Many post-independence rebel movements in Africa have unleashed extremely brutal forms of violence, especially against the peasantry. Such violence, which has bewildered many observers, cannot be explained by reference to African ‘culture’, nor as an expression of rational self-interest. Instead, it must be seen in the light of the essentially urban issues that have fomented rebellion, which cannot however be successfully pursued in major towns, where incumbent regimes possess a monopoly of force. Retreating to the countryside, however, rebels can rarely swim among the peasantry like Mao's fishes in the sea. The African rural setting is generally deeply inimical to liberation war, because peasants enjoy direct control over their own land, and surplus expropriation takes place through the market, rather than through an exploitative landlord class. The African situation, too, has tended to favour ‘roving’ rather than ‘stationary’ rebellions, in Olson's terms; many rebels are merely passing through the countryside, on their way to seek power in towns. Having little in common with the peasantry, and nothing to offer it, they resort to violence as the only way to control it. However incoherent their objectives, and however brutal their methods, rebellions nonetheless reflect a serious urban malaise that needs to be addressed.

This article analyses the ways in which socio-political opposition is expressed by looking into the morally loaded discourse of political legitimacy in Burkina Faso that emerged after the assassination of the journalist Norbert Zongo in December 1998. Through the analysis of different political statements, newspapers and various comments from the ‘street’, it locates the struggle against impunity in a social and political undercurrent in Burkinabe society. In this context, notions of the public space are central, because the public space defines both the boundaries of public debate and the behaviour of key political actors. Two recurrent themes in Burkinabe political discourse, namely ideas of truth and courage, and the legitimacy of White people, illustrate the various ways in which socio-political opposition seeks to define the public space within which politics is to be practised and the behaviour to be observed by those acting there. But the struggle against impunity also takes place on a symbolic level at which key symbols are appropriated, interpreted and incorporated into political discourse.

A year after the establishment of the Transitional National Government (TNG), Somalia and in particular the southern part of the country remained fragmented and riven by armed confrontations between clans and faction leaders. The TNG succeeded in re-assuming Somalia's seat in the United Nations and all relevant regional organisations, while the breakaway north-western region of ‘Somaliland’ failed to gain any international recognition, despite the widely acknowledged establishment of a relatively stable administration. This paper tries to explain this apparent discrepancy by arguing that state or government recognition is an instrument of international relations, designed to influence rather than passively acknowledge political reality. In Somalia, granting or withholding recognition to one or other political leadership has been driven by specific interests, thus complicating the process of political stabilisation and national reconciliation.

Research from a community study in rural Malawi speaks directly to contemporary debates about civil society. Investigating the role of local churches in empowering citizens, the study found that the local Catholic church was more effectively fostering a nascent sense of political efficacy among women than were local Presbyterian churches. Explaining this finding, the article presents two issues that expose problems in the liberal understanding of civil society, and underscore important themes raised in the critical discourse. First, the study reveals that organisations characterised by decentralised authority structures and internal democracy may fail to contribute to the empowerment of marginalised citizens. Such organisations are prone to reproduce and exacerbate local inequalities and conflicts within their structures. Second, corroborating critical views, the study highlights the importance of recognising how power relations affect the character and operation of civil society organisations. The adjusting of power relations within organisations may be a prerequisite to their serving an empowering role with marginalised citizens.

Stefano Ponte's article in the first JMAS issue of 2001 brings good news: previous pessimistic accounts of the dynamics of economic life in the Uluguru Mountains, especially mine, have to be revised (Ponte 2001; van Donge 1993c). There may have been economic decline in the area, but economic liberalisation has turned that around and raised incomes. Ponte collected rich material, especially in his household survey. Whereas I found it difficult to get precise estimates of money, land, and so on from people there, he collected precise quantitative insights. This information covers not only their present situation: people recalled with considerable precision their situation back to the mid eighties when I did research there. His critique touches, however, not only changes over time, but also the assumptions about how actors behave: people are much more resourceful than I portrayed them.

Van Donge's comment on my reassessment of agrarian change on the Uluguru Mountains, Tanzania, raises a number of issues that go beyond the specificities of the location under scrutiny. Before dealing with these, however, let me restate my argument, which van Donge has reconstructed only selectively. In my article (Ponte 2001a), I argued that rural households are not ‘trapped in decline’ on the Uluguru Mountains, as depicted in previous literature. Although agriculture is not going through an easy transition in the area, and some options are becoming more limited, others are being more skilfully utilised. On the Uluguru Mountains, land scarcity is the main feature of agriculture; deforestation and soil erosion are major problems; and inputs have become increasingly expensive. Under these circumstances, the main ways households can improve their quality of life – short of leaving the area altogether, and in addition to relying on remittances from outside – are to expand land cultivated in other locations, to experiment with alternative farming systems, and to increase non-farm incomes. I observed that Uluguru households were doing all of these in the mid-1990s, and that their income levels and housing characteristics had improved. This was intriguing and challenging to me, since farmers' adaptations to changing markets had not led to higher incomes in other areas that I had researched in Tanzania. Finally, I suggested that economic diversification can play an important role in improving rural livelihoods, but that this process is more likely to take place in locations with well-established economic ties and relatively good access to major markets.

Van Donge has a variety of problems with my argument. These can be grouped around three main themes: (1) issues of methodology; (2) a perceived misunderstanding of his argument; and (3) the impact of liberalisation. Due to space limitations, in my reply to van Donge I deal with these larger themes. A more detailed response covering specific evidence and technicalities is available from this author and has been sent to van Donge.