Rural development projects involve the application of bureaucratic systems of consciousness to traditional areas where there have never been such normative systems applied before. This means that the values, norms, and ideals of bureaucratic institutions are implicit to how traditionally oriented rural villages are approached by outside development agencies and also how relationships develop between them.

An examination of politics and political thought in Tanzania since independence reveals three recurring themes. These are egalitarianism, mass participation in politics at all levels, and anti-elitism. A brief examination of these ideas will serve to point out some possible sources of political conflict if this ideology does become a guide for decision-making in Tanzania.

Equality implies the adoption of a universalistic legal order, the application of achievement criteria in recruitment in all sectors of society, and fair treatment for all citizens. However, like many other new states, Tanzania is culturally plural, is unevenly developed, and has skilled manpower shortages. In the drive to fill positions with nationals, it is doubtful that equality of opportunity can be achieved with any consistency in the immediate post-independence period.

The Arusha Declaration encourages mass participation in political life at all levels. Furthermore, compared to other African political parties, TANU has been relatively successful in involving citizens in the political process. The rationale for advocating mass involvement is to narrow the mass-elite gap and to create a sense of responsibility on the part of citizens. However, mass participation could also lead to the weakening of leadership by skilled individuals and the overloading of the political system via inflated demands.

The Arusha Declaration also deemphasizes the significance of wealth, education, skill, or other such values in the recruitment of leaders. The objective is to discourage elitism and all forms of elitist behavior on the part of the leadership.

Since the passage in 1969 of congressional legislation intended to regulate the activities of tax free philanthropic foundations, a spate of works dealing with the role of foundations in American life has been published (Cuninggim, 1972; Heimann, 1973; Nielsen, 1972; Peterson, 1972). Most of these works have dealt in a general way with the responsibilities of philanthropic organizations in a period of rapid change. Several were commissioned by the larger foundations themselves, perhaps to indicate to a potentially hostile legislative branch the foundations' willingness to evaluate their performances to date and to establish socially “responsible” goals for themselves. None of these studies has analyzed specific policy issues in which the foundations have been involved or themselves have helped to create. The central role played by foundations in the growth of American institutional life has been seriously neglected by scholars, more specifically by political scientists, whom, one would think, would have an especial interest in studying these institutional pillars of American society. If the role of American foundations in the evolution of institutions at home has been neglected, the significant role of American foundations as institution builders in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and as implementors of American foreign policy is hardly even known. It is with the role of American foundations overseas, particularly in Africa, that I am concerned at this juncture.

Ten years after the exile of Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana, Ghanaians find themselves celebrating a renaissance of Nkrumahism. This is happening after flirtations with two military regimes, an intervening civilian regime, and a current interest in constructing a future Union Government allowing for more political participation by including more civilian groups into the decisional process. There are few programmatic indications that Nkrumah's notions of “scientific socialism” have been incorporated by recent regimes. Yet Nkrumah himself is revered as a hero in Ghanaian culture.

For ten years following Ghana's independence in 1957, Ghanaians were subject to Nkrumah's prolific verbal output concerning “scientific socialism,” consciencism, and Pan-Africanism. The meanings attached to these concepts by Nkrumah, and by his followers, however, remain somewhat ambiguous. This ambiguity is understandable given the fact that Nkrumah's often contradictory writings on the subject of socialism were devoid of the rigor which scholars often associate with the ideology. As derived from Engels, socialism is scientific in the sense that there are laws of history which move the proletariat to challenge the bourgeois order and instigate a successful revolution. Moreover, the forces of production and distribution should ultimately rest with the state which orders the economy in such a way that the profits of industrial enterprise are reinvested in state enterprises, and do not accrue to individuals.

It is now more than twenty years since the Rome Treaty (1958) creating the European Economic Community (EEC) was signed. Eighteen African States were also associated with EEC at the signing of the Treaty. However, during that period numerous views have been expressed either for or against the special preferential treatment that was arranged for these eighteen African nations. Some of the arguments have been made without a proper understanding of the background leading to the association of these African States with the EEC. As a result, these viewpoints have been misleading to those people who are interested in African development problems and to observers in general.

In view of this unsatisfactory situation and the author's concern, this paper will be devoted to examining the economic background to the association, with respect to French economic and financial policies in Africa. It is hoped that this exercise will help create a better understanding of the position in which French African states found themselves at the time the Rome Treaty was signed and, therefore, the rationale for their association with the EEC.

Indeed, the African countries were justifiably concerned with their world trade position, because for all of them international trade had been very important as a source of foreign exchange and capital, which are essential for their economic development and also for raising the living standards of the masses of the people.

Radical social scientists and third-world scholars have accused traditional social scientists, especially social anthropologists, of failing to study the colonial milieu in which a majority of its field studies have been conducted (cf. Asad, 1975; Lewis, 1973 for examples). There are notable exceptions to that neglect, examples which partisan radicals fail to cite. Among those exceptions are Morris's (1968) study of Asians in East Africa, Ajayi's (1965) study of missionaries in Nigeria, Beidelman's (1974) call to study up in which he uses a Weberian framework in order to understand expatriates in Africa, and Heussler's (1968) study of the British in Northern Nigeria (cf. also Oberg, 1972; Pitt, 1976; Jones, 1974; Reining, 1966; Salamone, 1974, 1977, and 1978; Savishinsky, 1972; Schapera, 1958; Stavenhagen, 1977; and Tonkinson, 1974 for a few such works).

Still, it remains true that social scientists have tended, by and large, to neglect the study of colonial society. This relative neglect entails both serious theoretical and methodological consequences for the social sciences, for it both narrows the range of societies in its comparative repertoire and masks a source of systematic bias. After all, expatriate societies are but one transform of plural societies, one possible manifestation of deeper underlying structural principles. Unfortunately, as Beidelman (1974: 235-36) correctly indicates, those segments of society closest to the anthropologist did not capture his wonder. Neither were they perceived as fit subjects for analysis.

This essay examines the tensions that emerged when South Africa's newly democratic government attempted to deliver reforms rapidly in the interest of distributive equity, sidelining the slower and more inclusive process of consultation with stakeholders outside of government. Its focus is on policy debates in the welfare sector over the new Child Support Grant proposed in 1997. An analysis of these policy debates reveals that consultation with stakeholders outside of government strengthened the democratic process and provided a necessary venue for citizens to engage government and have a say in the development process. However, this essay also suggests that with the introduction of the government's Macro-Economic Strategy for Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR), the policy terrain has become less consultative as the ANC government has increasingly centralized decision-making powers within the executive and cabinet. While in the short term this may be seen as a necessary measure in order to begin to address many of the pressing needs of the electorate, in the long run it has the effect of installing undemocratic practices and shifting the locus of power to those institutions of government that are least representative and accountable.

The 1985 Nairobi Conference to close the United Nations decade dedicated to women of the world caught Kenyan women (and men) by storm. Indeed, the majority of Kenyan women did not know, until the eve of this conference, that there had been an entire decade dedicated to them, and committed to the achievement of Equality, Development, and Peace. However, the Kenyan policy makers and the enlightened among Kenyan women, especially leaders of women's organizations, were not only fully aware of the decade's developments, but had in various ways participated and contributed to it. On its part, the Kenya government by the end of the decade, had adopted a Women in Development (WID) policy position and created and/or promoted national machineries to develop and coordinate programs for women.

When I went to live and learn among the Alur for the very first time in 1947, the great linguist Archie Tucker described them to me mysteriously as “very wild and woolly.” What anthropologist could resist? Indeed, although part of the colonial state, no one in Southern Uganda really knew who they were. The refined BaGanda referred to them in lilting labials as Balulu, uncouth northerners, who came to do the unskilled work, and grow cotton on the Ganda landowners' estates. The Alur reciprocated by not really considering themselves in Uganda, despite the legal facts. When they crossed the Nile to go “down country” they spoke of going across to Uganda.

In the then Belgian Congo, where many Alur also lived, they were very differently regarded. The Belgian District Commissioner of Mahagi wrote of them as “civilizers of the hordes” (Quix, 1940). In the vast ethnic wilderness of eastern Zaire, the white administrators saw the Alur as a ray of hope, an intelligent and progressive people with the capacity to rule over others and bring them to order—the fundamental requirement of development then (as now) when “Toe the line!” was the requirement of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Agency for Development (AID), Overseas Development Agency (ODA), and so on, however deceptively camouflaged.

For some centuries the Nilotic Lwo immigrants had been establishing themselves and incorporating more and more people from the surrounding ethnic groups into their evolving system, thus creating a new entity: Alur society. When I tried to find out how and why it was that the Alur were able to exercise this domination and why the other peoples submitted to it—since it did not seem to be a simple matter of military conquest—the symbolic answer always was “we brought them rain.”

In the early 1960s when the South African Government outlawed the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), the South African trade union movement was an almost unnoticed casualty. The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), affiliated with the ANC in the Congress Alliance since 1955, had become the leading trade union movement based on non-racial principles in direct competition with the racialist Trade Union Congress of South Africa (TUCSA). Although not completely outlawed, SACTU's leadership was driven into exile or underground and a decade after its founding SACTU was moribund and union organizing within the country was at a virtual standstill (Luckhardt and Wall, 1980; Feit, 1975).

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, what little international support was generated for the South African working class was funneled through the exiled SACTU organization and its ANC ally. This was a small but important part of the general campaign against Apartheid South Africa, which like the campaign against apartheid sport, sought the total isolation of the regime and all apartheid institutions. As with the sports movement, statements of support by international bodies and the exclusion of internal Soulh African bodies from international forums was the key to the SACTU/ANC policy on South African labor (Luckhardt and Wall, 1980: 470-91).

In the early 1970s, a spontaneous revival of trade union activity within South Africa challenged the racialist principles of TUCSA and the authority of the South African state. The independent black trade union movement which dates from the Durban strikes of 1973 represented a new phenomenon among South African workers (Macshane et al., 1984).

Six years after independence, Zimbabwe is viewed by its admirers as having adopted a pragmatic approach to a broad range of socialist oriented policies. A massive expansion and re-direction of services in the areas of education, health, and agricultural extension services, in addition to the creation of one of the world’s largest resettlement programs, are often cited as evidence of how the government of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe is working for socialist transformation in Zimbabwe. In addition, under Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) government, the Zimbabwean economy has been able to maintain a real expansion in production averaging near 4.6% per annum-perhaps the highest rate in Africa--while the government has reversed a tremendous balance of payments deficit.

It is currently assumed by many scholars that the British ruled northern Nigeria through the indirect rule system. The essence of this system, according to our authorities, was to maintain the cultural and religious status quo (Perham, 1960; Temple, [1918] 1968; Crowder and Ikime, 1970). This assumption has fostered the belief that the British administration in northern Nigeria had very little impact on the traditional political system and society. Hence, many writers who have written on the British administration in northern Nigeria have tended to ignore the traditional political system and society. Thus, while we have scholarly works on the relationship between the British officials and the chiefs of northern Nigeria (Heussler, 1968), little work has been done on the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects.

Yet we cannot adequately assess the impact of the British administration on the status of the Hausa-Fulani feudal aristocrats by simply examining the aristocrats' relationship with the British officials. We also need to examine the extent to which the British administration affected the relationship between the chiefs and their subjects. British rule in northern Nigeria, like any other alien rule in Africa, whether it was French or Portuguese, was a culturalizing agent which affected every fiber of the society. The British as colonizers had to create a sequacious society, which would be conducive to the chief aim of their rule, i.e., economic exploitation, from the restive communities of the precolonial days (Last, 1970: 345-57).

The African National Congress (ANC) emerged from South Africa’s 1999 election in a greatly strengthened position. Now, not only is the constitutionally obligatory five-year period of a government of national unity over—which means that the ANC as the majority party is entitled to rule the country on its own—but the ANC increased its already strong majority in Parliament to just short of two-thirds.

In this article, we first discuss the context of the political debate in which the election took place, as well as the outcome of the election. We then examine the prospects for the consolidation of democracy in South Africa in light of the election results and in relation to the issues surrounding electoral procedure, a dominant party system, and opposition politics within the context of a still very much racially divided society.

I shall deal with a limited number of aspects of the traditional healer in Tanzania. A more expanded treatment will be presented in a larger study on health policy and development in Tanzania since 1930. Traditional medicine has been discussed by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers in ever increasing numbers in this country, probably because research in their fields brought them into close contact with the rural population. Historians and political scientists have been slow in examining the role of the native doctor in the colonial period and since 1961. This does not mean that material on the existence and activities of the African practitioner of medicine was not available. It was the medical doctor who became aware of the existence of African medicine when he found that his treatment was not accepted or was supplemented by visits to the African medicine man.

For several years now, Africa has been forced to reexamine its image as a continent that is dominated by single-party regimes, which have characterized it for the past three decades. For the most past, the demands have centered around multiparty systems. These have either been peaceful, when the leaders have accepted to undertake the political changes involved, or violent.

The setting was comfortable, and the social atmosphere relaxed. By all measures, he was a distinguished colleague. He had received a good degree from a Western university; he was respected in his own country (Nigeria); he belonged to those citizens who are often referred to as “our leaders of thought”; he had published widely; and he had been asked to speak at many professional meetings in both the Western and non-Western world. By local standards he was well paid, and his home and his family revealed all the features of his “elite” status. As a visiting researcher I had gone to see him to exchange views, to learn about the state of affairs in the country. He was polite, he was helpful; we joked about this and that, exchanged memories of events which had taken place at this or that conference. Academic chit-chat blended with that kind of casual conversation which makes life pleasant.

Since 1989, the “winds of change” have swept throughout Africa, signaling the dawn of a new era, variously referred to as the “second independence,” or the “Springtime of Africa.” After three decades of authoritarian one- (or no) party rule characterized by political repression, human rights abuses, economic mismanagement, nepotism and corruption, democracy is spreading like bushfire throughout Africa. In 1992 an evaluation of the Carter Center’s African Governance Program, noted that 9 African countries may be described as “democratic,” 4 are under a “directed democracy” regime, and 31 are in transition to democracy, with various degrees of commitment. Popular struggles for democracy in Africa are not new, they have been here since independence. But recent changes in the structure of the international system (notably successful popular struggles for democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union) have created a generally favorable and supportive environment for their development and maturation.