In order to reappraise discourses on the restitution vs. retention of Africa’s cultural heritage, Eyssette examines the Musée du Quai Branly (France), the AfricaMuseum (Belgium), the British Museum (UK), and the Humboldt Forum (Germany) as one representative spectrum for analysis showing the mutual imbrications of their changing strategies and practices. After detecting biases in retentionist arguments on security, accessibility, law, and ethics, Eyssette stresses symmetrical shortcomings in restitutionist discourses on provenance research and the instrumentalization of heritage for economic gains or post-colonial rebranding. The conclusion determines whether these four institutions are retentionists, rhetorical restitutionists, or truly reformed restitutionists.

The history of coffee cultivation on Mount Meru in northern Tanzania has been narrated by men and most scholars as a tale of extraordinary achievement and unfortunate decline. Meru women, however, associate coffee agriculture with gender inequality and social disorder. Complicating narratives of cash crop agriculture as a straightforward communal good, Williams uses oral histories to explore alternative renderings of Meru agricultural history, centering memories that highlight coffee’s role in reifying patriarchal power. Women’s concern with labor exploitation and emphasis on relational integrity challenge our understanding of what coffee represents in Meru history and our ideal models for pursuing sustainable growth through cash crop commodities.

Studies of protest in contemporary Africa often fail to address three related dynamics. First, rural radicalism has long been more central to African political struggles, even urban ones, than is commonly recognized. Second, the ongoing transformation of rural political economies links them to those of urban areas and has changed struggles over land and resources. Finally, these changes have reduced the power of traditional authorities and increased the appeal of nonviolent protest, as well as shifting protest toward a more national mode in which rural populations are increasingly central. Mampilly elaborates on these propositions, which are derived from brief examinations of both historical and contemporary examples of rural protest across Africa, before applying them to a deep analysis of LUCHA, a social movement in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The role of power over people and over land is an important issue in West Africa, with important implications for relationships between commoners and elites. Along with conquest, slave raiding, marriage, and procreation, control over land has enhanced the ability of chiefs and other elites to gain control over people, thus increasing their production and reinforcing social hierarchy and centralization of power. This article utilizes oral evidence and European documentary sources to examine the importance of the concept of “wealth-in-people” for understanding the significance of land in African societies. By focusing on the Gambia region, where both paddy and upland rice farming were practiced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the article contributes empirical observations to support the argument that control over both land and people played a central role in the accumulation of wealth in many African societies.

Two good goals are in collision in African Studies in the United States--the fostering of certain black interests and the untrammeled pursuit of scholarship. I think that neither needs to give way before the other, provided a division of labor can be devised which secures the autonomy of scholarship from politics. This is the gist of the remarks that follow. In proceeding with these remarks, I shall refer to the governance of the African Studies Association and the disproportionately small number of black inquirers in a field concerned with an area with which blacks have a special tie, only as these matters seem to me to have implications for the autonomy of scholarship.

The view has been expressed that the conduct of inquiry about Africa needs to be radically revised so that black people will have control over their own history and its interpretation (Clarke 1969, p. 9). Adherents of this view, in elaboration, say they wish to have “the study of African life…undertaken from a Pan-Africanist perspective,” which “defines that all black people are African people and rejects the division of African peoples by geographical locations based on colonial spheres of influence” (Clarke 1969, p. 11). I think this view is representative of thinking sufficiently widespread to warrant considering it with the utmost seriousness in any effort to deal with the future of African studies in the United States.

Four theories are used to explain the causes and dynamics of violent conflict along the Oromia–Somali Border in eastern Ethiopia. Of these, political economy (greed versus grievance) and political ecology theories are instrumental in understanding the main drivers of violence. Politicization of ethnicity and the self-centered behavior of political elites have increased the complexity of the conflict. Fekadu Kenee demonstrates that peacebuilding efforts require respect for the outcomes of referendums on the disputed territorial units and revitalization of customary systems, among others. While customary institutions can resolve conflicts at least temporarily, sustained community dialogue needs to be part of the political reform to build lasting inter-regional peace.

In the past decade Cape Verde has seen an unexpected outburst of gang-related urban violence. The state has reacted mainly by means of a repressive securitization policy, which has not been able to offer more than temporary solutions. In public discourses, “broken” families, youth drug consumption, and a supposed lack of education and sufficiently severe punishment are often referred to as the main causes for the rise in crime. The article discusses such discourses, contrasting them with the experiences and narratives of inmates from the country’s two central prisons. It suggests that extrajudicial punishment of suspects and offenders by police officers, as reported by many juvenile convicts, is part of the dynamics of violence manifest in different spheres of Cape Verdean society and may be a possible factor influencing the decision of young citizens to “opt” for, or stick to, careers of marginality and delinquency.

Historical writing about Africa in the last decade has undergone a quantitative, if not always qualitative, boom. This is particularly true in the realm of political and, to a lesser extent, economic history. But little work has been completed in the area of African intellectual history, surely one of the most fascinating and ultimately rewarding fields into which history can be divided.

One obvious reason for this dearth of work is the elusiveness of intellectual history in general--the immense difficulty involved in researching and writing about it well. Intellectual history, according to its broadest definition, deals with the history of thought. But thought, unlike so-called “hard,” verifiable evidence used by social scientists--such as statistics, carbon dating, chronologies--is a nebulous phenomenon to isolate and define. Thought can be nonverbal as well as verbal. It can be symbolic or “unmethodical,” as in poetry, fiction, art, or music, or quite definite and “methodical,” as in science and philosophy.

Ideally, an intellectual historian would study all of these types of thought, not for their accuracy or logical consistency (as would a, scientist or mathematician), not for their value or aesthetic satisfaction (as would a critic or philosopher), but for their relation to each other in time, how and why they appear and spread at a particular time, and their effect on concrete historical situations. In other words, it is the intellectual historian's job to delineate or describe thought in a given historical epoch and to explain the changes which this thought undergoes from epoch to epoch.

An examination of politics and political thought in Tanzania since independence reveals three recurring themes. These are egalitarianism, mass participation in politics at all levels, and anti-elitism. A brief examination of these ideas will serve to point out some possible sources of political conflict if this ideology does become a guide for decision-making in Tanzania.

Equality implies the adoption of a universalistic legal order, the application of achievement criteria in recruitment in all sectors of society, and fair treatment for all citizens. However, like many other new states, Tanzania is culturally plural, is unevenly developed, and has skilled manpower shortages. In the drive to fill positions with nationals, it is doubtful that equality of opportunity can be achieved with any consistency in the immediate post-independence period.

The Arusha Declaration encourages mass participation in political life at all levels. Furthermore, compared to other African political parties, TANU has been relatively successful in involving citizens in the political process. The rationale for advocating mass involvement is to narrow the mass-elite gap and to create a sense of responsibility on the part of citizens. However, mass participation could also lead to the weakening of leadership by skilled individuals and the overloading of the political system via inflated demands.

The Arusha Declaration also deemphasizes the significance of wealth, education, skill, or other such values in the recruitment of leaders. The objective is to discourage elitism and all forms of elitist behavior on the part of the leadership.

Since it began active programs in 1951, the Ford Foundation has had two principal sorts of interest in the areas outside the Western world. One is to help these areas in the development efforts that are now their great preoccupation. There is a division of the Foundation called the Overseas Development Program that has this purpose. Another interest is in American capacities for understanding and dealing with the non-Western world. The Foundation's International Training and Research Program pursues this aim, through grants to universities and other academic organizations, through an area training fellowship program, and through other means. A third division of the Foundation, the International Affairs Program, supports non-academic American organizations concerned with international affairs, and adds other sorts of activities through in Europe and a general concern with peace and international order.

Burundi society has become polarized along ethnic lines. In 1972 a series of increasingly violent confrontations erupted into an ethnic civil war. The two ethnic coalitions which faced each other were the Tutsi and the Hutu. The Tutsi are the socio-politically dominant minority in control in Burundi.

The letter above capsules the problems and opportunities of African studies in the mid-1970s. It suggests that American education about Africa is pitifully inadequate, and that it has a long way to go to achieve the objective of a citizenry informed about Africa and one which accepts and appreciates Africa as well as the range of cultures which comprise our modern global society.

This is an important time for Sub-Saharan Africa. First and foremost, because over half the region is actively engaged in wide-ranging programs of economic reform or structural adjustment. Second, because the donor community is in the process of deciding how these African efforts will be supported over the next several years. Lomé IV, (Europe’s major funding mechanism for Africa), its volume and how it is allocated, is a critical part of that process. So too are the current negotiations on the Ninth Replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA).

On May 17, 1970, Portuguese colonial forces in Mozambique numbering 50,000 and headed by the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief, General Kaulza de Arriaga launched a sweeping offensive against the areas in northern Mozambique held by FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front. Operation Gordian Knot was intended to crush the FRELIMO forces which had been operating in Mozambique since 1964. Now, four years after “Gordian Knot,” General de Arriaga has retired from the Portuguese armed forces. Following the coup that rocked Portugal on April 25 the new provisional Portuguese government has opened discussions with FRELIMO in Lusaka on the colonial problem. And FRELIMO forces are operating in strength in five districts of Mozambique—from Niassa and Cabo Delgado in the north, to Tete in the west, to Beira and Vila Pery in central Mozambique. The purpose of this article is to examine the Portuguese military defeat in Mozambique and the growing strength of FRELIMO, to look at the situation as it appears immediately following the coup in Portugal, and to briefly relate these developments to U.S. policy towards Portuguese colonialism.

The most dramatic testimony of the Portuguese military failure is of course the coup in Portugal. Many accounts have noted that General Spinola's book, Portugal and the Future, which heralded the coup, made clear in its analysis that Portugal could not defeat the liberation movements militarily and that a political solution had to be sought. The signs of the erosion of Portugal's position have been evident: the feeling of “hopelessness” among Portuguese youth about the colonial wars; an estimated 100,300 draft resisters and deserters abroad added to the some one million expatriates working outside the country; an increasing tendency for troops in the field “to shy away from contact with the enemy, taking defensive stands only“; fewer than one hundred places taken in the military academy with room for four hundred; the massive discontent within the Portuguese junior officer corps about conditions of service; the growing refusal of military duty (one half of the last class called refused to report).

The fact that more than half of the world’s refugees are presently found in Africa is a reality that has gone unrecognized or been ignored by the Reagan Administration policies toward refugees. This is partially a reflection of the lack of understanding of the American public about the extent and magnitude of the refugee crisis in Africa. The current total of 6.3 million African refugees is likely to increase substantially in the near future. In absolute terms, the increase in the number of African refugees for the last ten years is over 5 million, an increase of more than 500%. The rate of increase between 1979-81 is particularly significant. Within two years the refugee population swelled by 50%, giving Africa the tragic responsibility of being a host continent for more than half of the world’s refugees (See Table 1).

There is much about the Central African republic of Zambia to make it indistinguishable to the casual Western observer among the multitude of black independent fragments into which the monolith of colonial Africa was blown by the wind of change. Its borders are all too familiarly arbitrary and just as paradoxically treasured; its population, though of one ethnic group, is divided in loyalty by strong tribal and regional affinities which nurture the ghosts of ancient feuds never entirely laid by the 60-year interregnum of alien rule; its economy is dependent upon primary product export and thus at the mercy of markets well beyond its control; the frailities of the new princes of the political kingdom have become all too clear in the eight years since the last unlamented duty at the midnight stroke in the independence stadium; and the expectations so feverishly aroused in the popular breast in the euphoric march to freedom remain, for many, as distant a prospect as ever.