"Partnership" and Multiracialism in the New Africa -- Consummating Zambian Nationhood -- King Cobra and Other Menaces: Zambia Banishes Autocracy -- The Hijacking of Malawi: Banda's Uptight Despotism -- Promises, Promises: Modern Malawi Seeks Prosperity and Plenty Through Pot -- Mandela's Triumph: The Liberating of South Africa -- Surviving State Capture: the Path Forward -- Botswana: Africa's Democratic Exception -- The Promise of Democracy Lost: Zimbabwe -- Namibia: Throwing Off the Long Yoke -- Leaders of Integrity Conquer Africa's Consummate Challenges.
Summary:
"This book is about southern Africa's long walk to freedom, about the overturning of colonial rule in the northern territories and the dissolution of backs-to-the-wall white settler suzerainty first in what became Zimbabwe and then in South Africa. Chapters on the individual countries detail the stages along their sometimes complicated and tortuous struggle to attain the political New Zion. We learn how and why the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland failed, how and why apartheid eventually collapsed, and exactly how the various components of this heavily white conquered and later white oppressed domain transitioned via diverse fits and starts into today's assemblage of proud, politically-charged, and still mostly fragmented nation-states. But what did the new republics make of their hard won freedoms? That is the subject of more than half of this book. Having liberated themselves successfully, several soon dismantled democratic safeguards, established effective single-party states, closed their economies, deprived citizens of human rights and civil liberties, and exchanged economic progress for varieties of central planning experiments and stunted forms of protected economic endeavors. Only Botswana, of the new entities, embraced full democracy and good governance. The others, even South Africa, at first tightly regimented their economies and attempted severely to limit the degrees of economic freedom and social progress that citizens could enjoy. Corruption prevailed everywhere except Botswana. Today, as the chapters on contemporary southern Africa reveal, most of the southern half of the African continent is returning, if sometimes struggling, to return to the patterns probity and good governance that many countries abandoned in the decades after independence. Now there is a resurgence of high performance, which this book celebrates"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.