The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring addresses the often unspoken connection between the powerful call for a political-cultural renaissance that emerged with the end of South African apartheid and the popular revolts of 2011 that dramatically remade the landscape in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Looking between southern and northern Africa, the transcontinental line from Cape to Cairo that for so long supported colonialism, its chapters explore the deep roots of these two decisive events and demonstrate how they are linked by shared opposition to legacies of political, economic, and cultural subjugation. As they work from African, Islamic, and Western perspectives, the book’s contributors shed important light on a continent’s difficult history and undertake a critical conversation about whether and how the desire for radical change holds the possibility of a new beginning for Africa, a beginning that may well reshape the contours of global affairs.
Table of Contents
Foreword: The Arab Reawakening: An Africa Renaissance Perspective
Thabo Mbeki
Introduction: Beginning Again? The Question of a Continent
Erik Doxtader, Charles Villa-Vicencio, and Ebrahim Moosa
1. From Cairo to the Cape: The Dilemmas of Revolution
Shamil Jeppie
2. Gathering the Pieces: The Structural, Social, and Psychological Elements of African Renewal
Don Foster
3. Understanding a Flawed Miracle: The History, Dynamics, and Continental Implications of South Africa’s Transition
Charles Villa-Vicencio
4. Irreconcilable Truths: Gender-Based Violence and the Struggle to Build an Inclusive History
Helen Scanlon
5. Managing Transition: Lessons from Tunisia
Ibrahim Sharqieh
6. Is There a Center to Hold? The Problem of Transition in Post-Qaddafi Libya
Asif Majid
7. The Pharaoh Returns: The “Politics of Order” and the Muslim Yearning for Freedom
Ebrahim Rasool
8. Political Theology in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring: Returning to the Ethical
Ebrahim Moosa
9. The One and the Many: Religious Coexistence and Belonging in Postapartheid Society
Abdulkader Tayob
10. A Popular Revolution? Gender Inequality and Political Change in North Africa
Katherine Marshall
11. A “New” Pan-Africanism: Future Challenges
Chris Landsberg
12.The Potential of an African Assertion—Once More, in the Name of a Renaissance
Erik Doxtader
Appendices
A. Colonization and Independence of African Countries
B. Select Chronology of Afro-Arab Spring
C. Pan-Africanism: Select Initiatives, Organizations, and Conventions
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Contributors
Reviews
"Anyone who wants to understand what is going on in Africa today needs to read this book. The birth of the African Renaissance and Afro-Arab Spring has injected hope and produced its disappointments. The continent’s future is uncertain. I suggest, however, that future generations will look back to this time as a crucial turning point in African and global politics. This book plumbs the depths of Africa’s quest for rebirth, often against overwhelming forces of resistance–with tentacles reaching deep into the West, the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and elsewhere."—Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus (Cape Town—South Africa)
Contributors
Erik Doxtader Don Foster Shamil Jeppie Chris Landsberg Asif Majid Katherine Marshall Thabo Mbeki Ebrahim Moosa Ebrahim Rasool Helen Scanlon Ibrahim Sharqieh Abdulkader Tayob Charles Villa-Vicencio
About the Author
Charles Villa-Vicencio is a visiting professor in the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown University and senior research fellow at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town.
Erik Doxtader is a professor of rhetoric at the University of South Carolina and a senior research fellow at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town.
Ebrahim Moosa is a professor of Islamic Studies with appointments in the Department of History and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
