The Graves Are Not Yet Full Race, Tribe And Power In The Heart Of Africa | 
| Author: Bill Berkeley
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
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Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 213196
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.4
ISBN: 0465006418
Dewey Decimal Number: 960.32
EAN: 9780465006410
ASIN: 0465006418
Publication Date: March 2001
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Product Description
Since 1983 journalist Bill Berkeley has traveled through Africa's most troubled lands to seek out the tyrants and military leaders who orchestrate these nations' seemingly intractable wars. Shattering once and for all the myth that ancient tribal hatreds lay at the heart of the continent's troubles, Berkeley instead holds accountable the "Big Men" who came to power during this period, describing the very rational methods behind their apparent madness. Weaving together insightful historical analysis and his own keen observations of ordinary men, women, and children struggling in the midst of terrible violence, Berkeley insists that what the world often sees as uniquely "African" interethnic troubles are in fact rooted in the international politics of colonialism and the Cold War. The Graves Are Not Yet Full provides a convincing explanation for the last half-century's cycle of revolution and genocide in Africa, detailing the stirring history of these nations' quests for peace and independence over the last seventeen years. Berkeley's incisive analysis does much to bring recent African history into sharp focus while at the same time illuminating just what it is that allows societies-wherever they may be-to accept, and sometimes embrace, violence.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Demystifying the Dark Continent May 28, 2008
To the casual observer Africa looks to be the "heart of darkness' or the "dark continent" found in Joseph Conrad. From the bits of news and information gleaned from the Western press, it would appear that the entire continent is a cauldron of ethnic diversity simmering under the heat of individual quasi-nation states that could erupt for any reason at any time. "Tribalism" becomes a codeword for inaction, since it would appear to be useless to act with all the ancient hatreds.
This quick diagnoses and prescriptions for non-action have allowed Africa to flounder in a disconnection from the global economic, political and social revolutions of the twentieth century. Bill Berkeley operates on the crazy notion that one should look into the issues facing Africa before making such judgments. Instead he meets individuals in and connected with Africa. In six chapters he finds two basic theses: first, the individual actions are affected by what he terms, the "big man"; second, the individual actors seek their own ends through means that may hurt or help other actors
One example is Zaire. In Zaire, Berkeley's Big Man is Mobutu who uses the idea of anarchy and instability to maintain his own tyranny, a theme throughout through out the work. Mobutu uses the ethnic differences as a "wedge issue" to divide his subjects and through a slight of hand pitting Kaisans against Katagans. This divide and rule allowed Mobutu to continue his kleptocracy long after it had outlived its Cold War uses.
Berkeley reports his experiences in Africa. Further, he analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the "oh, it's Tribal" attitude. While not letting the US or the Soviets completely off the hook, Berkeley sees a larger picture in each case. In Rwanda he sums it as "the rule of the gun over the rule of law." While at times he tends to under-analyze, such as whether Museveni's point on ethnicity versus class is valid, Berkeley is still open to interpretations and does not see anything as the good guys versus the bad guys. (His look into the Tutsi rebels in Rwanda and the violence perpetrated by the ANC bares this out). The fact is that problems in Africa are not "just tribal." Instead, he tries to look to qui bono. If the Zulus are fighting with the ANC instead of the Apartheid regime; qui bono? This is a must read for anybody interested in Africa or political movements in the world in general.
 one more time... The White Man Did It! January 14, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Graves Are Not Yet Full disappoints all the more because it comes so close at times to being a good book. Berkeley clearly has the experience and writing talent to give real insight into the convulsions of post-independence Africa. Instead of doing that, he's let his affection for Africans trick him into absolving African societies of any role in the continent's endless bloodshed. It's all because of white greed, and a few totally unnatural Africans who became the pawns of foreigners.
For anybody who's actually inclined to believe that white people have a monopoly on greed, cynicism or callousness, Berkeley's gripping accounts of his own encounters with African thuggery give the lie to his thesis. By the end of the book, a drearily prolix effort to misunderstand Mangosuthu Buthelezi and the Zulu Inkatha movement, Berkeley has lost all his conviction, and meanders off into a childish jeremiad on Buthelezi's (extremely understandable) hostile responses in an interview.
The realities of tribal animosity must be why, despite his subtitle, Berkeley never gets around to asking a single African how she or he sees her or his own and rival tribes: they'd've said the wrong thing, and Berkeley certainly comes across as too honest to lie about that. He doesn't want to believe in tribalism, so he doesn't ask or talk about tribes. And as Cashew Son's review points out, he's not intellectually honest enough to look at some of the bloodiest African conflicts, because they wouldn't fit his cockeyed theory.
So the book's almost, but not quite, a waste of time--the forty per cent or so that represents Berkeley's own adventures and the history of Liberia make it worth buying for anybody who wants to start understanding Africa.
(Just in case I might be taken for some sort of closet apologist for Western dealings with Africa, let me say that what particularly infuriates me is the way this sort of gross exaggeration of Western responsibility for Africa's woes lets the globalizers and neo-imperialists paint all their detractors as loonies. Nothing helps the Bad Guys like letting your emotions lead you to make wild accusations.)
Excellent Work on Africa - But Biased November 8, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is first of all an excellent bit of research by the author. In each of the African nations he profiles, he goes to great lengths to interview the major and minor figures in each crisis, in order to get as full a picture as possible of the situations. He also fully seeks out US officials who work in the region. Unfortunately, where he loses me sometimes (though not all the time) is to pass the blame back on to outsiders for the atrocities committed during each conflict. I do agree that many of the dictators and regimes in question actively sought to use chaos as a weapon against their enemies, but rather than put the blame squarely on the Taylors, Bashirs, and Does that enacted this policy, he goes back to blame the legacy of colonials or US support for these regimes.
This legacy and American support for crackpot dictators is deplorable, but there comes a point in any society when its people must stand up and take responsibility for their own actions. That means owning up to the killing. . .not matter who sold you the guns or the machetes.
The Genesis of Genocide March 24, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Graves are not yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa
Atlantic Monthly correspondent Bill Berkeley has written a thorough and provocative account of the relationship among racial, tribal, and ethnic interests in African culture.
Drawing on the Rwanda genocide and the recent famine and mass starvation in Darfur, Berkeley says these developments are not so much the result of "age old hatreds" as they are the consequence of a history of tyranny going back to Leopold II of Belgium and the failure of the international community to focus on Africa except as an extension of the Cold War.
"For four decades U.S. policy toward Africa was driven almost entirely by our competition with the Soviet Union. Africans scarcely existed except as strategic pawns in the great global game. Democratic and Republican administrations alike defined their options narrowly: they seldom gave priority to initiatives that did not serve U.S.
Strategic interests. They often overlooked, excused, rationalized ---and bankrolled-- wanton repression, injustice, corruption and economic mismanagement by unelected
Leaders who were willing to oppose Moscow." (Berkeley, P. 78)
The CIA bears responsibility for much of Africa's problems, Berkeley says, and the media is to blame as well. "The press bears a measure of responsibility for this attitude. There is a school of thought that the overwhelming emphasis on bad news creates an unrepresentative image of Africa. There may be some merit in this. My own view is that a more serious, and sinister problem is not the quantity of bad news but the quality." (Berkeley, P.88)
Finally, he says, Africans bear responsibility for their actions. He says there is a culture of Corruption where everything is for sale and everybody has his price.
In all a gloomy, but well-researched, look at the problems of a continent which one ninth of the world's population calls home.
Four Stars: ****
 Tribalism and loyalties September 15, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I liked this book, more because it shed several spotlights on how several things happened that have contributed to past and present conditions in Africa. Much scorn should be rained down on several generations of leaders of the so called industrialized world for prepetuating the continued patronage of really bad people who seem to hold no regard for thier fellow man outside of thier clan or tribe. How divide and conquer is used repeatedly. When the cold war ended, Africa was suddenly abandoned as a front and more support for bad people was prepetuated. Five areas that continually recieve attention for good and bad, mostly bad are the key hotspots, we have to the northeast, Sudan and Somalia, though not much mention of the latter here, in the southwest; Liberia and all of the hate and discontent that a sucession of this leaning and that leaning despots created. In the centre, we have Rwanda, Zaire( the Congo) and Uganda and the very bottom, South Africa. Much of the cause for many of these turmoils seems to be a result of a half hearted attempt to extract the wealth from the country, and leave the mess for some one else to deal with, a general misunderstanding of history and the legacy of colonialism past and present.
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