The management of ethnic problems has tended to be complicated by the complex ethnic situations which give rise to them. It is known for example that ethnicity rarely exists in a pure form, being usually combined with other conflict-generating cleavages, such as religion, race, class and regionalism, in mutually reinforcing ways. Ethnicity is also situational, fluid and intermittent, while ethnic boundaries are constantly changing. In addition, levels of ethnic consciousness and political mobilisation differ among groups, for reasons of different perceptions of relative privileges or deprivation, history of inter-group relations, effects of state policies or actions, dispositions and strategies adopted by other competing groups, and so on. For these and other reasons, common stimuli like democratisation, economic prosperity or decline, and transformatory social processes, all of which impact on ethnicity, produce different effects on ethnic groups.

These differences and complexities have implications for the management of ethnic problems and conflicts. For one thing, ethnic conflicts tend to be intractable, especially where their management does not take full account of their complexity. The temptation to proffer catch-all management formulae, such as federalism, bills of rights, secularity and so on, as if all ethnic conflicts can be dealt with uniformly or in one fell swoop, is the product of the fallacy of oversimplification. It goes without saying that conflict situations must be properly understood for the appropriate ‘therapies’ to be formulated and applied. If this is done, it will be found that more nuanced solutions are required to cope with the demands of the complex situations.

The relationship between language and politics in the African post-colony remains obscure and underexamined. Here we withdraw into a poorly lit area, an area of potentialities, where new political shapes may emerge as the outcome of half-conscious choices made by very large numbers of people. Language choices in the first place: the expansion of the Wolof language in Senegal, principally though far from exclusively an urban phenomenon, is to be seen in a context where the individual may speak several languages, switching linguistically from one social situation to another. Such multilingualism is general in Africa: the particularity of the Wolof case, at least in Senegal, is the extent to which this language has spread, far beyond the boundaries of core ethnicity, of a historical Wolof zone from the colonial or pre-colonial periods. And these individual language choices cast their political shadow.

The political consequences of this socio-linguistic phenomenon are as yet indistinct, but to see a little more clearly one should in the second place relate it to the subject of the politics of ethnicity. Language is of course an important element in any definition of ethnicity, and there is an evident overlap; but the politics of language is also a distinguishable subject in its own right. Where the assertion of ethnic identity can be identified as a possible weapon in the individual's struggle for power and recognition within the colonial and post-colonial state, the choice of a language is that of the most effective code in the individual's daily struggle for survival. Language choice in such a setting may be less a matter of assertion, the proud proclamation of an identity, than it is one of evasion, a more or less conscious blurring of the boundaries of identity. And in Senegal the government itself by its inaction has practised its own shadow-politics of procrastination.

This article attempts to explain the rural–urban voting patterns in the 1992 Ghanaian presidential election. In this election, rural voters voted overwhelmingly for the incumbent and urban voters did the opposite. It is argued that Ghana's Structural Adjustment Programme (1983–92) was distributionally favourable to rural households and unfavourable to urban households. A link is therefore drawn between the distributional impacts of the Structural Adjustment Programme and the voting patterns of rural and urban households.

The relationship between the state of the economy and the fortunes of political parties at the polls is one which has generated a lot of debate. This debate has largely taken place within the confines of Western democracies, not least because of the absence of Western-style democracy in many developing countries. We are, however, seeing a movement towards ‘democracy’ in many developing countries, with pressures for economic liberalisation going hand in glove with those for political liberalisation. The increasing democratisation by many African countries undertaking Structural Adjustment Programmes provides us with an opportunity to investigate the relationships between the welfare implications of these programmes and the voting behaviour of the electorate. Is voting behaviour in Africa any different from that in Western democracies?

The Zambian general elections held on 18 November 1996 to elect a president and parliament are of more than merely national interest. Even before the elections took place, a vocal opposition already doubted their genuineness, and these claims have found considerable international sympathy. The Zambian government and those who voted them into power for a second term, however, consider these elections a hallmark of the success of the reintroduction of multi-partyism, which Zambia was one of the first, and one of the most successful, to reintroduce in Africa. These elections, therefore, provide a case in which to analyse a triangular interaction which is common in Africa: the interaction between an incumbent political group, an opposition which does not accept the victory of the former, and the international community. This article aims to offer a theoretical perspective on the way in which these three groups of actors intermesh; but, in order to ground these more theoretical concerns in an understanding of the empirical realities, an attempt is made first to capture the essence of the conflicts involved.

The peace accord signed in October 1992 and multiparty elections held in October 1994 brought to Mozambique fresh hopes and opportunities. Post-war reconstruction has been underway for some years, through an array of projects ranging from hand-outs for demobilised soldiers to the World Bank supported Roads and Coastal Shipping (ROCS) rehabilitation project running from 1994 to 2000. Although there is political tension between the two main parties and former contestants in the civil war, Frelimo and Renamo, and a combination of rising urban crime and sporadic banditry on roads in rural areas, generally there has been a strong improvement in political stability and physical security for the majority of the population. Economic reforms, broadly typical of World Bank/IMF stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes, have accelerated during the 1990s and have been underwritten by substantial external financial support. The end of war together with deregulating policy reforms and a sweeping privatisation programme have provoked a surge in foreign investor interest in the country. In aggregate terms and in spite of data caveats, the evidence suggests that Mozambique has become one of the fastest growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1990s.

In 1992, several national newspapers in America and Europe ran headline stories which accused Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, the nationalist movement which had been locked in a vicious civil war with the MPLA–PT government of Angola, of conducting witchcraft trials and burnings of witches at his liberation base at Jamba. The revelations, provided by two high-ranking defectors from UNITA, caused an outcry among both critics and supporters, with all predicting Savimbi's ignominious defeat. Savimbi's longtime critics expected the latest scandal to deprive him of his remaining credibility, and predicted that the support he had gathered as a fighter for Angolan nationalism and a supporter of democracy would evaporate.

On the contrary, the incident had little impact on Savimbi's stature among his Ovimbundu supporters. Later that year he went on to win the majority of the Ovimbundu votes in the United Nations sponsored elections, and gained a chance to be in a run-off election against José Eduardo dos Santos for the presidency of Angola. Details about these and similar incidents which have taken place in Africa from the time of conquest reflect a political legacy that has deep roots in Africa's pre-colonial past. They also illustrate some of the fundamental differences that exist between African and Western conceptions of political behaviour and ideology that need to be addressed.