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Article: Legitimacy, justice, and the future of Africa.(Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa)(Book review)
- Article from:
- Human Rights & Human Welfare
- Article date:
- January 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Development in Africa edited by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza and Philip J. McConnaughay. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. 308 pp.
In 1961, just as the countries of Africa were acquiring their independence, a junior Washington Evening Star reporter named Smith Hempstone, having just returned from a three-year-long odyssey across the continent, pessimistically opined:
All that can be said at this juncture is that Western democracy
is not going to work in Africa. Nor is government going to
revert to a tribal framework. A new synthesis is in the making
and something new in political organization is ...