Zimbabwe today is the site of a surprisingly vigorous debate over the one-party state. Some students of Africa might find the issue stale and the conclusion foregone, but Zimbabweans do not look at their political future that way. The first task of this article is to present the arguments of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) in favour of one-party rule and the rebuttals this has provoked. Documenting this debate is worthwhile given various popular misconceptions about Zimbabwean political life; in addition, doing so sheds light on the character of political thinking in Africa. The arguments are also important enough and of sufficient interest to be assessed philosophically, and this is my second task. Since Z.A.N.U.(P.F.) officially embraces a Marxist ideology, I shall, in particular, scrutinise its case for one-party rule from within its own political-theoretical framework. I contend that Marxist theory does not dictate such a system of government, and that viewed from this perspective the arguments for it are flawed and the party's faith in it is problematic.

Zambia has faced an economic crisis since 1975. Living standards for most of the population have deteriorated sharply, with falling real wages and a drop in G.D.P. per capita by about a quarter. At the same time, the gap between the high- and low-income groups has probably widened.

Zambia's economic difficulties originated in international factors. In the two decades of independence, and unusually high degree of external dependency, inherited from the colonial era, continued to chatacterise the economy. Imported inputs accounted for at least one-third of all costs in mining and manufacturing, as may be seen from Table I. Meanwhile, the production of copper and relate minerals contributed a steady nine-tenths of export revenues. But in 1975, the terms of trade for copper plummeted by nearly 50 per cent, and merchandise imports promptly contracted by almost one-quarter, seriously affecting production. Since then the price of copper has stagnated.

The diamond industry is perhaps the most successful commodity cartel of the twentieth century. It is not, and has not been since the turn of the century, a monopoly in production: De Beers has normally been the major, but by no means the only, producer. The cartel has been maintained by the system of ‘distribution through one channel’, the Central Selling Organisation (C.S.O.), a subsidiary of De Beers.

The abundant health enjoyed by these people [the Xhosa] must undoubtedly be principally ascribed to the simple food on which they live: milk, the principal dish, which is supplied in abundance by numerous herds of cows; meat, mostly roasted; corn, millet and watermelons, prepared in different ways, appease hunger… —Ludwig Alberti (1807)1 The tuberculosis scourge is undoubtedly on the upgrade in the Native Territories and especially in this district with its high rainfall and congested population. Unsatisfactory conditions of living and nutrition are amongst the chief factors in spreading malnutrition… the former accounted, I'm afraid, for a considerable infant mortality and pellagralike conditions among the adults.

Under the title ‘The American Dilemma on the Horn’, Bereket Habte Selassie published in this Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2, June 1984, pp. 249–72, a lawyer's presentation of a client's case: that of the Eritrean separatists. Although my views do not necessarily represent those held by the régime in Addis Ababa, they do indicate why Ethiopians resolutely continue to defend the territorial integrity of their motherland with a degree of unity only admitted by a few writers.

If the study of the foreign policies of underdeveloped countries is underdeveloped, the systematic analysis of their foreign policy decisions is not. It is simply nonexistent. – Bahgat Korany, 1984 1

The first half of the 1980s has posed new challenges for African foreign policy in practice and analysis, symbolised by the Ethiopian drought and the conflict in Southern Africa, but generalised in the continental crisis of negative growth. The halcyon days of the 1960s – the innocence and optimism of early African nationalism – have long since disappeared, obliterated by the global and regional shocks of the 1970s. The first independence decade coincided with a period of gradual economic expansion – as it turned out, the continent's last. The years since the mid-1970s – the end of the post-war Bretton Woods era – have been characterised by slow growth at best, for a minority of states, and by none for the majority of countries and peoples. Thus the African agenda has shifted dramatically from nation-building to -salvaging, and from import-substitution to de-industrialisation. Somewhat fanciful notions of regional and continental integration have been replaced by pragmatic imperatives of food aid and debt relief.

My aim is to examine one particular mode of political participation: the urban riot. In the West African context its importance is enhanced by the fact that there exist few, if any, other ways in which the mass of the population can participate in the political process and seek to bring some influence to bear upon governments. For most of the time, in the majority of states in the region, constitutional mechanisms for influencing governments have been largely absent due to the prevailing climate of political authoritarianism. Only in the Gambia have competitive parties operated throughout the last 10 years, although a few other states (Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Senegal) have had this type of democratic system for part of the time. For the rest, single-party or military rule has held sway, and opportunities for influencing, or indeed replacing, governments through the ballot box have been marked by their absence. Authoritarianism has extended not only to opposition parties — or, in the case of the military, any political organisation — but also to autonomous or semi-independent pressure groups, which have in general been fairly weak, even where not banned altogether.

At the October 1985 meeting in Seoul of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, African delegates insisted that ‘the economic situation is the worst in recent history’.Indeed, it is now widely accepted that the states and peoples of sub-Saharan Africa are in the midst of a crisis of unprecedented magnitude that has been caused by both short-term and long-range factors. Domestic food production has been declining, whilst food imports have increased, and this has exacerbated the televised disasters of drought and famine. The recession in western countries has led to a decline in the external demand for African primary products. Export volumes and values have decreased overall, producing significant fiscal problems, and the resulting foreign-exchange shortages have meant industrial stoppages, an inability to replace infrastructures, and a decline in the gross domestic product.

Nigerians are worried about the inability of their country's economy to support an annual population growth rate of 3·3 per cent, not least because of the persistent decline in agricultural productivity, and the inadequacy of current ad hoc measures in stabilising the situation.

There is, of course, increasing international awareness of the intractable economic and social woes associated with uncontrolled population growth. More important still, there is now considerable interest in devising effective policies and measures for controlling population, and these include the implementation of massive public-education programmes. In Tanzania in January 1984 the Second African Population Conference called on the member-states of the U.N. Economic Commission of Africa ‘to ensure the availability and accessibility of family planning services to all couples or individuals seeking services freely or at subsidized prices‘.2 Implicit in these proposals is the need to develop national communication policies on population issues.

Decolonisation in sub-Saharan Africa began in January 1956 when the Sudan joined long-independent Ethiopia and Liberia as a new, post-colonial state. Although the process is not yet complete because of the disputed status of Namibia and South Africa's continued rule by a white minority, over the past 30 years as many as 43 new states have achieved independence from colonial rule, the most recent being Zimbabwe in April 1980.