Abstract: In several African states, postconflict contexts provide opportunities for the expansion of women's political representation. Little is known, however, about the opportunities for enhancing women's participation in politics during ongoing conflicts. We examine the relationship between conflict and women's political representation in Cameroon, which has experienced conflict in its anglophone regions since 2017. The government has responded to the challenge by introducing several new institutions. Analysis of women's political representation and responses to an online survey demonstrates that while conflict has disrupted gender relations and contributed to the growth of women's movements, the new institutions have not created significant advances for women. The ongoing conflict has provided few opportunities for women activists to embed gender equity commitments in new institutions.
{"title":"Anglophone Conflict, New Institutions, and Women's Access to Political Power in Cameroon","authors":"Melinda Adams, Lotsmart Fonjong","doi":"10.2979/at.2023.a900109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/at.2023.a900109","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In several African states, postconflict contexts provide opportunities for the expansion of women's political representation. Little is known, however, about the opportunities for enhancing women's participation in politics during ongoing conflicts. We examine the relationship between conflict and women's political representation in Cameroon, which has experienced conflict in its anglophone regions since 2017. The government has responded to the challenge by introducing several new institutions. Analysis of women's political representation and responses to an online survey demonstrates that while conflict has disrupted gender relations and contributed to the growth of women's movements, the new institutions have not created significant advances for women. The ongoing conflict has provided few opportunities for women activists to embed gender equity commitments in new institutions.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135142359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.4.03
Olayinka Osuolale, Babasola Fateye
We reflect on our experience during a ten-week fellowship at a university in the Global South. Colleagues who participate in such collaborations need to be culturally competent and adopt culturally relevant pedagogical practices as they engage their host institutions. Those returning from the diaspora can experience culture shock in the culture in which they grew up after being away. Collaborations and relationships take commitment and time to build, and this should start early. Culturally informed notions of care are important for both partners. Being well emotionally, socially, and physically enables one to research and teach effectively, as environmental and social factors will arise that can affect one's mental state. Autoethnographic methodology is a valuable way to begin to hear the perceptions and experiences of partners in the Global South.
{"title":"Two Sides of the Coin: An Autoethnographic Analysis of a North-South Science Collaboration","authors":"Olayinka Osuolale, Babasola Fateye","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.4.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.4.03","url":null,"abstract":"We reflect on our experience during a ten-week fellowship at a university in the Global South. Colleagues who participate in such collaborations need to be culturally competent and adopt culturally relevant pedagogical practices as they engage their host institutions. Those returning from the diaspora can experience culture shock in the culture in which they grew up after being away. Collaborations and relationships take commitment and time to build, and this should start early. Culturally informed notions of care are important for both partners. Being well emotionally, socially, and physically enables one to research and teach effectively, as environmental and social factors will arise that can affect one's mental state. Autoethnographic methodology is a valuable way to begin to hear the perceptions and experiences of partners in the Global South.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135145581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.4.02
Jeroen Lorist, Eileen Moyer
This article examines the experiences and motivations of young volunteers engaged in the development domain of sexual and reproductive health and rights in Uganda. While promoting various family-planning projects, volunteers deftly navigated human-rights discourses of international donors, norms of religious leaders, and development narratives of national policymakers as they attempted to advance their own life projects. Through the creation of new narratives and their agency, the volunteers translated, reformed, and re-presented Global North development discourse as part of a situated theorization on development problems. Simultaneously these educated, middle-class youth embraced the discursively vague field of family planning as the likeliest avenue for social mobility by becoming "big" within national and local patrimonial and patriarchal systems. Although such family-planning programs do seem to allow some volunteers to achieve their goals, they paradoxically reproduce the patriarchal systems that gender-equality NGOs aim to dismantle.
{"title":"Paradoxes of Patrimony: Family Planning, Youth Volunteering, and Becoming \"Big\" in Uganda","authors":"Jeroen Lorist, Eileen Moyer","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.4.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.4.02","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the experiences and motivations of young volunteers engaged in the development domain of sexual and reproductive health and rights in Uganda. While promoting various family-planning projects, volunteers deftly navigated human-rights discourses of international donors, norms of religious leaders, and development narratives of national policymakers as they attempted to advance their own life projects. Through the creation of new narratives and their agency, the volunteers translated, reformed, and re-presented Global North development discourse as part of a situated theorization on development problems. Simultaneously these educated, middle-class youth embraced the discursively vague field of family planning as the likeliest avenue for social mobility by becoming \"big\" within national and local patrimonial and patriarchal systems. Although such family-planning programs do seem to allow some volunteers to achieve their goals, they paradoxically reproduce the patriarchal systems that gender-equality NGOs aim to dismantle.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135145583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.3.03
John F. Clark
Abstract:Despite the common interests of African states vis-à-vis the rest of the world, African states display autonomy and variety in their foreign policies with one another. How can we account for this variation? This article advances the idea that regime type and regime identity frame the overall foreign policies of African states. It identifies three regime types: the competitive multiparty regime, the party-dominant regime, and the personalist regime. The latter two types have identities that reflect the dominant party's ideology or the ruler's predilections. One can find distinctive patterns of foreign policy associated with each regime type in areas such as relations with Western powers, adherence to African norms, and willingness to engage in continental peacebuilding missions.
{"title":"Regime Types, Regime Identities, and African Foreign Policies","authors":"John F. Clark","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Despite the common interests of African states vis-à-vis the rest of the world, African states display autonomy and variety in their foreign policies with one another. How can we account for this variation? This article advances the idea that regime type and regime identity frame the overall foreign policies of African states. It identifies three regime types: the competitive multiparty regime, the party-dominant regime, and the personalist regime. The latter two types have identities that reflect the dominant party's ideology or the ruler's predilections. One can find distinctive patterns of foreign policy associated with each regime type in areas such as relations with Western powers, adherence to African norms, and willingness to engage in continental peacebuilding missions.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"53 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48072530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.3.05
Olufemi Babarinde, S. Wright
Abstract:Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most important mantras of global business today. Companies nowadays, if we believe them, are a paragon of virtue in global and local communities. International governmental and nongovernmental organizations and civil-society organizations outperform one another in promoting CSR guidelines for companies and promoting conscious capitalism. For critics, however, CSR is a tool used cleverly by corporations to keep from making meaningful concessions to labor, stave off state intervention or regulation, and spin irresponsible actions. This article analyzes CSR practices in South Africa, emphasizing the mining sector and relevant legislation. It argues that CSR performance in South Africa has been nothing short of missed opportunities and unfulfilled promises.
{"title":"Corporate Responsibility in South Africa: Limited Success, Unfulfilled Promise","authors":"Olufemi Babarinde, S. Wright","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most important mantras of global business today. Companies nowadays, if we believe them, are a paragon of virtue in global and local communities. International governmental and nongovernmental organizations and civil-society organizations outperform one another in promoting CSR guidelines for companies and promoting conscious capitalism. For critics, however, CSR is a tool used cleverly by corporations to keep from making meaningful concessions to labor, stave off state intervention or regulation, and spin irresponsible actions. This article analyzes CSR practices in South Africa, emphasizing the mining sector and relevant legislation. It argues that CSR performance in South Africa has been nothing short of missed opportunities and unfulfilled promises.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"115 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49435990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.3.04
A. Atta-Quayson, Olufemi Babarinde, S. Wright, C. Rono, Ismaila Ouedraogo, R. Benedikter, Borlli Michel Jonas Somé, G. Diallo, P. Okpalaeke, Riti Sharma, Christi van der Westhuizen, Guido Nicolás Zingari, B. Riccio, P. Sakho, D. Cissokho, John F. Clark
Abstract:The effectiveness of the institutional framework—customs, traditions, laws, regulations, policies—that governs the salt sector in Ghana is here assessed using the political-settlement approach. This framework has minimal effects on the sector, which has been producing considerably below its potential for decades. The resulting pattern of a poor-distant-cousin characterization of the salt sector explains its historically poor performance. Politics, power, and institutional forms are characterized by different political processes and incentives to produce different economic outcomes; hence political-settlement literature can address weaknesses in the mainstream conceptualization of institutions.
{"title":"The Impact of Institutions on the Salt Sector in Ghana","authors":"A. Atta-Quayson, Olufemi Babarinde, S. Wright, C. Rono, Ismaila Ouedraogo, R. Benedikter, Borlli Michel Jonas Somé, G. Diallo, P. Okpalaeke, Riti Sharma, Christi van der Westhuizen, Guido Nicolás Zingari, B. Riccio, P. Sakho, D. Cissokho, John F. Clark","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The effectiveness of the institutional framework—customs, traditions, laws, regulations, policies—that governs the salt sector in Ghana is here assessed using the political-settlement approach. This framework has minimal effects on the sector, which has been producing considerably below its potential for decades. The resulting pattern of a poor-distant-cousin characterization of the salt sector explains its historically poor performance. Politics, power, and institutional forms are characterized by different political processes and incentives to produce different economic outcomes; hence political-settlement literature can address weaknesses in the mainstream conceptualization of institutions.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"115 - 117 - 133 - 134 - 138 - 139 - 141 - 141 - 142 - 25 - 27 - 3 - 51 - 53 - 73 - 75 - 92 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45846657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.3.08
P. Okpalaeke
{"title":"Life Expectancy in Africa: Improving Public Health Policy, Augustine Adu Frimpong","authors":"P. Okpalaeke","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.08","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44925499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.3.06
C. Rono
Abstract:This essay relates Margaret Atieno Ogola's I Swear by Apollo (2002) to Kenya's postcolonial context to signal the contribution of literary texts to the understanding of Kenya's sociopolitical and economic orientations. Particularly instructive are theoretical inspirations and epistemological insights from studies that locate literature on illness in medical humanities and narrative medicine, demonstrating the extent to which Ogola deploys illness and the Hippocratic Oath as emblems of sociopolitical convulsion. By focusing on how digressions act as bricks, not only for political-medical dialogue to help recontextualize medicine in literature, but also in converting medical signs into poetical elements, the article diagrams a reparative trajectory that can be taken in a politically apocalyptic scenario.
{"title":"The Hippocratic Oath, Illness, and Metaphors of Politics in Margaret Ogola's I Swear by Apollo","authors":"C. Rono","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay relates Margaret Atieno Ogola's I Swear by Apollo (2002) to Kenya's postcolonial context to signal the contribution of literary texts to the understanding of Kenya's sociopolitical and economic orientations. Particularly instructive are theoretical inspirations and epistemological insights from studies that locate literature on illness in medical humanities and narrative medicine, demonstrating the extent to which Ogola deploys illness and the Hippocratic Oath as emblems of sociopolitical convulsion. By focusing on how digressions act as bricks, not only for political-medical dialogue to help recontextualize medicine in literature, but also in converting medical signs into poetical elements, the article diagrams a reparative trajectory that can be taken in a politically apocalyptic scenario.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"117 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45483286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.69.3.01
Christi van der Westhuizen
Abstract:The twenty-first-century global resurgence in populism has raised academic contention over whether populism undermines or deepens democracy. This question is particularly relevant in postcolonial contexts such as South Africa. Populism can be of both the left and right. Fascism, one permutation of it, has been confined by leftist academics to right-radical nationalism. Contemporary South African populism in the form of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the country's third-largest political party, confounds neat categorization. An academic and political debate has ensued about whether the EFF presents a fascist threat to South African democracy. This article extends the scrutiny of the EFF beyond what has been undertaken thus far, to situate and analyze it in relation to economic, political, and social features of fascism, contextual and ideological conditions, and the use of rhetoric and violence.
{"title":"Populism as African Fascism? Examining the Economic Freedom Fighters in Postapartheid South Africa","authors":"Christi van der Westhuizen","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The twenty-first-century global resurgence in populism has raised academic contention over whether populism undermines or deepens democracy. This question is particularly relevant in postcolonial contexts such as South Africa. Populism can be of both the left and right. Fascism, one permutation of it, has been confined by leftist academics to right-radical nationalism. Contemporary South African populism in the form of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the country's third-largest political party, confounds neat categorization. An academic and political debate has ensued about whether the EFF presents a fascist threat to South African democracy. This article extends the scrutiny of the EFF beyond what has been undertaken thus far, to situate and analyze it in relation to economic, political, and social features of fascism, contextual and ideological conditions, and the use of rhetoric and violence.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"25 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48401664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Reviewed by: Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza by Dugmore Boetie Riti Sharma BOOK REVIEW of Boetie, Dugmore. 2020. Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza. Edited by Vusumuzi R. Kumalo and Benjamin N. Lawrance. With an introduction by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Vusumuzi R. Kumalo, foreword by Nadine Gordimer, and afterword by Barney Simon. Athens: Ohio University Press. 187 pp. $24.95 (paper). In this novel, the word tshotsholoza, meaning "go forward," is the title of a South African song, sung by prisoners. Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost is like a requiem for this song, as the protagonist is usually found amid acts that will help him go to a place he calls home. The heart of the text lies in the concept of home—its location and its history. Dugmore Boetie is a conman who serves time in South African prisons. Half his narrative is like a prison diary; the rest is paced like a thriller, incorporating elements of the satirical and the sentimental. It is in the style of a bildungsroman, which tells the tale of a boy in a world busy segregating human beings. The trials and twists in his life hinge on the fact that he has survived many years of racial prejudice and cultural hatred, but his job description makes life worse for him. Learning to be a conman when one is a Black South African in apartheid South Africa means flirting with death. Not just the crime, but being a criminal means having to carry this identity for the rest of one's life. But for Boetie, battling the so-called pass laws is a rite of passage. His nerves, brain, and just plain bad luck get him into and out of complicated predicaments. He comes to the reader as a runaway child who has dabbled in petty crimes. As an adult, he wants to escape the state-mandated social services, but he goes back to them when he needs work, unemployable on account of being physically disabled. "If you were black, you'd see life. If you were white, life would see you" (14). It would be betraying Boetie to say his story is summed up in these words, but they are evidence of his perspective on life. Whether he joins a gang, serves a prison sentence, sells marijuana, becomes a musician, or tries to be an honest husband, his skin color both makes him face extenuating circumstances and permits him to create a new sense of identity. The law in [End Page 141] South Africa works differently for Blacks and Coloreds, and Boetie is a man who understands its nuances. All the importance of identity comes to the final point: how does a person survive? His stories may seem like an act of lying, but autobiographies are not always whole truths. Boetie's contribution to the landscape of South African literature is through his method of telling, a testament to the oral tradition. Only a phenomenal storyteller can come up with phrases like "ox-cart-wide alleys." That is how people remember Boetie—as a musician and a storyteller. Boetie's friendship with other conmen opens a world of p
书评:《熟悉是失落或Tshotsholoza的王国》，作者:杜格莫尔·博伊斯·丽蒂·夏尔马，博伊斯，杜格莫尔，2020。熟悉是失落的王国或tshosholoza。由Vusumuzi R. Kumalo和Benjamin N. lawrence编辑。Benjamin N. lawrence和Vusumuzi R. Kumalo的介绍，Nadine Gordimer的前言，Barney Simon的后记。雅典:俄亥俄大学出版社，187页，24.95美元(纸质版)。在这部小说中，tshotsholoza这个词，意思是“前进”，是一首南非歌曲的标题，由囚犯演唱。《熟悉是失落的王国》就像这首歌的安魂曲，因为主人公通常会在帮助他回到他称之为家的地方的行为中被发现。这篇文章的核心在于家的概念——它的位置和历史。Dugmore Boetie是一名在南非监狱服刑的骗子。他的叙述有一半像监狱日记;其余部分的节奏就像一部惊悚片，融合了讽刺和感伤的元素。这是一部成长小说的风格，讲述了一个男孩在一个忙于隔离人类的世界里的故事。他生活中的考验和曲折取决于他在多年的种族偏见和文化仇恨中幸存下来的事实，但他的工作描述使他的生活变得更糟。在种族隔离的南非，一个黑人要学会做一个骗子，就意味着和死亡调情。不仅仅是犯罪，作为一名罪犯意味着他的余生都要背负着这个身份。但对Boetie来说，与所谓的通行证法抗争是一种必经之路。他的神经，他的大脑，还有他的坏运气让他陷入和摆脱了复杂的困境。他给读者的印象是一个离家出走的孩子，犯过一些小罪。成年后，他想逃离国家规定的社会服务，但当他需要工作时，他又回到那里，因为身体残疾而无法就业。“如果你是黑人，你就能看清生活。如果你是白人，生活就会看到你。”说他的故事是用这些话总结出来的，这是对Boetie的背叛，但这些话证明了他对生活的看法。无论他是加入帮派、服刑、出售大麻、成为音乐家，还是试图成为一个诚实的丈夫，他的肤色既使他面对可减轻的情况，又使他能够创造一种新的认同感。南非的法律对黑人和有色人种是不同的，而Boetie是一个了解其中细微差别的人。身份的所有重要性归结为最后一点:一个人如何生存?他的故事看起来像是在撒谎，但自传并不总是完全真实的。Boetie对南非文学景观的贡献是通过他的讲述方式，这是口头传统的证明。只有非凡的讲故事的人才能想出像“牛车般宽的小巷”这样的短语。这就是人们对botie的印象——作为一个音乐家和一个讲故事的人。Boetie与其他罪犯的友谊为理解犯罪和社会如何作为合作伙伴发挥作用打开了一个充满可能性的世界。没有一个，另一个是不可能的。Boetie作为一名音乐家的生活与他开始远离犯罪的时间相吻合，但即使在今天的世界里，做一名音乐家也很难。他用了“敲了三下颤音”这样的短语;在后记中，巴尼·西蒙承认在博伊蒂所在的医院里见过一些人，他们认出他就是那个唱歌、讲故事给他们听的人。一个是Tshotsholoza这首歌，Boetie听到监狱里的其他囚犯在唱这首歌。Boetie把这首歌比作一个孤儿，因为没有人知道它的起源。他的书讲述了一个类似的男孩的故事——他不能声称自己的身份，也没有人会来声称自己是自己的。当Boetie谈到参军的时候，你就会面对作为一个南非黑人的讽刺。比如开个玩笑……
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