A much neglected perspective on Zimbabwe's post-independence war is that held by its insurgents, the so-called dissidents. The experience of dissidents has been little explored, in part because of the difficulty of doing so until recently but also because scholars and journalists have analysed post-1980 violence primarily in terms of the political interests of either ZAPU or ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe's dominant nationalist parties, or the South African state. No account has sought to explore the motives, goals and organisation of the dissidents themselves; the how-and-whys of the turn to war have remained obscure. Though dissidents' views are often as partisan as those of their detractors, focusing on the perspectives of the dissidents allows a substantial reinterpretation of the war and its aftermath. From the dissidents' point of view, post-Unity politics is bitterly disappointing: they say Unity is meaningful only for the national leaders. Unity has not overcome the political tribalism of the 1980s nor has it brought an end to economic hardship. Though the dissidents' perspective on Zimbabwe's post-independence war is unique in many ways, the stress on the unresolved wrongs of the 1980s—continued developmental neglect, the lack of restitution or even recognition for losses and suffering, the failures to make peace with the High God of Njelele and the spirits—finds a much wider resonance within Matabeleland as a whole.

Young people are the major participants in most wars. In the African civil wars of the last twenty years combatants have become increasingly youthful. Some forces are made up largely of young teenagers; combatants may sometimes be as young as 8 or 10, and girl fighters are increasingly common. The trend to more youthful combatants also reflects the discovery that children—their social support disrupted by war—make brave and loyal fighters; the company of comrades in arms becomes a family substitute. There are two main adult reactions. The first is to stigmatise youth combatants as evil (‘bandits’, ‘vermin’). The other (regularly espoused by agencies working with children) is to see young fighters as victims, as tools of undemocratic military regimes or brutally unscrupulous ‘warlords’. But many under-age combatants choose with their eyes open to fight, and defend their choice, sometimes proudly. Set against a background of destroyed families and failed educational systems, militia activity offers young people a chance to make their way in the world. The purpose of this article is to let young combatants explain themselves. The reader is left to decide whether they are the dupes and demons sometimes supposed.

The Rwandan refugee camps in Tanzania witnessed the marriages of very young adolescents: girls as young as 13–14 married boys of 14–15 years, boys they often did not even know. These marriages usually did not last very long; after a few months many girls were forced to leave—sent away by their husband. People of both sexes and all ages, when asked about the problems in the camp, would always mention these child marriages as one of the biggest problems. They were worried not only about the loss of respect for Rwandan culture and traditional values but also about the future of the marriages and what would become of the children. This article is not based on extensive research into child marriages, but the author was able to interview a number of young people who had got married in the camps, and to collect information and the opinions of other people on these and other cases. Rather than describing marriage customs and wedding ceremonies in Rwanda, and comparing them with what took place in the refugee camps, the article aims to show the impact of (civil) war, the consequent poverty and the destruction of social structures on a community, in order to show how in these circumstances behaviour can change radically. Refugees have to build up a new life in a camp, and the new ‘society’ is likely to be different from the one they came from, with different rules and changed values. Among various examples of deviant behaviour child marriages were the most remarkable.

This article explores indigenous notions of power and chiefly legitimacy among the Ihanzu, a relatively small Bantu-speaking community located in north central Tanzania. Particular attention is paid to local ideas and ideals of gender—that is, the cultural categories ‘male’ and ‘female’, as well as the relationship between them—in an effort to show the complex ways in which gender categories, when combined, are powerful and capable of effecting transformations of different sorts. Men and women, by combining male and female fertilising fluids, create children. Similarly, male and female chiefs, through royal incest, bring forth male and female rains. It is suggested that the strategic combination of the cultural categories ‘male’ and ‘female’ provides the underlying transformative model both for sexual reproduction and for rainmaking. And it is through the combination of gender categories that chiefs legitimise their own positions, first by producing rain and, second, by metaphorically giving birth to all Ihanzu people each season. But whether for chiefs or commoners, it is argued that power frequently comes in gendered pairs.

The study and application of household coping have largely been confined to the problems of famine and food insecurity. Based on field insights from West Africa, this paper argues that understanding how households cope and allocate resources in times of crisis is of immense value to a broad array of development interventions. It also introduces a conceptual framework that evaluates household coping in exogenous and endogenous contexts. The application of this framework may provide a more informed approach to development intervention design, implementation and targeting that is sensitive to the differential needs and experiences of rural households and communities.