Abstract: Disillusionment is one of the dominant themes in post- independence African literature. In the South African context, Athambile Masola’s collection of poems , Ilifa, reveals that South Africa, the last state to gain independence in Africa, is no exception. In investigating the theme of disillusionment in Masola’s poetry, the data of six poems, examined through the lens of imbokotho literary criticism, the subthemes of make-believe freedom, land and human settlement, dishonest and corrupt political leaders, as well as gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) emerged. These issues demonstrate how promises of “better life for all” South Africans turned out to be a mirage. By foregrounding Masola’s poetic voice, the paper demonstrates how poetry functions as a critical archive of post-apartheid discontent and popular consciousness. In doing so, the study enriches South African literary scholarship by situating isiXhosa post-1994 poetry within broader continental discourses on failed independence, governance, and unfulfilled liberation ideals.
Abstract: This article analyzes the Nigerian COVID-19 poetry anthology Of Shadows and Rainbows: Musings in Times of Covid to examine how poets articulate collective trauma and panic. Employing trauma theory adapted to the Nigerian context, it argues that these poets craft a distinctive, culturally embedded poetics of witness. Through close reading, the study reveals how Nigerian poets deploy indigenous linguistic resources, including Yoruba ritual euphemisms, Nigerian Pidgin, and potent metaphors to articulate COVID-19’s horror, embody somatic distress, and critique governmental failures. The findings demonstrate that Nigerian poetry not only documents pandemic trauma, but transforms it into a site of cultural endurance and resistance. By foregrounding locally situated aesthetic strategies, the article contributes to postcolonial literary studies and trauma theory by challenging universalizing frameworks, while advocating for multidisciplinary approaches to understanding the pandemic’s enduring impact on human communities and cultural memory.
Abstract: The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have always imposed conditions on the loans they provide to African governments. Recent years have seen the emergence of “queer conditionality,” whereby lending policy is manipulated in order to impose toleration of LGBQTI minorities on recalcitrant governments. The hostile reaction of African states to such pressure is often presented as irrational in the Western media. However it conforms to an ancient tradition within Western thought. Between Aristotle and Jeremy Bentham, Western philosophy generally agreed that non-reproductive sexuality (or “sodomy”) was homologous to auto-reproductive money (or “usury”). Usury confounded the mutually definitive binary opposition between “nature” (phusis) and “custom” (nomos) by making money “breed,” while sodomy transgressed the same polarity between “custom” and “nature” by artificially preventing sexuality from attaining its natural end. Western capital’s modern efforts to make Africa safe for sexual minorities, like the aggressive reactions of African governments, form an integral part of this millennia-long tradition.
Abstract: Nigeria, with an estimated urban growth rate of over 4 percent annually, is one of the fastest growing urban areas in Africa. The paper interrogates the nexus between digital technology and urban social conflict in Nigeria. While Nigeria may not benefit from the same level of technological penetration as nations in the Global North, there is no gainsaying the rapidity of technological absorption among its youth population. However, such widespread utilization of technology has not meant only positive influences but has equally heralded deleterious effects on social life. Therefore, the paper unravels new and emerging forms of social conflict and violence in Nigeria and how ICTs have been deployed in promotion of such phenomena, especially the 2020 #EndSARS protests and the proliferating kidnapping practice in the country.
Abstract: With a focus on Muslim university students and graduates, this article considers how their educational trajectories (have) necessitate(d) mixing with (religious) “others” and asks what their experiences can tell us about modalities of multireligious cohabitation in Nairobi more broadly. The ethnography challenges the notion of mixing as a liberal “good” or a choice, as Western multicultural discourse holds. Instead, it reveals both how young Muslims navigate encounters with “others” through a mix of shared aspiration, proximity, and necessity and how, post-graduation, multiple factors preclude or undermine such “spaces of commonality” (Hage 2014). Their experiences suggest that urban coexistence is not about tolerance but pragmatism, which neither denies (religious) difference nor centers it. In doing so, it contributes to discussions of everyday life amid socioreligious diversity in Africa and beyond.
Abstract: Belonging presupposes a certain stability within both individuals and environments to which belonging is claimed. This stability is absent for most individuals in Africa and the actual societies they belong to. The disintegration of communities and the inability of individuals to have stable identities can be traced to the damaging effects of the colonial project. Africa's postcolonial states have failed to shirk off the effects of colonialism and have suffered the influence of some of colonialism's undesirable but lasting effects. Two of these effects are damage to individuals and communities, leaving them with no sense of connection and a permanent state of paralysis of imagination of how responsible agency can create responsive communities that evoke an authentic sense of belonging. Such a condition can be guaranteed under individual integrity aimed at achieving dignity.
Abstract: Drawing on multisited ethnography in Kenya and the Netherlands, this article explores how Kenyan LGBTIQ+ activists navigate opportunities, tensions, and constraints in transnational activism. As a case study, it examines Rights Out There—a solidarity event organized in the Netherlands by Dutch INGOs with the participation of activists from the Global South—to explore how external imposition and localized practices are negotiated. Its findings demonstrate that transnational spaces such as Rights Out There embody solidarity non/performances centered on addressing the “suffering other located elsewhere,” yet remain grounded in Western ideals and forms of organizing. It argues that such problematic spaces offer Kenyan activists room to reimagine how universalized LGBTIQ+ frameworks are adopted locally while challenging dominant expressions of solidarity. In turn, it opens up new possibilities for supporting transnational activism that is less hegemonic and more responsive to localized agencies and epistemologies.
Abstract: The move to “decolonize” is sweeping across academic disciplines, but scholars are becoming wary, suspecting that the term may have lost its value. Olufemi Taiwo may be the most subversive critic of decolonization discourses, which he derides as mere tropes. On the one hand, this essay underscores the cogency of his case and even parries some of the most critical remarks it has received; on the other hand, it parts ways with him, taking the concept of coloniality as its point of departure. While he remains unimpressed with coloniality and studiously sidesteps such murky waters, this essay—paradoxically—sees in coloniality a concept that may furnish the proper justification for any responsible decolonial efforts. Hence, it retheorizes coloniality, elaborates how such an old and subtle global phenomenon reinvents itself, and so defies much of the weapons Taiwo mobilizes against decolonization. It then argues that the fact of coloniality indeed legitimizes any responsible effort in the service of decoloniality. A responsible and worthwhile effort at decoloniality would judiciously embrace modernity and uphold Africa’s agency, the issues Taiwo seems most concerned with.
Abstract: This work explores the African sense of belongingness in search of a harmonizing and nonassimilating framework alternative to those that accentuate difference, diversity, and otherness. This is an African ontologico-existential theory, which perceives being as belonging. Because of its relational and dialogical propensities, the conversational method is here employed. The African sense of belongingness is characteristically participatory, egalitarian, pluralistic, and inclusive. Its principles of solidarity and subsidiarity with contributivedistributive mechanisms guarantee healthy relationships and a balance of autonomy and integrity. These principles can engender a fair and rational ethical model. The thesis of this article is that the principles and values inherent in an African sense of belongingness can be harnessed to provide a humane framework for the authentic integration of migrants.
Abstract: Aggressive smuggling of agricultural and petroleum products, automobiles, fabrics, and firearms underscores the motivation for Nigeria’s border-closure policy instituted in August 2019. The dominant opinion, particularly that of the official government analysts, assessed the policy as successful, even before thoroughly evaluating its performance. Existing studies on borders and cross-border relations in Africa have focused on colonial cartography, the porosity of African borders, and their consequences for border security. These studies have not adequately engaged border-closure policies to ascertain why they failed. Moreover, border-regulation policies have often ignited dangerous and alarming approaches to penetrate the border and promote illegality. Drawing on interviews, archival documents, institutional reports, newspaper editorials, and secondary sources, this article deploys the notion of checkpoint politics to make sense of the implementation of the closure policy and discusses cross-border exchanges and practices, showing how they contributed to the failure of the Nigerian border-closure policy of 2019.
