The African press of colonial British West Africa has been recognized for the role it played in moving the area toward independence (Crowder, 1968: 424-25). On the other side of the continent, however, the African press of former British East Africa–Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania–has largely been ignored by scholars. One accepted view has been that the African press of East Africa, while contributing little to the independence movement, thrived on subversive attacks on government and irresponsible publications in general (Hatchen, 1971: 202). Some recent research has suggested that in Kenya and Uganda there was an important African press in the pre-independence period, a press that helped to spread social and political ideas and to mobilize the African population (Scotton, 1973: 1975). Almost totally ignored, however, have been the African newspapers of pre-independence Tanzania, and more specifically those of mainland Tanganyika.

This paper will examine the role of the African press of Tanganyika before that United Nations territory under British administration achieved self-government in 1961. This African press, perhaps on a more limited scale, played a role similar to that of the African newspapers of neighboring Kenya and Uganda. In all three areas, the African press provided an outlet for specific African grievances, challenged accepted social and political patterns, and helped to mobilize the African population in support of proposed new patterns and their African spokesmen.

Early African spokesmen such as Harry Thuku in Kenya, Sefanio Sentongo in Uganda, and Erica Fiah in Tanganyika also saw the need for some kind of news sheet or newspaper to help legitimatize their arguments for equal treatment and eventually even self-government for Africans.

In early 1976 the Ethiopian Amharic language daily, Addis Zemen, opened its columns to a surprisingly free political debate. Through a series of so-called letters to the editor, two political factions, one violently opposed to the military government, the other reluctantly in favor of it, exchanged daily barbs. Both groups considered themselves Marxists-Leninists, both wanted people's government and a socialist revolution. Both, it should be added, used a complex, abstract, highly intellectual and, in addition, not too clear language which rather belied their claims to represent the broad masses. Here, however, the similarity between the two groups stopped. The anti-government faction, initially known as the “Democracia” group, accused the military council and its supporters of fascism. The pro-government group, known as “The Voice of the Masses”, called its rivals anarchists.

This debate was the first and most visible step in an attempt to heal the rift between the military and civilian left in Ethiopia, the major unresolved internal issue of the Ethiopian revolution. From the time of the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in September 1974, the military council, or Derg, was faced with the opposition of one or another faction of the radical intelligentsia, a large section of the student body, the old labor confederation, and, in general, most civilian organized groups. Such opposition was not directed against the policies enacted by the Derg–a sweeping land reform, the nationalization of major industrial concerns, and the organization of the population into peasant associations and urban neighborhood associations whose powers have become quite considerable. Rather, the opposition was directed against the military government per se, dubbed as fascist irrespective of the radical policies it enacted.

The history of industrial education in the European-initiated educational systems of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Africa has been and remains controversial. Some scholars maintain that in the late 1800s both the government and missionaries favored, and indeed established, industrial training (Berman, 1974: 530; Foster, 1965). Others insist that, contrary to government wishes, missionaries resisted the establishment of industrial education until the beginning of the twentieth century, when industrial training came into vogue only as a result of “doubts regarding the mental ability of the Black African.” (Lyons, 1975: 148-49).

These conflicting observations about industrial education (here meaning both pre-industrial and industrial skills taught for personal as well as occupational use) are based primarily upon the British Protestant experience in West Africa. Experience in Belgian Africa was quite different. This paper will argue that there were two distinct phases in the development of industrial education in the Congo during the Leopoldian era: (1) the late nineteenth century, characterized by the training of a limited few highly skilled craftsmen for missionary service and (2) the early twentieth century, when the skill component of industrial education declined to the teaching of a bit of carpentry as an adjunct to general education, especially for prospective evangelists and catechists. In the second phase, even those missions which originally had prepared skilled craftsmen for their own use now eagerly accepted the watered-down version of industrial education.

Non-western peoples are often portrayed as extremely conservative, tradition-bound, and either apathetic or hostile toward change agents and their efforts. This picture of the conservative peasant appears in both social scientific analyses and journalistic accounts, and springs in part from the frustrations that many external change agents have felt when confronted with what seemed to be implacable resistance.

In the African context, particularly in East Africa, the “conservative native” par excellence has been the pastoralist. Ogling tourists are fascinated by the “noble savagery” of the Maasai, the Karimojong, and the Samburu, while African governments pass laws prohibiting the carrying of spears, requiring school attendance, banning transhumance, setting minimum quotas for livestock sales, establishing destocking policies and programs, and demanding increased agricultural production.

From the government's point of view, this pastoral conservatism has been particularly annoying and costly in its manifestations in economic behavior. Pastoralists are said to be emotionally attached to their livestock to a degree that makes it impossible for them to operate as rational economic actors. They are accused of being both lazy and spend-thrifts. A European economist, who was chiefly responsible for the creation of a development plan for Karamoja District, Uganda, told me that the Karimojong “don't have the sagacity of a squirrel.”

Countering this stereotyping is a growing awareness among some social scientists that the label of “conservatism” applied by analysts is myopic and ethnocentric (Ortiz, 1971) or, in the case of some officials, self-serving (Erasmus, 1968).

The General Assembly of the United Nations passed two conflicting resolutions on the Korean question at its thirtieth session in 1975. One was sponsored by the United States, Japan, and 24 pro-western countries, and the other by the Soviet Union, China, and 41 pro-eastern countries. The pro-eastern proposal demanded the dismantling of the United Nations Command and the withdrawal of all foreign forces under the United Nations flag by 1 January, 1976. The pro-western proposal concurred, on the condition that the parties directly concerned came to a new agreement which will replace the existing truce agreement before the withdrawal of the United Nations forces. The pro-western proposal was supported by eight black African countries, and the pro-eastern proposal by 26 black African countries.

The Korean question is the oldest cold war issue debated in the United Nations. Since it was brought to the United Nations in the wake of the Korean war in 1950, it has been debated and voted on in the General Assembly almost every year (see Goodrich, 1956; U. S. Department of State, 1960; Cho, 1967).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, through a case study approach, the nature of African non-alignment and the African perception of the cold war, especially as related to divided countries. I will first review how the diplomatic relations between newly independent African states and North and South Korea have developed, and next explore how African countries have been voting on the Korean question in the United Nations. Finally, I will discuss the implications of the relationships between the two Koreas and African countries, both in and out of the United Nations.

In the summer of 1833, the British Parliament passed into law a bill designed to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire. The Abolition Act conferred freedom on all slave children in the plantation colonies, who were not over six years of age, and declared as free persons children born after the passage of the act. All persons over six years of age became free but were required to work for their former owners as “apprentices” for a limited period: the domestics were to serve for four years, while the agricultural slaves were to work for six years. The act also provided for twenty million pounds sterling to be given as compensation to the owners of the slaves. As the title of the act states, the “apprenticeship” system was designed to promote the “industry of the manumitted slaves …” (Great Britain, Public Record Office [PRO], C.O. 167/205, Glenelg to Nicolay, 6 November 1838). The apprenticeship system was inaugurated in the British West Indies in 1834, and in Mauritius and her dependent colonies on 1 February 1835. Following the examples of Antigua and Barbados, the British West Indian colonies aborted the system in 1838; in Mauritius and its dependencies the system came to an end in 1839.

The assessments of the apprenticeship system are varied. The framers of the Abolition Act pronounced the system as one in which “manumitted” slaves performed compulsory labor for a limited period and in their own interests. Some contemporary observers (Baker and Blackhouse, 1838) were inclined to think that the apprenticeship system was a prolongation of slavery.

There is considerable evidence that induced abortions account for a great deal of the decline in birth rate or slowing down of the growth in birth rate in a number of countries such as Japan, the USSR, Hungary, the other East European countries, Korea, Taiwan, Chile, and Uruguay. Tietze and Lewit (1969: 21) wrote: “Abortion is still the most wide-spread, and the most clandestine method of fertility control in the modern world.” In Ghana public opinion also suggests that induced abortion is the most widespread method of fertility control. Whether this is true is difficult to ascertain, because induced abortion in Ghana is certainly, as Tietze and Lewit wrote, “the most clandestine method.” It is forbidden by law and is generally condemned by the people. Usually, therefore, abortions are performed in secret, which renders research extremely difficult. Ironically, however, the secret character of abortion makes the need of investigation even more urgent, because illegally performed abortions tend to cause the gravest medical complications.

To my knowledge, no one has yet made a scientific estimate concerning how often and under what circumstances induced abortion occurs in Ghana, and what its consequences are. I do not intend to make such an attempt either. My sole intention is to look at induced abortion in the context of a single Akan matrilineage in order to gain a more realistic insight into the conditions that lead to abortion, the ways it is practiced, and the reaction to it by the people concerned. This paper will, therefore, have little value for demographers who require statistical evidence. At best it may suggest a number of hypotheses about the incidence of induced abortion in Ghana and thus encourage further research.

How should one relate culture to the modernization process in Africa? This paper will attempt to indicate how one might go about answering this important question, probably raising more questions in the process than providing substantive answers. A point of departure, in doing so, is to offer a critical exposition of the uses to which certain African political thinkers, principally Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, have put the culture concept.

The paper assumes that contemporary African political thought, especially since the 1950s, has been preoccupied chiefly with explaining the modernization process in cultural terms. A thesis, deriving from this basic assumption, is that the culture concept provides a useful focus for interpreting and assigning meaning to contemporary African political thought. This paper will illustrate this thesis with respect to aspects of the political thought of Fanon, Cabral, and some others.

Students of contemporary African political thought have tended to ignore and, therefore, have not explored the implications of the strong connection between the concepts of culture and modernization in contemporary African political thought. Hopefully this paper will correct this situation. In doing so, the paper will point to the explanatory dimension and force of contemporary African political thought. This is because the interpretation offered here looks upon African political thinkers as using the culture concept to explicate the consequences of colonial rule and the colonial inheritance for the modernization process.