Youth, Waithood, and Protest Movements in Africa

Africa is the world’s youngest continent, with the majority of its population under the age of 24. Although during the past decade the continent has experienced considerable economic growth, this has not translated into job creation and greater equity. Soaring unemployment rates have severely affected the younger generation especially; young people find it difficult to carve out a decent future. Most young Africans are living in a period of suspension between childhood and adulthood that I call ‘waithood’. Youth in Africa, like their counterparts in Europe, North America, and other parts of the world, face similar crises of joblessness and restricted futures. Their struggles have driven many young Africans into the streets in protest movements that challenge the status quo and contest socioeconomic policies and governance strategies that exacerbate poverty, heighten social inequalities, and deny them basic freedoms. Young people have emerged as active social agents in the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, in the ‘Y’en a Marre’ (Enough is enough!) movement in Senegal, and in the food riots in Mozambique, counteracting the notion that youth are apathetic. What will be the result of these youth movements? Will young people be able to sustain them beyond streets protests and hold onto the promise for more equitable societies? This lecture examines the broad challenges facing young Africans today, particularly those relating to their socioeconomic position, citizenship, and political activism

Excluded youth are becoming angrier

Huge student demonstrations in South Africa in October 2015 were officially about university tuition fees, but were actually about the failure of post-apartheid South Africa to create jobs, writes Alcinda Honwana. This is part of growing youth unrest across Africa, ranging from demonstrations last month in the Republic of Congo to support for Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram

Children in War: Reintegrating Child Soldiers

This article discusses the issue of child soldiers by weaving together the threads of experiences of violence, terror and survival narrated by children directly involved in armed conflicts. Despite the fact that the majority of them have been forced to enter the military, they are not just empty vessels into whom violence is poured. Having started as victims, many are converted into perpetrators of the most violent and atrocious deeds. The article suggests that former child soldiers exercise a ‘tactical agency’ to deal with the immediate circumstances of their situation. The interstitial position of child soldiers, as both victims and perpetrators of violence, places them in a unique position vis?à?vis their communities and society in general. The article examines the role of local community strategies for healing, rehabilitation and social reintegration of former child soldiers. But beyond social healing in the immediate aftermath of war, these children and their families need to be given access to education, training and employment to rebuild their lives

Undying Past: Spirit Possession and War Memory in Southern Mozambique

Magic and Modernity is the first book to explore comparatively how magic—usually portrayed as the antithesis of the modern—is also something that is at home in modernity. “Magic” and “modernity” are rarely regarded as belonging together. Evolutionism regarded magic as quintessentially “unmodern.” Although psychologists and romantic artists have sometimes declared magic to be a human universal, few modern scholars in the humanities and social sciences have studied how modern culture and institutions incorporated and even produced magic. This book is the first to adopt a comparative approach to the study of magic as something that has a place in modernity, and that helped to constitute modern society at local and global levels. The essays in this collection contribute to recent discussions in anthropology, cultural studies, comparative literature, history, and sociology that increasingly question the extent to which modern self-conceptions are accurate reflections of a state of affairs in the world rather than cultural interventions

Healing and social reintegration in Mozambique and Angola

About the book: The past two decades have witnessed the end of several civil wars and authoritarian regimes. In a period shaped by the ideal of democratization, in which more countries are emerging from deep-rooted conflicts, international attention is turning to the question of how societies with a grievous past face issues of accountability and reconciliation. How do societies deal with a past characterized by gross human rights violations? What kinds of processes--judicial as well as non-judicial--are most likely to generate a sense of reconciliation? Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book provides a systematic and comparative analysis of reconciliation processes in various societies that in recent years have made a transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, or from war to relative peace. Revisiting case studies from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia through a lens of comparative analysis, shedding new light on how societies have dealt with their violent pasts, Roads to Reconciliation is essential reading for both scholars and practitioners concerned with human rights, transitional justice, or peace building

Negotiating Post-War Identities: Child Soldiers in Mozambique and Angola

About the book: Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories brings together intellectuals from a variety of fields, backgrounds, generations, and continents to deepen and reinvigorate the theoretical and intellectual integrity of African studies. Building on recent debate within African studies that has revolved about the role of Africanists in the United States as "gatekeepers" of knowledge about Africa and Africans, this volume of interdisciplinary essays focuses on the contested character of the production of knowledge itself. In every chapter, case studies and ethnographic materials, drawn from West, Central, East and Southern Africa, demonstrate the application of theory to concrete situations