bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Massive postpartum hemorrhage treated with transcatheter arterial embolization: technical aspects and long-term effects on fertility and menstrual cycle
Authors: Eriksson L.-G. , Mulic-Lutvica A. , Jangland L. , Nyman R.
Published: July 2007

Background: Transcatheter arterial embolization (TAE) is considered a safe, life-saving procedure in postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), but its long-term effect on menstruation and fertility is unclear.

Purpose: To investigate technical aspects and the evaluation of complications, focused on menstrual cycle and fertility, using TAE in patients with PPH.

Material and Methods: A retrospective study including 20 patients (seven with vaginal and 13 with cesarean delivery) with severe PPH treated with bilateral TAE of the uterine artery was carried out. All patients were asked to answer a questionnaire regarding their post-embolization history. In six patients, the radiation dose was measured.

Results: All 20 cases underwent bilateral TAE of the uterine artery. Gelfoam was used as the embolic agent. However, after cesarean delivery in six patients who had clear contrast medium extravasation and/or pseudoaneurysm-like lesion, metallic coils had to be used in order to achieve hemostasis. No major short- or long-term complications were registered. Normal menses resumed in all patients. Four patients had a total of five full-term and two preterm pregnancies, and all delivered healthy infants by cesarean section with no recurrence of PPH. The mean radiation dose to the ovaries was 586 mGy (range 204–729 mGy).

Conclusion: TAE in patients with PPH is safe and has no major short- or long-term side effects. A patient managed with TAE can expect return of normal menses and preservation of future fertility and successful pregnancies. PPH after cesarean section might need to be embolized with metallic coils in addition to Gelfoam in order to achieve secure hemostasis.
Conflict, complicity & confusion: unravelling empowerment struggles in Nigeria after the Return to 'Democracy'
Authors: Ifeka Caroline
Published: July 2007

The national and international press report the recent upsurge of youth-led ethnic violence in Nigeria as if it were new. But Ifeka argues that in view of the catastrophic fall in Nigeria's GDP from $US93.1 billion in 1980 to US$40 billion in 1997 (Adedeji, 1999), youth's proclivity for violence is hardly surprising. Indeed, youth-led rebellions are not new. A political economy approach shows that developed economies exploitation of peripheral economies supplying raw materials sustains under-development and conditions spawning periodic revolt (Richards, 1996).

Poverty makes people depend for assistance on customary (kin-based) relationships between superior elders and junior youths. But educated (unemployed) youth are finding that dependency on elders thwarts their own development and that of their people. Militant youth articulate a general perception that development is being obstructed by 'selfish' elders and chiefs who 'chop' on government contracts for their own gain, not their people's advancement.
Land reform in South Africa
Authors: Cliffe Lionel
Published: July 2007

The newly‐elected South African government began in 1994 to make laws and implement a programme for land reform. It consisted of three dimensions: redistribution (transferring white‐owned commercial farm land to African users); restitution (settling claims for land lost under apartheid measures by restoration of holdings or compensation); and land tenure reform (to provide more secure access to land in the former bantustans). Only a few restitution claims have been so far resolved. After much rethinking a revised draft of a land tenure bill is to be presented to Parliament in late 2000, but as one stated aim is to give ‘land to tribes’, it remains to be seen whether it will bring increased democratisation, allowing for common resource management, or will entrench ‘decentralised despotism’.

This article concentrates on the most actively pursued dimension of land reform: redistribution. Under the diverse influences of rights‐based activism of earlier years and of World Bank advice about a ‘market‐led’ approach, the government has set up mechanisms to help finance and facilitate ‘community’ initiatives to acquire land, to settle on it and, if possible, to make productive use of it. What was advocated as a more rapid and less bureaucratic approach than a government agency acquiring and administering resettlement has instead spawned a sprawling edifice, some of it out‐sourced to an array of consultants, often with little experience and few credentials, and has led to a protracted process of transfer of a much smaller amount of land in five years than, say, Zimbabwe managed in the same period. The reasons for this are examined.

A policy rethink during 1999 has led to changes in emphasis which, hopefully, will speed up the redistribution of land, provide more back‐up to those resettled, and prioritise future grants for more productive agricultural use. This latter formula, however, is constricted by old‐fashioned ‘modernist’ (and often implicitly colonial) orthodoxies still current in South Africa, not least in the ANC and government. These are fixated on ‘commercialisation’ ‐ which usually translates into larger‐scale and high‐tech ‐ and the promotion of the interests of a would‐be black agrarian entrepreneurial class, rather than those of the propertyless. Some hope may derive from the inclusion of experiments in the new programme to chart an alternative to the ‘market‐led’ formula which would instead allow redistribution of land as an element within district‐level planning.
Britain and western sahara: examining the debate
Authors: Seddon David
Published: July 2007

Over the last six months, the British Government has come under sustained pressure from MPs and Lords urging them to implement the UN Appeal Agreements. We estimate that a 100 MPs have written to the Government, either because of all the constituents' letters (your letters) or because they share the concerns of the Campaign. This shows how much concern there is in Parliament for the Saharawis.
Overview: HIV/AIDS in Africa: global & local inequalities & responsibilities
Authors: Baylies Carolyn
Published: July 2007

This issue of the Review is devoted to an examination of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, an emergency which compromises the future of so many on the continent, yet is persistently underplayed. The depth of need it has generated has scarcely been measured and not even begun to be met. Although increasingly acknowledged to be grounded in social behaviour and systemic inequalities, HIV/AIDS is still treated predominantly as a health problem. At the same time, far more attention continues to be paid to the (admittedly crucial) issues of prevention and care than to the economic and social impact of AIDS and the ways it can be addressed and mitigated.

This introduction to the issue expands upon general points made in the editorial and reviews some of these issues by exploring two aspects of the multi‐layered context of the AIDS epidemic:

•

The question of what African governments should and can do in the face of AIDS, and

•

The viability and potential of the International Partnership on AIDS in Africa.
Political will, political economy & the AIDS industry in Zambia
Authors: Scott Guy
Published: July 2007

This brief article outlines an approach to analysing the effectiveness of public health interventions in the third world, specifically in regard to HIV/AIDS. Its purpose is not to be the definitive last word but to float certain ideas consistent with the precepts of political economy, with a view to inviting criticism, commentary and contributions to future publications.
Kenya: one step forward, three steps back: the succession dilemma
Authors: Ajulu Rok
Published: July 2007

Despite the optimism in 1992, that competitive multi‐party politics would create effective and meaningful democratic politics in Kenya, there has been a process of political deliberalisation and politicisation of ethnic politics. There is, moreover, little prospect that President Moi will give way to a replacement at the end of his second five‐year term in 2002. There is even less chance that effective political democracy is likely in Kenya in the foreseeable future.
Structural adjustment, state power & genocide: the World Bank & Rwanda
Authors: Storey Andy
Published: July 2007

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been partly attributed by some commentators to state weakness or collapse, and the weakness or collapse has in turn been partly attributed to the policies of the World Bank and the IMF. Neither argument is valid, and to advance them is to misunderstand the extent to which state power is a persistent and potent force in Africa and elsewhere, and also the extent to which the World Bank and IMF buttress that power (despite their own rhetoric of ‘rolling back’ the state). The first section of this article outlines the centrality of state power to an analysis of Rwanda in general and of the preparations for genocide in particular, while the following section demonstrates how the World Bank lent material and discursive support to a repressive and ultimately genocidal state apparatus. The concluding section offers some explanation of why the World Bank adopts such policies.
Oil & war in Angola
Authors: Frynas Jedrzej
                      George , Wood Geoffrey
Published: July 2007

This article investigates the impact of oil on the war in Angola. It demonstrates that mineral wealth has not only financed Angola's war but has also intimately shaped the contours of the conflict. MPLA's access to oil revenues and UNITA's to diamonds can help to explain the duration and character of the conflict, and, to some extent, even the timing of military operations. The logic of the ‘resource curse’ has had a major impact on the make‐up of Angola's political economy and has been decisive in the erosion of state legitimacy, which in turn has had important consequences for the prospects for peace. The activities of foreign oil companies have affected the shape of the conflict; the intense competition for oil concessions has led to a number of different companies seeking the favour of the Angolan state elite through dubious charitable donations, weapons deals, and other forms of assistance. On a theoretical level, the article questions liberal assumptions about the positive effects of trade on peace.
The politics of ‘uncivil’ society in Egypt
Authors: Rahman Maha
                      Abdel
Published: July 2007

This article investigates the concept of civil society. It argues that the recent celebration of the concept as the domain of freedom and justice and as a panacea for the ills of state‐led development models has underestimated its inherent weaknesses and limitations. The portrayal of the concept in both academic and policy circles is often based on ideological convictions and uncritical adulation rather than empirical evidence and rigorous analysis. Tracing the historical development of the concept, the article provides an alternative view of the conflictual, often reactionary nature of civil society organisations. The Egyptian case offers empirical demonstration of how the state is no longer the prime authoritarian force in repressing civil society organisation. Instead, civil society has become an arena for political conflict and its organisations have been seized by representatives of contending political programmes that often resort to violence and repression to suppress other groups within civil society.
Present‐day capitalism, the new international trade regime & Africa
Authors: Gibbon Peter
Published: July 2007

This article contributes to the analysis of the effects of globalisation on Africa's economy, on the basis of discussions of emerging trends in the industrial organisation of present‐day capitalism, and in the nature of the international trade regime emerging from the Uruguay Round. On this basis, recent and current developments in the Africa clothing and horticulture sectors are described. The paper argues that certain aspects of the current international trade regime provide scope for Africa to play a heightened role in the global economy in the these two sectors. However, the emergence of the global ‘contract manufacturing’ phenomenon, and the institutionalisation of process‐based food safety standards, implies that the main winners in this scenario will be large‐scale transnational enterprises.
Globalisation from below: conceptualising the role of the African diasporas in africa's development
Authors: Mohan Giles , Zack‐Williams A B
Published: July 2007

In the past both African Studies and Development Studies have ignored questions of the African Diaspora. This point was made by Zack‐Williams back in 1995 but since then there has not been much work attempting to rectify this matter. In this article we put forward a framework for examining the role of diaspora in development. This centres on recognising that the formation of the African Diaspora has been intimately linked to the evolution of a globalised and racialised capitalism. While the linkages between capitalism, imperialism and displacement are dynamic we should avoid a simplistic determinism that sees the movements of African people as some inevitable response to the mechanisms of broader structures. The complexity of displacement is such that human agency plays an essential role and avoids the unhelpful conclusion of seeing Africans as victims. It is this interplay of structural forces and human agency that gives diasporas their shifting, convoluted and overlapping geometry. Having established that we examine the implications of a diasporic perspective for understanding the development potential of both Africans in diaspora and those who remain on the continent. We argue that both politically and economically the diaspora has an important part to play in contemporary social processes operating at an increasingly global scale. The key issues we address are embedded social networks in the diaspora, remittances and return, development organisations, religious networks, cultural dynamics, and political institutions. We conclude by suggesting where diasporic concerns will take us in the next few years.
Conflict of interests or interests in conflict? diamonds & war in the DRC
Authors: Samset Ingrid
Published: July 2007

This article explores how the exploitation of key natural resources, diamonds in particular, has contributed to prolonging the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It affirms that the motivation and feasibility of resource exploitation largely explain why external military contingents have remained active in the country since August 1998. Driving forces of war can be identified among elites of Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, for whom DRC resources have proven decisive to sustain positions of power. Although most exploitation has been carried out at gunpoint, the use of existing networks suggests that withdrawal of forces will not necessarily stop the massive resource diversion. While a lasting resolution to the crisis needs to ensure due benefits to the local population from their resources, it also requires that stakeholders see peace as a more attractive option than continued war.
The political economy of sacrifice: Kinois &the state
Authors: Trefon Theodore
Published: July 2007

With approximately 6 million inhabitants, Kinshasa is the second largest city in sub‐Saharan Africa ‐ and one of the poorest. The residents of the Congolese capital (the Kinois),like people throughout the country, have been struggling through a multi‐dimensional crisis for over forty years. Security, political and economic problems are dramatic, largely because the post‐colonial state abdicated from its role as provider of social and administrative services, transforming itself into a social predator. In response to these constraints, the Kinoishave developed remarkably creative people‐based ‘solutions’ to address the challenges of daily survival. In contrast to what has become a tradition of condemning the inability of the Congo/Zaire authorities to ‘manage the country’ according to Western perceptions of how states should function, this article argues that state‐society relations in Kinshasa are not always as poorly organised as outside observers tend to believe. There is order in the disorder. Function and dysfunction overlap. This applies to all social and political levels. The Kinoishave entered into a new phase of post‐colonialism by combining global approaches to local problems while blending ‘traditional’ belief systems and behaviours with their own unique forms of ‘modernity’. They have proven themselves remarkably clever at mobilisation for economic survival thanks to new forms of solidarity and thanks to accommodation with the international community, which is increasingly ‘acting on behalf of the state’ in many areas of public life. Conversely, the Kinoisseem to have failed at transforming political discourse and desires into political mobilisation.
Citizenship, identity formation & conflict in South Kivu: the case of the Banyamulenge
Authors: Vlassenroot Koen
Published: July 2007

The objectives of this exercise are threefold. First, through a case‐study of the Banyamulenge ethnogenesis, I demonstrate that this ethnicity was never constructed in a vacuum, but in a ‘pre‐imagined’ field. The ‘creation’ of a Banyamulenge identity illustrates perfectly that ethnicities are ongoing processes of continuous change. Ethnicities are dynamic processes that result from the confrontation of a community with its socio‐economic and political environment. Contrary to what local political and social leaders like to believe about their followings, the existence of a Banyamulenge identity is not the result of pure invention. I illustrate how historical events gave meaning to the content of this identity. Second, a close look will be taken at the different internal dynamics within this community to reach a better understanding of the real content of this ethnogenesis. While the Banyamulenge in Uvira were undoubtedly subject to exclusion, widespread ethnic resentment and violence, their marginalised position is also due to a lack of coherent leadership and internal division. An inquiry into the reasons why the Banyamulenge community, even today, still lacks any coherent leadership that is capable of improving the position of their community is crucial. Finally, as recent local history in Uvira suggests, I show that political exclusion tends to be the key to conflicting identity formation. In the case of the Banyamulenge, it seems that their claims to political participation not only had the effect of hardening the boundaries between different identity groups, but also had facilitated the shift to massive violence as an enticing strategy of control and resistance. This work is mainly the result of extensive fieldwork in and around Uvira and Bukavu, complemented by what was learned from the few printed sources that exist.
Making a killing: criminality & coping in the Kivu War economy
Authors: Jackson Stephen
Published: July 2007

Over the last four years, the eastern Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have seen the precipitous rise and fall of a lucrative economy based on artisanal mining of tantalum ore. In some ways building on older patterns of survivalist economics in Congo, it also represents a radical mutation of livelihood strategies responding to an economy profoundly destroyed by colonial and post‐colonial neglect and greed, and more recently by five years of vicious war. That war has itself capitalised on the country's vast mineral wealth, progressively becoming ‘economised’, in that profits increasingly motivate the violence, and violence increasingly makes profits possible for all belligerents.

This article details the tantalum commodity chain from its base in the forests and uplands of the Kivus to global markets. Through an exploration of popular rumour about economic activity it also traces how the war has radically altered conventional Congolese attitudes to the survivalist tradition of ‘fending for yourself, from perceptions of the heroic to perceptions of criminal domination by ‘foreigners’ and ‘Congolese traitors’. Yet if there is criminal gain from tantalum on the part of Congolese and foreign actors, tantalum mining has also become a critical mode of survival for many at the grassroots. International action against the ‘war economy’ in the Congo must therefore be careful to punish the real villains.
Accumulation and development: a theoretical model
Authors: Amin Samir
Published: July 2007

In this article Samir Amin sets out the core of his model of the global accumulation of capital. In it he defines two distinct patterns: one applying to development at the centre, the other to dependent development in the periphery. Central development is characterised by the dominance of economic activity to satisfy mass consumer needs and the consequent demand for production goods. The power of the masses is enlisted in a ‘social contract’ which allows the establishment of a limited economic viability, at a national level. However, the internationalisation of productive capital increasingly threatens that stability. The peripheral systems are dominated by production of luxury goods and exports and the consequent lack of importance of internal mass markets. This leads to growing inequality, technological dependence, political weakness among the oppressed — in sum, marginalization. Restructuring of these economies requires a break with the international economy, and self‐centred development which establishes the dominance of production for mass needs, though there are particular difficulties for individual countries attempting such a break and ultimately a solution can be found only if such changes take place internationally. Policies for the difficult period of transition must first and foremost focus on the need to build the political consciousness necessary to complete tills process.
Multinational companies and national development: MIFERMA and Mauretania
Authors: Bonté Pierre
Published: July 2007

MIFERMA, an iron ore mining consortium set up by French, British, Italian and German steel capital, was established during a period when Mauretania, as a source of cheap raw materials, was being integrated through the colonial system, and through French imperialism, into the world capitalist economy. As MIFERMA's iron ore output increased, it replaced less profitable operations in France itself, causing unemployment and social dislocation. MIFERMA has made enormous profits from its operations but has failed to invest them in financially more risky mining projects in other areas which might make a greater contribution to economic development. It has repatriated profits and is rapidly exhausting the reserves in the areas mined. The company has a close relationship with the State, providing a third of its budget. MIFERMA has presided over the development of the capitalist mode of production in Mauretania, which has resulted in an increasingly cohesive working class on the one hand, and the acceleration of rural poverty on the other, through the process of labour migration. There have been pressures for nationalisation in order to control the company's activities and these pressures are likely to be successful, but they will not resolve the increasing contradiction between the neo‐colonial state and the growing consciousness of the workers.
The struggle for workers' control in Tanzania
Authors: Mihyo Paschal
Published: July 2007

The wave of strikes and workers' occupations in Tanzania over 1972–73 was the result of the workers'justifiable discontent with the level of‐ wages and their conditions of work. The workers contrasted their deteriorating situation with the relatively high incomes of their employers and their despised condition with the arrogance of managers, trades union and government officials. Using Mwongozoas an ideological weapon to attract support from the State, the workers took over some privately owned factories and turned them into producer cooperatives. In some cases the State endorsed the workers' action but in the case of the Mount Carmel factory detailed here, it‐crushed the workers' movement. Whose side is the State representing in the class struggle?
Modes of production and Kenyan dependency
Authors: Kitching Gavin
Published: July 2007

This paper aims to show that the concept of a world capitalist mode of production is necessary to analyse Kenyan dependency, and also aims to develop some concepts with which to explore class relations in Kenya. First we shall show that the attempt to develop the alternative conceptualisation of the ‘capitalist mode of production in Kenya’ is an impossibility. Secondly, another alternative of ‘pre‐capitlist mode(s)’ is considered and also rejected. Third, a complex of more specific concepts is generated which taken together can define the Kenyan situation more adequately, and involves an examination of Kenya's position in the world capitalist mode of circulation and production of commodities, and the position of different classes within this set of production/ circulation relations.
The Senegal River Valley: what kind of change?
Authors: Adams Adrian
Published: July 2007

‘Développement de fonctionnaires’ or ‘développement paysan’. At the meeting with which the paper opens, peasants and SAED officials were unable to come to terms, because each group held different and incompatible views about what constituted ‘development’. For the SAED delegation, there was only one kind of development, defined in terms of technological innovation. Modernization therefore imposed its own objective constraints; once the peasants had chosen progress, there could be no sound reason for them to reject the production techniques and styles of organisation which progress required. For the leaders of the peasant association, on the other hand, there were two kinds of development, two ways of bringing agricultural change to the area; the choice was not between innovation and stagnation, but between change evolved from within, and change imposed from without. They had organised on their own, and had shown themselves capable of adapting to new crops and new techniques: that was ‘développement paysan’. The SAED takeover, they felt, could not be justified in objective terms; its purpose was to deprive them of the freedom to control their own productive activity and its fruits, and make them work for outside interests rather than for the good of their own community. That was ‘développement de fonctionnaires’. The SAED officials often spoke in terms of nationalist interest, one and undivided; but the peasants saw no necessary fit between their interests and those of officialdom. The evidence available suggests that the peasants’ view of the situation is nearer the truth.
Agricultural policies in Mainland Tanzania
Authors: Coulson Andrew
Published: July 2007

The years 1946–76 cover the last fifteen years of colonial rule in Tanganyika, and the first fifteen years of Independence. In that period Governments attempted a wide range of policies relating to agriculture. The more important of these are summarised in Table 1. This paper attempts to bring out the historical sequence to show how the perceived weaknesses in one set of policies led to the choice of the next. A general conclusion is that those who controlled the State consistently misunderstood fundamental aspects of peasant agriculture, and over‐estimated what the use of State power could achieve in rural development. More specifically the paper charts a conflict of interest between peasants and bureaucrats beginning in colonial times and continuing today. From a bureaucratic point of view, the peasants are an important section of the economy which they cannot fully control, but which they must attempt to manipulate to extract a surplus of food to feed the cities and export crops to extract the foreign exchange to maintain or expand the State. The peasants view the bureaucrats with mixed feelings: they know that the bureaucrats possess power — to set prices for crops or call in the police force, but they are uncomfortably aware that that power is often used to exploit their labour power.
Southern Africa: imperialism, racism and neo‐colonialism
Authors: Mohan Jitendra
Published: July 2007

This polemical piece aims to provoke further discussion on the character of imperialism and nationalism in Africa, by focusing attention on the broader continental and international background of the national‐liberation struggle in southern Africa. It takes issue with what is seen to be a typical position assumed widely by left commentators in the West that underestimates African resistance and misjudges African nationalism. It argues that that, in its turn, is due to the tendency to isolate and abstract Western imperialism as well as African nationalism from the overarching reality of the growing rivalry between the two superpowers, the US and the USSR, in the context of a marked parallelism and convergence of methods and objectives between the two.
The incorporation of Northern Nigeria into the world capitalist economy
Authors: Shenton Bob , Freund Bill
Published: July 2007

Recent historical writing on Northern Nigeria has celebrated African entre‐preneurship and even an alleged ‘bourgeois revolution’. This paper offers an alternative account of the way in which Northern Nigeria was incorporated into the world capitalist economy. A merchant bourgeoisie has been important to this process, and proved incapable of initiating autonomous capitalist development. This paper examines the social relations of production and the forms in which surplus was extracted from the producers in nineteenth‐century Hausaland and in colonial Northern Nigeria. It presents the era of colonialism as a period of transition to peripheral capitalism. The surplus was transmuted into cash and commodities from which surplus value could be extracted.
Labour in Liberia
Authors: Mayson Dew
                      Tuan‐Wleh , Sawyer Amos
Published: July 2007

Mayson and Sawyer trace the development of peripheral capitalism in Liberia, drawing out the totally dependent nature of its export economy dominated by international corporations, the deteriorating economic position of the workers and peasants, and the growing power of the different fractions of the ruling class. They go on to trace the growth of the working class and its increasing militancy since 1961, the legislative response to this in the form of anti‐strike legislation and the consequent worsening of workers’ conditions and standards of living. As a consequence of the collaborationist character of the trades union leadership, rank and file workers have assumed responsibilities of leadership and organized strikes despite the collusion of trades union leaders with the police.
Peasant fishermen and capitalists: development in Senegal
Authors: Jonge Klaas
                      de
Published: July 2007

This article aims to show, on the basis of a micro‐level case study, the nature of the relations that exist between peasants, notably those in the Balante village of Birkama in Casamance in South Senegal on the one hand, and capitalism and the state on the other. I shall take as my basis a subsidiary activity: shrimp fishing, dominated as it is by French companies. Against the background of conflicts, including strike action, that arose in 1975 in the shrimp fishing industry in Casamance, an analysis will be given of the complex and constantly shifting relations between the diverse groupings: peasants and fishermen, industry, middlemen and government officials. Attention will also be paid to the question why the ostensibly weakest grouping, the shrimp fishermen, eventually succeeded in settling the conflict in their favour.
Nationalist politics in Zimbabwe: the 1980 elections and beyond
Authors: Ciiffe Lionel , Mpofu Joshua , Munslow Barry
Published: July 2007

This study of the February 1980 Zimbabwe elections which preceded Independence is not so much concerned with the administrative conduct of the elections, nor the charges of manipulation. Rather it seeks to explore the results, the campaigning and the whole background leading up to the elections for what these events tell us about the character of Zimbabwe's African politics, so long submerged. What does the decisive rejection of the Smith‐Muzorewa Internal Settlement tell us about what the African masses expect of Independence? What of the structures of the two nationalist parties: are they carry‐overs from the liberation struggle or of pre‐UDI politicking? How far do these experiences ‘explain’ the victory of the two parties of the former Patriotic Front? And how are we to explain the regional split in support for the two parties? What are the consequences for the period of reconstruction ahead of the legacy of the particular forms of popular involvement in the liberation struggle, and of the continuing split between the nationalist parties?
Multinational corporations and the instability of the Nigerian state
Authors: Turner Terisa
Published: July 2007

Terisa Turner seeks to explain the instability of the Nigerian state. Stability and instability is not just a matter of vulnerability to forcible changes of regime. A stable state is one in which authorized individuals make, apply and enforce legal imperatives and public policies. To say that the Nigerian state lacks coherence is to say that it has not become separate from, dominant over, or capable of regulating society. Nigeria continues to have a predominantly import‐export economy, but one in which the state itself provides the main market for many commodities, and controls access to the supply of and market for others. Because of the key role of the state, its officials play a central part in Nigeria's commercial system. Foreign firms compete with one another for a share of the lucrative Nigerian market by offering inducements to local middlemen and state officials. Bribes are the basis of competitive advantage. State officials and Nigerian businessmen are compradors because they organize the access of foreign firms to local markets and raw materials. At the same time, the state is also expected to provide administrative and infrastructural services, to promote economic development, and to increase national control over the economy. This requires the appointment of technically‐qualified staff committed to the application of technocratic criteria to the determination of policy‐making, which brings them into conflict with the dominant comprador faction in the administration. Terisa Turner's paper analyzes such operations of foreign capital in Nigeria, and the way in which they undermine the stability of the state. In the second part of her paper she shows how conflicts over oil policy were crucial to the overthrow of the Gowon regime, conflicts which are not likely to be resolved by its successor.
Disposable nannies: domestic servants in the political economy of South Africa
Authors: Cock Jacklyn
Published: July 2007

Roughly 89 per cent of domestic servants in South Africa are black and of these about 88 per cent are women. Domestic service accounts for the employment of 38 per cent of black women whose conditions of work are the least protected within one of the most regimented labour forces in the world. The institution of black domestic labour socialises whites into the dominant ideological order of race and exposes servants to its most humiliating practices. Black servants are coerced into dependency upon their employers but white women are also dependents within the patriarchal structures of capital.

In this article the author explores the ideas generated by the domestic labour debate to understand the role of domestic labour in South Africa in the reproduction of labour power and examines some of the contradictory trends in the conditions of reproduction within the capitalist economy.
Agrarian policy in migrant labour societies: reform or transformation in Zimbabwe?
Authors: Bush Ray , Cliffe Lionel
Published: July 2007

This paper deals with one basic problem that southern African countries will have to face in any transformation of their agriculture: if these societies are ‘labour reserves’ can they be easily transformed so as to eliminate labour migration. Zimbabwe seems to have an official policy of ending ‘divided families’ by pushing some into being unambiguously working class families with no land and others into a settled, non‐migratory peasantry. Thus former white‐owned land is only distributed to those without jobs. But this could be only a more radical variant of plans that were attempted in the 1950s to end migrant labour. Are today's plans for separating out worker‐peasants into separate classes any more realistic? Isn't there some danger of creating a landless, unemployed stratum in between, and of ignoring the needs of women heads of households? May it not be better to recognise that combining paid work and farming may have to continue for some time as Mozambique and Nicaragua seem to have done?
Food policy and production in Mozambique since independence
Authors: Raikes Philip
Published: July 2007

Mozambique's food crisis is one of the most disastrous in Africa. Undeniably a result of systematic South African destabilisation, and made worse in the last years by drought, it has its origins in the colonial structure of agriculture and the shock of the sudden Portuguese exodus at Independence. But the paper explores, as Frelimo's 1983 Fourth Congress did, whether policy choices have not made matters worse. Attention is drawn to the last few years’ emphasis on the former settler sector, its conversion to complex, costly and not very productive state farms; to low prices of food, to sustain an essentially Portuguese urban diet — all to the detriment of peasant farming.
Nationalism, peasant politics & the emergence of a vanguard front in Eritrea
Authors: Gebre‐Medhin Jordan
Published: July 2007

The concern of this article is with explaining the difference between the two Eritrean liberation movements. It argues against Pool's thesis in ROAPE19 that the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was rooted in the pastoral lowland people and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) was able to transcend its practices as it drew on a ‘higher’ agricultural mode of production in the highlands. Instead it is argued that the composition of both movements was not dissimilar, but that the original ELF gained from the popular movement of serf rebellion in the pastoral areas, but then split as it was only the breakaway EPLF that could, through its political and ideological stance, successfully tackle the problem of agrarian reform in the agricultural areas.
Somalia and the World economy
Authors: Laitin David D. , Samatar Said S.
Published: July 2007

The performance of the ‘socialist’ period of Somali development after 1970, and the present predicament of the different path since defeat in the Ogaadeen war in 1978, are analysed against the background of the pre‐colonial pastoral economy and the colonial plantation system.
The social relations of grain marketing in Northern Nigeria
Authors: Clough Paul
Published: July 2007

Clough examines the social relations of the internal marketing of one crop in the northern part of Nigeria, guineacorn, through case studies of rural traders. He examines the relationships between traders of varying degrees of wealth and political power, the manner and extent of profit‐making in the purchase and sale of peasant produce, and the particular social rules governing the interaction between the different levels of trader in guineacorn.

The area of field‐work carried out between 1976 and 1979 embraced Malumfashi Division in the southern part of the Katsina Emirate, in Kaduna State; Danbatta weekly market, about 40 miles north of Kano City; and occasionally, the grain markets of Sokoto City and of Mai Aduwa, on the border between Nigeria and Niger. The research had a four‐fold focus: firstly, the production and marketing of guineacorn in the hamlet of Marmara, eight miles from Malumfashi town: secondly, the grain trade in the weekly market of Kankara town, 22 miles north of Malumfashi, and the bi‐weekly market of Yargoje village; thirdly, the retailing of guineacorn transported from Marmara hamlet in Danbatta market; and finally, the wholesale transfer of guineacorn between traders in these markets and also Sokoto and Mai Aduwa, much of it intended for Niger. It was a study of inter‐rural marketing between the grain‐surplus region of southern Katsina and grain‐deficit regions to the north. Clough's case studies describe four trading relationships in the private, commercial marketing of grain: the relationship between a Hausa/Fulani aristocrat and Hausa rural trader; relations between urban merchants and an inter‐village wholesaler living in the countryside; the connection between the inter‐village wholesaler and a hamlet wholesaler; and between the inter‐village wholesaler and a retailer in Danbatta market.
Household units and historical process in Southern Malawi
Authors: Vaughan Megan
Published: July 2007

This paper discusses the effects of commodity production on rural households in Southern Malawi during the colonial period. It argues that the effects on relations — particularly those of gender — within the household can only be understood within a wider context of inter‐household relations and the interventions of the colonial state. Drawing on two case studies of commoditisation, occurring in the same historical period and within the the same region, it shows the very different effects of this on the position of women within their households and communities.
Structural adjustment and the political question
Authors: Bangura Yusuf
Published: July 2007

The call for a national debate on the country's political future has so far generated a lukewarm response. However, several tendencies have appeared which have serious implications for the struggle for democracy. Coming in the wake of the debate about Nigeria's relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one would have thought that the ‘political debate’ would have been informed by the specific problems the economy is experiencing and the concrete adjustment policies the state has persistently implemented since 1982. Even some of the radicals who ought to have drawn the correct lessons from the diversionary tactics of the state in the IMF debate have tended to proceed as if we are starting from a tabula raisa,without any concrete economic policies which inform the state's quest for a new political order. This partly explains the reason for the strange convergence which seems to be developing between some radicals and the bourgeoisie in the articulation of a new political formula.

The thrust of this paper is to discuss the link between the state's adjustment programme and the question of political power. We argue that the adjustment programme of contemporary monetarism, which reached its highest expression in the 1986 budget, throws up specific types of political regimes ranging from zero/one and controlled two party systems to military rule, civil/ military diarchy and corporate representation. Against the background of the specific character of capitalist accumulation, with its monopolistic, antidemocratic and corrupt practices, the monetarist strategy of crisis‐management pushes the state towards more authoritarian policies. Many contributors to the political debate have not grasped this point. The appropriate response to authoritarian rule should, therefore, focus on the struggle for democracy and the strengthening of the working class movement for socialist power instead of the strategy of co‐determination which seeks to resolve the conflicting interests in the society under a unitary power structure that will accommodate the representatives of popular organisations.
Labour movements or popular struggles in Africa
Authors: von Freyhold Michaela
Published: July 2007

In this article von Freyhold considers and evaluates the kind of popular or class struggles capable in the long run of reducing inequality and exploitation. She begins with a critique of dependency theory which, if accurately portraying economic patterns characterising developing countries, remains essentially functional in its assumptions and tied to a model of change based on an inaccurate historical account of the metropolis. The author points to important differences between the experience and position of the working class in the West and its counterparts in other contexts. In particular the fundamental element of racism intruding into the relationship between worker and employer in colonial situations has meant a broader gap between the exploited and controlling elements of society there. This in turn has fostered the emergence of movements and struggles which, as a matter of course, have transcended the boundaries of the working class. It is such forces, suggests von Freyhold, which are likely to make a positive impact in transforming the status quo. The role prescribed for labour is not as an independent force but as a part of a larger and broader initiative.
The state, Agrarian change and crisis of hegemony in Somalia
Authors: Samatar A.
Published: July 2007

Minds don't stay in the past … they can find the truths of the past, come back to the present and look forward to the future. That's not getting lost. The present is when we get lost – if we forget our past and have no visions of the future (Ayi Kewi Armah, The Healers, 1979)
Dependency theory and the political economy of Africa's crisis
Authors: Bienefeld Manfred
Published: July 2007

This article will examine the ways in which the right and a large part of the left have converged in their assessment of the African problem, united both in their denigration of dependency theory and in their belief that state intervention lies at the root of Africa's problem andthat market forces represent a powerful and historically progressive force in Africa today. In this context it will consider the assumptions, the evidence and the arguments that support both the right's ‘new orthodoxy’ and the left's ironic rediscovery of ‘the acceptable face of capitalism’ in the smouldering ruins of Africa's economies.
No escape from the laws of world economics
Authors: Frank Andre
                      Gunder
Published: July 2007

The artificial division of the world into ‘capitalist’ and ‘socialist’ does not correspond to the reality of contemporary world development; the real struggle is between the US, the EC and Japan, as the world is becoming increasingly divided into three or more blocs. But nothing can ensure independence from the process of world economic development and history: neither ‘policy’ nor ‘ideology’. For all regimes, democratic and non‐democratic alike, it is dependence within the global system which establishes the framework for policy and political practice. Even the ‘choice of the people’ is determined by economics. The development of political social democracy in the West has been much less the cause than the consequence of success within the capitalist world‐economy. As long as the debt burden continues and mounts, the debt‐ridden economies of the South will suffer and their democratic development be prevented or threatened. The same is valid for Eastern Europe's new or aspiring democracies. But freedom of the market does not equal democratic freedom: on the contrary, in the market it is ‘one dollar, one vote’, so that ‘many dollars means many votes and no dollar – no vote’. In the absence of economic power or electoral political democracy, the people of Eastern Europe were obliged to organise themselves in grassroots social movements of participant democracy. In the South also, the economic crisis and lack of electoral political democracy obliges the people to organise and mobilise among themselves to create a civil democracy.