Africa
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Then, on the subject of civil servants, he said: ‘For, once you begin to think in terms of a single national movement instead of a number of rival factional parties, it becomes absurd to exclude a whole group of the most intelligent and able members of the community from participation in the discussion of policy simply because they happen to be civil servants.’20
In a Guide to the One-Party State Commission of January 1963 Nyerere set out guiding principles to include: Tanganyika to be a Republic with an executive Head of State; the Rule of Law and the independence of the Judiciary to be preserved; there to be complete equality for all Tanganyika citizens and maximum political freedom for all citizens within the context of a single national movement; that there should be maximum participation of the people in their government and ultimate control by them of the organs of state through universal suffrage; and that there should be complete freedom for the people to choose their own representatives on all Representative and Legislative bodies, within the context of the law.
Nyerere came to be regarded as the intellectual defender of the African one-party state at its best and his arguments would be widely quoted in the coming years. Following this speech in which he argued that Tanganyika should become a one-party state, Nyerere was at once faced with powerful counter-arguments of equal intellectual weight from Miss Frene Ginwala, then the editor of Spearhead (a pan-African review published in Dar es Salaam). Throughout his arguments, she said:
President Nyerere emphasizes the need for discussion as a fundamental characteristic of democracy. He implies that with the removal of two-party disciplines there will be an immediate sprouting of self-criticism and discussion. This may be true in so far as parliament and its members are concerned, but what of the rest of society? Can one believe there will be an atmosphere conducive to the expression of dissent from the norm?
President Nyerere himself says that opposition parties ‘tend to be regarded as traitors to the majority of our people’. Might this not also apply to those who differ in any way from official policy, or who express disagreement with any government action? There is, in fact, an unfortunate tendency, especially amongst certain TANU officials to regard any criticism of the Party, particularly from a non-official, as tantamount to treason.
The whole argument that a one-party system would not in any way limit discussion or criticism of shortcomings, falls to the ground, unless steps are taken to ensure firstly that the atmosphere for discussion and self-criticism is created, and secondly that there are avenues and channels for it to flourish and be effective. The atmosphere for free unfettered discussion must be actively fostered by the TANU leadership. The problem of how that criticism can be made to be effective raises the whole question of the institutions that will be required within the new system.21
It was perhaps not unconnected with this article that in May 1963 Miss Ginwala was declared a prohibited immigrant with no explanation as to why! Under the one-party system that was adopted, presidential and parliamentary elections were held in Tanzania in 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1990, all being carried out peacefully and, despite the party’s executive influence in the nomination of candidates, these elections were competitive as each constituency was contested by two candidates. Thus, the elections often contributed to significant changes in the composition of the political elite.22
KENYA AND UGANDA
Prior to announcing on 14 August 1964 that Kenya was to become a Republic on 12 December 1964, Kenyatta told the House of Representatives that the country would also soon have a one-party system, ‘because we do not subscribe to the notion of the government and the governed in opposition to one another, one clamouring for duties and the other crying for rights’. Kenyatta said he would not justify the one-party state by using the fragile and perennial argument that parties were the expression of social classes, and therefore that there must be only one party. He said that the necessity for a one-party system in most parts of Africa stemmed from two predominant facts. First, traditionally, African society evolved around the family tree, the wider pattern of blood brotherhood and the wider networking of clans and tribes, all of which acted in concert in times of emergency. Secondly, to the African, the supreme authority was the tribal council, which was at once a government and an expression of the personality of every citizen. African leaders were advised by elders, and by obeying the tribal councils, the people maintained that they obeyed themselves, and their true will. ‘Constructive opposition from within is therefore not an alien thing in so far as the traditional African society is concerned.’23
On 10 November 1964 Kenya became a one-party state by consent when Ronald Ngala, leader of the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) and salaried Leader of the Opposition, led his party across the floor of the house to the government benches, or rather, to scenes of jubilation, was carried bodily across the House to the government benches. At an earlier press conference Ngala said: ‘This is one of the times when we must be prepared to sacrifice our political dignity for the peace and harmony of Kenya.’
Uganda became independent in October 1962 with an alliance of Milton Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) and Kabaka Yekka (KY – ‘the King Alone’) party, which won all the seats in the Kingdom of Buganda. It was an uneasy alliance from the start. By 1964 the UPC, aided by defectors from the Democratic Party and the KY, had gained an overall majority in Parliament that enabled Obote to dispense with the KY members of his government. A power struggle then developed between the UPC and Buganda with the latter trying to resurrect its position as a kingdom. In February 1966 a KY Member of Parliament accused government ministers of smuggling gold from the Congo, an accusation that was interpreted as an indirect attack upon Obote, and a motion to that effect was passed unanimously. It looked as though Obote must fall. Obote, therefore, carried out his own coup, arresting five of his ministers at a cabinet meeting. Then he suspended the constitution and took full executive powers. In April he introduced a new constitution and made himself President. He abolished the federal status of Buganda and the other kingdoms as well as the official estates held by the chiefs. The Lukiko (Council) of the Kingdom of Buganda reacted to the coup by demanding that the central government should leave Buganda’s soil: in other words, it declared itself independent of Uganda. Three days later, as rumours spread that the Ganda were taking to arms, the regular army under Obote’s orders stormed the Kabaka’s palace. Following heavy fighting and casualties, the Kabaka (King Frederick Mutesa II) escaped to exile in England, the Kingdom of Buganda was brought to an end and was divided into four districts and placed under a state of emergency.
There were other coups during the 1960s: in Algeria where Houari Boumedienne ousted Ahmed ben Bella in 1965; in Burundi in 1966 where Michel Micombero deposed King Ntwane V to make the country a Republic with himself as President; in Libya in 1969 when Muammar Gaddafi seized power from King Idris; and in Lesotho in 1970 when Chief Leabua Jonathan, who was losing the election, suspended the constitution and ruled by decree. The pattern varied but the end result was the same: the creation of a one-party state and, too often, the military replacing the civilians as the rulers. Over these years a growing number of leading Africans claimed that there was no place for the two- or multiparty system on the continent and that their people did not wish to be dominated by a majority but wanted, instead, a system that allowed decisions to be reached by consensus. In Francophone Africa, 10 years after independence, only seven of the 17 statesmen who had led their countries to independence were still in power, while eight of the new presidents were army officers; and in Gabon and Dahomey, where civilians held power, the army played a significant ‘watcher’ role in the background. The army, indeed, had become a crucial power broker in half the states of Africa. In former British West Africa the army had brought an end to Nkrumah’s nine-year rule, had intervened, ruled briefly, and then returned Sierra Leone to civilian rule while in Nigeria the civil war came to an end with the end of the decade though the army would ru
le for most of the succeeding 30 years. Yet no rule of thumb could explain the emergence of the one-party state or the predominance of the army. In 1968, for example, in both Dahomey and Sierra Leone the army returned the government to civilian rule while the following year the army in Ghana also stepped aside in favour of civilian politicians. Although the soldiers who carried out coups justified their actions on the grounds of general misrule and corruption on the part of the politicians, discontent soon surfaced when it became clear that the soldiers were unable to do any better. There was an obvious link between deteriorating economic conditions and the military coup. As Moussa Traoré, the Mali coup-maker of 1968, put it, it was no longer possible to acquiesce in the ‘deterioration of the country’s economy’ while ‘revolutionary demagoguery’ could no longer disguise the true facts. The principal indices of discontent were student revolts and trade union protests and strikes and in 1968, for example, substantial student troubles occurred in Senegal, Upper Volta, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Kenya and Madagascar.
Several general conclusions can be drawn from this decade of coups and the emergence of the one-party state. The first, that many of the countries that came to independence were woefully unprepared for it, a fact that reflected on the colonial powers rather than the new African states. Second, that the armies of the new states saw themselves, almost at once, as players in the political game and not as impartial instruments of state. Third, that the political systems and constitutions bequeathed to their ex-colonies by the departing colonial powers were not suited to many of the conditions prevailing at the time of independence; neither had they taken into account the African approach to consensus that was the main justification for the one-party state. There were other arguments but what the colonial powers never understood was the fact that only after independence could African politicians and leaders work out what would best suit their countries and their people and that the process of finding the appropriate system would be both long-drawn-out and painful.
CHAPTER FIVE
Problems of Development
THE DIFFICULTIES TO BE FACED
At the beginning of the 1960s most of the newly independent African states had underdeveloped, fragmented economies based principally upon small-scale agriculture and craft industries. Colonial economic activity had concentrated upon export-import enclaves concerned with plantation agriculture or the extraction of minerals. The bulk of the profits from these activities, including surpluses that might have been invested locally, were remitted overseas. Without exchange control, moreover, the new African states could not prevent a continuing flight of capital, including both foreign and domestic savings. A respected British aid commentator at this time opened a pamphlet Aid to Africa with the following words: ‘Little is known about the population of Africa south of the Sahara. In very round figures the area may now contain about 200 million people.’1 After a century of colonialism it might have been reasonable to expect a somewhat more precise appraisal but from the viewpoint of the newly emerging aid donors the continent presented a virtual tabula rasa upon which to operate. The same author continued: ‘In a continent the size of Africa, in which agricultural yields are so low, where other natural resources are not lacking and where industrialization hardly exists, the scope for development is enormous.’ He enumerated three problems: the general weakness and high cost of administration; lack of clear purpose in economic planning; and the difficulty of stimulating indigenous enterprise. He elaborated further upon the small absorptive capacity of the new states, how aid should be used and supervised, and queried donor policies. Most aid was then ‘tied’ to the procurement of goods from the donor. There was plenty of finance available at the time; the question was how it should be used. And little noticed at first was the growth of the debt problem. At that stage, immediately after independence, all returns on the extraction of raw materials ought to have been used to finance other aspects of development including industrialization. This did not happen for several reasons: because most such profits were remitted to the metropolitan powers in the form of profits and interest; and because of limited market size, the absence of an educated, skilled labour force, and the inherited patterns of colonial export-import growth instead of national development. Moreover, there was urgent need to co-ordinate inter-state transport systems to facilitate development on a regional scale.
At the time, as these problems surfaced, there existed a clarity of thinking among African leaders, both about the intentions towards Africa of the big powers and about what they ought to do in order to be truly independent, that was not apparent at the end of the century. At the same time, the predominant Western motive was to retain control over the levers of economic power on the continent. The background to these considerations was the Cold War. As the British economist Andrew Shonfield shrewdly observed: ‘The habits of totalitarian tyranny both in the rulers and the ruled take a long time to correct. That is no justification for running to the opposite extreme and trying to use economic aid as a weapon in the Cold War… Letting a country go communist is a risk that we must feel able to afford to take; otherwise the West is likely to be the permanent object of blackmail by all the least worthwhile and most oppressive governments.’2 That sage advice was ignored and in the years that followed, Western aid, too often, was deployed for Cold War rather than for development reasons and African leaders quickly learnt how to use Cold War arguments to ensure a constant flow of aid. Another examination of the continent’s problems at this time included this judgement: ‘What is needed in Africa today is a thorough-going reconstruction of the entire economy. It is not the details of production, which are wrong, not marginal adjustments which are needed. The entire structure of production is a colonial creation, with an emphasis on primary exports that inhibits any sustained economic growth.’3 In his seminal book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Walter Rodney lays bare what, in essence, was the starting point for independent Africa:
It is fairly obvious that capitalists do not set out to create other capitalists, who would be rivals. On the contrary, the tendency of capitalism in Europe from the very beginning was one of competition, elimination and monopoly. Therefore, when the imperialist stage was reached, the metropolitan capitalists had no intention of allowing rivals to arise in the dependencies.
Many irrational contradictions arose throughout colonial Africa as a result of the non-industrialization policy: Sudanese and Ugandans grew cotton but imported manufactured cotton goods, Ivory Coast grew cocoa and imported tinned cocoa and chocolate.4
Although diamonds were produced in Africa the cutting, which enhanced the value, was done in Europe: ‘No Africans were allowed to come near that kind of technique in the colonial period.’
Rodney writes from a Marxist point of view; he might have added that there were no serious capitalists in Africa at the time of independence except for the whites in South Africa. There was, therefore, an urgent need for Africans to regain power and the consequent decision-making capacity that had been lost during the colonial period.
Some post-colonial problems had been deliberately created. Thus, when independence became inevitable, France, which had administered its sub-Saharan African Empire as the two large regions of West and Equatorial Africa, split them into a dozen states that were hardly viable economically. Both Senghor of Senegal and Boganda of Central African Republic wanted to retain the Community that had been proposed by de Gaulle, not to pander to his political ambitions but in order to bargain with France on a single, united basis. Instead, France kept its former colonies in the franc zone and was therefore able effectively to control their financial decisions. Britain, on a somewhat looser rein, maintained the sterling area for some years thereafter and kept the sterling reserves of its ex-colonies in London, using them to bolster Britain’s account when faced with periodic sterling crises. The French Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs said the franc zone had been created with a ‘clearly defensive character, conceiv
ed essentially for the profit of a metropolis which assumed, at the same time, in an authoritarian and centralized fashion, all the responsibilities of a geographically heterogeneous and dispersed group’ – which, of course, France had created.5
The French agronomist, René Dumont, produced one of the most important studies of agriculture in Africa at this time.6 He argued that the problem of mechanization was crucial because African elites were seduced by the idea of modern machines and that it was difficult to convince them that agricultural progress did not depend on immediate and complete mechanization. Rather, he argued, the vocational training of the peasants would constitute the most effective lever for agriculture and general progress in tropical Africa. ‘Agricultural development must go beyond its colonial framework. Until now the main emphasis, sometimes the exclusive one, has been on export crops. Efforts in this direction must, of course, be continued as capital resources beyond those offered by foreign aid must be increased to buy equipment.’ Unfortunately, as Dumont pointed out, ‘The schoolboy son of an agricultural worker is taught to have only one desire, to escape the land and his dependence on it.’ In Senegal, for example, agriculture was the last profession school children chose. The colonial powers had neglected education in the rural areas; their African successors did the same thing.
WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT?
Growth is not the same thing as development and this was to be illustrated in a number of ways during the 1960s. At the beginning of the decade only a very few newly independent states, and then only with the assistance of substantial aid inputs, were in a position to enhance their productive power in any meaningful sense. At that stage it was a question of absorptive capacity, which, in turn, depended upon skills or, rather, their absence. Aid, therefore, moved to the centre of all development arguments; could it create an economic momentum that would continue once the aid had ceased?