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Marketing Board depots and Agricultural Field Daysin articulating andsubverting the power of the Mugabe regime in postcolonial Z imba bw e.In these flnal chapters, we get a clear and more substantive senseof local perspectives and practices and their role in state-making. As sug-gested, this situation may be the consequence of chronology, rather thanindividual research: anthropologists working in the ethnographic presenthave more evidence at hand than historians working on the nineteenthcentury. Questions regarding methodology therefore remain. Recoveringpractices and cosmologies and ch artin g the m over tim e is no easy task, fpartic ularly from tex tua l sources, and Crais's introd uctio n, despite his skill oat syn thes izing a range of literatur e, is often mo re rhetor ical th an provid ing Ha clearly stated m etho d. H is theo retical exub erance also co nta ins slippage: othere are m om en ts wh en vam pires are conflated w ith witchcraft (p. 17), "*and when fundamental differences hetween scholarssuch as Mahmood ~zrM am da ni and Jean-Frangois Bayart are elided for th e sake of comp rehen- -J l-sive inclusion. These observations aside, Crais and his contributors offer ^a comp lex, forceful, and ultim atel y valuable engagem ent w ith developing 8discus sions on how to w rite new politica l histo ries of th e region. 33

REFERENCES

Abrams, Philip. 1988. Some Notes on the D ifficulty of Studying the State. Journal of Historical Sociol-ogy H:):5S-89.

Cooper, Frederick. 1994. Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History. AmericanHistorical Review 99^5).^5^6-^545.

CraisX^iftonC.2002.The Politics of Evil:Magic, StatePower, an d the Poiitical Imagination in South Africa.New York: Cambridge University Press.

Crais, Clifton C. 1991. White Supremacy an d Black Resistance in Pre-lndustriai South Africa: The Makingof the Colonial Order in the Eastern Cape, 1770-1865. New Y ork: Cam bridge University Press.

Christopher J. LeeHarvard University

Eltr ingham, Nigel . 2004. ACCOUNTING FOR HORROR: POST-GENO-CIDE DEBATES IN RWA NDA . London: P luto P ress. 232 pp. $79.95 (cloth)$24.95 (paper).

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Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaire) that are nearest toand bordering Rwanda, in particular North and South Kivu, have been thescene of almo st co ntin ua l chaos and civil war since 1997, res ultin g in closeto four million deaths. In the past ten years, millions of Africans havesuffered predation at the hands of soldiers and rebel militias.One of them was a Rw andan refugee na m ed M arie Beatrice Um utesi,wh o fled across the DRC on foot from 1994 to 1997, ulti m ate ly a rriving inKinshasa, from where she secured passage to Belgium. Her memoir of the

\^ journey. Surviving the Slaughter, originally published in France in 2000 asO Puir ou Mourir au ZaVre, translated by Julia Emerson, reveals the depth ofH hu m an suffering resulting from the Rw anda-C ongo crisis and the polit icalD com plexities surro und ing it. U m utesi's story rem inds readers of the ang uish"* experience d by all sides in the Rw andan conflict and its after m ath."T:~ Nigel Eltringham, who performed doctoral research in Rwanda and

- ! ^ am ong Rw andan exiles in Europe, offers a different perspe ctive on the^ genocide in Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda. As8 a worke r for thr ee years in postgenocide Rw anda w ith a conflict-resolution^ N G O , he is we ll suited to offer a scholarly work th at ex am ine s the histo ri-^ cal thou gh t processes in Rw anda tha t led to the genocide. He also seeks to^ und erstan d the way the genocide is viewed in post-1994 Rwanda. T aken

together, Eltringh am and Um utes i offer a mo re com plete picture of tbe levelof human suffering experienced in the Rwanda-Congo crisis and a fullerunderstanding of why it happened.In 1959, Belgium yielded self-governmen t to Rwanda and B urun di. Inthe years that followed, both countries endured almost perpetual conflictbetween their two main ethnic groups, the majority Hutu and the minorityT utsi . In Rwanda, conflict simm ered inte rm itten tly un til 1994, wh en th eassassination of Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvenal Habyarimana, sparkeda conflict that ult imately cost the l ives of more than 800,000 Rwandans.T he massacre, carried out by the interahamwe mili t ias and regular armyunits (the Forces Armees Rwandaise [FAR]), was directed mostly againstethnic T utsi .

Many in the West viewed the conflict dichotomously, as betweenH utu and T utsi , and explained it as a reversion to tribalism , but U m utesiand Eltringham illustrate that the conflict was far more complicated.Umutesi recalled her youth in postindependence Rwanda by observing,"I had to realize that I was Hutu. All Rwandans share the same languageand culture, and there is no speciflc region that is identifled with an ethnicgroup, no 'Hu tula nd ' or 'T utsila nd '" (Um utesi, p. 6). Eltringh am suppo rts

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The 1994 genocide ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA),led by current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, intervened with force,stopped the bloodshed, and established a government of national unity.The RPA was the military arm of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), apolitical faction made up of Tutsi exiles living in Uganda and backed byUgandan President Yoweri Museveni. Following the restoration of orderin Rwanda and Burundi, civil war erupted in Zaire, ult imately resultingin the 1997 overthrow of Mobotu Sese Seko by Laurent Kabila and hisRwandan-backed Alliance des Forces Dem ocratiques pour la Liberation du ] ^Congo (AFDL). ^'

Far from separa te crises, th e Rw andan genocide is inextrica bly link ed Hto the social disorder in Cong o. W hen th e RPA secure d con trol of Kigali (in oJuly, 1994), nea rly 1.5 m illi on H ut u s fled Rw anda for refugee cam ps in th e "*Kivu provinces. Am ong their num ber were former perpetrators of genocide, " 3 "but the overwhelm ing majority w ere innoce nt R wandan H utus w ho feared Jf-retribution in the wak e of the slaughter. U m utesi reco unts that, in Aug ust 1995, when the Forces Armees ZaVroises arrived in Buk avu to drive the 8H utu s back to Rwanda, scores of H utu s com m itted suicide by drow ning ^them selve s in th e Ru zizi River (Um utesi, p. 89). ^

U m utes i, a sociologist wh o, in the years before the genocide, worked ^to develop assista nce prog ram s for Rw andan w om en, lived at various localesin South Kivu for two years before the Congolese civil war began. As theconflict worsened, the RPA intervened by directly invading the countryand aiding the anti-Mobotu AFDL forces. Uganda and Burundi also sentforces into eastern Zaire to help topple Mobotu. When the war began,Umutesi fled across Zaire from one camp or village to another, each timedeparting an area just before a group of soldiers or militia caught up withthe refugees. Her memoir brings to light an often forgotten legacy of theRwandan genocides. Her story suggests that RPA soldiers, ostensibly topro tect Rw anda from the perpe trators of genocide in Zaire , aided the AFDL,who were often involved in the harassment and kill ing of innocent Hutu,especially those who resisted repatriation back to Rwanda in 1994, 1995,and 1996. Being unw elcom e in Za ire, the Rw andan H utu refugees, includ-ing Um utes i, lived in fear of attack , by not on ly RPA and AFDL forces, bu talso former interahamwe, ex-FAR soldiers, and a myriad of various rebelmilit ias. Nigel Eltringham supports Umutesi, noting, "Reports indicatetha t coun tless thousa nds of people were killed in Zaire/D RC b etwe en 1993and 1997. V ictims inc luded . . . Rw anda n refugees (who wished to retu rn toRwanda) killed by ex-VAR/interahamwe-, and Rwandan refugees killed by

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have prevented the genocide of the Tutsi by the H utu m ilitias and when theyshould have condemned the massacres of the Hutu by the RPF?" (p. 166).Umutesi 's story is a heartbreaking account of the Hutu exodus fromRwanda and supp orts Elie W iesel's claim, qu oted by Eltrin gh am , th at "Anysurvivor has more to say than all the historians combined about whathappened" (p. 147). That being said. Accounting for Honor offers a morebalanced and scholarly account of the social and historical forces thatled to the genocide. Eltringham's research, comprised of numerous inter-

t ^ views w ith Rw andans from all sides of the conflict, reveals tha t histo ricalO narrativ es are never absolute.-4 Eltringham dem onstrates that historical narratives have been used0 cou ntless tim es in Rw anda to justify the claim s of thos e in power, and he"* warn s readers th at cu rre nt efforts to acc ount for the 1994 genocide eo ntin ue" 3 " to be framed by appeals to absolutist accounts of tbe past. He concludes," "If we self-consciously reco gn ize the lim its of ou r ow n words and refuse to cla im abso lute clarity[,] we ena ct a final rejection of the abs olu tist basis of8 the genocidal me ntality. Tb is would surely be the mo st fi tt ing m em oria^ to the v ic tim s" (p. 182).1 Phillip A. Cantiell, IIS Ohio University

Gilbert, Erik. 2004. DHOWS AN D TH E COLONIAL ECONO MY OF ZAN -ZIBAR, 1860-1970. A then s: O hio U nivers ity Press. 192 pp. $49.95 (eloth)$26.95 (paper).Erik Gilbert seeks to set the record straight about dhow s. Aeeo rding to bimdhows and tbe commerce they enabled have suffered from neglect and out-right ho stility at tbe ha nd s of British adm inis trato rs, posteo lonial officialsand historians alike. Tbis book is less about dhows themselves than it isabout the u ses to wbic b th e vessels were put. W bile giving passing atten-tion to tbe design, construction, sailing, and navigation of dhows, Gilbert 'sstudy con centrates on tbe ir econom ic and political role, m ak ing an effectivecase for tbeir centrality to Zanzibar's prosperity during the colonial era.Gilbert is keen to situate Zanz ibar in tbe wider we stern Indian Oceaneconomic and cultural zone. His research took him not only to Zanzibarand Da r es Salaam, but also to Yemen and Kenya. He relies mos tly on colo-nial-era archival sources, but peppers bis narrativ e wit b anecdo tes from bistravels and interviews w itb m ercha nts and seamen. Tbis approach presents

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