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of independence, current head of state, capital, and official language, plus a statement on the future of the country, which is usually a comment on its political stability and whether it tends to be communist, democratic, or socialist. When an unusual political event occurs in a country, it may be described in one or a few paragraphs. For example, in Africa 1968 there are several paragraphs on the Biafran conflict in the entry on Nigeria, and in Africa 1976 the Tipending independence of the Transkei is mentioned in the entry on South Africa. In addition, a general up-date section precedes the individual country entries, which are grouped regionally. Over the years this section has included brief commentary on such topics as the unliberated areas of Africa, which are referred to as dependencies, activities of the OAU, Angolan independence, and the activities of Idi Amin.
In Africa 1975 a map shows the "political face" of Africa with a symbol for each nation indicating military rule, one-party state, dependent territory, military control, or democratic government. The same labels are used in the country entries. This source describes neither political structure nor political process, but it does include some political facts. It is up-dated relatively little from year to year, and changes in political names are often considerably belated, the change from Southwest Africa to Namibia being a case in point. 'Despite such lags, it is the most up-to-date reference source for children on political facts for the continent of Africa, since neither children's encyclopedias nor social studies surveys are up-dated with any frequency, if at all.
Fiction
The politics of African independence are not covered in any systematic way in fiction written for American children. In fact, children's fiction about Africa is notable for ignoring political background regardless of whether it is set in times of independence or colonialism. However, it seems to be significant that on-those few occasions when politics are included in fiction written for American children, it is only political violence that is mentioned or described. This is as true of Dorothy Robinson, The Legend of Africania (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 1974), an allegory about the colonial era, as it is of Charles Kearey, Last Plane From Uli (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), a first person description of the Biafran conflict by a European mercenary.
Usually political violence is mentioned only in the background of a
novel that has some other focus. For example, election riots briefly disrupt the activities of the boy hero of Mary Louise Clifford, Salah of Sierra Leone (New York: Crowell, 1975), and guerrilla fighting in Angola is briefly mentioned in Alice Wellman, The Wilderness Has Ears (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975), a modern-day exotic novel about an American girl's experiences of Kimbutu religion. Perhaps fiction is worth mentioning in this essay only to illustrate that stereotypes about African violence die hard, and that routine politicalbehavior is not yet a part of the fictional world of Africa, whereas warfare still is, as it has been ever since Europeans first contacted Africa and began to write fiction about it.10