John S. Saul, born and first educated in Toronto, Canada, moved to Tanzania almost sixty years ago and, since then, has also taught in Mozambique and South Africa as well as back in Canada at York University. In Tanzania, he discovered the centrality of the war for freedom from white rule and global capitalist dictate then taking shape further south – in Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. Both his scholarly interest and his activist bent drew him to support and to seek to better understand the struggles in these nations-in-the-making, a political choice that now culminates in a final trilogy of books under the general title, The Rethinking Southern African Liberation Trilogy. The first volume of this trilogy, On Building a Social Movement: The North American Campaign for Southern African Liberation Revisited, was published by Africa World Press / Fernwood Books (2017). The present book is the second in that trilogy, with a third volume entitled Class, Race and the Thirty Years War for Southern African Liberation – A History set to conclude his work to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.
Here, Saul’s extended first chapter lays out the broad premises of the thinking that has guided his endeavours, ideas that takes the core reality of economic production and exploitation centrally but that are alive to the tangible impact on outcomes of a wide range of other social realities, including class, race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, the environment, politics and the state. A second section covers the essential unity of theory and political practice that underpins Saul’s findings. And a third and final section paints illuminating pictures of some core aspects of the diverse regional contexts — sites of both recolonization and continuing struggle, and all contexts whose trajectories will be further explored in his forthcoming third volume.
Joachim Zeller
The collaborative anthology focuses on the profound inequalities and injustices as a result of “1492”. The authors and artists look closely and stumble upon the violence resulting from the colonial past, which is inherent in global inequality. Lights are being topped the coloniality of our everyday life today. At the same time, reference is made to the decolonializing potential of the everyday struggles of activists. The detailed introduction explains the postcolonial approach of the book. The collaboration on the artistic level, through dialogue and solidarity, has given hope, it says. Last but not least, the non-profit project sees itself as a contribution to the commitment to development education. A literature list in the appendix rounds off the volume. The moving “Episodes from a Colonial Present” must not be missing in any postcolonial library! Joachim Zeller https://www.iz3w.org/artikel/rezension-zeller-episodes-colonial-present-bendix
CLIP-Editorial
In nine stories, (post)colonial conditions are linked to the personal experiences of the authors and the historical conditions of colonial life are made transparent. This is what the story is about the story of tracking trauma. The German Genocides at Home and Abroad, the complexity demanded by the FES and illustrated, as the Nama groups changed alliances in connection with the German colonial aggression: “The Witbooi (/Khowesin) initially fought against the Ovaherero, then closed peace and fought side by side with the Ovaherero under German command against other peoples. 43). An explanatory text states: “Today, 70 percent of the private land belong to a few thousand whites, most of which are German-speaking farmers” (p. 45). They wanted a German version in all waiting rooms of our perpetrator country. https://www.cilip.de/2024/12/05/literatur-78/