Angola: Promises and Lies
- Book Review,
by Karl Maier
From Publishers Weekly
Combining finely detailed reportage with anecdotal snapshots of the horrors of war, Maier, a correspondent for The Independent and the Washington Post who began reporting on Angola in 1986, offers an explanation of the Angolan civil war for the rest of us. His engrossing chronological account lays out the nearly two decades of conflict that have ripped apart the southern African nation. An inability to resolve differences rooted in race, political ideology and tribal ethnicity has set contemporary Angola on a highway to hell instead of the road to prosperity its vast reserves of natural resources promised. Maier notes with some irony that American oil companies have continued their drilling operations throughout the war. He also intelligently positions the conflict's historical import as one of the last battlegrounds for the combatants in the Cold War. Despite a glossary defining the plethora of acronyms that riddle the pages, some readers may have a hard time following which faction is fighting for what side during, first, Angola's war for independence from its colonial Portuguese rulers and, second, the lengthy civil war that continues today. Maier tells his story in the present tense, which makes the book read like dispatches from today's paper. The writer's sharp eye for detail catches a swarm of hungry Angolans falling upon a bag of maize that foreign aid workers have dropped onto an airport tarmac. The powder sifts through their emaciated fingers as they try to stash it in strips of fabric tied around their concave chests. More of this kind of personal observation and reflection would have added to the book's compelling narrative. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Margaret Anstee, International Relations, August 1996
It makes a rivetting read and deserves to reach a wide public. With passionate eloquence Maier depicts the horrendous sufferings of ordinary Angolans, who have known nothing but war over thirty years - enduring constant bombardments from one side or the other, families divided and uprooted, many thousands mutilated for life by anti-personnel mines, many thousands more, mainly women, children and old people, dying of hunger and malnutrition. The author's moving account of his encounters with individual Angolans of all ethnic and political persuasions brings out the indomitable tenacity and courage of ordinary Angolans, especially the women, as well as the senseless stupidity of the conflict....The other great strength of this book is that Maier sets the war in its historic and cultural context.
Peta Thornycroft, The Mail & Guardian, May 1996
On a scale of 0 to 10 of sexy wars to cover, Angola scores a fat zero. it was dangerous, there were no good guys, and most newspaper editors couldn't have given a toss about it. The few journalists determined the report the war were not helped by over-priced hotels and a dogged determination by both sides to hinder the press whenever possible. So Africa's longest, bloodiest war was hugely under-reported... It was left to a few individuals, mostly foreigners, to report the various stages of the war, the peace, and the final devastating chapter. American journalist Karl Maier was one of them - probably the most distinguished reporter and storyteller to cover wars in both Angola and Mozambique. Maier's book is a luminously accurate gem. He's wary of all the politicians and their rhetoric, and tender with ordinary people helpless against the murdering guns of both sides. No wars are sexy. Karl Maier's book underscores the point. Angola: Promises and Lies is compelling about war and peace, seen through the critical eye of a journalist and told with the heart of a writer.
Sousa Jamba, Times Literary Supplement, January 1997
Karl Maier is an American journalist who has been wandering through the vastness of Angola for years, trying to make sense of the war. Angola: Promises and Lies is an accessible, balanced account which stems from his dispatches in The Independent and the Washington Post. Most books on Angola tend to be highly partisan, usually blaming UNITA or its leader Jonas Savimbi, for the enormous hardship the 10 million Angolans have endured. Maier eschews this temptation and is critical of all the major players on the scene... In their dealings with the South Africans and the Americans, many Angolan politicians have become quite fluent in English. Perhaps one of the most valuable acts they could perform would be to buy each other copies of Karl Maier's book.
Professor David Birmingham, Journal of Southern African Studies
Each of Angola's great political crises has attracted at least one sharp-eyed observer to disentangle the welter of mendacity and propaganda that cocoons a civil war. In 1961, the level-headed analysis was provided by John Marcum. In 1975, the grass-roots perspective was given by Ryszard Kapuscinski. Now the war of the 1990s has been written up with clarity and humanity by Karl Maier. No other book has attempted to explain the third Angolan civil war as dispassionately as this one. Few journalists have got so near the long-suffering people on the road-side. Few have been able to observe the machinations of the politicians and their puppet-masters at such close quarters. The author knows Angola intimately and loves its people, but his book, subtitled 'promises and lies', brooks no deviation from the truth as he perceives it. The result is elegant, compelling, tragic. It is a tour de force.
Book Description
Angola's civil war has been the longest and bloodiest in Africa. What was once a proxy conflict between the Cold War superpowers has become an apparently endless ethnic conflict. While the political leaders struggle to control the country's immense reserves of diamonds and oil, ordinary Angolans have been caught in the crossfire of a quarter of a century of conflict. There have been many books written on Angola, either by South Africans or by authors who have favored and/or defended South Africa's involvement. Maier, through unbiased eyes, records perhaps the clearest view. In 1992 the country was supposed to, under UN auspices, hold its first ever democratic election-but it all went wrong. UNITA's Jonas Savimbi rejected his defeat. Pik Botha, for many years one of Savimbi's greatest defenders, went to Angola to help bring peace to the country. UNITA owes much of its current military strength to Pretoria, just as the MPLA had a huge debt to the Cubans and the former Soviet Union. Botha's diplomatic efforts were no more successful than those of other international peacekeepers and the diplomatic community eventually negotiated a new, though fragile, peace agreement. Skeptical of both sides' promises and lies about peace, Maier has written a gripping account of conflict in one of the world's most tragic yet least understood war zones.
About the Author
Karl Maier, author of This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis and Into the House of the Ancestors: Inside the New Africa. A graduate of Columbia University, he has covered African affairs since 1986 for The Washington Post, The Economist, and other publications.
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