The Graves Are Not Yet Full Race, Tribe And Power In The Heart Of Africa - Hardcover

Berkeley, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465006418 ISBN 13: 9780465006410

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

Since 1983 journalist Bill Berkeley has traveled through Africa's most troubled lands to seek out the tyrants and military leaders who orchestrate these nations' seemingly intractable wars. Shattering once and for all the myth that ancient tribal hatreds lay at the heart of the continent's troubles, Berkeley instead holds accountable the "Big Men" who came to power during this period, describing the very rational methods behind their apparent madness. Weaving together insightful historical analysis and his own keen observations of ordinary men, women, and children struggling in the midst of terrible violence, Berkeley insists that what the world often sees as uniquely "African" interethnic troubles are in fact rooted in the international politics of colonialism and the Cold War. The Graves Are Not Yet Full provides a convincing explanation for the last half-century's cycle of revolution and genocide in Africa, detailing the stirring history of these nations' quests for peace and independence over the last seventeen years. Berkeley's incisive analysis does much to bring recent African history into sharp focus while at the same time illuminating just what it is that allows societies-wherever they may be-to accept, and sometimes embrace, violence.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Berkeley is a contributing editor on the op-ed page of the New York Times and a Fellow at the World Policy Institute of the New School for Social Research in New York City. He has reported on domestic and foreign affairs for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

"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.

Berkeley, who has reported on Africa for a decade, acknowledges the white attitudes that ethnic strife there results from "some mysterious, exotic savagery." He rebuts that attitude, however, examining individual villains in the horrific ethnic conflicts in Liberia, Congo-Zaire, South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda; and in his reporting on and interviews with the big men behind the conflicts, he provides insight into the struggles' origins and evolution. His subjects include a Liberian rebel who exploits differences in pursuit of power; a black South African who, during apartheid, exploited Zulu nationalism to advance his own and the white regime's interests; and the mayor of a small Rwandan town who blindly obeyed orders to commit and promote genocide. Berkeley looks beyond the image of Africans as an undifferentiated mass of victims to highlight the opportunistic and venal men who make use of combustible environments and the determined individuals struggling to resist them. He also examines the effects of colonialism and American private interests on the exploitation of ethnic tensions in Africa. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465006418
• ISBN 13: 9780465006410
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320