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.

When we speak of ‘the state’ in Tropical Africa today, we are apt to create an illusion. Ordinarily the term denotes an independent political structure of sufficient authority and power to govern a defined territory and its population: empirical statehood. This is the prevailing notion of the state in modern political, legal, and social theory1, and it is a fairly close approximation to historical fact in many parts of the world – not only in Europe and North America, where modern states first developed and are deeply rooted, but also in some countries of South America, the Middle East, and Asia, where they have more recently emerged. The state is an inescapable reality. The military credibility of Argentina during the Falklands war, when it was by no means certain that Britain would prevail against its air force, is an indication of the reality of the state in some parts of the Third World today.

On 21 March 1985, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the infamous Sharpevile incident, South African police, without provocation or warning, killed 20 unarmed black marchers at Langa in the Eastern Cape. Most were shot in the back. The outnumbered contingent of white and black police with two armoured vehicles, felt that the blacks, on their way to a funeral, would threaten the white township.

The repetition of this crudest form of state violence against politicised youngsters and workers, threatened by recession after two-and-a-half decades of anti-apartheid opposition, suggests that little has changed in the repression by a minority ré. The rulers command the guns and the subordinates are left wiht no alternative but to submit or perish.

MOST economists agree that industrialisation should help to increase agricultural productivity and raise the living standards of rural producers. In the 1970s, however, manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa, even including South Africa, grew at a slower rate than in any other region except South-East Asia. Furthermore, far from promoting the anticipated outcome, industrialisation in Southern Africa undermined peasant farm cultivation and contributed to the present crisis in African agriculture.

By any standard, no other third-world leader in recent times has earned as much notoriety for foreign adventurist policies as Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. The Libyan President has on different occasions embarked on a militant course of confrontation with the United States in defence of his controversial definition of territorial air space over the Gulf of Sidra. Gulf of Sidra. During the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina, Qaddafi shipped more than $100 million worth of weapons, including 120 Soviet-made SAM-7 missiles, to Buenos Aires.1 His name has since been linked with bombing and shooting incidents in Britain, which eventually led the Government there to sever Anglo-Libyan diplomatic links in April 1984;2 with arms supplies to Nicaragua, the Irish Republican Army, and several secessionist movements in Africa; with coup plots in a number of countries, including Pakistan;3 and he has openly assaulted some of his neighbours, notably the Sudan and Chad.4 Then, in December 1985, the Libyan President was linked to the daring attacks by P.L.O. gunmen on the Israeli Airline's check-in counters at the Vienna and Rome airports, in which at least 16 people lost their lives and 120 were injured.5

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 Federal Republic of Germany is one of the major pillars of the group of western industrialised capitalist countries, and this largely determines its rôle in international financial institutions, and its attitudes to the global economic system and market structures. The F.R.G. is second in the world, behind the United States, expressed by its share of the monetary volume of total international trade, but the proportion of exports relative to G.N.P. is much higher than in America and slightly more than in Japan.

Continuous pressure against the South African Government has led to what previously seemed unthinkable: the reform of apartheid. Strikes from 1973 onwards, the Soweto revolt in 1976, the increasing resistance from school and consumer boycotts, the strengthening black trade-union movement and mass political organisations, and the unceasing campaign by the African National Congress, have led the State President, P. W. Botha, to declare in early 1986 that apartheid in its present form cannot be maintained, despite strong reactions from sections of Afrikaner interests. Many of the structures thought essential to racial segregation are to go: the pass laws controlling the movement of African men and women, the fiction that the ‘Bantustans’ are ’independent’ or ‘national’ states, and that urban blacks are citizens of other countries. There is even the promise of political representation for Africans. These measures appear to mark the end of Botha's attempt to create a divided black working class — some with residence rights in white-only areas, and others, notably unskilled migrants, without. The specific shape of the more racially-integrated South Africa which Botha promises remains unclear. It is not surprising in a recession that the President appears to have recognised the inappropriateness and disproportionate cost which maintaining structures of black recruitment to white employers has on the state's exchequer — not including the cost of policing influx control.

The rich empirical and historical evidence available on the various popular movements that arose in the Gold Coast, especially since the turn of the nineteenth century, mainly in order to demand political and economic reforms,1 as well as the implications of the post-colonial cycle of military coups d'état and counter-coups in Africa, is critically re-analysed and reinterpreted to advance the following related theses:

IT is widely acknowledged that the origins of Africa's hunger crisis lie only partly in weather patterns. A growing number of studies have emphasised the rôle which the state plays in creating a policy environment which either undermines or promotes commercial agriculture.1 Much of the fault for the latter's poor performance in many areas of the continent is assigned to short-sighted government policies of excessive intervention in agricultural markets. The cardinal sins are considered to be price controls, food subsidies, and state-run marketing boards. As the external debt of African states grows, foreign lenders and aid donors impose economic reforms deemed necessary to address the long-run structural problems. The austerity packages of the International Monetary Fund, for example, aim to reduce demand in the borrowing country by cutting government spending on subsidies, while the World Bank focuses on stimulating agricultural production through a mixture of targeted investments and advice on how to change the pricing and tax structure so as to improve incentives for farmers.2

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.

When Zimbabweans went to the polls in June and July of 1985, they decisively returned the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) to formal power, provided regional support for the Patriotic Front–Zimbabwe African People's Union and, in the case of the white roll, endorsed Ian Smith's Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe. Questions raised in the wake of the elections tended to focus on the changes that the Z.A.N.U.(P.F.) Government could institute in the next three to five years – a one-party system, a complete abrogation of the Lancaster House privileges for whites, a vigorous turn towards Marxism.

THIS article aims to clarify the national political culture of Tanzania through an analysis of one important institution — the Cabinet. Although attention to the norms and rules that regulate political behaviour in formal and informal ways can reveal insights that are not disclosed by other approaches, political culture has been a neglected field in the study of African politics.

By way of contrast, class analysis has been a popular approach to African politics in past decades.1 It has been shown, for instance, that those in government positions siphon off surplus from the peasantry through the marketing of agricultural produce. This has happended in countries as diverse as Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Malawi, and Tanzania, 2 where there are enormous differences in economic performance, as well as with respect to the way in which political conflicts are handled. People n similar class positions can act in a variety of ways – this is a matter of culture – because there is more than one possible logic with which to perceive and defend interests.

After years of agricultural production significantly below domestic consumption needs for key commodities, in 1985 Zambia looked forward to a good harvest of maize, the nation's staple. The Minister of Co-operatives, Justin Mukando, said in February that more than eight million bags were anticipated, and the Prime Minister, Kebby S. K. Musokotwane, declared in May that ‘we expect about ten million bags of maize’.1 In the Zambian system of presidentialism and state capitalism, the purchasing, transportation, and storage of crops, as with many other agricultural functions, was in the hands of the state. This was so in terms of the close involvement of political figures at the highest level, and through the continued reliance upon the National Agricultural Marketing Board (Namboard) and the quasi-parastatal provincial co-operative marketing unions. President Kenneth Kaunda committed himself and his Government to success in the forthcoming harvest when he told Parliament in January: ‘I am not prepared to see a recurrence of what happened last year when thousands of bags of maize remained uncollected in various depots’; the state would ensure that the agencies involved in the collection of produce improved their performance.

The establishment of independent commissions in Nigeria since 1931 to review wage structures, gradings, and relativities in the public sector would seem to suggest either a continuing belief in their efficacy for determining remuneration and job classification, or else that this method has become ‘inevitable’ for reasons that remain to be discovered.

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.

The French colony of Niger gained republican status on 18 December 1958 and political independence on 3 August 1960. This vast country, twice the size of its ex-metropole, and which figures amongst the 25 least-developed countries in the world, was under the political direction of the Parti progressiste nigérien for over 15 years. The P.P.N. had come to power in September 1958, after capturing 78 per cent of the votes cast in favour of continued membership of the now defunct French Community, and was headed by Hamani Diori, the leader of the local section of the Rassemblement démocratique africain, the more or less common platform for French-speaking West African politicians after World War II. However, President Diori formed his first cabinet only after the independence constitution had been promulgated on 8 November 1960.

The resettlement of nomads recently has become a renewed topic of interest within the literature on development. The general purpose of most schemes is to sedentarise nomadic peoples through farm or manufacturing co-operatives to be able systematically to provide them with the necessities of existence, including health services and education, and to reduce their vulnerability to the vagaries of their day-to-day search for green pastures and water. Nomadism has been defined as ‘the movement of the household during the annual round of productive activities’, while its polar opposite, sedentism, is ‘the immobile location of the household during the annual round of productive activities’.1

Some recent studies indicate increased interest in the origin and evolution of food markets in West Africa, a development clearly related to the current concern with the food crisis and a desire to understand the impact of past economic processes and administrative measures on today's food distribution and production. Jane I. Guyer, for example, explores the implications of colonial policy for the direction of indigenous change in the economy of central Cameroun.1 Richard Roberts traces the expansion of the Bamako grain market to the demands of the colonial state and the employers of wage-work.2 The present article is conceived in the same vein. Its purpose is to describe the growth of a similar market in Burkina Faso, from its remote colonial origins to the developments of the last 20 years which shaped its present form, and thus to contribute to the understanding of the food sector in West Africa.

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.