The declaration of principles by Churchill and Roosevelt in the Atlantic Charter in 1941, with its promise of self-determination and self-government for all, heralded the end of European colonialism in Africa.1 As the Second World War progressed, a new generation of black leaders intent on securing self-rule emerged out of the native resistance movements. Among them were Kwame Nkrumah (1909-72) of the Gold Coast, Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906-2001) of Senegal, Jomo Kenyatta (1891-1978) of Kenya, Ahmed Sekou Toure (1922-84) of Guinea, Patrice Lumumba (1925-61) of the Belgian Congo (Zaire), Kenneth Kaunda (b. 1924-) of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Julius Nyerere (1922-99) of Tanganyika. Britain's granting of independence to India in 1947, coupled with Dutch and French defeats in Asia, further strengthened the movement for African independence.
The decolonization of Africa2 began in the 1940s when the Italians were driven out of Ethiopia and Libya (Map XVI). Until it was overrun by the Italians in 1936, Ethiopia had been the only African country of any consequence free of western control. Regaining its independence in 1941, it has remained self-governing. After the Second World War, Italy's one-time colony, Libya, was ruled by the British and the French. On 2 January 1952 Libya became an independent constitutional monarchy. In 1969 a military group, led by Colonel Muammar al-Qadhafi (b. 1942-), seized power.
In 1956, France grudgingly granted independence to the protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco. Spain followed suit, peacefully transferring its Moroccan territory the following year (1957). In Algeria, however, the French, who thought in terms of common citizenship for the Algerians rather than independence, refused to yield control. First colonized to compensate psychologically for French humiliation in the Napoleonic wars, Algeria witnessed
Map XVI DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA
A seventeen-year long struggle (1945-62) for independence, in which hundreds of thousands died. Three-quarters of the European population had to flee the country before independence from a De Gaulle-led France was won. By then, following the example set by French Guinea in 1958, all the former colonies of French West and French Equatorial Africa had disavowed French rule. The last African colonial territory to be granted independence by a European power was French Djibouti in 1977.
Independence in British colonies followed a similar course. The decline of imperialist sentiment in Britain, and the ongoing decolonization of British possessions in Asia, made it imperative. Egypt had been a British protectorate from 1914 to 1922. Britain continued to influence Egyptian affairs until the relations of the two countries were formalized in the 1936 treaty. In 1951 Egypt finally gained its independence by abrogating that treaty. Following a military uprising in July 1952, a republic was proclaimed in June 1953. The abortive invasion of Egypt in 1956 by British, French and Israeli troops, which ensured the victory of Gamal Abd al-Nasser (1918-70), who had challenged western control of the Suez Canal, as well as European control of Egypt's oil resources, gave great stimulus to the African independence movements. The humiliating language in which Britain was ordered out of Egypt by the US and USSR marked the end of Britain's great power status. Britain subsequently curtailed its presence east of Suez. After Nasser's death, pan-Arabism was taken up by Libyan president Qadhafi, who came to power in 1969 advocating a policy of Islamic socialism.
The Gold Coast was granted independence in 1957; renamed Ghana, this was the first European colony south of the Sahara to achieve its freedom. British Nigeria, Cameroon and Togoland3 followed in 1960; Sierra Leone in 1961. Also breaking away from European rule were Britain's East African colonies of Somalia (1960), Tanganyika4 (1961), Uganda (1962), Kenya (1963), Nyasaland (1964) and Northern Rhodesia (1964). Except for Kenya, where Jomo Kenyatta led a revolt against the British, and Southern Rhodesia5 where Robert Mugabe (b. 1924-) did likewise, power was transferred peacefully. In 1980, with Mugabe as its first President, the state of Zimbabwe was created. Defying historical trends, in 1990 it declared itself a Marxist-Leninist state.
Unable to resist the groundswell for independence, what in 1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (1894-1987) had called 'the wind of change', the Belgians followed the example set by the other Europeans. Belgian rule in Africa ended in 1960 when the Democratic Republic of the Congo was proclaimed. From 1971 to 1997 the Congo was called Zaire.
Spain and Portugal were the last colonial powers to yield to native rule. Mozambique and Angola obtained their independence from Portugal in 1975. Spain's rule in the Spanish Sahara was terminated in 1976; the territory was divided between Morocco and Mauritania. Cold war-inspired conflict in Angola between black liberation groups resulted in a 1977 victory for the Marxists (with the help of Cuban troops and Soviet aid). Throughout the 1980s, the US and South Africa backed the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the non-Marxist rebel movement led by Jonas Savimbi (1934-2002). Angola's sixteen-year old civil war officially ended in May 1991 when the warring factions signed a peace treaty. The elections in 1992 returned a Marxist government, which the US only recognized in May 1993; oil and the end of the cold war caused the US to switch sides from Savimbi to the leftist government. Britain followed America's example. In August 1997, the UN Security Council, still trying to obtain an Angolan government of national unity, voted to impose sanctions on UNITA to force it to comply with the 1994 peace agreement. Paradoxically, although in 2000 the Marxist government controlled most of the people, UNITA forces still controlled most of the country. In 1998 Angolan troops supported the revolt of Laurent Kabila (1939-2000) against Zaire's president, Mobutu Sese Seko (1930-97). In January 2001, Angola's hope of national unity was still unrealized.
South Africa had been given a mandate over Namibia by the League of Nations in 1920. After more than a decade of guerrilla warfare between the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) and the South Africa-backed Democratic Turnhalle Alliance Party (DTA), UN-supervised elections in 1989 settled the course of its independence by giving SWAPO a majority and ending South Africa's control. In March 1990, Namibia celebrated its independence after 74 years of South African rule. South Africa's intervention also ended in Mozambique and Angola.
The curious thing about African decolonization is that it was accomplished with relatively little violence. By and large, the European nations were as glad to surrender power as the native leaders were to assume it. When one compares the endless struggles for independence in Asia, African independence - the exception is Algeria - was won quietly and with relatively little bloodshed; in some instances it was thrust upon those who sought it. For the Europeans, imperialism had fallen into disfavour. Perhaps another reason why the European powers were glad to shed their responsibilities is that imperialism had become too costly. While enormous private fortunes had been made,6 it was the European states that had to meet the ever-growing cost of defending and administering the acquired territories. The exploitation of Asia by the West seems to have been a much better business proposition for western governments than the exploitation of Africa. Perhaps that is why western colonialism in Africa was so late and so short-lived.
In the 1990s only the Republic of South Africa (a nation of forty-five million) remained as an example of white minority rule. The struggle in South Africa,7 in so far as it was between black and white Africans, differed from that which had taken place in the rest of colonial Africa. Until the coming to power in 1989 of the more conciliatory, if less visionary, President F. W. de Klerk (b. 1936-), the white elite (firmly convinced that the black and white races should be culturally independent, separate and distinct) ruled a predominantly black country (ethnic groups in 1996 were black 75 per cent, white 14 per cent, coloured 9 per cent, Indian 3 per cent).
The principle of apartheid - or separate development of the races - first defined and proclaimed by the Boer leader Daniel F. Malan (1874-1959) in 1948 (following the postwar victory of the Boer National Party at the polls), has plagued South African history. It was one of the reasons why the Afrikaner Nationalist Party declared the independence of South Africa in 1958, and why it withdrew from the British Commonwealth in 1961. It was the cause of growing divestment by western countries in the 1980s, and the United Nations' arms embargo8 imposed in 1986. The policy of apartheid soured the relations of the white-controlled government of South Africa in Africa and abroad. It was the cause of widespread and incessant confrontation between black and white.
The turning point in the history of apartheid was de Klerk's announcement in February 1991 to end all apartheid laws. His attitude towards the leaders of South Africa's black majority, especially towards the socialist African National Congress (the ANC was formed in 1912) led by Nelson Mandela9 (b. 1918-), was much more flexible and sympathetic than that of P. W. Botha (b. 1916-), who had preceded him.
With the overwhelming victory of the ANC at the polls in April 1994 (with 62.7 per cent of the vote) and de Klerk's surrender of power to Mandela, white supremacy and apartheid came to an end. For the blacks, faith in the country's future was reborn. Thankfully, partly because of Mandela's vision and stature, the end of apartheid did not result in a civil war.
The Republic of South Africa is the greatest single industrial and military power on the continent; it accounts for about half of Africa's productive capacity; it also possesses one of the greatest mineral lodes10 in the world. Its huge coal (it is the only country in the world presently producing large quantities of oil from coal) and uranium reserves render it independent of outside energy supplies. The oil lifeline between the western industrial nations and the Persian Gulf passes by the Cape route - one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. At least twelve nations are dependent upon South Africa for trade, access to the oceans and employment. Although trade with other African countries is slight, there are hopes that it will become the leader of a regional trading area. South African companies have begun a business trek to the rest of Africa. Political instability, the smallness of the market and Africa's weak infrastructure make this all the more remarkable.
Since 1945 the whole of Africa has rid itself of colonial rule. In freeing themselves, sub-Saharan Africans have changed worldwide attitudes to race relations, especially in the US. Under black rule, some improvements for blacks in life expectancy, health services, education, housing, electricity and running water have been achieved.11 Although new leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, have put the state before tribe or personal aggrandizement, economic progress has fallen far short of expectations and far short of what is needed. By 2001 many health, education and social welfare programmes were failing. Black-ruled Africa is also suffering from a political malaise that few would have imagined earlier. The hope that Africa would evolve democratic multi-party politics on the western model has been dashed by regional and tribal rivalry, which lay behind all the earlier anti-colonial rhetoric.
When one considers African traditions, and the desperate economic condition of so many Africans, it was perhaps foolish to have expected Africa to adopt western ways. With a tradition of hierarchical tribalism, Africa has never been disposed to democratic politics. What the West understands as freedom of the individual under the law has still to be achieved. Where the rule of law exists, it is often broken by autocratic leaders. When in March 2000, Robert Mugabe inspired an invasion of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, the law failed to protect the farmers' basic human rights. In many African countries free elections and a free press (as the West would define them) are not tolerated, nor is an independent judiciary; they are considered destabilizing. One-party states and military rule are the norm. In 2001, not democracy but the military was the dynamic element. Half of black African nations are military dictatorships. The western idea of freely-held, multi-party elections is still alien. Too many governments do not have a 'loyal opposition', they have political enemies. Elections are means of conserving power, not introducing democracy. In a continent where power is personalized, few presidents have ever accepted defeat in an election. Concentrated power, rather than shared power is the African way. Countries that have nominally become democratic are still run by the military, who supposedly were deposed to make way for democracy. Only the label changes, often to please foreign donors. The overthrow of civilian rule by the military is a constant threat. Having removed the colonial yoke, Africans now bear a yoke of their own making.
Until the 1990s, only four nations - Botswana, Gambia, Mauritius and Senegal - had allowed their people to express their political wishes freely. More recently Mozambique (1990), Benin (1991 and 1996), Zambia (1991), Ghana (1992), Tanzania (1992), Malawi (1994), Ethiopia (1995), Sierra Leone (1996), Uganda (1996), South Africa (1996) and Nigeria (1999) have obtained elective governments. The coup against the government of Sierra Leone in 1997 - the culmination of years of anarchic fighting - was condemned throughout the continent.
Undermining the hope of a better Africa is the growing violence and lawlessness arising out of tribal and ethnic warfare. Scores of leaders have been assassinated in ever-recurring tribal purges and coups. The struggle for power constantly takes its toll. In the 1980s-1990s, massacres of blacks by blacks became commonplace. Fighting ravaged one country after another. In the winter of 1992, in an effort to halt the slaughter and combat widespread famine arising out of tribal clashes, a UN force (including US soldiers) occupied parts of Somalia. Little was achieved. In November 1996 another UN force entered Zaire to help with refugees. In 1999, after nearly a decade of civil war, UN peacekeepers were provided for Sierra Leone, whose troubles are now spilling over into Guinea. In the 1990s, Liberia, Rwanda (where in 1994 a most terrible act of genocide left hundreds of thousands dead), Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, Angola, Congo and Chad were all torn apart by tribal and ethnic clashes.
The ongoing warfare in Congo (Zaire) has destabilized the whole of central Africa. Until the flight and death in 1997 of Zaire's western-backed president, Mobutu Sese Seko, a break-up of the country threatened. Following the assassination in January 2000 of Laurent Kabila, (who had driven Mobutu out of the country and proved himself another petty tyrant), his eldest son, Joseph Kabila assumed power. Since April 2000 there has been an uneasy ceasefire between the spoils-seeking five nations who have intervened (Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia - who had fought for Kabila - and Uganda and Rwanda - who had opposed him). In 2001, the war-wrecked Congo was still in a state of dangerous uncertainty. Its nine neighbours fear that the war will be renewed and spread. They have no more confidence in the last ceasefire (Lusaka, 1999) than in the ceasefires that preceded it. Congo has too many enemies with unsettled territorial claims and grievances for the present peace to last. The country is too large, too difficult to traverse and too politically complicated for the UN to have much influence on future events.
A dangerous uncertainty also exists in the countries of north Africa, where a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism has threatened the security of whole societies. Several years of brutal conflict between Algerian Islamists and the military-backed regime - who refused to recognize the Islamic Party's success at the ballot box - has cost more than fifty thousand lives. In January 2001, Algerian Islamic militants continued their killing. Muslim fundamentalists were responsible for the assassination on 6 October 1981 of Egypt's president Anwar al-Sadat (1918-81). Throughout the 1990s several attempts have been made on the life of Sadat's successor, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak (b. 1928-), the most recent in September 1999.
Independence has not only brought wide-spread violence, it has also brought a deterioration of Africa's economic lot. It is the world's poorest, most indebted continent, the debt payments of some countries exceeding the amount being spent on health and education. Twenty-nine of the world's forty-two least developed nations are African. The continent has the greatest number of refugees, about one-third of the world's total.12 Millions of people have been displaced within their own countries.13 Many people are poorer than they were twenty years ago. Relative to other continents, much of Africa always has been poor.
Talk of improvement in Africa's economic performance by the World Bank14 and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)15 - particularly the increase in direct investment - is heartening, but unconvincing. Too often the structural reforms recommended have left countries with worse living conditions than before. The problem surrounding the giving of financial help to Africa are legion. It is the only continent to which massive foreign aid has been transferred often without any visible results. Throughout the 1990s, Tanzania, a country of about thirty million, received one billion dollars per year in aid, with little to show for it. Critics argue that only one third of aid is used effectively, the rest is wasted or plundered by corrupt leaders. In the age of colonialism the West plundered Africa (here and there it still does), now Africa plunders itself. There is no example of an African country that has been developed with outside help. Nor does Africa appear to be able to help itself by an increase in foreign trade. Despite the Lome Conventions of 1975, 1980 and 1985 between the European Economic Community (EEC) and a number of African countries, which promised reciprocal trade preferences, the foreign trade of many countries remains either stagnant or sluggish. Africa's share of world trade lessens. It is particularly vulnerable to volatile commodity prices and unfavourable changes in the terms of trade, which make Africa's primary produce cheap relative to western industrial products. Prices for most of its exports have declined since the 1960s.
At the end of 2000, the general economic outlook for Africa was disheartening. Algeria and Nigeria, at one time considered classic examples of indigenous economic progress, have become economically crippled countries. One cannot imagine how oil-rich Nigeria became the chaotic country it is. In 2001, it was in economic and political disarray;16 Nigeria's GNP per head has halved since 1983. Angola, Zaire and Sudan, all potentially rich states, are bankrupt. In the African mind, markets and profits do
Not hold sway; too often, there is a disregard of economic realities.
Partly due to the advice given by westerners, independence has been followed by a steady decrease in per capita food production. In 1957 nine-tenths of Africa fed itself; today, while there are some agricultural successes (in recent years countries such as Ghana and Mauritania have increased their grain production considerably), the Republic of South Africa is one of the few states self-sufficient in food. Most major western-induced agribusiness experiments in Africa - meant to serve western rather than African interests - have failed. Horror stories of failed experiments in agriculture abound. Food production per capita between 1961 and 1995 fell 12 per cent. The stress placed by the World Bank and the IMF on monocropping and the export of raw materials has denied many countries the broad-based economic growth they so badly need.
Part of the dramatic change in Africa's food production must be ascribed to widespread drought, which has affected the continent for more than a decade (nature has never been kind to Africa). The increase of human and animal pestilence, general mismanagement and the loss of arable land have also reduced the food supply. Widespread hunger, starvation and sickness threaten. The spread of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (one-third of the population is supposedly infected), makes population predictions unreliable. Added to which, Africa suffers from a growing blight of malaria. To combat these health problems with drugs and treatment is beyond its means.
Equally alarming is the manner in which the infrastructure of Africa's roads, railways, cities and towns built under European rule has deteriorated.17 The problem extends far beyond infrastructure. For want of maintenance, equipment built or financed by westerners has been allowed to fall into disrepair. Steel mills were built that now rust. Dams were constructed that still yield no power. Where small, labour-intensive projects were needed, western-inspired and financed technological 'white elephants' multiplied. One wonders how so many ruinous investments ever came to be made. Since 1970, while Africa's share of world markets was reduced by half, its foreign debt increased more than twenty-fold. To cap it all, African countries have quadrupled their imports of arms since 1968. The trouble with debt relief given by the western powers is that it is likely to increase the amount spent on arms still more.
In some respects, Africa reflects the negative aspects of western colonialism. In the post-1945 era it was thought to be an unquestionably good thing to help the underdeveloped world to develop along western lines. It was a period when ignorance of Africa and Africa's past on the part of the western banking community was bliss. It ignored the difficulties of trying to lop off the technology and values of one culture and social history and fasten it onto another.
Many Africans trace their failures since independence to the political and economic distortion caused by the European colonial system. Africans are not only prisoners of a western economic system, but also of European languages.18 Under western tutelage, countries were forced to be part of the western political and economic organization. The boundaries which the West arbitrarily imposed had very little to do with economic and ethnic realities. In consequence, ethnic differences have brought war to many parts of the continent. The Ibo secession in Nigeria in 1967 cost one million lives. In October 2000 an ethnic clash took place between the Yoruba and the Hausa in Lagos. A renewal of ethnic strife between Hutu and Tutsi, in the early 1990s, resulted in the slaughter of half a million Tutsi. Ghana has been troubled for years by a breakaway movement from the Ewe tribe, some of whom want to rejoin Togo. Multi-tribal tensions are particularly great in Kenya, Zambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi and Rwanda. Since 1962, Ethiopia has fought Somalia over the Ogaden territory to which the Somalis make ethnic claims. In December 2000, a peace deal was struck between Ethiopia and Eritrea to end a border war that had gone on for thirteen years and cost tens of thousands of lives. Ethnic differences have been the cause of much bloodshed in the Sudan. Only in 1972 did the Sudanese government agree to grant autonomy to the ethnically different South. Notwithstanding this action, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) based in the Christian South, continues to fight a widespread war against the government. Such conflicts deny Africa the economic growth and development it so badly needs.
In all but a handful of African countries, tribal loyalties still persist, especially in rural areas where nationalist sentiment never penetrated. The greater unity sought by the Organization of African Unity (OAU),19 at its inception in 1963 at Addis Ababa, still has to be achieved.
Those Africans who place the blame for their present difficulties on western shoulders are not without supporters. The present political despotism and economic malaise is at least to some degree the result of western modernity. The disruption of traditional culture - not least the destruction of spiritual and social values associated with tribal life - is partly the result of western intrusion. Western impact undermined the self-confidence of many Africans. To hear some of them tell it, it will take a long time to recover from centuries of western depredation and culture shock. Nor has independence and the end of the cold war freed Africa from the threat of outside meddling; witness the interference of outside powers, white and black, in Angola and Mozambique, Somalia, Ethiopia and Zaire. Belgium and America were long supportive of the Congo despot Mobutu. Fearing a Soviet-led takeover, in 1961, both countries played a role in the removal of his socialist rival Patrice Lumumba. In 1986 the US, in response to suspected terrorism by the Qadhafi regime, bombed Libya in a deliberate attempt to kill its president. Despite independence, the political and military intervention of outsiders in Africa continues. Since the end of the cold war there has been a shift in interventionist measures from ideology to economics.
For Africans to hold the West responsible for its extreme poverty, its internal wars, its tribalism, its fatalism and irrationalism, its disregard of the future, its stifling of individual initiative, its military vandalism, its staggering corruption and its mismanagement and sheer incompetence is an act of self-deception. Ethiopia and Liberia were never colonized, but they remain as poor or poorer than other countries. A similar colonial background has not prevented certain Asian countries, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea from achieving rapid economic development. Africa cannot hope to escape from its present economic and political dilemmas by placing blame on others. What Africa needs, next to good government, is a rapid increase in domestic and foreign trade, as well as a considerable influx of other people's money. Outside investment in Africa is deterred by the turmoil that plagues the continent.20 The crucial issue in Africa is not western intervention or western exploitation - indeed, in recent years the West has shown a wilful neglect of Africa - it is Africa's inability to cope with problems largely of its own making: a dismal economic record, a failure of leadership and a heightening of the struggle for power between competing tribes. If, in spite of its human and material resources, Africa cannot break out of the pattern of setbacks that has plagued it since 1945 then the prospects for the continent, by western standards, are dim.
Only if Africans accept responsibility for their own actions - and there are signs in some states that this lesson is being learned - only if it can come to terms with the past can Africa possibly avoid the threat of increased suffering and privation. Africa by western standards is desperately poor and worse is threatened. If it is to play a necessary and constructive role in the world community, it must first rediscover itself. Only Africans really know where they have been and where they might hope to go. Africans do not have to have western values and western goals to become economically viable; their cultural values are too deeply planted for that to happen. Western values and goals may be entirely inappropriate for them. Nor does their performance have to be judged by western standards. Apart from all the other drawbacks, Africa faces unique challenges in public health, disease, climate and especially geography. There is no other continent that has such lamentable government. It is a tremendous challenge calling for a tremendous response. Ultimately, it is African intrinsic values and their own goals that must prevail. It is African ideas, African confidence and resolve, rather than foreign leadership and foreign resources that will eventually determine Africa's future.
World History
