Overcoming the Oppressors examines how southern Africans fought against colonial rule and South African sub-imperialism between 1959 and 1994. The book demonstrates that thereafter (between 1994 and 2023) some southern African presidents proceeded to oppress their own citizens. Its eleven chapters use governance as an index – the author sees it as a better measurement than democracy – to assess the extent to which the presidents of Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia have provided affordable health care, education, staple food and equitable opportunities to their diverse citizenry.
Rotberg praises Botswana's Seretse Khama and Ketumile Masire, as well as Nelson Mandela of South Africa, for being transformational, incorruptible, visionary and developmental leaders who established participatory governing systems in their countries. In contrast, Kaunda is chastised for condoning corruption, particularly in his nationalisation of Zambia's copper industry. Kamuzu Banda of Malawi gets excoriated for his anti-transformationalist traditionalist politics. Presidents Mugabe and Mnangagwa are accused of creating personality cults, persecuting ethnic Ndebele minorities and ruining the Zimbabwean economy by implementing the Land Reform Programme. Thabo Mbeki is accused of undoing Mandela's democratic achievements and for allowing corruption to flourish in South Africa. Furthermore, Mbeki's prescription of quack cures to HIV/AIDS patients and his disdain for scientific advice on the matter are thoroughly explained, as are his disastrous diplomatic initiatives in the region. Jacob Zuma receives criticism for allowing the state capture scandal. Namibian presidents are slotted midway between the transformational leaders and the autocratic southern African presidents. The aforementioned transformative leaders avoided corruption, tyranny, ethnic-based politics and ambitious resource nationalisation schemes in favour of consultative politics. This, alongside their promotion of free trade, allegedly made their states' institutions strong, whereas autocratic leaders bequeathed to their citizenry ‘pre-institutional’ (312), weak and/or failing states. Consequently, this provoked alienated ethnic minorities in some of these countries into taking up insurgent separatist politics.
The book, however, glosses over the IMF Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) that were imposed on some of these countries and which crippled them. The observation that multinational businesses ‘legally but damagingly’ (72) repatriated profits out of Zambia was not pursued sufficiently. Recently, Ireland complained about the unrestricted repatriation of profits into tax havens by these companies.Footnote 1 Such repatriations took the said capital, its compound interests and its developmental dividends from southern African countries. The author also ignores the adverse impact of colonial capitalism as codified in negotiated agreements that barred newly independent countries from distributing previously alienated resources to their formerly colonially subjected citizens, and why this resulted in an extremely unequal ‘post-empire’ global economy.Footnote 2 According to the book's conclusion, ‘if the peoples of southern Africa are to join the peoples of the rest of the continent and the rest of the world in realizing their full human potential, if they hope to contribute meaningfully to the progress of our planet, then their own leaders must show the way’ (331). Is it true that these people have not yet made any contributions to the planet? The author then pledges ‘eleemosynary assistances’ (328) to southern Africa promising that ‘we saw our program as nurturing, and creating an esprit de corps for young African political leaders that would in many respects be modeled on the long-established collectivity (and methods of selection) of Rhodes Scholars’ (328). Certainly, the Rhodes Must Fall protests demonstrated how most southern Africans feel about Cecil John Rhodes. Similarly, it's unclear why he continues to use colonial terms like CiShona (232) instead of Chishona or Shona, which language speakers have always used. Furthermore, elevating Mandela above his ANC colleagues in terms of constructing robust state institutions is implausible. Because of such new revisionist histories, others have recently accused Mandela of conceding to neocolonial demands during the independence negotiations. Finally, Overcoming the Oppressors advices southern Africans to adopt more neoliberal economic policies which have been shown to be more damaging than helpful.
