Africa
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It was often forgotten or overlooked in the aftermath of independence that the colonial powers, Britain and France, had bequeathed to their successors highly centralized states that assisted the creation of one-party rule or dictatorship. They had not, for example, developed much local government because up to the end they were determined to keep power in their own hands. In Guinea, Sekou Touré identified the party with the people and elevated it to a position of superiority over the government so that major decisions were taken out of the hands of ministers and cabinet and made instead by the Party’s Executive Committee. In recent history at that time such elevation of a single party had only been carried out in Communist countries. It could be very effective; it was, in the end, profoundly anti-democratic.
The idea that a single political party should have the right to monopolize political discussion, whether in West Africa or anywhere else, is so absurd, in the light of human history, that it is hard to take it seriously… The single-party thus fails in all its claims. It cannot represent all the people; or maintain free discussion; or give stable government; or above all, reconcile the differences between various regional groups.23
The political problem that affected almost all the new states was what form of democracy was best suited to a plural society? The Western system of first past the post was clearly not the answer if the winners were then seen to impose their will upon the plural minorities that had lost. Democracy, to work effectively, must provide all sections of opinion with an opportunity to be represented in decision-making. This has been hard enough to achieve in the relatively more unified countries of the West where divisions have been on class and economic rather than ethnic lines; in West Africa at this time, with its many ethnic subdivisions, the process was far harder and often seemed unattainable. And so we return to the one-party state. Justifications for this form of government were much discussed in the Africa of the 1960s. It was seen as the best available system for uniting the people behind a new and inexperienced government whose first, overriding concern was development. A multiparty approach that insisted upon an official opposition would simply create divisions that could and should be avoided in the name of development and national unity. There were other justifications but these were the core arguments and they were greatly reinforced by the realities on the ground: the fact that Nkrumah or Touré, or in a quieter but no less ruthless and effective way, Houphouët-Boigny, controlled all the levers of power and had every intention of holding onto them indefinitely.
Western reluctance to be more critical of the new governments stemmed from two broad causes. The first was the all-absorbing concern with the Cold War, which coloured all Western dealings with Africa at this time. The fear that new radical governments would turn to the Communists persuaded the United States and the ex-colonial powers to support non-democratic and sometimes tyrannical regimes provided these remained in the Western camp. The second cause was more cynical: that Western interests, especially economic ones, would be best served by one-party state leaders who did not have to go through democratic processes before entering into agreements with Western commercial interests that in turn were bolstered by the rapidly growing new arm of foreign policy, the aid business. These foreign considerations were bolstered from within by other, quite different considerations. In politics, ‘what counts is having one’s own man in a position of authority, whether in political office, the party hierarchy, the public service, or a parastatal body. The dominant purpose of electoral activity in West Africa has therefore been the control of such preferment. The disappearance of party politics makes little if any difference. Indeed, one-party states have resulted not only from the intolerance of governments for opposition, but also from the disinclination of the oppositions to be automatically excluded from government patronage.’24 If there was loot to be had in the new state, everyone wanted his share and that was a powerful personal motive, which led many opposition politicians to acquiesce in the one-party state and join the ranks of the ruling party.
One final, some would argue overriding, argument in favour of the one-party state at this time was the need for political stability and when it was achieved under a strong man it was hailed as a justification for his subversion of wider liberties.
CHAPTER NINE
The Horn of Africa
No other region of the African continent faced such immediate problems of boundary adjustment following independence as did the Horn of Africa whose legacy of imperial manipulation was to be more than 30 years of warfare. The tiny territory of French Somaliland (later Djibouti) was as senseless a creation as the equally tiny and absurd Gambia on the other side of the continent. The French had taken it to match Britain’s Aden on the Arabian side of the Red Sea and it only made sense as an entry port for the railway to Addis Ababa. After its defeat at the battle of Adowa in 1896 Italy had been obliged to content itself with its colony of Eritrea, which effectively made Ethiopia landlocked. The British Protectorate of Somaliland on the Red Sea shore of the Horn and the Italian colony of Somalia on its Indian Ocean shore meant different administrations and different languages during the colonial era for two Somali regions that would only be united in 1960. When in 1941 British forces defeated the Italians in Ethiopia after the five-year Italian occupation that had followed Mussolini’s 1935 onslaught, the Emperor shrewdly dashed ahead of his country’s ‘liberators’ to enter Addis Ababa first. He was well aware of Britain’s imperial ambitions concerning his country and, as it transpired, fully justified in not trusting the British who spent the next 10 years trying to bring Ethiopia under their control. Part of the traditional Somali grazing lands had been incorporated in the British colony of Kenya as the Northern Frontier District (NFD) and this led to the Shifta war of the 1960s between Somalia and Kenya.
In the big power manipulations in this region from 1942 to 1950 the Emperor Haile Selassie watched the old colonial powers – Britain, France and Italy – manoeuvre for renewed influence; but in the end it was a newcomer to the African scene in the form of the United States, one of the world’s two emerging superpowers, that became the new ‘guardian’ of Ethiopia, principally to secure the military base at Kagnew in Eritrea to oversee America’s new strategic interests in the Indian Ocean. When British Somaliland and the UN Trusteeship territory of former Italian Somaliland were united as the independent Somali Republic in 1960, the flag of the new state had as its centrepiece a five-pointed star: two points represented the former British and Italian colonies, now united; the other three points represented French Somaliland, the huge Ogaden region of Ethiopia and the NFD of Kenya respectively, a conceit that automatically placed Somalia in confrontation with its three land neighbours. The Somali Republic refused to agree to the 1964 OAU ruling that the new states of Africa should accept their inherited colonial boundaries and embarked instead upon years of near or actual warfare with its neighbours. The UN decision to federate Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1950 and the subsequent Ethiopian incorporation of Eritrea in 1962 produced what was for years to be described as Africa’s longest war. Finally, British colonial policy in the Sudan that enhanced the divisions between North and South meant that in 2000 the two parts of Africa’s largest country were still fighting what had by then become both the longest and possibly also the most devastating war on the continent.
ETHIOPIA
In 1960 the Emperor Haile Selassie had a high reputation in Africa. As an exile following Mussolini’s invasion of his country in 1935 he had upheld African demands for independence at the League of Nations. He was the proud descendant of the only African leader, Menelik II, who had defeated one of the great powers during the Scramble for Africa, while the Jamaican Rastafarian movement, a mixture of black nationalism and religion, saw him as its spiritual leader. During the 1940s he had successfully defied British attempts to subvert Ethiopia’s independence and had made plain his desire to modernize a country that was regularly described as medieval. As the longest-ruling head of state in Africa he enjoyed great prest
ige and was shortly to take a leading role in the formation of the Organisation of African Unity. The only blot on this reputation was his readiness, though the pressures had been greater than he could withstand, to allow the United States to create its military base at Kagnew and become the country’s principal aid donor and, as Washington liked to believe, political mentor. In 1962, a decision that would ultimately cost Ethiopia dear, Haile Selassie ended the Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which had largely been engineered by the United States in order to secure the base it wanted at Kagnew, instead incorporating Eritrea into Ethiopia. This act led the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), which had been founded at Cairo in 1958, to launch what became a 30-year struggle for secession and independence. During the remaining years of his long reign until his overthrow in 1974 the Emperor faced growing opposition, especially from students, and demands for more radical reforms than he was prepared or able to grant; the growing tension between the traditionalists and the radicals was to be made worse by the escalating guerrilla activities of the ELF in Eritrea where the developing war steadily absorbed more and more government resources.
In May 1960, even before the Somali Republic became independent in July, Haile Selassie held discussions with the Ambassadors of Britain, the United States, Russia, France, Yugoslavia and the UAR about the situation in the Horn, which he described as ‘very grave’. He was referring to the claims already advanced by the Somalis for a union of the so-called Somali territories, including the Ogaden Province of Ethiopia. He said these claims were a first step aimed at the dismemberment of Ethiopia and that the ‘so-called Somali demands’ constituted a thinly disguised conspiracy which he would oppose with all means in his power.1 Thus the scene was set for years of conflict, sometimes erupting into full-scale war, between Ethiopia and Somalia. Indeed, border clashes with Somalia occurred immediately after that country’s independence in July and the Ethiopian press accused the new Somali Republic of refusing to reciprocate Ethiopia’s desire for friendly relations by at once exchanging ambassadors. The Ethiopian papers speculated as to whether there was not ‘some hidden foreign hand’ behind the Somali attitude.
The attempted coup against Haile Selassie of 14 December 1960 when he was on a visit to Brazil (see above, chapter four) failed; it was, however, symptomatic of growing Ethiopian restlessness and desire for change that reflected the continent-wide demands for a break with the past and rapid development and progress. As a leading article in The Times put it, personal loyalty to Haile Selassie was not enough: ‘This idea of personal loyalty has been one of the Emperor’s constant themes since his return. But although many of his ignorant subjects may offer him such loyalty, the time has come when his country must make the transition to the nation state, in which loyalty to kings becomes at best a symbol for loyalty to country.’2 Assessments of Ethiopia’s progress at this time were all the same: the pace of economic development was slow when compared with that of other African countries and expectations were not being met. Ethiopia, more than most African countries, depended upon agriculture with 90 per cent of the population working on the land while only five per cent of the GDP was derived from industry. There had been some advances: in road construction, for example, and the development of a modern port at Asab. But these advances were not enough to satisfy the radicals. In 1961 the government decided to establish a civil service recruited on the basis of merit through open competitive examinations. What was urgently needed was land reform and greater autonomy for the provinces as well as expansion of agricultural production.
A good many Western observers visited Ethiopia during the 1960s and their reports reflect an almost conscious sadness that what the Emperor stood for could not last. James Morris, writing for the Guardian, described Ethiopia as
just awakening from a long aloof dream, and disgruntled by the daylight. It is the view of the Emperor of Ethiopia that you can best make haste very slowly indeed. He has repeatedly proclaimed his intention to modernize the country, and to give the people a fair voice in the conduct of their own affairs, but the speed at which he is advancing towards a constitutional monarchy is distinctly sluggish. Thanks to his firm conservative hand, Ethiopia has so far escaped the welter of cross-values, the hodge-podge of immature politics, that has overcome most of Africa.3
In an interview with Andrew Wilson of the Observer early in 1962, Haile Selassie said he would end feudalism in Ethiopia. ‘One cannot imagine,’ he said, ‘what hard work must be faced in order to end feudalism without bloodshed. But our future is to move from feudalism to democracy. To remove all difficulties will take some time. There are those who must be convinced.’ The Emperor declined to name a date for the formation of political parties – which had never existed in Ethiopia – but said he was ‘always finding new ways’.4 There spoke a tired man; Haile Selassie was then approaching 70, and had spent the 20 years since regaining his throne trying to modernize one of the most conservative countries in the world against the vested interests of powerful semi-independent hereditary rulers who would surrender none of their privileges willingly. Clyde Sanger, one of the most sympathetic Afrophiles of that time, described for the Guardian the establishment of a new university in October 1962 and then reflected upon the current unease in Ethiopia. ‘In an uneasy atmosphere of discontented rumblings and threats from the Army, disillusionment over governmental changes among young intellectuals, the banishment of a Supreme Court judge and a score of suspected fellow plotters, and the dismissal of local editors for indiscretions, the establishment of a proposed University of Ethiopia… is a crucial move.’ The establishment of the University may have been an advance but too many other developments arose out of old-fashioned fear at radical change. There was a growing consensus that the situation could not last.
Interestingly, despite the large US presence as the country’s most important donor, the Emperor had lost none of his old skill at playing the great powers off against each other. Thus, in August 1963 a £37 million loan offered by Russia to cover the design and construction of an oil refinery at Asab was accepted by the Ethiopian Chamber of Deputies but only after a heated debate. In the division 11 voted against, 33 abstained, and 124 were in favour.5 Reviewing progress in Ethiopia, Norman Bentwich, another sympathetic British journalist, first described slow but steady reforms, touched on the problem of 400,000 Somalis in the southern province, and then said: ‘One of the Emperor’s most skilful achievements is the geographical and ideological distribution of foreign assistance. Since his restoration to the throne, he has been determined to avoid any aid imperialism and to be neutral in receiving benefactions and advisers from the Western and Eastern blocs. The Soviet Union has just completed the building of a big technical college at Bahar Dar at the southern end of Lake Tana, a small town which the Emperor envisages as an industrial centre because it is near the source of power from the falls of the Blue Nile.’6
The problem, and it would become acute in the early 1970s, was simply that no major decision was made except by the Emperor, and by the end of the decade he was in his mid-70s. At that time the rebellion in Eritrea was in full swing and the army, as a result, was becoming larger and more influential. Like many long-lasting leaders, Haile Selassie turned his attention, increasingly, to continental affairs in which he saw his role as one of mediation. He worked hard through the OAU, first to prevent and then to end the Nigerian civil war. At home, however, he became ever more conservative in the face of growing student and other unrest. In 1969 coups from the radical left in two of his neighbours brought Siad Barre to power in Somalia and Gaafar Nimeiri to power in Sudan.
ERITREA
Following the United Nations’ decision to create a federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea in 1950, the United States had effectively replaced the European powers in the domination of Ethiopia. Currency reform had severed the Ethiopian dollar from the pound sterling and tied it to the US dollar while US aid, especially for civil aviation, had become the country’s largest source of external funds. The
change had been entered into willingly enough by Ethiopia which had rejected ties with the European colonial powers – Britain, France and Italy – that had each been ready to interfere and had opted instead for a close alliance with the United States. Washington had devised the federal idea because what it really wanted was a base in Eritrea. The USSR condemned the federation as a new form of Western colonialism. John Foster Dulles, soon to become President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, said at the time: ‘From the point of view of justice the opinion of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless, the strategic interests of the United States in the Red Sea basin and consideration of security and world peace make it necessary that the country has to be linked with our ally, Ethiopia.’ The Federation of Eritrea and Ethiopia formally came into being on 6 August 1952.7
In 1953 Eritrea came under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian Crown though retaining semblances of autonomy. The Americans then constructed a multimillion-dollar complex at Kagnew. This base ‘was among the most crucial of the US National Security Agency (NSA) bases in the world. It primarily served US military and intelligence objectives in the region. It was used to promote the “command and control” of the American ballistic missiles in the Indian Ocean. It also served in the conduct of what are known as “cryptologic” activities. These included operations of jamming and telecasting coded information.’8 US aid to Ethiopia, up to 1970, came to US$250 million, the highest figure for American aid to any African country.
The Federation of Eritrea and Ethiopia came to an end in 1962 when the Eritrean legislative assembly voted itself out of existence. It was by then an emasculated body controlled by the Emperor. Four years earlier at Cairo in 1958 Eritrean dissidents who were determined that their country should not be subsumed by Ethiopia had founded the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and they had turned to armed struggle in 1961 when in September the first shots were fired in what came to be known in the 1980s as ‘Africa’s longest war’. On 15 November 1962 Haile Selassie issued Order No. 27 in which he announced that ‘the federal status of Eritrea is hereby terminated’ and that Eritrea was ‘hereby wholly integrated into the unitary system of administration of Our Empire.’9 By mid-1965 the ELF was reported to have a guerrilla force of 2,000 troops and these were often better trained and equipped than the Ethiopians opposed to them. Ethiopia, therefore, raised the number of its troops in Eritrea to divisional strength at 7,000. Eritrean resistance to the central government was sporadic and uneven during the 1960s, although the ELF gained considerable publicity from hijackings. By 1965, a further complication for Ethiopia, the ELF was receiving support from Sudan. In 1962 the ELF had moved its headquarters to Damascus and was always to receive substantial Arab (Muslim) backing in its struggle. For a decade the ELF was the most significant Eritrean liberation group, although others, such as the Popular Liberation Front (PLF) with Marxist leanings, came into being in the early 1960s. Both were committed to full independence for Eritrea. But by 1969 young militants in the ELF accused the leadership of feudalist or reactionary tendencies and moved towards a more socialist stance; they were supported by radical Arab governments – Iraq, Libya, Syria – as well as by Al Fatah (the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine) and the stage was set for the young militants to gain control of the Eritrean Liberation Army (ELA) and then from bases in Sudan develop a systematic guerrilla campaign across the border into Eritrea.