1

FROM

COLONIALISM

TO

INDEPENDENCE

2

3

FROM

COLONIALISM TO

INDEPENDENCE

A Reappraisal of Colonial Policies &

African Reactions. 1870-1960

SEMAKULA KIWANUKA B.A. (HONS) PH. D. (LONDON)

KENYA LITERATURE BUREAU

4

KENYA LITERATURE BUREAU P.O. Box 30022. Nairobi M. S. M. Kiwanuka First published 1973 Reprinted 1982 KLB (CPS)-975-3m-4.82

5

To the memory of my father Samuel Mukiibi

6

7

CONTENTS Preface (ix)

THE ORIGINS OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM AND THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA, 1870-1900 1

The Changing European Moods 2

THE MECHANICS OF THE SCRAMBLE FOR AND THE PARTITION OF AFRICA 15

Treaty-making and the Scramble for Africa 17

The Chartered Companies 18

The Imposition of Colonial Rule, its Nature and the Extent of European Violence 1880-1914 20

THE AFTERMATH OF THE IMPOSITION OF COLONIAL RULE: A STUDY OF AFRICAN SURVIVALS (RESISTERS, COLLABORATORS AND T14E NEW CHIEFS) 31

Colonial Policies and Administration 37

Labour Policies 37

Land Policies and the Violence of Expropriation 41

THE LABOUR SITUATION IN EAST AFRICA 49

EDUCATION POLICIES 53

Political Leadership and University Education: A false: connection 68

INDIRECT AND DIRECT RULE: THE MYTHS OF THE CONTRASTS 76

Representative Government: Propaganda or Reality? 81

8

Preparation for Independence 84

An Anglo-American Interpretation of African Colonial History 88

The Crucial Decade (1950-1960) and the Disintegration of European Colonialism 93

Anti- imperialism in Europe 94

The Aftermath of World War 11 97

The Triumph of African Nationalism 1950-1960 99

THE COLONIAL IMPACT AND THE RISE OF NEW SOCIAL CLASSES 104

The Three Traditions of African Nationalism:

The Conservatives or Traditionalists and their Politics 106

The Constitutional Gradualists (or the liberals) and their Politics 109

The Role of the Press 111

The Militants or Radical Nationalists and their Politics 113

Conclusion: The Violent Decade and its Impact (1960-1970) 119

MAPS

Africa in 1879 12

Africa after the Scramble 30

The Triumph of African Nationalism 102

TABLES

(i) Statistics for Labour Report 50

(iii) African States, Area and Population Data and Political Status 56

(ii) Statistical Data on Colonial Education in East and Central Africa including the Congo (Zaire) during the 1950s 58, 71 and 72

APPENDICES 122

9

Preface

The inspiration to write this book came in July 1969 when I was lecturing to a Summer School at the State University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, USA. Most of the participants in the Summer School were Secondary Schoolteachers. One of the lectures I gave was on "Direct and Indirect rule in Africa, the theory and the practice." At the end of the lecture I was overwhelmed by the response, most of which was fortunately enthusiastic. It became clear to me then that the enthusiastic response was the result of a genuine desire (and even surprise) to hear more of what actually happened in colonial Africa. Between July 1969 and May 1970, 1 was visiting Professor at Duke University in North Carolina. While at Duke, I began the first draft and gave several public lectures on colonial policies in Africa. One such lecture was given to graduate history students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When I returned to Makerere, I gave another public lecture entitled "Colonial Administrations: The myth of the Contrasts." The response from the audience which included Secondary Schoolteachers again amounted to a demand that such a study should be made available to a wider audience.

By then I was of course already convinced that a study along these lines was overdue. In writing this book therefore my intention was to re-examine the different aspects of colonial policies and to assess their impact on the African. The book is interpretative and the accent is on the effects of colonial rule on the African. The text deals with methods of colonial occupation and the European response to African resistance. It treats of labour, land, education and administrative policies. Besides being interpretative, the approach is also comparative. Examples are thus drawn from different parts of Africa such as Ghana, Nigeria, Zaire and East

10

and Central Africa in order to demonstrate the common features of colonial policies. My conclusion is that these policies whether carried out by the British or by the French or by the Belgians had more in common than existing historiography admits. As a background to European policies, there is a section on the scramble for Africa and its antecedents. In dealing with the nationalist movements I have divided them into the conservative tradition which was characterised chiefly by politics; the liberal tradition was characterised by the politics of the professional intellectuals and the radical tradition of which Nkrumah was perhaps the best representative. I have dwelt at some length on the 1950s which I regard as the crucial decade in the history of African Nationalism. It is my hope that this book will help to demythologise colonial historiography. I have intended it for students in the upper forms of Secondary Schools, university undergraduates as well as teachers of African history. With the increasing interest in African history, a text which examines the role and position of the African in the colonial set-up should be useful to all those interested in Africa. This text attempts to fulfil this need. The book is both for the academic and general reader. As an academic text it deals at times with controversial issues, quotations have been long in order to bring out fully the points at issue. To keep a balance between an academic and general text, details of footnotes have been reduced to reasonable proportions.

This book is a by-product of several inspirations. I have already mentioned the effects on me of the responses of the audiences to which I lectured. I would like to mention in particular Professor Newcomer, a former colleague at Makerere, and Professor Kinzie both of Wisconsin State University at Oshkosh, USA. who invited me to participate in the summer programme at the University; Professor Barry K. Beyer of the History Dept. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh; who encouraged me to write it. The History Department of Duke University, North Carolina, provided an excellent atmosphere of an air conditioned office in which I worked during the summer of 1969. The Department also put at my disposal its excellent facilities and secretarial staff. My thanks are due to the Chairman of the Department, Professor Joel Colton; to the ladies; Mrs Jackson, Mrs Foster and Mrs McConnel who typed the first drafts of this book. I wish to

11

record my thanks to the History Department at Makerere for typing the final draft. Finally I am grateful for the ideas and criticisms of my colleagues in the History Department of Duke University where I spent a happy 1969-1970 academic year; and also at Makerere University, Kampala. However, all the errors and shortcomings which may appear in this work are entirely my own. Semakula Kiwanuka, November 1970. Makerere University, Kampala.

12

1

The Origins of European Colonialism and the Scramble for Africa, 1870-1900

Colonialism is not a new thing. Man has lived with it probably since the beginning of his existence. The old empires of Greece, Rome, Mali and Songhay were a reflection of man's urge to expand,. Colonialism has many common characteristics; though differences due to time and location may exist. Modern European colonialism may be traced to the fifteenth century beginning with Europe's first contact with the Americas through the Spaniards and the Portuguese. At that time the motivating influences were what are characteristically known as the Three G's: Gold, Glory and God. By the seventeenth century, nearly all the major European powers, England, France, Holland, Portugal, Spain and Denmark, had overseas colonies. The system under which they operated was known as the Old Colonial System or the Mercantile System. It is important to note that during this first phase (1500-1800) of colonial expansion, Europeans possessed only a limited technological advantage over other people. But as they exploited the colonies and enriched their countries, they were able to outstrip other people industrially. "Not until the nineteenth century", writes Geoffrey Bruun ... "when Western Science put a girdle round about the earth did the Europeans come into the plenitude of their imperial heritage. . ." (P 1. 19the. European Civilization). Between 1815 and 1914 the world entered a new era of global integration under the compulsion of western technology, an era that might, without undue exaggeration, be termed the European age. . . "

The enthusiasm for colonial acquisitions slowed down during the 18th century especially because colonial and dynastic struggles among Europeans during the seventeenth century had progressively weakened some countries such as Holland, Portugal and Spain. As a result of the Anglo-Dutch wars of the seventeenth century,

2

Holland was almost knocked out. By the middle of the 18th century France too had been weakened because in 1763 she lost a great deal of her overseas empire in India and America to the British. Internally she was soon to be thrown into the catastrophe of her own revolution. For the next eighty years, nearly all Europeans were too preoccupied with domestic and military questions triggered off by the French Revolution of 1789 and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. As for Britain herself she had suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of her colonial subjects. This led to the loss of the American colonies, disillusionment in colonialism and political bickering at home. For the next forty years (1776-1820), the British like the French were too preoccupied with European questions particularly the attempt to contain Napoleon and to control the fall out from the French Revolution itself.

It is perhaps not surprising that the last quarter of the 18th century is generally regarded by historians as the end of the Old Colonial System. Consequently, it is tempting to see a difference between the so-called Old Colonial or Mercantile policy which is believed -to have been notoriously more exploitive; "where the absolutist state and the mercantilist economy had relished centralized control over the inflow of colonial goods." Hence historians refer to nineteenth century European expansionism as the New Imperialism and it is with this so-called New Imperialism that we are concerned. Its beginning is generally put at 1870. Before then, Europe was still concerned with the questions raised by the French Revolution and by the Napoleonic wars, that is questions of democracy and nationalism. Meanwhile the industrial revolution had also brought about important economic, social and even religious changes; and it is to these changes, political, economic, social and religious, that we must seek the immediate causes of the nineteenth century colonialism which led to the scramble for and the partition of Africa between 1885-1900. Let us therefore examine first the new outlook in Europe.

THE CHANGING EUROPEAN MOODS

Prior to 1870, as we have noted, the enthusiasm for colonial acquisitions was at a very low ebb. Cobden, a radical Englishman of the nineteenth century, referred to the colonies as the "bloodstained fetish of Empire". In Germany, Bismarck had once described

3

himself not as a colonialist and likened colonial possessions to the silken sables on the back of a Polish nobleman who had no shirt beneath. For Bismarck colonies were not worth the bones of a single German soldier. Disraeli had in the 1850s and early 1860s described colonies as "millstones around our necks". Such anti-colonialist utterances of Disraeli, Cobden and Bismarck and others were typical of the European governing classes prior to 1870. Some anti-colonial ists like Bismarck remained so only until the 1880s, but others like Disraeli had become converted as early as the beginning of the 1870s. A few men like Cobden remained anti-expansionist for all their lives. Generally, however, the days when such statements as those of Cobden were made came to an abrupt end with the dawn of the 1870s. The change in the English mood must be sought among other things in her threatened markets. The 1870s witnessed a general swing from free trade to protectionism in Europe. As the continental Europeans began to close their markets against British goods, Englishmen began to feel the economic competition especially from Germany. Partly due to this, the years 1868-1872 witnessed a phenomenal growth of imperial sentiment in England. The Imperial Federation League was founded originally to oppose Prime Minister Gladstone's so-called little Englandism.

During the same period, The Royal Colonial Institute was founded and in 1872 Disraeli formally ranged himself on the side of the colonialists. Froude the historian recognized that the days of England's economic supremacy were short. He declared that the dream of England as the workshop of the world is a dream of the past. In 1870, Ruskin, a Professor at Oxford, threw the weight of academic opinion on the side of the colonialist and declared in an Inaugural Lecture, "This is what England must do or perish. She must found colonies as fast and as far as she is able … … … .Seize every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set foot on … … In Germany,

as elsewhere in Europe, the pressures of modern economic development had already made themselves felt. German industry and commerce was growing by leaps and bounds. By the early 1880s, therefore German merchants began to appear in various theatres of the world. Missionaries too appeared in different quarters of the world and often combined commercial and spiritual activities. By the period of the Berlin Conference, German traders and Missionaries had established important economic centres: fifteen firms and sixty factories in West Africa for instance. Hence the three

4

decades 1870-1900 witnessed in Europe an outburst of imperialist sentiment so wild and so sordid that it seemed to eclipse all the old colonial movements. The scramble for territory was not confined to Africa. It extended to Asia and to the Pacific on the convenient pretext of "civilizing", that is of "Europeanizing" the benighted natives.

To what extent was nineteenth century colonialism a new thing? While there were factors here and there pointing to a few differences, nineteenth century imperialism was not a new thing. It was essentially a continuation of the so-called Old Colonial System with the same basic motives of economic exploitation. The Three G’s,1 which characterized the Mercantilist System became the C's: Commerce, Christianity and Civilization. What seemed to be new was the extraordinary degree of aggressiveness and the stamp put on the movement by the political, social, economic and religious changes of the nineteenth century in Europe itself. The instruments of expansion such as the steamship, the railroads and fire aims were to a certain degree products of the Industrial Revolution. It is also true that this industri4ism was developed and dedicated mainly to the internal needs of Europe. Nevertheless during the process of industrialization and as a result of the increasing encroachment of democracy on traditional institutions the European old regimes were undermined. The crumbling of the old regimes led to the displacement of the military officer, of the churchman as well as the gentry. For all these displaced classes, colonies offered a career combining the traditional hierarchy of the ancient regimes with the materialist progress of the new.

Among the many factors which led to the scramble for Africa was the so-called humanitarian or philanthropic motive whose principal component was the spread of Christianity. The humanitarian movement was the result of a religious revival which had touched all parts of Europe during the final decades of the century. The anti-slave trade agitation in Britain owed much to the Christian zeal of the Non-Established Churches. Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably given the nature of the situation, the Christian Cross became an intimate bedfellow of the National flags by which Africa and Asia were conquered. It is true that some missionaries were motivated by genuine humanitarian ideals, nevertheless they unintentionally became pioneers of the colonialist. By stressing Christianity and commerce, David Livingstone probably did not recognize

5

the implications of his gospel. This is because everywhere the extension of European interests overseas involved new claims on the home governments. Traders as well as missionaries invariably clamoured for protection and feverishly agitated for the takeover of the territories in which they operated. Under such circumstances neither official Britain nor France nor Germany could resist colonial expansion for long. The scramble for and the partition of Africa in this case became inevitable. Furthermore neither the commercial agent nor the missionary wanted to operate in a hostile environment. But at the same time every African ruler recognized the long term effects of these new agencies and he was anxious to control them. By so doing he became an enemy of colonialism. If a missionary embroiled himself in African quarrels or violated African customs and got himself killed that became a pretext for colonial aggression and takeover. In any discussion of the Scramble for Africa therefore the colonialism of the Christian missions cannot be ignored.

Yet many liberal western scholars today, rather ashamed of the activities of their countrymen who claimed to go to Africa purely for altruistic reasons, either play down the colonial role of the missionaries or reject it as non-existent. What such historians are trying to do is to transplant these 19th century men into modern liberals for whom the colonial excesses of the last century are not only remote but a little difficult to comprehend. The fact remains, however, that these missionaries were part and parcel of the last quarter of the 19th century whose main characteristic was excessive zeal for the glory of their countries. If purely altruistic motives for the spread of the gospel could be promoted by other agencies such as political domination and economic exploitation, many missionaries saw no contradiction.

Other factors included the expansion of European political institutions as well as of the educational system. These were significant causes of European imperialism. In England for instance the Parliamentary reform acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 enfranchised a fairly large number of the working classes. This expansion of democracy meant that an enthusiastic and imperially minded electorate became a major indicator of the mood of public opinion as well as a decisive constituent. The expansion of the educational system which we have already mentioned and the growth of the popular press benefited from each other. Thus democracy, the growth of the popular press and the expansion of a literate public combined to form

6

an important psychological element in the whole movement which came to be known as jingoism, that is a combination of hysterical nationalism and patriotism. Such exaggerated national self-consciousness regarded colonies as symbols of greatness and prestige. An equally important element in the psychological process was racial Darwinism which stressed the superiority of the Europeans as the master race, thereby justifying the subjection of the so-called inferior races of Africa and Asia to European colonialism.

Some historians have, stressed the role of the Berlin Conference and have seen it as the trigger which set off the scramble. Because of this the role of Germany and the quest for colonies as symbols of her newly won greatness has been stressed. The partition of East Africa has consequently been attributed not only to British occupation of Egypt but also to the sudden irruption of Germany on the East African coast. By laying claims over the lands of the interior, Germany forced Britain to abandon her dog in the manger attitude and begin to be serious about her vague claims over the East African interior. Thus Sir Charles Lucas has written:

The power which had perhaps the greatest say in the Partition was the newest comer, Germany, fresh from her successful unification in Europe. In spite of the territorial addition which accrued to the British Empire, the Partition was not to the mind of Great Britain . 2

It was no accident that the Berlin Conference should have been held in Berlin; no accident either that German restlessness should have been the yeast of fermenting the mixed African and European leaven in the years 1884-85. Germany at that time was in a very real sense, the arbiter, of colonial destinies.3

Another historian, Sybil Crowe, has also stressed the impact and the role of Germany in the Partition. She wrote:

Another view explains Germany's motives in the scramble as being dictated by diplomatic considerations in Europe. There is some evidence to support this interpretation. After all it was the great German Chancellor Bismarck who had remarked once that his map of Africa was in Europe. One of the exponents of this view is the English historian A. J. P. Taylor. He argues:

Bismarck quarrelled with England in order to draw closer to France; and the method of the quarrel was the deliberately provocative claim to ownerless lands, in which German Government had hitherto shown no interest; the German Colonies

7

were the accidental by-product of an abortive Franco-German Entente .4

Historians of French colonialism have seen France's defeat by Prussia in 1871 as the catalyst of her increased colonial ventures in Africa, and these ventures have been cited as the triggers which set off the scramble. Henri Brunswick thinks that France wanted to compensate psychologically for lost greatness in Europe and also for the territorial losses of Alsace-Lorraine. Jean Stengers; thinks that it was these French activities in West Central Africa especially which triggered off the scramble. He writes:

In truth, it was from France, we believe, that emanated what ought to be considered the two true initiatives in the scramble. The first was the conclusion of Brazza-Makoko treaty, even more its ratification in 1882. The second was the policy of protectorate inaugurated in West Africa in January, 1883.5

Another school of historians sees the activities of King Leopold of the Belgians as the major factor which triggered off the Scramble. His initiatives in 1876 changed the European outlook towards Africa. A Conference was convened under his Presidency in September, 1876, and it met at no other place than the Belgian capital of Brussels. Then The International African Association was established. Leopold's contribution to the Scramble has been summed up by Raymond Betts as follows:

The persevering energy of the King of the Belgians had made the African question the first order of business in Europe and kept it there. The impetus given to the imagination was general. Governments could no longer abstain; rather it was to be more feared that certain of them would hasten precipitously to make up for lost time ... The convocation of a Conference at Berlin in 1884 by the Imperial Government of Germany was the result and sanction of this movement .6

Roland Oliver and Fage have also stressed the importance of Belgium (besides Germany) in starting the Scramble. They have written:

The partition of Africa was indeed essentially the result of the appearance on the African scene of one or two powers (Germany and Belgium) which had not previously shown any interest in the Continent. It was this that upset the pre-existing balance of power and influence and precipitated a state of international hysteria in which all the powers rushed in to stake claims to

8

political sovereignty and to bargain furiously with each other for recognition in this or that region.7 We have deliberately left the Hobson thesis until the end. It represents the

classical interpretation of the Scramble for and Partition of Africa in terms of capitalistic motives. Hobson was not the only writer who saw the Scramble for colonies as a direct result of capitalism, but his popularised idea and conception of the nature of Imperialism has been widely accepted. Hobson himself wrote copiously and what he wrote generated a lot of literature. As a result of the copious pro and anti-Hobson literature, the Hobson thesis has come to exercise tremendous influence. When Lenin took it up and expanded it, the thesis gained further support and exercised even greater influence in socialist states. Briefly Hobson's argument was that there was a need for new areas of investment and also for new markets for industrial products:

Overproduction in the sense of an excessive manufacturing plant, and surplus capital which could not find sound investments within the country, forced Great Britain, Germany, Holland and France to place larger and larger portions of their economic resources outside the area of their present political domain, and then stimulate a policy of expansion so as to take in the new area. Without the internal pressure for capital investment Overseas the impulse for the acquisition of new colonies would not exist; and without colonies capital would lack an outlet.8

Modern trends in interpretation have stressed strategic factors such as the occupation of Egypt by Britain as the cause that triggered off the scramble. Led by Robinson and Gallagher these historians have tried to deemphasize the economic motive and have stressed the views of the British Foreign Office. But their thesis suffers from over-simplification and over-concentration on British activities in Egypt. It suffers also from the sweeping elimination of the capitalistic motives. It has become a modern characteristic among followers of this school of historians not only to downgrade the economic motive when recounting the causes for the 19th century colonialism, but also to brand those who stress it as Marxists. This is of course a diversion because the economic imperatives of the industrial revolution had by 1870 propelled most of the European countries into a machine age. Expanding industrialization demanded the discovery of new markets as well as raw materials to feed the machines.

9

Besides that industrialization had contributed to the population increase which needed more food to be fed.

The reforms of the banking system and increased prosperity bad led to the growth of surplus capital which in turn needed new areas of investment. It was argued for instance that money invested in backward countries would bring higher rates of return than that invested at home. Since all these things, new markets, tropical products, new areas of investment could be supplied adequately only by colonies, the Scramble for Africa and Asia became inevitable. To ignore these economic factors and refer to historians who stress them as Marxists is to inject the politics of the Cold War into a human phenomenon which is as old as history itself. After all between 1870 and 1900 many men in Europe and America had defended colonialism by advancing economic arguments long before Marxism became an ideology. These modern trends in interpretation have been strongly enhanced by the connection between imperialism and capitalism which Hobson and Lenin saw. Thus the antiLeninist (or anti-Marxist) historian has de-emphasized the economic aspects of imperialism, rightly pointing out that the colonies were poor in resources, were not good areas of investment and therefore Hobson as well as Lenin were mistaken in their assumptions.

Professors Robinson and Gallagher, mention of whom is already made, are once again some of the leading members of this school. These have explained the Scramble in terms of nationalist crises in Africa itself and the impact of such crises on the European colonialists. They stress the influence of Egypt and assert, "It was Egypt and Egypt alone" that triggered off the Scramble9 They also reject the view that there was anti- imperialism in England before the 1880's. They thus stress the strategic factors as the overriding motive behind British participation in the scramble. The Robinson and Gallagher thesis as it is now called has attracted enthusiastic support as well as partial acceptance; Professor Jean Stengers has contended that the central thesis "is almost entirely false. The day will come when this thesis will be rejected."10 Robinson and Gallagher not only based their thesis on Egypt, thereby ignoring other parts of Africa as well as Asia, or Oceania, but they also limited themselves to English politics as if other European powers and other issues were not in the forefront of the Scramble. The strategic value of Egypt was important but it deserved less emphasis than it is receiving today.

10

After all the Pressure of increased foreign competition, the revival of protectionism and the subsequent closure of European colonial markets by Britain's rivals was sharply felt by Britain. it was this pressure of unprecedented assault from foreign tariffs which highlighted the need and called for urgent action to protect existing outlets and volume of British trade and investment overseas. By 1880,-this had become an economic necessity. Looking at the European economic scene at this time Britain's changing attitude should not surprise anyone. Before then she was the world's leading exporter of manufactured goods as well as of capital and her position was virtually unchallenged. She had opened areas of world trade in South America, in the Near and Far East again with little serious challenge. But this situation had begun to change in 1870 and by 1885, Britain was beginning to feel the effects of German competition "in quarters where our trade formerly enjoyed a practical monopoly". 11

It is true as William Langer observed in his review of Hobson's Imperialism, that the period of maximum territorial expansion coincided not with considerable export of British capital, but with marked falling off in capital investment overseas. It is also true as most ' scholars in this field have observed that the most popular destination of British capital before 1914 was the U.S.A. and that less than 50 % of British investment was in the Empire. British capital moreover, in tropical colonies was only marginal compared to the total overseas investment. Equally marginal was the African market for the home manufactured goods. All these were economic factors which neither Hobson nor Lenin assessed carefully. This much can, however, be said in defence of Hobson. All the colonial powers were capitalist. It was thus inevitable to see a connection and to interpret contemporary colonialism as a function of Capitalism.

A more important and serious consideration is this. If contemporary opinion is a better guide to what the men of the 19th century regarded as their basic motives for colonial acquisitions, then their views deserve greater attention than the so-called antiMarxist ideologists are prepared to accord them. In France for instance there were many men active in formulating the theory of modern economic imperialism. In 1874 a French economist by the name of Leroy Beaulieu published De Ja Colonation chez lespeuples modernes. The book had tremendous influence throughout imperially minded Europe. Beaulieu stressed the importance of colonization

11

and argued that the sinews of colonization are capital funds. He saw the acquisition of colonies as a matter of life and death for France. But perhaps the man whose views were a classical expression of modern economic imperialism was Jules Ferry. For Ferry, colonisation was not a question of the immediate future "but of a future fifty or a hundred years hence, of the very future of the country of the heritage of our children". Adressing the Chamber of Deputies he declared:

Today, as you know, the law of supply and demand, freedom of exchange, the influence of speculations all these move in a circle which extends to the ends of the world. Colonies are for rich countries one of the most lucrative of methods of investing capital ... I say that France, which is glutted with capital and which has exported considerable quantities has no interest in looking at this side of the colonial policy is the offspring of industrial policy for rich states in which capital is abundant and is rapidly accumulating, in which the manufacturing system is continually growing and attracting, if not the most numerous, at least the most alert and energetic part of the population that works with its hands, in which the countryside is obliged to industrialize itself in order to maintain itself.12

This brief survey of contemporary European opinion in England, France and Germany clearly demonstrates that economic considerations were vital and they always remained in the forefront of the advocates of colonial expansion. The African consumer market might indeed be small and the areas of investment unattractive. Yet to most colonialists like Jules Ferry '13 Africa like other parts of the Empire was the land of great expectations. Missionaries, explorers, travellers and representatives of chartered companies all spoke glowingly of future prospects and like speculators they were prepared to be patient. But they did not sit still. They wrote often exaggerated accounts, aimed at attracting a prospective investor as well as counteracting anti-imperialist charges that colonies were a drag on the taxpayer. To Sir Harry Johnston the acquisition of colonies and the expansion of trade were inseparable and in 1887 he argued that Britain must pursue a more vigorous policy towards colonial expansion.

A further illustration of the importance of economic imperialism in the process of the scramble can be made from the clauses of the so-called treaties or agreements made between colonial

12

13

powers and African rulers.14 The major and most important of these clauses were about commercial monopolies.15 For example when King Mwanga 11 of Buganda indicated that he did not want to give a trade monopoly to the British but would prefer representatives of other powers to trade freely in his country, this was described as a hostile attitude to the British by both missionaries and the representatives of the Imperial British East Africa Company. From Central to East and West Africa the most coveted thing was the alleged Chief's or King's X mark, ceding all the wealth of his country, actual and potential (i.e. present arid-futur-1--) to, the-colonial power.

In conclusion we must note nevertheless that it is impossible to understand fully the causes for the partition of Africa without a proper understanding of Euro-African relations region by region. We must take into account and stress the changing socio-economic political scene. The entertainers in the music halls, the poets and the historians as well as the politicians all made their contribution to the scramble when they began to talk about "the historic missions of expansion". There was talk about "the white man's burden", "the manifest destiny", and "the lamp of life". The European nationalist movements which had been sparked off by the Napoleonic wars had by 1875 led to the unification of Italy and Northern Germany. These new nations looked to the colonies as an outlet for their nationalism. The phrase "a place in the sun" became a catchword among German colonial circles. The arrival of new claimants for the place in the sun on the colonial scene sharpened the rivalry and quickened the scramble. As the entire atmosphere became charged rivalry turned into enmity and the whole thing exploded in 1914 with the outbreak of the first world war. All in all we can say that 19th century imperialism was the child of nationalistic and industrial materialism. The two combined to demand colonial expansion: "The former to satisfy its urge for power, prestige, adventure, a sense of surperiority and religious humanitarianism. The latter to translate these idealistic terms into the realism of increased business." 16

1. (P 1) G. Bruun, Nineteenth Century Civilization 1815-1914 (London 1959) P.1

2. Charles P, Lucas, The Partition and Colonization of Africa (Oxford 1922) p. 89.

14

3. Sybil E. Crowe, 7he Berlin West Africa Conference 1884-85 (London 1942) p. 47.

4. A. J. P. Taylor, The struggle for the Mastery of Europe (Quoted in R. Betts, 7he Scramble

for Africa) (Boston, 1966) p XV

5. Jean Stengers, ' L' Imperialisme colonial de la fin du XIX Ci6me si6cle. My the ou Realite"

(Journal of African History, 111 (1962) pp. 471-490.

6. Raymond Betts, op. cit. pp. i-XIII.

7. R. Oliver and J D. Fage,A short History of Africa (Baltimore, 1962) p. 186

8. J. Hobson, Imperialism A Study,

9. R. Robinson J, Gallagher and Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians (Cambridge, i4l).

10. Jean Stengers op. cit.

11. See D. C. Platt ' "Economic Factors in British Policy During the New Imperialism" (Past

and Present No. 39) (1968) pp. 120-138

12. L. Snyder, Teh Imperialism Reader (A Collection of documents on Imperialism) New York,

1960

13. Easton, op. cit.

14. see Appendix B on Treaties.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

15

The Mechanics of the Scramble for and the Partition of Africa

By the mid-1890's nearly the whole of Africa had already been partitioned like a piece of cheese and there is little doubt that the scramble for Africa was one of the most dramatic events of the 19th century. How was the process carried out? In this brief account we can only point to a number of land-marks. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century Britain, France and Portugal were the only European countries firmly entrenched in this continent and this was only in a few parts of Africa. Yet by 1885, they had laid claim upon the whole continent. In 1884, the European powers met in Berlin and the next year they issued the Berlin Act, giving guidelines for the scramble. The Act was filled with high sounding phrases promising to protect the Africans in their "moral and material well-being; to cooperate in the suppression of the slave trade, to further education and civilization." The act further emphasized the doctrine of effective occupation of claimed territories. All these high sounding statements could have been well intentioned. But this is doubtful, because what happened between 1885-1900 demonstrated that none of the signatories put much stock in them except in the suppression of the slave trade. As Professor Snyder points out the opportunity to prevent greedy aggression and land grabbing was lost the moment the Act was signed. Profits came first and the well being of the African a very poor second.

European colonialism was imposed by and sustained through team work. The teams consisted of explorers who started as adventurous men of fortune and ended as instruments of colonialism. There were also soldiers, keen to be decorated for their African adventures or to be acclaimed by the mobs of their cities. We have already dealt with the chartered companies. European colonialism

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had been justified because Europeans were allegedly superior and therefore should spread their civilization to the benighted natives wherever they might be. Unfortunately, while the colonizers assured the world that their major objective was merely to civilize, to Christianize and to uplift the Africans, they all rushed in to grab the wealth of Africa. Christianity perverted by its bearers became an essential ingredient in promoting the ideas of racial superiority.

Ready-made justifications why Africans should accept European domination were found in the Bible. The Holy Book, so the Africans learned, clearly demonstrated that they were the accursed children of Ham, whose role in this terrestrial existence was that of drawers of water and hewers of wood. Many Africans accepted the Word from the Holy Book and perhaps that made their burden lighter. Treaties had been made full of legal fictions designed to salve the consciences of the Europeans. These fictions were important also because they promoted the attitude that anything goes as long as it looks legitimate on paper and reaps money and power. Those Africans who did not submit to colonialism resisted, but after a prolonged struggle they found that the military power of the Europeans was too much. They either voluntarily or forcibly surrendered, offering their lands, freedoms and energy for taxes, exploitation, deportation and death.

Let us look briefly at some aspects of the Berlin Act which legalized the partition of Africa. With the outline map of Africa before them, the colonizers sometimes vaguely demarcated their so-called spheres of influence by lines of longitude and latitude, regardless of' ethnic boundaries. Oftentimes they were content to make reference to geographical features which later exploration often found to be miles from their positions on the map. Sometimes, such geographical features were even non-existent! For the colonial Scramblers, the Conference stressed the necessity of securing sufficient authority in any occupied territory. But there was no clear definition of the basis upon which the validity of claims to sovereignty in the area should be recognized. Soon after therefore the Germans put forward a proposal that a power which occupied coastal areas was entitled to claim the interior. This was the birth of the hinterland theory which became the answer to the Conference's failure to deal explicitly with the acquisition of territory other than coastal lands. By the hinterland theory, a power which occupied

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coast lands was entitled to claim exclusive rights to exercise political influence "for an indefinite" distance inland.

In the wake of the rush to apply the hinterland clause and almost in mad haste, European powers began to declare spheres of influence. It was in this fashion that the Scramble in Africa began in a rapid and confused manner. The experience of the hinterland theory was of short duration, because soon after France insisted that Effective Occupation alone could confer title. France's proposal was accepted by all the signatories of the Berlin Act in 1887 and Lord Salisbury accordingly instructed the British representative in Lisbon to "Make a formal protest to any proposal not based on effective occupation." Even the spheres of influence theory which had been devised to curb rivalries which might lead to war was not always adhered to and before the conclusion of formal agreements Europeans were constantly encroaching on each other's shadowy boundaries.

TREATY-MAKING AND THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA

The Berlin Conference and the Hinterland Theory are directly linked to two important aspects of the partition, namely the foundation of Chartered Companies and the rush for concluding treaties. Today historians make a distinction between the different phases of the Scramble. For example the period of the Berlin Conference when spheres of influence were drawn on a map of Africa is now being viewed as the Scramble or Partition of Africa on papei.1 R.O. The second phase marked the moving up and down the breadth and length of Africa by the Europeans with treaty forms in their kit, ready to cheat, to forge, to threaten and to intimidate an African Chief. The use of the gun-boat as a coercive force as in the case of Jaja of Opobo in West Africa and of Zanzibar in East Africa, is already a familiar one. This and the expression "gun-boat diplomacy" became proverbial during the 1880's and 1890's.

The Berlin Conference was followed by a period of rapid and confused activity, a rush forward rather similar to that of gold speculators. The scramble in Africa was essentially carried out by the trading companies which extended their political control by a system of treaty making, treaties which were made on behalf of the metropolitan countries. The mad lush forward was accentuated by the rivalry and the desire to thwart the claims of other powers.

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In West Africa, Herr Flegel wanted to secure the Nigerian hinterland for Germany, but by the time he reached Sokoto and Gondo, Joseph Thomson, a representative of the British Royal Niger Company, had already got there and secured treaties from the Sultans. Lugard forestalled the French by concluding treaties with the Nikki Chiefs.2 In Uganda Karl Peters of Germany opened letters addressed to Jackson by King Mwanga of Buganda calling for military help. When Peters read the letters, he rushed to Buganda, concluded a treaty and left soon after. Jackson followed hot foot, offered a treaty to the King, but Mwanga iefused to sign it because its terms were ungenerous.3 Writing on the activities of the Royal Niger Company, Kenneth Dike states that between 1882-1886 Goldie and other Company representatives had signed over two hundred treaties.

The European scramblers in Africa were prepared to do anything on behalf of their countries. Some, such as Lugard and Stanley, for example, made blood brotherhoods with Africans in East Africa. Stanley himself concluded over four hundred treaties in East Africa and the Congo. From East to West, to Central and to South Africa, the documents for the scramble were generally worded in the same way as the following text of Carl Peters' treaty with Sultan Sakwa of Kavirondo reveals:

"Sultan Sakwa, of Kavirondo, begs Dr. Karl Peters for his flag. He acknowledges Dr. Peters unreservedly as his lord.

"Dr. Karl Peters promises to protect Sultan Sakwa according to his power, and to help him in the conquest of the whole of Kavirondo, so far as is consonant with Dr. Peters' other plans.

"Sultan Sakwa solemnly hoists the German flag to-day in his capital. Both parties complete this treaty by the signatures of witnesses."4

THE CHARTERED COMPANIES

The actual Scramble was handled by many agents; the most prominent of which were the Chartered Companies which we have already mentioned. Once spheres of influence had been drawn, the problem of control immediately arose. This more than anything else gave impetus to the foundation of trading companies. The Trading Companies of the second halt of the 19th century belonged to an intermediate phase between the Laissez Faire Era when govern-ments left everything to unrestricted private enterprise and one of

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conscious imperialism when the state stepped in. In the early days of the Scramble, Governments viewed with alarm the great cost of effective occupation in terms of manpower for administration and for the conquest of the Africans. Hence the use of Chartered Companies. Let us state from the outset that government by chartered company was nothing new in the history of colonialism. Many parts of North America, India, etc. were first colonized by trading companies. So in the last quarter of the 19th century the capitalist adventurer was ready to employ his resources provided he was guaranteed a monopoly of trade and he was allowed to exercise exclusive rights over taxation, mineral and land rights. All these things would provide revenue for the administration and policing of the territory and also profits for the capitalist investor. To protect these traders and safeguard their future claims, European Governments declared the so-called protectorates. Because such protectorates might be claimed to have no legal standing, a legal fiction was found by a system of Treaties or Agreements. These documents were accepted as valid titles to the acquisition of African territories and the Africans were alleged to have "voluntarily ceded their sovereign rights".

This led to the era of treaty making. Documents were produced by the hundreds, written in all forms of legal verbiage. It did not matter whether a chief had no power to dispose of the wealth of the country or the political rights of the people upon whom he had been called to lead. The so-called treaties were duly attested by a cross which purported to carry the assent of a King or Chief. As we have already remarked, the so-called assent was obtained by vague promises which were often unrecorded. Even when such promises were recorded, they could easily be ignored.5 Oftentimes such assent was secured by military force or by the presence of a gunboat. Believing in the theory that the end justified the means, the colonial governments accepted these treaties and buttressed them by moral postures and high sounding phrases thereby justifying the acquisition of African lands. Lugard for instance observed that in cases where a native was an alien or a despot who exercised unmitigated rule, the colonial government felt a moral obligation to intervene. Today we might ask who appointed the colonial powers to be protectors of the African? But in an age where the dictum that the end justified the means and that might was right applied, the African could not raise such questions.

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The biggest achievement for the colonial powers was that they added thousands of square miles to the colonial empires. In East Africa the British established the Imperial British East Africa Company, Imperial Germany established the German East Africa Company. The British South Africa Company was established to "peg out" claims in South and Central Africa. Whether British or German, all these companies had many common features. Government by a trading company offered a means of asserting Colonial Sovereignty in a territory on behalf of' the Colonial power. They supplied cheap administration by providing capital without demands from the metropolitan treasuries. At a time, as in the case of Britain, when colonial expenditures were not enthusiastically supported by the Treasury, the Trading Company's readiness to provide capital played an important role in overcoming the resistance to expansion from the Treasury Officials. In the case of the British South Africa Company, Gann has observed that Cecil Rhodes's offer of financial assistance to the British Government in connection with the North-ward expansion, "played an important part in overcoming resistance from the Treasury".6

THE IMPOSITION OF COLONIAL RULE, ITS NATURE AND THE EXTENT OF EUROPEAN VIOLENCE 1880-1914

Practically everywhere in Africa the imposition of colonial rule was resisted. Such resistance inevitably provoked military retaliation from the colonial powers. Better armed and employing crackshot mercenaries, colonial powers imposed their rule by violence. It is fashionable among some historians to associate colonial violence only with certain European powers such as Germany and to portray others as using humane and more gentle methods. Alleged special national characteristics and temperament are features stressed today perhaps as much as during the 1920's and 1930's. An illustration of this view is the legendary stereotype that only the Germans were brutal. Consequently German brutality and violence towards her colonial subjects was a widely public ised subject after World War 1. Prolonged or current African resistance movements in German territories, such as the Maji-Maji war in Tanganyika,were quoted as examples resulting from brutality and violence. The victors of

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World War I accused Germany of inefficient colonial rule, thereby justifying the seizure of all the German colonies. Germany was accused of dereliction in the sphere of colonial civilization (about which so much had been said by the Berlin Act of 1895) and this was followed by a severe indictment of German colonial rule on grounds of cruelty, slavery, compulsory labour and militarization. The victors of World War 1, especially Britain and France, expressed is great concern" at the prospect of abandoning "Thirteen or fourteen million natives to a state from which fate had delivered them". Moved by "compassion" for the natives, the Allied and Associated powers, (Belgium, Britain, France, Australia, South Africa and U.S.A.) "consented" to make a second experiment and assumed responsibility for the former German colonies.

But although all this talk about German colonial inefficiency, the militarization of the Africans, compulsory labour, cruelty and slavery was true; it should be clear to any perceptive reader that its prime motive was political propaganda, designed merely to justify the victors' seizure of the German colonies and to show that their brand of colonialism was of a benign kind. Unfortunately therefore such Allied propaganda though politically motivated left behind one of the persistent myths that other colonial powers treated their colonial subjects differently. This myth is even propagated by African historians!

In order to illustrate how false this view is, let us examine the manner in which the British imposed their rule. The choice of the British is particularly pertinent because of their stereotyped genial temperament and national characteristics which made them "more benevolent colonialists" who imposed their rule by more gentle and humane methods. A study of early British rule in Kenya as elsewhere in her colonies demonstrates that she was just as brutal and as violent as Germany or Belgium. On the Kenya coast, the Swahili chiefs such as Mbaruk had been famous for resisting alien rule. When the British took over Kenya, the Mazrui chiefs resisted British rule as they had repeatedly done in the past. They knew that they could not win pitched battles against an enemy who was far more powerful and better armed than they. So they concentrated on fighting limited engagements and making lightning attacks, and they sustained a fairly successful resistance movement for some time. But the British were in Kenya to stay. They therefore imported Baluchistan regiments from India to crush the African resisters.

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Mbaruk, the leader of the resistance, fled to Tanganyika only to fall into German hands. He and four other leaders died in exile.

Further north in the Kismayu hinterland, the Ogadens were equally elusive fighters and determined enemies of colonialism. They remained a thorn in the side of British and Italian colonialism and refused to recognize British rule over them. Their fighting tactics concentrated on swift, lightning attacks and even swifter withdrawals. Extraordinarily mobile, and accustomed to move vast distances without water or food, the Ogadens became formidable enemies. This forced the British in Kenya to resort to more violent methods. What is particularly interesting is the Hobbesian attitude towards the methods they adopted for the imposition of their rule The case was excellently summed up by a British official in Kenya:

These people (The Ogadens) must learn submission by the bullets ... It's the only school; after then you may begin modern and humane methods of education ... In Africa to have peace you must first teach obedience and the only tutor who impresses the lesson properly is the sword.'7

Convinced that the best tutors were bayonets and machine guns, the British in Kenya moved against the Ogadens with the help of Indian regiments in 1898. The resisters were smashed, hundreds of their cattle were confiscated and in August of that year the Ogadens sued for peace. The Nandi also of Western Kenya put up a very stiff resistance and they too had to be smashed by British fire power. 8 There is yet another vivid and perhaps better example of the use of such violence by the British in order to achieve their colonial ends than this illustration from Zanzibar. In August, 1896, the death of the Sultan of Zanzibar led to a succession crisis. Prince Seyyid Khalid bin Bargash was the popular candidate among the masses and the army. But he was not prepared to be a British puppet and for this reason the British were ready to resort to violence in order to secure and protect a malleable successor. In the harbour, writes Preston and Major,

at the time were the Cruiser Philomel and the Gunboat Thrush, which landed every man they could spare. Later that morning another gunboat arrived from Aden and it began to look as if the situation might be retrieved. Thrush was worked across the harbour so that her guns could bear on the palace as a prelude to negotiations... Next morning the deadlock continued, although joined by two other, St. George and Racoon.

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By nightfall the five warships were moored in line with every available gun trained on the palace." 9

It does not need exceptional imagination to guess the fate of Khalid Bargash. The bombardment "lasted exactly thirty-seven minutes" and during that period the Sultan's warship "was a burning wreck and the British shell fire had destroyed the palace and sunk several dhows". In another two hours, the British were firing a 21-gun salute "in honour of the new Sultan". As usual, concludes Preston and Major, "the British losses were trifling, a seaman wounded compared to the hundreds killed and wounded by the bombardment"10

When we turn to Uganda, we find that there was far more resistance to and consequently more violence from the British than it has hitherto been admitted. Kabarega, King of Bunyoro-Kitara, a kingdom which had existed for at least five hundred years, fought first against Anglo-Egyptian imperialism in the 1870's and 1880's and in the 1890's he fought against naked British colonialism.11 From 1891-1899, Kabarega resisted British rule and he was hounded from one part of his kingdom to another. The Kingdom of Bunyoro was fragmented and in 1899 Kabarega himself was overcome by armed violence. He was so severely wounded that his arm had to be amputated. He was then deposed and deported to the Indian Ocean islands. He died in exile in 1923. Mwanga 11, the king of Buganda, an equally ancient kingdom and the most powerful in East Africa during the 19th century, had at first collaborated with the British as a result of threats of deposition, But by 1896 he had come to the conclusion that the British presence was incompatible with his sovereignty and independence. Unfortunately for him his kingdom was already torn by religious rivalries between Catholics, Moslems and Protestants. The Christian missionaries themselves actively preached that his resistance against British colonialism was an attempt to restore paganism and the law of the jungle. When Mwanga joined Kabarega the rulers of the two most powerful kingdom As in East Africa fought defensive engagements until their final overthrow in 1899. Mwanga was deposed and deported to the Seychelles Islands where he died in 1901.12

In Eastern Uganda British rule was imposed by armed violence, but it was resisted and this provoked more violence. Threats of deposition and deportation secured the cooperation of the Basoga

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chiefs. In modern Zambia, the British South Africa Company like chartered companies elsewhere was the main agency of British colonialism. It sent a large and well armed military force against Chief Kazambe who had earlier inflicted a humiliating defeat upon them. In 1899, the company avenged its earlier defeat but Kazambe refused to surrender and fled to the Belgian Congo. By 1900, however, the most powerful states in Zambia, the Lunda and the Bemba, had already been crushed. Dr. Andrew Roberts has summed up the aftermath to the crush of the Bemba and the Lunda. "No other African in the area was stupid enough to challenge the white man's firearms. 11.13 In Ghana, many Ashanti resisters were hanged, sixteen were deported and thirty-one were imprisoned. It was not until a quarter of a century later (1925) that the Asantehene returned to Kumasi and was restored as Prempeh 11.

In Dahomey, the French imposed their rule by military force when the kingdom was finally conquered in 1893. The king was deported but instead of fragmentation there was territorial reconstruction. The new political unit was probably larger than the preconquest kingdom. Nevertheless the political authority which had been built up by the Dahomean kings before was weakened. A classic case of military resistance in French West Africa similar to that in Uganda and the Maji-Maji against the Germans in Tanganyika was that of Samory. Between 1891 and 1898, he fought against the French with extraordinary tenacity. In 1893, the Behanzin of Dahomey was deposed and the French recognized his brother as ruler of an area which coincided roughly with the 19th century kingdom. Besides brute military force colonial rule was, as we have already noted, imposed by means of treaties or agreements. These so-called treaties have for a long time acted as a cloak over the trickery and hypocrisy of the colonial powers. The point which has always been missed is that in nearly all cases these treaties were worth and meant only what the Europeans thought of them.

Apart from the fact that it was not the African who had the final word over these documents, the colonised seldom comprehended the language and the full implications of the so-called agreements. Africans were deliberately told lies and because of this or under duress they affixed their signatures or X marks upon pieces of paper thereby selling away their political rights or their wealth. Here and there, there may be cases of exceptions to this general pattern, where a friendly missionary might spell out and

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expose the full implications of the document to the African chiefs. In Uganda, the Baganda chiefs who signed the Uganda Agreement of 1900 14 with Sir Harry Johnston were greatly aided in their negotiations by the CMS missionaries. Besides that the Baganda chiefs were fairly adept at negotiations as contemporary European travellers testified. But such cases were rare and far between. A case study of two areas will help to expose what we have called the hypocrisy and treachery behind treaty making.

Perhaps the two most classical cases of treachery which rendered the agreement worth only what the colonial power thought they were worth were those of King Lobengula of the Matabele in Southern Rhodesia and Jaja of Opobo in Southern Nigeria. In Matabeleland a document was presented before Lobengula by a representative of the British South African Company.15 Shortly after Lobengula had affixed his X mark on the so-called concession agreement to exploit all the minerals in his country be was warned by a friendly missionary that he had been tricked. As the missionary explained the full implications of the treaty Lobengula realized that be had been unfairly induced to part with his people's rights. Lobengula was furious, particularly with the man who had acted as the interpreter and counsellor. He executed him. Assuming that he had been dealing with crooks and that the British government would deal honestly with him he sent an appeal to Queen Victoria.

Replying on behalf of the Queen, the Secretary of State stated on 26th March, 1889.

Lobengula is the ruler of his country, and the Queen does not interfere in the government of that country. But as Lobengula desires her advice, Her Majesty is ready to give it ... In the first place the Queen wishes Lobengula to understand distinctly that Englishmen who have gone to Matabeleland to ask leave to dig for stones have not gone with the Queen's authority, and that he should not believe any statement made by any of them: The Queen advises Lobengula not to grant hastily concessions of land, or leave to dig, but to consider all applications very carefully.16

Shortly afterwards Lobengula sent another protest to the Queen. This time, the British made no effort to hide their trickery. The Queen's "adviser" told Lobengula that it was impossible to exclude white men and that the Queen had made inquiries as to the persons concerned and was satisfied that they may be trusted to carry out the working for gold in the king's country.

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The West Africa British intervention at Opobo in modem Nigeria was forceful and treacherous.17 King Jaja trusting in the good-will and honesty of the British had refused to deal with German and French traders. He was so loyal to the British that he sent his troops to help his British- "allies" when they fought the Ashanti in Ghana in 1875-1876. Queen Victoria sent him an engraved sword which he proudly displayed on appropriate occasions or before visitors he wanted to impress. But Jaja had a cardinal sin in the eyes of those who wanted to overthrow him. He was a brilliant businessman, adept at exploiting rivalries between the British companies, but worse still he was determined to monopolise contact with the producers. This was more than many of the British traders could stand. They at once took measures against him completely disregarding treaties he had made to protect his commercial empire. In one of the documents signed by a British Consul, Jaja's monopoly of trade as well as his sovereignty had been entrenched by the unequivocal statement that there would be no interference with his country or his markets. As things turned out the statement was not even worth the paper it had been written on.

So with increasing encroachment on his markets and interference in his country Jaja appealed to the Foreign Office. Its reply altered the whole basis which Jaja had understood to govern the relationship between himself and the British. The Secretary of State asserted that the relationship must be based on:

The promotion of the welfare of the natives of all the territories taken as a whole by ensuring the peaceful development of trade and facilitating their intercourse with Europeans. It is not to be permitted that any chief who may happen to occupy a territory on the coast should obstruct this policy in order to benefit himself.18

As Professor Flint points out, the Foreign Office's reply altered the course of African sovereignty beyond recognition. Jaja was not King of Opobo, but a chief who happened to occupy territory on the coast Thereupon Harry Johnston, anxious for a bold and successful stroke and convinced that the dismembership of the African continent was at hand, used his humble vice-consulship as a steppingstone to higher things. He carried forward the quarrel with Jaja and demanded the stoppage of trade with Opobo. The next demand by Johnston was permission from the Foreign Office for the deportation of Jaja.

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Then Johnston refined colonial treachery to a fine art. He invited Jaja to a conference on board a British Gunboat, otherwise known as a Man of War, and although he had pledged that Jaja would be given safe conduct, such pledges were worth only what Johnston himself said they were worth. No sooner had Jaja stepped on the gunboat than Johnston offered him the alternative between deportation and war. Jaja opted for the former and was deported first to Ghana and later to the West Indies. Using the state of emergency which he had created Johnston proceeded to demonstrate British naval power in the River States and imposed British rule on Opobo by armed violence. A similar violent episode was when Ralph Moor, a British administrator, brought to a head quarrels with Nana, chief of the Itsokiri, controllers of the trade of the Urhobo oil producers. Nana's country was invaded, and he fled to Lagos where he was exiled.19

King Jaja of Opobo and Lobengula of Matabeleland and many others elsewhere demonstrated by their appeals to England the belief that their fellow rulers were not involved in this game of trickery and r-uthless exploitation. It was a persistent and genuine belief held by all African rulers. After all colonialism thrived on high-sounding phrases about humanitarianism. The African rulers had heard these phrases often enough from such impeccably impartial voices as those of the missionaries and had unwillingly believed in the impartiality of the metropolitan governments. A barrage of promises of "protection against their enemies, the economic and commercial development of their countries and the guarantee of their sovereignty", had naturally created hopes among these African rulers. But as they soon discovered the promises were hollow. We might argue that these rulers were quite naive to believe that Queen Victoria or other European governments would be on their side and not on that of Cecil Rhodes or de Barazza. Nevertheless these rulers had been "persuaded" to affix their signaturies on the so-called treaties and they had done so. The Africans believed as they were told, that these documents contained nothing more than their words and what they had been told about civilization, economic development and protection. Clauses in these documents which were far more important to the colonial agents were seldom explained.

Such clauses concerned the control of foreign relations, political sovereignty, rights over taxation, trade and the exploitation of

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mineral wealth. It was a rude shock when these chiefs and kings were warned that they could no longer trade in the produce of their kingdoms. King Mwanga 11 of Buganda, who had been induced to sign an agreement after his defeat in 1892, suddenly found that it was illegal for him to sell ivory from his country. He was publicly reprimanded by a British official and finally fined. The dilemma of African rulers was that whether they resisted or collaborated, the result was almost the same. Either they were to remain sovereign in their states or to be puppets of the new regimes. This dilemma was callously and yet accurately stated by the Secretary of the British South Africa Company where he wrote,

If Lobengula attacked the Company he must expect no mercy and none will be given him. If he attacks us he is doomed, if he does not his fangs will be drawn ... and the desired result, the disappearance forever of the Matabele as a power, if delayed is yet the more certain.20

When King Mwanga of Buganda and Kabarega of Bunyoro led a national revolt against the British they inquired in 1898 what their fate would be if they- surrendered. They were informed by the British Chief Administrator that no mercy would be given. They would be deposed and deported all the same. So they carried on the struggle, knowing full well that their dwindling supply of arms and ammunition meant certain defeat. It should be clear from this account that colonial violence knew no bounds. The very crimes of which the victors of World War I had accused Germany were perpetrated in colony after colony by the British, the French as well as by others. The British in particular had a much longer list of depositions and deportations than many historians of the British Empire are prepared to admit.21 From South to Central Africa, from East to West Africa it was the same old tale of might being right. Churchill had boasted in the Boer war that they (the British) had the machine guns and I think any colonial power could similarly have boasted because it was a question of who had the guns. Throughout the Scramble as we have demonstrated the cause of colonialism was helped by a body of promoters, diplomats, "explorers", soldiers, missionaries and engineers who constructed the railroads. Such men as Charles Gordon in the Sudan, Lugard in Uganda; Dr. Karl Peters whose efforts secured Tanganyika for Germany; de Barazza, founder of the French Congo; Lyautey in Morocco, and Kitchener in Egypt were typical of soldier administrators.

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Among the capitalist promoters were King Leopold of the Belgians and Cecil Rhodes. The latter was one of the greatest financial manipulators who became a leading imperialist of his day.

1. (P22) See R. Oliver and A. Atmore, Africa since 1800 (Cambridge, 1967).

2. (P 23) See L. H. Gann and P. Duignan, Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960 Vol I (London A

969). See esp. pp. 66-99, 199-260.

3. See Semakula Kiwanuka, A History of Bugandafrom thefoundation of the Kingdom to 1900

(Longmans, London 1971) pp. 322

4. Quoted by Sir John Gray, "More Uganda Treaties" (Uganda Journal),.

5. Philip Mason, The Birth of A Dilemma: The Conquest and Settlement of Rhodesia (London

1958).

6. Gann and Duignan, Colonialism in Africa, op. cit. pp. 100-131

7. G. Mungeam,British Rule in Kenya 1895-1915 (London 1966) p. 30.

8. See Matson, The Nandi of Kenya, (E. A. Publishing House, Nairobi).

9. Preston and Major, Send a Gunboat, (London 1967) p. 155.

10. Send a Gunboat, p. 156.

11. See R. A. Dunbar, A History of Bunyoro Kitara (Nairobi 1965).

12. Semakula Kiwanuka, M.S.M. History of Buganda, op. cit.

13. In T. Ranger (Editor), Aspects of Central African History (London 1968) pp. 71-96.

14. Semakula Kiwanuka, M,S.M. "The Evolution of Chieftainship in Buganda, C. 1400-1900"

(Journal of Asian and African Studies Vol IV/3 1969, pp. 172-185.

15. The Imperialism Reader, op. cit.

16. Ibid.

17. Colonialism in Africa, op. cit. pp. 199-260.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. The Imperialism Reader, op. cit.

21. See for example, M. Crowder, "Indirect Rule British and French style" (Africa XXXIV/3

(1964) pp. 197-205. Also by the same author, West Africa Under European Rule (Evanston

111) 1968; See also Gann and Duignan, Burden of Empire; An Appraisal of Western

Colonialism iu Africa South of the Sahara (New York 1959) (See esp. pp. 217-225).

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The Aftermath of the Imposition of Colonial Rule: A Study of African Survivals(Resisters, Collaborators and the New Chiefs)

In the previous chapter we have attempted to show that contrary to traditional historiography, neither the British nor indeed any other colonial power could accept defeat at African hands. Every colonial power therefore went all the way to assert its authority. Invariably the means through which such authority could be asserted was military. Hence all colonial powers resorted to military coercion and violence both of which knew neither boundaries nor national temperaments and characteristics about which we have been told so much. The European subjugation of Africa resulted in the emergence of two major groups of Africans whom we may describe as Colla-borators and Resisters. The questions we have to address ourselves to when dealing with these two types are, who composed each group? What were the motives of each group? Were they essentially different, representing enlightenment on the one hand and reaction on the other? Were the resisters backward looking and the collaborators progressives? Are the differences as clear cut as they appear at first sight? What was the legacy of each group for future generations? Let us deal with the resisters first. The Resistance movements consisted of men who chose to defend and fight for their rights and freedoms. Many died in action, others in exile. Those who survived resigned themselves to the rule of the conqueror, humiliated but hopeful that one day the colonial yoke would be overthrown. For the moment, however, they were crushed partly because they had underestimated the might and determination of those against whom they had chosen to battle. Little did they realize that for the colonial power there could be no retreat. In the short run therefore it seemed as if resistance did not pay and for a time history condemned these men as reactionaries and

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backward looking. Nothing appealed more to the other group than a description of the iesisters as traditionalists attempting to block progress. Who were the resisters?

The resisters were a diverse lot. The major group consisted of kings and chiefs, that is those who were more closely associated with power. These were the men whose ancient political powers were being curbed almost overnight. As they -resisted they were hounded from one part of their kingdoms to another, betrayed by their own subjects and despised by the conquering foreigner. Throughout Africa the bitter fruits of resistance consisted of war, deprivation, deportation and death. Although the blow fell heaviest on the upholders of ancient institutions, the general mass of resisters were ordinary folk who resented the new philosophies and the cultural intrusion of Christianity. Nearly all of them objected to and resented the description of their ways of life as pagan. Africans suddenly discovered that much of what they had always regarded as something of value was now being denounced as primitive. What was the driving force behind the resisters? Briefly it was an intense desire to defend their rights and freedoms, their social values, their -religions and cultures and many of them preferred death to submission.

But the resistance movements were embraced also by criminals, men who had escaped the long arm of the law. Some were murderers, robbers, arsonists. For many, however, their offences were crimes because they had been so defined by the colonial regim6. They smoked pot and bhang, they traded in arms and ivory and they drank gin brewed by themselves. Between all these men there was a common bond. Except for the true criminals, resisters were sustained by the belief that they were defending rights and values which had been cherished by all previous generations. Those so-called "pagans" who wanted to retain their religious beliefs and cultures, those rulers whose powers were being whittled away, the smokers of pot and the drinkers of gin were all piotesting against the arbitrary imposition of alien rule and the arbitrary definition of new rules of ethics and behaviour. By protesting and fighting they demonstrated that like men in other ages and countries, there was more to live for than material gain or positions of power and prestige. This above every-thing else distinguished them from the collaborators and it is this which has earned them an exalted place in the history of our continent.

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Resisters were not necessarily reactionaries or backward looking men. As a matter of fact many had at first attempted to accommodate the Europeans. In this respect we may call such men manipulators. Mwanga 11, King of Buganda, l ike his father Mutesa I had welcomed missionaries and traders. Mwanga had signed treaties though under duress. He nevertheless hoped that he could co-exist with the British. But his ideals and ideas of co-existence were different from those of the British. In matters of trade for instance he did not want to give a monopoly to the British. But such a view on his part was interpreted as hostile. Neither was he totally against Christianity as such except when he felt that it was undermining his authority. Many African rulers had the common sense to know that Christianity was a pervasive philosophy. King Jaja of Opobo in modern Nigeria, for example, regarded Christianity as a dangerous philosophy. Even when lie sent his sons to be educated in England by the West African traders he did so on condition that they were neither to read the Bible nor to receive religious instructions. Wabogo, another West African, collaborated at first and received the French colonial agents cordially. But as their designs became clear he decided to fight them. Jaja himself had at first collaborated and did not quarrel with the British until after they had redefined his sovereignty and rights of control over the middlemen traders in the coastal trade. Lat-Dior, the Damel (king) of the Senegalese kingdom of Cayon, was described as a moderniser who accepted commercial groundnut production. His relations with the French Governor who succeeded Fidherke were generally good. But when the French began to build a railway he realized that their plans were too vast and were bound to erode his sovereignty. Even men who had resisted from the very beginning such as Kabatega of Bunyoro in Uganda wanted some kind of accommodation with the British. But the latter were not ready to offer any. We can repeat many examples of men throughout Africa who were ready to welcome the Europeans as traders and technocrats but who were later forced to fight when the Europeans seized their countries,

If the resisters were a diverse lot, so were the collaborators. Some men collaborated because temperamentally they were so inclined; that is they were moderates and compromisers by nature. The introduction of Christianity had been pervasive and divisive. In West Africa where its introduction was much earlier than in East Africa, there had sprung up a group of African Christians who

34

were resented by their fellow Africans even much more than they resented European missionaries. Christianity itself won a fairly large group of followers the vast majority of whom fell into the category of collaborators. Such men collaborated partly because they had been told and perhaps convinced that resistance to European rule was a fight against progress. Such an attitude was perhaps more abundantly demonstrated in Uganda than anywhere else. Although the introduction of Christianity to Uganda was of more recent date (1877) than in West Africa it won devoted followers. Within less than a decade and by the end of the 1880's, Christianity had its martyrs. The country was divided between Moslems, Catholics and Protestants and those who did not believe in any of the three new religions.1 Thus it became fashionable among Christian missionaries as well as their African followers to brand the resistance movement as anti-Christian. Similarly the collaborators saw themselves as advancing the cause of Christianity. In the minds of many Baganda collaborators, progress whether technical or material and Christianity were somewhat indivisible.

Other men collaborated because they were convinced that the military might of the colonial power was invincible. Why therefore fight wars you cannot win? they asked. Another important motive behind collaboration was that a man's rivals or enemies were resisters. This fact alone drove some men into different camps. Other collaborators saw the colonial wars as a perpetuation of old conflicts with their traditional rivals. Thus there is a strong suspicion that the Baganda who collaborated with the British in the conquest of Bunyoio saw this as a crusade against an old enemy. Chief Merere of South Unyamwezi in Tanzania collaborated with the Germans partly because they were in conflict with chief Mkwawa and the Wahehe, his old enemies. Other men collaborated after calculating the benefits. Could they use or manipulate the colonial power to advance their own personal or national interests in politics, trade or otherwise? If collaboration could lead to personal advance-ment then it was worth one's while.2 The Baganda Christian chiefs as well as chief Merere of Tanzania were such manipulators. In the Niger Delta, in the Ivory Coast as well as in the coastal states of Sierra Leone rulers were moved by commercial considerations.

Collaborators were also opportunists who read the signs of the times correctly and they may even be described as worldly wise. Having read the signs of the times they willingly jumped on the

35

colonial bandwagon and reaped the fruits of collaboration. With the colonial administration they established a partnership which lasted until decolonisation. Collaborators were essential partners and allies in the process of conquest. We have already mentioned how King Jaja of Opobo sent troops to Ashanti to assist the British before they turned against him. In Uganda collaborators became the colonial hatchetmen fighting and facilitating the overthrow of their rulers or conquering their neighbours on behalf of the British. The role of the Baganda collaborators in extending British rule in other parts of Uganda was unique in East Africa. The fruits of collaboration were many and varied. But they could be summed up as political and economic, the two things which determine social status. For the early part of colonial rule therefore, all collaborators whether marginally or centrally important to the colonial regime, shared that feeling of being associated with and moving in the corridors of power. Many became chiefs, tax collectors, law enforcement officers and thereby became the backbone of colonial rule.

Whether colonial rule was direct or indirect it rested on the cooperation and energies of these men. As colonial agents, their political power could be very tenuous indeed. Nevertheless they remained an important and privileged group, a fact known not only to themselves but also to their colonial masters. Whatever benefits therefore the colonial administrations had to offer they went first to this group. For example, in many parts of Africa schools were established first of all for their sons and daughters and although their salaries were meagre, individually as well as collectively they were economically better off. A classic example was that of the Uganda Agreement of 1900. When Sir Harry Johnston signed this agreement with the Baganda chief-, he hoped to create an aristocracy which would always be grateful to and have vested interest in the continuation of British rule. Thus about a thousand chiefs chosen by no one but themselves to share in the new economic ethos became land owners under the Uganda Agreement promulgated and guaranteed by the British colonial governor. Politically and socially collaborators everywhere were the political insiders on the African side. They had the advantages of wealth, political power and privileges. They generally had the first opportunity to educate their children thereby ensuring the perpetuation of their "dynasties".

Many of the collaborators had risen from nothing and found

36

themselves overnight in positions which they would never have occupied in the pre-colonial political set up. We can therefore call them New Chiefs under the new regime. For these men like all men in power there was no better time to be alive. What must be remembered, however, is that although collaborators were the back bone of colonial administrations, colonial regimes regarded them as nothing more than agents. Despite the hotch-potch and mythology regarding the behaviour of some colonial powers relying on persuasion, these was little difference in the colonial attitudes these chiefs. As if to emphasize their role as mere agents a. as the colonial power was strong enough to assure administrative responsibility of a region, the African agent was generally unceremoniously dismissed. It was as if a contract had been ended. Traditional legitimacy upon which so much ink has been poured went by the board not only under French or Belgian rule but also under British rule .3

How do we assess the overall impact of these two groups upon the politics of Africa between 1900 and 1960? A detailed analysis of their impact is beyond the scope of the present work. It must await more research. Tentatively, however, it can be suggested that these two groups came to represent two very important political traditions in colonial Africa: One radical and another conservative. Between 1900 and 1940, the radical tradition whose first mentors were the resisters was generally dormant. The surviving resisters were outsiders in the colonial set-up. They dreamed of the day the colonial yoke would be overthrown and sometimes they naively thought in terms of intervention of a friendly European power. Their hopes outlived them and died when colonialism was more entrenched than ever before. As I have pointed out elsewhere,4 these resisters may unfortunately become a football in the historian's field. Who were they? Were they nationalists? Were they rebels? Were they proto this or proto that, or were they leaders of mere protest movements? Whatever the historian's view point might be toward African nationalism, these men were true nationalists. It cannot be denied that kings, chiefs and their followers were not fighting for a national cause. Such a cause demanded the defence of their independence, as well as the defence of deeply rooted values. As for the collaborators, because they were part of the official establishment the collaborating chiefs were quite in business with the colonisers. But the fact that many had risen from nothing and

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occupied positions which they would otherwise not have occupied without the colonial presence, added another dimension to the African politics during the colonial period. It was not only in Ashanti (1905-1907) where chiefs appointed by the colonial administration (after deposing the legitimate chiefs) were being challenged by the communes, but in Uganda also there was persistent opposi-tion to the elevation of Sir Apolo, Kagwa who was rumoured to have plebeian origins. In Ghana the "commoners" refused to serve under the new chiefs but as in all cases of "rebellion" against the appointed chiefs, the colonial administrations supported its agents.

COLONIAL POLICIES AND ADMINISTRATION

Labour Policies Long before the scramble for Africa began, Eulopean powers had already

made a distinction between colonies for settlement and what they described as colonies for exploitation. For the British, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada for instance were colonies for settlement which suggested that the policies applied there would be different. Black Africa, however, was a land for exploitation. An appreciation of this fact will enable us to understand what European colonialism in Africa was really about despite idealistic and high-sounding rhetoric designed to tranquillize anti-colonial organizations and later the League of Nations and the United Nations. Failure to note this distinction is largely responsible for the untenable generalizations about colonial policies in Africa. An examination of labour, land and economic policies in Africa demonstrates that they differed from areas where there were European settlers and where there were not. As is the case with other systems of administration the historiography on the colonial labour policies has unfortunately produced the same stereotypes and the same tendency to exaggerate the differences between the policies pursued by the different colonial r6gimes has persisted. French and Belgian r6gimes are said to have resorted more to forced labour than the British and Lord Hailey had this to say,

Railway construction in the French Congo, and in early times in the Belgian Congo, presented painful evidence of the abuses which may attend the resort to forced recruitment in order to supply the deficiency of voluntary labour.5

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The theme has been taken up and exaggerated out of all proportion. According to Gann and Duiganan "French officials played an active part in mobilizing labour and in enforcing the cultivation of economic crops. They relied on order more than on persuasion.'6 The views of Lord Halley and Gann are of course correct. But it is misleading for these authors to create the impression that British Labour policies were any different. For this reason the author regards Anglo-American views on colonial labour policies to be too simplistic because they are based on a limited sample of evidence. Unfortunately they have been used to generalize about the whole of Africa. Elspeth Huxley referring to the District Commissioners and the labour crisis in Kenya wrote, "He (the D.C.) was an absolute dictator within his district. In the eyes of the natives he was all the powerful government".7 Surely that is not the picture of a man who relied on persuasion. Labour -policies like methods of occupation which we have examined in some detail had far more in common than is often realized and on balance the British r6gimes do not emerge with that ever-shining image. Practically everywhere in Africa colonial regimes operated their compulsory labour laws on the convenient assumption that native society in Africa always recognized the value of "supplying" (forcing) labour for common purpose. Throughout the colonies with European settlers, the frequent argument was that the government had an obligation to the settler farmers, "Because land was no good without labour". Hence, in colonies Eke Southern Rhodesia, the government took an active part in labour recruitment.

It will be wrong to create the impression that forced labour and active government participation in the recruitment prevailed only in S. Rhodesia. In Kenya, forced labour was a common feature though the British Colonial Office held ambivalent views. But as the settlers clamoured for more labour, "it became impossible for a District Officer to be impartial towards the labour question ... Every administrative officer thus bore a special responsibility which he could not shirk".8 As the District Commissioners became too involved in labour recruitment the Colonial Office reacted in a characteristic fashion. It discouraged "Active Participation" by the DCs in the labour question. So instead of the D.C.s dirtying their hands, there sprang up a profession of labour recruiters (Europeans) who went into the African residential areas and charged a commission on each man engaged by an employer. These recruiters bullied the

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African chiefs to compel their fellows to go and work for the settlers. It was thus not only in the Belgian Congo or in the French colonies of in

German East Africa where forced labour was a wide spread phenomenon but in Kenya, Rhodesia and other colonies. The nomenclature can be misleading. We find for instance that the British in Kenya and later in Tanganyika used the word "conscript" rather than "forced" to describe their policies which prevailed well into the 1940s. During 1940, the war provided a convenient pretext for the use of forced labour, not only on government projects but also on the farms and plantations of European settlers. Accoiding to a colonial report on "Labour Conditions in East Africa" in March, 1942 the African Labour for Essential Services Act was published which led to the immediate rise in the number of forced labourers. In June 1942 there were 2,595 but by the end of the year the number had risen to 12,661. At least 50 % of these were employed on European plantations (5,266) while government employment required 4,975; construction and excavation required 1,733; while stock and agriculture required 1,233.9 Forced labour was required for sugar, lime burning, pyrethrum and rubber and "essential foodstuffs". All these laws were approved by the British Secretary of State for the Colonies. The inclusion of "essential foodstuffs" here is rather interesting because that did not apply to the African. As a matter of fact forced labour led to such an acute shortage of food in the African areas that the practice was temporarily stopped by a governor's Order in Council between February and June, 1943.

The picture we have presented here can easily create the impression that forced labour prevailed only in colonies with European settlers. There is plenty of evidence, however, to show that even in colonies which were described as primarily African the system prevailed. Moreover, the important question for us is not whether the system was called "forced" or "compulsory" or "conscript", but, 'how did it affect the African. Were there any essential differences between a forced labourer in the Congo and in Kenya? It would appear that whatever local differences may have existed, they were obscured by the overwhelming common characteristics of suffering to which the Africans were subjected. Accurate statistics are difficult to obtain. The Labour Report on East Africa which we have quoted frankly recorded that figures of mortality among forced labourers were not easily available. Hospital records for instance did not

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distinguish between the class of labourers, and those which were given "were below the correct ones".10 Nevertheless, we know that deaths occurred in camps and on the journeys and during employment. A British labour report of 1946 in East Africa found "The Tanganyika figures for rubber for 1944 to be the worst giving a death rate of about 10 per thousand .... A figure which was admittedly an underestimate".11 One might argue that Kenya was a special case because it was settled by Europeans who "needed African labour in order to develop the country". Hence Elspeth Huxley, a spirited defender of -settler regimes in Africa, has made this point eloquently clear when she wrote about the "problems" of the settlers; she listed labour as the greatest. For the settlers the questions were: "How far were the government responsible for seeing that enough labour was forthcoming to save the farmers' crops; how far were they justified in persuading natives to work for settlers .... Basically the matter in the colonists' view boiled down to one of economics ... The role of the white man was that of supervisor, organiser and skilled expert". The settlers wanted the government to recruit labour for them. Lord Delamere their leader urged at the Assembly in 1908 that "all government officers be directed and be strictly required to encourage the native to seek labour and to do their utmost to assist those who require it." 12

We now know that forced labour prevailed not only in settler dominated colonies like Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa but even in countries like Uganda. In Uganda forced labour continued almost into the 1920's. The groans of the sufferers can be gathered from the newspapers of the time.

The important question for us is not the jargon which was applied to the system and it did not really matter who operated that system. We have already pointed to the possibilities of famines and starvation due to the depletion of African villages of the food producing populations. Then there was the pyschological impact itself of doing a job one did not want; of being forced to walk long distances, of separating families for months and sometimes years. Apart from all this the wages were low, deliberately fixed so that the African could not save and he would consequently be forced to return to the distant farms or mines of the white man. ff we consider the fact that the British possessed more colonies similar to South Africa, it is obvious that on balance she had harsher labour laws than any other colonial power in Africa.

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LAND POLICIES AND THE VIOLENCE OF EXPROPRIATION

In his An African Survey Lord Hailey noticed three main characteristics of land policies in Africa. He wrote.

In the African territories state action in regard to land has followed three recognizable lines. There is, first the group of states which have been influenced in their policy by the demand for land for European colonists or for missing interests; secondly, the group which has sought development mainly through the agency of the native cultivator; and, thirdly the group which has endeavoured to develop the resources of the territory by giving to Europeans large scale concession of land or of monopolies for the collection or sale of produce. The first group comprises the Union, the Rhodesians, Kenya and Ngasa ... the second group contains the remainder of the British, the Belgian and the French territories .... 13

Lord Hailey observed differences in the systems applied between the Franco-Belgian policies of the concessionaire system to companies or monopolies and those of alienating land to individuals. But the important question once again is what effect these policies had on the African? It seems that there was little difference in the overall effect upon the African peoples. Whether in Kenya or Rhodesia or the Belgian Congo, it was the least pro-ductive part of the land that was left to the African. Nothing is more misleading than when statistics of acres or of square miles of alienated land are dangled before our eyes. In Kenya for instance, the country has a total area of 224,960 sq. miles. By 1926 only 16,000 of these were alienated to European settlers and 13,500 sq. miles were gazetted for African use. Although Lord Hailey went on to claim that the Northern Frontier Province had an average density of less than 1 per sq. mile it is a fact that the Northern Frontier Province is a semi-desert area. Cultivatable land in Kenya is centred along a narrow strip, a great bulk of which formed the so-called "White Highlands”.14 Moreover, a detailed study of land policies reveals that colonies with settler populations had the most violent laws in terms of expropriation and segregation. Africans were collected in locations or reserves as if they were a peculiar species of mankind. African areas in Kenya, Zambia, Rhodesia and South Africa were known as Reserves. Official colonial views regarding African land expropriation and segregation were the most hypocritical. In theory practically every pronouncement by the colonial powers emphasized

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the role of the trusteeship which would maintain and preserve African lands for the good of the African. Since the latter were believed to be children, the role of trusteeship would be played by the colonial powers until the children had grown up. What happened in practice was a far cry from the phrase mongering about trusteeship. In settler colonies practically everything was dictated by these minorities.

In Kenya between 1903 and 1905 a very large part of the Masai population was removed from the northern part of the Kenya Rift Valley where they had settled and grazed their cattle for generations. Now that their land was wanted by the settlers, "a meeting" was held with a Masai doctor and "an agreement" to which the Masai acceded was drawn up by Sir Donald Stewart, the British governor. Henceforth two reserves, one at Laikipia and another towards the Tanzania-Kenya border, were created and the Masai lands were taken over by the settlers. The general effects of land expropriation in Kenya especially in Kikuyu land were abundantly draniatised by the Mau Mau uprising between 19521960.

In Southern' Rhodesia the original concessions of land were given by King Lobengula, so we are told. In 1890, Lippert, an agent of the British South Africa Company, claimed to have secured not only mining tights but also rights to grant or lease land in the name of the king! Henceforth the British Company made considerable land grants to the settlers. We are often told that such operations of land grabbing were subject to control by the British government. What is significant is not that this was the "official attitude" but that thousands of acres of land were grabbed with the acquiescence of the British government. This hypocritical attitude is illustrated by the alleged alarm and surprise of the British government when it suddenly discovered in 1894 that African land was being grabbed at a fantastic rate. For the British the interval between 1890 and 1894 was decent enough to ensure that at least enough land had been acquired by the settlers. After that the British Government proceeded to appoint a land commission which would assign "adequate areas to Matabeleland." In 1918, after another very decent interval indeed, a Judicial Committee of the Privy Council made a report which was described by Lord Hailey as "one of the classic pronouncements on land rights in the British colonies." 15

Yet this so-called classic pronouncement referred only to lands

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which had not been acquired by that date. Much of that unallotted land was poor and generally useless. Neither the mineral rights allegedly granted by Lobengula nor the validity of the land titles given by a European settler supposedly in the name of Lobengula were considered important enough issues to be investigated by the Privy Council sages. African claims that the lands which the settlers had acquired were legally theirs did not impress the Privy Councillors. Their Lordships therefore "found that such rights as the natives of Southern Rhodesia passessed at the time of conquest could not be described as falling into the category of rights of private property which the sovereign power would recognize and that the unallocated land which included the native reserves was therefore held to be the property of the Crown. It was a rather startling attitude in view of the fact that the Privy Council had recognised the rights acquired through fictitious concessions. But it emphasises very clearly that this was a situation in which the African could not win because the final interpretation of any document did not rest with him.

Under the Act which allowed equal right of purchase of land anywhere enterprising Africans had by 1923 acquired 100,000 acres in the so-called European Areas. This stimulated demands from the racial supremacists that the British government must decree that henceforth Africans must purchase land only in areas set aside for them. To put a seal on the racist victory, the official Land Commission reported in 1926 that it was "desirable to separate as far as possible the areas held by the two races until the natives had advanced much further on the path of civilization. It is better that the points of contact in this respect between the two races be reduced". Once again the right of "equal purchase of land" had been re- interpreted by others and against the African who had no say in the interpretation.

The total picture of what the present author calls the violence of expropriation can be gathered from the following data for Southern Rhodesia. By 1914 one hundred and four African Reserves had been gazetted. These totalled 21.6 million acres. By 1933 32,100,000 acres had been alienated to the settlers and a further 15,076,700 were available for further alienation. Thus the total area available for the settlers was 47,176,700 acres. The total area available for the African was 29,230,100 acres which meant that out of a total area of 96,200,000 acres, less than one third was available for the African.

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What was even worse was that large areas of African land. at least 3 million acres, were unsuitable for cultivation. Not only were they infested by the tsetse fly but they were deficient in water. The figure of 21.6 million acres which was actually allotted to the African was therefore even worse than it appears.

The British land settlement in Rhodesia was (outside South Africa and Kenya, both of which were British possessions) the worst on the continent.16 In Kenya for instance a small minority of settlers had disproportionate shares in the voice of the government. Given sympathetic administrations, settlers almost always managed to get their wishes. By 1920, it was obvious throughout the African continent that the policy of racial segregation was being condoned everywhere by the colonial government. All these policies found encouraging inspiration from the United States where white supremacy was the rallying cry at the turn of the century. Moreover, it was supported not only by the so-called revealed word of God in the Bible but also by pseudo-scientific studies of Anthropologists whose main emphasis was the so-called primitive mentality and group instincts of the African. Interestingly enough, these theories and goals of racist segregationists did not basically differ from those of the advocates of indirect rule among whom once again the British predominated.

In order to preserve civilization, so the world was told, Africans must be herded into the Reserves! But, as we have already seen, the Reserves served as a convenient pretext for taking the better parts of the land. In South Africa the Native Land Act of 1913 prevented the African from buying land in European areas. In 1920, an Order in Council further defined the Native Reserves in Southern Rhodesia and went. on to state, though mildly, that Africans could acquire and dispose of land on the same conditions outside the Reserve.

Inevitably this aroused the settlers to further activity. They demanded of the colonial government to prevent Africans from acquiring land outside their own Reservations. Up to now, (1921) the Africans of Southern Rhodesia theoretically had the same legal right as the settler to buy land. The increased activity of the settlers led to demands that all available land should be reserved for them. "Africans should be deprived without any compensation of the right to buy and own land." It was argued that the Reserves were too large already. "If they are crowded so much the better... the natives will only work when they find the Reserves are too small

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for them". This attitude was significant and characteristic of attitudes towards Africans especially in the countries with settler communities. They regarded the Africans as no more than an asset of the labour market. As Dr. Gray points out, the overwhelming majority of settlers supported segregation for diverse reasons.17 But behind all these reasons was the fear of the politically conscious African. The trend in world opinion (meaning actually USA) was towards segregation. The Rhodesian settlers based their views on South African arguments that "The educated Negro was the most undesirable neighbour. The educated often becomes a nuisance to his European neighbours"18 (pp. 15-6).

The educated African was not only an undesirable neighbour. He was an economic threat as well as a political danger because of his numbers. Economic competition was feared much more by the marginally secure, that is the poor whites. These more than anyone else were the men who spoke in terms of the White man's country: a country in which they and their children would enjoy the benefits of standards of living higher than many Europeans enjoyed in Europe. Unfortunately a great deal of this standard of living was secured on the sweat, labour and expropriation of the Africans. These are facts we must not ignore when we study British colonial policies.

Given this background, economic development was bound to take two directions. First of all let us consider how these policies affected settler interests and also the extent to which the African himself participated in the economy. In countries with settlers questions of labour and the fear of economic competition remained important factors and they decided the extent to which the African participated in the economy of his country. In Kenya for instance, Kenyans were barred from growing cash crops such as coffee, pyrethrum, wheat, etc. From the government point of view Africans were a reservoir of labour and as such they did not threaten the economic security of the settler farmer by their productions. Moreover, the settler at the same time ensured that his farm would be supplied with cheap labour. We thus find that in Kenya, Rhodesia, and South Africa and in the Belgian Congo there grew up a large population of wage-earning Africans, working either in the mines or on the farms. Those who remained in the Reserves eked out a dangerous existence cultivating poor and

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exhausted soils. As the Reserves became overpopulated, cultivatable land became even more scarce for the African.

In countries without settlers, the economic development depended largely on the natural resources of each country. In Uganda for example the country with its equable climate was suited to the cultivation of cotton and other tropical products. Its heavy population was noted for its eagerness to acquire what the British manufacturers had to offer. For the British Uganda was a valuable potential market. From the very beginning the Uganda African was encouraged to grow cotton which had been introduced in the early 1900s. Nevertheless the question of whether the Uganda agricultural economy should be left in the hands of the Africans or those of the European planters was debated by the colonizer and it was not resolved until the mid 1910s. Some factors, such as the heavy African population, influenced the final decision. But above all, the existence of the Uganda Agreement of 1900 which had been signed with the Baganda was perhaps the most important deterrent. It made it legally difficult to expropriate Africans. But all the same the Uganda African unlike his West African counterpart participated in the economy of his country only as a producer. The marketing and processing of his crops were in the hands of the Indians. 19 Crop price fixing became the order of the day and the cause of despair on the part of the African producers. Early in the 1930s many Africans in some parts of Uganda declined to grow cotton until the government removed the monopolies it had given to the Indian. But African efforts were not successful and since cotton growing was the only source of income the boycott could not be maintained for many years. By the mid 1950s, Uganda was not only the leading cotton producer but also the leading producer of coffee in the British Empire.

Tanganyika and Malawi were generally poor in natural resources. Nevertheless by 1914 the Germans had pushed up economic development far more than the British had done either in Kenya or in the South. When the British took over at the beginning of the 1920s, Governor Cameron was torn between the policy of indirect rule and of economic development. He settled for the former and it was not until the 1930s that economic development was speeded up. Co-operative Unions of African Coffee farmers sprang up and were encouraged in the Kilimanjaro and Lake Province areas. In West Africa, Nigeria and Ghana for example the absence of European settlers meant that land and labour laws were different from those

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of Kenya, South and Central Africa. Similarly the long commercial developments between West Africa and Europe marked an important difference between East and West in the pace of economic development. Although there were Lebanese and other oriental peoples commercial activities in West Africa were not so monopolised as was the case with Indians in East and Central Africa. The natural resources of the countries, particularly the Southern region of Nigeria, for instance, ensured more rapid development of these regions than the North. The sharp differences were demonstrated between Northern and Southern Nigeria when the latter had to subsidise the economy of the former and it was because the Northern administration could not pay its way that an amalgamation took place. 20

By 1920, colonial policies regarding labour, land, economic development were already formulated and applied. They might be modified here and there due to local factors, change of administrations or due to African uprisings, but the basic outlines remained. In East and Central Africa the African was the agricultural producer who was paid low prices which were fixed by the government and the Indian middleman. In Kenya and South Africa, Zambia and Southern Rhodesia, he was a reservoir of labour. Railway and road build-ing had also developed first and continued as needs arose. When the economic depression came at the end of the 1920s, the African suffered along with the owners of the markets. Many scholars have emphasized the differences between the policies of the various colonial powers, but it would seem that railway construction, road building, growing of cotton, coffee, cocoa and palm oil were aspects of economic development which brought benefits to Africans and certainly helped to transform the economic map of Africa. Scholars have stressed these benefits and have even argued that these developments were done for altruistic motives for the African.

What should concern us is how much revenue was collected from these countries and how much was put back; invested in economic and educational development? How much of the many millions of pounds went into the pockets of the African? Once we have looked at the question from this angle, we shall find that the differences in colonial policies whether real or imagined, left the African as the victim of exploitation. Much of the new history of the former Colonial Empires today almost tells the African to be grateful for the token investments which were put in his country!

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Whereas the truth is that the colonizer built the railways for example primarily to transport his raw materials and manufactured goods and only secondarily to benefit the African. The colonizer urged the African to grow cotton and cocoa primarily to supply the need for raw materials back home. To argue that the campaign to grow these tropical products was intended to uplift the African is to falsify what economic imperialism was really about. African material enrichment was a marginal side issue in the whole scheme of economic exploitation. 1. Semakula-Kiwanuka (MSM) History of Buganda opocit.

2. See J. Kimambo and J. Temu, (eds) A History of Tanzania esp. pp. 85-FI22. 3. Semakula Mwanuka, "Colonial Policies and Administrations in Africa: the myths of the

contrasts" (Journal ofAfrican Historical Studies, Vol. 111/2 (1970) pp. 295-315.

4. Semakula Kiwanuka History of Buganda,. opocit. 5. The best survey in English of European policies in Africa before World War 11 in Lord

Hailey's An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara

(London and New York, 1938) For this quotation See p. 603. 6. For British policies in Kenya and the attitudes of the settlers see Elspeth Huxley, White

Man's country: Lord Delamere and The Making of Kenya in 2 Vols. (New York 1967). For

these quotations see p. 210-237. 7. Ibid.

8. Major G. St. Orde Browne, Colonial Office Report (London H.M.S.O., 1946) No. 193.

9. Ibid. 10. Ibid.

11. White Man's Country.

12. An African Survey. 13. White Man's Country, op. cit, See also East Royal Commission Report, 1953-55, CMD

9475 (London HMSO, 1955) p. 481.

14. An African Survey. 15. Ibid.

16. R. Gray, The Two Nations (London 1960). See esp. pp. 3-42

17. The Two Nations, pp. 15-16. 18. Semakula Kiwanuka (MSM) "Uganda under the British" in Ogot and Kicren (Eds) Zamani

(Nairobi, 1968) pp. 312-333.

19. Colonialism in Africa, pp. 254-55.

49

The Labour Situation in East Africa

The Tanganyika figures for rubber for 1944 are the worst of the above, giving a rate of about 10 per thousand. This, while not excessive, is higher than it should be, particularly when it is remembered that the figure is admittedly an underv-stimate. A probable partial explanation is that medical inspection was ineffectual in many cases owing to substitution (see Section on Identification). In some instances, death occurred before the men had done any work, or had even reached the plantations. It can, however, be said that there was no serious outbreak of disease, or mortality due to any specific cause, as I examined the hospital records most likely to indicate this, and found no abnormal figures.

Note.-Complete figures for those in transit and in camp are not available

from all the Central Civil Depots concerned, since in the earlier stages of conscription military and civil recruits were accounted for collectively.

The estimated number of Africans employed on the dates named, voluntarily, in work for private or Government employers is as follows:-

*Estimated. Notes.-a) Male adults only, although it is suspected that in some cases

women or children were included in figures given by employeis. (b) No accurate figures available. Figures given at time were estimated

only and probably under-estimated in view of coffesponding figure in last two columns.

50

SUMMARY OF CONSCRIPTION

TANGANYIKA

Date No. In employment

No. in transit No. in camp

Workjor which conscripted

1.1.41 100 Essential Public Services = 100 1.7.41 860 1 1 1 1 1 1

Timber Production = 800 60

1.4.42 400 Essential Public Services = 400 1.7.42 1,895 1 1 1 1 1 1 =

Foodstuffs = Mineral Production =

1,070 225 600

1.1.43 6,525 560 Essential Public Services = 1 1 Foodstuffs, Pyreth rum and Timber = Rubber Production =

1,843

3,705 977

1.7.43 7,069 520 Essential Public Services = 1 1 Foodstuffs and Pyrethrum. = Rubber Production =

1,033

2,589 3,447

1.1.44 12,386 Rubber and Sisal=298

1,060 Essential Public Services = 11 Foodstuffs and = Pyrethrum Rubber Production = Sisal 11 =

112

4,315 5,061 2,898

1.7.44 18,261 Rubber and Sisal=105

1,279 Essential Public Services = 1 1 Foodstuffs and Pyrethrum = Rubber Production = Sisal =

68

4,401 6,635 7,157

1.1.45 26,256 Rubber and Sisal=103

1,101 Essential Public Services = 1 1 Foodstuffs and Pyrethrum = Rubber Production = Sisal 1 1 =

535

6,429 7,476

11,816

51

NUMBER OF VOLUNTARY LABOUR EMPLOYED IN THOSE INDU-STRIES FOR WHICH LABOUR HAS ALSO BEEN CONSCRIPTED

Industry Dates Census Census 1.1.41 1.1.42* 1.1.43* 1.1.44 19.4.44 a) 15.2.45 Sisal - - 100,0; 95,500 90,200 91,000 Rubber - - 9,700 13,200 10,700 13,700 Essential Foodstuffs and Pyrethrunt

- - 13,300 17,700 20,500 17,300

Timber Not available

- 4,800 5,300 11,500 15,000

Mineral Production

- 20,000 14,400 18,500 21,000 17,500

Essential Public Services

Not available

Not available

39,000(b) 34,000(b) 56,700 64,000

*Estimated

SUMMARY OF CONSCRIPTION

KENYA

Conscripts Voluntary Total Ist July, 1941 Ist January, 1943 Ist July 1943 Ist January, 1944 Ist July, 1944t Ist January, 1945t Ist July, 1942 Ist January, 1943 Ist July, 1943 Ist January, 1944 Ist July 1944t Ist January, 1945t

2,595 13,652 6,310

10,056 16,003 21,903 2,595

13,652 6,310

10,056 16,003 21,903

228,066 224,710 225,642 242,541 24,1627 225,124 228,066 224,710 225,642 242,541 241,627 225,124

230,661 238,362 231,952 252,597 257,630 247,027 230,661 238,362 231,952 252,597 257,630 247,027

t Corrected totals.

It is not possible to indicate the various categories in which this labour was employed, except for the month of November,

52

1944, when a Special Labour Census was taken. For that month the distribution was as follows:-

Production of essential food and pyrethrum 4,394 Civil labour for urgent works 363 Sisal 10,265 Sugar 1,060 Rubber 931 Flax 51 Government and Local Government wolks 189 Lime burning 202 In Labour Camps 704 ________ 18,159 Sick, off duty 517 On leave 125 Absent without leave 1,668 ________ Total conscripts 20,469

________

Mortality.-Unfortunately, exact figures of mortality among conscripts as such, are not available; deaths might occur in camp, on the journey, or during employment, and hospital records do not distinguish accurately between conscripts and others, so available records are limited to returns which actually specified the class of the worker. The following figures ate given, but they are undoubtedly somewhat below the correct ones:-

Tanganyika Rubber Sisal Essential production 1943 33 1 10 1944 61 54 22 1945 (to March) 1 14 not yet available Kenya 1943: 10; 1944: 30

53

Education Policies

The last hundred years have witnessed a remarkable transformation of the world. Many factors have combined to bring about this change and scholars will debate for decades to come which one of these factors was the most important. We might count the industrial revolution which has taken place at various times and at different speeds in each country as the number one factor. The cash economy, the new technologies, the growth of cities and populations, the highly developed means of communications of road, railway, sea and jet transport. All these are factors whose impact on the modern world has been tremendous. Everywhere in the world there is an influx of peoples to the cities. It is not only the Highlands of Scotland or the Welsh Valleys of Great Britain or the poor rural areas of the South of the USA which are becoming depopulated, but villages and small hamlets in Africa. Spectacular improvements in medicine and increased food production have meant that people are healthier, they live longer and infant mortality has also been greatly reduced. All these factors and their repercussions are reverberating throughout the African continent. Their combined assault on traditions and traditionalism, on antiquated methods of production and distribution, on medical practices, on religious beliefs have been tremendous.

But if we are to single out one factor which has led to the transformation of Africa as it has done elsewhere in the world, this will be undoubtedly modern education. It is education which has been the gateway to modernization. Modernization after all is the spread of knowledge and new ideas. We cannot apply the advanced technological devices unless we have the know-how. We cannot appreciate Picasso or the beauty and value of our environments unless we have been trained to do so. For this reason the second half of the 20th century perhaps more than any other period in human history, has looked upon education as the vehicle of progress. When we deal

54

with Africa, the common assumption among many Europeans and Americans is that before the advent of colonialism there was no system whatsoever of education in Africa. The absence of western forms and values has thus been equated with the absence of education. This is of course a false assumption because as long as man has been on this planet each community evolved its own religious beliefs, social and cultural values and it was upon these values that education was based. Technical education was not also unkown, because crafts and craftsmen, artists, road builders, smiths and mechanics were common in Africa long before the advent of colonialism. The spread of knowledge about these technologies was education.

It is true nevertheless that the 20th century has speeded up the growth of this knowledge and this speeding up has been largely though not solely due to the European penetration of Africa. Western style education could be dated to the time when Christian missionaries began to pour into Africa, but its subsequent expansion depended on a variety of local factors as well as on the attitudes of the colonial powers. Missionaries wanted to build schools which would act as vehicles of conversion and also as ideological tools to combat Islam and oriental influences. But like other men of the 20th century, some of these missionaries looked upon modern education as the key to progress. After the establishment of colonial rule governments began to give some financial assistance to what were then purely missionary enterprises. Before the mid 1920s, African education in East and Central Africa was not a priority in the governments' scheme of things. Money was short and could not therefore be expended on what was regarded by the colonial Administrations as a social service. This attitude differed from colony to colony, though on the whole the Germans seem to have paid greater attention to education before 1914 than either the British or the French. Nevertheless, even after the governments began to interest themselves in African education, it was the missionaries who remained the main anchor. A great deal has already been written on African education and the contributions of the missionaries and their governments have been noted. Some have been beneficial while others have been detrimental to the development of the African and "in his training and preparation for independence." A brief survey of educational policies in Africa will suffice to expose the myth that surrounds this subject and the exaggerated

55

achievements of some colonial powers. But before we dernothologise the subject, it will be useful to review the conditions and local factors which generally played a decisive role in shaping the educational policies of each country.

The presence of settlers for instance, had a tremendous influence on educational policies in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Zambia, the Belgian Congo and to a little extent in Kenya. Moreover the natural resources of each country were important factors in countries such as Uganda, Southern Ghana and Nigeria though they made no difference in the settler dominated countries. Colonial preoccupation with policies of indirect rule or assimilation left their mark on the educational policies in Northern Ghana, Northern Nigeria and a number of French colonies. As for the Africans themselves, some responded more enthusiastically than others especially at the beginning of the century. For the African because the family budget was meagre, the education of girls was always considered after that of the boys. But this is not an African phenomenon, as some are apt to assert. A close look at individual countries will provide a better picture of colonial policies. In South and Central Africa, policies were colonial, racist and segregationist. by 1925 many schools existed, but they were vernacular or bush orvillage schools.The aim of these schools was to provide the kind of education that would keep the African "in his place". Thus indirect rule and its advocates immediately came to the rescue not only to promote segregation but to "preserve the traditional way of life". "This emphasis," writes Dr. Gray, "was strikingly reflected in the educational theory wl-~ich was primarily connected with the tribe, the village and the peasant community".1 Bolstering up ethnoccntricism by indirect rule to oppose the growth of a class of skilled African workers and to oppose the emergence of African political consciousness was of course to resist the march of events. But all the same many colonial powers basked in this illusion. In some areas such as Southern Rhodesia and South Africa, Mozambique and Angola, colonialism still survives, but as events have proved the colonialist wrong elsewhere, they will prove the racial supremacist minorities of these countries wrong there too in the long run.

A quick glance at the government subsidies in Malawi, Zambia and Southern Rhodesia will further illustrate the attitudes of the colonial governments in these regions. Before 1914 in Malawi the government paid a grant of a mere $1,000 in 1907 which was

56

raised to $3,000 by 1924. In Southern Rhodesia in 1909 grants totalling fl,744 were made. A committee of Native Affairs recommended the establishment of a Teacher Training Institute in the African Reserves, but no steps were taken to implement the recommendation. The Phelps Stokes Commission of the niid-1920s suggested that the literally and narrowly evangelistic education was inadequate. The Report whose members profited from their experience with the Black Americans in the USA emphasized that education should be related to the Africans' environment. It emphasized agricultural training and provision for secondary education. The latter recommendation was hardly considered in Central Africa.

BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA The population of the territories in 1952 is estimated as:-

TABLE I

Africans Europeans Asians Coloured Total Southern Rhodesia 1,800,000 152,000 4,600 6,300 1,962,900 Northern Rhodesia 1,930,000 43,000 3,100 1,200 1,977,800 Nyasaland 2,540,000 5,000 6,000 500 2,551,500

6,270,000 200,000 13,700 8,000 6,49-1,700

In 1949 the distribution in Southern Rhodesia government-aided schools was as follows:-

TABLE 2

Type of School Number of Pupils Sub-Standard A 79, 975 (42,488 boys; 37,487 girls) Sub-Standard B 49,898 (27,000 boys; 22,898 girls) Standard I 36,932 (20,643 boys; 16,289 girls) Standard II 23,038 (13,909 boys; 9,129 girls) Standard III 16,217 (10,381 boys; 5,836 girls) Standard IV 8,897 ( 6,093 boys; 2,804 girls) Standard V 5,525 (3,832 boys; 1,673 girls) Standard VI 3,092 ( 2,269 boys; 823 girls) POST-PRIMARY: Form 1. General Secondary Industrial ... Form Il. General Secondary Industrial ... Form III. General Secondary

70 (65 boys; 5 girls) 80 (boys) 76 (69 boys; 7 girls) 60 (boys) 58 (50 boys; 8 girls)

57

TABLE3 The proportion of African school children reaching secondary education is

small as the following three tables (which exclude pupils in teacher-training schools) show. In 1950 in Nyasaland the distribution was as follows:-

Type of School Number of African Schools Number of Pupils

Sub-Standard, Unassisted,

Sub-standard, Assisted

Junior Primary

Senior Primary

Secondary

3,936

379

233

30

3

134,931

35,000

47,112

2,462

162

TABLE4 In 1951 in Northern Rhodesia the distribution was as follows:-

Type of School Number of African Schools

Number qf pupils

UNASSISTED SCHOOLS

ASSISTED PRIMARY Elementary Middle

Upper SECONDARY

310

1,276

59 5

16,107 (9,738 boys, 6,369 girls)

6,003 (31,511 boys, 44,492 girls)

14,570 (12,756 boys, 1,814 girls)

4,133 (3,822 boys,311 girls) 248 (236 boys, 12 girls)

}

58

(Continued)

The results of the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate examination for candidates from the African secondary schools are as follows:-

TABLE5

Year Candidates Ist Class 2nd Class 3rd Class Fail

SOUTHERN RHODESIA

1949 34 (including 1 girl)

1950 49 (including I girl)

1951 37 (including 5 girls)

7

17

9

10

14

11

16

16

10

1

1

7

TOTAL: 120 of whom I 10 passed

33 35 42 10

NORTHERN RHODESIA

1946 6 ... ...

1947 12 ... ...

1948 7 ... ...

1949 15 ... ... 1950 18 ... ...

1951 20 ... ...

-

4

0

2 0

4

-

3

4

6 7

6

3 passed

2

3

4 8

7

3 failed

6

0

3 3

3

TOTAL: 78 of whom 60 passed

6 27 24+3 18

NYASALAND

1947 2 ... 1950 10 ...

0 5

2 3

0 2

0 0

TOTAL: 12 of whom all passed

5 5 2 0

The Commission had highlighted the need for higher education and the

participation of the government in the process. Thus we find that Directors or Commissioners of African education were established in most British colonies and government subsidies increased. In Southern Rhodesia a five year plan was adopted in 1930 providing 02,179 (1930-1932) for the year, raising this to $171,346 in the fifth year. African schools were originally founded to teach to read the Bible and to provide a pool for catechists. Partly as a result of the Phelps Stokes emphasis on the African community, interest in the 1920s and 1930s was focused on the village, the ethnic, group rather than on the individual or the town. In this scheme of things, secondary education was quite low in the

59

order of priorities. This approach harmonised so well with the theory of indirect rule that not only did it restrict the ambitions of emerging Africans, but it revitalized traditional authority. European teachers both missionary and lay laboured to promote and to glamorize the image of the traditional village life in the eyes of African children. The major instrument in this process was the Jeanes School and the Jeanes trained teacher who was himself an African.

The idea of a Jeanes School and the kind of teacher it produced originated in the Deep South of the USA and it was particularly significant that in Africa these schools flourished in countries dominated by the white settlers, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Southern Rhodesia. These schools became the pivot of a policy which was vigorously adopted at the end of the 1920s and which de-emphasized any academic tendencies in the African curricular. In this way emphasis on the rural community and on the village diverted attention from the urgent realities of the 20th century. The colonial governments of these countries left nothing to chance. In 1935 all matters connected with Africans were placed under the Secretary for Native Affairs, variously known as Chief Native Commissioner, or Director of Native Development. Henceforth the Department of Native Affairs began to look carefully into the matter to ensure that government policy was carried out. By 1938 the Southern Rhodesia government was responsible for two schools whose specific aim was to give training in crafts. This was followed by a proviso that, "natives must not be trained in such a way as to enter into competition with Europeans".2

To condemn indirect rule and the system of education whose basic aim was to exclude the African from the competitive demands of the 20th century is not to overlook the fact that the task of preserving African culture and values was of immense importance. There is no reason to believe, however, that the African cultural inheritance would not have survived as it bad indeed done, as a living force when it took part in the challenges of the 20th century. The problems of the world have been to transform the inhabitants so that they can share in what the 20th century had to offer. When Africans demanded education they did so because they wanted it to enable them to become 20th century beings and to be in a position to respond to the economic imperatives of industrialism and materialism. Yet we see in Central Africa as well as elsewhere that the

60

philosophy which lay behind the Jeanes School retarded secondary education so much so that even as late as the 1960's this remained one of the most serious challenges of Central Africa on the eve of the 1970s3

There is little doubt in the modern world that education, particularly higher education, has come to be regarded as the engine for progress. As we have already seen, the attitudes of colonial powers in Africa towards higher education differed from extreme indifference to lukewarm support. It is important however, that we remove the web of mythology from what was done and what was not done. There is a geneial belief among many writers on Africa

Total Enrolment Total Gov.

Expenditure Cost per pupil Year

Coloured & Indian

1135 il 1,409.0.0 fl.0-0 1936

European in British Central Africa.

105,466 (in aided schools,

E52, 926.0.0 0. 13.9 1395

E323,179.0.0 E30.13.9 1935

that there existed significant differences between the educational policies of the different colonial powers. Unfortunately an examination of the historiography on this subject reveals the same kind of stereotype which has little bearing to the facts. The literature on colonial education in Africa increased in volume particularly as a result of the Congo Crisis in 1960. As in the case of administrative policies, the British have sold themselves very well to the historians and political scientists and examples have been dangled around from Nigeria to Ghana and to Uganda. On the other hand many of these writers have maintained almost discreet silence on what happened in British colonies like Tanganyika, Malawi, Zambia and Southern Rhodesia. When talking about Nigeria and Ghana few have made the distinction between the north and the south.

In order to understand the differences in colonial policies regarding African education we shall examine what the educational systems produced. Attention will be focused on "higher education" because its products are believed to have determined the course of events at the time of independence. Education in Africa has been fairly well documented. In English we have the classic Phelps Stokes Commission Reports of the 1920s and Lord Hailey's An African Survey. These have left for us a wealth of literature on which to base

61

balanced conclusions before the 1940s. By 1939, it is clear from Lord Hailey's survey that in Africa as a whole and with a few exceptions there was little difference either in the philosophy of education or in the actual achievement by the colonial powers. Nevertheless many writers for instance have been amazed at the extent to which the missionaries dominated the Belgian system of education. Thus Professor Rene Lemarchand has commented "Even on a continent where the association of education with religious missionaries is a commonplace, the reliance of the Congo on this type of educational colonisation is striking".4

Anyone acquainted with the educational systems in Africa knows very well that there was everywhere the same reliance on "missionaries". There were few state schools in Africa except in the French Colonies. Reliance on missionaries therefore was the order of the day and was to say the least taken for granted both by the governments and by -the missionaries themselves. Neither the British colonial governments nor the British missionaries themselves saw anything seriously odd in this. In Uganda a school which had been founded on secular l ines at Nyakasura in Toro, was taken over by the Protestant missionaries as soon as the founder-headmaster died. As late as 1956 in Uganda Kyambogo Government Domestic Science College was closed to Catholic girls by a government circular signed by the Minister of Social Services. And yet this was a state school supported by public funds.

What kind of "higher" education was given to the African? A careful study of secondary education may reveal important similari ties. For Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and Malawi and Zambia, post secondary education was supposed to be obtained at Makerere in Uganda. For Nigeria, it was at Yaba Higher College, Lagos; and at Achimota for the Gold Coast and at Four abay in Sierra Leone. All these institutions were according to Lord Hailey founded with the intention that students should ultimately be able to meet the standards required for an English university degree. What is important for us in this discussion is not so much the existence of the colleges as the number of Africans who went through them and the standards of the qualifications they obtained. Makerere was founded in 1922 as a technical school and it grew in academic status as the years rolled on. Yet by 1936, only a handful of its students had obtained the Cambridge School Certificate and only a few of them qualified for exemption from the "London

62

matriculation". The rest of the Makerere students pursued what Lord Hailey described as vocational courses .... in medicine, teacher training, engineering, agriculture and veterinary work.

"A Medical School" had also been founded in the mid 1920s and its products were referred to as doctors, though officially they were referred to as "qualified medical aids". A Colonial Office Report on Higher Education in East Africa defined these Makerere doctors as "Aids capable under some supervision of running small district stations and hospitals by themselves". 5 Perhaps not surprisingly the products of the Makerere medical school who had all along been called doctors were not awarded a degree in medicine until 1963. Neither was their qualification recognized as a real academic diploma until 1957 when it was termed a licentiate in medicine and its holders were described "as qualified to practise medicine in East Africa". It was not until 1957 that the Makerere medical qualification was recognized by the British Medical Council. Thus the existence of what is described as a medical school for more than 30 years (1924-1957) can be deceptive if we do not ask ourselves about the achievements of the school. When we turn to actual num-bers, the output for 1958 was 31 students-25 of whom were from Uganda, one from Kenya, 3 from Tanganyika and 2 from Zanzibar. There were none from Malawi or Zambia. By 1939 it was still contemplated that "in some 10 years time the numbers will reach 100”.6 In Nigeria, a school similar to Makerere had been founded at Yaba in 1932. But Lord Hailey's observation on these medical schools at the end of the 1930s was significant, He wrote,

There does not exist in Africa any institution designated to afford the African an opportunity of gaining full medical qualification in the sense in which that is understood in Great Britain or in countries which the British Medical Council has concluded agreements for reciprocal recognition of qualification .... Both Yaba (Lagos) and Mulago (Makerere) would appear to contemplate that at some future date, they will be equipped to train fully qualified African practitioners though at present they have more limited aims.

'Justifying this', concluded

that the British Territories do not at present contemplate making a provision for Africans to take full medical degrees is largely due to acknowledged lack of necessary facilities for pre-vocational education.7

63

But even by the later 1950s, the Medical School population at Makerere in the academic year 1957-58 was still Pitifully small. Consisting of 89 students for the whole of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia the total number of the graduating class was 7". 8

After World War 11 there was a fresh look at African education by the colonial powers. It was as a result of this look that new plans in British Africa, for example, led to the foundation of University Colleges which were in a special relationship with the University of London. Makerere in Uganda was thus created a University College of East Africa in 1949. A study of the development of Makerere University College reveals interesting aspects of British colonial education policy. The college was created by royal charter in 1949 and at first only two year (general) degree courses were offered in the Arts and Sciences. But even by the late 1950s the supply of graduates about which so much has been written was still extremely meagre. Statistics supplied by the two Reports on Higher Education in East Africa between 1958 and 1959 showed the following figures. There were twenty nine students in the first year degree course and twenty five in the final (second) year. Only five of the finalists were Ugandans. There were fourteen Kenyans, few Tanganyikans, one Zanzibarian, no Mp.'; vian and one Zambian. In the Sciences, the first year B.Sc. general degree totalled sixteen. Of these there were no Zambians or Zanzibarians or Malawians. The final year totalled fifteen, two of whom were Ugandans, five Kenyans and eight Tanganyikans. There were no Zanzibarians, Malawians or Zambians graduating in Science at Makeiere in 1957-58. The same miserably small figures are shown for the diploma courses in Agriculture and Veterinary Science. (See figures in Appeadix C pp. 148-157)

On the West Coast of Africa, the picture was much better because of the higher secondary school output and because West Africans were generally wealthier than their East African counterparts, they paid their way through colleges in Britain and America. For the West Africans, this was particularly important because it helped to raise the educational standards. Moreover, the presence of Afro-Americans, some of whom were ex-slaves, played a major role in West African education. Notable among the very early Afro-Americans, was Dr. Edward Blyden whose name loomed large in Sierra Leone and Liberia during the second half of the 19th century. The presence of these men and their experiences in other

64

lands outside West Africa helped to widen the outlook of West Africans at a much earlier date. But in British East Africa, Uganda for example, the British so carefully insulated their subjects from the currents of the external world, that educational standards were low compared to West Africa. This was because East Africans knew no better. They had no experience of other educational institutions. Their primary schools were called High Schools and Junior Secondaries were called Colleges. With this smoke screen of highsounding titles, the Biitish maintained a generally low standard of education throughout the 1930s and even 1940s. As far as British Central Africa was concerned the data provided by The Central -African Council Report on Higher Education for Africans in Central Africa9 clearly shows that little had been done there even by the late 1950s. The Report provides data also on Makerere. But the Makerere figures include possibly more than nine-tenths of non-degree students especially in the case of those from Uganda. It should be clear from these statistics that the highly trained manpower which the British are believed to have left throughout their colonies did not exist except in the minds of the writers.

Let us now turn to French Africa and to the Belgian Congo.10 I shall not talk about Belgian Technical education which was one of if not the best and most generous in Africa though by no means adequate. Neither shall I waste time on Primary education which according to colonial plans has again been acknowledged as one of the best and most generous in Africa. I shall focus my attention on the secondary school training and on the training of graduates and medicos. According to available statistics there were 461,370 pupils in Belgian secondary schools in 1950 in the Belgian Congo. Considering the size of the Congo this is not a terribly high figure. But it does not compare badly with any regional grouping of French or British territories. This of course is not to say that what the Belgians provided was in any way adequate. Turning to medical training a medical centre very similar to Makerere was created in the lowet Congo in 1925 by a number of medical professors of the University of Louvain. In 1932 another group of Louvain professors created an intermediate agricultural college for training agricultural assistants similar to those trained at Makerere. In 1936 a school was opened for "medical assistants". It offered. a two year preparatory course, four years of medical instruction and a two year probational period. In 1947 the Congolese University

65

Centre was created to co-ordinate the different schools and on 21 Feb. 1949 the project was granted a royal charter. This was followed by a grant of 675 acres to start building the Louvain University of the Congo. The first pre-university students were admitted in 1954 and the first university courses began in 1956.

A perusal of the literature on the question of higher education in the Congo reveals interesting similarities with the arguments and counter-arguments used by the British in Uganda, Kenya and indeed elsewhere in Africa. For instance the question of whether higher education in the Congo should lay emphasis on quality iather than quantity was heard often enough among Belgian buieauciats. Consequently the intake was strictly controlled on this pretext. In East Africa the same arguments were heard almost as frequently. A young man who took a School Certificate examination and obtained five "A" grade passes out of a possible eight would be denied entry into Makerere if he "did not satisfy the examiners" in his English Language Paper. The question of whether technical education should be paiamount had been debated by the Belgians and settled, because according to them, "the country's needs of technicians were immense" but the same thinking was not absent among the British. In East Africa, what is now the University of Nairobi was founded as the Royal Technical College and when it first opened its doors to students in 1956 its concentration was on the technical side. When the question of another University College in East Africa atmosphere was tremendous opposition to upgrading the Royal Technical College as the College was then known. Much of the opposition came from British expatriate staff at Makerere and in the Civil Service. Nevertheless, as the political winds of change began to blow hard in East Africa, a second University College (the former Royal Technical College) was opened in 1960. In the Congo, the second University, known as the "State University of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi" was created by a decree on 26th October, 1955.

Nevertheless, everywhere in colonial Africa, whether British or Belgian, the question of whether Africans should be sent abroad or to create for them "special institutions of higher education" was debated extensively. Many colonialists argued that Africa was not ripe for higher education because that had to be based on "a highly developed social and cultural life". In the view of such men a University born in the present circumstances could only turn out to be a

66

complete failure. Often the question of cost was beard. In Uganda, Kenya, as well as in the Belgian Congo, one frequently heard that sending students overseas was a more costly solution than the creating of Universities on the spot. These of course were shortsighted views of the problem. The problem extended beyond the question of how university graduates could be turned out at the lowest cost. The solution to the problem of higher education in Africa could thus not be reduced to a few individual cases and pay no attention to the general interest and future needs of the continent. Although today, many African countries have rejected the old image of a university, the fact still remains that we need universities perhaps more than the developed countries. Universities have an educational and scientific mission to fulfil. They are centres of culture and because of this they have a stimulating effect on the cultural development of our countries.

From this account it seems that the growth of University education in the Congo does not present a significant gap when compared with British East and Central Africa. This is particularly so when we consider the fact that until 1958 the majority of Makerere students were not pursuing courses leading to degrees. The agriculturalist, the veterinarians and the teachers were not awarded degrees until the 1960s. If an ex-Makerere agriculture student wanted to get a degree he had to go to Britain or to some other country. The Belgians were perhaps more honest but less diplomatic in not calling their medical trainees doctors. Those in East Africa were unofficially called doctors. But the time it took to register their diploma as people capable of practising medicine (even though it be only in East Africa), the time it took the British Medical Council to recognize the Makerere medical qualification offers food for thought. Looking at the statistics, the number of degree students at Louvain in 1956 and later compares favourably with the numbers for British East and Central Africa.

It is true that fewer Congolese trained abroad before 1960, but the gap becomes enormous only when we compare the situation with countries like southern Nigeria and Ghana. The Tanzanian figures are small and the Congolese situation was in some respects better than that of Malawi, Zambia and Southern Rhodesia. The 6ngo had many people who by 1960 were secondary school "graduates" and many others who had post secondary training but who were not called university graduates. Uganda, Kenya and

67

Tanzania had many such people: preachers, agricultural assistants, veterinary assistants and people who had taken technical training in civil engineering. There were not many African lawyers in Uganda at the time of independence. There were also few in Kenya and less than ten in Tanganyika. The situation in Malawi, Zambia and S. Rhodesia was worse. In 1961 there were just over five hundred physicians in Tanganyika but only fourteen were Africans and the majority of the fourteen held qualifications which according to British official policy entitled them to practise medicine only in East Africa. They had a licentiate and not a medical degree. In other words they were the equal of their Congolese counterparts who however were not called doctors. President Julius Nyerere was one of the first Tanganyikans to attend a British university and returned with a university degree in the 1950s.

When we look at French Africa as a whole, i.e. French West and Central Africa, the situation compared favourably with the majority of British colonies. In certain cases it was even better. Probably because of their assimilationistic philosophies the French permitted and had a substantial body of Africans who had received very high education eatly on. Their Ecole de Medicine de L'Afrique Occidental Frangais at Dakar was older than the British schools at Makerere in Uganda or Yaba in Nigeria. The French achievement, though by no means spectacular, was summed up by Lord Hailey before World War 11 as follows, "It may be said (The Ecole de Medicine) to be the most successful and certainly the largest effort in Africa to provide a colonial medical education with an acknowledged standard of efficiency".11 By 1940 it bad produced over four hundred practitioners, a figure which was still a far cry from Makerere. But the French, like their British counterparts, did not then confer full medical degrees which could be obtained only in France or some other overseas country. African medical practitioners in French Africa practised in the State Service and were not permitted to do private practice though an exception could be made sometimes for those with exceptionally high standards. The pattern of the course was similar to that in the Belgian Congo and in the British institutions.

The most remarkable thing about education and educational qualifications in Africa is the bewildering diversity of nomenclature. This fact seems to have escaped the attention of many writers on Africa. Who was a medical assistant in the Belgian Congo? Looking

68

at his course, it was no different from that of his counterpart at Makerere or Lagos. He spent six years in training, two of which were spent in practical laboratory work. The British, masters of diplomacy and subterfuge, called their trainees doctors. But in East Africa their qualification did not become registerable until 1940 and it was not recognized by the British Medical Council until 1957. The French allowed their trainees to practise medicine, but they, like the British, made it clear that the qualification was not a full medical degree. The Belgians, perhaps more rigid, did not permit their trainees who in fact 'held equivalent qualifications as their British and French counterparts to practise medicine. Similarly many people in Africa were by American definition college graduates since they had spent three to four post-secondary years training in various fields.(See Tablesjpp 71-:73.) POLITICAL LEADERSHIP AND UNIVERSITY EDUCATION: A FALSE CONNECTION

There are other aspects of colonial policies which have been prominently linked with political training. These were higher education and indirect rule. A mythical fink has been discovered between the peaceful transfer of political power at the time of independence and these policies. The Congo crisis of the 1960s accentuated the belief that there was a close connection between these policies. Judgement on Belgian failure to prepare the Congolese for indepen-dence by methods of indirect rule and by providing higher education has been severe. In order to illustrate this we shall unfortunately have to quote extensively. In his Congo Background to the Conflict Dr. Merrian has perhaps summed up the views of most commentators on the Congo. "We have many lessons to learn from our look at the Congo." He wrote in the preface, "We see ... that man does not indeed five by bread alone, and that economic security cannot be successfully substituted for ideas.1112 Other writers on the Congo were amazed at the "tremendous degree" to which the Congo had been controlled by outside forces, the triumvirate of government, Catholic church and business and the conclusion was that such an arrangement represented a strong power system which contributed to the stifling of independence and independent

69

thought on the part of the Congolese. Stressing the shortcomings of Belgian paternalism, Merrian has written,

The philosophy of mass education was against the education of the elite .... The British programme of sending numbers of their subjects to universities in England and Europe and America was considered foolish by Belgians. Paternalism fed the body .... but it did nothing for the intellect .... The basic weakness of paternalism was that it failed to prepare the Congolese for independence. It failed to give them a sense of belonging to their country. It failed to instruct them in the western system of government which it was assured they would undertake once the fact of independence was established.

He concludes

Perhaps the most serious lack in Belgian preparation of her colony was the failure to build up a group of educated Congolese who could participate in government and give the country a mature and considered leadership in independence. There was none equipped to teach. The average level of the Congolese at the Round Table Conference in February was something less than high school. The cabinets of the first government, which included very few graduates, was not much higher. There were no engineers. There were bishops, journalists, accountants, medical assistants, teachers, civil servants, pharmacists, but no attorneys or architects. There were no doctors. No people trained at university level in what we could call a liberal education. There were no social scientists, no humanists; there was simply no group of truly educated people who were prepared to give enlightened leadership .... thus it was to a group of uneducated people that the Congo was turned over to independence." 13

Professor Rene Lemarchand delivers the same judgement when he links education to the so-called mature and enlightened leadership.

The University students were a tiny fraction of the whole population and by the time they became available for political action, the less well educated had already seized the initiative. . .. Clearly the educational system was responsible in a large measure for the delayed political awakening of the Congolese elite (paternalism) operated to divert the aspirations of the Africans from the sphere of revolutionary politics.14

'Professor Martell blames the Congo tragedy on Belgian failure to prepare the Congolese. He writes, "The Grant of Independence to the Congo .... was the unkindest thing any nation could have

70

done to another .... The Belgians should have started sooner to prepare the way by training more Congolese as government officials and civil servants.'15

All this condemnation is justified. But the writers err when they assume that Belgian policies were different from those of other colonial powers. If this mythology is to be exploded therefore the first thing to reappraise is indirect rule which is believed to have provided political training for Africans. A careful study will show that whether indirect rule preserved indigenous institutions or not, whether a colonial power practised indirect rule or not, that had nothing to do with the so-called reservoir of experience which was needed at the time of independence. This was precisely because the men who took over at independence were not the chiefs who had sat in the tribal councils. If that was done in Nigeria it was certainly not done in East and Central Africa. But perhaps the most extraordinary and unfounded myth is the connection between university education and what Doctor Merrian calls "enlightened and mature leadership." When Merrian castigates the Belgians for not sending Congolese to Europe and America as the British did, he does not tell us how many Tanganyikans, how many Malawians, how many Zambians were sent to Europe and America and how many of them took over the reins of government at independence.

Dr. Merrian sees in every physician and in every engineer an able and "enlightened" leader, but not in an accountant, not in a teacher, not in a pharmacist, not in a Congolese "medical assistant" who had had the same training as his counterpart (doctor) in East Africa or Nigeria. By his criteria, Obote of Uganda, Kenyatta and Tom Mboya of Kenya, Kaunda of Zambia would be disqualified for lack of enlightened and mature leadership because they had no university degrees. Yet bibliographical studies of the legislators in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and even Ghana will show that they were not all university graduates. It is amazing that Dr. Merrian despises journalists because in America as well as in Europe some of the brightest people in the arts and humanities usually take up Journalism. Moreover even if all legislators had university degrees, a university degree does not make an enlightened leader. Churchill never got one, neither did Napoleon and one guesses that Nikita Kruschev never had one. Yet they are men whom posterity cannot forget because of their achievements and the impact they made.

71

72

The following is a detailed table of registered students for the academic year 1957-58: TABLE2

A. NA. Total

FACULTY OF THEOLOGY

Ist year bachelorship 7 0 7

FACULTY OF MEDICINE

2nd undergr. in nat. and med. sc. 5 9 14 3rd undergr. in nat. and med. sc. 4 1 5 I st grad. in nat. ;~d med. sc. 3 1 4

FACULTY OF PHILO. AND LITERATURE

Ist undergr. prep. to law 0 4 4 2nd undergr. prep. to law 1 4 5 Ist undergr. in rom. 0 2 2 2nd undergr. in rom. philol 0 2 2

INSTITUTE OF PEDAGOGY

1st undergr. in ped. sc. 4 2 6 2nd undergr. in ped. sc. 4 2 6 Ist grad. in ped. sc. 5 0 5 2nd grad. in ped. sc. 5 4 9

FACULTY OF SCIENCES

Ist undergr. in nat. and med. sc. 7 8 15 1st undergr. in math. or physl. sc. 1 1 2 2nd undergr. in math. or physi. sc. 1 0 1 Istundergr. in biol. sc. 0 1 1 2nd undergr. in biol. sc. 0 0 0 Ist undergr. in zool. sc. 0 2 2

SPECIAL SCHOOLS

Ist undergr. civil eng. 9 7 16 2nd undergr. civil eng. 2 1 3

AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE

Ist undergr. agric. experts 2 4 6 2nd undergr. agric. experts 5 0 5 I st year agric. experts 0 1 1 2nd year agric. experts 1 1 2

FACULTY OF POL. SOC. AND ECONOMIC SCIENCES

Ist undergr. in poI. soc. and ec. sc. 17 1 18 2nd undergr. in pol. soc. and ec. sc. 10 1 11 Ist grad. in pol. soc. and ec. sc. 4 2 6 2nd grad. in pol. soc. and ec. sc. 4 0 4 Ist undergr. in appl. econ. sc. 8 2 10 2nd undergr. in appl. econ. sc. 1 4 5 SCIENTIFIC, PRE-UNIV. 9 5 14 GENERAL PRE-UNIV. 58 0 58

TOTAL number of students 177 72 249

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TABLE 3

The following table indicates the number of Affican and non-African students in the different years:

1954-55 1955-56 1956-57 1957-58 A.-Non-A. A.-Non-A. A.-Non-A. A.Non-A.

Students in the faculties

Students in gen. pre-univ.

Students in sc. pre-univ.

18

12

0

3

0

0

32

43

2

10

0

0

66

50

6

39

0

8

110

58

9

67

0

5

30 3 77 0 122 47 177 72 33 87 169 249

TABLE 4

1954-55 1955-56 1956-57

UNIVERSITY SECTIONS A N.A. T A N.A. T A N.A. T

With honours

Cum laude

Pass

Failure

2

3

11

2

1

1

1

0

3

4

12

2

1

7

18

4

2

1

4

2

3

8

22

6

1

8

44

14

2

12

15

8

3

20

59

22

GENERAL PRE-UNIVERSITY

Admitted to University

10

0

10

29

0

29

31

0

31

ENTRANCE examination to

Special sch. in sc. maths or phys.

Students admitted

6

2

8

10

5

15 A=African N.A. -Non African

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It should be clear from the foregoing account that the many aspects of educational policies which have been presumed to be found only in the Congo were more widely spread than is generally admitted. A greater knowledge of the history of other parts of Africa would have shown anyone who cared to look that similarities in policies were far greater and that the supposed enlightenment of some colonial regimes is a figment of the imagination. With the exception of Northern Nigeria education was in the 1920s in the hands of the missionaries. With the exception of the French colonies, State Schools hardly existed. It was not only in the Belgian Congo that religious bodies had undue influence on government policy but in British colonies as well. In Uganda for instance the increasing measure of state control envisaged by the British colonial office Memorandum of 1925 was "unacceptable to the Protestant missionaries" unless it gave prominent place to the formula that native education must be based on religion. The missionaries argued that "the education -of the natives would be of no value without religion and it should therefore be left to a large extent in the hands of the missionaries." According to Lord Hailey it was the government's acceptance of this formula which persuaded the missionaries when they met in 1926 to accept the proposals with a number of amendments .16 Two more examples from Uganda will illustrate one close alliance between British colonial policy and the religious bodies.

Early in the 1920s Nyakasura School which is already mentioned was founded by a man with strong secular tendencies. He wanted it to be a non-denominational school and it remained so during his headmastership. It was a unique institution in Uganda but as soon as he died the school was taken over by the Protestant missionaries and it became a de facto denominational school. In 1955 the Uganda Government opened a Domestic Science College at Kyambogo near Kampala. This was a state school supposed to be non-sectarian. Yet Catholic girls were forbidden to attend the college by government circular because of their catholicism.

There is another aspect of colonial policy which was widely spread. It was not only the Belgiau Administration in the Congo who felt uneasy and feared an African trained abroad, but their British counterparts as well. A British Colonial Committee on education in 1937 deprecated the resultant efflux of these Africans who studied abroad and concluded that it was socially and intellectually undesirable and that the courses provided at these institutions were

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unsuitable for African conditions.17 The background to such arguments is not far to seek. Surely if the African might get a university degree from abroad how could he fit into the scheme of things which provided "higher studies" or "higher science" which in practice led to nowhere? Such overseas education was indeed unsuitable!

This brief survey of colonial educational policies has demonstrated clearly that not only the Belgians denied the African full academic qualification but all other colonial powers. This was high policy with tremendous advantages to the colonial power. First of all colonial r6gimes had justified their continued existence in Africa on the pretext that the African, like a baby, was not yet ready to stand on his own. The continent lacked trained personnel and even the general level of education was low, so the world was told. In view of this no colonial power would speedily go out of its way to cut the ground from under its feet by training Africans. Even when such Africans existed, it was colonial policy throughout Africa to place them in insignificant positions without responsibilities. Hence the continued claim that Africa lacked experienced men who could staff an independent state. Wherever changes took place whether in colonial administrations or not they did so because of the irresistible circumstances and not because of a benevolent colonial policy.

1. The Two Nations. 2, An African Survey, pp. 1226-1227, additional information-King's book. 3. Richard Hall, The High Price of Principles: Kaunda and the White South (London 1969). 4. Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo (California, 1964). 5. Higher Education in E. Africa. Report (1939). 6. An African Survey. 7. Ibid. 8. For Higher Education in East Africa during the 1950s. See Reports (Entebbe, 1958) and

(Nairobi 1959) on the same subjects. 9. (London 1953) 10. An African Survey is still the best source. 11. Ibid. 12. Alan P. Merrian, Congo: Background to Conflict (Evanston, 111, 1961) 13. Ibid. 14. Political awakening in the Congo. 15. George Martelli, Leopold to Lumumba: A history of the Belgian Congo (London 1962). 16. An African Survey, pp. 1235-1236. 17. An African Survey, p. 1232.

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Indirect and Direct Rule: The Myths of the Contrasts

By 1914, colonial powers were firmly entrenched and between then and 1920 they had formulated the philosophies or theories upon which their administrations were to be based. Colonial administrations whether German, French or British rested on the principle of using Africans as agents. They were cheaper and acted as shock absorbers. As we have already remarked both the coloniser and the African chief needed and reinforced each other. The colonial power guaranteed the positions of the chiefs while the cooperation of the latter enhanced or at least it was believed to enhance the moral presence of the coloniser. During this period theories such as those of indirect or direct rule or assimilation of the African came into prominence. One of the staple foods of colonial historiography is the search for differences rather than similarities.

Many writers therefore believe that the greatest degree of difference in colonial r6gimes existed in the systems of administration and in the constitutional practices, especially in so far as they treated traditional authorities or African chiefs. Thus Professor Emerson has asserted

the nature of the colonial setting and the contrasting colonial policies of the powers have played a significant role not only in the shaping of nations, but also in the development of nationalism, influencing the speed with which nationalist movements have swung into action, their membership and structure, the demands they pose and their tactics and strategy .... Such matters as the type of economy the imperial power encourages, the goals it sets, the colonial institutions it establishes, the civil and political institutions it extends to the people, the centralization of direct or indirect rule are all of major consequences in determining the character of the political mores which arise to challenge the colonial overloads.'1

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In their Burden of Empire, Gann and Duignan have argued that

the British were on the whole pragmatic and more respectful of established chieftain authority while the French were more legally minded, bound to the continental tradition of centralized administration. The French thus based their government on centralized rule from Paris and on the same administrative concepts that dominated their outlook on government at home. They generally saw themselves as the new chiefs, and the French service produced a whole generation of fois de la prousse who governed their districts with an iron hand. French Governor Generals exercised a much tighter control over local Governors than the British Governors over their local Residents or British Residents over their district commissioners. African chiefs were generally treated as subalteins rather than as partners in government .... Many tribal heads were deposed, titles were discontinued; some disappeared altogether and tribal areas were regrouped into larger units. This policy occasioned a great deal of friction and the French system thus helped to undermine the power of the traditional chiefs and thereby had the unintended effect of facilitating the ultimate abolition of chiefly rule under African government. The British desired legitimate chiefs and, unlike the French or the Portuguese, rarely deposed the dignitaries they appointed. They accepted a great variety of chiefly rule; they attempted to retain traditional legal institutions. They delegated both judicial and executive powers, such as the right to raise local taxes, maintain police forces and issue administrative orders. The Chiefs were treated with much respect in publ ic, and the British tried to gain their way through persuasion rather than command. The British saw the native state as a basis for the political future of their African empire.

Turning to the Belgians, the authors conclude,

The Belgians like the French believed in extreme centralization. Leopold ruled the Provinces and Brussels ruled Leopoldville. The inhabitants of the Congo both white and black remained strictly excluded from all influence in government. Under the French, chiefs, however, remained nothing but the agents of the administration without independent judicial or executive powers. Former soldiers or clerks with a knowledge of French were put into office only to be dismissed if they did not carry out their duties in a manner acceptable to the French.2

The most recent and assertive statement regarding differences between British and French administrations has been by Professor Crowder. According to Crowder

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There were such fundamental differences between the French and the British system that, it is not possible to place the French system of native administration in the same category as British indirect rule upon Northern Nigeria, Uganda and Tanganyika as models of indirect rule. What is important is the very different way in which these (native) authorities were used. The nature and position of the power of the chief in the two systems was totally different and, as a corollary, so were the relations between the chief and the political officer, who was inspired by very different ideals .... The relations between the British political officer and the chief was in general that of an adviser.3

For our analysis of colonial administrations and the myths which surround them let us first of all try to understand what indirect rule was really about. How, if at all did it differ from Direct Rule? Indirect Rule as a system of administration was talked and written about probably much more by the British thereby creating the impression that if they did not invent it they alone applied it. The supposed founder of indirect rule was Lord Lugard. He wrote extensively about it and has been followed by a long line of academic and administrative devotees as well as propagandists. As far as the two systems of Direct and Indirect Rule are concerned, there is no standard definition, although they are believed to have different characteristics and aims. Indirect rule then as a system of administration is based on the use of an indigenous authority or power by the colonizer. To the colonial power the system has certain advantages. It is far cheaper for instance to employ an African. Because even if he does the same job twice as efficiently, he is always paid less than his European counterpart. Being a mere functionary, he does his best to please his colonial master and he can be far harsher towards his fellow Africans than the colonizer himself. Furthermore the immediate repercussions of the agents' harshness may not be rubbed against the colonizer but against the agents. In Uganda anti-colonial sentiment manifested itself first in anti-Kiganda demonstrations because the Baganda, had acted as agents in the early days of British rule. Similarly in areas where chiefs were an entrenched class there was far more hostility before the 1950s towards them than towards the colonizers.

According to Sir Philip Mitchell, a former Governor of Kenya and Uganda, indirect rule was merely a means to an end. It had nothing to do with home rule or sovereignty about which we have

79

been told so much by modem Africanists. "Neither was it a patent medicine which can be applied to any group of people".4 In order to function the system of indirect rule must be a recognizable indigenous authority to which power can be delegated. The bigger the polity, the easier it is to locate the locus of political authority. Thus indirect rule was believed to work excellently when used in centralized states such as kingdoms or chieftainships. In "chiefless" areas indirect rule was either tried and abandoned or it was never tried at all. Sir Philip Mitchell concluded his observation with a high sounding statement expounding the highest and noblest motives behind indirect rule and those who applied it. He wrote,

Indirect rule is founded on the conception that the most important duty of the government is to train and develop the African inhabitants of the country, so that their ancient tribal colonisations may be modernized and adapted by them in such a manner as to serve the present and the future as they have served the past. That our duty is not to facilitate the Europeanisation of exceptional individuals but the civilization of the masses . . 5

Such "noble" motives had been sounded by others before, such as academics as well as administrators and journalists. Unfortunately it is from high sounding statements such as this that much of the mythology and legends regarding indirect rule and its supposed virtues and differences in colonial policies have orginated. Few scholars have addressed themselves to the question of what was said and what actually happened in practice. Fewer yet have recognized the fact that the British colonial system came to be associated with the philosophy not so much because the British applied more indirect rule but most probably because they talked more about it than others.

The long quotations we made above from Professors Crowder and Gann reflected all the stereotypes which make blanket statements as if colonial practices even of one country were exactly similar everywhere. In. an attempt to demonstrate how the French or Belgian administrators differed from the British and how the policies affected Africans and African institutions, many historians have come up with isolated examples and treated them as gospel truths. It will be instructive to examine in greater detail indirect rule in the three supposed models that is Northern Nigeria, Uganda and Tanganyika. We are told that the French flouted native authority, whereas the British system depended on the advisory relationship between the political office and the native authority.

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We are further told that the French system placed the chief in an entirely subordinate role to the European officer. As another sign of disregard for native authority and therefore a love for direct rule we are told that the French and Belgians preferred appointed officers who had no traditional authority. These according to Professor Crowder did not head a local government unit neither did the area which they administered correspond to a pre-colonial unit. The French fike the Belgians but =like the British (so we are again told) divided up the country administratively into units which frequently cut across the precolonial political boundaries. We could go on citing more presumed contrasts. Suffice it to say that all colonial powers, British as well as French, did in certain cases deliberately break up the old political units as in the case of Bunyoro in Uganda. Any scholar who has cared to look therefore will find that such colonial practices existed elsewhere and in great abundance.

A brief study of the colonial history of any country even of the so-called British models shows that the differences upon which so much ink has been poured are more mythical than real. Whether a chief was hereditary or appointed, whether he was under a British or French r6gime, he owed his position to the approval of the colonial power and he retained that position only as long as the colonial r6gime believed he was playing the role he was supposed to play. For this reason the British, like other colonial r6gimes, deposed many African kings and chiefs. Chiefs in Buganda for instance were in an entirely subordinate position just like other colonial chiefs elsewhere. And yet Buganda is believed to have been a model of Indirect Rule. Thus in this model of indirect rule in 1926 a youngish District Commissioner forced the resignation of Sir Apollo Kaggwa, a man who had been knighted by the British and who had spent a good part of his military and political life fighting battles for British rule in Uganda. The political career of Semei Kakungulu, another veteran chief of the 1890s who did much to extend British rule in Eastern and North Eastern Uganda and who was promised a royal crown by Sir Hafry Johnston, was dismissed within a few years of that promise. That was done because the Biitish had all along regarded him merely as a functionary. As soon as they were in a position to assume responsibility they dismissed him.

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REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT: PROPAGANDA OR REALITY? Throughout the colonial period, it was fashionable for the occupying

powers to stress their so-called mission of trusteeship because in their judgement Africans were little better than children. So the world was informed by Edward Cordington, a one-time governor of modern Zambia. For this reason any young Englishman "who could produce testimonials certifying the ability to keep British schoolboys in order, would do equally well as a District Commissioner." As children, Africans were expected to grow up, but their growth rate was believed to be extremely slow. It would probably take centuries before they could reach maturity and become civilized. Meanwhile, however, they must be introduced to the secrets of civilized Europe, that is models of European governments. In 1954, the Belgians defended their colonialism in the Congo as follows,

Primitive Congolese society consisted of the rulers, the elders of the tribe and the anonymous hoi-polloi. The basic principles of the social and political structure was a kind of paternalism that all too often degenerated into brutal tyranny. In fact, the people had little voice in their own affairs and the very idea of democracy would have been considered by those in power as an heresy. White paternalism has been decried nearly as much as colonialism itself, it has been represented as an attack on the dignity of man. It certainly is objectionable when one deals with people who socially and intellectually are full grown. It is not, when one has to educate to modern ways a population that is supposed to have covered in 50 years the road the western world took more than two thousand years to travel.

The mental inferiority of the Congolese has never been an axiom of Belgian colonial action. On the conti ary, the educators, administrators and missionaries have always contended that the possibilities of the Congolese were those of any man anywhere else. Consequently, the idea of discrimination and racial superiority was absent from their policy. However, a de facto distinction was made between those Congolese who already have achieved a degree of civilization,mental as well as technical, and those who have not yet done so. In western society, we discriminate against people who do not wash, or whose way of speech is objectionable; we discriminate all the time in order to preserve our civilization ... and to educate the poor and the country-bumpkin. That kind of discrimination exists and will

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continue to exist until the majority of the Congolese have attained a certain degree of evolution.

To what extent do the Congolese participate in the government of their own affairs? This question, often asked, is as much a leading question as the classic: Have you stopped beating your wife? Because the premise of the discussion should be that nobody, white or coloured, has the franchise in the Congo, and that in their present stage, the majority of the population does not have an idea what effective government is all about.. .

Without false modesty, the Belgians say to the world, to the ignorant sentimentalists who deplore the disappearance of the picturesque old ways of primitive society, as well as to the hypocritical critics who treat them as exploiters of the natives: "Look at the Belgian Congo today, look at what we have done in scarcely half a century, above all, look at the million primitive, miserable beings we are making into citizens of the world." 6,

On the British side we have another right wing defence from Lord Robbins

who wrote even as late as 1959 in the London Times of 3rd March, 1959, (p. 11)

First of all, the predominance of the white man, the British white African must continue for at least another generation. Few Black Africans of the Central African tribes have as yet developed the qualities of leadership, or the education and experience to act without control .... Social relations must be governed by good manners and civilized behaviour’7

These two quotations demonstrate the extraordinary mumbo jumbo with which many colonialists were preoccupied. What could good manners, civilization do in the face of facts? The facts were simply a ruthless exploitation and racism in South Africa, in Kenya, in the Belgian Congo, in Zambia, in Southern Rhodesia etc., all designed to prevent the African from attaining any kind of equality in his own land. Nevertheless the mumbo jumbo continued throughout the colonial period and every administrator spoke in high-sounding phrases stressing the role of training the natives in methods of self government by introducing representative institutions. The achievements of colonial administrations in this field have been judged by modern scholars by the rate at which each colonial power introduced those institutions.

The case has been brilliantly summed up by Professor Emerson. According to him "Nations like individuals are products of heredity

83

and environment ... the environment enters into the heritage to change the direction of the national stream and to enrich or diminish it." He goes on,

The nature of the colonial setting and the contrasting colonial policies of the powers have played a significant role not only in the shaping of nations, but also in the development of nationalism, influencing the speed with which nationalist movements have swung into action, their membership and structure, the demands they pose and their tactics and strategy .... Such matters as the type of economy the imperial power encourages, the goals it sets, the colonial institutions it establishes, the civil and political it extends to the people, the centralization of direct or indirect rule are all of major consequence in determining the character of the political mores which arise to challenge the colonial overlords." 8

In 1960, David Ormsby-Gore, British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, described British colonial policy to the U.N. in the following glowing terms and stressed the U.K. concept of colonialism.

1. find it hard to improve upon the terms of Article 73 of the Charter as a description of the British concept of the modern colonial relationship, which is, by definition, a living and constantly evolving one and one which, by its very nature, must be rapidly replaced by something new. Let me quote a few passages from this Article. We the United Kingdom Govern-ment as an original member of the U.N. and here I quote, "recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of the non-self-governing territories are paramount". We, and I continue to quote, "accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories". We "underake to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social and educational advancement". In this connection I notice that Mr. Krishna Menon of India observed in Committee the other day that we have never tried to turn other people into Englishmen. Moreover, we (and I quote again) "undertake to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement." 9

These obligations, Mr. President, we have honoured, the manner in which we have done so is known to all the world. I think it is fair to say that the speed with which we have developed selfgovernment has been remarkable, in the light of the expectations of the world in 1946.

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What then were these institutions which prepared Africans for self rule? How did they operate and above all what was their role as opposed to the imaginary achievements? An examination of colonial policies, Belgian, French, as well as British, clearly demonstrates that before World War II European rule rested on the assumption that it would last for generations. This was -no secret and the more honest among the colonial administrators have openly admitted that it was so. Sir Andrew Cohen, a former bureaucrat in the Colonial Office and later a governor of Uganda (1952-57) admitted that they thought they had "an indefinite time ahead". Consequently for all colonial powers modernisation could be carried out at a snail's pace by creating viable export economies which would depend on the production of raw material for the metropolitan countries. But the cataclysm of World War II dealt a most devastating blow to European morale of colonial domination. Before we deal with the causes for the decline and fall of colonialism in Africa, it will be proper to study the political institutions which are claimed to have prepared and. trained the African for independence. PREPARATION FOR INDEPENDENCE

Practically every writer on the colonial transfer of power has stressed the importance of preparing the African for independence. One way of preparing him was by higher education as we have pointed out. The second way was by training Africans practically in the arts of government. In any comparisons the British once again came off best and it seems to the present author that many writers have once again reached their conclusions from prior conviction rather than from impartial investigation. We have already pointed out all the mumbo jumbo about indirect rule and have demonstrated that it had little relevance to the question of independence. What has further misled scholars on this point was the existence of Legislative Councils. As long as these bodies existed, it was taken for granted that they provided the Africans with the necessary experience. No one has paused to ask how many and what kind of Africans sat in those councils. No one has asked what their role was. Were they the men who led Africa into independence? What was their legislative experience before independence? How long was the constitutional transition between the period of internal self, government and independence? Professor Emerson has asserted.

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"with the possible exception of the United States, Britain has consistently gone further than any other colonial power in endowing its dependent peoples with political institutions which had the makings of self-government in them ... in consequence it is the British territories which have consistently produced the most vigorous and mature nationalist movement 10

It is difficult to know which nationalist movement in Black Africa Professor Emerson had in mind, since he did not state it. If he had Ghana and Tanzania in mind when he wrote he was certainly correct. Yet it cannot be thought that Nkrumah's Convention People's Party was any more militant and vigorous than Sekou Toure's party in French Guinea. By any standards, the PDG. was one of the best organized parties on the continent. If Professor Emerson had Tanzania in mind, then the statement needs modification, especially as it ignores the special and peculiar circumstances of Tanzania which made that country emerge as it did. Only in neighbouring Uganda, a British colony, such vigorous and mature nationalists movements did not emerge.

The example of Ghana has often been misleading because the transitional period of internal rule was nearly the longest in the history of British Africa. Nkrumah became leader of government business in 1952 and five years later carried Ghana into independence. But Uganda had its first national election in 1961. The party which took over at independence had come into power only in April 1962, and in October, 1962 Uganda became independent. The catalogue can be repeated in country after country. But perhaps the most important thing if we are to explode the myth that the existence of the Legislative Councils automatically provided the African with experience in executive or legislative government is to study the membership lists of the Legislative Councils. We shall find that for nearly fifty years East and Central Africans were mere spectators and not participants. In Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Southern Rhodesia, "African Affairs" were taken care of by a clergyman or by a colonial minister; neither of whom was an African.

We can illustrate our point by a detailed study of one of the colonial legislatures in a country which many Africanists considered to be a model. The Uganda Legislative Council was established in 1920. But there was no African member until 1945. He was

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nominated and not elected because the electoral principle was simply inconceivable at this time. It was not until the beginning of the 1950s that the second African was nominated to the Council. In 1953, there were seven nominated Africans, but only one or two of them was a politician involved in nationalist politics. The official side of the Council (Executive) consisted of twenty four members. All were Europeans. By 1954, Sir Andrew had introduced his constitutional changes and as a result of these changes the number of African members was increased. But they were nominated and not elected by Africans. And none of them had executive authority. The situation changed a little in 1955 when the number of nominated Africans increased to eighteen. Two Africa4 ministers were also appointed and one assistant minister. These were the first Africans to have any executive responsibility in a colonial legislature which had existed since 1920. In 1956 seven more Africans had been nominated to sit on the government side, that is to swell the governor's votes but not to share in executive authority. By 1958, there were thirty-four Afriban members including three African ministers and two parliamentary secretaries. By 1960, there were four African ministers including a deputy minister, who however had never been a member of the Legislative Council before his appointment. Also on the executive side were three parliamentary secretaries. So this was the political landscape of Uganda's Legislative and Executive Councils on the eve of independence.

A proper assessment of whether the British prepared the African in constitutional government should go beyond the mere counting of heads. We must find out how many of those who led African governments into independence had ever sat in the Legislatures and whether they had held executive responsibility and for bow long. Let us once again look at Uganda. A detailed examination of the National Assembly elected members of the first nationalist government in Uganda (1961) shows that of the forty-five members of the majority party only six were university graduates. Only one of them, J. C. Kiwanuka, had trained in Britain on a British colonial scholarship. B. K. Kiwanuka, the leader of the government, had gone first to South Africa and later to England at his own expense. Two of the five graduates had obtained their qualifications in the USA universities, but their going to the USA had been arranged through missionary organisations. The other graduates, Mbazira and Mukasa, were British-trained lawyers. But they too had gone

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originally to Britain through private organisations. The. Colonial Government in Uganda had not sent them abroad as it is often assumed, though towards the end of their courses, these and other "private students" got some financial assistance from their governments.

In the government Party only two members had sat in the colonial legislative council and only one had had executive responsibility in the colonial government. B. Kiwanuka who became the Prime Minister and his leading ministers such as Bemba, B. Mukasa, Sebalu (the latter two were graduates) had never had executive responsibility before. When we look at the opposition side for the 1961 Election, the leader, Mr. Obote, was not a graduate. There were, however, some five university graduates on the opposition side, one of whom was a U.K. trained lawyer, another a Makerere product, one trained in India and two in U.S.A. There were thus only two of these (the U.K. and the Makerere) who had obtained their qualification with the financial support of the British colonial government in Uganda. Among the UPC opposition members eight had sat in the colonial legislature for periods varyip.8 between five to seven years, but none of them including Obote had ever held executive office. Nevertheless both the DP and UPC non-graduates were men who were experienced in their respective fields, as teachers, trade unions leaders, cooperative officers, lawyers, etc. Both in the 1961 and 1962 elections, the chiefs and other nominated members in the colonial legislatures had not been elected. In other words with the dawn of party politics and universal suffrage, the "would be experienced legislators" were simply driven out of politics by the "new men." Where then is the reservoir of experience about which we have been told so much?

The new men were not only new in the legislative councils but they represented the new politics everywhere in Africa, that is party politics. The supposedly experienced administrators, who are believed to have graduated through the self government system of indirect rule, were not represented, which meant that their presumed experience and talents were not available in leading nationalist Africa. The reason is not as Gann and Duignan assert that French methods of direct rule undermined that authority and led to their eventual abolition. As self government and independence drew near these traditionally privileged and other hangers-on who had been sustained by the colonial authorities, struggled or were believed

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by the nationalists to be fighting for a status quo. They feared to lose whatever privileged status the colonial r6gime had conferred on them. Some thought that the best political course for Africa was evolutionary and not revolutionary. It was because of this that they could not be elected as representatives in nationalist parties. Their politics were not of the future. After independence, theold suspicion that chiefs were against the nationalists still fingered on. As African political r6gimes became increasingly totalitarian, they could not permit what seemed to be centres of division among the masses: Since chiefs and kings were believed to be the source of division, nationalists everywhere have either successfully abolished them or have turned them into agents of the new r6gimes and for this they have retained a few of their old influences, powers and privileges.

The pattern of the Uganda legislature at the time of independence was similar to many others though it was not educationally superior to the Ghanaian and Nigerian. But when we look at the Congolese legislatul7e we find that it was not educationally inferior to that of Malawi and Zambia and it was probably as well equipped educationally as that of Tanzania. Politically, many Malawians, Zambians as well as Congolese went into independence with little or no executive experience in government. But when all this is said and done we must stress that the connection which many Africanists see between the Congo crisis, higher education and "enlightened mature government" is mythical not only for Africa but for other countries. Political ability and intelligence are not necessarily equitable with university education. Moreover in the colonial world where educational opportunities were so severely limited many people with brains and ability never had a chance of becoming university graduates. Almost always, the very intelligent and very able were shunned by colonial administrators. These were the men who refused to obey without question and were regarded as dangerous agitators. Such reactions towards nationalists were universally true in the colonial world and not peculiar to Belgian or French rule.

AN ANGLO-AMERICAN INTERPRETATION OF AFRICAN COLONIAL HISTORY.

It is clear that the contrasts in the colonial politics regarding indirect or direct rule, the preservation of African traditional institutions, and attitudes towards traditional chieftainship amount

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to very little. As regards education it is clear also as we have shown in the majority of British colonies that many Africans got higher education through private means and not because they were sent abroad to train. Of course after 1960 and presumably because the tragedy in the Congo had highlighted a number of problems, the British in their colonies stepped up "Africanisation of the Civil Service" and sent more Africans abroad for training. At the same time the USA stepped in and offered bulk scholarships to Kenya and Belgian Congo. Why then has this interpretation persisted despite the thinness of evidence? Why has theie been so much generalization? Can we speak of an Anglo-American interpretation of African colonial history? I think we can. For those who subscribe to this view, the confusion begins with the assumption that colonial policies in Canada, Australia, etc. and Africa were the same. Because legislative councils existed from an early date in Africa no one has cared to ask who sat in them. Were they Africans? In the case of Canada and New Zealand the question did not arise. But failure to ask this question in the case of Africa has resulted in an interpretation which ignores what colonialism was really about in Africa.

There is no better illustration of this confusion between British policies in the white Dominions and Africa than the following statement made by Professors Nadel and Curtis in their book Colonialism and Imperialism. They write

The British Empire possessed an aura of liberty and constitutionalism that were largely missing in other Empires. In the 1830s and 1840s a group of British political reformers led by G. E. Wakefield, Lord Durham and Charles Buller, had urged the adoption of a systematic policy based on the principle of responsible government." 11

Professor Rupert Emerson draws the same conclusion and asserts

The Biitish (in contrast to the French) leaned towards a large devolution of power to the colonies themselves ... which we recorded as consitituting distinct and unique entities, while the French system has been based on a far greater centralization .12

The question to be asked here is, in which colonies in Africa was this large devolution of power made? Professor Emerson does not tell us. This kind of interpretation represents an attitude of mind rather similar to what Professor Butterfield described as the Whig interpretation of History. That is conclusions are reached not as a

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result of empirical research but as a result of prior convictions. A caricature of this result is the popular view that only the British practised indirect rule, that only they respected traditional institutions, that indirect rule transferred self government on the Africans and thereby indirectly prepared them for independence, that only the British by introducing legislative councils and by introducing higher education prepared their colonial subjects for independence. These stereotyped contrasts are to my mind mythical, and are a subterfuge to the real issues at stake as the colonial powers saw them.

In his book From Empire to Nation Professor Emerson frequently quotes India as the outstanding example of how much British Colonial Policy differed from that of other European powers. Thus Emerson creates the impression that what the British did in India was the result of benevolent and enlightened policies. But was this the case? An answer to this question can be provided by a brief account of the struggle for Indian Independence. The fact that India got independence in 1947 from Britain has obscured many aspects of British Colonialism. One thing we must not lose sight of is that opposition to Indian independence existed in countless quarters in Britain. Let it not also be forgotten that India had been ruled by Britain for nearly three centuries. It seems that the citing of Indian independence by many Anglo-American historians is a clear demonstration of carefully chosen examples while forgetting the cases of Rhodesia, Burma, Cyprus, etc. This Anglo-American interpretation stems from, (among other things), a general ignorance of British domestic politics. Such knowledge would show us that in any colonial country (and not only Belgium or France) there were countless diehard imperialists to whom the question of colonial independence was inconceivable.

As an exercise in comparative studies let us look in greater detail at the opposition to Indian independence. Between 1900-1930 there had been a slow but steady increase in the devolution of power s in India. In the 1920s Gandhi emerged and the Indian National Congress revived. But this was also the period when highly placed officials in the Colonial Office such as Lord Birkenhead discounted the possibility of Indian Self-government "in any foreseeable future." He wrote, "It is frankly inconceivable that India will ever be fit for Dominion Self Government". Early in 1930, a committee which had been appointed to look into the question of Dominion Status published its Report. Clement Atlee, the future Labour Prime

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Minister between 1945-51, was a member of this Committee. He made no "drastic recommendations for alteration in the basic structures of British rule in India". The Committee Report itself though published in 1930 made no reference to Dominion Status. Even then as the question of Dominion Status remained in the forefront of Indian politics, diehard imperialists in Britain closed ranks. Lord Birkenhead supported by Lord Reading, a former Viceroy of India, launched a violent onslaught in the House of Lords on any proposals for granting Dominion Status to India. That was early in the 1930s. Churchill himself fired warning missiles and wrote a fierce article in the Daily Mail. The language and style of this article is an excellent example of the degree of opposition to Indian Self-government among British politicians. This is something we must not lose sight of in any discussion of British Colonial rule. Churchill wrote,

Against the perpetuation of such a crime as the immediate granting of Dominion Status, it is necessary without delay to marshal the sober and resolute forces of the British Empire, and thus preserve the life and welfare of all the people of Hindustan." 13

Between 1930 and 1939, Churchill's speeches on India became more violent. When in 1931 Gandhi and his principal Congress colleagues were released from jail and when the restrictions on Congress were removed, Churchill became more vehement in his attack. He was then one of the leading members of the "India Defence League". His speeches, his abusive language of Gandhi and his supporters were like those of a madman.

Gandhism and all it stands for will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with and finally crushed. It is no use trying to satisfy a tiger by feeding it on cat meat .... When the British will be no more to them than any other European nation, when white people will be in India only on sufferance, when debts -and obligations of all kinds will be repudiated, Congress should be broken up forthwith and its leaders deported .14

Yet what he was saying, painting an ominous picture of India if Congress took over, was typical of all the colonial right-wingers in every European country.

In India the Act of 1935 had given India Dominion Status, "without the reality". But even that was too much for Churchill and

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the right wing-politicians in Britain. Political language was debased by such a portrayal of men like Gandhi and Nehru as "evil and malignant Brahmins with itching fingers". Gandhi and Nehru thus became frequent targets of Churchill's scorn and abuse just as many African nationalists were at various times. As Kenyatta of Kenya was described as "leader unto darkness and death" by Sir Patrick Renison, so was Gandhi described by Churchill as "This malignant and subversive fanatic, a fakir of a type well known in the East. . . ."

It will be futile to resurrect the speeches and the newspaper articles of men like Churchill. Suffice it to say that such attitudes were not confined to Britain or to Belgian or to French politicians and administrators. They were widely spread in the colonial world. Churchill's language of the 1930s was no different from that of Patrick kenison, a former governor of Kenya, in the 1960s.

It should thus be clear that Indian Independence was not through a benevolent colonial policy. Like the Africans, the Indians got their independence through constant struggle. If nationalism in the coloni6s had not put persistent pressure on the colonisers, if the Second World War had not dealt a stunning blow to European colonialism, Ifidia like many African countries might not have got their independence when they did despite the so-called plans of the British.

There is another problem which scholars have persistently ignored, that is despite the supposedly rival philosophies colonial policies frequently fluctuated depending on the personalities of the governors. Many of these men left their stamp on colonial administrations. Hence the problem for the professional historian in Africa should be to examine vigorously what was done and what was said. What is happening now is that that whole process of specialised research which has in so many other fields and countries reversed the previously accepted interpretations and set our minds afresh, has not been applied to African colonial history. In other words colonial policies have not been studied as colonial policies but as references to a presumed ideal model, the British. Such a process of historical study has tended to act as an obstruction to historical understanding because of the temptation to classify some colonial r6gimes as bad and others as good. While it is true that the historian's craft must necessarily involve an element of selectivity and rejection, many Anglo-American historians have by a handy rule of the thumb

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carefully looked only at material which supported their assumptions and even that was never done really critically.

The net result of this method has been to produce a scheme of general history, which neatly converged upon select British colonies which were presented as models. All this has happened in spite of the fact that in the colonial world policies were as flexible or as inflexible as circumstances demanded, and this was true of all imperial powers. All colonial r6gimes advanced economic justification of empire and the common denom inator was a concern for the economic utility of colonies. African colonies were colonies of exploitation and the question was to maximize their resources. When the district commissioners encouraged Ugandans to grow cotton it was more due to a desire to keep the cotton mills of England going than to enrich the Ugandan Africans. Labour policies too had a great deal in common since every colonial r6gime relied on cheap and often compulsory labour with a hope of making the colonies pay. It was not only in colonies like the Belgian Congo settled by Europeans that compulsory labour prevailed, but also in "primarily African colonies" like Uganda. In view of all this it seems idle to generalize because no colonial power had a monopoly of virtue or wisdom.

THE CRUCIAL DECADE (1950-1960) AND THE DISINTEGRATION OF EUROPEAN COLONIALISM

The years 1950-1960 were crucial in the history of Africa. In 1960 Prime Minister MacMillan of Britain in an address to the South African Parliament described what was happening everywhere in Africa as a Wind qf Change. That was an understatement. What was happening was a hurricane which reached its peak at the end of the 1950s. During those ten years, Europeans, except the Portuguese, had been forced to decolonize or at least to accept the idea. For these colonialists it was no longer an "indefinite time ahead" as they had often believed. The Belgians who had in 1954 been telling the world that what took Europe two thousand years to achieve could not be achieved by the Africans in less than a century, had within six years of that statement returned to the Congolese their independence. Why did the political winds of change blow as they did? Superficially what had happened was that the colonial master had been caught in a gale which tossed his boat dangerously during this decade. Let us now trace the origins of the so-called

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winds of change and try to find out why they blew hardest and more dangerously during the 1950s.

ANTI-IMPERIALISM IN EUROPE

Any student of colonialism knows that decolonisation is an inevitable outcome of the process of alien domination. The reason is that by its nature, colonialism is counter-productive and this makes it its worst enemy. Decolonisation was therefore bound to come in the long run because any oppressed people have after years of subjection overthrown the imperial yoke. But though colonialism is by nature counter-productive there must be factors which speed or delay its demise. Our task in this chapter is to trace these factors and estimate their relative effects. If we want to look for remote causes responsible for the decline and fall of European colonialism, we can go back to the Anti-imperialist tradition within the colonizing powers themselves. It is important for us to do this and to appreciate that even in Europe there existed men and women who were opposed to the domination and exploitation of Africa and Asia as ourselves. A study of the European politics of the last quartet of the 19th century demonstrates isolated examples of anti-colonial groups. Though small these groups remained vocal and undaunted. But the years 1880-1900 were also thc; period when super-patriots, jingoists and commercial travellers denounced those who opposed the exploitation of Africa in the name of Christ and civilization as unpatriotic.

The anti-colonial movement was largely intellectual and it is therefore difficult to estimate its impact. A number of events, however, helped this intellectual movement to attract attention and to enable it to exercise influence in some quarters. During the first half of the 19th century (as a result of the factors we mentioned in the beginning) imperial sentiment waned. During the 1850s, Disraeli, a leading British politician referred to the colonies as "a millstone around our necks". Other Europeans questioned whether the colonies were worth the effort which went into their acquisition and maintenance. In Britain Sir Henry Brooke Parnell contended that there were only three ways in which colonies could be of advantage to the* mother country. They must furnish a military force, they must supply it with a revenue and must afford the mother country commercial advantages. According to him colonies did

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not furnish any of these things. They were instead a drain upon the resources of the country. Wilfred Scawen Blunt was another antiimperialist. He was sharply critical of British policies and imperialism everywhere. He wrote,

The old century is nearly out, and leaves the world in a pretty mess and the British Empire is playing the devil as never an empire before on so large a scale. All the nations of Euiope are making the same hell upon earth, in China, massacring and pillaging and raping in the captured cities as outrageously as in the middle ages. In South Africa, out troops are burning farms and the Queen and the two Houses of Parliament and the Bench of Bishops thank God publicly for these acts .... The Americans are spending fifty millions a year to slaughter the Filipinos, the king of the Belgians has invested his whole for-tune in the Congo where he is brutalizing the Negroes to fill his pockets .... the whole white race is revelling openly in violence as though it had never pretended to be Christian ... so ends the famous 19th century into which we were so proud to have been born .... 15

In France, Anatole France rejected in 1904 the claim that imperialism was a civilizing force. He described it as the most recent form of barbarism, the end of the line for civilization. "I do not distinguish between the two terms, imperialism and barbarism for they mean the same thing". In 1912, Jean Jaures, a socialist politician and a strong opponent of militarism and imperialism, denounced the French conquest of Morocco. In his address to the Chamber of Deputies he remarked "Don't tell me gentlemen that we are subjugating dorocco by these brutal means for the sense of civilization . .. " But the greatest and most classic assault on imperialism was made in. 1?02 by John Hobson, an English economist who traced the origins of imperialism of the aims of capitalism and its desire to secure profitable investment overseas. Hobson's analysis was partly utilized by Lenin in 1917 who described imperialism as the final stage of a collapsing capitalism.

As we have remarked, colonialism bore within itself the seeds of its own demolition. In whatever area and in whatever age it operated its two inevitable results, nationalism and international strife, have always acted as booomerangs upon the interests of the colonial powers themselves. These weaknesses with their disastrous consequences are always inherent in colonialism. The Fashoda affair, the Moroccan crisis, and the Agadir crisis, were some of the

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series of international crises. Prior to World War 1, the Anglo war of 1899-1901 had exposed the terrors of colonialism. And although the war was confined to Britain, it demonstrated the naked power of colonialism. War in South Africa, so the world was informed, had been undertaken to establish British ideals as contrasted with those of the backward Boers. But what had happened was farm burning and scorched earth as military policy. Concentra-tion camps had been established for Boer women and children and the death rate of Boer children had risen in October 1901 to 344 per one thousand. The shock ofthe Anglo-Boer War may have been temporary. Nevertheless colonial rivalry increased instead as imperialism expanded.

British atrocities in South Africa provided ammunition to the anti-colonial movement whose literature from then onwards grew in volume~ and increased in its criticism. When colonial rivalry increased and passed beyond the point of compromise, it resulted in the catastroplie of World War I in 1914. Hence after the war the anti-colonial literature increased in volume. But the Treaty of Versailles which ended the first World War failed to bring about a fair settlement, thereby creating a gap between the colonial victors and the dispossessed. Versailles was thus counterproductive to the colonial powers because it fanned the embers of colonial rivalry during the 1930s. Hitter emerged to challenge the British Empire and demanded the restoration of Germany's colonies. In Italy, Mussolini similarly sought a place in the sun and contributed his hammer blow to the colonial organization by seizing Ethiopia. In Asia, Japan sought to replace western Imperialism when she struck at the existing colonial organization in Asia. As international strife increased, World War 11 became a possibility if not inevitable. Probably no one then realized that this rivalry and the subsequent war would have the effects of a hammer blow to colonialism and lead to its disintegration not only in Africa but also in Asia. By the 1930s, anti-colonial groups were putting out proposals for liberating the colonial peoples. The movement was interrupted by the outbreak of World War 11, and many of the proposals which had been put forward for winding up the Empires (proposals which implicitly indicated that colonialism was crumbling) were shelved.

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THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR II The effects of World War II on European colonialism cannot be told in

statistic alone because they were material as well as psychological. In the 1930s, Europe was still the undisputed arbiter in the African continent, but after the war, the question of colonies as national assets could no longer depend on what was decided in each colonial country. The nature and mood of the post-war world had become a factor to reckon with. As the world unfolded it became clear that the great war had turned 19th & 20th century colonialism into An Old Colonial System. No longer could Britain remain at the centre of her multilateral trade system like a spider on a web. Devastated by war, indebted to the USA, dwarfed by the two super powers, USA and Russia, both of which were critical of the colonial status quo, Europe and European colonialism suffered a mortal blow. Shorn, of her Asian Empire in the 1940s, Europe faced the 1950s in Africa no longer as the unquestioned arbiter of the Black Continent. With the 1950s, therefore, Africa entered a period of rapid and momentous change, speeded on by the dynamic nationalist movements for independence.

The political effects of the war quickly manifested themselves in declarations and reform programmes for Non-Self-governing territories. The first of such declarations was Chapter XI of the U.N. Charter. As far a's declarations of intent went, Chapter XI was a landmark because the signatories of the charter recognized as important all matters relating to hundreds of millions of people still under the colonial yoke. The fact that colonialism and colonial rivalry had been a contributory factor to the catastrophe of 19391945, ensured that it could not remain a domestic issue ' though this was what the colonial powers desired. Chapter XI of the U.N. Charter which we have already quoted had signified this. Henceforth all oppressed peoples aimed their appeals not only to the anti-imperialists within the colonial countries themselves, but also to an international audience. As the cold war became part and parcel of East-West relations, it affected the outlook of and the response of the big powers to the aspirations of those under alien rule. Both the USA and the USSR vied with each other to win the favour of the oppressed.

An examination of U.S.A. policy from 1945 reveals interesting contradiction. First of all it seems that the USA has always pursued

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at least two contradictory foreign policies. There was a time when the USA used to wear the image of the pioneer of the anti-colonial ists while remaining a colonial power in a different theatre of the world. So have the Soviets. In the 1950s therefore both of the Super powers were anxious to promote this other image of anticolonialism and the Cold War struggle gave a sharper edge to the conflict particularly during this decade. The USA began gradually to gain influence in former British and Dutch and French colonies, to the chagrin of the former colonial powers. In Vietnam the USA simply took over from the French and the combat still goes on. Western imperialists have strenuously attempted to minimize the effects of Soviet anti-imperialist propaganda. Such propaganda probably did not amount to much in actual results. But its psychological impact on the western colonizers was tremendous. Its magnitude real and imaginary can be gauged from the speeches of the colonial governments. On 29th November, 1960, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, the British Foreign Secretary, appeared before the U.N. General Assembly to respond to an item on the agenda which originated from the Soviet delegation. The item was entitled, "The declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial countries and peoples."

The embarrassment of the British and other colonizers was tremendous. Thereupon, the British minister seized the opportunity to describe Soviet imperialism and the purpose of his long speech was of course to convince the African and the Asian nationalists that the Soviets were as imperialist as the British. Consequently nearly half the speech was devoted to countercharges of Soviet imperialism.

There is another important aspect we must note in our study of the international pressures against colonialism and their impact on the European mentality. Although USA foreign policy was conditioned by the Cold War, the USA had its own interests in Asia and Africa. These interests did not necessarily coincide with her Western partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). There was no greater demonstration of this USA attitude than the Anglo-French colonial adventure of 1956, otherwise known as the Arab-Jewish War. Colonel Nasser of Egypt national ized the Suez Canal in that year. Britain and France anxious to show that they were still great powers and "not some kind of Scandinavian country unworthy of her great traditions" (so spoke Premier

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Eden in March 1956 on behalf of Britain's greatness) embarked on a policy of military coercion in the name of Israel. But the results were a blow to the French and British colonial postures, because the Suez adventure turned out to be too humiliating a blow against Anglo-French imperialism. Not only did the USA government stand aside, but she warned the European powers that she would not support that kind of gunboat diplomacy. All this happened while the Soviets were threatening to rain a hailstorm of rockets on the British Isles. Small wonder that Anglo-American relations reached a low ebb and the British expressed themselves, in the most invective speeches ever to be made against the USA.

World War 11 had also revealed to the colonial powers themselves that the post-war world would not tolerate a status quo in which the subject races had no interest. Consequently Britain and France especially embarked on reform programmes some of which we have mentioned. Let us look at France first ... In the wake of defeat, France picked herself up to consolidate what the Germans had not taken from her, namely her colonies. In February, 1944, a conference on colonial problems was convened at Brazzaville in the French Congo with a view to liberalize French colonial philosophy by creating representative assemblies. In October, 1946, French voters accepted a draft constitution submitted by the National Assembly outlining the relations between France and her colonies. Soon after, the French Union was created, introducing limited portions of self-government. This was the first serious sign that liberalizing fresh air was blowing in colonial cupboards everywhere. In Kenya (1944) and in Uganda (1945) the British nominated for the first time an African to the Legislative Council.

THE TRIUMPH OF AFRICAN NATIONALISM 1950-1960.

It is almost a truism to state that the most crushing blow to European colonialism was nationalism in the colonized countries. Whereas international pressures and the Cold War rivalry undermined European colonialism, whereas anti-colonial groups became more vocal and better organized if not more influential in the 1930s and 1940s, it was African nationalism which finally forced the colonizers to pack up and go. From the beginning of history, nationalism has been the most determined enemy of all forms of imperial governance. Nationalism has been the major destroyer

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of empires and colonial systems. European Nationalism of the 19th century for example destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As nationalist revolts increased during the 20th century it became a question of time for the Asian and African peoples to tread the same old path and bring European rule crumbling down like a pack of cards. In South East Asia, Ho Chi Minh led Indo-China into rebellion against the French and on September 2nd, 1945, he declared the independence of the Republic of Vietnam.

It was characteristic of the post-war world that he invoked the San Francisco meeting of Allied Powers where the principics of self-deterimu-nation embodied in Chapter XI of the U.N. Charter had been endorsed. While it is difficult to estimate the effects of these international charters on colonialism, the fact remains that as long as these charters existed, they could always be invoked as an embarrassment to all the signatories including the colonial powers. In their declaration of independence against French imperialism the Vietnamese invoked Chapter XI of the U.N. Charter and stated, "We are convinced that the Allied Nations which have acknowledged at Teheran and San Francisco the principles of self-determination and equality of states will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam."

The Nationalist movements in Asia and North Affica did not go unnoticed in Black Africa, though during the 1940s only a small percentage of the African population knew much about the world outside... But by the beginning of the 1950s, nationalism had gathered momentum and flung itself massively against the colonial r6gimes. The 1950s were thus the crucial decade during which the tools of colonialism, that is industrialization and westernization and consequent modernization, were used to turn out the colonizers. It was not a voluntary surrender on the part of the colonial powers, although it is fashionable today for them to claim that it was. And it is fashionable to remind the African that his continent would never have made any progress had it not been colonized. Thus as nationalism gained victory after victory at the expense of British and French colonialism, super patriots and jingoists in every colonial country thought that it was time to make a stand. Churchill whom we have already quoted had made his stand loudly and boldly against the granting of dominion status to India.

The 1950s was also a decade of massive political awakening throughout Africa and it was during this decade that real political

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progress towards self-determination was made. As the colonial r6gimes came under increasing pressure to decolonize they opened the avenue of power to the Africans though the floodgates to freedom did not open until the late 1950s and early 1960s. But what had happened between 1950 and 1956 meant that the clock could never be turned back either by the French or by the Belgians.

1. Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation: The Rise of Self Assertion of Asian and African

peoples (Cambridge, Mass., 1960) p. 60.

2. P. Duignan and L. Gann, Burden of Empire: An Appraisal of Western Colonialism in Africa

South of the Sahara (N.Y. 1959) pp. 217-218, 221-222.

3. "Direct and Indirect Rule" (Africa XXXIV 1964) p. 197.

4. (p. 89) "Indirect Rule" (Uganda Journal) 1936

5. Ibid.

6. Quoted in Imperialism Reader, op. cit.

7. London Times, 3rd March, 1959.

8. From Empire to Nation, p. 67.

9. Imperialism Reader, op. cit.

10. (P 9) Empire to Nation, p. 77.

11. Colonialism Imperialism, (London 1964) pp. 20-21.

12. Empire to Nation, pp. 67-70.

13. Churchill.

14. Ibid.

15. Quoted in Imperialism Reader.

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The Colonial Impact and the Rise of New Social Classes

What were the forces which led to the origins and development of African nationalism? Historians and political scientists have attempted to define nationalism and many western scholars have applied double standards to the word itself, that is nationalism as understood in the European context and nationalism as they understand it in the African context. Consequently there has emerged as many definitions as there are scholars who have cared to define the word. One does not see the value of going into the complicated definitions. The present author sees nationalism as an expression of hostility to alien rule or influences in all their manifestations. In the colonial context nationalism is anti colonialism. Coloi therefore should be regarded as one of the major progenitors of African nationalism because any people subjected to alien rule will struggle to overthrow that rule. The process may take a generation or century, but it is an inevitable stage. Colonialism undermined its cause by speeding up changes which were already in existence and by introducing new ones: such changes took different forms. They were economic, social, educational and political. Their combined effects led to modernization. Since modernization itself entails the spread of new ideas and knowledge, we should not look upon it merely as a technological process. Industrialization, educational, social and political developments have always led to the emergence of new economic and social groups. In Africa this was one of the positive contributions of colonialism. To say this is not to accept the claim that Africa could never have developed without colonialism because modernization and development as we have pointed out go far beyond the mere production of machines.

One of the major agencies of modernization in the 20th century not only in Africa but also anywhere in the world is education.

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Its importance has been stressed by thinkers since the beginning of history. There is a Chinese poem which goes like this

If you plan for a year, plant a seed. If you let years plant a tree If for a hundred years, teach a people.

When you sow a seed once you will reap a single harvest. When you plant a tree, you will reap ten harvests. When you teach the people, you will reap a hundred harvests.

Another Chinese thinker put it more succinctly twenty-six centuries ago

"If you give a man a fish, he will have a single meal. If you teach him how to fish he will eat all his life"1

In one of the best selling books of the 1960s, The American Challenge, J. J. Servan-Schreiber has described this challenge as based upon a highly developed talent in the art of organization in the mobilization of intelligence to build a higher form of industrial society. Throughout the book the author stresses the versatility of American education and the tremendous efforts and emphasis which Americans unlike Europeans have placed on universal education even at university and graduate level. For the colonized countries, therefore education was a major vehicle of change. In a report on the unsatis-factory situation of British higher education, Lord Robbins concluded with the following pertinent remarks, that

If a series of nuclear explosions were to wipe out the material equipment of the world, but the educated citizens survived, it need not be long before former standards were reconstituted. But if it destroyed the educated citizens even though it left the Building and Machines intact, a period longer than the Dark Ages might elapse before the former position was restored. ((HMSO. 1963) pp. 199-209).2

If Plato, one of the greatest thinkers the world has known, were to return today, there is no doubt that the Minister for Education would be the most important man in his cabinet.

These examples have been given merely to demonstrate that throughout history, men have recognized education as an instrument of change and as a vehicle for progress; not only in the under-developed nations as some writers have claimed but also everywhere.

At first the educational system in colonial Africa was narrow and limited. In Uganda for instance the first schools were for sons

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and daughters of chiefs. But in regions like West, Africa, education was far more widely spread than in other parts of Africa. This explains, though only partly, why the nationalist movements gathered greater momentum at a much earlier date than in East and Central Africa. Education produced an intellectual elite which played a major role in the overthrow of European colonialism. The elite, whether it possessed university degrees or not, increasingly discovered that the opportunities open to it were either limited or completely-non existent. As their number increased the elite found that they were either under-employed ot unemployed. That partly explains the existence of many part-time politicians in Uganda and elsewhere for example. That by itself was sufficient to create a climate of dis content.

Whether through education abroad or in their own countries the intellectuals learnt and accepted the ideas of material improvement of the masses particularly by popular participation in government or in the economic sector. Very soon, however, they discovered that such ideas ~f democracy, equality and social justice were anathema to the colonial regimes which were only too eager to crush advocates of such infamy. Quite naturally the colonial powers regarded any acts in that direction by the Africans as subversive. For the African, therefore, many factors intermingled to produce the nationalist movement: First of all, for the educated and qualified Africans there was the desire for gainful and satisfying employment, an opportunity to use the knowledge and the skills they had acquired. But beyond this narrow motive was the clear realization that only rapid modernization would produce a better society and end the poverty of the masses. This could never be achieved while the centres of political and economic power were dominated by an alien r6gime.

THE THREE TRADITIONS OF AFRICAN NATIONALISM: THE CONSERVATIVES or TRADITIONALISTS AND THEIR POLITICS

The most conspicuous results of modernisation was the change in the patterns of leadership. Whereas in the 1920s and 1930s leadership had been confined to the chiefs and their sons who were generally the first to become literate and to beable to speak English or French or Swahili, the situation gradually changed. By the end of 1940 it had been extensively transformed. Expanding economic,

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educational and commercial opportunities meant that there were too many of the categories of people besides those who had dominated the centres of power around the 1900s and 1910s. In Western Nigeria, in the 1920s, educated Yorubas began to develop different attitudes towards the traditional leadership of chiefs with the formation of "Progress Unions". In Uganda the Young Bajanda Association which was founded in the early 1920s, became the back-bone of the intellectual national movement of the future years. Its impact was felt in Kenya, where the Kikuyu Central Association and Young Kavirondo Taxpayers Association were formed. In Ghana, especially in Ashanti, the collaborating chiefs who had been appointed by the British regime after the last of resistance, were strongly challenged by the "commoners". That is the wealthy cocoa farmers in Ghana, Nigeria as well as the wealthy farmers in Uganda were beginning to take a lead in political affairs. It was between these groups and the chiefs that the political clashes of 1920-1940 took place. The Ghana Colonial report of 1922 specifically mentioned that political tension was sharpest between these two groups. We witnessed the same phenomenon in Uganda during the 1940s. The riots of 1945 and 1949 were a manifestation of this clash.

Let us look in greater detail into the character of African politics during the Crucial Decade. We have already remarked that the European conquest of Africa led to the emergence of two major political groups and two political traditions. That is the tradition of the politics of collaboration and the tradition of the politics of resistance. The collaborators were at first the beneficiaries of what the colonial regimes had to offer, that is they had power, prestige and economic status. These benefits, however, could not be confined to the collaborating class. As the 20th century progressed the distribution of the results of modernisation such as the spread of education, the expansion of economic opportunities, the expansion of the political base and institutions and the rise of commercial and economic activity affected a far wider cross-section of the population. Thus what one notices between the 1920s-1950s is the emer-gence of new classes, new interest groups and new patterns of leadership. Three major interest groups became more prominent on the African political scene during the 1950s. The 1950s was the period when these groups became more conspicuous than before.

We have already remarked on the new leadership which came into being as a result of modernisation. The existing leadership of

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chiefs whether hereditary or appointed will be described as The Conservative Traditionalists who represented the conservative tradition . The conquest of Africa by Europe and the collaboration of these men in the process of the conquest of their continent was the beginning of their triumph in the colonial set-up. Their power reached its climax during the hey-days of indirect rule. But this power was challenged as soon as the new classes emerged. An appreciation of the importance of the emerging elite can be illustrated by this shift in appointments of chiefs. From the 1920s colonial administrations endeavoured to appoint literate and better educated chiefs. In Uganda for example a District Commissioner forced the resignation of Sir Apolo Kaggwa, one of the last bastions of the first chiefs. In Uganda again a constant complaint of the Young Baganda Association was that politics were dominated by men who were barely literate. On the West Coast of Africa, in order to bridge the cleavage between the Yoruba elite and the illiterate chiefs in Nigeria, the British began to appoint educated chiefs. On the African side what we see during the 1930s and 1940s is the attempt to link national organisations which became the political parties of the future though we must stress that the progress and development of nationalist political parties differed from country to country, depending on many different local factors.

Let us look at The Conservative Traditionalists during the 1950s. Before the 1940s the traditional chiefs, although their authority and influence was being progressively undermined by the emergence of the more militant groups, these chiefs held their own stand pretty well. In any confrontation with the emerging national ists, the chiefs knew that the colonial administration would back them. In Uganda during the nationalist disturbances of 1945 and 1949, the colonial regime backed the chiefs to the hilt. Those few chiefs who were suspected of sympathies with the nationalists; were dismissed, deported and one was declared insane. He died soon afterwards in exile!! A rather extraordinary coincidence. Throughout colonial Africa chiefs had all along been the am beneficiaries of the fruits of colonialism. Now with the coming of nationalism, they no less than the colonial r6gimes felt threatened. Nationalism did not only challenge the powers of the chiefs, but they demanded a share in the colonial benefits. Worse than that, they went further and wanted to appropriate completely not only the benefits but the whole, machinery of patronage.

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Up to that time the chiefs claimed to be the representatives of the masses, an image which the colonial regimes helped to promote. Now, however, the nationalists claimed that right and asserted that they rather than the chiefs were the spokesmen of the oppressed. As the nationalists challenged chiefly power, the 1950s became a period of bewilderment and dismay for the chiefs though they still had the backing of the colonial r6gimes. Internationally if they knew anything at all, they knew that international opinion was against them. Under such circumstances the clash between the traditional chiefs and the nationalists became inevitable in most parts of Africa except perhaps in Nigeria where even today nationalists still aspire to be chiefs. This clash became a major feature of the politics of the 1950s. THE CONSTITUTIONAL GRADUALISTS (OR THE LIBERALS) AND THEIR POLITICS

The second group of political leadership shall be called the constitutional gradualists who represented the liberal tradition. This category consisted generally of the most educated Africans, lawyers, teachers, medical practitioners, etc. Many of these men were the sons and relatives of the Conservative Traditionalists. Some were no doubt pure technocrats who had achieved eminence through education and hard work. But the majority had close family ties with the traditional leadership. The major gap between the Conservative Traditionalists and the Liberals was educational and generational. The liberals were young and better educated. In most cases they were the founders of the earliest political movements which they had at various periods attempted to organize into mass political parties. In Ghana Dr. Danquah founded a youth movement during the 1930s and in 1947 the United Gold Coast Convention was founded. The leadership of the UGCC included many of the leaders of earlier movements and this pattern was repeated everywhere in Africa. In Uganda for instance the Uganda National Congress was founded in 1952 and it included men who had been prominent in the earlier Bataka movement of the 1940s. The formation of the Kenya African Union included many leaders who had been in the earliest movements. As a general pattern, we find that all the political organizations led by the liberal intellectuals generally sought and depended on support given by the traditional leadership. By the

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standards of the traditionalists, the liberals could be described as militant, although they were very moderate. But this did not become clear until the emergence of the radicals; the militant nationalists who swept the countryside with their superior orgnizations and mob oratory.

The Liberals were constitutional and gradualist in their approach to the independence of Africa. Let us look in more detail at the characteristics of their politics. A study of the Ghana political movement is a good example of the style of the liberal politics. First of all and because of their education, this group can rightly be described as intellectuals in its general approach to the problems of life. They have been described as "men of sobriety and practical wisdom, by whose brilliant works the Gold Coast has greatly benefited." For these constitutional gradualists education and enlightenment were important factors which qualified them for nomination to the colonial legislatures. In Ghana the majority of the liberals descended from "old -families" of Creole origins or were products of extengive intermarriages. Ghanaian political leaders of the 1930s to 1950s were forceful men of integrity. They, like their counterparts elsewhere in Africa, desired in their own way to throw off the colonial yoke. In French as well in British colonies these men desired independence but without sacrificing cherished European institutions and values. As "gentlemen" they resented events which would disrupt normal life. As nationalists, the lawyers for example, were pursuing occupations which were steeped in European traditions. Their education and wider view of life marked them off from the chiefs. Nevertheless they sometimes collaborated and promoted policies which were beneficial to both groups.

Before the rise of the millitant constitutionalists, discussion of the politics of Africa by these men was indeed a serious business "In which sober and decent men displayed wit and intelligence." Unfortunately it was generally raised above the heads of the man in the street though it remained a serious game in which men like E. M. K. Mulira in Uganda, Casey Hayford of Ghana to name but a few, excelled with bril liance and moderation of speech and of pen. We cannot get a clearer picture of the type of men to whom the task of liberating Africa was entrusted unless we compare their approach and tactics with those of the militant group. After listing an impressive array of Ghanaian political leadership before Nkrumah, Magnus Sampson concludes, "In no country in the whole of the British

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colonial Empire can there be found more loyal, sober and yet fearless subjects of His Majesty the King than this array of gentlemen".3 THE ROLE OF THE PRESS

In pursuing what was generally elite politics these men were in a special class set apart from the average citizen. In colonial terminology they were gentlemen even though that could be interpreted to mean they were loyal colonial subjects. In 1934, Dr. Nanka Bruce, a member of the Ghana Legislative Council, declared, "we have had our connection with the British for so long and it is so beneficial to us that I do not think you can get anybody in this country to say that we should exchange British rule for any other rule in the world today." In Ghana as well as in Nigeria; in Uganda as well as elsewhere 'in colonial Africa, these leaders had such historical pride in their European (British or French) connection that they always ended their speeches with declarations of loyalty to the colonial king or queen or Republic. In Ghana in 1944 during the centenary celebration of the Bond of 1844, the Joint Provincial Council marked the occasion by sending messages of loyalty to the king and even passed a vote of confidence in the colonial administration. An observer of the political scene in Ghana during the mid-1940s noted,

The educated African continues to retain his belief in British justice and fair play; he has not in general become a cynic or an embittered nationalist. It is common for, but worth noticing how, the strongest African critics of government will round off their attacks by a declaration of loyalty to the Empire. In the reverential loyalty to the Crown; in the paternalism of the government's attitude; in the widespread acquiescence in the existing political system; in the high-mindedness of all African public utterances infused with the spirit of what used to be called in England the Non Conformist conscience; in the unquestioning and sometimes pathetic optimism of the public outlook, the unshaken belief in the old simpler creed of progress which saturates the press.4

Political agitation by these intellectual leaders was largely through the press. The politics of mobilization was left, to the radical nationalists whom we shall deal with presently. In British West Africa the nationalist press was in English, but in Uganda the nationalist newspapers were in Luganda. In Tanganyika and Kenya

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the colonial administration permitted mild criticism of itself through the semi-government papers such as Baraza (Swahili) and the East African Standard. Otherwise there was no nationalist press in settler-dominated countries such as Kenya. The same was also generally true of French Africa where the newspapers were not run by Africans. Throughout colonial Africa, the masses were first made politically aware through the press. To this extent the intellectual politicians helped to bridge the gap which separated them from the masses.

These men dominated the pre-Independence politics practically in every African country. During that period, men of intellect counted for something in politics (see the history of the Progressive Party in Uganda between 1955-1958). In our assessment of this group, it is clear that agitation for political enfrachisement and independence would have continued much longer and the overthrow of the colonial yoke would have come much later than it did. These were part-time politicians who made little or no effort to take the issues to the people except through the press and spasmodic rallies in towns. These men cherished the values and the institutions of the colonizing power and if many of them had taken over at independence that would have led to a mere replacement of colonial bureaucrats by Africans with a similar outlook. Because their politics were of the elite, because they were part time, because they were "gentlemen", nearly everywhere in Africa they lost the initiative to the militants who demanded "self-government now". Writing about this group, with reference to Ghana, David Apter made the following observation which was generally true in other parts of Africa.

They were schooled in the tradition of indirect rule, and were those . . . who would logically inherit the mantle of British rule. The chairman of the organization was one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country .... and most of the top leadership were lawyer intellectuals .... These were cautious men of the traditional aristocratic establishment ... who had isolated themselves from the main stream of their country's people5

Thus although political advance and independence were the goals of the majority of these men, their gradualist approach to the bulning issues of the day makes it certain that under their leadership, independence would have taken longer to be achieved.

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THE MILITANTS OR RADICAL NATIONALISTS AND THEIR POLITICS

From the colonial point of view it was folly that colonial administration everywhere in Africa avoided contact with the liberals. The colonizers still bathed in the illusion that the future of Africa was with the chiefs, they still believed in the myth they had helped to perpetuate that the chiefs were the spokesmen of the masses. Thus by the time they realized the moderation of the intellectuals it was too late. Nevertheless as soon as the colonial administrations realized that the intellectuals were in fact far more moderate, they began to dine and to wine them. Such overtures contributed to some degree to the pro-western stance of this category of leadership. Let it be overemphasized nevertheless that no single group, liberals or radicals possessed the monopoly of virtue. Each desired the best for its country and each wanted independence. It was true nevertheless that the liberals were more susceptible to the soft talk of the colonial administrators who appealed to their being better educated gentlemen or flattered them of being natural leaders of their countries. Largely as a result of their moderate approach, practically everywhere in Africa the liberals lost to the radicals because the latter were better organized and more militant and attracted the more idealistic young men and women. And as independence drew near, a split became inevitable.

But these party squabbles must be viewed primarily from the background of rivalry for leadership and dominance and secondarily from ideology. The latter though present all the time was never an overriding issue. In countries with settlers such as Kenya and Tanganyika readiness to work or not to cooperate with the settlers or Indians was an important issue. So was the form of government. The latter was perhaps a more burning issue than others, but here again we must warn that its intensity differed from country to country. In the Belgian Congo, it marked off the Abako Party from the Mouvement Nationale Congolais and it later led to the split between Lumumba and Kalonji. Hence the existence of the MNC-L and MNC-K at the time of the Congo's independence. In Kenya the question of having a Unitary or a Federal form of government was a major issue between KANU and KADU. In Uganda it remained unresolved and it needed the violence of 1966.

Once leadership had been wrested from the Liberal gradualists

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by the militants, belated efforts were made in most parts of Africa by the colonial r6gimes to boost the political fortunes of the liberals. In Uganda, the Uganda National Party was founded and led by a colonial minister, a civil servant. The party had the support of the colonial administration and word was quickly passed around. Its aim was to unite all the moderately conservative elements so as to block the future of the more radical nationalists. In Kenya the Kenya National Party led by a liberal European settler, Michael Blundell, was founded to sell the ideology of multiracialism. When the KNP failed to gather grass-root support, the government transferred its support to KADU. In Tanganyika as well as in Ghana the same manoeuvres were tried but everywhere they failed partly because they came too late.

There was moreover a fundamental difference between the liberal and the radical leadership although the two groups had originally worked together. But as' independence drew near, the rivalry for position and influence made a split inevitable. Moreover there were also, differences in ideology from the timing of independence to international alignment; forms of government and the type of economic structure for the independent nations. These are fundamental issues and are still with us today. Ideologically the leadership of the radicals was more objective in its attitude towards the communist states. After all many of the Socialist states had denounced western imperialism almost as vocally as the Africans themselves. A convention of the Bandung Conference by the governments of Burma, Ceylon, India, Indonesia and Pakistan in April 1955 was the most visible expression of the recognition of common interests. Attending the conference from Africa were Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Sudan, Libya. The Bandung Conference was followed by Afro-Asian summits in Cairo in 1957, by the Accra Conference of Independent African states and by the All African People's Conference in Accra in Ghana.

So far as economic philosophy was concerned, the militant nationalists believed simply in a measure of socialism and state enterprise as the only way of uplifting the well-being of the masses. In foreign policy this group subscribed to the idea of non-alignment or, if aligned, the inclination was towards the East. All these ideas and ideologies, though more vaguely talked about by the rank and file of the radical leadership, nevertheless represented a significant distinction between the liberals and the radicals. But the most

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outstanding difference between the two groups was in the weapons they chose. The latter believed in political organization; they believed in the value of the masses and the countryside for that was where the votes were. Another weapon chosen by the radicals but generally shunned by the liberals was inflammatory language. Theirs was the politics of caution, whereas the radicals did not shun the "big lie". For this reason the radicals promised practically everything that would win the support of the masses. Neither did they shun violence. If violence was the only weapon that would demonstrate to Africans the determination to win independence then violence would be used.

The rise of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and his eventual split between the United Gold Coast Convention leadership provides an excellent example of the two different approaches to African independence. When Nkrumah was arrested in 1950, there was a sigh of relief among some members of the United Gold Coast Convention as evidenced by the following speech made in the Legislative Council by Mr. 1. K. Agyeman. He said,

This is the time for the government to strengthen its hand, check lawlessness and disregard for law and order. We have suffered enough, many lives have been destroyed and lost, valuable property has been damaged. This is the time for the government to strengthen its hand .... no chief has asked for self government and no person in this country has asked for self government and self government is not attained overnight.6

Nothing was more popular with the colonial administrators than such a speech the like of which was often heard in Kenya, for example during the second half of the 1950s. The claim that the ordinary citizen was not interested in self-government, thereby creating the impression that the masses were satisfied with colonial rule, was nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the Anglo or Francophile Africans. Tranquillized by their superficial judgment of the political situation both the colonizers and the intellectual politicians were suddenly thrown into confusion by the rise of the militant nationalists.

With the granting of independence, the traditionalist chiefs were literally driven out of politics except in a few countries like Nigeria. Everywhere else, the chiefs were not only driven out of politics, but on the defensive as it seemed as if there was no room for them in independent Africa. It is true that some traditional leaders had

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actually fought for a status quo which would guarantee their privileged position and because of this, the hostility of the nationalists remained unabated even after independence. Hence throughout Africa there has been a speedy abolition of kingdoms, chieftainships and other traditional institutions. Africa desired to be modern and Africans had been told by every western journalist and political scientist and countless charlatans that traditional institutions were stumbling blocks to progress. These institutions so Africa was informed were feudal and feudalism was against anything a modem state stood for. In order to have rapid economic progress the new advisers claimed it was necessary to get rid of all feudal structures. The western journalist, though he might be an Englishman, could not see the difference between his own country which has all the feudal trappings and Bulgaria. The American political scientist proudly pointed to his own republic. The Eastern ideologist pointed to the Peoples Republics, without telling the African how poor many of them were. Thus -as we looked at the first independent Parliaments, the faces of the men who had dominated the colonial legislatures were few. And as African political r6gimes became more centralist some more totalitarian, chiefs were driven from the political arena. Not because French direct rule had undermined traditional institution as some are apt to assert but because of the political insecurity of some leaders and because some leaders believed genuinely that political progress was incompatible with traditional institutions.

In our study of African Nationalism, we have noted three traditions which formed the background which led to the emancipation of our continent. The chiefly tradition was decidedly conservative and rightwing. Its contribution to the liberation movements of the 1950s and early 1960s was thus very minimal. This tradition has few or no active successors in the Africa of the 1970s. The second tradition was represented by the intellectuals. They were constitutionalist and gradualists in their approach to independence. A small fraction of them consisted of downright conservatives though the majority were moderates. In modern political terminology, these represented the liberal tradition. For many of them when they agitated for increased responsibility they did so for themselves and their kind. They often collaborated with the chiefs but such cooperation was not always enthusiastic. In Uganda, Mulira's Progressive Party was anti-chiefs. In Ghana one of the leaders of the UGCC,

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R. S. Blay, declared at a public rally, "as for the chiefs, we shall kick them like this" (and he demonstrated). The third tradition represented radical and militant nationalism.

At the beginning of the nationalist movements, the liberals and the future radicals were, not only indistinguishable but they also worked together. It is also important to note that the complexion of the two groups was not always clear cut and it often imperceptibly merged into each other. There was overlap in militancy, in ideology and many men were not always consistent. Labelling individuals therefore as this or that could be misleading. Some men who were liberals in the 1950s became the radicals or the conservatives of the 1960s and vice versa. The shifting scene of African and world politics has been largely responsible for these changes. But at the time of independence, the vast majority of African nationalists believed in liberal institutions such as free elections and individual liberty. This is why I have called the three groups constitutionalists.

Despite the difference we have pointed out between the liberal and radical leadership, it is important to stress the tremendous effect of nationalism on these men. The means each group chose might be different, but for all of them the goal was the same. Why was this? The answer must be sought in the colonial situation. Nationalism had united peoples of diverse backgrounds, ethnic origins and economic and social classes. Their goal was to regain their independence and dignity in their countries. They were men of the 20th century and as such they demanded a share in what the 20th century had to offer. But the benefits of the 20th century were realy limited as long as the colonial r6gimes remained. In the commercial sphere in East Africa for instance the African remained a mere producer and for that he was paid very low prices for his crops. The Indian and the British, that is the price fixers, reaped the benefits from the sweat of the African farmer. In South Africa, industrial colour-bar was official policy, In Zambia and Southern Rhodesia, every available artificial weapon from pass laws to the Grain Marketing Act was made to squeeze from the African whatever could be squeezed in order to provide the European settlers with a standard of living, the overwhelming majority of whom never had dreamt of enjoying in their own countries. In Kenya as well as in Central Africa, Africans had been cleared out of the best lands and were forced to live as squatters on European farms or in overcrowded reserves where they eked out a dangerous existence.

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In Kenya the colonial labour laws precluded the African from growing such cash crops as coffee, pyrethrum and wheat. In Zambia, Malawi and Southern Rhodesia, as well as in South Africa, the recruitment of African labour from a wide area beyond the country's borders ensured that wages were kept to a minimum. The Industrial Conciliation Acts precluded Africans from skilled employment and thereby shielded the settlers from African competition. Not only in countries which were dominated by racist policies were the Africans excluded from the executive branches of their governments, but in countries like Uganda which had been proclaimed all along as, "primarily African". As we have already pointed out, African membership in the Uganda and Kenya legislatures had been expanded during the 1950s, but they had little or no say in executive affairs. So in all spheres of life, social, economic and political, it became clear to the African that as long as colonial r6gimes remained there would be nothing but token concession. Tokenism could not be eliminated without complete independence. These factors forced all nationalists to oppose -the continuance of colonialism. The 1950s ensured that independence would be a reality. They were thus crucial because they brought freedom and paved the way for independence for the whole continent except in Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, Mozambique and Angola where bondage for the African is official policy. It is particularly significant for the mythmakers about British rule that two of the countries where African independence is now a pipe dream are former British colonies.

During the latter half of the 1950s, Ghana, the Sudan and Guinea had paved the way. With the dawn of the 1960s independence was gained in rapid succession. Perhaps the greatest achievement of African Nationalism was the crushing of racist white resistance in Kenya and the collapse of the Federation of Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The return of African independence witnessed the resurrection of old African place names which had been swept into oblivion by the colonizers. The Gold Coast became Ghana, Northern Rhodesia became Zambia and Nyasaland became Malawi. The British masters of diplomacy handed back African independence with great pomp and ceremony despite their long record of imprisonment of African leaders. In this respect they contrasted with the French whose indecent exit from Guinea demonstrated that no colonial power would return independence without anger. Let us conclude this brief survey of colonial policies

119

and African reaction by a look at the first decade of African Independence.

CONCLUSION THE VIOLENT DECADE AND ITS IMPACT (1960-1970)

As the new nations emerged, the problems of nation building, economic reconstruction loomed on the horizon. Writing in 1970, one cannot ignore the impact of the 1960s. This was the first decade of independent Africa and it has been characterised by violence from north to south, from east to west. What we saw at the beginning of the 1960s was a precuisor of what was to come. The Congo crisis, the secessions of Katanga and Kasai were symptoms of the malady of the continent. At the beginning of the 1960s it was fashionable then to look upon the Congo tragedy as the unique example of Belgian colonial ineptitude. Now with ten years of bitter experience behind us, we can say that the Congo situation pointed to all the issues which would afflict Africa during Vie 1960s. The secession of Katanga for instance raised the very question of the form of government. We now know and perhaps the Nigerians know better how vital that question is. The Congo gave us also the first real taste of the cold war involvement in Africa. As the Congo became a battle sound of international strife, it was unfortunately the African who bore the brunt. It was once again the Congo which gave Black Africa the first indication of the importance of the military in African politics. This has become a fact of life and no one in Africa today can plan a political career and leave out the role of the army.

The Congo as an independent country gave us the first taste of political tragedies coming with the death of Lumumba and his immediate associates. The irony of the 1960s was that those cold war warriors who helped Moise Tshombe to dispose of his political opponents were the same people who helped to dispose of Tshombe himself. Political assassinations and massacres of some of the ablest people in Africa is a fact of life we have learnt to live with. By assassinations, by coups d'etat, by political detentions, the 1960s deprived Africa of the men and women who would perhaps have built a better future. Each assassination, each coup d'etat, each detention and each political exile dealt a blow to Africa.

120

The anti-colonial movement had united Africa in a crusade which gave birth to the pan-African movement. The 1960s, especially the early part, marked the high water mark of a movement which had begun nearly sixty years before with the inspiration of Africa's sons in diaspora; such as Dubois and Marcus Garvey. With the anti-colonial winds blowing hard the movement gathered momentum in the 1950s and the two meetings in Accra, Ghana at the end of the 1950s pointed to Nkrumah as the guiding star of the moverfient for African unity. Most political leadeis subscribed to this idea with varying degrees of enthusiasm but as the 1960s progressed, as the problems of nationalism (rather than pan-Africanism) became more important, as each political leader became more concerned with his own political future, pan-Africanism was relegated more and more into the backgound. The greatest blow dealt to the panAfrican cause was the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah.

The foundation of the Organization of African Unity (OA-U) and OCCAM had indicated that the pan-African movement had reached maturity. But as fime went on it became clear that the OAU like other international organizations had many problems beyond its control. The most important was that the Organizations could not decide on national questions. Resolutions were indeed passed on multifarious issues, but generally nothing resulted from those resolutions. The failure of the OAU to resolve the important issues of the 1960s such as Rhodesia and Biafra helped to expose the weaknesses of Africa. Though independent, some African nations realized perhaps for the first time that they were as much subject to cold war manipulations as if they were not independent.

The 1960s have demonstrated also that Africans are human. Because we ate human we have repeated practically every mistake made by other countries despite the euphoria at the beginning of the decade that we shall be an example to the corrupt world of the colonizers. The decade has further demonstrated that Africans have a strong sense of self-preservation and the desire to stick with the devils they know. At the beginning of the decade the so-called free world feared that communism would sweep the continent. It has not done so. Not because Africans love the Capitalist West and hate the Socialist East but because Africans feel they understand the British and the French better than the Russians and the Chinese. Bread and butter issues have weighed more with a large number of African countries. In this respect the USA has been helped because

121

of her tremendous resources and the English language; otherwise the USA like Russia and China would have found it had to displace the influence of the former colonizers.

The beginning of the 1960s, ushered in a period of idealism and hope, a kind of political euphoria. The world was happy because Africa was happy. By the end of the decade that idealism was no more. Africans felt weaker and humbled, not physically but in ideals. This was because the decade had demonstrated and exposed our weaknesses and the limits of our influences. Africa had lost her colonial status and she spent the 1960s in search of a role on the world's stage. The decade showed that Africa could not influence the world to the extent it had hoped. Pan African Unity is still elusive, though the existence of the East African Community remains the only shining example in a continent which is still divided. The Nigerian tragedy, the wiping out of nearly two generations of Biafrans and the Africans' failure to halt the slaughter, the existence in the 1970s of Rhodesia, and the so-called Portuguese Angola and Mozambique, have exposed more than anything else Africa's political impotence. Thus Africa entered the 1970s humbled, less idealistic, frightened by the politics of the bullet, the sirens of the armies, but perhaps more realistic and probably more aware of its limited influence on world affairs.

1. Higher Education in Britain (A Report, HMSO) (1963) pp. 199-209.

2, Peter Omari, Anatomy of Dictatorship.

3. Anatomy oj'Dictatorship, quoted.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

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Appendix A

HOW EAST AFRICA WAS ACQUIRED BY BRITAIN & GERMANY 1886-1890

Conflict Over Uganda: The German Emin Pasha Expedition, 1889

The Anglo-German agreement of 1886 did not halt the scramble for control of Uganda in East Africa. Emin Pasha, a German doctor whose real name was Eduard Schnitzer, had become a Turkish citizen and had travelled to the Equatorial Province to set himself up as a Colonial Potentate. Here, failing under control of the Mahdi, he asked for help. Henry Morton Stanley, interested in acquiring the area for either England or Belgium, answered the call. But the German East Africa Company, alarmed by possible British penetration of the hinterland, financed a German party led by Dr. Carl Peters to rescue their "native son." In the complicated negotiations, Peters won out, and obtained a treaty from King Mwanga placing Uganda under German protection. However, as we see from the next document Uganda went eventually to Britain by the Anglo-German Treaty of 1890.

In his New Light on Dark Africa (1891), Peters revealed the story of the Emin Pasha expedition in Eastern Equatorial Africa. In his book, Peters told the story of his difficulties with the British. Here again was the familiar story of the clash between British and German ambitions in Africa.

The Heligoland Treaty between Germany and Britain, 1890

Anglo-German rivalry for the conquest and exploitation of East Africa and Southwest Africa came to a head in 1890. For some time Germany's Iron Chancellor had been negotiating with Britain for the cession of Heligoland in exchange for territory in Africa.

123

Although Bismarck resigned in early 1890, his successor, Caprivi continued the negotiations. On July 1, 1890 was concluded the famous Heligoland Treaty, whereby Germany secured Heligoland in exchange for concessions described in the treaty, reproduced in full below.

In Germany the Heligoland Treaty was attacked as a one sided affair "giving England a whole suit of clothes in exchange for a trouser-button." But Heligoland was more than a trouser button. A small island of 130 acres in the North Sea it commanded the entrance of the Kiel or Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, 28 miles northeast of the mouth of the Elbe. Thus in exchange for Zanzibar and other disputed territory in Africa, Germany obtained an important naval base for the protection of Hamburg and Bremen. The Germans at once undertook the fortification of the island, which became a key area for the defence of the German coast line. Treaty-making however, within British sphere of influence lost momentum after 30 June, 1896. That was when the British Protectorate which was by then confined to Buganda, was proclaimed over Bunyore as well as over Busoga and "Other territories" to the East of Busoga which were under the administration of the British Commissioner and Consul General for the "Uganda" (Buganda) Protectorate.

No. 270.-AGREEMENT between the British and German Governments, respecting Africa and Heligoland. Berlin, Ist July, 18901

THE Undersigned,- Sir Edward Baldwin Malet, Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador

Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary; Sir Henry Percy Anderson, Chief, of the African Department of Her

Majesty's Foreign Office; The Chancellor of the German Empire, General von Caprivi; The Privy Councillor in the Foreign Office, Dr. Krauel,- Have, after discussion of various questions affecting the Colonial interests

of Germany and Great Britain, come to the following Agreement on behalf of their respective Governments:-

East Africa. German Sphere of Influence. Art. I-In East Africa the sphere in which the exercise of influence is

reserved to Germany is bounded-

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German Sphere. To the North. River Umba to Victoria Nyanza. 1. To the north by a line which, commencing on the coast at the north bank

of the mouth of the River Umba, or Wanfa., runs direct to Lake Jipe, passes thence along the eastern side and round the northern side of the lake, and crosses the River Lurne; after which it passes midway between the territories of Taveita and Chagga, skirts the northern base of the Kilimanjaro range, and thence is drawn direct to the point on the eastern side of Lake Victoria Nyanza which is intersected by the Ist parallel of south latitude; thence, crossing the lake on that parallel, it follows the parallel to the frontier of the Congo Free State, where it terminates.

Mount Mfumbiro.

It is, however, understood that,'on the west side of the lake, the sphere does not comprise Mount Mfumbiro; if that mountain shall prove to lie to the south of the selected parallel, the line shall be deflected so ag to exclude it, but shall, nevertheless, return so as to terminate at the above-named point.

German Sphere.To the South. Rovuma River to Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika

(Stevenson's Road). 2. To the south by a line which, starting on coast at the northern limit of the

Province of Mozambique, follows the course of the River Rovuma to the point of confluence of the Msinje; thence it runs west-ward along the parallel of that point till it reaches Lake Nyassa; thence striking northward, it follows the eastern, northern, and western shores of the lake to the northern bank of the mouth of the River Songwe; it ascends that river to the point of its intersection by the 33rd degree of east longitude; thence it follows the river to the point where it approaches most nearly the boundary of the geographical Congo Basin defined in the Ist Article of the Act of Berlin (No. 128) as marked in the map attached to the 9th Protocol of the Conference.

From that point it strikes direct to the above-named boundary; and follows it to the point of its intersection by the 32nd degree of cast longitude; from which point it strikes direct to the point of confluence of the northern and southern branches of the River Kilambo, and thence follows that river till it enters Lake Tanganyika.

125

Map. NXassa-Tanganyika Plateau. The course of the above boundary is traced in general accordance with a

map of the Nyassa-Tanganyika Plateau, officially prepared for the British Government in 1899.

German Sphere. To the West. River Kilambo to Congo Free State.

3. To the west by a line which, from the mouth of the River Kilambo to the Ist parallel of south latitude, is conterminous with the Congo Free State.

East Africa. British Sphere of Influence.

The sphere in which the exercise of influence is reserved to Great Britain is bounded-

British Sphere. To the South. River Umba to Congo Free State

1. To the south by the above mentioned line running from the mouth of the River Umba (or Wanga) to the point where the Ist parallel of south latitude reaches the Congo Free State.

Mount Mfumbiro.

Mount Mfumbiro is included in the sphere.

British Sphere. To the North. River Juba to confines of Egypt. (Uganda, &c.')

2. To the north by a line commencing on the coast at the north bank of the mouth of the River Juba; thence it ascends that bank of the river and is conterminous with the territory reserved to the influence of Italy in Gallaland and Abyssinia, as far as the confines of Egypt.

British Sphere. To the West. Basin of Upper Nile to Congo FreeState

(Uganda, &c.). 3. To the west by the Congo Free State, and by the western watershed of

the basin of the Upper Nile.

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Withdrawal by Germany in favour of Great Britain of Protectorate over Witu. Art. H-In order to render effective the delimitation recorded in the

preceding Article, Germany withdraws in favour of Great Britain her Protectorate over Witu.

Recognition by Great Britain of Sultan of Witu's Sovereignty.

Great Britain engages to recognize the sovereignty of the Sultan of Witu over the territory extending from Kipini to the point opposite the Island of Kwyhoo, fixed as the boundary in 1887.

Withdrawal of German Protectorate over adjoining Coast up to Kismayu, to all other Territories North of Tana, and to Islandsof Patta and Manda. Germany also withdraws her Protectorate over the adjoining coast up to

Kismayu, as well as her claims to another territories on the mainland, to the north of the River Tana, and to the Islands of Patta and Manda.

South West Africa. German Sphere of Influence.

Art. IH.-In South-West Africa the sphere in which the exercise of influence is reserved to Germany is bounded.

Namagualand. Damaraland, &c.

1. To the south by a line commencing at the mouth of the Orange River, and ascending the north bank of that river to the point of its intersection by the 20th degree of east longitude.

2. To the east by a line commencing at the above-named point, and fol.lowing the 20th degree of east longitude to the point of its intersection by the 22nd parallel of south latitude, it runs eastward along that parallel to the point of its intersection by the 21st degree of east longitude; thence it follows that degree northward to the point of its intersection by the 18th parallel of south latitude; it runs eastward along that parallel till it reaches the River Chobe; and descends the centre of the main channel of that river to its junction with the Zambesi, where it terminates.

German Access to the Zambesi.

It is understood that under this arrangement Germany shall have free access from her Protectorate to the Zambesi by a strip of

127

territory which shall at no point be less than 20 English miles in width. South-West Africa. British Sphere of Influence. Bechuanaland,Kalahari, & c.

The sphere in which the exercise of influence is reserved to Great Britain is bounded to the west and north-west by the abovementioned line.

Lake Ngami.

It includes Lake Ngami.

Map- The course of the above boundary is traced in general accordance with a

map officially prepared for the British Government in 1889.

Wafflsch Bay. The delimitation of the southern boundary of the British territory of

Walfisch Bay is reserved for arbitration, unless it shall be settled by the consent of the two Powers within two years from the date of the conclusion of this Agreement. The two Powers agree that, pending such settlement, the passage of the subjects and transit of goods of both Powers through the territory now in dispute shall be free; and the treatment of their subjects in that territory shall be in all respects equal. No dues shall be levied on goods in transit. Until a settlement shall be effected the territory shall be considered neutral.

Line of Boundary hetween the British Gold Coast Colony and the German

Protectorate of Togo. Volta Districts. Art. IV.-In West Africa- 1. The boundary between the German Protectorate of Togo and the British

Gold Coast Colony commences on the coast at the marks set up after the negotiations between the Commissioners of the two countries of the 14th and 28th of July, 1886; and proceeds direct northwards to the 6' 10' parallel of north latitude; thence it runs along that parallel westward till it reaches the left bank of the River Aka; ascends the raid-channel of that river to the 6' 20' parallel of north latitude; runs along that parallel westwards to the right bank of the River Dchawe or Shavoe; follows that bank of the river till it reaches the parallel corresponding with the point of

128

confluence of the River Diene with the Volta; it runs along that parallel westward till it reaches the Volta; from that point it ascends the left bank of the Volta till it arrives at the neutral zone established by the Agreement of 1888 which commences at the confluence of the River Dakka with the Volta.

Each Power engages to withdraw immediately after the conclusion of this Agreement all its officials and employes from territory which is assigned to the other Power by the above delimitation.

Gu6r of Guinea. Rio del Rey Creek.

2. It having been proved to the satisfaction of the two Powers that no river exists on the Gulf of Guinea corresponding with that marked on maps as the Rio Rey, to which reference was made in the Agreement of 1885 (No. 260), a provisional line of demarcation is adopted between the German sphere in the Cameroons and the adjoining British sphere, which, starting from the head of the Rio del Rey Creek, goes direct to the point, about 9' 81 of east longitudei, marked "Rapids!' in the British Admiralty chart.

Freedom of Goods ftom Transit Dues between River Benue and Lake Chad.

Art. V.-It is agreed that no Treaty or Agreement, made by or on behalf of either Power to the north of the River Benue, shall interfere with the free passage of goods of the other Power, without payment of transit dues, to and from the shores of Lake Chad.

Treaties in Territories between the Benue and Lake Chad.

All Treaties made in territories intervening between the Benue and Lake Chad shall be notified by one Power to the other.

Lines of Demarcation subject to Modification.

Art. VI-All the fines of demarcation traced in Articles I to IV shall be subject to rectification by agreement between the two Powers, in accordance with local requirements.

Boundary Commissioners to be Appointed.

It is specially understood that, as regards the boundaries traced in Article IV, Commissioners shall meet with the least possible delay for the object of such rectification.

Art. VH.-The two Powers engage that neither will interfere with any sphere of influence assigned to the other by Articles I to IV. One Power will not in the

129

sphere of the other make acquisitions, conclude Treaties, accept sovereign rights or Protectorates, nor hinder the extension of influence of the other.

No companies or Individuals of either Power to exercise Sovereign Rights in

Sphere of Influence of the other. It is understood that no Companies nor individuals sunject to one Power

can exercise sovereign rights in a sphere assigned to the other, except with the assent of the latter.

.4pplication of Berlin Act in Sphere of Influence within Limits of Free Trade

Zone Art. VIII.-The two Powers engage to apply in all the portions of their

respective spheres, within the limits of the free zone defined by the Act of Berlin of 1885 (No. 128), to which the first five articles of that Act are applicable at the date of the present Agreement;

Freedom of Trade

The provisions of those articles according to which trade enjoys complete freedom;

Navigation of Lakes, Rivers, &c.

The navigation of the lakes, rivers, and canals, and of the ports on those waters, is free to both flags;

Dffferential Duties. Transport or Coasting Trade.

And no differential treatment is permitted as regards transport or coasting trade;

Duties on Goods.

Goods, of whatever origin, are subject to no dues except those, not differential in their incidence, which may be levied to meet expenditure in the interest of trade;

Transit Dues.

No transit dues are permitted;

Trade Monopolies. And no monopoly or favour in matters of trade can be granted.

130

Settlements in Free Trade Zone.

The subjects of either Power will be at liberty to settle freely in their respective territories situated within the free trade zone.

Freedom of Goodsfrom Transit Dues, &c.

It is specially understood that, in accordance with these provisions, the passage of goods of both Powers will be free from all hindrances and from all transit dues between Lake Nyasa and the Congo State, between Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, on Lake Tanganyika, and between that lake and the northern boundary of that lake and the northern boundary of the two spheres.

Trading and Mineral Concessions. Real Property Rights.

Art. 1K.-Trading and mineral concessions, and rights to real property, held by Companies of individuals, subjects of one Power, shall, if their validity is duly established, be recognized in the sphere of the other Power. It is understood that concessions must be worked in accordance with local laws and regulations.

Protection of Missionaries.

Art. X4--In all territories in Africa belonging to, or under the influence of either Power, missionaries of both countries shall have full protection.

Religious Toleration and Freedom.

Religious toleration and freedom for all forms of divine worship and religious teaching are guaranteed.

Cession to be made by Sultan of Zanzibar to Germany of Possessions on the

Mainland and of Island of Mafia. Art. XI.-Great Britain engages to use all her influence to facilitate a

friendly arrangement, by which the Sultan of Zanzibar shall cede absolutely to Germany his Possessions on the mainland comprised in existing Concessions to the German East African Company, and their Dependencies, as well as the Island of Mafia.

It is understood that His Highness will, at the same time, receive an equitable indemnity for the loss of revenue resulting from succession.

131

German Recognition of British Protectorate over remaining Dominions of Sultan of Zanzibar, including Islands of Zanzibar and Pemba. and Witu. Germany engages to recognize a Protectorate of Great Britain over the

remaining dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar, including the Islands of Zanzibar, and Pemba, as well as over the dominions of the Sultan of Witu.

Withdrawal of German Protectorate up to Kismayu.

And the adjacent territory up to Kismayu from which her Protectorate is withdrawn. It is understood that if the cession of the German Coast has not taken place before the assumption by Great Britain of the Protectorate of Zanzibar, Her Majesty's Government will, in assuming the Protectorate, accept the obligation to use all their influence with the Sultan to induce him to make that cession at the earliest possible period in consideration of an equitable indemnity.

Art. M.-Cession of Heligoland by Great Britain to Germany.

EDWARD B. MALET. H. PERCY ANDERSON. v. CAPRIVI. K. KRAUEL.

Berlin, Ist July, 1890.

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Appendix B

SOME OTHER TREATIES In this appendix we show the "bogus" treaties or agreements by which

Africa, its people and resources were acquired. The attention of the reader is drawn to the Forms which merely required an African chief to affix his X mark. Such forms were produced by the cartload. They show the significance of hoisting a Trading Company's Flag. The reader's attention is further drawn to the fact that:

(a) No African had a say in the wording of the text of the so called treaties. (b) The so called witnesses to the African's signature or his X mark, were

one and the same persons who presented the bogus pieces of paper. Yet such witnesses and their signatures were accepted as legally binding in

international law. This was because the so called international law-makers and their lawyers and International Courts were part and parcel of the European game about which the African had no control.

Finally these so called treaties should demonstrate to the leader that much of what was written about German Agents such as Karl Peters by many historians, was nothing more than a vigorous exercise to whitewash the Colonial practices of other European nations. Not only German Agents produced bogus and fictitious treaties, not only German Agents sought out any one who claimed to be a chief but their British counterpart. See for example the list of treaties made at the Coast, in Uganda and Eastern Congo by Stanley on behalf of Britain. The evidence brought before us by these treaties confirms what we have pointed out, namely that to overstress differences in the colonial practices of the different European powers, is a deliberate falsification of what European colonialism was really about. Page 164 in the text.

No. 35-List of Treaties concluded by the British East Africa Association with Native Chiefs, 1887-1891.*

133

(1) List of Treaties (Nos. 1-21) concluded in June, 1887, according to the following Form (a), and referred to in their Charter:*

Form a. (Name of Chief) declares that he has placed all his country and peoples

under the British East African Association. "The whole country is voluntarily placed under the rule and government of

the said Association, and I will hoist the flag of His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar, as has been agreed by deed between His Highness and the Association.

(Signature of Chief.) "ERNEST BERKELEY.

HER MAJESTY'S VICE-CONSUL."

Witnesses. "Let it be known to all whom it may concern that (Name of Chief) has placed himself, country, and peoples under the protection of the

British East African Association, and that the Undersigned is authorized in their name to give him and them protection.

"E. N. Mackenzie, as Agent." Page 164 continued.

EXPLANATORY NOTE ON THE TREATIES MADE IN UGANDA AND EASTERN CONGO (Zaire)

The Secretary of State's approval was given to all these treaties, except those indicated (a).

Hertslet's Map ofAfrica by Treaty (1909). Vol. 1, lists the treaties "83 in all" and prints two standard texts, A and B, both of which purport to include the signature of the chief with whom the tieaty was made.

Hertslet states that treaties Nos. I to 21 inclusive, made in 1887 and referred to in the I.B.A. Company's Charter, were in Form A. These were with chiefs in the Coast region, and provide for hoisting the Sultan of Zanzibar's flag.

Treaties Nos. 22-73 are said by Hertslet to be in Form B (which is somewhat similar to the form used by Lugard for his treaties with Mugenyi, Katonzi and Kavalli in W. Uganda). But Hertslet's Form B differs substantially from the texts given by Gray in his article for the six Stanley treaties Nos. 56-61. Gray's texts are to be fourld in contemporary printed Foreign Office Correspondence (State Papers) and may be regarded as correct. All Blue Book texts are also in State Papers.

134

No. Date of Treaty Names of Chiefs Tribes of Districts I

2

3

4

5.

June 9,1887

June 20, 1887

June 20, 1887

June 20, 1887

June 20, 1887

Mbaruk-bin-Raschid-bin- Salem-bin Hamed Mearoni Tomwatu Lodali Mali Vishne

Salook

Mbogoli

K-amba

M'Tav6ta, Nwilu Wagundu

Dungu Wagungaa

Mdega Maazow

Ketonga

Duruma(Gunjoie country).

Wataveta.

Wateita.

Wakamba.

.P.P. "Africa No. 4 (1892)." "Papers relating to the Mombasa Railway Survey and Uganda." See also P.P., Africa, No. 2(1894).

No. Date of Treaty Names of Chiefs Tribes or Districts

6

17

8

10

11

12

13

14

15 16

17

18

June 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887 “ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

Kirunu

Gona

Mboia Mchunia

Matamn

Mbogo Mpugulu

Mwezaiani

Muyka Wangomba Demndego Mevero

Bonfo-bin-Kifui

Kubu

Mzee Kilanda (Kaya Bama)

Mzee Muazi (Fimboei) Mzee Kallanko (Rabai Mpia)

Mzee Dymija (Kyeniblue)

Kirari

Makondi-bin-Fethair .

Chiro Kiromunga Koolay

Moti-bin-Omaro

Abigela-bin-Heribai

Ghana Babara

Godana Ghara (;~n of &ve Chief)

Wagiriama.

Waduruma

-Ditto

-Ditto

-Ditto

Wadigo.

Warabai

Waribe

Wakambi

Wachoni. Wagivana.

Wasania

Wagalla.

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No. Date of Treaty Names of Chiefs Tribes of Districts

19

20

21

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

“ 20,1887

Myogwe Madgowa

Momchera

Mombazi

Mwenzanya

Magalonja Makijumbe

Majego

Majunda

Marmzi

Wazaba Dani

Magundu

Shanga

Kuse

Ndowongere

Msami Calgallo-bin-Abarofat

Ohda-bin-Odalala

Washirnba

Wadigo.

Kaurna

Wagafla.

'Toro. The Lugard-Kasagarna treaty comprised two contemporaneous and collateral agreements: one is in the same form as the Lugard-Kavalli treaty: the other, concerned with administrative detail, is given by Gray.

The Owen-Kasagama treaty comprised the treaty proper (text -n Africa, No. 7 (1895)) and two annexures. In the first annexur e Kasagama agreed inter afia to pay an annual tribute of 40 frasilas of ivory and to limit his claims on the salt from the Katwe lake: in the second the boundaries of Toro and its districts and subordinate chiefs are cited. The tributes were not included in the approval of the Foreign Office which regarded the first tribute as unduly onerous.

Page 166 in the text. (2) List of Treaties (Nos. 22-62) concluded by the British East Africa

Company with Native Chiefs, between March, 1888, and May, 1890 (after the Charter), according to the following Form (b), which were submitted to the British Government for approval, 5th March, 1891, and were approved, 30th June, 1891:

Form (b).

(Name of Chief) hereby declares that he has placed himself and all his territories, countries, peoples, and subjects under the protection, rule, and government of the Imperial British East Africa Company, and has ceded to the said Company all its sovereign rights and rights of government over all his territories, countries,

136

peoples, and subjects, in consideration of the said Company granting the said Company to him, his territories, countries, peoples, and subjects, and extending to them the benefit of the rule and government of the said Company. And he undertakes to hoist and recognize the flag of the said Company. As witness his hand, at this day of

(Signature or Mark of Chief).

No. Date of Treaty Names of Chiefs Tribes of Districts

22

23

24

25

26 27

28

29

19A

30

31

32

33

34 35

36

37

38

39 40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

Mar. 18,1889

20, 1889

21,1889

23, 1889

24, 1889 27, 1889

April 1,1889

1,1899

1,1889

17, 1889

July 18, 1889

July 17, 1889

18, 1889

19,1889 20,1889

22,1889

30,1889

21, 1889

21,1889 Aug.17, 1889

25, 1889

Sept. 25, 1889

In the month of

Jumad Akhr

28, 1307 Mar. 29, 1889

Kyoi

Mbaraka

Bagilla

Golgalo

Delo Koricha

Bolotho (Joint Chiefs oi Kurumse in Garisa.) Molongu Boro

Sethe

Sethe

Eribyindima

Avatula-bin-Khairo Nife

Makorani

Gulo

Otha

Otha Wa Bobu Dada Komeno

Aba Shora .

Kayuwayu of Subak

Daadi Aba Daada

Gura Wagadana Kasa Mudoni

Ali Nahar

Goolhed Mahomed

Sherwa Ismael

Ismail Othman-bin-Kismayu Sowakhron,

Othman Kilidudoil Mzee Saef

Wapokomo (Masa)

Wapokomo (Ntuna), north bank of Tana Wapokomo (Kidori or Kula), Tana. Wasania (Manyole)

Wasania (Kikate).

Garisa

Wapokomo (Korokoro) (Waraopa in Oto Bacirova) Wagalas (Korokoro). Deed of sale, land (Koro koro).

Baza, on Tana.

Waboni.

Wapokomo (Nderani)

(Guano). (Kineko mbe)

(Ndura)

(Malalulu)

(Mwina).

Wasania(Karacha) Wapokomo (Subaki)

King of the Gallas(Gotbanti). Chief of town and district of Kinakombe, on south bank of River Tana.

Chief of town and district of Kinakornbe on south bank of River Tana.

Murjerten. Kismayu.

Murjerten (Kismayu).

Ditto-

Chief of Wabagoni.

137

No. Date of Treaty Names of Chiefs Tribes of Districts

49 50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

58

59

60

61

62

May 13, 1890 18,1890

April 24,1890

May 9, 1890

April 22, 1890

May 15, 1890

Apr. 25, 1890

May1888

1888

1888

May 1888

1888

1888

1888

Concession, Mar. 4, 1890

Omer Mahomed Ismail Mahomed

Shurua-bin-Ismail

Othman-bin-Jamia

Sumunta Abdalla

Hadji-bin-Ohamid . Ali-bin-Shurwar

Ubdi Arrala

Abdulla Jama

Husson-bin-Adoni

Omer Ubdi .. Ahamed-bin-Mahomed

Abdulla Isa ..

Abdullah-mon-Ubseye

Mahomed-bin-Mahomed

Hadji Ali

Husson-bin-Ahamid Ali Brala

Umbari

Mazamboni

Katto

Kalenge Uchunku, for Antari

Mpororo

Mbiassi, of Kavalli

Mwite

Malai Ruguju

Musiri

Komubi

Katonza

Mpigwa Mpinga

Bulemo

Bevwa

Ulegga

Bevwa Kakuri

Lamu

Manda,

Patta

Kismaya, and c

Murierten Somalis NKismayu.). -Ditto.-

Warsengli Somalis

Doolbahanti Somalis.

Orguden Somalis

Juba River.

Musugooro

Undussuma.

Wanyankori and Mpororo.

Between Iturik River and Nyanza.

Between Iturik River and Nyanza.

Ruigi Unyarnpaka, and

Kitagwenda. Ukonju and Semlild Valley.

Basongora.

From Sultan of Zanzibar.

138

3) List of Treaties (Nos. 63-73) concluded by the British East Africa Company with Native Chiefs between August 1889, and July, 1890, according to the above Form (b) (p. 166) which were submitted to the British Government for approval, 28th May, 1891, and were approved, 30th June, 1891:* No. 63 With M'Boli, of Iwati, Ukambani August 4,1889

64 Kamiri, of Kikuyu .. .August 11, 65 Menya Kisharia of Lumbwa Oct. 13, 66 Kitoto Jama, of Lower Kavirondo Oct. 23, 67 Kisero Punda Mero, of Kisumo August 28, 68 Kimaugichi, Elgon Feb. 2,1890 69 Sakwa, of Kisongo March 6, 70 Wakoli, of Akola March 25, 71 Majania, of Kitosh June 21, 72 Mumiya, of Upper Kavirondo June 23, 73 Losora Lonon, Njemps . . July 14,

The following Treaties were approved on the 29th April, 1892: No. 47

Agreement with the Representatives of the People of (No. 33) March 18, 189 1. .

*See P.P., "Africa, No. 4 (1892)," pp. 14 and 19. No. 75. Treaty.with King (Mwanga) and Chiefs of Uganda (per Captain Lugard, p. 16) December 26, 1890. No. 76. Treaty with Mbekirwas, of Busoga . . December 10, 1890. No. 77 or No. 78 Declaration with Ooguden Somalis .. August 13, 1891.

List of Treaties (Nos. 79-84) concluded by the British East Africa Company with Native Chiefs in September and October, 1891, according to the above Form (b) (p. 166), which were submitted to the British Government for approval I I th January, 1892, and were approved, 23rd January, 1892.t No. 79 With WatoroM Gosha) Tribes of River Juba

(Mirgow, & c-) September 10, 1891. No. 80 -Ditto- (Macowah) September 19, 1891.

,, 81 -Ditto (Macowah) September 19, 1891.

82 -Ditto- (Moosagoor) September 19, 1891.

83 Ooguden Somalis (between Tana and Juba Rivers) October 13,

84 Reer Hursi Tribe of SomaHs (River Juba) pp

*No. 77 was a Treaty with Kimangelia, of 19th May, 1891, but it was not submitted for approval, as it dealt with territory now in the German Kilimanjaro sphere of influence.

tIn approving these six Treaties, the Company were informed that the Agreement annexed to Treaty No. 79, sent by them, did not accompany that sent home by Mr. (afterwards Sir Gerald) Portal, and, being outside the Treaty, was not included in the

139

approval. They were also informed that Nos. 83 and 84 had been received through Her Majesty's Agent and Consul-General at Zanzibar. Page 170 in the text.

No. 36-Notes on the Boundaries of the British Sphere of Influence on the East Coast of Africa, 1887-1891. The following reference to the boundaries of the British sphere of

influence on the East Coast of Africa was made in a Despatch addressed by the Marquis of Salisbury to Mr. (afterwards Sir Gerald) Portal, Her Majesty's Commissioner and Consul-General, on the 22nd March, 1892, which was laid before Parliament with the "Papers relating to the Mombasa Railway Survey and Uganda" (Africa No. 4 (1892)).

"The boundaries of the British sphere north of the German sphere on the East Coast of Africa are defined in the lst Article of the Anglo-German Agreement of the Ist July, 1890 (No. 129), and in the Anglo-Italian Agreement of the 24th March, 1891 (No. 135).

"There are three distinct divisions of the territory comprised in the British sphere of influence on the East Coast of Africa.

"I. The dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar leased to the British East Africa Company, extending from Wanga to Kipini, with an inland frontier 10 miles from the coast, and including the islands of Lamu, Patta, and Manda. (See Concessions, 24th May, 1887 (No. 24); 9th October, 1888 (No. 26) 4th March, 1890 (No. 30); and 5th March, 1891 (No. 31).

"2. The territory administered by the Company under its Charter (3rd September, 1888 (No. 25)).

"3. The territory not at present administered by the Company." Territory leased by the Sultan of Zanzibar to the British East Africa Company. "I. The limits of this territory are thus described in the note written by

Acting Consul-General Holmwood to the Sultan on the 3rd December, 1886 (No. 1553). The note refers, in addition, to ports north of the Juba. Page 171 in the text.

Territory administered by the Company under its Charter. "2. The second includes territory held by the Company under Grants,

Concessions, Agreements, or Treaties, in accordance with clause I of the Charter, subject to the provisions of clause 3, which stipulates that no power shall be exercised under such Grants, Concessions, Agreements, or Treaties until copies shall have been furnished to the Secretary of State, and he shall have signified his approval. absolutely or conditionally. The claims of the Company

140

are recorded in letters and Treaties, all of which have received the formal approval of the Secretary of State. Under the 2nd clause of the Charter, the Company is authorized and empowered to extend its territory from time to time, but such extension is subject to the approval of the Secretary of State and to the conditions of the 3rd clause.

Territory not at present administered by the Company. "3. The third division comprises all territory not included in the other two

divisions. This is liable to diminution in proportion to the extension of the Company's administration.

The Instructions to Mr. (aftQrwards Sir Gerald) Portal then said: -1he administration ofjustice, as regards Europeans and others, not natives

of the country, will be exercised under the Order in Council of 15th October, 1889.*

"The Order in Council does not apply to the Sultan's dominions, in which the administration of justice is governed by His Highness' Treaties.

"It will not be your duty, in the portion of your district outside of the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar, to undertake judicial administration as regards natives.

*H.T., Vol. xviii, p. 1. Page 172 in the text. for the present, remain in the hands of the Chiefs; but you should check abuses, and let the Chiefs understand that, under British influence, injustice will not be tolerated. In special cases, where no other remedy may appear adequate you will be justified in obtaining the delegation to you of the Chiefs' powers, in order that you may undertake the direct administration of justice. Such cases should always be reported by you."

(For the changes which have taken place since this despatch was written, see. GREAT BRITAIN, AFRICA (EAST COAST); GREAT BRITAIN AND CONGO STATE; GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY; AND ZANZIBAR AND ITALY.)

Uganda.

On the 20th August, 1891, the British East Africa Company announced its determination to withdraw from Uganda, which was definitely confirmed on the 17th May, 1892.

On the 3rd March, 1892, a Treaty was concluded by Captain Lugard,on behalf of the British East Africa Company, with Mwanga, King of Uganda, by which the Company agreed (among other things) to afford protection to the Kingdom of Uganda, and the King (among other things) acknowledged the suzerainty of the

141

Company;* but this Treaty was not ratified. On the 29th May, 1893, Mwanga, King of Uganda, entered into a

Provisional Agreement with Sir Gerald Portal, Her Britannic Majesty's Commissioner, in which it was recorded that the British East Africa Company had definitely withdrawn from Uganda, and that, pending the decision of Her Majesty's Government on the whole question of Uganda, Mwanga had bound himself to certain specified conditions, and entered into certain engagements, with the object of seeming British protection, assistance, and guidance; one of which engagements was that he would make no Treaties or Agreement of any kind with any European, of whatever nationality, without the consent and approval of Her Majesty's Representative.t This Treaty was ratified, and a British Protectorate proclaimed over Uganda, 18th June, 1894 (See APPENDIX).

*See Parl. Paper, "Africa," No 1, p. 25 (1893). tParl. Paper, "Africa,", No. 2, p. 18 (1894).

Page 365 in the text.

No. 90.-Notes on the GAMBIA. 1783-1894. On the 3rd September, 1783, a Treaty was concluded between Great

Britain and France, by Article X of which the King of the French guaranteed to the King of Great Britain the possession of Fort James (Albreda) and of the River Gambia. (See GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE, p. 539.)

In 1806, the Island of St. Mary, at the mouth of the Gambia, on which is situated the town of Bathurst, was purchased by the British Government.

Island of Lemain. On the 14th April, 1823, the following Deed was signed for the Cession to

Great Britain of the Island of Lemain, near Kayee, in the River Gambia: "Whereas Alexander Grant, Esquire, Major in His Majesty's 2nd West

Indian Regiment, and Commandant of the British Settlement of St. Mary's, in the River Gambia, has been deputed by his Excellency Brigadier-General Sir Charles Macarthy, CaptainGeneral and Governor-in-Chief in and over His Britannic Majesty's Possessions on the Western Coast of Africa, to treat with us for our Island of Lemain, situated in the River Gambia, near Kayee, and opposite to our Port of Junko Conda; and whereas all sovereignty of the said Island at present lies in us, and has been handed down to us by our ancestors, and we having full power and authority to dispose of the same, and being fully convinced of the pacific and just disposition of the said Governor- in-Chief and Major Grant, his deputy, acting for and on behalf of His Britannic Majesty, as also of the great reciprocal benefits which will result from a British

142

Settlement being established in our neighbourhood, and withal being desirous of manifesting our distinguished affection and friendship for the King of Great Britain and his subjects: Page 366 in the text. *H. T. vol. xiv p. 942

Do hereby, for and in consideration of 100 dollars value in merchandise, to be well and truly paid to us yearly and every year, and the value of 10 dollars in merchandise, to be at the same time and in like manner paid to Wooda Maddy, our Alcaide, or our Alcaide for the time being, the first payment to commence and be made from the lst of April in this payment year of the Christian Fra, 1823, and ever afterwards, by half-yearly instalments, that is, 55 dollars value in merchandise on the lst of October and lst of April in each year, for ever cede and relinquish, and do bind ourselves, our heirs and assigns, for ever to cede and relinquish, all claim, title, or property which we or they have or might have had in the said Island, to the King of Great Britain and Ireland, his heirs and successors, for ever.

"And we do further, in 6onsideration of the value of 50 dollars in addition to the 110 above mentioned, to be well and truly paid yearly and every year, the first payment to be made on the Ist of April, 1824, abandon, relinquish, and for ever give up for ourselves, our heirs and successors, any claim we had for customs on Colonial vessels trading in the river from St. Mary's; and we further, in consideration of the above-mentioned sums of 110 and 50 dollars, in all amounting to 160 dollars, bind and oblige ourselves, our heirs and successors, as aforesaid, to protect by every means in our or their power, all British vessels trading in the river, which are not as heretofore to be boarded by us or any of our subjects for the purpose of extorting or asking any custom whatever, they having henceforth and for ever, by virtue of this Treaty, full liberty of passing and re-passing our territories, without any hindrance or molestation of any kind whatever.

"And we do further, by virtue of this Treaty, and being moreover convinced that the cultivating a good understanding with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty will, under Providence, be attended with the happiest consequences to us and our subjects, solemnly guarantee our protection to them and their property, either settling in or passing through any part of our: dominions, as also protection and encouragement to all strangers or Native traders passing through our territories in order to trade with the subjects of His Britannic Majesty or otherwise. Page 367 in the text. and lastly, we bind and oblige ourselves, our heirs and successors, as aforesaid, faithfully and truly to abide by and discharge the articles

143

of this Treaty under the penalty of forfeiting all the pecuniary advantages therein held forth.

"And to the purity and sincerity of our intentions in the mutual observance of the foregoing articles, we, the Contracting Parties, call the Omnipotent God of truth and justice to witness.

"Signed, sealed, and delivered in the Commandant's tent on Lemain Island, in the presence of the witnesses who have hereunto signed their names, this 14th day of April, in the year of the Christian era one thousand eight hundred and twenty-three, and in the fourth year of the reign of our Most Gracious Sovereign George the Fourth."

(Here follow signatures and marks.) Cession of the River Gambia to Great Britain.

On the 15th June, 1826,* a Convention was signed between the Acting

Governor of Sierra Leone and the King of Barra and of the River Gambia, with his Chiefs and headmen, for the cession of the Gambia to Great Britain.

It contained the following stipulations:

"2nd. The Said Brunay, King of Barra, by and with the advice and consent of his Chiefs and headmen before named, cedes, transfers, and makes over to his Honour Kenneth Macaulay, Acting Governor of Sierra Leone, and his successors, Governors of Sierra Leone for the time being, on the part and behalf of His Majesty the King of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, his heirs, and successors for ever, the full, entire, free, and unlimited right, title, sovereignty, and possession of the River Gambia, with all the branches, creeks, inlets, and waters of the same, as they have been held and possessed by the Kings of Barra from time immemorial; and the said Brunay, King of Barra, with the advice and consent of his said Chiefs and headmen as aforesaid, does further cede and for ever relinquish all and every right, claim, or demand for customs or duties of any description on British or other vessels entering or navigating the River Gambia, or any of wateis thereof (as have been formerly demanded and taken). Page 368 in the text.

*S.P., vol. x1viii, p. 882; H. T., vol. xii, p. 5 See also Treaties, 5th January, 1832, p. 324, and 18th November, 1850, p. 326.

French Vessels trading to Albreda. "It being distinctly understood that this does not apply to French vessels

trading to the factory of Albreda.* Cession to Great Britain of Territory on Right Bank of River Gambia for one mile inland.

144

"3rd. The said Brunay, King of Barra, by and with the advice and consent of the Chiefs and headmen aforesaid, cedes, transfers, and makes over unto his Honour Kenneth Macaulay, Acting Governor of Sierra Leone, and his successors, the Governors of Sierra Leone for the time being, on the part and behalf of His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, his heirs and successors, for all that part of the northern or right bank of the River Gambia for one geographical mile inland, commencing at Bonyadoo Creekt on the west and extending to Jokadoo Creek on the east.

Reservation of French Factory of Albreda. "Reserving only unto the -said Brunay, King of Barra, and his successors,

that portion of land at present occupied by the French at the factory of Albreda, the limits and boundary line of which is fixed and determined at the signing of this Treaty by persons duly appointed on the behalf of the Contracting Parties."

4th.-Annual Payment of 400 Spanish Dollars to be made by the King of Barra and his Successors.

5th.-Prohibition against Transport or Shipment of Slaves. *Ccnfirmt d 5th January, 1832. See "Report, Africa, Western Coast, 1865,

House of Commons Papers, No. 412," p. 344. tBonyadoo Creek, now called Jannak Creek. H. T., vol. xii, p. 7.

Page No. 92 28 May, 1888 Declaration. Itebu. Non-cession of Terr itory. Boundaries, etc. 426 - 29 May, 1888 Declaration. Ketu. Non-cession of Territory. Bondaries, etc. 427 - 31 May, 1888 Declaration. Ibu. Non-cession of Territory. Boundaries, etc. 428 - 21 July, 1888 Convention. Ilaro. Non-cession of Territory. Boundaries, etc. 429 - 21 July, 1888 Declaration. British Protectorate over Ilaro 429 - 23 July, 1888 Treaty. Oyo and Yorubaland. Non-cession of Territory. Boundaries, etc. 430 - 5 Aug., 1891 Note. Igbessa added to Lagos 425 - 8 Aug., 1891 Note. Addo added to Lagos 412 - 13 Aug., 1891 Note. Ilaro added to Lagos 429 - 9 Oct., 1888 Memorandum. Artijere Wharf. Itebu and Ibu. Boundaries 431 - 20, Feb., 1889 Treaty. Ondo. Non-cession of TeWitory. Boundaries etc. 432 - 10 Aug., 1889 Agreement. Great Britain and France. Spheres of Influence. (See Great Britain and France). - 15 Aug., 1893 Treaty. lbadan. Internal Affairs of Zoruba Towns, etc. 432 Page No. 92 24 July, 1874 Letters Patent. Erection of the Settlements of the Gold Coast and Lagos into one Colony under the Title of the Gold Coast Colony. (See also Letters Patent, 13 July, 1886) 417 - 24 Sept., 1879 Agreement. British Protectorate over Katanu 417

145

- 15 Mar., 1884 Proclamation. British Protectorate over App 417 - 16 July, 1884 Treaty. Jakri (Benin River) British Protection 417 - 24 Dec., 1884 Treaty. Ogbo. British Protection 418 Page 404. - 24 Oct., 1885 Treaty. Mahin. Cession to Great Britain of Mahin Beach 419 - 24 Oct., 1885 Treaty, Mahin. Atijere. British Protection 421 - 11 Jan., 1886 Letters Patent. Erection of Lagos into a Separate British Colony 422 - 5 Feb., 1886 Proclamation. British Sovereignty and Protection over Coast between Odi and Benin River

(Jakri, Ogbo, Mahin, and the Mahin Beach) 422 - 5 May, 1886 Declaration. Badagry. Meaning of term "Town of Badagry" in Treaty of 7 July, . . . . 424 - 29 Dec., 1887 Order in Council. British Jurisdiction in Territories adjacent to Colony. S.P., 78, vol. 836. . - 15 May, 1888 Declaration. Igbessa. Non-cession of Territory. Boundaries, etc. 425 - 15 May, 1888 Proclamation. British Protection over Igbessa 426 - 22 May, 1888 Declaration. Ife. Non-cession of Territory, Boundaries, etc. 427 - 29 May, 1888 Treaty. British Protectorate over Ketu . . 42 Page 403 in the text. List of Treaties, etc. Page. No. 92 1851-1893 Notes on Lagos 405 - Oct., 1851 British Instruction. Deposition and Expulsion of Kosoko from Lagos 405 - 1 Mar., 1852 Agreement. Akitoye King of Lagos Grant of piece of land to Church Missionary Society . . 405 - 23 Sept., 1854 Agreement. Kosoko, Chief of Epe, not to attempt to regain possession of Lagos. Palma recognised as Port of Kosoko. . . . . . 406 - 22 June, 1861 Decision of British Government. Lagos to be a British Dependency - Aug., 1861 Treaty. Lagos. Cession to Great Britain of Port and Island of Lagos. Decemo to retain title of King. His stamp and pension 409 - Aug., 1861 Proclamation. British occupation of Lagos 410 - 7 Feb., 1863 Declaration. Docemo, ex-Chief of Epe and formerly King of Lagos. Extent of Lagos Territory. Palma and Leckie 411 - Mar., 1863 Conditions of Peace. Government of Lagos and Possoo of Epe 411 - 27 June, 1863 Agreement. Addo. British Protection 412 - 29 June, 1863 Agreement. Pocrah. British Protection . . 413 - 4 July, 1863 Agreement. Okeodan. British Protection 413 - 7 July, 1863 Agreement. Badagry. Cession of Town and Territory of Badagry to Great Britain. (See also Declaration 15 May, 1886) .. . . 414 - 17 July, 1863 Deed. Okeodan. Sale of piece of land to Great Britain for Government residence . . . . 415 - 19 Feb., 1866 Royal Commission. Union of Lagos with Sierra Leone (Revoked 24 July, 1874) . .. 416

146

by Bodomfil and Daniasi, at a distance of 10 kilom, to the eastward; that it would then pass Buko, so as to strike the Volta at the spot where that river was intersected by the road from Bandagadi to Kirhindi, and would then follow the river as far as the 9th degree of north latitude. (See Great Britain and France, p. 573.)

On the 12th July, 1893, an Arrangement was entered into between Great Britain and France, fixing the boundary between the British and French Possessions on the Gold Coast. (See Great Britain and France, p. 589).

Treaties have recently been concluded, in the name of Her Britannic Majesty, with the Chiefs of Bona, Dagarti, Wa, and Mamprusi, at Gambaga, in the Gold Coast Hinterland, by which they engaged, among other things, not to conclude Treaties with any other Power, or to cede territory or accept Protectorates without the consent of Her Majesty.

147

Appendix C

EDUCATION IN COLONIAL EAST AFRICA

The statistical data provided in the following tables shows the extent to which Africans received "higher" Education in East and Central Africa plus the former Belgian Congo (Zaire). The reader should note the miserably small number of Africans of higher learning. Another important aspect to note about East African figures, especially those of Kenya regarding Students pursuing studies overseas, was that the vast majority of Students were not Africans.

Two Reports on Higher Education in East Africa were produced and published after 1958. The first working party which was led by Sir Alexander Carr-Sounders who was then the Director of the London School of Economics saw little reason for the immediate establishment of another University College in East Africa despite the fact that Makerere's annual intake was less than one hundred. (See Tables). In other words, the Carr-Sounders' report was re-commending a near status quo in East African Higher Education. Inevitably such recommendations were not very acceptable to a number of people in Kenya and Tanzania.

The principal of the then Royal Technical College of Nairobi, who had hoped that his Institution would be raised to University College Status resigned. Representations were made to the Colonial Office and this led to the second Working Party led by Professor J. F. Lockwood, Vice Chancellor of the University of London and Master of Birkbeck College. Their Report strongly recommended the establishment of University Colleges in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam because Makerere alone could no longer meet adequately the increasing need for higher education in Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar.

148

STATISTICS RELATING TO THE POTENTIAL SUPPLY OF STUDENTS

The four tables attached to this note provide material on which estimates of the potential candidates for higher education in East Africa can be based.

Table I, in its comparison of the entries and passes at the School Certificate Examination in the years 1954 and 1957, shows an increase of 72.3 per cent in the total of entries and of 62.4 per cent in the total of passes.

Table 11 gives the comparative figures for the Higher School Certificate Examinatidn in the years 1954 and 1957.

Table III, in its forward estimate of entries for the Higher School Certificate Examination in the years 1960 and 1964, reflects the likely outcome of the plans for a substantial growth in the number of Higher School Certificate courses in the East African schools.

Table IV shows the number of students from East Africa and the subjects they are studying in the United Kingdom during the session 1957/58. It is emphasized that these figures, must be regarded as approximations only, it being for example difficult to record accurately at any given time the number of students who have gone at their own private cost and who may perhaps be pursuing degree course. 'Report of the Working Party on Higher Education in East Africa (July-August. 1958) Government Printer, Nairobi (1958).

149

150

TABLE 11 ESTIMATES OF ENTRIES FOR SCHOOL CERTIFICATE

19.55 1960 KENYA TANGANYIKA UGANDA ZANZIBAR

1,563 423 724 104

2,500 950

1,200 150

TOTAL 2,814 4,800

TABLE III SCHOOL CERTIFICATES AWARDED IN 1954 TO CANDIDATES OB-

TAINING FIVE OR MORE CREDITS, ONE OF WHICH WAS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Kenya Uganda Tanganyika Zanzibar Total European Asian African and Arab

226 Ill 64

- 31 73

3 35 55

- 12 6

229 189 198

TOTAL 401 104 93 18 616

TABLE IV

SCHOOL CERTIFICATES AWARDED IN 1954 TO CANDIDATES OBTAINING SEVEN OR MORE CREDITS, ONEOF WHICH WAS IN

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Kenya Uganda Tanganyika Zanzibar Total European Asian African and Arab

123 60 47

- 19 39

2 26 37

- 7 2

125 112 125

TOTAL 230 58 65 9 362

TABLE V

STUDENTS OBTAINING FOUR OR MORE CREDITS NOT INCLUDING A CREDIT IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN 1954

Kenya Uganda Tanganyika Zanzibar Total

European Asian African and Arab

27 231 98

- 81

109

- 54 36

- 15 19

27 381 262

TOTAL 356 190 90 34 670

151

TABLE VI STUDENTS OBTAINING SIX OR MORE CREDITS NOT INCLUDtNG

A CREDIT IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN 1954 Kenya Uganda Tanganyika Zanzibar Total

European Asian African and Arab

9 46 52

- 23 42

- 10 15

- 4 4

9 83

113 TOTAL 107 65 25 8 205

TABLE VII

HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION, 1954

European Asian Total1 1954 1960 (Est.) KENYA, 1954 Candidates Pass TANGANYUCA, 1955 Candidates Pass UGANDA, 1954 Candidates Pass ZANZIBAR Candidates Pass

60 50

18 16

78 66

250

ToTAL CANDIDATES TOTAL PAssEs 107 65 25 205

152

TABLE X G.C.E. STUDENTS IN U.K. AND IRISH REPUBLIC, JULY, 1955

KENYA:

Kenya

Africans and Arabs 12

Asians 79 Europeans 4

TOTAL 95

UGANDA: Africans and Arabs 7

Asians 26

Europeans 1 TOTAL 34

TANeANY]KA:

Africans and Arabs - Asians 13

Europeans 2

TOTAL 15

ZANZMAR

Africans and Arabs -

Asians 7 Europeans -

TOTAL 7

TOTAL 151

153

154

155

TABLE I SCHOOL CERTIRCATE EXAMINATIONS-1954 AND 1957

African Asian European Others Total KENYA, 1954

Candidates Pass

1957 Candidates Pass

TANr,,kNYm451954 Candidates Pass

1957 Candidates Pass

UGANDA, 1954 Candidates Pass

1957 Candidates Pass

ZANZIBAR, 1954 Candidates Pass

1957 Candidates Pass

175 162

383 363

123 108

150 149

270 227

665 491

14 4 9 2

713 410

1,048 588

164 109

398 235

166 128

332 159

77 45

121 77

389 347

452 406

12 7

24 21

- - - - - - - -

6 6

29 12

- -

24 21

- - - -

20 11

34 16

1,283 925

1,912 1,369

299 224

596 426

436 355

997 650

111 60

164 95

1954 1957

Total Candidates 2,129 3,669 Total Passes 1,564 2,540

NOTE-Figures exclude private students.

156

TABLE II HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATIONS-1954 AND 1957

European Asian African Total KENYA, 1954

Candidates Pass

1957 Candidates Pass

TANr,,kNYm451954 Candidates Pass 1957 Candidates Pass

UGANDA, 1954 Candidates Pass

1957 Candidates Pass

ZANZIBAR, 1954 Candidates Pass

1957 Candidates Pass

60 50

76 64 - - 3 2 - - - - - - - -

18 16

16 13

12 9

12 6 - - - - - - - -

- - - - - -

12* 6 - - - - - - - -

78 66

92 77

12 9

27 14

- - - - - - - -

*Private Candidates.

TABLE III HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE ENTRIES,

1957 1960* 1964*

KENYA

TANGANYIKA

UGANDA

ZANZIBAR

92

27

-

-

148

137

70

20

300

180

150

20

119 375 650 *Tentative estimates only. 'Note that the majority of these entries especially before 1960 were not of African students.

157

TABLE IV

UNITED KINGDOM-SESSION 1957/58 Compiled from information supplied by Government Student Units in London

Kenya Uganda Tanganyika Zanzibar Remarks

Accountancy Agriculture Arts and Crafts Arts (1) Architecture Building Commerce Co-operative Dentistry (1) Domestic Science Dressmaking and Tailoring Economics (1) (2)

Education and Teacher Training Engineering Estate Management Law . . . . Medicine (1) music .. Nursing Optics Pharmacy Printing Photography Police Public Administration Radiography . . . . Raffway Training Science (1) Surveying Shoemaking Veterinary Science 1 Preliminary Courses Miscellaneous

15 6 4

81 35 2

13 2 6 3 2

13

15 65

I 67 85 2

45 9

29 2 4 I 3 5 I

28 5 - 7

55 174

- 12

2 24

5 2

26 1 3

10 11

11

40 60

- 3

29 -

31 3 5 1 - - - - -

23 6 1 1

114 152

14 2 1

13 8 - 4 5 - 2 2

1

9

30 -

48 18

- 21

- 9 - - - - - - 1 - - 1

42 114

8 3 - 6 2 - 3 - - 1 4

1

1 7 -

18 15

- 7 - 2 2 - - - - - 4 - - -

18 20

(1) Not all these students are necessarily read ing for a degree. (2) Some Economics students are included under "Science"

T(YrAL 785 576 345 122 Grand Total 1,828

COMPARATM TMAL FoR 1955/56

629 328 183 82 Grand Total or 1955/56 1,222