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Notes
1. Quasi-democracies refer to regimes that opportunistically display all the symbolic hallmarks, if not trappings, of a genuine democratic system (regularly held elections, parliamentary representation, transparency, accountability, rule of law, free press, etc.) but which are, in fact, underpinned by elaborate yet shadowy mechanisms of informal control exercised by a tyrannical power clique covertly pushing for a developmentally-bereft narrow sectional agenda.
2. Consider, for example, the murder of the Mozambican journalist, Carloso Cardoso, in November 2000; the earlier shooting of the editor of the newsletter ‘Impartial Fax’ in Angola in January 1995; and the killing of Mr Paul Tembo, once a senior member of Chiluba’s government just six hours before he was to release a report on corruption within that government.
3. This term refers to the coming together of tribal members who fear that the system, headed by a member of another tribe, is ganging up against them. It is a gesture designed to, metaphorically, circle their tribal wagons in order to form a laager, a defensive position against a possible enemy.
4. The notion of vampirism is used in this article to describe regimes in Africa that appear to be obsessed with sucking dry national budgets to a degree that provokes a wide ranging but destructive collapse of wealth-creating institutions. Such a disposition is non-entropic in its conceptual underpinnings in that it regards rapaciously exploited states to be systems that can survive without ploughing back a certain critical quantum of economic, political and institutional throughput. Unlike a ruminant state which grazes and fertilises at the same time, a vampiristic regime tends to debilitate and paralyse. For this distinction, see R. Wade (Citation1990).