When it gained independence from Britain in 1960, hopes were high that, with mineral wealth and over 140 million people, the most educated workforce in Africa, Nigeria would become Africa s first superpower and a stabilizing democratic influence in the region.However, these lofty hopes were soon dashed and the country lumbered from crisis to crisis, with the democratic government eventually being overthrown in a violent military coup in January 1966. From 1966 until 1999, the army held onto power almost uninterrupted under a succession of increasingly authoritarian military governments and army coups. Military coups and military rule (which began as an emergency aberration) became a seemingly permanent feature of Nigerian politics.The author names names, and explores how British influence aggravated indigenous rivalries. He shows how various factions in the military were able to hold onto power and resist civil and international pressure for democratic governance by exploiting the country's oil wealth and ethnic divisions to its advantage.Africa is featured in the headlines as developed countries and China clash over the need for the continent s resources. Yet there are few serious books to help us understand any aspect of the never-ending cascade of wars and conflicts. While other titles on Nigeria are mostly children's books or travel guides, the current work focuses specifically on the social tensions, the motivations and the methods of the series of coups that rent Nigeria.

    By focusing on individuals, Blaine Harden uncovers an Africa that endures behond the sum of its statistics.

    We were colored girls in a white world that didn’t want us."  Born on the wrong side of a racial divide in apartheid-torn Cape Town, young sisters Ruby and Rose exist in a world where they are not welcome. As part of the Cape Colored community, they are considered socially inferior, yet even within their own social group the sisters live in the poor end of town. Their father was killed when they were very small, so when their mother dies after a protracted illness, Ruby and Rose’s fate falls into the hands of Aunt Olive. Ruby knows without being told that their aunt’s home will not be opened up to them – charity does not extend to the poor relations who would cast a smudge on such a respectable house. Aunt Olive condemns her nieces to the local orphanage, relieving her conscience with monthly invitations to Sunday lunch. In the orphanage the girls grow up sheltered from a divided world that they do not yet fully understand, but the day approaches when Ruby and Rose must forge their own paths in life and confront the lessons that apartheid enforces. Like the award-winning Dance with a Poor Man’s Daughter, this beautifully observed novel of sisterly love once again displays Pamela Jooste’s poignant understanding of human nature.

    Her long dark auburn hair cascaded over her shoulders and her pale, attractive face, wide set eyes and full sensuous lips took his breath away. Robert could not help staring at her in frank amazement. He found it difficult to equate this alluring woman with the tall, awkward girl he vaguely remembered while a young boy at Fairlee Manor in Scotland.* * *Action, adventure and erotic entanglements loom large in young Robert Hamilton’s future as he seeks to make his fortune in the rough and tumble world of the Johannesburg goldfields in the closing years of the nineteenth century.Robert’s business interests and adventures in the wilds of South Africa, bring him into close contact with the Boer peoples of the Transvaal Republic. As the threat of a British invasion looms large over the country, his support for the Boer cause finds him on the opposing side to his fellow uitlanders – foreigners. He is dismayed to discover that both of his brothers have enlisted in Canadian regiments ready to fight on the side of Britain in the Anglo-Boer War.

    Ben will stop at nothing to save his son, but what awaits him is an evil, more dangerous and insidious than he could have ever anticipated. Into the Lion’s Den is a fast-paced action thriller, a compelling saga of the love of family and the indomitable will to survive in the face of an implacable malevolence.

    She spent five years on the run from the brutal LRA, and then cared for her young nieces after their mother died of AIDs, losing them one by one to the disease. Their deaths plunged her into depression, which only began to lift after she took in an unexpected guest: a pregnant teenage girl, kidnapped and assaulted by the LRA, who had escaped captivity with her toddler.Spurred on by her young friend's plight, Alice began to house and nurture survivors of the sexual violence that was a trademark of the LRA's twenty-year campaign. Out of this rose the Pader Girls Academy, which Alice saw as a 'School of Restoration'. It has helped hundreds of girls, many left with babies and HIV as a result of their enslavement. Alice recognised the humanity and potential in these girl mothers, who had been rejected or were trapped in their villages without hope.Written in Alice's powerful yet understated voice, The School of Restoration is a compelling story of hope, forgiveness, redemption and the human capacity to survive and even thrive against the backdrop of war and chaos.

    

    Her friend called with a job offer too curious to refuse: a cruisey-gig as a dementia carer for a rich old man in Kenya. All expenses-paid, plenty of free time to travel or do some freelance reporting. There seemed no good reason to say no... so she got on a plane.Only Kirsten's friend hadn't given her the full story. It was only on arrival in Nairobi that she discovered the rich old man's family was fighting a war around him, and that she would be on the frontline. Caught in the crossfire of all kinds of wild accusations, she also had to spy on his wife, keep his daughter placated, rebuff his marriage proposals, hide the car keys and clip his toenails all while trying to retain her own sanity in the colonial time warp of his home.Meanwhile, the Kenyan army was invading Somalia, Al-Shabaab was threatening terror attacks, the East African bodybuilding scene beckoned, and Kirsten discovered she had long-lost cousins running a bar on the other side of the city.I Built No Schools in Kenya is a travelogue-tragedy-farce about race, wealth, love, death, family, nationhood, sanity, benzodiazepines, monkeys and whisky.It is almost entirely true.

    But for a one small boy in the leafy northern suburbs of Johannesburg ... his beloved housekeeper is serving fish fingers for lunch.This is the tale of Hamish Charles Sutherland Fraser – chorister, horse rider, schoolboy actor and, in his dreams, 1st XV rugby star and young ladies’ delight. A boy who climbs trees in the spring and who loves a girl named Reggie.An odd child growing up in a conflicted, scary, beautiful society.A young South African who hasn’t learnt the rules.

    Written by a man who was intimately involved with the unit and served as its Regimental Sergeant Major for two years, the book aims to explode the myths surrounding the legendary 32 and set the record straight. It records how and why 32 Battalion was formed, explores its unique identity forged by the men who fought in it, details the many operations in which they participated, and concludes with its eventual disbandment at the dawn of a new South Africa. What they did, and how they did it, would earn this controversial group official recognition as the best fighting unit in the South African Army since World War II. This book s unembellished, factual reporting will fill a big gap in the highly popular military genre."

    But her desperate attempts to find help elsewhere are abruptly thwarted by a new outbreak of fighting initiated by an untested government determined to win at any cost. With her husband forced into conscription, her time and options running out, she must make a fateful decision - remain where she is and jeopardize the life of one child, or flee her beloved homeland, leaving her husband and second daughter behind... possibly forever. Relentless is the powerful and inspiring story of an Eritrean woman who faced incredible obstacles, defied a ruthless regime, and became an American immigrant success story, all while never giving up fighting for the only thing that really ever mattered: family. "There is a proverb in my native Tigrinya language,both warning and admonishment.It goes like this:Haki tseraba mot keraba.It means, if you speak the truth, you will gather many enemies." The Dreams of Freedom stories One family, two powerful accounts of love, heartbreak, and determination from one of the world's most isolated and abusive governments in modern history. It's 1991, and a bloody thirty-year conflict with Ethiopia has just ended, earning Eritrea its first taste of freedom in over a century. But peace is a delicate flower, and power is all-too easily corrupting. Soon, the small Horn-of-African nation will find itself at war once again, back in the familiar stranglehold of despotism, except this time it will be at the hands of its own beloved leader and war hero. Families are torn apart, suspicion and desperation grow. Human rights are violated. In the midst of worsening oppression, one man and one woman will risk everything to save their children from this life of violence and give them the future they once imagined for themselves.. ~ Relentless - An Immigrant Story by Wudasi Nayzgi and Kenneth James Howe ~ I Will Not Grow Downward - Memoir Of An Eritrean Refugee by Yikealo Neab and Kenneth James Howe I WILL NOT GROW DOWNWARD - MEMOIR OF AN ERITREAN REFUGEE ONE MAN'S LONG AND PERILOUS FLIGHT FROM AFRICA'S HERMIT KINGDOMTHIRTY YEARS OF BLOODY CONFLICT with a powerful enemy never broke the spirit of the Eritrean people. After winning their freedom from Ethiopia, a young man dreams of starting a new life, building a home, and teaching his children what it means to be the masters of their own fate. But all-too soon, the fighting resumes. Rounded up and forced into conscription, subjected to inhumane treatment, made to serve a despotic leader in an army fighting a war nobody wants, he will have to sacrifice much just for a chance to get back what he lost - his family, his freedom, his birthright. But will it be worth it? Or will he simply lose everything in the end? I Will Not Grow Downward offers an exceedingly rare glimpse inside the highly secretive and brutally repressive regime known as Africa's North Korea.

    "If I don't offer it milk, our son will grow up to look like a lizard," she explained. Clearly I had a lot to learn about life in Africa.On the cusp of middle age, Simon Fenton leaves Britain in search of adventure and finds Senegal, love, fatherhood, witch doctors—and a piece of land that could make a perfect guest house, if only he knew how to build one. The Casamance is an undiscovered paradise here mystic Africa governs life, people walk to the beat of the djembe, when it rains it pours, and the mangoes are free. But the fact that his name translates to "vampire" and he has had a curse placed on him via the medium of eggs could mean Simon’s new life may not be so easy.

    As the years passed, the two grew closer, swapping stories about coloureds and zulus, life in Riverlea and Soweto, pass laws, politics and falling in love.

    THIS is Africa is a compilation of stories that defines the maxim "Truth is sometimes stranger, and more wondrous than fiction." From a place known for its continent-wide diversity, notorious for its dramatic turbulence, and beloved for its animals and untamed wildness, Mat Dry, brings his incredible true tales of living and working in Africa as a Safari Guide.

    But the Africans she meets are survivors, fascinating individuals charting new ways of living between tradition and modernity. The story of Malinese blues singer Kar Kar (Boubacar Traore)- celebrated in Europe, caught up in a family tragedy at home - epitomises the struggles facing so many people in these lands. With her remarkable gift for drawing stories out of people, Joris paints a hauntingly intimate portrait of the singer and his society, brilliantly capturing the rhythms of a world that refuses to give in.