Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

No. 22: South African Government And Civil Society Responses To Zimbabwean Migration, Tara Poizer

Southern African Migration Programme

This policy brief discusses a key paradox in relation to Zimbabwean migration into South Africa. While Zimbabwean migration since 2000 has been the largest concentrated flow in South African history, South Africa’s reaction to this movement has been characterised by the attempt to continue with ‘business as usual’ and ‘no crisis’ responses.1 Compared with most other developed and developing countries, where an inflow of tens or hundreds of thousands of people is usually treated as a political crisis, such a non-response to over a million immigrants requires explanation.

The lack of commensurate responses is especially noticeable within the various departments …

Increasing Political Activism And Mobilization: Building An Oromo Agency And Capacity For Liberation, Asafa Jalata

Asafa Jalata

Without increasing our political activism, mobilizing and organizing our people, we cannot effectively challenge and defeat our external and internal enemies that are attempting to strangulate the development of Oromummaa and the progress of the Oromo national struggle. Our external enemies have been using Oromo clienteles to achieve their political and economic objectives in Oromia. Some Oromos have been used as raw materials in building other nations. Such Oromos have lacked political and national consciousness or lacked self-respect and attacked the Oromo nation for money and other interests. As the Said Bare government created and used the Somali Abo group …

Peace Without Justice, Or Justice Without Peace?, Clair Apodaca

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Peace without justice is an illusion. The use of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute human rights violations not only provides restorative justice for those harmed by the wrongdoing but also retributive justice towards the perpetrators. Restorative justice seeks to help heal the wounds of the victims and community by acknowledging and witnessing the pain and suffering of the victim. Retributive justice seeks to punish the offenders. The hope is that retribution will deter or prevent future acts of violence by holding perpetrators accountable for the violations of human rights, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. …

Pugnacité Et Pouvoir: La Représentation Des Femmes Dans Les Fi Lms D’Ousmane Sembène, Sheila Petty

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As a pioneer of African fi lmmaking, Ousmane Sembène has demonstrated a remarkable dedication to exploring the importance of women in African society. From the struggle against colonial oppression by Diouana in La Noire de… (1966) at the beginning of his career, to the character of Kiné and her struggle to build a life for her children in postcolonial Senegal in Faat Kiné (2000), Sembène has portrayed African women as agents of change and courage in their societies. This essay explores women’s representations in two fi lms from Sembène’s oeuvre, including Black Girl (1966) and Faat Kine (2000). Using narrative …

Du Néoréalisme En Afrique: Une Relecture De Borom Sarret, Sada Niang

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Critical evaluations of African cinema have tended in the past to confi ne the analysis of this corpus to its content. In books and articles published earlier, the colonial and postcolonial history of the continent abound, social dramas are explained at length, thefts at all levels, cultural mystifi cation, corruption as well as violence are amply described. The insights of such an approach notwithstanding, the aesthetic sources of African cinema are not limited to the rural and the traditional. Through a comparison of Vittorio De Sica Bicycle Thief and Sembène’s Borom Sarret, this paper argues that african cinema inserted itself …

L’Éthique Et L’Esthétique Chez Ousmane Sembéne, Frederic Ivor Case

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The ethics and aesthetics of the films and novels of Sembène reflect the axiological principles of his work. Sembène’s impact can be felt throughout as his practice in both cinema and literature helped redefi ne the features of the African novel and film. For him, writing was fed by the experiences, however painful, of workers of diverse origins attempting to survive their difficult conditions. His novels reveal the agony of this world but also various opportunities for self realization among his characters. Such practice, born out of the sweat, resistance and determination of men and women eking out their living, …

Un Autre Monde Est Possible: Création Et Résistance Dans L’Oeuvre D’Ousmane Sembène, David Murphy

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

During an artistic career that spanned half a century, Ousmane Sembène often played a pioneering role. However, although the many awards he received constitute recognition of the artistic quality of his work, his literary and cinematic output is best known for its denunciation of colonial and neo-colonial injustices. This article argues that Sembène’s importance is not solely political, and nor should it be limited to his role as a pioneer of African cinema. Sembène was also a great artist who developed a profound refl ection on his practice both as a writer and as a filmmaker. The article will trace …

De La Fiction Criminelle En Afrique. Relecture Des Films D’Ousmane Sembène, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

For institutional, ideological and even sociological reasons, the detective genre had difficulty rising to prominence within literatures and especially within the field of African cinema. If one observes today its shy emergence in the works of some West African film directors and within popular Nigerian video films, it is nonetheless possible, thanks to a finer scrutiny of theories developed on the subject, to realize that some films by Ousmane Sembène contain aesthetic strategies that allow for a fresh assessment of the works of a director whose films were often reduced to their ideological aspects. This second reading also unravels the …

Les Stéréotypes, Vecteurs De La Constriction Identitaire Chez Biyaoula, Françoise Cévaër

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

From the 1980s, writers in the francophone diaspora have examined the post-colonial African identity and its portrayal, according a special place to stereotyping. Thus, they denounce not only its tyrannical hold, but also the devastating effect of stereotyping on individuals and societies. Paradoxically, they show how stereotyping can offer to the post-colonial subject a means of manipulating identity features, therefore, of avoiding predetermination. In its study of, mainly, Biyaoula’s L’impasse, this article also proposes to show how the stereotypes, going beyond the limits of theory, is reborn within he body, becoming a veritable enclosure for forgery of identity.

La Quête Poétique Dans L’Oeuvre De Fouad Gabriel Naffah, Georges Khoriaty

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In his poetic search, Fouad Gabriel Naffah states his conception of a poetic image revealing the absolute and the universal, his verbal adventure which consists of disintegrating the conventional language with sclerotic forms in order to have access to the authenticity and to ensure the everlasting poem. He also sets out the poetry of the imaginary which, through a dialectic and harmonization of contradictories, extends all over the universe to include and reach the study of the eternal return that satisfies his longing for eternity.

December Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Activist.” Harper's Magazine. November 2008.

Human Rights Or Inhuman Wrongs, Edward Friedman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The project of promoting universally recognized human rights, that is, the commitments of the U.N. General Assembly-ratified Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), is in danger. Military and political intervention, including economic sanctions, to stop genocide and ethnic and other political mass murder is under attack. Apparently the lessons of Hitler’s holocaust, the Turkish genocide of Armenians, Pol Pot’s slaughter of innocents, and the loss of life in Rwanda are being rethought and un-taught. So-called peace is now preferred over prevention. The dead may have died in vain.

Global Ethics And The Role Of Academics, Christien Van Den Anker

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Academics have a social and professional responsibility that stems from their individual duties as global citizens. With their privileged position as lifelong learners they need to assess carefully where they direct their attention for research, their teaching and their exchange of knowledge with the wider public. This means that academic freedom does not only bring a range of rights, it also involves duties to develop and advocate ethical positions on real-life dilemmas and to engage in self-reflection on being in the role of contributing to oppression.

Challenging The International Criminal Court Over Al-Bashir, Emma Gilligan

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As of late November 2008, we are still awaiting the decision of the U.N. Security Council with regard to the request for the arrest of Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide put forward by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in July. With former Presidents Charles Taylor of Liberia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia as the only two heads of state formally indicted by the ICC since its inception in 2002, the question remains whether the U.N. Security Council will allow this controversial indictment of al-Bashir by Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo or invoke Article 16 …

Alex De Waal's Shuttle Diplomacy, Sarah Stanlick

Human Rights & Human Welfare

This month’s discussion piece, “The Activist,” is a critical look at one of the most renowned scholars of the turmoil in Sudan. Alex de Waal, a man with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the different factions, aspects, and issues surrounding the conflicts in Sudan, is profiled under a careful eye. De Waal, a competent critic—as McDonell notes who “takes pride in his competence, and he does not hesitate to criticize activists he deems inexpert”— has built a career on a meticulously researched understanding of the conflict. He honed that reputation through careful action, critical thinking, and a critical voice for …

Increasing Political Activism And Mobilization: Building An Oromo Agency And Capacity For Liberation, Asafa Jalata

Sociology Publications and Other Works

Without increasing our political activism, mobilizing and organizing our people, we cannot effectively challenge and defeat our external and internal enemies that are attempting to strangulate the development of Oromummaa and the progress of the Oromo national struggle. Our external enemies have been using Oromo clienteles to achieve their political and economic objectives in Oromia. Some Oromos have been used as raw materials in building other nations. Such Oromos have lacked political and national consciousness or lacked self-respect and attacked the Oromo nation for money and other interests. As the Said Bare government created and used the Somali Abo group …

The Role Of Private Military Companies In Us-Africa Policy, Emmanuel Aning, Thomas Jaye, Samuel Atuobi

Emmanuel Kwesi Aning

This article discusses the increasing use of private military companies (PMCs) in United States' security policy in Africa, and examines this phenomenon in relation to the US' various military training programmes on the continent. We argue that the increasing use of PMCs in US security policy has evolved due to two critical and mutually dependent developments; African state weakness and resource stringency on the one hand, and the US's overwhelming security commitments around the world, combined with military downsizing, on the other. The article further argues that the involvement of PMCs is to a large extent informed by US concerns …

Faces Of Terrorism In The Age Of Globalization: Terrorism From Above And Below, Asafa Jalata

Asafa Jalata

This paper explains how the intensification of globalization as the modern world system with its ideological intensity of racism and religious extremism and its concomitant advancement in technology and organizational skills has increased the danger of all forms of terrorism. In this world system, the contestation over economic resources and power and the resistance to domination and repression or religious and ideological extremism have increased the occurrence of terrorism from above (i.e. state actors) and from below (i.e. non-state actors). We cannot adequately grasp the essence and characteristics of modern terrorism without understanding the larger cultural, social, economic, and political …

Faces Of Terrorism In The Age Of Globalization: Terrorism From Above And Below, Asafa Jalata

Sociology Publications and Other Works

This paper explains how the intensification of globalization as the modern world system with its ideological intensity of racism and religious extremism and its concomitant advancement in technology and organizational skills has increased the danger of all forms of terrorism. In this world system, the contestation over economic resources and power and the resistance to domination and repression or religious and ideological extremism have increased the occurrence of terrorism from above (i.e. state actors) and from below (i.e. non-state actors). We cannot adequately grasp the essence and characteristics of modern terrorism without understanding the larger cultural, social, economic, and political …

U.S. Foreign Policy Toward West Africa: Issues On Democracy, Economic Development And Security, Andrew Ewoh

Andrew I.E. Ewoh

No abstract provided.

Health As A Basic Human Right: Efficacy Of Quality Assurance For Healthcare In Uganda, Ally Pregulman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Quality of health care is an important aspect of health services delivery because of its ability to maximize outputs within given resource constraints. Quality assurance programs for health care are paramount to the realization of good quality health care because of their ability to identify gaps in service provision. The Ministry of Health and other stakeholders in health care have created quality assurance supervision and support programs for the health sector, yet there is a disconnect between the programs and the operational realities of the sector. The health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are far from being achieved within Uganda and …

Special Collections At The United States International University Library In Kenya: Strategies For Development And Implementation, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Due to the completion of a brand-new library building at the United States International University (USIU) in Nairobi, Kenya, opportunities for collection development at the library have appeared. This paper outlines three strategies for taking advantage of the special collections holdings and developing them over time. The authors provide research on creating an Africana collection, a United Nations (U.N.) Depository, and a UNESCO Memory of the World Program digital archive. These efforts are aimed at increasing indigenous knowledge and raising the profile of the university internationally. The global implications of this project dovetail with the university’s stated mission of expanding …

An Assessment Of Local Peoples Opinions Of Community Conservation Initiatives In Relation To Livelihood Strategies In Kenya, Jill Mechtenberg

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Abstract This paper analyzed the changing livelihood strategies in Kenya, and their cultural impacts via a literature review. I then combined this understanding with the data I collected while in Kenya to examine the opinions local people have of community conservation initiatives, based on their changing livelihood strategies. I expected to find that the following factors would have an affect on the opinions local community members have of community conservation initiatives: livelihood strategy, gender, ethnicity, whether or not they believe the distribution of benefits coming from wildlife conservation is equitable, what issues they would like to see improved within community …

Conditional Incentives As A Basis For Rural Development In Egypt, Gideon Kruseman

Gideon Kruseman

policy bvrief concerning outcomes of conference “Developing Policy Towards Dynamic Rural Areas in Egypt” held on June 16th 2008, focusing on four important components: agricultural competitiveness, environment and countryside, economic diversification and quality of rural life and local institutional capacity.

Saga Of African Underdevelopment: A Viable Approach For Africa's Sustainable Development In The 21st Century, Tetteh A. Kofi, Asayehgn Desta

Asayehgn Desta

Politique Culturelle : Tradition, Modernité Et Arts Contemporains Au Sénégal, 1960-2000, Kinsey Katchka

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay approaches contemporary arts in Senegal and their exhibition from the perspective of cultural policy. This is an especially salient approach in Senegal, where policy has played a significant role in exhibition and creative practice since the colonial period. This history is conventionally examined through a distinctly nationalist framework that reveals the government’s clear distinction between "tradition" and "modernity". State exhibition practice and rhetoric have reinforced this dichotomy, serving to position the Senegalese state as purveyor, definer, and arbiter of cultural heritage. However, diverse creative expressions throughout the capital city of Dakar call into question nationalist rhetoric’s rigid distinction …

Biennale Et Effervescence Artistique Au Sénégal : Conjonctions Et Passerelles, Hélène Tissières

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The Dakar Biennial, Dak’Art, plays a key role and is the only event of this kind on the african continent. Held in a country where there is an abundant artistic production, it prolongs Senghor’s objectives (underlining the importance of the collective, intertwining art forms, investing mystical positions). Made of an “In” and “Off”, its structure dismantles divisions between popular/theoretical, accessible/obscure, autodidact/trained and promotes a dialog between people and approaches. Many Senegalese artists proceed in a similar fashion, assembling concepts (orality, signs, cultural references, categories), drawing from the world at large. Inscribing memory, they invite us to interrogate our future beyond …

Les Limites De L’Appartenance : Composition, Intertextualité Et Langue Dans Les Dents Du Topographe Et Méfiez-Vous Des Parachutistes De Fouad Laroui, Carla Calargé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this article, I examine two novels by Fouad Laroui, Les dents du topographe (1996) and Méfiez-vous des parachutistes (1999). I analyze the difficulties encountered by their narrators when they try to find and define non alienating cultural and geographical spaces to which they could belong. For that purpose, I study the composition of the two novels, the play of intertextuality as well as the language of the main characters.

L’Éthique De La Différence En Traduction : Le Cas De Deux Romans Africains Francophones Et De Leur Restitution En Anglais, Augustine H. Asaah

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Translation advances the cause of the international community as it plays a vital role in global development and understanding. The literary text needs to be translated before readers from diverse linguistic communities can apprehend and enjoy it. To a large extent, the success of the translation enterprise is a function of the accuracy of the target-text. With illustrations drawn from two francophone african masterpieces, Ahmadou Kourouma’s Les soleils des indépendances and Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre, this article seeks to determine the extent to which the target-texts in English respect the spirit and the letter articulated by the source-texts. …

Logiques Urbaines Dans Les Arts Plastiques : De La Filiation De Jean-Michel Basquiat Au Sénégal, Massamba Mbaye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

ertain Senegalese painters, including Soly Cissé, Camara Guèye, Birame Ndiaye and Samba Fall draw their inspiration from the city’s structure. Attentive to the tensions it produces as well as the daily struggles to survive, they transpose urban walls in their paintings to better transgress them, go beyond pre-imposed limits. One can therefore ask what is the influence of a painter like Basquiat on these contemporary painters ? Approaches and needs found in Senegal differ greatly from those found in the United States ; however interesting links can be traced that allow for a better understanding of present Senegalese art.