African Oral History

During the Zimbabwean struggle for independence, the settler regime imprisoned numerous activists and others it suspected of being aligned with the guerrillas. This book is the first to look closely at the histories and lived experiences of these political detainees and prisoners, showing how they challenged and negotiated their incarceration.
Introduction: The prison as a site of struggle during Zimbabwe's liberation war -- The growth of African opposition and intensified state political repression in Rhodesia, 1960-1970s -- Getting arrested : oral histories of violence, torture, and arrest in Rhodesia, 1960-1979 -- Life in detention : oral histories of confinement in Rhodesian detention centers -- Life behind bars : oral histories of life inside Rhodesian prisons, 1965-1980 -- Epilogue: Life beyond bars and legacies of incarceration in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe, 1965-2000 -- Conclusion.

Are Africa's world markets really contributing to development across the continent for individuals, nations and regions? This is the key question posed by Margaret Lee in this provocative book, in which she argues that all too often the voices of African traders are obscured amid a blizzard of statistical analysis. However, it is these very voices - from those operating on the ground as formal or informal traders - that must be listened to in order to form a true understanding of the impact trade regimes have on these individuals and their communities. Featuring a wealth of oral histories from across sub-Saharan Africa and beyond, including Africans in China, Africa's World Trade offers a unique insight into how the complexity of international trade agreements can shape the everyday lives of ordinary Africans.

An examination of the ways in which gender intersects with informal and formal education in England, Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, USA and the Netherlands. The book looks at various issues including: citizenship; authority; colonialism and education; and the construction of national identities.
Introduction: 'gender', 'colonialism', 'politics' and 'experience': challenging and troubling histories of education / Joyce Goodman and Jane Martin -- A head and a heart: Calvinism and gendered ideals of parenthood in Dutch child-rearing literature c. 1845-1920 / Nelleke Bakker -- The pleasure of learning and the tightrope of desire: teacher-student relationships and Victorian pedagogy / Mark McBeth -- Through cigarette cards to manliness: building German character with an informal curriculum / Geoffrey Giles -- 'Like the spirit of the Army': fascistic discourse and the National Association of Schoolmasters, 1919-39 / David Limond -- Contesting knowledge: Mary Bridges Adams and the workers' education movement, 1900-18 / Jane Martin -- Gendering the 'Wisconsin idea': the women's self-government association and university life, c. 1898-1948 / Christine D. Myers -- 'Their market value must be greater for the experience they had gained': secondary school headmistresses and empire, 1897-1914 / Joyce Goodman -- Raden Ajeng Kartini: the experience of politics of colonial education / Joost Cotè -- New frontiers in the history of education: oral histories and history teaching in South Africa / Ziphora K. Moichela.

The African Christian Roho religion, or Holy Spirit movement, is a charismatic and prophetic movement that arose in the Luo region of western Kenya. This movement has fascinated students of history and religion for more than sixty years, but surprisingly has not been extensively studied. Thisbook fills that lacuna.In Women of Fire and Spirit, Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton uses the extensive oral histories and life narratives of active participants in the faith, giving them full voice in constructing the history of their Church. In doing so, she counter-balances the existing historical literature, which draws heavilyon colonial records. Hoehler-Fatton's sources call into question the paradigm of "schism" that has dominated the discussion of African independent Christianity. Faith, rather than schism or politics, emerges here as the hallmark of Roho religion.Hoehler-Fatton's book is doubly unusual in foregrounding the role of women in the evolution and expansion of their Church. She traces the gradual transformation of women's involvement from the early years when--drawing on indigenous models of female spirit possession--women acted as soldiers, headedcongregations, and served as pastors, to the present condition of Western-style institutionalization and exclusion for women. Despite this marginalization, women members continue to be inspired by the defiance of past heroines.

Looks at how oral traditions preserve cultural history.

Records the life histories of three of the author's African students during her tenure as director of an education program in Africa. The collection allows Tanzanian youth to speak for themselves and provides glimpses into their home and school life.

With the end of apartheid and the exciting, but elusive, advent of a new nation, South Africa is witness to the emergence of a new generation of oral historians whose aim is to develop a broader, more inclusive, and culturally sensitive understanding of the South African past. In a country still wounded by a legacy of racial discrimination, the retrieving of oral memories is a task more urgent than ever. Oral History in a Wounded Country shows how the cultural, political, socio-economic, and intellectual evolutions - that gave birth to South Africa as we know it today - affect the oral history process. It will help practitioners, whether they use oral history as one technique among others to gain a better knowledge of the past or envisage oral history as an academic discipline in its own right, to reflect critically on their practice and find better ways of handling the interview process. The challenge is to appreciate the complexity of South Africa's diverse histories, while being attentive to the dynamics of the interview and their effect on both interviewers' and interviewees' sense of identity.

How did African women negotiate the complex political, economic, and social forces of colonialism in their daily lives? How did they make meaningful lives for themselves in a world that challenged fundamental notions of work, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and family? By considering the lives of ordinary African women -- farmers, queen mothers, midwives, urban dwellers, migrants, and political leaders -- in the context of particular colonial conditions at specific places and times, Women in African Colonial Histories challenges the notion of a homogeneous ""African women's experience."" While recognizing the inherent violence and brutality of the colonial encounter, the essays in this lively volume show that African women were not simply the hapless victims of European political rule. Innovative use of primary sources, including life histories, oral narratives, court cases, newspapers, colonial archives, and physical evidence, attests that African women's experiences defy static representation. Readers at all levels will find this an important contribution to ongoing debates in African women's history and African colonial history.

Until the advent of African independence, Africans were not considered fitting subjects for historical research and their words, voices, and experiences were largely absent from the continent's history. In 13 lively and provocative essays focusing on all areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, oral sources are seen as a way to restore African expression to African history. African Words, African Voices evokes the richness and relevance of oral sources for understanding a complex past for readers at all levels. Contributors include E. J. Alagoa, David William Cohen, Laura Fair, Babacar Fall, Tamara Giles-Vernick, Isabel Hofmeyr, Abdullahi A. Ibrahim, Corinne A. Kratz, Stephan F. Miescher, Bethwell Allan Ogot, Megan Vaughan, Luise White, and Kwesi Yankah.

What were the experiences of those in Africa who suffered from the practice of slavery, those who found themselves captured and sold from person to person, those who died on the trails, those who were forced to live in fear? And what of those Africans who profited from the slave trade and slavery? What were their perspectives? How do we access any of these experiences and views? This volume explores diverse sources such as oral testimonies, possession rituals, Arabic language sources, European missionary, administrative and court records and African intellectual writings to discover what they can tell us about slavery and the slave trade in Africa. Also discussed are the methodologies that can be used to uncover the often hidden experiences of Africans embedded in these sources. This book will be invaluable for students and researchers interested in the history of slavery, the slave trade and post-slavery in Africa.

This is a collection of essays by American scholars who had worked on narratives in east and central Africa.

Oral history -- Tunisia.

This is the history of the Meru people of Mount Kenya, based on their own traditions, from the earliest times through the colonial period. Many of these tales have been ritually passed down through no fewer than nineteen generations; others were remembered by those personally involved. Jeffrey Fadiman gathered them in interviews with more than 100 of the Meru's oldest men and women. The traditions touch on every era of the Meru past. They include narrations, songs, chants, and riddles. They tell of a mysterious origin, past enslavement, despairing flight, mountain warriorhood, British conquest, and the fight for freedom. The Meru elders spoke most often of urogi, or witchcraft, the incantations, rituals, and potions used to deal with the supernatural aspects of Meru life. As their society evolved, so did their urogi, developing a history of its own as practitioners in every generation sought to cope with the challenges of slavery, migration, war, colonialism, and Christianity. Fadiman has crafted the tales into a compelling narrative, passing on in his turn the stories he was given. This is African history from African perspectives that stretch back over 300 years.