News & Events

Youth culture and popular music are important sites for critical reflection on contemporary society and social change. They emerge as forms of protest and critique in response to discrimination and marginalization, inequality and injustice. Mirjam de Bruijn (Leiden University), Kno’Ledge Cesare (poet, blogger and motivational speaker) and Croquemort (slam artist) will discuss these issues on Wednesday evening 20 April in Museum Volkenkunde, in the African Arts and Literatures series (#3). 

Press cuttings from 1968 about the banning of the miniskirt in Malawi, a proposal for the Republican Constitution of Malawi dated 1965, field notes of conversations with local court chairmen: the Library of the African Studies Centre Leiden is thrilled to have acquired the archives of scholar Franz von Benda-Beckmann, who collected material about legal pluralism in Malawi in the 1960s. His wife, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, kindly donated 3 small boxes containing interesting material on Nyasaland and Malawi, including old Constitutions, law books, reports from local courts, penal codes and folders.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) in 2004 decided to document the Southern African liberation struggles and to publish the results in a series of books. In 2015 the 9-volume work appeared, describing the liberation wars in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and the experiences in frontline states Botswana, Tanzania and Zambia and in the ‘extension countries’ Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland. Historical chapters are followed by personal stories of liberation fighters, such as Saara Kuugongelwa, Namibia's current Prime Minister. The books are the subject of our latest Library Highlight.