ABSTRACT
Nation-state and ethnic gemeinschaft, trade union and political party, precolonial religion and the newer monotheisms, modern education and the older patterns of socialization: all are "real" in various situations, in varying degrees, and at different points in people's lives. African states do contain diverse primordial solidarities, as do most other societies, and these solidarities, in Africa as elsewhere, sometimes rise insistently to self-consciousness and become divisive, occasionally threatening the integrity of the states. East Africans greatly admire the litigious and judicial skills and value tribunals in which such skills may be deployed to achieve the just settlement of disputes. The East African coast has been under Near Eastern influence, principally from the Hadramaut and the Persian Gulf, since before the beginning of the Islamic era. Many ordinary East African Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca, where they encounter all the varied currents in contemporary Islam.
