This maiden edition of the African Journal of Rhetoric is a collection of papers presented at the first colloquium of the African Association for Rhetoric (AAR) and papers that were later solicited from experienced researchers. This volume critically looks at the role that rhetoric plays during an impasse between Government and civil society. Some of the issues that occur in this volume range from the state of rhetorical studies in Africa to the nature and the nuanced extreme culture of protest in Africa. The volume also examines the activities of the different actors during protest, namely civil movements, the police, the judiciary and the executive as either sources or recipients of violent behaviour during protest. This is a multidisciplinary array of chapters and contributors. The group consists of both senior scholars and young researchers in Rhetoric, African studies, Law, Linguistics, Political Sociology, Psychology, Politics, Communication and Media Studies and Development Studies.