Straylight, Mala Mala, Pink Frikkie, Blekgelexy and Rumba Kali. The Net- New Apprentices and Old Masters

History gives us the opportunity of perspective. But in the "Network Society", time moves too fast for hindsight. An appropriate metaphor is that of quantum mechanics, in which matter exists in two states at the same time. Consequently, the invitation to reflect on what one thought was happening three years ago is unusual. Does anyone really care how extensively Africa was connected to the Internet in 1998? As it happens, the exercise has proved interesting, if sobering. Three years ago, the key issues could be expressed as a paradox: how could access to digital technology be used to mark exclusive status and, at the same time, be seen as a democratizing form of mass communication that could bypass years of conventional economic development? Three years later, there seems little prospect of bypassing conventional economic development, and different associations suggest themselves. For example, there are at present almost ten times the number of Africans infected with the HIV virus than there are Internet users on the continent, and this year roughly the same number of people will die of AIDS as will use the Web. Africa is beset by regional conflicts, and the still-emerging new economic order has devalued many African currencies several times over. Realities such as these indicate social and economic priorities that must temper initial enthusiasms for a digital Africa. But while the euphoric advocates of new digital frontiers now appear as jaded boosters, more careful analyses have proved robust. Models of the new relationships between local identities and global diasporas, articulated by cultural theorists such as Stuart Hall (1990), Arjun Appadurai (1996) and Manuel Castells (1996, 1997, 1998), have proved durable and help to explain the ways in which the relationships between "center" and "periphery" are still being shaped.