Volume 23 - Issue 3 - December 1980
Research Article
The Zulu Revolution: State Formation in a Pastoralist Society
- David Shingirai Chanaiwa
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- 23 May 2014, pp. 1-20
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One cannot comprehend the demographic and political maps of contemporary Southern Africa, as well as the cultural-historical dynamics of the region during both the colonial and post-colonial periods, without first studying the changes caused by the Zulu revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and by the accompanying Nguni-Sotho migrations into Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and even Tanzania. Among the Nguni who occupied the present Natal province of South Africa, the revolution essentially was a violent counter-elite overthrow of the traditional political system and a transformation of the social order. The revolution was conducted throughout the reigns of five monarchical leaders: Dingiswayo (c. 1800-1818) who laid the foundations; Shaka (1816-1828) who established the Zulu kingdom and ruled at the peak of the revolution; Dingane (1828-1840) who was the first to encounter European encroachment upon Zululand; Mpande (1840-1872) who became a vassal of the Boers and the British; and Cetshwayo (1872-1884) who died in an armed resistance against British colonialism. The prolonged period of revolutionary warfare and the accompanying deprivations, known as the Mfecane among the Nguni and the Difaqane among the Sotho-Tswana, resulted in widespread migrations of peoples in different directions and destinations.
Regionally, the Nguni-Sotho migrations led to militarization, conquest and nation-building, and to the absorption of alien peoples. The whole process resulted in the intermixing, intermarriage and assimilation of peoples of diverse origins, languages, and cultures and gave them an enduring sense of corporate identity.
National Parks in Africa: A Note on a Problem of Indigenization
- Jonathan S. Crush
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- 23 May 2014, pp. 21-32
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The growth and development of an international national parks movement has provided Africa with a powerful impetus for devoting increased attention and funding to the preservation of natural African habitats and the conservation of indigenous floral and faunal stock (Lamprey, 1969; Olindo, 1974; Nelson et al., 1978). The political, social and economic dynamics of independent Africa, however, are providing their own set of counter forces to the establishment and consolidation of integrated national parks systems in a significant number of African countries. Particular threats are posed by the continued intrusion into Africa of western multinational corporation capital and by the failure to wean those national parks which do exist away from their almost exclusive externally directed function (Farvar and Milton, 1972; Dasmann, 1973; De Vos, 1975).
Africa's conservation inheritance from the colonial period was a largely uncoordinated set of game reserves and parks designed to serve the recreational needs and economic interests of expatriate whites, settler communities, and foreign tourists. The mass of Africans invariably had little access either to the reserves and parks themselves or to the private and public decision-making bodies which created and maintained them. Political independence brought a measure of access and potential control, but for the masses the inevitable temptation to regard the reserves as white and foreign playthings of only marginal relevance in the independence milieu has persisted.
The widespread commitment to westernized development paths by African states has, in addition, posed long term threats to environmental conservation and the creation and sustenance of national parks systems. Wildlife preservation is often viewed purely in economic terms, as an important, but ultimately dispensable, adjunct to the foreign tourist industry (Pollock, 1974; Myers, 1975). This attitude is expressed in a number of ways.
Allocation of Credit to Ujamaa Villages in Tanzania and Small Farms in Zambia
- Jean M. Due
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- 23 May 2014, pp. 33-48
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As agricultural production shifts from traditional methods (where land and labor are the major inputs and seed often is saved by the farmer) to more modern methods in which more of the inputs are produced off the farm, farmers' savings in Third World countries may be insufficient to purchase the needed inputs for cash. Thus credit may have to be provided from some source. Many governments have established agricultural development banks to increase the lending available to the agricultural sector and have experienced low repayment rates [a good summary is found in Donald (1976); also see World Bank (1975)]. Some writers have suggested that loans be made through cooperatives or a similar political group where selection of the borrowers is made by the group and there is group pressure for repayment. This study examines the experience of loans allocated through this type of arrangement to ujamaa villages in Tanzania and to small private farms in Zambia, and it seeks to establish some correlates of repayment ability.
Tanzania established the Tanzanian Rural Development Bank (TRDB) in 1971 and Zambia the Agricultural Finance Company (AFC) in 1970 to provide increased capital to the agricultural sector. Although both organizations make loans to both large and small farmers, this study concentrated on small farmer experience. In each country these organizations replaced predecessors with poor repayment experience (Due, 1978a). In each country lending procedures were reviewed and a determination made to attain high repayment rates. Training and administration were upgraded.
Attitudes and Development: The District Administration in Tanzania
- Louis A. Picard
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- 23 May 2014, pp. 49-68
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At the heart of the development process, insofar as it involves governmental activity, is the attitude of the administrator who is supposed to carry out that policy. An administrator who is not committed to a policy can either simply ignore it, or if the policy seems threatening, actively work to sabotage it. In the final analysis, it is the administrator in the field who must act as the lightning rod in the linking of policy planning in the center to policy implementation in the rural district.
Development policy in Tanzania depends particularly upon the aptitude and the attitude of the district level administrator. Tanzanian socialism, with its emphasis on self help and cooperative effort, must be accepted by civil servants in the districts and regions who may be skeptical of much of the thrust of development policy. Heirs to an elitist administrative tradition, the Tanzanian district officer and his staff may have little financial incentive to implement a policy of egalitarianism which has at least some emphasis on the redistribution of wealth.
This study focuses on the issue of administrative attitudes in an attempt to determine to what extent the administrative and political changes which have occurred in Tanzania have been accepted at the district level. This article will first examine the attitudes of a select group of Tanzanian district level administrators and then compare these attitudes with those of their closest colleagues at the district and at the regional level.
Sources of Material Inequality in Lushoto District, Tanzania
- Patrick Fleuret
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- 23 May 2014, pp. 69-88
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Anthropologists have long been interested in the sources and consequences of material inequality among African peoples. Societies in which such inequality existed during pre-colonial times have been investigated (cf. Maquet, 1970; Cohen, 1970; Hoben, 1970) but, especially since the close of the colonial era, attention has been directed toward societies originally without significant material wealth differences that have become internally differentiated due to exogenous social and economic forces. Emergent wealth differences have been related to a number of causes, including differential participation in labor migration (Mitchell, 1970; Watson, 1970; Wilson, 1977), differential incorporation into trade networks (Levine, 1962; Cohen, 1966; Mascarenhas and Mbilinyi, 1971), differential participation in ideological systems (Allan et el., 1948; Long, 1968; Barrett, 1974), and, especially, differential control over the factors of production (representative are: Ruthenberg, 1968; Vincent, 1971; Hill, 1972; Parkin, 1972; Feldman, 1974; Raid and Raid, 1975).
In East Africa today there is cause for particular concern regarding the extent to which differential access to land, labor and capital is generating patterns of rural inequality in which a few fortunate households are elevated while the majority remain poor. The concern exists not only because maldistribution of wealth and material well-being implies widespread suffering in rural areas, but because concomitant circumstances such as unequal educational opportunities (Sheffield, 1967; Court and Ghai, 1974), unequal access to development funds (Hyden et al., 1970; Heyer et al., 1971), and unequal nutritional intake (Gerlach, 1961, 1964; Dema, 1969; Kraut and Cremer, 1969), can lead to social, economic and physiological polarization of the rural population.
Confrontation and Incorporation: Igbo Ethnicity in Cameroon
- Gerald W. Kleis
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- 23 May 2014, pp. 89-100
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The upsurge of ethnic consciousness in urban America which crested during the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired a sustained academic interest in ethnicity as a social phenomenon. This may partly explain the fact that American scholars over the past two decades have been largely concerned with urban ethnicity and have shown little inclination to carry their investigation into rural areas. Among Africanists, Wallerstein (1965: 477) has gone so far as to suggest that ethnicity is an exclusively urban phenomenon. The present paper argues that, although this generalization is unwarranted, one does tend to find more striking manifestations of ethnicity in urban areas than in the countryside. However, the author's study of Igbo migrants in Cameroon reveals that rural centers often favor the articulation of an ethnic identity which is, in some aspects, more functional and consolidated than in the town.
The Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth and his colleagues broke new ground with their provocative analyses of ecological factors which condition the maintenance of ethnic boundaries. They noted that individuals often downplay or transform their ethnic identity in response to the local environmental situation or particular ecological niche that the group comes to occupy. Extreme examples of ethnic transformation are Barth's (1969) southern Pathans who are incorporated into Baluchi tribes as serfs and Haarland's (1969: 61) Fur cultivators who acquire many cattle and ultimately become Baggara Arabs. Less extreme examples of identity manipulation include Eidheim's (1969: 39) Lapp fishing villages and the Mon peasants studied by the American anthropologist Brian Foster (1974).
Domestic Instability and Foreign Conflict Behavior in Black Africa
- Richard Vengroff
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- 23 May 2014, pp. 101-114
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The nature of the relationship between domestic and foreign conflict behavior has been an important concern of students of both international and comparative politics. Scholars attempting systematically to examine this question on a cross-national basis have generally found the hypothesized positive relationship to be weak or non-existent (Rummel, 1963, 1964, 1968; Tanter, 1966; Haas, 1968). Similarly, studies concentrating on this relationship as it applies to a single nation (Burrowes and Spector, 1973) or to a dyadic relationship (Jensen, 1969) have found no support for the hypothesis.
Most of these studies failed to differentiate between types of government and nations at different levels of development. Additional work by Zinnes and Wilkenfeld (1971) and Wilkenfeld (1969, 1973) indicate that when we control for type of government, (i.e., polyarchic, personalist, and centrist), different types of domestic and foreign conflict are positively, although weakly, correlated. The major exception to the general trend of findings in this area appears in the work of Collins (1973). Utilizing a sample consisting of thirty-three African nations, most of which were excluded from all previous studies, he found strong positive relationships between certain measures of internal and external conflict. Similarly, Copson (1973) found a relationship between domestic conflict and foreign conflict within the African region. It is the purpose of this study to reexamine these seemingly anomalous findings for Black African nations. If the relationship holds as both Collins and Copson suggest, is it a function of the level of development or the type of government of these nations? Is there some particular facet of African political culture that lends itself to a linkage between domestic and foreign conflict? Alternatively, can these findings be explained as merely an artifact of the measurement techniques employed in their analysis?
Front matter
ASR volume 23 issue 3 Cover and Front matter
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- 23 May 2014, pp. f1-f6
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Back matter
ASR volume 23 issue 3 Cover and Back matter
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- 23 May 2014, pp. b1-b5
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