African Society Today – serie

This 1985 book highlights important attributes of farm labour, how it is mobilised and controlled, and places it within a context of historical change. International trade, colonialism, the growth of towns and transport have all exerted a powerful influence on rural Africa; yet agriculture is still dominated by small-commodity producers who have retained control over their means of production. These forces have altered traditional forms of agricultural production and distribution, but not sufficiently to undermine their labour-intensive character. Many small farmers now produce for local or international markets and this shift towards greater commodity production has been achieved by new patterns of work and labour organisation. Domestic production and family labour have been expanded or reduced by the spread of hired labour, as workers are redistributed between richer and poorer farmers and developed and underdeveloped regions. In addition, women have become more important as field labourers, as off-farm work for men becomes part of household reproduction.

First published in 1985, Migrant Laborers surveys the literature on labor migration in east, west and southern Africa and interprets it from a political economy perspective. It addresses the controversies as to the origins of migrancy and its effects on the rural economy, emphasizing the differences in the response of various African pre-capitalist societies to wage labor, and the regional variations in the effects on the rural economy and on the division of labor within the rural household. Male migrants' experiences with forced labor, recruitment systems, advance payments and compound controls are described, and the rather different character of women's migration is examined. A central concern is the development of migrant workers' consciousness and forms of resistance. Labor protest among dockers, miners and domestic workers is examined with respect to these questions. Finally, the persistence of migrancy in South Africa is contrasted to the decline of labor migrancy in other parts of the continent

First published in 1990, Rural Communities under Stress goes behind the crises of famine and poor agricultural production to examine the forces and pressures that can affect peasant farming communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on a wide range of case studies by anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and economists, the book shows that peasant farmers have ways of defending their interests. Cases from Senegal, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda are given as concrete examples of ways peasant farming communities cope with the stresses of economic exploitation, political subordination, and demographic and ecological pressure. Even when they are not successful, peasant farmers are far from being passive victims. The book examines in direct and clear language the major arguments about the basic nature of Africa's rural crisis put forward by powerful agencies of international assistance and influential academics.

The African Worker, first published in 1988, was intended as a synthesis considering issues and debates from the work of many writers on labour history and labour studies in Africa. The development of a particular critical literature, spanning a number of disciplines, is critically considered. In some respects, the concerns of past generations have been to align the understanding of labour issues in Africa with those more generally in the modern world. In others, the emphasis remains on the specific and African. Both directions clearly emerge here. The bibliographical essay, as well as the bibliography itself, is meant to point readers further who want a higher order of detail, a regional focus or a more thorough-going theoretical treatment of all or some of the relevant issues.

This study of inequality in Africa, first published in 1988, not only rejected the orthodox approach of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which neglected income distribution and advocated greater external economic reliance, but also the statist Lagos Plan of Action, which supported comprehensive planning, large capital-intensive state firms, and increased government intervention in peasant prices. Wayne Nafziger's political economy analysis shows how the colonial legacy, the contemporary global economic system, and the ruling elites' policies of co-opting labour, favouring urban areas, distributing benefits communally, and spending on education to maintain inter-generational class exacerbate discrepancies between regions, urban and rural areas, and bourgeoisie and workers, even under 'African socialism'. The author's policy discussion eschews technoeconomic solutions, arguing that reducing inequality requires democratising political participation as well as economic control.

African states are not, in any real sense, capitalist states. Elsewhere, the state has played a crucial role in facilitating capitalist expansion, but in postcolonial Africa one finds a form of neopatrimonialism - personal rule - that introduces a variety of economic irrationalities. Productive economic activities are impeded by the political instability, systemic corruption and maladminstration associated with personal rule. In extreme cases, a downward spiral of political-economic decline is set in motion that is difficult to halt and reverse. Is personal rule simply a euphemism for ineptitude and mismanagement? The authors argue that it is not; it operates according to a particular political rationality that shapes a ruler's actions when, in the absence of legitimate authority, he is confronted with the challenge of governing an unintegrated peasant society. Neopatrimonialism is essentially an adaptation of colonial-inspired political institutions to peculiar historical and social conditions. This book focuses on the political factor as an important cause of Africa's economic ills. It analyses the social conditions impelling political adaptation and the consequences of personal rule for economic life, and surveys creative responses to the predicament African people now face.

For many years, the prevailing view of African capitalism stressed its dependence on state and foreign capital and therefore its inability to make a significant contribution to African development. Drawing upon material from a number of countries and a range of academic disciplines, this 1988 book provides an analysis of African capitalism which offers a much more positive view of its role. The book suggests that a number of major constraints have combined to obstruct the emergence of dynamic African capitalist bourgeoisies: foreign competition, the cultural climate, the dependency factor in African economic life, the evolving class structure, the quality of indigenous enterprise and the nature of politics, ideology and state power. All these are assessed and found to be significant, but in the final analysis, it has been in the arena of politics and ideology, centred on the struggle to exercise state power, that the fate of private indigenous capitalism has so often been determined.

The waning of the Cold War means that major political powers no longer feel compelled to support African authoritarianism. Revised official consensus holds that, in Africa as elsewhere, political reform must accompany economic adjustment. According to this view, African recovery requires a reduction in the size and economic role of monopolistic and inefficient states, and their transformation into accountable liberal democracies. Is this a desirable and practicable political programme? Certainly, all over Africa the number of liberal democracies is growing. But can they survive and are they compatible with renewed economic growth? Richard Sandbrook answers these questions, and assesses the feasibility of the new political programme in reinforcing Africa's economic recovery. He argues that the programme has merit in the short term, but, in the longer term, a more self-reliant, state-directed approach should be adopted to ensure prosperity and durable democracy in the region.