Martin Meredith's "The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent since Independence," initially published in 2005, delves into the complex history of Africa following the wave of independence movements in the 1950s and beyond. Meredith, a British journalist and author, presents a comprehensive, albeit critical, view of the challenges and failures that have plagued the continent in the post-colonial era.
The book seeks to explore and explain the myriad problems that Africa has faced in the past half-century, and faces still, focusing on the key personalities, events and themes of the independence era
The view from reviewers and the book’s own publishers suggests a familiar vision of Africa: a problem of monumental proportions brought about purely internally, what a sad place, but the children still smile, so maybe we should send some money this month.
Meredith’s book charts the history of African states in the half-century since the colonial powers either left or were kicked out. In this big, exhaustive history Martin Meredith leaves us in little doubt as to what he believes is the primary cause of Africa’s pain: its corrupt, tyrannical, incompetent, thieving, “vampire-like” leaders.
Given the state of conversations around Africa in the mid-2000s-a decade after the Rwandan genocide, in the midst of a widely publicized genocide and civil war in Sudan, and at a moment that many saw as a period of economic revival, with nations like South Africa, chosen to host the FIFA World Cup in 2010, and Nigeria, with its massive oil reserves, seen as leading the way-it’s not surprising that a history offering (by virtue of its ominous title) a judgment on just how well the whole independence thing had gone, would go over well.
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The book is an in-depth investigation into the history of Africa since European decolonisation. Meredith examines the many challenges much of Africa has faced including civil conflict and lawlessness, government corruption and dictatorships.
Post-Colonial Africa: A Story of Hope and DespairIn The Fate of Africa, Martin Meredith presents a comprehensive account of the continent's post-colonial history.
He begins by portraying the optimism and hope that accompanied Africa's decolonization in the 1960s. African leaders, inspired by the promise of freedom and self-determination, embarked on nation-building projects, vowing to create prosperous and just societies for their people.
However, this initial enthusiasm soon gave way to a harsher reality.
Meredith highlights the challenges faced by these newly independent nations: a lack of infrastructure, weak economies, and the legacy of colonialism, including artificial borders that divided ethnic groups and fueled conflict. The author also discusses the Cold War's impact on Africa, where superpowers vied for influence, often exacerbating existing tensions.
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As the book progresses, Meredith delves into the rise of autocratic regimes across the continent. He points to leaders like Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and Idi Amin of Uganda, who used their power to enrich themselves while suppressing dissent.
These dictatorial regimes, characterized by corruption, human rights abuses, and economic mismanagement, led to widespread disillusionment and unrest among their citizens.
The 1980s and 1990s saw Africa engulfed in a series of devastating civil wars. Meredith provides detailed accounts of conflicts in countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, and Rwanda. He vividly illustrates the human cost of these wars, with millions of lives lost, widespread displacement, and unimaginable suffering.
In the latter part of The Fate of Africa, Meredith explores the turn of the millennium as a period of cautious optimism. The end of apartheid in South Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela symbolized the triumph of justice and reconciliation over racial oppression.
Nelson Mandela, a symbol of hope and reconciliation in Africa.
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Additionally, the spread of democracy in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya offered hope for a more stable and prosperous future.
However, this optimism is tempered by the persistence of old challenges and the emergence of new ones. The AIDS epidemic, environmental degradation, and the exploitation of natural resources by foreign powers all continue to plague the continent.
AIDS awareness campaign in Africa.
Moreover, the phenomenon of 'failed states' - countries unable to provide basic services to their citizens - remains a significant concern.
The tome began with a quote from Pliny the Elder: “Out of Africa, always something new.” On a continent with so many diverse cultures, ethnic groups and nations, the development of each country followed the same pattern.
Ghana’s independence on 6 March 1957 served as the centerpiece of the book’s beginning. The first African nation to achieve independence from a colonial power became a major event in world history. This served as one of the very few positive events to take place throughout the entire narrative. Some rare others included Nelson Mandela’s election to the South African Presidency and the end of apartheid.
Another occurred when Abdou Diof of Senegal left office after losing an election in March of 2000. At the time, he was only the fourth African leader in four decades to relinquish power voluntarily.
Although my version of The Fate of Africa came out over a decade ago, I found the author’s analysis of foreign aid very topical. Angus Deaton received the Nobel Prize in Economics this year. One of his areas of study concerned how outside financial support can restrain a country’s development.
In his history, Mr. Meredith referenced the “donor fatigue” that took place in the 1980s. The West became frustrated with the profligacy of various African rulers. The author also provided myriad details how leaders used donor finance to delay as well as implement reforms.
Earlier in the book Mr. Meredith detailed how African leaders “selfishly” pursued development goals.
The author explicated the rise of political Islam on the continent. He traced its origins to the “demise of the Pan-Arab nationalism of the 1960s” and the Arab defeat in the Six Day War of 1967.
Meredith traced its development in multiple countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Somalia. Of course, he elucidated its permeation into Sudan.
As disturbing as I found the overall book, I thought it well written. His lucidity made the overall narrative more impactful. The author even included some good lines to make the text more memorable. Kenyans resorted to humor in explaining how their court system worked. “Why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?” They joked.
At times I wondered about the author’s core purpose in writing it. For a time I thought he aspired to educate people about the avaricious governance that infected the continent and the ensuing catastrophic human suffering it begot.
While Meredith criticized the programs of Britain, France and Belgium, I thought he reserved his main ire for the United States.
Here’s his commentary on American policy towards Liberia.
But the most enthusiastic visitor was Richard Nixon, then the United States vice-president. From the moment he touched down in Accra, he rushed about shaking hands, hugging paramount chiefs, fondling black babies and posing for photographs. It was not always to good effect. Surrounded by a crowd of Ghanaians at an official ceremony, he slapped one man on the shoulder and asked what it felt like to be free. “I wouldn’t know, sir,” replied the man.
The repercussions of Sudan’s alliance with Islamist extremists reverberated for many years. In August 1998 “sleeper” cells planted by as-Qa’eda in East Africa in 1994 bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 263 people and injuring more than 5,000. President Clinton retaliated by ordering a missile strike against a pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, claiming it was being used to manufacture chemical weapons. No credible evidence was ever provided to support the claim but Sudan lost a large part of its capacity to produce medical supplies.
First Meredith attacked the US for being too passive. When they responded with force against a brutal dictator, he criticized that.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan (a native Ghanaian) observed, “Let us be careful not to mistake hope for achievement.” Sadly, there’s been exponentially more of the former throughout Africa’s postwar history.
The book leaves me with many questions, even though its accessible narrative enlarged my historical understanding. One is how tribal rivalries and national identities can be reconciled, a question at the heart of so many of the tragic conflicts on this continent. Another is, what can be done to develop the rule of law and leadership with integrity? A third question is how can the rest of the world community constructively engage with Africa without promoting new forms of colonialism or dependencies that thwart the indigenous development throughout this continent?
As a Christian, I also found myself wondering whether there is a greater role for the church throughout Africa in promoting reconciliation and ethical practice, along the line of Desmond Tutu’s work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. The final thing I found myself curious about is whether there are good indigenous works of African history, rather than those written by westerners, which seem to dominate the book lists in this area?
Mr. Meredith gave the expression “the dark continent” a whole new connotation in The Fate of Africa. This narrative provided an historical overview of the region’s development from the end of the Second World War through 2005; at least in my version of the book. An intriguing synopsis resulted from it.
Regardless of the successes and failures of the various political leaders of post-independence Africa, Meredith casts a disparaging eye on nationalist movements, communists, socialists, revolutionaries of any stripe, even minor reformers; he sees their ideas as pointless to engage with because, after all, they failed. How or why they failed is rarely the point; they just did.
This is not to say that there weren’t many failures among African leaders and within African revolutionary and nationalist movements, or that even the most lauded leaders on the Left were infallible, whether Nkumah or Sankara or Lumumba. But so were there many failures among leaders across the world in the same period.
What is particularly striking is Meredith’s insistence that it is Africans’ fault for failing when the deck was so thoroughly stacked; or, better yet, the deck was stripped of all the good cards to begin with. Meredith treats US, Western, and Soviet intervention, for example the proxy wars in the Congo and Angola, as simple facts rather than evidence of a system of neocolonialism at work that might, just maybe, have had some role in destabilizing African efforts to build a future.
Love, because Meredith provides, in short, the kind of introduction to major issues, figures, and periods in African history that would take reading two dozen other books to get a basic grasp on. Love, because he’s given me a starting point for a much deeper understanding than I had, one I can now build on with greater confidence in how individual national histories feed into a larger estuary of African histories.
Hate, because Meredith cannot take a moment to think of empire as a net negative, as an endless atrocity committed daily for decades, and in some cases, hundreds of years on African peoples across the continent.
Hate, because Meredith has no sense of the Africanness of the histories he is telling, only the foreign correspondent’s view.
As a young man in the sixties, I learned of the independence from colonial rule achieved by various African states. In the seventies, I read of the brutal regime of Idi Amin. In the 80s, we listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland and its songs speaking of the beauties of Africa and the longings for freedom from apartheid. Our hearts were stirred by the transition from apartheid to black rule under Nelson Mandela in the 1990s. While Africa emerges again and again in our news and collective consciousness, I am like many others in understanding relatively little about this huge continent and so I picked up this history to begin to redress that lack.
The Rise and Fall of Kwame Nkrumah
Meredith begins by summarizing the colonial history and its arbitrary dividing up of Africa into colonial entities, often throwing together tribal groups significantly at odds with each other. Ethiopia alone succeeded in avoiding colonial rule. He then chronicles the beginnings of independence first with Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah in 1957, and the high hopes he promoted of Pan-Africanism and African leaders leading independent nations. He then follows independence movements from country to country-Egypt, French-speaking Africa, other English colonies. The book seems to from bad to worse until the final chapters on South Africa. We see the descent into the maelstrom of Somalia and Rwanda and the aftermath of bloody tribal war that led to the fall of Mobutu in Zaire.
| Decade | Key Events/Trends |
|---|---|
| 1960s | Decolonization, Pan-Africanism, high hopes for independence. |
| 1970s | Rise of brutal regimes (e.g., Idi Amin), increasing instability. |
| 1980s-1990s | Devastating civil wars, economic decline, donor fatigue. |
| 2000s | Cautious optimism, end of apartheid, spread of democracy in some countries, persistent challenges (AIDS, environmental degradation). |
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