There is a cancer in the body politic of South Africa that may not be cured in the foreseeable future but cannot be ignored. The Prime Minister, Pieter Willem Botha, is currently attempting to again support for a modified form of apartheid or multinational development. More land and resources must be assigned to Blacks, and a great deal more capital and recurrent funds must be spent if the Homelands are to be built up and made viable and attractive. Meanwhile, some concessions to Indians and Coloureds are being made to get them to acquiesce to a modified system of government and administration. They have not, however, satisfied Blacks, who want nothing less than majority rule, and the constitutional changes are strongly opposed by the right-wing faction of the ruling National Party. This short article will review prevailing attitudes and recommendations concerning current developments in South Africa, and then offer a possible solution to the seemingly insolvable dilemma.

In 1967, shortly after Lesotho's political independence from the United Kingdom, Michael Ward desribed Lesotho in this Journal as ‘the economic hostage of South Africa’:

it is clear … that Lesotho will become more and more economically dependent upon South Africa … in the short run it has virtually no hope of becoming economically viable or independent of South Africa and foreign aid.

The objective of this article is to examine how these views hold up 15 years later, and to argue that although in summary form Ward seems to have been very accurate, the nature of Lesotho's dependence has changed in ways few would have foreseen at the time of independence. In addition, the contrast between the rhetoric of the Government and what has happened, and the prospects for the future, will be explored.

A central feature of the Bechuanaland Protectorate was the wide jurisdiction accorded to the tribal chief or kgosi by the Administration. These traditional leaders were allowed by the colonial authorities to retain a considerable measure of autonomy and were able to regulate nearly all aspects of tribal life.

Both Lesotho and Swaziland possess a well-developed rhetoric advocating disengagement from South Africa, exemplified most recently in their joint commitment to the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference. Nevertheless, both countries remain firmly fastened to their dominant neighbour and committed to development strategies which tend to perpetuate such ties. The implications of continued social and economic domination by South Africa have not been lost on analysts of these two small, nominally independent Southern African states.

Much has been written and assumed about the impact of World War II on the political consciousness of African soldiers. It has been stated that as a result of their military service the veterans developed a new political awareness, and that consequently they played a singnificant rôle in the nascent nationalist movements of the post-war period. This argument has been presented more persuasively for East Africa, although some of the evidence produced to support the thesis appears at times rather thin. It has been strongly contested for West Africa.

This article examines an unusual phenomenon in the context of modern African labour migration. It explains how Malawi, which had long been a significant source of migrant workers for its neighbours, managed to withdraw over one-half of its international labour force from abroad in the first six years of the 1970s, and to integrate these individuals into the domestic economy within a very short period of time. Traumatic movements of large numbers of migrant workers have been all too common in contemporary Africa, usually manifested as expulsions from host countries during periods of economic stress. A recent notable example was the exodus of about a million foreign workers from Nigeria in the course of one month in 1983. What is unusual about the reduction in international labour migration from Malawi is that it was induced mainly by economic opportunities rather than by coercion.

A consultant is not expected to report that he cannot explain why things are the way they are. Such a conclusion tends to undermine belief in the expert as well as on the part of the client. It can, however, be the true state of affairs. In our opinion there is ample reason to admit to ignorance as regards the causes of widespread administrative inertia in the Third World, where bureaucracies often just do not function: letters are not replied to, appointments are kept haphazardly, and rules are either absent or referred to in the extreme. Bureaucratic behaviour is, as a result, often highly unpredictable for citizens. This is especially painful when it concerns necessities. In Zambia, for example, it is virtually impossible to travel or look for work without identification documents, but in the rural areas, people may have cycled for 20 or 30 kilometres to the headquarters of the District in order to get a National Registration Card only to find that the civil servant responsible is away for an undetermined period.

[Windhoek, 1977]…fellow-workers…the weak point we have [to remedy] in order to change the system is unity and co-operation. And we must not distinguish whether some workers are sleeping in a compound and some are staying in the single quarters and some in the so-called locations. All of us who are exploited, we blacks, we must know that we are all workers. We workers want to be in unity. We workers in Namibia, we want to unite. It doesn't matter what kind of work he is doing, each and every worker should come into that union. After such unity and co-operation have been established, it is only then that it will be possible to campaign for better working conditions, for higher wages and to embark on any other action which will change the working conditions.

The idea of a railway from the Zambian Copperbelt to the Indian Ocean via Tanzania had long been considered. But although the first serious report was published in 1952 by a consultant from the British Colonial Office, it was not until 1964, the year of independence, that further studies were commissioned, all of which eventually found such a railway uneconomic. The World Bank mission erred in tying the cost estimates to the trans-shipment of goods (due to gauge differences), and ignoring the option (actually taken) of constructing a direct line to Dar es Salaam. The U.N. team argued that the reasons for the project were too speculative, that the existing railways had spare capacity, and that the likely development benefits were invalid, unless an iron and steel complex emerged. In 1965 the authors of the Brookings Institution study felt that the project was an unnecessary duplication of existing facilities, and that transport matters in the region should be depoliticised, an idealistic proposal since there are external benefits and costs involved in the operation of railways.

Contemporary women from technological cultures are often perceived as self- rather than family- or relationship-oriented. Whether true or false, this perception creates problems in communication between males and females in the United States, especially in communities where black women grounded in African-world views attempt to respond to conflicting western cultural orientations. Issues of marriage, child-care, economics, employment, career advancement, and race relations have often contributed to the nexus of confusion surrounding the education and work of black women in a highly industrialised society.

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 virtual collapse of the agricultural sector in tropical Africa has been the subject of great concern over the last decade. An interesting overview of the search for solutions has recently been provided in this Journal by Michael F. Lofchie and Stephen K. Commins, ‘Food Deficits and Agricultural Policies in Tropical Africa’, 20, I, March 1982, pp. 1–25. My purpose here is to suggest an alternative account, based on a somewhat different classification of the relevant theories and the policy prescriptions which are based on them.