Policy research involves two acts of translation: translation of the problem from the world of reality and policy into the world of scientific method, and then a translation of the research results back into the world of reality and policy.1

Since the political scientist, David Easton, commented critically in 1959 on the state of the study of politics by anthropologists,2 many interesting changes have taken place in the analyses of African politics – in fact, of politics of non-western societies in general.

In the early hours of Easter Sunday, 14 April 1974, the army, led by Lieutenant Colonel Seyni Kountché, overthrew the Government which had held power in Niger since independence. President Hamani Diori's régime became the twenty-fifth in Africa to fall to a coup d'état in eleven years, and Niger the eighth republic of former French Africa to come under the control of the military.

In his Path to Nigerian Freedom – the blueprint for the nation-state he had envisioned – Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the man who later came to be one of the leading figures on the Nigerian political scene, stated categorically in 1947:

Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English’ or ‘Welsh’ or ‘French’. The word ‘Nigeria’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria from those who do not.

In the light of lively and widespread interest in developing-country technology it is not surprising that the search for what is ‘appropriate’ should be bedevilled by semantic confusion. This is, nevertheless, a nuisance which imposes on those who participate in the search and related discussion a tiresome obligation to try to make more than usually clear the meaning of the terms they use. In this regard, it comes naturally to economists to take as ‘appropriate’ that technology (set of inputs and processes) which would minimise the cost of production of a given volume of a given good in any particular location. This minimum cost can, of course, be calculated either at market or social prices, and the application of the latter — if they accurately reflected the real opportunity costs to the economy of the various factor inputs — would for many identify the optimum technology.

A Central question in African education, almost since the time the first schools were established by missionaries and colonial governments, has been the importance of making education relevant to the needs of the developing areas, rather than offering only an academic education transplanted from Europe. As early as 1847, for example, the British Colonial Office received a comprehensive memorandum on education which included a number of suggestions for providing practical training in schools in the colonies. Among the specific steps proposed were the establishment of industrial and farm schools, with the inclusion of agriculture, stock management, and land surveying in the curricula of teacher-training institutions.1

The purpose of this article is to explore the pattern of South African responses to external pressures. My study grows out of a concern with the regional conflict situation in Southern Africa, whose dimensions have become relatively clear only since the coup in Portugal in April 1974. Whatever the specific details of the policies and actions of the rest of the world; these should not rest on a misperception of the basic motivation and dynamics of South African decision-making vis-à-vis external pressures.

The study of the military as an agent of societal change began to attract the serious attention of western social scientists after World War II. Since then the independence of the African states has given rise to many coups d'état, thereby awakening the concern of Africanist scholars in the rôle of the military in contemporary society. Predictably, this interest has largely been confined to recent military developments, including the liberation movements in Southern Africa and Guinea–Bissau.

Solutions to old problems are sometimes found in new paradigms and models which provide alternative means of approach and analysis. It is suggested here that South Africa's socio-economic and political problems, stemming from the country's multi-ethnic structure, may be viewed within a conceptual framework that emphasises the spatial dimensions of the associated conflict. A model suitable for understanding this will stress the many disparities and tensions between the white core élites and those black counter-élites – including the leaders in the Homelands – who are emerging from the subdominant peripheral groups. Moreover, an analysis of the interaction between core and periphery will highlight the transformation necessary to reduce and resolve the conflict between whites and blacks in the South African spatial system and so promote their more equitable development?

Urbanisation is often held to be responsible for social disorder and alienation. In fact, the stresses experienced in the process of urbanisation can produce both a breakdown and/or a reinforcement of patterns of social association. Many scholars have discarded the term ‘alienation’ because of its multiplicity of meanings, but I believe that when the word is defined in terms of social network ‘density’ there is considerable utility for social scientific interpretation. Even in relatively similar urban communities, small differences in network density have important manifestations in the types of response to urbanisation.

Industrialisation in Africa and elsewhere has been beset with problems, many of which relate to the selection of ‘inappropriate technology’, or processes which are far from optimal in their use of labour and capital in the context of developing economy. Many products have no alternative methods of manufacture because they have been created in an industrialised economy, and the only existing technology reflects the skill, labour, and capital constraints of that environment. Plastics moulding, oil refining, and many metal-forming techniques are examples of this situation. The process itself is basic to the nature of the product, so that the choice of a more labour-intensive technology would result in the selection of a different product altogether. There might be no viable alternative, as in the case of petroleum products, or the alternative might be unacceptable because of its inferior performance in relation to the more sophisticated product which people already know. Processes which appear hopelessly capital intensive, and thus quite unsuitable for a developing country, may be appropriate because they form an essential part of an industry whose raw material involves economically and socially beneficial methods of production. In certain circumstances a paper-making factory could fall into this category, since the ‘inappropriateness’ of that technology might be offset by the benefits of the timber industry which is labour intensive and spread over a wide area. Some products, such as medicines, books, or fertilisers are essential and expensive to import, so it may be economically sensible to manufacture them locally in spite of other considerations.

Although the oldest independent African republic, Liberia ranks among the continent's poorest states,1 despite the existence of a small but prosperous foreign enclave dominated by iron ore and rubber plantation companies. Prior to 1950, even this sector was non-existent, with the exception of the Firestone rubber plantation at Harbel which was started in 1926.