Books published by Daraja Press

The book identifies three key moments in Nigeria's experience with federalism and makes the argument that a complex and socially-diverse country like Nigeria can only be successfully governed by a truly federal arrangement, and not the present unitary contraption that has only delivered poverty, social unrest and the powerful centrifugal forces that are now threatening the very existence of the country itself. The time has come, write Ike Okonta, to convene a conference with sovereign powers to design a federal constitution for the country. The current process of amending the 1999 Constitution by the National Assembly will not suffice. The document is so hopelessly flawed that only its discarding and a fresh effort at constitution-making will suffice.

The current absence of any emancipatory vision for Africa lies at the heart of our political problems of racial capitalist and colonial oppression. Any attempt to rethink political emancipation on the African continent must be able to locate a universal conception of freedom within singular cultural experiences where people live. Irrespective of the specific manner in which such struggles for freedom were thought within different historical contexts, emancipatory politics always exhibited such a dialectic when it was based within popular traditions. Yet only some militant intellectual leaders understood the importance of this dialectic in thought. The present volume outlines and discusses two particularly important views concerning the role and importance of popular culture in emancipatory politics in Africa. Each is the product of distinct forms of colonial capitalist exploitation: the former saw the light of day within a colonial context while the latter is directly confronted by the neocolonial state. All emancipatory politics are developed in confrontation with state power, and all begin with a process of discussion and debate whereby a collective subject begins to be formed. The formation of such a collective political subject has been fundamentally informed by popular cultures on the African continent. The two authors whose essays are included here understood this and posit popular culture at the centre of their politics. The first, Amílcar Cabral, addresses the central role of popular culture in the independence struggle of Guinea Bissau in the 1970s; the second, Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, addresses the centrality of African popular culture in an emancipatory politics for the current Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite the distance in time that separates them, both Cabral and Wamba-dia-Wamba develop a dialectics at the core of their politics which activates the universals of culture in the present. It is this that makes their views of central importance to emancipatory thought today.

Technology is one of the central elements of contemporary human life. The world as one knows it today is a space increasingly mediated by technological interventions, be it in the field of contemporary cultural expressions or political, organizational forms. Social media has played an important role in this transformation. Gone are the days when social media was merely a conduit for conversations. Today, it is a diverse field of operations spanning advertising mechanisms, branding processes and even direct commercial exchanges between users: the prime focus of this particular book.Direct user-to-user trading through social media within an institutional form is a relatively new dimension in the dynamic world of social media. Yet, just like every other form of innovation within the paradigm of market relations, social media commerce or social media trading has also created newer and diverse alterations in how individuals interact with the existing socio-political fabric within which they exist. This book analyses these alterations and critically investigates the role of Capital in creating them.The book analyses real-world interactions, interviews and observations through the theoretical framework provided by Marxist political economy and social theory. It draws upon the theoretical scope provided by Marx's dialectical methods of social analysis and uses it to unearth the effects that trading and commercial activities performed through virtual communities have on society and individuals.

Estado Sociedade e Capital Estado Sociedade e Capital. in Portuguese

Lenin150 (Samizdat) aims to contribute to the re-kindling of the communist attractor by engaging, in the spirit of critical solidarity, with Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in the year of his 150th anniversary. Conceived out of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, the book brings together contributions from all continents, ranging in style from the academic to the lyrical. As such, these compelling, and in some cases absolutely urgent, appropriations of (the spectre of) Lenin aspire to be of considerable use-value for the struggles ahead.

The book explores the challenges Palestinian filmmakers confront to develop a cinema that gives expression to the national narrative. The research is based on collaborative work to research and screen Palestinian films involving Film Lab Palestine, Sheffield Palestine Cultural Exchange and Sheffield Hallam University as part of the Creative Interruptions research project (https://creativeinterruptions.com/palestiniancinema/). We explored the political, economic and cultural factors that impact on Palestinian film production and some of the barriers encountered in profiling and screening Palestinian films in Britain.

This book collects four decades of writings on dialectics, a number of them published here for the first time, by Kevin B. Anderson, a well-known scholar-activist in the Marxist-Humanist tradition. The essays cover the dialectics of revolution in a variety of settings, from Hegel and the French Revolution to dialectics today and its poststructuralist and pragmatist critics. In these essays, particular attention is given to Lenin''s encounter with Hegel and its impact on the critique of imperialism, the rejection of crude materialism, and more generally, on world revolutionary developments. Major but neglected works on Hegel and dialectics written under the impact of the struggle against fascism like Lukács''s The Young Hegel and Marcuse''s Reason and Revolution are given full critical treatment. Dunayevskaya''s intersectional revolutionary dialectics is also treated extensively, especially its focus on a dialectics of revolution that avoids class reductionism, placing gender, race, and colonialism at the center alongside class. In addition, key critics of Hegel and dialectics like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, Pierre Bourdieu, and Richard Rorty, are themselves analysed and critiqued from a twenty-first century dialectical perspective. The book also takes up the dialectic in global, intersectional settings via a reconsideration of the themes of Anderson''s Marx at the Margins, where nationalism, race, and colonialism were theorized alongside capital and class as key elements in Marxist dialectical thought. As a whole, the book offers a discussion of major themes in the dialectics of revolution that still speak to us today at a time of radical transformation in all spheres of society and of everyday life.

There has been a rise in the use of strategic litigation related to seeking equality for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) persons. Such developments are taking place against the backdrop of active homophobia in Africa. The law and the general public should, argues the author, treat LGB persons in the same way that heterosexuals are treated. In the past two decades,30 strategic cases have been fi led by LGB activists in the Common Law African countries, namely in Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda. While the majority of the cases have been successful, they have not resulted in significant social change in any of the countries. On the contrary, there have been active backlashes, counter-mobilisations, and violence against LGB persons, as well as the further criminalisation of same-sex relations and constitutional prohibitions on same-sex marriages in some of the jurisdictions. The author argues that activists in Common Law Africa have to design LGB strategic litigation in such a way as to fi t within the actual social and political conditions in their countries if strategic litigation is to spur social change.

THESE LETTERS AND poems are invaluable fragments of a living conversation that portrays the indomitable power in humans to stay alive in the face of certain death. Reading through the treasure trove of the letters and poems compiled here as The Last Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa evoked such intense memories of his resolute struggles against an oil behemoth and a deaf autocratic government. His crusade frames one of the most tumultuous periods of Nigeria's history; his tragic story evokes anger and demands action to resolve the crises that first led the Ogoni people to demand that Shell clean up Ogoni or clear out of the territory. It was his leadership, in great part, that forced Shell out of Ogoni in January 1993. The letters are a testament of hope. Being one side of robust conversa­tions between two persons that many would find unlikely as close friends, we learn the lessons that indeed 'friends love at all times and brothers (and sisters) are born for adversity', as a proverb in the Bible states. This is where we must applaud Sister Majella McCarron for preserving and making pub­lic these letters that Ken Saro-Wiwa wrote to her between 20 October 1993 and 14 September 1995. The collection includes essays by the three editors, select bibliography and recommended resources.

Under-Education in Africa: From Colonialism to Neoliberalisma collection of edited essays on diverse aspects of educational systems that were written over a period of four and a half decades. With the focus on Tanzania, they cover education in the German colonial era, the days of Ujamaa socialism and the present neo-liberal times. Their themes include social function of education, impact of external dependency on education, practical versus academic education, democracy and violence in schools, role of computers in education, effect of privatization on higher education, misrepresentation of educational history, good and bad teaching styles, book reading, the teaching of statistics to doctors and student activism in education. Two essays provide a comparative view of the situation in Tanzanian and the USA. Deriving from the perspective of an activist educator, these essays connect the state of the education system with the society as a whole, and explore the possibility of progressive transformation on both fronts. They are based on the author's experience as a long term educator, original research, relevant books, newspaper reports and discussions with colleagues and students. The author is a retired Professor of Medical Statistics who has taught at colleges and universities in Tanzania and at universities in USA and Norway.

These poems by Issa Shivji, lawyer, activist and Tanzanian public intellectual, were written at different times in different circumstances. They give vent to personal anguish and political anger. Mostly originally written in Kiswahili, and here accompanied by English translations, they are intensely personal and political. Poems are clustered under several headings to provide a context. The first Shivji combines personal agony at the loss of comrades and friends with poems about love and affection for living one. The second is about robberies of freedom, resources, and dignity and the loss of justice under neoliberalism. The third section, entitled Hopes and Fears, comprise short poems tweeted over the last five years expressing despair, fear and hope in the human capacity for freedom. The last section are poems, concerned with Shivji's period in South Africa in 2018, reflect on the emergence of neo-apartheid with its wanton and shameless exploitation of the majority.

Wreaths for a Wayfarer: An Anthology in Honour of Pius Adesanmi is an assemblage of original some 200 poems written by 127 established and emerging African writers. While some of the poets celebrate Pius Adesanmi, who died in the doomed Ethiopian Airline flight on March 10, 2019, others philosophically reflect on existence, mortality, immortality and/or offer hope for the living. In this memorably textured collection, the poets—who knew (or did not know the poet)—exorcise the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with passion.“This historic collection of poems by esteemed and budding writers from across the African continent and beyond seeks to confront the ephemerality of life with the permanence of art; it is a testament to the power of poetry to turn grief into art. As WH Auden would have said, these poems start the healing fountains in the deserts of the mourning heart.” —Harry Garuba, Professor and poet, University of Cape Town, South Africa.“Richly evocative and engaging, this powerful collection of poems from the heart is a magnificent tribute that emblazons the essence of Pius Adesanmi—joy, love, laughter, wit, brilliance, erudition, nomadism, commitment—whose life was a long poem of peerless beauty; a melodious song of the breeze and birds of the savannah; an elegant dance to the rhythms of Africa; a resplendent sun that refuses to set..” —Obioma Nnaemeka, Chancellor’s Professor, Indiana University, Indianapolis, USA, and President, Association of African Women Scholars (AAWS).“Wreaths for a Wayfarer is written in divinely eloquent verses—to drums, gongs, flutes and songs—by citizens of the world of words, in whose hearts the Wayfarer lives. It is an assemblage of kindred tongues creating and recreating a new future from an unrelieved past and denounced present—around the archetypal wayfarer. This collection . . . is a rare accomplishment. I doubt if this can be surpassed. I may have, but I cannot recall it, of a single volume thrust upon my hapless laps . . .with such a climate of paradoxes—a synthetic Mass of threnody, elegy, requiems and hope, rebirth and redemption around a single living-dead—Pius Adebola Adesanmi. Igi dagbara j’eno otin (A lone log that brews a pot of corn wine to intoxicating ferment…)” —Olu Obafemi, Professor of English and Dramatic Literature, Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL), and recipient of the Nigeria National Order of Merit (NNOM). 

Africa Matters: Cultural politics, political economies, & grammars of protest provides a sampling of some of these insightful articles from the first five issues of Nokoko, bringing together some of the pieces that for the editorial board of the journal are particularly perspicacious in their analysis and resonant in their crafting. Like expressions associated with the Ga word, Nokoko has brought something new, novel, if not surprising and interesting, to the wider publics. It supports a wider commitment to bring a range of views and voices in and on “Africa,” some of who are just emerging, all of whose insights are fresh and challenging. Grouping twelve articles in three sections of this book permits a new dialogue to emerge around the key themes of cultural politics, political economies and grammars of protest. Their intersection here provides a sharp spotlight on some of the seams, knots, and contestations of varied “matters” of import for many Africans in the twenty-first century.As a verb, the authors contribute to teasing out the varied ways “Africa” is increasingly important in economies, politics, and daily lives for many outside of the continent of Africa even if, perversely, there is a deeper sense of abjection, of rejection by their governments and corporations and deep neglect by those in the Global North and international institutions, by more and more within different parts of Africa.In its nounal form, the book’s chapters trace some of the forms, objects, and lives of differently constituted groups, polities and communities within African and its diasporas. The Africa matters here range from fashion to literature, entrepreneurs to monetary policy, regional administrative bodies to feminist movements, cellphones to cinema, xenophobic violence to political activism.The first section of the book explores different dimensions of cultural politics, some of the symbolic significations and sentiments that help motivate, rationalize, dissemble, and constitute the debates, and socialities from the murmurings and rumours careening down proverbial radio trottoir to the boardrooms of banks, from state prisons to international development donor workshops.This is followed by a section that examines the weight of political economy, the political formations, the power dynamics, and the economic drives and inequalities constituting many of the valuations of the “worth” of African matters for differently positions actors, companies, policy-makers, and opinion-shapers.While the chapters in the previous two sections show Africans on the continent or the diaspora generating cultural forms for various audiences on the scale of the person or the globe, engaging in debates, carrying out entrepreneurship, engaged in bureaucratic maneuverings, avoiding terror, and the like, the chapters in this final section address specific politic actions. Attending to the specific grammars of protest in particular historical moments, they show how different Africans are generating specific confrontations with power, with specific examples coming from Kenya and from South Africa.