On 21 March 1985, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the infamous Sharpevile incident, South African police, without provocation or warning, killed 20 unarmed black marchers at Langa in the Eastern Cape. Most were shot in the back. The outnumbered contingent of white and black police with two armoured vehicles, felt that the blacks, on their way to a funeral, would threaten the white township.

The repetition of this crudest form of state violence against politicised youngsters and workers, threatened by recession after two-and-a-half decades of anti-apartheid opposition, suggests that little has changed in the repression by a minority ré. The rulers command the guns and the subordinates are left wiht no alternative but to submit or perish.

Continuous pressure against the South African Government has led to what previously seemed unthinkable: the reform of apartheid. Strikes from 1973 onwards, the Soweto revolt in 1976, the increasing resistance from school and consumer boycotts, the strengthening black trade-union movement and mass political organisations, and the unceasing campaign by the African National Congress, have led the State President, P. W. Botha, to declare in early 1986 that apartheid in its present form cannot be maintained, despite strong reactions from sections of Afrikaner interests. Many of the structures thought essential to racial segregation are to go: the pass laws controlling the movement of African men and women, the fiction that the ‘Bantustans’ are ’independent’ or ‘national’ states, and that urban blacks are citizens of other countries. There is even the promise of political representation for Africans. These measures appear to mark the end of Botha's attempt to create a divided black working class — some with residence rights in white-only areas, and others, notably unskilled migrants, without. The specific shape of the more racially-integrated South Africa which Botha promises remains unclear. It is not surprising in a recession that the President appears to have recognised the inappropriateness and disproportionate cost which maintaining structures of black recruitment to white employers has on the state's exchequer — not including the cost of policing influx control.

When Zimbabweans went to the polls in June and July of 1985, they decisively returned the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) to formal power, provided regional support for the Patriotic Front–Zimbabwe African People's Union and, in the case of the white roll, endorsed Ian Smith's Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe. Questions raised in the wake of the elections tended to focus on the changes that the Z.A.N.U.(P.F.) Government could institute in the next three to five years – a one-party system, a complete abrogation of the Lancaster House privileges for whites, a vigorous turn towards Marxism.

After years of agricultural production significantly below domestic consumption needs for key commodities, in 1985 Zambia looked forward to a good harvest of maize, the nation's staple. The Minister of Co-operatives, Justin Mukando, said in February that more than eight million bags were anticipated, and the Prime Minister, Kebby S. K. Musokotwane, declared in May that ‘we expect about ten million bags of maize’.1 In the Zambian system of presidentialism and state capitalism, the purchasing, transportation, and storage of crops, as with many other agricultural functions, was in the hands of the state. This was so in terms of the close involvement of political figures at the highest level, and through the continued reliance upon the National Agricultural Marketing Board (Namboard) and the quasi-parastatal provincial co-operative marketing unions. President Kenneth Kaunda committed himself and his Government to success in the forthcoming harvest when he told Parliament in January: ‘I am not prepared to see a recurrence of what happened last year when thousands of bags of maize remained uncollected in various depots’; the state would ensure that the agencies involved in the collection of produce improved their performance.

The French colony of Niger gained republican status on 18 December 1958 and political independence on 3 August 1960. This vast country, twice the size of its ex-metropole, and which figures amongst the 25 least-developed countries in the world, was under the political direction of the Parti progressiste nigérien for over 15 years. The P.P.N. had come to power in September 1958, after capturing 78 per cent of the votes cast in favour of continued membership of the now defunct French Community, and was headed by Hamani Diori, the leader of the local section of the Rassemblement démocratique africain, the more or less common platform for French-speaking West African politicians after World War II. However, President Diori formed his first cabinet only after the independence constitution had been promulgated on 8 November 1960.

The rapidly deteriorating social and economic situation in sub-Saharan Africa, and the need for large-scale action to reverse that ominous trend, are captured well in the following paragraph:

It is becoming evident that Africa is in a state of breathtaking and grievous crisis whose… likes may not have been seen anywhere in the West since the 14th century Plague. Twenty-nine of the world's 36 poorest nations are to be found south of the Sahara desert… and 24 of them are now appealing for emergency aid to ward off famine… The percentage of Africans living in absolute poverty rose from 82 percent to 91 percent through the 1970s. In 1983 per capita food production was down by 14 percent from 1981. Five million Africans are currently refugees. Five million African children died this year; another five million were crippled by malnutrition and disease.

The understanding of state formation in Africa depends on the analysis of attempts by Africans to build political institutions which suit their needs in an era when they have been faced with many constraints. These efforts take place in a setting of two dimensions: in time, as part of a history of indigenous culture and political traditions, colonial domination, nationalist independence movements, and the trials of new nationhood; and in space, as the activities of members of a world system of integrated economies and political relations, with a well-defined and sometimes brutally administered pecking-order of power and status. There have been a number of attempts to explain how state institutions in Africa have been created and built up, or perhaps how they have collapsed and been supplanted by alternative structures.