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On balance, Africa generally has made some progress in good governance under liberal, multiparty democracy in the past two or three decades. But there are well‐noted, wide‐ranging dysfunctions in governance, which inhibit human development and fulfilment. Several papers have been published, which propose various solutions to the dysfunctions. Among them are proposals for types of all‐inclusive democratic politics. I examine a couple of these proposals and conclude that they generate formidable feasibility challenges, even for the types of democracy they advocate. This paper focuses on Ghana, but with a thrust intended to have import for the sustainability of democracy across Africa. The argument is basically that the operating democratic constitutions in Africa provide a normatively desirable liberal, multiparty democracy, which promises a reasonably good life for all without exception; but practice has resulted in enduring, multiple deprivations and low standards of living for millions of citizens. The reason for the undesirably wide gap between the ideal and the practice is not because multiparty democracy is inconsistent with African traditions or is otherwise not good for Africans, as some scholars claim, but because of those who tend to run it—their general incompetence, including or marked by their intellectual and ethical inability to rise above partisan limitations and failure to leverage the efficiencies of the free market system. The proposed solution for Ghana, intended to eliminate or significantly mitigate the dysfunctions just mentioned and to sustain the multiparty democracy, is to redesign the National Development Planning Commission (NPDC), a constitutional organ which serves the partisan executive, into a robust, non‐partisan, independent institution, anchored on the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances, to enable it to do at least the following two things: (a) to produce, with representation from key stakeholders, including political parties, technocratically objective, competent, efficient and accountable rolling and all‐inclusive National Development Plans (NDPs) in place of vote‐inspired and partisan manifestoes, with budgets approved by parliament; and (b) to monitor, evaluate and report on the governing party's implementation of the NDPs to parliament. Democracy will become sustainable as the general quality of lives grows steadily under the continuous implementation of all‐inclusive NDPs, which are to be crafted to efficiently and sustainably deliver public goods and services that serve district, regional and the common needs and interests of all Ghanaians rather than the interests of the few and powerful or, at best, of majorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If we cannot do this, if Classics remains the preserve of a White enclave, then it is hard to see a future for the subject in South Africa.[23] Twenty-five years later, people may well ask if Classics in South Africa, historically the country in Africa with the most extensive network of university Classics departments, and the most international, but almost wholly White, Classics ecosystem, still remains that "White enclave". But for what we have been able to produce, we hope that this attempt will lead to a more sustained and serious conversation on decolonizing Classics in Africa, including what we can learn from the history of Classics in Africa and what strategies, challenges, and prospects there are for us to navigate. B David van Schoor b 's paper, 'For an African elenchus: colonial and post-colonial misprisions and Classics in Africa', attempts a refutation (hence, an elenchus) of two prevalent errors of interpretation - Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism - to point the way forward for future Humanities and Classics in Africa. [Extracted from the article]

Biology and ecology set optimal limits to our potential for development and significant deviations from these limits threaten our well-being and existence. Yet there seems to be little, if any, concern, for those significant deviations that are atavistic and are reinforced by or are generated from Western industrial modernity, which most Third World countries have adopted as their favoured approach to national development. This paper focuses on nine of the areas in which these deviations occur. The measure of deviation, explicitly or implicitly made, is a select set of lifestyles and life-conditions in modernity and antiquity. The emphasis in this paper on ecologically or biologically efficient lifestyles and lifeconditions in antiquity is not a recommendation to return to the ways of antiquity; it is to highlight the principles and values of wellness embedded in those ways in order to provoke further discussions and to imply either that creative adaptations of those lifestyles and life-conditions are desirable or that policy interventions may be required to address deviations from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at adverbial placement and interpretation in Ewe. It takes from English adverbial placement in which several positions are possible. Implicitly, it looks at what is the same compared to English and what is different when we look at adverbials in Ewe. The study looks at Ewe adverbials from a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines reflexivization in Dagbani, a Gur language spoken in Northern Ghana. The data are examined within the parameter of co-referentiality and antecedence. I argue that reflexives are formed by suffixing the reflexivizer, maηa, meaning 'self', to the possessive pronominal. The pronominal varies in form depending on the singularity or plurality of the antecedent. I minimally compare reflexive pronouns with pronouns within the Binding Theory and observe that whilst pronouns are free within their domains, reflexives are governed within the clausal domain. I conclude that anaphors and pronouns of Dagbani match the principles of the Government and Binding theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the semantics of verbs which are used in basic locative constructions in Logba to code spatial information. I will show that there are twelve verbs in Logba, a Ghana Togo Mountain language. The verb le ['be located'] is the unmarked form and eleven other positional verbs-- kpɔ 'lie' kɔ 'hang' tɔ 'fix' tsi 'sit' ye 'stand' gbɛ 'lean' gbo 'fall' tsoga 'lie across' bata 'wind round' glɛ 'tie' dzi 'tie firmly'-- are used in three constructions in reply to a 'where search' question (see Dorvlo 2008). In the three constructions that will be presented, the subject NP position is filled by the Figure followed by the locative verb and the postpositional phrase (Ground). In the first construction, the unmarked locative verb is used and is followed by a postpositional phrase. The second construction is slightly different as the ground phrase is marked by a preposition while in the third construction the noun in the postpositional phrase can be analyzed as a body part noun. I will show that serial verb constructions involving two verbs are used to give an accurate description of the manner and position of the figure to the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two rhetorical structural types, characterised as WH-ASK and NPWH-LET constructions, derived from the Yoruba praise and incantatory poetic tradition, are identified in Niyi Osundare's poetry. The syntax, though distinct and unique, does not violate the combinatory possibilities of English. Breaking no rules of the syntax of English, the syntagmatic patterns inevitably draw attention to themselves as characteristic habits of thought and modes of expression of the Yoruba people. The syntactorhetorical borrowing from Yoruba poetry represents the poet's efforts at "domesticating" English or making it carry the "weight" of his Yoruba experience. The paper identifies a profound and highly rewarding interaction between the lexical and syntactic arrangements in the poet's creative works, pointing out that no investigation of the oral dimension of his poetry should ignore the structural paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the attitudes of some university and tertiary institution students to codeswitching. Respondents were drawn from four tertiary institutions located in the Southwestern part of Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was administered to the informants whose ages ranged between sixteen and fifty-five years. The social variables tested included qualifications/programmes and schools. The study revealed that the overall attitude of Nigerian students to codeswitching is largely positive. It also showed, among other things, that students on degree programmes are more positively inclined to use codeswitching than those on other programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the pros and cons of the checkered nature of language use in the Tanzanian Parliament. It focuses on language policy, language choice and the practicality of language use in parliamentary discourse. Right from the eve of independence, the medium of communication in the Tanzanian parliament has been Swahili although the option is between Swahili and English; Swahili has been and still is the preferred choice among parliamentarians. Nevertheless, we observe that language contact phenomena such as various forms of alternation between Swahili and English occur quite regularly in parliamentary debates and submissions. The paradox however is that various forms of documentation in parliament are drafted in English. From data extracted from a corpus drawn from issues of the Tanzanian parliamentary Hansard, the paper attempts an analysis of particular choices, the advantages and disadvantages of such choices and their impact on the Swahili language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews contemporary Ghanaian poetry in the light of emerging scholarly discourses about transnational cultural traffic, especially as they relate to Africa and its post-slavery Diasporas in the Western world. The paper argues that while most studies of Ghanaian poetry have been framed by narrowly conceived nationalist viewpoints related to the limiting and inherited mandates of European colonialism, contemporary Ghanaian poetry actually embraces a wider conception of nation that invokes spaces and bodies in both the Ghanaian/African homeland and the Diaspora. The paper argues that nation-language, for Ghanaian poets as much as it was for Kamau Brathwaite and others in the African Diaspora, rests on a foundation of multiple memories and historical experiences drawn from the spaces of both the African continent and its Diasporas, and that is precisely why the imagination of nation in Ghanaian poetry paradoxically transgresses the borders of Ghana and logically leads to transnational transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People that the editor would like to thank for their assistance in publishing this journal are mentioned, including Professors A. N. Mensah, M. E. Kropp Dakubu and K. Dako.