The pantheon of African national heroes houses a man forgotten by recent African history. He is Blaise Diagne, who became the first Negro African deputy of the French parliament by winning an unusual election in Senegal on 10 May 1914. This success not only launched Diagne upon a distinguished career of public service but also marked the beginning of African participation in modern politics in Senegal. Diagne, who was an incipient nationalist, broke the French and Creole domination of Senegalese representative institutions, introduced new campaign techniques and political methods, and gave a sense of purpose and unity to a badly divided African electorate. He was allowed to keep his parliamentary seat, despite attacks from many quarters, and thereby gave the French assimilationist theory its highest expression. He initiated a pattern of African involvement in metropolitan affairs that characterized French-speaking African politics for the next two generations; he set a style and created a mystique which inspired later African politicians; he can be called with great justice the precursor of modern African politics.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the production and settlement system of the Bantu-speaking Turu of central Tanzania and to discuss its effects on the social system. Save for certain other peoples of this area who are historically close to the Turu, the practice of manuring of land and strictly sedentary settlement without slash-and-burn horticultural techniques or bush fallowing (except as ancillary to the main production processes) are an unusual combination in Africa.

This paper analyses factors affecting the variable character of urban marriage patterns in the predominantly African city ward of Kampala East, Uganda. Kampala city comprises two other wards, both of which accommodate considerable proportions of Asians and Europeans. Skirting the west and south of the city is the Kibuga, meaning capital in the local vernacular, Luganda. The Kibuga, like Kampala East, is also predominantly African. The city and Kibuga are administratively and culturally highly distinct. The city has its own council and is the nation's capital. The Kibuga is the capital of the quasi-autonomous kingdom of Buganda. The latter is alternatively a province of Uganda.

The religious government and society of contemporary Northern Nigeria have their historical roots in a jihād (Muslim holy war) which was waged there in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The leader of thai jihād, Usuman dan Fodio, sought to establish a Muslim form of government over the Hausa city-states of what is now Northern Nigeria; his movement had the effect of replacing most of the nonorthodox, and in some cases non-Muslim, Hausa rulers with orthodox Muslims who, like himself, were Fulani.

In his recent study of urbanization among the Xhosa in East London, Mayer (1961) reveals a new dimension in the pagan/Christian opposition. The Xhosa-speaking tribes, Mayer points out, distinguish between what they call Red people (abantu ababomvu) and School people (abantu basesikolweni). The former are conservative traditionalists, adhering to Xhosa custom; the latter are already westernized to a degree and value many aspects of European material and non-material culture. But, Mayer emphasizes, Red Xhosa must not simply be regarded as a backward residue of unfortunates who have lacked the opportunity, one way or another, of becoming westernized. On the contrary: the Red Xhosa, no less than School Xhosa, have probably had more opportunity than any other population in Africa to experience and adopt western culture. The point is that Reds are not only conservatives, they are positive conservatives. They represent those Xhosa who have deliberately rejected white civilization and chosen instead to maintain their traditional way of life. And theirs is not an easy choice: it is a constant struggle against the forces of change.

With the exception of such pioneering efforts as Evans-Pritchard's structural functional analysis of the Azande beer dance, which appeared in this journal in 1928, African dance has rarely been the focus of research. Thirty-eight years after that article appeared I can write, as Evans-Pritchard did then, that African dance is usually given a place quite unworthy of its social importance. The typical report on African dance is either a limited, vague description without reference to context, or a discussion of the context of a dance without explicit reference to its function, style, and structure.