By Stephen Williams

In the footsteps of Mr Kurtz

By Michela Wrong

£13.99 Fourth Estate

ISBN 1-84115-421-0

In 1965, Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, son of domestic servants, a one-time journalist, army officer and Belgian spy, executed a coup and declared himself President of the newly independent Belgian Congo. For the next three decades, he systematically plundered this vast central African nation with an avarice which exceeded mere greed.

Zaire, as Mobutu was to later rename the country, possessed an enormous cornucopia of natural resources - rubber, timber, gold, diamonds, uranium, copper, cobalt, manganese, tin, and zinc - which should have made it one of the richest nations in Africa. Instead, thanks to Mobutu’s comprehensive looting, it became one of the poorest on earth. Its population was forced to endure wretched standards of living, huge urban unemployment, impossibly low wages, hyper-inflation, a crumbling infrastructure, non-existent health and education services and endemic corruption. Adept at intimidation, manipulation, coercion and outright bribery, Mobutu was able to entrench his rule over a population of 40m Zaireans with a seemingly supernatural ability

Michela Wrong describes the rise and eventual fall of Mobutu’s rule with both clarity and precision. The book relies not only on the testimony of those ‘mouvanciers’, local parlance for the elite who profited from Mobutu’s despotic regime - that she tracks down in exile - but also many ordinary people whose lives were so blighted by it. She spent over a year in Zaire working as a journalist and was there at the transfer of power to Laurent Kabilas and his rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces.

The ADF were mainly gumbooted footsoldiers who had marched across half a continent, sweeping Zaire’s ramshackle army before them in what can only be described as a rout. They entered Kinshasa hours after Mobutu had fled the capital and shortly before he died of cancer in Morocco - although it would not be long before Zaireans and the world at large realised that Kabila, their putative liberator, was to all intents and purposes no saviour at all. Very soon, many realised that Kabila’s administration was probably as repressive and incompetent as its predecessor.

For years the West funded Mobutu, even though it must have been clear that little of the money they gave in aid ever reached the intended recipients. Instead, with a technique that verged on the simplistic, Mobutu blurred the distinction between what belonged to the state and what belonged to himself, diverting huge sums to his own overseas bank accounts. Billions of dollars were embezzled, much of it squandered by Mobutu, his family and a favoured few.

Grotesque details

One of the grotesque details revealed by the author is that over 25 years the regime spent over $lm a year on cars for the elite - that in a country whose official annual GDP had dropped to less than $150, and had barely a road system.

Parsimony was never Mobutu’s style, as the extraordinary palace he built for himself in his home town of Gbadolite testifies. It came complete with a nuclear fall-out shelter and a private presidential airport capable of handling the largest of commercial airliners - handy for when he chartered Concordes for overseas shopping trips, to visit his bankers or keep a dental appointment. Gbadolite was just the grandest of a number of palaces he built throughout the country, complete with imported marble, crystal chandeliers and solid gold taps, kept in constant readiness should he choose to visit. Many other luxurious properties were acquired throughout the world, similarly kept in readiness for the occasional visit.

Much of what this book reveals is of course, by now, common knowledge. To this knowledge Michela Wrong adds the details, the first-hand experience, that brings the era into focus. If the book has one shortcoming it is in the lack of detail regarding how much remains of the proceeds of Mobutu’s larceny and their whereabouts. Neither does it address the question of what should become of any recoverable assets - but these are perhaps questions that no-one has, or ever will have, a definitive answer to.

Even from beyond the grave, Mobutu exerts a terrible fascination. Many who met the old dinosaur spoke of his Svengali-like ability to mesmerise an audience. In a subtle way, this story does the same. Michela Wrong brilliantly describes the surreal atmosphere in Kinshasa as events during the last days of Mobutu’s rule unfold at ever quickening pace. It is a story that could only be told by someone who witnessed, at first hand, the rats fleeing the sinking ship, the flow of vintage pink champagne going flat and Mobutu’s house of cards tumbling down. Her courage and professionalism during these tumultuous events contribute to a remarkable book.

Zanzibar

By David Else

£12.95 Bradt Publications

ISBN 1-84162-013-0

Zanzibar must rank - along with Mt Kilimanjaro and a number of excellent game parks - as one of Tanzania’s greatest tourist assets. As almost all guide books unfailingly point out, the very name itself has exotic and romantic associations which are in themselves a primary reason that so many visitors to East Africa choose to spend at least some time on the islands. Most find the experience fascinating, as they encounter a culture that is a rich and heady blend of both African, Arabic and other influences. So it is a little surprising that there are so few quality tourist guide books that deal exclusively with the islands. Most visitors rely on a chapter or two in guidebooks that deal with either Tanzania or East Africa in general.

Comprehensive listings

One of the few guidebooks that is dedicated specifically to Zanzibar is the Bradt Guide, written by an author who has visited many times since the mid-1980s when the islands started welcoming tourists. This, the fourth edition of the book published early in August, incorporates the very latest information on getting to and around Zanzibar. There are comprehensive listings of hotels and guesthouses for visitors, the arts, crafts, music, dance and festivals of the islands; expert coverage of their natural history including birds, mammals, marine life and flora; a section on the Swahili language; and recommendations for websites and resources for further research.

Whether you are seeking a perfect beach holiday, want to take a ‘spice tour’ of the islands or just spend time in Zanzibar’s Stone Town - a UNESCO World Heritage Site - David Else’s careful and comprehensive guide is an ideal companion. Yet even he recognises the limitations of a single book trying to cover such a complex number of subjects.

He warns that prices have risen considerably over the last few years and that there is little reason to think this trend will not continue, but this factor should not dissuade the visitor. Zanzibar is a unique destination, and to keep it special he urges visitors to ‘behave in a sensible and appropriate manner, treat the local people with consideration and respect, support local businesses and conservation schemes, travel with an open mind and see the islands of Zanzibar as a community, not just a theme park in the sun’.

East Africa Handbook 2000

Edited by Michael Hodd

£14.99 Footprint Handbooks

ISBN 0-8442-4630-1

This new guidebook, the sixth edition, updates travel not only in Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar and Uganda but also Djibouti, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Practically all the information a traveller would need is set out in a well designed format, from preparations and advice on visas and formalities to hotels, healthcare, places to eat, places to see, local tour companies and transport details. The 37-page colour section features excellent wildlife photography, and a useful table helpfully indicates where and when you might reasonably expect to sight the various flora and fauna.

Footprint has a long history in producing travel guides. Its flagship guide to South America has been published annually for the last 75 years. More recently, it has produced some 40 different titles, and its guides have a new supertough paperback format to deal with the rigours of travel.

There is an inherent problem for any travel guidebook author or publisher. It is obviously not possible for a writer to cover six countries, gather information, write the text without some details changing in the meantime.. That said, this guidebook tries to overcome this problem by, for example, not giving hotel rates or restaurant prices but rather grouping them in general cost bands which are unlikely to change substantially. Nor does the author attempt too broad a description of a particular establishment’s service or quality, rightly recognising that these can and do vary from day to day.

Rather, this book’s emphasis and value lies in the comprehensive listings of addresses, e-mail addresses, web sites, telephone and fax numbers. Along with the sensible advice it contains 70 odd ‘shorts’ providing entertaining reading, with short biographies, local legends and humorous fables, historical overviews - as well as telephone codes and travel timetables.

Deliver Us From Evil

Warlords and Peacekeepers in a World of Endless Conflict

By William Shawcross

£20 Bloomsbury

ISBN 0-7475-4844-7

A decade ago, with the collapse of communism, hopes were raised that the ending of the Cold War that had dominated international relations since the end of World War II would signal what former US President George Bush described as a ‘new world order’.

A new era would see an end to the super-powers’ proxy wars of the previous five decades. A consequent ‘peace dividend’ resulting from a reduction in the super powers’ arms race spending was, the argument ran, a chance for the world to turn its back on confrontation and concentrate on economic development.

Those hopes were soon to be dashed. True, classic international wars became less common, but there was a rapid rise in conflicts, the power of warlords and associated humanitarian disasters around the world.

What transpired was an unprecedented multiplication of internal conflagrations and increasing demands that the United Nations intervene to halt the tragic consequences for civilian populations.

William Shawcross notes that in the 45 years from the formation of the UN in 1945 to the beginning of the 1990s, there were a total of 13 UN peace keeping missions, but in the last decade alone, there have been more than 20 UN peace keeping operations.

Kofi Annan’s challenge

This book tells the story of international peace keeping in the post-Cold War period. The author’s reputation as one of the world’s leading print and broadcast journalists gave him privileged access to global policy makers, diplomats and humanitarian aid officials.

In the course of writing the book, he travelled to the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Algeria, Nigeria, Albania and Afghanistan. Some of these trips he made in the company of Kofi Annan, first when he was head of the UN’s peace keeping department and later after he had become the UN secretary general at the end of 1996.

Kofi Annan has come to personify the United Nations perhaps more than any other secretary general since Dag Hammarskjold, and arguably faces a greater challenge than any of his predecessors to meet the conflicting demands of the international community to provide moral leadership for the world.

Set against the limitations imposed on the UN by a lack of international strategies, resources, structures, chains of command or indeed clear mandates, William Shawcross is not that far from the mark in describing the secretary general as having been gifted ‘a job from hell’.

The author is very careful not to blame the secretary general for the UN’s recent perceived failings, by highlighting the way the UN’s response to many of the world’s conflicts is determined by constraints and delays imposed by some UN member states, in particular those that sit on the UN’s Security Council. He argues that these member states have frequently hindered much-needed humanitarian assistance such as peace-keeping missions.

The book also examines highly contentious arguments that the UN should, where intervention is deemed too dangerous, employ the services of mercenary groups, or even allow conflicts to play themselves out rather than risk intervention itself prolonging a conflict.

Less contentious is the implied call for a fundamental change in the way that the UN is empowered to deal with its international responsibilities. It is also a call for state sovereignty and strategic interests to be subsumed in the interests of individual rights and liberty. That the UN should embark on a process of re-invention is difficult to refute, after all, the world has changed substantially since its inception in 1945. But reaching international agreement on how this might be achieved is a daunting prospect. Even the question of how the institution should be financed is certain to raise huge difficulties, even before the central problem of how it should be mandated to conduct international interventions.

Millenium Summit Report

A UN report, published to coincide with the Millenium Summit in early September some three months after this book appeared, recommended some key changes to the way UN peacekeeping missions were authorised, funded and deployed.

The ten-man panel who compiled the report included two African experts. It was chaired by Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi of Algeria and also called on General Philip Sabanda of Zimbabwe who led the UN Angola Verification Mission.

The panel’s report proposes, unsurprisingly, that more effective conflict prevention and peace-building strategies should immediately be put in place.

It also calls for prompter authorisation and funding, plus the formation of ‘coherent, multinational brigade-sized forces’ armed, equiped and on constant standby to , which should be able to defend itself and UN mandates with ‘robust rules of engagement.’ However, it drew back from calling for a standing army.

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