Although it suffered a serious setback when, in 1991, three senior commanders tried to wrestle control from its leader, John Garang, the SPLM/A has remained the main rebel organisation in the southern Sudan since the start of the second civil war in 1983. At a national level the SPLM/As influence over political development in the south has been matched only by the ...

In this collection, some of South Africa's most distinguished historians and social scientists present their views on the importance of history and heritage for the transformation of the South African society. Although popular use of history helped remove apartheid, the study of history lost status during the transition process. Some of the reasons for this, like t...

SKINNING THE SKUNK refers to a saying in Shona, kuvhiya kadembo. The Zimbabwean writer Stanley Nyamfukudza uses it here to illustrate how important problems, like the legacy of violence, are avoided in Zimbabwean public discussion. Terence Ranger writes on the new policy of rewriting the history of Zimbabwe, in the name of patriotic history, through which the Zanu-...

The two articles are revised versions of papers presented at the end of May 2004 to a Zimbabwe Conference at the Nordic Africa Institute, which was co-organised by the project "Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa" (LiDeSA). They highlight current socio-economic aspects of Zimbabwean society. By doing so, they raise relevant issues, yet ones that have tended...