Violence in its various proportions, genres and manifestations has had an enduring historical legacy the world over. However, works speaking to approaches aimed at mitigating violence characteristic of Africa are very limited. As some scholars have noted, Africans have experienced cycles of violence since the pre-colonial epoch, such that overt violence has become banalised on the African continent. This has had the effect of generating complex results, legacies and perennial emotional wounds that call for healing, reconciliation, justice and positive peace. Yet, in the absence of systematic and critical approaches to the study of violence on the continent, discourses on violence would hardly challenge the global matrices of violence that threaten peace and development in Africa. This volume is a contribution in the direction of such urgently needed systematic and critical approaches. It interrogates, from different angles and with inspiration from a multidisciplinary perspective, the contentious production and resilience of violence in Africa. It calls for a paradigm shift an alternative approach that forges and merges African customary dispute resolution and Western systems of dispute resolution towards a framework of positive peace, holistic restoration, sustainable development and equity. The book is a welcome contribution to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.

Violence in its various proportions, genres and manifestations has had an enduring historical legacy the world over. However, works speaking to approaches aimed at mitigating violence characteristic of Africa are very limited. As some scholars have noted, Africans have experienced cycles of violence since the pre-colonial epoch, such that overt violence has become banalised on the African continent. This has had the effect of generating complex results, legacies and perennial emotional wounds that call for healing, reconciliation, justice and positive peace. Yet, in the absence of systematic and critical approaches to the study of violence on the continent, discourses on violence would hardly challenge the global matrices of violence that threaten peace and development in Africa. This volume is a contribution in the direction of such urgently needed systematic and critical approaches. It interrogates, from different angles and with inspiration from a multidisciplinary perspective, the contentious production and resilience of violence in Africa. It calls for a paradigm shift – an alternative approach that forges and merges African customary dispute resolution and Western systems of dispute resolution – towards a framework of positive peace, holistic restoration, sustainable development and equity. The book is a welcome contribution to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.

This unique volume seeks both to historicize and to deconstruct the pervasive, almost ritualistic, association of Africa with forms of terrorism as well as extreme violence, the latter bordering on and including genocide. Africa is tendentiously associated with violence in the popular and academic imagination alike. Written by leading authorities in postcolonial studies and African history, as well as highly promising emergent scholars, this book highlights political, social and cultural processes in Africa which incite violence or which facilitate its negotiation or negation through non-violent social practice. The chapters cover diverse historical periods ranging from fourteenth century Ethiopia and early twentieth century Cameroon, to contemporary analyses set in Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. It makes a crucial contribution to a revitalized understanding of the social and historical coordinates of violence - or its absence - in African settings. Violence and Non-Violence in Africa will be of interest to students and scholars of African history and anthropology, colonialism and post-colonialism, political science and Africanist cultural studies.

Though conflicts among (African) nations diminished at the end of the last millennium, the need for peace remains a perennial concern for African citizens within their communities and countries. Once again, Maphosa and Keasley have engaged a collection of scholar practitioners to address the query ‘What’s Going to Make a Difference in Contemporary Peace Education around Africa?’ The contributing authors draw from daily headlines as well as African literature to unearth twenty-first century quandaries with which educators in formal and informal contexts are called upon to grapple. The ‘What’s Going to Make a Difference’ authors offer insights to educators, peace education practitioners and parents for everyday living. The authors probe the wisdom of the recent and ancient past and bring forth pearls for contemporary moments. All in discerning effort to respond to the guiding question, the editors and their contributing colleagues deliver a compelling set of revelations for Making a Difference in Peace Education for African and world citizens.

Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa reveals the ways in which domestic space and domestic relationships take on different meanings in African contexts that extend the boundaries of family obligation, kinship, and dependency. The term domestic violence encompasses kin-based violence, marriage-based violence, gender-based violence, as well as violence between patrons and clients who shared the same domestic space. As a lived experience and as a social and historical unit of analysis, domestic violence in colonial and postcolonial Africa is complex. Using evidence drawn from Sub-saharan Africa, the chapters explore the range of domestic violence in Africa’s colonial past and its present, including taxation and the insertion of the household into the broader structure of colonial domination. African histories of domestic violence demand that scholars and activists refine the terms and analyses and pay attention to the historical legacies of contemporary problems. This collection brings into conversation historical, anthropological, legal, and activist perspectives on domestic violence in Africa and fosters a deeper understanding of the problem of domestic violence, the limits of international human rights conventions, and local and regional efforts to address the issue.

This volume critically interrogates, from different angles and dimensions, the resilience of conflict and violence into 21st century Africa. The demise of European colonial administration in Africa in the 1960s wielded fervent hope for enduring peace for the people of Africa. Regrettably, conflict alongside violence in all its dimensions physical, religious, political, psychological and structural remain unabated and occupy central stage in contemporary Africa. The resilience of conflict and violence on the continental scene invokes unsettling memories of the past while negatively influencing the present and future of crafting inclusive citizenship and statehood. The book provides fresh insightful ethnographic and intellectual material for rethinking violence and conflict, and for fostering long-lasting peace and political justice on the continent and beyond. With its penetrating focus on conflict and associated trajectories of violence in Africa, the book is an inestimable asset for conflict management practitioners, political scientists, historians, civil society activists and leaders in economics and politics as well as all those interested in the affairs of Africa.

One of the oldest survival pursuits undertaken by the weak and the downtrodden people across the world has been begging. Going back to the ancient Christian biblical times up to the present epoch as well as across varying spatial settings, in situations of trouble and tribulations, parts of various communities have resorted to beggary to either overcome immediate adversities or longer term calamities. Drawing on insights from two polar theoretical lenses of Social Constructionism and Social Deconstructionism, and guided by a pithy study of the begging across the African continent especially by Zimbabweans, this book troubles the various contours related to the subject of begging. Inter alia, the book considers the concept of begging, the causes of the prevalence of begging across the world and particularly among Zimbabweans, the challenges and benefits associated with the pursuit of alms, the impact of begging in foreign lands as well as some of the strategies that beggars employ to maximize their collections and/ or profits. What can be discerned from the book is that for many, begging is one of the last resort undertakings with low pickings. However, from a utilitarian perspective, begging has helped to sustain the impoverished livelihoods of Zimbabweans, both inside and outside the borders of the country since the advent of a debilitating crisis experienced from the turn of the new millennium. On the whole, this book seeks to provoke further researches on an important socio-economic area that affects many African communities but has so far been scantily researched. The book is handy for students and practitioners in economic history, African studies, economics, risk and disaster management, social anthropology, political science, and development studies.