARY AFRICAN CITIZENS EXPECTED A BETTER LIFE following independence, but the post-independence period has proved to be utterly disappointing. The dominant narrative of the experience since independence can be read as follows: expectations at independence; failure of the state and elites to address African development and democracy; crisis of rule, poverty and societal withdrawal; structural adjustment programmes; internal opposition; democratic transitions with varied outcomes; and the present disappointment with democracy. Yet many of those living on the continent remain optimistic about the future. Where once coups were the established pattern for elite circulation, and single-party and military regimes dominated the African political landscape, the late 1980s witnessed a wave of competitive multi-party elections across the continent. In the hostile socioeconomic conditions prevalent in many African countries, the possibility of democracy flourishing was interpreted as a new beginning.
- ItemRestrictedThe Owl of Minerva and the Ironic Fate of the Progressive Praxis of Radical Historiography in Post-apartheid South Africa(2010) du Toit, AndréThis review essay reflects on issues raised by a recent edited volume. Despite its title and stated objectives, ‘History Making and Present Day Politics’ does not provide a broad and inclusive survey of post-apartheid South African histo- riographical developments. Its main topic is the unexpected demise in the post- apartheid context of the radical or revisionist approach that had invigorated and transformed the humanities and social studies during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of the anti-apartheid struggle the radical historians had developed a plausible model of praxis for progressive scholarship, yet in the new post-apartheid democratic South Africa radical historical scholarship itself encountered a crisis of survival. This should not be confused with a general ‘crisis’ of historical scholarship in South Africa, as some of the uneven contributions to this volume contend, as that remains an active and diversely productive field due also to substantial contributions by historians not based in South Africa. If the dramatic and ironic fate of radical historical scholarship in the context of the transition to a post-apartheid democracy is the volume’s primary topic, then it unfortunately fails to provide serious and sustained critical reflection on the origins and pos- sible explanations of that crisis. It is argued that a marked feature of the accounts of ‘history making’ provided in this volume is the (former) radical historians’ lack of self-reflexivity and the scant interest shown in the underlying history of their own intellectual trajectories.
- ItemRestrictedReview Article: War in Southern Africa(1992) Seegers, AnnetteThe study of war really is not what it used to be. The twentieth century has altered our way of looking at wars and the military. Scholars became interested in how armed forces relate to economic affairs, culture or politi- cal decision-making, how intelligence affected actions, and the effects of wars on imagination and memory. Militarism, resistance to it, and peace studies spawned countless books. And what was once thought to be peripheral -- budgetary battles, for example, or the role of women --became central. The four books under review here are about war in Africa. The first, a special issue of Cambridge Anthropology, is the product of a colloquium on contemporary warfare in Africa. The remaining books are devoted to southern Africa. Namibia is the subject of 'The Devils are among Us'. In 'War and Society', editors Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan collect twenty-four contributions about South Africa. 'Like Lions they Fought' is also on South Africa, but Robert B. Edgerton takes a more historical line in examining the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.
- ItemOpen AccessThe New Constitutional and Administrative Law. Vol II: Administative Law (Book review)(2003) Corder, HughAnyone reflecting on the level of activity in constitutional law in South Africa over the past 15 years or so would have been startled to hear a prominent judge comment rather plaintively just three years ago on the dearth of incisive and critical academic writing in the field. Surely the extra-ordinary achievements of the recent past would have been unattainable had there not been a considerable body of scholarship feeding the creative processes, not only on the Bench?