The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa (Paperback)

~ (Author) "ON A SATURDAY MORNING in June 1992, the Liberian port of Buchanan sweltered in the dense tropical humidity of West Africa's rainy season..." (more)
Key Phrases: white tyranny, personal militia, racial tyranny, South Africa, United States, Cold War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"This is a book about evil." With these words, Berkeley launches into a gripping exploration of some of the worst African atrocities of the past 20 years, which he has covered as a journalist for the Atlantic Monthly and other publications. Focusing on several flash points the genocide in Rwanda, the political violence in Zaire and South Africa's apartheid killings, for instance he avers that the violence that has permeated these societies is born of the same evil that motivated Hitler to kill six million Jews: racially and ethnically based tyranny, which, he says, is the result of Western colonization, not "age-old" hatreds. Berkeley is at his best when he is reporting; he conducted interviews with African leaders, such as Liberia's Charles Taylor, with ordinary people and with high-level American officials involved in formulating African policy, like former Assistant Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker. He is particularly effective at pointing out the links between longstanding Western attitudes and policy and Africa's atrocities ("Tribalism solved the colonial dilemma of how to dominate and exploit vast numbers of indigenous inhabitants with a limited number of colonial agents"), and he shows how maniacal tyrants have exploited ethnic divisions. But the reader is still left wondering how so many people could have taken part in the mass killing of their own countrymen. Though Berkeley writes that "most African tribes live side by side without conflict," the book leaves the opposite impression. (Apr. 1)Forecast: This is one of several books about Africa due out this spring. Perhaps the critical mass will turn the interest of serious readers toward that strife-ridden continent.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Berkeley (writing, Columbia Univ.) has reported on African affairs for more than a decade. This moving, disturbing work focuses on recent examples of tyranny and civil disorder in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, the Sudan, and Rwanda. Berkeley argues that the pain, suffering, and genocide in these nations were not the result of some mysterious primitive African tribal conflict. Rather, they came about because "Big Men," often supported by the United States, exploited ethnic tensions to create chaos from which they would allegedly "rescue" their societies. The only dim hope for these countries lies in "fledgling attempts to build institutions of law and accountability." Berkeley combines his reporting experience with first-rate historical analysis in a beautifully written, powerful examination of contemporary horrors. Recommended for all libraries. A.O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465006426
• ISBN-13: 978-0465006427
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #499,727 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last, a western reporter who doesn't condescend to Africa, July 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Graves Are Not Yet Full Race, Tribe And Power In The Heart Of Africa (Hardcover)

As an african who is tired of reading self-fulfilling in-anities in the western press about how africans are programmed to commit "tribal violence" on each other, this book is a refreshing breath of clean air. It shows how political elites, and their backers use ethnicity as a means for holding on to power. It details how conscience is completely absent in the people who draft the foreign policies to support the dictators of the day, taking former assistant secretary of state Chester Crocker as an example. It also looks at the cynical manipulation of ethnic tensions by erstwhile "leaders" to get power (such as Charles Taylor of Liberia), or to maintain it (Mobutu of Zaire). (Mobutu is given praise by president after president in his 33 years of looting, one calling him "an uncommonly wise leader). The author repeats his observation that most african "tribes" live together in peace, but that conflict is manufactured by the elites. He gives the example of Liberia, where two "tribes" were involved in killing each other, but how just across the border, which is nothing more than a dried out this river bed, the same two tribes live together with no problem. This book is a must read for Africans, africanists, and most of all, western journalists who only superficially write on Africa.

67 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Incomplete Picture of African Conflict, June 19, 2002

By	Cashew Son (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Graves Are Not Yet Full Race, Tribe And Power In The Heart Of Africa (Hardcover)

Although I share Berkeley's concern for the people of Africa, in my opinion he is way to eager to prove an initial thesis - that Africa's basic problem is "outside" influence. Like many young idealists who care passionately about their cause, Berkeley is highly selective about what is included in the book, although he does make an admirable effort to give targets of his criticism an opportunity to state their case (no small concession).

Over one-third of the book - nearly 100 pages - is devoted to Liberia, a tiny country with less than three-tenths of one percent of the continent's population. The reason for this is that it is simply not chic to criticize the West unless you can find some way of demonizing the U.S. in the process. This is hard to do in the case of Africa, since the U.S. was never a colonial power there, but Liberia is a country in which the U.S. has had a special interest over the years, which makes it a juicy target. It doesn't hurt that Liberia's worst problems began just as the Reagan administration was being installed, although connecting the dots becomes a bit of a stretch (Berkeley criticizes the U.S. both for supporting the Doe regime in 1986 and then failing to support the regime three years later).

This touches on the main problem with the book, namely that it is a long litany of skin-deep complaints without any exploration of alternatives. Certainly it is easy to criticize the U.S. for supporting the kleptocratic Zairian dictator Mobutu, but how would the country have been any better without Mobutu? Zaire would most certainly have fallen under Soviet influence (if not outright anarchy) and, as we see in places like Guinea and Ethiopia, this would not have been any better for the people or the economy. Failure to hold the line in the Third World would simply have prolonged the Cold War, and the Marxists were far less supportive of human and political rights than was the West.

Berkeley does not mention any Communist countries or African disputes that fail to fit the model, such as that between the Shona and Matabele. His foray into South Africa is an amazing piece of gerrymandering that manages to portray the ANC as a victim of Inkatha aggression. He accomplishes this by focusing only on the Natal area, an Inkatha stronghold in "Zululand." Tough questions are put to the Inkatha leadership on the violence in their district, yet there is no mention of what was happening in the rest of SA. ANC atrocities, such as the Shell House and St. James's church massacres, are neatly sanitized from Berkeley's version of events. One wonders if he ever heard of the Black Consciousness movement and why it no longer exists in SA.

Perhaps instead of trying to fit Africa into a politically correct cliché, Berkeley would have done better to challenge his own preconceptions and educate the reader in the process. There is no harm in providing the total picture, but a dedication to do otherwise, simply for the purpose of influencing the audience, insults those who feel that they can be trusted with the true details of a complex situation.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars On Familiar Ground, With Telling Details, July 4, 2001

By	Paul Frandano (Reston, Va. USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Graves Are Not Yet Full Race, Tribe And Power In The Heart Of Africa (Hardcover)

Bill Berkeley begins with an interesting idea social scientists have mined deeply: that politics--most frequently of the exploitative tyrannical stripe--and "ethnic competition" provide a far more compelling explanation of ethnic violence than threadbare notions of "primordial conflict"--"that's just the way those people have always been"--which constitute the conventional wisdom underlying most accounts of of ethnic strife in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Berkeley expressly criticizes popular writers like Robert Kaplan for keeping the conventional--and easily controvertible--wisdom in circulation. In doing so, and in writing to correct the record, Berkeley deserves a pat on the back.

After these introductory passages, the book heads for mostly well worked territory in accounts of African ethnic conflicts Berkeley has, at some point, covered as a reporter (for Atlantic Monthly and other publications). He does this through the lens of six "types"--"the rebel," "the collaborator," "the assistant secretary"--each with its own chapter, some of which work better than others (such as the ones on Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African for the entire Reagan Administration and errant practioner of Kissingerian realpolitik, and Gatsho Buthelezi, the Zulu leader who collaborated with South Africa's White Apartheid regime against the Mandela's African National Congress). In other chapters, however, Berkeley is hard-pressed to maintain this focus, especially since he seems determined to cut or stretch his material to give roughly equal attention to each conflict. Still, Berkeley provides reliable, informed overviews, filled out by personal anecdotes, interview material, and occasional gleanings from other scholarly or popular writers.

Some things irritate: I found his use of "tribe" and "tribalism" to be inconsistent, at times diffuse, first criticizing these terms as Western categories imposed on subservient peoples, and later using them conventionally (and, I would add, insensitively), without any suggestion that such usage may be in any way objectionable (at a time when "tribe" has been widely abandoned among Africanists in favor of, say, "people" or "ethnic group"). From time to time the text repeats itself, and Berkeley often returns to home themes artlessly (a problem of structure: if each of your chapters has the same basic point, you'll tend to repeat your punchlines unless you factor them into a common front end or conclusion). And Berkeley is at times too much the "new journalist," gratingly front and center of his own narrative, wearing his progressive credentials and editorial opinions (he's now an editorial writer at the NY Times) on his sleeve, hatband, shoulderbag, and anywhere else he can hang them.

This is nevertheless a book that, apart from its other merits, gets its big concerns right, and for that reason alone I would recommend it as a corrective to a lot of the nonsense on ethnic strife now in circulation.