Module: HST5610 Kingdoms, Empires and Colonisation in African History
By Kristina Tsabala
On the 14th of December 1960, the United Nations Assembly adopted a resolution that declared the independence of 17 African states. This event marked the success of the independence struggle in Africa as the decolonized states were finally relieved of the colonial authority of the European states. However, the post-independence reality embodies a high level of economic dependence of the African states, to which historians and other humanities academics refer to as neo-colonialism. Therefore, many scholars, such as David Birmingham and Frantz Fanon, have adopted a critical approach on the analysis of the matter and they often conclude that decolonization was not a success because it was shaped by the colonizers. On the other hand, there exists a more nationalist approach that focuses on people’s demands from below and their struggle to suppress the external political structures as Thomas Hodgkin observes. To answer the question, it is important to define both the reality after independence and the attempts and methods of the African leaders to seek independence. It is crucial to note that colonialism continued to be attractive and the colonial powers managed to maintain their economic control while giving away the political. In cases such as Ghana, Guiné, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, etc, the demands for autonomy and independence were administered through reforms and diplomacy rather than armed insurrections and, therefore, the transfer of power seemed to be more peaceful and without a significant amount of atrocities at first sight. In other cases, such as Kenya, Algeria, South Africa and the Portuguese colonies, the stakes were higher, and warfare was involved. However, each state and their respective leaders did fight one way or another to win their political freedom. In this essay, I will focus on African groupings such as parties, congresses and underground organizations in Ghana, Guiné, Kenya and Algeria who won their freedom through different political and social techniques.
The post-independence reality of economic dependence has significantly influenced the historiography on the process of decolonization. Many of the historical analysis share a critical approach on the anti-colonial struggle undermining the success of the nationalist movements to win their political freedom from European subjugation. This leads to a devaluation on the action taken by the Africans to demand their political sovereignty and to secure it further. For example, David Birmingham states that “the decolonization of political institutions was often relatively rapid, but the minds of many Africans continued to work on colonial assumptions, making cultural, emotional and intellectual decolonization difficult for the heirs of empire.”[1] The main problem came from the process of transfer of power - a strategic manoeuvre that aimed to continue profitable relations for the metropole. By initiating the process of negotiations Britain and France managed to place African allies in the leadership positions who would continue to serve the interest of the metropole, without having many opportunities to change the conditions of the newly freed states. On the other hand, countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast and Egypt whose main objective was to industrialize, were cornered to enter the world market through debt and dependency. Furthermore, this strategy served an international and humanitarian purpose to make the colonial governments be perceived as altruistic and generous, rather than enforced to give up their power because of their inability to hold it.[2] The leader of the nationalist movement in Guinee – Bissau and Cape Verde - Amilcar Cabral defined the transfer of power as: ‘The most important problem in the liberation movement. The problem of the nature of the state created after independence is perhaps the secret of the failure of African independence’.[3] Many politicians, Nkrumah as well, were aware of the great risk of downfall for a self-governed state, and therefore, it was very important for the future politics of the state how the independence was to be achieved.
Firstly, the decolonization process of Ghana is an example of how the colonial government can be forced to withdraw without violent actions. The nationalist and anti-colonial aspirations of the population of the Gold Coast can be traced back to 1925. People’s unrest with the administration and the economic conditions were expressed in the 1930s through the hold-up of cocoa and hindering the production. However, the nationalist demands were agitated during WW2 and the demand for self-government was claimed definitively at the Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945, in which the future African leaders - Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah, participated. The current leaders of Ghana such as Dr. Danquah realised the necessity for extra-parliamentary measures which could appeal to the British government. In 1947 the United Gold Coast Convention was founded with the aim to push the colonial administration towards independence through diplomacy and moderate reforms. But the moderate reforms did not satisfy the Africans and failed to solve the common problems. In 1948 due to economic struggle, the Gold Coast population boycotted the production of European goods and started peaceful demonstrations and riots for pensions, particularly for the war veterans, better wages, and better working conditions. However, the police responded with arms and left 29 killed and more than 200 wounded. Thus, it was provoked a wider resistance to the state system and the foreign government. Afterwards, in 1949 Kwame Nkrumah based his new Convention People’s Party on mass support and they won their first elections with great success, even though Nkrumah was imprisoned for his campaigns of non-violent protests, similarly to Kenyatta who was charged for leading the Mau Mau movement. Eventually, the British government had no other option besides to start the negotiations for the transfer of power in 1951. Finally, Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan country to declare independence in 1957.
Another example of diplomatic challenges to imperialism is Guiné. The demands for autonomy and independence of the French colonies in West and Equatorial Africa were represented through the Rassemblement Democratique Africain established at the Bamako conference in 1946. Although the organization was less separatist than later nationalist revolutionary formations, its aim was the “equality of political and social rights… local democratic assemblies; and a freely agreed union of the peoples of Africa and the people of France.”[4] After the wars in Algeria and Indochina, de Gaulle had to shape decolonization in order to profit from it. Therefore, instead of supporting the autonomy of an African Union, he decided to offer concessions to each country if they partake in a new French Union that was supposed to be more united than the British Commonwealth. Simultaneously, a new important political actor emerged in the African scene – Sékou Touré. He created the Parti Démocratique de la Guineé that was opposed to the assimilation strategies of de Gaulle, as Touré acknowledged the difficulties of neo-colonial subjugation that accompany the creation of self-government. He was widely supported and in 1958 when the referendum for the entrance in the French Union was conducted in Guiné, 94% voted ‘non’. Consequently, de Gaulle withdrew all the technical and administrative personnel including material equipment and telephones to ‘make independent Guiné ungovernable’.[5] Nevertheless, the new administration continued to deny their alliance to France and proclaimed independence from any French presence in 1958.
In contrast to Ghana and Guinea, parliamentary reforms and democratic diplomacy proved to be unsuitable in Algeria and Kenya. They were different from the other colonies because of the great number of white settlers there. The settler’s interests were decisive for the development of colonial policy.[6] The presence of the whites accounted for the political, social and economic segregation. Therefore, diplomatic means of achieving independence were fruitless. For example, the parties in Kenya – Kenyan African Union and Kenyan African Democratic Union could not initiate any political reforms despite their numerous campaigns, rather they were able to operate only on a regional level. Consequently, the population, and particularly the young Kikuyus, were disappointed by their parties as they practically could not represent them and continued to live in a racist regime dominated by the white settlers. In the 1940s a radical organization called the Forty Group was created by the disillusioned veterans from WW2. Later, the young Kikuyus joined, and the movement evolved to what is known as Mau Mau. In 1952 Fred Kubai and Eluid Motonyi who were the leaders of the rebellious forces founded the War Council that aimed to launch military actions against the imperial rule. Mutonyi justified the appearance of the Mau Mau as: ‘Our main objective was to demonstrate by action that Africans were fed up with European Imperialism. We had noted that the demand [for independence] … had fallen on deaf imperialist ears… We want to force the issue of independence.’[7] After several political assassinations, a state of emergency was announced in 1952 in Kenya. Additionally, 180 politicians including Kenyatta and Kubai were imprisoned. The fighters fled to the jungle and established military bases. In a short period of time, the movement accounted for 12 000 people. They attacked civilians, both white settlers and black indigenous who collaborated with the colonial government. In the end, around 12 000 soldiers were wiped out by the administration. The state of emergency continued until 1960, although the war ended in 1956. There was still no freedom of association after the war, but the Mau Mau uprising made Harold Macmillan realize that the colonial government must prepare for the transfer of power because they cannot afford to secure their power. Consequently, in 1963 Kenya declared independence.
Algeria shares significant similarities with Kenya in its struggle for independence. It was the foreign territory with the largest presence of French settlers but in contrast to Kenya, Algeria was part of France, since it became a prolongation of the metropole since 1871. There existed the same racial hierarchy that oppressed the African population and it provoked strong anti-colonial sentiments. The Parti du Peuple Algérien announced the claims for immediate independence as early as 1937. However, WW2 postponed the independence struggle until 1943 when Ferhat Abbas, who later was the president of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republique, wrote the Manifesto of the Algerian people. In this Manifesto he calls to the Free French, the UN and the US to ensure the principle of self-determination.[8] Nevertheless, peaceful means were not enough once again to enforce the French administration to leave and the disillusioned Algerians opted for violence. In 1947 Ben Bella, Hocine Ait Ahmed and Ahmet Belouizdad founded the paramilitary formation the Special Organization that prepared for violent attacks on the French. In 1953 French troops tried to sabotage any attempts of an uprising by killing civilians publicly and imprisoning any revolutionary suspects without proof, and thus, demonstrating control over every aspect of life. However, the Special Organization evolved to Front de la Liberation Nationale and gained a significant amount of popular support. They started the war for independence in 1954 and did not expect to continue as long as to 1962.[9] This, in fact, was a very cost-inefficient project for the French government particularly after the loss in Indochina and the French government was forced to ratify the Évian Accords which granted the independence of Algeria.
Joanna Lewis observes the process of initial establishment of the colonial rule as: ‘The empire was reliant upon an indigenous elite for whom the British [or the French] served their interests as much as the empire served the metropole’s’.[10] These conditions of imperial relations are based on an economic hierarchy which unfortunately after decolonization continued to exist. The metropoles were still attracted to the advantages of the foreign territories, and the national elites continued to collaborate either for their own good or because they had no other choice. This post-independence reality has impacted the historiography to rather stress the intentions of the colonial states to subjugate their former colonies economically, and thus the African’s agency to force the colonial administrations to politically let go of their overseas dominions was overshadowed.
Footnotes
[1] David Birmingham, The Decolonization of Africa (Psychology Press, 2002), p. 6 [2] John Darwin ‘Decolonisation and the End of Empire’ in The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography (OUP, 1999), p. 544-545 [3] Amilcar Cabral, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), p. 84 [4] T. Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (Lightening Source Incorporated, 2008), p. 146 [5] Birmingham, Decolonization, p. 23 [6] Tony Smith, ‘A Comparative Study of French and British Decolonization’, Comparative Studies in History and Society, 20:1 (1978), p. 81 [7] Eluid Motonyi cited in Fabian Klose, Human rights in the shadow of colonial violence: the wars of independence in Kenya and Algeria, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), p.69 [8] 10 février 1943 – Le Manifeste du people algérien, Textures du temps, Contemporary Algeria, https://texturesdutemps.hypotheses.org/1458 [accessed 17 February 2019] [9] Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, (New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 23 [10] Joanna Lewis, ‘The British Empire and World History: Welfare Imperialism and ‘Soft Power’ in the Rise and Fall of British rule,’ in J. Midgeley and D. Piachaud, (eds) Colonialism and Welfare. Social policy and the British Imperial Legacy (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011), p. 19
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