Anthills of the Savannah

Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society is an academic journal on African literatures and societies dedicated to interdisciplinary dialogue between literary and cultural studies, historiography, the social sciences, and cultural anthropology.

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This book harnesses the collective wisdom of African Psychiatry and therefore serves as a departure point for ongoing efforts to refine practice in accordance with the best practice and local needs. There are a number of chapters dedicated to a range of conditions, covering the most prevalent as well as some emerging conditions ranging from HIV related psychopathology to eating disorders. Additionally, the book provides a focus on a related and pertinent Sub-specialist field – that of neuropsychiatry. There is a chapter devoted to child and adolescent psychiatry – a sub-specialist area that is sorely underserviced. The elderly too are not forgotten in this book. Whilst much is spoken of the youth, it is well to consider the ageing members of society. Psychiatry and the law have also been adequately tackled through a chapter on forensic mental health. The book is a ‘must-read’ for academicians, researchers and practitioners in different areas of mental health. Postgraduate students pursuing various aspects of mental health, undergraduate medical students and diploma medical students will find this book quite ideal.

The history of Ghana attracts popular interest out of proportion to its small size and marginal importance to the global economy. Ghana is the land of Kwame Nkrumah and the Pan-Africanist movement of the 1960s; it has been a temporary home to famous African Americans like W. E. B. DuBois and Maya Angelou; and its Asante Kingdom and signature kente cloth—global symbols of African culture and pride—are well known. Ghana also attracts a continuous flow of international tourists because of two historical sites that are among the most notorious monuments of the transatlantic slave trade: Cape Coast and Elmina Castles. These looming structures are a vivid reminder of the horrific trade that gave birth to the black population of the Americas.

The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade explores the fascinating history of the transatlantic slave trade on Ghana’s coast between 1700 and 1807. Author Rebecca Shumway brings to life the survival experiences of southern Ghanaians as they became both victims of continuous violence and successful brokers of enslaved human beings. The era of the slave trade gave birth to a new culture in this part of West Africa, just as it was giving birth to new cultures across the Americas. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade pushes Asante scholarship to the forefront of African diaspora and Atlantic World studies by showing the integral role of Fante middlemen and transatlantic trade in the development of the Asante economy prior to 1807.

The Cry of the Go-Away Bird’ is the debut novel from Andrea Eames. It revolves around Elise, a white Zimbabwean girl living through her teens on the eve of the Mugabe-sponsored farm invasions at the beginning of this century. The author herself grew up in Zimbabwe before moving to New Zealand with her family at the age of seventeen and there is a strong sense of memoir and personal experience in the novel, which has both positive and negative effects on the narrative.

The main character is drawn very effectively. The natural anxieties felt when emerging into an adult world are uncannily accurate, and allow the reader to relate to Elise and her family as their experiences later become more extreme. However, sometimes the story is so personal that it verges on one-sided. There is more variety, and a more complex array of emotions and motivations among the white characters than the black ones. The black characters are unfathomable and often sinister. Perhaps this is how Elise really sees them, but the novel could have perhaps painted a more complex picture for the reader of the spectrum of attitudes surrounding these massive social upheavals.

Eames makes various attempts to describe the fragile nature of race relations in post-independence Zimbabwe. Often she succeeds admirably, as when Elise’s parents invite a black farm-worker and his wife over for dinner in an effort to make friends. The awkwardness felt by all is palpable and it is a fine piece of writing. Eames clearly has a talent for describing a society in microcosm. There are examples of Eames’ considerable powers of observation elsewhere in the book too. Of the ‘Bush War’ (or War of Independence) it is said, The war felt like a death in the family – someone whose name was never mentioned, who was cut out of photographs. Of Mugabe, Elise says, He was like a hated Headmaster, overbearing and incompetent, towards whom you felt a kind of loyalty. This metaphor demonstrates that Eames is certainly able to express complicated emotions in a clear and artful manner.

There are, however, times in the novel when the writing fails in this respect. Sentences such as We were Whites, and nothing else and The air between us was a different colour, are clumsy and blunt, and have a taste of bitterness that the story does not benefit from.

The action in the novel is heavily weighted towards the last half, when the actual farm invasions and killings of farmers are taking place. In these pages the book does become compelling. Eames successfully renders the panicked atmosphere of a rapidly crumbling way of life, and the events feel both real and shocking.

Overall, though well written, the novel is trying to tell too many stories in too many ways. Elise’s story is cut-off by the dramatic political events occurring, but those events appear as from nowhere and lack real context. The book is still worth reading for a glimpse into this interesting and unfamiliar world, but there may be better novels to come from Andrea Eames.