African Intellectuals; Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development
By Thandike Mkandawire (ed.), CODESRIA, Dakar and Zed Books, London, 2005; 248pp. £18.99; ISBN 2 86978 145 8; 1 84277 620 7 (hb)/1 84277 621 5 (pb). Reviewed by Richard Rathbone, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
The papers published in this useful volume were first presented at a conference on Intellectuals, nationalism and the pan-African ideal held in Dakar to mark CODESRIA's thirtieth anniversary. It was an appropriate theme for an organisation which is celebrated for its imaginative support and encouragement of intellectuals and their work. In this respect, CODESRIA is admirably unfashionable because there is little doubt that throughout the world intellectuals have lost support, respect and even credibility. Some of the reasons for this tendency are sympathetic; the democratisation of knowledge through new technologies, the recognition of the values of popular culture and the consequent decline of elitism are positive enough.
Less wholesome are the world media's enthusiasm for ephemeral celebrities, the frightening authority of the owners of the means of coercion and the worship of wealth. All of these processes have marginalised intellectuals in Africa as elsewhere. But as many of the authors in this collection remind us, things were not always so. Despite the barriers imposed by colonialism which inhibited access to literature, to freedom of speech and travel, a quite remarkable clusterof African intellectuals – and Africans of the diaspora – conceived of a liberated Africa and then played leadership roles in the achievement of independence. While not all of them were saints, most of them had ambitions which were not limited to political liberation but included mass socio-economic improvement and cultural expansiveness.
Most of the authors represented in this book are concerned with what happened next. Some of this analysis comes in the form of auto-critique. Joseph Ki-Zerbo whose recent death has robbed us of one of the last survivors of that towering generation of political intellectuals of the late colonial world, criticizes some African intellectuals for allowing themselves to become harnessed to power. He argues that whilst the development project was itself the product of intellectuals, intellectuals all too often then allowed themselves to be silenced by authoritarianism which argued that development was unattainable in the absence of uniformity and acquiescence. Having participated as heavyweights in the getting of independence, intellectuals now found that much of what characterised their roles, the pursuit and proclamation of truth to put it crudely, was now dangerous. Attacks upon the iniquity of foreigners were entirely welcome but criticisms of one's own regimes became a risky business. The editor, Thandika Mkandawire's introduction and first chapter which deal with many of these points are gracefully and uncompromisingly honestly written.
The risks involved in alienating governments and the financial advantage to be gained by cultural producers by proximity to big markets ensured that large numbers of African intellectuals left the countries of the birth, countries partially constructed by their predecessors, for Europe and the Americas; by the 1980s Paul Zeleza estimates that over 20,000 African academic staff were emigrating per year. The reasons for such flows are familiar enough; the under-funding of schools, universities and culture in general have tended to deny African intellectuals what Mkandawire calls ‘autonomous spaces for their thinking’ and presented them with the stark choices of compromise and silence or marginality.
In his exciting and original chapter Zeleza argues that the presence of such a diaspora is of itself neither a good nor a bad thing; but its potential to make a contribution to Africa's future requires a strong lead from Africa so that ‘the historic pan-African project, spawned by the global dispersal and exploitation of African peoples …’ can be rebuilt in ways that involve the diaspora in creative endeavours. And manifestly the continent will retain more of its best and brightest young women and men and attract migrant intellectuals back home when its governments offer them decent salaries and freedom of expression.
There is so much that is new and thoughtful in this unusually valuable collection of essays. Much of the scholarly literature speaks of intellectuals and the intelligentsia as those these were easy, self-evident categories. Mkandawire and his authors pave the way for a more informed, more critical and more constructive set of approaches. They have produced a handsome 30th birthday present for CODESRIA.
Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed
By Cynthia J. Arnson and I. William Zartman (eds.), Woodrow Wilson Center Press: Washington, DC / The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD, 2005; 300pp. £15.50; ISBN 0-8018-8297-4 (hb)/ 0-8018-8298-2 (pb). Reviewed by Martin Evans, University of Leicester.
This collection builds on the ‘greed and grievance’ debate, particularly the ideas of Paul Collier and his co-workers, but deploys a different, three-way categorisation of drivers of civil conflict. Grievance is subdivided into issues of ‘need’ (political repression, economic deprivation) and ‘creed’ (belief, identity). The book argues throughout that ‘greed’ among combatants only arises later, as they see the economic opportunities of war and/or conflict becomes stalemated.
This model is explored through seven developing country case studies, chosen ‘because in all of them, economic resources derived principally from primary commodities … have played an important and observable role’ (pp. 7-8). In Africa this takes us to three countries about which much has already been written in this vein – Sierra Leone, Angola and the DRC – albeit seen anew through the book's framework. The chapter on Sierra Leone (Kandeh) takes ‘greed’ as ‘the unbridled rapacity of its political class’ (p. 86), showing how the ‘explanatory significance of diamonds … derives from their mismanagement by incumbent political elites’ (p. 85). The theme of the greed of elites and their complete indifference to the wider population continues in Le Billon's study of Angola. He further debunks simplistic resourcebased explanations of conflict, explaining how the ‘transformation of nature into tradable commodities is a deeply political process’ (p. 110). Kennes’ account of conflict in the DRC highlights its sheer complexity, recognising the difficulties in defining both when civil war begins and ends and the meaningof ‘illegal’ resource exploitation in failed states.
The non-African studies include Lebanon (Picard), perhaps a less obvious case for linking economics and conflict but well explored here in terms of narcotic and other trafficking, land speculation and diasporic remittances. McClintock's study of the Shining Path insurgency in Peru cogently analyses the changing material conditions underlying a shifting mosaic of creed and need. Chernick's account of conflict in neighbouring Colombia extends back to 1948 and challenges the popular greed-based (cocaine and kidnapping) characterisation of the FARC. The Afghanistan chapter (Newberg) emphasises the complex articulations of internal, regional and global causes of instability and war there over the past 30 years.
There are some familiar and important themes here. One is the way in which natural resource wealth increases social stratification. Class comes over as a stronger locus of mass mobilisation than ethnicity in most cases, and the studies all argue for the tough political business of nation-building and creation of a viable social contract to avoid conflict. Another common thread is the changing, sometimes fickle politico-military interventions of foreign governments, whether in the Cold War or subsequently, or in the US war on drugs in Latin America. Collusion between supposedly antagonistic factions if it is in their mutual economic interests also appears repeatedly. Some unlikely bedfellows are cited – Cuban troops and US oil companies in Angola, even Hizbollah and Israeli officers cooperating to traffic drugs in Southern Lebanon – again problematising normative notions of conflict.
One of the book's main analytical strengths is the historical depth of its case studies, showing the conjuncture of factors that precipitated, maintained or terminated conflict; changes in conflict dynamics over time (decades in some cases); and continuities in political economy between war and peacetime, and sometimes extending back to the colonial era. There is also a welcome policy aspect throughout – what the studies tell us about conflict prevention and resolution, and peacebuilding – reflecting the book's sponsorship by the Woodrow Wilson Center. This is synthesised by Malone and Sherman in the penultimate chapter, which discusses the many difficulties in translating the complexities and contradictions of the academic debate into useable policy advice.
I have only three reservations. First, the Collier models could have been more thoroughly problematised at the outset, particularly the serious conceptual problems with the proxies used (subject to excellent critiques elsewhere by Christopher Cramer and others). Instead, the proxy issue, situated within a comprehensive account of the development of economic explanations of conflict, is not properly discussed until Zartman's closing chapter. Consequently, Collier seems at times like a straw man being unpicked in the course of the case studies. Second, the authors all clearly recognise that the three categories of the title are only heuristic devices, but at times I still felt that the model straitjacketed their more nuanced arguments; Newberg notably unfetters herself from it entirely. Third, psychological understandings of the causes of rebellion – deep feelings of neglect and alienation – are only touched upon. In fairness this is still a relatively unexplored area, but given the claims made in the ‘greed and grievance’ debate for combatants’ motives, and the proper focus that the studies bring to the sociological basis of insurgency, greater attention could at least have been given to field methodologies. Only McClintock really begins to air the practical problems of getting inside the heads of insurgents.
Overall, though, the authors should be applauded for their efforts to analyse ‘war not as a mechanical, reified process but rather as a total social fact’ (p. 28), in Picard's words. We could use more of this approach.
Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation
By Patrick Bond. London: Zed Books, 2006; pp. 172, £15.99 (pb), ISBN 1-84277-812-9 (hb)/1-84277-811-0 (pb). Reviewed by Ian Taylor, University of St Andrews.
Patrick Bond's latest book is an examination of how he sees the continent within the international political economy and how its underdevelopment is a result of its location in the global hierarchy. As Bond rightly notes, Africa has been exploited for centuries and this continues today. Bond is also absolutely correct to be cynical of the likes of Tony Blair and his ‘Africa Commission’, whilst the Live 8 concerts and the Make Poverty History campaign – although well-meaning – had their limits. The book is well-argued and is similar in tone and style to other books by the author. Certainly, Bond elucidates knowledgeably on what he sees as the central problems that blight Africa's economic and political environment, namely debt and financial relationships with the North, what he calls ‘phantom aid’, unfair trade, distorted investment and the continent's brain/ skills drain. And he is quite right to argue that neo-liberal reforms have stimulated the rise of exceptionally dominant ruling elites. Overall, Bond seeks to contextualise Africa's wealth outflow, something which he sees as exemplifying the ‘looting’ of the continent.
Having said all that, there are a number of issues that are raised but could have been handled differently. On capital flight, it is now well established that the stock of Africa's capital flight is more than the continent's debts. Bond argues that the debt should be wiped clean – yet an awful lot of that has been racked up by corruption, with many of the same actors still in power. Given that there are over 100,000 African millionaires on the continent, worth around $600 billion in total, it is difficult to wholeheartedly agree with Bond. I certainly agree that there needs to be far greater commitment to tracking down and returning illicit capital flight from Africa, most stashed in western banks. And the whole western banking sector needs restructuring to stop this scandal. But the question remains, who is putting this money overseas?
A problem that the book does not address is the lack of domestic hegemony in Africa. Within the majority of African political systems, those at the apex (the patrons) are unable to impose their hegemony and thus depend on periodic largesse to buy acquiescence. Consequently, the bureaucratic and legal pillars of the rational state are incapable of being properly instituted because there is no hegemonic project and, to put it crudely, no one ‘believes’ in the state. Thus the systems of predictable governance that are indispensable to fostering capitalism are absent. Arbitrariness stakes out the system and inhibits the development of productive capitalism. As a result, neo-patrimonial systems are profoundly anti-capitalist and antidevelopmentalist. This is not necessarily an argument in line with Bill Warren’s, but is intriguing nonetheless.
Whilst Bond's book points out a great deal of valuable information and a compelling critique of Africa's place in the world, alternatives are not that clear, other than that taken from civil society declarations. But in Africa does the bourgeois-like autonomous agentic individual described by the dominant paradigm vis-à-vis civil society exist? This is, after all, the essential prerequisite in the making of civil society. I would argue that such autonomous individuals, free from communal, ethnic, and class loyalties, do not exist in most parts of Africa. In this case, building Africa's renewal upon such actors is problematic.
Ultimately, it should be pointed out that sub-Saharan Africa's is currently experiencing a growth rate that, in 2005, was equal to the overall rate of growth that the developing world has experienced since 2000. The question is, what will be done with this, who will benefit and who will not? Bond's book provides some interesting questions and answers to such issues, although I would have liked him to have explored some other – perhaps less comfortable – avenues for investigation.
Conflict and the Refugee Experience: Flight, Exile and Repatriation in the Horn of Africa
By Assefaw Bariagaber, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006; pp. 196, £50.00 (hb), ISBN 0-7546-4365-4. Reviewed by Wray Witten, (formerly at Mekelle University, Tigray, Ethiopia).
Twenty years ago, when I lived in Darfur, legions of refugees from Chad had fled to Sudan to escape the violence of eight armies jousting in Chad (at least one supported by Libya, whose jets also flew overhead on the way to bomb southern Sudan). Today much has reversed: Sudanese refugees now flee into Chad to escape the violence wrecked by the multiplying factions fighting for a pieceof Sudan's North-South settlement. During the twelve years I lived in Tigray, 1991 to 2003, nearly all the Tigrayan refugees who fled Ethiopia's military regime returned from Sudan, yet a third of Eritrea's did not; and Eritrea's 1998 invasionof Ethiopia lead to yet another flightof Eritrean refugees to Sudan. Assefaw Bariagaber makes a valiant effort to help us understand such refugee experiences in his Conflict and the Refugee Experience: Flight, Exile and Repatriation in the Hornof Africa.
Why the Horn of Africa? While refugees in the rest of the world dropped from 0.36% of total population to 0.14% (1974-2002), they rose from 0.25% to 0.92% in the Horn, Bariagaber tells us. Moreover, the experiences of these Horn refugees – both originating and taking refuge in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia – provide a highly diverse sample. And, significantly, this is Bariagaber's place: the book is dedicated to his brother, killed by the Ethiopian military regime in Asmara in 1979. His connectedness is a source of strength in the book, though also of one weakness.
At the book's core, Bariagaber pulls together much of the conflict and refugee literature, both specific to the Horn and more general analyses. From this literature he argues that 1) refugees make rational choices within a changing but patterned and structured economic and political environment; but 2) refugees themselves vary greatly to begin with and 3) also change significantly over the period of their exile; and, therefore, 4) the only way to really understand, and perhaps to predict the variability of refugees’ experiences is to study them longitudinally. These arguments seem to me the central strength of the book.
As his starting point for each case, Bariagaber assembles a portrait of the conflict that turned citizens into refugees. Describing the origins and course of violence – especially the 1970/80s Ethiopian suppression of Eritrean independence movements – he details international meddling, regional linkages and factions, and local effects. Unfortunately, and uncharacteristically, one of the most mysterious conflicts, the 1998-2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian war – one Bariagaber needs to understand to analyse Eritrean government behaviour– is dismissed with a few zingy one-liners.
Bariagaber then follows the refugees’ flights into exile, prying from the literature – and some original interviews of his own – the refugees’ differentiating attributes, how these affect where they choose to settle in the first country of refuge (e.g., urban vs. rural; scattered vs. camps), and how that in turn affects them and their subsequent choices. Though these rich descriptions tend to suffer from a lack of rigorous parallelisms, reflecting much of the literature, Bariagaber's final conclusions bring some order.
Finally Bariagaber seeks to untangle how all these individual choices and changes affect the success of the ‘three durable solutions’: integration into the first country of refuge, onward resettlement, and repatriation. He concludes that only the latter has worked for the vast majority of Horn refugees.
One of Bariagaber's key worries shows when he breaks the orderly progression of the book with an exceptional chapter analysing the least successful repatriation of all those considered (64% vs. 94%-100%): Eritrea's refugees in Sudan. His investigation is fulsome, but at a critical point suffers from the peculiar blindness of those who still do not grasp the direction of ‘the victorious EPLF’. Here, Bariagaber accepts the Eritrean leadership's claim that an almost-admirable war-conditioned need for ‘self-reliance’ and ‘autonomy’ caused Eritrea to alienate the support it needed from UNHCR, Sudan and international donors for assisted repatriation, thus stranding its remaining refugees in Sudan. Quite to the contrary, the 1993 agreements between Eritrea and Ethiopia, cited by Bariagaber, are heavy with Ethiopian aid for Eritrea and undercut that explanation. Instead, Eritrea's leaders’ consistently unrealistic assessment of their negotiating positions, and the country's resulting downward spiral, need serious study. In an opportune book, Bariagaber misses the chance to pierce that particular veil.
But that one blind spot aside, overall the book should prove useful, particularly for students of refugee studies. Though it is not always clear whose voice we are hearing, the author's or the refugees’ (often due to dilatory editing), the core arguments are clearly presented, much evidence is assembled in a compelling manner, and, in the end, Bariagaber makes an admirable effort towards strengthening theory in the discipline.
A Nose for Money
By Francis B. Nyamnjoh, East African Educational Publishers: Nairobi / Kampala / Dar es Salaam, 2006; 202pp. £13.95. ISBN 9966-25-427-7 (pb). Reviewed by Martin Evans, University of Leicester.
This is the third novel from Francis Nyamnjoh, who will also be known to many readers through his scholarly works. Set in the African stateof ‘Mimboland’, it charts the rise and fallof Prospère, a semi-literate orphan of humble origins and imbued with singlemindedness and self-reliance. We meet him as a driver working for Mimboland Brewery Company in the country's commercial hub, Sawang. His positive outlook on his recent marriage is soon shattered when he catches his young wife in an act of adultery, prompting their divorce and irrevocably tainting his view of relationships. Prospère falls into anomie until he inadvertently becomes involved with two conmen, whose unexpected deaths leave him with a fortune in cash.
Prospère moves to Nyamandem, Mimboland's capital, to start a new life with his windfall. His wealth and status grow as he wins government contracts by cultivating high-level connections, but his personal life is more troubled. He re-marries but, not entirely trusting his new wife, he takes another (polygamously) to keep check on her, although they outmanoeuvre him when they form a sisterly bond. He takes yet another wife, an ingénue who, despised by the other two, withers and dies. Attempting to learn the reasons for her demise, Prospère discovers the devastating web of deceit behind his married life.
Those familiar with Cameroon will recognise Mimboland as the novelist's homeland, thinly veiled. Ruled by President Longstai Moumou, ‘determined to put asunder all that God had put together’ (p. 54), the country's political landscape is presented in bleak but humorous terms: its fractious Anglophone/ Francophone relationships, clientelism, corruption, and total dereliction of duty by acquisitive public servants. Nyamnjoh scathingly describes how ‘[t]he civil service in Mimboland was like a piece of bone that belonged to no dog in particular, but which every dog was free to play around with as it liked, then abandon for others to pick up’ (pp. 64-5).
In this setting, where the allure of modernity is universal but its benefits enjoyed only by the privileged few, people will do anything for even a meagre slice of the cake. As its title suggests, this is the novel's main theme: the way in which everything, including love, is corrupted by the insatiable pursuit of wealth. The narrative is well grounded in the sociological realities of such an environment, richly described by Nyamnjoh both in the city (‘the ghetto concentration of poverty, of hope and despair, in the midst of Sawang's promise of modernity’, p. 21) and the village, where resentment of selfish, ungrateful city-dwellers is palpable.
This link between city and village, and the dangers if it is broken, form another important theme. Prospère has largely abandoned his village, identifying himself instead through materialism: he even feels that his first ‘car was sure to give him a sense of belonging’ (p.54) and ignores warnings from country folk about his lack of rootedness until it is too late. However, Nyamnjoh avoids a simplistic view of the city poisoned by its own rapacity and the village as an unsullied repository of ‘tradition’; instead, the values and practices of each seep into the other milieu. The urban-rural relationship artfully frames the whole novel, which begins in the brash, noisy brightness of the city, and ends in the gloomy, intimate spaces of village huts.
The Potentiality of ‘Developmental States’ in Africa: Botswana and Uganda Compared
By Pamela Mbabazi and Ian Taylor (eds.), CODESRIA: Dakar, 2005; (Distributor: African Books Collective Ltd), pp. 175, £19.95 (pb), ISBN 2-86978-164-4. Reviewed by Adrian Leftwich, University of York.
Though its main title is a little misleading, this collection of 11 essays seeks to explore the how far the states of Uganda and Botswana may be deemed to be developmental states. While there is not much new in the book's net contribution to the theory of how developmental states form and are sustained, a number of the chapters are very insightful and informative on the institutional and (less so) political detail of Uganda and Botswana. Chapters on the institutional features of the state in Botswana (Taylor, Sebudubudu) and Uganda (Akampumuza) provide good information, as do the chapters on decentralisation (Murembe, Mokhawa and Sebudubudu) and on gender (Mbabazi, Mookodi and Parpart). Excellent chapters on privatisation (Muriisa Roberts) and by Mbabazi and Mokhawa on the state and manufacturing, are well worth reading.
The editors rightly stress at the start that ‘The construction of democratic developmental states in Africa must now be seen as one of most urgent tasks facing the continent’ (1). Although the essays address the extent to which current institutional features in Uganda and Botswana approximate that task, the book does not address the question – the critical question for Africa – of how that may be achieved. The East Asian developmental state model was forged in a context of crisis and threat, primarily external, with roots going back to the Meiji restoration of the 1870s in Japan and driven through by a determined and modernising elite. What can substitute for that in creating the incentives for African polities and political forces to establish the institutional means for effective developmental states? Contemporary external pressures push them in the opposite direction, if anything. And, as Nyamnjoh and Jimu argue forcefully in their chapter, it is folly to ignore the ‘corruption of Africa's political class, the fragility of Africa's economic base, the low productivityof Africa's agriculture and ethnic belonging’, all of which render Africa very risky for investment and which also compromise the prospects for developmental states.
The editors rightly conclude that there is a vital role for the state in Africa in advancing development and establishing the appropriate relationship between the public and private sector. But that leaves us with many more questions than the book answers and the real next task is to turn to the comparative and historical insights of political science and political economy about state-formation to begin to answer them in the context of the history and structural characteristics of African societies and the nation states that have been created there. Ultimately the creation of developmental states is a politically-driven process. But where will the internal demand for the construction of such states come from? Are the political forces available to form the coalitions that will build them? How can they be supported and enhanced? What institutional forms will replace those of clientelistic politics that pervades the continent, and could clientelism be harnessed as a force for development? Another conference and hopefully another book might usefully start with these essential state-building questions, though it is to be hoped that the technical quality of such a book will be higher than this one, which omitted countless references and put notes for one chapter at the end of another.
Sudan Odyssey through a State from Ruin to Hope
By Lt. Gen. Joseph Lagu, Omdurman: MOB Centre, Omdurman Ahlia University, Sudan, 2006. 584pp; price unspecified; ISBN 9994257005 (hb). Reviewed by Mairi John Blackings, University of Strathclyde.
Lt. Gen. Joseph Lagu's memoir, the first ever Sudanese political memoir to be published in both Arabic and English, by the one time Vice President of the Sudan and the leader of the South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) and its military wing, the Anyanya, sketches the events that led to the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972 and its aftermath. The Accord brought to an end the first stretch of the civil war in the Sudan (1955-72) between the largely Christian and black African South and the North, which subscribes to an Arab Islamic identity. The book concludes with the bell going off in Bor, for the second stint (1983-2005), the commencement of which, barely ten years after the first round, serves as a reminder that the factors that led to the first spell, are neither ephemeral nor have they been exorcised by the Accord.
The seeds of this conflict, which is still burgeoning fifty years later, were sown on the eve of independence in 1956. As the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium packed its bag, the northern establishment's positioning of itself to be the new colonial master, triggered a series of uprisings which escalated into a fully fledged civil war. It was under these circumstances that Joseph Lagu, then a lieutenant in the Sudanese Army, was invited by Joseph Oduho, one of the Southern leaders in exile, to defect and assume the organisation and leadership of the military side of the liberation struggle. The book, which retraces this odyssey by Lagu, consists of five parts, further divided into fifteen chapters, excluding a prologue, an epilogue and appendix in which two of his earlier booklets: Anyanya: What We Fight For and Decentralisation: Why a Necessity, are incorporated.
The disciplined life of the army illprepared Lagu for the chaotic world of politics. He was soon to discover that the vision of elegance portrayed by the politicians and their rhetoric did not match the reality in the field. He found a leadership whose successful propaganda machinery, ‘had saturated the South with false information and lies about their actual strength, organisation and management, ‘ while ensuring that ‘back in[side] the south’ it was not known ‘that William Deng was working separately from the Father and Oduho.’ Lagu's gamble to bypass the squabbling politicians and to focus solely on building up the army paid immediate dividends. It culminated in his bringing together the various armed groups under the name of the South Sudan Liberation Movement (SSLM) with the Anyanya, as its military wing.
The building of the army was wrought with problems as the Anyanya was not blessed with a ready-made pool of trained soldiers to start with. Second, there was no sizable Southerners in the Sudanese Army, either as soldiers or officers, who one could rely on to defect and swell the numbers. Third, Lagu's decision to send away all school age volunteers to go to the neighbouring countries to pursue education instead, accentuated the personnel scarcity. Fourth, whatever personnel there was, consisted solely of individuals operating in small groups with no central command, often armed with rudimentary weapons like bows and arrows and machetes. The moulding of the ragtag volunteers into a formidable fighting force the government could reckon with, and the creation of a unified central command, the Anyanya High Command, were Lagu's greatest achievement. Ironically, for a man, whose defection from the Sudanese Army was in a response to a call from the civil authority, his greatest achievements could only be realised after dispensing with the same politicians.
The lack of basic military understanding by the politicians, which often resulted in unnecessary loss of life, further estranged Lagu from the politicians. Lagu recalls how after only a few days of rudimentary training, Father Saturnino issued him with orders to lead the men into action. When he posed the question ‘what was available to start with’, the father went to his ‘bedroom and came out with three old rifles!’ Thus, in their first coordinated operation against the enemy on 19 September 1963, code named the D-Day, Lagu as the commander had only a machete!
Lagu emerged as a leader at a difficult time when in Uganda, for example, President Obote was locking up Southern political leaders like Joseph Oduho and Pankrasio Ocheng. The indifference and the hostility of the African countries was to cost, inter alia, the life of Fr. Saturnino, the spiritual leader of the movement, at the hands of the Ugandan Army, and was to play a key role in the signing of the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972.
The Anyanya, under Lagu, remained one of the few African liberation movements not characterised by opulent lifestyles, Armani suits, expensive mansions in neighbouring countries, millions stashed away in foreign bank accounts, child soldiers, gross violation of human rights, hordes of body guards to keep the very public they purport to be serving like lepers at arms length. When, for example, Lagu was en route to Addis Ababa to sign the Agreement, his fellow countryman Dr Hasan Gama was so embarrassed by the clothes he had on that he loaned him his own. The Addis Accord was, thus not signed in a three piece Armani suit, but in a borrowed second hand suit.
In order to combat regional disparity within the South, Lagu ensured that his initial delegation to the talks in Addis was constituted to reflect equitable distribution; three delegates from each of the then three provinces of Southern Sudan. Similarly, on signing the peace deal, he ensured that the six thousand Anyanya soldiers to be absorbed in the national army ‘were apportioned equally among the three southern provinces, though Equatoria had more people under arms.’
Liberation movements have cruel ways of exacting vindictive prices from, especially the protagonists. Just as President Tambo Mbeki of South Africa's son ‘disappeared’ during the liberation struggle, Gen. Lagu's brother, Simeon Jima, fell at the frontline. His marriage too like that of Mandela was sacrificed on the altar of the liberation struggle. The lossof Fr. Saturnino and Lagu's second in command, Joseph Akwon, who fell in action on the eve of the Addis Ababa Agreement were equally devastating events.
The subtitle of the book is misleading as there is hardly any evidence in the book to suggest that the country is in the process of lurching from ‘ruin to hope’. For, all the imponderables that confront the nation catalogued in the book offer no lasting solution, which exclude total disintegration.
In ending the book at two key iconic signifiers: the demise of the May Revolution and at the inception of the SPLM, the author seems to be symbolically signalling the end of an era and the passing of the mantle to the next generation.