This seems a particularly appropriate time to devote a double issue of the Journal to one topic—constitutional law. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, there is blowing a wind of political change comparable with that identified by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in his famous speech to the South African parliament in Cape Town on 3 February, 1960. The source of that wind was African national consciousness which was impelling the process of decolonisation: in that year, 1960, most of the francophone African states discussed by Reyntjens and Nigeria became independent. By 1968, the process was complete except for Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe. All the new states were endowed with shiny new democratic constitutions, a “Gaullist” or Westminster” legacy from the departing colonial masters.