Against the backdrop of Africa's recent transitions to multi-party democracy, two countries stand at opposite ends of a spectrum of success and failure that ranges from the apocalyptic to the nearly miraculous. At one extreme, South Africa, the site of what has been described as ‘one of the most extraordinary political transformations of the twentieth century’, where the people ‘have defied the logic of their past, and broken all the rules of social theory, to forge a powerful spirit of unity from a shattered nation’. At the other end of the scale, Rwanda, a synonym for abyssal violence — a name that will go down in history as the epitome of an African Holocaust. Burundi, though spared the agonies of her neighbour, has not fared much better. There a remarkably successful transition was abruptly brought to a halt by an attempted military take-over, setting off an explosion of ethnic violence on a scale consonant with her reputation as a leading candidate for the title of genocidal state.

Most of the reports about the reaction of the Ethiopian regime to the blow that it suffered in the 2005 elections focus on its institutional evolution, and conclude that it took a turn towards even stronger authoritarianism. Observations made in a rural community in south-east Amhara State reveal that it reacted first, until the end of 2009, by a whole range of the deepest reforms since its takeover in 1991. These combined a stronger grip of the ruling party in all areas with a ‘liberalisation’ of the rural development strategy and first steps towards local ‘good governance’. They were embodied in the rise of the traditional rural elite which had been ostracised for years, as if the regime was trying to build its new constituency on it. But at the end of 2009 the local authorities suddenly returned to the all-encompassing authoritarian attitude characteristic of the pre-2005 period. This ‘liberalisation’ could thus be seen as merely a tactical interlude, conceded by a ruling party still driven by its Leninist legacy and the Abyssinian ‘culture of power’.

Major institutional reforms are currently under way to improve the performance of the public water sector in Kenya. However, a historical perspective is needed in order to achieve sustainable improvements that will also benefit the urban poor. This article seeks to provide such a perspective, applying a cross-disciplinary and socio-technical approach to urban water supply over the last century, in which institutions, organisations and technology are seen to interact with political, economic and demographic processes. Despite a series of reforms over the years, the socio-technical structure of the urban water sector in Kenya has shown a remarkable stability since the 1920s, and into the 1980s. However, the sustainability of the public service systems has been eroded since independence, due to changes in the institutional framework surrounding the systems, while exclusive standards and technological choices have essentially been preserved from the colonial era. Current sector reform must create incentives for addressing technology choices and service standards in order to provide public water services also for the urban poor.

This article discusses the reorganisation and fragmentation of political rule in the Nigerian Niger Delta from the end of the 1990s until today. It details empirical evidence on the resources provided by transnational interventions, especially those connected to the changing security strategies of oil companies as well as intensified corporate social deployments, and on the appropriation of these resources by local actors. The continued drive from neopatrimonial to predatory rule, it is argued, has taken a decided twist towards localisation during recent years. Instead of constructing the crises in the Niger Delta as an example of ‘state failure’, the focus of this article is directed at the establishment of extra-state political formations, their legitimising discourses and social practices.

At the conclusion of a meeting of the Armed Forces Ruling Council in October 1986, President Ibrahim Babangida turned to the Inspector- General of the Nigeria Police Force, Etim Inyang, and asked, ‘My friend, where is Anini?’. At about this time, Nigerian newspapers and journals were publishing numerous articles and editorials on the ‘Anini Challenge’, the ‘Anini Saga’, the ‘Anini Factor’, ‘Lawrence Anini – the Man, the Myth’, ‘Anini, Jack the Ripper’, and ‘Lawrence Anini: A Robin Hood in Bendel’. The Guardian asked, almost plaintively, ‘Will they ever find Anini, “The Law”?’, and when he was finally captured in early December, the cover of the magazine Thisweek blared forth, above a picture of the badly injured criminal in his hospital bed, ‘Anini. Face to Face with The Law’.

Private research institutions, commonly referred to as think tanks, are a recent phenomenon in the Ghanaian policy environment. They are part of a growing number of NGOs that have emerged with Ghana's political liberalisation and are attempting to influence policymaking. These institutions exert a greater influence on policies affecting the functioning of the ‘administrative state’ than other NGOs. Through their efforts, ideas pertaining to administrative reform appear to have taken root strongly in Ghana. This paper examines the processes and methods that have been adopted by these institutions in developing policies that are being pursued to change the ‘administrative state’ in Ghana. It argues that the ability of these institutions to influence policies geared towards changing the administrative state can be attributed to the calibre of personnel as well as the processes and methods they have adopted.

Questions about the rôle and position of the African state are not new, but today they are being asked with increased emphasis. The reasons for this vary with the position and perspective of the questioner, but they often include a concern about capacity and performance, about styles and orientations of leadership, and about the measure of representativeness and legitimacy which African governments enjoy within the society at large. In short, a strong current of opinion believes that there is a problem with the African state, and this concern has recently led to much discussion as to what its proper rôle is or should be, as well as fostering a variety of proposed and actual interventions by international organisations and consultants to help ‘solve’ the problem.

Although conflict in Zimbabwe's diamond mining sector has recently received much international scrutiny, very little research has examined conflict in Zimbabwe's gold mining sector. This article analyses how a nationwide crackdown called Operation Chikorokoza Chapera (‘No More Illegal Mining’) affected – and ‘disciplined’ – livelihoods in profound ways in both licensed and unlicensed gold mining regions. Drawing on interviews conducted between 2006 and 2013 with artisanal miners in the Insiza, Umzingwani and Kadoma areas as well as miners who crossed the border to Mozambique, the study reveals how a highly politicised crackdown led to uneven consequences. The analysis highlights both structural and physical violence, with more than 25,000 miners and traders arrested between 2006 and 2009 and more than 9,000 still imprisoned in 2013. Situating the crackdown within evolving political and economic interests, the study contributes to an understanding of how simplified discourses on ‘eradicating illegal mining’ mislead and mask power dynamics, while policing activities transform patterns of resource control. The study also emphasises that conceptualisations of the crackdown's legacy should carefully consider the agency of artisanal miners' associations, which, in some cases, have been actively seeking to resist coercive policies and rebuild livelihoods in the aftermath of Operation Chikorokoza Chapera.

This article discusses the situation of Hausa women in the predominantly Muslim City ofKano, Nigeria, and speculates upon the possibilities for changes in their status and life options grounded in the realities of their social environment.

A strong trend in feminist scholarship focuses on the cultural aspects of the rôle of men and women, and relates their apparently universal asymmetries to the structural oppositions of ‘private’ and ‘public’ social spheres. In such studies, women are considered to be oppressed according to the extent that they are confined to a domestic life that excludes activities outside the home, which men control. Women are thus deemed to have gained stature, and to have realised a sense of their own value, only in so far as they are able to transcend the ‘private’ sphere and penetrate the predominantly male or ‘public’ world. In this context, a liberated society for women is posited as one in which men are routinely involved in domestic activities while women are free and able to participate effectively in public functions.

Faced with global depression and political readjustments in the late 1980s, all states in Africa have been trying to implement major reforms. For socialist régimes, however, the demands have been the more daunting since these changes have often directly threatened the ideology (and the aspirations) of creating a more egalitarian social order in the wake of colonial rule. Their states faced fundamental social, economic, and ideological transformations, as well as political reconstruction; what was required was no less than the replacement of a socialist with a capitalist market economy, and corresponding alterations in property relations that involved enterprises such as peasant holdings, small family firms, and co-operatives, as well as large-scale farms, factories, and plants under state control. These reforms not only affected the lives of ordinary people, but also reshaped the power and privileges of the government, party leaders, and others directly dependent upon the state.

This article examines the ways in which illicit gem mining in Madagascar indicates the highly variable impacts of globalisation in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that distinct categories such as global/local, legal/illegal and traditional/modern have lost much of their explanatory power. Far from being distinct categories, they are indivisible and constitute a single, complex whole which produces enormous wealth, coupled with high degrees of poverty and marginalisation in precisely the same locations. It is clear that Africa's participation in globalisation has not been just about ‘joining’ the world economy; instead it has been characterised by highly selective forms of global connection which have been combined with highly visible and very real forms of disconnection.

Two these are presented in this article. The first is that since the great surge in oil revenues during 1973—1974, there has emerged in Nigeria an intert economy. By this I mean an economy which has reacted passively to the increased revenues, but which has had no growth-generating power of its own outside of the crude oil-producing sector. The other-than-oil economy has not had any internal ebgine of growth. In support of this thesis, I shall make three points: (1) the growth of Nigeria' economy, apart form oil, has been strikingly small, give the huge increase in oil revenues; (2) even the linited growth rate has been dwindling; and (3) the pattern of the growth that has been achieved suggests a passive response to an exogenous stimulus.

Following the neopatrimonialism paradigm, it can be hypothesised that in African states informal politics of the rulers infringe on the collection of taxes and in turn reduce state revenue. This article tests this proposition for the case of Zambia. Neopatrimonial continuity in the country is evidenced by three factors: the concentration of political power, the award of personal favours, and the misuse of state resources. Despite this continuity, the revenue performance increased considerably with the creation of the semi-autonomous Zambia Revenue Authority. Donor pressure has been the most important intervening variable accounting for this improvement. Yet, strengthening the collection of central state revenue has been consistent with a neopatrimonial rationale, and may even have fed neopatrimonialism overall, by providing increased resources for particularistic expenditure.

In 1955 the South African Government began to demolish a black freehold suburb in Johannesburg, and to relocate its inhabitants in a state-controlled township. Resistance to these moves by the leading black political organisation of the time, the African National Congress (A.N.C.), was short-lived and unsuccessful. Despite its abortive nature, the attempt to oppose the destruction of Sophiatown was historically significant for several reasons.

In July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its armed wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA),1 entered Kigali after routing the former régime and putting an end to months of genocide in which upwards of 500,000 had lost their lives. By August, another one to two million had fled from Rwanda. All in all, nearly half of the population had been killed, displaced inside the country, or was in exile.

In 2002, Kenya's new National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) undertook to investigate and ensure the recovery of all public lands illegally allocated by the outgoing government. A Commission of Inquiry into the Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land, chaired by the lawyer Paul Ndung'u, was appointed. The commission's report sets out the illegal land awards made to powerful individuals and families, provides important information about the mechanisms by which public land was misallocated, and shows how the doctrine that public land should be administered and allocated ‘in the public interest’ was consistently perverted. This paper explores what the Ndung'u report tells us about the role of the legal profession in the illegal and irregular misallocation of public land. It makes clear that the legal profession, far from upholding the rule of law, has played a central role in land corruption, using its professional skills and networks to accumulate personal wealth for itself and others. This stands in contrast to the role of the legal profession in promoting good governance and the rule of law envisaged by donors of international development aid. This paper focuses on ‘local’ land grabbing, and argues that the ‘global land grab’ or ‘investor rush’ needs to be understood alongside local manifestations of land privatisation.

Shortly after the overthrow of the Traoré regime in early 1991, several thousand cotton farmers in the southern part of Mali rose up to demand significant policy changes in cotton production and marketing. This rural revolt symbolised a new era of ‘democracy in the countryside’, and brought forth a vital, new political actor (the National Union of Cotton and Food Crop Producers, Syndicat des Producteurs de Coton de Vivriers, SYCOV) in Malian politics. After listening to more than thirty years of governmental populist pronouncements, Mali's cotton growers finally had a real opportunity to realise a measure of empowerment.

Earlier assessments of agricultural development and technology policy-making in Mali confirmed the need to see SYCOV in the long tradition of discontented farmers' movements around the world. This article places SYCOV in a broader political and global setting. It explores how an analysis of the union's emergence and its political relationships can improve our understanding of the contours and dynamics of democratisation in Mali, and perhaps throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

In the four years since the signing of the Nkomati accord in March 1984, Mozambique has undergone a quiet but far-reaching process of policy reform. Faced with a major crisis caused by the Renamo insurgency and by economic mismanagement, the Government has apparently abandoned its ambitious programme of socialist transformation through the creation of state farms and the launching of large projects, adopting instead a package of market-oriented economic reforms. Having joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in late 1984, Mozambique has been devaluing its currency, increasing the prices of agricultural produce, allowing peasants to sell commodities to private traders, and channelling some aid to the private sector, in keeping with the policies favoured by those organisations, The U.S. Agency for International Development, which has also become a donor since 1984, has likewise exerted pressure for policy reform, in particular for aid to the private commercial farms. While the socialist economic sector has not been dismantled, the Government is now stressing the importance of peasant and private agriculture, and the necessity of providing more support for both.1

Comparing pre- and post-genocide Rwanda, this article argues that clear continuities exist between the regimes of Juvénal Habyarimana and Paul Kagame. Both have projected a remarkably similar image of ‘benevolent leadership’. Presenting themselves as harbingers of an ‘improved’ or ‘new’ Rwanda, both leaderships have claimed to be best able and willing to guide Rwanda along the right path to peace, security, ethnic unity and development. ‘Benevolent leadership’ in both periods has also served as a tool to try and shape regime relationships with international and domestic audiences. Internationally, each government has worked to promote Rwanda and its authorities as a good development partner. Domestically, these projections have served to establish norms of order and obedience. We argue that projections of ‘benevolent leadership’ have been a tool designed to win over the international community and discipline the Rwandan population.

Are human rights a western invention? Is their very conception, and the accompanying notion of a legal process that sets definite limits on the exercise of political power, an invention of the seventeenth-century Enlightenment philosophers, and an ideological product of the French and the American Revolutions? And thus, is any talk of human rights in Africa tantamount to a mechanical importation of a western bourgeois ideological conception without the struggles and the relations that gave rise to it in the first place?