Literature is both an object and an agent of social control. Not only is it shaped by social constraints, but it is also a constraint on society. Ezekiel Mphahlele (1962: 186), the South African writer, has lamented the effect of society on literature in his homeland:

During the last twenty years the political, social climate of South Africa has been growing viciously difficult for a non-white to write in. It requires tremendous organization of one's mental and emotional faculties before one can write a poem or a novel or a play. This has become all but impossible…[At one time,] oppression provided just a sufficient spur to adult creative writing. The spur is a paralysing one today. Although the short story is very demanding, it is often used as a short-cut to prose meaning. And so it has become the most common medium in African literary activity, barring the large volume of vernacular writing being produced for school use.

Oppression constrains not only the structure of literature but also its content. Mphahlele suggests that the short story in such a racist setting goes through three stages: romance or escape, then protest, and finally irony. He calls irony “the meeting point of acceptance and rejection in the broadest terms: acceptance and protest in specific areas of black-white relations within implicit acceptance in a larger area” (Mphahlele, 1962: 188).

It is no more than a truism to point out once again that much of social science and other research in African studies is devoted to problems of change—and quite rightly so. The greatest share of this research, however, is today focused on urban studies. Rural areas are seldom brought into the equation since the flow of international power comes primarily from the cities. Yet it is the country which ultimately provides the people for the cities; it is the country upon which the cities must count for foodstuffs and other supplies; and it is country people, as well as city people, who influence national governments via the ballot. Thus in one sense, at least, the countryside is a microcosm of the city, and what is happening there should give us different but equally valuable perspectives on change.

It was thus with special anticipation that I returned, in May and June of 1973, to the village of Lupupa Ngye, located in what is now the Eastern Kasai Region of the Republic of Zaire. In 1959-60, my wife, two small children and I spent almost a year there engaged in ethnographic, ethnological, and ethnomusicological research. My purposes were traditional ones in anthropology: to renew old ties, to attempt to fill in gaps in my understanding of village life and thought and to see how my friends had fared and how much, and in what ways, they and their way of life had changed in the intervening thirteen years.

Despite scant advance publicity, the hot and airless court-room of Malawi's Southern Regional Traditional Court was filled to overflowing on October 19, 1971, to hear the case against Walla Laini Kawisa. Every lawyer and senior civil servant who could possibly arrange it was there. The Police had cordoned off the area surrounding the Court. A huge crowd stood behind the barrier in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the proceedings. On the bench were three elderly chiefs, a legally-qualified magistrate and a young Judge from a lower Traditional Court. Police Superintendent Phuza prosecuted, assisted by the Attorney General and a senior CID officer. Kawisa was unrepresented and pleaded guilty to three counts involving eight murders. The Prosecutor told the Court that the accused had agreed to have other charges taken into account. Kawisa impassively pleaded guilty each time the details of a charge were read, causing a stir in the courtroom. On October 30, 1971, after an arduous presentation of the case by the Prosecutor, Kawisa was found to be solely responsible for thirty-one murders and fifteen attempted murders. Reading the Judgement, Chief Chikumbu said:

Cocoa is an important agricultural export commodity not only because it provided about 20 per cent of the aggregate export earnings for Nigeria in the last decade but because it has generated considerable revenue for the government in terms of export duty, produce sales tax, and Marketing Board surpluses. In particular, the economy of Western Nigeria has been largely financed by the proceeds from the cocoa industry.

A look at the production statistics of the cocoa industry will reveal a declining trend in output since the 1964/65 crop season. The problem of declining yield is linked with the fact that about 40 per cent of the existing 1.2 million acres of cocoa are classified as marginally productive due to old age. The production problem is aggravated by the fact that most of the farmers whose cocoa trees have become moribund do not appreciate the need for replanting, and those who do indicate that they have not been encouraged by the prevailing producer prices. On the official side, the producer prices have been defended as fair and equitable and the assertion made that what is lacking is a good response on the part of the farmers who should replant their cocoa groves and upgrade their maintenance program. The raging controversy over cocoa supply response provided the stimulus to carry out this study.

Deliberate British support for the supremacy of the Basotho monarchy and the prerogatives of chieftainship after 1884 assured that those traditional institutions would adapt to changing socioeconomic conditions within a relatively narrow, increasingly rigid format not conducive to popular participation. Despite strong official discouragement of overt challenges to the existing structures of rule, various new channels of popular expression began to emerge as potential alternative outlets for political agitation. The expansion of mission education, cash cropping, the money economy, and labor migration along with other similar innovations unleashed forces for reform which could not be entirely contained and quickly became, in Lord Hailey's words, “much stronger than the Administration realized” (1953: 136).

Hailey recognized that the diverse groups generating such social and political pressures included not only the educated, incipient “middle class,” but also certain dissatisfied segments of the chieftainship. Together with most observers, he devoted major attention to the all-important development of the Basutoland National Council, which had evolved in part as a product of colonial inspiration, encouragement, and guidance. However, Hailey, like virtually all other analysts, gave minimal attention to the equally crucial and highly controversial roles of emergent interest aggregations such as the Progressive Association and Lekhotla la Bafo (The Council of Commoners). Nevertheless, these groups established a heritage of political ideas and of interaction with both colonial and chiefly administrations that is vital in understanding the policies, values, and behavior of subsequent Basotho political parties.

As the Portuguese crept cautiously along the western coast of Africa, they met a dizzying multiplicity of African cultures but nowhere did they encounter an economic vacuum. Since their primary interest was trade (pious disclaimers to the contrary), they had to discover and then adapt to local and interregional patterns of exchange before they could hope to exploit them to their advantage.

The two centuries between the discovery of Capo Blanco and adjacent Arguim Island in 1443 and the fall of Elmina to the Dutch in 1640 circumscribe the period of Portuguese hegemony and the opening phase of European-African interaction. Though other Europeans followed close on their heels, it was the Portuguese who pioneered both physically and commercially. Ships might put in almost anywhere along the coast where they could find a safe anchorage, but there were five regions that from the beginning seemed to promise profitable and convenient trading contacts: Arguim, Senegambia and the “Rivers of the South,” the Gold Coast, Benin and the Slave Rivers, and Congo-Angola. Each of these presented a different situation and each demanded a different response.

These regions have been the subject of specialized monographs which have brought out the local characteristics of trade as they evolved, but there has been no attempt at an overview, no attempt to compare and generalize from the data now available to present a larger picture of trading patterns on the West Coast of Africa as a whole.

An interesting if not unique aspect of Kenya's attainment of independence was the peaceful displacement of European settlers from central positions of political power. Explanations for their political demise lie chiefly in various political and economic trends in Kenya colony eroding settler dominance. These trends accelerated the separation of the interests of the colonizers (European settler-farmers) from those of colonialism (authoritative ties and political economy) down to Kenyan independence in the early 1960s.

The demise of colonial rule in Kenya was not the same as the erosion of European farmer domination; nor were they necessarily interdependent. English colonialism in Kenya dealt both with the attempt to colonize Kenya with European settlers and with the maintenance of a system of authority called colonialism in the country. Regarding the latter, more important aspect of the term, the European settlers were an important link — perhaps at times the most important — but certainly not the sole one. Colonial officials, commercial interests, tribal authorities, the Asian community and missionaries, were all vital supports to the system. The separability of the two aspects of the colonial system can be seen in a Rhodesia where the settler-dominated political system could survive without colonial authority, and in a Ghana where colonial authority existed without the settler presence.

Ever since African art was “discovered” as an aesthetic as opposed to ethnographical genre, enthusiasm for its emotional vigor and clarity of form has centered primarily upon sculpture. Sculpture, to be sure, is the most widespread mode of African artistic expression, and the description and analysis of regional and ethnic styles in sculpture either in the round or relief have commanded a great deal of attention; but, while carving in wood has been the chief medium modeling in clay has also been extensively developed. Some of the most interesting of African artistic achievements have been embodied in clay sculpture either in the round or in architectural reliefs, yet very little has been written on clay sculpture, and virtually nothing has been done on African architecture and its myriad patterns and styles of mural decoration. Reasons for this imbalance are not difficult to find: most of the books on African art have been written in Europe with the help of extensive museum and private collections. Mud sculpture, on the other hand, is extremely difficult to transport, especially if sun-dried and not fired; and architecture remains essentially impossible to study in absentia.

A few anthropologists have mentioned mud sculpture and architecture, but writers on African art have tended to ignore this area of both historic and contemporary artistic achievement.

The role of Algerian women in their own society has rarely been what it has seemed. Outside observers have often indulged in generalizations based on a lack of understanding, in judgments represented by only partial truths. David Gordon's recent pronouncement (1968) that “women are the serfs of Algerian society” is, for example, a fair enough description of the position of the majority, but it is, in the end, no more accurate than Jacques Berque's (1967) axion that “there were not even any bastards” produced by the temporary sexual relations between Algerians and European settlers in the 1930s. What is quite clear is that women have played and continue to play important roles in Algerian society although they have always suffered definite legal, social, and cultural disadvantages that have not been essentially changed by independence.

Historically, Algerian women have enjoyed more freedom than is usually admitted by Western authors. In rural areas women were allowed to go about daily routines without hiding. Only in cities was the wearing of the veil normal, and even this practice can be easily explained. Germaine Tillion's interesting and convincing interpretation (1964) on this issue comes to mind: the practice of wearing a veil in countries bordering the southern shores of the Mediterranean is simply an attempt of basically nomadic peoples to maintain privacy in the crowded cities. Nor is this custom unique; Spanish women wear black, a practice that serves much the same purpose as the veil in Muslim lands.

All of us have very decided ideas about teaching. While our geographical interest may be Africa, our disciplinary training and specialties are varied, and our methodologies and ideologies lead us, not only into different research paths, but toward differing teaching goals and learning expectations. Perhaps, common interest in Africa creates a better understanding of, and cooperation among, the various disciplines, and, if that is the case, it is an indisputable advantage in our classes. Still, it would be presumptious, indeed impossible, for a historian to tell a geographer or an economist or a linguist how, or even what, to teach.

However, our profession expects two things of us: to produce original contributions to the pool of knowledge in our specialty, and to teach effectively what we have learned to undergraduates seeking a general education, as well as to graduate students whose educational goals are more akin to our own. There is no small irony in the fact that, for a variety of reasons, as the number of college students dwindles, as the cost of education spirals, and as the job opportunities for new Ph.D.s all but vanish, our peers are more demanding in their evaluation of our research, while college and university administrators are more concerned with “accountability;” that is, total student credit hours produced—our teaching.

There are three points I want to make about teaching, but first I think it is important to make a disclaimer.