For the countries of Africa the 1980s was a decade of depening economic crisis. The international economic environment became increasingly hostile, with declining terms of trade, recession in the industrial countries, and heavy debt-servicing burdens. Domestically, many economies were disrupted by severe drought conditions and civil disturbances.

The signing of the General Peace Agreement in Rome in October 1992 marked the formal cessation of 17 years of intermittent warfare in the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique.1 The bitter struggle by the guerrilla movement known as the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (Renamo) to topple the avowedly Marxist–Leninist régime established by the leaders of the Frente de Libertção de Moçambique (Frelimo) was in many respects a regional expression of the cold war politics which dominated the international environment. The transformations in the Soviet Union and South Africa, blunting the ideological and logistical support which had fuelled the conflict, provoked a crisis for the protagonists. With over a million casualties, a greater number of refugees in neighbouring countries, and an economy devastated by war and mismanagement, the Government and Renamo at last sued for peace.2

The failure of the African state, capitalist or socialist, to induce successful economic transformation has led to attempts by neo-liberal institutions and scholars to jettison it out of the business of economic development except in the form of ‘night watchman’.1 The minimalist strategy which is at the heart of such efforts ignores the historical evidence that sustained accumulation and development anywhere has been the product of either a capitalist class, conscious of its interest, pushing the state to foster capitalist development, or a state leading the way where such a conscious class did not exist. Successful capitalist development in either of these scenarios entailed the protection of the common class interest against the narrow schemes of individual members, or the demand and needs of other classes.

A social activist with wide-ranging concern for the welfare of his society, Wole Soyinka is on record as saying that it was the death toll among students and colleagues which prompted him to become involved in road safety. These victims were among the grim statistics of accidents; for example, in 1988 a total of 9,077 people were killed on Nigerian roads, and 24,413 were injured.2 But it is clear from Soyinka's writing that his interest in ‘the road’, and the rich characters it throws up and crushes under foot, predates the slaughter of his students. Early poems such as ‘Epitaph for Say Tokyo Kid’, and prose pieces such as ‘Oga Look Properly’, testify to this, as does the work of the mid-1960s, which includes the satirical revue sketch ‘Obstacle Race’ (about the hazards facing drivers in Nigeria), his first novel, The Interpreters (London, 1965), with its memorable description of the death of Sekoni in a motor accident, and above all his play entitled The Road (London, 1965). When these are linked with Soyinka's interest in the god of the road, Ogun, it was not surprising to find a whole section of his first collection of verse described as ‘of the road’.

The devaluation of the Communauté financière africaine (CFA) franc occurred on 12 January 1994. Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal were immediately affected as the value of their currency decreased by 50 per cent. One French franc now became worth 100 instead of 50 CFA – in reality a 100 per cent increase in the cost of goods purchased on the international market with the CFA franc.

Ever since independence Lingala has been gradually spreading throughout Zaïre to the extent that nowadays in Bukavu, a traditionally Swahili-speaking city near Rwanda and Burundi, about 70 per cent of the population has some knowledge of the language. This holds true for all layers of society: youngsters, students, teachers, civil servants, businessmen, petty traders, soldiers, and prostitutes. The advent of Lingala raises an important question: how do we explain the presence of this new language in a city where already three lingua francas exist, namely French, Swahili, and Indoubil.1

Bullets rather than ballots have dominated politics in Uganda since independence, where two governments have been removed by coups, one by a foreign invasion, and another by an armed rebellion. Force has not only dominated the formal political system, but also threatened the economic and social basis on which democratic processes and progressive development depends. For 25 years predatory military rule and civil war have destroyed lives, skills, and assets, undermined institutional competence and accountability, caused widespread per sonal trauma, suppressed autonomous organisations in civil society, and intensified ethnic hostility and conflict. And Uganda is not alone in this – the middle of the twentieth century was dominated by fascism and war, while sectarian or ethnic conflicts in Bosnia, Ulster, Sri Lanka, Somalia, the Sudan, Angola, Liberia, Zaï, Burundi, and Rwanda have inflicted untold damage on people and property.1

In this 1971 novel by Charles Mangua, and in his sequel 15 years later, Son of Woman in Mombasa (Nairobi, 1986), Dodge Kiunyu is a self-made man, ‘son of woman’. He believes that he was ‘conceived on a quid’ by ‘one of the scores of men who took [his mother] for a bed-ride’ (1971, p. 7). Raised first by his prostitute mother until her death and then by her prostitute friend, Dodge is sent away to the countryside as an 11-year-old orphan, educated by a mission, and eventually graduated from Makerere University College. His adult life has been spent working ‘with Ministry of Labour, Kenya Shell, Ministry of Lands and Settlement and lastly with the Ministry of Home Affairs as an insider of Kamiti prison–blast them cops!’ (1986, p. 2).

Adewale Maja-Pearce is an iconoclastic Nigerian critic who has dethroned a number of literary reputations, and his 1992 book, on Nigerian fiction of the 1980s, is only a few pages old when some venerated literary figures come into the sights of his polemic. Chief among these are Chinua Achebe and Elechi Amadi, whose early novels are seen to construct nostalgic traditional world-views on discredited superstitions and ‘degraded fetishism’. Maja-Pearce's real target in A Mask Dancing, however, is not the first wave of anglophone Nigerian novelists of the 1950s and early 1960s, but the writers of his own generation, and his concern is as much with the manner as with the matter of the writing.

In Kenya, the Kuria, Suba, Meru, and Abagusii are among the contemporary cultural groupings which continue to believe in the importance of female circumcision. The ceremonies may have been partly abrogated or modified, but operations to cut off the tip of the clitoris of young girls are still carried out, not least in the expectation that the needed spirit of endurance will shape their character into adulthood. Although the primary objective of clitoridectomy is to initiate female children into womanhood, it is also performed in many African countries to ensure virginity, to enhance fertility and fecundity, and to promote cleanliness.

The system of apprenticeship within the so-called informal sector in East and Central Africa is generally thought to be more limited than in West Africa, albeit less well documented. This note reports briefly some findings from Uganda, based on a survey covering 45 metal-working and 45 wood-working establishments in and around Kampala from June to August 1993. Selected on a more or less random basis, all 90 were in the ‘micro-enterprise’ category, employing less than to persons, with a mean size of 5·7 (metal) and 5·0 (wood). As regards the first trade, 25 of these establishments were located in Katwe, seven in Kisenyi, six in Bwaise, four in Nbeeda, and three in Nakawa. The sample of wood-working establishments was selected more widely from 16 different locations, the most from any one place being seven.