Therefore, the Union of Tanzanian Women will be: (a) An organization which will unite all Tanzanian women and enable the revolutionary ideas of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi on Socialism and Self Reliance and the liberation of women to reach them and be understood wherever they are (Kazuni Za Jumuiya Ya Wanawake Wa Tanzania, 1978).

First, you must intensify the struggle against us for the purpose of doing away with loopholes and laws that prevent equality between men and women. Second you must overcome mental attitudes imposed on women by social orders. As a result of social systems, women have become either slaves or flowers (Nyerere, 1976).

Men will have to learn to accept women as equals in social production and women must cultivate a new personality, a new consciousness of freedom and rebellion against male exploitation and domination (Tanzania Daily News, 29 Oct., 1976).

One of the greatest weaknesses of the UWT … is the incompetence of its leadership to penetrate to the grassroots level. … (Madabida, 1974: 18).

As the first three quotations with which this paper begins suggest, the rhetoric of “women's liberation” became quite acceptable in Tanzania during the 1970s with President Nyerere himself taking the lead in identifying existing inequalities between men and women as an impediment to socialist transformation. At the international level as well it had become clear–with the declaration in 1975 of a “UN Decade of Women” as the most obvious rhetorical gesture–that the neglect of women as objects of, much less as actors in development projects and programs was seriously undermining the success of such efforts, with negative consequences for development in general and devastating consequences for women in particular.

This article examines differing explanations for violence against foreign nationals in post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that the most compelling analyses in the scholarship draw from a family of arguments in the global literature that locates popular violence against outsiders within the context of declining sovereign power, explaining theatrical displays of force against enemies within as attempts at the retrieval of that power. To the extent that these arguments rely on the concept of a scapegoat, they are inadequate. More analytical attention needs to be paid to the scene of the encounters between the “us” and the “them” of collective violence.

Formerly marginal areas are increasingly the focus of extractive mega-projects, which are framed as necessary for economic growth and a modern industrial economy. Yet there are concerns that such projects are unjustly displacing local populations, facilitated through the alliances of local elites with foreign investors. This article asks, who are the winners and losers from oil exploration in the Turkana region of Kenya? Using longitudinal ethnographic research on the dynamics of local government, oil exploration, and pastoralist livelihoods in Turkana, Mkutu and Mdee highlight how current processes may exacerbate inequality and marginalization, with the potential for increasingly violent consequences.

Defined primarily in terms of the exodus of the highly talented from the Southern countries to the North, the phenomenon known as “brain drain” has gained in importance during recent decades and years. Changing global conditions, unprecedented developments in information and electronic technology, globalization, and widening of the gap between the South and the North have focused attention on the brain drain. We begin this article by discussing the nature of the brain drain, briefly noting that it occurs in three settings: internal, regional, and global. Our argument here is that brain drain occurs in almost all societies, initially from poorer and impoverished rural areas to relatively rich and developing urban centers within national boundaries and later (or sometimes concurrently) to more developed and wealthy regions and neighboring countries.

I am greatly honored to be giving the first Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola Distinguished Lecture. I am grateful to the African Studies Association (ASA) of the United States for giving me this role.

Although the first Abiola Lecture is being given today, the decision to launch such an annual event was taken by the ASA more than a year ago. That was of course before Chief M.K.O. Abiola entered the presidential race in Nigeria from which he seemed to have emerged the victor—but the results were never officially confirmed.

But there is another side to Chief Abiola's concerns. This is the crusade for reparations to be paid to black people for hundreds of years of enslavement, exploitation and degradation.

Africa has experienced a triple heritage of slavery—indigenous, Islamic and Western (Robertson and Klein 1983). The reparations movement seems to have concluded that although the indigenous and Islamic forms of slavery were much older than the trans-Atlantic version, they were much smaller in scale and allowed for greater upward social mobility—from slave to Sultan, from peasant to paramount chief.

Indigenous systems of slavery were uniracial—black masters, black slaves. Islamic forms of slave-systems were multi-racial, both masters and slaves could be of any race or color. Indeed, Egypt and Muslim India evolved slave dynasties. Western slave systems were the most racially polarized in the modern period—white masters, black slaves (biracial) (Winks 1972; Klein 1986; Lewis 1990).

In 1856, as two young girls in the eastern Cape stood guarding their fields from the birds, they were approached by two strangers who entrusted them with a prophetic message:

Such millennial visions in Africa have varied over time and space. While some prophets predicted that great winds would arise, driving Europeans into the sea, others promised that wealthy black brethren would arrive by airplane from America to right the ills of white domination. In either case, the cataclysmic event would usher in a time of harmony, peace and prosperity. As the current millennium approaches, many scholars of Africa are voicing a comparable sense of crisis, a feeling that our understanding of the continent must be reimagined, reconfigured and reconstructed. Unlike Africans of earlier generations, however, we no longer predict a harmonious world emerging from the ashes of the old.

Since the 1980s, the Tanzanian state has been undergoing a transformation involving both the relations of power among the central organs of the state and the social role that the state plays in Tanzanian society. The dominance of the ruling party (CCM), with its goals of rural-based socialist development has eroded. Administration has triumphed over politics, and the state is coming increasingly under the sway of an administrative ethos. There is little indication that opening up politics through multi-party elections will counter this trend.

Several factors contributed to this transformation. The economic crisis of the 1980s was a catalyst, weakening the capacity and legitimacy of the state and the party in particular. A second element was international actors, particularly the IMF, empowered to intervene in Tanzania by the economic crisis. These actors played a significant role in defining policy shifts away from rural-based socialist development through their advocacy of structural adjustment. The crisis of capacity and intervention of outside influences might have generated some policy shifts, but did not necessarily determine that a transformation of the state would ensue. Adam Przeworski (1986) has suggested that transitions from authoritarian rule are possible only when there is a viable alternative to the authoritarian regime. Likewise, it is only when a sufficiently coherent counter coalition exists within the state to represent an alternative ruling elite that state transformation is possible. In Tanzania, the crisis of state capacity and intervention of foreign actors generated such a transformation because administrators presented a potential counter coalition. Never adequately incorporated into the CCM-dominated state, administrators retained elitist norms, viewing themselves as a development vanguard, contrary to the role specified for administrators by the CCM. Although political authorities explicitly sought to render administrators subordinate and responsive to the party which would define the social role of the state, bureaucratic autonomy remained high.

This article examines the epistemological certainties and uncertainties of Akan spirit possession and witchcraft knowledge. It is based on fieldwork carried out between 1990 and 1991 in Dormaa-Ahenkro, Brong-Ahafo region, Ghana. The article examines the transcendental knowledge found among antiwitchcraft shrine gods and their priests and how the sacred knowledge of gods is utilized to counter witchcraft in the modern postcolony. This, it is argued, is an ambiguous process, involving the “partial” knowledge of the shrine priest versus the “complete” picture of events held by the god. However, it is suggested that antiwitchcraft practices are very popular among priests because this type of knowledge allows the priest to manage uncertainty at first hand. The witch confesses directly to the priest, and this knowledge is not mediated through a god.

Marginal Gains (2204) has been described as a surprising and bold book. Since the articles in this collection, which take one or other of its arguments as points of departure, share certain similar qualities, they can be treated as a collective effort initiating new debate with non-African economic research and thinking. This article reviews the argument of the book, highlights the concept and phenomenon of ordinal ranking in both the book and the articles, and then uses the findings to begin an appreciative critique of the ideas of Michel Callon. Although Callon's approach intersects with that of Marginal Gains in many ways, the scalar ranking of people, and the use of rank to exclude and divert, finds more prominence in the book's approach, which also has more relevance for Europe than economists seem to have acknowledged so far. The article ends with a new instance of ordinal ranking, from Cameroon.

Modern African life has been profoundly affected by the brief period of European colonial domination during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While the past is prologue for all states, the ramifications of Africa's colonial past have been felt with particular acuity in the current era due to the speed of Africa's transition from colonial status to that of independence. Many aspects of contemporary Africa reflect the residual effects of colonialism, but few do so with the clarity of the boundary situation. This study will focus on one particularly important aspect of that boundary situation—boundary conflict. In particular, it will define the explanations for boundary conflict offered most often in the traditional literature and test their validity using empirical methods.

The boundaries of modern Africa were the creation of European diplomats who partitioned Africa among themselves with little regard for, or knowledge of, the socio-cultural characteristics of the continent. As a result of the capriciousness of the European partition, a typical African boundary may group together many ethnic groups in one state, it may cut across many ethnic or national boundaries of the past, or it may create a state whose physical characteristics hinder political, social, or economic stability. Since the colonial boundaries were used, with few exceptions, as the basis for the devolution of sovereignty in Africa, the current leaders of the continent have had to deal with the effects of this boundary situation.

African international relations have also been influenced by the presence of externally defined, artificial boundaries. Political boundaries mark sharp discontinuities in political jurisdiction, but in Africa few of those discontinuities correspond to the patterns of the socio-cultural environment. It has, therefore, been frequently charged that the artificial boundaries of Africa form the basis for conflict between the African states (Emerson, 1963: 105). In order to make their boundaries more congruent with the ethnic landscape, some states might attempt to adjust their boundaries at the expense of a neighbor. If Africa's modern boundaries had been allowed to evolve in a more natural manner, or if the colonial powers had based their partition upon a more thorough appreciation of the ethnic contours of the continent, it is assumed that the states of Africa would be less prone to boundary conflict.

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

Elie Wiesel (1986)

The consequences of this state of affairs [the division of the world into competing blocks and an arms traffic which knows no borders] are to be seen in the festering of a wound which typifies and reveals the imbalances and conflicts of the modern world: the millions of refugees whom war, natural calamities, persecution and discrimination of every kind have deprived of home, employment, family and homeland.

Pope John Paul II (1987: para. 24)

Africa is sometimes called “a continent on the move.” But this is not a recent phenomenon. Africans have always been “on the move,” long before any regular contact with Europe. In a vast and sparsely populated continent, people and communities relocated to maintain ecological balance, to seek a more secure environment and to achieve better conditions of living. Almost every region of Africa at one time or another has been affected by various streams of population distribution and redistribution. It is neither possible nor important to define these movements precisely or to delineate their frontiers exactly (for an overview based on archeological and linguistic studies see Devise and Vansina, 1988: 750-93, and Cambridge Encyclopedia, 1981: 57-86).

Population displacements and human migrations are neither unique to Africa nor confined to the 20th century. They are the inevitable companions of war, civil conflict and prolonged economic deprivation.

Over the last few decades, an increasing number of developing countries have embarked upon the organization of nationwide literacy programs. Although the rationale behind those programs varies from country to country, it is generally expected that efforts to increase the literacy levels of adults will have positive consequences for both the learners and the nation as a whole.

It is worth noting, however, that until now empirical evidence which could support these expectations has remained extremely weak. By and large, adult literacy has been a neglected area in terms of data collection and research. In many countries it may even be difficult to find precise information about simple facts such as the number of adults enrolled in literacy classes, the number of instructors, or the number of literacy proficiency certificates which have been delivered. In most cases the illiteracy rate, which is an essential indicator for any plan of action in the field of literacy, is only a crude measure based on self reporting by household heads and on questionable assumptions about the equivalency between a given number of years of primary school attendance and a sufficient proficiency level in reading and writing. Only recently have certain governments started using literacy tests to assess, by direct measurement, the levels of literacy of their population, most often on the basis of a representative sample household survey (for example, Kenya, Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe).

When it comes to the effects of literacy, the lack of appropriate information is even more disturbing. There are several studies which demonstrate the positive effects of a given number of years of primary schooling on farmers’ productivity (Jamison and Lau, 1982).

Rehabilitating the legacy of deceased leaders is a phenomenon particularly salient in Southern Africa, insofar as memories of liberation wars provoke considerable debate. After a protracted civil war, Angolans remain divided about the contributions of their historical leaders. Jonas Savimbi sits at the center of this division, a binary representation of both heroism and villainy. Martins demonstrates how Savimbi’s memory is invoked both as a moral source of hope for an alternative Angola—one imagined and disseminated by Savimbi and UNITA and appropriated by social protest—and as a technology of fear and control employed by the MPLA to assert political dominance.

The decade from 1990 to 2000 saw a total of seventy-eight top leadership elections involving forty-three of the forty-eight sub-Saharan African countries. Of these, only twenty-one elections led to power transition from an incumbent to an opposition political party in nineteen countries. Paradoxically, even where there was such transition, authoritarian tendencies persisted. Focusing on Kenya and Zambia, this article argues and seeks to demonstrate that the limited number of transitions from an incumbent regime to an opposition party and the persistence of authoritarianism are a function of political liberalization without democratization of political institutions and rules of the political game.

This paper advances a resource mobilization perspective on the 2011–12 electoral protests in Senegal based on social movement theory. Motivational explanations, in the form of grievance accounts, have already been used to explain successful protest mobilization in this case. Here the emphasis is placed on organizational efforts and the financial and human resources behind social movements. Using this approach to analyze the rise and fall of the social movement created to protest against President Abdoulaye Wade reveals its strategic role for opposition parties and their leaders. These findings add nuance to the perception of a democratic revolution in Senegal.

It hardly came as a surprise that Ghana's Supreme Military Council obtained, or at least claimed that it had received, the result it wanted at the 30 March 1978 referendum: endorsement of its proposal for Union Government (see Appendix B). In Ghana's unpredictable political climate, the SMC had spared no effort to make the outcome of the referendum as predictable as possible.

The July 1977 decision to call a national referendum was the result of pressures brought to bear on the SMC during the fall of 1976 and the spring of 1977. Widespread dissatisfaction with the management of the economy, coupled with indications that the military intended to remain in power for an indeterminate period led to student strikes which culminated in the 23 June 1977 demand by the Association of Recognized Professional Bodies (ARPB) that the government resign immediately (Resolution …). The ARPB's ultimatum was rejected out of hand by General Acheampong in his dawn broadcast of 1 July 1977. The ensuing general strike of lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other professionals almost paralyzed the country, and the SMC was virtually forced to announce a schedule for the return to civilian rule (see Appendix B). The first phase of the process was to culminate in the March 1978 referendum.

Undoubtedly, the SMC would have preferred a quiet, carefully controlled plebiscite, or more simply, a constitution octroyee which outlawed political parties and permitted, if the SMC thought it necessary, a reversion to full military control. As previous Ghanaian regimes have discovered to their peril, however, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prevent Ghanaians from openly and forcefully expressing themselves on important political issues. Thus, it was also not surprising that the decision to conduct a referendum released forces pent-up since the NRC took power in 1972.

Sierra Leone's transfer election of 1996 was instigated by a resurgent civil society that came alive after thirty years of dictatorship. This electoral democratic renewal did not, however, alter the spoils logic that has defined the organization and exercise of political power in Sierra Leone since the late 1960s. Because performance by a popularly elected government is critical to the consolidation of public support for democracy, the SLPP's inability to distance itself from its discredited precursors endangered the country's fragile democracy.