Let me explain right from the outset that I have chosen the term ‘after the generals’ only as a convenient shorthand. In fact what I mean is something like ‘after the notorious dictatorships of the later half of the last century in Africa south of the Sahara’. Some of these, as you know, were military regimes, like those of Eyadema, Bokassa, Mobutu or Abacha (graphically satirized in Soyinka's A Play of Giants), but quite a number were also civilian governments, such as Arap Moi's Kenya or Boigny's Ivory Coast, always depending, of course, on how you choose to classify them.