This monograph is intended to examine the epistemology of restorative rights in view of the continuing violation of rights in all aspects of life on the African continent and other parts of the world. It is based on the research, which the Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute undertook between 2006-2008, under a cross-disciplinary research project entitled Restorative Justice and its Relationship to International Humanitarian Law, which resulted in a Comprehensive Report that was later discussed at an international conference in Nairobi in August 2008. This conference was opened by the Prime Minister of Kenya, Right Hon. Raila Odinga and attended by Ministers of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, judges and other ministers from the five countries in which the research was carried out, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Southern Sudan. The objective here is to relate the concept of restorative justice, in its broad and cross-disciplinary meaning to the epistemology of Afrikology and transdisciplinarity, which aim at breaking down disciplinary boundaries between the different academic disciplines, which inhibit our capabilities of looking at realities in a comprehensive, holistic manner; leading to the adoption of fragmented solutions to problems, which inevitably fail to address those problems. As stated in the monograph on the epistemology of Afrikology, knowledge is created holistically by the heart and the basis of the perceptions and experiences of the five senses. The knowledge created through the word, which ultimately constitutes the language and the community, is related to our cosmic forces and reason, which gives cosmic significance to our existence. We cannot therefore detach ourselves from these cosmic forces and reality must be examined from this combinatory holistic understanding.

Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) was publicly launched as a think tank in March 2011 and took up the task of following a transdisciplinary approach to the research generated within the organisation. The projects initiated by MISTRA integrate various streams of knowledge and expertise when examining complex issues such as nation formation, economic growth, social equity, adaptable science and technology, and other strategic topics related to South Africa's development as a democracy. Serving in part as an intellectual movement and in part as a research institution, activities are structured around diverse topics that require the opening up of intellectual space for strategic research and reflection specific, but not exclusive, to the African continent. A project was launched: The concept and application of transdisciplinarity in intellectual discourse and research. The intent of the study was two fold: in the first place the need for better theoretical understanding of a transdisciplinarity approach was identified as a necessity; and in the second place MISTRA intended to apply transdisciplinarity towards the opening up of an African approach guided in part by the Afrikology principles of the late Professor Dani Nabudere. By orientation Transdisciplinarity is an approach that recognises a united and borderless intellectual terrain. It is an attempt to formulate an integrative process of knowledge production and distribution in reaction to the twentieth century narrow discipline focus and hyper-specialisation. It responds to the multi-layered challenges of diffused disciplines, interlinked socio economic problems, the impact of globalisation, the de-terretorialised nation state, technological advancements, environmental concerns, agriculture and food security and health. And it recognises that, in history, some of the most revolutionary breakthroughs in science and technology in fact happened on the margins of narrow disciplines.

In the past four decades, transdisciplinarity has gained conceptual and practical traction for its transformative value in accounting for the complex challenges besetting humankind, including social relations and natural ecosystems. The need to develop frameworks for joint problem-solving involving diverse stakeholders is unquestionable. Besides generating inclusivity, which embraces academia, civil society, and policymakers in the public and private sectors, transdisciplinarity allows for the appreciation of phenomena from a multiplicity of angles and affords societies creative ways of seeking solutions to challenges that may appear intractable. This book puts forward alternatives within this arena and attempts to directly respond to the multilayered challenges of diffuse disciplines, interlinked socioeconomic problems, impacts of globalization, technological advancements, environmental concerns, food security, and more.

Travel and the Pan African Imagination explores the African Atlantic world as a productive theater or space where modernity, racialized dominance, and racialized resistance took form. The book stresses the importance of placing three Atlantic figures—the Charleston, South Carolina-based armed resistance leader Denmark Vesey; the West African emigration advocate Edward Wilmot Blyden; and the Christian missionary and teacher in Liberia as well as the United States, Alexander Crummell—within an Atlantic context and as African world community figures between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The book also examines the religious origins of Black Power ideology and modern Pan Africanism as products of the intense dialogue within the African world community about concepts of modernity, progress, and civilization. Tracy Keith Flemming identifies how travel and social mobility led to the generation of an ever more complex and dynamic Atlantic world and of a fluid and adaptive African world community imagination for those figures who were forced to operate within and against a racially framed universe. The vexing social position and symbolic figure of “the African” was central to the dilemmas facing the racialized imagination of African world community figures and the discipline of Africology.

Dani Wadada Nabudere, the illustrious Ugandan scholar, produced a diverse body of work on various aspects of African culture, politics, and philosophy. Toward the end of his life, he formulated a theoretical construct that he termed “Afrikology.” Unlike most other Afrocentrists, who have stopped with the task of proving the primacy of the Egyptian past and its numerous cultural and scientific achievements, Nabudere strenuously attempts to connect that illustrious heritage with the African present. This, remarkably, is what makes his project worthy of careful attention. His corpus is multidisciplinary, although a major preoccupation with Africa is discernible in virtually all his works. His writings deal with critiques of imperialism, African political systems, processes of globalization and Africa’s location within them, and finally the ideological and existential imperatives of Afrocentric discourse.

This handbook comprises fresh and incisive research focusing on African media, culture and communication. The chapters from a cross-section of scholars dissect the forces shaping the field within a changing African context. It adds critical corpora of African scholarship and theory that places the everyday worlds, needs and uses of Africans first. The book goes beyond critiques of the marginality of African approaches in media and communication studies to offer scholars the theoretical and empirical toolkit needed to start building critical corpora of African scholarship and theory that places the everyday worlds, needs and uses of Africans first. Decoloniality demands new epistemological interventions in African media, culture and communication, and this book is an important interlocutor in this space. In a globally interconnected world, changing patterns of authority and power pose new challenges to the ways in which media institutions are constituted and managed, as well as how communication and media policy is negotiated and the manner in which citizens engage with increasing media opportunities. The handbook focuses on the interrelationships of the local and the global and the concomitant consequences for media practice, education and citizen engagement in today’s Africa. Altogether, the book foregrounds convivial epistemologies relevant for locating African media and communication in the pluriverse. This handbook is an essential read for critical media, communications, cultural studies and journalism scholars.

Looting has become an increasingly popular concept in South Africa as an unsophisticated interpretation of ownership by "force" of property during periods of mayhem. However, looting is a complex concept whose origin spans a long history that cuts across time and space. In The Afrocentricity Trajectories of Looting in South Africa, edited by Mfundo Masuku, Dalifa Ngobese, Mbulaheni Obert Maguvhe, and Sifiso Ndlovu, contributors provide sophisticated analysis on the concept of "looting" and address nuances in the concept of looting, looking at links to spiraling inequality and poverty, racialization of property ownership, and skewed access and benefits of economic policies. As shown in this collection, looting has taken on a variety of political meanings: a challenge to the violence of racial capitalism, an alternative and accelerated path to justice, and a way to call attention to the reality of racial violence that is often ignored by the media, to name a few. This volume provides a critical analysis of looting from a multi-disciplinary approach that focuses on a combination of themes to show that looting is deeply rooted in property "ownership" and spiraling poverty and inequality that is structural in nature.