HSRC Catalogue

African research that changes global thinking

US documents released in August 2011 reveal that President Eisenhower directly ordered the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of Congo. But the Americans were not alone Six months after achieving independence from Belgium, Congos first legally elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, was assassinated on 17 January 1961. The effects of that attempt at annihilation, sanctioned by the United States and carried out by the Belgians, continue to reverberate throughout the continent today as the scramble for Africa continues.

Does the African continent want to be economically and socially sustainable as well as environmentally safe? What is the role of culture and how does it shape development strategies? In New African Thinkers: Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development, the authors argue that culture – defined broadly as the way of life, system of values and controls, and modes of practice and expression – lies at the heart of a re-imagined Africa as a place of prosperity and socio-economic well-being, integration, and self-determination. By contextualising the discourse of development, the authors hope to influence policy and practice towards shifting the narrative from ‘one size fits all’ to a more morally justified and socially diverse model.

Contested Ecologies: Reimagining the Nature-culture Divide in the Global South offers an intervention in the conversations on ecology and on coloniality, and on the ways in which modern thinking, with its bifurcation of nature and culture, constitutes ‘ecology’ within a very particular politics of the cosmos.

Sankara’s legacy, unclear as it may be, still lives and he remains immensely popular. If you travel through Africa his image is unmistakable. His picture, with beret and broad grin, is pasted on run-down taxis and is found on the walls of local bars. Internationally Sankara is often referred to as the ‘African Che Guevara’ and like his South American counterpart; it is his perseverance, dedication and incorruptibility that appeal to the imagination.