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[introduction.]

p When the Second World War ended Africa was a changed continent. There had been significant advances in the economy of the African countries. Production of strategic raw materials had markedly increased, as also the extraction of minerals. There had been some growth of the manufacturing industries, notably in the consumption goods and food processing field, due to contracting imports of manufactured goods from overseas. Roads and airfields had been built in many regions, and port facilities enlarged. Labour had been required for all of this, and the labour force had sharply increased numerically in practically all the African countries.

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p Roughly a million Africans had been mobilised into the fighting forces. Never before had so great a number of African soldiers travelled away from their countries or from the African continent. They had fought in the Arab countries of North Africa and Ethiopia, as well as in Western Europe and even as far away as Burma and Malaya.

The war and its consequences had had a profound effect on the political and national thinking of the Africans. The metropolitan countries, particularly France, Belgium and Italy, had become compromised as a result of their defeat. Nothing could revive the faith in their invincibility that had been fostered in the indigenous population by colonial propaganda. Many Africans had gained a considerably broader conception of things in general: they had seen much more of the world than ever before. Never had the current of world events stirred the Africans as it did now. Such developments as the emergence of the socialist system and, later, the crash of the colonial regimes in the lands of Asia, had produced a lively impression in the countries of Africa and created favourable conditions for a struggle for liberation. How profound all these shifts had been became evident in the early aftermath of the war.

Fifth Pan-African Congress

p In October 1945, Manchester played host to the Fifth Pan-African Congress. This Congress was far different from those that came before, both in respect of its membership and the resolutions adopted. Side by side with the fighters for Negro emancipation who had become known back in the 1920s, arriving from the United States and the West Indies, sat the representatives of various comparatively young African political organisations and trade unions. Indeed, these formed a majority.

p Among those present were: Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, patriarch of the Pan-African movement, prominent Negro public figure and scientist; Kwame Nkrumah, future president of Ghana; Jomo Kenyatta, future president of Kenya; Peter Abrahams, the noted South African writer; and many other public and political personalities whose names were later to become known the world over.

p The resolutions adopted by the Congress contained—for the first time in the history of Pan-Africanism—a demand for independence. Its Declaration stated:

p “The peoples of the colonies must have the right to elect their own governments, without restrictions from foreign powers. We say to the peoples of the colonies that they must fight for these ends by all means at their disposal... the struggle for political power by colonial and subject peoples is the first step towards, and the 439 necessary prerequisite to, complete social, economic and political emancipation. ... Colonial workers must be in the front of the battle against imperialism. .. . Colonial and subject peoples of the world, unite!”

p Another document adopted by the Congress was the Appeal to the Colonial Workers, Farmers and Intellectuals which summoned them to organise mass movements against colonialism.

This Congress mirrored the important developments brewing on the African Continent, though still below the surface.

The Emergence of Ghana

p First among the countries of Tropical Africa to gain its freedom, in March 1957, was the British Gold Coast colony. Its proclamation as a sovereign state reverberated throughout the continent. Many African countries viewed it as a promise of their own early liberation. It was a sign of the times, too, that the first sovereign state of Tropical Africa had dropped the name of Gold Coast given it by the colonialists to take that of Ghana, in tribute to the powerful West African country that existed in the Middle Ages.

p Ghana had travelled a difficult road to gain its independence. 1945 saw the formation in the Gold Coast of a Trade Union Congress, and in December 1947, the United Gold Coast Convention came into being, the first political organisation to demand independence. This latter organisation was headed by bourgeois elements and that section of the feudal landlords which was especially closely linked to them. D. A. Grant, a prominent exporter of timber and cocoa, was given the post of president, Dr. J. K. Danquah became a vice-president, and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, back in his native country again after thirteen years in the United States and Great Britain, took, in 1947, the post of secretary-general.

p The rapidly rising cost of living in this period produced various forms of protest on the part of the population, such as strikes, meetings, demonstrations, and boycott of foreign-made goods. On February 28, 1948, soldiers who had been given neither jobs nor allowances on being mustered out of the army came to the governor’s residence to submit their demands, and were fired upon by the police.

p Nevertheless the British authorities considered it necessary to grant the Gold Coast population certain concessions; and a Constitutional Committee was set up to revise the system of government. Its membership included practically all the leaders of the United Convention; and some of these used this as a pretext for claiming that Britain’s attitude towards her colonies had radically 440 changed for the better. This produced a split in the Convention, and in the middle of 1949 a Convention People’s Party emerged therefrom headed by Kwame Nkrumah, which was determined to assume leadership in the struggle against the colonial regime.

p In November 1949, the People’s Party, in co-operation with the Trade Union Congress, convened a Gold Coast Representative Assembly with the participation of trade unions, co-operatives, and various cultural, youth and women’s organisations. The Assembly demanded that the country be granted dominion status. When the British Colonial Office refused, the People’s Party issued, on January 8, 1950, an appeal to the people to begin a campaign of "positive action”, which was to include meetings, demonstrations, a general strike, and a boycott of goods of British origin. Taking its start in Accra, the campaign quickly spread over the rest of the country. A state of siege was proclaimed by the governor, and leaders of the People’s Party and Trade Union Congress were arrested. But these repressions merely gave a further impetus to the liberation struggle.

p Towards the close of 1950 and early in 1951 the British Government introduced a new system of government for the Gold Coast, which provided for the formation of a local government. Elections to a Legislative Assembly, held in February 1951, ended in a resounding victory for the People’s Party, which won 34 seats out of 38. In 1952 Kwame Nkrumah was given the post of prime minister.

p For all these changes, however, the Gold Coast remained a colony, with the British governor still wielding the power of veto. In 1953 the Legislative Assembly approached the British Government with a request to place before the parliament a bill granting the Gold Coast independence within the framework of the British Commonwealth. This request ran into the opposition not only of reactionary elements in the metropolis but also of the feudal nobility in the Gold Coast itself. In many parts of the country the feudal landlords began forming armed detachments to fight the People’s Party. And a number of political parties cropped up in opposition to the Nkrumah government.

Elections to the Legislative Assembly in July 1956, however, showed that the majority of the people were against a colonial status. The election returns, the changing balance of world forces, and the decision of Britain’s ruling circles to alter the methods of colonial exploitation, all pointed to the necessity of granting the Gold Coast independence. Accordingly, the British Government resolved to grant it dominion status, and on March 6, 1957, the Gold Coast was solemnly proclaimed an independent state and took the name of Ghana. The British trust territory of Togo was incorporated into the new state. A referendum conducted in this 441 part of Togoland in May 1956, had shown that the majority of its population were in favour of union with the Gold Coast (after it was granted independence), rather than continue as a trust territory. The independence of the eastern part of Togo under French trusteeship was proclaimed in 1960.

Guinea, First French
Colony to Gain Freedom

p Eighteen months after the liberation of Ghana another country south of the Sahara rid itself of the colonial regime. This was Guinea. While still a dependency known as “French” Guinea, it formed part of a solid block of French colonial possessions, administratively divided into French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. Besides Guinea, the former comprised Mauritania,. Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, French Sudan, Niger and Upper Volta. French Equatorial Africa comprised Gabon, Middle Congo, Ubangi-Shari, and Chad. This area also contained the French trust territories of Cameroon and Togo.

p In October 1946, representatives of the various political parties of the French colonies met in Bamako (now capital of the Mali Republic) and decided to create a common political federation to be known as the African Democratic Union. This organisation came out strongly against colonial rule and by 1949 its membership had grown to roughly a million. While expressing the prevailing antiimperialist feelings, it also reflected the trend towards unity among the African peoples, more specifically the desire to preserve—after the achievement of independence—the “federations”, which was the name applied to French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. Many Africans hoped that it would be possible eventually to win independence for the two large and therefore more viable federations, rather than for the twelve minor colonies.

p In the liberation movements in the French colonies, trade unions were coming to play a greater and greater role. They, too, displayed a trend towards concerted action: thus, in 1957, they succeeded in forming a united trade union centre known as the General Union of Workers of Black Africa. In their struggle, the African workers had the unfailing support of the Communist Party and progressive trade unions of France.

p The growing power of the national liberation forces compelled the French Government to make concessions. The French governing circles had their hands full with the wars that had been going on since 1954 in Algeria and since 1955 in the French trust territory of Cameroon, and had to be careful not to allow armed conflict to break out in other French colonies. In the summer of 1956 the 442 French president signed a law decreeing that each colony was henceforward entitled to form a government council which would function as an executive body. The terms of reference of such councils, however, were to be quite limited, the chair could be occupied only by the French governors, and the minister of French overseas territories would have the right to veto any of their decisions. Moreover, and this was of even greater importance, the law, while conferring wider powers on certain colonies, was frankly designed to prevent the retention of any common governing bodies on a “federation” level.

p In 1957 the African Democratic Union at Bamako called for the formation of federation states. The French Government flatly rejected the proposal, considering that it would be easier to deal with small and weak countries than with one or two larger states.

p Faced with the disintegration of the imperialist colonial system and a serious political crisis at home as a result of the war in Algeria, President de Gaulle announced a referendum in all the French colonies of West and Equatorial Africa. The people were to be asked whether they wished to remain within the French community or to be completely independent of France. This referendum, conducted on September 28, 1958, was not an expression of the free will of the people. The internal feudal elements and other forces that had thrown in their lot with the French imperialists were determined to prevent a break with the metropolis. Witness reports indicate that in some colonies the election returns were crudely falsified. Many voters were frightened into believing that France would turn her back on any people that came out against remaining within the French community.

p As a result, Guinea was the only country that voted for complete independence from France: 95 per cent of her voters voted against remaining within the French community. This was largely due to the efforts of the Democratic Party of Guinea, the local branch of the African Democratic Union. This party had acquired great prestige in the land. Sekou Toure, its secretary-general, had headed the colony’s government council. Shortly before the referendum in Guinea the Democratic Party had succeeded in bringing about important reforms in the interests of the people at large, such as tax cuts for peasants, higher wages for workers, dismissal of tribal chiefs from administrative posts, etc.

p Just before the referendum Sekou Toure said that at the Bamako Congress Africa had come out in favour of the federations, with a view to retaining French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa and converting them into states which would adhere to the FrancoAfrican community. Resolutions to that effect, he said, had been submitted to the French Government.. . . However, the French 443 Government had failed to take cognisance of this in its draft constitution. It wished to partition Africa, it told us: Guinea will become a state, the Ivory Coast will be a state, every territory will become an independent state and make its own laws. And although the West African market was rather limited, Sekou Toure added, and should have been extended to cover French Equatorial Africa, so as to constitute a single economic and monetary entity, it was nevertheless the intention to arrange things in such a manner that Guinea should be a state separated from Senegal, that there should be customs houses on their common frontiers, and that there should be similar customs houses on Guinea’s frontiers with Sudan and the Ivory Coast.

On October 2, 1958, when the final returns of the referendum had come in, Guinea proclaimed herself an independent republic. Soon thereafter all French experts were recalled from the country, and a rapid outflow of French capital followed: the French Government attempted to organise an international boycott of the new state. Thanks to the firmness of the Guinean people, however, as well as to the support of the socialist countries and neighbouring Ghana, the French efforts failed to bring Guinea to her knees.

1960—Africa Year

p The proclamation of Ghanaian and Guinean independence made the first breach in the system of colonial rule in Tropical Africa. Thereafter the disintegration of that system continued at a rapidly rising rate.

p Historically, 1960 may be regarded as Africa Year: seventeen new states emerged on the African continent during that year. On January 1, Cameroon, hitherto a French-administered territory, proclaimed its independence, to be followed by Togo, another French trust territory, on April 27; the Malagasy Republic on June 26; the Republic of the Congo (ex-Belgian colony) on June 30; and on July 1 British Somaliland and the Italian trust territory of Somaliland united to proclaim themselves a republic.

p Between August and November all the colonies of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa were proclaimed independent. There thus came into being: the Republic of Dahomey, the Republic of Niger, the Republic of Upper Volta, the Ivory Coast Republic, the Chad Republic, the Central African Republic ( Ubangi-Shari prior to 1959), the Congo Republic (capital—Brazzaville; formerly Middle Congo), the Gabon Republic, the Republic of Senegal, the Mali Republic (ex-French Sudan), and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. Nigeria, largest of African countries in size of population, became independent on October 1.

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Yet it was during this selfsame year 1960 that Africa came to realise how completely illusory the independence thus proclaimed could be in certain conditions. A convincing object lesson was given the Africans by the tragedy of ex-Belgian Congo, which foreign imperialism succeeded in plunging into chaos within a few months of its “independence”, and by the fate of Patrice Lumumba and his comrades-in-arms, done to death by the colonialists and their henchmen. The tragedy of the Congo and the dramatic events that took place in other African countries showed only too clearly that the second phase of a national liberation revolution, the one that began with the proclamation of independence, was often more complicated, more difficult, and sometimes more bloody, than the struggle to end a country’s colonial status.

New States Emerge
in East and Central Africa

p Among the countries of East and Central Africa which achieved independence between 1961 and 1964, British possessions were in the majority, namely, Kenya, Uganda, Zanzibar, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. There were two trust territories: Tanganyika, administered by the British, and Ruanda-Urundi, by the Belgians.

p These countries were of considerable importance to the world capitalist economy. Thus, the "Copper Belt”, a highland area in Northern Rhodesia, was one of the world’s leading producers of copper. The plantations of Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika yielded heavy crops of coffee, cotton and sisal. That is why the governing circles of Great Britain had been intent on holding on to these possessions.

p In Kenya and Northern Rhodesia, to name two of them, there had been a large number of European settlers. Their climate is favourable, quite unlike that of many areas in West Africa, which have rightly earned for themselves the name "white man’s graveyard”. In the middle 1950s the white population of just the two above-mentioned colonies numbered roughly 100,000. Quite a few of these settlers were ready to take up arms in defence of colonial rule, and the ruling circles of the parent countries could rightly count on their support.

p In order to maintain their colonial rule in East and Central Africa, the British considered it highly important to create colonial federations: an East African, which would include Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika; and a Central African, comprising Nyasaland, and Northern and Southern Rhodesia. The idea of forming these two federations dated back to the period between the First and 445 Second World wars, though it had remained deferred ever since. But after the Second World War one such federation was actually formed; it came to be officially known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

p The white settlers of Southern Rhodesia viewed this federation as a means of extending their control to cover Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, while the settlers of these two colonies, who formed a negligible minority of their population, hoped to benefit by the support of the more populous and better organised white settlements of Southern Rhodesia. In all three colonies the settlers were unanimous in the belief that they would thus find it easier to keep the Africans in subordination and so assure an influx of capital from Europe and America. On an economic level, federation pursued the aim of linking the relatively developed industry of Southern Rhodesia with the raw material resources of Northern Rhodesia and the vast reserves of cheap labour provided by Nyasaland.

p In uniting the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland the British Government sought to strengthen its dominant position in these colonies by enlisting the white settlers in the struggle against the growing forces of liberation. The African peoples, however, actively fought against the formation of any colonial federations. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland functioned just ten years, from 1953 to 1963; and as to an East African Federation—that the British had never been able to create.

p The anti-imperialist movements that developed in the British East and Central African colonies in post-war years were accompanied by the sprouting of various mass political organisations, whose membership ran into tens and hundreds of thousands. Among them may be mentioned the Kenva African National Union, founded in 1960, headed by Jomo Kenyatta; the Tanganyika African National Union headed by Julius Nyerere, founded in 1954; and the United National Independence Party of Northern Rhodesia, headed by Kenneth Kaunda. Other large organisations existed in Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Zanzibar. All of them owed their existence to the activities of numerous political groups, trade unions and social organisations, which had provided the Africans with an opportunity to gain experience in fighting for their rights.

p The movements for independence varied from country to country, naturally, in respect of certain characteristic features and the specific difficulties encountered. Yet there was also much that was similar in their history. In all of these countries the colonial authorities instituted mass persecution of the population. In Kenya, between 1952 and 1955, in their efforts to crush the Mau Mau peasant rebellion the British colonialists threw 62,000 Africans into prisons and concentration camps, including Jomo Kenyatta 446 and other independence movement leaders; and over 11,000 Kenya Africans were killed.

p In the Rhodesias, in Nyasaland, as in the other countries of East Africa, the authorities resorted to such measures as state of emergency, mass arrests, prohibition of political organisations, etc. Suppressed political organisations promptly reappeared under new names, however, and with even more numerous memberships, as a rule.

p First among the countries of East Africa to achieve independence, in December 1961, was Tanganyika. As of July 1, 1962, a United Nations resolution ended the trusteeship regime in RuandaUrundi, in lieu of which two states appeared on the map, namely the Republic of Ruanda and the Kingdom of Burundi  [446•1 . Uganda gained independence in October 1962; Zanzibar in December 1963; and in 1964 Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanzania.

The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland fell apart towards the close of 1963, and in July 1964, Nyasaland was proclaimed a state under the name of Malawi, after the name of the numerically largest of its peoples. Northern Rhodesia gained independence in October 1964, and forthwith dropped the name it had been given once upon a time in honour of Cecil Rhodes, the British colonialist, to become known as Zambia, after the river Zambezi.

Problem of Freedom for South Africa

p By the beginning of 1966 nearly all the relatively large colonies north of Angola, Southern Rhodesia and Mozambique had won independence. Only such smaller countries as French Somaliland, Portuguese Guinea and Spanish Sahara continued under colonial regimes. Sierra Leone had become an independent state within the British Commonwealth early in 1961, and Gambia  [446•2  early in 1965. In September and October 1966, Basutoland and Bechuanaland gained statehood under the respective names of Lesotho and Botswana.

p A large cluster of colonies was now left only in South Africa. These included the Portuguese possessions in Angola and Mozambique, the British protectorate of Swaziland  [446•3  and Southwest Africa (Namibia), annexed, to all intents and purposes, by the Republic of South Africa.

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p As soon as the Federation of Rhodesia fell apart, South Rhodesia (which the Africans call Zimbabwe) fell into the hands of the extreme racist section of the white settlers, which in November 1965 proclaimed the country an “independent” state, while retaining their dominant position therein. This was done against the will of the Africans, who form the majority of the population.

p These remaining African colonies came to form a kind of barrier fencing off the Republic of South Africa, the most raciallyminded country in the world today, from the continent’s new independent states. And, in turn, the Republic of South Africa props up, in a manner of speaking, the regimes of the still surviving colonies on its northern borders, with which it constitutes a solid bloc.

p The problem of liberating the southern part of Africa is fraught with many difficulties. This is the continent’s richest part. It is here that 70 per cent of the capitalist world’s total output of gold and platinum is produced, together with diamonds, uranium, vanadium and many other valuable minerals. The world’s biggest monopoly concerns vie for domination in this area. Some 3,500,000 white settlers live in South Africa, mainly in the Republic of South Africa, a considerable proportion of whom embrace the racist creed and are willing to promote the interests of imperialism.

Far greater forces than elsewhere on the continent were lined up here against the movement for liberation, but the struggle against colonialism and imperialism was gaining momentum, especially in the Portuguese colonies, where since the early 1960s it had developed into a regular war.

Struggle for African Unity

p The liberation forces in every African country grew apace and success achieved by any one of the former colonies served to inspire the rest of the continent. The developing national liberation revolution made the Africans realise more and more that they were facing common tasks and that unity on an all-African scale had become a necessity.

p In 1958, Africans began, for the first time in history, to initiate conferences for the purpose of discussing their common tasks. This constituted an important advance. Prior to that, African issues were debated and decided solely by the representatives of imperialist powers assembled in conference to cut up and piece together at will the map of Africa and legalise the “right” of the participants to exploit selected countries of the "Dark Continent".

p This new type of conferences was initiated by the first Conference of Independent African States, convened at Accra in April 448 1958. It was attended by representatives of the eight then already existing independent countries, namely, Ghana, Guinea, the UAR, Morocco, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Liberia and Libya.

p The Conference made an exhaustive examination of all aspects of the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist struggle on the African continent. Other conferences of independent African states followed: at Addis Ababa in June 1960; at Leopoldville in August 1960; and at Casablanca in January 1961.

p But the broadest representation of the numerous political and public organisations of all contemporary African countries was achieved through the periodic All-African peoples’ conferences. The first such conference met at Accra, in December 1958; the second in Tunis, in January 1960; and the third in Cairo, in March 1961. Permanent elective bodies functioned in the intervals between conferences. The new arrangement led to a much greater participation of the African countries in the Afro-Asian solidarity movement.

p The idea of a common struggle against colonialism meantime assumed an increasingly definite shape. The range of subjects tabled for discussion by the All-African peoples’ conferences grew ever wider. The second conference adopted resolutions relating to practically every colony and proposing specific measures for ending the colonial status of each. Much more attention was given to such problems as the role of the working class in the struggle for the complete liberation of Africa; the policy of neutralism; and the struggle for universal peace. The first All-African peoples’ conference was devoted primarily to the problem of political liberation; the second—to the achievement of economic independence; and the third—to neo-colonialism, now rapidly becoming the main threat to the peoples of Africa.

p From conference to conference, the Africans showed a growing desire to employ more active methods in their struggle. Whereas non-violence and passive resistance were stressed by many delegates at the first conference as the only admissible tactics, at the second recommendations were made to form a volunteer corps to aid Algeria and other peoples now actively at war, and the third called for the creation of a supreme African headquarters.

p An unfailing demand voiced by the conferences of the late 1950s was for independence for most of the African countries in 1960. And every African nation, obtaining the support of the whole continent at these representative assemblies, fought with all the greater firmness for the realisation of its ambitions.

p Those countries who succeeded in achieving independence regarded the continuing colonial regimes in other regions of the continent as a threat to their newly gained sovereignty. And rightly so, as.amply proved by the fact that the South African Republic 449 furnished mercenaries for the "Foreign Legion” in the Congo, for the Smith regime in Southern Rhodesia, and so on.

p Characteristic of all African countries, parallel with a yearning for independence, was a growing trend towards a united stand against colonialism and imperialism and mutual aid both in fighting for freedom and in building a new life. True enough, this idea had a different meaning for some African leaders; so that in the late 1950s and early 1960s there came to exist a number of associations and political blocs that pursued rather different aims.

p The founding of an African Unity Organisation spelled a signal success for the trend towards complete unity. This organisation came into existence by virtue of a Charter adopted at a conference of the heads of state and heads of government convened in May 1963, at Addis Ababa. Its programme included: promoting solidarity among the African states; co-ordinating their activities and strengthening co-operation; safeguarding their independence and territorial integrity; and fighting all manifestations of colonialism. The members of the Addis Ababa conference declared themselves resolved to settle all differences by peaceful procedures; to refrain from adhering to any blocs; and to aid in every possible way the liberation of those African countries that remained under colonial rule.

p The Assembly of the Organisation of African Unity held in 1964 at Cairo declared Africa an atom-free zone, thereby making a substantial contribution to world peace.

However, the development of the OAU in the first years following its emergence in 1963 proceeded far from smoothly. Thus, the conference of heads of state and government of African countries, meeting at Addis Ababa towards the close of 1966, showed that their unification in a genuinely united anti-imperialist force was running into serious difficulties, posed above all by the manoeuvres of neo-colonialism. The concept of unity, fundamental to the OAU, was extremely popular, however, and had numerous adherents in all African countries.