Julia Hornberger

Marie Morelle

Frédéric Le Marcis

This interdisciplinary volume presents a nuanced critique of the prison experience in diverse detention facilities across Africa. The book stresses the contingent, porous nature of African prisons, across both time and space. It draws on original long-term ethnographic research undertaken in both Francophone and Anglophone settings, which are grouped in four parts. The first part examines how the prison has imprinted itself on wider political and social imaginaries and, in turn, how structures of imprisonment carry the imprint of political action of various times. The second part stresses how particular forms of ordering emerge in African prisons. It is held that while these often involve coercion and neglect, they are better understood as the product of on-going negotiations and the search for meaning and value on the part of a multitude of actors. The third part is concerned with how prison life percolates beyond its physical perimeters into its urban and rural surroundings, and vice versa. It deals with the popular and contested nature of what prisons are about and what they do, especially in regard to bringing about moral subjects. The fourth and final part of the book examines how efforts of reforming and resisting the prison take shape at the intersection of globally circulating models of good governance and levels of self-organisation by prisoners. The book will be an essential reference for students, academics and policy-makers in Law, Criminology, Sociology and Politics.

Confinement, Punishment and Prisons in Africa

Véronique Tadjo

Devan Pillay

Pumla Dineo Gqola

Shireen Hassim

Tawana Kupe

Eric Worby

Alex Eliseev

Rolf Maruping

Daryl Glaser

Noor Nieftagodien

Stephen Gelb

Loren Landau

David Coplan

Melinda Silverman

Tanya Zack

Anton Harber

Cathi Albertyn

Andile Mngxitama

The xenophobic attacks that started in Alexandra, Johannesburg in May 2008 before quickly spreading around the country caused an outcry across the world and raised many fundamental questions: Of what profound social malaise is xenophobia – and the violence that it inspires – a symptom? Have our economic and political choices created new forms of exclusion that fuel anger and distrust? What consequences does the emergence of xenophobia hold for the idea of an equal, non-racial society as symbolised by a democratic South Africa? On 28 May 2008 the Faculty of Humanities in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg convened an urgent colloquium that focused on searching for short and long-term solutions. Nearly twenty individuals – mostly Wits academics from a variety of disciplines, but also two student leaders, a journalist and a bishop – addressed the unfolding violence in ways that were conversant with the moment, yet rooted in scholarship and ongoing research. Go Home or Die Here emanates directly from the colloquium. It hopes to make sense of the nuances and trajectories of building a democratic society out of a deeply divided and conflictual past, in the conditions of global recession, heightening inequalities and future uncertainty. The authors hoped to pose questions that would lead both to research and to more informed, reflective forms of public action. With extensive photographs by award-winning photographer Alon Skuy, who covered the violence for The Times newspaper, the volume is passionate and engaged, and aims to stimulate reflection, debate and activism among concerned members of a broad public.

Violence, Xenophobia and the Reinvention of Difference in South Africa

Go Home or Die Here

Julia Hornberger

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