Focusing on the autobiographies of Peter Abrahams, Albert Luthuli, Ruth First and Nelson Mandela (South Africa), Nnamdi Azikiwe (Nigeria), Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), George Mwase (Malawi), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Maurice Nyagumbo (Zimbabwe), and Oginga Odinga (Kenya), the book uncovers the social and cultural forces which galvanized the anti-colonial resistance movement in African societies. In particular, the book explores the disdain for foreign domination, economic exploitation and cultural imperialism. It delves into themes of African cultural sovereignty before the colonial encounter, the disruptive presence of colonialism, the nationalist ferment against European imperial domination, the achievement of political autonomy by African nation-states and the corpus of contradictions which attended postcolonial becoming.
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