The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

806 Pages·2011·6.93 MB·English

by  Martin Meredith

Table of Contents

Praise
Title Page
Epigraph
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Introduction
PART I

Chapter 1 - THE GOLD COAST EXPERIMENT
Chapter 2 - REVOLT ON THE NILE
Chapter 3 - LAND OF THE SETTING SUN
Chapter 4 - L’AFRIQUE NOIRE
Chapter 5 - WINDS OF CHANGE
Chapter 6 - HEART OF DARKNESS
Chapter 7 - THE WHITE SOUTH
PART II

Chapter 8 - THE BIRTH OF NATIONS
Chapter 9 - THE FIRST DANCE OF FREEDOM
Chapter 10 - FEET OF CLAY
Chapter 11 - A HOUSE DIVIDED
Chapter 12 - DEATH OF AN EMPEROR
Chapter 13 - THE COMING OF TYRANTS
Chapter 14 - IN SEARCH OF UJAMAA
Chapter 15 - THE PASSING OF THE OLD GUARD
Chapter 16 - THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
Chapter 17 - THE GREAT PLUNDERER
Chapter 18 - WHITE DOMINOES
PART III
Chapter 19 - RED TEARS
Chapter 20 - FAULT LINES
Chapter 21 - THE SCOURGE OF AIDS
Chapter 22 - THE LOST DECADE
Chapter 23 - THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY
Chapter 24 - A TIME OF TRIUMPH
PART IV

Chapter 25 - IN THE NAME OF THE PROPHET
Chapter 26 - BLACK HAWK DOWN
Chapter 27 - THE GRAVES ARE NOT YET FULL
Chapter 28 - WHERE VULTURES FLY
Chapter 29 - BLOOD DIAMONDS
Chapter 30 - NO CONDITION IS PERMANENT
Chapter 31 - THE HONOUR OF LIVING
Chapter 32 - BLACK GOLD
Chapter 33 - A DEGREE IN VIOLENCE
Chapter 34 - SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW
Chapter 35 - OUT OF AFRICA
CHAPTER NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Copyright Page
Praise for the Fate of Africa

“A welcome and significant contribution to the local and global debate about the
state of the continent.”
—AllAfrica.com

“Though today an independent scholar, Meredith was one of those now-too-rare
journalists who knew his beat intimately, having lived on and off (mostly on) in
Africa for 40 years, informing a keen and humane mind with all things African.
It shows here in the depth and fluid familiarity of his narrative, light on its feet
for so wildly complex a picture. Meredith isn’t afraid of venturing an opinion,
but what he dines on are basic realities: who did what when, and the
consequences. These he spreads before his readers, for them to draw their own,
now also informed, conclusions.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“For the author, even organizing this information is a hugely daunting job. How
can such vast amounts of information be analyzed for the reader? One way was
to follow parallel developments in different places—which is more or less how
Mr. Meredith works, with attention to the hair-trigger ways in which one coup or
crisis could set off subsequent disasters. He is able to steer the book firmly
without compromising its hard-won clarity.”
—New York Times

“A solid journalistic and analytical recounting of recent African history with a
hard, dispassionate eye without an ideological edge . . . The Fate of Africa . . . is
a big, important book that, although at times benumbing in its litany of horror
and hopelessness, desperately deserves to be widely read and discussed.”
—Indianapolis Star
“The Fate of Africa is a comprehensive, wonderfully readable survey of the
entire continent’s recent past.... Blessed with a strong, clean prose style, the
author has delivered a work that offers an education in one volume and, despite
its length, the book maintains the pace of an artful novel. . . .”
—Ralph Peters, New York Post

“Meredith first traveled up the Nile from Cairo in 1964 as a 21-year-old and
claims that, in many ways, his ‘African journey has continued ever since.’ His
careful, detailed analysis, his dispassionate but not detached writing, and his
evident wit mean that we might all hope his journey continues for much longer.”
—The Weekly Standard

“Meredith’s exhaustive study appears just as world leaders are finally trying to
come to grips with Africa’s needs. It starkly underlines the urgency of that task.”
—Providence Journal

“In this book [Meredith] provides the most comprehensive description of the
causes and consequences of failure in quite a while.”
—Boston Globe

“The book is elegantly written as well as unerringly accurate, and despite its
considerable length it holds the attention of the reader to the end.”
—Financial Times

“[Meredith’s] massive but very readable examination of African history over the
past century unfolds like a drawn-out tragedy. . . This is a brilliant and vitally
important work for all who wish to understand Africa and its beleaguered
people.”
—Booklist starred review

“Complex, but highly accessible... Sharp-edged, politically astute.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“In Africa the past does matter. It explains the present and no one is going to
move anywhere without it. That is why this book is important. It’s about how we
got here. The legions of development missionaries, trained in development
theory, heading off to Africa’s capitals to work in air-conditioned offices, should
all be given a copy free. The book is also a great narrative. Delivered in
digestible chunks, it plots the politics of independent Africa country by country.
Meredith is at his best telling the story of the rise and fall of each ruler. African
potentates are nothing if not dramatic... Meredith has given a spectacularly clear
view of the African political jungle.”
—Richard Dowden, Spectator
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi – Out of Africa always something new

Pliny the Elder