This article has as its theme the organisation of an African urban revolt in South Africa from 1960 to 1965. Reference is made mainly to events in Port Elizabeth and its near neighbour, East London; it need hardly be added that there were similar developments in other parts of the country. The way in which the revolt was organised was little reported at the time, and the details emerged only in the verbatim court records of the trials of both leaders and followers. Press reports of these trials are scattered over a number of South African newspapers, whose reporting—while good—is not as detailed as the documents; and a few items appear in the overseas press. The importance of this revolt, which is still being waged from outside South Africa's borders, might justify an analysis of what took place in the country itself, even if the research on which it is based remains incomplete.

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.

In 1966 two military coups were executed in Nigeria, upsetting a tenuous political balance between ethnically different regions and unleashing bitter tribal antagonism. In the first coup, in January, politicians and soldiers primarily of Northern origin lost their lives, and Major-Gen. J. T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Ibo from the Eastern Region, acceded to power. In the second coup, in July, mainly Eastern officers and soldiers died, and Lt.-Col. (now Major-Gen.) Yakubu Gowon, a minority-tribe Northerner, became Head of State. Because the years before and after independence in 1960 had witnessed scarring interregional rivalries for dominion over Nigeria, the coups were regarded as a continuation of these struggles.1

Pierre Nkurunziza died in 2020, just a few months short of completing his tenure as the first post-civil war President of Burundi. Critics have cast him as yet another rebel-turned-politician who came to office on a promise of a democratic transformation but became progressively authoritarian, particularly during his third, disputed term in office. As a political figure, however, Nkurunziza remains poorly understood. What kind of a worldview motivated his politics? Drawing on critical discourse analysis, we identify three recurring themes in Nkurunziza's key political speeches: anti-colonialism; unity and self-sufficiency; and discourse around ‘politics of a new beginning’. These themes were stable across time, indicating Nkurunziza's consistent worldview, but became more pronounced and radical as he faced growing challenges to his legitimacy from within and without. Far from being confined to rhetoric, the themes also manifested in concrete policy decisions, underscoring the urgent need to take ideology seriously in understanding the political trajectories of African leaders.

Even now, in the last third of the twentieth century, the nineteenth-century dual economy still exists, in effect if no longer in name, over much of the developing world. Although nationally independent — in Latin America for the past 100 years, and now in Africa and Asia — many of the developing nations are still economically dominated by their past colonial masters.

Despite the superb hospitality of the President of Sénégal and his Government, and of the rector and staff of Dakar University, the second meeting of the International Congress of Africanists in December 1967 must be accounted a disaster on such a scale as to endanger the whole future of the organisation. Intending participants were given wholly insufficient notice to produce papers worthy of such an occasion, and those who nevertheless complied with the invitation were cruelly disappointed to find on arrival that their contributions had not been translated or duplicated for circulation in advance of the sessions at which they were to be presented. Neither a programme nor even a provisional list of participants was available in advance of the meeting. Even so, there were persons billed as chairmen of sections and leading speakers who failed to put in an appearance. As a result, most of the discussions at most of the sessions had to be improvised. True, one of the admirable team of U.N.E.S.G.O. interpreters was heard to say ‘J’ai vu pire’, but when pressed he could think of only one worse example. No doubt individual participants could point to fresh contacts which made the occasion not wholly a waste of time, but there must be few who could conscientiously ask their employers to provide the expenses of attending another meeting without the assurance that it would be of a very different character from this one.

In the 1980s, a financial crisis engulfed Southern Africa. Widespread evidence exposed the way that inherited institutional structures and technologies – reinforced by International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) conditionality – had reproduced the region's poverty and vulnerability.1 To overcome the crisis requires an alternative strategy built on theoretical foundations fundamentally different from the neo-classical models that underpin the ‘restructuring’ programmes of the I.M.F. and World Bank. The state must play a positive interventionist rôle.

Widespread scepticism prevails that the proper conditions for negotiations do not as yet exist in South Africa. Yet, most major parties to the conflict (with the exception of the Pan-Africanist Congress) flaunt negotiations as the magic formula for settling a seemingly intractable dispute. From the western governments to the Soviet Union, from the African National Congress to the National Party, all advocate negotiations. In 1989 the N.P. fought a successful election campaign to receive a mandate for talks. The A.N.C. issued a lengthy policy document that aims at preparing its constituency and setting wellknown preconditions (lifting of the emergency, release of political prisoners and return of exiles, free political activity). Even the Conservative Party admits that it eventually will have to negotiate the boundaries of a Boerestaat when it ‘opts out’ of an increasingly integrated, undivided one-nation state.

Closer international co-operation at the national level—this was the basic idea behind the resolutions passed by this conference, where overseas volunteers from seven different organisations operating in the United Republic met government officials to discuss the possibilities of more detailed collaboration. The seven were: Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, the British United Nations Association, Voluntary Service Overseas, Harvard—Project Tanzania, the American Friends Service Committee, Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst, and the United States Peace Corps, which alone has 180 volunteers at work.

This paper studies how the practices of climate change governance and development assistance have reshaped the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) process in Mozambique. We look at how the original goals of the Mozambican REDD+ strategy changed in the interplay of different governance-related practices, both those originating locally and nationally, and those coming from international organisations. The paper is based on the frameworks of multilevel governance and practice theory. We identify six combinations of practices that are relevant in the REDD+ programmes and projects. Three of them are incorporated in the general idea of sustainability, including practices of promoting environmental conservation, economic growth and social justice/development, while the remaining three practices are connected to climate-mitigation practices, for which the frame is defined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A 1980 World Bank study paints a bleak picture of the current economic situation in sub-Saharan Africa, where most countries are at the bottom of the development pyramid. They have low incomes per capita, and their rates of economic growth have fallen behind Asian countries of comparable low income. Moreover, population growth in Africa is accelerating while trends in other developing regions suggest a slowing down.