ERRATA

Page 3, line 16, for "Clarke" read "Clark". Page 64, line 24, for "Johannesburg" read "Pretoria". Page 101, line 44, for "John" read "James". Page 102, Title, for "Ethiopia" read "Entrea". Page 132, 3 (b) 1953–4, for "23800" read "223,800". Page 160, line 7 from bottom, for "south" read "bush".      

ERRATA: VOL. 44, No. 175

P. 53, 1.6. For "only" read "more than". P. 87, 1.3. For "Father" read "Son".      

Boubou

He was only a little monkey, a very little one the first timeI saw him, not more than 9 inches tall; and when he died 3 yearslater, fully grown, he did not measure more than a foot anda half.     

CORRECTION

"THE SUDAN DEFENCE FORCE AND THE ITALIAN EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN"Vol.41,No. 164; July 1942; p. 168, 10th line:For "Akobo" read "Jokau."     

Studies in War-time Organisation: (4) The Union's Supply Effort

South Africa's war-time supply problems have led to a spectacularsuccess for her infant industry, under Government direction,as this note by the editor of "South Africa" explains. As tothe future General Smuts has said (at Bloemfontein last December):"It will be the policy of the Government as early as possibleto restore full freedom to private enterprise, unhampered bycontrols, except in exceptional cases called for by overallinterest."     

POLITICS WITHOUT PARTIES: AFGHANISTAN’S LONG ROAD TO DEMOCRACY

Democracy has not brought stability to Afghanistan in the almost two decades since the fall of the Taliban. But it would be wrong to conclude that the soil of Afghanistan is not conducive to the tree of democracy, when in reality it was never planted with any skill. Democracy did not fail in Afghanistan; it was never even tried.

A series of connected mistakes began with the introduction of a flawed electoral system, no insistence on a transparent register of voters, lack of proper scrutiny of polling, and a lack of support for the development of reformist political parties and other functioning civil society institutions. From the start the US did not see this as a ‘nation-building’ project, but nevertheless US officials made far-reaching decisions about the nature of Afghan democracy. These were seriously unsound, and the electoral system introduced itself operated against the development of strong democratic institutions.

This article outlines the problems inherent in the Single Non-Transferable Vote system, examines the history of Afghan political parties through the twentieth century and asks whether alternative and traditional forms of Afghan government provide any real obstacles to the development of modern politics. The 2004 constitution was the seventh since 1923: this was not a green field site in terms of institution-building as it was seen by many of the international officials who flooded in after the fall of the Taliban.     

African Mental Ability

No question is more vital to the future of Africa than the mentalcapacity of its original inhabitants, whose two main groupingsare the Negro and the Bantu-speaking peoples. Nor is any questionless exactly known. It was therefore with surprise that manypeople learned earlier this year that Colonel Deneys Reitz hadmade the following statement in a war review at the Guildhallin London: "I am not an anthropologist and therefore not qualifiedto say whether our native tribes will ever be capable of evolvingup to European standards. Indeed the balance of scientific evidenceappears to lean to the contrary opinion." The Union High Commissionerin London speaks with the authority of a former South AfricanMinister of Native Affairs. Nevertheless this statement hasnot gone without challenge. The following article was writtenat our request by the Principal of the Adams Native Collegein Natal, who also represents the Natives of Natal and Zululandin the South African Senate. But the subject is of such importanceand such complexity that we have added an extended summary ofa book by Dr. S. Bieshcuvel, a psychologist now working withthe R.A.F., on "African Intelligence".Dr. Bieshcuvel‘swork, which has been delayed by the war, is a reply to someof the "scientific evidence" cited by Colonel Reitz. Althoughin his article Dr. Brookes mentions other work (by Dr. van Rensburg)more recent than Dr. Fick’s, the summary may give someidea of the complexity of the work of investigation requiredbefore it acquires a true scientific validity.     

DIAMOND INDUSTRY IN WARTIME, 1941

Reprinted from "The South African Mining and Engineering Journal." Each year "The Jeweller's Circular-Keystone" publishes a reviewof the diamond industry. For as long as can be recalled thisreview has been prepared by Sidney H. Ball, of the engineeringfirm of Rogers, Mayer & Ball, of New York. The latest review,covering 1941, has now been published, and this article is abstractedfrom it by courtesy of the publishers.     

GULF STATES' POLICY TOWARDS SYRIAN REFUGEES: CHARITY BEFORE HOSPITALITY

The regional turmoil in the Middle East since December 2010 has provided researchers with many topics for research. Despite a relatively large number of studies in recent years, none of them deal with one of the central questions – namely, the attitude of the Gulf States toward the misery of the Syrian refugees. While more than six million Syrians fled their homeland and became refugees, 1.5 million in Europe, few, if any, succeeded in relocating to the Gulf States.

This paper endeavors to explore the Gulf States' policy toward Arab (mostly Syrian) refugees. The major finding is that GCC members prefer to grant financial support to refugees outside of the Gulf region (this is justified as charity – Zakat) instead of hosting refugees. The combination of a fragile demographic structure, fear of political and social instability, and constant concern about infiltration by terrorists under the guise of refugees are the main reasons for the policy of closing the gates entirely to the refugees. These concerns also indicate that the idea of the nation state prevails over pan-Arab nationalism.     

Memory and taste in the collections and households of the Spanish nobility (nineteenth and early twentieth centuries): an introduction to the topic with some notes on the house of Osuna and the origins of the period room

“Albeit democratic, their coat of arms has pride of place”. Thus Romualdo Nogués defined, in 1890, Spanish collectors of bourgeois origin who had joined the ranks of the aristocracy. A few years later, in 1924, the Duke of Alba’s maiden speech at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando justified his personal artistic worthiness on the basis of his ancestors’ collecting activities and the artworks they had amassed.

These two examples set the scene for the research questions studied in this monographic issue. The present introduction offers a bird’s eye view of the phenomenon and continues with a few remarks about the House of Osuna which, as is well known, occupied a pivotal position in Spanish nobility during the whole of the second half of the nineteenth century.     

Studies in War-time Organisation: (2) THE RESIDENT MINISTRY IN WEST AFRICA

One of the purest types of "functional" organisation, initiatedfor purely temporary purposes, and, with the alteration in thewar situation, almost inevitably gravitating to more long-distanceplanning, is the Resident Ministry in West Africa. This articlewas written, at our invitation, by a member of Lord Swinton'sHeadquarters staff, who wishes it to be understood that he iswriting in a purely private capacity.     

The fate of the Assyrian minority in early independent Iraq: a test case of political violence based on rational primordialism

Analyzing ethno-national conflicts is usually not easy in that not all quantitative scientific tools are useful to the student of a conflict based on primordial elements. The burden of studying the outcome of a conflict is all the more complex given that the two conflicting groups might be at two different stages of their political development at any given time during the course of the conflict. In the case of the fate of the [Eastern Christian] Assyrian community in early independent Iraq, the political rationale for decisions taken by each party was drawn from different sociological, historical and political realms. Decisions in times of conflict and their political and historical ramifications are not always rational, since they draw upon primordial/communal considerations rather than the accurate reading of the overall true strategic scene.

The violence was an outcome of a combination of primordial differences and rational choice. The Iraqis sought to establish a new sovereign state with minimal disturbances from its Christian minority that they perceived as not belonging to the new nation. As for the Assyrians, they chose violence believing that at least some superpowers would support them. Historically, this rational decision based upon a primordial dispute turned out to be a mistake primarily because of lack of external support, weak internal cohesion of the group, and feeble leadership.     

The Baha’i minority in the State of Israel, 1948–1957

This article examines the virtually unexplored topic of the Baha'i religious minority in Israel's early statehood period based mainly on primary source documentation. It will be argued that while the number of Persian Baha'is in Israel after 1948 was minuscule — even smaller than the similarly minuscule Circassian and Armenian populations — the non-Arab and non-Muslim identity of the Baha'is, the lack of any historical antagonism between the Baha'is and the Jews, a shared history of marginalization in the modern Middle East, the Baha'is' principled commitment to non-violence as a basic tenet of their religious faith, their complete neutrality leading up to and including the 1948 War, (and their support for Jewish statehood after it), their lack of proselytizing in the state of Israel, and the fact that nearly all of their high-ranking administrators in post-independence Israel hailed from the United States — whose support Israel sought — led the state to cultivate this minority to a degree few other minorities experienced in post 1948 Israel.

A study of the flight and return of most (excommunicated) Baha'i adherents during and after the 1948 War, respectively, will form part of a separate, forthcoming article.     

Two More Nigerian Poems

In our last number we printed two poems, selected, with no regardto their subject matter, as examples of the attempts that youngAfricans are making to express themselves. Crude though theyare, these poems appeared to us to be something more than merebad imitations of English verse. V/e now reproduce another two–onea romantic, almost Teutonic evocation of the forest, the otherresembling at least the spirit of the Latin songs of wanderingscholars in the Middle Ages. Eweka writes from the same townas Yesufu-Giwa, Sapele, where there seems to be a literary schoolthat might be worth investigating: at least the quality of itsverse, however uneven, ts much higher than any seen from "older"areas like Lagos or the Gold Coast. Is this due to the superiorimagination of the "new" Nigertan peoples, or to the fact thatthey have not yet learned enough to blight them by imitatinginappropriate English models? The answer may be a combinationof these reasons. The first of the present poems, by the way,comes from the Comet of Lagos, the second from the Spokesmanat Onitsha.     

Some Impressions of East Africa To-day

Mrs. Huxley has just returned from an extended visit to EastAfrica, in particular to Kenya, where her girlhood was spent.This is a lecture which she delivered at a combined meetingat the Royal Empire Society with Lord Hailey in the Chair, on30th July. It raises some very wide questions of colonial policy,even though she describes it herself as "rather disjointed andpersonal".     

III. A CONSERVATIVE VIEW

Colonel Ponsonby devoted the first half of his lecture to acomparison between East Africa and Central Asia, which he visitedlast winter. Concentrating mainly on Uzbekistan, he paid detailedtribute to the transformation of the last 21 years, and thenasked the question, could we have been more progressive, havingregard to the nature and state of civilisation of the people?He thought not. There is a difference between the 3000 yearsof history of the national entities round Samarkand or Bokharaand the tribes of E. Africa; there is a difference between existingAfrican conditions, and the Soviet doctrine of work, as laiddown in Article 12 of the Constitution: "He who does not workneither shall he eat." It is really only on the highest levelthat there is any similarity between the two areas, one of whichlooks to Moscow, the other to London, for methods of government,technical advice, and finance for schemes of development.     

Mass Education in Udi Division

This paper, written at our request by the responsible DistrictOfficer, illustrates the vitally important long-term, personallink between Europe and Africa. Udi is a Division in the OnitshaProvince (South-Central Nigeria) and the people described inthis "extension of the Administration" are Ibo.     

An Experiment in Colonial Journalism

It is not too much to say that the Press will occupy the keyposition in African development, yet at the moment, Governmentrelations with pressmen in many advanced areas are very farfrom good-in Lagos, there is continual trouble with the "Zik"group, in Uganda a man got 3 years and a fine under customarylaw for attacking the Kabaka. Colonial journalism, in short,sums up the outstanding problem of education and political development.This article is by a considerable authority.     

THE SUDAN'S SERVICE IN A GLOBAL WAR: THE STORY OF A SECTION OF THE TRANS-AFRICAN AIR FERRY ROUTE

When Amba Alagi fell and the campaign on her eastern bordersreached its dènouement, the active part of the Anglo-EgyptianSudan in the war fell from the headlines, and those who livethere had to console themselves that they were no longer playinga part on the stage but in the wings: that by their work onthe vital lines of communication of Africa they were still helpingas much as ever in the Middle East War effort. But lines ofcommunication are not good "copy", and for security reasonsas well, they are not usually found in the news. Two years,however, have now gone by, since the Ferry Route for aircraftacross Africa came into operation, and no harm can be done,now that this route is an admitted fact in the Press of theworld, in giving some account of the part played by the Sudanin its inception and very successful operation.