Book Series No.1 (Year 1998/2005 )

The issue of language in Africa is fraught with complications. The advent of colonialism denied to most of the people of the continent the dignity of consideration for their mother tongue, imposing on them instead a dependency on colonial languages. Contributors to this important and timely collection argue that without respect for what Prah calls “the door into people’s culture”, without the use of indigenous languages – “the languages of the masses” – development in Africa cannot be realized. The “Myth of the African Tower of Babel” is challenged and the theory posited that most of what are regarded as autonomous languages are really dialects which can be put into wider clusters enjoying significant degrees of “mutual intelligibility”. Such “harmonization” on a Pan-African scale, it is argued, would facilitate the development of educational materials for African societies. Coming as they do from a wide range of countries in Africa and beyond, the contributors cover a great deal of ground and dissect in a variety of ways the plethora of issues which impinge on the question of harmonizing and standardizing African languages, and demonstrate the need to update existing classifications.

ISBN No. 1-919799-51-6 R180,00 / US$30 / £16

Book Series No.2 (Year 1999)
Knowledge in Black and White: The Impact of Apartheid on the Production and Reproduction of Knowledge.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah (ed.) 

In all areas of South African life racism has taken its toll. Perhaps in no quarter has this pernicious history been more culturally devastating than in education, the production and reproduction of knowledge. Apartheid and racist philosophy usurped the status of science and knowledge production. Any knowledge which controverted the canons of apartheid was treated as state subversion. Racism affected not only the social, political, economic and other infrastructural bases of knowledge production in South Africa, it also affected the substance of what passed as knowledge itself. The papers captured within these covers take the work of exposing the sociological influence of apartheid on knowledge production further and deepen our understanding of the social context of knowledge production under apartheid. The papers thematically complement each other while representing fairly divergent theoretical formulations. All, however, expose the social perversions of apartheid, with regard to the way it affected the socio-cultural basis of knowledge production. In this sense they represent a collection of critiques developed from disciplinary academic positions regarding the sociology of knowledge creation and knowledge use.

ISBN No.1-919799-01-X R120,00 / US$21 / £11 

Book Series No. 3 (Year 2000)
Ibibio Phonetics & Phonology.
Eno-Abasi Essien Urua

As stated by the author, the intention of the book is “to describe the phonetic sounds in Ibibio, the phonemic sounds, the phonological as well as the morphophonemic and morphosyntactic processes that have a bearing on Ibibio phonology”. Dr Urua has done this very satisfactorily and professionally. The result is a scholarly publication that has brought currency into Ibibio linguistics, among other things. 

ISBN No.1-919799-33-8 R90,00 / US$13 / £9

Book Series No. 4 (Year 2000)
Rethinking African Arts and Culture.
Dele Layiwola (ed.) 

A certain basic misunderstanding, occasionally deliberate misrepresentation, of African literature and art abounds. It is even more dangerous when such postulations, bereft of truth and light, assume the cloak of theories and canons. The dangers they pose to the future of scholarship in Africanist-derived studies are better imagined than described. It is hoped that this modest effort will complement the work of others across the globe to place the creativity of and about a continent and its diverse – multi-ethnic and multi-racial – cultures in true perspective.

ISBN No.1-919799-35-4 R120,00 / US$21 / £11

Book Series No. 5 (Year 2000)
Language and Institutions in Africa.
Sinfree Makoni & Nkonko Kamwangamalu (eds)

This book is an excellent collection of articles addressing issues about language in two main areas: education and politics. It makes an important connection, often missing in most studies, between language planning and democratic practices. It also examines the manner in which national identities are partially articulated through the emergence of varieties of English. Rarely has research into varieties of English explicitly addressed their contribution to the construction of national identities. Another innovative feature of the book is the way it shifts debates from a narrow focus on the linguistic properties of language towards bigger issues such as the moral and intellectual responsibilities of linguists – an issue which is extremely important in post-colonial Africa. 

ISBN No.1-919799-37-0 R135,00 / US$24 / £12

Book Series No. 6 (Year 2000)
The New Ewe Orthography: Based on the Gbe Uniform Standard Orthography (GUSO)
Hounkpati B.C. Capo

The present monograph shows how Ewe can best be written as a language on its own, yet allow texts written in it to be read and largely understood by speakers of other Gbe communities: this is done through the Gbe Uniform Standard Orthography (GUSO). The Gbe language unit, spoken in Ghana, Togo, Bénin and Nigeria, comprises more than fifty dialects, including such well-known members as Fon, Gen-Mina, Ajá, Gun and Ewe. By promoting this type of orthographic system, CASAS intends to show that there are not as many African languages as some people suggest and that the true development of Africa implies the uncompromising usage of its indigenous languages as media for science and technology. 

ISBN No.1-919799-36-2 R75,00 / US$11 / £7

Book Series No. 7 (Year 1995)
African Languages for the Mass Education of Africans.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah

The text attempts to present the argument for the use of African languages for the mass education of Africans. Its economic and social rationality has been elaborated. The text also argues that indeed African education from primary to tertiary levels should provide for the possibility of Africans to school and study in their own native tongues. Only this will bring out the best in the African.

ISBN No.1-919799-38-9 R75,00 / US$11 / £7

Book Series No. 8 (Year 2000)
Mother Tongue for Scientific and Technological Development in Africa
Kwesi Kwaa Prah

The topicality of the issue presented in this book appears to be catching the attention of development planners, linguists, and students of African society. Increasingly the realization is being shared by larger numbers that mother-tongue education is crucial for both individual and societal development. It is the view of the author that mother-tongue education is the missing link in all our development endeavours on the African continent. It is the enabling factor in the search for a workable paradigm for African development.

ISBN No.1-919799-39-7 R75,00 / US$11 / £7

Book Series No. 9 (Year 2000)
Nyansap·w.
James Gyekye-Aboagye

This book is a collection of Akan proverbs assembled over the author’s years of travel across the Akan-speaking areas of Ghana. The text is monolingual, with explanations of the meanings of the proverbs.

ISBN No.1-919799-40-0 R180,00 / US$30 / £16

Book Series No. 10 (Year 2000)
Education, Literacy and Development in Africa.
Sassongo J. Silue 

The decision to use national languages as mediums of instruction poses another challenge for education systems in almost all Sub-Saharan nations. Since several speech forms generally co-exist within these states, how do we reconcile internal linguistic diversity? How can African states go through regional integration when the grouping of several nations into viable economic units implies more complex linguistic constraints?

ISBN No.1-919799-49-4 R105,00 / US$14 / £9

Book Series No. 11 (Year 2001)
Ìsefe Ninu Awon Ere-onitan Yorùba.
Arinpe Gbekelolu Adejumo

Isefe Ninu Awon Ere-Onise Yorùbá (“Satire in Yorùbá Written Plays”) examines the form of satire in some selected Yorùbá written plays. The work classifies the forms of satire in the plays into those that are pure satirical plays and those that make mere allusion to satirical sketches in their contents. It then goes on to discuss satires which concern religious leaders and their followers, those that concern families and those that concern the political leaders

ISBN No.1-919799-50-8 R75,00 / US$11 / £7

Book Series No. 12 (Year 2002)
Language Across Borders.
Felix Banda

This book is the result of work being done by the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) based in Cape Town, South Africa. It is a remodeling of papers presented at a Workshop on Harmonization and Standardization of Orthographic Conventions of Zambian and Malawian Languages, held at the Lingadzi Inn, Lilongwe, Malawi, 23–24 November 2000. Although Zambia is said to have more than eighty languages, and Malawi more than ten, these languages share a similar structure (morphology and syntax) and sound system (phonological rules). However, they have diverse spelling systems because orthographic conventions are as numerous as the different missionary groups that came to this part of Africa. In some cases the same language has two or three different orthographies. The major advantages of harmonizing orthographic conventions across borders are that it will enable health, teaching and other material to be internationally available, and a vast number of languages/dialects will have an orthography, which will empower users to store knowledge for posterity in their own languages.

ISBN No.1-919799-64-8 R80,00 / US$12 / £8

Book Series No. 13 (Year 2001)
Ifá and Related Genres.
Lawrence Olúfemi Adéwolé (ed.)

This work contains the edited version of essays written on Ifá and topics related to it. It comprises fourteen papers.

ISBN No.1-919799-54-0 R60,00 / US$10 / £6

Book Series No. 14 (Year 2001)
Globalising Africans.
Bankie Forster Bankie

Bankie’s compilation of letters, papers and records which preceded the creation of the platform for the 7th Pan-African Congress represents a historical source of information which all students and activists of Pan-Africanism would need to consult.

ISBN No.1-919799-46-X R60,00 / US$10 / £6

Book Series No. 15 (Year 2003)
Akan Nsemfuasekyere
J. Gyekye-Aboagye, S.A. Gyima, L.A. Okraku, R.M. Opong, S.K. Coleman, A.O. Boakye

This is the first Akan monolingual dictionary.

ISBN No.1-919799-83-4 R160,00 / US$26 / £15

Book Series No. 16 (Year 2002)
A Linguistic Analysis of ciNsenga: A Bantu Language Spoken in Zambia and Malawi.
Lazarus Miti

A Linguistic Analysis of is, in fact, a reference grammar or a grammatical handbook. It is intended to be a fairly comprehensive description of the morphology of the language. It is not meant to be a theoretical grammar. Although the main aim of the book is to provide a morphological description of the language, a brief description of the sound system is given in Chapter 2, and in Chapter 11 some observations on syntax are made. The final chapter deals with relative clause formation. In the description of the sound system an inventory of tones and tonemes is included since is a tonal language. However, no detailed tonological analysis is attempted in the present work.

ISBN No.1-919799-59-1 R80,00 / US$12 / £8

Book Series No. 17 (Year 2001)
Kiswahili Katika Karne ya Ishirini na Moja.
Kimani Njogu, Kitula King’ei, Clara Momanyi, Paul Musau

This volume carries articles on various aspects of Kiswahili studies. The papers emanate from a 3-day national workshop on Kiswahili held at Kenyatta University in 1998 to discuss the most important stages in the roadmap of the development of Kiswahili at the dawn of the new millennium. These well-researched papers in both Kiswahili and English address a wide range of topical issues in the scholarship of Kiswahili and other African languages against the backdrop of major challenges caused by the liberalization and globalization of cultural and educational sectors, science, technology and commerce. They touch on the internal and social development of the languages, their pedagogy, research, literature and dissemination. 

ISBN No.1-919799-53-2 R90,00 / US$13 / £9

Book Series No. 18 (Year 2002)
Rehabilitating African Languages.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah (ed.)

The papers captured within the covers of this text were presented at the Terminal Workshop of Phase II of the CASAS Harmonization and Standardization of African Languages Project (Cape Town, 1-2 October 1998). They are fairly diffuse in focus but are integrated in their general concerns about the need to develop African languages for an emergent Africa. They represent cases drawn from very different points on the African continent and provide contemporary African linguistic thinking on African languages.

ISBN No.1-919799-60-5 R60,00 / US$10 / £6

Book Series No. 19 (Year 2002)
Harmonisation and Standardisation of Nigerian Languages.
F.O. Egbokhare and S.O. Oyetade (eds)

This text represents the views of the participants at the colloquium on Standardization and Harmonization of African Languages for Development, held in Cape Town, South Africa, 11–14 July 1996. The need to revisit the classification and number of these languages was recognized as an issue that should be treated with urgency. Thus the hitherto so-called separate languages that have enough demonstrable cognates can be harmonized and standardized in a common form. This will reduce the number drastically and make for closer ties between African nations, since a good number of African languages cut across national boundaries demarcated by the Europeans.

ISBN No.1-919799-70-2 R125,00 / US$22 / £12

Book Series No. 20 (Year 2002)
New Perspectives in Edoid Studies: Essays in Honour of Ronald Peter Schaefer.
Ohioma I. Pogosan and Francis O. Egbokhare (eds)

These essays are presented in honour of Ron Schaefer of Southern Illinois, University of Edwardsville, USA, on his fiftieth birthday. Schaefer has spent 20 years actively working (doing teaching and research) among the Northern Edo. The result is an enviable publishing record and a bright future for Edoid studies. Indeed, Prof. Schaefer has so much affected Edoid studies that this little contribution in his honour can only be considered modest.

ISBN No.1-919799-68-0 R125,00 / US$22 / £12

Book Series No. 21 (Year 2002)
Speaking African: African Languages for Education and Development.
Francis R. Owino (ed.)

Speaking African: African Languages for Education and Development provides answers to some language issues in Africa and raises controversies for further research. Some of these should preoccupy social scientists for some time to come. The text will be invaluable to students of linguistics, history, anthropology, political science and the general reader interested in language policy, language planning and language rights.

ISBN No.1-919799-62-1 R180,00 / US$30 / £16

Book Series No. 22 (Year 2002)
Speaking in Unison: The Harmonisation and Standardisation of Southern African Languages.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah (ed.)

The papers presented in this text fall into two categories. One set of papers deals with general issues relating to standardization and harmonization of Southern African languages. These include the contributions of Banda, Mtenje, Simango, Miti and Sitoe. Some of them relate specifically to speech forms of the region. The second set of papers is more specific to particular languages in its concerns. These include the contributions of Kavari, Mbenzi, Kamwendo, Chisanga, Ngunga, Carstens, Johl, Jokweni, Kwetana, Nakin, Matubatuba and Mkwisa. These two categories in some respects overlap. By and large, all the contributors favour the principle of harmonization and recognize its importance for the development of African languages.

ISBN No.1-919799-67-2 R180,00 / US$30 / £16

Book Series No. 24 (Year 2002)
Discourses on Difference. Discourses on Oppression.
Norman Duncan, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Murray Hofmeyr, Tamara Shefer, Felix Malunga, Mashudu Mashige

The papers presented in this text variously engage issues of oppression, repression, and relative deprivation in the context of a multi-cultural society in search of a formula for civilized co-existence and pluralism. They allow the celebration of diversity and the development of shared space by the different cultural, political and economic demographic components of South African society. The philosophical points of departure of the various contributors differ considerably and the issues they address themselves to are equally varied. They include considerations of political representation, ethnic and cultural differences, gender issues, race, class and conflict, pigmentation, art and society, and religious confession. A good number of the chapters are inspired by the philosophical left. There are also a few avowedly Afrocentric ideas represented here. While the philosophical points of departure of the various contributors vary, they share a degree of social engagement and concern for a positive transition to a new society; their message is loud and clear. Collectively, the contributions provide a rich body of discussion, useful for concerned South Africans, the rest of Africa and the wider world.

ISBN No.1-919799-65-6 R150,00 / US$25 / £14 

Book Series No. 25 (Year 2002)
Writing African: The Harmonisation of Orthographic Conventions in African Languages.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah (ed.)

The text is in fact the proceedings of a workshop which was held in Johannesburg in 1999. The various chapters are examinations of the practicality of the orthographic engineering of African languages.

ISBN No.1-919799-66-4 R 80,00 / US$12 / £8

Book Series No. 26 (Year 2002)
Aspects of Tonology.
Lazarus M. Miti

Aspects of Tonology is a description of the behaviour of tone in this Central Bantu language, spoken in Chipata District in Zambia and Mchinji District in Malawi. It is a sequel to A Linguistic Analysis of (Miti 2001), which is a grammatical handbook comprising descriptions of the sound system, the morphology and some aspects of the syntax of the language. In A Linguistic Analysis of , all items included in the text are tone-marked but no tonological analysis is undertaken as such an analysis is beyond the scope of that book. In the present work, tonal data are presented and tonal analyses undertaken. Aspects of the language considered include the behaviour of tone in nouns, verbs, noun phrases, qualificative forms and relative clauses.

ISBN No.1-919799-75-3 0,00 / US$12 / £8

Book Series No. 27 (Year 2002)
Ikale Masquerade Traditions and Artifacts.
Ebenezer Aiku Sheba

Yorùbá art includes rich masquerade traditions. Those which have received scholastic attention are Egúngún masquerades among the Òyó-Yorùbá; Gèlèdè among South-Western Yorùbá peoples in Nigeria and Benin; Ìgunnukó masquerades found in Lagos and Ògùn States; Èyò masquerades found in Lagos and environs; and the Agemo of the Ijebu people of South-Eastern Yorùbáland. Others are the Ìjèbú-Yorùbá masquerade cult of Àgbó or Èkìnè, and the Epa masquerades among the Èkìtì and Ìgbómìnà Yorùbá. The Ìkálè too have their own masquerade traditions, which have not been studied by art scholars. This work focuses on the masquerade traditions of the Ìkálè-Yorùbá and their associated art objects.

ISBN No.1-919799-81-8 R150,00 / US$25 / £14

Book Series No. 28 (Year 2002)
Akan Kasakoa Horow Bi.
J. Gyekye-Aboagye

Akan idioms and idiomatic expressions. 

ISBN No.1-919799-84-2 R120,00 / US$21 / £11

Book Series No. 29 (Year 2002)
Les Langues Africaines Pour L’education des Masses en Afrique.
Kwesi Kwaa Prah

(FRENCH VERSION of African Languages for the Mass Education of Africans, Book Series No. 7) The text attempts to present the argument for the use of African languages for the mass education of Africans. Its economic and social rationality has been elaborated. The text also argues that indeed African education from primary to tertiary levels should provide for the possibility of Africans to school and study in their own native tongues. Only this will bring out the best in the African.

ISBN No.1-919799-78-8 R75,00 / US$11 / £7

Book Series No. 30 (Forthcoming)
Isènbáyé Àti Ìlò Èdè Yorùbá.
Olasope O. Oyelaran & Lawrence O. Adewole

ISBN No. 1-919799-92-3 R / US$ / £

Book Series No. 31 (YEAR 2005)
F· L· Maninkaw.
Boniface Keita

ISBN No. 1-919799-99-0 R85,00 / US$12 / £8 

Book Series No. 32 (Year 2004)
Unifying Southern African Languages: Harmonization and Standardization
A. Chebanne/M.Jowkweni/L.Mokitimi/S.Ngubane

This book puts together key issues in the harmonization and standardization of Southern African languages.  It is the proceedings of the Conference which took place in Pretoria, in February 2003.

ISBN No. 1-919932-02-X R120,00 / US$21 / £15 

Book Series No. 33 (YEAR 2004) 
Chasing Futures: Africa in the 21st Century – Problems and Prospects
K.K. Prah (ed).

This volume is a collection of Conference papers by a select group of concerned African scholars on a number of issues, which are of significance to Africa's future.

ISBN No. 1-919932-03-8 R115,00 / US$20 / £9 

Book Series No. 34 (year 2004)
Silenced Voices: Studies of Minority Languages of Southern Africa
K.K. Prah (ed)

This volume puts together a number of papers on the status of minority languages in Southern Africa in general and South Africa in particular. The papers look at the Khoe and San languages, Afrikaans, xiTsonga and tshiVenda.

ISBN No.1-919932-04-6 R100,00 / US$15 / £8 

Book Series No. 35 (YEAR 2005)
Reflections of Arab-led Slavery on Africans.
K.K. Prah (ed)

The Arab-Led Slavery of Africans predates the Atlantic Slave Trade of the West by about a millennium. At source, it was by far more extensive in geographical spread than the Atlantic Slave Trade. However, generally little is said or known about it. Also, its effects on the social fabric and history of Africa is generally underestimated. As we penetrate the twenty-first century, the interrelated issues of racism and the legacy of African slavery as lingering historical and sociological phenomena constitute for Africa and the world one of the most vexatious problem areas on the conscience of the human community. At a time when people of African descent, particularly in the Diaspora, are calling for reparations for the chattel slavery of Africans in the western hemisphere and its effects, Africans on the continent are making similar demands for Ottoman and Arab-led slavery and its outstanding historical and sociological implications.

ISBN No.1-919932-05-4 R100,00 / US$15 / £8 

Book Series No. 36 (Forthcoming)
The Yorùbá Auxiliary Verb.
Lawrence Adewole

Despite the importance of the auxiliary verb to any grammar, many Yorùbá grammarians are guilty of using the term ‘auxiliary’ as a sort of rag-bag into which to toss most verbal uses that do not seem to the author to be those of the standard main verb. This work intends to correct this misconception. The work is a comprehensive analysis of the Yorùbá auxiliary.

ISBN No.1-919932-06-2 R / US$ / £ 

Book Series No. 37 (Year 2003)
A General Introduction to Ndebele Grammar
Langa Khumalo

A General Introduction to Ndebele Grammar is a comprehensive description of the Ndebele language. This is a pioneer work in the study of Ndebele grammar. Designed as a textbook for the undergraduate course on Ndebele Linguistic Structure, the book is in lucid and accessible language that readers would find pleasant to read. Although the anticipated users are undergraduate students, the depth of the content and some illuminating perspectives contained makes the book relevant to linguistics of all kinds.

ISBN No.1-919932-09-7 R75,00 / US$11 / £7

Book Series No. 38 (Year 2003)
Pourquoi le Gabon doit invester sur ses langues vernaculaires.
Danial Franck Idiata

This text is a timely and insightful contribution to ongoing debates in Africa about the fate and role of African languages. Idiata's text looks at the role of language in contemporary Gabonese society. It scrutinizes issues like the number of languages in Gabon, their places in status planning, the politics of language and language-use, perspectives on the development of Gabonese language and makes cogent suggestions as to the advancement of Gabonese languages.

ISBN No.1-919932-15-1 R95,00 / US$14 / £10

Book Series No. 39 (Year 2005)
Languages of Instruction for African Emancipation
Birgit Brock-Utne and Rodney Kofi Hopson

Anyone who is looking for a contemporary discussion on the complex educational language scene in postcolonial Africa will find this book an important read. Though written in English, it deals with countries in what are known as the francophone and lusophone parts of Africa as well as the so-called Anglophone countries. It addresses and explores common myths about languages of instruction in Tanzania, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Botswana, Guinea and Nigeria. The editors have see it as important to encourage young/new African scholars to enter into the debates on the language of instruction in Africa alongside well-established authors in the field. The authors gathered in this volume offer an interesting cross-section of voices with varied experience from the African continent. The volume has been put together especially with postgraduate students and teachers as well as policy-makers in Africa in mind. The book should also interest donors to education in Africa, local and international NGOs working in Africa, and students of African education and African languages both in Africa and abroad.

ISBN No.1-919932-05-4 R100,00 / US$15 / £8 

Book Series No. 40 (FORTHCOMING)
A Comparative Bantu Phonology and Morphology
Lazarus Miti

ISBNNo.1-919932-28-3 R / US$ / £