Southern Africa
Old Treacheries and New Deceits
-
- $19.99
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
In this timely and essential book, Stephen Chan explores the political landscape of southern Africa, examining how it's poised to change over the next years and what the repercussions are likely to be across the continent. He focuses on three countries in particular: South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, all of which have remained interconnected since the end of colonial ruleand the overthrow of apartheid.
One of the key themes in the book is the relationship between South Africa and Zimbabwe, and Chan sheds new light on the shared intellectual capacities and interests of the two countries' respective presidents, Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe. Along the way, the personalities and abilities of key players, such as Morgan Tsvangirai, the prime minister of Zimbabwe, and former South African president Thabo Mbeki, emerge in honest and sometimes surprising detail.
In Southern Africa, Chan draws on three decades of experience to provide the definitive inside guide to this complex region and offer insight on how the near future is likely to be a litmus test not just for this trio of countries but for all of Africa.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chan's detailed and morally nuanced study of Southern Africa untangles the knotty history between South Africa and Zimbabwe over the past 30 years, and refers to neighboring Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia to provide contour and color to the region's central and crucial relationship. Chan (Robert Mugabe), a former adviser to various governments in Africa on such issues as Zimbabwe's transition to independence and the reconstruction of Uganda after Idi Amin, distills a convoluted transnational history rife with ethnic tensions, unprecedented economic transformation, and competing visions of democracy into a compulsively readable work. The book packs its biggest punch with deftly rendered portraits of Southern Africa's most iconic political leaders: saintly Mandela, intellectual Mbeki, authoritarian Mugabe, and ambivalent Tsvangirai, to name just a few. Some readers might rue Chan's lack of interest in communicating how the machinations of the political elite affects the citizenry; his focus is squarely on Southern Africa's leaders, questioning and confounding the labels attached to them, and in challenging reductive, Manichean and often Western constructions of African politics wherein one side is inherently "bad" and the other "good."
