Is there really no explanation for Khalid Masood’s lone attack on Westminster Palace, as Scotland Yard sleuths say? Masood could not change his “blackness”, nor the reality of racism in England. He could not get over his schoolmates calling him “Black Ade”. He laughed about it, and even as he grew up into manhood he behaved convivially, behaving like a “good boy”, so as not to appear rude.

In May, Paul Kagame will be feted for his outstanding friendship with the Jewish people. That friendship chiefly entails cynical use of the Rwandan genocide to advance U.S. and Israeli interests in Africa and the Arab world. Kagame was the only African head of state to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He has totally thrown his lot in with U.S.-led imperialism.

Africa is a vast continent with diversity of cultures. Rather than see this as an impediment to development, the continent should take advantage of this rich cultural diversity in its quest for economic development and should change the attitudes of its people towards work, interpersonal trust, time, youth and women.

Not only did the ANC consciously choose (before 1994) to turn its ideological and strategic back on the possibilities of organising a massive wellspring of popular power to pursue much more thoroughgoing systemic change, but it also made a conscious choice after 1994 to exercise its unparalleled political position and power (mostly through the state) in partnership with and in service to capital.

The editors have brought together a vast compendium of knowledge that challenges the Eurocentric epistemic colonisation of Africa. The book should be on the reading list for courses on the Political Economy of Africa, Development Economics, and International Relations at universities. It would also do well in the library of journalists and other analysts.