There have been a number of attempts by social scientists to discuss the economic significance of the land issue on the politics of Southern Rhodesia. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930, the cornerstone of segregationist policy, has been discussed at length in many treatises on Rhodesia, the most notable being those of Malcolm Rifkind (1968), Robin Palmer (1968), and Lewis Gann (1963). The important Land Husbandry Act of 1951 has been analyzed by Kingsley Garbett (1963), Ken Brown (1959), and J.F. Holleman (1969). Little has, however, been written on the changing distribution of land resources between Black and White, except for an analysis by Roder (1964) which covers aspects of the period up to the early 1960s.

This paper will attempt to illustrate how the process of capital accumulation and discrimination against Blacks in capital markets, through land policy, has worked to impair Black economic advancement. This will be done by demonstrating how the broad trends in racial land distribution in the 1946-69 period have fostered African underdevelopment. The importance of the racial division of land assets on the distribution of income will also be highlighted.

In this paper a simple model is proposed by which the relationship between slave prices in Africa and the number of slaves exported in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Atlantic slave trade is investigated. Statistical evidence indicating a high degree of correlation between fluctuations in prices and in slave exports shall be presented which, in conjunction with a priori theoretical expectations as well as collateral historical evidence, supports the hypothesis that economic motives were one of the major determinants of the African slave supply process.

The statistical analysis also permits an estimation of the “elasticity” of the African slave traders' response to changes in coastal slave prices; such an estimate answers the question, “How much must the economic incentives (in terms of price changes) be increased to bring about a given increase in the numbers of slaves brought to the coast for exports?” Since the price responsiveness of African traders was itself influenced by the conditions they faced in the enslavement, transportation, bulking, and other components of the African supply process, the elasticity analysis permits an investigation into more than the simple issue of whether or not African traders were profit motivated. The analysis provides an indirect view of a wide variety of phenomena occurring within African societies. Some of the possible uses to which the elasticity estimate may be put are examined in the final section of the paper.

In recent years, anthropologists and sociologists have been concerned with the problem of the definition of ethnic groups within various societies. This paperl suggests that the purpose of the researcher's definition largely determines the composition of the group and that research on ethnicity may be seen as analogous, in that respect, to approaches to research on language.

For some types of research, it is sufficient to equate ethnic identity with tribal affiliation. This is true in areas of the world where it makes sense to record answers from informants to the question “What is your tribe?”. However, it is necessary in such areas for the researcher to ask the question directly, rather than ask one person to label another.

In a recent article, A.N. Tucker (1973) discusses this same problem with regard to placenames. He cites, for Africa, cases where it was discovered that the official name of a particular place was not the place's name at all but had been supplied to researchers (linguists, anthropologists, geographers, or whatever) by a guide from another culture or linguistic group. Tucker (1973: 163) states that:

As research in social anthropology has turned from studying tribal units in more or less isolated areas toward urban-centered research, it has become apparent that one feature of urban social organization seems to be emergent ethnic or tribal groupings (Arens, 1973: 441). The criteria underlying such groupings, as opposed to those underlying traditional tribal affiliation, are often of a complex nature. Where, in rural areas, it has been possible to ask informants “What is your tribe?” and receive an unambiguous answer (usually related to parentage and/or land inheritance), in urban poly-ethnic communities today as well as in rural yet urban-linked areas, criteria for determining ethnicity are changing. In fact, as Arens has pointed out, in today's Africa common tribal identity in the sense of ethnic consciousness seems to be of particular importance in the cities, where ethnicity—in the absence of kinship—underlies social organization. The common assumption that rural areas are static and urban areas dynamic is being challenged.

A literary scholar runs a certain risk when he ventures into the troubled waters of African politics. But a poet—whether it is Shakespeare carefully plotting his historical plays to conform to and support the Tudor position on the Wars of the Roses or Wordsworth confusing the atmosphere of the French Revolution with the air of heaven or Ginsberg howling with rage and existential despair at the sight of democracy betrayed—makes political statements. Sometimes these statements are only subtly and indirectly political; at other times they are specific and topical. In either case, they are part of the milieu in which a political culture flourishes. They are, in fact, part of the political culture itself.

I want to examine several of the ways in which indigenous poets of West Africa have functioned as part of the developing political culture. And I want to address myself specifically to political culture—a term of some exactness which nevertheless allows considerable latitude for analysis and speculation. The political culture of a society might be described as the political system internalized in the perceptions, judgments, feelings, and attitudes of its people. In their important study, Civic Culture, Almond and Verba (1966: 15-16) have this to say about the “orientation” which constitutes political culture:

In an article on educational planning, C. Arnold Anderson and Mary Jean Bowman (1968) suggest that there is a conflict between equity and efficiency in the distribution of schools. Since independence, each Anglophonic African state has altered the English educational inheritance of local religious and voluntary schools and has opted in favor of a more centralized system of state control. Centralized control, according to Anderson and Bowman, could theoretically act as a vehicle for an increase in equity by spreading schools more evenly throughout the population and therefore limiting the advantages which could accrue to the children of the privileged. On the other hand, the authors view centralized control as a device which might obstruct the efficient utilization of schools, since the pattern of school distribution reflects the local population's interest in education and their effort to acquire it.

By extension, Anderson and Bowman infer that localized decision-making would tend to maximize efficiency. They say that “[in] localities where given educational efforts will evoke the largest response in attendance and in demand for further schooling … [such effort] tends to be realized by local interest and resources” (1968: 361).

I wish to explore the Anderson and Bowman equity-efficiency dilemma by focusing upon Uganda as a case in point. I do not differ substantially from them. As assumed from their thesis, there have been changes in efficiency and in equity since Ugandan government became involved in primary education. But in contrast to the expectations of their thesis, I question whether the effect of government involvement has not been detrimental to three specific areas of equity—the same equity under whose guise centralized action was originally motivated.

African socialism is the ideology of Africa. The purposes of this paper are to examine the meanings attached to this ideology by Africans and Africanists alike, to analyze and compare any perceptual differences which may exist among competing viewpoints, and, finally, to indicate areas of consensus or agreement emerging from such an analysis. The ideology of African socialism is investigated here under experimental circumstances. Employing Q technique, 53 Africans and Africanists were asked to sort 75 statements pertinent to African socialism made by African leaders along an opinion continuum. Data were inter-correlated and factor-analyzed, producing three factors or patterns of perceptions toward African socialism, respectively described as pragmatic, scientific, and internationalist. Respondents aligned with all three viewpoints mention Julius Nyerere of Tanzania as their ideal type of African socialist leader. The inference is that Nyerere serves as a condensation symbol for persons of differing ideological persuasions.

Ideology is an important aspect of any political culture. Political culture is part of the general cultural system, and according to Parsons (1964: 57-58), the individual is involved in three possible ways: by his interest in it, by his participation in it, and by his individual value orientation or political beliefs. Verba (1966: 513) observes that the political culture

consists of the system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols, and values which defines the situation in which political action takes place. It provides the subjective orientation to politics.

At a general level of analysis, ideologies embody issues of importance to individuals or groups. As a working definition of political ideology, Dion (1959: 49) has suggested that it may be regarded as a “more or less integrated system of values and norms noted in society, which individuals and groups project on the political plane in order to promote the aspirations they have come to value in social life.”

The Serkawa, or Sarkawa, of Yauri Division, Northwestern State, Nigeria, provide an excellent opportunity for analyzing the interrelationships of the concepts of three major theoreticians: Frederik Barth, Ward Goodenough, and Max Weber. The Serkawa describe themselves as “Hausa who fish” and have moved into Yauri in increasing numbers since the late 1960s in order to fill an ecological niche created by the building of Kainji Dam, a major hydro-electric dam at New Bussa, Borgu Division, Kwara State. These professional fishermen, an offshoot of the Sorkawa from Songhai, have moved into the riverine environment which the Gungawa (Reshe) abandoned under governmental fiat. The Gungawa (literally, ‘island-dwellers’) were resettled on the mainland.

The major theoretical problem examined in this paper is that of the interrelationship of the concepts of class, status, and party and their relationship to that of ethnicity. Finally, ethnicity as a mode of identity is examined. The primary objectives of this study are: (1) to examine the consequences of ecology on identity and presentation of self; (2) to assess the interrelationship of Weber's concepts of class, status, and party in a situation of change; (3) to suggest that these are various modes of the same phenomenon; (4) to combine the insights of Barth's optative approach to ethnicity with that of Weber; (5) to analyze the political uses of ethnicity in a multi-ethnic situation; and (6) to apply Goodenough's reformulation of status and role theory to ethnic groups.

There are a number of benefits to be derived from using such an approach. Ethnic groups in this framework become social persona whose boundaries can be defined by their distribution of rights and duties vis-a-vis other similarly defined social persona. This approach has the further advantage of making the concepts operational without forfeiting their taxonomic clarity. It also succeeds in focusing on dynamic and relational aspects of stratification rather than on those that are static and descriptive.

“There is no conflict between the Church and the State in Zaire,” President Mobutu Sese Seko stated recently in a Kinshasa daily newspaper (Salongo, 28 Oct. 1973: 5). Despite the President's claim, the events of the last several years indicate a situation of high tension, if not of conflict. Zaire's only Cardinal was expelled from the country; the state banned all religious broadcasts, publications, youth groups, and Bishops' meetings, and a Bishops' Committee wrote that the government is moving towards totalitarianism and dictatorship—not exactly the kinds of actions which reveal close harmony.

This article discusses the steady deterioration and final stabilization of church-state relations in Zaire over the last five years. In an attempt to give both viewpoints, President Mobutu's public pronouncements and the state's concrete actions are presented, as well as the Bishops' statements and the Church's responses.

This conflict has been an important one to both sides. On the one hand, the Zairian Church is certainly the largest and most powerful Catholic Church in Africa, and thus one in which the Vatican takes a keen interest. On the other hand, the government is preoccupied with the Church, which has constituted the greatest threat to Mobutu's drive for absolute power. With its 3,900 Belgian priests and sisters and its close ties to the Vatican it represents both the colonial past and foreign domination. Worst of all, the Church professes a system of beliefs and practices which are different from those of the Zairian political party. Certainly one of the fascinating aspects of this topic is the contradiction between the President's public statements, which imply that he objects to the large foreign involvement in the Zairian Church, and the state's concrete actions, which are clearly directed against spreading the Catholic system of beliefs and practices.