Making Ends Meet at the Margins? Grappling with Economic Crisis and Belonging in Beitbridge Town, Zimbabwe
Rekopantswe Mate; Dakar: CODESRIA, 2005; (Distributed by the African Books Collective); 44pp. ISBN: 2-86978-152-0.
Suffering for Territory: Race, Place and Power in Zimbabwe
Donald S. Moore; Durham, NC: Duke University Press/ Harare: Weaver Press, 2005; 399pp. £15.95 (pb); ISBN: 0822335700.
Walking a Tightrope: Towards a Social History of the Coloured People of Zimbabwe
James Muzondidya, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005; 323pp. £19.99 (pb); ISBN: 1592212468. Reviewed by Sarah Bracking, University of Manchester.
Chikwava (2007) recently noted of Zimbabwe's fiction:
Thankfully, in spite of or because of the difficulties that Zimbabwe is going through, the turn of the century has seen a quiet adjustment in the publishing of fiction, giving new voices a better platform to be heard.
More detailed accounts of the diversity and social history of Zimbabwe are also emerging in contra-distinction to the global labels and fixed polar identities of war, liberation, reconciliation, structural adjustment and the Third Chimurenga. Muzondidya work is archetypal here, although selected from a much larger group of possibles. In Walking a Tightrope, Muzondidya writes an impressive social history of how Coloured identity has been constructed and understood, challenging the conventional fixity of ethnicity and race in Zimbabwe as biologically determined through the act of miscegenation, and imposed as a category by the colonial State. He both restores the active agency of Coloured people in making their identity, while going some way to reclaim space for the community in a region where the binary white/black racial categorisation has dominated.
In Mate's ethnographic account of the perception and social construction of ‘locals’ and ‘outsiders’ in Beitbridge Town the nuances of conflicted identity and its relationship to entitlements, rights and resources literally comes alive from the page. She has conducted a careful study of tensions and continuities of belonging and outlines the contradictory definitions and criteria used by variously resident people in Beitridge. Those without patrilineal roots and Venda language skills, for example, stress home ownership or length of formal employment in the town as criteria of localness and belonging, whereas those with Venda, Shangani, Sotho or Ndebele linguistic belonging, and corresponding patrilineage and clan name, discount these criteria in favour of an ethnicised indigenous categorisation. To the latter, the former remain outsiders who may, in addition, be seen as an unwelcome beneficiary of local resources, housing and employment.
Also, a central strength of this work, despite the author's initial claim (p.3) to be studying through a binary lens of ‘local’ and ‘outsider’ is that she actually goes beyond this initial sorting, accounting for the gradations and multilayered attributes of localness (p. 25). For example, when an Ndebele speaking woman marries an (even more) local Venda man, Mate notes that the children will tend not to learn the patrilineal Venda language, such that even within the non-Shona group of related peoples gradation of belonging, and perceived cultural hierarchy, still occur. In this case, the woman contributes to the family's dispossession from the man's cultural and patrilineal heritage.
After a discussion of the various ills apparently wrought on the town by outsiders (according to locals) – the increase in children born out of wedlock, the increase in informalised, and sometimes criminal livelihoods (foreign currency trading, prostitution and assisted border jumping), crime, public health crises (cholera and HIV/AIDS), and their trickery in gaining housing and resources – Mate contextualises these perceptionswithin broader sociological processes. She explains the role of identity cards in producing covert discrimination by authorities (pp.11–12), the role of a crisis in gender relations which produces relationships of mutual abuse (pp. 28–29) and the way in which the crisis of material life is displaced onto and explained within expressions of outrage to the moral community.
What is examplorary about this work is how a careful ethnographic case study can convincingly lead to such insightful theoretical comment. For example, Mate notes of prolonged poverty and material crisis that it affects the morality and behaviour of the poor in particular ways, that ‘relationships are temporary and dependent on market conditions’ (p.92). Mate concludes that poverty, and its harbinger globalisation, destroys communities and certainties while simultaneously preventing others forming (p.31), although it remains unclear how globalisation can be privileged with such a role, given the salience of localised coordinates of political degeneration, or quite why these degraded and materialised social relations are not a ‘community’, but rather just a community which does not appeal.
In Moore's much longer book and period of field study in Nyanga District, Manicaland, further entangled contradictions of the Zimbabwean identity emerge in an exceptional ethnographic study of the discursive and material production of power, race, and place, within an anthropological elaboration of governmentality. Moore examines how history, discourse, ideology and cultural understandings combine to produce subjects enlisted in the project of their own rule, guiding their conduct and selfdisciplining them, in a Foucauldian sense, into their spaces of racialised dispossession. This is understood by Moore as a situated ‘contingent constellation of practice, milieu, and materiality’ (p.4); an
entangled landscape in which multiple spatialities, temporalities, and power relations combine: rainmaking and chiefly rule; colonial ranch and postcolonial resettlement scheme; site-specific land claims and discourses of national liberation; ancestral inheritance and racialised dispossession(Ibid.).
I was reminded of the resonance of these architectural and linguistic metaphors of the spatiality and disciplining of development and power, in the similar ‘malines’ emerging from Operation Garikai/ Hlalani Kuhle (‘live well’(sic)), the pictures of the (small number) of outside-toilet-sized ‘houses’, built in rigid lines, and largely unoccupied due to errors in construction (see Solidarity Peace Trust, 2006). In sum, the continuities of struggle and complexities of a rural identity are carefully explored by Moore with clear contemporary resonance, in an exemplary ethnographic case study: I don't think I have ever recommended a book to quite so many people, or cited one text so often in quite so many diverse contexts. All these books, and others, contribute to the recognition of a diverse Zimbabwe and indirectly, to the richness of its possible future.
Re-Living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle
Fay Chung; Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute / Harare: Weaver Press, 2006; 358pp. £17.66 (pb); ISBN: 9171065512. Reviewed by Brian Raftopoulos, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Cape Town.
It is one of the ironies of Zimbabwean politics that even as the ruling party Zanu PF has recently steadily imposed a stodgy diet of narrow party history on Zimbabweans, this view of the past has been challenged not only by an increasing flow of critical historiography, but also from within the ranks of Zanu PF itself. The latter has taken the form of emerging biographies by critical voices within Zanu PF, that have added very useful insights into the history of the liberation struggle and the internal battles in the liberation movement. These voices have not so much provided a new paradigm for understanding the liberation struggles as added new information to doubts that have been apparent in both the creative literature and historiography of the struggle for some time.
Of equal significance however is the manner in which such critical biographies have been received within Zanu PF. The ruling party's response to Edgar Tekere's recent biography A Lifetime of Struggle has been somewhat hysterical. The book has been denounced because it ‘clearly and explicitly denigrates and vilifies’ Mugabe, and Tekere been expelled from the party for the second time in his lifetime. The overblown response to Tekere's story is a reminder that authoritarian regimes like Zanu PF are usually most sensitive to criticisms from within their ranks. The personal bonds formed by such nationalist groupings during periods of prolonged struggle, are most keenly affected by the personal criticisms that emerge from within. Some of the ‘myths’ of the struggle have begun to unravel as key participants tell their stories of the inner workings of Zanu PF, within the broader context of the intense succession battle taking place within the ruling party and the resurgent opposition to the regime.
It is from this perspective that Fay Chung's book is interesting not only for its valuable discussion of the history of Zanu PF, but as part of the general rethinking of Zimbabwean nationalism that has been taking place over the last decade. Chung's narrative of her early life is an interesting account of a Chinese youth in colonial Southern Rhodesia, showing the ambiguous status of the Chinese in the colonial racial hierarchy. The author provides an absorbing narrative of her childhood and education in Coloured schools, as well as her move into nationalist politics in Zambia after her time at university.
It is however her narrative of the internal struggles within Zanu in the 1970s that provides the most interesting and contested part of the book. In these chapters Chung takes the reader through the Nhari-Badza rebellion of the mid 1970s and the rise and fall of the left-leaning Zipa group. On the former, Chung argues that the ‘rebels’ had substantial grievances against the High Command, and that the summary execution of the leaders on the orders of Tongogara were part of the ongoing leadership battles taking place in the party. Wifred Mhanda (2006), formerly known as Dzinashe Machingura, one time leader of Zipa, has contested this interpretation. In his view the rebellion was ‘a clear attempt at the usurpation of power by Nhari and Badza, chagrined by their demotion’, in the army. He thus concludes that ‘if the revolt was ill conceived, and if it has been misconstrued by Chung, its suppression was characterised by unparalleled brutality’.
On the Zipa period in Zanu, while Fay Chung displays sympathy for the leftwing guerrillas, she argues that the group was ultimately defeated by the old guard because of a combination of poor negotiating skills, ‘uncompromising rigidity’ and their unwillingness to work with traditional structures. In her discussions of this period Chung also throws some light on the growing rightward shift of the liberation leadership, marked by its own forms of racial intolerance. As Chung was centrally involved in Zanu's education programme in Mozambique, the book provides a very useful insight into the liberation movement's efforts in this area.
The weakest parts of the book are the two concluding chapters on the post-1980 period, and it is in this section that one of the central tensions in the book is most apparent. For while the discussion of nationalist politics in the 1970s is largely a critical examination of the problems of nationalist politics, the post-independence assessment, for the most part, provides an official rendition of the causes of the crisis in Zimbabwe. Issues of state violence, political intolerance, and human rights abuses are largely neglected in favour of a position that, notwithstanding the problems she has tracked in Zanu, the spirit and traditions of liberation politics in the latter provide the best hope for the future. Her position on this is backed by an extremely shallow assessment of post-1990s opposition politics, that in no way matches the nuance she displays in understanding the history of Zanu. Moreover Chung's uncritical view of the figure of Robert Mugabe himself will raise many eyebrows. Preben Kaarholm's very good introduction provides an important context for understanding this and other problems in Chung's narrative.
Several areas of the book can be contested for historical accuracy, and no doubt there are many in Zanu PF who will challenge her interpretation of the 1970s struggles in liberation politics. Nevertheless Chung's critical perspectives on the form and content of the political struggles and conflicts in Zanu have provided the historiography of the liberation struggle with an important new voice, and for the frankness with which she approached her subject she is to be greatly thanked.
Sudan, the Elusive Quest for Peace
Ruth Iyob & Gilbert M. Khadiagala, Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers/International Peace Academy Occasional Paper Series, 2006; 224pp. £11.99 (pb); ISBN 978-1-58826-350-6. Reviewed by Mark Leopold, University of Sussex.
The vast and complex country of Sudan tends to confuse observers, even those who have spent a long time studying the place. Iyob and Khadiagala are not Sudanists by background, and I approached this volume with some suspicion. Reading it, however, many of my caveats faded away, and I became aware that there are strengths, as well as weaknesses, in coming at the subject of contemporary Sudan from an outside perspective. In the first place, the book is presumably intended for people, particularly in the NGO world, who themselves know little about the country. Secondly, the book's main value lies in its explanation of the regional context of Sudan's conflict, especially in relation to the countries of the Horn.
It begins, however, with a brief but largely accurate account of the all-important historical and geographical background to Sudan's present predicament. The authors emphasise, quite rightly, the inadequacies of the usual media travesty of Sudan's civil wars as conflicts between an ‘Arab, Muslim North’ and ‘African, Christian or Animist South’. Rather, they argue that, ‘[c]ontemporary Sudan is mired in multiple conflicts whose origins can be traced to the distant precolonial past and the eccentric colonial heritage of Anglo-Egyptian overrule’ (p.27), and ‘it is the conflicts over resources – agricultural land, water, pasturage, and recently oil – that underpin the attenuated rivalries that followed, leaving behind new hostilities that were, in turn, woven together to become the poles of identity/ethnicity around which the contesting groups rallied.’ (p.29).
The first two substantive chapters explore these processes in a way that is necessarily rather superficial, given the available space. Some of the emphases are questionable; I wanted more on Equatoria, Abyei, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile region, while the role of White Nile flooding in determining patterns of conflict should have been explained rather than merely alluded to. Darfur, on the other hand, is perhaps over-emphasised, in line with current political preoccupations. Issues of Muslim theology and history are presented in a rather superficial manner, while provocative but somewhat far-fetched comparisons are made with Rwanda and Brazil. Nevertheless, these chapters manage to cram a huge amount of information and analysis into a rather small space.
The next two chapters form the heart of the book. They examine the development of conflict in postcolonial Sudan from 1955 to 2005, emphasising the influence of the regional context (and to an extent the wider international arena) on events in the country. The growth of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) is outlined and the changing roles of Sudan's neighbours in the processes of civil war are examined in detail, as are the twists and turns of the peace process under the auspices of the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). This concern with the regional factor is original and valuable, but inevitably skews the analysis somewhat away from the internal dynamics of Sudanese politics, while also downplaying the influence of powerful Western political and economic interests. The importance of the oil industry, for example, is mentioned, but not outlined in any detail. Given the presumed audience for the book, there should also be more about the often contested role in the conflict of the aid and development industry – Operation Lifeline Sudan, for example is barely mentioned.
Chapter 6 focuses on Darfur, and again does a reasonably good job of outlining the history of the area, with due emphasis given to both the longstanding role of slave raiding and the long lasting influence of the social institutions of military slavery. The chapter underlines Darfur's ethnic complexity and its relatively late incorporation into the Sudanese polity. The authors argue that the conflict here reflects wider patterns in Sudanese society, such as ‘economic marginalisation of the region and centralisation of power in Khartoum … [T]raditional conflict over scarce resources; the polarisation of Sudanic communities – inextricably linked through ties of history, kinship and culture; and the demands of political inclusion and economic integration by marginalised regions’ (p.160). Nevertheless, one feels that singling out Darfur reflects current international political preoccupations rather than an analysis of the area's importance in Sudanese history and contemporary politics per se.
The final substantive chapter looks at the progress of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between North and South. Inevitably this is already rather dated, though it does (just) manage to cover the death of the SPLA leader John Garang in July 2005. The authors conclude that Sudanese history does contain potential resources for peace and reconciliation, notably the interconnectedness of supposedly distinct groups, and a claim that ‘[m]ore than any other society of the Horn of Africa, the peoples of this vast nation have retained a healthy respect for dialogue and the importance of intra-Sudanese communication in the resolution of feuds, hostilities and wars’ (p.177). This somewhat pious conclusion rather underestimates the abilities of Khartoum's ruling elite not to listen to such communications.
Given the constraints of length, this book represents a reasonable attempt to outline the complexities of Sudanese politics and history for an NGO audience. However, as a one-volume introduction to the Sudanese conflict for non-specialists, it does not measure up to Douglas H. Johnson's magisterial account in The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars (2003). Where Sudan: the Elusive Quest for Peacediffers from Johnson's book is in its emphasis on regional political factors, which in itself makes it a useful contribution to the field.
Rebels and Robbers: Violence in Post-Colonial Angola
Assis Malaquias, Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute, 2007; 263pp. £25 (pb); ISBN: 978-91-7106-580-3. Reviewed by Steve Kibble, Progressio.
This book shows how the political economy of violence is central to Angola, as an unchanging presence but a constant mutation, including the period of (negative) peace since 2002. UNITA provided the physical violence and the ruling MPLA the structural violence – the ‘criminal insurgency’ versus the ‘criminal state’. The continuities of structural violence weave in the historical patterns of ethnicity, class, ideology, race and power – and indeed massive in-equality/corruption as a form of violence. The other defining feature is the criminal nature of the warring parties.
Not only is there a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in Angola where money moves unaccountably between the Presidential Palace, the central bank and the state oil company and thereby into the pockets of the elite, but this is mirrored by the triangle of violence, wealth and power. Although the military outcome and defeat of Savimbi meant that the alternative elite, i.e. the UNITA leadership, was quicklyabsorbed into the power bloc after April 2002, there was no opening up of political and economic power to accompany it. Instead there was the continuation of the accumulation strategies of war and the elite's use of ever-expanding oil revenues (through Chinese loans, high oil prices, and lack of international pressure points). This is maintained through the ruling party's cavalier attitude to elections, combined with a fanatical desire to win them and thus maintain power and hence massive amounts of illegitimate wealth and impunity. Malaquias warns of the dangers of the inheritance of violence through ethnic identity being more of an unexploded landmine than the physical ones still littering Angola's farmland.
The sub-theme is how violence is shaped by and shapes the mutual and sustained intolerance of rebels and robbers in the civil war – from the commonly-quoted slogan ‘MPLA robs but UNITA kills’. ‘African authenticity’ versus ‘African cosmopolitanism’ meant the three liberation movements were unable to find common cause, and were engaged in a zero sum game to deny the other two space (even to the extent of one being prepared to collaborate with the colonial power). This had massive impacts on the population as successive peace agreements failed to stick, endemic war, revenue (mis)appropriation, denial of rights and/or identity to the ‘Other’ – and indeed misery. Although the ‘orphan of the cold war’ element is stressed, and the external and internal dynamics of the Cold War are handled with a good understanding of the South African and US positions, the internal and postcolonial dynamics of Angolan history are seen as more important, including the current lack of external leverage – including positive opportunities.
Malaquias asserts one positive in this centrality of violence and criminality, namely that war established a political and economic basis of statebuilding through large scale indigenous capital accumulation not present at independence. This is to ignore the lack of ‘trickle down’ or any commitment to poverty alleviation and the fact that post-war spending on infrastructure rather than social services means ‘development’ is an option, but only if it benefits the elite. Malaquias does see the possibility of the elite grouped around the personalised rule of the President moving into more sustainable forms of accumulation from rent-seekers using export/import through investment in construction, light industry, services and commercial farms, although this would be under their control and to their advantage.
Much of the work stresses, via Galtung, the necessity of going beyond absence of war to sustainable peace/ freedom from structural violence. None of the peace agreements cared about the citizenry's view, and none dealt with the key question of revenue sharing. A significant percentage of the population had no political voice within a very restricted political system, thereby legitimating violence as a resource. The genius and tragedy of Jonas Savimbi was to capitalise on this.
As well as parliament and party being subservient to the clientilist Presidential system Malaquias sees no alternative vision from UNITA, which appears unable to transcend its military nature. How are Angolans to change this venal nature of the state, when the elite is comfortably in the driving seat and has no incentive to change in a situation of little internal or international pressure? Like most of us Malaquias finds this difficult, although he is prepared to suggest some options (however unlikely the cynic might think). First, UNITA must undergo genuine transformation and have a coherent political programme – difficult when manipulation of allopposition parties by MPLA is both blatant and successful. Second, politics has to be delinked from the pursuit of economic gain. Third, there is the building up of sustainable (neutral is not mentioned but is implicit) political structures.
Although a good deal of the book brings in wider theoretical questions such as what structural violence entails, the problematic nature of the postcolonial state, the nature of nationalism and its relation to ethnicity, and the malignity of external intervention, there is oddly no mention of women. Nevertheless, this is an insightful and useful contribution to the literature on Angola.
The Crisis of the State and Regionalism in West Africa: Identity, Citizenship and Conflict
W. Alade Fawole and Charles Ukeje. Dakar: CODESRIA, 2005; (Distributed by the African Books Collective). 226pp. £9.95 (pb). ISBN: 2869 781660. Reviewed by Morten Bøås, Fafo, Institute for Applied International Studies, Norway.
Issues concerning identity, citizenship and regionalism are hotly debated in contemporary West Africa, and the same issues are also closely connected to the region's many conflicts. This volume is therefore very timely, and there is much to recommend here. Evaluated separately the chapters are of high quality, and in the beginning they even fit nicely together. Said Adejumobi (chapter 1) does us all a service when he revisits Peter Ekeh's (1975) concept of the two publics in Africa. However, one could only wish that Adejumobi had spent more time discussing Ekeh's work in relation to Mamdani (1996 and 2001) and the West African context instead of focusing on Rwanda, which no matter where we draw the border of the region is beyond the geographical scope of this volume. Another gem in the volume is Aron's chapter about the Niger Delta. This is an elegant display of both how deeply embedded the conflict is in history and how it is connected to the political economy of the Nigerian state and the ways in which its practice turns the inhabitants in the Niger Delta into secondary citizens. The other contributions also have much to offer as they give insight into many different aspects of the West African crisis.
The volume is a product of the 2003 CODESRIA conference ‘West Africa in search of democratic nationhood’, and it is unfortunately more a collection of the conference proceedings made available to the editors than a volume based on well-integrated chapters that engage with each other from page one through to the very end. This is a pity, because it would have been very interesting to hear what the mainly Nigerian based authors had to say about the relationship between the various dimensions of the West African crisis that are mentioned in the first couple of chapters.
The state is undoubtedly both the problem and the solution. The regional dimension cannot be ignored in West Africa, and there is much more than material aspects to the many conflicts in this region. Identity, be it ethnic, regional or generational also matters. And as the Ivoiran conflict shows us all too well, the issue of citizenship is not only obvious, but the discourses created by citizenship conflicts can also rip a country apart. These dimensions are the very heartbeats of the West African conflict zone, and all of them are addressed in various ways here. The problem, however, is that the volume lacks a coherent approach. The regional dimension is weak in many of the chapters and completely absent in others. The overall majority of the authors are affiliated to Nigerian universities and Nigeria is therefore also, quite naturally, at the centre of analysis in most chapters. Nigeria is undoubtedly the most important country in West Africa, but as this is presented as a book about identity, citizenship and conflict in West Africa, more emphasis should have been placed on how this is played out in cases such as Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone as well, and what relationships and trajectories that exists between local and national conflicts in the region. This is unfortunately a task that the volume does not accomplish.
This criticism apart, people concerned with West Africa should read this book. Everybody will find something of interest, and the weaknesses pointed out are more a consequences of the difficult circumstances that West African scholars work under, than anything else. Hopefully, the editors and the authors will get the opportunity to address the interplay of these factors in the region in a more integrated manner in another publication. The strength of the individual chapter proves that they have a lot to offer in this regard as well.
Governing Global Desertification: Linking Environmental Degradation, Poverty and Participation
Pierre Marc Johnson, Karel Mayrand & Marc Parquin, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006; 312pp. £55.00 (hb); ISBN 0-7546-4359-X. Reviewed by Sarah Bristow, University of Aberystwyth.
Since drylands occupy 41% of the planet's land area and are home to a third of the human population, desertification and the related development challenges are an important feature of sustainable development. This edited volume explores the salient aspects of governance and desertification by investigating the relationship between dryland degradation, poverty and participation; three interdependent facets of sustainable development in the world's drylands. The book provides a balanced account of the challenges, strengths and weaknesses of the United Nations Convention to Combat Drought and Desertification (UNCCD), which forms the cornerstone of global desertification governance. The volume also achieves its objective of providing an analysis of some of the complex issues related to sustainable development governance in drylands and the role of the UNCCD in that context (p. 6).
Published in 2006, this is a timely collection; its publication coincides with the UNCCD's tenth anniversary and the Year of Deserts and Desertification. Composed of thirteen chapters and an appendix of the full text of the UNCCD, the volume begins with a short, though sufficient, account of the scale and character of land degradation in dryland regions. The first three chapters focus on issues directly covered by the UNCCD, namely its scientific basis, the linkages between poverty and land degradation and desertification and migration. The book then dedicates chapters to the discussion of the historical context of the Convention's negotiation including an overview of the UNCCD Secretariat's role in global governance, good governance and financing, followed by chapters on regional perspectives with respect to knowledge exchange and the implementation of National Action Programmes (NAPs). The volume concludes by contextualising the UNCCD within contemporary processes of economic globalisation and considers the role of the UNCCD in the years ahead.
A central theme running through the collection reflects the dual focus of the UNCCD, namely the achievement of sustainable development and the mitigation of desertification and drought. In this respect, the volume highlights a key challenge of global sustainable development governance broadly and of desertification governance specifically, namely how to successfully link environmental and poverty reduction objectives. Though the UNCCD was originally designed to integrate poverty alleviation, sustainable economic growth and social development, efforts to implement its provisions are often hindered by questions concerning whether it is an environmental or a development convention (pp. 76, 138). While there is scope for both interpretations, the Convention is often perceived to privilege the environment (Ibid.). For example, the government bodies responsible for implementing the NAPs in affected countries are generally located in environment ministries. This in turn creates a problem; environment ministries are often under-funded, under-staffed and politically marginalised ‘with very limited influence on development planning’ (p. 200). Environment ministries are also often ‘without adequate links to ministries of finance, agriculture, and other departments poised to influence policies and budgets pertinent to UNCCD implementation (such as rural development or agriculture)’ (p. 138). In other words, the integration the Convention sought between environment and poverty alleviation is impeded by this separation in the implementation of its provisions.
This situation poses a problem for sustained dryland development and the mitigation of desertification; neither is likely to be achieved if efforts to combat desertification are not fully integrated within broader development strategies since in rural dryland regions, land degradation impacts poverty alleviation while the lack of development often hinders ecological sustainability. Hence, the incorporation of the many facets of sustainable land management in dryland areas is not only preferred, but is necessary for addressing both poverty and desertification. Indeed, the implementation of the UNCCD requires its provisions to be integrated within mainstream development practices. Such ‘mainstreaming’ should not be out of reach for the UNCCD since the convention itself, the editors argue, has within it the ability to bridge ‘the very distinctive worlds of environmental and development governance’ (p. 199).
On this issue, the volume successfully draws attention to both the strengths and weaknesses of the implementation of UNCCD as an instrument of global sustainable development governance and is a valuable contribution to knowledge about the effects of desertification on development and how the implementation of the UNCCD might be valuable to achieving sustainable land management in drylands. It is recommended for academic audiences as well as development practitioners, particularly those concerned with rural dryland regions.
The Investigation
Peter Weiss, adapted by Jean Beaudrillard, played at The Young Vic Theatre, London by the Rwandan company, Urwintore. Reviewed by Victoria Brittain.
Travelling in Rwanda in the early years after the genocide of 1994, lines of prisoners in pink pyjamas, repairing roads or buildings, were a commonplace part of the landscape. The sheer numbers of prisoners was overwhelming – 120,000. Who were they? And how were they ever to be brought to trial, especially in a country with a judiciary shattered like all the administration?
Inside a women's prison I once spent several hours interviewing a number of women whose dossiers indicated their deep involvement in rapes, mutilations and murders of other women, and of children. None of them showed the faintest hint of remorse or guilt, all claimed mistaken identity or settling of old village scores were the reasons for their incarceration. Inside the huge Kimironko prison in Kigali the governor described how the men's old lines of authority that had drawn every level of society into the killing, remained intact inside the prison. No one was confessing to their role in the genocide of the Tutsis, in which a million or more people died in three short months.
The army and the church were the most powerful organisations in Rwanda; without them there would have been no genocide. In those first years after 1994 the confidence of the perpetrators across the social spectrum was high that their power would be back with a new war launched from over the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo. For them, the Rwanda Patriotic Front was based on a Tutsi minority that would not be allowed to survive.
Dorcy Rugamba, a dancer, actor, author and director, left Rwanda a week after the massacre of his family of artists on the first day of the genocide. His direction of Peter Weiss's ‘The Investigation’, is a revisiting of the Nazi war crimes trial and, also, as he puts it, ‘it is our own time in history that we examine.’
The words of Weiss' play come from the eighteen month Auschwitz trial which began in Frankfurt in 1963. There were 22 defendants, from SS men to kapos, the German criminals used for low level control in Auschwitz, and 319 witnesses.
The seven Rwandan actors, all dressed in various simple cream suits, are on a completely bare stage backed by large screens for the English translation of their French delivery. Nothing distracts from the power of the words. Rugamaba has called the play ‘our gateway to questioning this world which continues to permit such genocides to be committed with such indifference.’
As though to underline the universality of evil responses in extreme situations, the actors shift between playing witnesses, perpetrators, judges, at various times. How heartfelt this must be for the actors who have watched the long and shabby process of the United Nations Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, where corruption spread even among the court personnel, witness protection was poorly organised, and because the court was not even in Rwanda, the trials of a few big fish served none of the redemptive purpose of Frankfurt.
The play captures perfectly the alternative versions of history which have been, and remain, such a feature of writing on the genocide, and of discussions in almost any forum in Rwanda, from village to university. The lies and evasions of Weiss's characters are the lies and evasions these actors know at a profound level few of their audiences could reach. This has been the fundamental story of the big men of the genocide, many of whom fled abroad and in many cases are still evading justice protected by powerful forces.
Anyone who has sat in a village in Rwanda through a long session of gachaca justice – the homegrown trials under 19 locally elected judges – has seen how the lies and evasions can fall away, and the torrent of modest testimonies from friends and neighbours can produce confession and apology.
Weiss's words about annihilating a philosophy, and racial extermination, are delivered with chilling clarity from the actors. In the genocide, Tutsis were killed as ‘cockroaches’. The reminder of the dehumanisation is almost unbearable in the faces of these actors. Similarly unbearable are the stories Weiss tells of the deaths of children. His small girl with a pigtail, shot in the head, is every one of those Rwandan children who met much grimmer individual deaths from machete cuts, or from repeated rape.
Rugamba is appealing against indifference in our world. With this play, he and his actors have created a potent force to stir consciousness. Before the 1994 genocide, Rwanda's Tutsis suffered massacres in 1959, '60, '61, '63, and '72. Generations were in exile. The very survival of Rugamba and his company's artistic vision is a miracle and an inspiration, which The Young Vic have done so well to bring to Britain.
Editor's Note: Would you like to review books, films, theatre, art or music for us? If so, get in touch with our new Reviews Editor, Rita Abrahamsen, e-mail: rra@123456aber.ac.uk