It is generally advisable to get a reasonably firm grasp of the past and present before attempting to achieve an approximate ‘fix’ on the future. Prognostications about the furture are always risky and especially so in reasonably unpredictable fields like science and technology, which can be demonstrated to have been congenitally immune to accurate predictions throughout history. Scientific and technological break-throughs have often, in the past, produced unanticipated changes, and they have frequently led to the solution of heretofore unresolvable problems. History gives us instances of communities which have taken advantage remarkably quickly of advances in science and technology, but it also shows us instances of societies which for one reason or another failed to adapt. And one might add that while some scientific and technological innovations take on global relevance, others have remained specific and have been circumscribed by time and place.

For more than a decade, the South African Government has tried to suggest that a rethinking of some of the basic tenets of that country's race policy—apartheid—was not only possible, but was actually underway. Starting with the March 1973 appointment of the Theron Commission to look into the position of the then 2·3 million Coloureds of South Africa (persons of mixed-blood), there have by April 1984 been no fewer than three government-appointed commissions of inquiry, two parliamentary select committees, and three President's Council reports—all dealing with such fundamental matters, in addition to the position of the Coloureds, as trade-union rights for blacks, the movement of Africans into urban areas, and—repeatedly—constitutional change.

The relatively peaceful decolonisation of British and French Africa in the 1950s and led, for the most part, to the capturing of state power by a new political élite rather than a throughgoing transformation of the state structures inherited at independence. Instead of refashioning institution in ways that might increase political participation and social justice, existing state capacities tended to be marshalled for exclusionary and, in many cases, authoritarian purposes.

The historical development of the modern state is marked by, among other important changes, the transformation of political legitimacy from the authority of princes to the mandate of the people, from dynastic to popular legitimacy. Since states are the creatures not only of their domestic environment but also of international society, we must distinguish between internal and international legitimacy. Martin Wight defines the latter as ‘the collective judgement of international society [i.e. other states] about rightful membership of the family of nations’. According to him, the convention of international legitimation that has predominated since 1945 is based on the combined and paradoxical principles of majority rule, which rejects the legitimacy of colonialism, and territorial integrity, which nevertheless accepts territorial divisions established under colonialism. We define internal legitimacy as the recognition of a state and its government as rightful by its population, which during the modern era has increasingly meant a popular recognition democratically expressed.

The impact of nuclear weapons on the present and future trends in international relations continues to attract wide scholarship. While the literature on the subject has been growing apace, nuclear technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and the dangers posed to the survival of mankind are becoming much more acute than hitherto. In broad terms, the fears expressed about these weapons tend to centre around the implications of three major issues: the emergence of greater first-strike inclinations in the two super-power nuclear forces; the possibility of a perceived strategic imbalance favouring either the United States or the Soviet Union; and the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

By the early 1980s, it was becoming increasingly apparent to the Frelimo Government in Mozambique that its agricultural policies were not having the required effects. Production had not recovered to pre-independence levels as intended, agricultural exports remained generally low, and there was hunger in certain areas of the country. Queues and shortages were widespread in the cities, and rationing was introduced in the capital, Maputo. There were many exogenous factors accounting for these problems: alternating years of drought and floods, a constant state of war, first against the Smith régime in Rhodesia and then against South Africa and its client groups, and finally, of course, the world recession and worsening terms of trade.

This article attempts to situate the recent power struggle between President Daniel arap Moi and the ex-Minister for Constitutional Affairs, Charles Njonjo, in the context of class antagonisms in the Kenyan state. Over the past few years, Moi survived a number of crises partly as a result of the consistent support he has received from Njonjo. During the run-up to the general election of 26 September 1983, however, Moi was hoping that he could mobilise sufficient support amongst Kenya's political élite to be able to dispense with Njonjo, and thereby remove the only politician powerful enough to pose any threat to his leadership. SinceJomo Kenyatta's death in 1978, Njonjo had been regarded as the third member of a ruling triumvirate, with Moi and Vice-President Mwai Kibaki. In the following analysis, we examine the class context for conflict with the figure most closely associated with the conservative, capitalistic, and pro-British tendency in Kenyan nationalism.

In the post-World War II period, South African capitalism is considered by many to have been reproduced on the basis of ‘cheap’ African labour-power. This is generally understood to mean that the prosperity of capitalism in the Republic depended on the poverty of the African majority. On the one hand, between 1950 and 1979, gross domestic product grew (in constant 1970 prices) from R4·4 billion to R15·5 billion. On the other hand, Africans on average earned wages that were below subsistence levels as defined by such minimal indices as the poverty datum line, and that were only 5 to 25 per cent as large as those earned on average by whites – see Tables 1 and 2. As generally analysed, both overall growth and the absolute and relative poverty of Africans were the direct result of the apartheid policies of the régime, in particular those responsible for the so-called cheap labour system.

There are unwritten rules for the distribution of money in all societies, notably about from and to whom it is appropriate to give and receive money, and when. These rules differ from one society to another, and we err in assuming otherwise. This article examines some reported practices in the redistribution of earnings and other cash in Swaziland. It arises out of a reading of transcriptions of 118 recorded interviews, 49 with wage-earners conducted at their place of work, and 69 with earners or their dependents in the rural areas. These wide-ranging interviews covered many topics besides the giving and receiving of sums of money between kinsmen. From this evidence I attempt to spell out the detailed nature of these rules. To ignore or to be ignorant of their strength and complexity is to fail to recognise a powerful mechanism for redistribution, which goes some way to modify alleged inequalities between town and country, and between one homestead and another within Swaziland. Similar rules probably affect income distribution elsewhere in Africa.

It is generally acknowledged that a policy of agrarian reform involves much more than the mere redistribution of land to obtain an equitable system of production. A parallel and essential supporting range of complementary institutions usually need to be reorganised at the same time, concerned with credit, marketing, extension, and settlement, so that they can further rather than constrain and negate the reform. The old skewed land-holding structure, especially if involving latifundia estates, has probably contributed to a particular pattern of rural settlement that is quite inappropriate to cope with the more equitable distribution of land, unless large private estates are directly converted into state or multi-member farms. The beneficiaries of reform frequently need resettling on or near their newly-acquired land, and associated co-operative agencies for equipment, inputs, and marketing, together with programmes to provide basic social and commercial services, may well call for a nucleated form of settlement to be created.

Little exists to document the widespread repression of opposition in Africa since independence. Current studies of the rise of capitalism and the post-colonial state largely ignore institutionalised authoritarianism, which characterises the political side of this process. This article discusses the restraints placed on opposition in Kenya up to 1969. Its salience continues with the creation of a de jure one-party state since the abortive coup of 1982.

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.

The nature of the boides responsible for administering justice to Africans, and for settling disputes between them, was the subject of continual and sometimes heated debate in colonial Kenya, and indeed elsewhere in British Africa. Nor have the old controversies completely lost their relevance in contemporary independent African states, as recent moves to reform the system of courts in Zimbabwe have clearly shown. Nevertheless, the debate has a rather timeworn air about it today, the arguments a tired familiarity which obviates the need to rehearse them in detail. They tend to centre on certain key issues: the composition, procedure, and administration of the courts, and the appellate system.

This article discusses the relationship of missionaries and anthropologists in South Africa. Due to such important factors as ethnicity, linguistic group membership, denominationalism, and party political affiliation, it is essential to present historical perspectives on these and related matters. The vocation of missionary is almost exclusively a white enterprise as is that of professional anthropologist. Blacks have however had significant influences in both realms and are today entering these vocations.

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.

The conflict in the Horn of Africa and its internationalisation since 1977 has stimulated many arguments in Amercian policy-making circles on whether the costs of expanded involvement in the region are coming to outweigh the strategic and other benefits. The most intense phase of this controversy has followed the post-1978 realignment of forces in the region, which transformed Somalia into an ally of the United States, and Ethiopia, long a close friend, into a Soviet ally.

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in international politics in Africa. After the initial post-independence discussion of pan-Africanism the international dimension seemed overshadowed by the concern to account for domestic developments in many new states, and it is this imbalance which is now being redressed. Indeed, it has recently been argued by Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg that, contrary to the situation elsewhere, Africa's international politics have assumed an order which is sadly lacking in the domestic affairs of many states: ‘At the level of international society, a framework of rules and conventions governing the relations of the states in the region has been bounded and sustained for almost two decades.’ If the contrast between internal anarchy and international order seems somewhat exaggerated, the distinction between domestic and foreign politics appears both conventional and appropriate.

The performance of Africa's external sector during the 1970s has been described in a number of important publications. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the continent's share of world exports declined from 3·9 per cent in 1970 to 3·4 per cent in 1979. The performance of the region's export sector had been sluggish throughout this period, growing at an annual rate of only 0·6 per cent in volume compared to 6 per cent during the last five years of the previous decade. The World Bank report on sub-Saharan Africa described the 1970s as having been characterised by growing balance-of-payments deficits, attributable partly to external factors — notably the two large oil-price shocks, the slow growth in world trade in primary commodities, and the persistently rising price of imported manufactured goods — but partly caused also by domestic factors. Even within the group of developing countries, Africa's share of non-fuel exports is estimated to have declined from over 18 per cent in 1970 to about 9 per cent in 1978. During this decade the volume of imports expanded by an estimated 58 per cent annually — although for the sub-Saharan region the growth rate was only 3 per cent — while the terms of trade worsened significantly. Official development assistance rose substantially as a whole, but offset only a part of the growing deficit.

This extract from an editorial in The Times, which followed the capture of a Soviet warrant officer by invading South African forces in southern Angola in September 1981, sums up well the attitude in many western quarters, including most governments, towards Soviet involvement in the continent, particularly Southern Africa. It was widely assumed that the victory of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola led by Agostinho Neto, achieved with substantial Soviet and Cuban aid, would lead to the use of Angola as a springboard for communist intervention in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. Those who supported this premise believed that Moscow's leaders wished to be in a position to control the sea-lanes off the South African coast, and that

The August 1983 overthrow of Major Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo by Captain Thomas Sankara in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), the New Year's Eve abrupt termination in Nigeria of Black Africa's largest multi-party democracy, and the decision by the Guinean army in April 1984 to remove their party leaders after the death of President Sékou Touré, illustrate two of the most salient realities of contemporary African politics: (1) military coups d'état are the principal form of régime change, and (2) they can happen under any type of political system–a functioning democracy, a personalistic civilian dictatorship, or an already existing military junta.1