Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 3

Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 1

Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 2

Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe [Paperback] Gerard Prunier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0199754209 | ISBN-13: 978-0199754205 | Edition: Reprint

The Rwandan genocide sparked a horrific bloodbath that swept across sub-Saharan Africa, ultimately leading to the deaths of some four million people. In this extraordinary history of the recent wars in Central Africa, Gerard Prunier offers a gripping account of how one grisly episode laid the groundwork for a sweeping and disastrous upheaval.

Prunier vividly describes the grisly aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, when some two million refugees--a third of Rwanda's population--fled to exile in Zaire in 1996. The new Rwandan regime then crossed into Zaire and attacked the refugees, slaughtering upwards of 400,000 people. The Rwandan forces then turned on Zaire's despotic President Mobutu and, with the help of a number of allied African countries, overthrew him. But as Prunier shows, the collapse of the Mobutu regime and the ascension of the corrupt and erratic Laurent-Désiré Kabila created a power vacuum that drew Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and other African nations into an extended and chaotic war. The heart of the book documents how the whole core of the African continent became engulfed in an intractible and bloody conflict after 1998, a devastating war that only wound down following the assassination of Kabila in 2001. Prunier not only captures all this in his riveting narrative, but he also indicts the international community for its utter lack of interest in what was then the largest conflict in the world. 

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa

This collection of essays explores the contemporary crises in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, offering important new insights into the cycle of genocidal violence, ethnic strife, and civil war that has made the Great Lakes region of Central Africa the most violent on the continent.

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa

René Lemarchand

2008 | 344 pages | Cloth $59.95 | Paper $27.50
Political Science | African-American/African Studies
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The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa

René Lemarchand

344 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus.
Paper 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2090-2 | $27.50s | £18.00 | Add to cart
Ebook 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0259-5 | $27.5s | £18.00 | About | Add to cart
A volume in the National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century series
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"René Lemarchand ranks among the top Africanist political scientists of his generation, unmatched in his depth of knowledge about the African Great Lakes. He brings to The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa a broad comparative perspective as well as decades of close observation of the political evolution of the Great Lakes region."—M. Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Endowed with natural resources, majestic bodies of fresh water, and a relatively mild climate, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa has also been the site of some of the world's bloodiest atrocities. In Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, decades of colonial subjugation—most infamously under Belgium's Leopold II—were followed by decades of civil warfare that spilled into neighboring countries. When these conflicts lead to horrors such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, ethnic difference and postcolonial legacies are commonly blamed, but, with so much at stake, such simple explanations cannot take the place of detailed, dispassionate analysis.

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa provides a thorough exploration of the contemporary crises in the region. By focusing on the historical and social forces behind the cycles of bloodshed in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, René Lemarchand challenges much of the conventional wisdom about the roots of civil strife in former Belgian Africa. He offers telling insights into the appalling cycle of genocidal violence, ethnic strife, and civil war that has made the Great Lakes region of Central Africa the most violent on the continent, and he sheds new light on the dynamics of conflict in the region.

Building on a full career of scholarship and fieldwork, Lemarchand's analysis breaks new ground in our understanding of the complex historical forces that continue to shape the destinies of one of Africa's most important regions.

René Lemarchand is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Florida.

Table of Contents

Preface

PART I. THE REGIONAL CONTEXT
Chapter 1. The Geopolitics of the Great Lakes Region
Chapter 2. The Road to Hell

PART II. RWANDA AND BURUNDI: THE GENOCIDAL TWINS
Comparative Perspectives
Chapter 3. Ethnicity as Myth
Chapter 4. Genocide in the Great Lakes: Which Genocide? Whose Genocide?

Rwanda
Chapter 5. The Rationality of Genocide
Chapter 6. Hate Crimes
Chapter 7. The Politics of Memory
Chapter 8. Rwanda and the Holocaust Reconsidered

Burundi
Chapter 9. Burundi 1972: A Forgotten Genocide
Chapter 10. Burundi at the Crossroads
Chapter 11. Burundi's Endangered Transition

PART III. THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO: FROM FAILED STATE TO FRAGILE TRANSITION
Chapter 12. A Blocked Transition: Zaire in 1993
Chapter 13. Ethnic Violence, Public Policies, and Social Capital in North Kivu
Chapter 14. The DRC: From Failure to Potential Reconstruction
Chapter 15. The Tunnel at the End of the Light
Chapter 16. From Kabila to Kabila: What Else Is New?

Notes

Index