Exploitation and Misrule in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa

This book offers new perspectives on the history of exploitation in Africa by examining postcolonial misrule as a product of colonial exploitation. Political independence has not produced inclusive institutions, economic growth, or social stability for most Africans-it has merely transferred the benefits of exploitation from colonial Europe to a tiny African elite. Contributors investigate representations of colonial and postcolonial exploitation in literature and rhetoric, covering works from African writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Kwame Nkrumah, and Bessie Head. It then moves to case studies, drawing lines between colonial subjugation and present-day challenges through essays on Mobutu's Zaire, Nigerian politics, the Italian colonial fascist system, and more. Together, these essays look towards how African states may transform their institutions and rupture lingering colonial legacies.

This book offers new perspectives on the history of exploitation in Africa by examining postcolonial misrule as a product of colonial exploitation. Political independence has not produced inclusive institutions, economic growth, or social stability for most Africans—it has merely transferred the benefits of exploitation from colonial Europe to a tiny African elite. Contributors investigate representations of colonial and postcolonial exploitation in literature and rhetoric, covering works from African writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kwame Nkrumah, and Bessie Head. It then moves to case studies, drawing lines between colonial subjugation and present-day challenges through essays on Mobutu’s Zaire, Nigerian politics, the Italian colonial fascist system, and more. Together, these essays look towards how African states may transform their institutions and rupture lingering colonial legacies.

1. Introduction: Exploitation, Colonialism, and Postcolonial Misrule in Africa.- Section I. Encounters: Texts, Images, and Fiction.- 2. Rupturing Neocolonial Legacies in the African Novel: Ngugi wa Thiong'o'sMatigari as a Paradigm.- 3. Decolonial Visions in Mid-Twentieth-Century African Rhetoric: Perspectives from Kwame Nkrumah'sConsciencism.- 4. Images of Colonialism in the Text of Two African Female Poets.- 5. Migration and Exile: The Exotic Essence of Life in Bessie Head'sWhen Rain Clouds Gather.- 6. Ingrid de Kok's "A Room Full of Questions" and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.- 7. Identity, the "Passing" Novel, and the Phenomenology of "Race".- Section II. Encounters: Spaces of Subjugation and Dominance.- 8. Precolonial Imaginaries and Colonial Legacies in Mobutu's "Authentic" Zaïre.- 9. World War II and West African Soldiers in Asia, 1943–1947.- 10. A Colonizing Agricultural Company in Somalia: The Duke of Abruzzi'sSocietà Agricola Italo-Somala in the Italian Colonial Fascist System.- 11. The Magical Hour of Midnight: The Annual Commemorations of Rhodesia's and Transkei's Independence Days.- 12. Colonial Ideologies and the Emergence of Two Spaces: The Nigerian Experience.