The greatest achievement of Arabism in the Sudan has been the unquestioned acceptance by the whole world that this is an Arab state, in spite of the fact that only about 40 per cent of the population is Arab. Indeed, the predominance of the Arab Sudanese in the country's culture, politics, administration, commerce, and industry makes it de facto an Arab state. The ascendancy and assertiveness of the Arabs caused the North–South conflict to be almost intractable, while their economic and political domination led even the Northern Muslims to begin to assert themselves, although they had traditionally looked with favour upon assimilation into Arab culture.

One characteristic which all countries presently hold in common — whatever their level of income — is the tendency for a growing proportion of the population to be employed in the ‘service sector’ of their economies rather than in ‘secondary’ or industrial activities. The purpose of this short article is to suggest that a consideration of certain features of the expanding employment in services in low-income countries may help to evaluate two commonly identified situations. First, in regard to manufacturing activities there has been a persistent tendency towards increasing capital intensity, despite the frequent assertion that resort should be made to more labour intensive technology in order to ‘spread’ jobs more widely. Secondly, the pace of urbanisation has continued to accelerate, despite widespread concern over high rates of urban unemployment and under-employment that seem a consequence of excessive migration to the cities.

It is a comparatively recent development that places housing not only as one of the main targets in the national plan, but also as a vital means of achieving other social and economic objectives.1 Admirable though this may be, a number of difficulties can arise in practice, particularly with regard to the question of new housing where many dwellings may be on unsuitable sites and require relocation or extensive redevelopment. The point is that remedial measures are likely to have only short-term effects, unless several underlying – and often conflicting – variables are taken into account. Four such variables have assumed importance in the planning for future housing needs in the Greater Manzini Area of Swaziland, and it is the purpose of this article to illustrate how policies relating to industrial location, urban growth, and housing, interact with the tenurial system in force.

A COMMON premise in the study of central–local relations in new states is the belief that governments attempt to extend their authority into most areas of socio–economic and political life. By exerting influence within a variety of distinct spheres of activity throughout the national territory, central authorities are supposed to create connections between national institutions and potential arenas for the exercise of central power. These ‘structures’, such as local administration, political parties, schools, and programmes as diverse as agricultural extension and family planning, are intended to be the orgartisational skeleton of the new state. Their success in relating central authority to specific localities, political movements, and development problems is supposed to indicate the degree of institutionalisation of a regime and its level of development.1 Observers of this process examine the ‘penetration’ of public policy into local areas, the expansion of the influence of central authority on traditional political and administrative arrangements, and the gradual incorporation of the ‘periphery’ into the process of decision-making at the ‘centre’. While differing in form and content across national boundaries, the ‘crisis of penetration’ is understood to be a common experience in the political development of new states.2

Soviet relations with the countries of black Africa have been of considerable interest to many western scholars. They have examined extensively the history of these relations, their shifting doctrinal bases, and the many formidable problems Soviet policy-makers have encountered in the pursuit of their stated objectives.1 A frequently overlooked aspect is the scholarly research of a group of Africanists whose activities appear to be inextricably linked with overall Soviet efforts in Africa.

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.

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.