Favourite moment of the movie ‘The Endless Summer’*? What gets me every time is when the big African chief clambers to his feet on his first ever wave – no mean feat – and rides the wave in a way that can only be described as African style. With such a good understanding of the vast African continent thanks to Bruce Brown’s 1966 cult classic, I thought I would top up my knowledge with a read of Martin Meredith’s ‘The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence’. Here you can pretty much judge the book by its cover as the author tackles an extremely complex topic in a straight-forward and lucid manner. Such is the success of the work that Bob Geldof’s claim that: “You cannot even begin to understand contemporary African politics if you have not read this fascinating book” does not seem as outlandish as it may first appear. Repeatedly the reader is left bewildered as to how a continent so rich in natural resources can have an economic output of no more than 1.3 per cent of the world GDP. Highlights are the opening chapter on Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and the brief but compelling chapter on Rwanda, menacingly entitled: “The graves are not yet full”. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this latter chapter is the perspective of General Dallaire, who was unable to deploy his troops due to weak UN leadership. In essence, the UN were fearful of a repeat of the recent Somalia debacle later brought to life in the film ‘Black Hawk Down’ and so refused to deal with the imminent catastrophe head on.  As an aside, it is interesting to think that maybe one of the consequences of the Bush/Blair legacy will be that organizations will not be brave enough to step in and prevent humanitarian disasters by force. All in all, it is an engaging account of a fascinating continent. The one pivotal moment Meredith is guilty of neglecting however is the seminal moment in African surfing that Bruce Brown does manage to record. Never mind.

*Could the proud new owner of a much-missed copy of ‘The Endless Summer’ please return it to me?

Martin Merediths bok “The state of Africa” må vara ambitiös i sin ambition att sammanfatta hela den afrikanska kontinentens första 50 år efter avkolonialiseringen. Men den är icke desto mindre en fantastiskt intressant och bra bok som ger en helhetsbild av den disparata samlingen nya nationer som växt fram på den näst största kontinenten sedan 1950 -talet. Jag rekommenderar den för alla som vill få en första inblick i Afrikas moderna historia men det är också en bra bok för de som redan är ganska belästa på Afrika då Martin Merediths enorma kunnande gör att han kan knyta ihop händelser och beskriva stora samband och tendenser i Afrika på ett fantastiskt sätt. Läs mer om boken här.

Martin Merediths bok “Mugabe” om Zimbabwes envåldshärskare är en båda lättläst och mycket infortmativ bok om hur gerillaledaren Robert Mugabe blev en av världens mest kända despoter.
Boken tar dig med på en resa genom hela hans aktiva liv från studierna i Zimbabwe till jobbet som lärare i Ghana och hans växande engagemang i politiken. Genom hans fängelsevistelse, gerillakrigen och Zimbabwes befrielse hela vägen till dagens Zimbabwe som fallit ner för ruinens brant.

Den målar en bild av en man som trots att han en gång av västvärlden sågs som Afrikas hopp (mycket längre än vad vi nu vill tro) alltid varit en man som härskat med våld och terror.

Om du vill ha mer kunskap om mannen som tyvärr gjort Zimbabwe till Afrikas kanske mest omskrivna land är detta en bra första bok. Med sina drygt 240 sidor är den inte oöverstigligt lång att ta sig igenom.

Perhaps I’m too much of a a pessimist. But I don’t understand how the international community can expect these negotiations to be successful. Tsvangiarai and Mugabe have had a long and violent past. Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has on many occasions tried to murder opposition leader Morgan Tsvangiarai including an unsuccessful attempt of trying to throw him from a ten-story office building. Robert Mugabe, who has been in power in Zimbabwe since 1980, has always stated that he desired absolute power and his party would be the only ruling party. Mugabe’s wife has even been quoted as saying that no other political party would ever step foot in their capital building.

I have just finished reading an excellent biography of Mugabe by Martin Meredith. It astounds me that so many forget the type of leader Mugabe is and what his tendencies are. The man just finished killing his own people if they did not vote for him in a supposed democratic election. I do realize a lot of African leaders respect Mugabe for his actions regarding land re-distribution. However, it’s very difficult to get past a man that condones killing his own people just so that he may stay in power.

We’re lucky here in America, to have a strong infrastructure and a system of checks and balances. I fear that we haven’t seen the end of violence in Zimbabwe.

]]> http://capetodelta.com/2008/06/27/livraria-select-books-na-cidade-do-cabo/ Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:21:26 +0000 Paulo http://capetodelta.com/2008/06/27/livraria-select-books-na-cidade-do-cabo/

“Select Books” é uma pequena livraria em Long Street na Cidade do Cabo. Tem uma boa colecção de livros sobre África, especialmente sobre a história da África do Sul. Para além das mais recentes publicações tem também um considerável fundo bibliográfico de obras raras.

David, o proprietário da loja, é um livreiro da velha guarda, sempre pronto a sugerir um livro e a partilhar o seu conhecimento – é um leitor que também vende livros. Envia publicações sobre a África do Sul para mais de trinta países, incluindo Portugal. (Falou-nos de um cliente de longa data que tem em Oliveira do Hospital!)

Um dos outros clientes famosos da Select Books é Martin Meredith, o autor de “The State of Africa” e do excelente “Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa”, um livro que nos foi recomendado por David e sobre o qual voltaremos a falar aqui no blog. Segundo David, Martin Meredith é um devorador de livros e a Select Books fornece-lhe muitas das obras que enriquecem as suas bibliografias.

Quem estiver interessado em visitar uma pequena livraria com uma boa secção de história económica, social e natural da África do Sul pode visitar a Select Books em http://www.selectbooks.co.za/ ou, se possível, no número 232 da Long Street na Cidade do Cabo.

by Martin Meredith
(Jonathan Ball)

Review: Terry Bell

Martin Meredith has already established himself as a force in terms of the political and economic analysis of Africa and the historiography of the continent. His recent The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence has rightly been hailed.

Diamonds, Gold and War maintains, in a highly readable form, the same high standard of scholarship, erudition and clarity of analysis. Here can be clearly seen the advantages of being an historian/journalist or journalist/historian: this is an enthralling, comprehensive narrative covering the events that shaped modern South Africa and had a considerable impact in many other parts of the world.

The bare bones of the story and many of the anecdotes dealt with may be well known to those who have ever shown an interest in, or been exposed to, the history of this period. But while there is not much that is very new in terms of overall facts, the manner in which they have been drawn together, reveals a clear understanding of the political and economic nuances. This makes for the most lucid reportage on this era that I have come across.

It is the sort of history that reads like a good thriller. Which is probably why the publishers chose to feature a comment by Wilbur Smith on the cover. Smith, a writer of generally gung-ho action novels notes: “Vivid and thrilling…a book I know I will re-read time and again over the years ahead.” This comment is obviously aimed at attracting readers who would not normally bother with what is all too often thought of — and all too often is — history drily and boringly told.

And it is these very readers, especially in South Africa, who should read this book. For here the roots of the present and the all too recent racist past are exposed and there are sound lessons to be drawn about many current political developments. At a time when so much history has been obscured by popular myth and prejudice, when revisionist rewriting of the past abounds, this a timely reminder of how the years between 1870 and 1910 laid the foundations of the modern South African state. Here we see how bigotry, brutality, racism and arrogance fuelled opposing nationalisms, along with the racist distortions and the still extant mythology of liberal English and illiberal Afrikaners.

It is useful even to be reminded about just how the pass laws and the notorious compound system came about and who introduced these measures many decades before formal apartheid was announced in 1948. I had forgotten — or perhaps never fully realised — just how the supposedly “progressive” members of the commission headed by Sir Geoffrey Langdon firmly put in place the basis of formal, legal, segregation in their 1905 report.

There is also a salutary reminder here of how the kombuis taal of Afrikaans came to be the glue of Afrikaner nationalism and how this nationalism was unconsciously fostered and promoted by the perfidy of British and colonial bureaucracy. Meredith’s explanation of the origins and growth of Afrikaner nationalism also aids an understanding of the ethnic and nationalist strife which continues to erupt, not only in Africa, but around the world.,

Above all, Meredith here presents admirably clear portraits of the two men who dominated most of the period covered: Cecil Rhodes and Paul Kruger. Of course, there already exists a large body of literature dealing with both men and their careers. Much of it, however, is two dimensional and, especially in the case of Rhodes, amounts to mild or blatant hagiography. Kruger’s image has tended to suffer from the predominant English view of him as a crude buffoon, a man who did, indeed, believe that the world was flat.

But it is easy to see why the SA Communist Party leader Bram Fischer (as quoted in Meredith’s 2002 biography, Fischer’s Choice) chose, during his 1966 trial to quote Kruger, despite his narrow Calvinism, as “one of the great Afrikaner leaders”.

Both Rhodes and Kruger were men of considerable ability, but in any hero and villain stakes, it is Rhodes who clearly takes the cake as a wholly unprincipled and consummate opportunist. His often charming exterior and erudition only thinly disguised a malicious, power-hungry opportunist and racist capable of glorying in brutality.Olive Schreiner,

It was the writer, Olive Schreiner, as Meredith points out, who saw and understood this duality. She wrote to her sister: “Rhodes, with all his gifts of genius…and below the fascinating surface, the worms of falsehood and corruption creeping.” Like so many other prominent people, she was also, initially enamoured of Rhodes. But, as she wrote in 1892: “I saw that he had deliberately chosen evil.”

Schreiner, also modelled the villain of her 1897 novel Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland on Rhodes, and included as a frontispiece illustration a “Christmas tree” of hanged Ndebele fighters surrounded by a group of white “pioneers” of Rhodes’ British South Africa Company.

But this is no one-sided or jaundiced view of that tumultuous period. The users and the used, the betrayers and the betrayed, the good the bad and the ugly all parade here in a grand tale that is extremely well told and whose lessons we ignore at our peril.

The one criticism I do have — and it is is one that will certainly be shared by researchers and academics — is that Diamonds, Gold and War is not fully annotated. Instead of detailed foot or end notes on sources, Meredith relies on ten pages of general “chapter notes” and an 11-page “select bibliography” list. It may sound like carping, but I feel that reference merely to “the archive evidence” for a source is simply not good enough.

• Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe by Martin Meredith
• Paperback 244 pages
• Published in the United States by PublicAffairs (2002, 2003, 2007) 
• Previously published under the title Our Votes, Our Guns
• My rating: 2 out of 5 chapatis

About a month ago I went to my local bookstore in search of a particular tome on Sudan. While perusing the shelves, I came face-to-face with Robert Mugabe. His wizened visage stared out at me from the cover of Martin Meredith’s recently updated biography, practically mocking my ignorance of his no-doubt fascinating life. What an excellent opportunity to learn more about the man holding Zimbabwe hostage, I thought. I grabbed the book off the shelf and headed for the cash register (I never did find the book I was originally seeking. I was too excited to head home and dive into my new find). 

Well I dove in all right, but I could tell almost immediately that Mugabe wasn’t the gem that I thought it would be. I should be up front and state that I had certain expectations when I bought this book. One of them was that I would be educated in some detail about Robert Mugabe’s early life, educational background, and career as a freedom fighter. Meredith’s book did not give me the level of detail that I was looking for at all. I can understand if copious information is not available about Mugabe’s youth since many of the people who educated him may well be dead, but I’m sure that there must be people around to interview that could provide background on the time he spent in prison, as well as Ghana and Mozambique. After finishing the sections on Mugabe’s early life, I felt like I was left with a very rough sketch of what could have been a fantastic portrait. 

My feelings of dissatisfaction continued as I became further engaged in the book. Major events such as the 2005 Murambatsvina campaign (better known to foreigners as the episode where Mugabe razed urban slums leaving around 700,000 people homeless)  garnered only five pages of discussion. Similarly, there was minimal analysis of Zimbabwe’s involvement in Congo’s war or the horrifying Gukurahundi campaign. Nevertheless, I slogged through this book because it does provide some crucial insights (mostly in the form of Mugabe’s own quotes) into how such a promising man went so very bad.

Meredith’s quite simple thesis is that Mugabe is a man obsessed with power. He writes, “Power for Mugabe is not a means to an end, but the end itself.” He argues that Mugabe might have become a teacher (his desired profession) if not for the oppressive colonial regime under which he was born. While in prison Mugabe determine that the best course of action was to overthrow the whites and replace them with a one-party Marxist military regime. Mugabe never did get his forced victory over the white population (a negotiated settlement was reached), but he worked diligently to institute the one-party state that he had dreamed of for years. As I write, he is still working to achieve this goal. 

Ryszard Kapuściński in The Shadow of the Sun, notes that a civil servant in Africa, during colonialism, had a life style 10 times better than their equivalent in Europe. My grandfather, an Italian doctor in Ethiopia, confirms this. That means a life style 100, 1000, god knows how many times better than the average life style of an African person (by western standards). When westerners left, locals took the jobs in the same condition, and a new spoiled class emerged in Africa.

Martin Meredith in The Fate of Africa describes the greedy, incompetent leaders Africa had after independence. Kapuscinski explains why Africa drifted towards such a badly governed continent. Westerners do have some responsibility….
Mario Alemi