First-person Africa: gazing into the future of the homeland with fresh eyes and informed vision.

* New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance by Charlayne Hunter-Gault Oxford University Press June 2006 $23, ISBN 0-195-17747-9

* An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner Viking, April 2006 $23.95, ISBN 0-670-03752-4

The capture and arrest of former Liberian President Charles Taylor this spring illustrates the sociopolitical crossroads between the not-too-old Africa seen by Paul Rosesabagina, the man whose story of heroism inspired the 2004 Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda, and the "new news" brought forth by highly experienced print-and-broadcast journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

Taylor, one of Africa's so-called "big men," represented the chaos and corruption of Africa's recent past and of its present; and his capture in Nigeria and subsequent appearance in front of an international tribunal in Sierra Leone represents that Africa will govern itself, if Hunter-Gault's argument is not misinterpreted. But Africa is in as much denial as Taylor (who pleaded not guilty to war crimes) if Rusesabagina's argument about his beloved Rwanda, now a nation of dried blood, can be extended to other parts of the continent

Hunter-Gault tells the recent history of a much-maligned continent through the prism of her decades of reporting in South Africa. She takes the reader deep into the post-apartheid era, warts and all. Her listing of the successes of the African Union under its most prominent leader, South African President Thabo Mbeki, would make any old head who ever wore a dashiki or had an Afro fill with pride. She shows evidence that Africa, despite its many problems, is taking serious baby steps toward self-governance--using peer pressure, for example, to uphold universal human-rights standards. Making inevitable comparisons between Pan-Africanism and the Civil Rights/Black Power Era, the women who bravely desegregated the University of Georgia in 1961 declares with some authority that "there is growing support among ordinary citizens for democracy on the continent, with people willing to put their bodies on the line to achieve it."

While Hunter-Gault is determined to provide a platform for the "new" (good) news of present-day South Africa and other places, Rusesabagina, with help from journalist Too Zoellner, tries, in the way a survivor of a massacre must, not to fixate on his nation's (horrible) history, old and recent. "We are obsessed with the past," he writes. "And everyone here tries to make it fit his own ends. But this is not something of which we should always be proud." Rwanda's past--one of ethnic dashes seemingly created, and definitely exacerbated, by pale observers/colonial rulers--shifts back and forth between Hutu and Tutsi conflict, tragically stuck between "us" and "them," Postulates Rusesabagina: "What divided us was an invented history."

By 1994, that divide was pronoun. Announcers from the nation's private radio station referred to Tutsis on-air as "cockroaches." The president then died in a plane crash: That was the excuse for the blood to pour.

The outpouring stopped in front of the Hotel Mille Collines in Kigali; due to the Machiavellian yet positive machinations of Rusesabagina. He kept Tutsis, and some Hutu moderates, alive through guile, flattery, constant improvisation and lots and lots of alcohol. If dancing with the Devil in the pale moonlight was the price he had to pay to protect his family, friends and others, then so be it. He offers no apologies to moral purists.

Hunter-Gault and Rusesabagine--one an observer of South Africa the other a son of Rwanda, both with an attachment to the ancient soil and its populace--show sharp differences in tone and passion. The journalist on the frontlines practices professional detachment (sometimes too much); the hotel manager who held back the blood tide for about three months seethes with controlled rage against the United Nations end the White House for their voluntary impotence while men, women and children with machetes chopped away their humanity, encouraged, and in some cases, egged on by hate radio, greed, prejudice and history.

Both bear witness to the continent, using their eyes and, later, their pens. The experienced American journalist and the savvy, former hotel manager from Rwanda see many of the same things, but of course do not share the same tone or level of hope. Hunter-Gault is talking about the posse progress of an entire continent, while Rusesabagina, understandably, seems to lapse into producing yet another bound autopsy of his nation. The fact that the "new news" in Africa is that the leaders of its many nations are no longer regularly assassinated says much about the continent's long road to true freedom.

These books are necessary because there no longer exist quasi-elite national black forums (defunct general interest magazines of the 20th century like Emerge, Black World and Encore immediately come to mind) that would excerpt these ideas for a wider audience of opinion leaders and policymakers. Hunter-Gault's slim book an outgrowth of three speeches she made as a Harvard University fellowship recipient in 2003; is more a contemporary document--almost, frankly, a footnoted series of would-be magazine articles--than a tome for the ages.

More detailed and nuanced conversations about Africa--old versus new, stereotype versus reality--are needed, and they should be led by those who have dedicated themselves to seeing Africa through the continent's eyes, These two authors have set the foundation for that discussion in their respective works. That groundwork is one that goes deeper than the British Broadcasting Corporation's semi-regular cry of continental woe and the "it's-leading-if-it's-bleeding" philosophy of the alphabet white boys of American television news.

--Reviewed by Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D. Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D, a frequent BIBR contributor, is a journalist and historian based in Hyattsville, Maryland.