The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of America

by Bill Berkeley

Book Overview

Since 1983 journalist Bill Berkeley has traveled through Africa's most troubled lands to seek out the tyrants and military leaders who orchestrate these nations' seemingly intractable wars. Shattering once and for all the myth that ancient tribal hatreds lay at the heart of the continent's troubles, Berkeley instead holds accountable the "Big Men" who came to power during this period, describing the very rational methods behind their apparent madness...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465006426
• ISBN13: 9780465006427
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.7" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Very Accurate and Very Disturbing

I have lived in East Africa, on-and-off, for over 5 years. Having lived in both Ethiopia and Uganda, I was blown away by Berkeley's accurate depiction of the modern history of this region. Berkeley's descriptive narrative of an American observing the madness of Afirca was amazing. This book is a must read for anybody wanting to learn about current affairs in Africa, and Africa's stance in the modern geo-political arena.

"Africa is a nation with a lot of diseases" - George W Bush

This oft quoted remark the president made last year is the epitome of what Berkeley calls the "conventional American conception of Africa as a unitary landscape of unremitting despair." The president and his conventional...wisdom? is not the target of Berkeley's book though. The author says that part of the purpose of THE GRAVES ARE NOT YET FULL is a "pointed rebuttal" to Afro-pessimists, the prime example being Robert D Kaplan and his book THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Similarly to Michela Wrong and her book - IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MR KURTZ, Berkeley sees a lot of the problems in Africa as having foreign origins. Much moreso than Wrong though, he develops on the theme that violence and ethnic warfare are not the results of some "ancient tribal hatreds" in the words of Kaplan, but are in fact organized, manipulated, or orchestrated devices used by various African leaders as a means of exerting control and maintaining power. Ethnic conflicts in Africa he plainly says "are all provoked from on high." He illustrates this point by developing a series of profiles on the manipulative leaders and tales about the victims of their crimes. Berkeley is pretty blunt in his reporting and with his words. He starts off by saying that "this is a book about evil". It should be no surprise then that he is willing to put names to these "creatures of evil". Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire is here, but again, this book is broader than Wrongs', - hers stopped there, but Berkeley looks at South Africa, Liberia, Angola, Sudan and Rwanda. He names Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor, Jonas Savimbi, Hasan Turabi and John Garang. It's not just Africans that are responsible though and in an entire chapter devoted to the role of former Assistant Secretary of State for Africa in the Reagan administration Chester Crocker, we see Berkeley's thesis developed to the full. While not calling the man a war criminal he nevertheless says that he was "the kind of figure many war criminals depend on: an articulate front man, capable of putting an intellectual gloss on otherwise crude power politics." Berkeley believes Crocker is morally guilty of crimes against humanity for supporting the despotic and murderous rule of Samuel Doe in Liberia in the late 1980's. With all these examples of criminal regimes, evil rulers, and morally corrupt and culpable supporters, it's possible to believe that this is an unremittingly bleak book and that the author holds out no hope for Africa. Not so at all. Berkeley says that "not all the news from Africa is bad, and much of it is hopeful." Yoweri Museveni and Uganda are put forth as an example of what a peaceful, democratic, African future might look like.All told this is a well researched, broad ranging book which develops an interesting thesis on the causes of what seems to be such an unyielding problem. Berkeley's rational, well written and very plausible argument does offer hope for Africa. While it is true that despotic regimes and evil rulers are a

Refreshing Insight into African Politics

I bought this book along with Michela Wrong's "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz." Both are must-reads for anyone interested in Africa. The difference is that Wrong's book is a straight-forward narrative of Zaire's descent into anarchy, whereas Berkeley considers several instances of anarchy and goes one step further by attempting to explain how and why these grim situations came about. His central thesis - that anarchy is a tool used by tyrannical "Big Men" to secure and enhance their own power - helps to dispel the myth that Africa's problems are the result of "age-old hatreds" or "tribal conflicts." Berkeley does a great job of explaining the motives and methods of a diverse array of players (ranging from Mobutu to South African generals to American politicians), thus demonstrating their complicity in creating so many of Africa's past and present problems.Best of all, Berkeley handles all this weighty material in a very user-friendly manner. The book is well-organized, the points are made clearly and strongly, and his first-hand accounts are vivid and fascinating - more than enough to keep you turning the pages. Highly recommended for anyone looking to understand modern Africa.

If you read one book...

...about ethnic conflict with all its tragic consequences, power-and spoils-hungry predators, and outsider opportunists, this is the one.Berkeley is very effective at showing how chaos is the fertile ground in which warlords sprout and tyranny and terror are the means through which they exploit the circumstances to the maximum.I rate him alongside Michael Ignatieff as one of the best writer-analysts of the humanitarian crises that present perhaps the most compelling international (and moral) challenge of our time. I have work on these issues for the past decade and would put this book at or near the top of any reading list.

At last, a western reporter who doesn't condescend to Africa

As an african who is tired of reading self-fulfilling in-anities in the western press about how africans are programmed to commit "tribal violence" on each other, this book is a refreshing breath of clean air. It shows how political elites, and their backers use ethnicity as a means for holding on to power. It details how conscience is completely absent in the people who draft the foreign policies to support the dictators of the day, taking former assistant secretary of state Chester Crocker as an example. It also looks at the cynical manipulation of ethnic tensions by erstwhile "leaders" to get power (such as Charles Taylor of Liberia), or to maintain it (Mobutu of Zaire). (Mobutu is given praise by president after president in his 33 years of looting, one calling him "an uncommonly wise leader). The author repeats his observation that most african "tribes" live together in peace, but that conflict is manufactured by the elites. He gives the example of Liberia, where two "tribes" were involved in killing each other, but how just across the border, which is nothing more than a dried out this river bed, the same two tribes live together with no problem. This book is a must read for Africans, africanists, and most of all, western journalists who only superficially write on Africa.