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China in Africa: A Review EssayGiles Mohan aa The Open University E-mail:Published online: 10 Oct 2008.

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Book Reviews

China in Africa: A ReviewEssayGiles Mohan

China in Africa by Chris Alden (2007),London: Zed Books; £12.99pb; ISBN 978-1-84277-864 7.

Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s NewEconomic Frontier by Harry G. Broadman(2007), Washington, DC: the World Bank;downloadable from http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUN-T R I E S / A F R I C A E X T / 0 , ,c o n t e n t M D K : 2 1 0 5 6 3 0 5 ~pagePK:146736~piPK:146830~theSitePK:258644,00.html. ISBN-10: 0-8213-6835-4, ISBN-13: 978-0-8213-6835-0, e-ISBN: 0-8213-6836-2, e-ISBN-13: 978-0-8213-6836.

Africa in China’s Global Strategy by MarcelKitissou (ed.) (2007), London: Adonisand Abbey; £20pb, ISBN 978-1905068-883.

China in Africa by Margaret C. Lee,Henning Melber, Sanusha Naidu & IanTaylor (2007), Current African IssuesNo. 33, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikaininstitutet; Euro 9 or downloadable fromhttp://www.nai.uu.se/publications/download.html/978-91-7106-589-6.pdf?id=25236. ISSN 0280-2171, ISBN 978-91-7106-589-6 (print), ISBN 978-91-7106-592-6 (electronic).

China in Africa: Mercantilist Predator, orpartner in development? by Garth Le Pere(ed.) (2007), Vorna Valley: Institute forGlobal Dialogue and Johannesburg: TheSouth African Institute of InternationalAffairs; £18.99; ISBN 1-919697-96-9.

‘African Perspectives on China in Af-rica’ by Firoze Manji & S. Marks (eds.)(2007), Cape Town: Fahamu/Pambazuka; £11.95 or downloadable fromhttp://www.fahamu.org/downloads/cia_download.pdf. ISBN-13: 978-0-9545637-3-8.

China in Africa: Implications for NorwegianForeign and Development Policies by E.Tjønneland with B. Brandtzæg, A. Kolås& G. le Pere (2006), Chr. Michelsen Insti-tute, CMI Reports R 2006:15, CMI: Bergen;downloadable from http://www.cmi.no/publications/file/?2438=china-in-africa-implications-for norwegian. ISSN 0805-505X, ISBN 82-8062-171-7.

‘The New Sinosphere: China in Africa’by Leni Wild & David Mepham (eds.)(2006), IPPR. £9.95 and summarydownloadable from http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publica-tion. asp?id=497. ISBN 1860303021.

* * * * *

Very rarely do I find myself agreeingwith a World Bank publication, but inthe introduction to Broadman’s (2007:4)Africa’s Silk Road he writes ‘there is,surprisingly, a paucity of systematicdata available on these issues to carryout rigorous analysis’. In the absence of‘systematic data’ many commentators,especially segments of the western me-dia, tend to take one example of China’sless positive engagement with Africaand project this onto the entire ‘China-Africa’ relationship. I am not arguingthat these are not critical concerns, butthis crude extrapolation is part of a move

ISSN 0305-6244 Print/1740-1720 Online/08/010155-19 DOI: 1080/03056240802011832

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to demonise China’s presence on thecontinent in order to represent ‘western’approaches as morally and ethicallysuperior. As George Monbiot (The Guard-ian, 2 October 2007:32) argues, ‘Chinathe excuse is not the same place as Chinathe country’. There is, then, a need toexamine the geopolitical, economic andideological contexts in which knowl-edge about China in/and Africa is beingproduced.

As with any new area of work, wheregroups of analysts hurry to publishsimultaneously, combined with a desireto make the subject matter as clear aspossible, on web searches there is homo-geneity of titles. When I used the searchphrase ‘China in Africa’ on Amazon itbrought up five of the titles reviewedhere.1 Most of the publications are editedcollections of one sort or another, usuallybringing together activists, journalists,academics and policy makers. OnlyAlden (2007) and Broadman (2007) aresingle authored, though the latter hascontributions from a team of World Bankresearchers, and clearly enunciate a con-sistent line of argument.

There are various reasons why thisreview is timely. First, given that muchwork prior to the glut of publicationsunder review has been spearheaded byjournalists, many in the US, there hasbeen a tendency to polarize the debateand present China’s presence as neces-sarily venal and implicitly a threat to USinterests. This is part of a long-standingManichean discourse pitting China’ssupposedly self-serving economic mo-tives against some philanthropic devel-opmental impetus on the part of the USand Europe. So, it is important to reviewa range of voices – US, European, andAfrican – on this matter. Second, asnoted above, claims about China’s im-pacts on Africa are often based on anec-dotal evidence or one example is used torepresent the entire China-Africa rela-tionship. Hence, it seemed timely toreview the publications that contain

more detailed empirical evidence. For theReview of African Political Economy it isimportant to see how these differentpublications approach the subject ofAfrica’s political economy in order toguide political action on the ground.

I begin with an overview of the eightpublications in terms of their origins andcontributors, and how they fit into slightlylonger histories of publishing on thissubject. In general, they are quite quicklyproduced assemblages of opinion andmark a renewed interest in China’s rolein Africa after a flurry of activity duringthe cold war. The next section examinesthe major themes running through thebooks in order to interrogate issues ofAfrican political economy. In particular,I examine how they actually conceive ofpolitical economy and how this is real-ised in concrete analysis, how this shapesquestions of governance (good or other-wise), and consequently the types ofscenarios that are envisaged for thefuture, including policy prescriptions. Iconclude with a call for even morethorough empirical analysis of theseissues.

The Publications

Past publishing on this subject wasdominated by cold war scaremongeringand used much of the same language wesee today about the Chinese ‘challenge’(for example, Attwood, 1967; Weinstein,1975; Greig, 1977), although China wasoften lumped in with Russia as part ofthe ‘red’ communist ‘threat’ even thoughChina and Russia were contesting Af-rica. Since then, publications have beensparse save for Philip Snow’s (1988)admirable, but somewhat uncritical, TheStar Raft and Brautigam’s (1998) excel-lent Chinese Aid and African Development:Exporting Green Revolution. However, therise of China’s presence in Africa overthe past five years has yielded a scramblefor publishing. I had originally intendedto review just three books, but by the timeI sat down to write I had eight and

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simply had to ignore some of the mostrecent material (Alden et al. 2008; Davies,2007). In the rest of this sub-section I givean overview of the origins and contribu-tors to these publications and pick outsome key similarities and differences.

As befits a new area of research, there isas yet no concentrated body of work froma single author or research centre, al-though the Centre for Chinese Studies atthe University of Stellenbosch has estab-lished itself as one of the major researchcentres on this subject. As a result, manyof the publications reviewed here areedited collections (five of the eight). Thepositive side of this is that they have adiversity of voices.

In Wild and Mepham (2006), for exam-ple, we have academics, journalists,policy analysts and civil society activ-ists. The same is true of Kitissou (2007), lePere (2007), and Manji and Marks (2007).The downside of this strategy is thatsometimes the collections lack coherencein terms of a sustained thesis. This isworst in the case of the Kitissou book,which has some strong chapters (dis-cussed later), but there is no apparentlogic to the chapters and a better prefacewould have helped to situate the contri-butions.

Alden’s is the only monograph and is avery well argued, ‘light touch’ politicaleconomy, which is able to sustain acoherent argument throughout. TheTjønneland et al. publication is verythorough and backed up by other studiesnot published in the booklet, but given itsremit has a strong normative policydimension. The other downside of col-lecting diverse papers is that virtuallyevery chapter starts with the obligatoryparade of statistics to evidence China’sgrowing interests in Africa as well asmentioning the 2006 Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC) meeting.While these rightly demonstrate China’sneed for and dedication towards Africa,it makes for quite tiresome reading and,

again, editors could have overcome thiswith strong opening chapters which didall this work for subsequent contribu-tors.

Another feature of some of these books ispart of the same issue. With a lack ofbreadth of expertise the same authors re-appear. For example, Rocha and Obiorahboth have chapters in Wild and Mepham(2006) and Manji and Marks (2007) andChan-Fishel appears in Kitissou (2007)and Manji and Marks (2007). A related,and more worrying, tendency is that thefew quality studies that do exist are usedand re-used as exemplars by other au-thors. For example, Lindsey Hilsum hasa chapter in the Wild and Mepham(2006) collection, and her ground-breaking study of the Chinese in SierraLeone (Hilsum, 2006) is regularly citedby others. Other ‘first movers’ who ap-pear in these collections or are regularlycited are Deborah Brautigam, RaphieKaplinsky, Barry Sautman, Chris Aldenand Ian Taylor. Likewise, in terms of theexemplars that are used to evidenceChina’s impact on Africa we tend to seethe same cases re-appearing. Quite ap-propriately most of the time, these areChina’s role in Sudan and Darfur as wellas the $2 billion loan to Angola whichare used to demonstrate the tensions thatexist with China’s engagement withAfrica.

Another feature, though not one new toAfrican Studies, is that there are notmany African authors in the books. TheManji and Marks (2007) collection wasthe first to actively seek out Africanresponses, although the le Pere (2007)collection does quite well on includingAfrican authors. In the preface, Manjinotes that ‘Lost in the cacophony (ofcommentary on China in Africa) hasbeen the voice of independent Africananalysts and activists’ (vii) and he iscorrect to offer the caveat that ‘there is nosingle “African view” about China inAfrica’ (vii). What follows in their collec-tion, and in keeping with Pambazuka’s

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excellent record of critical journalism,are various, more activist African voicessuch as Ndubisi Obiorah, the director ofa legal NGO in Nigeria, and Ali Askouriwriting about China in Sudan as directorof a research NGO that represents thoseSudanese displaced by the Merowe damproject. These represent the few criticalAfrican responses to the China issuewhich, given the near unilateral accept-ance of China’s presence by Africanleaders and regimes, necessarily comesfrom civil society organisations. How-ever, while these authors and a fewothers come from across sub-SaharanAfrica, the majority of African voices wedo find are South African. The le Pere(2007) and Kitissou (2007) collectionsare filled with South African-based au-thors and many chapters explicitly focuson the implications for South Africa.Again, we should not be surprised bythis given the level of economic develop-ment in that country and concomitantlythe quality and marketing reach of itsbook publishing industry. Moreover,South Africa’s economy is one of themost integrated with China’s so thatChina’s longer term implications for‘Africa’ have heightened significance,either positively or negatively, for SouthAfrica.

A related point is that in these collectionsthere is very little work by Chineseanalysts. The work by Chinese research-ers that appears in English is generallyby a small group of Chinese or China-based scholars. These are He Wenping,Li Anshan, Barry Sautman and YanHairong and they are regularly cited byothers but only appear once in thepublications reviewed here (Sautmanand Hairong have a chapter in Wild andMepham, 2006). Other Chinese authorswho appear tend to be officials wholargely re-state official Chinese policyand may have delivered a keynote at theconference from which the papers origi-nated. This reflects something of anintellectual division of labour (see Chan,

2007); namely, that between experts ofAfrican development and those workingin and on China. Given that China’sgrowing interest in Africa is driven byboth its domestic needs and global aspi-rations, it has been left to Africanists andAfrican-based analysts to make sense ofand connections between what goes inChina and in African countries. Hope-fully, this is a temporary lacuna, whichshould eventually be sorted once Africa‘experts’ become au fait with Chinesepolitical economy and vice versa, or atleast more collaborations between areaspecialists emerge.

As I have noted, many studies are basedon a lack of empirical detail or use datafrom official sources which is eitherflawed (see Alden, 2007) and/or aggre-gated to a scale which makes fine-grained analysis quite difficult. Many ofthe case study chapters in Wild andMepham (2006), le Pere (2007), Manjiand Marks (2007), and Kitissou (2007)have data which is drawn from officialsources (such as the IMF) and is supple-mented by information on specific Chi-nese projects derived from reviews oflocal news sources. The Broadman (2007)book is welcome because it is based onoriginal research using firm surveysamong Chinese and Indian companiesoperating across Africa. But by and largeanalysis is somewhat speculative giventhe paucity of data from Africa and thereluctance of Chinese authorities to re-lease information. An example of thedata problems is the number of Chinesefirms operating in Africa. Even withinthe Kitissou collection numbers vary –Servant claims 674 companies, Chan-Fishel and Lawson 750, and Reilly andNa 700. And when it comes to Chinesemigrants in Africa, the estimates varyhugely. In South Africa the number is putat anywhere between 100,000 and300,000 and in Angola the numbers are20-30,000, but some predict a potentialtotal over the coming years of 4 million.

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Un-political Political Economy,Governance & a Future Imperfect

In this section I outline some key themesrunning through the books, includingdifferent takes on political economy,questions of governance and the future

What is Political Economy? ForWhom Does it Matter?

Although the term political economyappears in the titles of some chaptersand Harry Broadman describes hisWorld Bank study as focusing ‘on politi-cal economy, governance, and institu-tional issues insofar as they directlyhave economic implications’ (2007:72),very few authors make explicit what theymean by the term. In this sub-section Iaddress what authors mean by politicaleconomy and how this frames theiranalysis and conclusions. In so doing, Ihighlight key differences between theirpolitical economy approaches and iden-tify those most sympathetic to the poli-tics of this journal.

In framing the political economy of China-Africa relations, most authors are im-plicit about what they mean. The Kitissou(2007) collection usefully situates theChina-Africa issue within an analysis ofglobalisation and China’s internal re-forms and internationalisation strategymore specifically. A similar pattern ofargumentation is found in the le Pere(2007) collection, where the chapter bySuisheng Zhao is a clear and well ar-gued account of changes in China’sforeign policy. Zhao argues that Chinahas moved to a more flexible approachbased on the need to achieve security interms of raw materials. This so-called‘peaceful ascendance’ is set within ageopolitical worldview of what the Chi-nese call ‘multipolarity’ in which theysee themselves as one of the key ‘poles’ inthe new world order. However, there is atension with China competing with theUS and at times revealing a sense ofinsecurity towards them. What is inter-

esting in Zhao’s account, but also in thelore that is already surrounding thisissue, is that once China engaged withthe developing world for ‘ideological’reasons, namely ‘socialist co-operation’in order to trump the Soviets, but thatnow the engagement with Africa (andothers in the South) is non-ideological.Zhao (2007:38) argues that China’s ‘prag-matist strategy is therefore ideologicallyagnostic’. While the point that a cold wardogma no longer holds sway in China’spolicy is well taken, the mantra thatChina is now ‘non-ideological’ and sim-ply pursuing rational economic interestsconceals the obvious ideological under-pinnings of China’s (or any other) eco-nomic growth strategy. As Harvey (2005)notes, China’s recent growth is ‘Neo-liberalism with Chinese characteristics’and requires a deeply ingrained ideol-ogy backed up by a raft of reform policiesand an authoritarian state.

Both the Kitissou and le Pere collectionshave chapters by Chinese diplomatswhich are interesting for a number ofreasons and tells us much about theexploratory relationships between Chinaand Africa. These chapters, based onspeeches from workshops, contain verylittle that you cannot find on Chinesegovernment websites about the harmoni-ous and supportive stance of Chinatowards Africa. They also contain the listof concrete policies of China towardsAfrica. And indeed these are impressive.But what is more interesting is the factthat they are given the opportunity touncritically champion China’s Africapolicy. This affirms the fact that theinstitutions supporting China’s moveinto Africa are excessively keen not tooffend their Chinese investors and thislack of critique overflowed into otherchapters.

In the le Pere (2007) collection a numberof case study chapters have politicaleconomy in the title and the substantiveanalysis is broken down into politicalrelations, trade figures, and aid projects.

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By and large these chapters are descrip-tive and tend to catalogue what hashappened, but with very little criticalanalysis. This is most apparent whenaccounts of the same country are given indifferent collections. For example, AliAbdalla Ali in le Pere (2007) and AliAskouri in Manji and Marks (2007) bothdiscuss the case of Sudan. In the former,the only hint at any political tensions isthat ‘The Chinese generally tend to havethings their own way’ (p.181) and theyare trying to establish a ‘powerful influ-ence in Sudanese society’ (p.182). Bycontrast, Askouri, the director of a re-search NGO working with those dis-placed by the Merowe dam, lays bare theways in which the Chinese support thejunta and how their projects directly andindirectly lead to displacement and per-secution. The former’s lack of critique isstartling, but pervades the le Pere collec-tion and, again, implies a strong desirenot to offend the Chinese in South Africa,from where this collection emanated. Forme, and probably the readers of thisjournal, the best collections are those byManji and Marks (2007) and the shorterone by Lee et al. (2007) from the NordiskaAfrikaininstitutet.

Harry Broadman’s study based on asurvey of 450 Chinese and Indian firmsoperating in Africa is one of the fewpublications based on original researchand should be welcomed for that. Itspolitical economy is to situate Africawithin restructuring of the globaleconomy in which China and India aremajor players and set to increase theirimpact – what Kaplinsky usefully termsthe ‘Asian Drivers’ (see http://asiandrivers.open.ac.uk/). Broadman’s politi-cal economy encompasses some valu-able work, especially around theownership patterns and business mod-els of Chinese and Indian firms and howthe former are much less integrated intoAfrican economies. While he puts thisdown to the relative novelty of Chineseinvestment compared with a longer rela-tionship with India, he also suggests

that a lack of trust towards Africanbusinesses on the part of the Chinesemay explain the reluctance to becomemore embedded locally. He also analy-ses the policies within Africa for attract-ing and organising inward investmentand argues, not surprisingly, that theseare multiple, overlapping and some-times contradictory. As one of the firstdetailed empirical studies the bookthrows up some worthwhile analysis,but the policy prescriptions, as I discussbelow, are nothing unexpected from aWorld Bank publication.

For me, the best and most coherentapproach to the political economy ofChina in Africa is given by Chris Alden(2007) in his short and engagingly writ-ten book as part of Zed Books AfricanArguments series. Although Alden pro-duces no original empirical research, histhesis is well argued and clear. Heargues that we need to focus on thenature of the engagements between Chinaand Africa, while making sure wedisaggregate both ‘China’ and ‘Africa’.His political economy, which helps ex-plain the differential impact of China onAfrica, is based around states such that‘it is best to look at the nature of theindividual African regimes in place andthe underlying economy of particularcountries’ (p.59). Although in such ashort book he does not have time to getinto the necessary details of ‘individualAfrican regimes’ there are chapters onthe changing geopolitical contexts ofChina’s foray into Africa where Aldenargues China’s interests in Africa havebeen episodic and that older discoursesof third worldism pervade current policyrhetoric. There follows a chapter onChina’s economic interests in Africa andusefully distinguishes between large,state-influenced Chinese corporationsand the myriad smaller private concerns.The point is well made that the largercorporations benefit from close andblurred relations with Chinese official‘aid’, which is usually tied to majorinvestments or trade agreements. Alden

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also documents Africa’s rather ad hocpolicy responses to China and the reac-tions of African civil society, which hasspearheaded the debate about China’srole.

This state-based approach to politicaleconomy is echoed by Ian Taylor in Lee etal. (2007) where he argues: ‘Understand-ing how the state in Africa really func-tions and its attributes has criticalimplications for China’s initiatives onthe continent’ (p.22). Taylor takes a moreWeberian approach to the African statein looking at organisational structuresand culture and, as a result, tends to seestates’ articulation with internationalcapital in terms of how it impinges uponpersonalised rule. His case study ofAngola’s loan from China in the contextof massive investment in the oil industryfocuses on its implications for evading‘good governance’. The difference be-tween these two authors is that Aldensees such an analysis helping to under-stand how ordinary Africans are af-fected by these engagements whereas forTaylor, the implications are more forpolitical elites in Africa, China and themajor western donor countries.

Impacts & Responses

What emerges from Alden’s framework,but also the better empirical analyses(e.g. the chapters by Kragerlund on Zam-bia in Kitissou and by Lee on Uganda inthe Lee et al. collection) is that there is nosingle impact of or response to China inAfrica. What Alden sets out is a broadtypology of states (see also Tull, 2006)which help us map these dynamics. Forpariah states, notably Sudan and Zimba-bwe, China’s presence may prolong au-thoritarian rule, but as the Zimbabwecase shows, even the Chinese will notinevitably and endlessly bolster a gov-ernment which continually fails to de-liver on its promises. Next ‘illiberalregimes and weak democracies’, such asAngola and Nigeria, are likely to becomemore centralised as mineral rents accrue

to state elites and aid allows them torebuff or renegotiate with the majormultilateral lenders. Finally, for demo-cratic countries with diversified econo-mies like South Africa and Ghana, thereis likely to be direct competition betweenChinese businesses and African ones sothat the effects will come down to howeffective the state and individual enter-prises are at working with or against theChinese.

The other approach found in these col-lections is to take a sectoral analysis,most usually and sensibly, of the oilsector. However, as research deepens itbecomes clear that oil is not the onlyinterest China has. That said, the chap-ters by Douglas Yates in le Pere and JohnRocha in Wild and Mepham provideuseful analyses of oil investment, mak-ing the point that China is moving intovertical integration of the industry aspart of a wider move not only to securesupplies, but to become a major player inglobal oil in the future. Although quitedescriptive, Yates’s chapter sets outclearly ‘Hu’s who’ in Chinese oil, whichgoes beyond the usual analyses thatsimply list the main companies andwhat they do. But other sectoral analysesin le Pere (of construction by Davies andCorkin, and textiles and clothing by vander Westhuizen) and of timber (by Butlerin Kitissou) show that impacts are mixed.Construction has the potential to benefitmany African countries, because Chi-nese companies now produce high qual-ity at competitive rates (facilitated by tiedaid, low labour costs, and high levels ofefficiency) although it varies how muchlocal labour is employed. In textiles, theprospects look bleaker as Chinese im-ports undercut local production andlead to plant closures and unemploy-ment, although this effect is not unique toAfrican countries. However, the moresavvy countries are thinking longer termand moving into niche markets or seeinga time when Chinese wages rise andAfrica becomes a favourable low costlocation. In timber, things look even

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worse with most accounts noting indis-criminate logging and collusion betweenAfrican local governments and timberfirms, although such practises are notconfined to Chinese companies alone.

What also becomes apparent and impor-tant is the scale of businesses operatingin Africa and their origins. Most studiesfocus on the big Chinese corporationsthat were privatised and given privi-leged status by the Chinese government.But what is clear, and is laid out byAlden and the chapter by Reilly and Nain the Kitissou collection, is that provin-cial Chinese corporations, sometimesbacked by their provincial administra-tions, are also key players. While not asbig as the centrally backed corporations,they are sizeable and win many con-struction contracts. Moreover, there is amyriad of smaller Chinese firms, ownedprivately by families that have enterednot only the retail sector but food process-ing and agriculture. The point made bythe excellent chapter by Reilly and Na isthat with so many Chinese firms inAfrica, emanating from different sources,it is impossible and unwise to talk of‘China’s’ African interests or even a‘Beijing Consensus’, because there is noway that these ventures can be centrallycontrolled. The discourse of some Beijing-based puppeteer orchestrating a coher-ent ‘Africa Policy’ says more about theparanoia of western commentators thanthe realities of the situation.

Two further issues that feed into a morenuanced political economy, but are oftenmentioned briefly in the publicationsreviewed here, are Chinese migration toAfrica and the environmental impacts.Migration is mentioned by Tjønneland etal. and by Steve Little in the Kitissoucollection, and dealt with in most detailby Alden. Numbers are speculative, butChinese migrants are the face of China inAfrica and it is in the Chinese stores,herbalists and restaurants that mostAfricans encounter China. And thesesmall-scale enterprises are significant in

number and in some places displacelocal businesses, as detailed in the excel-lent chapter on Uganda by Margaret Leein Lee et al. (2007). She discusses theresponses to the Chinese presence byKampala businesses who argue that theChinese succeed through unfair means.Although not leading to outright hostil-ity, we know that where Chinese busi-nesses impact most adversely in Africa,local populations have reacted in quitestrident ways.

The environmental effects of Chineseinvestment are dealt with by Chan-Fishel in the Manji and Marks collectionand by Butler in Kitissou. Focusingbriefly on different cases of mineralexploitation and timber extraction theconclusions are saddening, but do notsuggest China is any worse than otherinvestors. Essentially, China’s miningoperations in Africa create the same sortsof impacts as other mining companies.While this needs monitoring and ad-equate policy responses implemented,the fact that commentators assume Chinawill have a worse environmental recordsays much about how China’s domesticrecord of environmental damage is per-ceived.

Governance: The Good, the Bad &the Ugly

The pervasive discourse of mainstreammedia accounts of China in Africa is thatit will lead to African governments ‘es-caping transparency’. They feel that Chi-na’s long-standing policy of ‘non-interference’ in the political affairs ofstates with which it works gives spacefor unscrupulous leaders to pocket therents accruing from China’s interven-tions and entrenching their rule. Thisclaim is usually supported, as I said, bythe cases of Sudan and Zimbabwe. Whilekey issues for those countries, concernedAfricanists, and other policy makers,what emerges from these publications isa richer and more varied analysis of thegovernance impacts.

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China’s changing foreign policy is docu-mented by various writers, but Ian Taylor’saccount of ‘resource diplomacy’ in the Leeet al. (2007) collection is the most useful insuggesting that China uses a range ofpolitical tools to achieve its ends. What isclear are the murky linkages betweenChinese aid, trade and investment.

Chinese ‘aid’ is tied to concrete economicoutcomes (preferential export agreements,closed tendering processes, specificprojects) and so looks less like conven-tional aid. That said, many other coun-tries use not dissimilar politicalmechanisms for aid. It is more the rapid-ity and scale of China’s charm offensivethat has shocked and worried westerncommentators. Most accounts of Chinain Africa have a litany of the projects thatChina supports and the untransparentways they achieve influence, oftencouched in Nye’s phrase ‘soft power’. Isay untransparent, because most ac-counts use this or similar terms and aregenerally very light on the details of thisassumed collusion between Chinese andAfrican elites. This is not surprisingsince studying such things is nigh onimpossible, and potentially dangerous.

However, two chapters in the Kittisoucollection – on Chinese banks by MichelleChan-Fishel and Roxanne Lawson andcorporations by James Reilly and Wu Na– provide a detailed description of themechanisms through which China en-gages with Africa. While many studiesmention China’s deep-pocketed Ex-ImBank, the chapter by Chan-Fishel andLawson shows that a multitude of state-owned and private banks are involved inco-financing Chinese firms in Africa. Asthese bankroll China’s Africa resourcedrive they are accused by the west ofunfairly subsidising Chinese firms, butthe authors make the point that westerndonors cannot stand by and berate Chinawhile simultaneously failing to honourtheir own aid and debt cancellationobligations. Although, as we saw, Aldendevelops a light touch political economy

framework for analysing the ways inwhich African states are affected byChina and might respond, the publica-tions here sorely lack concrete analysisof the ‘real’ political effects. As I said,most political analyses tend to quotesome silken words issued by an AfricanPresident about China, list the agree-ments that African states have enteredinto with China, as well as outlining oneor two flagship projects. But what islacking are detailed accounts of deci-sion-making processes, how interestsare articulated by different actors, whatpolitical parties and parliaments sayand do about China, and how civilsociety contests China’s presence. Basi-cally, there is a lack of politics in thesepolitical economies. Odd moments arethrown out – how the Chinese are gettingfrustrated by Angola’s failure to honourpromises of reforms, how Mugabe wasrebuffed by Beijing, etc. But there is as yetno concerted analysis of how the politicsof these processes actually plays out.

However, there are some studies of Afri-can civil society reactions. NdubisiObiorah in the Manji and Marks collec-tion sets out some political parameters ofChina and Africa’s development. Heargues that China provides a powerfuldevelopment model which urges eco-nomic growth before human rights. Thishas a number of possible effects. First,African leaders use this model to denypolitical rights to their people. Second,China exports its model via growthoriented aid and overlooks the socialimpacts of its actions under the banner ofnon-interference. Ultimately this can en-trench authoritarian leaders so he feels itis the duty of African civil society todebate and discuss China’s role, becauserentier regimes will not engender suchdebate. The evidence from various stud-ies reviewed here is that the most activecivil society actors are not Africa based,but human rights organisations else-where. However, African trade unionshave been active in contesting the effectsof textile imports in particular.

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China-Africa Futures: Dialogues,Détente & Dependency

In terms of the future and possiblepolitical and policy implications I tendto agree with Tull (2006) that China’spresence signals more of the same forAfrica. Economically China probablywill not alter Africa’s ‘extroverted’ rela-tionship with the world economy inwhich it supplies raw materials withlittle value added local industry. Forresource endowed countries the evidencesuggests that elites will continue tocapture rents with little developmentalredistribution. And politically, there isnot much evidence that China will,purposefully or not, promote democracy.

The suggested solutions on the table asset out in these various publications tendalso to be more of the same. From a USperspective, Raymond Copson in theKitissou book sets out some sensiblescenarios which are in contrast to themore confrontational stances that or-ganisations like the Heritage Founda-tion have taken. Copson seeks to avoidwhat he feels is unhelpful confrontationwith China and that the US should buildon its existing ‘good will’ through suchthings as the Bush Government’s Emer-gency Plan for AIDS Relief and theMillennium Challenge Account (MCA).While I agree in principle with Copson’smore consensual approach to interna-tional relations, initiatives such as theMCA and various governance initiativesby USAID that he cites as laudable, arelargely about forms of conditionalitywhich seek to marketise Africa. In thisregard they are not so different from theapproaches of China; what differs islargely the ideological baggage in whichthis marketisation process is cloaked.And Copson adds a salutary warningthat for the US, despite some renewedinterest, Africa is still marginal to itsfocus on the Middle East.

The need for ‘dialogue’ is one of themainstays of the European donors, al-

though Copson warns that dialogue isnot the same as policy. The reports byTjønneland et al. for the NorwegianGovernment and by IPPR (Wild andMepham, 2006), very much a ‘New La-bour’ think-tank in the UK, seek tosocialise China into the western aidparadigm by suggesting dialogue be-tween China and the rest through exist-ing forums. Again, this is preferential tomilitarised solutions, but the call fordialogue, without some goals and decla-ration of interests, is a liberal appease-ment that seems to defer any clearposition. Again, it is a proposal whichacknowledges that China needs to bebrought into the fold of multilateral co-operation, but it cannot be forced to do soas this would risk alienating a lucrativemarket opportunity. So, the result is amerry dance of cajoling China, but neverpushing too hard for fear of stepping onChina’s sizeable feet. That said, Zhou’schapter in the le Pere (2007) collectiondoes see China becoming more involvedin multilateral institutions as signalledby developments such as the Olympics,membership of the WTO as well asinternational condemnation of and Chi-na’s response to the Darfur situation. Allthis is presented as a part and parcel ofChina’s ongoing ‘responsible’ and‘peaceful’ ascendance on the world stage.

The Wild and Mepham collection con-cludes with a chapter by the editorswhich usefully sets out four proposi-tions for future engagements. The first isthat solutions must be by and for Africans,although outsiders do have a legitimateconcern with China’s role on the conti-nent. While I agree with this argumentthey, and others such as Obiorah, place agreat deal of faith in African civil society.The issue is that if African countries areto avoid another (or deeper) resourcecurse, the benefits must be distributed –‘managed well’ – by a democratic devel-opmental state. The conundrum is that itis not in the interests of either theChinese or rentier elites to transform thestate, so we get the same old dependency

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model. The only chance, some argue, is toencourage civil society organisations(CSOs) to lead the critique and debatearound African countries (and by impli-cation China’s) development model. So,Tjønneland et al. and Wild and Mephamsee support for African CSOs as a keypriority for donors. But this has beentried before and civil society is not ahomogenous realm unilaterally acting inthe good of poor Africans. It is not clearhow this championing of civil societycan guarantee democratic developmentand it feels more like a prayer than agenuine hope. Broadman’s study alsosuggests ways in which African statescan benefit from India and China’s pres-ence, but not surprisingly, this is more ofsame in terms of liberalisation, transpar-ency and rule driven trade – none ofwhich are unique to African countries,China or India. I even suspect whetherthere is not a computer package at theWorld Bank which means that what everthe preamble, the policy prescriptions itgenerates are always the same –‘implement sound, market-based, at-the-border trade and investment policies’(Board-man, 2007:34-35).

On the other hand, China’s presencedoes give African leaders triangular lev-erage in being able to play donors andinvestors off against one another, but themessage coming from these publicationsis that there is a lack of coordinatedAfrican policy in Africa to begin tocapture the benefits of China’s presence.For example, no countries have localisa-tion agreements which would guaranteelocal labour inputs or sourcing of sup-plies that would in turn create localmultipliers. It is incumbent on Africanstates to put in place such mechanisms.A final area of tension around govern-ance comes from the relationship be-tween China and the institutions ofmultilateral governance in Africa, nota-bly the AU and NEPAD. The issue is thatChina deals with African countries bilat-erally, while bypassing these pan-African organisations that it purports to

support. That said, the pervasive critiqueof China as excessively bilateral masksthe ways in which many western donorsalso prefer dealing country-to-country asevidenced by debates at the recent Af-rica/EU Summit in Lisbon. If China isserious about co-ordinating its Africapolicy it will have to clarify its support ofNEPAD and the AU which is currentlyrather fuzzy and non-committal. Forexample, NEPAD’s African Peer ReviewMechanism, while not flawless, is anattempt to instil responsibility in govern-ments, but the Chinese, according toTjønneland et al. and Wild and Mepham,do not seem to adhere to it despitevoicing support for NEPAD.

Conclusion: More Work Needed

This review of recent literature on Chi-na’s engagement with Africa has estab-lished that something significant ishappening and that as concernedAfricanists we need to systematicallyanalyse these unfolding relationships.However, I am with Tull (2006) andothers in thinking that while we shouldpay attention to China’s role we shouldnot overestimate it for two reasons. First,it is unclear whether China’s role willgreatly alter Africa’s structural positionwithin the global economy. Undoubt-edly it adds new markets and investmentopportunities and creates new sources ofrents, but there is little evidence that thiswill straightforwardly alter the conti-nent’s fortunes. Indeed, in some cases itmay exacerbate conflicts in various ways.Second, in focusing on China we mustnot lose sight of other countries andcorporations that are vying for Africa’sresources in not dissimilar ways fromChina.

After reading these various studies I amstill convinced that we need detailed,sustained case studies. As Tjønneland etal. note: ‘We know very little about thequality and impact of Chinese projectsand assistance activities in Africa’(2006:ix). There are a few insightful

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studies in these publications and manywhich describe the broad brush dynam-ics, but very few that really tease out therelationships between classes, the state,and foreign investment. The politicaloutcomes of China’s involvement in Af-rica will primarily be shaped by state-capital dynamics, particularly howChinese capital and parts of the Chinesestate intertwines with fractions of capitaland political blocs within Africa.

Another driver of China’s African en-gagement that I discussed is Chinesemigration. Most studies of China inAfrica focus on the obvious politics asmanifested in diplomatic delegations,white papers, huge loans, and large-scale projects. While necessary, suchstudies often overlook the processes oftransformation beyond and below these‘big’ processes, the most important ofwhich is the growing numbers of Chi-nese who make African countries atemporary or permanent home (Mohanand Kale, 2007; Alden, 2007). Only bymonitoring these everyday relationshipsand social processes can we fully appre-ciate China’s impact on the politicaleconomy of Africa.

Giles Mohan, The Open University; e-mail: G.Mohan@open.ac.uk.

Endnote

1. I am aware of Ian Taylor’s (2006) China andAfrica: Engagement and Compromise (Routledge:London), but time precluded a thorough readand so it has not been explicitly discussed here,although he has produced other excellent workin this area (see Taylor various).

BibliographyAlden, C., D. Large & R. Soares de Oliveira(eds.) (2008 forthcoming), China Returns to Africa:A Superpower and a Continent Embrace, London:Hurst.

Attwood, W. (1967), The Reds and the Blacks: apersonal adventure, London: Hutchinson.

Brautigam, D. (1998), Chinese Aid and AfricanDevelopment: Exporting Green Revolution,Basingtoke: Macmillan /New York: St Martin’sPress.

Chan, S. (2007), ‘Ten caveats and one sunrise inour contemplation of China and Africa’,unpublished paper.

Davies, P. (2007), ‘China and the end of Povertyin Africa – towards mutual benefit?’, Sweden:Diakonia and Eurodad; downloadable fromhttp://www.diakonia.se/documents/public/NEWS/China_and_the_end_of_poverty _in_Africa_2.pdf.

Greig, I. (1977), The communist challenge to Africa:an analysis of contemporary Soviet, Chinese, andCuban policies, Sandton: Southern AfricanFreedom Foundation.

Harvey, D. (2005), A Brief History of Neoliberalism,Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hilsum, L. (2006), ‘We Love China’, in TheView from Africa, Granta No. 92, 15 January;http://www. granta.com/extracts/2616;(2005), ‘Re-enter the Dragon: China’s NewMission in Africa’, Review of African PoliticalEconomy, Briefing, Vol.32, No.104/5.

Mohan, G. with D. Kale (2007), ‘The invisiblehand of South-South globalisation: A com-parative analysis of Chinese migrants in Africa’,unpublished report for the RockefellerFoundation, available at http://asiandrivers.open.ac.uk/documents/Rockefeller%20Report%20on%20Chinese% 20diasporas%2010th%20Oct%20_3_.pdf.

Snow, P. (1988), The Star Raft: China’s Encounterwith Africa. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Taylor, I. (1998), ‘China’s Foreign PolicyTowards Africa in the 1990s’, The Journal ofModern African Studies 36 (3): 443-460; (2005),‘Beijing’s Arms and Oil Interests in Africa’, ChinaBrief, Vol. V (21) 13 October, pp. 4-6; (2006),‘China’s oil diplomacy in Africa’, InternationalAffairs, 82, 5, 937-959.

Weinstein, W. (ed.) (1975), Chinese and Sovietaid to Africa, New York/ London: Praeger.

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Kenya: The Illusion ofDemocracyKenya: the Struggle for Democracy byGodwin R. Murunga & Shadrack W.Nasong’o (eds.) (2007), CODESRIABooks, Dakar/Zed Books, London. Re-viewed by Janet Bujra; £19.99pb, I S B N :978-1-842778-579

I review this book as recent post-electionviolence and social turmoil unfolds inKenya. It would have been productivereading for the global media and theinternational community which havinggenerally represented Kenya as a havenof stability and economic growth nowprofesses astonishment at the directionevents have taken. The lack of historicaldepth and understanding of Kenya’spolitical economy in their accounts hasmeant that most can only seize upon thenotion of ‘ethnic violence’ to make senseof the crisis. Written by Kenyan authors(except for one piece), this study exposesthe long-standing nature of election rig-ging, state brutality and authoritarian-ism in Kenya. It is worth being remindedthat it was Mwai Kibaki (self-designatedcurrent President) who formalised theone-party state in Kenya in 1982, whenhe was Vice-President under Moi. All thepolitical actors in this drama have longand often murky past lives, whilst theinjustices over which they preside per-sist and are replayed in successive andoften bloody struggles.

This book focuses on ‘the struggle fordemocracy’, but it does so from the angleof many other struggles – for gender andgenerational equality, for an opening upof civil society and for political partiesand the practice of opposition. It avoids areductive understanding in terms of‘tribe’ and it contextualises these battlesin historical perspective and in the lightof Kenya’s courtship with global po-litico-economic forces. One of the mostincisive chapters here (Murunga) looksat the experience of structural adjust-ment from the Kenyan side. Murunga

uncovers the extent to which neo-liberalpolicies could be harnessed to extendingthe power of the Moi regime and theuneasy imbalance between donors’ lib-eralising concerns and their claim to beinsisting on good governance. Browncomplements this in his account of theuneven and even contradictory nature ofdonor pressures. These two chapters –and particularly Murunga’s, offer anuanced framing to the other material inthis book and would have been betterplaced at the beginning. Instead we havean introduction in which the value ofKenyan perspectives are justified in termsof a nationalistic rejection of ‘Northernfads … fabrications and incantations ofAfrican crises’ – as if all theoreticalperspectives deriving from the ‘North’were singing the same tune and did notdeserve serious engagement. This incan-tation in itself demands a critique, whenwe note that more than half of theauthors are currently teaching in exile inthe North (and indeed there is citation ofmany ‘Northern’ authors here).

It is invaluable to have Kenyan scholarsworking on the political analysis of theirown country but this needs to movebeyond the narrower confines of politi-cal science and towards what Kenyansmight do better than outsiders; in otherswords, researching not just the politicalactors and organisations who strut thestage, but also the ‘general public’, thevoters and non-voters, the audience forpolitical rhetoric and the extent andcharacter of political participation. In auseful chapter on Mungiki (Gecaga), amovement largely of urban youth whichdraws its inspiration from Mau Mau (seealso ROAPE 113), the sources seem to belimited to four interviews with partici-pants, and most of the data is derivedfrom press reports and literature whilstthe analysis is framed around a ‘reli-gious’ reading of youth unrest. The sameapplies to the chapter on political par-ties, where an exclusive focus on theformal and structural means that nego-tiation and dealings with followers make

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little first-hand appearance and hencethe relational core of patronage/clientilism is invisible. What we do learnhere is the in-built fragility of politicalparties and alliances, constantly seekingsponsorship from the most powerful,and hence the difficulties of institution-alising any role for an opposition. It isnotable that in all the current talk ofresolving the crisis through the creationof a ‘government of national unity’ (one-party statism in another guise?) thatRaila Odinga, and most of the otheroppositional leaders, were members ofthe previous Kibaki regime in its earlyphase and that they fell out not becauseof deep policy differences but following afailure by Kibaki to redistribute powerthrough constitutional change.

Mwangola’s chapter on youth is in-formative on school and university asso-ciations but has little to say about thegeneral conditions for youth in Kenya.Present troubles illustrate only too wellthe danger of angry male youth, living onthe edge of society, with little to lose,cheated of even the promise of change,and all armed with pangas (machetes)and rungus (cudgels). Whilst Nasong’oand Oyot’s chapter usefully considersthe extreme marginalisation of women inKenyan politics, it might additionallyhave examined male cultures of violenceand political competition (and perhapsavoided its ritual dismissal of ‘Westernfeminism’ which raised the question ofgender inequity in the first place).

It is worth considering the present crisisin terms of the strategems for seizingpower and those who devise them.Amutabi looks at the role of intellectualsin struggles for democracy in Kenya andmakes a distinction between those whodevise rationales for the status quo andthose who challenge it ‘on behalf ofunder-represented and disadvantagedgroups’. Representational politics is al-ways suspect in a society so economi-cally polarised. Raila Odinga makesgreat claim to speak on behalf of ‘the

people’ and the tag of ‘Orange’ whichhis party espouses is a symbolic declara-tion of affinity with other places (Ukraine)where relatively peaceful and sustainedmass protest brought down a regime.However, Raila, an educated man trainedas a mechanical engineer in EasternEurope, and a survivor of eight years inMoi’s prisons, also emphasises in hiselection address that he is a successfulbusinessman and co-founder of a largeengineering firm. It continues, ‘over theyears Raila has diversified his businessportfolio in Kenya … believing thateconomic independence is a precondi-tion for the total liberation of Africa’.1

From a narrative of personal successthrough business – to a call for liberationof a continent! There is little evidencehere of an alternative vision of Kenyaneconomy and society, restructured tobenefit ‘the people’.

Given the post-election debacle, whatconditions could have allowed for massorganisation and participation to effect acollapse of the regime responsible forrigging the election? In order to answerthis question we would need to lookbeyond the parameters of this book.Despite a language of class which someof the contributors adopt, there is nosearching analysis of the uneven devel-opment of capitalist relations of produc-tion in Kenya and of livelihood economicsfor which politics provides a platform.Without this it is impossible to makesense of the incapacity of any politicalparty in Kenya to effectively mobilise ‘thepeople’. The masses who come out inprotest are not organised and disci-plined through wage labour and inpowerful trade unions, but stranded in avariety of marginalised positions in theinformal urban economy, or in ruralareas where land or grazing are undersevere pressure; in other words, condi-tions where making a living pits peopleagainst each other as much as it brings themtogether. The present struggles are not allof a piece. In urban areas there is compe-tition for housing, markets and jobs as

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well as opportunities for crime (seeKatumanga, 2005). In the Rift Valley,there is a long-standing issue of migra-tion from the Central area, with landbought up or occupied, squeezing theexisting populations (who incidentallyare not Luo, though the incomers aremainly Kikuyu). All of this can be spokenof in the language of ‘ethnicity’ but it isnot cultural differences which are atissue here, but existential struggles (andmoreover not new, but prefigured inviolent clashes in 1992). More signifi-cantly, youth, especially young men, arethe lightening rod of anger and violentactivism in any situation involving col-lective impoverishment. Controlling the‘masses’, when their struggles are sodiverse, is beyond the politicians in theirbids for power.

If this book sheds little light on thepeople which representative democracyclaims to include, it does offer someinsight into the organisation of the politi-cal class itself. One of the most chillingaccounts here is Gimode’s mis-titledchapter: ‘The role of the police in Kenya’sdemocratisation process’. This is actu-ally a case study of the state as aninstrument of repression. It brings to-gether Kenya’s horrifying history of po-litical assassinations, imprisonment andtorture and critically analyses how andwho the autocratic state confronts andcrushes. The police are centred heremerely as agents of the state, not ana-lysed in their own right. And yet in thepresent troubles we also need to dissectthe structures and organisation of thepolice themselves in so far as theirbrutality (particularly in Raila’s strong-hold of Kisumu and in the corralledslums of Nairobi) has contributed tosmashing any hope of peaceful opposi-tion to the electoral travesty. We need toknow about their training, the hierar-chies of control, their deployment offirearms, the social composition of re-cruits and how they are mobilised. Thereare rumours of divisions within policeranks (see Mwakugu, 2008), an aspect

which one might expect a political oppo-sition to exploit. Certainly any resolutionof the bloody turmoil in which Kenya isnow enmeshed should address the roleof security in people’s lives and theagency of the state in creating andperpetuating insecurity.

State repression is an expression of theinterests of that section of the politicalclass which controls the state at any onetime. And whilst the nature of thatpolitical class reflects its gender(im)balance, its ethnic composition, in-tellectual credentials and generationalpower, more vitally it is driven by itscapacity to control or seize the economicheights (always moderated by externali-ties). There is little in this book thatwould enable us to assess Raila’s tacticof a boycott of companies run by allies ofthe regime. Or to understand why thepolitical history of Kenya since inde-pendence has been a struggle to protector disrupt the concentration of capitaland processes of accumulation in theCentral region. One thing is clear – thestruggles for democracy not just in thepolitical field, but also for lives andlivelihoods, must continue.

References

Atieno, A. (2007), ‘Mungiki, neo-MauMau andthe prospects for democracy in Kenya’, ROAPENo. 113.

Katumanga, M. (2005), ‘A city under siege:banditry and modes of accumulation in Nairobi1991-2004’, ROAPE No. 106.

Mwakugu, N. ‘Outrage at Kenya’s police tactics’(http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/7194832.stm viewed 23 January2008.

Servant, J-C. (2007), ‘Kikuyus muscle in onsecurity and politics: Kenya’s righteous youthmilitia’, ROAPE No. 113.

Endnote

1. From the on-line manifesto www.raila07.com/about.html viewed 23 January 2008.

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Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and theAfrican Poor, by Harri Englund. Berkeley:University of California Press, 2006; pp.247. £13.95 (pb). ISBN 9780520249240.Reviewed by Jessica Mzamu Kampanje,University of Bergen, Norway.

This is an important book. Indeed, it is a‘must read’ for anyone interested in therhetoric of human rights, freedom, de-mocracy, civic education, and the con-cept of transnational governance. HarriEnglund grounds his analysis of thecontemporary discourses of humanrights and democracy in Malawi, with acomparative Zambian context, and theresult is an incredibly rich critical stanceon such taken for granted concepts. Thebook may also be read as an excellenttheoretical or conceptual framework forresearchers, policy makers, and studentsfrom various disciplines engaged in dis-course analysis at different scales.

Englund’s main thesis is explored inrelation to three main domains; transla-tion of human rights and democracy,civic education, and legal aid. With thesedomains as investigative focuses, theintent of the book as Englund puts it, ‘isless to promulgate’ his own ‘definition ofdemocracy than to find out whether adebate about multiple definitions of de-mocracy is allowed to take place’.Englund thus builds his argumentsaround the thesis that democracy and itsassociated contemporary connotationsare essentially contested concepts opento multiple definitions, all suggestingparticular social, economic and politicalarrangements (p.12). His key argumentis that in Malawi and Zambia, ‘thepreoccupation with freedom, democracy andhuman rights as universal and abstractvalues both fosters elitism and underminessubstantive democratisation’ (p.9).

Translation is the focus of chapters 1 and2. Having knowledge of Chichewa, oneof the local and official vernacular lan-guages in Malawi and parts of Zambia,Englund explores the translated local

versions of human rights and democ-racy. The principal argument in thesechapters aims to show how a narrowdefinition of human rights as politicaland individual freedoms was establishedthrough an undemocratic process oftranslation in Malawi, as well as in partsof Zambia. Human rights being merelytranslated as ufulu wachibadwidwe, whichwhen translated back to English wouldmean freedom as the individual’s birthright (pp. 49-50) is criticised as being afurther abstraction of its universal ab-stract version. These chapters succeed inshowing how the universal abstract no-tions of human rights and democracyacquired their own local abstract defini-tions based on particular historical, so-cial, economic and political phenomena(p.50).

Englund’s rather disturbing conclusionis that the Chichewa version of humanrights was a result of unacceptable orcareless interpretation (p.60). This, in myopinion, is due to lack of emphasis on thestruggle to finding specific grammaticalderivatives within the Chichewa vo-cabulary that might better interpret orcapture such universal concepts. Assuch, his own neglect in providing analternative which according to hisChichewa knowledge and cultural un-derstanding best describes the humanrights version which he is critical ofmight be due to the same dilemma, ratherthan mere carelessness. Nevertheless,this should not mask the importantcontribution these chapters make, andEnglund’s main conclusion that colo-nial history and the political interests ofhuman rights activists were instrumen-tal to the translation of human rights asfreedoms is both important and insight-ful.

Chapters 3 and 4 cover the domain ofcivic education. Here, the book analysesthe ‘extent to which a nationwide civiceducation project disempowered themasses … by examining how Malawianswere recruited to act as civic educators

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and how the crowds they encountered invillages and townships responded totheir messages’ (p.13). This process ofcivic education, Englund argues, resultedin disempowerment of the majority of theMalawian populace and perpetuatedthe ingrained inequalities which humanrights rhetoric supposedly aims to over-come. Legal Aid to clients who cannotafford legal services is the topic of chap-ters 5 and 6. Through his analysis ofsome vital case studies of how legal aidofficers handled their clients, he con-cludes that claimants whose grievancessprouted from similar structural condi-tions were treated as individual prob-lems. This in turn was instrumental indehumanizing and disempoweringclaimants. The following chapter dis-cusses moral panics as an alternativediscourse, as an outcome of popularfrustrations with human rights dis-course’s lack of recognition of people’severyday needs. Chapter 8 concludesthat ‘human rights discourse will notdeliver substantive democracy, if onlybecause its universalism may concealhighly particular interests’ (p.194).

Englund’s book is the result of compre-hensive ethnographic research on com-plex worldviews such as human rightsand democracy. Its contribution to an-thropology and to the social sciences as awhole is outstanding. With its widescope, ranging from universal humanright discourse to the activities of donorsand Malawian activists, the book takesthe reader through thrilling theoreticaland empirical episodes which are bothilluminating and thought-provoking.

Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship andXenophobia in Contemporary Southern Af-rica, by Francis B. Nyamnjoh. London:Zed Books, 2006; pp. 288. £19.99 (pb).ISBN: 9781842776773. Reviewed byVineeth Mathoor, Centre for HistoricalStudies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi, India.

The South African transition is oftenreferred to as a ‘miracle’. The strikingargument of this book is that the transi-tion from apartheid has led to the emer-gence of xenophobia, racism anddiscrimination. Francis Nyamnjoh triesto understand the various trajectories ofracial discrimination in South Africaand analyses the cases of South Africaand Botswana as archetypes of neo-liberal globalisation.

Chapters 1 and 2, entitled ‘Mobility,Citizenship and Xenophobia in SouthAfrica’ and ‘Citizenship, Mobility andXenophobia in Botswana’ respectively,focus on the process of alienation ofsocial groups and its reasons and impli-cations. Both chapters discuss the anxie-ties of blacks, immigrants, refugees,foreign students and non-ethnic people.With their relatively affluent economy,these two countries attract a large numberof migrants, both legal and illegal. Inaddition, a large number of people on thecontinent see the two countries as thelast resort in their search for jobs, shelter,economic sufficiency and peace. Thegovernments, by contrast, see the issue ofmigrant labour from a different perspec-tive. To them, migrant labour exploits thenatural wealth of the country and de-prives citizens of resources. The result isthe implementation of draconian meas-ures and laws against the migrant popu-lation and the practice of a ‘silentapartheid’ by citizens. Thus, in SouthAfrica migrants are known and op-pressed as Makwerekwere, which literallyrefers to those who do not have masteryover South African languages (the termhas different meaning in different con-texts). In addition, to an ethnic South

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172 Review of African Political Economy

African, the areas of Makwerekwere areperceived as the peripheries of civilitywhere bottled water, mosquito repellentcreams and extra thick condoms arerequired to avoid contamination. Thefeeling of insider/ethnic and outsider/non-ethnic, Nyamnjoh argues, has deeplyinfluenced the people of South Africaand Botswana and their elected govern-ments act as paid servants of a smallelite, both blacks and white.

The second part of the book deals withthree different issues: Chapter 3: ‘Gen-der, Domesticity, Mobility and Citizen-ship’, Chapter 4: ‘Maids, Mobility andCitizenship in Botswana’ and Chapter 5:‘Madams and Maids: Coping with Domi-nation and Dehumanisation’. The focus,in other words, is on gender relationsand the issue of hierarchy in domesticlife. One of the fundamental problemsthat affect the life of both maid/slave andmadam/master in today’s South Africaand Botswana is the increasing feeling ofbeing insecure and dispossessed. At thesame time, in their attempt to grapplewith the neo-liberal, globalised societyand its inherent problems, the ethnic andnon-ethnic people are being subject toinhuman oppression, insults and inse-curity. This is what the author depictsbeautifully in the context of Zimba-bwean maids working in Botswana andSouth Africa. The Zimbabwean maids oftoday’s Botswana are treated with furyand intolerance, while the masters withthe support of the law increasingly ap-ply their power and state support toexploit the situation. As a result, themaids see their masters as enemies andoften feel trapped.

Nyamnjoh seeks to understand the issueof the rise of ethnicity and other primor-dial identities in the context of globalisa-tion, and places the issue as an outcomeof the neo-liberal global economy. Thebook’s overall approach and metho-dology is structural, and this yields somesignificant insights into the contempo-rary xenophobia in South Africa. How-

ever the study would perhaps havebenefited from greater attention to morestudies on ethnicity and its role in nationbuilding, and also from a more interdis-ciplinary method. That said, this is agood source of factual and theoreticalexplanations of the troubling rise ofxenophobia in the new neo-liberal, glo-bal Africa.

Imperialism and Postcolonialism, by BarbaraBush. Harlow: Pearson Education Ltd.2006; pp. 280. £14.99 (pb). ISBN0582505836. Reviewed by Owain Llyrap Gareth, University of Aberystwyth.

Postcolonialism is appearing in an ever-widening range of disciplines nowa-days. It is therefore a necessity to have anaccessible, concise and simple generalintroduction to the topic. The title of theseries to which this book belongs is‘History: Concepts, theories and prac-tice’. As this indicates, the focus islargely historical, as Barbara Bush ap-proaches the subject from the field ofimperial history, upon which she graftsthe concerns and issues that post-colonialism raises. This is a necessaryaddition to the literature, and the histori-cal focus counter-balances the focus onliterary concerns, text and textuality thatis a feature of so much postcolonialwork. Bush is certainly not the first tonote the way in which the movementfrom an economic-centric analysis hastoo easily given way to an elision of theeconomic in any instance. If the travel ofpostcolonial theory into the discipline ofhistory can return the problem of thematerial into the analysis of other stu-dents it will certainly benefit the devel-opment of the field.

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The breadth of historical knowledgeillustrated in this short book is compre-hensive, and this is clearly illustrated bythe impressive bibliography and thereview of recommended reading. Thelatter is a goldmine for anyone new to thefield, as well as for specialists lookingover the fence beyond their particularfocus. Bush addresses the rationale forher book by pointing to the tensionsbetween the macro-level ‘parachutists’and micro-level ‘truffle-hunters’ and theneed for a more productive relationshipbetween the particular and the univer-sal. This general historical sweep there-fore attempts to bridge these gapsbetween researchers, and to illustrate theinterconnections between different em-pires and imperialisms from Roman tothe American Empire.

The structure of the book follows fromthis rationale. After the standard over-view of the main concepts and historiesof the terms, the complexities and prob-lems of which are illustrated by a casestudy of Ireland, the chapters are set outby themes of modernity and imperialism,culture and imperialism, and represent-ing Empire, with case studies of Japanand China, British Africa and Britishdomestic culture respectively. Each casestudy illustrates the problems raised bythe respective themes, and this worksadmirably, although specialists will un-derstandably find nothing new and muchsimplification in the case studies. Giventhat the case studies are given a maxi-mum of twenty pages the point is clearlyto give newcomers the tools for furtherresearch in their own fields (to ‘truffle-hunt’ as it were). The themes are wellchosen, and go some way towards mak-ing the point that postcolonialism is notessentially new in tackling these issues,and that there are clear interconnectionswith other historical approaches to em-pire, culture and imperialism.

As noted, Bush’s focus is largely onimperial history, although with clearreference to resistances and culture. At

the risk of nit picking at what has beenleft out, I do feel that her focus onimperial history sometimes overwhelmsthe ‘postcolonialism’ of the title. It isclear that the engagement with manyelements of postcolonial theory isavoided, and given its prominence in thetitle this is a clear omission. The more‘postmodern’ elements of the field areavoided often by simple reference to theirdifficulty, and this feels somewhat cur-sory. Much room is given, as it should be,to Edward Said, as one third of the so-called ‘holy trinity’ of postcolonial stud-ies, but very little to Homi Bhabha andGayatri Spivak, and this despite the twobeing referred to as key thinkers in therecommended reading. One does notexpect the author to agree with thesewriters but an introductory text like thismust surely present and engage withthem, even if ultimately to disagree.

It is for this reason that I think this bookworks best as a complement to morerigorous introductions of concepts andtheories, such as Ania Loomba’s Coloni-alism/ Postcolonialism, and Robert Young’sPostcolonialism: An Historical Introduction.Nevertheless, this is a very useful tool forstudents of the subject and beyond, andits historical focus and clear accessibilitymake it useful also for those outside thesphere of history – particularly, I wouldimagine in literary studies, where thedangers of textuality and ahistoricity areclearest. These tendencies in post-coloni-alism are undoubtedly to some extentexplained by its rise to hegemony in thesphere of literary studies, and as such,general introductory works from otherfields are certainly to be welcomed, espe-cially ones as well-written and enjoy-able, concise, yet far-ranging in scope, asthis.

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