The growth of Johannesburg is synonymous with that of South Africa's gold mining industry and the expansion of the metropolitan area from a ramshackle collection of huts to one of the continent's major urban concentrations attests to the impact of visions quickly accumulated wealth on patterns of human movement. This is particularly true of the city's early white community, the prospectors and later the purveyors of capital and mining technology, to whom the imminent possibility of riches compensated for the rigors of existence on the geographically featureless Witwatersrand. Yet similar imaginings of affluence also partially explain the historic drift of blacks to “N'goli” (the city of gold) where today they constitute the overwhelming majority of its population. The opening of the gold reefs in 1884 brought unprecedented wealth to white South Africa (if not to the legions of black labor responsible for the precious metal's extraction). At the same time the discovery of gold set in motion the process of black urbanization of which Johannesburg is the epitome. By 1896 approximately half of the fledgling town's population were blacks seeking refuge in mine wage labor from growing poverty in the country areas and by 1913, with rural dispossesion aggravated by the Natives Land Act, an irreversible momentum was set in motion. Twelve years after the striking of the first successful claims Johannesburg's population of 102,000 was roughly divided between black and white (Lewis, 1966: 3). A mere 80 years later, despite the barriers to black urban influx institutionalized by successive white governments, the racial distribution of population was of the order of 3 to 1 with blacks the predominant element of the ratio.

Following the collapse of many civilian and constitutional governments in postcolonial Africa, most political analysts and commentators drew a dismal conclusion. They decided that democratic representation based upon freedom of speech and association would be abandoned in Africa and they proclaimed the onset of an era of authoritarian rule. Some analysts, in the tradition of colonialist thought, asserted that cultural and social conditions in Africa are simply unsuited to the practice of liberal democracy.

Although philosophers do not accept that education has intrinsic values or that it serves instrumental ends (Dewey, 1966; Peters, 1967; Gribble, 1969), most people would readily agree that it can be put to several uses and that it fulfills diverse functions. If by education we mean the aggregate of skills, values, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for the self-perpetuation of a society, it is easy to see its instrumental extensions, philosophers notwithstanding. Hence in every society that we know of today—under whatever form of government—much faith is placed on education as a panacea of all social evils. One of the tasks that education has been assigned in Africa is to forge national consciousness out of a myriad of ethnic particularities. From all indications, it has not been a success.

Statistical studies of the relationship between formal education and political integration in Africa have generally painted a grim picture. In their study of six nations—involving university students from Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, and Zaire (then the Congo)—Klineberg and Zavalloni (1965) found that national consciousness was very low, particularly in Nigeria. To the question “What are you?” 56 percent of the Igbos and 60 percent of the Yorubas replied in terms of ethnic references. The Yorubas disliked the Igbos more than the Igbos disliked them (74 percent Yorubas as opposed to 59 percent Igbos), and a Yoruba in Nigeria felt closer to a Yoruba in Benin (then Dahomey) than to a non-Yoruba in Nigeria.

This article is a tentative incursion into the making and workings of collective memory in the recent Nigerian elections. The crisis of memory—construction, distortion, exploitation, and suppression—is evident in the Nigerian “transmutation” process—the perpetuation in power, through civilianization, of a military regime. The term “transmutation” is used here to convey the sense of a political mutation, a process of uncertain nature or progeny, certainly a transition, but one emanating from an unlikely parentage, a brutal and militarized past.

Probably no two of the scholarly works punctuating the past quarter century better exemplify the intellectual voyage that Africanist political scientists have taken than do Thomas Hodgkin's pioneering classic, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (1956), and Crawford Young's recent admirable comparative study of political economy in Ideology and Development in Africa (1982). These two broadly comparative works reflect the major shift from the study of the processes of African self-assertion and decolonization–the quest for and acquisition of state power–which characterized the concerns of the first decade of that period, to the study of how that power is maintained and in whose interest and with what effectiveness it is exercised, foci which have increasingly become the preoccupations of the last decade.

The intention here is to examine some of the features of this intellectual trek–from first generation conventional studies of nationalism, elections, and constitutions to the current preoccupation with the state, class, and political economy–not by a travelogue of the journey, but by focusing upon an enduring issue, namely, the antinomy of universalism vs. relativism. The antinomy exists at two levels. The first is that of the individual scholarly endeavor and product; namely, does the product reflect (a) a generalizing and scientific mode of inquiry in which the scholar's intent and perspective is to identify uniformities and regularities–as well as differences–through systematic comparison? In short, is it nomothetic? Or is it (b), a mode that is idiographic, i.e., that aims to describe and to understand a phenomenon in all its configurative, situational, and cultural-historical particularity and uniqueness? The antinomy at the second and obviously related level concerns the conceptualization of the discipline by a particular set of practitioners as either (a) a social scientific endeavor aimed at generalization and universality, or (b) an intellectual vocation which is essentially descriptive and interpretive of political phenomena that are inherently historically and culturally relative to a particular human group or situation (cf. Fallers, 1968: 576; Pye, 1975: 6).

Recent studies of development in Africa reflect the broad ideological gulf between the perspectives of classical capitalist developmentalists and neo-Marxist dependency theorists. In the capitalist view, development is seen as a problem of modernization (i.e., westernization). Marxists, on the other hand, perceive the underdevelopment of the third world as a product of western development and the emergence of the world capitalist system. In an effort to inject an empirical element into this ideological debate several analysts have undertaken comparative examinations of the merits of the alternative approaches (Kaufman et al., 1975; McGowan, 1975; 1976; Vengroff, 1975; 1976; Walleri, 1975; Stallings, 1973; Chase-Dunn, 1975).

A general examination of the relative merits of the developmental and dependency approaches is beyond the scope of this brief paper. Here die author will attempt to assess the utility of these conflicting approaches as explanations of the particular phenomenon of domestic inequality in black Africa. The question of domestic inequality and development in Africa has unfortunately received only limited empirical consideration (Vengroff, 1976) and then usually from a national rather than a cross-national perspective (Leys, 1973; Harris, 1975).

Proponents of capitalist theory suggest that inequality is a natural, short run outcome of the development process. As the level of development increases, there is a broad expansion of the middle class, and hence a decline in inequality (Adelman and Morris, 1973; Paukert, 1973).

Few people consider the armed forces hesitant in their actions. Speed, decisiveness, efficiency, directness—such are characteristics often attributed to the military. Especially in areas where protection of military autonomy is concerned, quick action may be taken.

Recent African history suggests that members of the armed forces exhibit willingness to leap into active political involvement when challenges arise to their corporate interest. Since June 1965 fifteen African states have experienced coups d'etat. The decisive act of intervention, however, rarely is mirrored by an equally decisive act of withdrawal. Coups are clear-cut events, transitions to civilian governments far less dramatic or marked. As the time to return to the barracks approaches, doubts and hesitations seem to grow. Officers pause, uncertain whether they have accomplished what their intervention allegedly was to correct. They are caught in a dilemma, and as S. E. Finer noted, “whether their rule be indirect of whether it be direct, they cannot withdraw from rulership nor can they fully legitimize it. They can neither stay nor go” (1962, p. 243).

Once military intervention has occurred, voluntary disengagement of the armed forces from direct political involvement comes when withdrawal seems to enhance the military's corporate interest. Splits within the military, relatively restricted objectives, and the opportunity to transfer control to civilians whose outlooks, policies, and backgrounds resemble those of the ruling military group facilitate disengagement.

The subject of colonialism is still imbued with emotive overtones, and it is perhaps too early to expect complete agreement in the description and evaluation of the impact of colonial rule on Africa. This article utilizes an important indicator of government activity, public expenditure decisions, to aid in describing the nature of British rule in the Gold Coast from 1901 to 1939. The intention is twofold: first, to check the validity of certain propositions about British colonialism and, second, to investigate how well the apparent uniqueness of one particular Governor, F. Gorgon Guggisberg (1919-1927), is supported by this information source.

The descriptive strengths of government expenditure data are readily apparent. Expenditure is quantified and thus fairly comparable both over time and cross-nationally. Moreover, expenditure provides an empirical measure of nearly the entire range of government activities. Consequently, changes in governmental goals might be expected to be reflected in expenditure allocations.

There are, however, several problems which may impair the usefulness of government expenditure as a descriptive tool. First, every government, even the wealthiest, must operate within the constraints placed on it by the size of the revenue and, more fundamentally, the structure of the national economy. Strongly desired programs may, therefore, languish because of a shortage of funds. As is the case elsewhere in the social world, objective acts are often imperfect measures of subjective motivations. Second, the distribution of funds among various sectors is not always amenable to rapid restructuring, so that a change in goals may be sluggishly reflected in government expenditure.

Traditions about the foundations of the military kingdom of Dahomey, over which King Gezo reigned from 1818-1858, are well known. Suffice it to say here that this warlike kingdom was founded in the first half of the seventeenth century, probably around 1620, by one Dogbagri Genu (otherwise known as Dako), a fugitive prince from Allada, who had been ousted from the throne of his father by his brother, Te-Agbanlin (Akinjogbin, 1967: 22; Page, 1961: 93). Under its fourth monarch, Agaja Trudo, the nascent kingdom of Dahomey reached the height of its power in the eighteenth century. The glorious reign of Agaja Trudo (1708-1740) saw the expansion of Dahomey in all directions, particularly to the south. An inland West African kingdom, Dahomey, like the nineteenth century Egba state in southwestern Nigeria, needed a direct route to the coast, partly in order to participate in the West African trade with European traders and partly to have free access to gunpowder and arms, a sine qua non for any state that wished to acquire and sustain its greatness. Hence, in 1724, Agaja Trudo attacked Allada and included it in his rapidly growing empire. Three years later, Whydah was forced to become part of the kingdom of Dahomey. The basis of a future powerful state seems to have been laid by Agaja Trudo when Tegbesu, who came to the throne in 1740, pushed the state's frontier still farther, the intermittent incursions of Oyo notwithstanding.

Adventure stories are favorites among children in many parts of the world. Africa has been the locale of hundreds of children's adventure stories written by African and non-African authors for over a century. These adventure stories, along with other fiction, are just as powerful teachers about Africa as are professional educators.

This essay will compare the adventure stories of three wellknown and popular authors (as judged by literary critics and child readers) who based their stories on extensive firsthand experience in Africa. The writers belong to three different generations, and their adventure stories are typical of those of many other writers of their time. Representing the Victorian Age is George Alfred Henty, whose name is “probably identified above all others with the Victorian adventure story” (Townsend, 1975: 63) and whose books were so popular with children that in 1894 some British teachers limited the number that students could read (Welsch, n.d.). The early twentieth century is represented by Rene Guillot, the initiator of the exotic novel for children (Jan and Patte, 1973: 360) and winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Prize of the International Board on Books for Young People—a prize which has been awarded only three times since 1958. Although Guillot wrote all of his children's books in French, almost all of them have been translated into English. Barbara Kimenye (a journalist from Uganda, short story writer, and one of East Africa's most prolific children's writers) represents the mid-twentieth century. She writes about ordinary people “who live outside the pale of ordinary society” and makes their lives interesting (Nazareth, 1974: 167).

Most contemporary historians of the colonial period in Kenya emphasize the importance of the state. The colonial state, it is argued, ensures the conditions of settler capitalism, provides the infrastructure of transport, credit, marketing and agricultural research, creates by administrative action a supply of African labor, and generally ensures the interests of settler capital against those of an emerging African class of landed capital (Brett, 1973; Leys, 1975; Swainson, 1980). Equally, the theme of tension between the colonial and metropolitan states is a classic one in colonial history, and one which in much of the Kenya debate is seen as refracting tensions and conflicts between the interests of settler capital and the interests of international capital (Swainson, 1980; Cowen, 1982). Yet, despite this emphasis on the colonial state, very little discussion of its distinctive political features has occurred. The economic functions of the colonial state are stressed to the exclusion of questions about the basis of its legitimacy, of its citizenship principles and of its authority. Gavin Kitching (1985) recently pointed out that we have no really adequate theory of the post-colonial state. We are constrained instead to making negative statements to the effect that it is not simply the agency of one particular class force in Kenya, nor is it a unified force but die site of contending and fractured forces. The argument could well be extended to the colonial state.

In this paper an attempt will be made to provide answers to the following questions: (1) What was the pattern of political values held by members of the Zambian elite soon after independence? (2) How did these values develop out of the experiences of elite members during the struggle for independence? (3) How have the events of subsequent post-independence years influenced these elite values, and specifically, what is the relationship between earlier elite values and the ideology of “Zambian Humanism” which has only recently been articulated in a systematic way? (4) What have been the consequences for the Zambian political system of the interaction among elite values, ideology, and problems of exercising power? The answers given to these questions will be more meaningful and more easily understood if we first present briefly a theoretical framework which includes definitions of the principal concepts employed in the paper and a discussion of the interrelations among them.

Rural development in parts of Nigeria is a function of two comparable, if not, coordinate variables: the government and the townsmen residing in the urban areas. The government provides the access roads, runs schools and health clinics or hospitals built by the townsmen. These urban migrants, as we shall henceforth refer to them for reasons to be explained later, in addition to providing other infrastructural facilities, are the political and economic backbone of the rural communities as well as their source of modernization.

Smock (1971) dwelt upon the political and modernity role of ethnic unions in Nigerian cities. She showed how these unions “facilitated the accommodation between tradition and modernity in the Eastern political system…,” linked “traditional commitments with the modern political and administrative structures,” and prevented discontinuities, a characteristic feature of transitional political systems. For Smock, urban migrants, successfully manipulated tradition to politically modernize their rural villages. Little (1970) reasoned slightly differently. He saw the major functions of urban associations as the adaptation of traditional institutions and the integration of institutions whose raison d'etre is alien to traditional culture. These associations nurtured political leaders and the formation of political parties resulting in modernist ambition and nationalist aspirations for self-government. Meillassoux (1968) perceived urban migrants associations, or voluntary associations as he referred to them, as the mechanism by which the migrants approached the problems of social security and created new social networks. Meillassoux also saw a clear nexus between the norms of these associations and their rural origins in terms of their derivation, their roots, and their purposes.

It is mainly from this rural-urban link that we shall approach our present discussion. This paper shall also show that the psychological and sociophysical condition in the urban area, the acceptance that the city is a place for austere living and endurance of rough conditions all combine to prepare psychically urban migrants for their role in the economic maintenance and improvement of their home rural communities.

Currently, feminist activists are engaged in problematizing and reframing “rights” claims in southern Africa. This article discusses three cases of such activism, all of which show the limitations but also the potential of using rights claims to transform gender cultures and gain economic and gender justice. These cases involve the successful challenge to the gender discriminatory 1982 Botswana Citizenship Act; the policy shift of Women and Law in Southern Africa from a focus on legal rights advocacy to a synthesis of rights and kinship-based claims; and initiatives by South African gender activists to confront the contradiction between the country’s constitutional guarantees of women’s rights and high levels of gender violence.

This Special Issue is the condensation of an author-meets-critics double panel organized for the African Studies Association meeting in Washington, D.C., in November 2005, on Jane Guyer's challenging book Marginal Gains—Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa. The book was published in the first half of 2004, and when the three of us met in the fall of that year, we all felt it was a text that lent itself especially well to such a session. One of the elements that makes the book so compelling is Guyer's particular style of theorizing: Starting from a painstaking effort to discover regular patterns in empirical data, she moves to the positing and testing of theoretical notions—but in a way that does not strive to produce closure or systematicity. On the contrary, the book can sometimes be confusing because it leaves so much open. But precisely because Guyer continues to create new openings, it is an inspiring piece of work, constantly offering novel starting points for further research and reflection.

Often, for many analysts theorizing the brain drain, producing macrolevel statistics is considered enough to demonstrate the significance of the concept. Furthermore, nationalist and internationalist theories and perspectives have shaped the discussion of the brain drain, each seeking to determine whether the brain drain generates an economic loss for the country of origin or a gain for the welcoming country.

The question, “Which language for literacy?” is often asked in contexts where a number of languages are used in a given community or state (Bhola, 1983; Carron and Bordia, 1985; Fordham, 1985). Although pragmatic reasons for the choice of language—availability of materials and of teachers, and economic considerations—are sometimes adduced, it is generally agreed that the question is above all a political one.

The problem of language choice is acute in many developing countries, particularly in Africa, where a nation-state may be comprised of a large number of linguistically heterogeneous groups (Nigeria, for example, has 413. See Grimes 1988: 295). While the merits and demerits of developing and using such small languages are ardently debated (Fasold, 1984; Pattanayak, 1985; Skuttnabb-Kangas, 1981), it is rare to find studies of particular situations where attempts have been made to develop and use such languages for the purpose of rural development. This paper will present such a study.

Cameroon is a country of 10.5 million people where 238 languages are spoken (Dieu and Renaud, 1983). The bulk of the population (80 percent) live in rural areas where they are engaged in subsistence and cash crop farming (Biya, 1986). National development policy has emphasized the rural areas under the official banner of the “revitalization of village communities”; this policy has been adopted partly to seek to stem the rural exodus to the towns, and partly because of a recognition that Cameroon's main resource in the long term is agriculture.

The upsurge of ethnic consciousness in urban America which crested during the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired a sustained academic interest in ethnicity as a social phenomenon. This may partly explain the fact that American scholars over the past two decades have been largely concerned with urban ethnicity and have shown little inclination to carry their investigation into rural areas. Among Africanists, Wallerstein (1965: 477) has gone so far as to suggest that ethnicity is an exclusively urban phenomenon. The present paper argues that, although this generalization is unwarranted, one does tend to find more striking manifestations of ethnicity in urban areas than in the countryside. However, the author's study of Igbo migrants in Cameroon reveals that rural centers often favor the articulation of an ethnic identity which is, in some aspects, more functional and consolidated than in the town.

The Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth and his colleagues broke new ground with their provocative analyses of ecological factors which condition the maintenance of ethnic boundaries. They noted that individuals often downplay or transform their ethnic identity in response to the local environmental situation or particular ecological niche that the group comes to occupy. Extreme examples of ethnic transformation are Barth's (1969) southern Pathans who are incorporated into Baluchi tribes as serfs and Haarland's (1969: 61) Fur cultivators who acquire many cattle and ultimately become Baggara Arabs. Less extreme examples of identity manipulation include Eidheim's (1969: 39) Lapp fishing villages and the Mon peasants studied by the American anthropologist Brian Foster (1974).

How should one relate culture to the modernization process in Africa? This paper will attempt to indicate how one might go about answering this important question, probably raising more questions in the process than providing substantive answers. A point of departure, in doing so, is to offer a critical exposition of the uses to which certain African political thinkers, principally Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, have put the culture concept.

The paper assumes that contemporary African political thought, especially since the 1950s, has been preoccupied chiefly with explaining the modernization process in cultural terms. A thesis, deriving from this basic assumption, is that the culture concept provides a useful focus for interpreting and assigning meaning to contemporary African political thought. This paper will illustrate this thesis with respect to aspects of the political thought of Fanon, Cabral, and some others.

Students of contemporary African political thought have tended to ignore and, therefore, have not explored the implications of the strong connection between the concepts of culture and modernization in contemporary African political thought. Hopefully this paper will correct this situation. In doing so, the paper will point to the explanatory dimension and force of contemporary African political thought. This is because the interpretation offered here looks upon African political thinkers as using the culture concept to explicate the consequences of colonial rule and the colonial inheritance for the modernization process.