Land and agrarian studies are an integral part of Archie Mafeje's oeuvre. He acknowledges that Africa is still largely a rural continent and that an agrarian economy is likely to persist for a very long time to come. Because he is writing about the post-independence period there is, he argues, no land question in sub-Saharan Africa: it is an agrarian one. He hastens to point out, however, that southern Africa is an exception, as the subregion has a white settler community. Sam Moyo, who also conducted extensive work on the land and agrarian question in southern Africa, suggests that ‘unequal land distribution and land market relations in non-settler Africa had in fact been growing by the late 1990s’. Even in those countries where land is no longer owned by settlers, there is land alienation – the land is still not owned by the black masses. This is what Moyo refers to as the emergence of ‘a distributional land question’. Moyo agrees with Mafeje, however, that ‘the fundamental land and labour relations of Africa's pre-capitalist modes of economic and political organisation had persisted during and after colonialism and capitalist penetration in the former non-settler territories of Africa’. Mafeje and Moyo reject ‘the dominant view that agrarian transformation in Africa was constrained by alleged deficiencies in African land tenure systems’. (I should like to add that rural development is not limited to agricultural activities.) Relying on concrete examples, Mafeje attempts to overthrow Eurocentric paradigms – which is consistent with his search for an epistemological break. In addressing the land and agrarian question, Mafeje took historical sociology seriously.

The problem in its intellectual setting

A problem with the system of foreign aid is that international agencies assume recipient countries have no professionals to advise their own governments. This is an ideological issue. ‘The aim is clear,’ as Samir Amin writes. ‘[It is] to create the conditions that would allow modern islands of agribusiness to take possession of the land [non-governmental organisations and donor agencies] need in order to expand.’ Mafeje argues that this ‘volte-face exposes the cynicism of the epistemology of subjectobject in bureaucratically conceived strategies for development’.