In a recent article, Heribert Adam argued that the ‘prevalent view of South Africa combines conceptual errors with false methodological emphasis and, often, wishful thinking’, and that the ‘popular perspective represents a gross over-simplification of a far more complex situation.’1 The analysis to which he was objecting views South Africa as an outdated colonial society, in which white settlers enforce a racially defined domination upon an exploited mass of the black population, which is reduced to serving primarily as a source of cheap labour for white capital by an immense battery of totalitarian controls. Linked to this view - and now fuelled by the widespread riots during mid-1976 throughout African urban areas - is the assumption that substantive political change will necessarily come about by violent revolution, motivated by the growing determination of a burgeoning black population to force a redistribution of power and wealth. However, as Adam further pointed out, analysis of South Africa purely in terms of racial conflict leaves important questions unanswered, for there is need to explore how the differential distribution of wealth and resources - political and economic - originated, and how they are maintained.

In contrast with the study of pre-colonial societies characterised by well- established traditions, the writing on contemporary Africa seems to be in the stage of infancy. Thus it has largely avoided assessing the performance of ‘revolutionary’leaders in an objective manner, and has often exhibited paternalism, idolisation, or dogmatism. If the study of modern history and politics aims at what actually is, rather than at what might be or ought to be, a more balanced view of political mobilisation and performance should result. An attempt will be made from this perspective realistically to appraise Guinea under the Parti démocratique de Guinée in terms of its internal consistency.

Each dry season many Um Borroro or nomadic Fulani set off eastwards to Mecca. They are some of the 5,000 or so West Africans who make the pilgrimage (the haj) each year by travelling along the savannas through Cameroun, Chad, and the Sudan.1 About four-fifths of them come from what is generally called Hausaland and Bornu in Nigeria and Niger, but some pilgrims from all the West African savanna countries travel overland.2 Although they comprise only about six per cent of the total arriving in Mecca from West Africa (the majority come by air and sea), they represent an important relict movement which earlier this century involved more than 15,000 migrants per annum.3

In recent years the housing problems of Africa's burgeoning cities have become a primary concern of governments, international agencies, and scholars, but there appears to be a marked distinction between the approach contained in many national development plans and the focus of much academic research. A central feature of plan documents is the assessment of accommodation needs and the elimination of established deficits which are based, in the main, on conventional demographic data from the national census together with various cost estimates.1

The great upheavals that Africa has witnessed since the turn of the century have stimulated a flourishing variety of historical writings on revolution, rebellion, guerrilla warfare, conflict, and various other forms of collective political action. It would, therefore, be both useless and presumptuous for me to attempt to rewrite the history of these great turmoils in the light of a number of new studies, some of which are excellent. However, it is in order to recall that this ‘tearing and battering’ happened while the new states were fast transforming themselves from a ‘traditional’ to a ‘modern’ political life, when commercial expansion began to draw Africans into national and international markets, and when communal groupings gradually began to give way to broader associations.

This article has pointed out the increasing importance of the arms trade in the contemporary international system, and has reviewed critically the essential scholarly works devoted to this topic. Arguing that most of the existing literature is either descriptive or only very partially explanatory, I have suggested a set of five requirements for a satisfactory understanding. Following an analysis of the relationships between these ideal criteria and segments of the theoretically oriented literature, I have outlined an original, though preliminary, model for a systematic analysis of arms supply as an international political phenomenon

In the first full-scale fighting between white forces on African territory, the Boer War, Africans had been cast by the opponents in the rôle of an animated geographical background.3. When, however, the European struggle of 1914–18 was projected onto the continent, Africans were enrolled by both sides into the dramatis personae of the conflict. World War I resulted in a European mobilisation of African manpower on a scale unknown until that time,4 with the possible exception of the South African mines. The Nigerian Administration alone recruited 13,980 troops,5 and supplied approximately 10,000 carriers,6 so that the British armed forces in this period even outpaced the tin mines and railways as an employer of Nigerian manpower.7 Indeed, given the relative size of the population and degree of British administrative control it is arguable that the effect of this scale of recruitment was equivalent in its local impact to the later military mobilisation of 10,000 Nigerians during World War 11.8

Patrick McGowan has recently attempted to examine the relationship between ‘Economic Dependence and Economic Performance in Black Africa’ in this Journal, Vol. xiv, No. I, March 1976, pp. 25–40. His article reemphasised the need for concrete analysis since the generalities of ‘dependence’ have been more extensively studied than their concrete expressions. However, a fundamental problem of his analysis is that the criteria for verifying the theory of dependence are unrelated to the theory itself: the ‘test’ devised is a series of correlations between measures of dependence and indicators of economic performance, since ‘the theory [of dependence] predicts that dependence is negatively associated with indicators of economic growth and development’ (p. 27). Part of the problem is that McGowan does not really define ‘dependence’, but in addition it is not at all clear why this is expected to be negatively associated with indicators of economic growth.

An underdeveloped country wishing to establish a fertiliser industry ought surely to begin by examining the locally available raw materials. In Tanzania, for example, a report in 1961 drew attention to an anhydrite deposit at Kilwa which could have been used to produce cement, gypsum, and sulphuric acid.2 The latter if combined with ammonia from the oil refinery would have given ammonium sulphate, the fertiliser most commonly used in Tanzania. The report also noted three deposits from which phosphatic fertiliser could have been made. However, the development of these local resources was rejected on the ground that for plants of an efficient size the local market would not be able to absorb all the fertilisers.

A number of recent studies have challenged the concept of an ethnic grou as an absolute category and emphasised that ethnic identity is influenced by the context of the social situation in which the behaviour occurs.2 Analyst of migrant communities in both West Africa and the Copperbelt have documented the existence of situational ethnicity as a phenomenon in which individual or group identity is defined in terms of categories which vary in their level of inclusiveness. Situational factors have increasingly come to be viewed as influencing the individual's definition of his rôle as a member of more inclusive groups which allows him to relate to a more culturally heterogeneous community in terms of common elements of identity.3 Studies concentrating upon the political significance of ethnic identity in public interactions have also stressed that situational factors may play a more important role than cultural similarity in developing more inclusive identity groupings.4 Finally, analysts dealing with the problems of multiple ethnic loyalties have stressed that individuals and groups have an array of alternate identities from which to choose. They will adopt — or be perceived by others as maintaining — different ethnic identities in different situations.