Much of Ruth First's work examined the projects for radical transformation of Africa's political economy. She was aware of the failures of independence, writing in 1970 that decolonisation had been little more than 'a bargaining process with cooperative African elites'. But she remained an...

University students acquired a politically privileged status in much of sub-Saharan Africa; this was connected to the role the student-intelligentsia played in the struggles for independence. After independence, student activism became an important feature of the new states. However, higher...

This article considers the relationship between working class struggle and popular protest in Africa over the last 40 years. We argue that the form and content of class relations which developed in the period of nationalist struggle and early ‘national development’ have been fundamentally...