In his recent article in this Journal, X, I, May 1972, Dr Michael F. Lofchie catalogued what he considers to be the major factors contributing to the Uganda coup. In his analysis, Lofchie emphasises President Obote's ‘Move to the Left’ ideology for its threat to the privileged position of the military: ‘The coup of January 1971 was the army's political response to an increasingly socialist régime whose qualitariar, domestic policies posed more and more of a threat to the military's economic privileges.’

The racial cleavage has understandably dominated most studies of Rhodesian politics. Cohn Leys claimed in the late 1950s that the European community maintained ‘a type of one-party system’ that sustained itself by uniting on race against all foes, rather than splitting along class or social lines.1 The centrality of race has been challenged recently by Giovanni Arrighi, who argued that the policies of consecutive Rhodesian Governments could be explained by orthodox Marxism,2 and by David Murray, whose study of the 1923–53 period revealed a classically pluralist model of competing economic groups.3