WHY DID THE DECOLONISATION OF AFRICA TAKE PLACE SO RAPIDLY IN THE YEARS AROUND 1960's?

The decolonization of Africa was originally based upon Britain’s method of tutelage: to gradually transfer power in order to install stable democracies. But Macmillan’s “wind of change” speech in 1960 marked a dramatic change, suggesting that the growing consciousness of nationalism was the main force pushing the decolonization process as swiftly as a cheetah in pursuit of a gazelle. Despite Macmillan’s view, most historians regard the process as driven by a wide range of factors of which nationalist movements played a significant but not determining role.

In an interview with Kenneth Kaunda, Northern Rhodesia’s African freedom fighter, he stressed that the nationalist pressures arising from the soil of Africa had crucially intensified the pressure upon the colonial masters to grant independence. The formation of liberation movements on the continent from Cape to Cairo from the Gold Coast to Zanzibar were increasing in number, drawing the masses with them and creating a movement of unstoppable power.

The Africans were increasingly unhappy, living under oppressive and exploitative rule whose justifications rested upon threadbare arguments backed by brute force. Where there was discontent which Britain was unwilling to adapt to, there was bound to be the possibility of violence.

A clear example of this was the Mau Mau uprising fuelled by resentment and an appetite for the fertile soils of the motherland that were occupied by white settlers. The Kikuyu tribe, who were the core of the Mau Mau terrorized the “wazungu”, and killed anybody who opposed them, including their own kind, with “pangas” (broad bladed knives) which are still in existence as seen from the 2008 Kenyan post election massacres. Tales of black magic rituals and of the disembowelment of victims terrorized not only the Kenyan white community but the British government as well. This led to tribesmen and other suspects being put in detention by 1956. The false belief that Kenyatta was the main influence behind the campaign landed him in prison – the military campaign which was mounted was successful but so expensive as to create uncertainty in the minds of the British as to whether such a policy could be repeated throughout Africa.

Leaders of liberation movements were firing up in the fight for African decolonization. Kenya’s Kenyatta before and after his arrest, contributed to the speedy decolonization through KANU and the Pan-African Federation created with his counterpart Nkhruma, both were powerful orators capable of stirring the masses with their ringing denunciations of colonial oppression and their demands for freedom and land.

Nkhruma’s Ghana was one of the first to achieve independence and this provided an inspiration that strengthened the force of the wind of change. After March 1957 it was more like a domino effect, as the 1960s saw Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia all follow Ghana’s footsteps on the long road to freedom.

The movements’ leaders were able to use their British educations to good effect, employing liberal ideals which the British professed to uphold against their oppressors. Nyerere led the Tanganyika Africa National Union, Kamuzu Banda campaigned against the Central Africa Federation, Kaunda pressed on in Rhodesia and used the hypocrisy of the British signing up to Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948. He also petitioned at the 4th Committee of the UN Assembly of 1962 on the notion of “self-determination”. UN members such as Britain had signed up to this principle on paper but not in reality. The freedom fighters could be imprisoned, detained, threatened but they could not be silenced and they could not be ignored. The more strenuous the actions undertaken by Britain, the more the masses were stung into resistance.

During the period under review, Britain experienced some major unanticipated challenges which clearly affected the pace of the process.

The economic situation, which Britain found itself facing after WWII, led to it being financially too weak to support expensive military overseas commitments yet relying more than ever upon its empire to produce a financial dividend. The development of the Cold War drew the British closer to the Americans, both drawing them into a military engagement with the implied communist threat and making us uneasily aware of the USA’s anti-colonial stance. Britain’s attempts to meet these conflicting pressures came to a dramatic head in 1956.

The Suez crisis sparked by Egypt’s President Nasser nationalizing the canal and the covert agreement between Israel, France and Britain to intervene led to a run on the £ which finally exposed Britain’s reliance upon the USA. The British acceptance of US demands to withdraw their forces was inevitable and marked a very public humiliation, which Eden did not survive politically. Macmillan, his successor, took a cooler view of the situation and ordered a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether or not the empire was in fact of any continuing value to Britain. Gorbachev was later to view the satellites of Eastern Europe in a similar manner.

With, for example, each Mau Mau suspect in detention costing £10,000 it could be said that the British Empire did not disintegrate on “the battlefield but in the board room”.

British political factors also influenced the rate at which decolonization took place. There was a shift in attitudes amongst the British people towards the empire. People in general were less easy with old assumptions about racial superiority and ‘the white man’s burden’. Macmillan was keen to maintain support by concentrating upon domestic improvements in living standards which were threatened by diverting public funds to the maintenance of empire.

The background to many of these concerns was of course the founding and early development of the movement towards European integration. At first Britain tried uneasily to bridge the European, imperial and Atlantic spheres – but as our future began to focus more upon Europe, so the process of decolonization seemed less like a retreat than an inevitable disengagement from an out-of- date commitment.

Although it is necessary to hold these wider factors in mind, they have been given undue emphasis by too many historians and have resulted in a diminution of the role of the movements for national independence. The rapid process of decolonization was driven primarily by the faith, will and extraordinary determination of the nationalist leaders.

During an interview with Kenneth Kaunda in April 2008, I was able to ask him to address two key areas: why decolonization had occurred so rapidly in the 1960s, and if he and other freedom fighters had really achieved it, why was there still unrest in Zimbabwe over the land issue.

His response to the first question emphasized the rapid spread of anti-colonial organizations: FRELIMO in Mozambique, the ANC in South Africa, ZANU and ZAPU in Zimbabwe, UNIP in Zambia and the Mau Mau in Kenya. It goes without saying that the leaders of these groups such as Kaunda himself dedicated their lives to decolonization by abandoning their British qualifications as teachers or doctors to do everything possible to speed up the processes. Face to face encounters also led the British to realize that the demand for majority rule was unstoppable; they were fighting a losing battle. Under British rule any purchases by an indigenous person in Northern Rhodesia were transacted through a small window, and once Kaunda had gone to buy a bicycle for which he was told by the shop keeper to go round to the door to collect it and the young nationalist refused, demanding that it be passed through the window like every other item, just to highlight the absurdity of the situation.

Northern Rhodesia accommodated many nationalist leaders who were living in exile from Nyasaland, Tanganyika, Kenya, even Portuguese colonies like Angola and Mozambique. This nucleus of future leaders helped create the formation of the Organization of African Unity in Ethiopia on May 25th 1963, at a meeting where all African nations met at the same time and for the first time to show that they meant business. This day is now recognized as “Africa Freedom Day”. Kaunda was also able to use the United Nations as a tool to help speed up the process, he remarked that the “UN passed resolutions of great importance on the issue of decolonization.”

With regard to the second question, he commented that “freedom comes from inside us - it is within ourselves.” Leaving me to think that decolonization is not simply a legal process but also a cultural and social process which has only partially been achieved. Neo-colonialism still exists in parts, if not the whole, of Africa. Exploitation and economic control takes place in different forms, either indirectly or directly, whereby native resources are exploited largely for the benefit of outsiders. Whether directly through low wages for dirty and dangerous work and low prices paid for raw materials and foodstuffs, or indirectly through the debt burden.

The struggle by Africans to free themselves in the 1960s was the major factor in the process of decolonization. Even a major player in these events such as Macmillan acknowledged the “growth of national consciousness”. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote “Man is born free but everywhere is in chains” and the people of Africa must be aware that chains can take many forms from the shackles of the slave trader to the limits we set ourselves in our own imaginations. But whatever form they take, they will only be thrown off by our own actions.