In 1965 Kwame Nkrumah published a book which was to exert a powerful influence on thinking about economic development.1 His thesis was that colonialism had been replaced by neo-colonialism, ‘the last stage of imperialism’, the essence of which was that ‘the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside’.2 He went on to argue that ‘giant financial interests’ exercised control over nominally independent states,3 with the result that foreign control was used for ‘the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world’.4

A fundamental dilemma has long lain at the heart of the Organisation of African Unity. Two contradictory principles have helped it maintain solidarity: the first recognises that domestic jurisdiction rests at the foundation of sovereign equality, while the second stresses that national policies such as apartheid have international consequences. These principles clash directly in the broad area of human rights.

The term ‘parastatal’ is used rather loosely in Zambia, being often applied to a wide range of bodies such as boards, corporations, and companies that operate in the state-dominated sector of the economy. It is unfortunate that there has not been greater consistency in official usage, but these organisations have grown up over the years in different forms to meet felt needs and not according to a preconceived plan. The vagaries in terminology also reflect a degree of uncertainty in government policy on how the public sector should be ordered, as well as a piecemeal approach in its interventions in the economy since independence. However, in recent years the nomenclature has received greater attention out of a recognition that the parastatals loom rather large in the economy, often being more prominent than government departments and more visible than the private sector.

Events in independent Zimbabwe have confounded pundits on the left and the right who assumed that African resistance to settler colonial rule was more revolutionary than nationalistic. How can the rather unexpected direction of political and economic change in Zimbabwe since April 1980 be understood? The Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) Government of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe has committed itself to redress the severe social inequities of the past, but has decided, at least at the outset, to reach its goals through a prudent rather than a doctrinaire approach. What factors explain the current development strategy? Does the apparent accommodation of Z.A.N.U. (P.F.) with private capital signal a dangerous divergence from the stated goal of building socialism? Or does it represent an awakening to the idea that economic production, even if organised on capitalist lines, is a prerequisite of development in Africa?

‘The artist has always functioned in African society’, he said, ‘the record of mores and experiences of his society and … the voice of vision in his own time. It is time’, he concluded, ‘for [the artist] to respond to this essence of himself.’ The words appeared in mid-1967; their author Wole Soyinka, already celebrated as a leading poet and dramatist, representing the younger generation of writers among Africa's newly independent nations.

Urban unemployment and underemployment are widespread problems in Africa, perhaps more so than on other continents. It is a truism, apparently accepted by most governments, that capital is scarce, and that the rate of development and employment creation are constrained by the relative scarcity of capital equipment and the slow rate of capital formation. And yet these two observations, challengeable but generally accepted as commonplace and obvious truths, co-exist in much of Africa with a paradoxical third statement: that much of the urban capital stock, particularly in the modern-service sectors – government, education, large-scale commerce, finance, etcetera – is utilised at a very low rate, typically of the order of 25–30 per cent of the potential maximum. This brief note speculates on the reasons for this state of affairs, and explores the consequences of adopting a possible policy designed to produce a significant change.

The speeches and articles of Amílcar Cabral represent an attempt to think of imperialism and the colonial relationship in a new way. His published works sought to explain how a subsistence agricultural society was being transformed under the abnormal conditions attendant upon colonial domination. Superficially, Cabral does not present any new or particularly complex interpretation of colonialism. With the exception of a few rather brief essays, most of his work is a description of a guerrilla war fought against the last of the great colonial powers. Yet the appearance of the terms ‘mode of production’ and ‘productive forces’ indicates that his understanding of imperialism is founded on a new set of presuppositions. Cabral used these terms before they became common among the ranks of the ‘advanced left’, and at a time when the concept of the mode of production was essentially a possession of Soviet Marxism. In the early 1960s, Soviet visions of the ‘Asiatic Mode of Production’ were achieving much the same effect as modernisation theory in the West. That most of Cabral's important essays were written at this time only emphasises the innovativeness of his work.