Back to Africa

This special issue of Transition includes the following essays: the Dalai Lama is a spiritual icon, a Hollywood hero, and the world’s most famous pacifist - so why are his people dreaming of guerilla war? Meenakshi Ganguly goes underground with Tibet’s youth of today. The annals of colonialism are replete with accounts of settlers slaughtering natives. But what happens when the natives decide to take their revenge? And what if the settlers are black? Mahmood Mamdani examines race and the riddle of Rwanda. In 1918, the British Royal Air Force had thirty-three hundred airplanes, tons of explosives, and absolutely nothing to bomb. So they set off for darkest Africa and an obstreperous Somali chieftain. Sven Lindqvist tells a tale of adventure, intrigue, and death from above. In the parallel universe of Afrocentricity, Molefi Kete Asante is king, a tireless interpreter of black culture from Egyptology to Ebonics. For Asante and his followers, Africa is the solution - but Africans might be part of the problem. Kelefa Sanneh considers the continental divide. Last year, a coterie of radical intellectuals brought down Senegal’s socialist government, ushering in a new era of anti-American rhetoric and hip-hop democracy. Boubacar Boris Diop is both radical and intellectual, be he’s a skeptic all the same. Charles J. Sugnet talks with Senegal’s leading novelist about dope, guns, and writing in the streets.