http://www.africafiles.org/ AfricaFiles is a network of volunteers committed to promoting African perspectives and alternative analyses for human rights and economic justice in Africa. en-ca Copyright 2010 AfricaFiles. Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:39 EST 20 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24295 Test Culture Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24295 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24280 "Let us focus on African women’s agency, not just their oppression." Jenn Jagire. This Ugandan writer urges African feminists to ’deEuropeanise’ African feminism and avoid perpetuating neo-colonial mentalities that portray Africa’s women as victims rather than drivers of their own destiny. African women’s causes must be based on local experiences rather than foreign experiences that overlook the successes of local African women. One reader's response has also been included at the end of the article. ME/CJW ed. Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24280 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24267 In the first article, President Museveni seems to lay all the blame for political unrest on "the friction between the Protestants and Catholics and later between the two and Muslims". In the opinion article that follows, the author agrees that indeed "there has been some unrest between different religious and ethnic communities. Since the 1880s, multi-religious denominations and religions resulted into multi-political ideologies: Protestant, Catholic, Islamic and traditionalist". But the author claims that "what is always reported as religious or ethnic wars is not actually the case. It is rather a clandestine struggle for power and control of economic resources". B.T./CJW ed. Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24267 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24245 Despite the coalition government currently in power, screws are getting tighter and stifling the freedoms of the Zimbabwean peoples. FG/CJW ed. Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24245 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24086 The author bemoans the continued belief in witchcraft even among African educated elites whom he feels should know better and should teach and legislate against beliefs and practices such as blaming and punishing (even by death) children accused of witchcraft. He draws on a new UNICEF report that generalizes that this practice persists and is even spreading. Statistics and sociological reasons for such generalizations are difficult to determine accurately; more could have been done by the author to explain the persistence of witchcraft, indeed even to define it. JK Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24086 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24031 The Zanzibar Indian Ocean Research Institute launches a first publication, Dhow Cultures of the Indian Ocean – Cosmopolitanism, Culture & Islam, by Prof. Abdul Sheriff, Executive Director of ZIORI. "By the fifteenth century, the global world of the Indian Ocean had matured, and Islam became the dominant religion. It spread not by sword but by peaceful commerce, and the heroes of this world were not continental empires but a string of small port city-states stretching from Kilwa to Melaka." DN Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=24031 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23882 SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa asks important questions about the use of a mobile phone for activism in Africa. Do African women utilize this technology for women’s rights advocacy? In this interview the book’s editor gives her perspective. SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa is available for purchase from Fahamu. DN Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23882 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23871 In contrast to the FIFA World Cup Cape Town traders and communities negatively affected by FIFA-related urban renewal projects and by-laws invited everybody and created their own contra-World Cup, a creative alternative that does not exploit or marginalize people, but involves them in creating new spaces of exposure and participation. DN Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23871 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23758 A new building housing and restoring a collection of an estimated 700,000 ancient manuscripts recognised as one of Africa’s principal cultural heritages has opened in Timbuktu. The new centre is to house about 300,000 manuscripts until now locked away in 24 private libraries in and around Timbuktu. This large number of historic documents from the 13th to 16th century are on the verge of being lost if not treated with urgency. JMPA Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23758 http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23648 It depends on whom you ask. Can African magicians deliver the World Cup to Africa? They have tried in the past without much success. Will this time be any different? Traditionalists say yes - if rituals are follwed to the book. Christians, however, dismiss such talk as heathen. M. Makoni Sun, 23 May 2010 00:00 EST http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=23648