BOOK REVIEWS Large-Scale Colonial-Era Dams in Southern Africa

African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 BOOK REVIEWS Large-Scale Colonial-Era Dams in Southern Africa Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman. 2013. Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965–2007. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Many people today are aware that hydroelectric dams are not innocent, but rather have caused serious social and ecological damage in different parts of the world. Nonetheless, after some 50,000 large dams were built in the name of modernization in the previous century, the dam euphoria continues to haunt the twenty-first century.1 Allen and Barbara Isaacman oppose this trend with a piece of critically engaged research, offering an alternative history p. of the Cahora ”assa Dam on the Zambezi River, Mozambique s most important supposedly) development project. The authors aim to recover the silenced voices of those who had to pay for progress, suffering displacement and massive disturbances in their livelihoods. This piece of engaged scholarship p. is the result of a project initiated fifteen years ago, which encompassed archival research in Mozambique and Portugal and, especially, an impressive feat of oral history. The study rests on over 300 interviews, the bulk of which were conducted by the authors and their research team themselves, while also drawing on other scholars fieldwork. While the dam revolution p. that swept across “frica during the second half of the twentieth century was none too glorious in the first place, the case of Cahora Bassa is particularly extreme, the Introduction explains. Built in the early 1970s during the final years of Portuguese rule and against the backdrop of increasing security problems and economic constraints, the dam became a single-purpose hydroelectric scheme p. . Rather than stimulating economic activity, including within the Zambezi valley, as planners had originally envisaged, the dam s sole function was to generate cheap electricity for colonial Mozambique s neighbor and ally, apartheid South Africa. The project attracted harsh criticism from Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) and other anti-colonial groups. After independence in 1975, however, it was easily, frustratingly easily, accommodated in the postcolonial socialist and later neoliberal agendas. The book s seven chapters are bound together by three central arguments first, that the dam has caused very real ecological, economic, and social trauma for Zambezi valley residents p. second, that violence was a pervasive feature in the project and third, that there are strong links between the colonial past and the postcolonial or neocolonial p. 6) present. While the monograph focuses on the period from the 1960s to 2007, the authors also sketch the long history of planning rhetoric centered on the Zambezi. While similar tropes about the wild, dangerous, and unproductive river have been circulating since around the sixteenth century, local representations were radically different (Chapter 2). Valley residents predominantly depicted the pre-dam Zambezi as a source of life, although many also referred to the river s destructive side and its unpredictable floods. Skilfully interweaving environmental and social history, the authors subsequently describe the riparian communities http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf © University of Florida Board of Trustees, a public corporation of the State of Florida; permission is hereby granted for individuals to download articles for their own personal use. Published by the Center for African Studies, University of Florida. ISSN: 2152-2448 114 | BOOK REVIEWS socio-economic organization, which was finely attuned to the river s ecosystem. The third chapter examines the building of the dam, highlighting the many aspects of coercion and exploitation that it involved. The authors also draw out the strictly hierarchical and racialized labor process, whereby remuneration, work types and general treatment differed immensely depending on the respective employee s skin color. While forced resettlements reflect the dark side of most large-scale dam projects, the displacements for Cahora Bassa were particularly violent (Chapter 4). As part of a larger counterinsurgency strategy, men and women were herded into barbed-wire encampments (aldeamentos), where they came under constant surveillance and suffered from hunger and disease. Moreover, the valley became a site of combat for Frelimo guerillas, colonial forces and later Renamo (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana) fighters trying to destabilize the area after independence. Turning to the larger downriver area, Chapter describes how the Zambezi s radically altered flood regime upset the complex social-ecological organization of riparian communities, disrupting farming and fishing practices and undermining people s food security, health, social institutions, and cultural repertoires. The sixth chapter explains how Cahora ”assa s energy, rather than bringing profits to Mozambicans, has been benefiting South “frica and, in terms of revenue, Portugal. It was only in 2007 that Mozambique was finally able to acquire main ownership of the installation. Despite this recent achievement in terms of resource sovereignty p. , the final chapter does not leave the reader optimistic. As current plans to build a second dam further down the Zambezi at Mphanda Nkuwa demonstrate, there are disillusioning parallels between the colonial and postcolonial governments development calculations, which again seem to come at the expense of the rural poor and the river ecology. The authors achieve thier intention of bringing the perspectives of those who Cahora Bassa marginalized to the fore through rigorous research, careful analysis, and convincing arguments. However, the authors strong commitment to their aim also constitutes the book s main limitation. While readers learn much about the suffering of the affected communities, differentiated along age and gender and carefully contextualized in the people s pre-dam nostalgia, the approach to higher-level stakeholders or intermediaries is rather broad-brush by comparison. Without wanting to suggest any form of whitewashing, I would argue that it is the ambivalent grey areas the space between the modernizing perpetrators and their victims, for instance disagreeing planners, officials not entirely callous about people s concerns, or affected peasants trying to wrest some benefits from the project that help to explain why the idea of development still holds such power. Regardless of this, the book is exceptional in the way in which it brings out local perspectives and overcomes archival silences. Equally praiseworthy is the authors knowledgeable integration of environmental aspects in their analysis. The monograph is bound to become a classic in the literature on dams and large-scale development schemes and deserves a wide readership, including beyond academic circles. Notes: A German version of this review appears in H-Soz-u-Kult (Copyright (c) 2014 by H-Net, Clioonline, geschichte.transnational, and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 115 redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact [email protected] or [email protected]." 1 http://www.internationalrivers.org/problems-with-big-dams. Julia Tischler, Humboldt-University in Berlin, Germany Julia Tischler. 2013. Light and Power for a Multiracial Nation The Kariba Dam Scheme in the Central African Federation. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Houndsmills, Basinstroke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. 336 pp. The dam revolution, which dates back to the completion of the Hoover hydroelectric project in 1939, has generated a voluminous body of literature. Engineers, economists, developmental experts and representatives of the dam s industry hailed these mega-projects. They stressed that dams provided a cheap energy that would simulate industrial development, promote rural electrification, increase irrigated farming and flood control and insure a secure supply of clean water. In the s, geographers and anthropologists concerned about the social costs of dislocation and the troubling environmental effects of recently constructed dams challenged this develop mentalist narrative. Africanists, most notably Elizabeth Colson, questioned the dam building frenzy that was sweeping across Africa.1 Julia Tischler s study, Light and Power for a Multiracial Nation is a significant additional to this scholarly literature. Based on her awardwinning doctoral dissertation she provides a multi-perspective accounts of Kariba's construction and planning process and seeks to explore the links between modernization and late colonial nation building (p. 3). The book is organized chronologically into five chapters. The first documents the planning process surrounding the dam and the shifting, and at times, politically charged negotiations between British officials, settlers interests in Southern Rhodesia, foreign donors and development experts who promoted this high modernist project. Chapter two shifts the angle of vision to explore how the initial concerns about racial partnership gave way to a development project in which the interests of poor Gwembe Tonga peasants were ignored in favor of the need to maximize energy for settler plantations, industry and mining. The Third chapter documents the actual resettlement of 30,000 Gwembe Tonga who were removed from their fertile homeland to harsh backwater regions. Tischler also examine how nationalists and anticolonial forces in England used the force removal of the Gwembe Tonga to attack the white supremacist policies of the settler based Southern Rhodesian government and to promote the cause of the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress. Chapter 4 focuses on the building of the dam. Colonial authorities claimed that the work sites would promote racial harmony and instill a work ethic among Africans by emulating the behavior of their European colleagues. One of the most fascinating dimensions of this racially defined effort to uplift the “fricans was the belief that the relatively large number of brown Italian workers would be the brokers in this civilizing project. The author demonstrates that the colonial discourse bore no relationship to reality in the highly segregated labor process at Kariba. The final chapter African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 116 | BOOK REVIEWS examines the competing and hardening interests of the various protagonists, which helped to undermine the Central African Federation. The great strength of this study is the author s success in writing an entangled history of Kariba, which emphasizes the ways that the ideas, practices, strategies, and understandings of the competing protagonists are constructed as part of a set cross-cultural interactions located within an asymmetrical field of power. Her notion of entangled history, derived from a broad reading of post-colonial and subaltern studies, allows Tischler to moved beyond the familiar binaries of colonized and colonizer, black and white, resistors and collaborators, and colonial and post-colonial. She presents a more nuanced and complicated analysis of the ambiguous, and at times, contradictory, roles which many of the principal protagonists played in the unfolding drama of national building and modernization at both the local, national and global levels. She argues persuasively that by opposing, circumventing or collaborating in the resettlement and rehabilitation program, the Gwembe Tonga re-inscribed themselves into the development endeavor that they had been excluded from (p. 17). In her creative hands we follow the efforts of Chief Habanyama, the first Native Authority to learn about the proposed resettlement scheme, as he tried to meditate between his displaced followers who experienced hardships and misery and the colonial authorities in Northern Rhodesia: Habanyama knew exactly how to stretch but not transgress the hierarchical boundaries (p. 99). In a similar vein Tischler demonstrates how Harry Nkumbula, the leader of the Northern Rhodesian African Nationalist Congress and supported by anti-colonial interests in London, first championed the cause of the Gwembe Tonga. He lost interest in their plight, however, when it became clear that his nationalist agenda was not congruent with that of the Gweba Tonga. Light and Power is an extremely important book, which opens up new areas of scholarly inquiry. The study could have been even richer if Tischler had paid as much attention to the voices and memories of the displaced Gwembe Tonga and the workers who built the dam as to the documentation written primarily by colonial authorities and development experts. While she acknowledges that life histories can contribute to an agency centered account (which is one of her objectives) she uses the oral accounts of workers almost as an afterthought at the end of the chapter on the building of Kariba dam and made no effort to interview displaced peasants. Her justification for not giving more prominence to these accounts is that she is not confident that they represent the true Kariba experiences in a representative way (p. 203). This argument strikes me as flawed in two respects. There is never any authentic voice or voices that can capture the complex lived experiences of workers or displaced peasants. All such accounts are only partial and must be interrogated as such. Moreover Tischler is not reluctant to rely on written accounts, produced primarily by Europeans, with all their race, class, and cultural biases. This reservation not withstanding, Tischler has written a major study of Kariba both as a source of cheap energy for the ill-fated Central African Confederation and as a symbol of the illconceived notion of " racial partnership that underpinned the idea of the Central African Federation. African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 117 Notes 1 Elizabeth Colson. 1971. The Social Consequences of Resettlement: The Impact of the Kariba Resettlement on the Gwemba Tonga. Manchester: Manchester University Press; William Adams. 1992. Wasting the Rain: Rivers, People and Planning in Africa. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman 2013. Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007. 2013. Athens: Ohio University Press; JoAnn McGregor. 2009. Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on A Central African Frontier. Cambridge: James Curry; Thayer Scudder. 2005. The Future of Large Dams: Dealing with Social Environmental, Institutional and Political Costs. London: Earthscan; Dodzi Tsikata. 2006. Living in the Shadows of the Large Dams: Long Term Responses of Downstream ad Lakeside Communities of Ghana’s Volta River Project. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Allen Isaacman, University of Minnesota Additional Reviews Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare, eds. 2013. Democracy and Prebendalism in Nigeria: Critical Interpretations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 300 pp. This book is a critical engagement with the theoretical formulation that Richard Joseph articulated in his seminal 1987 book, Democracy and Prebendal Politics: The Rise and the Fall of Nigeria’s Second Republic. The book creatively re-engages with the central issues Joseph raised on the trajectories of governance, primitive accumulation and under-development in Nigeria. The editors divided the book into three parts: governance and the political economy of prebendalism; prebendalism and identity politics; and reconsiderations. In part one, several scholars on Nigeria examine the historical, sociological, political and economic factors that foster prebendalism in the country. The contributors were able to capture the essence of Joseph s theoretical interpretation of the nature and character of the Nigeria state, which predisposed it to such destructive level of corruption through primitive accumulation of what supposed to be a collective patrimony. The relevance of Joseph s book, which this volume elaborates, is the continuity (or, at the worst degree) of prebendalism in Nigeria. In other words, more than a quarter of a century after the seminal work was published, Nigeria continues to reel under the burden of endemic corruption, with inevitable attendant consequences such as poverty, inequality, non-inclusivity, conflict, and a perpetual threat of disintegration. In their introduction, editors Ebenezer Obadare and Wale Adebanwi underscore the inherent contradictions in Nigeria s version of democracy, which they rightly dubbed as crude democracy where for an illustrative example, the political leadership took a decision on January 1, 2012 to remove the subsidy on fuel, a decision that gravely affected the very livelihood of the majority of the citizens when consultation was still ongoing. The editors clearly identify the central question and the basic assumption of Joseph s work, which was to African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 118 | BOOK REVIEWS understand the nature of the fundamental processes of Nigerian political life, which in turn requires a prior appreciation of the nature, extent and persistence of a certain mode of political behavior and of its social and economic ramifications (p. 5, quoting Joseph 1987, p. 1). They then went further to provide a summary of each contributors and how their views feed into the propensity toward prebendalism in contemporary Nigeria. The general summary that the editors provide to the book constituted one of the major strengths of the volume as it gave any potential reader an insight to what the book contains. The contribution by Leena Hoffmann and Insa Nolte was significant, as they identify the pull and push factors of neopatrimonialism, such as survival and adaptation into the modern state of networks based on reciprocity and mutual organization p. , which dates back to precolonial and colonial periods. Using the South-Western Nigeria as their point of entry, they narrate how influential Yoruba political leaders such as Obafemi Awolowo, Lamidi Adedibu, Olusegun Obsanjo, Gbenga Daniel, and Bola Tinubu creatively played either mainstream or opposition politics within the context of a rich and powerful central government and a politically savvy local populace, who maintain confidence in the local base of neopartrimonialism. In a more sector specific approach, Jane Guyer and LaRay Denzer examine prebendalism and the people through the prism of the vexed issue of the price of petrol. After tracing the history of increases in the price of petrol and the regular discontent that accompanied them, they place the debate around appropriate petroleum pricing within the context of the international pricing system. This is the weakest part of the chapter as local conditions in terms of wages and infrastructure deficits prevent such comparison. Rotimi Suberu s contribution was important as he effectively locates the inscrutable problem of prebendalism within the communal nature of Nigeria s federal system as against liberal individualism on which federalism is anchored in United States of America. Even though there are constitutional means such as the federal character principle of addressing communal contention over resources in Nigeria s federation, Suberu contends that over centralization of power at the center has limited its utility. Remi “iyede employs an institutionalist s perspective to argue that political choices of political actors in post-independence Nigeria and other African countries are products of elite competition and these define and determine their level of political responsibility to the people. Other contributors to this book share similar perspective on the faulty foundation of Nigeria s federalism, unending influence of colonial policies, weak and decadent bureaucracy, sustained culture of entitlement and rent seeking; class interests, media and global consumerism as contributory factors to continuing prebendalism in Nigeria. The epilogue by Richard Joseph on the Logic and Legacy of Prebendalism not only showed the current relevance of prebendalism to the reality of Nigeria s contemporary experiences, but also utilizes similar words such as patrimonialism and predation to explain the phenomenon of using official positions to appropriate state resources for personal ends. Samuel Ojo Oloruntoba, University of South Africa African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 119 Afe Adogame, Ezra Chitando, and Bolaji Bateye, eds. 2013. African Traditions in the Study of Religion, Diaspora and Gendered Societies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 192 pp. For a long time the academy of religious studies has lacked scholarly writings with a multidisciplinary approach about religion in Africa. As prominent scholars have alluded to, religion in Africa permeates all the departments of life so it is not easy or possible to isolate it.1 For this unique nature of African societies, some attempts at studying a phenomenon called religion has been a superficial description of its resemblance and often misleading. African Traditions in the Study of Religion, Diaspora and Gendered Societies is a welcome intervention in a field dominated by misrepresentations, miscategorizations and bias. It assembles a group of African scholars from varied disciplines whose writings connect all the dots that are missing in outsiders perspectives of “frican religion. Writing in honor of the renowned scholar, Jacob Olupona, the thirteen-chapter book is divided into two sections. My initial skepticism of the broadened geographical contexts of the book disappeared a few pages into the first chapter. The blend of vivid descriptions about religious practices of Africans in Africa, Africans in the diaspora, and Caribbeans in the diaspora, leaves no doubt about the peculiar sameness of people from African descent, regardless of their present domiciles. This is rare in some writings that often situate their central arguments in one context and make generalizing assumptions that often tend to be far from the reality. I commend and encourage such collaborative adventures as a new way for Africans to tell our stories in a communal way. I could not agree more with the authors that Eurocentric theories are inadequate in explaining religion in Africa. For instance, Shamala suggests that peace in the Eurocentric sense is the absence of strife but to Africans, it is the ability to live in harmony (p. 17). Similarly, according to Laguda, theories that see modernization and secularization as going hand in hand do not hold true in the African context (p. 261). That is why modernized Ghana describes itself as a secular state yet, state functions begin with religious prayers, and being God fearing is a trump card to winning political power. Moreover, the belief that Indigenous religions have been forced into oblivion by western religions and modernization is, according to Chitando et al., an inaccurate description of a religious syncretic marketplace (p. 4). With a widespread belief that no religion possesses all the answers to the myriad of problems in Africa, individuals shop for, and adopt multi-religious solutions to their spiritual and material problems. Indigenous religion is still very prominent and has been appropriated for use by Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians.2 It is therefore imperative for scholars to formulate Afrocentric theories and not wait for readymade ones from the west. The call by Chitando for life saving research and knowledge on masculinities and HIV in Africa (p. 139) is therefore in the right direction. Scholarship in religious studies in Africa need to move towards multivariate research linking religion with other social problems in a bid to generate workable theories that have relevance for the socio-economic development of the continent. I enjoyed the interesting scholarship on gender in “frican societies and its intertwine with religion. With gender discussions assuming political dimensions, it becomes even more complicated for fair opinion to be assessed on its own merit. I do share the view of Bateye (p. 147) that theories that view women as temptress, destroyers and people who should be subordinated, arrived with colonialism and western religions. For this reason, it becomes African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 120 | BOOK REVIEWS counterproductive to adopt and adapt western feminist theories in Africa. The call by the writers for an increase in the number of women scholars in Africa did not go far enough. In fact we should begin to critique male-centric scholarship of African religion regardless of the gender of the writers. Women are key to religions in Africa, and any research that neglects such vital source of information cannot be credible. While commending the scholars for such a great work, I would advocate for a more inclusive array of writers in subsequent editions and similar ventures that are being nursed. The dominance of Nigerian writers casts a slur on its comprehensive nature and plays into the naive western perception that Africa is one country. I believe widespread solicitation from different parts of Africa would have enriched the book. Relatedly, subsequent editions would benefit from some proofreading to avoid some minor, yet embarrassing typographical and grammatical errors (see pp. 14 ln 30, 55 ln32, and123 ln 18). These issues notwithstanding, African Traditions in the Study of Religion, Diaspora and Gendered Societies is a must read for scholars of African studies, scholars in other fields with Africa as their context as well as for reading pleasure. Its simplified appeal with short articles written in clear and concise language makes it an easy read for any reader. Notes 1 2 Mbiti 1969, p 1. Asamoah-Gyadu 2010 References Asamoah-Gyadu, J. K. 2010. Religious Education and Religious Pluralism in the New Africa. Religious Education 105.3: 238 44. Mbiti, J. S. 1990. African Religions and Philosophy. 2nd edition. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann. Richardson Addai-Mununkum, University of Wisconsin-Madison Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell, and Bongani Xezwi. 2013. Marikana: Voices from South Africa’s Mining Massacre. Athens: Ohio University Press. 165 pp. Written by both academics and political activists, the book captured my interest from the first page. It attempts to understand the massacre at the South African Marikana mine on 16 August 2012, in which the police intervened against three thousand miners on strike, killed thirty-four of them, injured about one hundred, and arrested two hundred and fifty-nine. The book is a narrative through the lens of the workers and creates history from below p. . Contrary to media reports, which depicted the striking miners as unruly and dangerous mob, Alexander claimed that they remained disciplined and peaceful. Marikana is based on qualitative research, with interviews conducted with striking miners, their wives, community leaders and rival African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 121 union leaders in the two months after the intervention, completed by newspaper reports. Displaying original interview transcripts, the book offers more data than many dissertations. It claims that the merciless and bloody massacre […] had been planned in advance p. and was a sober undertaking by powerful agents of the state and capital who consciously organized to kill workers p. . The authors identified the police and the “NC government, the mining company, and the National Union of Mineworkers as the three main culprits responsible for the atrocity p. . “lexander criticized that the deployment of paramilitary units and the use of sharp ammunition were not justified considering that miners did not attack the police and carried only traditional sticks, spears, and machetes. He further speculated that such a mission required authorization from the Police Minister at least. He interpreted workers insurgence as a rank and file rebellion against mine owners and the dominant union, and indicated that the union has lost all credibility in the eyes of the mineworkers. Suspecting labor leaders of corruption, miners had rejected their representation, elected their own strike committees, and demanded higher wage outside the bargaining unit. The descriptions are quite normative, depicting the workers as remarkably brave, mine bosses as cruel, the union s indifference as depressing, and the police brutality as awful. Miners accounts were frequently taken as the truth, rather than constructions of meaning. The goal of the book, to understand what happened in Marikana and why p. , was hardly accomplished, considering that the Commission of Inquiry is still on going. Furthermore, the speculations about the suspected mastermind behind the massacre should not be taken as conclusions based on evidence, especially since interviews were limited to workers and disregard further parties involved. After reading the book, the mystery remains unsolved. I asked myself why during the first six days of the strike, no union branch leader, no company official, and no politician spoke to the striking miners, but only a police negotiator? The authors worst assumptions turned out to be true, with the Commission revealing that the mine s senior management including Deputy President Ramaphosa of the ruling African National Congress party) and the union leadership pressuring the police to understand the strike not as labor dispute, but as criminal act. In fact, after having listened only to the company reports, not even talking to his local branches, the president of the National Union of Mine Workers, Zokwana, had asked the Police Minister for more special forces, believing that, “it was no longer a situation where you needed negotiations. It was a situation where you needed trained personnel to play their role to restore law and order. 1 It was only after continuous meetings with the company security and the police that a general managed to persuade the union President to talk to the workers. The union saw the substance of the strikers demands not as their responsibility. From the onset of the strike, the National Union of Mine Workers had appealed to members to resume work and asked the police to protect them from being assaulted as strikebreakers. The distance of the union from the miners became clearer than ever when a branch secretary distributed knobkerries, sticks, and spears among his stewards, ready to defend their office against an apparent attack by striking miners. After a union representative had even fired shots at these, the branch fled to a safe place in the bush. 2 African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 122 | BOOK REVIEWS The raw data provided by the book makes it not only recommendable for labor scholars and African studies, but also a thrilling read for social movement activists. Marikana leaves room for more inquiries, which should contribute to conceptual debates. Expanding on classic socialist approaches, research on the (failed) production of legitimacy in organizations, the bases for and the rejection of authority, and the formation of criticism seem promising. Notes 1 2 Zokwana, S. at the Commission: 31 January 2013, p. 4442. Setelele, M. at the Commission: 28 January 2013, p. 4105. References The Marikana Commission of Inquiry (Commission). 2013. Transcripts of the Marikana Commission Hearings. http://www.marikanacomm.org.za/transcripts.html. Esther Uzar, University of Basel Johan Brosche and Daniel Rothbart. 2013. Violent Conflict and Peacebuilding: The Continuing Crisis in Darfur. London and New York: Routledge. 175 pp. The Darfur crisis in Sudan has received considerable attention concerning the prospects for peace, conflict, and humanitarian aid. Different articles, reports, and analyses have been published since the crisis. All had different targets. There have been different interventions, but they seem to have had limited success because the crisis continues. Interventions have ranged from international peacekeeping to mediation efforts. Some explain the crisis as a mere climate change-conflict. Others see it as ethnic conflict between Black Africans and Arabs. The reality on the ground is that whatever analysis or angle people use, the crisis continues. And the question we ought to ask is why? Fortunately, Johan Brosche and Daniel Rothbart present a solid analysis of the Darfur crisis. In Violent Conflict and Peacebuilding, the two remind us and argue that the crisis is greatly problematic. Darfur is a continuing crisis, so they say. Brosche and Daniel employed a framework of complementarity in explaining complex conflict dynamics like the Darfur crisis. It is a complex perspective. Four different conflict types identified were exposed. First, they argue that it is long standing disputes between farmers and herders and between different herder communities. The second is political struggles between local elite leaders or resistance and between traditional leaders as well as young leaders in the Darfur region. The third conflict is long standing grievances of marginalized groups at the periphery against the national center of power due to the disparity of power, among other factors. The forth conflict type observed using this complimentarity framework consists of cross-border conflicts. This particularly includes the proxy war waged between Chad and Sudan, and sometimes with South Sudan. The argument of the book is well-presented. It has two parts. Part 1, with seven chapters, details the framework of conflict complimentarity. Chapter 1 uniquely and summarizes the nature, scope, dynamics, and scale of violence in Darfur. The book proceeds with establishing African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 123 the theoretical framework in Chapter 2. The framework provides vital connections with findings from social identity theory. Chapter 3 presents communal conflicts. This entails struggles among so-called identity groups-ethnic, religious, or nationalistic p. . Chapter 4 highlights the local elite conflicts. Among others, it includes power struggles among selected individuals within the group. The center-periphery conflict type is developed well in Chapter 5. Powerful elites at state level control multiple societal sectors at the marginalized periphery groups. The fourth conflict type of cross-border conflict is illustrated by the proxy wars between Sudan and Chad in Chapter 6. The authors points out the cross-border dimension of the conflict. The last chapter finishes Part 1 with an examination of South Sudan, a new nation carved out from Sudan, using this complimentarity conflict perspective. Part 2 consists of three chapters presenting peace building in Darfur. Chapter 8 highlights the strengths and pitfalls of peace building through the international response to the crisis. It focuses on key actors like United States, China, the International Criminal Court, Russia, the African Union (AU), the United Nations, and the European Union. Although the authors did not dwell much on the role of NGOs and civil society role in peace building, their emphasis on the influence of international actors in relation to other actors clearly shows the challenge of confronting the continuing crisis. Chapter 9 highlights the fruits and challenges of major peace initiatives. The authors note some pros and cons effects of these initiatives on the dynamics of the crisis using the complimentarity framework. The last chapter is the conclusion. The authors used a variety of sources. The information gathered is from both primary and secondary sources. Field visits for interviews to Sudan and South Sudan plus wide participation of the authors in conferences on Sudan and Darfur provided insightful information. The book also shows a wide and deep desk review of materials on Darfur such as journals, magazines, newsletters, organizational reports, and analyses by other scholars. These sources coupled withdeep-rooted perspectives from conflict analysis, social identity theory, social psychology, international relations and African studies p. make this book a hot-cake for many potential readers given the ongoing crisis in Darfur. The book is potentially marketable to policy makers in North Africa, East Africa, and the Great Lakes Region, INGOs working in Africa, and researchers and academicians and their students. It is very useful for multilateral institutions and Inter-governmental organizations like the UN and AU, among others. It is also highly useful for those involved with armed and civilian peacekeeping in Africa. The subject areas for this book include but are not limited to: international relations, African studies, international peace studies, diplomacy, conflict resolution, justice and transformation, war studies, and development studies. Hope Tichaenzana Chichaya, Alumni of Catholic University of Eastern Africa African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 124 | BOOK REVIEWS J. J. Carney. 2014. Rwanda Before the Genocide: Catholic Politics and Ethnic Discourse in the Late Colonial Era. New York: Oxford University Press. 343 pp. In the hills of Rwanda, Christianity is known both as a centerpiece of Rwandan culture and as a great divider that led to violence, murder, rape, and ultimately the 1994 Rwanda Tutsi Genocide. Many well-known Rwanda-based authors have written on the connection between the Catholic Church and ethnic hatreds between the Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa. Carney adds to this literature by providing an in-depth historical narrative of the Catholic Church, specifically the White Fathers, during the colonial period from to Rwanda s independence in . This book makes a significant contribution to understanding Rwandan history, Catholic missionary work in Africa, and the formation of ethnic identity during and after colonization. Carney describes Rwandan colonial and post-colonial history in the context of four influential and controversial figures. The first is Leon-Paul Classe, who introduced Christianity to Rwanda and developed the strategic relationship between the White Fathers and the Rwandan monarchy. This close church-state relationship provided the Mwami, the (usually Tutsi) King of Rwanda, with the full support of the Catholic Church. In addition, Classe established the segregation of Tutsi political elites from the poorer Tutsis and from the majority of the Hutu population in church-related institutions such as education. It was under Classe s watch that Rwanda became a Christian Kingdom in “frica. The next and very controversial figure is Andre Perraudin, who led the Catholic Church in Rwanda after the death of Classe. Perraudin is often criticized for the formation of ethnic identities through the publication of Super Omni Caritas, which is recognized as the document that shifted the Church s allegiance away from the Tutsi political order and towards the Hutu peasants; and which reconfigured socioeconomic classes as ethnicities, with Hutus needing to raise themselves above Tutsis. Many scholars and the current Rwanda Patriotic Front-led Rwandan government see this publication and Perraudin s later support of the Hutu power movement as one of the most important factors that ultimately led to the 1994 genocide. Carney disputes this zero-sum belief that Perraudin should be solely held responsible for ethnic violence in Rwanda, by stating that during the early days of Perraudin s tenure as archbishop of Rwanda, he did not in fact concern himself with the growing ethnic question between Tutsis vs. Hutus. While he did go on later to support the pro-Hutu political party, Parmehutu, he did so not because of belief in Hutu power, but because of his fears of opposition parties, specifically the Union National Rwandaise (UNAR), spreading communism in the region. Overall, Carney describes the former controversial religious figure as a complex individual who made serious mistakes while in Rwanda. Aloys Bigirumwami is the next major figure that Carney describes. Compared to Perraudin, Bigirumwami was able to foresee the future ethnic problems that the Church was propagating. Throughout his tenure as a bishop, he tried to push for national unity and dismissed ideas of ethnic power. In Carney s historical analysis, ”igirumwami s warnings are prophetic of the coming genocide, but he is tainted by the fact that when he could have acted politically to stop the spread of ethnic hatred, he instead fell in line with Perraudin s beliefs of the Church s neutrality in political matters. Gregoire Kayibanda is the last major individual African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 125 Carney deals with. Kayibanda is depicted sporadically until he creates the Parmehutu political party and then becomes President of the newly independent Rwanda, at which point he is elevated to a person of major interest in the book. Carney is clever in only mentioning Kayibanda s early rise within the Church in order to prevent his legacy from overshadowing the other historical figures. Carney assigns these four people as the major individuals during Rwanda s colonization and post-independence with great success. Even though each chapter focuses on a specific time period, it is described through the writings, speeches and actions of these very important historical figures. Carney briefly describes Church-related events after the 1973 military coupd état of Juvenal Habyarimana and up until the genocide, but his major focus remains on the period between 1950 and 1962. The author is able through very detailed historical research to depict the lives and choices of the people who shaped ethnicity, Catholic growth and ethnic politics in Rwanda. Most importantly, Carney is able to execute this sizeable task without submitting to the common narratives that are found among Rwandan-based scholars and the current Rwandan government. In effect, he depicts people as individuals who cannot be put into simple categories of good or bad. Even though scholars and students who focus on Rwanda will most likely read this book, it may be interesting for academics who are interested in missionary work in Africa or on how ethnic categories were created and reinforced by colonization and Christianity. Jonathan R. Beloff, School of Oriental and African Studies Karen E. Ferree. 2011. Framing the Race in South Africa: The Political Origins of Racial Census Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 291 pp. Framing the Race in South Africa, The Political Origins of Racial-Census Elections is an easy book to read, and understand, written with moderate language, good prints, and illustrative examples that are clear and relevant to the concepts presented in the book. The author presents a robust tabular data presentation, which was collected largely through survey at relevant sections of the text and well analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Comprehensive footnotes also add to the features of the book with a view to buttressing and expatiating on the claims and position of the author. It is a well-researched, 291-paged book, with nine chapters chronologically and logically presented starting with chapter one as the general introduction. Chapter two focuses on voters voting decisions, which are better determined by party image other than identity considerations, policy preference, or performance evaluation. Chapter three to five present campaign efforts of major political parties ANC, DA, and NNP in South Africa in 1994, 1999, and 2004 that focused on the struggle to retain and change party label/image using persuasion strategy. Chapter six discusses the effort of political parties to alter the candidates characteristics with a view to changing their party label in order to convince the voters of their inclusiveness. Efforts and difficulties in recruiting high quality candidates were addressed in chapter seven. Chapter eight analyses how the ANC uses its negative framing strategy against African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 126 | BOOK REVIEWS its black opposition parties IFP, UDM, and Cope while chapter nine is a comparative analysis of negative framing strategies experiences in South Africa, Israel, and El-Salvador. The book is rich in content and quite insightful. It gives a vivid account and a peep into post-apartheid South African democratic experiments with robust empirical data presentation, largely sourced through survey method and analyzed with recourse to works of different scholars. Experiences of different countries such Sweden, Italy, Japan, Israel, El Salvador, and Mexico were also alluded to. Hence, the book is scholarly and has good theoretical grounding. It is characterized by comprehensive footnotes to elucidate views expressed and has a good reference style. Also, the book presents a lucid and novel account of how race and identity described as red herrings has been used to influence the ruling party s “NC) power dominance since the end of apartheid in South Africa to the disadvantage of its main opposition parties, the NNP and the DP, through its campaign strategy and retention of most black African talents-elite recruitment. Contrary to general belief, among political observers, the author shows that the racial-census election in South Africa is politically engendered rather than socially evolved. It is the intention of the author to show that a coherent and credible opposition is central to the ability of elections to generate accountability. In this connection, Ferree states thus: when oppositions lack credibility voters are stranded on the shores of the dominant party. . . Understanding when and how oppositions win this battle is crucial to our understanding how democracy consolidates, for without a coherent, credible opposition, elections lose their ability to generate accountability. It is to this and I write this book. (pp 29-30). This purpose was achieved by the author, as she was able to convince the readers that coherent and credible opposition is essential for elections to generate accountability thereby consolidating democracy. This was done through extensive and comparative analyses of how ruling parties use negative image campaign strategy to discredit their opponents so as not to provide alternative choice for the voters in spite of the ruling parties poor performances. In South “frica, “NC s monopoly of mass media and “frican talents as well as access to resources was used to discredit its main opponents by painting them as white and linking them to apartheid rule in the mind of the voters instead of being new or rainbow and Africanizing as they claimed. This, she argued, has increased Africans uncertainty about opposition parties (tables 1.1 and 1.2), thereby maintaining parties images/labels that has not enabled the opposition parties to win voters (chapter 3-5). The book has some areas of strength. There is robust data presentation and analysis. It also presents in-depth analyses and historical account of issues/events. However, the author used not too robust and inconclusive data (tables 6.5 and 6.10). Nevertheless, the book is a good piece suitable for whoever wants to understand the dynamics of elections and how democracy works in any political system and especially for its target audience-politicians, scholars, and students. Olugbemiga Samuel Afolabi, Obafemi Awolowo University African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 127 David Francis, ed. 2012. When War Ends: Building Peace in Divided Communities. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company. 217 pp. This multi-authored volume offers the opportunity to comprehend the whole process of reconstructing post-conflict war-torn societies. It is an important volume, which besides capturing problems, challenges, and opportunities associated with the reconstruction process, offers in-depth analyses of the nature, dynamics, and complexity of the process. Contributions in this volume reveal the lack of consensus on the definition of peacebuilding. Some authors show preference for a narrow definition whilst others opt for an all-inclusive, broad conceptualization. However, one characterization that in my view comes close to providing a close description of the process holds that in effect, though peacebuilding has a normative orientation, i.e. reconstructing a secure, peaceful and developed society, it is a largely value-laden project that apportions disproportionate powers to those who prescribe, fund and implement peacebuilding programmes (p.5). The volume adopts the label Liberal Peacebuilding because of the predominant emphasis on neoliberal political and economic principles. The West African country of Sierra Leone that has had a significant share of peacebuilding programmes, is covered in great detail. Some comparative analyses of peacebuilding in Liberia and Sierra Leone also feature in the final chapter. Those keen on grasping both the virtues and vices of liberal peacebuilding project in Africa will find the volume very useful as it offers both accounts, even though on the balance, the critical chapters outnumber those in defense of liberal peacebuilding. Arguably, a robust defense of liberal peacebuilding is provided in chapter 2. The chapter attacks the so-called hyper-critical school of scholars and commentators, branding their claims as exaggerated (p.28). The chapter finds alternative strategies proposed by the critical school, insightful as they are, are not markedly detached from liberal principles but rather espousing variations within liberal peacebuilding. The verdict here is that some criticisms have gone too far and offer no convincing rationale for abandoning liberal peacebuilding. Those adopting a critical position raise doubts on the selective nature of liberal peacebuilding interventions: excessive focus on state reconstruction; scanty attention on the trade-off between peace and justice; and placing too much of a premium on economic growth as the most reliable means that can propel the success of peacebuilding. Others rightly observe that economic aspects of post-conflict reconstruction still have been accorded relatively little attention. Critics also maintain that insulating the local market from the perils of neoliberal policies is necessary because economic inequality is often at the roots of conflicts in countries emerging from violence. Several conclusions can be drawn from the nine-chapter volume. First, an altruistic mission does not drive ongoing liberal peacebuilding around the world. Strategic economic and political interests of the external actors, who are intimately engaged in the whole peacebuilding enterprise, cannot be ruled out of the equation. Second, the major concern remains to be the quality of the peace achieved. Branding Sierra Leone as a successful model while the potential for a relapse into violence exists, and where people's welfare and well-being are marginal concerns, ought to be seriously questioned. Third, evaluation on the continent's experience that African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 128 | BOOK REVIEWS the balance of the results of peacebuilding in Africa, is ambiguous, uncertain and very subjective (p. 87), is spot on. The volume's last chapter provides a conclusive assessment of the discussion stating that in short, similar to Liberia, Sierra Leone's peacebuilding and reconstruction efforts have made the social subservient to the liberal, with major deficiencies in responding to the social problems which contributed to war in the first place (p. 181). With regard to the organization of the contents, one may find the volume repetitive in some chapters especially where authors begin their discussions with historical accounts of the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Historical accounts could have been presented at the beginning of the book instead of being repeated in the last chapter. On the topic of public health and peacebuilding in Sierra Leone (chapter 7), the author cites a local newspaper story in Uganda to illustrate medical malfeasance in developing countries, especially in Africa! Proper citation of a researched and documented report could convey the message better. Moreover, depicting the decision by the Blair administration to deploy six hundred British troops as demonstration of the international community will and capacity to act effectively goes a long way to portray the growing tradition of overemphasizing the impact of external actors' engagement. It, henceforth, comes as no surprise that the real motive of the initial British troops deployment in Freetown to protect British nationals, is taken for granted. Rasul Ahmed Minja, University of Dar es Salaam Carmela Garritano. 2013. African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History. Athens: Ohio University Press. 246 pp. Carmela Garritano's African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History is a captivating, well-researched and written first book arguing that Ghanaians refashioned their moral and national identities while engaging in globalization (1987-2000) through video movie-making. It offers a welcomed conceptual departure from Birgit Meyer's work, which primarily sees Ghanaian video movies through the eyes of pentecostalism modernity. Instead, Garritano argues that Ghanaian video movie production and consumption suggests shifting conceptions of dominant discourses concerning globalization, gender and sexuality, neoliberalism, and consumerism in Ghana (p. 23). Garritano's methodological approach is innovative and multi-faceted. Rather than analyzing and understanding video movies by locating meaning within the movies, Garritano utilizes "contextual criticism" as an approach. Borrowing from Julianne Burton, she examines video movies by understanding the dialectical relationship between the movie, its many contexts, and how the relationship affects the other (p. 8). Furthermore, beyond simply media analysis, Garritano conducted extensive ethnographic research over a ten-year period during numerous visits to Ghana. Each chapter is constructed around an argument building upon a close analysis of two to three Ghanaian video films, and substantiated by ethnographic interviews with the producers and people responsible for the distribution, production and filming of the video movies. The book is divided into five chapters, excluding the introduction and conclusion. Ultimately, each chapter reveals the historical circumstances that shape present- African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 129 day economic, moral, and social anxieties within the spectators' consciousness and how the movies address those. Chapter one, "Mapping the Modern," based on the study of two films: The Boy Kumasenu (1952) and A Debut for Dede (1992), argues against the grain by not seeing the birth of a national Ghanaian cinema as a complete turning away from colonial influence. Instead, Garritano insists that there is continuous "connection and disconnection" between the feature films of the Ghanaian Film Industry Corporation ( Ghanaian film productions) and the Gold Coast Film Unit (British colonial film productions) (p. 26). Chapter two, "Work, Women, and Worldly Wealth," presents the case that video movies attempted to a) normalize the fantasy of middleclass comfort; b) conceive of the female body as a metaphor for "pure consumption;" and c) highlight Ghanaians "ambivalent responses to globalization" and their subsequent shift from being producers to consumers in the global economy (pp. 63, 90). Chapter three, "Professional Movies and Their Global Aspirations," raises two important points. Firstly, the author maintains that video movie directors shifted their movie plots from "poverty and economic decline," which were central to the first wave of video movies (19871992), to their characters' individual choices, unconstrained by fate or wealth. Secondly, she contends that the second wave of video movies (1992-2000) gestured toward global fantasies, transcending previous video movies local horizons (p. 93). In this shift, Garritano asserts that female Ghanaian movie directors inserted themselves into broader, global gender debates through the use of female-centric actresses and scripts. In chapter four, "Tourism and Trafficking," Garritano examines Ghanaians in the diaspora attempts to locate a better life in their new surroundings and their shifting moral and social obligations to their relatives in Ghana. Finally, chapter five, "Transcultural Encounters and Local Imaginaries," argues that there should be a shift from viewing African films as an aligned force against a Western center. Instead, Garritano purposes adopting a view point that accounts for the heterogenous competitions and tensions between multiple national African video movie industries. Thus, the book uniquely analyzes Nollywood, the regional film powerhouse Nigerian-Hollywood as a both a hinderance and help to the Ghanaian video movie industry. Thinkers such as Simon Gikandi, James Ferguson, Jonathan Haynes, Brian Larkin, John McCall, Birgit Meyer, and Terrence Turner inform Garritano's analysis, but they never overwhelm her own voice. One of the most striking feats of African Video Movies and Global Desires is Garritano's ability to seamlessly weave sets of heterogeneous theoretical frameworks from various continents and people into a Ghana-centric, ideological conception of Ghanaian video movies (pp. 34, 59, 77, 125). This book is a forerunner in the excavation and understanding of the Ghanaian video movie industry's emergence out of neoliberal economic policies over the past two decades. It highlights the struggles and tensions between Ghana s dynamic local, national, and regional video movie industries. Garritano brings to light the contemporary paradoxical struggle of Ghanaian video movies attempts to creatively re-frame and confront "the grand narratives of modernity and globalization" while simultaneously often being complicit to such forces (p. 9). I have already highly recommended this book to colleagues, friends, and family members, and I do so again. African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 130 | BOOK REVIEWS Nana Osei-Opare, University of California of Los Angeles Trevor Getz, ed. 2014. African Voices of the Global Past: 1500 to the Present. Boulder: Westview Press. 223 pp. The Atlantic slave trade, the industrial revolution, formal colonialism, World Wars I and II, decolonization, and women s struggle for their rights and opportunities are key themes in world history textbooks today. They mostly tell the narrative of Western Europe and North America and how these events, trends, developments and realities have shaped the world since 1500 and have established an almost unique perspective, which makes these two regions the major agents of change in the period historians term modern history. This, however, is a partial global perspective, which overlooked others not less significant for the telling and writing of a compelling world history. One of these concealed if not untold perspectives is the African. Yet, as this book clearly shows, Africa and Africans were at the core of this global history not as victims, casualties, or scapegoats but as potential and dynamic participants. This book covers the period from the fifteenth century to the late twentieth century chronologically by looking at each of the six world episodes, setting them first in their global context, then looking at the African experience and finally offering the African perspective in the form of primary source material ranging from stories, poems, diaries, speeches to newspaper articles and police reports and written by different Africans including South Africans, Nigerians and others of Afro-Caribbean descent. Individual Africans relate their own stories of how they lived specific experiences, which directly affected their lives, and how they responded to them and in so doing, they unconsciously played a role in significant global events and contributed to their unfolding. The transatlantic slave system was bound to disappear, not because European slave traders decided so, but because resistance to the system by slaves, which took the form of attacks on ships, European forts, the burning of factories, the building of fortresses, and the diversion of rivers among other strategies of resistance, were so costly, that it ultimately led to its demise. This is not to suggest that other Africans did not accommodate or take part in the system. Over the long term and of greater significance, the transatlantic slave system thoroughly impacted central African societies by changing sex ratios, leading to depopulation, creating social hierarchies and political fragmentation, and introducing new forms of domestic enslavement and encouraging materialist values in societies that value people above everything. Similarly, the industrial revolution, which is exclusively associated with Britain, Europe, and the western world in general and which generated the unprecedented wealth of these societies and made them leading economic powers, would not have occurred without the vast amounts of resources carried to Britain from the colonies, in addition to African partnership and African labor. These resources helped to improve the living standards of the British and funded innovation and development in Britain and later in other parts of Europe and the world. The reputed Oxford and Cambridge universities, to cite but one example, were indeed endowed with money deriving from the slave trade. Africans were fully involved in the various global trade networks since the fifteenth century, and this is a component of world history. African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 131 In the same vein, the two world wars were partly about the African colonies. Yet, Africans had no story to tell, perceptions to develop or experiences to live in these world events. World history has so far silenced them. A close look at these global events reveals a radically different narrative. The African continent was an integral component of the global economic and political system in both wars. Both world wars were almost felt everywhere in the continent and had dramatic impact on Africans, who supplied raw materials and soldiers, many of whom lost their lives in two conflicts which were not theirs. In addition, many African regions were theaters of conflict and actually helped determine the final outcome of the war. For those Africans who were not directly involved in the conflicts, the imperial powers made them pay more taxes and restricted their consumption to support the war efforts. Africans contributed in other ways, not less crucial. In Nigeria, the newspaper press, which since the late nineteenth century, was culturally nationalist and which shifted its focus on the ills of foreign domination and the need for self-determination after World War II, sided with colonial Britain in the war, and launched a campaign to encourage Nigerians to join the colonial army not only to fight against Nazi Germany but also to train for the sake of the future development of an independent Nigeria. These are samples of how Africans largely and effectively contributed to key global events and patterns since the fifteenth century and legitimately invite historians to give them and the continent of Africa the floor in their world history writing, that is why this book is a significant addition to this history and is very likely to be a popular textbook and a companion to the existing history. Mohamed Adel Manai, Qatar University Clive Glaser. 2013. The ANC Youth League. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 168 pp. ”lack South “frican youth have shaped their country s history in important ways, from protesting inferior education to resisting apartheid, from nurturing new leaders to developing new ideologies. In this study, historian Clive Glaser reflects on the history of the African National Congress Youth League on the seventieth anniversary of its founding. His book is part of the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series, which has provided brief introductions on mostly South African topics to a broad audience. Glaser is supremely qualified for the task, having written extensively on black politics in South Africa and the role of black youth in particular. Drawing mostly upon secondary sources, Glaser charts the Youth League s evolution, accomplishments, limitations, and historical significance. In so doing, he has produced a concise book that is unusually engaging and well-written. ”ecause of the book s brevity, Glaser moves quickly through time. He traces the origins of the Youth League in the 1940s, showing how young intellectuals became increasingly frustrated by South “frica s rising tide of racist legislation and the “NC s inability to stop it. He explores the “fricanist ideology of “nton Lembede and “.P. Mda and notes how these Youth Leaguers and their colleagues Tambo, Mandela, and Sisulu developed a Programme of “ction calling on the “NC to adopt more militant tactics in the fight against apartheid. With African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 132 | BOOK REVIEWS the Youth League s triumph at the “NC s national conference in , a new era of direct mass action and civil disobedience had begun p. 40). From that moment onward, several Youth Leaguers assumed leadership positions in the ANC as a whole. They put the ANC on a more defiant course, but also began to engage in a broader set of alliances that included communists and activists of other races. Some resisted this trend and held fast to the Youth League s original Africanist ideology, ultimately breaking away from the ANC to form the Pan Africanist Congress. As he tells this story, Glaser interweaves important contextual material on the increasing state repression of the 1950s, culminating in the shootings at Sharpeville in 1960 and the banning of the ANC and PAC. Between 1960 and 1990, the Youth League was effectively defunct, so Glaser shifts his focus to black youth without direct ties to the ANC. He charts the growth of the black consciousness movement and shows how its ideas spread among black high school students, leading to a reemergence of internal black protest from the 1976 Soweto unrest onward. He describes the militant township youths known as comrades, noting both their bravery and their excesses. As he demonstrates how the youth regained the political initiative, Glaser touches upon many new organizations that rose to prominence, including SASM, SASO, COSAS, and SAYCO. “lthough these acronyms might perplex “merican students, Glaser s message is clear that a highly politicized youth subculture had emerged by the 1980s, a subculture that would play a leading role in apartheid s ultimate demise. Once the ANC was unbanned in 1990, it sought to incorporate disparate internal youth organizations into a reconstituted Youth League, which was officially re-launched in 1991. As he describes the turbulent transition period, Glaser discusses the rise of Peter Mokaba, the dominant figure in Youth League politics in the early 1990s. He documents the rift between the older ANC leaders and the Youth League over the abandonment of the armed struggle. He later asserts that Thabo Mbeki triumphed over Cyril Ramaphosa in the contest to succeed Mandela partly because of Youth League lobbying. He also discusses the Youth League s role in deposing Mbeki and supporting Jacob Zuma, showing that it could be an important pressure group in the ANC, just as it had been decades earlier. Finally, Glaser examines the career of Julius Malema, one of South “frica s most visible and controversial politicians. After he became Youth League president in 2008, Malema called for the nationalization of the economy, praised Robert Mugabe s seizure of white-owned land in Zimbabwe, and resurrected the song Shoot the ”oer at political rallies. He also used his political connections to make lucrative business deals. Glaser s disdain for Malema is evident, but he remains judicious in his observations. He predicts that as long as poverty and youth unemployment fester in South Africa, Malema will have a following, even with his recent expulsion from the ANC. Glaser concludes his study by comparing the Youth League of the 1940s with its more modern counterpart. He argues that despite some ideological similarities, a key difference stands out. In his view, the class of was more idealistic, whereas the current generation is primarily driven by personal ambition. In short, self-help has morphed into help yourself (p. . Glaser s study shows that while the impact of the Youth League has ebbed and flowed, African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 133 black South “frican youth have shaped the nation s politics in fundamental ways. Authoritative, streamlined, and highly readable, this book deserves a wide readership. Steven Gish, Auburn University at Montgomery Richard Gray. 2012. Christianity, The Papacy and Mission in Africa (Lamin Sanneh, editor). Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis. 197pp. Richard Gray (d.2005), known for his text titled Black Christians and White Missionaries (Yale University Press , devoted a fair degree of time exploring Christianity s ties with the “frican continent. Whilst Gray demonstrated an interest in the Ethiopian Church s early history, he spent his energies investigating the Roman Catholic Church s RCC , represented by various orders, such as the Jesuits, presence among African communities. Gray was enthusiastically engrossed with the way the Ethiopian Church, and the Kongo Catholics, made constant overtures to cement connections with the papacy and how these unfurled since the fifteenth century; a period during which the RCC was challenged by the influence of the Ottoman Empire that controlled large swaths of the North African geographical spaces that blocked it from maintaining close links with the mentioned African Christian denominations. Even though most of Gray s research outputs appeared in reputable journals between 1967 and 2001 as noted from the list of sources given on pp.177- , Gray s family felt the need to bring these together in an edited publication. The family thus approached Lamin Sanneh, the wellknown African professor of Church History at the Yale Divinity School, to execute this assignment. Sanneh s willingness, with the financial support of the Lundman Family Foundation, to undertake this editorial task was clearly observed in his informative introductory essay titled Foresight in Hindsight pp. 1-26); herein Sanneh contextualized the collection of eleven essays some of by sharing his personal scholarly thoughts about the importance of Gray s intellectual interventions. Sanneh opined that the essays illustrated history is a living experience, not just conformity on official pronouncements p. . Gray s fundamental thesis for having researched RCC s relations with “frica was to debunk the view that the papacy s participation in “frica was initiated by it, or its European missionaries (p. 4), and this was a point that he repeated in each of the first five chapters (pp. 27-115). Speaking about repetitive facts, one wonders why the editor did not employ his editorial skills to weed out some of the superfluous overlaps so that there was a better flow of ideas. Nevertheless, in each of them Gray confirmed that “frica s Christians pro-actively dispatched delegations to Rome since 1402 with the intention of forging ties (pp. 28-29). All of these diplomatic developments were partly spurred on by socio-religious factors and more importantly to counter the spread of Ottoman Empire s authority an authority that ultimately succeeded by 1453 in wresting the heavily fortified city of Constantinople from Byzantine control (p. 29). The edited text revealed that Gray, who was acquainted with the Ethiopian Church s historical developments and familiar with Bengt Sundkler s missionary/scholarly endeavors (Chapter 11 pp. 171-75), was keenly interested in The African Origins of the Missio Antiqu African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 134 | BOOK REVIEWS (Chapter 1 pp. 27-47). Gray observed that the papacy pursued this mission at the behest of “frica s Christians and not vice versa. Though these initiatives eventually resulted in the papacy s formation of its overseas missionary wing baptized as the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide during 1622, it was surprising to learn from Gray that this body did not have Africa in mind when Francesco Ingoli, its first secretary, drafted the guidelines (Chapter 3; see pp.69-71 and p.80). Nonetheless, this essay was complemented by A Kongo Princess, the Kongo Ambassadors and the Papacy (Chapter 2) and Ingoli … and the “tlantic Slave Trade (Chapter 4); whilst the former briefly narrated, among others, the story of a little known Kongolese princess who requested permission from the Lisbon based Mother Maria de San Jose to join the Carmelite order (pp. 51, , the latter focused on, inter alia, Ingoli s critical role in drafting the Propaganda Fide s memorandum as well as one that unhesitantly condemned the ongoing slave trade; a trade that enormously benefitted the Spanish rulers (pp. 71-72). Gray further discussed the unfolding relations between The Papacy and Africa in the Seventeenth Century (Chapter 4) in which he showed to what extent Kongo s King Garcia II strongly identified with the Catholic Church (pp. 82-86), and he elaborated more on related developments when he assessed the Capuchins connections with Soyo s authorities/rulers in Come Vero Prencipe Catolico… (Chapter 5). Turning to the next five chapters, one questions why Chapter 8, The Southern Sudan, that was published previously in the Journal of Contemporary History in 1971, was included since its contents that dealt more specifically with Southern Sudan s socio-political developments did not neatly fit into the volume s overall theme. This was unlike Chapter which uncovered Christian Traces and a Franciscan Mission in the Central Sudan, 1700-1711 and Chapter 7 that explored The Catholic Church and National States in Western Europe during the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, from a Perspective of Africa. At the end of Chapter 7 Gray once again underlined the fact that the increasing influence of the papal Curia was not…a sudden revolutionary change initiated by Pius IX... r ather its roots stretched back…when the papacy.…began to grasp the significance presented by the existence of “frican Christian Kingdoms… (p. 140). And Chapter 7 and not Chapter 8 acted as an appropriate backdrop for Chapters 9, Christianity, Colonialism and Communications in Sub-Saharan Africa, and 10, Popular Theologies in Africa, respectively. In these two essays Gray reflected upon the importance of communication and he reported upon a timely Speaking for Ourselves 1984 document that was issued by South “frica s Institute of Contextual Theology ICT . Even though Gray s article generated lively theological debates when it was first circulated in African Affairs during January 1986, one would like to know why he did not also offer his scholarly insights into the 1985 Kairos Document that was co-drafted by the ICT and others such as the Dominican priest Albert Nolan. In conclusion it may be stated that these, previously published, Gray essays, which were competently introduced by Sanneh, will remain an important contribution to both African historical studies and Christian studies. It may also be added that the collection underlined the Church s position as one of “frica s religious stakeholders. Muhammed Haron, University of Botswana African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 135 Gerald Horne. 2012. Mau Mau in Harlem? The U.S. and the Liberation of Kenya. Reprint Edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 334 pp. In this reprint edition of s Mau Mau in Harlem?, Gerald Horne provided an examination of the relationship between the United States, Kenya, and Great Britain beginning with the early twentieth century. Horne intended to place the bond between Kenya and the United States in the context of the struggle against white supremacy in both nations and in the context of the struggle for national liberation in East “frica p. 3). This is neither a history of US intervention nor Kenyan responses; instead, it is a recounting of the interactions between US and Kenyan leaders, politicians, activists, and common citizens to demonstrate how the fight for African and African American equality became intersected in the 1950s. Relying heavily on the Kenyan National Archives in Nairobi to recount the internal struggles within Kenya, Horne also utilized the National Archives and Records Administration in its College Park, Maryland and Washington, D.C. locations. Through the use of documents from the United Automobile Workers union and media depictions of Kenya, he strengthened his source base by examining its, often sensationalized, image in the United States. This allowed Horne to provide perspectives into how the civil rights movement in the United States sent ripples flowing across the ocean but there were simultaneous currents flowing as well from Kenya p. 15). This two-way current between Kenyan and American, especially African American, communities was the heart of Horne s study. Horne began his work in the early twentieth century when adventurous Americans exchanged a closed Western frontier for a new one in Kenya. The colonial government welcomed these European Americans in order to maintain control over a much larger indigenous population (pp. 26-27). This led to the growth of a quasi-partnership between the US and Britain in order to maintain their respective racial hierarchies (pp. 31, 41). Thus, Kenya became a nexus point and a symbol for the two powers as they attempted to justify their control over the African American and African populations. Horne revealed how the relationship fragmented with the onset of World War II since the war represented a weakening of the grip of the colonial powers and the concomitant ascendancy of the United States p. 70). The use of black soldiers by both powers in the war also weakened white control in both Kenya and the US while simultaneously pushing African and African American agendas together (pp. 67, 77). The onset of the Cold War drastically complicated matters amongst the US, Britain, and Kenya. ”ritain and the United States relationship became further strained as the globe was divided between the influence of the Soviet Union and the US. Horne attributed this breakdown to Washington s not having a colonial state in “frica since it afforded them with ample flexibility that London simply did not possess pp. 81, 74). However, the rise of the Kenyan anti-colonial Mau Mau forces in 1952 sustained the increasingly uneasy alliance between the US and Britain. Due to the culture of the Cold War and the sensationalized image of Mau Mau as a violent African movement, the US perceived Mau Mau and native Kenyans as underneath communist sway (p. 108). Horne credited the influence of Cold War blinders for the failure of the US to recognize the true issues at the heart of the conflict land, white supremacy, colonialism, brutal exploitation p. 111). This led the US to side with the settler class as they violently oppressed the indigenous Kenyans. Yet, along with growing domestic pressure from African African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 136 | BOOK REVIEWS Americans, the Bandung Conference in 1955, and the Suez Crisis in 1956 shifted the Cold War landscape since the former demonstrated the growing political clout of the Third World while the latter firmly established the Cold War as a struggle dominated by the US and the Soviet Union. In Africa, this meant the US began looking for options in Kenya beyond the colonial governments (pp. 140-41, 143-47). In the late s, the Kenyan labor leader Tom Mboya quickly became the United States preferred choice between the violent colonial government and the fear of Mau Mau s supposed Communist ties. Mboya opposed the settler regime and his ethnic identity was Luo, which distanced him from the mainly Kikuyu-led Mau Mau movement. Horne noted how Mboya s appeal crossed ideological lines in the US as he gained the support of the John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon (pp. 165, 172). Mboya was also responsible for spearheading one of most significant attacks on the colonial government: the 1959 airlift of Kenyan and other African students to the United States for an education long denied to them by the settler class. The US took part as a way to sway the young Kenyans away from the perceived danger of Communism (pp. 193-95, 204-05). However, Mboya encountered the criticism often attributed to moderates. He was too liberal to be embraced by the colonial government. On the other hand, he was tainted by his ties to the US due to the practice of Jim Crow and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. This led to many criticisms from his political left by Kenyan leaders such as Oginga Odinga and Jomo Kenyatta (pp. 177-79, 213-15). Those seeking a play-by-play of Mau Mau or Washington s interventions in Kenya should look elsewhere. Instead, Horne sought to write a transnational study and succeeded. He mainly focused on events within Kenya s borders, but was more concerned with demonstrating the two-way current between the US and Kenya. Horne also intended to explain the, to some, puzzling ties between the African American community and East Africa since the rise of Mau Mau and the civil rights movement in the 1950s created a level of unity between the two communities (pp. 237-38). Richard M. Mares, Michigan State University Hamid Irbouh. 2005. Art in the Service of Colonialism: French Art Education in Morocco, 19121956. New York: I.B. Tauris. 280 pp. Recent international scholarship has focused on the role of colonialism in visual culture, as well as women s participation in colonial and postcolonial institutions in “frica and the Middle East. Hamid Irbouh s Art in the Service of Colonialism is a valuable source for readers interested in art education, colonialism, gender, and the social role of arts and crafts. It also challenges traditional scholarship on modern artistic production in North Africa by focusing on the artisanal, rather than fine art, sectors of Morocco. Irbouh argues that French art education in craft industries in the Protectorate of Morocco played a major role in supporting the colonial agenda there. The author pulls from colonial accounts, aesthetic and political theory, administrative correspondence, art journals, and contemporary scholarship to illustrate how French educational reform shifted control from African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 137 Moroccan guilds to French authorities, and, furthermore, formed generations of Moroccan craftsmen and women trained with French techniques. Colonial administrators promoted these craft schools as a way for Moroccans to develop their own economic sector in the medinas (traditionally Muslim quarters of cities) and gain economic independence. As Irbouh demonstrates, however, these schools accentuated unequal education based on French misconceptions of racial and ethnic divisions in Morocco, and produced a subordinate work force for the development of European-occupied villes nouvelles in cities such as Rabat and Fez. Irbouh s analysis is dense with archival research. In dealing with art education reform and the colonial visual culture that resulted, Irbouh uses French and Moroccan textual sources to challenge assumptions about colonialism, women, and agency in Morocco. He demonstrates that Moroccan craftsmen and women either adopted or rejected visual practices developed by the Protectorate. The Moroccan elite, for example, supported the French educational project because it would enlighten the local working class and instill them with modern skills, such as education and physical fitness. Irbouh also responds to scholarly claims that European women played inconsequential or subordinate roles in the colonial project. As demonstrated in Chapter Five, French female educators were key players in managing craft schools and constructing visual culture in the Moroccan feminine milieu. However, in his analyses of men and women s vocational schools, it is unclear what Irbouh means by the feminine milieu, for which there is no masculine counterpart. He illustrates Moroccan craftsmen s resistance to colonial reform, yet fails to demonstrate the same for Moroccan women, making his repeated use of feminine milieu to describe Morccan women s experiences in artisanal sectors somewhat dubious. Nevertheless, Irbouh takes a critical approach to the ethnographic observations of French colonial officials. In Chapter One he describes the strong language of Prosper Ricard s accounts of Moroccan embroidery, which Ricard claimed was subdued by imported Italian textile patterns. It is sometimes difficult to tell whether qualitative observations on Moroccan craft production are those of the author or of the colonial adminstrators, as Irbouh cites similar French texts to demonstrate the harmonious and independent nature of pre-colonial men s guilds. Considering Irbouh s reliance on archival sources, Art in the Service of Colonialism is a historical analysis, rather than an art historical one. The black and white photographs of craft workshops and ironworking diagrams are valuable and intriguing, yet they lack captions and merely support the author s critical approach to French colonial accounts. Irbouh provides brief formal analysis in Chapters Five and Seven, where he discusses the symbolism of Rabat women s carpets and a floral drawing made by a Fez grammar school student. While images and visual analysis are sparse, readers will find Irbouh s nuanced discussion of the tensions between arts and crafts in Moroccan and French discourses particularly enriching. In Chapter One Irbouh describes the organization of pre-colonial men s guilds, where building construction professions derived their high social rank from the wealth amassed through these crafts. The author also highlights the role of drawing and vocational education in late nineteenth century France. These nationalist and industrial developments in the métropole African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 138 | BOOK REVIEWS transmitted to Moroccan craft schools, where drawing became a manual exercise in visual memory and dexterity for students. “lso useful is Irbouh s introductory discussion of contemporary Moroccan scholarship and fine art production, including writings on Farid ”elkahia, an elite Moroccan artist trained in the West. Art in the Service of Colonialism thus raises pertinent questions about gender and artistic appropriation between the realms of arts and crafts in Morocco: what did it mean for male Arab artists at the Casablanca School of Fine Arts to appropriate the arts and techniques of Moroccan ”erber women? “nd how did Moroccan understandings of arts and crafts shift in the 1960s, when artists were forming a national aesthetic for newly independent Morocco? Lara Ayad, Boston University Daniel Mains. 2012. Hope is Cut: Youth, Unemployment, and the Future in Urban Ethiopia. Pennsylvania: Temple University Press. 193 pp. Youth unemployment has become one of the most pressing development issues in contemporary Africa. With the youth being the majority of citizens in Africa, there is a growing concern that if this group of people is not catered for in all aspects of human existence, the stability and subsequent positive continuity of society will be ostracized. It is upon this justification that there is need for scholars to unpack the dynamics surrounding youth unemployment. There is a genuine need to conceptualize the terms youth and unemployment: unearth the causes of unemployment: the coping strategies employed by the youth: as well as understand the stratification dynamics surrounding youth unemployment. It is only when this is done that we can proffer solutions to this arduous problem of youth unemployment. This is exactly what Daniel Mains does in this book in a brilliant manner. The book starts with a radiant introduction that sets the basis for later chapters by giving a luminous conceptualization of the terms youth, hope and unemployment. The definition of youth as not being modeled on age but on relations of reciprocity is of major interest in the introduction. The author, states that an individual stops being a youth when they can be relied upon by their immediate relatives. The author s methodology is very reliable as it resembles a largely phenomenological and ethnography centered approach, as the author spent over eighteen months living and interacting with the youth of Jimma. Of interest however, is the fact that the author decided to specifically focus on youthful men only and not women. Chapter one introduces readers to an intrinsic understanding of the carving of the present outlook of unemployment in urban Jimma. The writer gives a beautiful historical analysis dating back to the 1800s where chief occupations were modeled on trade and religion. With the Ethiopian revolution in 1974, the government became the apex employer, providing employees with prestige and material benefit. Secondary education became a ticket to wealth and prestige as a qualification for government employment. With the inception of the Structural Adjustment Programs the requirement for government employment increased, but government employment still remains the symbol of success for the youth of Jimma. African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 139 Chapter two elaborates a high-quality conceptualization of time, where time is unstructured and is in abundance for the unemployed youth. In essence, unemployment was not simply the absence of work but a problem of time. Unemployed youth killed time by chewing khat and watching movies. These methods of killing time become a beacon of hope. This is a great chapter with various new angles on the concepts of youth, hope and time. In chapter three the author comes up with an amusing theory that contradicts itself immaculately. “t one end, education is a way of attaining progress linear improvement in the lives of the youth). On the other hand however, education has stopped most youth from progressing as they feel they cannot settle for jobs that are not equivalent with the status of their education. They therefore rather choose to remain unemployed but upholding their prestige, which is an important part of relationships. Chapter four examines the social aspects attached to unemployment. The author produces a handsome elaboration that communal values have a bearing on unemployment. Those young men that ignored communal evaluations of status managed to seek employment in the dreaded low status occupations and created their own reality of progress different from that of society. Those who remained wary of societal status evaluations remained largely unemployed. In chapter five, the author challenges the mainstream ideology of material rationalism, by unearthing new status hierarchies existing in urban Ethiopia. The author brings out the notion that material accumulation is used to create new relationships and networks. On the other hand, the unemployed used gifts to strengthen their social relationships with existing peers. To this end, the author argues that the state of relationships must complement the materialistic conceptions of inequality. In chapter six and the conclusion, the author comes up with possible solutions to the problem of unemployment. These solutions include migration (in and out of Ethiopia) to modern spaces developed by the free market, entrepreneurial brilliance and a return to education. An obvious change in culture is required as well to restructure social evaluations of status, which obviously restrict many young men from venturing into different professions. This is a book that students and teachers of Anthropology, Development Studies, African Studies and African Literature should get their hands on. The major pro of this book is the author s ability to re-conceptualize key concepts of youth, progress and unemployment. Ramphal Sillah, Midlands State University Richard C. Marback. 2012. Managing Vulnerability: South Africa’s Struggle for a Democratic Rhetoric. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 138 pp. The book opens up a vista of rethinking vulnerability in the South African social space; it equally calibrates the long struggle for freedom, democracy, and reconciliation, which apartheid South African framed and sustained via its variegated tendency to exclude coloured and black folks to the margins. In this wavelength, Marback, reasons with Nelson Mandela in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, which is appositely parallel to Managing Vulnerability: South Africa’s Struggle for a Democrat Rhetoric. The essence of the book resounds with African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 140 | BOOK REVIEWS transcending the shenanigans, atrophy, and social backwater occasioned and underwritten by the Western attempt to perpetually stifle alternative discourse. It equally dramatizes the attempt to rupture the dynamics of disempowering the marginalized by envisioning democratic culture and rhetorical artifact that is tempered with equality, social justice, and inclusiveness. Marback s clarion call also sheds light on human capacity to pursue means of mitigating material, emotional, psychological, and cultural vulnerability that detonates with democratic rhetoric, freedom and sovereignty (p. 22). The book, therefore, finds timbre in questioning the very logic of vulnerability as well as marginalization of the vulnerable in society the South African social space. To this end, We best respond to the suffering of others by giving expression to vulnerability in our aspirations for common good. Being vulnerable is fundamental to the human condition. We can never eliminate it. We must try to not ignore it in the experiences of others (p.131). This book s eight chapters coalesce to give an imprimatur of critical terms on vulnerability and sovereignty observed by the author. The first chapter, The Promise of Participation, encapsulates the processes of South “frica s democratic transition from apartheid. The second, Rhetoric as Vulnerability, presents the dual move by Salazar that depicts the vulnerability, which animates the pursuit for rhetoric of sovereignty and the vulnerability that takes account of inclusion. Chapter three, titled The Dangerous Rhetoric of Robert Sobukwe, brings to mind the author s view on the Sobukwe clause, which was intended by the parliament to keep Sobukwe, the first president of the Pan African Congress, in jail three years beyond his sentence. Chapter four, well titled On the Fragile Memories of Robben Island, reconstructs the issues surrounding the small house in the Island where Sobukwe was imprisoned. This little house has now become a historic tourist attraction. Chapter five, Nelson Mandela s Compromised Gesture, brings to mind Mandela and other freedom fighters journey to prison and the clenched fist that symbolizes uncompromising monumental commitment to the struggle against apartheid. This experience was paradoxically forgotten until Mandela s release from jail. Chapter six, Desmond Tutu s Even-Handedness, portrays Tutu as the pioneer of the gesture towards conciliation and open-handedness extended to another in the entire democratic processes spanning from 1967 to the 1980s. Chapter seven, Tsotsi, District 9, and the Visualisation of Vulnerable Rhetoric, dramatizes the admission of past injustices meted against the South African people, while equally promoting positive dialogue. The last chapter, The Prospects of Rhetoric as Vulnerability, takes further the inner workings of vulnerability orchestrated via sad experiences by the likes of David and Wilkus van der Merve. No doubt, the book has strengths. Nevertheless, it suffers from sanctimonious preachment, as well as near pseudo vision of democratizing South African society by ignoring the perils and challenges that lie ahead. Although the book challenges our collective conscience to take the path of conciliation, sovereignty, justice and equality, if you like, nonetheless, it is tinkered with an idealized view of change in the way vulnerability and democratic rhetoric is being managed in South Africa. Put simply and tersely, it would be more appropriate for the author to anchor his philosophy of democratic rhetoric in a more pragmatic approach. Emeka Smart Oruh, Brunel University African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 141 Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz. 2013. Kongo Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 228 pp. In a focused study of Central Africa and Cuba, Kongo Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign succinctly and precisely dismantles several old school paradigms of Africa. The most pernicious, of course, was that the continent lacked writing (with the exception of Egypt, which was more often grouped with Mediterranean antiquity . ”y extension, “frica s perceived lack of comparable written documents led scholars, from Hegel to Hugh Trevor Roper, to insist that it was as a place of historical darkness. Many have worked to disprove such fallacies, shifting focus to oral or visual sources as empirical records of the African past, but research into manifold African scripts is more scant. Where it exists, Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz argues in his Introduction, it often reinforces the divide between two- and three-dimensional forms of communication (p. 6). Martinez-Ruiz boldly insists that, in Kongo culture at least, writing the systematic making visible of language is not restricted to the flat arrangement of lines and dots, but extends to expressive gestures and the construction of religious objects, in particular Minkisi figures and their Cuban Palo Monte counterpart, Prendas. The product of not just several years of academic research, but a lifetime of involvement in Afro-Cuban religion, Palo Monte, Kongo Graphic Writing is a rare, ambitious scholarly work. Its chapters expound the spread of Kongo belief systems from Africa across the Atlantic, Kongo cosmology and cosmogony, pictographic and ideographic writing used for religious and other societal purposes, and the physical manifestations of these constructions. Kongo graphic writing, although deployed by experts conversant in its myriad forms, is not rarified communication; it is inextricably bound to daily practices, from the devotional to the memorial to the medicinal. Martinez-Ruiz s thesis relies upon a painstaking tracing of continuities and ruptures between signs and symbols across vast swathes of history and geography. He examines ancient rupestrian markings, mapping their recurrence across a number of sites and recording how they are understood within the context of living, local proverbs and practices. He scours illustrations from seventeenth-century European travel writing, exposing within them documentation of religious practices that have stood the test of time. The methodology is rich and unconventional, mobilizing fieldwork, interviews, and archival research, along unique personal insights from within Palo Monte. The cruciform Almighty Dikenga, the ur-graphic of Kongo cosmology, is the single greatest example of continuity between ancient and contemporary Bakongo culture (p. 68). Further, the appearance of the dikenga as nkuyu or lucero in Cuban Palo Monte evidences the fundamental connective tissue between the Caribbean and Central Africa, and insists upon the resilience of African religious practice despite the horrors of the Middle Passage. Indeed, another paradigm that Martinez-Ruiz s book concretely dismisses is that the latter, although an unquestionably horrendous trauma, equates to a total loss of culture. As he writes, his book desires to demonstrate the fundamental and rich continuity between Africa and the diaspora (p. 11). That he is a student of Robert Farris Thompson, who s Flash of the Spirit (1983) is regularly referenced, should come as no surprise. African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 142 | BOOK REVIEWS Martinez-Ruiz offers not just an academic explication of the history and the mechanics of Afro-“tlantic graphic writing, but a practical sourcebook for future research. The book s chapter arrangement is telling, with approximately half of the pages contained in Chapter 4. Here, Martinez-Ruiz not only discusses in depth the variety of two-dimensional graphic forms that constitute the communication systems of the Kongo (bidimbu and bisinsu) and Palo Monte (firmas), but illustrates his text with extensive tables of signs collected from both historic sites and contemporary informants, typically local priests. Hand drawn by the author, these signs and symbols, presented in table format to allow comparisons of recurrent forms and their varied interpretations, equip the reader with an invaluable Kongo lexicon. The author puts this to work, using it, for example to decode the composite complexity of certain Palo Monte signatures known as firmas. Kongo Graphic Writing defies categorization, for its findings spanning African and AfroCuban history, linguistics, religious studies, archaeology, and art history. While written by an art historian, its Library of Congress catalogue number places it in Language and Literature. This speaks directly to its multi-disciplinary appeal. That the author simultaneously published the book in Spanish further evidences his commitment to pushing the boundaries of the American academy. The opportunities for future research, from African graphic writing beyond the Kongo to linguistic/artistic/cultural connections between the continent and the diaspora are teasingly inferred in the Conclusion. Martinez-Ruiz s final paragraph alludes to no less than eight related lines of inquiry; the generative potential of this text is vast. Kate Cowcher, Stanford University Niq Mhlongo. 2012. Dog Eat Dog: A Novel. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 222pp. Dog Eat Dog is a work of fiction by Niq Mhlongo, a South African writer, and is part of Ohio University s Modern “frican Writing series. ”ecause Dog Eat Dog is part of this series, the intended audience is college students in African Studies or world literature classes. Mhlongo has also written two other novels, After Tears (2010) and Way Back Home (2013). The setting is Johannesburg and Soweto, South Africa. The book mostly takes place in the year 1994. Various flashbacks in the novel describe stories from the protragonist s childhood such as the death of his father, getting beaten in school for being absent, and the police searching his home and taking away his uncle for political reasons. The novel is narrated by Dingamanzi Makhedama Njomane, or Dingz for short. Dingz is an average college student at the University of Witwatersrand. Each chapter discusses some of the stories of his daily life, such as school and partying. Dingz s personal triumphs and struggles are sometimes overshadowed by a larger political backdrop. In 1994, the South African general elections marked the end of the apartheid system. Dingz and his friends were excited to be part of the election and eagerly waited in the queue. A few memorable lines reflect the importance of this election It was a queue of limitless hope. Many of us there thought this election would reshape our lives in the southern part of this unruly Dark Continent …It was the moment most of us had been waiting years to experience, p. . And, There was no one African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 143 at home and I guessed that they were still trying to vote at the nearest polling station. My brother s hi-fi speakers were pumping out some fat kwaito beats outside on the lawn p. . Despite the end of apartheid, Dingz has several encounters with racism such as corrupt police officers, classmates, and the school dean. Dog Eat Dog is an apt title for this book because all of the chapters deal with the struggles of Dingz s life in post-apartheid South Africa. In each chapter the reader senses how the world is very dog eat dog. Early on, we learn Dingz was denied financial aid from the University. He cannot otherwise afford to attend school, so he lies to the registrar at the ”ursar s Office about the severity of his situation. Dingz explains, I was not ashamed that I lied. Living in this South Africa of ours you have to master the art of lying in order to survive p. . With the help of his friends, Dingz manages to stay ahead or at least survive his troubles. Dingz is usually a likeable character who the reader can empathize with, but sometimes Dingz could have easily avoided many of his problems. For example, he could have studied harder for his exams and then he would not have worry about getting an exemption to take the test again later. “ critique about this book stems from the character development and side story of Dingz s love interest Nkanyezi. Part of Dingz s life revolves around picking up girls. ”ased on the rest of the book, it seems unlikely that Dingz s character would enter a serious relationship with one woman. Their relationship moves very quickly. Within days they have already slept together and said I love you. “ll the reader knows about Nkanyezi is her name, major in school, and some details of what she looks like. Nkanyezi is the reason Dingz gets kicked out of his temporary housing arrangement and even contracts an STD from Nkanyezi. Yet, there is no discussion of how she got the STD and what either of these events means for the relationship. Another critique is that the novel contains excessive harsh profanity and explicit sexual content. On the one hand, the dialogue between characters contains so much profanity that it can be off-putting to the reader. On the other hand, some may think Mhlongo s style is witty, gritty, and raucous. Although it could be considered witty, the jarring profanity can also distract from the substantive content of the writing. Overall, the book is easy to read, but by no means a light read. Dog Eat Dog is an entertaining set of stories about the kwaito generation and life in South Africa during the 1994 elections, a transition of government, and the end of apartheid. Rebecca Steiner, University of Florida Sasha Newell. 2012. The Modernity Bluff: Crime, Consumption, and Citizenship in Côte d’Ivoire. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 305 pp. Sasha Newell s The Modernity Bluff starts out by pulling the reader into one of “bidjan s typical outdoor bars where, around tables fully covered with bottles, groups of young men lavishly outspend each other. They flash rolls of money, prominently display their cell phones, and exhibit their prestigious US brand name clothing in the most refined ways. We witness a bluff: many of those indulging in seemingly unlimited consumption that night would struggle to African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 144 | BOOK REVIEWS find enough money to feed themselves the next day p. . What follows is an extraordinary account of how such bluffing makes sense in the Ivoirian context. Newell delineates in its most intricate details how the fakery of being wealthy and the performance of being modern (i.e. Westernized ) are of constitutive importance to such diverse phenomena as street language (chapter 1), the illicit urban economy (chapter 2), masculinity and social cohesion (chapter 3), consumption (chapter 4), migration (chapter 5), and the Ivoirian political crisis (chapter 6). Newell does not discard bluffing as unauthentic. He seeks to analyze the relations between the bluffer and the audience to show how the bluff intertwines the real and the imaginary. Through the copious use of rich ethnographic data, he hopes to demonstrate that appearances of modern success fortify one s social networks and thereby convey real success, and that the quest for appearing modern and successful has replaced the quest for being successful amongst urban youth in Côte d Ivoire. Mind the inverted commas in his conclusion, Newell challenges the normative differentiation between the real and the fake and argues that modernity itself is founded on bluffing in the first place. The modernity bluff therefore is neither fake nor real, but rather the ability to produce the real through manipulation of the imaginary p. . What deserves particular acknowledgement is, maybe unsurprisingly, the form of Newell s argumentation throughout the book. First and foremost, the author develops a captivating proximity to the people, places, and phenomena under study, which he conveys through detailed anecdotes, extensive and intriguing quotations of his friends and acquaintances in Abidjan, pop song lyrics, Ivoirian cartoons, and expressive photographs. Secondly, as much as Newell obviously immersed himself in the milieu he studies, he consistently steps back to situate his ethnographic accounts carefully within their larger context, tracing the history of the phenomena and the etymology of the concepts he studies, critically cross-checking different narratives and addressing their contradictions, and ordering the diversity and ambivalence of his topic through lists, typologies, and comparisons. Third and finally, Newell is a stunningly skillful theorist, opening up new perspectives on the political crisis in Côte d Ivoire, transnationalism, brands and consumption, to name but a few issues at stake. And while his cross-referencing between empirical and theoretical observations and between social theory classics and contemporary Africanist writing can be dazzling at times, it never appears heavy or lofty. Persuasively, The Modernity Bluff thus creates a suspicion against itself: could the reader not be duped by a brilliant bluffeur? The suspicion surfaces in sections where the author seems to play with the bluff s inherent ambivalence as a stylistic device e.g. when we read about the bluffeurs’ true selves on p. inverted commas in original , and concerns more substantially his diverse conceptualizations of modernity that are not accordingly mirrored in his empirical accounts. Generally, Newell interprets Ivoirians ubiquitous reference to a Western locus of power through their ideas about cosmology, consumption, and fakery; modernity is considered a culturally specific construction. While he also emphasizes the ideological, exclusive character of modernity ( the West is modern, the rest is not ), his descriptions of Ivoirian modern youth one-sidedly concentrate on the situational inclusion and creative appropriation of African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 145 modernity, and the ability to make real through appearance, if only temporarily, what was otherwise merely the reverie of desire p. . “nother surprising analytical blank space concerns Newell s fieldwork. Notwithstanding a few methodological remarks and interesting anecdotes, the author never really harnesses the empirical data of his experiences as a white, American researcher (who was, for instance, often perceived as a modern accessory to his Ivoirian friends). In many ways, a more reflexive elaboration on the intercultural aspects of fieldwork could have been helpful to empirically ground Newell s fascinating insights on cultural specificities and cultural hybridization. Finally, the reader is left wanting a conclusion about the epistemological consequences of Newell s findings. In fact, if culture and modernity are based on bluff, what about anthropology? Whatever the answer to this question may be and despite the ambiguity that it might intend to produce, Newell s Modernity Bluff is clearly a magnificently written, and thoroughly researched work. “ccomplishing its ambitious objective to recast anthropological theories of the relationship between mimesis, modernity and postcolonial identity p. , it will undoubtedly continue to spark new debates in anthropological and Africanist circles for quite a while. Joschka Philipps, Centre for African Studies Basel, Switzerland David P. Sandgren. 2012. Mau Mau's Children: The Making of Kenya's Postcolonial Elite. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 185 pp. David P. Sandgren, a professor of African history at Concordia College- Moorhead in Minnesota, taught from 1963 on for four years as a young college graduate at a secondary school in Giakanja, Kenya. In this work he explores significant elements of the daily life of seventy-five of his pupils over a fifty-year span from their childhood in the late s into adulthood in the mid s. The book is the result of interviews with his former scholars and members of their families held in 1995. In seven chapters the life histories of these men, which can be characterized today as Kenya s first postcolonial elite, are told by trying to use as much their own words as possible while adding some crucial information about the general situation they had to face in their country at that time. The result is a refreshing mixture of individual histories and historical facts. But for this reason the reader has to keep in mind that he is not dealing with a historical work about Kenya, but with information from a unique point of view about a limited group of men raised in Central Province near Nyeri belonging without exception to the tribe of the Gikuyu. The first chapter illustrates the difficult situation of the Gikuyu in the colonial society and especially childhood in the time of the Mau Mau rebellion. He enables the reader to see the conflict from the point of view of normal people being confronted with cruelties not only from the government but also from Mau Mau. It becomes clear that they could not see everything in black and white and were either loyalists or rebels but that they simply struggled to survive and to escape the blood thirst of that time. The second chapter explains the great need for education after independence and the difficulties the Giakanja Secondary School and its first students had African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 146 | BOOK REVIEWS to face. The start was especially problematic because Giakanja was one of the first day schools in the country, and most people at that time were convinced that only boarding school education could be successful. The following sections deal with the importance and difficulties of achieving a pass on the Cambridge Exams and of choosing the right path for making a career afterwards. It is summarized that after all the majority of this so-called golden generation irrespective of the results of their exams and whether further education at a university took place entered the wealthy middle-class. Showing generational conflicts and the differences between the traditions and the new lifestyle in a wealthy environment the final two chapters display figuratively the dramatic change of the society in just fifty years. The fact alone that the book is based on interviews and the personal experience of the author makes the work worth reading. Besides Sandgren shows once more his detailed knowledge about the Gikuyu society before and after independence already displayed in his 1989 work, Christianity and the Kikuyu: Religious Divisions and Social Conflict. Furthermore he combines the facts and the individual stories in a brilliant style and achieves a figurative description of the situation, which is unique in the historical literature about Kenya so far. Although an overview was not the aim of the work, some more explanations and a more detailed description of the present-day political and economical situation of the country would have enriched the study. In addition the author could have made even clearer, especially in the last two chapters, that the situation of his former scholars has nothing to do with the reality of the majority of Kenyan people today. They are the wealthy and extraordinarily-educated exception. Particularly the optimistic view that the tensions between the tribes belong to the past and the impression that all Kenyans are on their way to a lifestyle on a Western level being conveyed on the last pages can be questioned. It should have been mentioned at that point that the majority of people all over the country are still living under very poor conditions and that Nairobi is somehow another world in comparison to rural areas. Many young people still have to quit their education before achieving their secondary leaving certificate in order to go work and help their families to survive. Nevertheless the work can be recommended as an extraordinary and vital contribution to the scientific discussion about the history of Kenya and of the Gikuyu. Frederik Sonner, Institute of Philosophy and Leadership in Munich Elizabeth Schmidt. 2013. Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror. New York: Cambridge University Press. 267 pp. The literature on “frica s foreign relations is not only vast and complex, but the field is constantly changing with new perspectives/explanations on the continent s challenges. Elizabeth Schmidt s Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror is another valuable addition to the literature. The book is unique in terms of its intellectual rigor and continental coverage. Unlike the practice where some scholars select few countries in Africa as case studies and generalize their findings for the entire continent with little/no regard for the African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 147 divergent issues (cultural, historical, political, and socio-economic), this book is quite different from the norm. Grounded on a qualitative research method, the book investigates the root causes of “frica s contemporary problems of statehood and governance. “lthough the problems that confront Africa are multifaceted, the dominant explanations tend to over-emphasize the internally-driven factors like dictatorship, corruption, and inactions of political elites at the expense of the externally-driven factors. While the centrality of the internally-driven factors cannot be ignored, the author also reminds readers not to forget the impact of foreign intervention in “frica on the current problems. Schmidt s main argument therefore focuses on the consequences of foreign interventions (political and military) across the continent (p. 1). The book is categorized into phases of decolonization (1956-75), the Cold War (1945-91), state collapse (1991-2001), and the global war on terror (2001-10). Within the context of this categorization, the author sets forth four central assumptions/propositions as guiding tenets for investigation (pp. 1-3). The first assumption underscores the fact that imperialist and Cold War powers hijacked the decolonization process in Africa for their economic and political interests, to the extent that the continent became the battleground for imperialist influences and EastWest ideological proxy wars. Second, the author posits that Africa became strategically less important to Cold War allies after the demise of communism. Third, like the Cold War, the global war on terror increased foreign military presence in Africa with support for authoritarian regimes. Fourth, the author theorizes that foreign intervention tended to increase rather than decrease conflicts on the continent (p. 2). The author examines these assumptions with other topics like radical nationalism, decolonization, and the Cold War. In chapter one, for example, the author constructs a compelling narrative/argument to help readers understand the motives/tactics of these foreign actors (imperial and Cold War) on the continent. While major European countries (Britain, France, Portugal, and Belgium) occupied the top group of imperial powers during the colonial and post-colonial eras, the United States and the former Soviet Union were undoubtedly the Cold War giants on the continent. The roles of China and Cuba as Cold War actors were also addressed (pp. 18-32). With the propositions clearly outlined in chapter one, the author shifted the focus (chapters two to seven) to case study analysis of African countries that were deeply affected by these interventions (pp. 35-189). For instance, the author has systematically discussed interventions by neo-colonial and Cold War actors in Northern Africa (Egypt and Algeria), Central and Southern Africa (Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa) and East Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea). The colonial/post-colonial relations between France and its former colonies were also examined. The case of France and Guinea s independence struggle and the Cold War power politics that occurred in the Congo and Somalia are few examples to highlight. The eighth and last chapter explores the so-called global war on terrorism (pp. 193-222) and the growing military presence of the US in “frica. For Schmidt, terrorism replaced communism as the rallying cry for “merican overseas involvement following the terrorist attack on the US (p. 195). Clearly, the book appears to have accomplished its stated African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 148 | BOOK REVIEWS goals/propositions. Not only is it well researched and logically argued, but the author has demonstrated outstanding knowledge and an in-depth grasp of the continent s history and political complexities. The analyses and the persuasive arguments attest to this claim. One major drawback is the author s inability to examine the current intervention in Africa by China in search for economic resources/political influence. Although the author touches on China as a Cold War actor (pp. 27-29) and again mentions China with other emerging powers in Africa (p.221), the author was unable to discuss adequately China s current/forceful involvement on the continent. I also find the broad categorization of the period of state collapse (1991-2001) somehow problematic, especially from a continental perspective, since this was the same era that many authoritarian regimes in Africa transitioned quite well to democratic/semidemocratic forms of government. Notwithstanding, this book is an excellent resource for the academia, policymakers/researchers and anyone interested in African Affairs. Felix Kumah-Abiwu, Eastern Illinois University Jesse Weaver Shipley. 2013. Living The Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanaian Popular Music. Durham: Duke University Press. 344 pp. The book is an in-depth look at the hiplife scene in Ghana. Jesse Shipley has years of experience researching popular culture in Ghana, and it comes through in this text. He provides a detailed account of the history of hiplife and some of the genre s important figures. Shipley examines hiplife s innovative use of language and speech. “ccording to Shipley, early on hiplife incorporated local cultural values and the use of proverbs. In comparing hiplife to highlife, he says the former has expanded on the use of storytelling, proverbs, and references to traditional life. Shipley s access to and relationship with key hiplife figures resulted in a wealth of information on the popular music scene in Ghana. The strength of Shipley s text is his actorcentered approach, through which the author presents detailed historical accounts of hiplife emergence. He details a post-Rawlings Ghana, the various figures that pioneered hiplife music, and stories of second-generation hiplife artists. Chapter six, one of the strongest, is an important examination of attempts to control female sexuality, and the public shaming of women who misbehave. The chapter builds on existing literature on “frican women s sexualities as places of contestation, and of the public shaming of women as a means of control and discouraging deviation. The chapter focuses on assaults committed against hiplife artist Mzbel and the subsequent onslaught of comments that the artists brought on the attacks due to her provocative performances. Shipley addresses cultural attitudes towards female economic and sexual autonomy and the perceived threats female autonomy poses to public morality and male sexual dominance. The research represents some of the only work on the reinforcement of gendered spaces in urban youth music in Africa. Shipley s research also highlights the ambiguity of the parameters of hiplife. Presenting various perspectives on what hiplife actually is, Shipley includes this discussion briefly towards the end of chapter four. Discussing it earlier could prevent readers from getting the impression that African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 149 hiplife is Ghanaian hip hop. Hiplife is more its own genre. Shipley alludes to this. His analysis of hiplife suggests a genre that stands alone, but that incorporates elements from other genres, namely highlife and hip hop. An aspect of the text that stood out was the placing of hiplife within neoliberal ideals, hip hop culture, and Pan Africanism. While hiplife borrows heavily from hip hop, and may espouse Pan African sentiments, hip hop, as well as Pan Africanism, is extremely critical of neoliberalism. While few hip hop artists call neoliberalism out by name, hip hop often addresses the devastating results of neoliberalism on the urban poor. The contradictions inherent in an embrace of both neoliberalism and hip hop further distinguish hiplife as its own genre. Shipley says hip hop promotes desires for the bodily material markers of capitalist consumption and accumulation, though it does so through Black images of protest and authority p. . This is arguably the case with hip hop s emergence as a pop music phenomenon. Hip hop s core values, however, have remained decidedly anti-neoliberal, and while not socialist, is very critical of capitalism. Finally, it would have been good to see information on other genres of urban youth music in Ghana, namely hip hop and azonto. Given hiplife s ties to hip hop, some mention of the relationship between hip hop and hiplife in Ghana would have been beneficial. Shipley s chapter on M3nsa and his discussion of Blitz the Ambassador were important, as neither is classified as hiplife. Both perform hip hop music (Blitz, almost exclusively) and their inclusion in the text provided an opportunity to explore the relationship between hiplife and hip hop. In addition, the emergence of azonto music in Ghana has further diversified the urban youth music scene in Ghana. As the azonto scene grows, what will be the impact on hiplife? Overall, Shipley s book provides a wealth of information on hiplife s history and some of the key figures that most influence the genre. The incorporation of both local and foreign sounds in the creation popular music genre in Ghana was well reviewed. In addition, the look on the intersections of gender, sexuality and power in hiplife was one of the book s strongest aspects. Msia Kibona Clark, California State University, Los Angeles James Howard Smith and Rosalind I. J. Hackett, eds. 2012. Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa. South Bend, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press. 299 pp. Many interpretations of religion and conflict in Africa are too simplistic. The book under review, therefore, seeks to deviate from those interpretations and provide a more detailed perspective. A collection of essays edited by James Howard Smith and Rosalind I. J. Hackett, the book is touted as an introductory text to key themes with regard to religion and conflict in Africa. Most of the chapters in the volume are historical and ethnographic in method and scale and focus on the everyday activities, processes and structures that engender conflict and peace: liturgical verse, movies and street pamphlets, church services, secret societies, legal debates surrounding domestic arrangements, and so on. In this way, the volume pulls focus away from dramatic and highly mediated violent conflicts by examining the role of religious practices in African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 150 | BOOK REVIEWS the making and unmaking of social orders from the bottom up, in stark contrast to conventional top-down approaches. The first part of three, Historical Sources of Religious Conflict and Peace, examines how aspects of African history have laid the foundation for very divergent models of peace: one stressing reconciliation and cooperation between formerly opposed parties, and another relying on the ongoing perpetuation of conflict and the persistent demonization of others, especially the poor or marginal. In Forgiveness with Consequences Scriptures, Qene, and Traditions of Restorative Justice in Nineteenth-Century Ethiopia, historian Charles Schaefer delineates a tradition of restorative justice in Ethiopia that extends back to the medieval period, elements of which can be found in Ethiopian political thought and practice in the twenty-first century. He also argues that Ethiopian restorative justice has allowed for forgiveness of vanquished parties, but that forgiveness has always come with consequences this conditional clemency has implied that the one seeking forgiveness [was] obligated to show contrition and to be accountable for future actions; in other words, to correct their criminal ways. Schaefer s theme dwells at length on the peaceful potential of religion and religious discourse, and argues that these aspects of religious belief and practice should develop so that religion can contribute effectively to peace building. In contrast, in the chapter entitled Making Peace with the Devil The Political Life of Devil Worship Rumors in Kenya, James Howard Smith focuses on the productive dimensions of the concept of evil, epitomized by the idea of the devil. He argues that specific, culturally nuanced ideas about the devil and devil worshippers have been central to governance in Kenya from the colonial period, and that diverse Kenyan groups have tried to use these concepts to make peace by destroying that which threatens their vision of social order. Thus, Smith s chapter dwells on the unseemly aspects of peace the fact that real-world peace often involves scapegoating and the perpetration of tension. The second part, entitled New Religious Movements, Enduring Social Tensions, comprises three chapters. The first Grace Nyatugah Wamue-Ngare s The Mungiki Movement: A Source of Religio-Political Conflict in Kenya, examines a Gikuyu neo-traditionalist religious and political movement whose members and leadership have struggled to retain their original utopian religious foundations at the same time as the organization has morphed into a powerful shadow state and mafia. Wamue-Ngare eventually emphasizes the religious dimensions of Mungiki in reaction to those who have portrayed the movement as a mafia organization with no redeeming moral virtues. In contrast, Koen Vlassenroot, in his chapter Magic as Identity Maker: Conflict and Militia Formation in Eastern Congo, minimizes the occult dimensions of a similar, equally heterogeneous, youth-based movement in the eastern Congo in an effort to draw out their often unrecognized political and sociological motivations and historical underpinnings. Both Wamue-Ngare and Vlassenroot draw attention to an even more fundamental issue: mainly, that the new religious movements at work in African challenge entrenched Western understandings of religion as belief in a transcendental truth above and beyond political realities. Rather, these religious/political movements are firmly grounded in real-world struggles and transformations and are the principal mechanism through which people try to bend overarching structures to their wills. Isabel Mukonyora confronts this issue directly in her chapter, Religion, Politics, and Gender in Zimbabwe: The Masowe Apostles and African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 151 Chimurega Religion. Mukonyora examines a religious movement that has taken on many social functions including those formerly reserved for states, while in some ways echoing Zimbabwean state ideology about the sacral power stolen lands. Mukonyora s analysis demonstrates a profound ambivalence about tradition among Masowe Apostles: while they incorporate many elements of Shona culture into their rituals,and emphasize the symbolic significance of land, Masowe religious ritual is ultimately aimed at curtailing the power of ancestors, and hence the past, over living populations in the present (and thus shares much in common with other popular religious movements such as Pentecostalism). While the second part emphasized how religion engenders new forms of social and political identification in the wake of state transformation - and in many instances, decline and collapse - the final part, New Religious Public Spheres and the Crisis of Regulation, highlights the conflict between state structures and the new ideologies and institutions associated with neoliberal globalization (international religious nongovernmental organizations, new forms of media, and discourses of human rights, for example). Rosalind Hackett s chapter, Devil ”ustin Satelites How Media Liberalization in “frica Generates Intolerance and Conflict, argues that, contrary to all expectations that a liberalized print and electronic media would engender peaceful, open public discussion and dialogue among religions, the recent proliferation of new media images is in fact replicating, if not intensifying, old, as well as generating new, forms of religious conflict . Azonzeh F.-K. Ukah s Mediating “rmageddon Popular Christian Video Films as a Source of Conflict in Nigeria examines the popular and legal controversy surrounding the release of the Nigerian Pentecostal film Rapture. His theme expands upon the themes that Hackett introduced by examining a single example of antagonistic religious imagery made possible by a newly liberalized media. And, to sum it up, the Ugandan literary scholar “basi Kiyimba s chapter on the fraught history of the Ugandan Domestic Relations ”ill The Domestic Relations ”ill and Inter-Religious Conflict in Uganda: “ Muslim Reading of Personal Law and Religious Pluralism in a Postcolonial Society suggests a more complex relationship between the state and religion in contemporary Africa. This book adds to the growing literature about religion and conflict in Africa; it documents important traditional African responses to conflicts from a religion and conflict studies dimension; and it offers a different conceptualization of religion and conflict. There is a weakness, however. Some of the articles need to be reviewed. Lastly, while Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa can indeed serve as an introduction to key themes revolving around Displacing the State in Africa, it obviously cannot stand on its own as a foundation text in this field. Ibukun Ajayi, University of Ibadan Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani. 2012. Union Education in Nigeria: Labor, Empire, and Decolonization since 1945. New York: Palgrave MacMillian. 176 pp. Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani s most recent book, Union Education in Nigeria: Labor, Empire, and Decolonization since 1945, is an ambitious attempt to contextualize Nigerian labor union African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 152 | BOOK REVIEWS education during British decolonization. Tijani threads multiple theses throughout the work, but his central project is an emphasis on the pre- and post-colonial struggle to shape union education and workers mental development p. . He positions the anti-leftist colonial state at odds with leftist unions and the leftist intelligentsia, arguing that the colonial government established structural opportunities and used proactive mind-bending to exclude the left in the 1950s (p. 46). This in turn assured more conservative government influence over union education curriculums and institutions in post-colonial Nigeria. In Chapter One, Tijani explores labor unions in Africa prior to Nigerian independence in 1960. Central to his analysis is an overview of the six major communist front organizations operating during the period that, to varying degrees, used clandestine means to further their agendas within Africa. He also draws warranted attention to non-communist international groups, such as the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, “merica s “FL-CIO, and ”ritain s TUC that helped train and fund directly as well as indirectly African labor unions and officials in the 1950s. The chapter, which finishes with an introductory summation and thesis overview, is aimed at providing a primer on the continent s orientation of labor unions with passing commentary on Nigerian specifics (p. 1). Chapter Two examines the role of post-World War II Nigerian leftists, who, despite using their influence in forming alliances during the colonial period, were unable to survive the organization and institutionalization of the antilefist state model of unionism and the Nigerianization process. Tijani paints a broad picture, from a sweeping description of Nigerian labor union history in the twentieth century, to the influence of the Cold War on local labor groups. Unfortunately, this wide stance leaves the chapter feeling wispy and unsubstantial as Tijani attempts to cover so much background and context that he gives too little attention to his greater argument and purpose. Proceeding to Chapter Three, Tijani alters course, reconsidering European colonialism and adaptations in colonial policy in West Africa in contrast and complementary to conventional narratives. Tijani s major observation is that literature has given too little attention to why and how colonial powers began to initiate politics and methods aimed at persuading conservative African nationalists to become involved in a peaceful devolution of power in the colonies p. . The most promising, though short, tenet of the monograph comes in Chapter Four. Tijani asserts that ”ritain s use of formal and informal labor education programs during the colonial period was a concerted effort to reduce the threat of communism among the sector of society most vulnerable to leftist ideology the labor union p. . Despite this strong start, Tijani prematurely shifts focus, leaving the threads of his argument dangling behind him. Chapters five and eight provide respective overviews of labor union education in Nigeria preand post. Prior to independence, Tijani focuses on the Crown s use of education to confront the communist threat and create an enduring environment of anti-leftist unionism (pp. 53, 71). Tijani also elaborates on his definition of labor union education, which though varied in method, is defined as an attempt by all stakeholders…to ensure workers success through access to information and skill acquisition p. . Post independence, Tijani shows the association between union education programs and postcolonial nation building, including international dynamics and the national institute of labor education. Meanwhile, Chapters six African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 153 and seven focus on specific individuals and strikes: namely, Marxist publisher and activist Samuel Ikoku, and the Nigerian Seaman s Union which instigated the last strike prior to independence. Unfortunately, the caveats for Tijani s work require serious discussion. To begin, editing is problematic. The book is more than simply repetitious. Entire sentences, and on occasion, entire paragraphs are repeated verbatim (sometimes within a matter of pages) (pp. 16, 20). Larger detractions also weaken Tijani s argument, including unsupported assertions, and a loose structure that leaves the argument out-of-focus and ill proven. Key terms also go undefined. Most troubling are the terms leftist and anti-leftist. Though he uses these terms prominently, their definition is vague. “ reader can surmise that leftist refers loosely to those individuals and groups identifying with, and sympathetic to, general Communist and Marxist ideologies, while also holding an opposition to the colonial state. But this is not always clear. This lack of nuance is concerning given the extreme weight these terms carry in labor and union scholarship. “lso, Nigerianization , which the late sociologist Joseph “gbowuro once described as the appointment of qualified Nigerians to higher and responsible [government] posts, is such an exacting term that Tijani should have provided a better sense of interpretation.1 Overall, Tijani s monograph is a useful and worthwhile examination of the institutional and state history of an understudied region. Historians of Africa and abroad can gleam much from overlooking the blemishes and considering the larger implications of Tijani s turn towards the burgeoning field of labor and empire. Notes 1 Joseph Agbowuro. 1976. Nigerianization and the Nigerian Universities. Comparative Education 12.3: 243-54. Ryan Driskell Tate, Rutgers University Torrent Mélanie. 2012. Diplomacy and Nation-Building in Africa: Franco-British Relations and Cameroon at the End of Empire. London: I.B. Tauris. 409 pp. Mélanie Torrent s historical case study Diplomacy and Nation-Building recounts Cameroon s march towards independence and its subsequent nation-building process. Drawing upon extensive archival material collected in France, Great Britain, Canada, Cameroon, and the US, the author adopts an actor-centric approach to narrate Cameroon s striving for emancipation in the international system from the perspectives of British, French, Cameroonian, and Canadian state leaders and diplomats. The volume s central thesis holds that for the period between and the late 1970s, triangular diplomacy among France, Britain, and Cameroon substantially influenced Cameroon s decolonization and state-formation processes. Concurrently, Cameroon is described as central to the histories of French and British decolonization processes and foreign policy choices (p. ix). African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 154 | BOOK REVIEWS In chronological order, the volume s five core chapters survey French and ”ritish diplomatic struggles to safeguard their influence over a territory, which constituted a colonial boundary line between the French and the British zones of influence. The first chapter shows how France, after some initial reluctance towards Cameroon s quest for independence, soon emerged as the young nation s principal ally ahead of ”ritain, which appears to have begun regarding Cameroon as unpredictable francophone state (pp. 16-23, 39, 68-72). Following this argument, the second chapter demonstrates how close relations with France made Cameroon become a strange hybrid in British eyes, neither truly foreign nor fully integrated within the Commonwealth scheme. The early post-independence years were marked by an increasing alienation of British diplomats and Cameroonian officials, who to British diplomats were often, in effect, Frenchmen with black skins (p. 77). Chapter Three, dedicated to the early post-independence period, stresses France s by then predominant influence in many sectors of the Cameroonian state and society, before attention is given to the 1967 Nigerian civil war over the Biafra region. Torrent illustrates how the Nigerian civil war revealed essential antagonisms between French and British diplomats. The latter held de Gaulle and Foccart responsible for keeping the Nigerian civil war going for its last year p. 144, quoting Jean-Pierre Bat, Le syndrome Foccart). Fearing that the Igbo movement could prompt secessionist tendencies in reunified Cameroon itself (p. 141), President Ahidjo supported the central government in Lagos, a move, which improved relations between Cameroon and Britain (p. 145). The remainder of the chapter is dedicated to an issue that otherwise runs like a thread through the whole volume: the struggle for linguistic predominance in a formally bi-lingual state. While French had already become the dominant language in the political capital, Yaoundé, as well as in the economic center, Douala (p. 150), Ahidjo initially remained opposed to the Francophonie organization, which he deemed to be a revival of the French Community and as such being dominated by the former colonizer (p. 162). Against the backdrop of the referendum in May 1972 regarding the transformation of the Cameroonian Federation into a unitary state and ”ritain s possible entry into the EEC, chapter Four examines French and British efforts to bury old rivalries and their limits. Finally, chapter Five covering the period after the UK s joining of the EEC asserts that Britain, by then, had become disinterested in Cameroon (pp. 226- . ”ritish officials conceded to France s alldominant influence over the whole francophone African region (p. 246). Overall, Britain is portrayed as the more reluctant of the two former colonial powers, always anxious that its foreign policy towards Cameroon could corrupt its relations with France or the Commonwealth. France, on the other hand, driven by its quest for grandeur considers close ties with Cameroon and the whole francophone region as an indispensable factor of its foreign policy (p. 248). Cameroon itself is said to have emerged from the double-rejection of the Commonwealth and the French Community; but subsequently little space was left for balanced relations with both European powers or for other multilateral alternatives. In the end, Cameroon always had to side with either Britain or France when it came to important issues (pp. 271-2). Mélanie Torrent s monograph provides a detailed account of the international dynamics behind Cameroon s decolonization process. The mainly descriptive text would have benefitted African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf BOOK REVIEWS | 155 from a more clearly formulated central argument, which would in turn have helped the reader to discriminate between essentials and annotations. It would also have facilitated Torrent s intention to speak as an historian to an IR community. Some confusion emerges from the fact that the book does not limit itself to the triangular relationship among Britain, Cameroon, and France, and its impact on the nation-building process in Cameroon, but also engages with the inverse impact of Cameroonian foreign policy decisions on the Franco-British relationship and makes references to Canada s position on Cameroon in addition to the Commonwealth and Francophonie Organisations. The very interesting agent-centered approach to foreign policymaking might have been elaborated further in theoretical terms, in particular with reference to the pertinent literature in the field of foreign policy analysis. Regarding the examined decision-units, the plethora of officials and diplomats cited throughout the work is evidence of a meticulous research, but also confronts the reader with a cast of Tolstoyesque dimensions without always qualifying the relative importance of the different decision-making units involved. Despite the criticisms listed above, the study remains a valuable contribution to the fields of international history, “frican Studies, and IR. Torrent s empirically grounded work stands out due to the subtle style in which it brings the archives to life. The book can be recommended to history students engaging with the notion of Empire or post-colonial Africa. For pundits of French and ”ritish foreign policy the book s most promising contribution lies in the detailed description of patterns of state behavior that emerged at the end of the colonial period but which can be observed until the present day. Benedikt Erforth, University of Trento Bernard Waites. 2012. South Asia and Africa: Post-colonialism in Historical Perspective. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 456 pp. At 456 pages (excluding the contents pages, acknowledgements, list of tables and list of maps, and abbreviations, but including the bibliography and index page), this is a content-rich text that grapples with a difficult type of historical analysis. It is a comparative history of South Asia and Africa, with the notion of post-colonialism as its main historical theme. The author states that his endeavour is to perform an analysis on human agency and how political and economic factors affected the histories of South “sia and “frica. “pparently, these were, very broadly, of two kinds historical constraints arising from comparative economic backwardness and a low level of social development and structural constraints arising from geography, factor endowments, natural resource wealth and resource penury, climate and disease ecology. ”ackwardness and low have pejorative undertones which I do not intend, and refer to measurable indices such as the prevalence of subsistence agriculture and high infant and maternal mortality. p. 3). To gauge how these constraints were exacerbated or alleviated, he chose to analyze how South “sian and “frican political actors sought to overcome them. The use of maps, colonial records and studies, World Bank and United Nations reports, government surveys, texts, and articles endows this book with a variety of facts that, at times, African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf 156 | BOOK REVIEWS absorb the reader. To synthesize this wealth of information, the author refers to Partha Chatterjee s thesis, which states that the general form of the transition from colonial to postcolonial national states was a passive revolution … p. 8). This, in essence, was is an appropriation of “ntonio Gramsci s work on Italian reunification, the related suppression of popular radicalism, and the forms of social relations that developed between ruling classes and the industrial bourgeoisie under the auspices of a passive revolution . The author suggests that the parallels with Chatterjee s South “sian paradigm of passive revolution are not exact but they are sufficiently close to underline the usefulness of the concept for comparative analysis. This must begin, however, with those historical and structural constraints to which I referred earlier p. 9). This idea serves as the narrative s comparative template as he compares and contrasts the various political personalities, their ideologies, and their actions in the two regions. As his narrative proceeds into in-depth political and economic surveys and analyses of South Asia and Africa specifically Pakistan, India, ”angladesh, Congo-Zaire, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, and Mozambique), it becomes evident that despite the range of information, and depth of insight, the purpose of the author s study, at times, is unclear. This purpose, being to provide an account of post-colonialism as an idiographic expression, rather than a nomothetic idea within a linear historical narrative, is over-shadowed by un-warranted or ill-informed assertions and judgments throughout the text. This then obscures what he means by post-colonialism pp. , , -34, 99-100, 142-44, 179-85, 215-16, 223-25, etc.). Indeed, if historical perspective inevitably elicits a degree of bias, it is always necessary to be acutely aware of the balance in perspectives, regarding the subject under investigation. Nevertheless, the multi-disciplinary nature of the author s sources reveals his laudable ability to arrange and analyze the vast volume of information found in this study. This works in favor of the author s research credentials, but at the same time, forces a seasoned reader in histories of Africa and South Asia to question some of the premises for his arguments. Although this book is endowed with a great deal of facts in its analyses, its arguments and opinions need to be heavily scrutinized; a process which would require prior historical knowledge of the regions under investigation. More specifically, this text needs careful intellectual scrutiny, which senior scholars, or post-graduate students will be better equipped to perform. It is otherwise a very useful, factual account of post-colonialism in historical perspective. Kwesi D. L. S. Prah, East China Normal University African Studies Quarterly | Volume 14, Issue 3 | March 2014 http://www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/pdfs/v14i3a7.pdf