ABSTRACT
Politics, however it is defined precisely, is a way of conceiving and organizing relations of power. In modern times it has become closely identified with the sovereign states that, since 1945, have been the building blocks of the international system of diplomacy and law. Yet in most of Africa sovereign states of the modern type have only a short history, so much so that, according to the historian John Lonsdale (1981: 139), ‘the most distinctively African contribution to human history could be said to have been precisely the civilized art of living fairly peaceably together not in states’.
