Part 1 of this new online course introduces you to the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, the Pan-African Congress, Leopold Senghor’s notion of ‘negritude’, and much more.

Over the next 10 weeks, African Arguments is delighted to be bringing you a short online course in African Political Thought. The course is hosted by Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), and will consist of a series of 10-minute video lectures. These lectures will cover aspects of African political thought from the period preceding decolonisation, to the years of independence, and up to the present day.

African Political Thought Part 1: Race and Romanticism

The thought of liberation: Cabral and the Lusophonic thinkers; the ‘pacific’ counterpoint of Kaunda.

African Political Thought Part 2: The Thought of Liberation

The New African Man: the political thought of transformation – Kaunda, Nyerere, Obote, Nkrumah.

African Political Thought Part 3: The New African Man

The degeneration into ‘Big Men’: case studies of Mobutu and Banda; the critique of Mbembe.

African Political Thought Part 4: The Degeneration into 'Big Men'

The coup ‘artists’ and the new nationalisms-on-command: from Gowon to Rawlings; the contrasts between Sankara and Amin; the contrasts and similarities between Obasanjo and Abacha.

African Political Thought 5: The coup ‘artists’ and the new nationalisms-on-command

Welcome to Part 6 of our ten-part ten-minute lecture series on African Political Thought, brought to you by Stephen Chan, Professor of World Politics at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS). Each week, a short reading list will be published alongside the lecture. 

If you’d like to get an update when new episodes go up, please send an email with subject line “APT” to AfricanArgumentsEditor@gmail.com and you’ll be notified when new lectures are posted.

In this episode, we look at:

The old liberationists and their reassertion in new nationalisms: Mugabe’s political thought.

Reading list for Part 6

Stephen Chan, Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Stephen Chan, Citizen of Zimbabwe: Conversations with Morgan Tsvangirai, Harare: Weaver, 2010.

African Political Thought 6, Stephen Chan, SOAS University Of London

Africa in the world: Mbeki’s African Renaissance – nostalgia and the toleration of the carnivalesque; Ngugi’s linguistic chauvinism; Mandaza’s neo-Marxist retrospection

African Political Thought 7

The call for democracy: the critique of Soyinka; new constitutionalisms and the looking eastwards to China, Singapore and Malaysia; the model of Russian democracy

African Pol Thought 8

On Yvonne Vera's novel of trauma after liberation, gender equality and other equalities in constitution-building for nation-building.

African Pol Thought 9

African intellectual currents and philosophy today: going it alone vs integration with a hegemonic world; Africa and the ICC, Africa and electronic globalisation; the thought of the outlawed commons.

African Arguments

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