Book review: The Challenge For Africa

The Challenge for Africa. Wangari Maathai. William Heinemann. 2009. 319 pages.

Outside Africa Wangari Maathai is known mainly for her work as founder of the Green Belt Movement, and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Inside her country, Kenya, she is respected as an often lone voice defending the rain forests from being cut down, and the environment from degradation. She is also known as someone who has often risked arrest, assault and public humiliation in the cause of human rights. In this, her third book –she has published one on the Green Belt Movement, as well as her autobiography, Unbowed, she writes from experience and with authority on the present situation of a continent in a stage of delicate transition.

Africa, south of the Sahara, she writes, has been seen as a land of unparalleled riches, startling beauty, and extraordinary wild life; as a place of strange and at times primitive tribal customs, civil disorder and armed militias; of child labour and child soldiers, mud huts, open sewers and shantytowns; of corruption, dictatorship and genocide. These and other perceptions have framed the world’s response to Africa.

Yet, she goes on, a dangerous and unfortunate psychological process ensues that subtly and perhaps unconsciously affirms to Africans their inability to be agents for their own destiny. These depictions fail to capture another reality, which is that every day, tens of millions of African women and men go about their business, live their lives responsibly and industriously, and look after their immediate and extended families, even if they lack certain material possessions, higher education or access to the range of opportunities and goods available to the wealthy in other countries or even their own. These are the real African heroes, and it is these images the world should see more of.

The Western countries seem at times only to eager too hail African elections as “free and fair,” when they are neither. On that count alone, few African countries can be said to be “democratic.” Democracy, besides, isn’t just “one man, one vote.” It means the protection of minority rights; an independent judiciary; an informed and engaged citizenry; an independent press and media; the rights to assemble and advocate for one’s view peacefully without fear of reprisal or arbitrary arrest; and an empowered civil society that can operate without intimidation.

By this definition many countries in Africa –and the rest of the developing, and even developed world- fall short. In Africa, she maintains, democratic space can only be created when a critical mass of people is aware of the situation and willing to speak out, protest, monitor government actions and risk harassment, arrest or even death. That courage requires a leader, or his backers, who will acknowledge the rights of the people to self-determination and prosperity, and so demonstrate a leadership that avoids bloodshed or further violence. For example: a Mikhail Gorbachev to allow freedom in Eastern Europe by not sending in the tanks.

Likewise, “development” –or the lack of it - equally associated with Africa- isn’t only about acquiring material goods; although everyone should be able to live with dignity, without fear of starvation and a roof over his head. It is much more: a means of achieving a quality of life that is sustainable, and allows the expression of the full range of creativity and humanity.

Many worthy traditions that safeguarded traditional African society have been trodden in the dust and replaced by imported, alien structures that need time to adjust, or by nothing at all. She mentions her own people, the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest group, an enterprising and organized people, many of whose traditions were destroyed in the struggle for land in the years leading up to Independence, with the men, heads of households, being separated from their families to work on plantations and settlers’ farms.

Governance and leadership were entrusted to one age group; after their time limit expired, the whole group would retire to allow the next generation to take over. There was a formal procedure that took several years to complete, called “ituika” meaning “the severance,” and which acted as a guarantee that power would be handed over and to prepare the successors for their responsibilities.

The incoming generation would keep a close eye on the incumbents who, in their turn, would make sure the handing-over was smooth. Resources such as forests, water and land were entrusted to their care. This has been replaced by competitive capitalism, leaving many poor as urban migrants or land squatters.

Wangari Maathai’s book covers every conceivable aspect of African life, including the family. Her style is straightforward, incisive and enjoyable to read. Her final conclusion is that Africans must chart their own destiny, and, given the chance to do so not let it pass them by.

Martyn Drakard is based in Kenya.