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A wide body of scholarship has been developed on the Darfur crisis in Western Sudan which started in February 2003.1 Such scholarship includes various academic works by scholars such as Apiah-Mensa...

Genocide is horrible. It is an abomination of the human species, which is totally unacceptable. This is a common denominator among international lawyers, political scientists and other scholars and practitioners with an interest in the study of conflict and its implications on human existence. It is an obscenity, the evil of our time that all people must work to eradicate and this, in itself, is enough to explain why the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is obligatory to all states, including those who are no party to other related international legal instruments such as the Rome Statute of 2002. Thus, genocide is operationally referred to as the general practice of mass extra-judicial executions. To this end, this article seeks to achieve the following two central objectives: (1) interrogate the historical (and/or rhetorical) use of the term ‘genocide’ to refer to the security situation in Darfur region of Sudan during the year 2009 and (2) determine if genocide did take place in Darfur or it was simply a rhetoric. This is informed by the fact that this has been a matter of disagreement among policy makers, academics, political commentators and diplomats. Using the blend of Afrocentric perspective and interdisciplinary critical discourse analysis in its broadest form, we base our argument on the past developments about the Darfur conflict. The major finding of this article partly confirms the Euro-American claim of the occurrence of genocide in Darfur around the year 2009.

Achievable and viable peace and security efforts in Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) have been limited by an over dependence on foreign and international peacekeeping. The aim of this article is to unpack financial imperatives and constraints towards funding the SADC standby force (SADCSF). Through this the article hopes to provide lessons towards a suitable and sustainable funding mechanism aimed at addressing the financial challenges confronting African standby forces in peace operations. In particular, this article focuses on the SADCSF since its establishment in 2007. This article uses information from existing statistical and research data to first, identify existing funding models in international (regional and continental) peace operation and stand-by forces across the globe. Second, using four critical analytical frames (financial viability, the nature of regionalism, fiscal sustainability and economic landscape), the article highlights various implications of a lack of funding mechanism for regional peace and security in Africa. Third, the article shows that the following are critical to find a sustainable funding mechanism for the SADCSF: the financially demanding variable geometric nature of regional integration in Africa; the proliferation of security agencies; the complex nature of terrorism and interventions; the cost of skill acquisition and training of the multidisciplinary personnel; payment of wounded soldiers and contingents and member state tight budget. Based on international experiences and local realities expounded, this article suggests lessons towards building a suitable and sustainable funding mechanism for African peace and security in general, and regional standby forces in particular.

For more than two decades, 21st March has been canonised and celebrated among South Africans as Human Rights Day. Earmarked by the newly democratic and inclusive South Africa, it commemorates the Sharpeville and Langa massacres. As history recorded, on the 21st March 1960, residents of Sharpeville and subsequently, Langa embarked on a peaceful anti-pass campaign led by the African National Congress (ANC) breakaway party, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). The pass (also known as dompas) was one of the most despised symbols of apartheid; a system declared internationally as a crime against humanity. In the post-apartheid era, it is expectedthat all South Africans enjoy and celebrate the full extent of their human rights. However, it appears that the envisaged rights are not equally enjoyed by all. This is because widening inequalities in the health-care system, in schooling, and in the lucrative sporting arena have not been amicably and irrevocably resolved. Furthermore, it is still the norm that the most vulnerable of South Africans, especially rural Africans, find it difficult, and sometimes, impossible to access adequate and even essential healthcare services. Central to the possible questions to emerge from this discourse are the following(i) What is the current state of South Africa’s health system at the turn of 23 years of its majority rule? (ii) Why is the South African health system still unable to sufficiently deliver the socioeconomic health rights of most South African people? It is against this background that this article uses a critical discourse analysis approach in its broadest form to provide a nuanced Afrocentric assessment of South Africa’s human rights record in the health sector since the year 1994. Data for this article is generated through the review of the cauldron of published and unpublished academic, official and popular literature.

This article uses African critical theory (also known as Afrocentricity) to appraise US-Kenya inter-state relations. It does this first by contemporaneously historicising the relationship between the two countries and also looking at the current state of the US-Kenyan affair. Largely, the study carries a historical sensibility as it traces the relationship between Kenya and the US from as far as 1963. Our interest in this study is to highlight the peculiarity of the relationship between Kenya and the US. Put yet in another way, we seek to look at the nuances of the relationship. To achieve this, we rely methodologically on both primary and secondary sources to generate data. The data are analysed through the use of interdisciplinary critical discourse in its widest form. Overall, the central question we grapple with here is why the US sees in Kenya an indispensable political ally amidst all struggles and moments; some which have become part of the Kenyan political history, as this article will show. Three underlying currents shaping the relationship between Kenya and the US are identified in this article: 1) the consolidation of democracy; 2) the 2007 Kenyan election; and 3) the strategic importance of Kenya to the US’s overall political mission and objective. Lastly, this article makes its contribution to the existing body of literature in International Public Affairs (IPA) by implicitly and rigorously employing Afrocentricity as a new contextual lens to study US-Africa affairs.

Awareness of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW 1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC 1989) is relatively high within academic and political circles in South Africa and elsewhere around the world. In South Africa, this can be ascribed mainly to the powerful women’s lobby movements represented in government and academic sectors. Women and children’s issues have been especially highlighted in South Africa over the last few years. In this process, the aforementioned two international human rights instruments have proved very useful. There is a gender desk in each national department. The Office on the Status of Women and the Office on Child Rights have been established within the Office of the President, indicating the importance attached to these institutions. These offices are responsible for co-ordinating governmental efforts towards the promotion and protection of women and children’s rights respectively, including the two relevant treaties. Furthermore, there is also a great awareness amongst non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in respect of CEDAW and CRC. This can be ascribed mainly to the fact that there is a very strong women’s NGO lobby and NGOs are actively committed to the promotion of children’s rights. Women are increasingly vocal and active within the politics of South Africa, but the weight of customary practices remains heavy. The foregoing is evident of the widening gap between policy theory and practice in the fraternity of vulnerable groups – children and women in particular.

South Africa’s local government administration is complex in that both traditional leadership and elected municipal councils play a role in it. Traditional leadership occupies an essential position and status in local government administration, in particular in rural South Africa. However, the contemporary administrative jurisdiction of municipalities cuts across both rural and urban areas. In the rural areas, the conflict over the division of roles between traditional leaders and elected councillors is evident. Due to the influence and dominance of the neo-liberal global order, modernists often accuse traditional leadership of being undemocratic and authoritarian. However, the reality is that elected councils’ administration also leaves much to be desired, and the consequences of their poor administration are not uniformly understood. Since South Africa is a democratic state, it is expected that there should be a clear separation in government institutions between party (i.e., the ruling African National Congress) politics and public administration; a phenomenon that some describe as depoliticisation. Nevertheless, the realities on the ground suggest otherwise. This article, which is based on the theory of Afrocentricity, examines a selected rural municipality (Maruleng) in South Africa’s Limpopo province to critically reflect on the ethics and the value system of African culture in the context of local governance vis-à-vis Westernised governance principles. The aim of this research is achieved through interdisciplinary critical discourse and thematic analysis in its broadest form.

Background: Dr C. Archer has made serious theoretical and practical contributions to the understanding of the evolving scholarly and policy discourse on international organisations. Aim: This article critically analyse a selection of major and common difficulties faced by international organisations. Setting: Based on historical sensibility, this article heavily employs the United Nations as a test case to gain a crispy understanding of the difficulties faced by international organisations. Methods: This article was based on the study of secondary sources and critical discourse analysis. Data drawn from the emerging discourse were analysed thematically. Results: It has been established that the multifaceted nature of the difficulties faced by international organisations can best be understood when located within a historical context. Conclusion: There is no gainsaying that inasmuch as Archer’s study is not extensively cited by scholars, it remains a principal reference source for practitioners of the United Nations and other international organisations. The value for this article largely lies in its scholarly contribution, especially because of late the activities of international organisations have come under serious scrutiny within the diplomatic and academic circles.

The transition from colonialism and apartheid to democratic South Africa in the 1990s has not been a smooth one. In this context, the argument in this article is that the remnants of colonialism and apartheid continue to be evident in South African society and in universities in particular. In this country, the chains of colonialism (and later apartheid) facilitated an educational system that benefitted the coloniser (Britain) and the white minority. With the promotion of Bantu self-government came the building of historically black universities and their separation from former historically white universities. The former have inherited a Eurocentric educational system that does not meaningfully serve the needs of the majority of Africans. This alienated educational system served as a time bomb for the 2015 Fallist movements such as #RhodesMustFall at the University of Cape Town. This later led to the #TransformNWU and #FeesMustFall campaigns among students and lecturers in the country. Based on Afrocentricity as a theoretical framework, this article seeks to analyse the transformation of South African universities from being the product of colonialism to being an envisaged barometer of African scholarship. In analysing such a transformation, the authors address the following two key questions: (1) Are South African universities meeting the needs of the society they are meant to serve? (2) How far has the transformation of universities in South Africa progressed? In answering these questions, this article relies heavily on the methods of document review and discourse analysis in the broadest sense.

Since March 2016, the subject of South African state capture has received much attention from the political, business and scholarly community in the country and beyond. The vibrancy of this public and scholarly discourse was reignited by the claims by some politicians from the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), that in the recent past, they were approached by the Gupta family (business moguls) for consideration in ministerial appointments. These revelations have since produced a dominant perception that the Gupta family wields an undue influence over the President of the Republic and by extension, the entire state machinery. This extends to the family and friends as well. While the Guptas ‘capture’ the state, ministers and premiers are not directly accountable to them by protocol, but only to the President as a constitutional prerogative to do so. The view on state capture is not uniformly accepted. One notes the discourse is dominated by Euro-American perspectives, purporting to create a misunderstanding of the current trajectory of business–state relations in South Africa. As a theoretical framework, Afrocentricity is adopted and used in this article to answer the following two central questions: (i) Is it a myth or reality that the Gupta family has captured the South African state? (ii) At which point should corporate influence in state affairs be considered as illegal? Methodologically, this is achieved through thematic content analysis on conversations and the prevailing discourses circulating within South Africa.

To conceive the notion of corruption presupposes the existence of corrupt individuals, groups or organisations. The existence of corrupt individuals, groups or organisations you might say presupposes the presence of an entity. Every entity (i.e. state or corporate) has laid down procedures, processes and methods of doings and functioning. When these procedures and processes are negated, one could be accused of subversion. Subversion is an element in the definition of administrative corruption and is the unwillingness to follow stipulated plans of actions. An action that negates procedures falls under corrupt practice. This article will answer the following research questions: How has corruption been framed and perceived and what are the underlining consequences in Africa? In what ways, if any, has the prevailing perception of corruption undermined and understated the notion of corruption in Africa? In what ways can a remedial be conceived in the fight to make Africa free of corruption? And finally: How can Kleptoafronia be conceived as a panacea for corruption in the continent? This article uses themes and narrative analysis in the qualitative realm to provide answers to the research questions. Over 500 scholarly materials were read and scanned from journal articles, Internet sources, textbooks and several academic indexes to provide evidence for the arguments in this article from five disciplinary standpoints: political science, public administration, criminology, psychology and medical sciences. This article is a conceptual article that tends to demonstrate that corruption in Africa is a psych-administrative disorder termed – Kleptoafronia.

This qualitative article employs an Afrocentric perspective as an alternative theoretical and/or contextual lens to provide an overview of the national security challenges facing the United States of America (US) within the context of its engagement in Africa. It also demonstrates the reactions of the US to African security threats (real or imagined) to its national well-being. At the centre of the discussion of this article is the articulation of the main issues about the US National Security Strategy in relation to Africa. The objective is to unravel the myth that Africa is a threat to the US national security and the reality about its dismissed importance to US within the context of the current global discourse on security. In order to provide a wider context for understanding the security dimension of the US foreign policy as it relates to Africa and to foster epistemic justice, it is important to address this subject from the viewpoint of Africans and others whose fate is tied to this continent. Â