Reflections on the Annals of Neocolonialism A Record of Post-Colonialism in and the Challenges Ahead.

Keynote Address to the, International and Multi-Disciplinary Colloquium on “Independence and Future Prospects in Sub-Sahara Africa.” 1st – 5th August 2010. Yamoussoukro, Cote d‟Ivoire

Kwesi Kwaa Prah, Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) Cape Town

Introduction A half-century of post-colonialism is a good point in time to take stock. The era was ushered in with hubristic euphoria, vaulting ambitions and great expectations. Many of us believed too easily that with a little bit of effort, Africans were going to confidently develop and eminently prosper. Noticeably, each state that has emerged in the independence era has been accompanied in the initial years with the same type of ethos of rising expectations. In each country, we have believed almost without fail that we will succeed where others have failed; that our specific case is unique; we will therefore triumph where others have floundered. A decade or a little more, down the road, our increasing failures teach us otherwise. Indeed, the visible and shabby record of a half- century of post-colonialism has largely proven that we have been excessively optimistic. Our opening assumptions were unfounded; we had therefore grossly misread and misinterpreted our realities. With the benefit of hindsight we can say that, it was optimism without sagacity; a putative surge forward without a plausible or well- considered game plan.

Today, about a third of people in Sub-Saharan Africa survive on less than one dollar per day. A third of the African population – suffer from malnutrition. During the 1990s, the average income per capita decreased in 20 African countries. Less than 50% of Africa‟s population have access to hospitals or doctors and even when and where they have, they cannot afford the cost of medicines. Over half of Africans do not have access to safe drinking water. The average life expectancy in Africa is 41 years. Only 57% of African children are enrolled in primary education, and only one of three children complete school. One in six African children dies before the age of 5. This figure for sub-Saharan Africa is 25 times higher than in the OECD countries. Children account for half of all civilian casualties in wars in Africa. It is estimated that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has killed more than 20 million people. Of this number over 3 million were children. More than 25 million adults are currently infected. This in turn will result in the steady increase in the number of orphaned children. Each year, malaria kills more than a million people worldwide; 90 percent of them in Africa; 70 percent children under the age of five. The 1

African continent lost more than 5,3 million hectares of forest during the decade of the 1990s. This relentless denudation of our forests continues. Less than one person out of five has electricity. For every 1.000 inhabitants only 15 have a telephone line, and only 8 persons out of 1.000 people have access to the Internet. These indicators are chilling and benumbing.

Admittedly, some progress has been made in a number of areas of African life and society. In education and infrastructure some headway, often limited and patchy, have been effectuated. We definitely have more roads than we have ever had and the numbers that have passed through formal education are in many instances remarkable. However, in this latter case one may want to question the relevance of the education that we receive. Increasingly many want to argue that it is more mis-education than education; education which in effect alienates us rather than empowers us; education which imprisons rather than liberates our creativity as Africans; education which does not build on who we are and what we have, our languages, indigenous knowledge, values and memory. In both form and content, the educational systems we operate do not help us to be able to strategically deal with the problems we face as Africans. In dimensions of social life like health, sanitation, housing and economic growth, the record is in most cases unimpressive.

In addition to these problem areas, we have also seen interminable crises especially in politics and social organization. Corruption and endemic kleptocracy have swept through Africa like uncontrollable malignant forms. We can say without fear for controversy that in most African countries, bribery, corrupting relations, looting of the public exchequer, have informally acquired the institutional status of normality. Such practices run through the whole edifice of the social system, from the rich to the poor classes, but led from the front by the acknowledged leaders of our countries. Leaders (and their families) like dos Santos of Angola, Moi of Kenya, Masire of Botswana, Bongo of Gabon, Mobutu of Zaire, Chiluba of Zambia, Rawlings of Ghana, Babangida and Abacha of Nigeria, Taylor of Liberia (indeed the list is extensive) reputedly became inordinately rich while in power; in some cases they became the richest Africans in their countries. Some of their wives in turn became the richest women. Sometimes the ill-gotten wealth spreads into their extended families; The Kenyatta family in Kenya; the Moi family in Kenya; the Museveni family in Uganda; Mugabe‟s family and close kinsmen and women provide example of such instances. These realities are not lost on the general populace. It affects the moral fibre of the whole society. If it is okay for leaders to pilfer in tranquillity why should lesser social elements be more upright, they ask?

The greater societal ideals of the 20th and 21st centuries continue to elude us. The principles of democratic practice adapted to our realities are not meaningfully catching on. Societal prerequisites for democracy like tolerance, free speech, free association, free press, transparency and accountability, religious freedom and secularism, , gender equality e.t.c. have not been able to take firm roots in our states. They are

2 rhetorically adhered to but readily transgressed and contravened with contempt whenever it suits the powers that be to disavow these tenets. Kofi Annan somewhere says to good effect that; “one cannot pick and choose among human rights, ignoring some while insisting on others. Only as rights equally applied can they be rights universally accepted. Nor can they be applied selectively or relatively, or as a weapon with which to punish others. Their purity is their eternal strength…” We can make progress only if we substantiate and uphold the culture of respect for human rights.

A structural feature which inhibits good and effective governance in Africa is the idea which was built right from the start into the make-up of the postcolonial state; that so- called “national unity” required that all differences of a cultural, linguistic, localist or regional character needed to be discouraged, obstructed and if necessary dissuaded through forceful intervention. African regimes have therefore easily trampled on ethnic, regional, localist sentiments and expression. These latter are in fact part of the African historical and social heritage and are positive or negative depending on how we treat them or what use we make of them. They should be a source of strength. The celebration and acknowledgement of diversity can be a societally enriching factor in Africa, but this depends on how we provide democratic expression to these historical and cultural belongings. A key element in this approach should be decentralization and local control over issues which primarily affect people in their own localities. This indeed, strengthens democracy and allows it to adapt to local institutional usages.

The decade running roughly between 1960 and 1970 saw the proliferation of coups and military rule.1 These coups were sudden seizures of state power resulting from rivalries by sections of the elites dominated by the military in direct concert with the bureaucratic elites. Putschists in their political rhetoric use populist moralism to justify their actions, but the real reasons are their contestations over resources. Poor governance practices, authoritarianism, state-sponsored violence, intolerance of political pluralism, corruption, the suppression of opposition and the lack of a free press have also been convenient and frequently used justifications for the military to seize power. In practice, as incumbent ruling groups, they prove to be no better than their predecessors; civilian or military. Africa has in the past half-century seen more military administrations than any other part of the world.2 However, in recent years pressures and sanctions by the metropolitan

1 Congo-Kinshasa, 1960. Togo, January 1963. Congo-Brazzaville, August 1963. Dahomey, December 1963. Gabon, February 1964. Algeria, June 1965.Dahomey; December 1965. Burundi, October 1965.Central Africa , January 1966. Upper Volta, January 1966. Nigeria, January 1966. Ghana, February 1966. Nigeria, July 1966. Burundi, November 1966. Sierra Leone, March 1967. Algeria, December 1967. Sierra Leone, April 1968. Mali, November 1968. Sudan, May 1969. Libya, September 1969, Somalia, October 1969. 2 Algeria (1965-1978; 1992-1994); Benin (1963-1964; 1965-1968; 1969-1970; 1972-1975); Burkina Faso (1966- 1977; 1980-1991); Burundi (1966-1993; 1996-2003); Central African Republic (1966-1979; 1981-1991; 2003- 2005); Chad (1975-1979; 1982-1993); Comoros (1975-1976; 1978; 1999-2002); Democratic Republic of the Congo (1965-1990); Republic of the Congo (1968-1979); Cote d’Ivoire (1999-2000); Egypt (1952-1970); Equatorial (1979-1987); Ethiopia (1974-1987); The Gambia (1994-1996); Ghana (1966-1969; 1972-1979; 1981-1993); Guinea (1984-1991; 2008-); Guinea Bissau (1980-1984; 2003); Lesotho (1986-1993); Liberia (1980-1984); Libya (1969-present); Madagascar (1972-1989); Mali (1968-1991); Mauritania (1978-1992; 2005-2007; 2008-2009); Niger (1974-1989; 1996-1999; 2010-present); Nigeria (1966-1979; 1983-1989; 1993-1998); (1973- 3 powers and the OAU/AU have tended to discourage such options in the interplay of intra-elite rivalries. In 1999, a resolution of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), adopted during the Algiers summit called for the isolation of military governments in Africa.

Many military rulers change their military fatigues for civvies in order to compete in dubious presidential elections, which they invariably win. Rawlings, Bongo, the senior Eyadema, Taylor, Bashir, Numeri, Bokassa, Mobutu, Nguesso, Obasanjo and others, all went this route. This transformation from military to civilian rule by erstwhile military is supposed to give them respectability and legitimacy.

Our records speak volumes about the superciliousness of our rulers and the inhuman excesses to which they subject the populace with little or no compunction. We have seen barbarities wreaked on hapless citizens by regimes as varied as Bokassa, Amin, Nguema, Taylor and Mobutu (to mention some of the most cruel). If these have possibly been the worst cases, they are certainly not exceptional. Most countries on this continent have seen, at different historical periods in the post-independence era, varying instances and degrees of gross human rights violations perpetrated on citizens. When due process and redress is sought, the law does not always take its course. When it does it is often twisted to deliver in favour of the powers that be. There have been very few if any exceptions to this record. Some times non-state actors and ethnic-militia have taken the stage to commit equally fiendish atrocities on the populace.

In many other countries and regions incipient warlordism has taken roots. Possibly the most notorious among African warlords have been Foday Sankoh of the erstwhile Revolutionary United Front - Sierra Leone; Joseph Kony of the Lord‟s Resistance Army in central Africa; Germain Katanga, Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, Bosco Ntaganda, Laurent Nkunda- all Congolese warlords; and the clan-based warlords of Somalia. They terrorize town and countryside. Child soldiers are common in these warlord forces and ethnic- militias. The most devastated and warlord-infested countries today are the Congo-DRC and Somalia. In those areas where war and carnage usurp law and order, rape, torture, and flagrant abuse become the order of the day.

Looking at the evidence of the collective Africa record, we can say that, the post-colonial state has in all sub-Saharan African countries proved to be structurally inadequate to meet the challenges of our times. As Africans, we are hardly making developmental headway. Arbitrary rule, tin-pot dictatorship, corruption and mis-management have marked our journey of fifty years. The quality of life of the average African is hardly improving. There are indeed some of the older generation who in desperation insist today that, life was easier in the colonial period.

1991); Sierra Leone (1967-1968; 1992-1996; 1997-1998); Somalia (1969-1991; local militia rule since 1991); Sudan (1958-1964; 1969-1986; 1989-2000); Togo (1967-1991); Uganda (1971-1979; 1980; 1985-1986)

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The Roots of Neocolonialism The first and most prominent structure inhibiting African advance is neocolonialism. It comes in various forms; with differing faces and in varying guises. Its summary effect is that it saps the true potential of African society and keeps us from seeing the wood from the trees. It means an indirect form of control through economic and cultural dependence. It describes the continued control of former colonies through ruling indigenous elites willing to acquiesce to the bidding of neocolonial powers. The populations of neo-colonial states are effectively exploited for their labour and resources in order to feed the universal consumer desires for finished physical or cultural commodities made in the metropolitan areas of the world.

Indeed, the term, neocolonialism, is used here as a synonym for contemporary forms of imperialism as experienced and manifested in the former colonial world. Implicit in its meaning is the understanding that colonialism should be seen as something more than the formal occupation and control of territories by a Western metropole. Hence, while formal methods of control like the implementation of administrative structures may be today absent, the stationing of military forces is common.

Very early in the independence era observers like Frantz Fanon (Peau Noire, Masques Blancs, 1952. engl. Black Skin, White Masks. 1967) and Rene Dumont (L’Afrique noire est mal partie, 1962, engl. False start in Africa, 1966) diagnosed the inherent crisis of African independence; its weaknesses and pitfalls. For the period, Nkrumah (Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism.1965) produced the most lucid account of the phenomenon of neocolonialism. Historically updating J. A. Hobson (Imperialism; A Study. 1902) and Lenin (Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. 1916), he explained that neo-colonialism was the last stage of imperialism; neo-colonialism was the condition in which countries which are ostensibly independent are covertly or overtly prevailed upon through mainly political and economic pressure, but also sometimes military means, to follow the dictates of the imperial power or powers. These ideas of Nkrumah emerged in the final period of his rule. The year after the publication of his book he was overthrown and went into exile in Guinea .

Few paid serious attention to these expositions which were viewed by many as vapid pessimism and spurious prophecies of doom. A few years down the road, an interesting observation was made by Leonard Barnes in his book Africa in Eclipse (1971), in which he wrote that; “In the course of the 1960-70 decade, the too facile hypothesis that the Third World can be stood on its feet by a draught of internal political autonomy mixed with external economic aid, has been cogently falsified. Equally so has been the notion that African personnel can be treated as mere spare parts for the old colonial engine. In fact, all that occurs then is that one set of exploiters is substituted for another, while the engine either breaks down, or continues to run to the old tune of for the purposes. All the energy and talent of the new Africans go into aping the performance of their

5

European predecessors. Indeed, it frequently happens that behind the new African office chair stands the European predecessor himself, now disguised as an „adviser‟.”3

The euphemism “spare parts” to describe the role and function of African post-colonial elites is apposite. Historically, African elites have been very much products and creatures of the metropolitan colonial powers. In education and bildung they are in the first instance “spare parts” earmarked for the maintenance and running of the inherited colonial states. These former colonial states were not states brought into being, with the intention of service for African interests. It is the European powers who designed and created these states. Africans had little or no hand in their design. In economic, political and social terms they had been constructed for an extended lease on life for the colonial project under different nomenclature.

The elites the colonial authorities spawned were for the same purpose. It is in this context that their education both in structure and content; their tastes, norms and values as elites have to be understood. They have represented classes which were forged as vague replicas of their colonial masters, but with black faces constantly beholden to the metropolitan cultures; and at the same time with lingering and half-despised languages and cultures of their own. In the years that have followed the colonial era, they have been generationally reproduced and served as uncanny and faithful representatives of the neocolonial order. Independence in Africa has not terminated the fundamental character of imperialist domination; it has only changed the agency from colonial controllers to local ones.

The service of the elites as cogs in the imperial machine is frequently not a self-conscious process. The elites invariably believe they are free and independent agents serving their countries in the best possible way. The fact that, they are culturally programmed and trapped in the web of the imperial scheme is not a realization which comes easily to them. Furthermore, pertinently their material interests in the existing scheme of things, often blinds them to the fact that they serve more imperial interests, than the interests of the broader and poorer masses of their populations. These elites are partners in the rape of labour and resources in African countries.

In a newspaper report which appeared in the Cape Argus (South Africa) of Thursday, 15th July 2010, (P.12), the Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that on the 14th July in Paris, “Troops from 13 African nations marched in Paris, marking half a century of independence from France … The colourful display on the Champs Elysées yesterday came as rights groups accused some African leaders and armies of war crimes and of perceived shady ties between France and some of its former colonies. … Twelve African heads of state were guests of honour …. Protesters denounced „Francafrique‟ – the term for a perceived tradition of shady official and business ties between France and its

3 Leonard Barnes. Africa in Eclipse. Victor Gollancz Ltd. London. 1971. P.22 6 former colonies, which gained independence in 1960.”4 It is remarkable that of all the colonial powers which Africans have seen, the French have been the most hard-nosed about the protection and consolidation of their interests. In an array of African countries they have maintained numerous so-called advisors and military garrisons which have the capacity to intervene both politically and militarily in the affairs of African states. In countries as diverse as Senegal, Ivory Coast, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, Djibouti, Gabon, Congo Brazzaville and Togo, the French continue to maintain decisive military presence on African soil.

Over the past few decades the old colonial powers have seen new rivals for the acquisition of Africa‟s labour and mineral resources. Since the 1950s, British, French, Belgian and Portuguese interests have faced competition from the US. Starting from the 1960s, the United States has increased its influence on the continent mainly to consolidate access to oil and other strategic minerals like cobalt, columbite-tantalite (coltan) and uranium. It is, arguably, in the oil industry that such competition is most acutely reflected.

Early this century, the US upgraded its security interests in Africa. The United States has created the United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM or AFRICOM) responsible for U.S. military operations and military relations with 53 African states. AFRICOM was officially authorized in February 6, 2007, established October 1, 2007 and actuated on October 1, 2008. In an address to the International Peace Operations Association in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 27, General Kip Ward, Commander of AFRICOM formulated the command‟s mission as, “in concert with other US government agencies and international partners, (to conduct) sustained security engagements through military- to-military programmes, military-sponsored activities, and other military operations as directed to promote a stable and secure African environment in support of US foreign policy.”5 Since 2001 the US military has an advance base at Cyangugu in Rwanda. This base has been built by Halliburton, near the border to Congo‟s mineral-rich Kivu region.

In more recent times, the Chinese have become major players in the game of access to and exploitation of Africa‟s mineral resources. William Engdahl writes that; “In fact, as various Washington sources state openly, AFRICOM was created to counter the growing presence of China in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, to secure long-term economic agreements for raw materials from Africa in exchange for Chinese aid and production sharing agreements and royalties. By informed accounts, the Chinese have been far shrewder. Instead of offering only savage IMF-dictated austerity and economic chaos, China is offering large credits, soft loans to build roads and schools in order to create good will. Dr. J. Peter Pham, a leading Washington insider who is an advisor of the US State and Defense Departments, states openly that among the aims of

4 AFP. African Troops „under fire‟ in Paris. Cape Argus. 15 July 2010. P.12 5See, F. William Engdahl. China and the Congo Wars: AFRICOM. America's New Military Command. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11173 7 the new AFRICOM, is the objective of ‘protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance ... a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.’ ”6 The message could not be clearer. Elsewhere, I have had occasion to point out that; “Indeed, while China pursues considerations of purely short-term economic gains in African countries like the Sudan, it could seriously jeopardize its long-term interests in Africa if it displays injudiciousness with respect to African long-term interests in the Sudan, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. This point cannot be over-emphasized.”7

Neocolonialism and Culture Neocolonialism also comes in degrees. Not all neo-colonial states are to the same extent vested with the conditions of clientship. Economic privilege in the form of mineral resource wealth as is found in the cases of countries like Venezuela or Iran provides such countries with independent voices which other less resource-endowed countries labouring under the impact of imperialism do not have. They are therefore able to politically articulate populist positions which have a loud anti-imperialist ring. However, such rhetoric often excludes in practice the sort and type of measures which eventually can effectively nullify imperial power and influence. But it is at the level of culture that neo-colonialism is most invidious. In the cultural fields of media and entertainment we are swamped by materials from the West. Many African parents complain about the effects of this cultural flood on children and the youth.

Useful attention has been drawn to the fact that a good measure of the reality of neo- colonialism can be understood in terms of the culturally vulnerable openness which is associated with the absence of societally well-rooted, indigenous written traditions that can hold their own against the written cultures and societies of the global order. There are important differences to be noted between different socio-cultural regions of the Third World, not simply in terms of their relationship with the metropolitan societies of the world but in terms of their own indigenous, socio-cultural organization; in terms of communications as well as the economy. While the major societies of the Asian continent have historically been strongly affected by the expansion of European imperialism, they have been much less “colonies” in the same sense that preliterate African, American and Oceanic societies were; nor are they today as definitively neo- colonial from the cultural standpoint. Their written traditions have provided them with more ballast for cultural resistance and resilience than has been the case with most oral cultures.8

6 Ibid. 7 K.K. Prah. (ed). Afro-Chinese Relations: Past, Present and Future. CASAS Book Series. Cape Town. No.45. 2007. P.4. 8 Jack Goody. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. CUP. Cambridge. 1986. (1989 edition). p.86. 8

Without doubt it is at the level of culture that the most suffocating effect of neo- colonialism is felt and registered. From the importation of mineral water, French wines and baguettes into the supermarkets of Abidjan, Cotonou, Lome and Libreville to officially working in languages understood and spoken to good effect only by a small single-digit percentage of the population, African states in the Francophonie, within the deadening embrace of France, serve as bridgeheads for the French imperial enterprise in our times. Education in colonial languages and the steady erosion of African languages by default does not lead to the effective empowerment of the people. Rather it entrenches minority cultural hegemony made up of French overseas imperial interests and local African neo-colonial elites. What France achieves with the French Community or Francophonie, Britain does the same, or near the same, but less blatantly, with the British Commonwealth.

As early as 1952, Fanon in his, Peau Noire, Masques Blancs had laid bare the psycho- pathology of the colonized. He explained the psychology of dependency and inadequacy that colonized people experience in a White world. He discussed the divided self- perception of the colonized who through the alienating effects of colonialism has lost his or her native cultural originality and genius, and embraced the culture of the colonizer. Colonialism in effect, creates an inferiority complex in the colonized. As psychological compensation, the latter tries to imitate the cultural framework of the colonizer and the outer manifestations of the culture of the colonizer. The psycho-pathology of this process affects the educated more visibly than the uneducated. I would argue that it is the educated elites who in their behaviour legitimize the copy-cat phenomenon of dependence in the eyes of the masses. In Africa today many of us still say “continental food” when we mean European cuisine. Many try to speak French, English or Portuguese like our former masters. In Ghanaian linguistic coinage, the term “LAFA” means “locally acquired foreign accent.” The term was used to refer even to ex-president Rawlings‟ accent. Thus neocolonial alienation comes with self-deprecation and self- hatred. The neocolonial creature despises himself/herself and his or her colour. This is why skin-lightening and hair-straightening persist in contemporary Africa and many countries of the Third World.

In all African countries, to different degrees the neocolonial heritage distinctly displays in other social practices of government and people. Some of our countries show the plumage more prominently than others. A classic case of this is Gabon. Gabon‟s enormous oil wealth succeeded in attracting the coveted embrace of Elf Aquitaine, the French giant oil company. A visit to Libreville reveals that straddling the entrance to the sumptuous beach-estate where President‟s Bongo family own prime property is a French garrison. They literally guard the estate and beyond. The French military presence in the country is far stronger than the Gabonese armed forces. Who ultimately is in-charge can never be in doubt. In an age in which human rights and democracy have become universal watch-words, imperial powers have consistently tolerated dictatorial regimes in the Third World so long as such dictatorships serve them well.

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Nationalism and Pan-Africanism Africans today are divided into a patchwork of politically and economically diminutive states. The nationalism which opened their arrival on to the world stage was strangled at birth and shredded into smithereens. The point is that early African nationalism, was generically Pan-African, and accepted implicitly or explicitly sociological terms of reference, which defied and transcended the later borders of African states. Thus, for example, before the existence of the Ivory Coast, Mali or Burkina, the nationalism expressed in these areas, which later became these countries, was projected on a larger geographical or ethnic canvass.

We want to recall that the National Congress of West Africa inaugurated in the 1920s in political mandate covered the whole of British colonial West Africa. The African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa in its early years drew support and acolytes from different parts of Eastern and Southern Africa. A figure like Joshua Nkomo of Zimbabwe learnt his politics as a member of the ANC. The Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) founded in Bamako in 1946 and for a time led by Houphouet Boigny was an organization with membership throughout French-speaking Africa from West to Central Africa.9 It included sections from the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal, the French Sudan, Chad, Burkina, Cameroon, Niger, Gabon, and the French Congo. Its leaders became prominent either as Heads of State or very senior politicians. They included Felix Houphouet-Boigny (Cote d‟Ivoire), Justing Ahomadegbe-Tometin and Sourou-Migan Apithy (Benin), Modibo Keita (Mali), Gabriel Lisette (Chad), Leon M‟ba (Gabon), Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea), Maurice Yameogo (Burkina Faso) and Fulbert Youlou (Moyen-Congo).

The fragmentation of the nationalist argument and the tailoring of its language to suit the realities of the late colonial state were a direct response to the balkanization of Africa on the eve of the independence era. Africa in 1970 was more chopped up into bits and pieces than it was in the late 19th century, in the wake of “the scramble for Africa”. It is remarkable to note that, in 1958 was a monolithic colonial territory of 45 million people. Cameron described it as a; “ …… huge and once apparently immutable stretch of territory that enshrined the French mystique of overseas rule from the Sahara to the Atlantic. Nowhere except perhaps the Belgian Congo had seemed so permanently established in independence, so thoroughly sewn into the elastic straitjacket of French colonial policy. ….. It was eight times bigger than France herself; within a year this vast area had fragmented and Balkanized itself into twelve separate , autonomous, yet all, with one spectacular exception, Guinea, owing allegiance to the

9 Wikipedia notes that; Initially a Pan-Africanist movement, the RDA ceased to function as a Pan-African party as Houphouët-Boigny turned hostile towards the idea of African federalism. Splinter groups of the RDA remain active in the politics of Guinea, Cote Ivoire, Chad, Niger, Senegal, and Burkina Faso. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Democratic_Rally 10

Gaullist abstraction created for the new age: the „French Community‟, Commonwealth of the Fifth Republic.”10

This latter new entity was the French answer to the British Commonwealth. Both the French Community and the British Commonwealth were, in important senses, attempts to salvage what could be rescued, with the cooperation of the newly ascendant elites, from the remains of the old colonial empires, and maintain spheres of influence in neocolonial contexts. Nationalist concerns had by the 1960s and 1970s been reduced to parochial interests and limited étatiste preoccupations. The larger and wider, earlier, African frames of reference were geographically and politically scaled down. The core issues however remained, till today, the same. Africans wanted freedom, greater emancipation, better quality of life and just democratic governance; they still do. The authorities in all the post-colonial states, openly or quietly, swore and continue to swear allegiance to these ideals. The practice, as we have known it over the past 50 years, has been on the whole, a dismal failure.

Africans were effectively not only, or simply, geographically chopped up. Even more importantly, the further balkanisation of Africa on the eve of independence created more inhibiting conditions for the development of an African national consciousness rooted in Africa‟s deep history, cultural affinities, common modern experience and a chance to build on this heritage. The gross artificiality and conceptual arbitrariness of the post- colonial state created new Africans without histories, truncated cultures, and pure creatures of the imagination and interests of the Western powers. The retreating colonial powers left these historically bereft entities in the hands of carefully groomed elites, faithful and responsive to “his master‟s voice” beliefs and tastes. These entities were politically announced and baptized as “nation-states” or “nations in the making,” ostensibly en route to “nation-building.” Academics started writing history books which attempted to legitimize the neo-colonial states. In one country after the other we created instant histories; a history of Zambia, a history of Kenya, a history of Ghana, a history of Nigeria, a history of the Ivory Coast, a history of Mali, etc. These were all countries which hardly existed in their present forms until the onset of the independence era. So on we went creating and putting together ersatz histories for the European-crafted states we had inherited. These artificial states are treated today as if they have been with us from “Adam” and we want to believe that they consist in each case of people with distinct psychologies from their neighbours. We make a cult of Ghanaianess, Ivoirité, Nigerianess, etc. Such neocolonial consciousness is constructed at the expense of our common Africaness; in other words, it is we the elites who produce justifications for neo-colonial consciousness.

Cheikh Anta Diop spelt out the logic and benefits of African unity; Nkrumah exhorted Africans that “Africa Must Unite”; and Gabriel d‟Arboussier prophesied that: “We see French Africa surmounting both colonialism and its own petty loyalties of tribalism …

10 James Cameron. The African Revolution. Thames and Hudson. London. 1961. P.102. 11

Within ten years we may have come together to form a great new federal state, bilingual in French and English; not a unitary state, but a federation of Federations – a loosely organised but progressive association of fifty or sixty million African people.”11 Cameron rightly identified such expression as visionary language and imagery. He added that it was however a vision which was shared by many Africans who felt that “in a continent dedicated wholly to unrestrained nationalism the multitude of smaller nation-states stood small chance of independent progress”12 It was a sentiment which was clearly rampant during that period and was shared by others like Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, Azikiwe, Kenyatta, Nkrumah and Sobukwe amongst others. Sobukwe‟s words of the 21st March 1960 at Orlando Police Station (Johannesburg, South Africa) underscored this sentiment: “Sons and Daughters of Africa, we are standing on the threshold of an historic era. We are blazing a new trail and we invite you to be, with us, creators of history. Join us in the march to freedom. March with us to independence. To independence now. Tomorrow the United States of Africa. IZWE LETHU!” 13

Interestingly, in agreement with leaders like Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, Azikiwe, Nyerere, Kenyatta and Nkrumah; Fenner Brockway (the long time British member of parliament (MP) for Eton and Slough, who was dubbed, tongue in cheek in the British parliament, “the MP for Africa”), suggested that: “The United States of Africa will be a United Socialist States of Africa. It may be the end of this century before it is achieved, but no survey of the continent can lead to any other conclusion than that the creative forces of Africa are now fashioning both unity and socialism.”14 This has not happened.

In the arena of African politics, the idea of socialism in Africa has for most of the post- colonial period been a populist formulation. African governments and different leaders like Kenyatta, Nkrumah, Toure, Nyerere, Kaunda, Obote and Keita have all variously articulated positions, which they described as socialist. In some cases, for differing periods in the early post-colonial era, governments in Tanzania, Mali, Ethiopia, Guinea, and Ghana, have laid claims to socialism and socialist programmes of development. Much was not achieved. Socialism in Africa as theory and practice has been more about hopes and ideals than practical everyday solutions to our societal challenges.

The anti-colonial wars were mainly fought in the settler-colonial areas. Leading groups of the liberation movements were philosophically socialist-leaning. Another feature of the struggles for African independence is that; in places like Angola and Mozambique, where wars of liberation have been fought, because of fragmentations and divisions in the African nationalist front and the inability to create viable and enduring united fronts, the anti-colonial wars easily tipped into civil wars as independence was reached. In those

11 Ibid. Pp. 106 – 107. 12 Ibid. P. 107 13 See, Elias L. Ntloedibe. Here is a Tree. Political Biography of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe. Century-Turn Publishers. Mogoditshane/Botswana. 1995. P.74. 14 Fenner Brockway. African Socialism. The Bodley Head. London. 1963. P.124.

12 cases where no liberation wars were fought, such divisions and rivalries in the post- independence situation played out politically as government and opposition dynamics.

The Way Forward The challenges ahead are myriad. Leading them is the need to dismantle neo-colonialism. Without its demise it is impossible to see serious progress in Africa comparable to what we have seen in the West or contemporary Asia. As a process, its demise is at the same time the same process of constructing the unity of Africans and the serious development of African society. Attention in the first instance would need to be directed against the representations on the ground in Africa of the neocolonial arrangement. In other words, it is the values, institutions, orientation and interests of the elites who maintain structural neo-colonialism which need to be confronted and negated.

Two types of routes lie ahead. One is revolutionary and the other evolutionary. Potentially both routes can lead to the same object of dismantling neo-colonialism. The former would require an approach, which in the shortest possible time, through radical organization and processes, replace the elites‟ neo-colonial interests with the overriding interests of mass society. Regrettably, this route is in human terms costly and painful. The other route leading to the same objective would require also mass mobilization but measured and programmed by degrees in a systematic fashion to empower the broader sections of the population piece-meal. Either way these approaches should lead to a rearrangement of African relations with the imperial world and at the same time involve the diminution of the influence of the neo-colonial elites. Whether the transformation is revolutionary or evolution will depend on the ability of political institutions (internal and external) and processes to remain open for popular demands to effect change. Either way, democratic principles and practices would need to be adhered to.

There is the question of how imperialism would view any attempt to diminish its influence in the face of African nationalist resurgence. One would surmise from the records of Asia that imperialist interests are bound to come in aid and support of their local African allies. Such support could eventually be military. The advantage of a piece- meal evolutionary approach is that it cuts out the element of painful blood-letting. But it requires strategic and tactical planning of great finesse by the leadership of such movements.

If 50 years of post-colonialism for 50 plus states show little or near nothing progressive by our societies then obviously we should be able to face the fact that there is need for a revisit to the drawing board. We would suggest that unity of African people is central to African progress. This unity is the one and only condition which will guarantee Africans a serious place in the world of tomorrow. The late Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania, had this to say in 1997: “This is my plea to the new generation of African leaders and African peoples: work for unity with firm conviction that without unity there is no future for Africa. That is, of course, if we still want to have a place under the sun. I

13 reject the glorification of the nation-state, which we have inherited from colonialism, and the artificial nations we are trying to forge from that inheritance. We are all Africans trying very hard to be Ghanaians or Tanzanians. … Fortunately for Africa we have not been completely successful .... Unity will not make us rich, but it can make it difficult for Africa and the African peoples to be disregarded and humiliated. And it will therefore increase the effectiveness of the decisions we make and try to implement for our development. My generation led Africa to political freedom. The current generation of leaders and peoples of Africa must pick up the flickering torch of African freedom, refuel it with their enthusiasm and determination, and carry it forward.” Few people could have made the point better. Nyerere was reflecting the deepest African nationalist sentiments of our times. The African conscience has remained faithful to the ideal. But it comes with different formulations with respect to the steps towards unity and the forms this unity should take. At the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 (the predecessor of today‟`s ), the problem of what form this unity should take generated much debate. We ended up with an organisation with little real unity among Africans -- a regional body with limited intentions and more vision than practice.

There are in contemporary currency, two main formulas for the realization of African unity. There is what I describe as the continentalist argument. This view starts with the geographical unity of Africa as the basis of the project. Such approaches do not contend with the fact that the Arab north of the continent has another aspiration, sometimes described as “the unity of the Arab nation.” The other formula, which is historically and culturally more meaningful, views the task not primarily as the unity of a continent, but rather as the unity of African people. If Africans unite, most of the continent will unite, but we must democratically coexist with the various minorities who live with us as citizens.15

In all likelihood the South Sudan will vote itself out of the Sudan in the Referendum early next year (2011). This is bound to create a new political reality in Africa which has not been seen since the onset of the independence era. It will bring into sharp relief the historical contradiction between the Arab and African worlds. The two worlds need to survive and thrive in the future, but some way may be needed to facilitate the two worlds going their separate ways without rancour or conflict. Similar situations may arise elsewhere in the Afro-Arab borderlands and arguably this area may some time become a flashpoint for tension and conflict on the African continent. Arabization, which has gone on for centuries, in the Afro-Arab borderlands continues to erode African cultural identities; changing Africans into Arabs. Increasingly, many Africans are saying today that, this is not acceptable and resistance to Arabization is growing.

Just as they have accepted Christianity, Africans will in all probability continue to accept Islam. What is needed however is the ability to thoroughly Africanize these foreign cultural imports. We must not treat our own traditions of religion and ritual as inferior,

15 See, K. K. Prah. Counterpoint. The Mail and Guardian (South Africa) July 3rd, 2007. 14 pagan or heathen. At least, we must place our own on par with the imported religious traditions and let people freely choose what they want. Ultimately, the choice of religious confession is a universally acknowledged human right, but it should also be treated as a private affair. Secularism also remains an ideal of our times.

Africans who desire change in the directions outlined above would need to mobilize their actions and resources to influence political, cultural and social processes in their countries. We must lobby African political parties to include these items on their agendas or create organizations to champion these goals. There has to be some collective African agreement on the objectives of the processes of transformation that we seek. But as I have elsewhere explained, recognizing the existence and realities of these neo-colonial states and opening them up to people-to-people relations across borders is a way of approaching the objectives in as painless a way as possible.16 We can, around common political programmes, agree to move forward in our current states towards unity in a very practical and systematic fashion, but in order to do this we must ground the process in the cultures and histories of the African people. Our sense of collective being or African national consciousness needs to be sharpened and heightened; not in opposition to any other group in the world, but in support of our enlightened self-interest. We were historically and culturally African long before we became Gambian, Angolan, Kenyan, Ethiopian or Batswana. We were Yoruba, Zulu or Dinka before we became, Nigerian, South African or Sudanese. It is important to get this hierarchy right.

Apart from the benefits of people-to-people relations, unity is also the way to deal with the problem of xenophobia which from time to time besets African societies. An umbrella structure which puts all Africans together will limit and drastically reduce narrowly focussed and targeted rivalries and envies which play out as xenophobia. African leaders need to be candid and forthright about the unacceptability of xenophobia. In 2001, as part of the present author‟s contribution to a CASAS symposium at the NGO Forum, United Nations Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Tolerance (29 – 31 August 2001, Durban, South Africa) the argument was made that: “There are, however, conditions and circumstances in which mass society is whipped up into a frenzy of anti-foreigner feeling. This largely happens through the prompting and agency of members of the elite, particularly the political elite. In Africa, invariably when ethnic feeling is on the rise, one can often trace the hands of politicians in the matter. Ethnic feeling is mobilized by dominant and contending interests in the society to support their own designs for power and access to scarce or diminishing resources. One of the most disconcerting developments in post-colonial Africa has been the opportunistic social construction of identities based on the post-colonial state. Suddenly with the arrival of independence new identities maintained with rigidity, pompous declarations and myth-making have been constructed by the ruling elites in the name of „nation-building‟ and „national unity‟.

16 See. K. K. Prah. The African Nation; The State of the Nation. CASAS Book Series, No. 44. Cape Town. 2006. 15

Some of such myth-making becomes fuel for driving xenophobic feelings in the populace …”17

Since language is the main pillar of culture we must understand that progress is impossible without the unfettered use of our languages. I would venture to say that the moment we start using our languages as intellectualized languages our collective memory and cultural self confidence will return. Without the return of these latter progress for Africans is inconceivable. Our main contemporary instrument for pushing an agenda for Africanism, democracy and development, should be a cultural movement. The earlier we get on with it in all seriousness, the better for all.

17 Kwesi Kwaa Prah. Recollections and Reflections of a Foreign Native. Xenophobia amongst Africans. In, Kwesi Kwaa Prah (ed). Racism in the Global African Experience. CASAS Book Series No. 23. Cape Town. 2006. Pp.39 - 40 16