Africa Today
Volume 51, Number 3, Spring 2005
Special Issue: Youth and Citizenship in East Africa
Guest Editor: Thomas Burgess

CONTENTS

Burgess, Thomas.
• Introduction to Youth and Citizenship in East Africa
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  Subjects:
  • Youth -- Africa, East.
  • Citizenship -- Africa, East.

Burgess, Thomas.
• The Young Pioneers and the Rituals of Citizenship in Revolutionary Zanzibar
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  Subjects:
  • Zanzibar -- History -- Revolution, 1964.
  • Youth -- Zanzibar -- Political activity -- History -- 20th century.
  • Citizenship -- Zanzibar -- History -- 20th century.
  • Young Pioneers (Organization : Zanzibar) -- History.
  Abstract:
  Inspired by Eastern European precedents, Zanzibar's revolutionary regime in the 1960s and 1970s established the Young Pioneers as an institution through which to inculcate the sort of discipline perceived as necessary for nation building. I argue that through an emphasis on Pioneer parades, revolutionary elites allowed themselves to be persuaded by forms and appearances. They prized marching bodies of young men and women more for their visual effect than for the discipline they produced. Parades provided periodic evidence of good citizenship and conformity; they functioned as a strategy of display and a ritual of citizenship, more than as a discipline in the Foucauldian sense. This distinction explains how a rare accumulation of power on the part of a postcolonial elite in Africa could be both spectacular and ephemeral at the sametime.

Moyer, Eileen.
• Street-Corner Justice in the Name of Jah: Imperatives for Peace among Dar es Salaam Street Youth
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  Subjects:
  • Marley, Bob -- Influence.
  • Rastafari movement -- Influence.
  • Subculture -- Tanzania -- Dar es Salaam.
  • Street life -- Tanzania -- Dar es Salaam.
  • Youth -- Tanzania -- Dar es Salaam -- Social life and customs -- 20th century.
  Abstract:
  Young men throughout the world seem fascinated with Bob Marley. Especially fascinated with him are poor, disenfranchised youths, like those living and working in the streets of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who are the subjects this article. What is it about Bob Marley and Rastafari-inspired discourses of peace and love that make them so appealing? Why are street youths throughout the world growing dreads and praising Jah? By taking a close look at internal peacekeeping strategies employed on a specific street corner located in the middle of the central business district of Dar es Salaam, this article demonstrates that such questions are best answered from a local perspective. While Marley's global appeal may be attributed to shared experiences of inequality, the ways this popularity emerges locally sheds light on the particularities of those experiences.

Parsons, Timothy, 1962-
• No More English than the Postal System: The Kenya Boy Scout Movement and the Transfer of Power
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  Subjects:
  • Scouts and scouting -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century.
  • Kenya Scout Association -- History.
  • Africanization -- Kenya -- History -- 20th century.
  • Youth -- Kenya -- Social conditions -- 1963-
  Abstract:
  Decolonization in Kenya meant more than the transfer of political power: the end of colonial rule was part of a larger social transformation, where Africans struggled to master and adapt the political and social institutions they inherited from Britain. The attempt by the Kenya Boy Scout movement to successfully navigate the period from 1959 to 1964, when colonial officials, nationalist political leaders, and the common people alike negotiated the meaning of independence, exposes the social tensions inherent in this process. The "Africanization" of Kenyan scouting embodied larger debates—over political economy, education, race relations, and juvenile delinquency—that made this a particularly turbulent period in Kenyan history.

Ivaska, Andrew M.
• Of Students, "'Nizers," and a Struggle over Youth: Tanzania's 1966 National Service Crisis
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  Subjects:
  • Chuo Kikuu cha Dar es Salaam -- Political activity -- History -- 20th century.
  • College students -- Tanzania -- Dar es Salaam -- Political activity -- History -- 20th century.
  • National service -- Law and legislation -- Tanzania -- History -- 20th century.
  • College students -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Tanzania -- History -- 20th century.
  Abstract:
  In October 1966, student protest erupted at the University College of Dar es Salaam over the announcement of a new, mandatory National Service requirement for graduates—protest that dominated Tanzania's political scene at the time and culminated in the expulsion of nearly two-thirds of the university's students. Situating this event in the broader context of a struggle over the political valence of "youth," this article examines the proliferation of public discourse surrounding the National Service crisis. In focusing on the generational and class tensions and rivalries embedded in this debate, the article argues for a perspective that views the crisis as one in a string of campus conflicts, illuminating some of the anxieties and unevenness marking the struggle over the reproduction and expansion of an early postcolonial elite.

Summers, Carol, 1964-
• Young Buganda and Old Boys: Youth, Generational Transition, and Ideas of Leadership in Buganda, 1920-1949
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  Subjects:
  • Leadership -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Uganda -- Buganda -- History -- 20th century.
  • Youth -- Uganda -- Buganda -- History -- 20th century.
  • Higher education and state -- Uganda -- Buganda -- History -- 20th century.
  • Education, Higher -- Aims and objectives -- Uganda -- Buganda -- History -- 20th century.
  Abstract:
  From the 1920s through the 1940s, Britons and Baganda saw youth and generational transition as both disruptive to public order, and essential for Buganda's future. This article explores how—across the political and social spectrum—Britons and Baganda mobilized around ideas of youth. Britons, as government officials and missionaries, feared youthful conspiracies and "adolescent" politics. But they nurtured youth leadership and generational transition as essential in maintaining a governing alliance between British and Ganda elites. Baganda framed critiques of the kingdom and protectorate as statements of youth and the future, condemning the older generation's hierarchical and undemocratic political styles. Youth, rather than religion, ethnicity, nation, ideology, or class, provided a subversive, inclusive, flexible, and markedly democratic basis for imagining a new Buganda.

Books Review

Weber, Charles William, 1945-
• Flickering Shadows: Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Burns, James McDonald. Flickering shadows: cinema and identity in colonial Zimbabwe.
  • Motion pictures -- Zimbabwe -- History.

Lanegran, Kimberly Rae, 1965-
• Hostels, Sexuality, and the Apartheid Legacy: Malevolent Geographies (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Elder, Glen Strauch, 1967- Hostels, sexuality, and the apartheid legacy: malevolent geographies.
  • Women, Black -- South Africa -- Social conditions.

Brown, Margaret L.
• History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770-1822 (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Larson, Pier Martin. History and memory in the age of enslavement: becoming Merina in highland Madagascar, 1770-1822.
  • Merina (Malagasy people) -- Ethnic identity.

McLaren, Joseph.
• The Heart of Redness: A Novel (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Mda, Zakes. Heart of redness: a novel.
  • Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction.

Kapteijns, Lidwien.
• Historical Dictionary of Somalia (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Mukhtar, Mohamed Haji, 1947- Historical dictionary of Somalia.
  • Somalia -- History -- Dictionaries.

Peck, Richard, 1944-
• Local Governance in Africa: The Challenges of Democratic Decentralization (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Olowu, Dele. Local governance in Africa: the challenges of democratic decentralization.
  • Wunsch, James S. (James Stevenson), 1946-
  • Local government -- Africa.

Schoenbrun, David Lee.
• Political Power in pre-Colonial Buganda: Economy, Society & Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Reid, Richard J. Political power in pre-colonial Buganda: economy, society & warfare in the nineteenth century.
  • Buganda -- Politics and government -- 19th century.

Thielmann, Pia.
• Critical Essays on Bessie Head (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Sample, Maxine J. Cornish, ed. Critical essays on Bessie Head.
  • Head, Bessie, 1937- -- Criticism and interpretation.

Kilbride, Philip Leroy.
• The Children of Africa Confront AIDS (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Singhal, Arvind, 1962-, ed. Children of Africa confront AIDS.
  • Howard, W. Stephen, ed.
  • AIDS (Disease) in children -- Africa.

Ojukutu-Macauley, Sylvia.
• Gender, Development and Poverty (review)
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  Subjects:
  • Sweetman, Caroline, ed. Gender, development and poverty.
  • Poverty -- Developing countries -- Sex differences.

Books Received

• Books Recieved
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  Subjects:
  • Africa -- Bibliography.

Contributors

• Contributors
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