Department of Sociology, University of Botswana and Swaziland, extracted from
‘PULA-Botswana Journal of African Studies’,
Vol. 1, No. 1, June 1978
Stating Objectives
Briefly,
the main aim of this paper is to discuss the issue of the African
nationality. Of particular importance in the exercise has been the need
to explain the class character of African national expression, and in
the process of analysing the subject of the paper concepts like,
Pan-Africanism, Nationalism, Populism, and the Right to National
Self-Determination have had to be subjected to relevant scrutiny.
In
a late edition of the radical African journal “Ikwesi”, the following
statement is attributed to one of the greatest men of the 20th century,
the great Vietnamese revolutionary and leader Ho Chi Minh. “It is a
well-known fact that the black people are the most oppressed of
human-kind.” For centuries ever since the beginnings of capitalism, the
labour of black people has been an important source for surplus value
in the global process of capitalists accumulation. Almost everywhere
where people of African descent are outside Africa; they have been taken
there as slaves. Today in a large parts of Africa, in the south, white
fascist minorities in a manner presently unique for the whole world,
ruthlessly oppress, exploit, and treat Africans as inferior humans,
sub-human types in the land of their fathers and forefathers. The aura
of servitude which has hung around Africans for centuries lingers on as
echoes and reminders of the sad past. In black culture and politics,
expression has been given to the black human condition, for the history
of the African people is indeed a history of resistance and protest,
which was carried into sublime music and bloody warfare. Again today,
the possibility of organized proletarian struggles co-ordinated on a
broader African level has opened up perspectives of the African
revolution in a fresh and historically more advanced way. Students of
African history are cheered by Blydens’s last sentence in his The Negro in Ancient History (1871).
“Time’s noblest offspring is the last”. Indeed, the most violent and
the most benign expressions, war and music, have been used by blacks to
register their records. With respect to “Africans in Diaspora”, it is
interesting to remember that in all their exteriorization of spiritual
and physical anguish attendant on slavery in the form of deeply moving
music, there was solace in the millenarianism which saw “judgement day”
and the destruction of “Babylon” round the corner; on which day the
tribulations and woes of black people will end. This was the use to
which christian mythology was put. It was set into music as a form of
political protest. Black protest and nationalism, also developed a more
direct political form, under the aegis of Pan-Africanist ideas. But
what are the constituent elements of these concepts of African
nationhood?
Nationalism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
Naitonalism1 has
been one of the difficult politico-sociological concepts to define. To
some it is a state of mind, a mere ideological orientation, within
which the idea is held that ones ultimate loyalty and social commitment
lies with the nation-state which is his or her native land, ancestral
traditions, customs and people. Defined in such loose terms, it
represents a purely super-structural phenomenon with all the attendant
problems of subjectivism and terminological discrepancies. When the
concept is placed within a historical framework, it tends to be less
elusive, it is more materially grounded, and yields more cognitive
gold. In the sense that it is generally understood contemporarily, it
is a modern phenomenon dating from the late 18th century
in Western Europe and North America. It is not however so easily
understood that it arose at a specific stage of socio-economic
development, and represented the super-structural exteriorization of
material substructural conditions. The nation-state which was its
existential crucible was essentially the post-feudal state constituted
structurally for the expansion of capitalism and its dominant class, the
bourgeoise. The emergence of the nation-state shifted the point of
focus of political allegiances. Before the era of nationalism in the
West political allegiances often focussed on the secularized remains of
the Holy Roman Empire, the Christian world community; and specifically
on the feudal potentates, principalities, and sometimes religious
sects. Thus in a sense ironically the specific parochialism of the
feudal period was replaced by yet another form of parochialism whose
frame of reference was more extended in terms of its ethnographic
prerequisites. It would be however quite mistaken to overemphasize its
ethnic specifications at the expense of its fundamental class
character. The National movements which swept Western Europe between
1789 and 1871 represented in fact the ascendancy of the bourgeois
classes, and the collapse of the older dominant classes i.e. the
feudalist groups. The ideology of nationalism, and its political
expression, the emergence of nation-states was nothing more, and nothing
less, that the development of more favourable conditions for capitalist
development at its pre-monopoly stage. As Lenin explained: “Throughout
the world, the period of the final victory of capitalism over feudalism
has been linked up with national movements. For the complete victory
of definitions or ‘inventing’ abstract definitions, but by examining the
historico-economic conditions of the national movements, we must
inevitably reach the conclusion that the self-determination of nations
means the political separation of these nations from alien national
bodies, and the formation of an independent national state.”3 In the theses of the 2nd Comintern
Congress (1920) it was, among other things, stated that “real national
freedom and unity can be achieved by the proletariat only through
revolutionary struggle and by the overthrow of the bourgeoisie”.
Stalin’s brief treatment of the subject “Nationalism outside Europe”4 summarized precisely the essence of these ideas.
In
Africa, because capitalist colonialism was imposed by whites throughout
the continent, nationalist reaction albeit populist has been anti-white
colonialist. Historical conditions have made it nothing else. To most
Africans colonial oppression simply means the national oppression of
African people by Whites.
Hodgkin’s5 argument
that often nationalist propaganda in Africa “is liable to be
emotionally highly charged, relying on rhetoric rather than argument” is
very true but mass nationalist politics in Africa, because of the
basically morally justified character of its demands has needed often
only slogans to make sense to masses whose rejection of colonialism and
European oppression is so well and easily understood, that
arguementation on such basic issues becomes rather superfluous. That is
the catch about choruses like: “You Europeans are nothing but robbers,
though you pretend you came to lead us. Go away, go away, you
Europeans, the years that are past have been more that enough for us”.6 A more stylized rendering of the same idea can be read in the Mau Mau secret society oath of the mid 20th century:-
I speak the truth and now before God
And before this movement
The movement of Unity
The Unity which is put to the test
The Unity that is mocked with the name of “Mau Mau”
That I shall go forward to fight for the land,
The lands of Kirinyaga that we cultivated
The lands which were taken by the Europeans.
And if I fail to do this
May this oath kill me,
May this seven kill me,
May this meat kill me.7
Under
conditions of colonialism in the past and settler-colonialism in the
present, these expressions are the substance of reality for large
sections of the exploited African classes, although obviously
pre-Marxist in an ideological developmental sense, the millernarianism
and messianism of groups like the “Mau Mau”, the Kimbanguists of the
Congo, and others represented the politico-religious protest of deprived
classes with relatively low class consciousness.
Pan-Africanism
The prefix pan, which preceeds Africanism in the concept of Pan-Africanism derives from the Greek word Pan (all). Panmovements
have historically not been confined to Africa, and this is no surprise,
for the wish and recognition of identity in the broad basis of culture,
history and ethnicity, transcending contemporary state boudaries, are
sentiments which have in different ways and to different degrees,
affected most peoples on this globe at different historical periods.
The Slavs have articulated Pan-Slavic views, which originated at the
beginning of the 19th century
and envisaged a union of the Slavic language speaking peoples. It
started as a movement among intellectuals, scholars, poets, etc., under
the influence and in the wake of the French Revolution. In the 19th century
Russia, Pan-Slavic ideas crystallized into Slavophilism as opposed to
Westernism. In the Moslem world, Pan-Islamism originally underlied the
efforts of Muslim states in the 19th century to resuscitate Muslim power and achieve Moslem unity. These notions have lingered on into the 20th century,
with contemporary Neo-Pan-Islamism. Pan-Germanism has been another
species in this genus. Its aim has broadly been a union of all Germanic
people. In the Western hemisphere, Pan-views exist particularly in
Latin America where the common Latin culture has been a fertile ground
for the breeding of such sentiments. Not all these varieties of Pan-ism
have had the same politico-ideological focus. Some have in general
terms represented essentially right-wing views while others have carried
a leftist orientation, depending on the historical specifics of the
societies and peoples involved, so that Japanese views of the “Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere” and the Pan Germanic theories of Nordic-Aryanism,
and the ideas which lay at the bottom of the Hilterian contention for
Germanic “lebensraum”, were based on purely extreme right-wing racialist
views. Other less openly fascistic notions which have had clearly
right-wing expansionist and imperialist inclined intentions have been
such views as the Pan-Americanist ideas enshrined in the Monroe
Doctrine, and Pan-Slavic views under Tsarist Russian leadership; this
latter indeed became a vehicle of Russian domination over the Slavs.
However even within the same broad framework of Pan-Slavism, a more
progressive version representing popular, generally leftist, aspirations
has also been historically present. The first Pan-Slavic congress of
the Slavic nationalities of the Habsburg monarchy held in June 1848 in
Prague under the leadership of the Czech patriot Frantisek Palacky
highlighted demands of Austrian Slavs for the transformation of the
Habsburg monarchy into a federation of equal peoples under democratic
Habsburg rule. The same can be said for Pan-Africanism which till today
has largely represented the demands of African people in and out of
Africa for unity, freedom, and self-determination. Historically for
Africa and people of African descent it has for most of its life span
been a rallying point for African resurgence and unity, a popular
reference category in the aspirations of black people. However, today
it is clear that the idea of African unity as understood by
Pan-Africanists has been largely a populist apology for the African
Revolution and class struggle.
Generally whatever credit and emphasis is placed on the contribution of others before the 20th century,
it is agreed that the dominant figure of Pan-Africanist thought this
century is W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois’ impact has been perhaps only
equalled socially, although not intellectually by Marcus Aurelius
Garvey, who has been variously called, “The Negro Moses”, “the black
Zionist”. These two figures stood at opposite poles in the ideological
spectrum. Garvey was a blackist who divulged: “I believe in a pure
black race just as all self-respecting whites believe in a pure white
race, as far as that can be”.8 On another occasion he said:
“We were the first Fascists. We had disciplined men, women and
children in training for the liberation of Africa. The black masses saw
that in this extreme nationalism lay their only hope, and readily
supported it. Mussolini copied fascism from me, but the negro
reactionaries sabotaged it”.9 Garvey collaborated with the
Ku Klux Klan and other white right-wing extremists. Du Bois on the
other hand was a highly sophisticated left-wing scholar.
In
a preface to the Jubilee edition of his “Souls of Black Folk” Du Bois
noted that: “As I re-read these messages of more than half a century
ago, I sense two matters which are not so much omission on my part as
indications of what I then did not know or did not realize: one is the
influence of Freud and his co-workers in their study of psychology; the
other is the tremendous impact on the modern world of Karl Marx …. My
college training did not altogether omit Karl Marx …. He was mentioned
at Harvard and taken account in Berlin. It was not omission but lack of
proper emphasis or comprehension among my teachers of the revolution of
thought and action which Marx meant … I still think today as yesterday
that the colour line is a great problem of this century. But today I
see more clearly than yesterday that at the back of the problem of race
and colour, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements
it; and that is the fact that so many civilized people are willing to
live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance and
disease of the majority of their following; that to maintain this
privilege men have waged war. Until today war tends to become universal
and continuous and the excuse for this war continues largely to be
colour and race.”10
Pan-Africanism
originated not in Africa, but the New World. It was precisely those
Africans, taken from their homeland into slavery and servitude in the
Americas and the Caribbean who articulated their aspirations for Africa
and “Africaness” into what later became known as pan-Africanism. The
picture was caught in the poetry of the black American writer Claude
Mckay’s often quoted poem “Outcast”:
“For the dim regions whence my fathers came
My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;
My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.
I would go back to darkness and to peace.
But the great western world holds me in fee,
And I may never hope for full release
While to its alien gods I bend my knee.
Something in me is lost, forever lost,
Some vital thing has gone out of my heart,
And I must walk the way of life a ghost
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart
For I was born, far from my native clime,
Under the white man’s menace, out of time.”11
Evidence
of the attitude of black slaves in America to Africa can be gleaned
from the references and sentiments expressed in their songs (the
spirituals). Inspired closely by the metaphor of the old testament, the
slaves in America compared themselves to the Israelites in Egyptian
bondage. In the structure of this lyrical imagery “Heaven”,
“Jerusalem”, and “Zion” represented Africa and ‘River Jordan” the wide
Atlantic. “Ethiopia” was part of this vocabulary, and till today the
Rastafarians of Jamaica, latter day millernarianism and messianists
regard the Negus as their messiah and Ethiopia their Valhalla. During
the early nineteenth century, a French writer observed that in parts of
the New World, (Haiti in particular) among blacks the myth persisted
that the souls of black folk went to Africa after death in America.12
Obviously
one factor which enhanced the development of Pan-Africanist notions in
the New World was that here Africans from different parts were thrown
together under conditions of extreme degradation and suffering. The
commoness of their history, lot, and destiny was an immediate reality to
perceive. Thus although they were cut off from their various and
specific ethnic origins and the cultural references this provided, their
loss was replaced by a new consciousness which recognized and “embraced
the totality of African humanity”. Stuckey13 indicates
that the wish for independent and autonomous development of blacks in
the New World is probably as old as the 1600s, however it may have
matured into clear ideological form about the mid-19th century. Even then in some parts of the New World militant proto-black-nationalism was definitely pre-mid 19th century. With respect to the Guianas, Anton de Kom’s “Wij Slaven van Surinam” is particularly illuminating.
Denmark Vesey’s14 leader
of the 1822 Charleston slave conspirary had been an activist of a black
separatist church movement who had been greatly inspired by the Haitian
revolution. In North-East Brazil, a variety of religious cults became
the protective setting for black consciousness.15 Robert
Alexander Young’s “Ethiopian Manifesto” (1829), David Walker’s “Appeal
(1830)”, H.H. Garnet’s “Address to the slaves” (1843), and Martin
Delany’s “the Political Destiny of the Coloured Race” appartently went
some way in laying the ideological foundations of Black nationalism in
the U.S.16
In
so far as the political goals of Black nationalism in the U.S. and
Africa are concerned, on important point has to be borne in mind.
Whereas in America black nationalism is the political expression of a
minority nationality for equality and self-determination, in Africa
nationalism has been the expression of the majority nationality for
freedom, independence and self-determination in the land of their
forefather. However,
there is a fundamental and persistent notion among people of African
descent, in and out of Africa, this is the belief that they all belong
to the African nation.
Ideas in Practice
As Padmore17 points
out the concept of Pan-Africanism arose out of the feeling of
brotherhood which exists between Africans and people of African
descent. It was apparently thrown into currency by the Trinidadian
lawyer H. Sylvester-Williams. He convened the first Pan-African
Conference in London in 1900 to which he invited Du Bois among others,
this conference addressed itself to the black human condition and as
Legum18 sadly
admits, at that time, over three-quarters of a century ago they were
protesting against the treatment of Africans in South Africa and
Rhodesia smarting under the social torture of white racist chauvinism
maintained in support of developing capitalism. Three years after this
congress Du Bois broke with the more pacifist ideas of Booker T.
Washington. The second congress took place in Paris (1919) under Bu
Bois’ leadership. The third and fourth congresses were held in 1921 and
1923, and the fifth which has held in New York took place in 1927.
Between the 5th and 6th congresses,
the ideas of figures like C.L.R. James, George Padmore and Peter
Milliard became influential in Pan-Africanist circles. The 6th congress
was held in Manchester (1945). By now the youthful African element had
become predominant. It boasted members as R.G. Armattoe, Peter
Abrahams, Chief S.L. Akintola, Jomo Kenyatta, Chief H.I. Davies, Joe
Appiah, J.C. de Graft Johson, Otto Makonnen, Magnus Williams, E.J. Du
Plan, Dr K.K. Taylor, Kwame Nkrumah, C.L.R. James, George Padmore and of
course the “grand old man” “father of Pan-Africanism,” W.E.B. Du Bois.
The
West African National Secretariat, (organized by Nkrumah in 1945) at
its conference in August 1946 launched the idea of a West African
Federation, as a step towards a United States of Africa. Dr. N. Azikiwe
the older veteran African nationalist endorsed these ideas which he had
been known to support in earlier years.19 Between the late
40s and 1960 many of these young militants got back to Africa and
started translating their ideas in practise. Its first success story
was Ghana’s independence in 1957. With this foothold secured, the first
conference of Independent African States was held in Accra in 1958. A
second such conference was held in Addis Ababa in 1960. The All African
Peoples Conference of political parties and movements in Africa also
took place in Accra, 1958. Subsequently follow-ups took place in Tunis
(1960) and Cairo (1961). At its meeting, which drew people like Patrice
Lumumba, Felix Moumie, representatives of ANC (South Africa),
nationalists from Nothern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Kenya,
Tanzania, etc., it adopted a resolution in support of the ultimate aim
of a Union of free African States. Between the 60s and the 70s these
ideas have hobbled along and even the only existing political
organization, which in the late 50s – early 60s based itself on
Pan-Africanist principles, the Pan-African Congress of South Africa, in
recent years is drifting slowly from this position to a more
thorough-going marxist viewpiont.
In
East Africa during the last quarter century, Jomo Kenyatta has been the
most prominent Pan-Africanist. He had been one of the leaders of the
Pan-Africanist Congress in Manchester (1945). His historical status in a
way makes him a lonely figure in so far as Pan-Africanist traditions in
East Africa are concerned. James Gichuru the former president of the
Kenya African Union argues that Pan-Africanism appeared in East Africa
as an open political force between 1955 and 1960. Tom Mboya’s remarks
suggest the late 50’s as a crucial watershed in the development of ideas
of African unity20. Apparently Julius Nyerere caught up with these ideas also in the mid-50’s.21
However already in 1945 the concept of an all-embracing East African
movement was being discussed. In 1953, Ugandan nationalists sent
telegrammes to Nehru, Fenner Brockway, Nkrumah and others proposing an
All Africa government.22
In
Africa, early nationalist thought emerged in the 1850s and 60s. The
resettlement of former slaves in Sierra Leone and Liberia was not
inspired or instigated by Africans. But once it happened, it brought in
its wake a cross-fertilization of ideas between the former slaves and
the merging westernized African classes on the West coast. The early
leading advocates of Black nationalist ideas were probably Africanus
Horton and Edward Blyden. They were followed closely both historically
and intellectually by other bourgeois African nationalists like J.M.
Sarbah Jr., Attoh-Ahuma, J. Casely-Hayford, Holy Johnson to mention a
few of the better known ones. Some of them actively sought to create
political organisations with a wide African geographical and historical
base, and in their writings the nationalist unitary African sentiment
was never overlooked.
Booth,
the Baptist missionary who came to Nyasaland in 1892 became close to
Nyasaland’s first African nationalist, John Chilembwe. In 1894, at
Blantyre, a politico-religious grouping, the African Christian Union was
formed under the auspices of Chilembwe, Booth and others. Among other
things, their stated desire was “to unite together in the name of Jesus
Christ such persons as desire to see full justice done to the African
race and are resolved to work towards that day when African people shall
become an African Christian nation”; it also desired “to pursue
steadily and unswervingly the policy of ‘Africa for the Africans!”23
Further down south in Natal the first South African black medical
doctor, N. Yembula and others like Solomon Kumalo welcomed the ideas of
the Christian Union. Already in the 1970’s isolated groups of Africans
had started organizing their own church communities in the face of
racism of the whites in the two Boer Republics, Transvaal and Orange
Vrystaat. As Legum points out, the emphasis was on “the African to
write and work for his own redemption, political, economic and
spiritual”.24 Apparently Booth brought together in Natal
about 120 educated Africans who in the end rejected his proposals on the
grounds that they could not trust any whiteman with a project like
that. “No trust or reliance at all would be placed in any
representative of the blood-stained whiteman who had killed scores of
thousands of Zulus and their Matebele relations”.25 Today
these feelings among Africans have been reinforced even further by
apartheid in Rhodesia and South Africa. So powerful were nationalist
ideas from the U.S. during the early part of this century, that it is
interesting to observe26 that
among the about 20 South African students who went to America at about
that period, P.K. Isaka Seme (one of the founding members of the ANC –
1912) Sol Plaatjie, J.L. Dube, D.D.T. Jabavu and A.B. Xuma were all
prominent in South African early nationalist history. Later others from
elsewhere in Africa like Hastings Banda, P.M. Koinange and N.Azikiwe
caught the nationalist fever in the U.S.A.
Nationalism as a Populist Form
In 20th century
Africa, nationalism has been very much a populist ideological form.
Its thrust has been a anti-colonial (or anti-settler-colonial) in an
overt way. The state structures it has given birth to have been all
either laissez faire capitalist or state capitalist, or a mixture of the
two dominant varieties of capitalism. In some instances state
capitalism has been catchily dubbed socialism or African socialism. But
any real analysis of these state structures revels their basic
bourgeois character. Above all these nationalist independence movements
have said and done all “in the name of the people”. It is interesting
to note that populism where and whenever it has historically reared its
head, has vocalized and idealized the interest of “the people”. It has
thus tended to attract popular sentiment. However invariably no
structurization is accorded the concept of “the people”; no precise
definition of the content of ‘the people’is given. Rather
socio-economic differentiation among “the people” is avoided or
under-emphasized, although superficially, slogans in favour of the
common-man are fanfared far and wide. Populist nationalism thus has
been adaptable both to right and left-wing radicalism and rhetoric. In
this sort of populist language “the African people” becomes a holistic
unit within which both tycoons and paupers are supposed to have a common
destiny. This absence of a clear ideological structure dialectically
delimits its weaknesses and strength depending of course on the specific
historical conditions within which it is espoused and advocated. Under
those conditions where the expulsion of a colonial master or white
settler racism is the main item on the agenda, populist nationalism
appears as a progressive force unifying all Africans against their
oppressors. With the establishment of African bourgeois-democracy, the
internal class contradictions among the various African classes which
supported the independence movement, becomes more open and
antagonistic. Under such latter conditions populism becomes reactionary
and becomes an ideological weapon of mystification, and oppression in
the hands of bourgeois and petty bourgeois interest. Because of its
vague ideological orientation, populist nationalism tends to be
philosophically highly syncretic. Witness Nkrumah in the early years of
the Independence struggle in Ghana. “Today I am a non-denominational
christian and a Marxist socialist and I have not found any contradiction
between the two.”27 In the same vein populist nationalism
often attempts to synthesis traditional and modern values. These
tendencies are present in the ideas of Julius Nyerere on African
socialism and Ujamaa, Sekou Toure on “Communaucratique”, Jomo Kenyatta’s
African socialism, Numeiry’s Arab socialism, Kenneth Kaunda on
“Humanism”, Leopold Senghor on “Negritude” and Mobutu Sese Seko on
“Authencité” etc. In all these instances the philosophical character of
their substantive ideas are eclectic “radical often in ideals but
fundamentally reformist in methods”. These theories in practice
supervise neocolonial states for the expansion of capitalism. In this
effort sometimes a superficial but often loud anti-imperialist position
is adopted, and social contradictions are represented as emanating from
outside. The links between imperialism and internal reaction are not
established. As I have elsewhere argued, contemporarily, populist
nationalism often takes up a so-called Marxist or Marxist-Leninist garb.28
The experiments in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola fall under this
category. It should be added that actually Leninism represents both
historically and philosophically a rejection of populism, as can be seen
in Lenin’s polemics against the Narodniki.
Recent Unitary Efforts
Most
of the recent conceptions of Unitary African Organizations have had
buried deep in them all the contradictions inherent in the international
capitalist order. As such their successes and failures have actually
been reflective of trends in the international capitalist system, and to
a steadily increasing degree the international fortunes and misfortunes
of the super-powers in their tussles for spheres of influence and
control.
The
most important of these organizations of the last two decades is the
Organization of African Unity (OAU). This body created originally on
May 25, 1963, to enhance the aim of African unity has displayed purpose
and strength only in so far as the neocolonial masters of Africa would
permit. Compounding this problem has been the petty bourgeois
chauvinism of the African ruling classes. All this has gone a long way
into making this body a showground and debating club for African Heads
of State. In a sense the OAU historically merged two closely preceeding
histories in contenental African politics. These were the political
expressions of the Monrovia and Casablanca groupings.29 The
former tended to group the conservative governments which leaned heavily
on the West, the latter were militant progressist African states,
champions of “non-alignment” and “positive neutrality.”
In a sense the Casablanca group had an earlier progenitor dating from May, 1959, this was the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union.30
This was a radical populist group of sub-Saharan African states. Its
extreme opposite in terms of ideological colouring was the African and
Malagasy Common Organization (OCAM) created in December, 1960. Other
similar mainly economically oriented organizations incorporating a
number of African states are the Customs and Economic Union of Central
Africa (UDEAC) founded on the 8th December, 1964; the defunct East African Community (EAC) established on the 6th June
1967, out of the older (1917) colonial British East African Customs
Union: the African Development Bank (September 10, 1964); and the U.N.
Economic Commission for Africa. Recently, a new economic union of West
African States (ECOWAS) has been created.
Most
of these structures of unity created within the last two decades have
been rather short-lived, particularly the political groupings. The most
dramatic and traumatic of these have probably been the collapse of the
Mali-Senegal Federation, and the abortive idea of an East African
Federation.
Old and New Perspectives
If the criterium of language is used as a yard-stick for isolating ethnicities, there are then hundreds of ethnicities in Africa. In many cases, the structural likeness and proximity of these languages and cultures, are so close that, it serves little purpose to differenctiate them as separate groupings. They are rather sub-units of larger nationalities, and
there are about 54 odd countries accommodating this profusion of
nationalitites and subnationalities. Within each country invariably,
there are a few majority nationalitites, with a host of minorities
sharing a given state. There is no instance in which only one
nationality inhabits a given country.
Furthermore,
in all African countries, existing state borders cut through the
historico-geographical locations of hundreds of these nationalities, for
these borders were demarcated by the colonial powers in the 19th century
without any consideration for the aspirations and wishes of the African
people. Today, in many ways they have become sources of tension and
conflict among African countries. Since most of Africa is still
seriously neo-colonial, a lot of the tensions between African countries
are actually inherited by proxy from the various imperialist powers. As
such, they represent more the effects of imperialist rivalry, than
internally generated conflicts. When and where inter-ethnic conflicts
exist, they are often hyper-exacerbated.32 Although too
often the real horizontal class character of these confilcts are buried
under vertical and ethnically oriented analysis common among idealists.
In recent decades the oppression of various nationalities in
multi-national African states has led to armed struggle. In the
Southern Sudan, Arab oppression from the north provoked a cruel war
which partial autonomy in the south has now quietened. In Eritrea,
Ethiopian oppression has been met with a vigorous national war of
liberation by the Eritreans. It is to be expected that as time goes on,
and capitalist development expands in Africa, the need for wider
markets for the free and speedy development of capitalism will tend to
stimulate bourgeois African inspired moves towards larger unities, the
ECOWAS is a case in point.
Much
as such trends will facilitate the welcome movement of Africans in
Africa, this is in fact, also the aim of capital at that stage of
development when its further growth depends on wider markets and sources
of production. As has been explained: “Developing capitalism knows
two historical tendencies in the national question. The first is the
awakening of national life and national movements, the struggle against
all national oppression, and the creation of nation-states. The second
is the development and growing frequency of international inter-course
in every form, the breakdown of national barriers, the creation of the
international unity of capital, of economic life in general, of
politics, science, etc. Both tendencies are a universal law of
capitalism. The former predominates in the beginning of its
development, the latter characterises a mature capitalism moving towards
its transformation into socialist society.”34
In
the development of larger unities on the African continent, the African
bourgeoisie would place national demands and issues in the forefront.
On the other hand, the African masses specifically the proletariat and
peasantry, as their class consciousness deepens would place the class
struggle above narrow national demands. In the historical phase of
transition from feudalism to capitalism, expectedly the African
proletarian and peasant masses supported and continue to support
national demands in unison with the propertied classes. However in
order to achieve its strategic goal of “a world of unity between the
working people of all nations, a world in which there is no place for
any privileges or for the oppression of man by man”35 the
African labouring classes cannot from the standpoint of their own
strategic interests support the permanence and entrenchment of petty
bourgeois nationalism within the context of existing state structures.
Its support would tend to be thrown behind the removal of existing
national divisions and distinctions. In other words it would tend to
support those moves aimed at bringing nationalities together; towards
the fusion and merger of African nationalities; towards African unity
based on principles of free unification. This freedom to unite
naturally has meaning only if the right of seccession is also implied.
For as Lenin explained, “without freedom to secede, unification cannot
be called free.”35 From the viewpoint of the African peasant
and worker masses, in Africa today, Fanon’s description of the colonial
world is still too real: “the town belonging to the colonized people,
or at least the native town, the Negro village, the medina, the
reservation, is a place of ill fame, peopled by men of evil repute.
They are born there, it matters little where or, nor how. It is a world
without spaciousness; men live there on top of each other, and their
huts are built one on top of the other.”36
In
all parts of Africa, without exception one finds that the pattern of
capitalist penetration cuts across borders and nationalities. For this
reason often the classes which have developed across adjacent border
areas are extremely similar in both national and class terms. The
possibility of organizing them also on similar revolutionary lines and
around similar agrarian programmes is very real, for it is the agrarian
revolution under proletarian leadership which will draw the majority of
African people into the revolution of the 20th century.
The development of productive forces in Africa depends on the
elimination of imperialism. But imperialism itself in practice is among
other things “balkanization”; the fractionalization of a unit. It
precisely truncates unified development, stifles the holistic and total
development of productive forces.
1. Various idealist but scholarly interpretations of the subject prominently include the following: E.H. Carr,Nationalism and After, London, 1946. A Cobban, National Self-Determination, Chicago, 1947.
K. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, Cambridge-Mass., 1953.
J.S. Coleman, Nationalism in Tropical Africa. American Political Science Review, June 1954. R. Emerson, From Empire to Nation, Cambridge, Mass., 1960.
C.J.H. Hayes. Essays on Nationalism, New York. 1926.
Elie Kedourie. Nationalism, New York. 1961.
2. V.I. Lenin. The Right of Nations to Self-Determination. Collected Works. Vol. 20.
3. V.I. Lenin. The Right of Nations to Self-Determination. Collected Works. Vol. 20.
4. J. Stalin. Nationalism outside Europe. In Foundations of Leninism 1924. Reprinted in Problems of Leninism. Moscow. 1945.
5. T. Hodgkin. Nationalism in Colonial Africa. London. 1956. P.169.
6. Chorus of Kenya African Union “hymn” quoted in T. Hodgkin. Ibid. P.169.
7. J.M. Kariuki. The “Mau Mau” Oath from “Mau Mau” Detainee, 1963. P.26. Quoted here from E. Kedourie, Nationalism in Asia and Africa, London 1970, page 463
8. M. Garvey. Philosophy and Opinions. New York. Vol. 2. P.37
9. See, G. Padmore. Pan-Africanism or Communism. New York. 1972. P.75.
10. W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk. New York. 1953. (preface).
11. Claude McKay. Outcast. Quoted here from Colin Legum. Pan Africanism. New York. 1965. P.15.
12. I. Geiss. The Pan-African Movement. Metheun. 1974. P.28.
13. S. Stuckey. The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism.
Boston. 1972. P.2. In the Caribbean and South America as opposed to
the U.S., blacks managed to maintain a purer African cultural world. G.
Shepperson, “Notes on Negro American influences on the Emergence of
African Nationalism.”. Journal of African History. Vol. 1. No. 2. Pp.229-312.
14. See, R.S. Starobin. Denmark Vesey. Englewood Cliffs. 1970.
15. Till
today many of these cults exist, and Bahia in fact has the most
“authentic” African cultural lore in the whole of the New World.
16. See, S. Stuckey. The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism.
Boston. 1972. See, also H. Lynch. Pan-Negroism in the New World
Before 1862. In. O.E. Uya (ed) Black Brotherhood, Lexington, 1971.
and H. Aptheker. Conserveness of Negro Nationality to 1900. In, Toward Negro Freedom. New York. 1956.
17. G. Padmore. Pan-Africanism or Communism. P.95.
18. C. Legum. Pan-Africanism. London. P.31.
19. C. Legum. Ibid. P.33.
20. J.S. Nye. Pan-Africanism and East African Integration. Cambridge-Mass., 1966. P.31.
21. J.S. Nye. Ibid.
22. J.S. Nye. Ibid. P.96.
23. See, C. Legum. Op cit. P.22.
24. Ibid. P.23.
25. Ibid. P.23.
26. Ibid. P.27.
27. K. Nkrumah. Autobiography. London. 1957. P.12.
28. See, K.K. Prah, Social Background of Coup d’etat.
Publikatie No. 18. Afdeling Zuid end Zuidoost Azie. Amsterdam.
1973. P.116. In this particular chapter the author gives an extended
discussion on Populism. See also, P. Worsley, The Third World. London. 1967. G. Ionescu and E. Gellner, Populism. London. 1972. R. Cohen, Class in Africa. In Socialist Register London. 1972. P.231.
29. The
Casablanca Group was the result of a meeting held in Casablanca on
January 7, 1971 between representatives of Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco,
Lybia, Egypt and the Algerian Provisional Government. They adopted a
charter which provided for a joint military command and an African
Common Market. Members of this group were pro-socialist, and a strong
centrally organized African unity. They were supported b a newly
created body – the Pan African Movement for East, Central, and Southern
Africa (Pafmesca). The Monrovia Group (19) met in the Liberian capital
May 8-12, 1961. They met again in Lagos, January 1962 to adopt a draft
charter for an organization of Inter-African and Malagasy states.
30. Also this grouping had a predecessor in the Ghana-Guinea Union of 1958.
31. See, Africa Yearbook and Who’s Who. London. 1976. P.8.
32. In the late 60’s the Dutch Newspaper (Amsterdam) Waarheid published a number of revealing articles about Nigeria.
See Waarheid (12/10/1968)
Oorlog in Nigeria … stinkt naar olie (27/11/68) Shell and BP Investeren
in Nigeria (31/5/67) Nigeria een van die rijkste olielanden van
Afrika. (31/7/67) and (1/8/67) Shell and Biafra.
In 1968 the American Magazine Ramparts revealed
that European and American oil companies invested over 1 billion
dollars in Nigeria. These companies include Gulf Oil, Mobil, Texaco
Standard Oil and Phillips; French companies ERAP, Italy ENI. The most
important of these companies was the combination of Shell-BP.
Gowon asked for higher oil royalties as his predecessor Ironsi. Gulf
Oil refused. Shell-BP waited for time. The oil companies speculated
that the Nigerians would be better partners. In the meantime following
the massacre of Ibos in the North of Nigeria, Biafra declared its
independence and the question of whom to pay the oil royalties became
important. Nigeria blocked the Biafran coast but allowed oil tankers
free passage. Biafra was considered by the oil companies to be an ideal
“oil-state” (just like the oil sheikdoms in the Arabian Gulf). In the
course of the civil war, when it became clear that Biafra was loosing
ground the oil companies started backing more fully the federal
government. Only the French oil company continued to openly support
Biafra. The French company (ERAP) bought oil concessions in Biafra (¾
of Nigerian oil area) for 15 million dollars for an area which could
then deliver 2 million tons of oil per year. The French branch of
Rothschild-Bank also bought mining concession (15 million dollars for
tin, coal, gold and uranium), French support for Biafra and British
support of the Federal Nigerian Government was as such for purely
capitalist interests. Waarheid(12/10/68).
33. V.I. Lenin. Collected Works. Vol. 19. P.92.
34. V.I. Lenin. Collected Works. Vol. 19. P.92.
35. V.I. Lenin. Collected Works. Vol. 29. P.176.
36. F. Fanon. Concerning Violence. Quoted here from E. Kedourie. Nationalism in Asia and Africa. London.
SOURCE:
B.F.Bankie
Sudan Sensitisation Project (SSP)
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