Marrapodi Compound, a peri-urban settlement to the north of Zambia's capital, Lusaka, is a unique community containing several indigenous religious groups. These religious associations have enabled members of various ethnic backgrounds to create a form of social organization that provides a link between urban and village life. Through case studies of the community's major religions, it is possible to develop a composite picture of Marrapodi's social organization and to examine the importance of religion in each group's adjustment to an urban milieu. This discussion will begin by concentrating on detailed observations of two of the area's major religious groups, the Maranke and the Masowe Apostles.

It is my underlying assumption that the urban blight and social disorganization frequently attributed to shanty communities have been less important than the migrations and organizational efforts of the independent churches in creating the basic themes and direction of Marrapodi's growth over the past twenty years. This social and religious organization has been subtle, accretionary, and occasionally indirect. Exploring the impact of this tacit social organization on the changing shanty compounds and examining the ways in which religion is at the heart of Marrapodi's life will be my central concerns. A second, more external form of social organization, the planning of the local government, will also be examined from the perspective of both the urban planners and the community members interviewed in 1974. I shall concentrate on a description of the world of everyday events as seen from the perspectives of community members. Systematic observation of the social life, doctrine, and rituals of Marrapodi's major churches will be combined with broader historical and demographic information about the community's growth. These perspectives bridge the gap between the assumptions of outside urban planners and researchers and the uncorroborated personal reactions of individual residents. They make it possible to approach the crucial transitions now facing the community.

Many developing countries share the difficult problem of attempting to provide aid to the large sectors of their population living at or near a minimal subsistence level. These subsistence sectors are often characterized by their traditional orientation and their relative isolation from the commercial or modern sectors of the developing nation's economy. This isolation does not always entail physical remoteness of traditional enclaves, although spatial imbalances and disparities are frequent concomitants of functional dislocation within the economy. The maintenance of separate institutions governing social and economic relationships, and the persistence of patterns of motivation and behavior at variance with modern modes of reasoning, are frequently sufficient to impede contact between closely contiguous groups of traditional and commercially oriented peoples.

Thus although development may be theoretically possible for any group, and is often conceptualized as a continuum between low and high states of productivity and welfare, in some countries a pronounced dichotomy arises between traditional and modern groups. Economies in which functional separation of subsistence and commercial sectors has become acute are referred to as dual economies.

The purpose of this article is to stress the neglected aspects of the inter-war educational policy in British tropical Africa which was generally referred to as Adaptation. It is not unusual to find gaps between theory and practice in various systems of education, but stated policy and educational practice in British Africa were so divergent as to merit special attention. Although a concerted effort was made to introduce Adaptation in 1923, the policy did not remain rigid; in fact it evolved in three distinct yet overlapping phases. Adaptation in tropical Africa was a transplant of an educational policy which grew gradually in New Zealand and India and crystallized during the era of New Imperialism in the 1890s in South Africa and in the south of the United States. The discussion which follows is therefore at once historical and comparative. An attempt will also be made to show that adaptation was linked to the political fortunes of the West.

Adaptation was based on the Colonial Office document issued in 1925, though the Derby Day Meeting which officially conceived this policy was held two years earlier on 6 June 1923. The policy displayed noble intentions: the major effort was directed towards literacy of the masses. The education of girls and adults was not to be neglected. The curriculum was to be geared to the agricultural economy that sustained tropical Africa. Government departments other than Education in each colony were to assist in training artisans and technicians with machine tools. In non-Muslim areas the school would be encouraged to have a Christian bias. Since the colonial government could not finance school expansion on its own, expansion would be through government-assisted schools run by the missions. Circumstances permitting, higher education would be provided.

The attention of the world was focused on Ethiopia, briefly, when Emperor Haile Selassie I, once considered the inviolate descendant of Solomon and Sheba and the Elect of God, was deposed on September 12, 1974, and when, on November 23, 1974, sixty public and military officials were executed without trial. The Provisional Military Administrative Council, or Dirg, formally assumed power under Proclamation No. 1 of 1974 (Neg. Gaz. 34/1) which deposed the Emperor and “suspended” the 1955 Revised Constitution, while providing that all other laws and regulations remain in force. De facto, of course, the entire legal system remains in suspense and the emerging Grundnorm or basic postulate of Ethiopian public law has become the as yet vague philosophy of Ethiopia Tikdem, defined as encompassing the tenets of Ethiopian socialism.

Although the “revolutionary” movement was undertaken in the name of the peasants, events and legal changes have, to date, affected only the urban areas, and the Dirg's promise to pursue rural development and land reform (Ethiopian Herald, 1974: 4) has remained a mere promise. Will the interests of rural Ethiopians be pursued by the new regime in the future? What role will law play in this process? These problems will be resolved as a result of future political choices, and Ethiopia is at a stage in her history when difficult choices must be made in many areas. It is therefore an appropriate time to assess where the Ethiopian legal system has been and where it could go from the standpoint of improving the quality of the life of Ethiopia's subsistence peasants, who constitute eighty percent of the population.

Identification of the consequences of such a complex phenomenon as longdistance trade has engaged historians of east Africa most particularly since the publication of Reginald Coupland's East Africa and Its Invaders (1938) and The Exploitation of East Africa (1939). The more critically long-distance trade is examined, the more dimensions emerge which appear essential for an evaluation of its impact. Studies made in the 1960s examined political consequences of the trade within and among African societies, as well as those economic aspects which affected African rulers (Roberts, 1968; Gray and Birmingham, 1970). More recently there has been a desire to assess the economic consequences to the vast majority of east Africa's population-not just upon the rulers-during the nineteenth century (see Alpers, 1973). The direction of inquiry is certainly welcomed. It, in turn, will no doubt lead investigators to a number of social and religious issues heretofore unexamined; other significant effects of the trade will be identified and their impact at least partially assessed.

One such consequence worthy of consideration is the disease factor. At present we know precious little about the introduction of epidemic diseases into the east African interior during or before the nineteenth century. The most valuable single work available is Dr. James Christie's Cholera Epidemics in East Africa (1876). As a resident physician on Zanzibar, Christie observed and described the effects of cholera on various social and ethnic groups within Zanzibari society. He also endeavored to trace the relentless spread of four specific cholera epidemics from the Asian sub-continent into eastern Africa. Christie, however, was unable to provide precise information about African mortality from cholera within the interior, although impressionistic statements are cited. Given the east Africans' lack of immunity to cholera, there is every reason to assume that its effects were devastating on all people exposed to it (Curtin, 1968: 195). As Christie painstakingly described, cholera was inadvertently transmitted by traders seeking ivory along specific caravan routes through the interior of eastern Africa. Disease and long-distance trade thus became inextricably linked, with caravans serving as an effective mechanism for transmitting alien epidemic diseases as well as indigenous diseases.

Voluntary associations are significant mechanisms by which migrants can be integrated into a new urban milieu, yet not all individuals or sectors of city populations belong to them. While it is widely accepted that associations have a role to play in urban west Africa by offering welfare services (Little, 1965), providing political outlets in the broad sense of that term (Wallerstein, 1966), or defining status (Eisenstadt, 1956), little is known about the configurations of membership (but see Meillassoux, 1968). In order to understand more fully the part that voluntary associations play in the lives of city dwellers it is still necessary to ask fundamental questions. For example:

1) What percentages of urban populations actually belong to, and are active in, voluntary associations?

2) What kinds of voluntary associations are preferred?

3) Who belongs to what kinds of associations?

In other words we still need to know to whom voluntary associations are important and to whom they are relatively unimportant.

This essay addresses itself to these questions by examining voluntary association behavior among residents of one suburban neighborhood of Lagos, Nigeria. In so doing it argues that membership varies substantially according to ethnicity and sex. Yoruba and Ibo-speaking residents are known for their high level of participation in several types of voluntary associations, yet Hausa-speaking residents rarely join any but religious groups. The same contrast can be made between men and women, whose membership preferences are not necessarily similar. Examination of the variables of sex and ethnicity, therefore, begins to provide membership profiles of the various types of associations, but these factors do not stand alone.

Over ten years have now elapsed since the then Government of Northern Nigeria, in what has since been represented as a major attack on the institution of Chieftancy per se (Dudley, 1968, and Whittaker, 1970), set in motion the procedure for a Commission of Enquiry into the financial affairs of the Kano Native Authority which resulted in the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sir Muhammadu Sanusi, K.B.E., abdicating and going into voluntary exile at Azare, leaving his Emirate entirely and withdrawing to a life of religious seclusion.

Nothing has been published heretofore concerning the motives or the origins of this enquiry, other than the speculation of some scholars which have been based on only the most scanty corpus of material, but it would seem that, ten years after the event, and after so much water has flowed under the bridge, there would now be no impropriety in disclosing at least some of the broader aspects of the Enquiry as the Commissioner became aware of them. In particular, what has not been appreciated to date is that the fundamental element of the crisis when it occurred was really one of legitimacy.

When Felix Eboue made the observation quoted, it was already too late for France to effect any meaningful shift in colonial policy. When Charles Temple made his, British administration theory had already crystallized along the rigid lines for which Lugard had opted, and, in fact, it was against this very rigidity that Temple was inveighing when he wrote the book from which the quotation has been taken. The problem which each of these authorities was addressing, however, is not one that is applicable to the colonial context alone, or even, necessarily, at all. It is much more generally concerned with modernization and modernism, and especially with the dislocation of the traditional process which the unthinking application of modernistic norms invariably entails.

The Kwilu rebellion of 1964 belongs within a little studied species of political violence: the aborted rural revolution.

Political change in Africa marked by violence seems endemic—historically, revolts and resistance to colonial intrusion; international conflict during the two world wars and along borders since independence; civil strife in many countries; a plethora of military coups d'état; anomic violence of several forms, including urban riots, hut burnings, and women's uprisings. Yet one form of political violence appears conspicuous by its absence. Political revolution has been rare in recent African history. To be certain, events in Algeria, Rwanda, and Zanzibar entailed profound social and political transformations, making them revolutionary in import (Humbaraci, 1966; Wolf, 1969; Lemarchand, 1968 and 1970; Lofchie, 1965). These are exceptions. Even a society as polarized as that of the Republic of South Africa appears to negate the standard explanations of revolution (Adam, 1971; Daniel, 1975; Van den Berghe, 1965). Understanding the aborted rural revolution in Kwilu thus will enable us better to grasp the obstacles to sweeping political change in Africa south of the Sahara.

For much of 1964, young maquisards controlled an area nearly the size of Belgium in the Western Congolese province of Kwilu. Leader of the uprising was Pierre Mulele, briefly a cabinet minister under Patrice Lumumba, and later an official of the breakaway Gizengist government. The rapid initial success of the partisan fighters testified to widespread political and social frustration among many Kwilu residents, to popular support for Mulele's efforts at violent and extensive change, to the coercive inadequacies of the national armed forces, and to the mobilizing effects of an ideology that interwove indigenous and Marxist threads. Only with the major reorganization of the Congolese military (including the recruitment of foreign mercenaries) was the uprising quelled and Mulele forced into exile. How the Mulelist fighters gained their popular support and initial military success are questions of great concern to analysts of African politics.