Between 1967 and 1970 the number of squatter settlements in Zambia's capital, Lusaka, increased from 9 to 32, accounting for more than one-third of the city's population (Simmance, 1974: 503). In 1973, one in every two persons in Lusaka was a squatter (Andrews, Christie and Martin, 1973: 17). Today, people continue to squat in Lusaka despite a four year upgrading project (1976-80) sponsored by the World Bank. Although they certainly grew in density and number after independence in 1964, such settlements were not new phenomena. Rather, they have been part of Lusaka's socio-economic map ever since the town began to grow. The persistence of squatting exemplifies grassroots involvement by an urban work force that takes possession of vacant land and uses its own resources to create living space. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the processes at work in creating and maintaining Lusaka's squatter settlements.

Squatting was a response on the part of ordinary people to the changing structure of Zambia's economy, beginning with the colonial era when Zambia became a subordinate part of a system of capitalist production. The administrative framework of ordinances and policies that structured rural-urban migration first impelled men to seek wage labor and gradually brought whole families to the cities. This affected the housing situation in Lusaka, colonial social policy and labor employment. Government and private industry interests were instrumental in shaping the urban policy which formed the background to the development of squatting.

As the scholarship concerning women's roles in African society and politics increases, it has become clear that West African women were active participants in the making of the histories of the societies in which they lived. Much is now known about founding ancestresses (Akan), queen mothers (Kanuri, Asante, Bamileke, etc.), women paramount chiefs (Mende), iyalodes (Yoruba), women's councils (Igbo)—although a great deal remains to be done. Not so much, however, is known about women's participation in anticolonial movements in the twentieth century. With the exception of the famous Aba Women's War (Perham, 1937; Leith-Ross, 1939; Gailey, 1970; van Allen, 1972 & 1976; Ifeka-Moller, 1973; Afigbo, 1966), the one women's anticolonial event which has attracted a significant amount of scholarly attention, little is clear about the women leaders who actively organized resistance to colonial policy which they considered inimical to women's interests or as key organizers in the struggle for independence. Still less is known about the organizations they controlled. Although the first generation of leaders in independent Africa paid tribute to the important role played by women in raising political consciousness among Africans, they mention it only briefly, rarely describing women's participation in their parties in any great detail (Denzer, 1976). Nor did the scores of political scientists who flocked to West Africa in the 1950s and the 1960s notice what women were doing in the way of organizing. Nonetheless the names of quite a few women of exceptional ability and understanding and the movements they organized occur frequently in the local newspapers giving evidence to their role. In addition extensive oral history collection among surviving women's leaders, their families and their supporters enables scholars to begin the task of reconstruction of the history of women's contribution to the anticolonial movement.

During 1939 a political crisis developed in Sierra Leone which had far reaching implications for colonial policy in British Africa. At the end of January workers struck the War Department defense works and the Mabella Coaling Company. Simultaneously some gunners in the West African Frontier Force (WAFF) stationed in Murray Town refused to go on parade, in army eyes an act of mutiny. In the midst of these events an intense campaign to rouse working-class consciousness began in the African Standard, the newly founded weekly published by the West African Youth Leagus (WAYL). This campaign focused on the wage-earning sector of Freetown, particularly the police and laborers engaged in essential works like defense construction. Editorial warnings published at the same times that Sierra Leoneans should not support the coming world war sounded a more ominous note as far as the authorities were concerned.

The colonial administration responded to these developments by initiating legislation, six bills in all, designed to suppress anticolonial opposition and contain the labor movement. While these bills were still under preparation, miners in the Marampa iron mines conducted the largest and best organized strike to occur before 1940, thus increasing the urgency of the situation. The administration hastened the drafting of its repressive ordinances and presenting them to the Legislative Council for enactment. In the meantime the Sierra Leonean community combined in a massive effort to oppose the bills, culminating in the largest mass demonstration against the government to occur in Freetown up to that time.

Several recent studies have contributed significantly to our understanding of traditional African medical systems (e.g., Peterson, in press; Ulin and Segali, 1980; Imperato, 1977). Concurrently, medical sociologists (e.g., Conrad and Schneider, 1980; Conrad, 1976) have examined the role of the American medical establishment in the exercise of social control. Their definition of social control as “the means by which society secures adherence to social norms” implies the power to impose a particular definition of the world on its members. This definition is central to the purpose of this paper, which is to describe and analyze in a West African context the use of prayers, amulets, and charms in the distribution of health services, and, at the societal level, their role in social control. In Dyula medicine social control operates primarily as a collection of beliefs, morals, and internalized norms all subsumed under the rubric of self-controls; and relational controls which include such every day interactions as gossip, ridicule, and group support.

The worksite for this study was Bondoukou, a city in eastern Ivory Coast that was, until the colonial reorganization, the largest city in Gyaman. The kingdom of Gyaman was founded toward the end of the seventeenth century by the Abron fleeing the nascent confederation of Asante states. From their settlement some ten kilometers south of the present city of Bondoukou, the Abron gradually extended their hegemony over the autochthonous peoples and the Dyula at Bondoukou who were all Muslims and mostly traders. The Dyula were recent settlers, having emigrated from the collapsing market city of Begho during the preceding half century.

Scholarship until recently has focused on the reaction to colonialism among African elites, often urban elites. Little attention has been given to the perceptions that rural people had of colonial rule and its many manifestations, including missionary activity. As a result, rural dwellers have often been viewed merely as carry-overs from earlier times, living in static societies. They have rarely been seen as adaptive and innovative peoples, coping with or, indeed, thwarting the colonial/mission intrusion.

This article on the Kikuyu of Kenya seeks to describe what happened among one group of rural people as they confronted changing conditions and new opportunities created by British colonialism and American mission activity. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that a great many ordinary people were involved in grass roots activity, activity that calls into question our common notions of rural, early twentieth century Africa.

When the African Inland Mission (AIM) arrived in 1903, they became part of the flux and motion that had been taking place in Kikuyu society for some time. The close control of leadership positions in the primary descent and territorial group, the mbari, and the age organization, the riika, sent ambitious Kikuyu looking elsewhere for challenge and achievement. Within their society a few were able to find this in the areas of magic and divination, but greater numbers were attracted to the frontier as settlers, where they established a new mbari with themselves as leaders. Others found sources of challenge outside their society, particularly in warfare and trade. This combination provided a lively relationship for some Kikuyu with other Mt. Kenya peoples and the neighboring Maasai.