Scholars have recently begun to describe a speech form emerging in post-colonial cities which reflects the creative melding or ‘creolisation’ of elements from indigenous and former colonial cultures. These ‘urban varieties’ are not, strictly speaking, Creoles but rather indigenous languages whose structures and lexicons have been adapted to the complexities of urban life. A primary characteristic of such varieties is their ‘devernacularisation’. No longer tied to the cultural values represented by the languages in their more traditional forms, they reflect instead the new values and way of life found in the urban centres where they are spoken. This article, based on fieldwork conducted in Senegal between 1986 and 1989, describes the formation and role of one such urban linguistic variety, Urban Wolof. In particular, it focuses on Dakarois’ conflicting tendencies to accept Urban Wolof in Dakar as the most pragmatic form of urban communication while rejecting it as evidence of an undesirable creolisation between indigenous and French culture.

The article represents an overview of the activities of members of the géwél caste, or Wolof griots, in present-day Senegal. While seemingly little has changed in areas where traditional ways of life are still dominant, in the westernised urban culture many traditional artists have learned to cope with the use of mass media. Far from being threatened by extinction, traditional artists and historians have managed to adapt their art to the requirements of modern life and to make it accessible to a wider audience.

Spurred on in large part by the emergence of Jamaican and Anglo-Jamaican reggae music on to the global pop music scene in the mid-1970s, the Jamaican Rastafarian movement has within the past two decades managed to expand beyond its island home and attract a diverse and multi-ethnic international following. Apart from the various manifestations of ‘orthodox’ Jamaican Rastafarianism found in Africa today, one finds a number of religious and social formations which share similar features with and have been influenced to some extent by Rastafarian religion, music and culture. This article examines the various links that exist between one such group—the Muslim Baye Faal of Senegambia—and the beliefs and practices of the Jamaican Rastafari.

In the current HIV debate there are diverse opinions about the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa and the reasons for it. Caldwell and his colleagues, for example, argue that the whole of Africa has a distinct sexuality which is inherently permissive. They claim moreover that no religious moral value is attached to sexual activity, and Christianity has thus not succeeded in changing matters. They find in this failure the reason for the failure of the fertility control programme in sub-Saharan Africa, and they argue that HIV/AIDS control efforts will fail similarly unless the fear it generates forces Africans to adopt the Eurasian model, with its religious, moral value.

The article re-examines Caldwell et al.'s conceptualisation of the role of moral value in social change. Without considering the internal expressions, mechanisms and social contexts within and through which moral value is maintained and changed, they assume that Christian moral values could lead to a change in sexual behaviour from permissive (as they see it) African sexuality to the Eurasian model. In making such an assumption they ignore the ethical and behavioural contradictions generally inherent in moral systems. Moreover they pay little attention to the process of change in Western societies, where Christian morality has lost a great deal of its control over behaviour. But even if we assume that internal contradictions and processes of change do not exist, the christianisation process in Africa fundamentally transformed local customs in ways that delinked their role in regulating behaviour, including sexual behaviour.

For discussions and decisions on options and strategies for the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS, identifying the nature and impact of that transformation is essential.

The aim of this study was to examine people's beliefs about the causes of marital instability in a rural population cohort in south-west Uganda. Results from a baseline survey of HFV-1 infection in the cohort of over 4,000 adults (over 12 years old) showed a twofold increase in risk of infection in divorced or separated persons when compared with those who are married. A purposive sample of 134 respondents (seventy-two males, sixty-two females) selected to represent different ages, religions and marital status were asked in semi-structured interviews to comment on the reasons for continuing marital instability in their community. The most common reasons suggested for marital instability were sexual dissatisfaction, infertility, alcoholism and mobility. Interviewees stated that men and women would be more likely to stay with someone who satisfied them sexually. It was reported that infertility, particularly of the woman, would lead a couple to separate. Alcoholism was said to lead to neglect of family responsibilities and decreased sexual inhibitions, while occupational mobility was a common cause of infidelity. HIV infection was not mentioned as a direct cause of separation, but a small independent study revealed that seven out often couples separated on learning of a positive HIV test result of one or both partners. Marital instability is not uncommon in this population; there is evidence that HFV infection is making the situation worse.

The aim of this article is to show how a ‘traditional’ society may produce a household system in which the structural tensions are no less intense than in the Western world. Muslim Hausa society (in northern Nigeria) has one of the highest rates of divorce (and remarriage) in the world. An explanation is sought here in terms of the economic and organisational requirements of a subsistence farming system that is always potentially short of labour. Divorce is a solution to otherwise unacceptable pressures, particularly on young women, in a society that requires them to be subordinate and marginal within the extended family. The data presented here were collected between 1979 and 1989 in the Niger valley of Sokoto State in northern Nigeria.