Africa
May 1997

May Article Abstracts

Title: The Great Lakes Crisis
Author: Gérard Prunier
"Understanding little of what is happening on the ground, Europeans and Americans have a tendency to simplify, globalize, and overlook the 'details'. . . The Great Lakes crisis and the Zairian civil war into which it developed are perfect illustrations of the fact that, for better or worse, Africa is now an independent historical actor. Recognizing this will have to be the first step in any attempt at conflict resolution in the future."

Title: Endgame in Zaire
Author: Peter Rosenblum
"The mysteries surrounding the rebellion [in Zaire] remain, no doubt intentionally. Little is known about who is actually fighting or what authority [guerrilla leader Laurent] Kabila really has. Are the fighters Ugandan? Rwandan? Angolan? Zairian? Who is pulling strings? Is Kabila 'Zairianizing' the rebellion as it sweeps through the country, or simply winning the battle of appearances necessary for popular support?"

Title: France and the Great Game in Africa
Author: Peter J. Schraeder
"French policymakers are committed to maintaining some type of special relationship with their francophone African counterparts. . . [However,] French freedom of action is increasingly constrained by a variety of factors and developments: France's responsibilities and interests outside Africa, the evolving structure of the international system, declining military capabilities during a period of growing domestic constraints, and, most important, the emergence of new elites in francophone Africa less willing to accept the same ties enjoyed and permitted by their predecessors."

Title: Uganda's "Benevolent" Dictatorship
Author: J. Oloka-Onyango
"Museveni has been critical in extricating Uganda from the economic and political quagmire in which the country had become stuck by the mid-1980s. . . However, these changes belie the underlying instability, inherent tensions, and manifest autocracy of the system."

Title: Tanzania: From Disillusionmentto Guarded Optimism
Author: Harvey Glickman
Tanzania is beset by economic hardship and the travails of fledgling democracy. Yet, its "tattered legacy of peaceful political change and national cultural integration, coupled with a 'new broom' leadership and a slight upturn in economic activity, may allow the government to overcome the present discontents."

Title: South Africa: The Perils of Normalcy
Author: Antoinette Handley and Jeffrey Herbst
"South Africans are beginning to expect the same things from their political system-jobs, order, peace-that are the norm elsewhere. Ten years from now, the stability of South Africa will depend not on increasingly distant memories of success in avoiding apocalypse, but on the implementation of a new political order, proper economic policies, a plausible ideology, and new norms and mechanisms for the preservation of order."

Title: Privatizing War in Sierra Leone
Author: William Reno
A new configuration of power, founded on the pillars of commercial partnership, is being constructed atop the rubble of traditional government in Sierra Leone. It, and the rest of "post-cold war Africa [are] at the vanguard of a violent passage to a new world of minimal government and globalized commerce."

Title: Algeria: The Dialectic of Elections and Violence
Author: Robert Mortimer
"Although it has been severely jolted by the killings during Ramadan, the government has nonetheless stuck to its long-term plan to hold parliamentary elections this spring. What is to be expected in the near term politically-from these elections and on the military front? Will the next round of elections unleash yet another spasm of violence?"