The Black Man's Burden: Africa

The postcolonial countries of Africa turned to nationalism as a liberating force, but as Davidson observes in this profound inquiry, the modern African nation-state has meant harsh dictatorships, massive poverty and ever-increasing transfer of wealth to the industrialized world. Author of more than 20 books about Africa ( The African Genius ), he traces the roots of this crisis to Africans' slavishly copying European models of governance and denying their own past. Tribalism in Africa, he argues, has often been a force for good, creating progressive civil societies that were eventually undermined by alien rule and imperialist partition. Surveying renascent movements for democracy from Eritrea to South Africa, he sees the beginnings of a new politics of decentralization and grass-roots participation in self-government. With a masterful knowledge of the whole continentas is, evokes--is?--racist stereotype , Davidson in this energizing meditation delivers a powerful rejoinder to pessimists who would write off contemporary Africa. (May)