Durable Peace: Challenges for Peacebuilding in Africa

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Africa is the source of so much bad news that its future seems almost
hopeless, as many of the contributors to this volume admit. Timothy
Longman agrees that there are serious obstacles to peace in Rwanda.
Hevina Dashwood fears civil war in Zimbabwe, once the crown jewel and
breadbasket of black Africa. She agrees that “violence, fear, and
intimidation” were realities during the elections of 2000 in that
country, and that the country’s perennial president, Robert Mugabe, is
obsessed with a “desperate bid to cling to power.” Personal greed
appears the most likely explanation for Zimbabwe’s military
intervention in the Congo’s civil war. Dashwood provides a thoroughly
competent historical background to the present crisis. Other
contributors explain catastrophes in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia,
and Angola. Durable Peace offers succinct histories of these horrors.

Even good news intermingles with bad. Despite its good reputation,
Mozambique’s perceived success has been less than total, says
Alexander Costy. Success in South Africa has been “ambiguous,”
according to John S. Saul: the gap between the rich and the poor there
remains wide, with little indication of change on the horizon. John
Kiyaga-Nsubuga thinks that Uganda needs time to resolve its problems.

The conclusions too are gloomy. Editors Taisier M. Ali and Robert O.
Matthews conclude that Africa has produced some good leaders, most
notably Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda.
However, such people are in short supply. Wittingly or otherwise,
outsiders can promote instability. Military solutions seem more
effective in the long run than negotiated settlements that leave unjust
societies largely intact. Elections, especially if held prematurely, are
not panaceas. This book provides a mature analysis of Africa and its
problems, and it offers no easy solutions.