In 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became Africa’s first female head of state. Photograph by cgdev.

Welcome to Part 9 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. Viewers are also encouraged to pose questions they have for Chan in the comments section below.

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In this episode, we look at:

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

For an audio-only version:

Reading list for Part 9 & 10

Samir Amin, Global History: A View from the South, Cape Town: Pambazuka, 2011.

Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, Cape Town: Pambazuka, 2011.

Samir Amin, Ending the Crisis of Capitalism or Ending Capitalism, Cape Town: Pambazuka, 2011.

Previous episodes

• Part 1: Antecedents: race and romanticism in Africa – from WEB du Bois to the Manchester Conference to Senghor’s “˜negritude’.
• Part 2: The thought of liberation: Cabral and the Lusophonic thinkers; the “˜pacific’ counterpoint of Kaunda.
• Part 3: The New African Man: the political thought of transformation – Kaunda, Nyerere, Obote, Nkrumah.
• Part 4: The degeneration into “˜Big Men’: case studies of Mobutu and Banda; the critique of Mbembe.
• Part 5: 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.
• Part 6: The old liberationists and their reassertion in new nationalisms: Mugabe’s political thought.
• Part 7: Africa in the world: Mbeki’s African Renaissance – nostalgia and the toleration of the carnivalesque; Ngugi’s linguistic chauvinism; Mandaza’s neo-Marxist retrospection.
• Part 8: The call for democracy: the critique of Soyinka; new constitutionalisms and the looking eastwards to China, Singapore and Malaysia; the model of Russian democracy.

Coming next…

• Part 10: 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.