Afrocommunism by David Ottaway; Marina OttawayReview by: Patrick ChabalCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 17, No. 3,Special Issue: South Africa (1983), pp. 587-589Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/484954 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 08:01

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and Canadian Association of African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:01:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

1870s, value and quantities of imports and exports between Britain and West Africa from 1865 to 1879, and similar returns for selected years thereafter. The figures for cotton exports are particularly valuable. There are also several useful appendixes, including an 1862 price list for commodities exported to the Niger River. This statistical data will prove of considerable value to historians interested in the economic history of Nigeria in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The main concentration of the book, nonetheless, is on British ideas and actions; that is, the realm of more traditional diplomatic history. Because of the absence of indigenous source material, the account is necessarily one-sided, as most diplomatic histories of Euro-African relations invariably are. Nonetheless, there is considerable information on W. B. Baikie's consular activities at the Niger-Benue confluence from 1857-1862 that serves as a nice supplement to the more widely known activities of similar British officials at Lagos, Fernando Po and elsewhere along the West African Coast. Similarly, Nzemeke does a good job of analyzing the change from the promotion of British commerce through the agency of consuls to the consolidation of trade by chartered companies. His treatment of the Royal Niger Company is as thorough as his discussion of Baikie.

There are some curious errors and omissions in the book that should be pointed out. It is A. S. Kanya-Forstner, not Forstner-Kanya; numerous recent sources, published since Nzemeke finished his thesis and before he turned the thesis into a book, are not included, and many of these are relevant. Although referred to briefly, A. G. Hopkins' unpublished Ph.D. thesis on Lagos surely is relevant and widely known. Certainly Hopkins' An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1971) is an essential work that must be discussed in any reinterpretation of European imperialism - economic and otherwise.

Despite these weaknesses, the book is still a monumental research achievement. It can be expected that Dr. Nzemeke will continue to study the Niger valley and its relationship with European imperialism. The quest for cotton, in particular, is an excellent topic that follows directly from this book. Let us hope that the author pursues this subject with the same thoroughness displayed in this book.

Paul E. LOVEJOY Department ofHistory York University (Ontario)

David OTTAWAY and Marina OTTAWAY, Afrocommunism. New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1981, vii + 237p.

Explanations of politics (and even more of socialism) in Africa are unsteady, subject as they are to the tension generated by many spurious dichotomies. Ideal types are carefully and lovingly elaborated all the better to be savaged by the opponents of ideal types and the "connoisseurs" of Africa. Passionate pleas are entered on behalf of the uniqueness of the African case only to be dismissed as sentimental and paternalist nonsense. Political scientists and historians joust feverishly, their noses firmly on the latest print (but all the meanwhile looking over their shoulders), lest their explanation of politics in Africa should be overtaken. The battle lines are firmly drawn, modes of analysis have polarised:

587

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:01:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

do we understand politics in Africa by looking at the ground, searching for that rare African spice which gives politics there its so very peculiar flavour or do we look at the

sky, waiting for the coming of the immaculate conception which will reveal, beyond all doubts, that African politics is like politics elsewhere? So much hot air, and yet windmills are scarce on the ground in Africa. The Ottaways have brought backfrom Africa a breath of fresh air. If only for this, we are in their debt.

Afrocommunism achieves the two aims it sets for itself: first, to place the discussion of socialism in Africa in its proper historical setting and to assess its progress so far in four

different, though all important, countries (Guinea, Tanzania, Zambia and Algeria) and, secondly, to analyse the development of communist states in Africa by looking in some detail at three of the most significant cases to date (Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique). The Ottaways conclude, with much justification, that the four earlier experiments in socialism have led to four different outcomes, by no means similar in success and failure, both because of the enormous differences in their ecological and sociological resources and because of their radically distinct interpretations of the meaning, ultimate disirability and feasibility of socialism. The titles they use tell the story, cleverly, and very much to the point: "Zambia - The Upper Class Welfare State;" "Tanzania - Development without Growth;" "Guinea - Politics in Command;" "Algeria - Economics in Command."

The authors argue with considerable vigour and much knowledge that the advent of communist states in Africa is not simply the same old story of "Socialist rethoric" told in a different dialect, this time in the austere materialist phraseology; it is not simply one more collection of utterances by power hungry and ideologically flippant rulers seeking to consolidate their hold on shaky states, but the outcome of the apparent failure of other forms of socialism and of a determination to adapt, genuinely, the communist model to African conditions. Afrocommunism, the Ottaways endeavour to tell their American audience, must be taken seriously, like Eurocommunism. Their account of the genesis and early development of the three Afrocommunist states they discuss (Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique) is sober, factual, and to the point. Their case for the existence of indigenous communist states, neither puppets of the East nor simply totalitarian dictator- ships, blinds them neither to the enormous range of problems facing the three countries nor the potential failure of their experiments.

But how good is the Ottaways' case for Afrocommunism? Their first argument, that it is illegitimate to dismiss the relevance of communism to Africa on the grounds that Marxism-Leninism and African-ness do not mix, is sound and, in the face of surprisingly obdurate resistance, well taken. The second point, equally relevant if perhaps slightly more provocative, is that the force of communist ideology is far greater than that of the different shades of African socialism hitherto practised.

"Marxism-Leninism is much more specific [than African Socialism]. It prescribes institutions and policies and, perhaps more importantly, a method for analysing reality as well as for changing it. It is a very logical theoretical system, and it is the rigor of its logic that accounts for both its appeal and the strong impact it has on policies" (p. 196).

Thirdly, and crucially, the Ottaways argue that such ideology does lead to the attempt at implementing significantly distinct policies from those derived from African socialism, namely "the building of vanguard parties, the attempt at collectivising agriculture, the nationalisation of most of the economy and the close alignment with the

588

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:01:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Soviet Union on geopolitical issues" (p. 194). The case as put forward in this book is solid enough to shatter, as it is intended to do, the supremely naive and magnificently simplistic ideological edifice which passes for American foreign policy towards Africa, although I very much doubt that evidence and common sense could correct the monumental inanity which passes as policy. But the book is good enough, in its rare combination of scholarship, first-hand observation and intuition, to open up the possibility (to me a very real possibility) that Afrocommunism may not be either as specific as the authors argue or as effective as they claim it could potentially be. For all the shortcomings that specialists on the individual countries discussed by the Ottaways will no doubt seek to find, the book deserves a place on any reading list. I suspect that place could well remain secure for quite some time to come.

Patrick CHABAL Clare Hall University of Cambridge

Politique Africaine. Paris: Editions Karthala.

A new star was born in the galaxy of Africanist journals in January 1981, with the publication of the first number of Politique Africaine. The review appears quarterly, under the editorship of Jean-Frangois Bayart, well-known for his excellent studies of Cameroun politics. Inspection of the first six numbers offers some basis for identifying its niche, and evaluating its quality.

Each issue is organized around a special theme with about a half dozen articles. A documentary section reproduces texts of lasting importance (for example, the I, 3, September 1981) issue includes a long, detailed, and defiant open letter to President Mobutu by thirteen parliamentarians). Brief notices of major academic meetings are included, and a handful of pages devoted to book reviews. The latter cover mainly French titles, with too little space to permit full critical treatment.

The focus of the journal is upon contemporary political issues. While some of the articles are primarily reportorial, most are conceptually oriented. It is distinctly more academic in tone than the Revue fran.aise d'Etudes politiques africaines, but perhaps less so than Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines (or the RCEA/CJAS). Coverage is often cast in the form of dialogue and debate; the review faithfully reflects the major theoretical tendencies in French academe. Most of the contributors are French, although one encounters a few African authors, and even the stray "Anglo-Saxon."

Of the first half-dozen issues, the most noteworthy is the number devoted to Islam in sub-Saharan Africa (I, 4, November 1981). D. Cruise O'Brien offers a sparkling analysis of the role of the Sufi tariqa in contemporary Islamic revitalization. The Sufi order is perhaps stronger today in sub-Saharan African than anywhere else in the Islamic world. Through the vehicle of the tariqa a distinctively local leadership takes form, and its community saints become objects of veneration. In this way, the Sufi order became not only a refuge against the cultural arrogance of the Europeans, but also a subtle vehicle for an unavowed rejection of Arab claims to a superior place in Dar-al-Islam. August Nimtz in his recent study of Islam and Politics in East Africa (University of Minnesota Press,

589

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.78 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:01:12 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions