It pains me to see that three and a half years after Independence there is not a single Zambian-owned business in Cairo Road. There is not even a resident expatriate business or a foreign controlled business or any business for that matter with a Zambian manager in Cairo Road. (Kaunda, 1968: 30)

Few African countries have much effective control of their economies. Foreign and alien minority interests are still dominant. Many have proclaimed policies to remedy this situation, usually including some mixture of prohibition of aliens in business, aid to indigenous businessmen, and seizure or establishment of businesses by the government or government-controlled agencies. Countries as diverse as Ghana, Kenya, Zaire, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia have such policies, aimed at increasing indigenous control of the economy. Such policies and programs are seen as assertions of “economic independence.” Indeed, “indigenization,” the replacement of aliens with locals, is certainly a prerequisite to economic independence, if not independence itself (Ghai, 1973: 21-42).

This paper will examine the new policies designed to indigenize the Zambian economy and their actual impact on private indigenous business. Two questions must be answered. How successful have the policies been, as proclaimed and implemented by the government and ruling party? And, what factors have contributed to this result? Many proclaimed or hoped for consequences have not occurred. The growth of private African enterprises has been to some degree stymied by these new policies, called “economic reforms,” while foreign or alien-owned businesses continue growing, though at a slower rate.

“Dependence” has become the latest euphemism in a long list of such terms. No doubt its original intent was critical. The term itself emerged out of the “structuralist” theories of Latin American scholars and was meant as a rebuttal to “developmentalist” or “modernization“ theories and “monetarist” policy views. André Gunder Frank has traced its intellectual origins and its limitations in a recent combative paper entitled “Dependence is dead; long live dependence and the class struggle.”

We live in a capitalist world economy, one that took definitive shape as a European world economy in the sixteenth century (see Wallerstein 1974) and came to include the whole world geographically in the ninteenth century. Capitalism as a system of production for sale in a market for profit and appropriation of this profit on the basis of individual or collective ownership has only existed in, and can be said to require, a world system in which the political units are not co-extensive with the boundaries of the market economy. This has permitted sellers to profit from strengths in the market whenever they exist but enabled them simultaneously to seek, whenever needed, the intrusion of political entities to distort the market in their favor. Far from being a system of free competition of all sellers, it is a system in which competition becomes relatively free only when the economic advantage of upper strata is so clear-cut that the unconstrained operation of the market serves effectively to reinforce the existing system of stratification.

Literature is both an object and an agent of social control. Not only is it shaped by social constraints, but it is also a constraint on society. Ezekiel Mphahlele (1962: 186), the South African writer, has lamented the effect of society on literature in his homeland:

During the last twenty years the political, social climate of South Africa has been growing viciously difficult for a non-white to write in. It requires tremendous organization of one's mental and emotional faculties before one can write a poem or a novel or a play. This has become all but impossible…[At one time,] oppression provided just a sufficient spur to adult creative writing. The spur is a paralysing one today. Although the short story is very demanding, it is often used as a short-cut to prose meaning. And so it has become the most common medium in African literary activity, barring the large volume of vernacular writing being produced for school use.

Oppression constrains not only the structure of literature but also its content. Mphahlele suggests that the short story in such a racist setting goes through three stages: romance or escape, then protest, and finally irony. He calls irony “the meeting point of acceptance and rejection in the broadest terms: acceptance and protest in specific areas of black-white relations within implicit acceptance in a larger area” (Mphahlele, 1962: 188).

It is no more than a truism to point out once again that much of social science and other research in African studies is devoted to problems of change—and quite rightly so. The greatest share of this research, however, is today focused on urban studies. Rural areas are seldom brought into the equation since the flow of international power comes primarily from the cities. Yet it is the country which ultimately provides the people for the cities; it is the country upon which the cities must count for foodstuffs and other supplies; and it is country people, as well as city people, who influence national governments via the ballot. Thus in one sense, at least, the countryside is a microcosm of the city, and what is happening there should give us different but equally valuable perspectives on change.

It was thus with special anticipation that I returned, in May and June of 1973, to the village of Lupupa Ngye, located in what is now the Eastern Kasai Region of the Republic of Zaire. In 1959-60, my wife, two small children and I spent almost a year there engaged in ethnographic, ethnological, and ethnomusicological research. My purposes were traditional ones in anthropology: to renew old ties, to attempt to fill in gaps in my understanding of village life and thought and to see how my friends had fared and how much, and in what ways, they and their way of life had changed in the intervening thirteen years.

Few incidents in African colonial history give such an insight into the mentality and the methods of imperialism as the contraband arms trade in Africa. France and England, two of the major powers in Africa, tried to limit the quantity and type of firearms sold in their respective colonies. Fearing African resistance to colonialist control, both nations wanted a definite restriction of weapons and alcoholic beverages, but modern firearms continued to be smuggled and sold in vast numbers. French business representatives sold rifles to the native tribes in English regions, and the British did the same in the French areas. Continually trying to find ways to lessen the chances of African resistance, both states could not halt effectively the lucrative and dangerous business. Because of the old nationalist hatreds and the contemporary desire for new colonial areas, England and France hesitated in halting the arms trade. Additionally, the irrational hatreds and mutual distrusts kept the two powers from reaching any diplomatic agreement, and this in turn threatened the European presence in colonial Africa.

There was constant turmoil over the flow of weapons in all of colonial Africa, especially in two areas: Northwest Africa, or Morocco, and West Africa from Senegal to the southern border of Nigeria. While basically very different in their colonial experiences, these two locations were vital to both English and French colonial expansion. Morocco was close to French-held Algeria and was considered a natural area for France's North African expansion.

Few would dispute that the Africanization of the civil service was one of the more emotional and divisive issues in the Gold Coast during the inter-war years. While it is true that the attainment of equal status with the Europeans might not have been a subject of mass concern and popular regret, nevertheless it did animate the vocal and articulate elite who resented the unfair distinctions perpetuated by the colonial authorities. Thus repeatedly in debates of the Legislative Council, in sessions of the Provincial Councils, in newspaper editorials, and in petitions carried to Whitehall, protests were lodged against the pattern of discrimination in high-level government appointments. The extent to which this matter influenced the political dialogue of the colony and in time became an “important nationalist grievance,” has been noted by a number of scholars (Kimble, 1963; Crowder, 1968; Wight, 1947). My intention therefore is not to detail every disagreement nor to summarize every report but rather to view individual cases which shed light on the debate and to focus upon the prejudices and perspectives of the participants in the dialogue.

Following a period of time during which Africans had largely been excluded from the senior, or European, appointments in the civil service, Governor Frederick Gordon Guggisberg (1921-1927) charted a new course in February 22, 1926. He remarked that the policy of employing Africans in responsible positions commended itself to the Government for two reasons:

Leadership succession and regime change lie at the center of two perennial problems of governance: (1) how to ensure the political continuity of any regime without endangering the political stability of the political community; (2) how to protect both the regime and the political community against the natural disposition of those in power to manipulate their office so that they could extend their terms of office or succeed themselves against the provisions of written or unwritten rules of managing political power and succession rights. There can be little doubt, then, that the political acts that surround leadership succession and regime change constitute a most serious aspect of political life in any society. In all political systems in general, and in African politics in particular, such acts constitute an important index of the development or deterioration of politics.

The renewed focus on Africa since the middle 1950s as a subject of political inquiry and theorizing has contributed greatly to the existing body of literature on political development, modernization and related subfields of Comparative Politics. Unfortunately, this rather extensive body of literature has not provided us with a definitive knowledge of the dynamics of social and political change. In this regard, major events in African politics have continued to cast doubts on the validity of many an earlier theoretical formulation and expectation.

Despite scant advance publicity, the hot and airless court-room of Malawi's Southern Regional Traditional Court was filled to overflowing on October 19, 1971, to hear the case against Walla Laini Kawisa. Every lawyer and senior civil servant who could possibly arrange it was there. The Police had cordoned off the area surrounding the Court. A huge crowd stood behind the barrier in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the proceedings. On the bench were three elderly chiefs, a legally-qualified magistrate and a young Judge from a lower Traditional Court. Police Superintendent Phuza prosecuted, assisted by the Attorney General and a senior CID officer. Kawisa was unrepresented and pleaded guilty to three counts involving eight murders. The Prosecutor told the Court that the accused had agreed to have other charges taken into account. Kawisa impassively pleaded guilty each time the details of a charge were read, causing a stir in the courtroom. On October 30, 1971, after an arduous presentation of the case by the Prosecutor, Kawisa was found to be solely responsible for thirty-one murders and fifteen attempted murders. Reading the Judgement, Chief Chikumbu said:

Cocoa is an important agricultural export commodity not only because it provided about 20 per cent of the aggregate export earnings for Nigeria in the last decade but because it has generated considerable revenue for the government in terms of export duty, produce sales tax, and Marketing Board surpluses. In particular, the economy of Western Nigeria has been largely financed by the proceeds from the cocoa industry.

A look at the production statistics of the cocoa industry will reveal a declining trend in output since the 1964/65 crop season. The problem of declining yield is linked with the fact that about 40 per cent of the existing 1.2 million acres of cocoa are classified as marginally productive due to old age. The production problem is aggravated by the fact that most of the farmers whose cocoa trees have become moribund do not appreciate the need for replanting, and those who do indicate that they have not been encouraged by the prevailing producer prices. On the official side, the producer prices have been defended as fair and equitable and the assertion made that what is lacking is a good response on the part of the farmers who should replant their cocoa groves and upgrade their maintenance program. The raging controversy over cocoa supply response provided the stimulus to carry out this study.

Missionary domination of African education is a dying phenomenon. Today's church-affiliated institutions in Africa, while still mindful of their proselytizing duties, subordinate their religious messages to the rigors of academic preparation. The realities of contemporary African nation-building preclude any other course. Just as increasing nationalistic impulses and socio-economic considerations during the 19th century forced European politicians to recognize that education of their youth was too important to be left to the various confessions, so increasingly are African leaders coming to a similar conclusion. The shift from denominational to state control of the educational system is well advanced in many nations.

In 1942, 97% of Nigeria's student population was enrolled in missionary schools; today missionary education has been banned in the East Central State of Nigeria—the heartland of the highly Christianized Ibos—and is steadily declining with the strengthening of the Local Education Authorities in other areas of Nigeria (Coleman, 1958: 113). As recently as 1950, missionary schools accounted for 97% of the total enrollment in Ghanaian schools; twelve years later the government assumed the responsibility tor the payment of salaries of all teachers, irrespective of the type of school in which they taught (Anim, 1966: 189). In an attempt to remove the school issue from the arena of sectarian politics the government of Uganda abolished the posts of mission school supervisors in 1963, placing their functions in the hands of secular authorities (Hindmarsh, 1966: 145). In 1945 there were 5,360 mission-run schools for Africans in South Africa and only 230 state-sponsored schools;

The African writer has been very much influenced by politics, probably because the African intellectual is a part of the political elite. The writer is a sensitive point within his society. Thus, African literature has tended to reflect the political phases on the continent. Chinua Achebe is a very suitable example. Beginning during the colonial days his writing spans the succession of political crises which has beset Nigeria. Also, more than any other Nigerian writer, he has made statements on the role of the writer in his society. His conception of the writer's duty has also tended to change with the political situation in his country. By examining both his creative writing and his pronouncements, we can obtain an interesting picture of how the quality of a literature can be directly influenced by the degree of the writer's political commitment.

Achebe's first statement on the social responsibility of the African writer was made in a lecture entitled “The Role of the Writer in a New Nation,” delivered to the Nigerian Library Association in 1964. Although he had cast the title of his lecture in rather general terms, Achebe talked specifically about the role of the writer in what he called the new Nigeria. The major problem all over the world, he said, was the debate between white and black over black humanity, a subject which presented the African writer with a great challenge:

Traditions about the foundations of the military kingdom of Dahomey, over which King Gezo reigned from 1818-1858, are well known. Suffice it to say here that this warlike kingdom was founded in the first half of the seventeenth century, probably around 1620, by one Dogbagri Genu (otherwise known as Dako), a fugitive prince from Allada, who had been ousted from the throne of his father by his brother, Te-Agbanlin (Akinjogbin, 1967: 22; Page, 1961: 93). Under its fourth monarch, Agaja Trudo, the nascent kingdom of Dahomey reached the height of its power in the eighteenth century. The glorious reign of Agaja Trudo (1708-1740) saw the expansion of Dahomey in all directions, particularly to the south. An inland West African kingdom, Dahomey, like the nineteenth century Egba state in southwestern Nigeria, needed a direct route to the coast, partly in order to participate in the West African trade with European traders and partly to have free access to gunpowder and arms, a sine qua non for any state that wished to acquire and sustain its greatness. Hence, in 1724, Agaja Trudo attacked Allada and included it in his rapidly growing empire. Three years later, Whydah was forced to become part of the kingdom of Dahomey. The basis of a future powerful state seems to have been laid by Agaja Trudo when Tegbesu, who came to the throne in 1740, pushed the state's frontier still farther, the intermittent incursions of Oyo notwithstanding.

The number, behavior, and attitudes of the Dahamean modern elite, of the 1930's have been outstanding among the French-speaking African elites and have earned for Dahomey fame as the Latin Quarter of West Africa. What does this complimentary title suggest? It suggests that Dahomey has a concentration of educated people as does the quarter in the environs of the Sorbonne and also, perhaps, that Dahomeans are generally intelligent and educated. It also seems to imply that Dahomeans are more intensely motivated to secure an education and acquire knowledge than other Africans. Some of these qualifications are beyond our capabilities to evaluate; others, such as the intellectual activities of this sizeable group are an historical fact. During the colonial period more than forty newspapers appeared in Dahomey written and published by Dahomeans, who were also active in the organization of schools and constantly attempted to influence the content of education. After the Second World War, when new political institutions were introduced into Dahomey, the writers and editors of the 1930's, practically without exception, either associated with them, participated in them, or founded them. From being the cultural elite of the 1930's they became a decade later the political elite in their country. It is interesting, then, to inquire into the composition of this elite and into their attitudes as they are expressed on the pages of their newspapers.

Deliberate British support for the supremacy of the Basotho monarchy and the prerogatives of chieftainship after 1884 assured that those traditional institutions would adapt to changing socioeconomic conditions within a relatively narrow, increasingly rigid format not conducive to popular participation. Despite strong official discouragement of overt challenges to the existing structures of rule, various new channels of popular expression began to emerge as potential alternative outlets for political agitation. The expansion of mission education, cash cropping, the money economy, and labor migration along with other similar innovations unleashed forces for reform which could not be entirely contained and quickly became, in Lord Hailey's words, “much stronger than the Administration realized” (1953: 136).

Hailey recognized that the diverse groups generating such social and political pressures included not only the educated, incipient “middle class,” but also certain dissatisfied segments of the chieftainship. Together with most observers, he devoted major attention to the all-important development of the Basutoland National Council, which had evolved in part as a product of colonial inspiration, encouragement, and guidance. However, Hailey, like virtually all other analysts, gave minimal attention to the equally crucial and highly controversial roles of emergent interest aggregations such as the Progressive Association and Lekhotla la Bafo (The Council of Commoners). Nevertheless, these groups established a heritage of political ideas and of interaction with both colonial and chiefly administrations that is vital in understanding the policies, values, and behavior of subsequent Basotho political parties.

In the Sierra Leone Provinces, customary land law dictates that if an individual from another chiefdom or country wishes to rent land in a certain locality, he visits a landholder or head of an extended family and expresses a desire to be the landlord's stranger. If the landlord accepts the individual as his stranger, he becomes liable for any damages caused by the stranger to other natives' properties. This study applies some recent advances in welfare economics (see, for example, Coase, 1960; Demsetz, 1964, 1968) to pursue some interesting aspects of the landlord-stranger relationship. In particular, it is argued that within traditional society putting the liability for strangers' damages on the landlords' shoulders was efficient in a value-theoretic sense because landlords were more efficient than the government or the damaged parties in collecting damages from strangers and, therefore, that the magnitude of the collection cost would have been greater if the liability had been placed directly on the strangers. The paper also shows rigorously how and why it was that the higher the cost of collecting damages from tenants, the lower was the real income produced by the land. Therefore, if the government of the damaged parties should become lower-cost collectors, putting the liability directly on the strangers for any damage they cause would become the pareto-optimal arrangement.

Eskor Toyo's suggestion during his review of the 1966 crisis in Nigeria that the working class should not limit its politics to supporting others but should wage a struggle for power in its own right and on its own plank (1966, p. 34) raised anew the issue of the role of the working class in Nigeria's politics. The suggestion, as it stands, implies a criticism of the role the workers had played in politics and recommends a new line of action. The timing was perfect, for it would seem that, to adopt the new line, all that the working class needed to do was to step into the vacuum created by the decree which banned the existing political parties after the military coup of January 1966. The problem, however, was that, to grab political power for the working class, the workers would have needed to organise and emerge as a demonstrable political force and would thereby automatically have come under the ban and have faced confrontation with the army; hence perhaps Toyo chose the words to “wage a struggle for power.” After all, the army was then getting used to the power it had seized a few months before and would not have given it up without a fight. But the problem for the working class was even more complicated than the impediment represented by the army. This had not to do with the workers being inexperienced in the art of governing, for, as Toyo pointed out, the army had never ruled in Nigeria before 1966 and, as far as anyone could see, the situation was still far from anarchy. Governing, it seems, is one of those arts one acquires on the job.

As the Portuguese crept cautiously along the western coast of Africa, they met a dizzying multiplicity of African cultures but nowhere did they encounter an economic vacuum. Since their primary interest was trade (pious disclaimers to the contrary), they had to discover and then adapt to local and interregional patterns of exchange before they could hope to exploit them to their advantage.

The two centuries between the discovery of Capo Blanco and adjacent Arguim Island in 1443 and the fall of Elmina to the Dutch in 1640 circumscribe the period of Portuguese hegemony and the opening phase of European-African interaction. Though other Europeans followed close on their heels, it was the Portuguese who pioneered both physically and commercially. Ships might put in almost anywhere along the coast where they could find a safe anchorage, but there were five regions that from the beginning seemed to promise profitable and convenient trading contacts: Arguim, Senegambia and the “Rivers of the South,” the Gold Coast, Benin and the Slave Rivers, and Congo-Angola. Each of these presented a different situation and each demanded a different response.

These regions have been the subject of specialized monographs which have brought out the local characteristics of trade as they evolved, but there has been no attempt at an overview, no attempt to compare and generalize from the data now available to present a larger picture of trading patterns on the West Coast of Africa as a whole.

An interesting if not unique aspect of Kenya's attainment of independence was the peaceful displacement of European settlers from central positions of political power. Explanations for their political demise lie chiefly in various political and economic trends in Kenya colony eroding settler dominance. These trends accelerated the separation of the interests of the colonizers (European settler-farmers) from those of colonialism (authoritative ties and political economy) down to Kenyan independence in the early 1960s.

The demise of colonial rule in Kenya was not the same as the erosion of European farmer domination; nor were they necessarily interdependent. English colonialism in Kenya dealt both with the attempt to colonize Kenya with European settlers and with the maintenance of a system of authority called colonialism in the country. Regarding the latter, more important aspect of the term, the European settlers were an important link — perhaps at times the most important — but certainly not the sole one. Colonial officials, commercial interests, tribal authorities, the Asian community and missionaries, were all vital supports to the system. The separability of the two aspects of the colonial system can be seen in a Rhodesia where the settler-dominated political system could survive without colonial authority, and in a Ghana where colonial authority existed without the settler presence.

Since attaining independence nearly every African government has initiated a national planning exercise founded on the recognition that the technological imperatives of specialization and exchange essential for modern development require large markets, large capital investments, a broad range of natural resources, and the training of skilled manpower—all of which require mobilization of resources at least on a national level. Plans limited to allocating resources merely on a village or even on a regional level would be incapable of contributing to significant increases of productivity because such small units lack these essential prerequisites. However, the record of national planning in Africa has not been very successful in contributing to significant development (Waterston 1965). This is particularly true if development is defined—as it will be throughout this article—as increasing productivity in all sectors of the economy accompanied by raising the levels of living of the broadest masses of the population.

The somewhat dismal record of national plans underscores the realization voiced by more and more development theorists: development cannot be attained merely by transplanting to Africa the refined planning techniques devised to allocate resources in developed countries such as input-output tables, linear programming, or macro-economic models based on assumed capital-output ratios. This is true in part because the lack of adequate data requires that many of the essential coefficients must simply be “invented,” which, over time is likely to lead to results seriously deviating from planned goals (Lewis 1966, especially pp. 15, 20-21).