Sympathetic accounts of the rise and rise of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are few and far between. The anger that he has managed to generate has left little room for debate, and even more frightening, for criticism in Zimbabwe itself. He has ruled by fear and patronage, and he has maintained his political isolationism through invoking the unresolved land question and suppressing dissent. Stephen Chan is not a Mugabe hack. He does however attempt a reasoned look at history, politics, economics and war to develop a profile of arguably one of the most controversial leaders in Africa today.

Where do people earn Per Capita Income?
More than one poor starving soul would like to know.
In our countries, numbers live better than people.
How many people prosper in times of prosperity?
How many people find their lives developed by development?

Palaver Finish is a collection of essays written by one of Zimbabwe's top writers and published originally in the Zimbabwe Standard, an independent local newspaper. Having read these journalistic musings one can expect the Mugabe government to not take kindly to the writings of Chenjerai Hove.

A monumental work, epic in scope and design, and clearly the result of extensive research, which has been skilfully woven into an enchanting narrative. This panoramic story, with its vividly realised characters and heroic action, restores the ancient link between history and literature. - African Book Centre

Kwani? (www.kwani.org) is a literary journal founded by some of Kenya's most exciting new writers, to provide to the Kenyan reading public writing of the highest quality. We believe that Kenya is presently producing world-class writers, and we proved this with our very first edition. Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, a kwani? writer who had never been published before was short listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Also, referred to as It is our objective of kwani? to get Kenyans reading quality writing again.

There has been another stage in the degradation of the Heinemann's African Writers Series. At the beginning of 2003 it emerged that no new titles would be added to the Series. Now, because British government spending on British school textbooks has been cut, 30 members of the International Division at Heinemann were made redundant in July 2003 by the new Harcourt management. The overseas part of Heinemann which had contributed so much to the development of education in Africa, and had in the boom years made so much money out of Africa, is no more.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) has announced the coming to fruition of its new initiative, the Africa Review of Books (ISSN 0851-7592). The editorial production of the Africa Review of Books will be piloted by the Forum for Social Studies (FSS), based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with the active support of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique et Technique en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle (CRASC), based in Oran, Algeria. The initiative for the publication of the Africa Review of Books dates back to about a decade and it emerged out of a shared concern in the African social research community that considered it expedient to create a forum for a critical presentation of books produced on Africa within and outside the continent. Such a Review was deemed central to the goal of projecting interesting original works of art and science produced in Africa that might otherwise be lost on account of poor visibility.

Xoli Nkosi, a South African musician, started his band from scratch with a few guys from the township. “I call my music Bokasie fusion, that is the name that my sisters came up with.” He enjoys performing around the country, from Gauteng to KwaZulu-Natal. He believes that this is his calling, a mission to speak to people’s hearts through music.

Angola was still at war when, in 1997, Pedro Rosa Mendes, a young Portuguese writer, decided to travel by land from Angola to Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony that had been ravaged by war. It was never going to be easy; Unita also then controlled vast territories of southern Angola through which Rosa Mendes would have to pass. Bay of Tigers is a winsome, bittersweet account of Rosa Mendes's travails as he progresses through these countries. It is obviously the work of a highly talented, sensitive writer, though a preface or more detailed notes explaining some of the more involved aspects of Angolan history would have made it easier for Anglophone readers. The English edition could have also done with some rigorous copy editing. These faults do not, however, weaken the vitality of the work.

Pedro Rosa Mendes

Poems by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
Recapturing the celebratory voice of Africa in poems that are both contemporary and traditional, Liberian-born Patricia Jabbeh Wesley weaves lyrical storytelling with oral history and images of Africa and America, revealing powerful insights about the relationship between strength and tragedy - and finding reason to celebrate even in the presence of war, difficulties, and death. Rooted in myths that can be traced to the Grebo tradition, Becoming Ebony portrays Liberian-born Wesley’s experiences of village talk and civil war as well as her experiences of the pain of her mother’s death and the difficulties of rearing a family away from home in the United States, and explores the questions of living in the African Diaspora.

In Africa, national identity and ownership of land and other resources is deeply contested, largely as a result of the continent's colonial history. The need for art to advocate these issues and to promote ownership by the people of Africa of their culture, land and resources, is now paramount. This is according to Artists for Human Rights (AHR) a Durban-based non-profit voluntary association that promotes the international cooperation of artists and human rights organisations. AHR has developed a model for the use and application of high quality art as an effective public advocacy tool. Read more by clicking on the link provided.

Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is this year's winner of the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing. She was awarded for her short story Weight of Whispers, published in Kwani? magazine in 2003. Yvonne beat five other African writers drawn from Zimbabwe, Congo and two from South Africa who were all highly commended by the panel of judges, led by Abdulrazak Gurnah. The prize that is awarded annually for African creative writing is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former chairman of Booker Plc and chairman of the Booker Prize management committee for nearly 25 years.

“We, poets of South Africa, declare for all the country and the world to know that a country that does not appreciate poetry is a doomed country. This means that our poetry, just like our music and dance, contributed a great deal to South Africa’s present dispensation. Another reason is that new South African poetry is hardly ever studied in schools and universities; and that our public libraries do not carry sufficient poetry resources. Although there are policies and institutions to support the arts, there has been very little support for poetry and poets. We therefore commit ourselves to building a conscious society that appreciates poetry from primary to higher levels.”

Comprising of six dancers, the work ‘Ludic Liminality’, will be showcased to a South African audience before moving to the Netherlands for a series of performances there in November and December.

Visit for a display of work by Ugandan graphic artist Fred Mutebi, whose motivations are the African people and their environment, the colours and the splendour of Uganda (the pearl of Africa), and the rural people of Africa.

People who witness acts of terror and violence are often called after the event to bear witness to what they saw. In cases where this violence is inflicted by the state upon its own people, the process of bearing witness is both politically complex and traumatic for the individual involved. Fiona Ross's fascinating study of the process of bearing witness is the first book to examine the gendered dimensions of this topic from an anthropological and ethnographic viewpoint. Taking as a key example the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Ross explores women's relationships to testimony, particularly the extent to which women avoid talking about or are silent about certain forms of violence and suffering.

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan writer. He lived and worked for ten years in South Africa and has been writing from Nakuru, Kenya for the past two years. Now based in Nairobi, Kenya, he has been published by various literary journals around the world and in July 2002 he won the Caine Prize for African Writing - Africa's most prestigious literary prize.

'If in time, the reality of the absence of fundamental change convinces the disadvantaged majority that we have created a political democracy which is unable or unwilling fully to dismantle the system of racial oppression and exploitation, then we must expect that the dream deferred will, rather than wilt in the sun, explode!' (Thabo Mbeki, 1994). This book assesses how far South Africa has come in uprooting poverty since this pronouncement. It traces developments from the end of the apartheid economic system, that institutionalised and perpetuated poverty, and some of the highest levels of inequality in the world; to the new era, which grew out of this regime, and is characterised by black stratification, and an ever widening gap between rich and poor.

* Emmanuel Dongala on science, social sciences and Africa;
* Tanella Boni replies to Emmanuel Dongala;
* Robert Berold on celebrities, poets, and a week in Durban;
* Andile Mngxitama on how the rich (plan to) get cultured;
* Anant Kumar on the Mosques on the banks of the Granges.

The Sowetan reports that the South African Sports Commission has received Lottery funds worth R9m. The money will be distributed evenly to sports academies in all nine provinces.