Africa
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In March 1965 the government called a conference to find a solution to the North-South divide and though it came up with no long-term answers it did agree on repatriation of refugees, freedom of religion and a training programme for the South to allow its people greater participation in the army, police and civil service. In July 1965, a month after the Mahgoub government had come to power, rebel fighting round the Southern city of Juba was met with severe reprisals: many Southerners were killed and the divide widened. On 25 July 1966 the Mahgoub government was defeated on a censure vote and replaced by a new government under the young Sadiq al-Mahdi. It halted the current economic decline but was defeated in its turn in 1967 when Mahgoub returned to power. He was then to remain as Prime Minister until the coup of 25 May 1969 that brought Nimeiri to power.
The rebellion in the South, like most such rebellions, was at best sporadic in its early stages until properly organized. In October 1962 a strike in Southern schools led to anti-government demonstrations, which prompted many students to flee across the borders into neighbouring countries. Then some 500 former soldiers of Equatoria province came together to form the Anya Nya movement. This guerrilla organization began without arms and without much obvious purpose except opposition to Northern domination, and its members lived off the country. But in 1963 a former lieutenant in the army, Emilio Tafeng, became its leader; he organized the guerrillas and made them into an effective movement. It was Tafeng who first used the name Anya Nya (a snake poison) for the guerrillas. Growing disillusionment with the military government in the North and the desire for a return to democracy persuaded Northerners to use the issue of the South as a weapon against the government even if they had little real sympathy for Southern problems. From 1963 onwards Anya Nya maintained training camps outside Sudan in the Congo and Uganda, while inside the country it waged a guerrilla war, which consisted largely of ambushes of government forces. By the end of 1964 membership of Anya Nya had reached 2,000 and the greater part of the Sudan army had been moved to the South to deal with it. In 1967 a political figure of southern Sudan, Aggrey Laden, set up a Southern Sudan Provisional Government and established administration in the areas which by then were controlled by Anya Nya. From this time onwards the guerrillas called themselves the Anya Nya Armed Forces (ANAF), and by 1968 they had an estimated 10,000 members. By 1969 the government took Anya Nya sufficiently seriously to use the air force to seek out and attack the rebel hideouts; at the same time the numbers of Southern refugees were greatly increased as a result of the Northern policy of razing villages that had sheltered the rebels, a policy that did nothing to reconcile the government of the North to Southerners who were not necessarily in sympathy with Anya Nya tactics.
Efforts to reconcile North and South over these years were not helped by articles in the British press, especially those that insisted upon the religious dimensions of the civil war. Thus, referring to an article which had appeared in the Guardian the Chargé d’Affaires for Sudan in London, Bushra Hamid Gabreldar, described it as misleading: ‘Since 70 per cent of the Southern population are pagans and more than 25 per cent of the rest are Muslims, and since the terrorists in question belong equally to the three groups, it seems strange to refer to a Christian-persecuted South.’20 At the end of October 1966 the Prime Minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi, visited the South hoping to find new ways of reconciling the North-South conflict. The rebel leaders had already said they would reject any constitution that ensured the predominance of Islam throughout the country.
In 1968 Sudan still lacked a workable constitution and divisions over the Southern question had become sharper. In the North there were also other divisions, not least between members of the Ansari and smaller Khatmiyya sects, but also about whether Sudan should become a Muslim state, about its relations with Cairo and its attitude towards East and West in the Cold War. The elections of that year did not produce any clear majority so that an ineffective coalition government continued in power. By then the rebellion in the South had created 55,000 refugees in Uganda, Ethiopia was supporting the rebels and Sudan was supporting Somalia in its ongoing quarrel with Ethiopia. Then, on 25 May 1969 young revolutionary-minded army officers carried out a bloodless coup. Their leader was Col. Gaafar Nimeiri who became the Chairman of the National Revolutionary Council and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The coup was a response to a situation in which there was no constitution, the political system was dominated by sterile sectarian interests, the economy was stagnant and there was no sign of an end to the war in the South which involved the non-Muslim peoples of Equatoria, Upper Nile and Bahr-el-Ghazal provinces. The coup-makers arrested politicians and senior army officers. Only the Muslim Brotherhood mounted demonstrations against the coup. On the anniversary of the coup (25 May 1970) the government nationalized all foreign banks and followed this measure the next day by nationalizing a range of foreign companies. Commenting on these nationalization measures, Roy Lewis of The Times wrote: ‘While the right of any government to nationalize foreign firms, subject to “fair, prompt and effective compensation” is not contested, the Sudanese measures are without doubt the most sweeping and precipitate attempted in Africa since the Zanzibar revolution. They amount to virtually complete suppression of any substantial private enterprise.’21 Compensation was offered in the form of 4 per cent bonds on valuation of the business seized, repayable over five years after a moratorium of 10 years, that is between 1980 and 1985, an offer that was regarded as outrageous by the affected companies.
In the first statement he made Col. Nimeiri listed the Southern problem as one of the reasons prompting the coup and on 9 June he issued a policy statement in relation to the South. He claimed that he wished to follow the line adopted by the government in 1964, which had recognized for the first time that the Southern problem existed and had attempted to solve it by means of a round table conference. Nimeiri said his government was committed to the same objectives. All Southerners, abroad and at home, were called upon to see that peace and stability prevailed in the South and that life should return to normal conditions so as to enable the new government to carry out its policy. The need to build a broad socialist-oriented democratic movement in the South as part of the revolutionary structure in the North was an essential prerequisite for the application of regional autonomy. The Southern people should have the right to develop their respective customs and traditions within a united socialist Sudan. Regional autonomy was seen as the target after certain prerequisites and a programme of action had been drawn up. This would involve five objectives: the continuation and further extension of the Amnesty Law; economic, social and cultural development of the South; the appointment of a Minister for Southern Affairs; the training of Southern personnel to shoulder the new responsibilities; and the creation of a special economic planning board and the preparation of a special budget for the South. This declaration and programme of action on the South was hailed by both North and South as the most important single action of the new regime. The appointment of Joseph Garang, a leading Southern Communist, as Minister for Southern Affairs was a source of assurance to both sides since he was an advocate of union (the Sudan Communist party, prior to independence, had advocated autonomy for the Southern Provinces). In August 1969 Nimeiri toured the South to explain the new policy. He emphasized the need for peace and economic development. The Amnesty Law of 1967 was renewed in October 1969 to extend to October 1970. There followed an immediate increase in the populations of Southern towns as refugees returned home.
DJIBOUTI
At the end of World War II the port of Djibouti (in what was then French Somaliland), which handled 60 per cent of Ethiopia’s trade on the railway to Addis Ababa, found it was losing trade to the rival port of Asab in Eritrea. It was further adversely affected by the closure of the Suez Canal, first as a result of the 1956 Suez Crisis and then over the period 1967–75 following the Six Day War. In 1956 French Somaliland was made an overseas territory of France. In 1958 it voted to become a member of the Fr
ench Community. When Somalia became independent in 1960 it campaigned for the independence of French Somaliland, which it saw as part of Greater Somalia. President de Gaulle visited the territory at the end of August 1966. ‘On its own Djibouti could hardly exist as an entity. Its mineral wealth is minimal and unexplored and its climate is murderous. But as a sort of East African Tangier – and as the entrepôt for largely land-locked Ethiopia – Djibouti is a prize of great value. Not unnaturally Ethiopia and the Somali Republic are both candidates for its ownership, even though France – so far – has not indicated that it intends to withdraw.’22 In 1967, in a move to preempt Somali designs, France held a referendum which was carefully weighted in favour of the northern Afars, so as to reduce Somali influence – many Somalis were expelled from the colony at this time – and a majority of those who voted wanted to continue the French connection. Following the referendum the name of the territory was changed from French Somaliland to the French Territory of the Afars and Issas. Louis Saget, the French High Commissioner – the post of governor was now abolished – nonetheless held reserve powers covering foreign policy, defence, internal security, the currency, justice and broadcasting so that not a great deal was left outside French jurisdiction. The Popular Movement opposed continued association with France and demanded full independence. In elections the following year (1968) for a new chamber of deputies, the Afars under Ali Aref and his Regroupement Démocratique Afar (RDA) won 26 of 32 seats. France had managed to ensure the exclusion of many Somalis from the voting with the result that tensions were heightened. Over the next 10 years mounting pressures for independence came from the Somali-dominated Ligue Populaire Africaine pour L’Indépendence (LPAI), which was supported from outside the country by Somalia, while the OAU also exerted increasing pressure on France to grant the country full independence. In July 1976 France changed its policy and replaced Aref as head of government with Abdallah Mohamed Kalil (an Afar married to a Somali) whose government contained leading members of both ethnic groups. The Territory of the Afars and Issas became fully independent on 27 June 1977 as Djibouti with the LPAI leader, Hassan Gouled Aptidon, as President and Ahmed Dini (an Afar), the Secretary-General of the LPAI, becoming Prime Minister. By agreement, France stationed about 4,500 troops of the Foreign Legion in Djibouti, ‘at the disposal of the government’.
CHAPTER TEN
East Africa
Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda form the core of this region and the three territories came to independence within two years of each other between December 1961 and December 1963. They had a good deal in common, sharing a British colonial background, language and administrative institutions. They were comparable in size and resources, and had roughly equal populations while their levels of development were on a par with each other except that the presence of a substantial settler population in Kenya had acted as a magnet for considerably greater capital inflows, a fact that would cause problems between them in the immediate post-independence years. The impact of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya during the 1950s, despite its defeat by British imperial forces, had nonetheless hastened the regional momentum for independence with the result that the handover in all three territories had gone relatively smoothly. Jomo Kenyatta, whom the penultimate British Governor, Sir Patrick Renison, had described as the leader ‘to darkness and death’ had been transformed into ‘Good Old Mzee’ and came to be regarded in Britain as a ‘moderate’ African leader, as was Julius Nyerere in neighbouring Tanganyika. The transition from colony to independent nation appeared to have been accomplished very smoothly, especially in relation to the turbulent 1950s in Kenya.
The first problem facing the leadership in each country was to establish sound political control. In Tanzania Nyerere set out to create a one-party state and was to provide intellectual justifications for this exercise that found adherents throughout the continent. The more pragmatic Kenyatta allowed developments to take their course with much the same result: within a year of independence the dissolution of the opposition Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU) led to the emergence of a de facto one-party state. In Uganda Obote faced a somewhat different problem: how to create a unified state against the claims of the old kingdoms, and particularly the most powerful, Buganda, which was a state within a state.
Creating a one-party system was relatively easy but a single party must have an ideological purpose beyond providing stable government and herein lay its greatest challenge, for a two- or multiparty system, at least in theory, offers alternative policies. In the case of Tanganyika (transformed into Tanzania in 1964 following the union with Zanzibar) Nyerere justified the one-party system as a means of continuing the unity that had been achieved in the battle for independence and by 1965 had come to see the multiparty alternative as positively dangerous and destructive. As the masses in all one-party systems would soon ask: who controls the controllers? What checks and balances are required in a one-party state and how can these be created? Part of the solution, Nyerere suggested, was to allow members of the ruling party, in Tanganyika’s case the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), to run against official TANU candidates at elections although no non-TANU candidate had any chance of being elected. Another political problem, a crucial and necessary aspect of nation building, was to endow the head of state with awesome charisma so that in the early days he was first the hero of the independence struggle while later developing into the all-powerful presidential figure not to be questioned.1 Both Kenyatta and Nyerere earned this status, though in very different fashions, but Obote, who lacked the inherited charisma of the Kabaka of Buganda, never managed to achieve such a standing in Uganda.
In his early political life, which included a long spell in Britain and the publication of his book Facing Mount Kenya, Kenyatta had come to be regarded as a dangerous man of the left by both settlers and colonial authorities. In a famous trial he had been convicted (on perjured evidence) of managing Mau Mau and sent to an isolated prison in the north of Kenya. At the end of the 1950s and into the 1960s his release from detention became a central political objective in the independence struggle. When finally he achieved power and became first Prime Minister and then President of an independent Kenya, Kenyatta’s image was reversed and he came to be seen as moderate, pragmatic, subtle and as a symbol of national unity. He presided over a smooth transition from white settler to black rule and achieved a high level of racial reconciliation while his tolerance reduced tribal rivalries. His rallying cry ‘Harambee’ – ‘Let’s pull together’ – became the catchword in the new Kenya. During the remainder of the 1960s, despite a number of political crises, Kenyatta ruled over a comparatively free and prosperous society although his critics claimed that he was too conservative and laissez-faire in his policies. His admirers, however, called him Mzee, the old man, and elevated him above politics as the ‘Father of the Nation’. Julius Nyerere, by contrast, was an austere idealist who certainly earned his title Mwalimu, the teacher. Although he could be as tough as Kenyatta when the need arose, his approach was very different. ‘He was an idealist and his economic policies were hardly successful, but he did create a moral and social climate superior to the rest of Africa.’2 The Arusha Declaration of 1967 became one of the most famous landmarks in the continent’s political thinking. In his speech of 7 February 1967 in which he outlined the Declaration’s main purposes, Nyerere put forward the concept of ujamaa (familyhood or family sharing). It was a philosophy of self-help that led in 1970 to the policy, ultimately rejected, of villageization. Both Kenyatta and Nyerere achieved a status in their own countries and on the continent that was never earned by Uganda’s political leader of the 1960s, Milton Obote. He was a politician renowned for his skill at political infighting and he needed all his skills in his fight to create a centralized state following independence. With patience and skill Obote overcame the opposition of the Kabaka (King) of Buganda, Frederick Mutesa II, and his traditionalist supporters, first by offering them an alliance and then by manipulating them. By t
he end of the decade he had destroyed the power of Buganda and the lesser kingdoms, created a unified political system and then turned it into a one-party state with himself as President. However, once he had achieved his objectives, Obote found he was isolated with no real power base and he succumbed, as did so many of Africa’s new leaders, to the temptations of absolutism.
It was events in the island of Zanzibar that upset the apparently smooth early phase of independence in East Africa. Zanzibar, a separate British colony, became independent on 10 December 1963. At the beginning of the 1960s there were 40,000 Arabs on the island who owned the land, a few thousand Asians who ran the businesses and 300,000 Africans who did the work. Yet in 1963 Britain effectively handed over power to the Arab minority and then wondered why there was a revolution six weeks later when the Africans seized power. The revolution in Zanzibar, carried out over 12–16 January 1964, brought Abeid Karume, the leader of the Afro-Shirazi Party, to power as President. The Arab Sultan, Seyyid Jamshid bin Abdulla, left the island unharmed, with a retinue of followers in a yacht. He was subsequently declared banished for life. Kenya and Uganda recognized the new revolutionary government, which was also quickly recognized by the USSR, China and other Communist powers. John Okello, a Ugandan by birth, was the extraordinary figure responsible for leading the revolution, the self-styled ‘Field Marshal’ who proclaimed a people’s republic and said that a14-man Revolutionary Council had been set up. His own powers, he claimed, were ‘equal to that of the whole government’. He said that he had conceived the idea of the revolution without consulting the other leaders. On 17 January armed units of the Tanganyika police, numbering about 200, were despatched to Zanzibar to maintain law and order until the island’s police force had been reconstituted. In his autobiography, Okello described the contempt with which Arabs on Zanzibar treated Africans and told how in his presence one spoke to another, not believing that he understood what they said, ‘We know these Africans are fools and they will remain under our control forever; but don’t pay any attention to these mainland Africans because they don’t understand KiSwahili.’ This conversation, according to Okello, took place on 8 January when he was ‘making a routine reconnaissance of the town’ prior to the revolt, which he launched four days later. Okello was too unreliable and erratic a figure to be acceptable to the mainland rulers and he was rapidly sidelined. The official version of the revolution does not mention him at all: ‘The story of the Zanzibar Revolution of January 12 1964 is the answer of the people of the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba to the intrigues and plots of the Sultan and his political henchmen to prevent a popular democratic regime coming to power when Zanzibar cut free of British colonial domination on December 10, 1963.’3 The article went on to describe how the revolution had been led by the Afro-Shirazi Party and its leader, Sheikh Abeid Amani Karume. As Okello, who dropped from sight, says in his autobiography: ‘Now that my name has been omitted entirely from the “official” version of the Revolution I believe there is nothing about me or my part in the Revolution which makes East Africa’s leaders comfortable.’4 On 20 January 1964 the 1st Battalion Tanganyika Rifles mutinied.