Southern Africa: Old Treacheries, New Deceits

Chan's detailed and morally nuanced study of Southern Africa untangles the knotty history between South Africa and Zimbabwe over the past 30 years, and refers to neighboring Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia to provide contour and color to the region's central and crucial relationship. Chan (Robert Mugabe), a former adviser to various governments in Africa on such issues as Zimbabwe's transition to independence and the reconstruction of Uganda after Idi Amin, distills a convoluted transnational history rife with ethnic tensions, unprecedented economic transformation, and competing visions of democracy into a compulsively readable work. The book packs its biggest punch with deftly rendered portraits of Southern Africa's most iconic political leaders: saintly Mandela, intellectual Mbeki, authoritarian Mugabe, and ambivalent Tsvangirai, to name just a few. Some readers might rue Chan's lack of interest in communicating how the machinations of the political elite affects the citizenry; his focus is squarely on Southern Africa's leaders, questioning and confounding the labels attached to them, and in challenging reductive, Manichean%E2%80%94and often Western%E2%80%94constructions of African politics wherein one side is inherently "bad" and the other "good." (June)