Global Africa

ISBN-13: 9781032667126 / Twarda / 2024 / 470 str.

Adekeye Adebajo

Opis

This book of 100 essays written over the last three post-apartheid decades provides profiles of pan-African figures, mostly from Africa and its diaspora.

Recenzje

‘This is a powerful, precise, passionate, and painful anthology that will stand the test of time for its truthfulness. It is a work that erupts like a monument to the sacrifice and heroism of that humanity which flows through black civilization like the never-ending Nile in the night.'

-          - Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor, University of the West Indies

 

‘With his quintessentially Pan-African worldview, Adekeye Adebajo has deftly rendered the kaleidoscopic landscape of African achievement. It is not without crippling threats and disappointing reversals. But resistance to tyrants and female empowerment make visible the resilience to bounce back.’

-         - Professor Pearl T. Robinson, Tufts University, Massachusetts

 

‘Immensely fluent, readable, and accessible. Adekeye Adebajo’s scholarship is impeccable, his reading of multiple sources is evident, and the historical perspective he provides is essential for an analysis of the contemporary era. This book is unique in its scope and broad canvas. I do not know of a collection of profiles that is similarly expansive.’

-          - Maureen Isaacson, Former books editor, the Sunday Independent, South Africa

Spis treści

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

I. HISTORICAL FIGURES

Cecil Rhodes’s Crumbling Legacy

Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist?

Revisiting Woodrow Wilson’s Liberal Legacy

II.POLITICAL FIGURES

Kwame Nkrumah: Africa’s Philosopher-King

Albert Luthuli: The Nobel Black Moses

Nelson Mandela: Pan-African Prophet

Thabo Mbeki: Africa’s New Philosopher-King

Thabo Mbeki: Remembering the Renaissance Man

Thabo Mbeki’s Xenophobia Denialism

Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela: The Policy Wonk and the Patriarch

Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma: The Lion and the Jewel

Kenneth Kaunda: Farewell to Zambia’s Founding Father

The Fall of Robert Mugabe

F.W. de Klerk: A Nobel without Honour?

Olusegun Obasanjo: The Emperor’s New Clothes

Jerry Rawlings: The Death and Deification of ‘Junior Jesus’

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: The Iron Lady of Liberia

Meles Zenawi: Philosopher-King or Pragmatic Autocrat?

Abiy Ahmed: Ethiopia’s Nobel Intellectual Soldier

Mobutu Sese Seko: The Sick Man of Africa

Idi Amin: The Making of a Warrior God

Daniel arap Moi: A Ruthless Dictator

Paul Kagame and Wole Soyinka: The President and the Playwright

Qaddafi’s Monarchical Delusions

Obama, Clinton, and Africa

Obama’s Six Deadly Sins

Obama, Gandhi, and Egypt

Obama’s Africa Legacy

Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Donald Trump and Boris Johnson

Trump’s African ‘Shithole’ is Commonplace in America

Margaret Thatcher’s Black Mischief

The Trial of Tony Blair

The Strange Reappearance of Nicolas Sarkozy

Madeleine Albright: Remembering the First Female American Secretary of State

Colin Powell: The Reluctant Jamaican-American Warrior

III. TECHNOCRATS

Boutros-Ghali’s Huge Contribution to Egypt and the World

Boutros Boutros-Ghali: Afro-Arab Prophet, Pharaoh, and Pope

Kofi Annan: African Prophet or American Poodle?

Adebayo Adedeji: Farewell to Africa’s Cassandra

Adebayo Adedeji and Jean Monnet: The Fathers of African and European Integration

Raúl Prebisch and the Building of Latin America

Ibrahim Gambari: The Aristocratic Scholar-Diplomat

Lakhdar Brahimi: An Algerian Troubleshooter

Augustine Mahiga: A Tanzanian Peacemaker

Margaret Vogt: Africa Loses an Unflagging Peacemaker

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: Nigeria’s Iron Lady

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: A Super-Technocrat in Geneva

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: The Alchemist 

Naledi Pandor: South Africa’s New Diplomatic Troubleshooter

Mamphela Ramphele: Defender of the Status Quo at UCT

Eloho Otobo: Farewell to a Pan-African Peacebuilder

IV. ACTIVISTS

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr

John Lewis: The Last of the Mohicans

Wangari Maathai: Kenya’s Earth Mother

A Wreath for Saro-Wiwa

Denis Mukwege: Ennobling ‘Doctor Miracle’

Ruth First’s Pan-African Martyrdom

Mahlangu’s Moving Martyrdom

Kaye Whiteman: Ode to an Obituarist

Tor Sellström: A Cosmopolitan Swedish Freedom Fighter

V. WRITERS

A Tale of Two Continents: Dickensian Africa

Chinua Achebe: Farewell to Africa’s Griot

Soyinka’s Horseman: Who’s Afraid of Elesin Oba?

Wole Soyinka v. Caroline Davis: The CIA Controversy

James Baldwin: The Strange Persistence of Racism

Remembering Maya Angelou

Toni Morrison: America’s Black Bard

Bell Hooks: The Iconoclastic Feminist Scholar-Activist

Buchi Emecheta: Africa’s Literary Mother Courage

John Pepper Clark: Africa’s Protean Pioneer

VI. PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS

Ali Mazrui: Farewell the Trumpets for Prophet of Pax Africana

Edward Said: Pioneer of Post-Colonial Studies

Abiola Irele: The Last Prophet of Négritude

Chris Wanjala: Kenya’s Pan-African Griot

Thandika Mkandawire: The Afropolitan Intellectual

Raufu Mustapha: An Organic Intellectual

Angela Davis: A Life of Struggle

Three Prophets of Reparations: Randall Robinson, Hilary Beckles, and Ade Ajayi

VII. ARTISTS

Abami Eda: Fela’s Enduring Legacy

Bob Marley: Rebel with a Cause

Michael Jackson: The Strange Disappearance of the Moonwalker

Burna Boy: The Afropolitan Troubadour

Asa: Nigeria’s Songbird

Measuring Sidney Poitier’s Life

Cynthia Erivo: Building Bridges to the Diaspora

VIII. SPORTING FIGURES

Muhammad Ali: King of the World

Pelé: The Greatest Footballer of All Time

Eusébio: The King is Dead, Long Live the King!

The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Diego Maradona

George Weah: The Genius of King George

Samuel Eto’o: Cameroon’s Indomitable Lion

The Ivorian Pearl: The Life and Times of Didier Drogba

Africa’s Golden Generation: Salah, Mané, and Aubameyang

The Golden Age of West Indian Cricket

Jesse Owens’s Race

Jonah Lomu: Rugby’s First Global Superstar

The Greatness of Rafa Nadal

The Age of Hakeem

Flaming Flamingo: The Life and Times of Israel Adebajo

Notes

Index

O autorze

Adekeye Adebajo is senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) in South Africa. He is the author of eight books including The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War; and editor/co-editor of 10 books including The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers. He holds a doctorate from Oxford University in England where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and is a columnist for Business Day (South Africa), the Guardian (Nigeria), and the Gleaner (Jamaica).