The debate over the language of African literature has continued to generate significant interest ever since the emergence of African literary writing in European languages. Discussions of this debate have in the past often highlighted the inherently normative character of the idea of an African literature in African languages. By tracing the history of the debate, this paper seeks to distinguish between the actual role played by African languages in the emergence of a literature identified as African by its practitioners, and the ideological function of the debate for Africans who write in European languages. From this perspective, appeals for a literature in indigenous languages appear to serve the purpose of ethnic signification on behalf of a tradition of writing that continues to rely on European languages at the levels of both creative practice and theoretical formulation.

We cannot do better than Marcello Cecco's (1984: 1) concise definition of an international gold standard: it exists ‘when gold is the effective numeraire in most countries, and/or when the other means of payment used as monetary numeraire in those countries are readily redeemable in gold at their bearers' request’. Such a standard existed from the mid-1890s to 1914, even though Britain went on the gold standard much earlier than that, in 1816, and Germany a little over a half century later, in 1871. The Latin Union in Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy) did not join effectively until 1900 (Mertens 1994). Many claims were, and are still made for the system: that it facilitated international trade by providing a uniform standard of value; and as an automatic adjustment system, it freed markets from the (nationalistic) interference of public authorities while it created price equalisation in traded goods and ensured, over a protracted period, price stability.

The ‘Gold Standard’ in the title of this talk refers to the ‘academic gold standard’ invoked by Lord Ashby (1964; see also Austin 1980), one time Master of Clare College, Cambridge, a British educationist who was deeply involved with the development of universities in the later years of colonial rule in British West Africa. Although the University of the Witwatersrand and the city of Johannesburg owe a great deal to the gold industry, my talk is not about money or the metal's place in it. It is about the metaphorical ‘academic gold standard’.

Since the late 1980s, many African countries have been reforming their civil services as a part of the process of state redesign. Unfortunately, these reforms have not been very successful because of faulty diagnosis and prognosis. They have failed to tackle the major problems confronting African civil services. These include serious human resource management issues of leadership, merit pay and related governance reforms, the appropriate strategy for mobilising resources for civil service reform (CSR) and for implementing such reforms. These issues must be adequately addressed before African countries can make significant progress in CSR and in development.

The rise of wealth and power within the cattle-owning economy of Botswana has been accompanied by the creation of poverty and weakness. The impoverishment of the San and ‘destitutes’ was a structured, comprehensive, and long-term process, caused less by phenomena such as periodic drought than by an elite of economic and political power, and the exploitation which they practised. The growth economy of recent decades has not ameliorated the situation, but has strengthened the wealthy while neglecting or worsening the plight of the San. The state possesses the financial resources and developmental capacities to alleviate poverty, but its controllers continue to prioritise other matters.

This article seeks to examine the status of the medical profession in Tanzania, in the context of political and economic developments since independence. It demonstrates that doctors have maintained a relatively privileged position within the health care system and in the wider society from the colonial period, through the early years of indpendence, to the present. This has been achieved by a variety of means. During the 1970s and early 1980s the profession was closely associated with the developmentalist project of the state. Because of economic restructuring since then it has had to adopt the rhetoric and techniques of accountability, to distance itself from the state and position itself in the notional realm of civil society. Recent cases of the Medical Council are used to demonstrate this trend. Renewed legitimation is most significant as a means of maintaining the profession's links with its international counterparts, and with foreign donors who support the health care system in Tanzania.

The failure of successive generations of imported, Western development strategies and projects to deliver meaningful reductions in poverty and achieve basic needs in Africa, has provoked a deep questioning of Western concepts and methodologies of development. Non-governmental organisations and development practitioners are increasingly focusing their attention on strategies which build upon local knowledge, skills and resources. The concepts of ‘self- reliance’ and local economic development are examined in the context of development challenges which face Africa. This is followed by a detailed case study of local economic development in the rural Mpofu District of the former Ciskei Homeland, which was incorporated into the Eastern Cape province of South Africa with the demise of apartheid in 1994.

This article explores the complexity of managing refugee issues, particularly refugee repatriations, taking the Horn of Africa as a case. I argue that refugee repatriation endeavours are complex because their success depends on at least four actors, each with different – indeed often conflicting – interests. I examine the proposition that as the number of actors involved in a given issue area increases so does the likelihood of less-than-successful outcomes. This is particularly true if resource-poor actors are included in the decision-making process, and, because of the need to extract maximum benefits and/or minimise maximum losses, usually operate under the assumption of zero-sum situations. This assumption narrows their range of responses and hampers their ability to engage in mutually beneficial exchange relationships. As a result, repatriations, which are necessarily consensus-based, become more difficult to accomplish successfully as evidenced in the Horn of Africa.

As far as corruption in Africa is both conspicuous and generalised, it has to be studied from the viewpoint of the participants. This article starts with six general theses on corruption in Africa, which place it within a broader ‘corruption complex’, and emphasise its routine nature, the stigmatisation of corruption despite the absence of effective sanctions, its apparent irreversibility, the absence of correlation with regime types and its legitimacy to its perpetrators. Corruption is then shown to be socially embedded in ‘logics’ of negotiation, gift-giving, solidarity, predatory authority and redistributive accumulation. Any anti-corruption policy must face up to these realities.

The collapse of Mobutu's Zaïre in 1996/97 was the result of an unprecedented correspondence of domestic, regional and international interests. The Zaïrean state was established and sustained during the Cold War with Western support as a bulwark against communism and source of raw materials. It maintained itself after the Cold War by playing on external fears of state collapse and by supporting French regional interests. By 1996, with the failure of French credibility and US refusal to intervene, it had no reliable external protector. Internal support was non-existent, and an opposition alliance was constructed under Kabila's leadership. Regional states, notably Rwanda and Angola, intervened to protect their own security. Though successful, this regional alliance itself proved to be unstable, leading to a recurrence of war in 1998.

The end of the Cold War freed donors' aid policies from the co-ordinate system of East/West competition around the world. As a result, it was no longer necessary for the United States and its allies to continue providing aid on ideological grounds and/or geo-strategic needs. In the post-Cold War era, it became necessary for donor countries to evolve new rationales to convince their sceptical publics of the continued necessity for aid. One such new rationale was the imperative of promoting democracy and good governance as a way of guaranteeing international peace and security. This article examines the Japanese response to this development by identifying the factors that led to the inauguration of the ODA Charter. Thereafter, the content and intent of the Charter is examined and its application in Sub-Saharan Africa is analysed to highlight the changing objectives of Japanese aid policy in the continent.

Any adequate account of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda must acknowledge manipulation by external forces, domestic pressures and psychological factors. Even so, the nature of the Rwandan state must be seen as absolutely central. The genocide took place under the aegis of the state, and Rwandans were the main actors involved. Both precolonial legacies and colonial policies contributed to the formation of this state, whose increasingly autocratic and unpopular government was, by the early 1990s, facing serious threats to its hold on state power, for which genocide represented a last-ditch attempt at survival. Many of the mechanisms through which genocide was prepared, implemented and justified in Rwanda bore striking resemblances to those used during the twentieth century's other major genocide, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

Aid donors' support for democratisation in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s has been tempered by their desire to achieve other objectives. In Uganda, a high level of donor support for the Museveni government has been compatible with the Ugandan government's reluctance to introduce multiparty democracy. Donors have opted for ‘dialogue’ rather than coercive methods. This may be ascribed to a number of factors, including the destruction from which Uganda was recovering, the need to present Uganda as a success story for economic liberalisation, and donors' need to maintain good relations with Uganda in order to pursue their foreign policy goals. The resulting donor–recipient relationship has however created dangers for the maintenance of long-term sustainable democracy in Uganda, by condoning divisive policies, and neglecting the need for coalition-building and conflict resolution.

This paper explores the dynamics of regime change in South Africa and Zimbabwe through an examination of civil society's role, but more particularly mainline Christian religious associations, in democratising and consolidating democracy. After surveying state–civil society debates, an analysis of the nature and purpose of civil society in these two countries is undertaken. In both countries, a vibrant, diverse civil society exists that builds or strengthens democratic possibilities; however, Zimbabwean civil society is weaker for reasons that include regime type, the particularities of the liberation struggle, and constitutional limitations. The paper concludes with prescriptions for strengthening civil society in South Africa based on lessons learned from Zimbabwe.

For the best part of seven years, an increasing number of warring factions fought a vicious civil war for control of the West African state of Liberia. In August 1996, the fourteenth peace accord led to presidential and parliamentary elections in July of the following year. Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Party (NPP), formed out of the original invasion force, emerged victorious with a landslide 75 per cent of the vote. Given the international reputation of Taylor as a brutal warlord whose sole aim had never wavered from the capture of power in Monrovia, Taylor's across-the-board victory appears difficult to explain. Having concluded that, despite problems and allegations, the election did seem more free and fair than not, the article examines the factors that probably influenced the electorate's choices. The results of this research show an election heavily dependent on an uncertain security situation. However, it suggests that, although a former ‘warlord’ has been rewarded, the voting was a reasoned ploy by the electorate to maximise the possibility of improved living conditions.

A comparative literature on democratic transitions in Africa has sought out points of similarity across the continent in order to yield generalisations about the prospects for democratic consolidation. The underlying contention of this article is that history needs to be taken seriously in any such exercise, not least because politicians and voters alike are guided by their readings of the past. These, in turn, have a bearing on democratic prospects. The first part of this article demonstrates how, in the run-up to the 1996 Ghanaian elections, the opposition parties were guided by an assessment of their historic strengths. The parties which belonged to one or other of the great traditions – Nkrumahism and the Busia/Danquah tradition – regarded themselves as the natural rulers and treated the bearers of the rival standard as the principal threat under normal conditions. The ruling National Democratic Congress, which was regarded by each of them as a mere usurper of the natural order, exhibited a much more ambiguous attitude towards history. The second half of the article scrutinises the election results and seeks to establish the underlying patterns. Particular attention is paid to rural/urban and ethnic/regional voting patterns. The article concludes that while the opposition improved on its 1992 performance, its inroads were actually fairly limited. It further posits that the opposition parties of both traditions fundamentally misread the historical evidence and hence misjudged the scale of the task confronting them. It concludes by raising the possibility that the misfit between perceptions and electoral realities could prove destabilising to Ghana's fledgling democracy.

In the 1990s, there has been a marked upsurge in scholarly and practical interest in the relationships between urban development and environmental protection in Africa. It is apparent that analyses which take simultaneous account of economic, political and environmental aspects of urban development issues are an essential and yet under-represented facet of this upsurge. This article argues for a regional political ecology approach to African urban environmental issues, as a means of addressing the intertwined impacts of neo-liberalism, democratisation and environmentalism in African cities. The construction and materials supply industry in Zanzibar city serves as an empirical referent.

Population politics in Tanzania reflect multiple understandings of the ‘problem’ of population. While Tanzania has a long history of family planning service provision through its childspacing programmes, a national population policy was not adopted until 1992. This work explores the ambiguity and ambivalence reflected in the discourse surrounding the Tanzanian National Population Policy. Although an international consensus on questions of population and family planning may have been reached at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, when we look at actual cases of policy formulation and implementation, the discourse reflects ambiguity and conflict rather than consensus. The Tanzanian case suggests that this ambiguity may be strategic. Competing ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ approaches have been articulated from the level of national policy negotiations to that of local implementation. This enables the Tanzanian government, promoting a ‘positive’ view of population, to ally itself with proponents of an expanded reproductive health agenda without alienating the elements of the population establishment that pushed for a population policy and fund its implementation.

The failure of structural adjustment programmes to promote industrialisation in Africa may be at least partly explained by the fragmentation of African business systems. In Africa, the parastatal, foreign-dominated formal and indigenous informal sectors are poorly integrated, largely as a result of the institutional environment in which they have developed. The lack of supportive financial, state and social institutions inhibits trust and accountability, and impedes the access to capital, labour market flexibility, and sub-contracting, which are needed for modern industrial development. More research is needed, both detailed studies of business systems in individual African countries, and cross-country comparisons of the linkages between the economy and the wider social and institutional environment.

The lowland Ethiopian regions of Gambella and Benishangul, bordering Sudan, form a classic frontier zone. ‘Modern’ politics dates from the 1974 Ethiopian revolution, and has been shaped by developments on either side of the frontier, as well as by the complex relations among indigenous peoples, and between them and immigrants and officials from highland areas of Ethiopia. The implementation of the post-1991 Ethiopian government's programme of ethnic regionalism has intensified local rivalries, and regional governments remain weak, being highly dependent on professionals from highland Ethiopia. Education, transport links, and other indicators of development remain poor. None the less, local political power, in sharp contrast to earlier periods, has to an appreciable extent passed into the hands of indigenous leaders.

The official result of Lesotho's general election of 1998, which saw a 79 out of 80 seat victory for the ruling Lesotho Congress of Democrats (LCD), was repudiated by the opposition, notably the former ruling Basotho National Party (BNP) and the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP). These latter parties were historic enemies but forged an alliance of convenience to contest the outcome of the election. By mobilising their supporters to occupy Maseru they successfully paralysed the capacity of the LCD to govern. After diplomatic preliminaries, this led to military intervention by South Africa and Botswana in September 1998 and their brokering of an agreement which restored the LCD to power, on the condition that a new election would be held within eighteen months, with the rules for that contest being discussed between the parties in the interim. That election has now been scheduled for April 2000.

The article reviews the conduct and result of the general election of 1998. It concludes that the opposition's objections were largely spurious, but notes that the unbalanced nature of the LCD's victory – a product of the first-past-the-post electoral system – was a major cause of the wider crisis. It therefore proposes that any lasting settlement of political differences in Lesotho is going to require a new electoral system which will allow for a more inclusive outcome.