Events and Issues
-In-Take Editors for RA Book Review
Thanks to those who offered to join RA book review team. We have received a significant number of volunteers. However, we hope to launch the project with this small group of editors for now[https://sites.duke.edu/researchafrica/book-reviews/]. RA plans to publish its first edition by the end of the month of March, 2017. A call for book reviews is forthcoming.
Editor-In-Chief & Associate Editors
• Muhammed Haron, Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, University of Botswana, & Executive Member, Centre for Contemporary Islam, University of Cape Town (haronm@mopipi.ub.bw). (Editor-In-Chief)
• Professor Wilson-Fall, Associate Professor and Chair, Africana Studies Program Oeschle Center for International Education, Lafayette College (wilsonfw@lafayette.edu);
• Hassan Juma Ndzovu, PhD. Senior Lecturer of Religious Studies, Department of Religious Studies, Moi University, Kenya (hassan.ndzovu@gmail.com);
• Yunus Dumbe, PhD. Religious Studies Department, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, (ydumbe@gmail.com);
• Badr Ahmed, PhD Assistant Professor of Curriculum & Instruction, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt (badr_elkafy@edu.asu.edu.eg);
• Bamba Drame, Dar El Hadith El Hassaniya Institute, Rabat Morocco, (ndrame.online@gmail.com);
• Mbaye Lo, Associate Professor of the Practice, Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, Duke
University; (mbayelo@duke.edu).
– “Home” by Warsan Shire
The Somali poet Warsan Shire has become a rallying call for refugees and their advocates.
This poem is now the rallying call for refugees: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”. “No one leaves home unless/home is the mouth of a shark.” The line, by British Somali poet Warsan Shire, has become a rallying call for refugees and their advocates. Demonstrators at rallies this weekend against US president Donald Trump’s recent ban on citizens from Muslim-majority countries held up signs with lines from Shire’s poem, “Home.” A university instructor read it out loud at a protest in Omaha.
Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London. Born in 1988, Warsan has read her work extensively all over Britain and internationally – including recent readings in South Africa, Italy , Germany, Canada, North America and Kenya.
Home
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
Read more on the story in these two links
This poem is now the rallying call for refugees: “No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”
– It’s time South Africa tuned into Africa’s views about its role on the continent/
Author: Maxi Schoeman, et al.,
South Africa has variously styled itself as a “bridge” between the North, the global South and Africa as well as a “gateway” into the continent. It also sees itself as a spokesperson for Africa, given its membership of the alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa BRICS and the G20.
It has declared its commitment to the continent’s Africa agenda, the African Union’s ambitious development plans characterised as “Agenda 2063 – The Africa We Want”.
But how do Africans beyond South Africa’s borders view the country? What are the perceptions of the country’s role on the continent? Are these aligned with the way in which the country perceives its role and influence on the continent?
–> Read more on the story in this link
https://theconversation.com/its-time-south-africa-tuned-into-africas-views-about-its-role-on-the-continent-71019
– Sudanese Jews recall long-lost world with nostalgia
By ISMA’IL KUSHKUSH Associated Press/TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) —
Lily Ben-David gets emotional when she talks about her childhood in Sudan. She still dreams of her school, the courtyard, the balcony and frolicking on the banks of the Blue Nile, even though it has been more than 50 years since she saw any of it. Sudan’s Jews once made up the smallest Jewish community in the Middle East, a close-knit group of 1,000 people who enjoyed warm relations with their Muslim neighbors. But the establishment of Israel in 1948, followed by a series of Arab-Israeli wars, forced them to flee in the 1960s. Although Israel and Sudan are now bitter enemies, the remnants of that community retain fond memories of the northeast African country. “If I could get a ticket under an assumed name, I will go, honestly,” the 71-year-old Ben-David, who left Sudan in 1964 and now lives outside Tel Aviv, said with a chuckle. The history of Sudanese Jews has been largely unknown, even among world Jewry, until now.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/world/sudanese-jews-recall-long-lost-world-with-nostalgia/article_92791ff1-22da-5f83-b03f-45291d3cca8e.html
– What happened to black Germans under the Nazis
Not all survivors have had equal opportunities to have their story heard in Holocaust commemorations
By Eve Rosenhaft
The Independent – Thursday 28 January 2016
The fact that we officially commemorate the Holocaust on January 27, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, means that remembrance of Nazi crimes focuses on the systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The other victims of Nazi racism, including Europe’s Sinti and Roma are now routinely named in commemoration, but not all survivors have had equal opportunities to have their story heard. One group of victims who have yet to be publicly memorialised is black Germans. All those voices need to be heard, not only for the sake of the survivors, but because we need to see how varied the expressions of Nazi racism were if we are to understand the lessons of the Holocaust for today.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, there were understood to have been some thousands of black people living in Germany – they were never counted and estimates vary widely. At the heart of an emerging black community was a group of men from Germany’s own African colonies (which were lost under the peace treaty that ended World War I) and their German wives.
They were networked across Germany and abroad by ties of family and association and some were active in communist and anti-racist organisations. Among the first acts of the Nazi regime was the suppression of black political activism. There were also 600 to 800 children fathered by French colonial soldiers – many, though not all, African – when the French army occupied the Rhineland as part of the peace settlement after 1919. French troops were withdrawn in 1930 and the Rhineland was demilitarised until Hitler stationed German units there in 1936.
Read more on the story in this link:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/what-happened-to-black-germans-under-the-nazis-a6839216.html
—–
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
– BLACKASS
[الأسود المتهور]
Author: A. Igoni Barrett
Language: English
Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, awakes the morning before a job interview to find that he’s been transformed into a white man. In this condition he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. With his red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, it seems he’s been completely changed. Well, almost. There is the matter of his family, his accent, his name. Oh, and his black ass. Furo must quickly learn to navigate a world made unfamiliar, and deal with those who would use him for their own purposes. Taken in by a young woman called Syreeta and pursued by a writer named Igoni, Furo lands his first-ever job, adopts a new name, and soon finds himself evolving in unanticipated ways.
Publisher: Graywolf Press, Minnesota, USA, 2016
– Rachel’s Blue [زرقاء راشيل]
Author: Zakes Mda
Language: English
Novelist Zakes Mda has made a name for himself as a key chronicler of the new, post-apartheid South Africa, casting a satirical eye on its claims of political unity, its rising black middle class, and other aspects of its complicated, multiracial society. In this novel, however, he turns his lens elsewhere: to a college town in Ohio. Here he finds human relations and the battle between the community and the individual no less compelling, or ridiculous.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, USA, 2016
– Fake Healing Claims for HIV and Aids in Malawi
Traditional, Christian and Scientific
[أوهام الشفاء لفيروس الإيدز و نقص المناعة البشرية في ملاوي
[بين الطقوس التقليدية والمسيحية والعلمية]
Author: Klaus Fiedler
Language: English
In this book professor Klaus Fiedler offers a candid critique of religious faith healing claims – a critique that extents to the Voluntary Male Medical Circumcision Campaign (VMMCC). The book reveals the lack of substantive evidence to back such healing claims and the contradiction between the VMMCC claims and the consequences of those claims in sexual health and practice.
Publisher: Mzuni Press, Malawi, 2016
http://mzunipress.luviri.net/
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Research Africa welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in next week’s edition.
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Website: https://sites.duke.edu/researchafrica/
