More than ten years after the turn from non-violence to organised violence by the African opposition in South African the white Nationalist régime remains firmlly entrenched in power. Its security forces have successfully suppressed sabotage campaigns initiated in the early 1960s, unco-ordinated terrorist attacks mounted during the same period, and incipient guerrilla action in South-West Africa in 1966. At the call of the authorities in Salisbury they joined their northern neighbours to defeat armed incursions in Rhodesia during 1967–8, and more recently they have contained sporadic attacks in the Caprivi Strip along the Zambian border. The South African Government appears confident that its forces can continue to thwart any future attempts at domestic insurgency.

Since Malawi became independent on 6 July 1964 diplomatic relations with her eastern neighbour, Tanzania, have been almost permanently strained. Differences between the two states have focused on three sets of issues: contrasting attitudes and policies towards the white minority régimes to the South, President Banda's suspicion that Tanzania was aiding and abetting the attempts by certain prominent Malawi exiles to subvert his régime,1 and a dispute over the de-limitation of the boundary between the two states along Lake Malawi (Nyasa).

These issues are not easily separable: for if it had not been for Banda's outspoken policy towards the white South (which led him alone amongst African statesmen to establish diplomatic relations with South Africa), there would have been no compelling grounds for Tanzania, which opposed this policy, to offer asylum and support to his political opponents; and if it had not been for Tanzania's confrontation, not only with South Africa but also with the Portuguese authorities in Mozambique (with whom Malawi also maintained close relations), it is doubtful whether President Nyerere would have been provoked during May 1967 into bringing the Lake dispute into the open. There is no doubt also that Malawi exiles in Dar es Salaam were actively campaigning against Banda's régime, at this time, over the whole range of his policies, including the question of the Lake.

Numerous commentaries have been written on Frantz Fanon's theory of decolonisation in relation to the peasants, most of them focusing on his claim that they constitute the most revolutionary sector in the Third World. This article critically re-examines what Fanon said–and what others think he said–dealing specifically with generalisations based on his observations of the Algerian peasantry during the war of independence, November 1954 to July 1962.

In the past several years there has been a proliferation of studies on coup d'états in Africa and the political role of African military structures. Armies have been analysed in terms of their social and ethnic composition, training, ideology, and socialising influences. Intense debate has focused around the overt and covert reasons for their intervention in the political arena. Simple and complex typologies of civil–military relations and of military coups have been constructed; statistical data – both hard and soft – has been marshalled and subjected to factor and regression analysis, in order to validate general or middle-range theories of military intervention. And once in power, the officer corps' performance has been examined in order to generate insights into its propensity to serve as a modernising or developmental agent.

In the literature of the social sciences, increased political participation is often regarded as one of the symptoms of a ‘modernising’ polity,1 but there have been few attempts to examine the detailed implications in any African rural society. This short article attempts to show that the national leaders in Sierra Leone feared the implications of mass participation in politics. Basically conservative and opposed to the idea of upsetting the status quo, they were satisfied in so far as they retained the support of their people in the struggle for independence, and if thereafter they were able to command enough votes at election times. They were afraid of the changes which countrywide political ‘involvement’ might imply, since these would have threatened their own privileged position.

Almost every student of the ideologies of the developing nations is familiar with the thesis regarding African socialism. It is held that village society was traditionally communal, and that consequently the introduction of socialist régimes in the newly established African states might not be expected to pose major difficulties. For many years it has become almost commonplace to comment on this hypothesis in a casual manner, to argue for and against it on the basis of one's own normative commitments, or simply to describe it as a political fact. Rarely has any systematic attempt been made to examine it analytically.

The language of African scholarship, like Africa itself, is a harp of many strings. It allows for countless variations, even though the central theme may recur. ‘Power’ is undoubtedly one of the most familiar of such themes: the variations played upon it are legion, ranging from the popular to the esoteric, from the classical to the lyrical.

Jean Ziegler's tune in his latest work, Le Pouvoir africain (Paris, 1971), clearly fits into the latter category. Even though the settings he has chosen for investigating African power – Burundi (indigenous) and Brazil (imported) – are likely to capture anyone's imagination, the author's manifest enthusiasm for the exotic seems to exceed the limits of the ‘sociological imagination’. Quite aside from the question of whether generalisations about African power are at all feasible on the basis of such limiting cases, Ziegler's handling of his subject matter raises a number of difficulties for the uninitiated reader – not the least of which is his tendency to lump together the form and substance of power in an ethnographic present seemingly fixed once and for all in time and space. Another difficulty stems from his peculiar terminology, at times so elusive as to confuse rather than illuminate the phenomena discussed: what, exactly, is meant by ‘la spécificité irréductible africaine”, or ‘la sociabilite africaine’ is anyone's guess. Ziegler's constant preoccupation with the surface manifestations of power – or, better still, with his own vision of these phenomena – occasionally leads him into a vein reminiscent of the worst examples of journalistic sensationalism, from which he only extricates himself by lapsing into calculated imprecision.

Of all works of literature, the novel is the most referential, the most discursive, and the most elusive. According to Philip Stevick's analysis, the novel, more than any other genre, is capable of containing large, developed consistent images of people, and can give form to a set of attitudes regarding a particular society, history, or the general culture of which it is an important part.1 David Daiches is accurate in pointing out the closeness of this relationship between the novel and its milieu: ‘Civilization is the attitudes and actions of people, and fiction uses these… as the raw material out of which to construct the kind of pattern we call a novel. No other art does this quite so directly.2

Recent articles by André Simmons and K. M. Barbour have analysed the various advantages of, and strategies for, regional economic integration in West Africa.1 This note focuses on the technical obstacles of full integration, and then on sub-regional economic co-operation as a more practical alternative.

How can one agree upon an accepted distribution of the benefits from regional economic integration? How could this be implemented among the West African countries ? These are the most difficult and contentious problems associated with forming and operating any customs union and free trade area among the developing countries. If an acceptable distribution of benefits does not come about, then ‘the operation of existing groupings may easily be rendered ineffective or, in extreme cases, they may collapse. The experience of the last few years demonstrates that this is not a remote possibility.’2

The International Studies Programme of the University of Toronto sponsored a conference on this topic from 6 to 8 April 1973, with participants not only from Canada, but also from Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The main aim was to assess the extent to which both radical and liberal writers are correct in ascribing to the working class a fairly passive rôle in Africa's economic and political development. In selecting the 13 papers for presentation, an attempt was made to provide a balanced coverage of Africa south of the Sahara, although Nigeria justifiably received the greatest attention. The discussions were particularly rewarding because of the presence of seven scholars and trade union leaders from West and East Africa, as well as a number of Canadian union officials who had served as advisers in Africa. The attendance of such an array of expertise was only possible because of the generosity of the University of Toronto, the Canada Council, the Canadian International Development Agency, and the Canadian National Office of the United Steelworkers of America.

In a recent issue of this Journal – Vol. IX, No. 4, December 1972 – Rodolfo Salcedo explores the question of causal sequences in the modernisation process. His article illustrates three serious weaknesses in current research into this problem: (i) the inadequate conception of modernisation as a dependent variable, (ii) the choice of theoretically significant independent variables in discussing paths to modernisation, and (iii) the neglect of political participation as a relevant factor.

Education for rural development in Africa is a sure-fire subject, but changes happen quickly, and sometimes disastrously for projects which looked like having a long life. Jennifer C. Ward's optimistic discussion of experiments in Botswana – in this Journal, x, 4, December 1972, pp. 611–20 – is unfortunately somewhat out of date. Both Swaneng Hill School and Shashi River School have almost ceased their old emphasis on involvement with practical village life and their possibilities of producing a new type of boy or girl. Under Government-appointed headmasters, both these schools are now back to standard examination-passing, with all the emphasis on classroom work and most pupils doubtless looking forward either to the whitecollar professions or to office jobs, both in the daily increasing ranks of the public and private sectors.

One of the major concerns of Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, and Sierra Leone during the operation of the West African Currency Board was the alleged relationship between the money supply and the balance of payments. It was argued by critics that changes in foreign exchange reserves tended to exert a preponderant influence on the monetary base, the main determinant of the money stock – which, in turn, is a good indicator of the thrust of monetary forces. The aim of this note is to discover the extent to which the monetary authorities have influenced the ‘base’ since the establishment of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

In a recent issue of this Journal, x, 2, July 1972, pp. 223–45, Dr E. Wayne Nafziger assessed ‘The Economic Impact of the Nigerian Civil War’. The article is, in general, an excellent summary and analysis of the available statistical information on the Nigerian economy for the war period, June 1967 to January 1970, as well as the years leading up to and immediately following the hostilities. However, the author has made an error in his interpretation of the Nigerian gross domestic product series which has led him to seriously understate the decline in aggregate economic activity associated with the war.