The early independence period in Tanzania was not simply an ante-chamber to the post-Arusha Declaration period of Ujamaa. The state undertook to incorporate, for the first time, the people of Tanzania in the formal development planning structures in an attempt to marry national developmental objectives to local needs. Self-help, or ‘nation building’ as it was also known, was an attempt to bring consensus and dialogue to the planning process. The scale of self-help activity unleashed by its formal adoption as part of rural development policy caught the government by surprise, however, and raised fears over the level of control that local government in particular was able to exert over popular efforts in development. The gradual emergence of statism in Tanzania, in place by the end of the decade, was in large part the response of a panicking state, fearing an imminent crisis in its power to direct development policy, and maintain command over scarce resources.

The landslide victory by the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in the 2002 elections was due not to any ideological or policy differences with opposition parties, but to the perception among a plurality of voters that the party delivered on its promise to end the war and therefore deserved re-election. The elections were in effect a referendum on the incumbent president and his ruling SLPP, with voters overwhelmingly concluding that Ahmad Tejan Kabba, the SLPP leader, was preferable to the legion of certified scoundrels seeking to replace him. Signs of the All Peoples Congress (APC), the party that was in power from 1968–92, making a political comeback galvanised otherwise unenthusiastic voters into supporting Kabba and the SLPP. In contrast to the APC, against whom the rebel war was launched, or the Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP), which initiated and prosecuted the insurgency, or the People's Liberation Party (PLP), whose earlier incarnation prolonged the war by colluding with rebels, Kabba and the SLPP claimed to have ended a war that was caused, launched and sustained by assorted elements of the political opposition. The SLPP, however, can ill-afford to bask in electoral triumph or ignore the festering problems of rampant official corruption and mass poverty that led to armed conflict in the 1990s. Tackling the problem of corruption and mass deprivation may hold the key to democratic consolidation, but it is doubtful whether the SLPP, as presently constituted, is capable of leading the fight against these scourges. The SLPP may be reaching out to become a national party but it still remains an unreconstructed patronage outfit that is unresponsive to popular currents and mass aspirations.

The strange collusion between occult belief systems and different trans-national social networks, embedded in specific transformations of local and global modes of production, results in unique but reinforcing modifications of witchcraft belief, its underlying structures and its impact on the process of democratisation. The amazing range of possible results has been indicated by the analysis of two outstanding examples of witchcraft violence in South Africa in times of transition: in the former homelands of Venda and Lebowa, seemingly ‘traditional’ elements of witchcraft accusations, mediated by a misguided struggle for liberation, stimulated the sympathetic attention of stakeholders beyond the local setting. On the other hand, the occult base of violence in the Transkei became so blurred by involvement of ‘modern’ elements of globalised markets of violence that it was hardly visible any more, although under cover its repressive effects were still very much alive. These different roots of witchcraft violence had serious repercussions on conflict resolution and genuine reconciliation, the base for any sustainable democratisation and development.

While African civil society seemed a beacon of hope for democracy in the early 1990s, by the end of the decade many scholars had come to view it as extremely weak, lacking a domestic constituency and therefore any significant political or civic impact. Critics have been particularly concerned about urban-based ‘democracy and governance’ NGOs' limited influence on and connection with the rural majority of the citizenry. This article examines this question in Kenya, looking at four NGOs that have used civic education and paralegal programmes to establish a rural presence. Based on a survey of participants, it concludes that although the programmes are relatively new, they have begun to have a measurable impact on citizen understanding of politics, and have given the NGOs a noticeable rural presence. They have done so, however, by relying on ethnic, clan, partisan and other ‘non-civil’ networks to build supporters.

The Mbeki government's failure to take action against the blatantly undemocratic behaviour of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, despite its commitment to the peer review mechanism proposed under the New Partnership for African Development, is highlighted by South Africa's armed intervention into Lesotho to quell post-electoral disturbances in 1998. Although initially accompanied by immense controversy, the South African military and diplomatic involvement was to prove crucial to a restructuring of Lesotho's previously recalcitrant Defence Force, and to the promotion of inter-party negotiations that led to the adoption of a new and more appropriate electoral system. Alongside other international pressures, these initiatives led to a further election in 2002, whose undoubtedly legitimate outcome appears to have laid firm foundations for democratic consolidation and stability. Despite this ‘unlikely success’, and despite its formal commitment to an idealist foreign policy, the South African government has consciously downplayed its role in promoting democracy in Lesotho. The article argues that this is because of the exceptionality of that country, and South Africa's reluctance to have the use of force used as a precedent by its critics for cajoling it into adopting a more activist stance for dealing with the more complex situation in Zimbabwe.

This paper analyses the parties and party systems that have begun to emerge in sub-Saharan Africa's fledgling multiparty systems. Using a data base of 87 legislative elections convened in the 1990s, the paper identifies three trends. The position of parties late in the decade is primarily tributary of their performance in the first multiparty election conducted in the early 1990s. Parties that won founding elections are almost invariably still in power. Secondly, the typical emerging party system has consisted of a dominant party surrounded by a large number of small, unstable parties. Thirdly, party cleavages have been overwhelmingly ethno-linguistic in nature, while ideological and programmatic debates have been muted and rare. The second half of the paper provides tentative explanations for these striking patterns. It emphasises the illiberal nature of most of the new African democracies, their characteristic centralisation of power around the presidency, and the pervasive clientelism that structures the relationship between the state and the citizenry. These characteristics shape the incentives faced by individual politicians and thus much of their behaviour.