Global Africa

Adekeye Adebajo is senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) in South Africa. He is the author of eight books including The Curse of Berlin: Africa after the Cold War; and editor/co-editor of 10 books including The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers. He holds a doctorate from Oxford University in England where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and is a columnist for Business Day (South Africa), the Guardian (Nigeria), and the Gleaner (Jamaica).

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

I. HISTORICAL FIGURES

1. Cecil Rhodes’s Crumbling Legacy

2. Was Mahatma Gandhi a Racist?

3. Revisiting Woodrow Wilson’s Liberal Legacy

II.POLITICAL FIGURES

4. Kwame Nkrumah: Africa’s Philosopher-King

5. Albert Luthuli: The Nobel Black Moses

6. Nelson Mandela: Pan-African Prophet

7. Thabo Mbeki: Africa’s New Philosopher-King

8. Thabo Mbeki: Remembering the Renaissance Man

9. Thabo Mbeki’s Xenophobia Denialism

10. Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela: The Policy Wonk and the Patriarch

11. Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma: The Lion and the Jewel

12. Kenneth Kaunda: Farewell to Zambia’s Founding Father

13. The Fall of Robert Mugabe

14. F.W. de Klerk: A Nobel without Honour?

15. Olusegun Obasanjo: The Emperor’s New Clothes

16. Jerry Rawlings: The Death and Deification of ‘Junior Jesus’

17. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: The Iron Lady of Liberia

18. Meles Zenawi: Philosopher-King or Pragmatic Autocrat?

19. Abiy Ahmed: Ethiopia’s Nobel Intellectual Soldier

20. Mobutu Sese Seko: The Sick Man of Africa

21. Idi Amin: The Making of a Warrior God

22. Daniel arap Moi: A Ruthless Dictator

23. Paul Kagame and Wole Soyinka: The President and the Playwright

24. Qaddafi’s Monarchical Delusions

25. Obama, Clinton, and Africa

26. Obama’s Six Deadly Sins

27. Obama, Gandhi, and Egypt

28. Obama’s Africa Legacy

29. Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Donald Trump and Boris Johnson

30. Trump’s African ‘Shithole’ is Commonplace in America

31. Margaret Thatcher’s Black Mischief

33. The Trial of Tony Blair

34. The Strange Reappearance of Nicolas Sarkozy

35. Madeleine Albright: Remembering the First Female American Secretary of State

36. Colin Powell: The Reluctant Jamaican-American Warrior

III. TECHNOCRATS

37. Boutros-Ghali’s Huge Contribution to Egypt and the World

38. Boutros Boutros-Ghali: Afro-Arab Prophet, Pharaoh, and Pope

39. Kofi Annan: African Prophet or American Poodle?

40. Adebayo Adedeji: Farewell to Africa’s Cassandra

41. Adebayo Adedeji and Jean Monnet: The Fathers of African and European Integration

42. Raúl Prebisch and the Building of Latin America

43. Ibrahim Gambari: The Aristocratic Scholar-Diplomat

44. Lakhdar Brahimi: An Algerian Troubleshooter

45. Augustine Mahiga: A Tanzanian Peacemaker

46. Margaret Vogt: Africa Loses an Unflagging Peacemaker

47. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: Nigeria’s Iron Lady

48. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: A Super-Technocrat in Geneva

49. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: The Alchemist

50. Naledi Pandor: South Africa’s New Diplomatic Troubleshooter

51. Mamphela Ramphele: Defender of the Status Quo at UCT

52. Eloho Otobo: Farewell to a Pan-African Peacebuilder

IV. ACTIVISTS

53. Remembering Martin Luther King Jr

54. John Lewis: The Last of the Mohicans

55. Wangari Maathai: Kenya’s Earth Mother

56. A Wreath for Saro-Wiwa

57. Denis Mukwege: Ennobling ‘Doctor Miracle’

58. Ruth First’s Pan-African Martyrdom

59. Mahlangu’s Moving Martyrdom

60. Kaye Whiteman: Ode to an Obituarist

61. Tor Sellström: A Cosmopolitan Swedish Freedom Fighter

V. WRITERS

62. A Tale of Two Continents: Dickensian Africa

63. Chinua Achebe: Farewell to Africa’s Griot

64. Soyinka’s Horseman: Who’s Afraid of Elesin Oba?

65. Wole Soyinka v. Caroline Davis: The CIA Controversy

66. James Baldwin: The Strange Persistence of Racism

67. Remembering Maya Angelou

68. Toni Morrison: America’s Black Bard

69. Bell Hooks: The Iconoclastic Feminist Scholar-Activist

70. Buchi Emecheta: Africa’s Literary Mother Courage

71. John Pepper Clark: Africa’s Protean Pioneer

VI. PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS

72. Ali Mazrui: Farewell the Trumpets for Prophet of Pax Africana

73. Edward Said: Pioneer of Post-Colonial Studies

74. Abiola Irele: The Last Prophet of Négritude

75. Chris Wanjala: Kenya’s Pan-African Griot

76. Thandika Mkandawire: The Afropolitan Intellectual

77. Raufu Mustapha: An Organic Intellectual

78. Angela Davis: A Life of Struggle

79. Three Prophets of Reparations: Randall Robinson, Hilary Beckles, and Ade Ajayi

VII. ARTISTS

80. Abami Eda: Fela’s Enduring Legacy

81. Bob Marley: Rebel with a Cause

82. Michael Jackson: The Strange Disappearance of the Moonwalker

83. Burna Boy: The Afropolitan Troubadour

84. Asa: Nigeria’s Songbird

85. Measuring Sidney Poitier’s Life

86. Cynthia Erivo: Building Bridges to the Diaspora

VIII. SPORTING FIGURES

87. Muhammad Ali: King of the World

88. Pelé: The Greatest Footballer of All Time

89. Eusébio: The King is Dead, Long Live the King!

90. The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Diego Maradona

91. George Weah: The Genius of King George

92. Samuel Eto’o: Cameroon’s Indomitable Lion

93. The Ivorian Pearl: The Life and Times of Didier Drogba

94. Africa’s Golden Generation: Salah, Mané, and Aubameyang

95. The Golden Age of West Indian Cricket

96. Jesse Owens’s Race

97. Jonah Lomu: Rugby’s First Global Superstar

98. The Greatness of Rafa Nadal

99. The Age of Hakeem

100. Flaming Flamingo: The Life and Times of Israel Adebajo

Notes

Index