The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence Paperback – 29 April 2021

This is the most depressing history book I have ever read, apart from accounts of the holocaust. It is a damning indictment on Africa's political leaders, and the short sighted naïve 1960 liberals, supported by the jealous empire hating Americans, who allowed it all to happen. From north to south, east to West, as the colonialists left, so dictators supported by tribal cronies took over and established regimes specialising in economic rape, terror, and war. Nkrumah, leader of the first country to get independence, was hailed as a saviour, jailed his opponents, turned Ghana into a one party state in 1964 and utterly ruined the economy with useless projects and constant corruption. The army eventually took over, but to no effect. After a string of coups by 1982 the country `was a wasteland, crumbling in ruins at every level'. Eventually Rawlings established a viable dictatorship. In the Congo the first ruler Lumumba was brutally murdered by his tribal enemies in 1961, with the connivance of the Belgians. The revenge from Lumumba's tribe was awful. Over a million died. Out of this blood bath emerged General Mobuto, who ruled by terror from day one and was soon considered a semi god, `who grew the trees and plants...'. Actually he bankrupted this rich country, shifting millions to those notorious Swiss banks. Corruption and waste spread, making men in the words on one bishop into `assassins'. Kenyatta turned Kenya into a one party state in 1969, but under his watch, apart from the slaughter of 70,000 elephants for the profitable ivory trade, the country stayed reasonably intact. Moi took over after his death and tightened the screws of the dictatorship, and corruption became epidemic and critics disappeared. In Uganda the brutality of Idi Amin is well known, though the suspicion of blood rituals over his victims and even eating their body parts was new to me. At least 25,000 had been killed before he was removed from power in 1979. If Haile Selassie had died in 1972 when he was eighty he would have been remembered as a firm but sensible autocratic ruler: unfortunately he lived on and utterly failed to deal with the famine that killed thousands in 1973. There was an uprising and the old emperor was ousted. Major Mengistu Mariam took over and made Marxism the country's new religion. The result was economic chaos and constant war, both internally and with neighbouring Eritrea. And then in 1984, while Mengistu's stooges were preparing lavish celebration for the revolution's tenth anniversary, famine again struck, not just because of precarious mother nature, but also because of the inefficiency of the new state farms, and most damningly because Mengistu used food as a weapon against rebels. During the anniversary celebrations not a word was said about the appalling famine. But then came surely one of the BBC's finest hours, or rather ten minutes, when their correspondent Michael Buerk made a short news film on the famine. The Western agencies (and Bob Geldof) moved in, but were too late to save the estimated million who had perished while Mengistu had sipped champagne in praise of his revolution. And so in country after country - Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Sudan, Ruanda, Algeria -Meredith takes us on this hugely depressing journey, and there's no time here to get onto AIDS. He is a superb writer, and while the detail is never lacking, he never loses the wood for the trees and keeps on reminding us of different parts of the stories, so at the end we really have just one depressing canvas of Africa's last fifty years. There is no political posturing, he just lets the account speak for itself. Sane people should come to two conclusions. First of all the depravity of man is a reality; and secondly benign colonialism operated by people who know how to rule fairly and set up stable institutions is a million times better than rampant tribalism. The rush to get out of Africa was a disgrace caused by the fact Europe could not afford to rule there anymore if it meant keeping down nationalistic insurgencies, and by a woeful naivety on the part of the Americans who on the basis of biased history about the tragedy of their separation from England, had concluded all colonialism was wrong, so a part of the deal for their joining in the Second World War was that Europe got rid of her empires. What a happier place Africa and the world would have been if they had joined the colonial enterprise. They should have taken the mantle from the Europeans; instead they have relied on quick fix solutions that have proved disastrous. But we are straying from Meredith's outstanding book, an absolute must if you are interested in world history and don't want to waste money on aid.

Back in 2018 I was reading Thomas Pakenham’s ‘The Scramble for Africa’ and then I came across this similarly sized tome. Martin Meredith certainly has all the credentials for such a huge undertaking... Everything you wanted to know about Africa, but were afraid to ask. For this is the story of the Scramble out of Africa, when the European powers wearied by two World Wars, lacked the resources and inclination to cling onto their new possessions. The end result was tribal conflict on a massive scale, with some countries spiralling into civil war and even genocide. A major issue was of course artificial border demarcations which cut through tribal lands. It would be interesting to speculate on how Africa would be today without the European involvement.Unfortunately despite huge mineral and other resources, Africa’s new leaders squandered a lot of the continent’s wealth. It was also unfortunate that Africa was gaining independence during the Cold War years, with many countries tied up in the proxy wars between the big powers. The book details also how foreign aid has been a curse rather than a cure to Africa’s ills plus the Live Aid fiasco in Ethiopia. In many cases it is a story of the oppressed becoming the oppressors. Humans are humans whatever their colour or ethnic background and all will squabble over the morsels that come their way. Martin Meredith tells how the ‘Big Men’ of Africa have run their countries like feudal fiefdoms, answerable to no-one. To make matters worse, over the past couple of decades the Chinese have been invited in and are now the new colonialists. Robert Mugabe said ‘We must turn from the West and face the East.’Massive population growth has been thrown into the mix and between 1960 and 1990 Africa’s population grew from 200 to 450 million. It now stands at 1.3 billion and the fertility rate remains depressingly high at nearly five children per woman in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions are migrating to urban areas into sprawling slums around major cities and that will create many more problems.‘From hero to zero’ I think would be the best description of most African leaders, though any leader to be honest has at least a touch of megalomania about him. Nice people, shame about the Government is the usual retort when talking about politics. So the conclusion is one set of brutal dictators replaced by another, and those at the bottom of the pile remaining there. Maybe that is the true meaning of the Pliny quote ‘Out of Africa always something new,’ with Livingstone’s open sore still suppurating.