The broad nature of this book has meant that I have relied on the work of many other authors. Included in these chapter notes are references to some of the books which I found to be of particular interest and value. A more complete list can be found in the select bibliography.
Introduction
The collection of general histories of Africa includes the eight-volume Cambridge History of Africa and single volumes by Philip Curtin et al; John D. Fage; John Iliffe; Roland Oliver; and John Reader. Thomas Pakenham writes vividly about the Scramble for Africa. On the decolonisation period, the two volumes of essays edited by Prosser Gifford and Roger Louis and the account by John Hargreaves are especially useful.
Chapter 1
Sir Charles Arden-Clarke spoke of his Gold Coast experiences at a joint meeting of the Royal African Society and the Royal Empire Society in London in November 1957; his address was published in African Affairs, Vol. 5, 226, January 1958. David Rooney makes extensive use of Arden-Clarke’s private papers in his biography. Nkrumah’s autobiography, written with the help of Erica Powell, was published to coincide with Ghana’s independence. Erica Powell gives a vivid account of working with Nkrumah over a period of more then ten years in Private Secretary (Female)/Gold Coast. The outstanding account of the period is Dennis Austin’s Politics in Ghana.
Chapter 2
William Stadiem writes about Farouk’s colourful life. Three leading conspirators – Nasser, Neguib and Sadat – published accounts of the 1952 coup. Among the biographies of Nasser I consulted were those by Anthony Nutting; P. J. Vatikiotis; Jean Lacouture; and Robert Stephens. In his book No End of a Lesson, Nutting, for reasons of discretion, toned down the word that Eden used about Nasser – ‘I want him destroyed, can’t you understand?’ In an interview recorded for Granada’s television series, End of Empire, produced by Brian Lapping, Nutting recalled that Eden had, in fact, used the word ‘murdered’.
Chapter 3
Some 3,000 books and more than 35 films have been produced about France’s Algerian war. Even though today it is more than forty years since the end of the war, it remains an issue that continues to divide France. Until 1999, French politicians could not even agree on whether to give it the formal label of a ‘war’. Previously, it carried the euphemism of a law-and-order operation and was referred to as les événements en Algérie. When the French National Assembly met in 2002 to consider a bill designating the date of the Evian peace agreement as a ‘national day of remembrance’, delegates split on the vote, with 278 in favour and 204 against. Such was the passion aroused that it was decided to drop the bill. The outstanding account in English is Alistair Horne’s A Savage War of Peace.
Chapter 4
Senghor’s life and work are covered by Janet Vaillant; Jacques Hymans; and Irving Markovitz. Houphouët-Boigny was born plain Houphouët, but in the wake of his 1945 election victory, to celebrate his success, he added Boigny to his name. In the Baulé language it means ‘ram’ and is said to reflect stubborn determination. Paul-Henri Siriex writes favourably about Houphouët. Marcel Amondji is far more critical. The quotation from West Africa about Houphouët’s palace in Abidjan is taken from the 26 August 1961 issue.
Chapter 5
The official British government report by F. D. Corfield, Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau Mau (HMSO, London, 1960) is still of interest mainly because it illustrates, seven years after the rebellion, how little the colonial authorities understood of what had happened. Personal accounts by Bildad Kaggia; Waruhiu Itote; and J. M. Kariuki provide valuable insights from the rebel perspective. Fred Kubai gave his version of the central committee’s encounter with Kenyatta in an interview for Brian Lapping’s series, End of Empire. Jeremy Murray-Brown follows Kenyatta’s career. Academic researchers have covered the ground extensively. Among the most useful accounts are those by Tabitha Kanogo; Frank Furedi; David Throup; Greet Kershaw; John Lonsdale (in Berman and Lonsdale); David Anderson; and the collection of essays edited by E. S. Atieno Odhiambo and John Lonsdale.
Chapter 6
Ever since Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness was first published in 1902, a legion of writers and historians have been drawn to the Congo and its turbulent history. The fascination remains as strong in modern times as ever. Adam Hochschild’s vivid account of King Léopold’s Congo Free State was published in 1998. That same year the American novelist Barbara Kingsolver produced The Poisonwood Bible, the story of an American missionary who in the fateful year of 1960 takes his wife and four young daughters into the heart of Africa to save Congolese souls. In 2000 Michela Wrong published a brilliant account of the last years of Mobutu’s ailing regime and the American journalist Jeffrey Tayler wrote of his remarkable journey down the Congo river. In 2001 the Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck produced a memorable film recreating Lumumba’s brief and tumultuous career. The film includes a line from Lumumba’s last letter to his wife, Pauline: ‘I know that history will have its say some day, but it will not be history as written in Brussels, Paris or Washington, it will be our own.’
Ludo De Witte’s groundbreaking investigation into the murder of Lumumba was published first in Dutch in 1999, then in French in 2000, then in English in 2001. Drawing on personal testimonies and a series of official documents, De Witte placed primary responsibility for the murder on the Belgian establishment, causing a public furore in Belgium. For forty years, officials had insisted that Congolese were entirely to blame. De Witte’s evidence prompted the Belgians to set up a parliamentary investigation in 2000. Written in measured terms, the parliamentary report, published in November 2001, concluded that ‘certain members of the Belgian government and other Belgian participants were morally responsible for the circumstances leading to the death of Lumumba’. The parliamentary investigation also uncovered the memorandum of 19 October 1960 incorporating King Baudouin’s remarks in the margin.
The evidence about Mobutu’s role as a police informer comes from Frederic Vandewalle, a former head of the Sûreté in the Congo who was interviewed by Sean Kelly in 1985. Mobutu remained on the Belgian payroll from the time he left the army in 1956. He regularly provided the Belgians with detailed reports on the activities of fellow Congolese, particularly those of his own generation who, like himself, were beginning to become involved in politics. Vandewalle said that under his administration the Sûreté developed a policy of employing many such Congolese as paid informers. ‘They were not spies in a Cold War sense, but simply informants who could tell us about the new Congolese leaders, and what we might expect from them. We were very short of this type of information in those days.’
In 1958 the Belgian colonial government sent Mobutu to Brussels where he studied journalism and continued reporting to the Sûreté. He also began working for Lumumba’s MNC, ending up in charge of its Brussels office. Lumumba was apparently aware of Mobutu’s connection to the Sûreté and decided it was an innocent activity by a struggling journalist designed to bring in some badly needed income. According to Vandewalle, Mobutu’s political reporting to the Sûreté was routinely passed to the CIA station at the US embassy in Brussels. Lawrence Devlin, who was serving in Brussels at the time, first met Mobutu during an American embassy reception in early 1960. As the CIA’s station chief in Léopoldville, appointed shortly after the Congo’s independence in June 1960, Devlin developed a close relationship with Mobutu, providing him with funds to secure the loyalty of his troops.
From her interviews with Devlin, Michela Wrong describes an incident in which he foiled an assassination attempt on Mobutu. Devlin rejected any notion that Mobutu was an American puppet. ‘He was never a puppet. When he felt it was against the interests of the Congo, he wouldn’t do it, when it didn’t go against his country’s interests, he would go along with our views. He was always independent, it just happened that at a certain point we were going in the same direction.’
Catherine Hoskyns provides a detailed account of the Congo during 1960 and 1961. Madeleine Kalb explores the American role. Also useful is the Report of the Senate committee investigating the CIA: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, United States Senate, Washington, US Government Printing Office, 1975. Devlin and Gottlieb both appeared before the Senate committee using pseudonyms.
Chapter 7
South Africa’s apartheid system has been examined exhaustively in a vast range of literature. Leonard Thompson’s writings stand out for their clarity and balance. Nelson Mandela’s career is covered by his autobiography and by biographies by Anthony Sampson and Martin Meredith.
Rhodesia’s road to rebellion has also been studied in detail. Useful accounts are provided by James Barber; Robert Blake; Larry Bowman; Frank Clements; and Kenneth Young.
Portugal’s colonial record is described by Malyn Newitt. John Marcum’s two-volume study of Angola provides a wealth of detail. The date on which the MPLA was founded has been the subject of prolonged controversy. At the heart of the dispute lies the question of which group started the anti-colonial movement. The ‘official’ MPLA version is that it was founded on 10 December 1956. A contrary version claims that no mention was made of the MPLA until 1958 or even later and that its origins were subsequently backdated to shore up its credibility. Fernando Guimarães examines both sides of the controversy.
Chapter 8
One of the most influential economists promoting industrialisation was W. Arthur Lewis who for a period in the early 1960s served as an adviser to the government of Ghana. He argued consistently that African countries could not achieve economic growth by seeking to increase their production of tradable agricultural commodities. He believed that world markets were simply saturated with the products that African countries were seeking to exploit – tea, coffee, cocoa and sugar. Increased production would only result in a lowering of the world price, thereby eliminating any prospect of gain.
Chapter 9
The title, ‘The First Dance of Freedom’ is taken from a quotation from Lord Byron’s Detached Thoughts, 1821–2. ‘I sometimes wish I was the Owner of Africa; to do at once, what Wilberforce will do in time, viz – sweep Slavery from her desarts, and look on upon the first dance of their Freedom’. In his book The Soccer War, the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski told of how in the course of one month at the end of 1965, he drove through five countries in West Africa – Guinea, Ghana, Togo, Dahomey and Western Nigeria – in four of which there were states of emergency. One president had just been overthrown, another had saved himself by chance, a third was afraid to leave his house which was surrounded by troops. Two parliaments had been dissolved, two governments had fallen, scores of people had died in political conflicts, scores more had been arrested. ‘Over a distance of 520 kilometres, I had been checked twenty-one times and subjected to four body searches. Everywhere there was an atmosphere of tension, everywhere the smell of gunpowder.’ The example of Action Group corruption in Western Nigeria is taken from the Report of the Coker Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of Statutory Corporations in Western Nigeria (Ministry of Information, Lagos, 1962). The study of trade statistics of fourteen francophone states by Gérard Chaliand was published in a special issue of Partisans – ‘L’Afrique dans l’Épreuve’, May-June, 1966.
Chapter 10
After Nkrumah’s overthrow, the military’s National Liberation Council appointed a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Fred Apaloo to investigate Nkrumah’s assets. It was the first of more than forty commissions, committees, special audit teams and other investigative bodies charged with probing the public and private activities of Nkrumah’s regime. There was no doubt that the military’s intention in exposing the depth of corruption to which Ghana had sunk was to discredit Nkrumah and legitimise its seizure of power. Yet the evidence uncovered was solid and substantial. The Apaloo Commission found that at the time of the coup, Nkrumah possessed cash and property worth £2,322,000. An American scholar, Victor LeVine, concluded that Nkrumah ‘clearly was involved in a variety of corrupt transactions’. Trevor Jones gives a detached account of Nkrumah’s last years.
Chapter 11
Chinua Achebe’s novels run the gamut of African experience from colonial rule to Big Man politics. For the crises that engulfed Nigeria’s First Republic, see: James Coleman (1958); Richard Sklar (1963); John P. Mackintosh et al. (1966); Robin Luckham (1971); Kenneth Post and Michael Vickers (1973); Billy Dudley (1973); and Larry Diamond (1988). John de St Jorre gives the best overall account of the civil war. John Stremlau examines international involvement. Michael Crowder provides a standard history of Nigeria.
Haile Selassie’s regime is covered by Christopher Clapham; Patrick Gilkes; and John Markakis. John Spencer, an American lawyer familiar with Haile Selassie’s court over a forty-year period gives a personal account. Ryszard Kapuscinski interviewed former palace officials after Haile Selassie’s overthrow, compiling a vivid picture of life at the old imperial palaces in his last months as emperor; critics claimed it was a little too imaginative.
Chapter 13
In his book Talk of the Devil, the Italian journalist Riccardo Orizio recorded interviews with Amin, Bokassa and Mengistu after their downfall. Amin was living comfortably in exile in Jeddah, courtesy of the Saudi government; Bokassa was living in retirement in the Villa Nasser in Bangui, after serving seven years in prison; and Mengistu was living in Harare as a guest of Robert Mugabe.
Henry Kyemba’s account of Amin’s regime is of particular interest. Kyemba served Amin as principal private secretary, cabinet secretary, head of the civil service and minister before fleeing into exile in 1977. Iain Grahame, a former British army officer, also knew Amin well. Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey give an eyewitness account of the Tanzanian invasion. Amin died in exile in Jeddah in 2003 at about the age of eighty. At the time of his death, Uganda’s economic output had recovered to the level it was in 1971 – the year Amin came to power.
Mengistu’s revolution is covered by David and Marina Ottoway; Fred Halliday and Maxine Molyneux; John Markakis and Nega Ayele; René Lefort; Christopher Clapham; and Andargachew Tiruneh. Dawit Wolde Giorgis provides a valuable insider’s account. Samuel Decalo, in his book Psychoses of Power, examines the careers of Amin, Bokassa and Nguema. Brian Titley gives a more balanced account of Bokassa. Robert Af Klinteberg’s report on Equatorial Guinea was published in 1978 by the International University Exchange Fund, Geneva.
Nyerere’s single-handed effort to pursue socialism is explained with great clarity in his own collection of writings and speeches. His ujamaa experiment excited particular interest in academic circles. Cranford Pratt examines its origins. Other useful accounts include those by Andrew Coulson; Goran Hyden; Dean McHenry; and Michaela von Freyhold.
Chapters 16 and 22
A valuable body of work has been produced on Africa’s economic decline. Particularly useful are accounts by Robert Bates; David Fieldhouse; Douglas Rimmer; Tony Killick; Ralph Austen; Richard Sandbrook; John Ravenhill; Nicolas van de Walle; Roger Tangri; and the collection of essays edited by Thomas Callaghy and John Ravenhill. Two works published in 1981 had a marked influence on the analytical debate about African economies. One was the World Bank’s Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, popularly known as the Berg Report after its principal author, Elliot Berg; the other was Robert Bates’s Markets and States in Tropical Africa. Both pointed to government intervention as a major cause of Africa’s economic decline. Robert Bates’s work, demonstrating how well-organised urban interest groups dominated national politics, had a significant impact on academic and policy circles.
Chapter 17
The extent of Mobutu’s fortune and what happened to it has been the subject of prolonged speculation. According to his biographer Francis Monheim, in Brussels at the end of 1959 Mobutu had no more than $6 to his name. In 1988 he told US Representative Mervyn Dymally:
Clearly, I would be lying if I said I do not have a bank account in Europe; I do. I would be lying if I said I do not have considerable money in my account; I do. Yes, I do have a fair amount of money. However, I would estimate it to total less than 50 million dollars. What is that for twenty-two years as head of state in such a big country?
In 1987, a team of editors and reporters from Fortune magazine, involved in a year-long project to rank the world’s richest people, placed Mobutu in a category ‘hard to prove and impossible to trace’. They said Mobutu was ‘reportedly’ worth $5 billion. The US television programme Sixty Minutes, in a report on Zaire in 1984, used the same figure. The London Financial Times in May 1997 estimated his fortune at $4 billion. A glimpse of his family’s wealth came from litigation papers in the US involving the assets of his uncle, Litho Maboti, who died in 1982, said to be worth $1 billion.
Certainly, Mobutu enjoyed flaunting his wealth. On one memorable occasion in 1982, he arrived in the United States for a vacation accompanied by nearly one hundred Zairians and in the space of two weeks, during visits to hotels, stores, a dude ranch and Disney World, spent an estimated $2 million.
But at the end of it all, after Mobutu’s downfall, apart from his properties scattered around the world, investigators found difficulty in locating his fabled private wealth. A paltry $4 million was discovered in Swiss banks. It seems likely that, although Mobutu acquired vast sums, much of it was used to sustain his system of personal rule.
A US Treasury estimate in the early 1990s came up with a figure of $40–$45 million. ‘When we tried to get a hold on what we had, we found to our surprise that Mobutu was having serious cash flow problems,’ an official told Michela Wrong. ‘He was having problems paying his bills, maintaining his French properties and keeping his entourage happy. It suggested that his ability to plunder various state mechanisms had shrunk enormously as Gécamines and Miba [the state diamond corporation] had decayed. He had squandered huge amounts and not squirreled it away as was supposed.’
Larry Devlin retired from the CIA in 1974 and became the personal representative of Maurice Tempelsman in Kinshasa. Tempelsman, scion of an Antwerp diamond-trading family which had moved to New York before the Second World War, remained a Mobutu confidant for more than two decades. Devlin had direct access to Mobutu, continuing to function as an intelligence channel. According to a former US deputy assistant secretary of state who visited Zaire in 1979, Devlin was ‘the true representative of the United States Government’ in Mobutu’s eyes, ‘having much better access than the ambassador’.
In his testimony about the political and economic situation in Zaire to the Subcommittee on Africa, House of Representatives in Washington in September 1981, Nguza described in chilling detail the torture he had experienced in 1977 after he was dismissed as foreign minister and sentenced to death for ‘high treason’ at a summary trial. Mobutu, according to Nguza, threatened to shoot him personally. During Nguza’s subsequent interrogation by security personnel, a metal tube was inserted into his penile shaft, through which jets of air were introduced, rupturing blood vessels and causing intense pain. Electric shocks were applied to his testicles at the same time. Despite all this, Nguza returned to work for Mobutu. Erwin Blumenthal’s IMF report was published in Info-Zaire, No. 36, October 1982.
Among the numerous accounts of the Mobutu era, those of particular merit include the work of Michela Wrong; Sean Kelly; Crawford Young and Thomas Turner; Collette Braeckman; Jean-Claude Williame; Blaine Harden; Bill Berkeley; and Mark Huband. Michael Schatzberg vividly describes the acute suffering of peasants in rural Zaire. A number of intrepid journalists recorded memorable journeys through the Congo during the Mobutu era. They include: David Lamb; Jeffrey Tayler; and Helen Winternitz. Winternitz interviewed Tshisekedi in Kinshasa in 1983 and describes her subsequent ordeal with Mobutu’s security police.
Chapter 18
Norrie MacQueen describes the collapse of Portugal’s African empire from the Portuguese perspective. John Stockwell, the head of the CIA’s Angola task force, gives an insider’s account, repenting his own involvement. Fernando Guimarães unravels the competing interests of Cuba, the Soviet Union, China, the United States and South Africa and examines the timetable of Cuban involvement, concluding that Cuban military intervention in Angola had probably been planned during the first half of 1975. In Another Day of Life, Ryszard Kapuscinski gives a vivid eyewitness account of the weeks leading up to independence. Professor Spies writes the official history of South Africa’s intervention, Operation Savannah. Fred Bridgland provides a favourable portrait of Savimbi. Martin Meredith writes about Rhodesia’s UDI years and the eventual outcome.
Chapter 19
The title ‘Red Tears’ is taken from the memoir by Dawit Wolde Giorgis, who fled into exile in 1985. Alex de Waal provides the most comprehensive account of war and famine in Ethiopia over a thirty-year period. Other useful accounts are by David Korn, the US chargé d’affaires in Addis Ababa at the time; and by Peter Gill who looks at international aspects of the relief operation.
Chapter 20
On Chad, Robert Buitenhuijs’s two volumes provide a comprehensive overview of Chad’s civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s. Also useful are works by Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff; Sam Nolutshungu; and Michael Kelley.
On Libya, Gaddafi’s regime is examined by Jonathan Bearman; John Cooley; Lillian Craig Harris; and David Blundy and Andrew Lycett. Gaddafi’s intervention in Chad is covered by John Wright; and by René Lemarchand.
On Sudan, Douglas Johnson explains the complexities of the wars in the south. An account of the Al Diein massacre by Dr Ushari Ahmad Mahmud and Suleyman Ali Bado was published by the University of Khartoum in 1987. Deborah Scroggins describes the plight of Dinka refugees in Darfur in 1988 in Emma’s War. Other valuable eyewitness accounts are provided by David Lamb; Robert Kaplan; Scott Peterson; Mark Huband; and Bill Berkeley. The quotes from aid officials are taken from Bill Berkeley’s account.
Most scientists believe that Aids jumped the species barrier from African primates to humans by ‘natural transfer’, the result, for example, of a hunter infected by a chimpanzee. A competing theory claims that Aids was caused in the 1950s when thousands of Africans were given contaminated polio vaccine from chimpanzee kidneys. This theory is argued at length by Edward Hooper in his book The River. Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside provide a global perspective on the Aids pandemic but concentrate mainly on Africa. Ezekiel Kalipeni et al. focus on the ramifications of Aids in Africa. A report in 2000 by ActionAid, London, entitled Open Secret: People facing up to HIV and AIDS in Uganda, provides an account of Uganda’s strategy for dealing with Aids.
Chapter 23
Between 1990 and 1996, 37 out of 48 African states in sub-Saharan Africa held multi-party elections. More than half of the elections resulted in a former dictator remaining in office. The most useful accounts of the ‘democratisation’ period are those by Michael Bratton and Nicolas van de Walle; Jennifer Widner (ed.); David Apter and Carl Rosberg (eds.); and John Wiseman. Segun Osaba’s essay on corruption in Nigeria was published in the Review of African Political Economy (1996), No. 69, 371–86. Peter Lewis’s observations on the 1993 election in Nigeria were published in African Affairs (1994), 93, 323–40.
Chapter 24
The rise of black consciousness is dealt with by Gail Gerhart; Steve Biko’s role is described by Donald Woods. Evidence about Biko’s ordeal at the hands of the security police is taken from testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; the role of Winnie Mandela as head of the criminal gang known as the Mandela United Football Club was also examined at length by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: see Martin Meredith’s Coming to Terms. The series of secret negotiations between Mandela and the South African government and South Africa’s subsequent odyssey to democratic elections are best covered by Allister Sparks; and by Patti Waldmeir.
Chapter 25
For an explanation of the ideas and work of Sayyid Qutb, see Gilles Kepel; on Sheikh Abdullah Abdel Rahman, see Mary Anne Weaver; and on the conspirators behind the assassination of Sadat, see Johannes Jansen.
On Algeria’s conflict, Hugh Roberts’s collection of essays, The Battlefield, provides valuable insights. Other useful accounts are by Michael Willis; and by Luis Martinez. While the massacres of the 1990s are generally attributed to the GIA, there is evidence implicating the security forces as accomplices if not perpetrators in some of them. A civilian eyewitness account of the massacre at Bentalha, a township ten miles south of Algiers, on the night of 22 September 1997, in which more than 400 people – men, women and children – were slaughtered, points to security force involvement. The account – Qui a tué à Bentalha: chronique d’un massacre annoncé – was written by Nesroulah Yous, with Salima Mellah, and published by La Découverte, Paris, in 2000. In La Sale Guerre, published by La Découverte in 2001, a former special forces officer, Habib Souaïdia, gives a scathing account of the counter-insurgency campaign, claiming he witnessed his army comrades engaging in torture, rape and wanton killing. A report by Human Rights Watch, Time for Reckoning, published in 2003, deals with the issue of 7,000 ‘disappearances’, mostly at the hands of the security forces.
Chapter 26
Professor Ioan Lewis provides the historical context, and in the fourth edition of his Modern History of the Somali, follows through until 2002. A number of individual accounts stand out, including those by John Drysdale; Scott Peterson; Mark Huband; and Keith Richburg. Mohamed Sahnoun gives his version in Missed Opportunities. Mark Bowden reconstructs the US operation on October 3–4, 1993 in gripping detail. John Hirsch and Robert Oakley present a narrative account largely from Oakley’s point of view. Ann Wright’s memorandum, ‘Legal and Human Rights Aspects of UNOSOM Military Operations’, was sent to the special representative of the secretary-general on July 13, 1993, two days after the ‘Qaybdiid’ raid. A comprehensive after-action aid report, Hope Restored? Humanitarian Aid in Somalia, 1990–1994, was published in November 1994 by the Center for Policy Analysis and Research on Refugee Issues, Washington.
Chapter 27
No accurate assessment of the number of people killed during Rwanda’s genocide is possible. Human Rights Watch estimate the figure as at least half a million. The figure most generally cited is 800,000. Other estimates put the number at 1 million. A census carried out in 2000 established the names of 951,000 victims. But entire families were sometimes wiped out leaving no knowledge of their existence. A report published the following year by the Rwandan government cited a figure of just over 1 million. Kagame’s army was responsible for the massacre of some 50,000 Hutus during and immediately after the genocide – war crimes that Kagame eventually admitted had occurred.
More than one hundred books have been written about the genocide. The most comprehensive account is provided by the Human Rights Watch report, ‘Leave None to Tell the Story’: Genocide in Rwanda, written by Alison des Forges and published in 1999. A 1,200-page report by African Rights contains testimony from scores of witnesses. Gérard Prunier provides an invaluable overall history, including revealing insights into French policy. Linda Melvern looks at the broader international role in Rwanda; in Conspiracy to Murder, she incorporates testimony given at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Among a number of outstanding accounts by journalists are those by Fergal Keane; and by Philip Gourevitch. Gourevitch uncovers the role of Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana. Elizabeth Neuffer portrays the difficulties of seeking justice in Rwanda.
Michela Wrong provides a vivid account of the end of Mobutu’s regime. Other accounts of interest are by Mobutu’s close aide Honoré Ngbanda, and his son-in-law Pierre Janssen. Reports by the United Nations-appointed panel of experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth from the Democratic Republic of Congo were published in 2001, 2002 and 2003.
Chapter 29
After visiting Liberia in 1953, John Gunther wrote: ‘I could use any of several adjectives about it: “odd”, “wacky”, “weird”.’ The upkeep of President Tubman’s 463-ton yacht, he noted, cost 1 per cent of the total national budget. Bill Berkeley’s report for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights provides a detailed description of Doe’s regime, including atrocities perpetrated in Nimba County. He writes again about Liberia in The Graves Are Not Yet Full. Mark Huband’s eyewitness account of the Liberian civil war includes portraits of Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson. Anthony Daniels gives a guided tour of the ruins of Monrovia in 1991. William Reno delves into the murky world of warlord finances in Liberia and Sierra Leone and examines the extent of corruption in Siaka Stevens’s regime. Stephen Ellis explores the religious dimension of Liberia’s war. Aminatta Forna gives a vivid portrait of her father, Mohamed Forna, a medical doctor and former minister, who stood against Stevens’s tyranny and was executed after a rigged trial in Freetown. Greg Campbell provides an eyewitness account of the diamond fields of Sierra Leone. Paul Richards looks at the social background of the war in Sierra Leone. The essay by Krijn Peters and Paul Richards, ‘“Why We Fight”: Voices of Youth Combatants in Sierra Leone’, was published in Africa 68 (2), 1998.
Chapter 30
Karl Maier writes perceptively about modern Nigeria in his book This House Has Fallen. The title is taken from a quotation by Chinua Achebe : ‘This is an example of a country that has fallen down; it has collapsed. This house has fallen.’ Ken Wiwa provides an affectionate portrait of his father, Ken Saro-Wiwa. Johannes Harnischfeger’s paper on the Bakassi Boys was published in the Journal of Modern African Studies 41, 1 (2003), 23–49.
Chapter 31
The UN Commission on Human Rights report, published in February 1994, was compiled by Gaspár Bíró. Other useful reports include those by Human Rights Watch: Denying the Honour of Living: Sudan, a Human Rights Disaster, New York, March 1990; and Sudan, Oil and Human Rights, New York, 2003. African Rights deals with the plight of the Nuba. In Slave, Mende Nazer tells her moving story of how as a young Nuba girl she was abducted by Baggara raiders and sold into slavery. Other useful accounts include those by Ann Mosley Lesch; and by Donald Petterson, a US diplomat stationed in Khartoum.
Riek Machar became famous internationally not just for being a warlord but because of his marriage to an English aid worker, Emma McCune. Deborah Scroggins tells the tale in Emma’s War. Scroggins reports McCune’s remark to a friend that it was ‘an incredible high’ to get up from lovemaking to draft constitutions for an independent southern Sudan. McCune died in a car accident in Nairobi in 1993.
Chapter 32
Tony Hodges gives a detailed analysis of modern Angola. Valuable eyewitness accounts are provided by Judith Matloff; Karl Maier; and Pedro Rosa Mendes. Margaret Anstee gives an inside account of the ill-fated 1992–3 peace process. Fred Bridgland, a British journalist, wrote a favourable biography of Savimbi, but later became disillusioned with Unita’s totalitarianism. Bridgland relates an anecdote told to him by Savimbi about his school days in the 1940s at a Protestant mission station. The missionaries there arranged a football game between black students at Savimbi’s school and white pupils from a nearby town. The white visitors brought along their own Portuguese referee who, according to Savimbi, disallowed every score by the black team. This infuriated Savimbi, especially because they were playing with his ball. So he stopped the game and walked off with the ball. The game had to be abandoned.
Chapter 33
A detailed account of the Matabeleland atrocities – Breaking the Silence – was published in 1997 as a joint venture by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Legal Resources Foundation, using testimony from more than a thousand witnesses. In two books, African Tears and Beyond Tears, Cathy Buckle, a white Zimbabwean farmer, chronicles the disruption and terror of the land invasions and the tragic outcome. Martin Meredith covers Mugabe’s career. Peter Godwin’s account of the 2008 election campaign, The Fear, vividly captures the brutality of Mugabe’s regime.
Chapter 34
The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on South Africa was published in five volumes in October 1998. Accounts of its work include those by Desmond Tutu; Alex Boraine; Antjie Krog; and Martin Meredith. On Aids in South Africa, see Kyle Kauffman and David Lindauer. Two other books dealing with Aids stand out: Edwin Cameron’s personal account, Witness to AIDS, and Jonny Steinberg’s Sizwe’s Test, a compelling account of the impact of the epidemic on village life in a small rural community. Andrew Feinstein provides an invaluable glimpse into the inner workings of the ANC. Paul Holden unravels the complexities of the arms deal. Mark Gevisser examines Mbeki’s career in detail. Alec Russell gives a lively journalistic account of the Mandela–Mbeki years.
Chapter 35
For contrasting views about the role of foreign aid in Africa, see Paul Collier; William Easterly; Dambisa Moyo; Roger Riddell; Robert Calderisi; and Jeffrey Sachs. Deborah Brautigan provides an authoritative analysis of China’s objectives in Africa. In It’s Our Turn to Eat, Michela Wrong describes the fate of John Githongo, a former anti-corruption chief who tried to tackle high-level corruption in Kenya.