Unpopular Sovereignty


Book Description

A truly satisfactory history of Rhodesia, one that takes into account both the African history and that of the whites, has never been written. That is, until now. In this book Luise White highlights the crucial tension between Rhodesia as it imagined itself and Rhodesia as it was imagined outside the country. Using official documents, novels, memoirs, and conversations with participants in the events taking place between 1965, when Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain, and 1980 when indigenous African rule was established through the creation of the state of Zimbabwe, White reveals that Rhodesians represented their state as a kind of utopian place where white people dared to stand up for themselves and did what needed to be done. It was imagined to be a place vastly better than the decolonized dystopias to its north. In all these representations, race trumped all else including any notion of nation. Outside Rhodesia, on the other hand, it was considered a white supremacist utopia, a country that had taken its own independence rather than let white people live under black rule. Even as Rhodesia edged toward majority rule to end international sanctions and a protracted guerilla war, racialized notions of citizenship persisted. One man, one vote, became the natural logic of decolonization of this illegally independent minority-ruled renegade state. Voter qualification with its minutia of which income was equivalent to how many years of schooling, and how African incomes or years of schooling could be rendered equivalent to whites, illustrated the core of ideas about, and experiences of, racial domination. White s account of the politics of decolonization in this unprecedented historical situation reveals much about the general processes occurring elsewhere on the African continent."










International Bibliography of African Customary Law


Book Description

This book makes life unusually easy for anyone who wants to know about African indigenous laws, and seeks to encourage further research into the laws that regulate the lives of millions of Africans. For, in spite of colonialism, military decrees and the authoritative modernity of state civil or common law, African indigenous laws have not fallen into abeyance. African indigenous laws, like Roman law before Justinian codification, was mos maiorum, the path of the ancestors. Accordingly, Roman law, English common law and African indigenous law are the great legal creation of pagan human beings whereas other ancient systems of laws such as Judaism, Sharia, Hindu, Adat laws, were religious in origin. The Bibliography ranges widely over topics as diverse as cultural property, coups d'etat and the plunder of antiquities, to formalities of marriage, child betrothal, divorce, sororate marriage, levirate marriage, to succession and inheritance, oral will, and administration of the estate. A word of warning to all those who normally skip reading Prefaces: the two here, one by Professor Antony Allott, the other by Professor Manfred Hinz, are essential reading. And as Professor Hinz writes: this bibliography 'is an indispensable tool for all who are in one way or the other concerned with customary law, as lecturer, researcher, law applier and law reformer....' This unusual bibliography crosses boundaries of countries and disciplines. It will be an invaluable aid to many different lines of research.










Foreign Acquisitions Newsletter


Book Description







Historical Dictionary of Zimbabwe


Book Description

Zimbabwe, one of Africa's longer, more promising countries, has been in the news a lot recently-for all the wrong reasons. This more than justifies a third edition. Zimbabwe has witnessed an incredible amount of history in the relatively short span of eighteen years. The new edition of this dictionary updates the dictionary to keep it abreast of the changes in the country. Hundreds of fresh entries cover new political leaders, changing governmental, cultural, and economic developments, and scores of place name changes. There were also corrections to existing entries and an expanded bibliography.




Rhodesia/Zimbabwe


Book Description