This article explores men in arms’ conceptions of armed violence in a country which has been prone to a violent cycle of rebellion and repression. Based on ethnographic research in Chad, it analyses combatants’ life trajectories in an unstable political environment and a militarised economy. It moves beyond rebellion towards an analysis of the most mundane patterns of the activities conducted by men in arms, to understand what is at stake beyond times and spaces of war. It argues that armed violence is an ordinary way of expressing contestation, as well as a practical occupation or métier, a French word that indicates a non-institutionalised profession.

In recent years, Niger has gained prominence as a hub for the smuggling of migrants from West Africa to North Africa and Europe. Urged on by European concerns, Niamey has adopted repressive measures to contain such migrations in the region. These, however, have largely failed, and have yielded unintended and unexpected results, which challenge policy predictions. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the article suggests that contradictory security imperatives have brought about the de facto regularisation of human smuggling. As a result, protection rackets sponsored by the state through patronage networks have severely limited the impact of externally sponsored measures to counteract irregular migration.

Given the socio-political and economic changes that have taken place since independence nearly 30 years ago, the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) Government has been remarkably slow to acknowledge the significance of those small-scale business activities popularly referred to as ‘Jua Kali’—Swahili for ‘hot sun’, since hardly any enjoy the benefit of either adequate shade or shelter.

In Zimbabwe today, Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF colleagues are busy expropriating white-owned farms, and claiming the moral high ground while they do so. Indeed, many observers, inside Zimbabwe and elsewhere, take it for granted that, whatever Mugabe's excesses, there is justice in his cause. But is there? This paper examines three moral arguments that Mugabe and his supporters advance to justify their land policies: that the peasants need the land, that the war of liberation was fought for the land, and that Zimbabweans are only taking back land that was originally stolen from them. The last of these arguments, which rests on an implicit entitlement theory of justice, is the strongest, and this essay therefore scrutinises it closely. It argues, however, that despite their emotive appeal, all three arguments are flawed beyond repair. Debunking them should help pave the way for a more sensible and more viable approach to the land question in Zimbabwe.

It is commonly assumed that the advent of democracy tends to bring about social welfare improvements. Few studies, however, have examined empirically the impact of third-wave democratisation processes on social policies in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Through a diachronic comparison, this paper examines the effects of Ghana's democratisation process on the evolution of its health policy. It shows that the emergence of democratic competition played an important role in the recent adoption of a crucial health reform. A policy feedback effect on politics and a process of international policy diffusion were additional but secondary factors.

In 1968, Guenther Roth perceptively argued the utility of using the concept of patrimonialism to analyse rulership in developing states.1 Roth described two principal types: ‘the historical survival of traditionalist regimes’, of which he saw Ethiopia as the foremost example; and the ‘personal rulership on the basis of loyalties that do not require any belief in the ruler's unique personal qualifications, but are inextricably linked to material incentives and rewards’.2. His distinction remains apt and serves to focus our attention on two modal political forms that continue to find expression in post-independence Africa. However, these useful categories are not mutually exclusive, and need further amplification if they are to provide much insight into the rich variety of political experimentation that still goes on throughout the continent. Moreover, since the terminology is self-consciously borrowed from Max Weber, both the traditional and modern matrices of African patrimonialism need to be explored briefly lest the reference to the Weberian connection constricts rather than enlarges the analysis.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) was established in May 1975 as an organisation to promote the development of the sub-region, and for 15 years did not deviate from this mandate. The 16 member-states – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo – restricted their interactions to purely economic matters and ran shy of political issues confronting West Africa. This tradition changed in 1990 when Ecowas decided to intervene in the civil war which had broken out in Liberia. Its strategy to resolve the conflict followed two parallel but mutually interactive channels — making and enforcing peace. The former involved negotiations and arbitration; the latter the deployment in August 1990 of a 3,000 strong multinational force to supervise a cease-fire.

The Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), and by extension the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the multi-ethnic coalition that it established and still dominates, is frequently considered to be a creation of, and beholden to, the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF). From this perspective the foreign loyalties of the TPLF made it an unsuitable, if not illegitimate, movement to lead the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) in 1991, and since 1995, the newly created Federal Democratic Republic. By way of contrast, this article attempts to demonstrate that the developing relationship between the TPLF and the EPLF during the course of their respective revolutionary struggles has been far more problematic and beset with tensions than critics are either aware of, or acknowledge, and that an understanding of their nature casts light on present and possible future differences between the respective regimes of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

This article offers a political economy perspective on the Malian crisis with a focus on aid and donor practices. The argument is two-fold. On the one hand, aid consolidated a regime that grew increasingly discredited, so that aid and donors – voluntarily or otherwise – contributed to create the pre-2012 context of fragility. On the other hand, this structural gap has created a state of affairs that provided some impulse and support to putschists and insurgent groups. It explores four channels through which this has happened in practice. External funding agencies have sponsored what was perceived as President Amadou Toumani Touré's ‘mismanagement’ of the situation in the north and the degradation of governance. In addition, donors exerted weak control over policies and ignored signals of growing popular dissatisfaction with ATT. Finally, when they tried to put pressure on governments, donors chose highly controversial issues and have enacted unpopular conditionalities, which have had destabilising effects.

Since 1987–8 the World Bank, together with other donors, has been engaged in a programme of activities known as ‘Social Dimensions of Adjustment’ (S.D.A.). This is the latest in a line of ‘pro-poor’ initiatives which the organisation has sponsored over the last two decades. This article analyses the Bank's succession of policies against the background of the changing political and economic world situation, as well as alternative policy agendas.

This paper analyses peacekeeping impartiality, i.e. the extent to which peacekeepers act in the interests of international peace and security, rather than the interests of specific states or other external actors. It reevaluates the question of impartiality through an analysis of the Congo operation of July–September 1960. This case study was selected because it was by far the most important instance of peacekeeping during the Cold War. Based upon primary source materials from US, British, and UN archives, as well as memoirs and secondary sources, it finds that the Congo peacekeeping force intervened to a considerable extent in the internal politics of the Congo; in doing so, the peacekeepers collaborated with US policymakers and, to some extent, advanced their strategic objectives. A comparison between the Congo operation and recent cases of peacekeeping in post-Cold War Africa indicates that impartiality is likely to remain an elusive goal.

Recent social, economic and political changes in the Western Saharan refugee camps in southwest Algeria have import not only for the project of Western Saharan nationalism, but also for the ongoing peace process. These are examined through a background to the Western Sahara conflict, and an appraisal of the camps' internal processes of elite politics, self-management and recent post-war socio-economic change.

In May 1994 the Life President of Malawi, Dr H. Kamuzu Banda, the world's oldest Head of State, was peacefully defeated in the country's first multi-party elections after having been in power since February 1963. During that 31 year era his Malawi Congress Party (MCP) régime had been characterised by a remarkably high degree of legitimacy. It can of course be argued that this was simply based on political repression, which certainly existed, notably during periods of excessive sensitivity to various criticisms and actions that were interpreted as threats to the prevailing stability. This could be seen in the activities of Banda's strong-arm organisations (such as the Young Pioneers and the Youth League), and in the omnipresent secret police, who did their best to identify dissidents and rebels. Punishments included detention without trial, or much worse, and disloyalty was often vaguely and broadly defined.

Against enormous odds, non-violent action proved to be a major factor in the downfall of apartheid in South Africa, and the establishment of a democratic black majority government, despite predictions that the transition could come only through a violent revolutionary cataclysm. This was largely the result of conditions working against a successful armed overthrow of the system, combined with the ability of the anti-apartheid opposition to take advantage of the system's economic dependence on a cooperative black labour force. This article traces the history of nonviolent resistance to apartheid, its initial failures, and the return in the 1980s to a largely non-violent strategy which, together with international sanctions, forced the government to negotiate a peaceful transfer to majority rule.

Any consideration of the process of decolonisation must be primarily concerned with the question of to whom power was transferred. Who inherited the colonial state and how did they establish their claim? The basic thesis of this article is that in order to understand the nature of the post-colonial state in Swaziland it is necessary to look back at least as far as the 1930s, and to trace the roots of Swazi ‘traditionalism’, the ideology which triumphed over competing forms of African nationalism during the 1960s.

The fact that this new nation has succeeded in fostering economic growth and democracy under the aegis of equalitarian values holds out hope for the rest of the world. For prosperity, freedom, and equality cannot be for white men only. If they are, then they will prove to have been as illusory and impermanent as the slave-based democracies of ancient Greece.

In this era of neo-liberal capitalist economics in Africa, has organised private capital in the form of business associations (BAs) become more active in public life or developed influence in public policy formation or implementation? This analysis examines the impact of five key factors to explain varying activity levels and influence of BAs in Ghana and Nigeria since independence: levels of capitalist development and hence size of the capitalist class; strength and autonomy of the capitalist class; strength of capitalist ideology; democratic vs. authoritarian rule; and impact of external hegemonic powers and ideologies. The paper finds that Nigeria's BAs are more highly developed, have had higher activity levels, and had more influence, however limited, than Ghana's. Externally generated economic liberalisation has stimulated higher levels of BA activity, but not necessarily the political space for BA autonomy. Political democratisation appears to increase political space, BA access to the state, and policy influence.

Since the acceptance of multi-party democracy as the most viable alternative to autocracy and military rule in Africa, democratic rule has become the vogue. Nigeria's attempt at democracy was (and is) accompanied by patronage politics, whereby certain personalities exact great influence on the political process. This study spotlights Chief Lamidi Adedibu and his patronage style in Nigerian politics, and shows that Adedibu gained political ‘patronic’ prominence during Nigeria's Third Republic in the 1990s, through the provision of the survival needs of the poor majority who are, mostly, used as thugs for protection against challenges from opponents and for political leverage. Since then, he has remained a ‘valuable tool’ of ‘any government in power’ and politicians ready to provide the necessary goods for onward transmission to clients.

Mon travail c'est pour former et encadrer la jeunesse dans le bon chemin et dans la fidélité au Guide; à l'attachement inconditionnel au PrésidentFondateur. Pour leur apprendre à être responsable, être productif. Pour leur préparer à leur vie future comme l'élite du pays. – a J.M.P.R. leader1

Land-Locked Burundi in the Great Lakes area of East-Central Africa, while very small in size (slightly under 28,000 sq. kilometres, roughly the size of Belgium), is after neighbouring Rwanda the most densely populated country in the continent, with about six million inhabitants of whom it is commonly admitted that Hutu and Tutsi constitute about 85 and 15 per cent, respectively.