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Olawale, Fasuan Emmanuel; Hooi, Khoo Ying; Balakrishnan, K. S
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2323525pmid: N/A
Traditional conflict resolution mechanisms in Nigeria are deeply rooted in customs, traditions, and native laws, forming a complex network that dispenses justice. Among these mechanisms, the reconciliation process stands out as a crucial traditional instrument, encompassing the pursuit of truth, justice, healing, and forgiveness. This study focuses on the Yoruba indigenous system and examines how its reconciliatory mechanisms contribute to conflict resolution through traditional reconciliation processes and in the healing of emotional wounds. Using qualitative research methods, this study generated data using interview protocols such as key informant interviews (KII) and naturalistic observational studies. This study explores the significance of indigenous practices in the reconciliation process within the Yoruba traditional society. These indigenous practices are employed to mend broken relationships and bridge the gaps created by conflicts. It further emphasizes that traditional conflict resolution approaches among the Yoruba ethnic group primarily serve the purposes of genuine reconciliation, peacebuilding, and maintenance of social relationships. This research confirms the appropriateness and practicality of Yoruba's traditional conflict resolution mechanisms as an effective home-grown approach. This demonstrates their compatibility with the modern Nigerian system, offering a pathway towards a cohesive future characterized by harmonious relationships.
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2324107pmid: N/A
The main thrust of this article is to trace and analyze the development of street theatre practice in contemporary Zimbabwe, paying particular attention to street theatre’s form and the context in which it has operated and operates. Concurrently, the paper examines how the political environment in Zimbabwe has been critical in shaping street theatre form and style. Scott’s theory of hidden transcripts is used to interrogate how street theatre navigates a censorious environment. Drawing on the post-linear and public and hidden transcript theories, the article historically interrogates street theatre as a performance form which adopts radical performance elements, allowing it to navigate an environment dominated by various censorial controls. Based on Scott (1990)’s assertion that the environment in which the subordinate find themselves shapes their public displays, this study argues that street theatre’s style of delivery is a result of the cultural and political background.
de Castro, Andrés; Mayer, Adam; Gaona-Prieto, Rodrigo; Bañares-Martin, Clara
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2324109pmid: N/A
Through research based on participant observations, interviews, the application of the Delphi technique and a SWOT analysis, this paper presents a qualitative evaluation of the first phase of the GAR-SI Sahel project, a major project that aims to bring security to the world’s poorest, as well as most volatile, region: the Sahel. Seven experts from military institutes in France, Portugal and Italy participated in the study, as well as six instructors from the Special Training Center of the Guardia Civil based in Logroño, Spain. Phase I of the GAR-SI Sahel project consists of a two-month training program, developed entirely at the Center, with the aim of training future commanders and trainers of the GAR-SI Sahel units of the project’s beneficiary countries Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. Through several rounds of semi-structured interviews and a categorical classification of the information obtained, this article offers an exploratory and evaluative description of the initial starting situation of Phase I of the project, as well as the progress of some proposals for improvement aimed at consolidating the GAR-SI Sahel project, as well as in its objective, the Sahel region as such, over time.
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2324112pmid: N/A
This paper incisively engages with the ways in which African leaders are not assertively demanding restitution of their material artifacts dispossessed in the eras of enslavement and colonization. It questions indigenous people’s struggles for restitution of materialities colonially dispossessed beyond a simplistic view of decentering their hierarchy and ownership. Besides, the paper critically interrogates why Euro-America scholarship generously offers resilience discourse as perhaps the most important conceptual addition to international policy making in the last few decades to Africa, but it ironically does not care to restitute dispossessed material artifacts back to indigenous African peoples. The paper argues that colonial dispossession is about recentering indigenous people as masters and owners of material artifacts via restitution. Using coloniality of dispossession/theft this paper proposes a framework of restitution that aims to address resilient colonial dispossession enacted by the West. It is pointed out that decolonization will be achievable through restitution of indigenous material artifacts. I engage in the topic of restitution of material artifacts, particularly in the context of Asante people of Ghana. The paper contends that restitution of dispossessed material artifacts would empower indigenous peoples in Africa and strategically position them in global geopolitics.
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2331492pmid: N/A
Representations of black-white homoeroticism and sensuality between men of colour in apartheid-era male nude photography aimed at white gay men, which, in South Africa, were exclusive to selected titles published by Alternative Books (AB) (1981–1991), are remarkable yet neglected in queer African studies. In this article, I explore how sexual apartheid was respectively maintained and transgressed in the historical reception of such photographs by two radically different readerships: that is, by censors involved in proscribing homoerotic commodities, and by AB’s intended audiences. Drawing from historical censorship reports on AB’s titles, I propose that the inconsistent treatment of photographs from these publications according to the racial categories of the men depicted is a particularly revealing iteration of selective homophobia and ‘official’ perceptions of homosexuality during apartheid. Considering, then, that AB’s titles anticipated a historical minority readership comprised of queer insiders rather than homophobic outsiders, I make the case for a corrective by ‘outing’ the queer and anti-racist potential of such diverse homoerotic images, which rendered intelligible possibilities for intimacy repressed elsewhere in consumer markets that catered to predominantly white gay audiences and that were, in a sense, complicit with the state’s whitewashing of male homosexual identity and desire.
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2331515pmid: N/A
On 29 May 2023, the vexed subsidy on PMS was finally removed after the unilateral border closure imposed since 2019 failed to prevent cross-border smuggling of the petroleum products in Nigeria. The ceaseless transborder smuggling despite border closure, raises questions about the effectiveness of border management in Nigeria. This study analyses the inefficacy of border policing against smuggling in Nigeria, arguing that strategies to monitor porous borders can only prevent cross-border smuggling of fuel in the absence of relationships between smuggling gangs and compromised border inspectors at various border crossings. The study identifies how the pervasive corruption and neo-patrimonialism characteristic of the Nigerian state has aided oil theft in the country and rendered border enforcement inefficient in addressing smuggling. By drawing attention to the profound socio-cultural ties as well as close economic relations between communities and villages on both sides of the border in the smuggling activities, the paper brings scholarship on the trans-border criminal cartel into international relations and contributes to the debates on contemporary border management politics in Africa.
Osisanwo, Ayo; Agunbiade, Modupe
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2339842pmid: N/A
Studies on humour have been extensively explored from the perspectives of stand-up comedy, hip-hop songs and others; however, existing works have not adequately researched the possibility of Nigerian university students evoking humour in their departmental chatroom through deployment of multiple codes. This paper therefore investigates how students spiced up their conversation in the departmental chatroom (DC) with purposefully composed humour through language manipulation in academic communities. Guided by an integrated framework of Jacob Mey Pragmatic acts theory, Attardo & Raskin General Theory of Verbal Humour and Peter Auer’s Typologies of Code Switching, the study examines humorous expressions in selected DC of Federal University students in southwest, Nigeria. Twelve excerpts were analysed and findings revealed code switching as a central humour strategy. Seven humour techniques and thirteen pragmatic acts were identified. The thematic issues that preoccupy the jokes were promiscuity, obligation of vigorous prayers, high consumption rate, and socio-cultural identity. The dissolution of the incongruous expressions to produce humour relies heavily on shared cultural knowledge (SCK), shared situational knowledge (SSK) and shared linguistic knowledge (SLK). The study validates existing knowledge that all humans naturally participate in humorous speech and behaviour as students engage in humorous interactions amidst their cumbersome academic programs.
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2345325pmid: N/A
This study proposes African ways of knowing as viable alternatives to Western theories, and demonstrates how Indigenous African epistemologies can be systematised for critical analysis of cultural productions. It builds on the argument that knowledge production in and about Africa should begin to utilise local frameworks to reflect African cultural specificities and instantiate how self-generational concepts from African cultures can be intellectualised. The study adopts Yorùbá Ọmọlúwàbí, Xhosa/Zulu Ubuntu/Hunhui and Shona Ukama, converts them to canons and uses them as models to validate empirical reality, propositional truth and epistemological premises of home-grown African theories. It discusses theory development and interrogates how these Indigenous epistemes can be structured and turned to theories using evidential, coherential, aesthetic and diachronic theoretical virtues. It also identifies the validity of these theories in cultural praxis, worldviews, proverbs of matrixes under study and generates five premises for the local frameworks, arguing that home-grown African theories can be adopted to remind and reawaken Africans to their cultural history and values.
Mpisi, Anthony; Alexander, Gregory
doi: 10.1080/14725843.2024.2345339pmid: N/A
Alumni discussions about racism and discriminatory practices experienced by Black learners at Historically White Schools (HWSs) in South Africa were triggered by the 2020 George Floyd incident. Several HWSs were accused of racist acts and discrimination by learners and alumni on social media forums during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations. It is concerning that after 28 years of democracy, racism still exists in South African schools, specifically HWSs. Many media and social media outlets continue to feature learners’ stories and encounters with racist behaviour. It is against this backdrop that this reflective paper engages with racism levelled against Black learners attending HWSs, precipitated by the BLM. The findings display that hashtag social campaigns in South Africa, after the appearance of the George Floyd incident in the United States, highlighted racism and various discriminatory practices in several HWSs in South Africa. The postings seem to have compelled some multicultural schools to effect genuine change and to locate diversity at the helm of a transformed South African educational system. This study recommends that education authorities initiate country-wide dialogues around anti-racism in HWSs, equip prospective teachers with skills, and deal with White privilege to address racism.
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