THE conventional wisdom has it that European/Western constitutional forms cannot be expected to take root in African political soil, much less grow and flourish, since they are based on essentially alien predicates and principles. That is why, it is further claimed, practically all the so-called ‘independence’ constitutions were quickly annulled, abrogated, or simply put aside by the generation of ‘founding fathers’ and/or their immediate successors as leaders, despite having been adopted in the 1960s amid universal jubilation and optimism about the continent's democratic future. Needless-to-say, this bit of conventional wisdom suffers from the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy that given the failure of constitutions, it must follow that they were at fault – a conclusion warranted neither by an examination of their provisions and the circumstances of their genesis, nor of the contexts in which they allegedly ‘failed’.

THE political agenda in Cameroon has become increasingly dominated by what is known as the ‘anglophone problem’, which poses a major challenge to the efforts of the post-colonial state to forge national unity and integration, and has led to the reintroduction of forceful arguments and actions in favour of ‘federalism’ or even ‘secession’.

AFFIRMATIVE action in South Africa – sometimes referred to by euphemisms such as ‘corrective action’, ‘reverse discrimination’, or ‘positive action’ – can be understood as a remedial strategy which seeks to address the legal historical exclusion of a majority. Unlike most other countries in which minorities are targeted, in South Africa a previously disenfranchised majority is the beneficiary of such policies. Quite distinct from North American notions of affirmative action, a labour/union driven vision of transforming the living and working conditions of the majority competes with a narrower business advocacy of black advancement as managers in response to market demands. Little resistance is found among white-owned corporations to broaden their recruitment pool by including qualified blacks and women.

THE question of how countries in Africa are dealing with the control and restructuring of their military forces and security agencies has aroused some scholarly and political interest but little systematic research. The story of the transition in Ghana may be said to have begun when the Supreme Military Council (SMC) was removed by a coup d'état on 4 June 1979 and replaced by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) headed by Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. The young officers had intervened, as they soon explained, because of the growing corruption and deteriorating conditions of service, the severe economic crisis and reduced military budgets, and the mismanagement of both the Armed Forces and the national government. Although power was restored to civilians only four months later, Rawlings intervened again on 31 December 1981 after the régime headed by President Hilla Limann had failed in the view of supporters of the ‘June 4 Movement’ to respond effectively to the problems faced by Ghana. Ironically this coup by Rawlings, widely known as his ‘Second Coming’, and described with some truth as ‘a popular affair’, interrupted efforts that were being made to re-professionalise the Armed Forces and restore civilian control.

THE Portuguese were the first Europeans to come across the island of Mauritius. It was found by the Dutch in 1598, and the Dutch East India Company settlement created in 1638 introduced both sugar cane and slavery. The French arrived in 1721, using slaves to clear large holdings which eventually became sugar cane plantations. Over time there emerged a colonial society of extreme inequality, where power and privilege belonged to estate planters from France while hard labour and deprivation became the lot of slaves imported from Africa. The British established political control of Mauritius in 1814 and preserved the structure of the island's economy and society with one exception: slavery was abolished in 1835 with generous compensation to slave owners. The colonial state helped to organise the importation of indentured workers from India, and by the 1860s the island had become the leading cane producer in the British Empire.

AFRICA South of the Sahara became so marginalised during the 1980s that its share of world trade fell from 3·8 per cent in 1960 to 1·05 per cent in 1989. And it has attracted relatively little foreign investment, with the exception of a few exporters of petroleum: only 2,000 million US dollars in 1995 corresponding to 2 per cent of the total for developing countries. Indeed, the continent's share (including North Africa) declined from 11 per cent in 1986–90 to 4 per cent in 1994.

The beast lives unhistorically; for it ‘goes into’ the present, like a number, without leaving any curious remainder ... But man is always resisting the great and continually increasing weight of the past; it presses him down and bows his shoulders.

– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History (Indianapolis, 1949), p. 5.

If the past is ‘dead’, it dances, a lively corpse indeed, on new graves everywhere almost every day in whatever kind of time.

– Harold Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe (Cambridge, MA, 1989), p. 121.

THE past has a social purpose of stressing the virtues of courage, endurance, and sacrifice. Picturesque folkloric characters such as Robin Hood and Nicholas Chauvin become models for selflessness and patriotism. The term chauvinisme, which appeared in France by the 1840s, for instance, did not carry any negative connotations. Instead, it helped the nation-state to inculcate a sense of oneness in its people, who began to say ‘Nouns sommes tous français, Chauvin’. The past, thus, has a double mission. It is both therapeutic and vital political ammunition.