This book argues that the basic component of any societys social security and sustainability is cultural capital and its ability to fully recognise diversity in knowledge production and advancement. However, with regard to African societies, since the dawn of racial slavery and colonialism, cultural capital indigenous knowledge in particular has iniquitously and acrimoniously suffered marginalisation and pejorative ragtags. Increasingly since the 1990s, cultural capital informed by African knowledge systems has taken central stage in discussions of sustainability and development. This is not unrelated with the recognition by America and Europe in particular of the central role that cultural capital could and should assume in the logic of development and sustainability at a global level. Unfortunately, action has often failed to match words with regard to the situation in Africa. The current book seeks to make a difference by exploring the role that African cultural capital could and should assume to guarantee development and sustainability on the continent and globally. It argues that lofty pan-African ideals of collective self-reliance, self-sustaining development and economic growth would come to naught unless determined and decisive steps are taken towards full recognition of indigenous cultural capital on the continent.

This insightful Handbook brings together leading and emerging scholars within the field of nonprofit organization, serving as a call to action for academics to interrogate key contemporary issues such as backsliding and authoritarianism. It meticulously distinguishes traditional, often marginalist perspectives from nuanced counterarguments to balance out the field.

This comprehensive ground-breaking southern African-centred collection spans the breadth of disability research and practice. Reputable and emerging scholars, together with disability advocates adopt a critical and interdisciplinary stance to prove, challenge and shift commonly held social understanding of disability in traditional discourses, frontiers and practices in prominent areas such as inter/national development, disability studies, education, culture, health, religion, gender, sports, tourism, ICT, theatre, media , housing and legislation. This handbook provides a body of interdisciplinary analyses suitable for the development of disability studies in southern Africa. Through drawing upon and introducing resources from several disciplines, theoretical perspectives and personal narratives from disability activists, it reflects on disability and sustainable development in southern Africa. It also addresses a clear need to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives and narratives on disability and sustainable development in ways that do not undermine disability politics advanced by disabled people across the world. The handbook further acknowledges and builds upon the huge body of literature that understands the social, cultural, educational, psychological, economic, historical and political facets of the exclusion of disabled people. The handbook covers the following broad themes: • Disability inclusion, ICT and sustainable development • Access to education, from early childhood development up to higher education • Disability, employment, entrepreneurship and community-based rehabilitation • Religion, gender and parenthood • Tourism, sports and accessibility • Compelling narratives from disability activists on societal attitudes toward disability, media advocacy, accessible housing and social exclusion. Thus, this much-awaited handbook provides students, academics, practitioners, development partners, policy makers and activists with an authoritative framework for critical thinking and debates that inform policy and practice in incomparable ways, with the view to promoting inclusive and sustainable development.

One of the fundamental challenges in rethinking and remaking development in Africa from a Pan African perspective is that too much “mere talk” and “blame game” have played out at the expense of “real action”. The blame game and mere talk on Africa’s poverty and underdevelopment jam have remained printed in bold on the face of the continent, yet Africa’s dire situation warrants nothing less than real emphatic action. This book focuses on the empirics of the production and reproduction of poverty and underdevelopment across Africa in a fashion that warrants urgent pragmatic policy attention and quest for workable homegrown solutions to persistent predicaments. The volume advances the need to recognise the realities of global inequalities and move swiftly in a most informed and transparent manner to address the poverty and underdevelopment conundrum. The book sets the tempo and pace on the need for praxis and pragmatism on the African situation. It is handy to students and practitioners in African studies, poverty and development studies, global studies, policy studies, economics and political science.

The emergent technoscientific New World Order is being legitimised through discourses on openness and inclusivity. The paradox is that openness implies vulnerability and insecurities, particularly where closure would offer shelter. While some actors, including NGOs, preach openness of African societies, Africans clamour for protection, restitution and restoration. Africans struggle for ownership and access to housing, for national, cultural, religious, economic, and social belonging that would offer them the necessary security and protection, including protection from the global vicissitudes and matrices of power. In the presence of these struggles, to presuppose openness would be to celebrate vulnerability and insecurities. This book examines ways in which emergent technologies expose Africans and, more generally, peoples of the global south to political, economic, social, cultural and religious shocks occasioned by the coloniality of the global matrices of power. It notes that there is the use – by global elites – of technologies to incite postmodern revolutions designed to compound the vicissitudes and imponderables in the already unsettled lives of people north and south. Particularly targeted by these technologies are African and other governments that do not cooperate in the fulfilment of the interests of the hegemonic global elites. The book is handy to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.

Arguably, one of the most polarising figures in modern times has been Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the former President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. The mere mentioning of his name raises a lot of debate and often times vicious, if not irreconcilable differences, both in Zimbabwe and beyond. In an article titled: ‘Lessons of Zimbabwe’, Mahmood Mamdani succinctly captures the polarity thus: ‘It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe… and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa.’ This, together with his recent ‘stylised’ ouster, speaks volumes to his conflicted legacy. The divided opinion on Mugabe’s legacy can broadly be represented, first, by those who consider him as a champion of African liberation, a Pan-Africanist, an unmatched revolutionary and an avid anti-imperialist who, literally, ‘spoke the truth’ to Western imperialists. On the other end of the spectrum are those who – seemingly paying scant regard to the predicament of millions of black Zimbabweans brutally dispossessed of their land and human dignity since the Rhodesian days – have differentially characterised Mugabe as a rabid black fascist, an anti-white racist, an oppressor, and a dictator. Drawing on all these opinions and characterisations, the chapters ensconced in this volume critically reflect on the personality, leadership style and contributions of Robert Mugabe during his time in office, from 1980 to November 2017. The volume is timely in view of the current contested transition in Zimbabwe, and with regard to the ongoing consultations on the Land Question in neighbouring South Africa. It is a handy and richly documented text for students and practitioners in political science, African studies, economics, policy studies, development studies, and global studies.