At the important forum for debate of the current state of African-American relations provided by the African-American Institute meetings in Harare, Zimbabwe, in January 1983, two apparently contradictory themes emerged in the public and private assessments of American-African policy by the African delegates. On the one hand, they observed—to their disappointment and dismay—that American policy appeared to remain essentially unchanged over the last quarter-century. On the other, and in the next breath, they angrily denounced the theory of “constructive engagement” in southern Africa, and in particular its corollary of “linkage” of Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola to South African acquiescence in a Namibia settlement.

Is it possible that Chester Crocker is simply Richard Moose by another name? Senator Jesse Helms evidently thinks so, but should we? Or, to put the matter more graphically, is it plausible that, despite the apparent rhetorical contrasts, United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick holds essentially the same views concerning Africa as did her predecessors Andrew Young and Donald McHenry? Perhaps this is a timely moment to explore this seeming paradox. Within the foreign policy machinery of the United States government, Africa was accorded bureaucratic recognition in 1958, a quarter-century ago, through the creation of the Bureau of African Affairs. This organizational innovation symbolized the birth of an African policy, even though episodic connections with sundry African states extend far back to the early days of the Republic: Liberia, Morocco, Zanzibar, Egypt, Ethiopia.

The early scholarship on post-independence Africa contained a decided focus on and preoccupation with political leadership. This emphasis was due in part to the fact that political leaders were particularly visible embodiments of the state and that the institutions of the state were much more amorphous and elusive of analysis than the leadership. Even political parties, which were the focus of a great deal of research in the late fifties and early sixties, were examined much more in the context of political leadership than of institutional structures or their relationship to the state. This focus on political leaders was based on the expectation by both writers and political leaders themselves that the new political elites of Africa were going to transform the political, economic, and social life of these states in the very near future. These views were not just functions of the romanticism of the sixties, but were expectations grounded in beliefs about self-government, freedom, participation, self-determination, and development.

Political leaders were seen as the key to mobilization of the masses (Apter, 1963: xv, 303-5; Pye, 1962: 27-28), the driving force for development (Apter, 1967: 378-79), the architects of institution building (Huntington and Moore, 1970: esp. 32; Huntington, 1968), and the focus of national integration (Coleman and Rosberg, 1964). They were to provide a new moral leadership, a short-cut to political and economic development, and the drive and charisma to move the post-colonial state from its period of suspended animation into the twentieth century.

Ever since Raúl Prebisch, UNCTAD's first Secretary General, called attention to it in his famous 1964 report (UNCTAD, 1964), the commodities problem has been a priority item on the international agenda in the various forums where the North-South dialogue has been taking place. When the First Lomé Convention was signed on 28 February 1975 between the nine countries of the European Economic Community (EEC) and forty-six African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) states, it was hailed as a major achievement, exemplary of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) then emerging within the wider framework of the North-South dialogue.

In particular, much was made of the EEC countries' attempt to come to grips with the commodities problem by agreeing to set up a scheme (known as “Stabex” in Lomé parlance) for the stabilization of export earnings from commodities exported by the ACP states to the EEC. This system, generally held as the most innovative feature of the Lomée Convention, seemed to meet some, if not all, of the demands voiced by the developing countries in the context of the NIEO on the problem of commodities.

Yet, this was by no means a gratuitous gesture on the part of the EEC. In the first place, the Community's acute awareness of its dependence on raw materials imports from the ACP states, as well as of the latter's dependence on raw materials exports to the EEC, tended to make it responsive to the ACP states' demands in the area of commodities.

The limited size of domestic markets, the availability of natural and technological resources in national units, and the desire to retain some form of protection against full global competition are all factors which promote the formation of regional economic groupings. National markets are usually too small to support efficient industries, exploiting economies of scale or specialization. The elimination of tariffs within an economic community and a common external tariff to non-members should divert trade from external to internal community sources. For industries favorably affected by trade diversion, trade expansion should enable the exploitation of economies of scale and specialization formerly unattainable because of the small size of the domestic market. Production should be allocated among members on the basis of comparative advantage and, following free trade theory, it should then be at its most efficient and low cost. Economic integration is essentially then a strategy of export promotion and free trade among members and of import substitution and protection towards nonmembers (Balassa, 1973; Berendsen, 1978).

As Balassa and Stoutjesdijk (1975) have noted, trade diversion and regional protection may have harmful effects. Goods imported from regional partners may be inferior or higher in price. Less competitive conditions may slow the adoption of new technologies. One of the problems of any economic community is, therefore, to minimize these disadvantages. Relevant policies include both the promotion of efficient and competitive intra-regional exchange by setting external tariffs at sufficiently low levels and, also, the maximum exploitation of member state comparative advantage.

Like most West African countries, Nigeria abounds in traditional associations or societies often referred to erroneously as “secret” societies. Secret societies (according to a dictionary of social science [Gould and Kolb, 1964: 642]) are those associations in which secret rituals, symbols, signs, medicines, as well as other material paraphernalia make up the main part of their raison d'être and gain psychological significance through being concealed. In the same vein, Hammond (1971: 193) notes that membership in secret societies is limited to only a segment of the total eligible population; members focally protect the secrecy surrounding their rituals, secret rites that are believed to increase the supernatural powers of their members; and that non-initiates are usually permitted to learn just enough about them to be frightened, impressed, and, therefore, enticed to join them.

A closer examination, however, shows that, more than nuisance value, secret societies fulfill economic, social, and political functions similar to those of associations based primarily on age and sex. For example, Robert Lowie (1927) was fascinated by functional resemblances between West African secret societies and certain men's organizations among the Plains Indians in America. This led him to suspect that the state might be found latent in sodalities or “associations.”

In the particular case of most Nigerian associations, the esoteric basis of their activities sets them apart from others like medicine societies, that is, societies concerned with the practice of traditional methods of diagnosis and healing.

Because of the ominous implications of a showdown in the United Nations over South West Africa, and in view of its uncertain outcome, it is of the highest importance that U.S. policy be actively directed to averting such a confrontation (Nielsen, 1965: 123).

A perennial of international diplomacy—the question of Namibia (South West Africa—remains unresolved. South Africa maintains military and political control while diplomats come and go. United Nations' resolutions go unheeded, and war devastates northern Namibia and adjacent southern Angola. A substantial body of literature on the international legal dispute over the territory has existed for some time. In recent years there has also been much research on Namibia's political economy and on the dominant role of foreign investment there. A few works also have appeared on internal political developments and on the liberation movement, the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO).

Observers familiar with the issue have repeatedly noted the main features of Western policy: the Western powers, including United Nations Security Council members Great Britain, France, and the United States, have often concurred in stronger and stronger international condemnations of South African rule, but those same countries have consistently balked at agreeing to sanctions on South Africa. Western representatives again and again have rebuffed African pleas for effective action to compel compliance with UN resolutions. Such a contrast between rhetoric and practice is not unusual in foreign policy, of course. In the Namibian case, however, the contradiction is unusually explicit.