On returning to power following the coup d’etat of December 31, 1981, Flight-Lt. Jerry John Rawlings set two major goals: the restoration of power to the people and the waging of a “holy war” against corruption. In line with these objectives, he suspended the constitution, banned political parties, detained party leaders, and took a number of extra-legal actions. Almost immediately questions began to surface about the prospects of the regime’s impact on Ghana’s long civil liberties tradition. This essay will examine the basis for these fears and assess whether or not they might be justified. An attempt is made to do this by placing the Ghanaian civil liberties situation in a broader comparative context, seeking in this way to give a balanced perspective on this subject.

Idi Amin’s eight-year reign as dictator of Uganda produced one of the most vicious regimes in Africa’s recent history. The number of people who met violent death at the hands of the regime’s agents is estimated to have been as high as 100,000.

When the regime was swept away by Tanzanian troops in April 1979, it was expected by Ugandans as well as foreign observers that at long last, political and social violence would abate. However, the events of the last three years have belied these hopes and expectations.

In this paper I will discuss women’s rights regarding marriage, the family, and genital operations in the context of internationally accepted views of the individual rights of women. I focus upon these particular areas partly because the issue of female genital operations in Africa has been the subject of much popular attention in the last three years, but mainly because, given that women’s biological reproductive roles are so much more central to their lives than are the equivalent roles for men, their rights in these areas profoundly affect their ability to exercise their rights in other areas, i.e. in the polity and in the economy. For data I use examples from several English-speaking sub-Saharan countries.

When he signed the Camp David treaty with Israel, President Anwar Sadat promised the Egyptian people that this would bring peace and prosperity. He assured American policymakers that as a leader in the Arab world, he would be in an opportune position to play a role in the region as an intermediary between the U.S. and Egypt’s Arab-Moslem neighbors, and to act as a bridge for peace between Israel and its Arab adversaries. Among many of Egypt’s Arab sister states, however, Sadat became known as a traitor, and his country became profoundly alienated from them. Since Sadat’s assassination, this condition has not improved. In fact, in recent years Egypt seems to have lost influence and prestige in the international as well as the regional community, and domestic problems have mounted, adding to the growing crisis of legitimacy which surfaced around the time of Sadat’s death.

Zambia’s contemporary experience of recession without resolution is, alas, quite typical of the majority of African states over the decade; for since the celebration of ten years of independence in 1974, its national income has been in almost continuous decline. But this economic decay has had an uneven impact, between both time periods and social groups: occasional injections of foreign aid or loans have been permissive of relative affluence for elements in the bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy along the line-of-rail. The full impact of negative growth has been felt in the more distant rural areas and among the peasantry and the unemployed.