Book Reviews

THE AUSTRALASIAN REVIEW OF AFRICAN STUDIES VOLUME 37 NUMBER 1 JUNE 2016 CONTENTS Editorial African challenges and challenges to African Studies 3 Tanya Lyons and Max Kelly Articles Sexual Violence in the Congo Free State: Archival Traces and 6 Present Reconfigurations. Charlotte Mertens Preventive Arbitration: Towards Strengthening the African Union’s 21 Mediation Capacity for Human Protection Obinna Franklin Ifediora The Power of Non-Governmental Organizations in Sudan: 52 Do Structural Changes Matter? Nawal El-Gack Zimbabwe’s Fast Track Land Reform Programme: Beyond 73 Emancipation, Towards Liberation Tinashe Jakwa Ethnomusicology, World Music and Analysis in African Music 95 Tony Lewis Book Reviews Richard Bourne. Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century. 118 Matthew Neuhaus ARAS Vol.37 No.1 June 2016 1 Andrew Walker. ‘Eat the Heart of the Infidel’ The Harrowing of Nigeria 120 and the Rise of Boko Haram. Nikola Pijovic Chris Vaughan. Darfur: Colonial violence, Sultanic legacies and local 122 politics. Wendy Levy Ali Mumin Ahad. Somali Poetry and the Failed She-Camel State: A 125 Critical Discourse Analysis of the Deelley Poetry Debate (1979-1980). Lidwien Kapteijns Cherry Leonardi. Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories 128 of Chiefship, Community and State Ryan Joseph O’Byrne D. M. Bondarenko, The Shades of Black: Cultural Anthropo-logical 130 Aspects of Mutual Perspectives and relations between African- Americans and African Migrants in the U.S.A O. Igho Natufe AFSAAP 2016 – 39th Annual AFSAAP Conference Call for Papers 134 ARAS Submission Guidelines 136 2 ARAS Vol.37 No. 1 June 2016 EDITORIAL African challenges and challenges to African Studies Tanya Lyons Flinders University [email protected] Max Kelly Deakin University [email protected] The articles in this issue of ARAS offer very unique views on a range of issues that are relevant to the countries of Africa - the legacies of sexualized violence in conflict; suggestions for preventing conflict; human development; sovereignty and the role of international political and economic imperatives; and the way we understand ‘world music’ in the age of globalization. In the article Sexual Violence in the Congo Free State: Archival Traces and Present Reconfigurations, Charlotte Mertens presents her extensive archival research conducted in Belgium, and ethnographic research conducted in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Mertens brings to light the ghosts of the past, still haunting this central African nation. Her focus on sexual violence during King Leopold’s Congo Free State, and more recently as a result of the ongoing conflict in the DRC, draws our attention to the ongoing legacies of sexualized violence, in particular against women. Mertens argues that this current violence is intricately connected to the colonial past, and is unfortunately enduring into the future. Obinna Franklin Ifediora argues in his article Preventive Arbitration: Towards Strengthening the African Union’s Mediation Capacity for Human Protection, that the African Union Commission could strengthen its conflict resolution and pacifying mechanisms through ‘preventive arbitration’, thus offering the many stakeholders, minority and opposition groups access to relevant and timely mediation, creating enduring peace and human security. Ifediora argues that the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) needs to be restructured to bring ‘mediation’ into the role of the African Governance Architecture, ARAS Vol.37 No.1 June 2016 3 BOOK REVIEWS Richard Bourne. Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century. Zed Books: London, 2015, 299pp, ISBN 9781780329062. As Africa’s most populous country and largest economy, Nigeria is the giant of Africa and one of the most influential African countries in the world. However, it also has a reputation for disorder, corruption and conflict. There has long been a need for a short accessible history of its emergence as a major modern state to inform diplomats, policy makers, investors, journalists and the general public. There have been efforts - Eghosa Osaghae’s “Crippled Giant - Nigeria since Independence” and Karl Maier’s “This House has Fallen - Nigeria in Crisis” come to mind, but they have either been too dense or polemical. Richard Bourne has now filled the gap with this excellent, balanced and readable new book. What a ride it has been - as indicated in the subtitle’s reference to a ‘turbulent century’. The name Nigeria, the land of the Niger, or Black River, which runs through it to the sea was coined, as the author tells us, by Flora Shaw, the wife of its first Governor General, the great British Pro-Consul Lord Lugard long before it came into official existence on 1 January 1914 as part of the British Empire. This development was simply for British administrative convenience, bringing together the very different regions of the Colony of Lagos and the Southern and Northern Nigerian protectorates. It is worth noting that it followed on three other imperial amalgamations - Canada in 1867, Australia in 1901, and South Africa in 1910. Remarkably all four have survived and become important modern nations successfully facing major challenges along the way. Nigeria perhaps faced more challenges than most in welding together the Northern Muslim Hausa Fulani with the Yoruba of the South West and the Igbo and Delta peoples of the South East, whose traditional beliefs and structures were heavily influenced by Western and Christian missionary engagement. Also unlike the federations in Canada and Australia - and to some extent South Africa - Nigerians were not consulted in this imperial amalgamation. The first half century of Nigeria’s history - till independence on 1 October 1960 - was thus largely a struggle for recognition by Nigerians that their destiny should be in their own hands. This story Bourne tells well. 118 ARAS Vol.37 No. 1 June 2016 One method of telling the story - and taking it into the second half century - is through the prominent Lagos based Ransome Kuti family, members of whom were close friends of Bourne, a British journalist who has known Nigeria for several decades. The Rev. Ransome Kuti, a Nigerian Anglican clergyman and his formidable wife Funmilayo, both early activists for Nigerian civil and political rights, produced three particularly remarkable activist children - Fela Kuti the musician, Beko Ransome Kuti, the human rights leader, and Dr Olikuye Kuti, a politician and Health Minister. But there is so much more to say here and one can only hope that Bourne’s next book might be about this remarkable family and their role in Nigeria’s development. Bourne records key events faithfully. However, the dispassionate focus on events does mean we miss some of the colour, atmosphere, tension and excitement in the extraordinary story of the succession of military coups which followed independence and the tragedy of the Biafra secessionist bid, perhaps the seminal event of modern Nigerian history. This is perhaps better understood through novelist Chinua Achebe’s remarkable memoir There was a Country - Personal History of Biafra,orevenAdichie’sHalf of a Yellow Sun, now also a major movie. Inevitably the need to cover immense ground quickly also means the character of the Biafran leader, the extraordinarily charismatic but self- centred General Ojukwu, never really emerges. Nor does the character of a succession of scheming military leaders, including that of the seriously scary military dictator of the 1990s General Abacha who dispatched the prominent Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa with relish. The same could be said of another key Nigerian, the still living ex- President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is perhaps the most important figure of the second fifty years of Nigerian history. After coming to power in a military coup, he handed power to a short-lived civilian regime. He was later jailed then re-emerged in 1999 as an elected President. In that role he finally ended the run of coups which had bedeviled Nigeria’s first forty years of independence and brought some order to a country he jovially described to this reviewer in 1998 as “impossible to govern” - before then proving he was equal to the task again. However, Bourne introduces us to them all, and hopefully will whet the reader’s appetite to go further and put flesh on the bones of the story he tells. The whole extraordinary span of Nigeria’s first century is all well and succinctly laid out in Bourne’s book, and this is its strength. It inevitably leaves many questions hanging. Why do Nigerians appear so ARAS Vol.37 No.1 June 2016 119 corrupt, and yet so energetic? Why is the nation so chaotic and poor, and yet Nigerians think of themselves as some of the happiest people in the world? What is also missing from this book is the colour and vibrancy of Nigeria - the impressive garments of Yoruba men, the medieval splendor of the Emir of Kano’s durbar, the grimness of the jungle waterways of the Delta where criminal gangs wait to kidnap the unwary. The definitive history of Nigeria should address these issues and needs to be in technicolor, not the black and white of print. However, until such a book is written Richard Bourne’s work is the best guide you will find. Everyone seeking to understand Nigeria - and it is a rapidly growing number - should read it. Matthew Neuhaus Former Australian High Commissioner to Nigeria 1997-2000 Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade [email protected] Andrew Walker. ‘Eat the Heart of the Infidel’ The Harrowing of Nigeria and the Rise of Boko Haram. London: Hurst & Company, 2016, 281pp, ISBN 9781849045582. The study of Nigeria’s infamous insurgency known as Boko Haram is relatively young, which makes any monograph on this group a potentially popular read. Combine that with a broader examination of Islam in Nigeria, particularly its northern parts, and you potentially have yourself a very interesting book.

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