Dictatorland


Book Description

A Financial Times Book of the Year 'Jaw-dropping' Daily Express 'Grimly fascinating' Financial Times 'Humane, timely, accessible and well-researched' Irish Times The dictator who grew so rich on his country's cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa and waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, and lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business. And behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence and excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed and complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds and gold that has encouraged dictators to rule with an iron hand, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris and banks in Zurich and keeping their people in dire poverty.




The Secret of the African Dictator - Inspired by real-life events.


Book Description

The United States falls head over heels in love with dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and lavishes him with millions of dollars. He finds happiness in his "defining relationship" until the Soviet Union fades into history and Washington's affection fades to indifference, then abandonment. Washington dumps Mobutu like a hot potato, only to discover that he has a covert survival strategy that will sting like a thousand wasps and leave a lasting mark on US's interests. This book explores the dictator's survival strategy and is based on actual events. **** The Secret of the African Dictator is a thrilling tale that unravels the State Department's hidden biases and takes us on a journey where individuals from different nations fight to stay afloat amidst crumbling fortresses and tangled webs of deception. They confront their own limitations, histories, and desires, all while navigating the unpredictable intentions of both allies and enemies. ****y In The Secret of the African Dictator, the sword of rebellion dangles over Mobutu's head. In his hour of need, he seeks solace in the arms of his merciless chief of security and enforcer. Together, they point fingers at the minority Tutsi tribes and their Banyamulenge kin, setting ablaze a fiery storm of genocidal fury towards their chosen sacrificial lambs. The chief of security's heart tangled with a woman linked to one of Mobutu's top rivals, making things more intricate. The security chief wants to knock off his rival, but that puts him between a rock and a hard place with the dictator's power grab. Love and jealousy are on a collision course with loyalty and self-interest, walking a tightrope with potentially catastrophic outcomes. The Secret of the African Dictator spills the beans, drawing inspiration from real-life happenings. **** Before fleeing Zaire for Togo, Mobutu Sese Seko began dictating a final letter to French President Jacques Chirac on May 11, 1997. It took him nine days to finish the message: "Please accept my heartfelt greetings to you and your wife." I do so out of gratitude for our long friendship. Given the gravity of the situation, the situation is painful for me today. First, at my current level of power, I have no control over the population. At the military level, there is no stopping the rebel advance on Kinshasa, which they can reach at any time. Let me remind you that I am in the midst of an unjust war. I am the latest Cold War victim, no longer required by the United States. Today, the United States, Uganda, and Rwanda are using the gang leader Laurence Kabila to stab me in the back, taking advantage of my illness. Not long ago, the United States shared my bed. Trusting them turned out to be my graveyard. Let it be noted before the people of the world that fairness, fairness, is all I ever asked for. I reserve the right to have my memoirs published. Then the entire world will know the real truth and how much fairness I was denied.” .... An international political tale, The Secret of the African Dictator, explores the lives of people in several countries struggling to survive webs of crumbling castles and intrigues as they entangle themselves in their own limitations, histories, yearnings, and what friends and foes have in store for them. Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you liked this book, it would mean a lot if you could take a moment to leave an honest review on your favorite online store. Thanks so much!




Another Fine Mess


Book Description

Is the West to blame for the agony of Uganda and its neighbors? In this powerful account of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni's 30 year reign, Helen Epstein chronicles how Western leaders' single-minded focus on the War on Terror and their naïve dealings with strongmen are at the root of much of the turmoil in eastern and central Africa. Museveni's involvement in the conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, Rwanda, Congo, and Somalia has earned him substantial amounts of military and development assistance, as well as near-total impunity. It has also short-circuited the power the people of this region might otherwise have over their destiny. Epstein set out for Uganda more than 20 years ago to work as a public health consultant on an AIDS project. Since then, the roughly $20 billion worth of foreign aid poured into the country by donors has done little to improve the well-being of the Ugandan people, whose rates of illiteracy, mortality, and poverty surpass those of many neighboring countries. Money meant to pay for health care, education, and other public services has instead been used by Museveni to shore up his power through patronage, brutality, and terror. Another Fine Mess is a devastating indictment of the West's Africa policy and an authoritative history of the crises that have ravaged Uganda and its neighbors since the end of the Cold War. "A stunning new book of reportage and analysis." --Pankaj Mishra, Bloomberg




Psychoses Of Power


Book Description

This book is about the idiosyncratic personal dictatorships sprang up in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. It surveys the social, economic, and political histories of Uganda, Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea, exploring conditions that facilitated the rise of the dictatorial triumvirate.




American Kleptocracy


Book Description

A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's American Kleptocracy offers an explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. "An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." —The Los Angeles Review of Books For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.




White Malice


Book Description

Accra, 1958. Africa’s liberation leaders have gathered for a conference, full of strength, purpose and vision. Newly independent Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Congo’s Patrice Lumumba strike up a close partnership. Everything seems possible. But, within a few years, both men will have been targeted by the CIA, and their dream of true African autonomy undermined. The United States, watching the Europeans withdraw from Africa, was determined to take control. Pan-Africanism was inspiring African Americans fighting for civil rights; the threat of Soviet influence over new African governments loomed; and the idea of an atomic reactor in black hands was unacceptable. The conclusion was simple: the US had to ‘recapture’ Africa, in the shadows, by any means necessary. Renowned historian Susan Williams dives into the archives, revealing new, shocking details of America’s covert programme in Africa. The CIA crawled over the continent, poisoning the hopes of 1958 with secret agents and informants; surreptitious UN lobbying; cultural infiltration and bribery; assassinations and coups. As the colonisers moved out, the Americans swept in—with bitter consequences that reverberate in Africa to this day




Do Not Disturb


Book Description

A powerful investigation into a grisly political murder and the authoritarian regime behind it: Do Not Disturb upends the narrative that Rwanda sold the world after one of the deadliest genocides of the twentieth century. We think we know the story of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Following the Rwandan genocide, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrew the brutal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that made Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. But the truth was considerably more sinister. Vividly sourcing her story with direct testimony from key participants, Wrong uses the story of the murder of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend’s assassination.




The Great Escape That Changed Africa's Future


Book Description

This is the story of the dramatic clandestine escape, in June of 1961, of sixty African students from Portugal across Spain and into France. Most were Angolan intellectuals. Some were from Mozambique and others from Guinea-Bissau, the Cape Verde Islands, and São Tomé-and-Principe. Soon after the first anti-colonial armed rebellions broke out in Angola (March 1961), the student community in Portugal suffered increasing harassment by the Portuguese political police. Passports were confiscated and some arrests of suspected student leaders occurred. Many students - men and women - decided to flee Portugal illegally. It was risky business. False passports from friendly African countries had to be found, contacts set up for night border crossings into Franco's Spain, and then overland transportation to France. Some of the students, graduates of North American and British missionary schools in Africa, appealed to the World Council of Churches in Geneva to help them escape. The challenge was accepted by the French Protestant service agency CIMADE. The successful operation makes for exciting reading. This updated edition includes recollections of African heads of government who participated in the Great Escape.




Sankofa


Book Description

A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK A BBC 2 BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION FUTURES PRIZE AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A captivating story about a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the West African father she never knew' REESE WITHERSPOON Anna is at a stage of her life when she's beginning to wonder who she really is. She has separated from her husband, her daughter is all grown up, and her mother - the only parent who raised her - is dead. Searching through her mother's belongings, she finds clues about the West African father she never knew. Through reading his student diary, chronicling his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London, she discovers that he eventually became the president (some would say the dictator) of a small nation in West Africa - and he is still alive. She decides to track him down and so begins a funny, painful, fascinating journey, and an exploration of race, identity and what we pass on to our children. 'A real pleasure, it's funny, thought-provoking and holds a light up to everything from cultural differences to colonialism' STYLIST 'I LOVED Sankofa SO MUCH' MARIAN KEYES 'Slick pacing and unpredictable developments keep the reader alert right up to the novel's exhilarating ending' GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE DAY 'Onuzo's sneakily breezy, highly entertaining novel leaves the reader rethinking familiar narratives of colonisation, inheritance and liberation' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'A really great book, very poignant' SARA COX




Wizard of the Crow


Book Description