The use of mercenaries in Africa has been almost universally condemned. Africans in particular loathe foreign mercenaries. Small wonder, with the memory and reality of the Congo experience still fresh. So pejorative has the label ‘mercenary’ become in Africa that at one point in August 1962, when United Nations troops had been occupying a none-too-quiescent Katanga, the Katangan Minister of the Interior passed a U.N. road-block manned by Indian troops and cursed them by shouting across the barrier, ‘Mercenaries, mercenaries!’1 And this came from a member of the very Government that had hired the first contingent of mercenaries in the independent Congo.

In the last few years there has been a growing interest in that very considerable and hitherto mostly unrecorded part of the economic life of the Third World which flourishes outside the state and foreign-owned medium and large-scale concerns. This great mass of non-enumerated enterprises and activities is a major source of employment and production. For the purpose of this article, it will be argued that many of those undertaking research in this sector can be regarded as belonging to one or other of two fairly distinct schools of thought formed by (1) a number of officials from the International Labour Organisation, the World Bank, and other international and government agencies, as well as some purely academic writers,1 and (2) the majority of social scientists attached to the British Sociological Association Development Group, some of whom operate to a greater or lesser extent within a Marxian or neo-Marxian perspective.2 For purposes of abbreviation only, these will be referred to as the ‘I.L.O.’ and the ‘Radical’ groups.

The official dismantling of apartheid, the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years imprisonment in Febuary 1990, and especially the first multi-racial elections in April 1994 followed by the inauguration of the Government of National Unity (GNU), have marked this decade as the most fascinating in the history of South Africa.

Although the analysis which follows centres upon the West African state of Mali, much of what is said applies in varying measure to other examples of military state capitalism in Africa and elsewhere. Its importance is underscored by the fact that this is an increasingly common régime variant in the Third World. Similarly, domestic militarism has been transformed from an unusual occurrence to a phenomenon which evokes little more than a déjà vu response. Today nearly half of the governments of the ‘South’ are directly or indirectly dominated by the military, whereas three decades ago little more than 15 per cent could be so classified.

This article examines the upsurge in denunciations of ‘tribalism’ in public debate during The Gambia's transition from the autocracy of Yahya Jammeh to the ‘New Gambia’ under President Adama Barrow. In these public debates, derogatory statements about particular ethnicities articulate fears of present or future alliances to monopolise political power. These fears are disproportionate to attempts of organised political mobilisation on ethnic grounds, which remain marginal. It is argued that accusatory politics are a salient, and neglected, feature of ethnic dynamics in contemporary Gambian – and African – politics. This politics of accusation involves the contestation and negotiation of moral legitimacy in the political sphere, in a manner challenging the separation of the moral and the political undergirding scholarly distinctions between ethnicity and tribalism.

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania, independent since 28 November 1960, is the most recent convert to the revolutionary model of single- party government practised in a number of new African states.1 As such, it is a political curiosity, for the model presupposes a militant mass party that ‘won’ independence, whereas the Mauritanian People's Party, founded after independence, in December 1961, is a heterogeneous association of politicians and traditional tribal leaders. Until 1964, President Mokhtar Ould Daddah, Mauritania's first university graduate, carefully balanced the regional, tribal, and personal demands of the notables while moderating those of the young modernisers within his administration. Since the extraordinary congress held at Kaedi in January 1964, however, he has attempted to transform a politics of equilibrium based upon tribal personalities to a politics of nation- building based upon a modern party.

To try to summarise in a few pages the present situation in ‘Portuguese’ Africa is at best a difficult task. Briefly, the three ‘Overseas Provinces’ (since the Portuguese constitutional revision of 1951 they are no longer called ‘colonies’) are in rebellion against continued Portuguese rule. Or, rather, elements in these territories are in rebellion. Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau are the sites of increasingly violent conflict as African nationalists intensify their guerrilla campaigns against a hardening Portuguese military resistance.

War and military institutions have played a crucial part in the history of Angola. Colonial wars, auxiliary armies, expeditions, and soldiergovernors fill the pages of this history, and it is no exaggeration to recall that military expenses have, except for some years during 1930–58, represented the major item in annual budgets since the sixteenth century, when the Portuguese began to conquer the Luanda hinterland. The character and role of the armed forces in Angola, however, have undergone changes: especially since 1961, new developments promise possibly important influences on future events in that territory, events which may not follow traditional patterns in history.

The introduction of the one-party system in Tanzania in 1965 was in part explained as a means of rescuing the National Assembly or Bunge from decline and decay. This institution had become a rubber stamp, according to the Presidential Commission, making few meaningful contributions to the system of government: debates had become ‘lifeless and superficial’, and legislation was passed rapidly and uncritically, ‘without challenge to basic principles or careful examination of detailed provisions’. The President had appropriately raised the question of whether the National Assembly should be formally removed from the structure of the state, or amalgamated with that of the ruling party.

Descriptions of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) – a relatively resilient rebel group in the Congo–Uganda borderland – are almost solely focused upon the rebellion's Islamic extremist characteristics. Through looking specifically at the ADF's recruitment practices, this paper seeks to problematise existing accounts of the group's constitution. It discusses how Islamic extremism has had a significant influence on various aspects of ADF recruitment, and therefore helps to explain particular dimensions of the ADF's composition. Nevertheless, this paper demonstrates that focusing on the role of Islamism alone, leaves a large part of the ADF's story untold – such as the important role played by recruitment networks associated with marginalised and militarised ex-combatants, or the populations of disenfranchised youth in the borderlands. Indeed, unresolved political and socio-economic injustices amongst the people of the Rwenzories have been just as significant motivating factors for joining the rebels as have Islamic sources. Thus, this paper argues that the ADF's recruitment practices and constitution cannot be sufficiently analysed without adequate recognition of the rebel group's position within a borderland context.

The early years of the East–West Cold War in sub-Saharan Africa are remembered for the violence surrounding the 1960–1 Congo crisis. While the crisis in the Congo threatened to spin out of control, on 6 January 1961 Nikita Khrushchev delivered his secret ‘sacred wars of national liberation’ speech, which suggested that Moscow intended to undermine Western influence in the region by fanning war and subversion. Despite the nasty turn of events in the Congo and Khrushchev's blustery rhetoric, Soviet activities in sub-Saharan African remained limited in scope and within the bounds of ‘peaceful coexistence’. Moscow sought to challenge Western hegemony in the region by offering economic and military assistance to developing countries, ‘free from any political or military obligations’. Although Moscow first targeted the radical West African governments in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, as part of his break with Stalinist orthodoxy Khrushchev was also willing to extend Moscow's ‘friendly hand’ to moderate African countries.

Moscow achieved an important strategic breakthrough within the moderate African camp in November 1963, when the Republic of Somalia announced that it would accept a $30 million military aid offer from the Soviet Union, thereby foiling an attempt by the West to preclude Soviet military aid to Somalia. During 1962–3, a consortium of Western powers, led by the United States, had presented a series of arms packages of increasing value to Mogadishu. This was done over the strong protests of Washington's long-time ally in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopian Emperor Haile-Selassie. But in the end, Moscow won the bidding war for Somalia by raising the arms ‘ante’ to a level which the Western powers were unwilling to match, owing to Washington's fear that to do so would jeopardise strategically vital US base rights in Ethiopia and provoke Haile-Selassie to adopt a less moderate voice in African affairs.

Although students of the Cold War in Africa are familiar with this general outline of the 1963 Soviet–Somali arms deal, scant attention has been paid to the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres and bureaucratic conflicts arising over the efforts of the Kennedy administration to dissuade Somalia from accepting military assistance from the Eastern bloc. A more probing analysis of this event is instructive in furthering our understanding of future developments in the Horn of Africa.

Within five years, some of the cadets to whom these remarks were addressed helped overthrow Kwame Nkrumah. Despite the warning, ‘Politics are not for soldiers’, the armed forces in Ghana – as in 14 other African states – assumed full political control. The military thus changed in Africa from relatively insignificant relics of colonial administration into prime arbiters of political disputes – settling arguments, in many instances, by the direct seizure of power. Praetorianism had reached south of the Sahara.

The potter is regarded as one of the few truly ‘traditional’ craftsmen still operating in West Africa. But, though the resilience of the craft has been noted, a general decline in its significance is accepted. Nor is this simply a matter of numbers. Nearly 40 years ago, K. C. Murray commented that ‘Pottery, which is one of the most important indigenous crafts in Nigeria, has escaped progress altogether. The traditional work has remained unchanged, except that in recent years its quality has declined’. Much of the responsibility for this state of affairs has been placed on the ‘primitive’ nature of both the product and the craft, as well as the easy availability of metal and enamelware substitutes as a direct result of colonial penetration.

The Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (S.A.D.C.C.) was established in 1979 to eliminate the economic dependence of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe upon the Republic of South Africa, and to create regional self-reliance –that is, economic development and regional co-operation. To attain these goals, S.A.D.C.C. seeks financial and technical assistance from all possible public and private sources, inculding international commercial banks and industrial corporations.

Most attempts to explain the slowness and perversity of change in Southern Africa are deficient because not enough attention is paid to regional interactions. This review suggests that it is time to correct the over-concentration on the national or global relations of this international sub-system by the adoption of an intermediate level of analysis. We cannot understand the coexistence of confrontation and co-operation in Southern Africa without an examination of the patterns of dependence and interdependence among its black- and white-ruled states. The adoption of a regional approach here is particularly promising and suggestive as it indicates the need to revise the established conceptual framework for the study of subordinate state systems.

Social scientists studying the development of Liberian political and social institutions have frequently viewed the country as fitting the model of a plural society. M. G. Smith has defined such a society as the differential incorporation of two or more collectivities within the same society… presum[ing] significant antecedent differences of institutions, culture and ethnicity between the collectivities concerned and…restrict[ing] their assimilation by preserving or promoting the institutional distinctness.

The subject-matter of African politics has always presented a special challenge and a special problem to political scientists, namely to develop a theory which would make sense of a vast, inchoate, and unfamiliar body of material. This problem has become particularly acute in the last year or two. The rapid deterioration of African political parties, a series of military coups, recurrent crises of national unity, and heightened tendencies towards anomic and violent behaviour have not only cast doubt on previous assumptions as to the nature of African political life but have also led to a heightened mood of theoretical uncertainty among political scientists.

The monetary evolution in the less developed countries in recent years has led to renewed interest in the functions of financial institutions, particularly in the potential contribution of commercial banks to economic growth. Since many of the developing countries have inherited banks and banking techniques from highly industrialised countries in Europe the question has been asked whether these institutions are capable of performing adequately the varied functions that the growth-conscious new nations now expect of them.

There was a close and continuing relationship between the press and nationalist politics in colonial British West Africa which acquired a new dynamic towards the end of World War II. As the imperial impluse faltered, a younger, more radical African leadership appeared which saw newspapers as a means of carrying their message to a wider political class than that addressed by the relatively conservative pioneers. It had for some time been true that ‘The spontaneous expression of grievances, against this tax or that bureaucratic decision, was built up by a handful of…journalists into a generalized protest against the fact of British authority.’1 Now movers and shakers like Nnamdi Azikiwe in Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah in the Gold Coast began to use the press in a frontal assault on their colonial régimes. Couched in terms ‘verging on joyful vituperation’, newspapers reached out beyond the elite of the cities to rural opinion leaders and the urban poor.2

South Sudan is in a unique combination of (post)-conflict reconstruction and the birth of a new state in which old policies are re-activated and new policies introduced. By looking at three case-studies of taxation and private sector regulation reforms, the paper will show how the overlapping and often contradictory regulatory frameworks of the state provide the setting for bricolage strategies by different actors. These actors, and particularly state officials, rely on a variety of institutional resources to implement, resist or remake certain regulatory measures. Although the breadth of regulatory measures has increased exponentially, the institutional corridor – the space in which bricolage is performed and on which various actors can rely – remains narrow. This space is contingent on wartime authority structures, and more particularly pre-existing Sudan's People Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) power structures, as well as a deep-rooted resistance to centralised control. Importantly, these regulatory practices are not fixed: intense periods of rearrangement of the social order or ‘open moments’ may provide a window of opportunity for regulatory reform.