One inevitable result of successful insurgencies is the myth of their uniformity. Certainly, contemporary guerrillas have drawn upon the pioneering.Chinese model of a people's war and the widely-publicised military thought of Mao Tse-tung. This application has led some observers to conclude that there is imitation rather than selection by guerrilla cadres

The virtuousness of the intentions conveyed by David Newsom's homily is indeed difficult to reconcile with the staggering evidence to the contrary recently disclosed through senatorial investigations, press reports, and various other sources. In the context of the post-Watergate era – when Americans have been told of the massive and direct involvement of the C.I.A. in the Angolan civil war, of the assassination plans against the late Patrice Lumumba, and of clandestine activities in Gabon and Madagascar – the least that one can say of such a statement is that it strains credulity.

In the last decade the states of black Africa have taken over a score of large industries owned by multi-national corporations and thousands of small enterprises owned by non-African residents. The methods of takeover, the targets, and the stated justifications vary from country to country, and yet there is a pattern throughout it all. Africans want control in their own house. This article reviews the facts of the takings in black Africa, considers the changing international law of nationalisation, and looks into the future of this confrontation between Africans and foreigners.

On 21 October 1969 the duly elected civilian Government of Somalia was overthrown by the armed forces. General Maxamed Siyad Barre took the helm of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, which proclaimed itself the ‘guardian and saviour of the nation’. The coup has been seen by some as the breakdown of a true democracy, and by others as the foundation of a ‘socialist progressive society’. The egalitarian Somalis have now experienced both a parliamentary democracy and a military oligarchy. Under which have they fared better? Now that President Siyad and the S.R.C. have been ruling Somalia for seven years, perhaps a sober assessment of their performance, in contrast to that of the civilian régime, is in order.

In February 1974, Ethiopia entered a period of deep and occasionally violent political and social change, the result of the breakdown of a semi-feudal system under the impact of economic modernisation. Despite the fact that the army played, and is still playing, the central rôle, it would be wrong to regard the change simply as a coup d'état which replaced one authoritarian régime with another. The political movement that started then was the result of significant social and economic changes which took place during the last 15–20 years of the Emperor's reign.

Race relations have become one of the most sensitive of international issues. They have been transformed from the domestic concern of single countries to a matter of world concern. The story of this transformation is almost too well-known for comment. It grew from a massive revulsion against fascist racialism, the decline of white dominance, the emergence of new states from colonial empires, and the growing dependence of developed countries on the raw materials of the less developed. The United Nations Organisation has, in addition, given the non-white majority a forum from which they can condemn countries maintaining racial stratification. It is clear, therefore, that a breakdown in racial prejudice would not only ease some world tensions, but is a desirable end in itself.

The phenomenon of increasing centralisation of governmental authority is often discussed in the development literature, yet there has been little specific, quantitative research in this area. In this short article I hope to make an analysis of the centralisation phenomenon in Nigeria's development, based on such research, using the evolution of the federal fiscal arrangements as a case-study.

The article by Victor Gerdes on ‘Precursors of Modern Social Security in Indigenous African Institutions’ in this Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 2, June 1975, is timely in raising the question of the interrelationship between ‘modern’ social security schemes, implanted comparatively recently in most African countries, and their traditional precursors. The description of a range of indigenous Ethiopian institutions which, to some extent at least, perform the functions of social security schemes, is a valuable addition to the published material in this field.

In his article on ‘Political and Economic Origins of African Hunger’ in this Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 4, December 1975, Michael Lofchie argues persuasively in favour of considering economic and political processes, rather than natural phenomena, as the major determinants of famine in Africa. He correctly demonstrates that the majority of analysts, be they academics or governmentai and relief officials, continue to view the question of famine in a limited and unsatisfactory manner.

In modern African political literature there is a recurrent reference to the dangers of ‘balkanisation’. Already during the 1920s the Gold Coast nationalist Kobina Sekyi compared Africa with the Balkans, and warned not to follow the ways of ‘balkanisation’ Later Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Sékou Touré, and other anti-colonial leaders continued to employ the term which rapidly became a basic part of the phraseology of modern African nationalism. I shall attempt to analyse the concept, and to show its use, definition, ambivalence, and implications.