Customer Reviews

The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair

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Five stars for this plain, urgent, and very comprehensive account of Africa since the colonial powers packed up and left, or were booted out. And as far as I know, this is the only book which covers all of Africa in the last 50 years. But I think readers should be issued with a very strong warning. You have to ask yourselves if you have a strong stomach. Because make no mistake, this is a horror story, and it has left me, after all the Geldoff-inspired euphoria, after the recent debt-cancellations, after all those good words from Blair and Brown, close to despair. Let me give you some examples chosen as random. From page 173 : "President Omar Bongo of Gabon...ordered a new palace for himself with sliding walls and doors, rotating rooms and a private nightclub, costing well over $200 million". From page 273: "The disruption caused by the `villagisation' programme nearly led to catastrophe (in Tanzania). Food production fell drastically, raising the spectre of widespread famine.... Drought compounded the problem." From page 368: "By the mid-1980s most Africans were as poor or poorer than they had been at the time if independence." From page 460: "Over a ten-year period (in Algeria) more than 100,000 people died. Nor was there any end in sight. The violence seemed to suit both sides - the military and the Islamist rebels."
The story of each African country seems to be the same. There is the early promise of independence, the charismatic new leader (it could be Nkrumah or Kenyatta or even Mugabe, of whom Ian Smith, the leader of white Rhodesia, said : "He behaved like a balanced, civilised westerner, the antithesis of the communist gangster I had expected"). There follows corruption and megalomania - palaces built, roads to nowhere commissioned, Swiss bank accounts opened, the president's tribal associates given all the top jobs. The president bans all political parties except his own, because multi-party democracy is not the African way and just plays into the hands of unscrupulous tribal leaders (but of course it is the President himself - and in Africa there has never yet been a herself - who's the biggest player of tribal politics). Then comes twenty - sometimes thirty - years of tyranny, with all political opponents jailed and tortured, and the country bankrupted. Then comes the military coup with the idealistic young military leader declaring a Council of National Salvation and a raft of anti-corruption laws. A few years later, the same young military leader (could be Samuel K Doe of Liberia, could be Yoweri Museweni of Uganda) has turned into a clone of the tyrant he deposed.
Slavery in Africa was followed by colonialism, and once that was ended, by Cold War proxy wars, and once they were over, by Aids. You would think that - plus the endemic disease and drought of course - was enough. But no, Africa suffers from another disease just as debilitating - the infestation of their own "vampire-like" ruling classes. By the end of Martin Meredith's book the horrors were not diminishing. We had had the Rwandan genocide, the children's armies of Liberia (ten year old kids high on cocaine shooting each other with Armalites) and the Lord's Resistance cult in Uganda. Still it goes on. "When Abdou Diouf of Senegal accepted defeat in an election in March 2000 he was only the fourth president to do so in four decades." And again: "The World bank estimates that 40% of Africa's private wealth is held offshore.".
The author leaves no room for any false optimism. I salute every aid agency and every politician willing to even try to improve the dire situation. But if they read this book they will be wondering where to begin.

In the late 19th century, in the space of fifty years or so, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium carved up Africa among themselves in an orgy of violence and greed. Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness (1902) was one of the first to narrate the devastating legacy of European exploitation and colonialism. More recent studies have included Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, and Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible, both treatments of the Congo published in 1998. With nearly a dozen important books about Africa to his credit, Martin Meredith's massive tome begins where Thomas Pakenham left off in his panoramic book, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 (1991).

There are very few bright spots for the 880 million people who live today in Africa's 53 countries. Nelson Mandela showed what sound judgment, integrity and a conciliatory posture can accomplish. Even so, most people in South Africa remain abysmally poor, and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, defended the psychopathic dictator Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and alternately claimed that HIV did not exist or that it was a white conspiracy. Compared to South Africa, most of Africa fares far worse. With only four independent states in Africa in 1945, Meredith documents this continental disaster country by country, beginning with Ghana's independence on March 6, 1957. Conventional wisdom argues that nothing could have been worse than colonial rule. Meredith demonstrates how and why this conventional wisdom is probably false.

After nearly 700 pages of meticulous research (and moving prose), Meredith finishes with a concluding chapter. Despite rhetoric about an African "renaissance," by almost every conceivable index Africa today faces complex problems of epic proportions. Fifty years after independence, its prospects, he believes, "are bleaker than ever before." As for politics and democracy, for example, "when Abdou Diouf of Senegal accepted defeat in an election in March 2000, he was only the fourth African president to do so in four decades." Half of all Africans live on less than US$1 a day. Its world trade has plummeted by half since 1980. It is the only part of the world where school enrollment is falling--40% of all Africans and 50% of African women cannot read. Life expectancy is dropping. AIDS has taken a devastating toll. Worst of all, Africa will never succeed without significant aid from the West, but these countries, having poured $300 billion into Africa with very little to show for it, are more reluctant than ever to invest. Even if the West did help, Meredith believes, "the sum of Africa's misfortunes--its wars, its despotisms, its corruption, its droughts, its everyday violence--presents a crisis of such magnitude that it goes beyond the reach of foreseeable solutions." Ultimately, in his opinion, Africa's own "Big Men" dictators are to blame, for they are the ones who have plundered the continent for personal gain and political power.

I am interested to see what Meredith's study does to conversations about Africa, especially in light of outspoken advocates for vigorous intervention like Bono and Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty, 2005). Further, given the magnitude of Africa's dysfunction, this book renewed my appreciation for all the many NGOs, Christian and otherwise, that have not given up but have served Africa with expertise, passion, and love. Finally, having traveled to Africa five times, I echo Meredith's tribute to "the resilience and humor with which ordinary Africans confront their many adversities."

In its 750 pages, this book thoroughly and meticulously charts the history of Africa since independence. Dealing with every single country, it explores and analyses the reasons for the continent's dismal failure. Although it provides a plethora of facts and figures, the work is an accessible and compelling read as it charts the bitter history of 50 years of independence from its hopeful beginnings to today's poverty and despair. Some passages may however upset the sensitive reader.

Africa has been cursed with corrupt and incompetent leaders who never cared for their people. There have been at least 40 successful and many more unsuccessful coup attempts over the past five decades, whilst the latest fashion is to hold sham elections as happened recently in Zimbabwe. Wherever there are natural resources like oil, the money ends up in the pockets of small ruling cliques while most ordinary people live in misery.

The rest of Africa has followed Ghana's example. The first African state to gain independence in 1957, the country was bankrupt within 8 years. Upon taking power, African leaders appointed their cronies in government instead of properly trained civil servants, of which there weren't many to begin with. These ruling elites indulged in corruption, oppression and bribery from the beginning. Today the whole continent produces less than Mexico.

The rogue's gallery of African despots includes Amin, Bokassa, Mobutu, Nyerere, Banda, Mugabe, Kaunda, Kenyatta, Mengistu, Nasser, Nguema and Nkrumah. The extent of the corruption has given rise to the term Kleptocracy. Meredith also looks at other reasons for the failure of Africa, for example rapid population increases and trade protectionism in the West.

The pattern set by Ghana is still repeating, leading to coups d'etat, oppression, misery, murder, refugees and the collapse of civil society. In the 1990s there was the tragedy of Rwanda and most recently, the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Throwing money at the problem has never resolved anything but may instead have made things worse. Africa has had the equivalent of six Marshall Plans but most of the money ends up in overseas bank accounts. The author points out the relentless tide of graft that characterizes government and business in Africa.

Meredith also looks at the exceptions, like Botswana, South Africa and Senegal. These countries are multiparty democracies with well-run economies. They represent some hope that Africa might one day become a decent place to live. The book includes maps, black & white photographs, explanatory notes and bibliographic references. Well-researched and well-written, it will remain the standard work on the modern history of Africa for a long time to come.

I realize that all the previous reviewers are from other parts of the world and I am from the part of the world so peculiarly described by Mr. Meredith --- and maybe I know better, and maybe I am biased. But I think Mr. Meredith has decided to do a powerful portrait in black (if I may say so) of the whole of Africa, and given that his book is almost entirely descriptive, the portrait is powerful enough indeed. The review from the gentleman from Bangladesh states the ultimate conclusion that one might have if one ignores the fact that Africa is still pretty much colonized, and that it is not so much that the Whites are gone as that they are hidden (only their helping hand is made visible). In any case, my overall impression is that the book is very informative on many of the crimes and horrors that have plagued Africa since the inception of the colonial era (with a concentration on the post-colonial period) but totally neglects the best programs of social and political emancipation which, by the way, can be symbolized by Mandela and Senghor only from a Western point of view. From an African point of view, Mandela has not had the chance to be a real leader and Senghor was a puppet of French neo-colonialism. The real leaders were people like Modibo Keita, Thomas Sankara, Seyni Kountche, in the Francophone countries that I know best. The author also ignores the economic structure of today's Africa, which is only beginning to shift from the colonial polarization to the emergence of an internal market, not without success in some cases, and tragedies in others. I think if the author had been less the journalist that he is by profession, in order to illuminate his narrative with structural analyses, he would have given a more complete vision of the continent, and one that would have made more sense of its evolution. Furthemore, living in Africa, one does not necessarily have the sense of violent decline that is described here. I am from a country which didn't know a single year of civil war, or ethnic brawl. There have been three coups d'etat, which on the whole I think were beneficial to the country. We now have a democratic system. I don't like our politicians: I don't think they have intelligent designs for the country, and they aren't at all above corruption. We have dire economic problems. But life there is peaceful, a bit drowsy and has its many charms. I should add that I am from the better-off section of society and that might taint my vision. But really, I do not have the impression of living in the hell pit of bloody feuds and utter corruption (I am 35, and have so far never had the occasion to bribe a civil servant in my country, although I know very well that corruption exists) that emerges from this book, and I'd venture to say that many Africans out of the warring areas will think that the book is a bit much. My general experience is that countries differ a lot, despite the kind of uniformity that Mr. Meredith sought to impose on us in this book. I won't be happy in Nigeria for instance. I liked Ghana. I am not desperate. I think we need peace and time, and the kind of help that works on structures (education and health) not on symptoms (corruption and poverty). Mr. Meredith book isn't helpful in that sense, and that's why although I found it informative, I never recommend it.

Had I been asked to review this work midway through, I would have given it at least four stars. However, the second half of the book began to read like a repeat of the first. I guess it is not the author's fault that the history of African development since independence has been the political equivalent of Groundhog Day (the movie).

This book is not a bad beginning for anyone just beginning to study recent African history, especially post colonial sub-Saharan Africa. When you consider that in just under 700 pages, the author covers virtually every country on the continent, you begin to get an idea of just how cursory the analysis is in many instances.

The recipe for this book is as follows: Begin with a region sporting literally thousands of disparate tribes and cultures. Mix in colonial powers who create political subdivisions without any regard for these cultures. Remove the colonial powers and entrust governance to native populations with no education and no experience in self government. Add the emergence of local "strong men" and the inevitable ethnic cleansing, corruption and large scale looting of government assets. Lather, rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. You get the idea.

Almost without exception, despite in many cases the presence of abundant natural resources and even on ocassion (though extremely rarely) honest politicians, each and every independent sub-Saharan African country has regressed since independence, and usually by an extremely wide margin. It is little wonder that most nations have begun to suffer from foreign aid fatigue in the face of failure after failure.

The author of this work is not without his biases. He doesn't pretend neutrality in most instances and for that I was grateful. There is evil in the world and evil is abetted in an effort to display moral relativism. The author also heaps generous scorn on the United Nations and in particular Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary General during much of the period in question.

All in all a very depressing work. I suspect that after finishing the book, you will be glad you are done because the capacity for misery is finite and after about 400 pages, I had reached mine.

Overall, this is a very good history of modern Africa. While a lengthy (800+ pages) book, "The Fate of Africa" has a flowing narrative that makes it quite enjoyable to read. The text is supported by the inclusion of a nice selection of black-and-white photographs, and several maps depicting the various regions of the continent.

It is impossible to come away from the book with any attitude, other than one that must regard contemporary Africa as a place of unrelenting squalor, violence, and disease. This is not Meredith's bias, but simply a consequence of his objective reportage of events as they have unfolded since the early 50's. There is no way to gloss over a numbing and depressing litany of despots, massacres, epidemics, and atrocities. There are many villains, few heroes, and a vast and disturbingly faceless array of victims, in the pages of recent African history.

Meredith tries to portray the end of apartheidt in South Africa as a rare but triumphal achievement of the African spirit amidst all the unrelenting horror. But anyone with even a passing awareness of conditions in South Africa today - massive crime; covertly organized campaigns of violence that are leading to the emigration of many whites; the uncontrolled influx of immigrants from poorer regions of the continent straining existing social and economic resources; and the crippling of a large segment of the black population from AIDS - will recognize that the downfall of Afrikaner rule is cruelly unlikely to lead the country into a new era of stability or prosperity.

To his credit Meredith does not close the book with an extended recitation of "how can we save Africa ?". Colossal sums of money have been spent to "save" Africa with little to show for it save the enrichment of a tiny coterie of dictators. The intervention of Western powersis rarely done with the most noble of intentions. There is no clearer example of this than the eye-opening disclosure of the machinations of the French government in Rwanda in the mid-1990s, actions which, as Meredith relates, exacerbated the dutiful slaughter of the Tutsi at the hands of their erstwhile Hutu neighbors.

The task of converting their continent from a place of ceaseless misery and suffering, to one with a promise of a better existence for its millions, lies- for better or worse- with the Africans themselves. It will be interesting to see what happens in Africa in the next decade; I am sure Meredith will be the writer best-qualified to tell us the story as it unfolds.

This is a new book just released by the author Martin Meredith. He was an African based reporter for 15 years and more recently an Oxford fellow. He is the author of many pieces including about a half dozen books on Africa. Some examples are the following: Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe, Elephant Destiny: Biography of an Endangered Species in Africa, Nelson Mandela: A Biography. There are probably few people anywhere in the world today that are more qualified to write this present book than is Meredith. In my humble opinion, the book is essential nonfiction reading for anyone interested in current events and world history. Africa is a continent with 800 million people, and by any reasonable measure probably they are in the most dire straights of all the earth's peoples.

The author has written the present book that covers the last fifty years in detail, but really it covers most coutries farther back with many references going back to the mid 19th century and earlier. This is a comprehensive 700 page book in medium to small font and I think it takes a few weeks to read and absorb all the details. He has a very brief introduction with historical maps of Africa and it is followed up with about ten pages of notes and comments at the back of the book, plus a number of references for further reading. I have just begun to read the book, but I have skimmed most of the book briefly to get an overall grasp of the writings. He goes through essentially every country in Africa from the north to the south tip, east to west, country by country, decade by decade describing colonial intrusions, resource and country trading by the big colonial powers, revolution, dictatorships, wars, military actions, famines, economic disasters, racism, and on and on.

He has 35 chapters divided into four broad catagories: colonialism and revolution, consolidation and revolution, developments and failures, and then the modern era. Those four section titles are my inventions, not his, to simplify the book and the 35 chapters. The divisions in the book are a bit more complicated with many subjects overlapping time periods and countries, and I am simplifying here.

The chapters tend to run in parallel, rather than simple chronological order. He starts out with Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972)the preseident of Ghana elected in 1957 with the new independence. It was British West Africa, a colony part of the "Gold Coast". He then goes on to Egypt and King Farouk (1920-1965) who was thrown out in a 1952 military coup led by Nasser. By the way, the coup took place while Farouk was at the gambling tables, living the carefree high life, and he dismissed the idea of the coup when his entertainment was briefly interrupted by a telephone call from his foreign minister who reported the coup. He goes on to cover Algeria and France's abandonment of the colony to the independence movement, and he covers the flight of the non Muslims back to France. He goes through most of the countries discussing the politics, the leaders, the history, the corruption, and where we are today.

If you can digest the boook, you will in effect know the modern history of Africa in detail, and you will be able to understand the myriad of map changes, tribal rivalries, etc. He has three sets of black and white pictures that show the flight from Rwanda, the corruption of Zimbabwe, and they reference the leaders of the Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, etc. We see pictures of many famous leaders from South Africa to Gadaffi, some shaking hands with Bush or dancing with Queen Elizabeth. We learn what colonial power dominated what region, when there was an overthrow of the colonials, who took charge, how the government evolved, and who were the people that have run and now run each country.

Truly an impressive book.

Clearly 5 stars.

The father of Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin, once observed: "The falsehood that exalts we cherish more than meaner truths a thousand strong." So, when a Western poll recently identified Nigerians as the happiest people in the world, amidst their squalor, corruption and confusion, the ghost of Pushkin was resurrected. This book does not paint a flattering picture of Africa; in fact, the news is downright bereft of cheer.

Country by country, Meredith's tour de force is, at once, a panoramic survey of all 53 African countries as well as a statistical compendium of each since Ghana was granted independence by Britain in 1957. Except for South Africa, Botswana and Senegal, Meredith retraces the recent 50-year history of each country in a way that plots its course through ethnic violence and infernal pillage by respective Big Men to present-day failure.

Born and raised in Nigeria, I submit that, in meeting all that its title portends, this 752-page book is unequaled in scope, substance and authenticity and should remain so for a long time to come. By omission or commission, Africans may have been set up to fail by their colonial masters, for instance, the sandwich arrangement of British-ruled countries, Nigeria and Ghana, which are each surrounded on all sides by different Francophone countries and the vertical yoking together of heterogeneous ethnic groups that are horizontally homogeneous across countries, have been troublesome. Meredith's magisterial work should persuade Africans to abandon further tendencies to blame former colonial masters and assume full responsibility for the current state of disintegration in which their continent is mired.

[...]One wonders why an African has not published a book that credibly sets the record straight; one asks where else a vulture would stand by waiting for an abandoned, emaciated child to expire so that it can feast on it? Continued denial can only exacerbate the problems of Africa. For other views, visit [...].

Africa, a continent which produces less than the country of Mexico, is not to be pitied; a continent with only 10% of the world's population but which accounts for 70% of AIDS victims is to be rehabilitated; a continent that inherits one despot after another to rule its countries can only retrogress, even with the best-intentioned foreign aid packages.

The wishes and dreams of eternal optimists such as the polymath, Columbia University professor, Jeffrey Sachs, (The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, Penguin, New York, 2005), are no match for named, predatory African leaders who steal, mismanage or waste foreign aid. Until the well-meaning, disenfranchised, cadre of African professionals, who are economic refugees, living in Western countries, return to rescue, if not recover, their continent, Africa will not return from the depths of despair to the heights of hope.

Meredith's book is insistent in its message and should be read by everyone interested in the economic and political self-reliance of Africa.

I read through this book in about three days. After about two thirds of the way through, the endless cycle of killing and thievery tends to get a bit numbing. Nevertheless an excellent post-colonial survey of African history. I was lucky to find such an unbiased and informative book. Unfortunately, I am left with a couple of questions that Meredith doesn't ask: wasn't much of Africa better off under colonialism, especially under the sort of colonialism practiced in the post war years? Isn't one reason why South Africa didn't go the way of just about every other African country that the whites held on to power until the waning of Socialist Pan-Africanism?

The Fate of Africa is bleak. For every glow of a candle such as Nelson Mandela, there are hundreds of dark corners. African governments are, almost without exception corrupt, filled with politicians out mainly to protect their own position and to line their own pockets for the time when they may have to leave the country. Foreign aid supports most of the governments, and it appears that most of the money is totally wasted. Popular fund raising activities such as the musical efforts Live Aid, are but a drop in the ocean of dispair.

This book basically covers the history of Africa since the end of the days of colonial empire. It has not been a pretty picture. Wars, despotic leaders, tribal genocides have all been a legacy of European departure.

Some critics of the book question the overall pessimism of Mr. Meredith. I think he is too optimistic. For instance he speaks highly of the government in South Africa. And in many ways he is right. The willingness of the whites to turn over power to the black ANC was remarkable. Perhaps even more so was the willingness of Nelson Mandela to voluntarily leave office. But now Mbeki is in office, he who says that it isn't clear that the HIV causes AIDS, he who praises Mugabe, will he leave office willingly? Will he yield to the more strident anti-whites to begin land forclosures, a la Mugabe. You can't borrow money to buy a farm now because the banks are afraid of confiscation.

Then there is AIDS. With 10% of the world's population, Africa has 70% of the known AIDS cases. In 2010 the average life expectancy in Botswanna (one of the mroe civilized countries) is expected to be 27 years. And this pandemic is still in its infancy.

Africa is not a pretty scene. The happy carefree life of the native in the old movie The Gods Must Be Crazy is gone, if it ever existed, just like the actor who recently died of multiple drug resistant TB.

A sad book. Unfortunately all too true.