The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  Finding a constitutional arrangement that satisfied so many diverse interests proved to be a protracted business, fraught with fierce arguments. Under the 1954 constitution, each region was given its own government, assembly and public service and allowed to move separately to self-government. The West and the East attained self-government in 1957 but then had to wait until 1959 for the North to catch up. The independence constitution provided for a federal structure that was regarded as an effective compromise balancing regional interests, though it left the North, because of the size of its population, in a commanding position, with a potential stranglehold over the political process, capable of dominating the combined weight of the other two regions.

  Nevertheless, when Nigeria was launched as an independent state in 1960, it was with a notable sense of optimism. Led by politicians widely applauded for their long experience of government, endowed with a strong, diversified economy and possessing an efficient civil service, Nigeria was marked out as one of Africa’s emerging powers.

  61

  GONE WITH THE WIND

  In eastern and central Africa, where white communities aspired to establish new dominions, Britain’s plans in post-war years were based on the idea of developing what it called ‘multiracial’ societies, a ‘partnership’ between white and black, albeit under white leadership. The process was marked by fierce disputes. At any sign that Africans or Asian immigrants might advance at the expense of the white community, the white reaction was invariably hostile. In Kenya, the British government eventually decided on a ratio of two European representatives to one African and one Asian – 2:1:1. In Uganda, with a different population mix, the ratio was 1:2:1. In Tanganyika, it was initially to have been 1:2:1, but as a result of strong European pressure, it was finally fixed at 1:1:1.

  In central Africa, white politicians managed to secure greater advances. By stressing the economic benefits to be derived from closer association between three territories – the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia and the two protectorates of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) – they won British support for a plan to establish a federation in central Africa. Southern Rhodesia had agricultural and manufacturing potential, but required larger markets; Northern Rhodesia was a major producer of copper, but needed a more diverse economy; Nyasaland was poor, heavily in debt, but offered a large surplus of labour. Combined together, the argument went, they would constitute a more attractive proposition for foreign investors and produce a much faster rate of economic development.

  The plan encountered strong opposition from the African populations of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland who feared that, in place of the relatively benign rule of the Colonial Office, they would come under the control of white Rhodesians and be subjected to the restrictive racial practices prevalent in Southern Rhodesia. No explanation of the economic advantages that would follow made any difference. At every opportunity, through chiefs, welfare societies, provincial councils and at meetings with government officials, Africans voiced their fears and objections again and again.

  To bolster their case, white politicians insisted that federation would lead to a new ‘partnership’ between Europeans and Africans, though when explaining their idea of ‘partnership’, they invariably spoke of senior and junior partners, or, as the Southern Rhodesian prime minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, put it more memorably, ‘the partnership between the horse and its rider’. Nevertheless, officials in the Colonial Office were persuaded of the merits of federation. In June 1951, they produced a report endorsing the case for federation on the grounds of economic, strategic and administrative benefit. African objections, they believed, could be taken into account by allowing Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland to remain under the auspices of the Colonial Office and by introducing safeguards into the federal constitution.

  Launched in 1953, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was a triumph for white power. Salisbury was chosen as the federal capital. In the federal government, in the federal parliament, in the civil service, white authority prevailed. Among thirty-five members of the federal parliament, six were Africans but their views were usually ignored. All attempts to introduce legislation to deal with discrimination were blocked. No effort was made to implement partnership once the federation was established. Buoyed up by revenues from the giant mines of Northern Rhodesia and by a huge growth of secondary industry in Southern Rhodesia, white politicians next set their sights on obtaining independent dominion status.

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  Britain’s ‘multiracial’ strategy, however, was soon knocked off course by a rebellion against colonial rule in Kenya. The rebellion grew out of land grievances among the Kikuyu people which had been building up since the 1920s. Living close to Nairobi and almost surrounded by the White Highlands, the Kikuyu had felt the impact of colonial rule more fully than most others in Kenya. More than a hundred square miles of Kikuyu land in the vicinity of Nairobi had been alienated for European settlement, a constant source of anger and resentment. A Kikuyu petition demanding the return of ‘lost lands’ had been taken to London in 1929 by a young political activist, Jomo Kenyatta.

  As their numbers expanded, the Kikuyu ‘reserves’ became increasingly crowded. Thousands of landless peasants emigrated to the main part of the White Highlands, the Rift Valley province, previously the domain of the pastoral Maasai. The Kikuyu ‘squatters’, as they were called, were at first welcomed by white farmers who wanted a regular supply of labour. Many prospered as independent producers. By the mid-1940s, the population of Kikuyu squatters and their families had risen to 250,000, more than a quarter of the Kikuyu people.

  In the post-war era, however, squatter communities in the Rift Valley came under increasing threat. White farmers needing more land for their expanding operations and requiring only wage labourers, imposed tight restrictions on squatter activities, forcing thousands to leave in destitution. Facing the loss of land and the destruction of their communities, the squatters embarked on a resistance campaign, binding themselves together with secret oaths. In 1948, government administrators in the Rift Valley reported the existence of what they believed was a sinister secret society named Mau Mau. It was a name which in the Kikuyu language was meaningless. Its origin was lost in the Kikuyu passion for riddles. But what the authorities were really confronting was an incipient revolt among the Kikuyu for which Mau Mau became, by common usage, the fearsome expression.

  Not only squatters in the Rift Valley were on the verge of rebellion. In the heavily populated Kikuyu reserves there was growing resentment of new conservation measures enforced by the government to prevent land degradation, adding to old grievances over ‘lost lands’ and government restrictions on African production of lucrative cash crops such as coffee. Landless peasants from Kikuyuland, along with dispossessed squatters from the Rift Valley, poured into the slums of Nairobi.

  In post-war years, the African population of Nairobi doubled in size. More than half of the inhabitants were Kikuyu, their ranks swollen by a growing tide of desperate, impoverished vagrants. Adding to their numbers were groups of ex-servicemen returning from the war with high expectations of a new life but finding little other than poverty and pass laws. Unemployment, poor housing, low wages, inflation and homelessness produced a groundswell of discontent and worsening crime. Mixing politics and crime, the ‘Forty Group’ – Anake wa 40, consisting largely of former soldiers from the 1940 age group – and other militants were ready to employ strong-arm tactics in opposing government policies and in dealing with its supporters.

  When Jomo Kenyatta returned to Kenya in 1946 after spending fifteen years abroad, he rapidly assumed leadership of the Kenya African Union (KAU), a nationalist group formed in 1944 to campaign for African rights. Kenyatta favoured constitutional means to oppose colonial rule, but soon found himself outstripped by militant activists prepared to use violence. Asked by the colonial government to denounce Mau Mau publicly, he duly complied, but he was subsequently summoned by members of a ce
ntral committee based in Nairobi and told to desist. ‘We said, “We are Mau Mau and what you have said at this Kiambu meeting must not be said again,”’ recalled Fred Kubai, a committee member. ‘If Kenyatta had continued to denounce Mau Mau, we would have denounced him. He would have lost his life.’

  The move towards violence split the Kikuyu people. Both the old Kikuyu establishment – chiefs, headmen and landowners – and the aspiring middle class – businessmen, traders, civil servants and government teachers – opposed violence. So did large numbers of Christian Kikuyu. But many other Kikuyu were caught up in the rebellion. From 1952, outbreaks of violence – murder, sabotage, arson and forced oathing – became increasingly common.

  Taken by surprise by the scale of violence, British officials assumed that Kenyatta and his KAU were the organisers. In October 1952, the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, declared a state of emergency, asked for troop reinforcements and ordered the detention of Kenyatta and 150 other political figures, a move taken by Mau Mau activists as tantamount to a declaration of war. In growing panic, white farmers in the Rift Valley expelled some 100,000 squatters, providing Mau Mau with a massive influx of new recruits. Many headed straight for the forests of the Aberdares and Mount Kenya to join armed gangs recently established there. Far from snuffing out the rebellion, Baring’s action intensified it.

  All the fear and hatred that the white community felt facing this sudden danger focused intensely on the person of Kenyatta. No other figure in colonial Africa was so reviled. British officials portrayed him as a criminal mastermind bent on gaining power and profit by using witchcraft and coercion to exploit a largely primitive and superstitious people, confused and bewildered by their contact with the civilised world. Determined to convict him in a court of law to justify their claims, but lacking evidence, they proceeded to rig his trial. He was charged with the management of Mau Mau, an unlawful society, and given the maximum sentence of seven years’ imprisonment, to be followed by an indefinite period of restriction. Baring publicly promised that never again would Kenyatta and other convicted leaders be allowed to return to Kikuyuland.

  The rebellion continued for four years before army reinforcements were able to withdraw. From small-scale, random and brutal episodes, it grew into a grinding guerrilla war. At the height of the Emergency, as it was called, the government employed eleven infantry battalions, some 21,000 police, air force heavy bombers and thousands of African auxiliaries. The brunt of the war fell not on white settlers but on loyalist Kikuyu. They became the target of Mau Mau leaders determined to enforce complete unity among the Kikuyu people before turning on the whites. Nearly 2,000 loyalists died. The official death toll of rebels and their supporters was listed as 11,500, though modern researchers put the figure far higher. More than 1,000 rebels were hanged. Some 80,000 Kikuyu were held in detention camps without trial, often subject to harsh and brutal treatment, including torture. By comparison, the white community escaped lightly. Though white farmers in isolated farmsteads lived in fear of attack, after four years, only thirty-two white civilians had been killed, less than the number who died in traffic accidents in Nairobi during the same period.

  In the aftermath of the rebellion, the British government recognised the need for more rapid African advancement if its strategy of developing a multiracial partnership was to survive. The first African elections in 1957 brought eight elected Africans into the legislative council; the following year, the number of Africans increased to fourteen, giving them parity with white representatives. In October 1959, the White Highlands were formally opened to all races. White objections hampered a faster pace of change. But by then, British ministers had begun to conclude that white minorities could no longer be allowed to stand in the way of African political progress. The cost, as the Mau Mau rebellion had shown, was too high.

  Just when the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland seemed headed for dominion status, an explosion of violence erupted in Nyasaland. The root cause was mounting African opposition to the federation, led by an elderly doctor, Hastings Banda, who had arrived back in Nyasaland in 1958 after spending forty-two years abroad, most of them in England. From the outset, Banda had campaigned vociferously against Britain’s plan to include Nyasaland in the federation, describing it as the ‘cold, calculating, callous and cynical betrayal of a trusting, loyal people’. At the age of sixty, he had decided to leave his medical practice in London and return to Nyasaland to lead the campaign there. Welcomed back as the saviour of his people, he threw himself tirelessly into the task of promoting the Nyasaland African National Congress, touring one district after another, invariably dressed in a dark three-piece suit and black homburg hat even under a hot midday sun, lambasting the ‘stupid’ federation at every opportunity.

  Facing violence and disorder, the governor, Sir Robert Armitage, decided it was all part of an anti-government conspiracy, including a plot to murder whites. In February 1959, he summoned Rhodesian troops to help keep order, declared a state of emergency, banned the Nyasaland African National Congress and ordered the arrest of Banda and hundreds of his supporters. Far from restoring order, however, the emergency measures provoked greater disorder.

  The report of an official inquiry into the violence found the governor’s actions were justified but caused deep shock by pointing out that they had turned Nyasaland into ‘a police state’. Moreover, the report challenged the British government’s contention that nationalist agitation over the federation was confined to ‘a small minority of political Africans, mainly of self-seekers’. Opposition to the federation, it said, was ‘almost universally held’. No longer were British ministers able to portray the federation as a bold experiment in racial partnership.

  Fearful of further outbreaks of anti-colonial violence, the British government altered course abruptly, accelerating the whole process of political advancement towards independence, even though few preparations had been made. In January 1960, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan sounded Britain’s retreat from Africa during a tour he made to Ghana, Nigeria, Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. ‘The wind of change is blowing through the continent,’ he said in Cape Town, ‘and whether we like it or not this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact and our national policies must take account of it.’

  One by one, the new states of Africa emerged amid much jubilation. In 1961 came Sierra Leone and Tanganyika; in 1962, Uganda; in 1963, Kenya and Zanzibar. In 1964, after the demise of the federation, Nyasaland gained independence as Malawi and Northern Rhodesia became Zambia. In 1965, the tiny Gambia was set up as an independent state. The three southern African territories soon followed: Bechuanaland (Botswana) and Basutoland (Lesotho) in 1966 and Swaziland in 1968.

  For the white communities facing life under black rule, there were many uncertainties, doubts and fears. Thousands decided to leave. In Zambia, more than half of the colonial civil servants left the administration. Kenya by independence had lost a third of its white farmers. Those whites who stayed, however, found the adjustment to be not nearly as painful as they had once imagined. Life in the tropics seemed to go on much as before. Within a short time, white settlers became reconciled to the habits of African government. In Kenya, they readily accepted Kenyatta as prime minister. Indeed, Kenyatta’s rule appeared to be so stable and benign that many whites who had only recently thought of Kenyatta with nothing but revulsion now began to worry about his passing.

  Other whites, though, saw Britain’s withdrawal from Africa as an act of surrender to the forces of black extremism. Nowhere was this view held with such conviction as in Southern Rhodesia and nowhere was the determination greater to bring a halt to Macmillan’s wind of change.

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  ‘AN HONOURABLE EXIT’

  The first challenge to French rule in Africa came from the Maghreb. In Morocco, the French had expected the sultan, Mohamed ben Youssef, educated by French tutors and dependent on French administrators, to be amenable to French control, but
in the post-war era, he had emerged as the figurehead of a burgeoning nationalist movement calling for independence. In a dramatic speech in 1947 he proclaimed Morocco’s affiliation to the Arab world and demanded recognition of Morocco’s national aspirations, drawing him into open conflict with the French authorities. He further infuriated them by withholding his signature to government decrees, including a plan for a new territorial assembly in which the votes of European settlers outweighed those of the Muslim majority.

  The French retaliated by encouraging the sultan’s rivals, Berber chieftains, to organise a vast march demanding that he be deposed. Using this as a pretext, the French government duly deposed him in August 1953, sending him into exile, first to Corsica, then to Madagascar, and replacing him with an elderly uncle, a wealthy landowner who had previously played no role in political life. The Spanish, however, continued to acknowledge Ben Youssef as the legitimate sovereign of their zone. The exiled sultan swiftly became the focus of nationalist agitation, uniting urban and rural populations, the middle class and the peasantry, behind a common cause. Violence and disorder broke out in towns and rural areas.