In October 1884, the major European colonial powers of the era were invited to a conference in Berlin by the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.1 The United States also attended the proceedings as an observer nation, and its representative, John A. Kasson, signed the Berlin Convention, one of the primary purposes of which was to regulate escalating imperial conflict by officially delineating the territorial boundaries of colonial possessions. Although warfare between colonial armies in Africa during World War I underscored the failure of negotiators to avoid yet another global military conflict, the Berlin conference none the less consecrated the creation of formal European empires and ‘spheres of interest’ throughout the continent. Except for the unique cases of Ethiopia and Liberia, independent Africa eventually ceased to exist.

Without the overriding concern of Soviet domination, Americans are engaging in an introspective re-evaluation of their national interests, values, and priorities. Despite the heterogeneity of all the participants, including the key opinion-makers, a near-consensus has emerged that the United States should be pushing and supporting an external process that has come to be known as ‘democratisation’. This policy stems from widespread perceptions about the special nature of America's identity and rôle in the world. The thesis presented here is that the United States is primarily defined by a particular liberal philosophy and concept of modernity, and that the projection of ‘democracy’ abroad is not necessarily a ‘natural’ or universal evolution of human development. Africa's increasing marginalisation has allowed certain groups committed to spreading ‘American values’ an unprecedented ability to shape policy and turn the continent into a liberal socio-political experiment.

While noticeable signs of change in relations between France and her former colonies in Africa began to appear in the post-cold war era, particularly since 1990, elements of continuity include their enduring historical and cultural ties; their informal, intimate, and secretive politico-diplomatic relations, typified by the bi-annual franco-African summit meetings; and the fact that when all is said and done, the contintent remains of great economic importance to France. As for the gradual process of democratisation which has swept throughout francophone Africa in recent years, there is evidence that this has been selectively supported by France according to criteria pertaining more to her core foreign-policy interests in Africa than to ideological, legalistic, or humanitarian considerations.

When analysing the implosion of political space and the rupture of social stability which has characterised the course of African history in recent years, there has too often been a tendency to focus attention on institutions, structures, and politicans. Whilst these are obviously important, such an approach tends to obscure the groundswell of new and yet barely understood social changes. Yet given that the ‘politicians’ seem unable to advance the process in which so many people have invested so much, many observers feel the need to explore alternative sources of dynamism. This is largely the reason for the current interest in the notion of ‘civil society’ which has recently become fashionable in the often cloistered world of African studies.

Freedom of expression is not only a fundamental human right but also constitutes one of the essential elements in the establishment of a democratic society. No country can seriously profess to be a democracy, or pretend to be making efforts towards this, if its citizens cannot freely express their opinions. Recent moves to introduce freedom of expression in Cameroon have come at a particularly difficult time. Like most African countries, it is on the horns of a dilemma. As it struggles to cope with an ever deepening economic crisis, it has come under strong internal and external pressure to democratise. The winds of change which blew into Africa at the end of the 1980s, when former communist-block single-party régimes collapsed, appeared to herald the beginning of a new era. But as leaders are increasingly pressed by impatient citizens to unfreeze their political, social, and economic rights, tyrants and dictators posing as democrats seem to be determining the nature and guiding principles of the new order.

The National Peacekeeping Force (NPKF) was designed to meet a serious security challenge anticipated in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994. Its establishment was an imaginative and constructive, but ultimately disastrous initiative. Its failure – however inevitable in retrospect – constituted a major tragedy, less as it proved for the free and fair conduct of the elections than for the longer-term prospects of forging a truly national army. This study seeks to explore: (i) the genesis and evolution of the concept of an integrated South African peacekeeping force; (ii) its character, composition, command structure, and cohesion; and (iii) the causes and consequences of its fateful deployment on the volatile East Rand.

Prospects for political change figure prominently on the research agenda in sub-Saharan Africa, and in current debates within individual countries. Democracy is advocated not only as a goal in itself, since it is also frequently argued that elections and openness are required to make governments really responsive to the needs of the population and properly accountable for their actions. In addition, greater transparency is held to be necessary in order to make the public service behave in accordance with bureaucratic norms. Although the general principles of responsiveness, accountability, and transparency are embraced by a large number of scholars and observers of the African scene as a means of countering the detrimental effects of clientelism and personalistic rule, important nuances are found in the literature with regard to the way in which democracy is perceived to facilitate economic development in general, and presently needed reforms in particular.

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.

Anarchic tendencies in Chad serve as a cautionary example of what the on-going reconfiguration of Africa may entail. Interim institutions of government set up by a Sovereign National Conference, which was convened two years after the downfall of the despotic régime of Hissène Habré in December 1990, have generated deep disappointment. Democratisation has proceeded fitfully. The economy remains stagnant. Strikes in the public sector reflect the ‘social crisis’. Worst of all, the security situation has deteriorated substantially and the state is suffering from a severe lack of authority.

While the western media were directing their gaze towards South Africa's political restructuring, another democratic transition was taking place to the north that was no less remarkable and no more imaginable a few years ago. Since Malawi obtained independence in 1964, it had been governed by Dr Hastings Banda (as he was then known) and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) under a system of absolute rule which the country's élites refused to reform or relinquish. In March 1992 the Catholic bishops issued a formal protest against President H. Kamuzu Banda's political high-handedness, initiating a popular movement for democratic reform and anti-régime demonstrations by university students and staff, as well as factory workers.1 When additional pressure was exerted by the international community, holding foreign aid hostage to democratisation, the Government finally yielded, holding a referendum for multi-party democracy in June 1993 that led to presidential and parliamentary elections in May 1994. Banda and the MCP were ousted, Bakili Muluzi and the United Democratic Front (UDF) were elected, and Malawians of all parties revelled in the freedom to be openly, aggressively political.

On 8 and 9 April 1995, Zimbabweans turned out for an election that mostly was not. As many as 55 of the 120 parliamentary seats open for contestation had already been decided for the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), because the six opposition parties of the moment did not put up candidates for them. ZANU PF could also count on another 30 parliamentarians: 12 non-constituency members, to be appointed by the President of Zimbabwe, as well as the eight provincial governors; and ten chiefs elected by local chiefs, all beholden to the ruling party for carrying forward traditional powers to the post- independence era. In other words, ZANU PF was sure of obtaining 85 of the 150 seats in the House of Assembly before a single ballot was cast in the 1995 elections.

In January 1991 President Ali Hassan Mwinyi appointed a Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters, under the chairmanship of Professor Issa Shivji, with extremely broad terms of reference. It was mandated not only to review laws and policies concerning the allocation, tenure, use, and development of land, and to make recommendations for reform, but also to examine the nature of the disputes that had arisen, and to propose measures for their solution. More generally, it was to hear complaints from the general public and to look into any other matters connected with land that it deemed appropriate. The appointment of the Commission might be interpreted as tacit official acknowledgement that the land policies of the preceding 25 years had, in many ways, been a failure, and that now was the time to formulate a new approach in keeping with the economic changes embraced in the mid-1980s

Domestic policy inadequacies have been targeted by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the main reason for poor economic performance in sub-Saharan Africa generally.1 The structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) sponsored by these international financial institutions (IFIs) over the past decade have sought to rectify such policies. But many countries following their advice have continued to experience economic decline, albeit according to the World Bank, as a result primarily of their failure to properly implement the recommended reforms. It was argued in the late 1980s and early 1990S that governments pursuing strong adjustment programmes, even in the face of inhospitable world economic conditions, still outperformed weak reformers.2 This analysis does not hold with the same weight for all African countries. In the case of Guinea, external factors have been equally important in explaining its economic record under adjustment.

The immediate origins of the democratic elections held in Malawi in 1994, which brought to an end over 30 years of political dominance by President Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), lie in the unprecedented events which shook the entire nation in 1992. Although that turbulent year was characterised by industrial action, serious urban riots, student demonstrations, the emergence of new domestic political groupings, and the Government's agreement to hold a national referendum on the future of the one-party system in the country, in retrospect perhaps what was most remarkable about these developments was that they were sparked off by the Catholic Church, and that their momentum was sustained at crucial stages by other Christian denominations in Malawi.1

Fears that the supposedly sacred norm of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other states has eroded in the last few years are not entirely groundless. Excuses to intervene, that now receive sanction by the Security Council of the United Nations, include humanitarian concerns, as in Somalia and Rwanda, international peace and security, as in Kuwait and Bosnia, and the denial of democracy, as in Haiti, all of which differ from the interventions of the cold war years. As Thomas Buergenthal has pointed out, ‘Once the rule of law, human rights and democratic pluralism are made the subject of international commitments, there is little left in terms of governmental institutions that is domestic.’

The end of the cold war has coincided with, and in some cases fuelled, the politicisation of ethnically based nationalism, particularly in Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. The international political environment had previously been characterised by ideological competition and conflict between the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union and Communist China on the other. Both of these ideological camps stressed the cohesion and viability of multi-ethnic nation-states, and as a matter of policy discouraged the representation of groups based upon a distinctive ethnic identity,1 a tendency reinforced in social science scholarship, which often focused on what was described as the process of national political integration. To the extent that it existed and was relevant, scholars generally agreed that ethnic solidarity was different from nationalism in that it did not require the creation of an ethnically pure nation-state. Today, however, the notion of the inviolability of certain internationally recognised entities is being seriously called into question as ethnic groups assert their right to self-determination up to, and including, separation from the multi-ethnic state.

Events in Southern Africa during the early 1990s have re-opened a debate over the effectiveness of the Reagan Administration's policy of ‘Constructive Engagement’. This was a controversy that had previously been laid to rest with the US Congress passing its Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in October 1986, since the ensuing punitive sanctions imposed by the enactment of this legislation scuttled Ronald Reagan's strategy of using friendly persuasion to encourage the South African Government away from its practice of apartheid. Yet, with hindsight, it may appear that the President's method of drawing the Pretoria regime into the international community, through offering recognition and encouragement in exchange for reform, has been triumphantly vindicated. After all, has not the African National Congress (ANC) come to power via a democratic process, thereby avoiding a bloodbath on the scale that so many had predicted?

Two conventions tend to shape appraisals of the Belgian Congo and the manner of its decolonisation. The first describes the colonial power structure as an alliance of state, church, and large corporations.1 This trinity was ‘not only… a virtually seamless web’, writes Crawford Young, ‘but each component, in its area of activity, was without peer in Africa in the magnitude of its impact’.2 The second convention typically portrays decolonisation as tumultuous, chaotic, bungled, or simply ‘gone awry’.3 Indeed, the mutiny and secession movements that followed hard upon the proclamation in June 1960 of the Republic of the Congo (renamed Zaïre in October 1971) resulted in the rapid internationalisation of responses to them, thereby demonstrating the fragility of domestic political arrangements.

The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, noted advocate of rights for the Ogoni people of the Niger delta, who was hanged with eight of his colleagues in Port Harcourt on 10 November 1995, drew universal condemnation from governments, human rights organisations, and literary figures. Following the trial of these Ogoni activists, the Nigerian régime headed by General Sani Abacha decided that the verdict of the appointed tribunal should be endorsed and implemented without delay, despite an international campaign for clemency. In the view of many, Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike, an independent judicial court would not have found the accused guilty of the murder in May 1994 of the four prominent Ogoni who had been killed during a riotous rally. For the military administration, however, the claims for self-determination made by Saro-Wiwa had run counter to national policy, nOt least by having highlighted long-standing tensions between the country's ethnic mosaic and its political centralisation.

These comments by South Africa's Minister for Trade and Industry, Trevor Manuel, were made in November 1994 in a speech to the African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP)—European Union (EU) ministerial meeting in Brussels. Words, of course, can be interpreted in various ways. Contrary to the seeming clarity of Manuel's request, the underlying sub-texts illustrated both the past prevarication of the South African Government and the continuing uncertainty on the part of the EU as to the appropriate shape of a new long-term relationship.