by Guy Arnold
In all the excitement of these dramatic years a number of Africans had risen to prominence as the independence struggles intensified. Some fell by the wayside in the sense that they never achieved power in their countries after independence while others became heads of state. Among the outstanding leaders were Boganda of the Central African Republic, Lumumba of the Congo, Danquah of the Gold Coast, Mboya of Kenya, Nasser of Egypt, Nkrumah of the Gold Coast, Kenyatta of Kenya, Awolowo of Nigeria, Touré of Guinea and Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire. Each of these men made their imprint upon the new Africa that was rising out of the old colonial system. Some such as Barthelemy Boganda (now largely forgotten) or Tom Mboya died before their time (Boganda was killed in an air crash, Mboya was assassinated). Others ruled their newly independent states briefly (the ill-fated Lumumba) or for many years (Kenyatta until he died of old age, Houphouët-Boigny into the 1990s) but all, in their different ways, were hero figures of the independence struggles that swept the continent at that time.
The triumphs of Black Nationalism, however, sparked off pressures for independence in the white south of the continent, where a different story was to unfold. Rebellions in the Portuguese territories – Angola 1961, Guinea-Bissau 1963, Mozambique 1964 – were to be met by years of repression and warfare. In 1958 Dr Verwoerd, the architect of ‘grand apartheid’, came to power in South Africa to preside over a country retreating steadily into isolation as its white minority attempted to stem the tide of history while Ian Smith and the Rhodesia Front attempted to do the same in Southern Rhodesia.
The rapid end of the European empires – British, French, Belgian and Portuguese – all in the course of a few years and all on the same continental landmass, where the affected territories were contiguous to one another, meant the creation of a power vacuum that was bound to lead to years of violence in the decades that followed as rival groups fought to gain control of the political prizes left by the departing colonial powers. None of the new states was economically strong and most were economic pygmies in world terms. Furthermore, as a later generation of leaders would discover, the inherited state structures were often fragile and gave little guarantee of stability against hungry power-mongers. The result was the phenomenon of the ‘failed state’ that emerged in the 1990s. These problems, however, lay in the future. The immediate reaction to the annus mirabilis of independence was one of joy: freedom had been achieved at last.
In the years that followed it was often suggested that independence had been granted too soon to countries that were not ready for it. When he was in Nigeria on his tour, Harold Macmillan asked the Governor-General, Sir James Robertson, whether the Nigerians were ready for independence. The Governor-General said the Nigerians were not ready and needed another 20 years but he still advised that independence should be granted in 1960. In response to Macmillan’s query as to why, he said that any attempt to hold on would alienate the intelligent who would rebel and have to be imprisoned so 20 years of repression would follow. Therefore they should be given independence at that time and begin to learn to rule themselves. It was a paternalist argument but it made sense. Another former imperial administrator, Sir John Johnston, said in 1988: ‘You can rule by force or by consent and consent can be pretty attenuated. But once consent is withdrawn, you can’t rule by force in the middle of the twentieth century, you’ve got to hand over.’ And another former colonial official, Sir Leslie Monson, quoted the succinct remark of Paul Marc Henri of the French Colonial Service: ‘You either shoot or you get out.’24
PART I
The 1960s
Decade of Hope
CHAPTER ONE
Problems of Independence
At the beginning of the 1960s Africa was the world’s most precarious region, its vast geographic centre ‘empty’ of power, its northern and southern extremities (Algeria and South Africa) in the grip of forces that appeared irreconcilable to the rest of the continent. Its newly independent states with their fragile infrastructures and minuscule economies desperately required help, but help that would not be accompanied by political demands and ‘strings’. Political power depends upon economic strength, and economic strength was what Africa lacked. There were also complex psychological problems associated with independence: African nationalist leaders had to demand and take independence; they could never appear just to receive it. Moreover, the scars of colonialism ran deep for, as Nigeria’s Dr Azikiwe had said back in 1948: ‘My country groans under a system which makes it impossible for us to develop our personalities to the full.’ And as another young nationalist said to a European at this time: ‘You have never known what it is to live under colonialism. It’s humiliating.’
During the decade that followed the euphoria of 1960, two parallel searches took place. The first was for political stability, the best system to encompass the needs of the new societies; and the second was for economic growth and development, in most cases starting from tiny under-developed bases. The political leaders had, at once, to learn the art of compromise, both with the various forces that had been released in their new states and with the departing colonial powers. One view on the art or necessity for compromise comes from Frantz Fanon1:
This idea of compromise is very important in the phenomenon of decolonization, for it is very far from being a simple one. Compromise involves the colonial system, and the young nationalist bourgeoisie at one and the same time. The partisans of the colonial system discover that the masses may destroy everything. Blown-up bridges, ravaged farms, repressions and fighting harshly disrupt the economy… Compromise is equally attractive to the nationalist bourgeoisie, who since they are not clearly aware of the possible consequences of the rising storm, are genuinely afraid of being swept away by this huge hurricane and never stop saying to the settler: ‘We are still capable of stopping the slaughter; the masses still have confidence in us; act quickly if you do not want to put everything in jeopardy.’
Fanon’s advice went unheeded in Algeria as it did in the Congo.
A more orthodox approach to Africa’s problems comes from the American academic, Gwendolyn Carter, who hoped that a united Africa could overcome some of the consequences of Balkanization: ‘African countries themselves are eager to have multilateral economic arrangements rather than bilateral ones, and they prefer United Nations aid to that from individual states.’ She advanced the idea that African countries should co-ordinate their efforts so as to avoid rivalry for aid and not play one donor off against another. This lofty idea never had a chance. She also suggested, on behalf of the West, that ‘In two other ways must we move if we are to give the new African states the opportunity to evolve in terms of their potentialities as well as of their aspirations: we must work to keep the Cold War out of Africa; and we must strive to settle our own racial problems and to aid the multiracial states in settling theirs.’ This did not happen either.2
Unsurprisingly, the leaders carried over into the new dimension of freedom their passionate anti-colonialism, not least because though they had achieved their political freedom they found themselves prisoners of their countries’ weakness and poverty. In any case, at the beginning of the 1960s, despite freedom for some, the continent was racked by explosive problems: in the north the bitter Algerian war was still being waged with one million colons supported by 500,000 French troops ranged against nine million Algerian Muslims; in central Africa the Congo was descending into chaos; in Angola Portuguese authority was being challenged as the long war of liberation got under way; and in South Africa, following Sharpeville, the white minority was entrenching its power for what was to be a 30-year struggle to maintain its control over the black majority. Another factor of immense importance was the way the British and French, the two principal departing colonial powers, would continue to behave after the independence of their African colonies had been achieved. They would continue to be guided by all the considerations that had impelled them to empire in the first place: the expansion of trade and investment, securing their intere
sts, safeguarding their migrants in the territories of white settlement such as Kenya, the Rhodesias or South Africa, and their need in a world where their power had been obviously diminished to retain what prestige and influence they could.
Another problem for Africa, one that had long preceded independence, was the absolute need to acquire an African personality, something that had been part of the imperative to decolonize. Guinea’s Sekou Touré spoke of the need to ‘reconstruct the African personality’ while others, and most notably Aimé Cesar and Leopold Senghor, had propounded the concept of negritude. And while Africans thought along such lines, outsiders were then developing their ideas of what the newly emerging Africa was about: ‘Everybody forms his own image of Africa in accordance with his preferences or his illusions rather than the realities.’3 In the preface to his book Voices of Negritude, the Afro-American Julio Finn says: ‘Negritude has been inextricably involved in a long, give-no-quarter war with colonialism and racism. And it is this which makes Negritude unique: it is the only artistic movement of modern times whose express creed is to redeem the spiritual and cultural values of a people… On the cultural level, Negritude vaunts the inimitability of Black civilization; on the human level, it proclaims the innate dignity and beauty of the race – the right of Black peoples proudly to cast their shadows in the sunlight.’4
The fact that the concept of negritude had to be propagated is in itself an indictment of the colonial system and explains the depths of the humiliations for which that system was responsible. As Senghor put it, independent Africa wished to assimilate with the rest of the world in its own way: ‘What all these distinguished minds want, whether they are Westerners or Easterners, is to superimpose a European civilization upon us, to impregnate us with it in the name of universality. Hence exotic peoples such as ourselves would be eternally condemned to be not the producers but the consumers of civilization.’5 Thus, forging a sense of shared nationality was a primary post-independence task.
Despite the annus mirabilis of independence, much opinion in the West, especially among the colonial powers, was against it; or, perhaps more accurately, felt that if independence had to come the question then was how these new states could best be controlled. At the time the imperial powers had a straight choice: either to assist the African revolution by lending their technical skills and capital; or to stand alongside the white racialists. Many new opportunities opened up to the African leadership at this time, yet many of the old structures and habits remained firmly in place. Indeed, some of the constraints on freedom were worse than they had been before independence because of the Cold War and the reluctance of the imperial powers fully to relinquish control. The ex-imperial powers and the other industrial democracies were prepared to co-operate with the new Third World countries but only in ways which would do as little as possible to undermine the existing distribution of power and influence within international society, and that constraining approach was to last down to the twenty-first century.
The truth is that it is not neutralism or socialism that the West distrusts, as much as independence. And there is a peculiar anger displayed by the West when an African state flexes its independence. In part it is the anger of disappointment, of an affronted service. The West knows what is best for an Africa that it governed so long, bringing peace and law and order and the ceaseless productive demands of the modern world; to reject its standards, its institutions, its continuing supervision is not just stupidity, it is ingratitude.6
For Britain and France, the relationship with their ex-colonies posed the question as to how, in a fiercely competitive world, they could transform the legacies of pre-eminence and empire from liabilities to assets.
The departing colonialists assumed that their former subjects should accept their values (they still do). Britain left behind mimic institutions – whether in the field of education or politics – and believed that democracy to the African politicians meant a British form of democracy with all its institutional trappings. As Britain found that it had no empire, there followed an emotional reaction accompanied by the assumption that former colonial subjects would remain subservient in outlook to British leadership. ‘The British people tended to judge African events by exclusively British values. The euphoria, which grew during the 1950s as Britain was thought to be adopting a magnanimous policy of voluntarily ending her imperial powers and setting up miniature Westminsters all over Africa, quickly evaporated… It was assumed that these British institutions would continue to reflect the glory of the British political system.’7 In fact Britain and France, by resisting African advance, were denying the roots of their own democracy. For France, total withdrawal from Africa represented an even greater defeat than for Britain since Africa by the 1960s remained the only area of the world where France retained sufficient influence so as to guarantee its claims to middle-power status in the international system.
Speaking on behalf of Africa, Fanon said: ‘Humanity is waiting for something other from us than such an imitation [of Europe], which would be almost an obscene caricature. If we want to turn Africa into a new Europe, and America into a new Europe, then let us leave the destiny of our countries to Europeans. They will know how to do it better than the most gifted among us.’8 He added that it is always easier to proclaim rejection than actually to reject. Writing at the height of the Cold War, Fanon argued that other (non-African) countries of the Third World tried to overcome their problems of poverty by using their strategic positions – one that accorded them a privileged position in the struggle between the two blocs – to conclude treaties and give undertakings with the result that the ‘former dominated country becomes an economically dependent country’. It was not to be long before many African countries had become hopelessly economically dependent.
The 1960s, understandably, was the decade for blaming colonialism as the new leaders came up against constraints that inhibited their actions or found they could not easily escape from the patterns of the past. The colonial system had been concerned only with certain forms of wealth and only with those resources that provisioned its own industrial and commercial growth. As a result the departing colonial powers left their colonies in economic strait-jackets, designed to ensure that they continued providing the resources – primary products – that the metropolitan powers required. At the same time, blaming colonialism was also convenient: to do so got governments off the hook when they had made mistakes and provided political leaders with an exciting basis for rousing rhetoric. The human haemorrhage inflicted on Africa by the slave trade, which has been estimated at a loss of between 60 and 150 million Africans, remained the greatest indictment of the Afro-European relationship; the African continent which in the eighteenth century had about the same population as Europe had been reduced by 1960 to only a twelfth of Europe’s population.
René Dumont, the French agronomist, examined the failures due to the historical framework in which independence took place. In most cases, for example, African states, which had been carved out of the continent during the European ‘scramble’ are not based on either geography or ethnic unity but, instead, are the result of the rivalry of the European powers at the end of the nineteenth century. Further, Dumont argued, the inherited imperial institutions, administrative structures and education systems were to lose most of their relevance once independence had been achieved. Above all, the Balkanized state of Africa at independence required regional co-operation, especially if economic progress was to be achieved and the existing divisions, especially those between Anglophone and Francophone Africa, did not assist this process.
Demands for equality, the desire to be treated as the white civil servants that were made by the rising elites prior to independence, meant that these elites were widely separated from the masses they were to rule once independence had been achieved. As the new governments accepted much-needed economic aid from the former metropolitan powers they also had to determine how the aid should be used and here they came in contact with a new
breed from the former colonial power, the ubiquitous aid experts, many of whom defended and built upon the colonial record and opposed any deviation from ground rules for development that had already been established. In any case, in terms of the size of their economies, most African countries at independence were hardly viable and therefore were unable to sustain self-supporting development according to the European model.9 If the economic shackles left by the colonial systems were to be changed this should have been attempted at once when the charismatic leaders were at the height of their influence and popularity. Unfortunately, they were almost all concerned to follow Nkrumah’s advice and seek first control of the political kingdom, and those who later turned their attention to economic control found that the inherited strait-jacket had been substantially tightened.
The African states that emerged to independence during the 1960s did so at the height of the Cold War and were warned about the dangers of Communism by the West. Unsurprisingly, in the circumstances, the African response was that if the West, represented by the departing colonial powers, was so opposed to it, Communism must have something to offer them! And so the 1960s witnessed the departure of the colonial powers, at least in their ruling capacity, and the arrival of the USSR and its allies as the purveyors of alternative aid. Marxism had played an important role as an instrument of resistance as well as a symbol of Soviet successes, but as a social philosophy it made little real headway in Africa for it was contrary to the orientations of traditional thought. The Soviet impact was first felt in Africa at the time of Suez and subsequently when Russia had provided aid in West Africa, especially to Ghana, Guinea and Mali. In the early 1960s, however, Russian influence in Africa met with fierce competition from China following the split between the two Communist giants. In 1961, for example, a Soviet trade delegation to Lagos and other approaches to Senegal, Dahomey (Benin), Niger and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) were rebuffed, and in 1962, despite earlier aid to Guinea (which had included the extension of the runway at Conakry airport), Sekou Touré refused permission for Soviet planes to use the country as a halfway fuelling stop during the Cuban missile crisis.