Customer Reviews

North of South: An African Journey

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Naipaul's trip to Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia in the late 1970's is recounted with a novelist's eye for amusing detail and a serious journalist's ability to discuss government policies and their social ramifications. It is rather difficult to find a book on Africa that is so informative, yet has no axe to grind. (Actually, the treatment of ethnic Indians in Africa is a small hatchet that Mr. Naipaul grinds occasionally.) It is a great book for those of us who like to know more about the world beyond the media glamor spots, without being told what to think about it.

I'm trying very hard to figure out how I can review this book without coming across as an ignorant, bubble-headed liberal or a rabid racist. Hmmm... I don't think it's going to happen. North of South, by the late Shiva Naipaul, is essentially a travelogue of a trip to parts of Africa in the 1970's, specifically Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. Welded to the descriptions of people and scenery are sharp observations on class, racism, government and colonialism. Naipaul's eye misses nothing during his travel, and his anecdotes are both humorous and sad. It was interesting to see that this guy is the brother of V.S. Naipaul, who recently won a Nobel Prize for Literature. Anyway, this book is not going to be found on the syllabus of any black studies classes anytime soon.

North of South reveals Africa in all of its glory: degenerate, corrupt and lazy. What really stands out is how Africans have taken Western ideas and applied them to their own situations, often with laughable results. Take the case of Tanzanian Socialism. Naipaul can barely contain a chuckle at the absurdity of this situation. Almost everyone he meets praises the administration, but almost no one has any true sense of what it's all about (to be fair, the same could be said for most nations). The corruption is truly astonishing. Bribery abounds everywhere, especially at border crossings, where tourists are routinely harassed and threatened with imprisonment if their papers aren't in order. A story in which Naipaul is conned when he gets a shoeshine is a good example. Not only does the guy ruin his shoes, he tries to overcharge him in the process. Naipaul constantly has to shell out the bucks to get even the most basic services, if he gets them at all. Hotels are run down traps, prostitution is epidemic, and beggars and the unemployed are everywhere. The few situations where something actually works are attributed to the presence of white expatriates, and even here there is the danger that the black government will step in at any minute and expel the whites.

Probably the most bothersome aspect of this book, and one that costs Naipaul a star in my review, is the bias Naipaul shows in regards to the "Asian" population in Africa. The "Asians" are actually of Indian descent, as is Naipaul. Naipaul reveals that Africans are prejudiced against these Indians and he seems to take it personally (what a surprise! Blacks can actually be racists!). Much time is spent on this problem and it opens Naipaul up to charges of retaliatory prejudice. Naipaul is much more effective when he shows how both blacks and whites have their racist attitudes, and how both races have been brought down together through the process of colonialism.

This is an obscure book that probably will never get much attention in the politically correct atmosphere of America. If you want to make a liberal's head explode, buy this book and tuck it into their stocking next Christmas. If you need a break from the multicultural crowd, this is the book for you.

Shiva Naipaul's _North of South: An African Journey_ is the most cynical book I've ever read. It is a travelogue of the author's visit to three postcolonial African countries in the 1970s: Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. Naipaul is a Hindu, born in Trinidad, and he pays attention to the role (and plight) of South Asians (Hindus, Pakistanis, Sikhs, Parsees, etc) in East Africa. He also focuses on the black-white relations in Africa as well. Naipaul gives Africa and everyone involved in its affairs (whites, blacks and Asians) no credit whatsoever. Declining European colonial powers gave their African colonies political independence in the 1960s and a variety of demagogues like and Julius Nyerre in Tanzania who took power spouting third world varieties of socialism and Marxism. Despite claims of social and economic progress, Africa remains as backward as ever. Naipaul freely writes of his disgust with the countries and its deceived leadership from the first page of the book until the last. This book, like another reviewer noted below, certainly is not going to make it into a black studies program anytime soon. It is a relief from portraits of Africa that classify it as a tropical paradise, a land of innocents exploited by evil Europeans, or conversely an AIDS infested human disaster. Naipaul's cynicism shows Africa the way it really is-struggling, corrupt, deceived, but at the same time Afroca is chugging along optimistically in some areas, with idealism and occasional realism, and attempting to do as well as it can to develop itself. No dry textbook prose here; the book is short, easy to read, engaging and very well written.

North of South describes Shiva Naipaul's journey through Eastern Africa as it emerged from colonialism several decades ago. Optimism and energy prevailed alongside a blind faith in imported philosophies which pundits failed to translate meaningfully to the impoverished, illiterate masses around them.

Naipaul is a witty, bold writer with a gift for sharp imagery and an uncanny radar for subtle undercurrents in human interaction - the hypocrisy of the black elite, the jittery desperation of the settlers, the paranoid clannishness of the Asians. He also vividly portrays the deepening poverty and decaying infrastructure that underscored the failure of well-intentioned socialism in Tanzania.

While some racists may use it to justify their beliefs, the book is more a compassionate, humorous look at pre-industrial populations trying to forge national identities from scratch.

While today's poor countries may not have to follow the painstaking, centuries-long process that western countries did, this is still a reminder that there is no shortcut to institutional development.

For Africans, this nostalgic book shows how far we have come, but is also a challenge to craft a fresh vision for the long distance still left to travel.

This is a wonderfully written book; Naipaul's proses flows effortlessly across the page, the connexion between thought and word is seemless. The comparatively small body of work Naipaul produced before his tragic early death has been neglected in favour of that of his less talented, but longer lived, brother (a Nobel Prizewinner). However in this one work, Naipaul's prosody surpasses anything produced either by his brother, or by other twentieth century travel writers like Thoreau. That said, some of the other reviews here are ludicrously jaundiced and do a disservice to the book itself. This is no crude work of 'anti-pc' nonsense (an American political term that the archly European Naipaul would have shuddered at). The prose is not illiberal (in the American sense of the term) but rather aristocratic, in the best tradition of Evelyn Waugh (the writer Naipaul most resembles). Like Waugh, Naipaul's caustic observations rip into the heart of human weakness and frailty, exposing the hypocrisy and cant from all sides. The pretensions of ghastly businessmen disgust him as much as the crudity of the black 'socialists'. Those who seek to defend either Marxism or any form of business enterprise system face Naipaul's perfectly expressed derision. I personally found Naipaul's lack of human feeling at the extent of Africa's poverty a little shocking but it is a rapturous pleasure to be so shocked.

~North of South: An African Journey~ is succinct and controversial travelogue by an Indian expatriate to the African continent. The author Naipaul presents a cynical, if not lampoonish travelogue of his odyssey through Africa in the 1970s: in particular, he visits Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. His book reflects upon the socialist ideologies advocated by the various regimes, and how in spite of their lofty ideological ideals, they only partake of corruption and misery. Central Africa is a region synonymous with bloodshed, corruption, plight, and poverty. Naipaul comments frequently about loose morals, laziness, and rank corruption. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Naipaul also illustrates how deeply ambivalent native Africans are to Asian immigrants, mostly from India. The issue of race is quite an odd one. The legacy of colonials left Africans ambivalent against foreigners, but strangely dependent on them. As Naipaul notes the few mildly affluent Africans would rather have their children educated by Westerners than by their own people.

A July 04, 2005 interview with a Kenyan economist in the German newspaper Spiegel offered some hard-hitting truth that the world needs to hear about Africa. Socialism in Africa, reinforced by naive western powers and the United Nations, is at the root of Africa's problems. It held true in the 1970s. And it holds true in the twenty-first century. Intervention inculcates weakness, saps market vitality, and props up despots and dictators. In 2005, the Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati says that foreign aid to Africa does more harm than good, declaring, "For God's sake, please just stop." He elaborated, "Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor." Spiegel then queried, "Do you have an explanation for this paradox?" Shikwati retorted, "Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid." Spiegel then queried, "Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them." Shikwati declared, "But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help... It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help... before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle."

... as in East Africa. The book is Shiva Naipaul's travel narrative, set in the late `70's, when he visited Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia for a couple of months. It was only 15 years or so since these countries gained independence from British rule. Zambia was once known as Northern Rhodesia; Tanzania was created by a mis-matched union, at least in terms of size, if not also culture, between Tanganyika (which had been a German colony until the end of WW I) and Zanzibar (a group of small islands off the coast); and Kenya, well, it had been known as Kenya, when it was a British colony, and underwent no transformation in name, or borders. With the independence of so many African colonies in the late `50's and early `60's, there were high hopes for the future; a better life for Africans once their colonial masters were shaken off. Naipual's account was one of the first that indicated that those hopes might not be warranted.

Shiva Naipaul, who died in 1985, was the younger brother of V.S. Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. They were originally of Indian sub-continent origins, born and raised in Trinidad, in the Caribbean, when it was a British colony, and both went into the literary world of London. There is a considerable school of negative opinion about V.S. Naipaul's role in describing "third world countries"; in essence, that he is entitled to say things, due to his origins, that for "politically correct" reasons cannot be said by white men or women. That opinion has been summarized, on more than one occasion, with a pithy, three-word non-PC formulation, in the possessive: Naipaul is the white man's... Concerning V.S., I share some of those negative opinions; however, even though Shiva possesses a fair degree of V.S.'s sardonic outlook, I've always felt he was much more honest and fairer. Among other matters, his outlook is an "equal opportunity" one; he takes on the whites as well as the blacks that he encounters. In brief, Shiva seems so much more authentic.

In the introduction Shiva Naipaul forthrightly addresses the "PC" concerns: "Especially a book about `Africa'- a subject that, in the ex-imperial West, is labeled `fragile,' `handle with care,' `this side up.'" Naipaul also explains the title early in the book. He is talking to one of the hustlers in Kenya, who describes Nairobi, as the greatest place "North of South," with the South meaning South Africa, specifically "Jo'burg." Naipaul commences his journey in the departure lounge in Brussels, flying Air Zaire, and thus via Zaire, for reasons of finance. In Kenya he visits the coast, Nairobi, and the "white highlands," and describes the interactions of the remaining whites with the blacks, "old-style" and "new". Naipaul quotes from his fellow Caribbean, Franz Fanon. He also has his own summation of blacks who have been completely uprooted from their native heritage, and have not had that heritage replaced with "Something of Value,": "They were made up of a number of separate and warring selves. Hence the wild veering between farce, piety and up-to-date cynicism."

In Tanzania, Naipaul reports: "Over the years, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania has adopted something of the character and style that Nehru affected in the first years of Indian independence, claiming a special place in the moral firmament for himself, his policies and, by extension, his country. He then proceeds to describe a country in which nothing works, including the people; there are shortages of almost all essentials, and Nyerere's policy of "Ujamaa," (familyhood) has a decidedly totalitarian bend. He goes on to Zambia, a "front-line" state in the "war" against what was then Rhodesia, and describes that the economic boycott measures are really non-existent; they are mainly a figment of the imagination of the Left in London.

It is the characterizations of the people that he meets along the way that is the true strength of this book: from the white Austrian who is still trying to run his dilapidated hotel on the Tanzania coast, obsessed with his sea-shell collection; the crazy Dutch woman, with her two young children who wander through the hotel; the black American woman, a true ideologue who walks out of a "dialogue"; the black native hustler in Nairobi with his brief-case; the border officials; and true to his origins, he pays particular attention to the Indian Diaspora which is being uprooted from these countries.

I first read this book not long after it was published, and found the recent re-read most worthwhile. The book has withstood the test of time. I do believe that Shiva is a better writer and observer than his older brother, and if he had not left us in 1985, he may have been awarded the Nobel instead. A solid 5-star read.

I doubt if Mr Naipaul made many friends among black Africans with this book. It's really damning. But true. And tells you more about east africa than any textbook or research paper will. I'm an Asian living in Zimbabwe and whenever my black friends ask me why Asian girls don't go out with them I give them my xerox copy of chapter 3.

I read this while living in Nairobi in the 1980's. It was "the book whose name shall not be mentioned" at the school where I was a teacher, for the headmaster described in the book was none other than my employer. He passed away sometime around 1987 but when he was still among us, the book served as the inspiration of many an evening's conversation.

It is an interesting read in part because it was written during the transitional times from colonial east Africa to independence.

If you wonder why Africa always seems to be an international basket case, read this book. Almost everyone Naipaul meets is a fool, incompetant, or corrupt. It may be hard to believe, especially for politically correct types, but the evidence bears him out. Africa has failed to develop in any meaningful way since colonialism. After you read this, you'll understand why.