Hubs of Decolonization. African Liberation Movements and “Eastern” Connections in Cairo, Accra, and Dar Es Salaam

Eric Burton HubsofDecolonization. African Liberation Movements and “Eastern” Connections in Cairo, Accra, and Dar es Salaam Introduction In the interwar period, London and Paris werethe primary hubs of anti-colonial activism. The Pan-African circles and transnationalcommunist networks that wereknit in the imperial metropoles duringthe interwar or earlypost-war years werecrucial for the rise of post-war liberation struggles and Third World- ism.¹ In the late 1950s and 1960s, when the dynamics of the Cold Warand Afri- can decolonisation became closelyentangled, the centreofgravity of the struggles moved southwards.New hubs emergedonthe African continent in countries thathad achieved independence and made decolonisation apillar of their foreign policy.² From the late 1950s onwards,the capitals of several African countries – some of which had had little international significance earlier – Iwould liketothank the editors,Immanuel Harisch and the participants of the “Momentous 60s” Conference(Hebrew UniversityofJerusalem /Ben Gurion University, Be’er Sheva, 6–8Jan- uary2019) for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this chapter and the inceptivere- searchproject at large. Though Lisbon evolvedfromaparochial small town into amorecosmopolitan city in the early 1950s, it still felt stiflingdue to censorship and the omnipresenceofstatesecurity.See M.R. Sanches, “(Black)Cosmopolitanism, TransnationalConsciousness and DreamsofLiberation”, in: M. Nash (ed.) Red Africa: Affectivecommunities and the Cold War,London: Black DogPub- lishing, 2016,pp. 69 – 79;H.Adi, West Africans in Britain, 1900–1960: Nationalism, Pan-African- ism, and communism,London: Lawrence&Wishart,1998;J.A. Boittin, Colonial metropolis: The urban grounds of anti-imperialism and feminism in interwar Paris,Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010;M.Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of ThirdWorld Na- tionalism, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015;M.Matera, Black London: TheImperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century,Oakland, California: University of Califor- nia Press, 2015. Therewereexchangesonthe African continent during the interwar period; northern Morocco was an earlyhub of anticolonial circuits: D. Stenner, “Centringthe periphery:northern Morocco as ahub of transnational anti-colonial activism, 1930 –43”, Journal of Global History 11 (2016) 3, pp. 430 – 450. Foranew late 1950shub in Europe see also West Germanyasaninvoluntary “sanctuary” and operating base of the FLN:M.von Bülow, West Germany,ColdWar Europe and the AlgerianWar,Cambridge:Cambridge University Press,2016. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642964-006 26 Eric Burton evolvedasnodalpointsoftransnationalanti-colonial networks that werepartic- ularlydiverse and dense.These countries hosted liberation movements in exile, yetthis was but one part of this increasingconnectivity.ColdWar diplomats, anti-colonial activists, guerrillas, students, and refugees flocked to Cairo, Accra, and Conakry in the late 1950s as well as Dar es Salaam, Brazzaville, and Algiers in the 1960s. New encounters turned these cities into “epicentres of the political friction between the dual forces of decolonisation and the Cold War”,asGeorge Robertsput it.³ It is these epicentres that Irefertoas“hubs of decolonization.” Accounts by the leaders of liberation movements are filled with references to African cities that enabled anew form of “extra-metropolitan cosmopolitanism”.⁴ Anticolonial activists and politicians usedthese hubs to establish connections to the wider world. Amílcar Cabral, the leader of the Partido Africano para aIndependência da Guiné edoCabo Verde (PAIGC), idolized late 1960s Algiers as the “Mecca of Revolution”.⁵ In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela recalls ar- riving in Morocco’scapital Rabat in 1962and encountering it as a “crossroads of virtuallyevery liberation movement on the continent.” Here, as aleader of South Africa’sAfrican National Congress (ANC), he could exchangeexperiences and visions with other freedom fighters from Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, and,Cape Verde and debate the merits of guerrilla strategies in different settings. In Cairo, Mandela discovered Egypt⁶ as “an important model for us”,asmanyofPresident Gamal Abdel Nasser’ssocialist reformswere “preciselythe sort of thingsthat we in the ANC somedayhoped to enact”.⁷ As countries of the socialist camp took amore active role in supporting liberation struggles and buildingrelations with non-aligned states in the late 1950s, some of these cities also enabled new connections to the “East”.Respondingto G. Roberts, “The assassination of Eduardo Mondlane: FRELIMO, Tanzania, and the politics of exile in Dar es Salaam”, Cold WarHistory 17 (2017) 1, pp. 1–19,at2. J.S. Ahlman, “Road to Ghana: Nkrumah, SouthernAfrica and the Eclipse of aDecolonizing Africa”, Kronos 37 (2011), pp. 23–40,at39; cf. also M. Terretta, “Cameroonian Nationalists Go Global: From Forest Maquis to aPan-African Accra”, TheJournal of African History 51 (2010) 2, pp. 189–212. Cited in J.J. Byrne, Mecca of revolution: Algeria, decolonization,and the Third Worldorder, New York: OxfordUniversity Press,2016,p.443. In 1958, Egypt and Syria formed the United Arab Republic (UAR) which was dissolvedin1961. Though the official designation UARwas retained until 1971,Egypt is used in most of the primary sourcesIdrawon. N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom,New York: Back BayBooks,1995,pp. 408–409;cf. A. Drew, “Visions of liberation: The Algerian war of independenceand its South African reverber- ations”, Review of African Political Economy 42 (2015) 143, pp. 22–43. HubsofDecolonization. AfricanLiberation Movements and “Eastern” Connections 27 the question how the relations between Moscow and the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) had originallyevolved, the former MPLA officer Manuel Santos Lima stated in an interview that from “1960,the axisofthe liberation struggle in Africa ranbetween Rabat,Cairo, Accra, and Conakry.These four countries competed for the primacy of the support [for] the liberation struggles in Angola and the Portuguese colonies.”⁸ Beyond influential leaders, long-standingorfreshlyrecruited rank-and-file members of liberation movements, students and refugees also moved in and through these hubs and assumed new rolesand identities. Their experiences point to shifting practicesoflabellingand self-perception in these hubs, exem- plifying “the fluidity of seemingly self-contained and clear-cut categories such as ‘student,’‘guerrilla,’ or ‘trade unionist,’ and the transformation of subjectivities and politicized understandingsalong the way.”⁹ When the youngZanzibari Adam ShafiarrivedinCairo afteranodyssey through Uganda and the Sudan in 1960,hewantedtomoveontostudyataEuropean university.During his stay, he experienced Cairoasa“bastion of freedom fighters” (Ngome ya Wapigania Uhuru) – and waspromptlyenrolled to takepart in military training to join his country’sstruggle for independence.¹⁰ One year later,Shafi was sent to East Germanyfor trade unionist training – thanks to aconnection that Zanzi- bari leaders had established in Cairo. Shafi had imagined Cairo as the gateto university studies Europe, but it became adestination in itself (for his guerrilla training) and alsowas the sitewherecontacts between Zanzibari and East Ger- man representativesprepared his later journey to courses at the trade union high school in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). This article considers the emergence and functions of three hubs of decolonisation in North, West and East Africa – Cairo, Accra, and Dar es Salaam – in relation to the globalColdWar “East”.Here, freedom fighters in exile wereof- fered shelter,could open branch offices and headquarters for their organisations and oversee the establishment of refugee and guerrilla training camps, getaccess to foreign supporters and broader communicative networks as well as political arenas and receive financial and material resources.Iwill sketch the emergence Interview with ManuelSantos Lima, cited in F.A. Guimarães, “The Origins of the Angolan Civil War: InternationalPolitics and Domestic Political Conflict 1961–1979”,Ph.D. thesis,The London School of Economics and Political Science, 1992, p. 473. Thanks to Immanuel Harischfor point- ing me to this quote. E. Burton, “Introduction: Journeysofeducation and struggle:African mobility in times of decolonization and the Cold War”, Stichproben. Vienna Journal of African Studies 18 (2018) 34, pp. 1–17. A. Shafi, Mbali na nyumbani,Nairobi: Longhorn Publishers,2013,p.374. 28 Eric Burton of these hubs and show how institutions and actors shaped – enabled, managed, and constrained – mobilities between liberation movements and the Cold War “East”.Though mobility mayencompass tracing phenomena from Maoist con- cepts of guerrilla struggles to deliveries of canned food, Iwill be mostly con- cerned with the physical mobility(and immobility) of persons, pathways of military equipmentand communications infrastructure. In fleshing out the characteristics of each hub, Ibuild on the global history concept of “portals of globalization” as elaborated by Matthias Middell and Katja Naumann.¹¹ They define portals of globalization as sites of intense transnational connectivity “whereinstitutions and practices for dealing with globalconnected- ness have been developed.”¹² In this vein, Iwill discuss which institutions emergedtofacilitate the support of liberation movements and manage associat- ed mobilities. Through its

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