Legacies of Power: Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics by RogerSouthall; Henning MelberReview by: John CartwrightCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 41, No. 2(2007), pp. 370-373Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40380239 .

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370 CJAS/RCEA41: 2 2007

Schmidt has provided an excellent starting point for scholars in a range of disciplines to engage further in this enquiry.

The book concludes with an elegant recapitulation of how the elements that had formed the grassroots movement - the peasants, women, youth, trade unionists, and other militant activists - fused momentarily into a political force powerful enough to dictate the course of history in September 1958 when the French colonies went to the polls to accept or reject future membership of the French Community. She tellingly reminds us that two weeks before the vote, Sekou Toure was still unconvinced that Guinea should reject membership. "The political movement that resulted in Guinea's independence was primarily a move- ment of the masses, shaped from the bottom up rather than the top down" (193). She has clearly and convincingly made her case in this scholarly work.

The book's title sounds like a lightly re-written thesis, but readers unfamiliar with Elizabeth Schmidt's work should be reassured. This is a mature work that reads easily and is immensely informative across a wide spectrum of historical issues.

Claire Griffiths University of Hull Yorkshire, England

Roger Southall and Henning Melber, eds. Legacies of Power: Leadership Change and Former Presidents in African Politics. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council and Uppsala: Nordiska Instituted 2006. 350 pp.

As African polities struggle to move toward more institutionalized, less "personalist," regimes, a major problem arises: what place is there for former heads of government? When a president's tenure was terminated only by death or a military coup, there was no problem; he rested in the grave, in jail, or in exile, with the last only rarely offering a possible return to office. In the past two decades, however, an increasing number of heads of government have peacefully handed over power because of constitutional term limits, defeat in an election, or simply age, and have thus remained in their countries as significant political figures, often to the discomfiture of their successors. This book, by thirteen well-estab- lished scholars, provides detailed examination of the behaviour of former presidents (and one who still clings to power, Robert Mugabe) in twelve anglophone African states, and from these builds an overview of the conditions necessary for such leaders to retain a place of importance

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Reviews / Comptes rendus 371

within their countries. All these studies make clear that the key factor in allowing a former

president to maintain a place of honour in his country is that he has run a reasonably non-oppressive and non-exploitive regime, so that there are not large numbers of people clamouring for revenge. Beyond this, the overview by Southall, Simutanyi and Daniel suggests the importance of a genuine humility on the part of the president, a willingness to live without the trappings of power, and linked to this, an acceptance that he is not indispensable, that others are capable of running the government effectively. They also note the importance of an opposition's willingness to allow the out-going president and his entourage to continue their lives with some security, even to the extent of granting immunity for a range of crimes in order to achieve political stability.

None of these conditions are absolute, as the case studies make clear. Henning Melber's portrait of Sam Nujoma shows a man who clearly wanted to keep backstage control of Namibia. Daniel arap Moi in Kenya and to a lesser extent Jerry Rawlings in Ghana each had acted ruthlessly enough that many people would have been glad to see them punished, as the studies by Thomas Wolf and Kwame Boafo-Arthur demonstrate, but the former secured immunity from prosecution, while Rawlings was left at liberty by his successor, despite claims that Kufuor's government was involved in several unsolved murders, and veiled threats of a civil disobedience campaign.

Rawlings7 treatment sharply contrasts with that meted out to Kenneth Kaunda, whose treatment by his victorious opponent, Frederick Chiluba, essentially constituted harassment and an ongoing effort to humiliate and discredit Zambia's "father of the nation." Ironically, as Neo Simutanyi's account makes clear, Chiluba's treat- ment for far more serious and justifiable charges brought by his succes- sor was far gentler; when he eventually did appear before a judge, it was by television from his own home.

One further key element affecting a country's ability to change its leaders is the extent to which the leader has managed to build up a corps of beneficiaries, both relatives and friends, around him, who would suffer severely in the event of a major regime change. Although Botswana has gone through three peaceful changes of leader, power has remained securely in the hands of a small, cohesive elite, a feature which Kenneth Good and Ian Taylor suggest makes Botswana some- thing less than the model democracy that its more enthusiastic support- ers claim. (Good was expelled from Botswana as a "threat to security" when he tried to present this argument at a university seminar.) Even more striking is the case of Robert Mugabe, who has driven his country further along a downward spiral since independence than any other

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372 CJAS / RCEA 41: 2 2OO7

leader, and yet manages to cling to power. While David Moore's account emphasizes Mugabe's own ruthlessness, the ineptitude of his oppo- nents, his shrewd development of patron-client links, and his readiness to play the race and anti-imperialist cards, underpinning this is clearly an aggregation of individuals who have profited greatly from his contin- uation in office, and who are ready to take any kind of action in order to ensure their own continued enjoyment of power.

Nigeria, with no less than six living ex-presidents (four of them military men), could be said to have had more experience dealing with former rulers than any other African country. While one or two of the former military rulers may harbour ambitions to follow Olusegun Obasanjo's path to become elected presidents, most seem to have found sufficient satisfaction either in making money through business or acting as elder statesmen either internally or in international affairs. While Sola Akinrinade is concerned that military men, either in uniform or through their accumulation of wealth, may come back to power, it seems that there are enough conflicting interests in Nigeria that some form of democratic selection is likely to be accepted as the least worst method of choosing rulers, although the extent of corruption is such that many people might still opt for an authoritarian solution.

The two models for ex-presidents, of course, are Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere. As John Daniel points out, Mandela's world stature is such that even a George Bush felt compelled to honour his work despite Mandela's criticism of the United States' Iraq policies, while domestically it was his intervention that led Thabo Mbeki to stop publicly opposing the use of retroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV/ AIDS. Nyerere's experience as ex-president was less satisfying; he had to watch as Ali Hassan Mwinyi reversed his commitment to "social- ism and self-reliance" in favour of a market approach under the guidance of the IMF. Southall also notes that he encountered difficulties in trying to maintain a balance between the mainland and Zanzibar with both intra-Zanzibari rivalries and pressure from mainland MPs making it difficult for him to find any clear path to the goal of a fully united Tanzania. Despite the economic difficulties attributed to his policies, the vast majority of people still respected him,- but members of the polit- ical elite sought to pursue their own agendas regardless of Nyerere's views.

While ex-presidents who have made an honest effort to rule their countries well can enjoy various honorific roles (for example, inclusion in a Council of Elders which could give advice to current regimes, or roving international conciliators), the overview notes that in the case of more abusive or corrupt rulers, "the demands of justice [may have to be] bargained away in return for peace and stability" (18). In this cautionary

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Reviews / Comptes rendus 373

balancing of an ideal with the claims of an imperfect world, the authors provide food for thought for academics as well as for all political leaders contemplating the possible end of their time in office. This book deserves the attention of anyone concerned with the question of how African countries can best develop democratic control over their rulers.

John Cartwright University of Western Ontario London, Ontario

Esi Sutherland- Addy and Aminata Diaw, eds. Women Writing Africa. West Africa and the Sahel: The Women Writing Africa Project, Volume 2. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005.480 pp.

It is high time African women moved onto center stage, with or without anyone's encouragement. Because in our hands lies, perhaps, the last possible hope for ourselves, and for everyone else on the continent (384).

So says Ghanaian writer and critic Ama Ata Aidoo in her 1992 essay "The African Woman Today/' which is included in this quite remarkable anthology.

Following the publication of Women Writing Africa: Volume 1: The Southern Region (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe), Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel is the second volume in a vast and impressive four- volume undertaking that, as the series editors and project co-directors Tuzyline Jita Allan, Abena P. A. Busia, and Florence Howe state in their Note on the Women Writing Africa Project, "aims to restore African women's voices to the public sphere" (xviii) and to foster new readings of African history by documenting the contributions of women from the region.

Indeed, the volume includes a variety of texts by African women and goes well beyond the scope of literature, an expectation that may initially be raised by the word "writing" in the volume's title. In fact, the editors have greatly expanded their understanding of "writing" to include not just oral and written fiction and poetry, but also work songs, praise songs, personal testimonies, letters, speeches, journals, newspaper articles, and legal documents totaling one hundred thirty-two texts by women from twelve nations: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'lvoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Conakry, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. A project of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York and funded by the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, this volume fully succeeds in carrying out its declared aim to make visible the contributions of African women to history and culture.

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