New Light on Africa
HAHN, LORNA
New Light on Africa Common Sense About Africa. By Anthony Sampson. Macmillan, 175 pp. $2.95. Reviewed by Lorna Hahn Author, "North Africa: Nationalism to Nationhood" UNTIL A FEW years ago,...
...The result is a body of information and analysis which can be useful to the policymaker as well as to "any boy or girl...
...Sampson knows his subject well, and he conveys a surprisingly large quantity of facts in a direct and spritely manner...
...Only in the last few years have books appeared which can tell the intelligent layman something about the people, politics and major problems of Africa...
...The major independence movements and leaders are analyzed critically yet compassionately, with an extremely interesting discussion of how and why the concept of nigritude developed not in race-conscious British Africa but in the assimilationist French territories...
...The main emphasis of the book, however, is on nationalism, the "connecting theme" of contemporary Africa...
...The problems of forging new nations are also neatly summarized, with emphasis on the problems of inter-tribal feuds and "fissiparous tendencies...
...Noteworthy among them is this new book by a journalist who spent four years in South Africa as editor of its popular Negro paper, Drum...
...He carefuly illustrates not only the "racial" and linguistic differences which separate "blacks," Bantus, Hamites and various combinations of same, but also the great contrasts between urban and rural dwellers, workers and intelligentsia, ruling classes and revolutionary reformers...
...Reviewed by Lorna Hahn Author, "North Africa: Nationalism to Nationhood" UNTIL A FEW years ago, interest in Africa was confined mainly to businessmen, agitators and academicians (usually anthropologists...
...The omnipresent conflict between the old and the new, he states, is about the only characteristic shared by all the people of Africa...
...Sampson makes it painfully clear that while these advocates of multi-racial parties and regimes mean well, their ideas are acceptable neither to the white supremacists they oppose, nor to the African leaders who want absolute, not shared, power for their followers...
...Sampson refrains from making any precise predictions or recommendations here, but one is left with the impression that there is little room left for compromise in the territories still under white domination, and that the handwriting is on the wall for those who keep the African in any form of vassalage...
...Despite a title which suggests bottled panaceas, and a jacket which explains that the author is trying to reach even "any boy or girl—of average education," this is a very sophisticated little volume...
...The first group offered a noteworthy paucity of information about the economic and political conditions in the erstwhile Dark Continent...
...The author begins by dispelling some widely held illusions, such as those which picture all Africans as uniform in color, customs and desires...
...The uninitiated reader also learns that "Pan-Africanism" is not only a dream in the minds of some idealists, but also, in a few cases, a cloak for the expansionist ambitions of some very realistic politicians...
...the second provided propaganda which often tended to present everything white as black, and vice versa...
...From the halls of ivy and foundation-financed safaris came some objective studies, but they usually dealt with linguistics, rhythms and circumcision rites (both male and female...
...Extremely useful, particularly for those who are disturbed by the growing racist trend in East and South African politics, is the discussion of the dilemma of white "liberals...
Vol. 43 • December 1960 • No. 50
