Over 300,000 Sudanese perished primarily from hunger during 1988-89 in one of the most avoidable human tragedies in recent history. Mostly from the war-torn southern part of the country, these civilians were deliberately starved by central government, and to a lesser extent the insurgent Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), which used the deprivation of food as a tactic of war. The threat of further genocidal actions by the Islamic fundamentalist junta in Khartoum and the private militias allied with the government continue to daily threaten the lives of millions of internally displaced people. Due to these man-made causes and nature’s lack of rain, up to ten million Sudanese are at risk of malnutrition, hunger and starvation in 1991.

There are few parallels to the human holocaust that took place in Burundi in 1972 in the wake of a tortuous competitive struggle between the country’s two major ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. Scarcely noticed (let alone understood) by public opinion anywhere, the killings are conservatively estimated to have caused between 80,000 and 100,000 deaths. Approximately 3.5 percent of the country’s total population (3.5 million) were physically wiped out in a period of a few weeks. In comparative terms this is as if England had suffered a loss of 2 million or the United States about 8 million people. To speak of “selective genocide” in describing the outcome of such large-scale political violence seems scarcely an exaggeration.

Five years ago, women in Africa moved to the center stage of the continent. The U.N. Decade for Women Conference held in Nairobi brought together women from all over the world to exchange ideas and discuss future strategies. African women turned out for the meeting in force. Women representing governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and grass-roots women's clubs converged on Nairobi to tell their story to other women in the common struggle for equality, justice and peace.

The practice of treating the environment with disdain has gradually become unfashionable. Yet in many developing nations, Nigeria among them, environmental education and awareness campaigns remain something regarded as unnecessary. According to Berry (1993: 158):

It is commonplace to refer to southern Africa as an area of confrontation and strife — an area where conflict between white and black could engulf the southern half of the continent in total warfare. President Kaunda's warning that “warfare in southern Africa would make Vietnam look like a child's picnic” characterizes the opinion of a large number of concerned lookers-on.

Adding to the severity of the situation is the possibility of big-power involvement. With the outbreak of open hostilities in southern Africa, it is possible that the major powers would be seized by a crisis of brinkmanship. Even while failing to lead to war, such a crisis would threaten the modus Vivendi which enables the big powers to regulate their conflicts and to forestall armed hostilities.

Motivated in part by these concerns, the arms control project of the Center for International Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology simulated the conduct of American and foreign leaders under conditions of conflict in southern Africa. In this article, I will report on some aspects of CONEX III, as this simulation was called. I will leave it largely to the reader to assess the validity of the findings and will furnish materials to enable such assessments. Questions of validity aside, the study is an important one. It brings to light the options possibly available to the leaders of black Africa for preserving the peace of the continent while advancing the goals of self-determination and majority rule.

Ghanaians not only have good reason to be extremely cynical about politics and politicians in their country, but also to keep considerable distance from the current debate about the proposals for a civilianized “Union Government” that would follow the retirement of the country's military government. Ghanaians have seen enough political upheaval in 20 years to make them extremely suspicious of what may in fact turn out to be yet another purely symbolic exercise in popular consultation. Militaries ceding power to, and then taking it back from, civilian regimes has become a fairly frequent exercise in recent years; Ghanaians obviously remember the Busia interregnum of 1969–72, and the examples of similar unsuccessful experiments in Upper Volta (1971–74), Dahomey (1964–65, 1970–72), Zaire (1961–65), and the Sudan (1964–69) provide little comfort to the optimistic. Besides, none of the Ghanaian governments since 1957 can be said to have been unqualified successes. To be sure, the Nkrumah regime enjoyed massive popular support during its first few years; yet, when it fell to the February 1966 National Liberation Council (NLC) coup, few except the privileged CPP elite mourned its passing. The NLC managed to accumulate a few good marks during its three years of rule, but its departure was also accompanied by sighs of relief. It was said with all sincerity that nothing so became the NLC as its departure, and given its relative inability to repair the economic damage done by its predecessor, its passing was more welcomed than deplored. The Busia regime fell victim as much to its own ineptness as to Colonel Acheampong's soldiers, and the current military regime's poor showing in the economic realm has certainly not endeared it to Ghana's restive middle class, to say nothing of the peasants victimized by rampant inflation, capricious and corrupt bureaucrats, and such disasters as crop disease, drought, and famine. Even the high price of cocoa has failed to benefit anyone except those who can smuggle their crops to illicit and licit markets outside the country, or who can rake off high percentages from internal transfer.

A century ago, Cecil Rhodes told a Dutch Reformed missionary’s mother that “your son among the natives is worth as much to me as a hundred policemen.” He was referring, of course, to the role many missionaries played in turning Christianity into an ideology which could be used to convince Africans not to resist white domination.

Rhodes’ modern-day successors—South Africa’s white rulers and their allies—have gone one dangerous step further. For them, it is not enough to use the church as a kind of ideological cheering section for white domination. Instead they are quite literally using pastors and missionaries as soldiers and policemen.

At the risk of being called unscholarly, or unnecessarily pedantic, I would like to revive an old issue: the role of Africanists vis-à-vis Africa. In most intellectual circles, this issue is shunned. Generally, criticism of Africanists has been presented in terms of the relevance and/or nature of African/ non-African, Black/White involvement in Africa. The defense of the Africanist community, however, has been based on the impartiality of scientific investigation and the cumulative nature of all knowledge– without regard to cultural bias. My purpose here is to take a slightly different route and to interweave the two views in an effort to restate the case against Africanists.