The Ethiopian experiment stands out among the burgeoning Afro-Marxist states which have sprung up since about 1976. Its uniqueness does not lie in the fact that the revolution which spawned it had its roots in historic feudalism (although this has given it a somewhat unique character), nor does its uniqueness result from being an uncommon example of an attempt to build a state socialist society in the Third World. There are others-among them Viet Nam, Cuba, Benin, Angola, and Mozambique (Young, 1982; Ottaway and Ottaway, 1981). In fact with the decline of the Soviet Union's ability to impose ideological conformity on its clients and allies in the post-World War II era, Third World states have found it increasingly easy to adapt the Marxist-Leninist model devised by the Soviets to fit their own countries' objective conditions as they interpret them. Furthermore, the Ethiopia experiment is not any more successful than other such experiments in the Third World.

Ethiopia's efforts to build a new socialist society are primarily of interest because it seems to be moving toward state socialism despite the architects of this transformation viewing this process more as a means to an end than as an end in itself. The higher goal is clearly the legitimation of the vanguard role of the “men in uniform.” The priority assigned to maintaining a central role in the revolution for elements of the military is evidenced in the manner in which the long-promised vanguard party of workers, peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals was formed between 1979 and 1984.

There is an unbroken continuity in African verbal art forms, from interacting oral genres to such literary productions as the novel and poetry. The strength of the oral tradition seems not to have abated; through three literary periods, a reciprocal linkage has worked these media into a unique art form against which potent influences from East and West have proved unequal. Vital to African literature is the relationship between the oral and written word; in seemingly insignificant interstices have flourished such shadowy literary figures as Egyptian scribes, Hausa and Swahili copyists and memorizers, and contemporary writers of popular novellas, all playing crucial transitional roles in their respective literatures. The oral tale is not “the childhood of fiction” (Macculloch, 1905), but the early literary traditions were beneficiaries of the oral genres, and there is no doubt that the epic and its hero are the predecessors of the African novel and its central characters.

The African oral tradition distills the essences of human experiences, shaping them into rememberable, readily retrievable images of broad applicability with an extraordinary potential for eliciting emotional responses. These are removed from their historical contexts so that performers may recontextualize them in artistic forms. The oral arts, containing this sensory residue of past cultural life and the wisdom so engendered, constitute a medium for organizing, examining, and interpreting an audience's experiences of the images of the present. The tradition is a venerable one.

The ruling class has lost its consensus … this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies. … The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

—Antonio Gramsci (1973: 276)

The notion of a general crisis in African agriculture has entered the current African development lexicon with great rapidity. In spite of the questionable quality of some of the most basic agricultural production statistics (see Berry, 1984), critics of quite different political and theoretical persuasion have promoted the view of widespread structural stagnation (World Bank, 1981; Eicher, 1982; Lofchie and Commins, 1982). Sustained by the realities of starving peasants in the Horn of Africa, of a meteoric growth in food imports during the 1970s, and the persistence of high fertility regimes across the continent, this identification of an agricultural collapse in more than twenty African states raises the spectre of a Malthusian crisis of terrifying proportions (Africa News, Feb. 6, 1984). The plausibility of a widespread agrarian crisis is lent further credence when it is painted on the much larger canvas of national economic performance. The quadrupling of oil prices, stagnant or falling primary commodity prices, high interest rates and debilitating debt repayments, and periodic recession in the world economy have all contributed to the unfavorable current account balance and the economic austerity across the continent as a whole.

The government of Zimbabwe has publicly committed itself to a development strategy which it terms “Growth With Equity.” At least two official policy documents articulate the strategy: Growth With Equity (1981) and The Transitional National Development Plan: 1982/83-1984/85 (1982; hereafter TNDP). The theme appears frequently as well in the semi-official press and in Zimbabwe News, a publication of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) party. In each, the government claims that Growth With Equity will move the country away from the capitalist socio-economic system it inherited to a socialist order better able to redress the extreme racial and class inequities which were Rhodesia. Transformation is the watchword.

The degree to which the strategy will transform Zimbabwe-indeed, the degree to which it is even intended to do so-draws increasingly skeptical commentary. From the ranks of neoclassical economists comes the critique that Growth With Equity sets over-high standards and is technically unfeasible (EIU Special Report, 1981). Mainstream development theorists call attention to the moderate-reformist aspects of the strategy which predict a Fabian socialist future (Bratton, 1981). Radicals, once quite willing to give the Mugabe government the benefit of doubt, are becoming disillusioned; the most promising aspect of Growth With Equity, some say, is its Gramscian logic (Saul, 1980; The Review of African Political Economy, 1980; Bush and Cliff, 1984).

There is no dearth of Zimbabwe-watching and no shortage of opinion on the country's development prospects.

Studies of drama and other performing arts in Africa suffer from what Andrew Horn (1981: 181) in a recent article terms “an unnecessary imprecision of nomenclature.” Horn has in mind the tendency among certain scholars, African and non-African, to apply the name “drama” to African traditional performances of every description. Convincing corroboration for his point comes from the entries (among which his article is one) in Yemi Ogunbiyi's (1981) recent collection of scholarly discussions on drama and theater in Nigeria. The essays in the volume embrace such diverse activities as religious rituals, spirit mediumship, one-man comic shows, puppetry, various forms of masquerades, and others that more closely resemble conventional drama.

What Horn describes as a “curious refusal to acknowledge generic distinctions” confronts any scholar who attempts to pursue precise dialogues on this supposedly wellestablished art form, because of the stubborn difficulty of establishing any precise delimitations for it, at least in its African manifestation. An illustration of the confusion might begin with Peter Nazareth's (1978: 91) statement that “dramatic forms” existed in Africa well before the arrival of the colonialists. “We are almost a nation of dancers, musicians, and poets,” he quotes Olaudah Equiano as saying, adding: “Equiano is describing a peculiarly African phenomenon, part ballet, part drama, part opera in which the entire community is the cast and the village square the stage.” From these examples of “pre-drama,” he observes further, drama has developed in West Africa in contrast to East Africa, which suffered in this regard from a more unfortunate colonial experience than did West Africa.

This paper is a general interpretation of the social determinants of health and health care in Africa over the past century. The evolution of health cannot be separated from the broader story of social change. The political and economic forces which shaped the continent's history also established the framework within which patterns of diagnosis and treatment, health and disease, emerged.

The implication of this is that healers of all kinds—whether doctors or “traditional healers”—have been less influential than we commonly think in shaping states of health or in healing the sick.

This position opens up a range of difficult problems which are addressed in the following pages. What is the exact nature of the link between the broad political-economic forces and the distribution of health or disease? Which of these forces have driven therapeutics along its historical path, and by what means? What role do healers actually play?

The body of the paper is divided into three main sections. The first explores the micro-sociology of changing treatment of illness. In most African communities several kinds of healers work side by side: physicians or medical assistants, specialists in sorcery or spirit possession, Christian or Muslim religious healers, and others. Multiple authorities co-exist, and therefore no one healer decides the cause or cure of illnesses in a way which others accept as beyond challenge. But treatment cannot exist without coordination. Someone must decide on a course of action when lives are threatened.

This article is extracted from a larger essay which grew as a consequence (or, more exactly, as an accident) of an invitation to establish a survey on African philosophy. Strictly speaking, the notion of African philosophy refers to contributions of Africans practicing philosophy within the definite framework of the discipline and its historical tradition (Horton, 1976; Hountondji, 1977; Mudimbe, 1983b). It is only metaphorically or, at best, from a historicist perspective, that one would extend the notion to African traditional systems of thought, considering them as dynamic processes of integrating concrete experiences into the order of concepts and discourses (Ladrière, 1979: 14-15). Thus, I have preferred to title this text “African Gnosis.” J. Fabian used the notion of gnosis (1969) in his analysis of a charismatic African movement. In this contribution, the wider frame of this notion seems better to encompass the range of problems addressed, all of which are based on a preliminary question: to what extent can one speak of an “African knowledge,” and in which sense? Etymologicaly, gnosis is related to gnosko, which in ancient Greek means “to know.” It refers to a structured, common, and conventional knowledge, but strictly under the control of specific procedures for its use as well as transmission. Gnosis is, consequently, different from doxa, or opinion, and, on the other hand, cannot be confused with episteme, or general intellectual configuration.

Increasing attention has been paid to population growth in the Third World. Although it is commonly held that mortality decline has been responsible for the population increases that have occurred, in many instances fertility has contributed significantly to the population increases as well. Many traditional societies have relatively high fertility rates, but they are still often below the potential maximum. Fertility in these pre-modern societies has been held in check by health conditions of the society, by prolonged breastfeeding, and by sexual restraint, particularly after the birth of a child (Lesthaeghe, 1981: 3–23). The move from a traditional to a more modern society can mean increased health care and better nutritional status, both of which may improve the health of the mother and child and lead to increased fecundity and higher fertility. In addition, the relaxation of postnatal sexual abstinence and the decrease in the length of lactation which usually accompanies this transition can lead to shorter birth intervals and higher fertility levels. The time lag between the effects of fertility-increasing factors and the changes in values and norms which favor smaller family size allows rapid population growth to occur.

Evidence for this pattern of fertility increase can be found in many Third World countries (Nag, 1981). In Africa, for example, a rise in fertility during the beginning stages of modernization has been documented in Zaire (Romaniuk, 1980), Nigeria (Olusanya, 1969), and Sudan (Henin, 1969). In each case, the rise has been accounted for through the spread of social and economic change.

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.—Ethiopian proverb

The overriding structural and political characteristic of the Southern African subsystem has been the dominance of the Republic of South Africa. Indeed, South Africa's ties to the subordinate states of the region have given the subsystem form and substance. An economic Gulliver among Lilliputians, South Africa created a network of trade dependencies, investment flows, labor migration patterns, and infrastructural ties (railways, roads, etc.) which bound the countries of the area together and which secured South Africa's pivotal position within the region. Before the successful wars of national liberation in the 1970s, South Africa had close political connections with the white regimes in Angola, Mozambique, and Rhodesia as well as with a black-ruled state, H. K. Banda's Malawi. As a military force, South Africa was without parallel, and the other white-ruled states formed a buffer against the hostile black states to the north. Thus, it was South Africa which both held the subsystem together and benefited from its existence. Much has changed in Southern Africa since the early 1970s. Angola and Mozambique gained their independence from Portugal. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. These political changes in turn destroyed the buffer zone which had once afforded South Africa protection from the independent African states. Emboldened by the success of such national liberation efforts, blacks within South Africa escalated the tempo of their agitation for change in the structures of apartheid.

The electoral process in Sierra Leone has changed substantially over the last twenty years from one operating in the context of a competitive multi-party system to one defined by the formal establishment of a one-party state in 1978 with elections under those rules in 1982. The former was often cited as a model of democratic competition; the latter was established to overcome problems the political elite felt resided in multi-party competition. In this sense, Sierra Leone was not unlike many other African states (including Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Ivory Coast) which had moved to de facto or de jure single-party systems. The earlier effectiveness of the multi-party system in Sierra Leone, which saw the opposition party defeat the party in power, makes this a particularly interesting case for examining the electoral process in a singleparty context in general.

This study focuses on the 1982 election in Sierra Leone and its implications for the political process. Of particular importance are the changes which occurred as the country moved from a political system which fostered competition between parties to one in which electoral competition was to be within the framework of the single-party system. The move to a one-party state had obvious consequences for the electoral process. Less obvious are the implications for electoral competition, campaign strategy, the legitimacy of the government, and the nature of participation in elections. The creation of a one-party state is often seen as an exercise in elite control of the masses (Hermet et al., 1978: vii) with elections functioning as part of the process of manipulation and control (Edelman, 1971; Collier, 1982).

The study of Malawi's colonial history has been dominated by the establishment of British rule, the spread of Christian mission influence, and the development of nationalism, among other themes. Perhaps due to the Whiggish approach to history which has influenced many historians of colonial Malawi, critical issues such as ethnic awareness–which was developing in a pronounced way at the same time as the expansion of mission schools and the evolution of national feelings-have been neglected until recently (Vail, 1983: White, 1983). It appears that ethnic awareness has been taken for granted and accepted without a proper understanding of it. This article discusses ethnicity in the old North Nyasa district in the period 1891-1938. It demonstrates how the economic and political changes which took place in the region in the first three decades of the establishment of colonial rule promoted ethnic tension, and it argues that the indirect rule system (which assumed that the African was a tribal man, inward-looking, with a primary loyalty to so-called traditional authority) was not only divisive, but also a major catalyst for greater ethnicity. It also argues that through certain educational practices which tended to discriminate against some peoples of the region, a number of Karonga-based missionaries of the Livingstonia Synod encouraged the growth of this phenomenon. The article, like some recent studies (Ilifte, 1979: 318–41; Ranger, 1979) pays particular attention to the role played by the elites of North Nyasa in the heightening of ethnicity in the district.

This article discusses the traditional amd modern literary influences in Okot p'Bitek's poetry. It must be borne in mind, however, that the question of influences is very complicated because it is difficult to pin down an influence to a particular source. If those sources have become assimilated into an integral whole, it is difficult to sort them out—to know where the modern ends and the traditional begins, or where the Western ends and the African begins. Therefore, no attempt will be made to show that the modern and traditional influences are mutually exclusive. As with all aspects of life, there are bound to be overlaps, and this kind of overlap cannot be any more expected than in the work of a poet with the diverse kinds of experiences of p'Bitek.

A brief survey of his background is illumniating. Okot p'Bitek is an Acholi from Uganda. His father, Opii Jebedyo, was a teacher from the pa-Cua clan of the Patiko chiefdom and his mother, Lacwaa Cerina, came from the Palaro chiefdom. p'Bitek (1973: 21) has repeatedly testified to his early interest in oral literature and his mother's influence in forming that interest:

…my interest in African literature…[was] sparked by my mother's songs and the stories that my father performed around the evening fire.

The title, Song of Lawino, is derived from his mother's name and confirms that his mother, as a composer and singer, taught him many of the songs that he enjoyed throughout his life and used in many aspects of his varied career.

Claude Ake (1982: 8, 3), in his Presidential Address to the 1982 Convention of the Nigerian Political Science Association, criticized Nigerian society, politics, and state behavior in damning terms:

A predatory capitalism has bred misery, turned politics into warfare and all but arrested the development of productive forces. The Nigerian ruling class has assaulted the masses with physical and psychological violence and thwarted their aspirations, particularly their escape from underdevelopment and poverty.

Legitimacy has receded to the background, making way for relations of raw power and the perception of right as being coextensive with might.

Ake's views reflect a common perception that the Nigerian state survives by coercion as other means of gaining the compliance of the populace-the capacity to create a legitimating consciousness or utilitarian pay-offs-have proven ineffective, or have been wasted by a rapacious ruling class and its clients. Coercion, of course, means the police and the military.

This paper focuses on the control and autonomy of coercion, concretely examined as the actions of the police, in the political economy of Nigeria. Who controls the police and how autonomous are they as an organization and as individuals? The paper argues that the state and the police are relatively autonomous from class control; that the police have interests of their own which will influence both what they do or refuse to do; and that the police are a very weak reed for the ruling class to relay upon.

Since the dawn of history, mankind has developed a variety of practices which are intricately related to complex social orders and to traditional codes of behavior. Over the years many of these, especially those with harmful effects, were gradually abandoned while others remained. One of those which still survives is the practice of female circumcision with its long past and its serious health complications (Taba, 1980: 21).

There is no conclusive evidence to indicate where female circumcision first originated and how it was initially performed. Circumcized females have been discovered among the mummies of ancient Egyptians. Herodotus, the Greek historian, found the Egyptians practicing male and female circumcision when he visited their country around the middle of the fifth century B.C. A Greek papyrus in the British Museum, dated 163 B. C., refers to operations performed on girls in Memphis at the age when they received their dowries. Strabo, the Greek geographer, also reported circumcision of girls as a custom he found when visiting Egypt in 25 B. C. (Hosken, 1982). More recently, the German traveller Niebuhr, the sole survivor of a European scientific expedition to Arabia, Egypt, and Syria in the late 1700s, reported that this operation was fairly prevalent (Taba, 1980: 21). Such noted explorers as Sir Richard Burton and Sir Samuel White Baker described female circumcision in their writings from the 1800s (Hosken, 1982).