New Books in African Studies

In 218 BCE, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca launched an invasion of Italy designed to bring the Roman Republic to its knees. Yet for all of his success in defeating Rome’s legions on the battlefield, Hannibal ultimately failed in his lifelong goal. In Hannibal (Simon and Schuster, 2017), Patrick N. Hunt recounts the triumphs and frustrations of the legendary commanders dramatic military career. The son of a Carthaginian leader who fought Rome in the First Punic War, Hannibal was raised to reverse Carthage’s loss in that initial conflict. This he did by taking the fight to Rome, where his outnumbered armies triumphed over the Romans in three successive battles. Yet, as Hunt explains, Rome soon learned from Hannibal’s example, and the Carthaginians’ inability to translate battlefield victories into a Roman surrender left him mired in a war of attrition he could not win. By the time he faced a Roman army at Zama in 202 BCE, the situation was now reversed, as Scipio Africanus used many of Hannibal’s own tactics against him. In this Hunt exposes the irony of Hannibal’s life, as his effort to destroy Rome’s nascent empire only made it stronger, setting the stage for the next seven centuries of its domination of the Mediterranean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s second novel, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun (Cassava Republic Press, 2016), is an excellent addition to the larger, and ever-expanding, genre of Nigerian literature. The novella begins slowly, teasing out details of the main character’s life as she interacts with the people of her San Francisco neighborhood. Morayao Da Silva, the main protagonist, is an elderly Nigerian woman, who is positive, youthful and independent. A fall interrupts her independence and forces her to become dependent on others, which exposes to the reader a hidden loneliness to her cheer and allows Morayo to reflect back on her life of world travel and eventual limitations brought about by age. Each character in this book, from the young mother named Sunshine, to the older African American man visiting his dementia-afflicted wife at the rehabilitation center, allows the reader to get deeper insight into the world of Morayo, while also exploring other character’s insights on the protagonist from an outside perspective. Overall this is a complex and nuanced read. The meandering pace is a testament to the lived experience, and the reader is rewarded for their patience with a thoughtful and satisfying character study. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Few images attached to Islam and to the Islamic legal tradition (the Sharia) in particular are more often and more disturbingly sensationalized than that of the stoning punishment. In her riveting new book Shari’ah on Trial: Northern Nigeria’s Islamic Revolution (University of California Press, 2017), Sarah Eltantawi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Religion at Evergreen State College, offers a dazzlingly nuanced and lucid account of the past and present of the stoning punishment in Northern Nigeria. Effortlessly moving between pre-modern and contemporary archives and contexts, Eltantawi traces the shifting meanings and political projects that have been invested into the stoning punishment over time. Historically grounded, theoretically exciting, and lucidly composed, this book is sure to spark important conversations and debates in multiple fields. It will also make a wonderful text for undergraduate and graduate seminars for courses on Islam, Islamic Law, Gender and Sexuality, and on Islam in Africa. SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at stareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Anita Hannig‘s first book, Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital (University of Chicago Press, 2017) is an in-depth, ethnography of two fistula repair and rehabilitation centers in northern Ethiopia. Focusing on the juxtaposition of culture, religion and medicine, Hannig turns the heroic narrative of surgery on its head to expose the realities of life for women treated in, and living at the centers. Utilizing first-person interviews, she show the human face to the surgery and its aftermath. Moving beyond the easy and cathartic narrative promulgated by the media and non-profit fundraisers, Hannig shows the complex reality of life post-surgery. Hannig’s book is a testament to the importance of good, long-term research in the arena of public health in the developing world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In the capital of the African nation of Angola today stands a statue to Njinga, the 17th century queen of the Ndongo and Matamba kingdoms. Its presence is a testament to her skills as a diplomat, warrior, and leader of her people, all of which she demonstrated over the course of a reign described by Linda Heywood in Njinga of Angola: Africa’s Warrior Queen (Harvard University Press, 2017). The daughter of the Ndongo king Mbande a Ngola, Njinga grew up in a west central Africa that was facing growing encroachment by Portugal, who were major customers in the regions slave trade. Seeking to extend their control, the Portuguese challenged Njinga’s succession to the throne in 1624, prompting a war that lasted for three decades. To persevere, Njinga had to navigate the complex politics of the region, gaining control of the Matamba kingdom and pursuing ties with both the Vatican and the Dutch to provide a counterweight to the Portuguese. The treaty signed with Portugal in 1656 was a testament to her success, allowing her to focus on establishing a legacy of an independent kingdom that she could pass on to her sister after her death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Apartheid in South Africa formally ended in 1994, but the issue of poverty and what to do about it remained as contentious as it had been a century earlier. In the new book, Poverty Knowledge in South Africa: A Social History of Human Science, 1855-2005 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Grace Davie shows that the poverty question was up for grabs even into the twenty-first century because of ongoing disagreements about how to measure poverty and to manage the racists assumptions that underwrote it. The book uses the idiom of co-production to show how scientists, activists and other knowledge-makers made and remade poverty in dynamic interaction with the people they sought to know. The book documents the thwarted efforts of scientists to accomplish their political goals as their expert knowledge was variously invoked, reinterpreted, and dismissed not only by white-supremacist governments, but also by social activists, black communities, and labor unions, which all used experts poverty knowledge for their own political ends. At issue was the question of what constituted credible evidence, and over more than a century debates continued to toggle between quantitative and qualitative forms of evidence, between statistics and stories. Through this analysis, Davie pushes back against the familiar claim that the technocratic state was on a steady march towards quantitative objectivity. Poverty Knowledge in South Africa is a serious, thorough book and it is indispensable for thinking through questions of social justice not only among historical actors but among scholars in the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Rwanda’s homegrown gacaca law has been widely hailed as a successful indigenous solution to the unprecedented problem of the country’s 1994 genocide. In his book Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice After Genocide (University of Wisconsin Press, 2016), Bert Ingelaere complicates this received wisdom by focusing on the way the post-genocide gacaca trials unfolded, rather than on their lofty goals, as framed by the public relations arm of the post-genocide Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government and other interested parties, both internal and external to Rwanda. The Kinyarwandan word gacaca, derived from the word umucaca, originally referred to a plant that was so soft to sit on that people preferred to gather on it during precolonial times to adjudicate disputes and crimes, but most importantly, to restore social order and harmony. During the colonial period, the jurisdiction and prevalence of gacaca was greatly restricted. Its re-emergence as a viable means of transitional justice in Rwanda following the genocide was a response to the volume of the associated crimes. Western-style court systems were simply unequal to the task of dealing with the 1,958,634 cases of alleged participation in the genocide. The basis of this concise treatment of the gacaca court system and the transitional justice it sought to dispense between 2005 and 2012, is Ingelaere’s mixed methods research in Rwanda, which included extended field research, as well as proxy trial observation by his Rwandan collaborators. The books eight chapters provide an overview of the basic operational characteristics of gacaca and consider how we should qualify the outcomes of this ambitious process. Mireille Djenno is the African Studies Librarian at Indiana University. She can be reached at mdjenno@indiana.edu   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Brandon Kendhammer takes a fresh approach to the juxtaposition of Islam and democracy in his latest book, Muslims Talking Politics: Framing Islam, Democracy and Law in Northern Nigeria (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Rather than employing a top-down approach to understanding Islam’s compatibility with democracy, Kendhammer chose to speak with blue-collar, working-class Muslims in cities across Northern Nigeria. Through this approach, Kendhammer exposes the pragmatic views of ordinary citizens more concerned with economic stability than jihadist rhetoric. As the political situation gets more violent and the idea of democracy more remote in Nigeria, Kenhammer offers a viewpoint of deep understanding for the complex situation. Based upon hundreds of conversations with ordinary citizens, he sketches a picture of how Islam and democracy can, and often is, reconciled in the neighborhoods and marketplaces of urban Nigeria’s centers, where Christians and Muslims live side-by-side. It is in the daily political and social negotiations that the way forward can be seen. However, with the increasingly violent acts of Boko Haram, it seems that the ordinary voices are being lost to unwavering religious rhetoric. While this books only tackles Northern Nigeria, the themes and lessons can be extended into the larger Muslim world grappling with the possibility of fitting Islamic values into a democratic state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

In my time doing this podcast, I’ve covered a number of books about transitional justice. All have been insightful and interesting. But few of them focused carefully on the trials themselves. Anuradha Chakravarty seeks to remedy this. Her book Investing in Authoritarian Rule: Punishment and Patronage in Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts for Genocide Crimes (Cambridge University Press, 2016) looks carefully at the processes and people involved in Rwanda’s Gacaca courts. She looks at the recruitment and training of judges. She looks at the incentives offered for denouncing others as genocidaires. And she examines the ways in which the incentives and context led many defendants to confess. In doing so, Chakravarty significantly advances our understanding of the workings of transitional justice in Rwanda. But she also uses Rwanda as a lens to try and understand the challenges faced by authoritarian leaders. She argues that the RPF engaged in a kind of clientalistic bargaining with Hutus. By offering targeted grants of clemency and patronage to defendants and to those who denounced others, the RPF secured its political control over Rwanda as a whole. Chakravarty argues that other autocratic leaders have often used a similar strategy of “authoritarian clientelism” to secure their power. It’s a persuasive argument. Kelly McFall is Associate Professor of History at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas, where he directs the Honors Program. He is particularly interested in the question of how to teach about the history of genocides and mass atrocities and has written a module in the Reacting to the Past series about the UN debate over whether to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Daniel Magaziner’s latest book, The Art of Life in South Africa (Ohio University Press, 2016, and UKZN Press, 2017), is a welcome addition to the intellectual history of South Africa. Rich in color images and documentary history, The Art of Life tells the story of African art in white apartheid South Africa, juxtaposing the beauty of an ordinary life well lived, against the random cruelty of the apartheid state. The book follows the story of the Ndaleni Art School in modern-day KwaZulu-Natal from 1952 until its closing in 1981. The school was set up to teach the art teachers of the Bantu education system, but in doing so, it opened up the student’s lives to more complex discussions of creativity, beauty and resilience. Magaziner sets up the tale by spinning the individual lives against the opposing pressures of both the apartheid state and the black consciousness movement. On the one side, rigid oppression, and on the other, the push to fight apartheid or be deemed a collaborator. The individual stories of former Ndaleni students force the reader to see beyond the black and white of these opposing narratives. The people profiled chose to lead fulfilled lives, not because they were defying apartheid, but because their only choice was to simply live. The book is, at its heart, a human story, set against the backdrop of apartheid. Erin Freas-Smith, Ph.D can be reached at efreassmith@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies