For decades, American scholars have been studying one aspect or another of the African experience. From 1927 on, Professor Melville J. Herskovits used his field research and scholarly insights to fashion courses on Africa offered as part of the regular curriculum at Northwestern University. Northwestern and Indiana graduate students, and possibly others, were already completing distinguished Ph.D. dissertations in the late 1930s that were based on field research in Africa or other types of original data. What we generally mean by African studies developed at a later stage, when the scholarly interaction of specialists on Africa drawn from a number of disciplines is formalized through a structure established by their institution.

One major consequence of black African independence has been the redirection of the continent's historians. Since the 1960s, researchers have sought not only to rediscover but revise Africa's pre-colonial image. On one hand, efforts have been made to recover those aspects of history and tradition that had been suppressed or destroyed by colonial power. On the other, attempts continue to restore other areas which were merely distorted by European rule. Too often it was the European distortion rather than the African tradition that was passed on to the younger generations by colonial educators. As a result, youngsters throughout the continent were deprived of those portions of their heritage of which Europeans disapproved.

This is nowhere more true than in the sphere of the African supernatural. The entire network of relationships between the gods, ancestral spirits and the living, which formed so great a portion of the latters' daily lives, was initially greeted by colonial hostility and contempt. Trapped within their own religious framework, Europe's missionaries and administrators—with a few striking exceptions—were unwilling to examine what they saw. They placed every form of supernatural practitioner and practice under the labels of “witchcraft” and “witchdoctor,” while attempting to replace them with values of their own.

A few European and African scholars have opposed the general trend. Their works have probed deeply into supernatural tradition at a regional or tribal level. In West Africa, Bohannen, Debrunner, Basen and Field, in studies of Nigerian and Ghanaian societies, have investigated the relations between West African gods and their human servants.

When I was first asked to write this paper, I was instructed that the whole field of social history was open to my purview and that my efforts should be directed to future accomplishments and not past glories. My first impulse was to wander over to the library and try to determine in fact what social history was in order to bring some boundaries to my paper. After looking through several of the standard reference works on the social sciences and their definitions of social history, I began to feel that I was not the only person unsure of the boundaries between social/political/economic/intellectual/religious history. Furthermore the request to look only into the future and not the past left me feeling out of sorts given my historian's training. Thus, I decided instead to try to examine several of the many areas of the social history of Africa which are largely unworked or need examination in more depth.

The medical history of Africa is an area in which many fruitful and significant opportunities exist for further research. Work in this field has been done in several different countries and the results are beginning to appear in a growing number of books and articles. Yet there are still a great many important topics and geographic areas which remain to be explored. These range from local issues such as the sleeping sickness epidemic which ravaged the Zaire River basin near the turn of the century, to the regional differences of experiences with epidemic disease in early colonial Africa, especially those differences between East and West Africa (Feierman, 1985).

Education in post-colonial African nations has served as the apparatus for sustaining and accelerating overall development, for increasing political and social awareness, and for providing a cadre of highly trained indigenous manpower to implement, manage, and administer ambitious national development strategies. To understand the process and impact of an educational system, however, one must be cognizant of exogenous forces. From a structuralist frame of reference, Apple (1975) asserts that researchers must examine the power and control external to the educational system, thus making political and economic decisions an integral part of an educational investigation. Scribner (1970) argues that researchers cannot avoid the effects of political demands on the changes in the educational system.

The relationship among educational systems and variables in the social, economic, and political systems in which education exists have been well studied in the comparative education literature (Apple, 1975; Arrighi and Saul, 1973; Dasgupta, 1974; Jolly, 1969; Mazrui, 1978; Morrison, 1976; Simmons, 1974; Simmons and Alexander, 1975). However, the outcomes of the relationship between politics and higher education in post-colonial Africa have not been documented extensively. This paper helps to remedy this deficiency by examining the functional relationship between the national level of leadership in Tanzania and the nation's only university, the University of Dar es Salaam. Julius K. Nyerere, the President of Tanzania since its inception, and the ruling party have attempted to accomplish decolonization, restructure the educational system, and promote rural development

Africa is experiencing an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions in higher education. Having been hailed in the 1960s as agent of modernization, social mobilization, and economic growth, most African universities are now tumbling down under the pressures of diminishing financial resources. From all indications, Africa is lagging behind other developing regions in terms of public expenditures particularly on education, availability of educational facilities, equal access to education, adequate pools of qualified teachers, and sufficient numbers of professionals and skilled workers. Pertinent data show that most African governments in the 1960s and 1970s made comparable progressive accomplishments in higher education. However, these accomplishments steadily disappeared in the 1980s. What went wrong in the 1980s? Why is higher education now such a convenient target for African leaders/governments, when pressured to trim their overextended public sector? To what extent is the lack of multiparty democracies affecting the deteriorating state of higher education in Africa? Is the declining importance attached to education in sub-Saharan Africa a reflection of the lack of education among Africa’s tyrannical rulers, hence the low appreciation of education? What role did the foreign financial institutions play in the African educational system? How can we turn the educational crisis around? These questions not only address African educational issues but also help us to explain the scope of this crisis. In a comparative analysis, this study describes the main African higher educational problems, identifies the root causes of the problems, and finally examines the implications for the twenty-first century.

There can be little doubt that the African refugee problem is a severe one that should command a good deal more attention than it has received over the past few years in the public’s eye. But if the African refugee crisis has received less than its deserved attention, the role of private voluntary organizations (PVOs) in responding to that crisis has received less. It is the purpose of this brief inquiry to assess the role of PVCs in the African refugee situation. Before doing so it is essential that the dimensions of Africa’s refugee problem be briefly outlined.

When I was asked to share some of my reflections on the evolution of African Diaspora studies in the United States, I recalled that a colleague and I mused about the appearance of recent advertisements in scholarly journals for African Diaspora specialists. We also observed that several colleges and universities have courses with African Diaspora in the title. Indeed, Diaspora as a description of the dispersion and settlement of Africans abroad is fairly common in academic parlance today and increasingly so in popular discussions; however, such has not always been the case.

As we all know, the historic African diaspora in the United States is the result of the European slave trade, which resulted in millions of people being taken from Africa. Dei and Asgharzadeh correctly point out in this issue that this population and its descendents constitute a portion of the original African brain drain. Often, consideration of the causes of, problems of, and solutions to the African brain drain ignore this population and place most of the emphasis and research on the contemporary African diaspora. This may have to do with conclusions in some of the research contending that this historic diaspora lost all linkages to Africa. However, there is a vast body of literature that supports the claim that the institution of slavery did not totally sever social, cultural, economic, and political linkages.

Africa and Africans do not get along well with the United States press, radio and television—and vice versa. Most Africans (whether students, individuals, or government officials) who have had some exposure believe it offers of Africa. Most directors of the U.S. media are leery of Africa and would prefer major news events to occur elsewhere. Fraternization and sympathy are mostly limited to African journalists who have lived or traveled in the United States (a considerable number on various exchange grants) and American journalists who have done an African stint. Alcoholically cursing their respective bosses, these two groups usually get on quite well.

Health care services in South Africa are in decline. Inadequate resources, the fragmentation of services along racial lines, their division between a confused jumble of authorities together with a growing privatization of medical care are among the many factors having grave effects on an already poorly constructed health service. The persistence of high levels of infant mortality and the widespread nature of preventable disease provide clear measures indicating that existing health services have failed to meet the needs of the majority of the population for basic medical care. The changes that are currently underway in health services are making it less likely that they can adequately contribute to providing health for all.

Southern Africa earns little press coverage in the United States. Issues which relate to this part of the world are, newsmen feel, of minimal interest to the American news consumer. But the lack of coverage reflects another phenomenon: the nature of the activities of Southern African agents and allies in the U.S. These pressure groups, unlike those of the splashier (domestic) labor, medical and legal lobbies, do not concern themselves with grassroots activity or extensive media attention. Like the Nixon Administration at least until the Watergate debacle the Southern Africa-oriented pressure groups foster and consciously maintain a low profile.

Zambia, like all African countries, is experiencing significant political, economic, and social change. The Zambian government and ruling party seek to control change and channel it in certain directions, but many aspects of change are not initiated by them and a substantial proportion of these are not to their liking. Politically initiated changes and government reactions to other changes have inevitably affected the legitimacy of the Zambian political system and its major components in the eyes of a wide variety of Zambians. In his contribution to the Social Science Research Council's volume on the crises of political development, Sidney Verba indicates that all such “crises of development” or problems associated with change “would seem always to involve problems of legitimacy as well as one of the other problem areas” (Verba, 1971: 306). Thus it is important to study the effects of change on legitimacy since they will be crucial in determining whether the Zambian government and ruling party will be successful in directing change into the paths they desire.

Political legitimacy can be defined as a generalized appraisal of the political system as a whole, its various components, and the policy outputs they produce, which indicates that these objects are appropriate in terms of accepted values and norms. To define legitimacy as a generalized appraisal of appropriateness is to differentiate it from specific appraisals of political structures and policies made in terms of perceived interests. These two types of appraisals are empirically interdependent in the long run, but they can be independent of one another in the short run (Easton, 1965: 267-77). They tend, however, to be very closely related in most new political systems, where most diffuse bases of legitimacy have not had time to develop (Binder et. al., 1971: 90-91, 158, 194, 315-16). A complete description of legitimacy in a political system must indicate who grants what degree of legitimacy to what political objects on the basis of which values and norms.

Idi Amin's brutal regime in Uganda presented a series of unique and complicated dilemmas for American policymakers. Despite its stated commitment to the cause of human rights, the administration of President Jimmy Carter opposed the imposition of economic sanctions against Uganda. Congress, however, determined that the levels of atrocity and repression which marked Amin's dictatorship warranted a new foreign policy approach. In addition, by providing another example of changing executive-legislative relations in foreign policy, the October 10, 1978, embargo of United States' trade with Uganda established new precedents in America's commitment to human rights.

Amin came to power in Uganda as a result of a 1971 coup against President Milton Obote. During his eight-year regime, over 100,000 people were murdered and thousands of others were expelled (U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on Africa [hereafter U.S. Congress, House], 1978: 5; International Commission of Jurists, 1977). A number of Amin's victims received worldwide press attention. Two Americans, Nicholas Stroh, a thirty-three year old journalist, and Robert Siedele, a forty-six year old lecturer, were brutally killed in 1971. The expulsion of the Asians from Uganda in 1972 attracted international attention. An El Al jetliner hijacked in July 4, 1976, again thrust Uganda into the headlines. In the aftermath of the daring Israeli raid to rescue the hostages at Entebbe airport in Kampala, the Ugandan authorities murdered Mrs. Dora Bloch, a seventy year old passenger who had been removed to a hospital. The 1977 murder of Ugandan Anglican Archbishop Janai Luwuum, together with two government officials, was condemned throughout the world. This event prompted Senator Clifford Case (R-NJ) to introduce Senate Resolution 175, expressing the sense of the Senate that the regime in Uganda should be condemned.

The sixties will be remembered as the decade of independence for most of Africa, independence won for the most part at the negotiating table. All too frequently the parties negotiating on behalf of African countries were a carefully cultivated elite who simply replaced the colonial administrators and set the stage for the growth of neocolonialism, coups, and counter coups. Unlike Britain and France, Portugal, until its 1974 revolution, refused to relinquish its colonies in Africa–Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola.

Guinea-Bissau, a small country on the west coast of Africa, had been a colony of Portugal for 500 years. For most of this period the relationship was one of trading. Portugal was not interested in political control so long as it had access to slaves and other goods. But with the “scramble for Africa” at the end of the nineteenth century, Portugal changed its attitude. Africa was being greedily divided up by the imperial powers and Portugal realized that unless it entrenched its presence and took political control, it might lose out altogether. With the coming to power of Salazar and a fascist dictatorship in Portugal in 1926, the control became both brutal and complete.

In 1956 the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was founded by Amilcar Cabral and a few country people. At first PAIGC's goal was to organize workers in the towns, hoping that through demonstrations and strikes they would convince the Portuguese to negotiate for independence. It soon became clear that this was not going to happen. Each demonstration was met with violence, until the 1959 massacre of fifty dockworkers holding a peaceful demonstration at Pidgiguiti. This was a turning point for PAIGC: they realized that independence could not be won without an armed struggle, one that had to be based on the mass participation of the people. They turned their focus to the countryside and to mobilizing the peasants, who represented 95 percent of the population.

That there is a strong historical intellectual tradition of African Americans studying Africa is news to some. That there remains a demand among African Americans in the United States to study Africa is also a surprise. That these ideas are challenging to some is ludicrous to others. For many African Americans in African studies, affirming our engagement with Africa over and over is not only a nuisance but also a waste of precious time and intellectual energy. After countless efforts, many African Americans have simply disengaged, refusing to have these futile conversations. Others bear witness in perpetuity to the defense of Black nationality and global Pan-Africanism for themselves, the race, and the enlightenment of disbelievers. Both groups act with calculated rationality, yet denials of African Americans’ interest in, engagement with, and effect on African studies abound. The denial within the community of scholars comes mostly from White Americans but also from continental Africans and other African Americans.

There seems to be a myth surrounding the nature of South African women's participation in the struggle against apartheid. It is one which erroneously assumes that women, who must undertake almost complete responsibility for the welfare and survival of their families, are so limited by being passive, nurturing and motherly that they cannot at the same time be powerful, independent and politically active.

Breaking the Silence, A Century of South African Women's Verse (Lockett 1991) forwards the cause of self-definition for the women and mothers of South Africa. The insight it provides into the political commitment and social orientation of women helps dispel the myth of Mother Africa, which, as editor Cecily Lockett describes it,

seldom allows for any role other than those of wife and mother for the black woman, who continues to be a prisoner of gender, defined only in terms of black men. Similarly, the emphasis on courage, determination, and survival as positive qualities inherent in black women tends to glamorize their real suffering and oppression as, in many cases, sole breadwinner of single-parent families (1988, 35).

Perhaps that underestimation of the power of South African women can be dispelled in light of their literary contributions, which are now surfacing with increasing momentum. The role of South African women in society, as seen in Cecily Lockett's anthology, Breaking the Silence, A Century of South African Women's Verse, is all encompassing and inherently proactive.

In 2007 South Africa's Parliament passed the Sexual Offences Act, which had been debated since 1999. The law includes a statutory provision with new legal definitions of rape and consent. Influenced by Western human rights ideology and vocabulary, the Sexual Offences Act represents one form of discourse in South Africa about sexual coercion and consent. By using ethnographic methods, this article examines the wide disparity between some of the state discourses about coercion and consent and local beliefs and practices about the meanings of these terms in the Zulu township of Mpophomeni. Proponents of South Africa's new democracy often ignore poor young women's and men's local understandings of rape and of the violence they encounter on a daily basis. Against this background, the article offers recommendations to improve the current law and its effectiveness.