PROPAGANDA IN SOUTHERN AFRICAs THE APPARATTS IN EAST AFRICA

PROPAGANDA IN SOUTHERN AFRICAs THE APPARATTS IN EAST AFRICA by SAUNDERS REDD±N] "SOUTHERN AFRICA IN TRANSITION" FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE April U2 - 13, 1963 Howard Universityq Washington, DoCo Sponsored by THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF AFRICAN CULTURE 15 East 40th Street New York 16, N. Y.

PROPAGANDAo. THE APPARATUS IN EAST 1FRi.JA I cannot begin this brief examination of the msohinary of po g~ da for the independence of the countries of Southern Afric - Nya sLand, the Rhode sias, Mozambique, Angola, South West Africa and South Africa - .ethout 46lmy* lodging my indebtedness to two individuals who prefer to go nameless. They wish to have their anonymity preserved here for the stark and simple reson that the national governments to which they are opposed are quite apable of taking reprisals against resident citizens. -ho happened at scmk to be and may still be suspected of being associated with 'hem, I ha-Te been told that, as melodramatic as it may sound, the governments *.u.d be iikely to do this in the name of "national security' and on the desperate prinoiple of guilt by association. The South African gover ment has already legalized this concept, and the parliament of Southern Rhodesia recently has ben cons deding and is almost certain to pass - legislation against "making subverai're Rtxtements" and "publishing or otherwise uttering false ne*s outside the country." Madness creates not only its own logic, but more madness. My' t*o friends are Justified in their fear, One has a family still living in the Republic of South Africa, and the other finds it necessary to return occasionally to Southern Rhode sia. But though I acknowledge my debt to them for correcting and/or confirming my own observations and providing new insights, I alone bear the r bility for the rather severe limitations of this report0 It is not intended to be a thorough-going analysis, such as Mr. Nkosi is qualified to mnk 9 and some of what I have to say is certainly not neo The observations of any relatively thoughtful inquirer would reveal the essential featuras of the propaganda and political offensive against the colonial-oriented co'atlea of Southern Africa; but I was privileged for a little while to 'be in one of the places where that offensive seems to have gained its greatest moment=m and attracted its most resourceful prosecutors. It has no special pertinency to this report, but I was there the day the first Russo-Czech delegation arrived, and I heard one member of the delegation address an African porter in Swahilio I speak of Tanganyika - of Dar es Salaam. I was also in Accra, Ghana, where, as everyone knows, there is also considerable propaganda and political activity. But that is a different story. From the day of its independence, Tanganyika became a haven for the politically disaffected, the hunted and the hated from the southern end of Africa. Tanganyika was favorably located, and its government was known to be ardently anti- oppression. The word got around that anyone with "a dark skin, a tale of woe, and nationalist leanings" could be sure of asylum, Indeed, to say that the government was sympathetic to nationalist causes is to understate. In 1960, Mr. Julius Nyerere offered to postpone Tanganyika's own independence for a year on the condition that "it would expedite the independence of Kenya and Uganda." And when independence came, the ruling party - the Tanganyika African National Union, whose power and influence reposes largely in the strength and personality of Nyerere - welcomed the political refugees from Mozambique and Angola, the Federation, South West Africa and South Africa. Until recently, these various nationalist groups had offices in the headquarters of TANU itself. Now each has its own quarters, and one section of the main street of Dar es Salaam, Independence Avenue, is referred to as Freedom Fighters Square. Ideologically and emotionally, the nationalist groups spread over the entire revolution spectrum, and there are those who say that within some of the groups there is this same spectrum-spread. While I am neither prepared nor inclined to support this allegation, which I believe is intended to be divisive, I am aware that, although the names usually associated with the African National Congress, which is banned in South Africa, are Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela - the latter now unfortunately in prison in South Africa - the ANC, when I was in Dar, was represented by Moses Kotane and Duma

Nokwe, who are not at all likely candidates for peace prizes. Considering the probable course of events in South Africa, this is certainly nothing against them. The other South African nationalist group represented in Dar es S am is or was - the Pan Africanist Congress* It is relatively young, and my observation was, less active in Dar than in Accra and Cairo. The ANC published a five-page mimeographed paper in Dar - the § African Freedom News, which very effectively straightened the slant of the news from the white So A. press; and distributed another, the A, which was printed in So Ao until it was banned last January, and which was reputed to be the most outspoken paper. Also the ANC was supported - as all African nationalist movements are - by Smearhead, a monthly. Ably edited by Miss Frene G nwala, and frequently carrying pieces by such important leaders as Nyerere9 Mboya, Legum and Nkrumah, S aims at an intellectual readership and regards itself as the "conscience of African socialism." It would be superfluous to remark that all these publications zero in on such vulnerable targets as the ineffable Roy Welensky and Winston Field, as well as the ilk of Verwcerd and Swart. In South Africa, it is an offense punishable by five years In prison to have a copy of South African Freedom Nws in onews possession. I have been told that the paper is smuggled into S. A., and that several hundred people commit this offense weekly, The possession of a newspaper is not yet declared sabotage in Southern Rhodesia, but now that ZAPU has been banned and its leader forced into exile in Tanganyika, it may soon be. Ndabaningi Sitholes party already has its own organ, a tabloid-size paper that was started in Dar, but it is not yst vafficiently sure of itself to go in for the refinements of political argumenta and international questions that characterize S=erhead, or the monthly magazine F, which, incidentally, still manages to get itself produced in South Africa, and which, judging by the several issues I've seen,

4 4 carrying the by-lines of Ezekial Mphahlele and Lewis Nkosi, as well as stories, poems and drawings, is very sophisticated indeed, Much, if not most, of the work of two former liberation movements in Mozambique, which united about a year ago to form the Nationalist Front of Mozambique, called FRELIMO, is coordinated in Dar es Salaam. I think it is no secret that FRELIMO, under the strong leadership of Eduardo Mondlane, has gone beyond propaganda's first stage, which aims at creating a one-ness of will, and is ready to take those practical political steps that will lead to independence. So far as I was aware, FRELIMO had no propaganda organ in Dar, but it did have a publicity secretary, Mr. Leo Milas, when I was there, and Dr. Mondlane, who happened to be there at the same time, certainly had coverage by the Tanganyikan press° But whereas Mozambique's nationalist leadership saw the advantage of uniting two separate liberation parties - which, anyway, had the same end in view - my observation was, and the information I currently have is, that South West Africa's nationalist leaders have "resisted a merger" of forces. South West Africa's nationalism is represented by two establishments in Dar - the South West Africa Peoples Organization, nominally headed, I believe, by Mr. Sam NuJoma; and the South West Africa National Union, nominally headed by Mr. F, Kozonguizi, whose projects and duties seem to keep him pretty constantly in London. Each of these several nationalist group movements concentrates on the objective of gaining independence for its own country, and the propaganda of each is primarily designed to that purpose. But necessary to its accomplishment, it appears to me, is the concentrated force and the directed impulse of the people of the country involved, and the willingness of other countries on both sides of the diplomatic curtain - to see it accomplished, if they cannot be persuaded to help in the accomplishment. Looked at from this angle, it would be my judgment (for whatever it may be worth) that the South Africa

ANC is by far the most sophisticated of the nationalist groups operating in Dar, or anywhere else for that matter. This may be because the situation in South Africa itself is by far the most stubborn and dangerous, and the graat(t menace to the peace of Africa and the world, South African nationalists have had a long experience of that situation, and they exploit it in the international press. ANC spokesmen in Dar get the attention of Tas, Universal Press International, Associated Press, Reuters, and correspondents for the Christian Science Mi , the London Times, the London P, and The T A of India have been known to go to Dar from Nairobi to attend an ANC press conference. With considerable financial support from "outside." South African nationalists (and liberals) publish and distribute world-wide the mimeographed bulletin called S, and the first rate quarterly called =igaSo African writers from South Africa - Ezekial Mphahlele, Alex la Guma and Bloke Modisane are among the best known of African writers; and the work of Alan Paton, Elspeth Huxley and Nadine Gordimer - whatever the reaction of black South Africans to it - has certainly not hurt the independence movement in S. Africa in the rest of the world. Though the world has not yet seen fit to move effectively against it, the present South African government gets an astoundingly bad world press. That Chief Albert Luthuli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is at least some measure of the success of South Africa's nationalist propaganda. In Julius Nyerere Tanganyika has a great propaganda resource, which TANU successfully drew upon, and still draws upon - largely, now with its own independence accomplished, for the benefit of Kenya, Uganda, and Nyasaland, ZAPU propaganda is as yet mainly effective only among its own follovre, And as the final item in this particular context, FRELIMO, the nationalist front of Mozambique, is listened to with greater attention in North Africa -Aliera and Egypt - than in any place in Europe except Portugal and Spain. And so it goes: but as particular to itself as each group is in the pra-

L 6 suit of its own aims, they do not represent separate and separatist moyements. They spring from the same single impulse - which the sooner the rest of the world recognizes, the better - and they are bound together in PAFMECSA, which gives them both mechanical and emotional cohesion, From the time of its founding in the late 1950's until recently, the Pan Africanist Freedom Movement for East, Central and South Africa was chaired by Julius Nyerere, but Kenneth Kaunda, of Northern Rhodesia, is chairman now, and Peter Koinange, of Kenya, is secretary. Operating on funds that come from Africa, Europe and the East, this union of nationalist groups purposes to free the countries of Southern Africa one after another - by non-violent means if possible, Its first target is said to be Northern Rhodesia. its second, Kenya, and its third, Mozambique. But this over-all union also serves as a forum and a clearing house for ideas. It organizes ceremonials for visiting nationalist leaders, and its offices are made available to them for press conferences. Though PAFMECSA has no publication of its own, it has taken an important part in establishing a paper, which, when it begins publication in June, will be run by TANU in the interest of independence movements in all Southern Africa, In short, PAFMECSA is Pan-Africa in action, and its members seem in complete agreement with the thirty-year old declaration of the now defunct African National Congress Youth League: "To unite and to rally the African people...on the basis of African nationalisx.,,and to work for unity and community between the free African States." As Julius Kiano of Kenya points out, the Pan Africanist Freedom Movement even envisions "the development of specific principles and moral ideologies which would comprise the fundamental creeds and philosophic content for the emergent African nations." Whether or not this addition to the intellectual dimensions of PanAfricanism is politically practicable, it cannot be denied that the concept of Pan-Africa has emotional viability for that part of the world, and, I might add, for those to whom Nyerere once referred as "the homeless sons of Africa" all over the world. And it will have greater viability when the apparatus of propaganda is more precisely geared to the masses of Africans who have yet to be propagandized. For all their dedication to the cause of national independence, leaders in Southern Africa are but limited and mortal men. Only at great sacrifice of their energies and in some instances only at hazard to their personal liberty can Kozonguizi, Tambo, Mboya, Kaunda and Sithole go constantly to the remotest corners to carry the message of freedom to their people for whom the printed word as yet has no meaning. It is to be hoped that with Radio Tanganyika free, its propaganda potential will be increasingly realized. Through PAFMECSA and its "Free Northern Rhodesia" offensive, Radio Tanganyika played an important part in Kenneth Kaunda's election campaign, It introduced a "foreign service" beamed to Northern Rhodesia, and carried undiluted National Independence Party propaganda in Shona, which is the main language of Northern Rhodesia. This caused a rumpus with the British-owned Federal Broadcasting Corporation in Lusaka, but apparently Radio Tanganyika was not daunted, for my information - from the usual "reliable sources" is that it will beam FRELIMO propaganda to Mozambique. Less reliable sources report that PAFMECSA will make an effort to establish a radio facility in one of the three British protectorates in Southern Africa. It would be used against South Africa itself. Since it is not even remotely possible that Britain and her Western allies will look with favor upon such a project, and since Africans themselves have neither the equipment, the technical knowledge, nor the money for it, the alternative to Western aid is obvious. And would not this play straight into South Africavs hand and strengthen her own propaganda line? - which is to the effect that all liberalism is comunism, and that African nationalism runs counter to the will of God,

For propaganda, after all, can out both ways, and African nationalists, who are using propaganda with a laudable singleness of purpose, certainly know this, They are too smart to try to make it do for them more than it can do faster than it can be done. And, anyway, the changes they mean to effect creep every day a little nearer to hand, It is impossible to believe that the consciences of great nations can go on sleeping through the thunder of a right and righteous cause, and it is impossible to believe that the thunder will cease until the cause in Africa is won, Saunders Redding