At Independence in 1980, Julius Nyerere called Zimbabwe 'the jewel of Africa', and cautioned its new leaders not to tarnish it. Tragically, they paid no heed to Africa's esteemed elder statesmen. Arguably - and only if one ignores the carnage of Gukurahundi - the first decade was a developmental one, with resources being used prudently to benefit the formerly disadvantaged majority population. However, the 1990s witnessed a transition from a developmental to a predatory leadership which saw Zimbabwe cross the millennial line in crisis, where it has remained ever since. While many African countries have moved forward over the last three decades, Zimbabwe has gone relentlessly backwards, save for the four-year interregnum of the tripartite coalition government, 2009-2013. Virtually all development indicators point in the wrong direction and the crisis of poverty, unemployment, and the erosion of health. education and other public goods continues unabated. The imperatives of political survival and power politics supersede those of sound economics and public welfare. Moreover, unless good politics are conjoined with a sound people-first policy, the country will continue sliding downhill. Zimbabwe's Trajectory tells the story of the country's post-independence dynamics and its recent descent into becoming one of the three most unhappy countries in the world.

This book is an examination of post-colonial land reforms across various African states. One of the decisive contradictions of colonialism in Africa was the distortion of use, access to and ownership of land. Land related issues and the need for land reform have consistently occupied a unique position in public discourse in Africa. The post-colonial African states have had to embark on concerted efforts at redressing historical grounded land policies and addressing the growing needs of land by the poor. However, agitations for land continue, while evidence of policy gaps abound. In many cases, policy change in terms of land use, distribution and ownership has reinforced inequalities and affected power and social relations in respective post-colonial African countries. Land has assumed major causes of structural violence and impediments to human and rural development in Africa; hence the need for holistic assessment of land reforms in post-colonial African states. The central objective of the text is to identify post-independence and current trends in land reform and to address the grievances in relation to land use, ownership and distribution. The book suggests practicable policy options towards addressing the land hunger and conflict, which could derail the ‘moderate’ socio-economic achievements and political stability recorded by post-colonial African nation-states. The book draws its strength and uniqueness from its adoption of country-specific case studies, which places the book in context, and utilizes field studies methodology which generate new knowledge on the continental land question. Taking a holistic approach to understanding Africa’s land question, this book will be attractive to academicians and students interested in policy and development, African politics, post-colonial development and policy, and conflict studies as well as policy-makers working in relevant areas.

These proceedings represent the work of researchers participating in the 6th International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (ICIE 2018) which is being co-hosted by Georgetown University and George Washington University and is being held at The University of the District of Columbia (UDC) on 5-6 March 2018.

Combining ethnographic and historical research conducted in Angola, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, A Prophetic Trajectory tells the story of Simão Toko, the founder and leader of one of the most important contemporary Angolan religious movements. The book explains the historical, ethnic, spiritual, and identity transformations observed within the movement, and debates the politics of remembrance and heritage left behind after Toko’s passing in 1984. Ultimately, it questions the categories of prophetism and charisma, as well as the intersections between mobility, memory, and belonging in the Atlantic Lusophone sphere.

Modern religious tourism is a main segment of the tourism business. The main goal of religious tourism is aimed at developing human spirituality, spiritual healing, and culture, where a person receives the experience of cooperation, or involvement with the place in which he resides, his people, culture, and religion. This type of tourism is able to play a significant role in the overall goals of society and to promote the establishment of trusting relationships between people of all cultures and religions. Global Development of Religious Tourism is a crucial reference book that contains research on the current religious situation as well as the tourism industry and provides insights on their joint development. It is not possible to study any religious field without understanding the religion itself and its impact on any country’s political and social system. Therefore, the work also examines the impact of religion and tourism on economic and social developments across the world. Highlighting topics that include sanctuary cities, religious tourism management, and religious tourism in regions that span Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more, this book is targeted to managers, executives, planners, and other professionals in the tourism and hospitality industry; government officials; religious leaders; and researchers, academicians, and students working in the fields of tourism management, business management, information and communication sciences, administrative sciences and management, education, and social and political sciences.

In this accessible and authoritative book, Godfrey Kanyenze provides a comprehensive and far-reaching analysis of the socio-economic development in Zimbabwe in light of the expanding authoritarianism and the ongoing destruction of democratic institutions during the four decades after independence. Kanyenze describes the various phases of the socio-economic development starting with 1980 when the people of Zimbabwe saw their hard-won independence and new democracy as a promise for a "better life for all". Kanyenze highlights how by dismantling all barriers of economic and legal restraint, and that despite being necessary, The land reform programme put the political and financial interests of the elite before those of the people which continues to this day. Kanyenze reveals the governmental attacks on civil society, and notes how economic policy was not even part of an "authoritarian bargain", an implicit arrangement between ruling elites and citizens whereby citizens relinquish political freedom in exchange for public goods. And he concludes this analysis with a current update of Zimbabwe today, where citizens have nothing -neither political freedom nor public goods. This impressive and gripping account of an authoritarian capitalist system and a country in decline is a must-read for students, researchers, policymakers and those who want to better understand how politics and the economy, interests, conflicts, and power work together.

Zimbabwe’s crisis since 2000 has produced a dramatic global scattering of people. This volume investigates this enforced dispersal, and the processes shaping the emergence of a new "diaspora" of Zimbabweans abroad, focusing on the most important concentrations in South Africa and in Britain. Not only is this the first book on the diasporic connections created through Zimbabwe’s multifaceted crisis, but it also offers an innovative combination of research on the political, economic, cultural and legal dimensions of movement across borders and survival thereafter with a discussion of shifting identities and cultural change. It highlights the ways in which new movements are connected to older flows, and how displacements across physical borders are intimately linked to the reworking of conceptual borders in both sending and receiving states. The book is essential reading for researchers/students in migration, diaspora and postcolonial literary studies.

This book adds to the research of urban informality in the Global South with a specific focus on South Africa and Zimbabwe. It addresses the agency and the potential transformative capacity of the phenomenon of urban informality in connection with Southern African cities and towns. It adopts a political economy approach to analyse the evolution of informality in cities and its implications for urban planning. It brings to bear how the South African and Zimbabwean historical and/or ideological and contemporary political and economic trajectories have impacted on the ever changing nature of urban informality, both spatially and structurally and/or compositionally; thus resulting in unique urban materialities, which are aspects that have scarcely been studied or discussed in the extant literature. This book, therefore, seeks to close the academic gap by dealing with the dearth of literature on spatial (re)locational discourses of urban informality. The work positions urban informality as a resilient force with potency in terms of political mobilisation and (re) shaping urban spaces. Though these are fundamental issues, they have received comparatively little attention, especially in literature that focuses on the Southern African region. Accordingly, undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as academics in the fields of Urban Geography, Political Science, Development Studies, Sociology, Town and Regional Planning among others, will find the range of topics and depth of coverage in this book particularly valuable. Similarly, practitioners and activists on issues of urban informality and urban governance will find the book very useful.

Human Rights, Power and Civic Action examines the interrelationship between struggles for human rights and the dynamics of power, focusing on situations of poverty and oppression in developing countries. It is argued that the concept of power is a relatively neglected one in the study of rights-based approaches to development, especially the ways in which structures and relations of power can limit human rights advocacy. Therefore this book focuses on how local and national struggles for rights have been constrained by power relations and structural inequalities, as well as the extent to which civic action has been able to challenge, alter or transform such power structures, and simultaneously to enhance protection of people’s basic human rights. Contributors examine and compare struggles to advance human rights by non-governmental actors in Cambodia, China, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The country case-studies analyse structures of power responsible for the negation and denial of human rights, as well as how rights-promoting organisations challenge such structures. Utilising a comparative approach, the book provides empirically grounded studies leading to new theoretical understanding of the interrelationships between human rights struggles, power and poverty reduction. Human Rights, Power and Civic Action will be of interest to students and scholars of human rights politics, power, development, and governance.

Beyond the examples above, this book presents us with in-depth analyses on several African countries which are seldom assessed when the topic is democracy and whose experiences vary on an axis that can be generalised and applied for other countries in the continent, since they happened in countries from different regions and with different backgrounds. Throughout the book, challenges and opportunities for democracy consolidation in Burkina Faso, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zimbabwe are studied and invite the reader to promptly question conventional knowledge on the topic. In addition, the book also analyses the mechanisms and tools that the African Union have to manage (un)democratic changes on its member-states and thoroughly and innovatively assesses the impacts that migration has on democracy in Africa. As a passionate researcher on African politics and international relations, I am confident to say that this book will be useful for anyone who wants to get a better and unbiased sense on challenges and opportunities for democracy in Africa. By challenging conventional knowledge and presenting fair generalisations whilst highlighting heterogeneity, this book contributes to a better understanding of the democratic processes in the continent and encourages scholars and students to deepen their knowledge and to engage in further research on the topic. Since I save no effort in helping people to develop a critical thinking and to deconstruct stereotypes that accompany African politics, this book will certainly be included in the recommended readings for my students.