Books published by Langaa RPCID

The relationship between police and the public in formerly colonised countries of Africa has never been smooth. It is plagued with clichés of suspicion, mistrust, and brutality which are all a result of the legacy of draconian policing in colonial Africa. This colonial hangover has chiefly been an upshot of sluggish switching from the mantra of colonial policing to community progressive policing advocated in democratic societies. This book, the result of five years of ethnographic and library research on the interaction and relationships between police and members of the public in Zimbabwe, is a clarion call for a generative progressive working together between the police and the public for a peaceful and orderly society. While it traces the historical trends and nature of policing in Africa and in particular Zimbabwe, the book demonstrates how law, morality and policing enrich one another. The book offers critical insights in the interpretation of contemporary policing in Zimbabwe with a view to inform and draw lessons for both police and the public. It should be of interest not only to legal anthropologists but also political scientists, members of the public, police instructors, police officers, and students and educators in academic disciplines such as criminal justice, criminology, law, sociology, African studies, and leadership and conflict management.

In Boundaries, Musang, from the Grassfields, falls in love with Etonde from the Coast. Although aware of some existing tension and unfounded mistrust between both camps, the couple is ready to marry when Etonde's father, incredibly, rejects the marriage proposal at the last minute. Although traumatized, Musang, finally, deems the rejection a sign from heaven and so reconsiders a lingering vocation idea - the priesthood. Meanwhile, a devastated Etonde, now defiant of men, struggles on to regain her equilibrium. Years after, however, and barely months away from his ordination into the priesthood, Musang, an exemplary postulant, is suddenly given the deprecating choice to go on probation or leave the seminary; he leaves.

Contemporary social science is a product of the capitalist world-system and Eurocentrism is constitutive of the geoculture of this system characterized by the parochiality of its universalism, assumptions about the superiority of Western civilization and imposition as the sole theory of global progress. The creation of these structures of knowledge, specifically the institutionalization of the social sciences, is a phenomenon that is inextricably linked to the very formation and maturation of Europe's capitalist world system or imperialism. There is therefore nothing that is natural, logical, or accidental about the institutionalization of the social sciences. These Europeanized structures of knowledge are imposed ways of producing knowledge of the world. This Eurocentrism of social science has justifiably come under increasingly vigorous scrutiny, especially in the period since 1945 with the formal decolonization of Africa, Asia, and much of the Caribbean. This book forcefully argues that if social science is to make any progress in the twenty-first century, it must overcome its Eurocentric heritage that has distorted social analyses and its capacity to deal with the problems of the contemporary world and embrace other non-Western funds of knowledge production.

This book brings together twenty think-pieces on contemporary Human Rights issues at the international, regional and national level by one of Africa's foremost scholars of International Human Rights and Constitutional Law, J. Oloka-Onyango. Ranging from the 'Arab Spring' to the Right to Education, the collection is both an in-depth analysis of discrete topics as well as a critical reflection on the state of human rights around the world today. Taking up issues such as the African reaction to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the question of truth and reconciliation before the outbreak of post-election violence in Kenya and the links between globalization and racism, the book is a tour de force of issues that are both unique as well as pertinent to human rights struggles around the world.

Secrets, Silences, and Betrayals is an invitation to readers to consider factoring in the often discarded or censored but useful information held by the dominated. The book's principal claim is that the unsaid weighs in significantly on the scale of semantic construction as that which is said. Thus, it legitimates the impact of the absentee in broadening and clarifying knowledge and understanding in most disciplines. In other words, just as exogenous epistemologies have underlain and explicated the basis for understanding diverse encounters-social, political, historical, cultural, literary, etc.-Secrets, Silences, and Betrayals challenges, from a pluridisciplinary angle, such highly dominant approaches to investigating the origin, nature, ways of knowing, and limits of human knowledge. It thus yields to the deontological basis to critically reexamine our understanding of the world around us. It is in this regard that the present volume points towards the need for human history to become a cumulative record and re-recording of every human journey and endeavor in life; it brings together disparate voices illuminating topical issues that would be or have been legated to posterity as nonexistent, partial, or half-truths.

The idea that human beings are inextricably bound to one another is at the heart of this book about African agency, especially drawing on the African philosophy Ubuntu, with its roots in human sociality and inclusivity. Ubuntu's precepts and workings are severely tested in these times of rapid change and multiple responsibilities. Africans negotiate their social existence between urban and rural life, their continental and transcontinental distances, and all the market forces that now impinge, with relationships and loyalties placed in question. Between ideal and reality, dreams and schemes, how is Ubuntu actualized, misappropriated and endangered? The book unearths the intrigues and contradictions that go with inclusivity in Africa. Basing his argument on the ideals of trust, conviviality and support embodied in the concept of Ubuntu, Francis Nyamnjoh demonstrates how the pursuit of personal success and even self-aggrandizement challenges these ideals, thus leading to discord in social relationships. Nyamnjoh uses a popular Ivorian drama with the same title to substantiate life-world realities and more importantly to demonstrate that new forms of expression, from popular drama to fiction, thicken and enrich the ethnographic component in current anthropology.

Takumbeng and Other Poems from Abakwa is a tribute to the Takumbeng in Cameroon. This collection of poems celebrates the prowess of the Takembeng, a militant female secret society in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. The poems address human rights violations, rape of democracy, misgovernment, and other forms of societal ills that plague post-colonial Cameroon. It is written in impeccable Standard English. The strength of the book resides in the vastness of the thematic terrain broached.

"A la tête du client is a vitriolic indictment of the unsettling myths and stereotypes surrounding the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Cameroon. It problematizes and lampoons the unethical practices of medical personnel that have made this disease an intractable ailment in Cameroon and beyond. The English translation of A la tête du client titled Fly over the Crooks' Crooked Nest denounces and scourges the predatory behaviour of the wicked who take advantage of the weakest in a context of HIV/AIDs. When two rascals decide to open their own laboratory for medical analysis, without any skills or equipment, the least harmful results amount to 'Obama... blood type O, Axelrod...blood type A...'" Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta, University of Indianapolis, United States of America

Home is a place in ourselves where we are happy with ourselves, where we find peace with ourselves, where we are satisfied, fulfilled... The important theme coursing through all the stories in the novel, Finding a way home, is that we have to make the journey to find our homes, we have to find the path, and start walking in that path.