The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa (review)

American press coverage of Africa focuses almost exclusively on disasters—civil wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Ivory Coast; ethnic and religious violence in Rwanda and Nigeria; drought and famine in Ethiopia and Somalia. Rarely covered are positive events—such as the successful democratic transitions in Senegal and Kenya—or Africa's great writers and musicians—much less the courage, strength, and creativity of ordinary Africans. As a result, most Americans imagine Africa to be a continent of unrelenting and inexplicable misery and chaos, run by corrupt madmen, and the population is seen as pitiful and helpless. Disasters are reported with little context, historical or otherwise, leaving most people to imagine that the widespread suffering arises from something inherent to Africa or its people.

In The Graves Are Not Yet Full, journalist Bill Berkeley seeks to dispel the simplistic and often racist popular interpretations of modern Africa by demystifying the violence that plagues much of the continent. While he explores a variety of factors that contribute to the many wars, Berkeley focuses primarily on the role of leadership. As he explains, "America's awareness of Africa focuses overwhelmingly on the victims. I found I was interested mostly in the perpetrators" (p. 7). Taking the cases of Liberia, Congo/Zaire, South Africa, Sudan, and Rwanda, he discusses the responsibilities of the international community, the weight of history, and the destabilizing effects of poverty. But in each case he comes back to the individuals whose political machinations, greed, and incompetence he proposes as the root cause of violence. "It is a phenomenon that runs like poison through all of Africa's seemingly senseless wars: Big Men using little men, cynically maneuvering for power and booty while thousands perish" (p. 14).

Berkeley draws on a wealth of personal experience and interview data, as well as a careful reading of secondary texts. His writing is lucid and engaging as he recounts his travels through Africa and the numerous interviews he conducted, not only with African leaders, but with many ordinary people as well. In each of the cases, Berkeley provides compelling images of tragedy, a succinct history, and a variety of factors behind the violence.

In contrast to many journalists who have covered Africa, Berkeley eschews easy answers. For example, he writes of the Rwandan genocide, "This was the culture of obedience, chillingly illuminated, at the very heart of Rwanda's darkness.... It goes a long way toward explaining the velocity of a mass slaughter that was orchestrated on high but implemented by tens of thousands of ordinary civilians at the grass roots" (p.256). But he is quick to qualify what could be construed as too simple a cultural explanation: "Of course, many other factors also contributed to the genocide: a menacing insurgency, external arms deliveries to all sides, economic insecurities and acute population pressures" (p. 257).

While considering a range of explanations, in each case Berkeley returns to the role of national leaders. "All of Africa's ethnic conflicts start at the top and spread downward," he states. "People hungry for power use violence as a means of achieving it. They use ethnicity to mobilize constituencies—above all, the militias they need to vanquish their foes and protect themselves" (p. 35). He sees the international community as a major factor in explaining why venal rulers are able to achieve and maintain positions of power, often against the wishes of their populations. He spends an early chapter discussing Chester Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs under the Reagan administration, whose involvement in the continent Berkeley sees as illustrative of the cynical self-interest with which American administrations generally have operated. Yet in the end the author lays the primary responsibility for Africa's suffering at the feet of African leaders themselves, whom he...