We were trained to he inferior copies of Englishmen, caricatures to be laughed at with our pretensions of British bourgeois gentility, our grammatical faultiness and distorted standards betraying us at every turn....We were denied the knowledge of our African past and informed that we had no present.... Our text-books were English text-books. Many of these manuals had not been altered since 1985* 27
Independence could not lead backwards. The elegant attempts of French-Africans to blend Marxism with the ideal
"consensus society" they sought in African tradition were poems rather than politics. Nkrumah's invocation of Muslim
scholarship had no practical relevance to an anglophone society that knew not the Koran. Yet the common rejection of Europe - shared by those most intimately involved,
politically and economically, with the West - shaded over into politics and Pan-Africanism. Why did Nkrumah build a merchant fleet and a useless and expensive frigate?
Why did he order planes that could serve no economic purpose? Or build all the luxury hotels? Or the great fly-overs and highways that were almost empty? All these were denounced, by economists inside Ghana and outside it, as dangerous
prestige projects. And so they were. But it is impossible to understand the politics of independent black Africa
28 without taking account of the dignitarian factor.
27 Africa Must Unite I p.d9
28 It is appropriate to recall in this connection that Jome Kenyatta advised the whites of East Africa to learn to call Africans "Bwana" in 1962.
One might add to Nkrumah's "prestige projects" one of international significance - the laying of the foundation stone of an Atomic Reactor Centre at Kwabenya in
It was important for Nkrumah to show that, despite everything, Ghana could afford a disproportionate air-force, or mammoth hotels empty of tourists.
Within the continental perspective, the common
desire of many Africans to find their own way in the world, rejecting the colonial legacy and the framework of cold war alliances, filled the early Pan-African conferences.
It was the economic argument for African union, however, that was most decisive. Nkrumah’s discussion
of economic problems was always scrappy and discontinuous. He was always impatient of details and of potential
obstacles. When the details are there, as in Neo-Colonialism, the reader suspects a different authorship. The strongest economic case for African union was worked out by the
"Economics of African Unity" Research Group, headed by Professor Jan Drewnowski, assembled in the Department of Economics in the University of Ghana under Nkrumah's
patronage. (After the coup, they moved to the United Nations Research Institute in the Problems of Social and Economic
Development, at Geneva.) They provided background papers for the meetings of the Organisation of African Unity, and an impressive scholarly backing for Nkrumah's enthusiastic but often rash initiatives.
87 The arguments of the Research Group were later
expanded by Reginald Green and Ann Seldmann in their book Unity or Poverty? The Economics of Pan-Africanism.^
The first part of the book is a study of the present economic debility of African states, peripheral to the world economy
(no African state accounts for as much as 1% of world primary exports or one-half of one per cent of imports of
manufactures),^ divided beyond hope of common planning, subject to the narrowing "price scissors" of the
international commodity markets. As the Economic Commission
29 Published in the Penguin African Series, 1968.
My right to take this work as representative of the views of the Ghana Research Group is at best questionable, since Dr. Green has served as economic adviser to the Tanzanian Government and both co-authors have also worked for the United Nations. Their foreword describes the book as
"developing out of" the discussions and background papers of the Ghana Research Group, and I have taken it as a very coherent statement of the economic case for political
union, developed with a depth and breadth of scholarship that were alien to Nkrumah. It is Nkrumah's argument carried to logical perfection, and for that reason
probably is much more forceful than the case Nkrumah was able personally to present in the course of Pan-Africanism meetings. It also has the benefit of hindsight:
Nkrumah's most important unionist initiatives were taken while most of Africa was still under colonial rule.
for Africa has observed, "the present cash market of most African countries is not larger than that of a moderately- sized European town." Yet it has been suggested that the minimal optimum market size for an "economic region" is a Gross National Product of $30 billion with a per capita average income of $ 3 0 0 . The entire continent of Africa, forming a single economic region, might approximate to these desiderata, with a GNP of some $40 billion and a (lagging)
per capita income of $ 1 0 0 . (Of course, this is to interpret the problem in Pan-Africanist terms. It would be possible to see alternatives in the more equitable interdependence of, for example, the OCAM and the European Economic Community.)
For the Research Group, the problem of scale was central. The need was for large domestic markets to absorb the
products of developing industries, which otherwise would be compelled to operate on an uneconomically restricted scale - and for the pooling of capital and technical resources.
The creation of a larger economic region (or regions) would necessarily involve common decision-making bodies to plan, for example, the distribution of new industrial complexes and to conduct negotiations with foreign investors. Such bodies would have to take the initiative, since
31 See in particular E.B. Chenery. "Patterns of Economic Growth", American Economic Review, I960, pp.643-6. 32 Economic Commission for Africa. Industrial Growth in
Africa: A Survey and Outlook (E/CN.14/IRR/1) 1962, Tables 1 and 5«
89 Essential structural changes do not take place
automatically. African states have, in general,
accepted the need to initiate planning and create appropriate economic institutions to ensure that
such planning is put into effect. (But) at best,
national economic planning is difficult, limited
and frustrating. At worst, it is a delusion and
a farce. 33
There was a time-limit involved. The Research Group
welcomed the general adoption of "interventionist" state planning among African states, but lamented the fact that many major projects - including the Nigerian steel mills, the S u d a n ’s textile industry and Ghana's aluminium industry - would enjoy only limited success because compelled to service a sub-optimal market and to operate on a restricted scale. It was vital to act for continental planning before each
state had become committed to "major investment and structural decisions based on narrow national m a r k e t s " ^ (just as
Nkrumah saw it to be necessary to press for political union before the national structures won popular credence and promoted firmly-established personal interests).
33 Unity or Pove r t y ? pp . 3^4-45
The Research. Group insisted, on orthodox Nkrumaist lines, that the kind of economic co-operation projected would involve political union, and perhaps would actually have tc follow it.
An institutionalised council or parliament, with a constitution defining its powders and obligations, adopted by all member states, is essential. The importance of an agreed political framework for action directed towards economic unification is not only because major economic decisions are among the most vital of all political decisions, but also because
without such a framework to insure permanence, the commitment of substantial resources to union-oriented economic activity would be extremely hazardous. 35
In his own speeches, Nkrumah devoted as much attention to the dangers of possible alternatives to economic union as to the inventory of advantages. He was a particularly vehement critic of the association of many francophone
states with the European Common Market. He was suspicious of the EEC for political as well as economic reasons. Hot only did he view the Common Market as a device for securing
"the perpetual subjection" of African economies to the economy of Western Europe; he also regarded it as a kind of front organisation for the NATO alliance. It was easy for any student of the problem, according to Nkrumah, "to realise that the Common Market is aimed at harnessing the
African countries to satisfy the profit-lust of the imperialist bloc and to prevent us from following an independent
neutralist policy." Nkrumah became one of the most noisome
55
56
ibid p .5^9
Kwame Nkrumah, "Africa Fights the Common Market", Labour Monthly, September, 1962, pp.421-22
91 critics of the concept of Eur-Africa, but for reasons that are discussed below, his arguments failed to convince the francophone leaders who stood to gain most from the European connection, and who shared neither his belief in malefic intent of the Common Market nor his phobia for defensive or political alliances between Africa and the West.
Nkrumah argued that continental union was a political necessity for two prime reasons: first, that it would hasten the liberation of those parts of Africa that remained under colonial or white supremacist rule; second, that it would enable Africa to present a united front to foreign pressures and "neo-colonial" intervention. A third reason gained
increasing force with the Congo crisis: the need for Africans to act as their own policemen, resolving internal disputes
5 7
before foreign powers could take advantage of them.
A fourth reason was of a more general character and should be considered against the background of Nkrumah's personal attempts to act as a mediator in international affairs:
the desire to interpose an African "non-aligned" bloc between 58
the cold war antagonists. A powerful and united Africa was seen to assure not only continental security and
development, but world peace also.
37 See below, Part II, Chapters 3 and 4.
38 The concept of Pan-Africanism intersected with Nkrumah's stand for "non-alignment" and "positive neutralism".
Ghana was on the crest of the independence wave. The Accra inter-African conferences naturally focussed attention on the question of complete liberation for Africa that preoccupied most delegates present. The Accra All-African Peoples' Conference, for example, drew up detailed resolutions condemning the persistence of
"racialism" in Africa. The delegates called for economic sanctions against South Africa by free African states, a boycott of labour for South African industry, the severing
of diplomatic relations with "countries practising racial discrimination. They also called for the establishment of an "African Legion" composed of shock-troops who would be used, in the last resort, against the white laager.
The most radical conference resolutions on this subject were probably those insisting on the immediate independence of all remaining colonial territories. The Central African Federation was condemned. The Portuguese claim of
"assimilation" was rejected. The delegates called for the cessation of the Kenyan state of emergency and the revocation of the South African mandate for South-West Africa.
The inter-African, conferences exercised a continual moral pressure over the colonial powrers to withdraw from Africa. They encouraged independent African states to provide training and shelter from "freedom fighters".
39 A]1-African Peoples1 Conference: Resolution on Imperialism and Colonialism (Accra~^ 1998) P-7 •
93
Their resolutions tended to become increasingly extreme from year to year. Thus, at the Conference of Positive Action for Peace and Security in Africa, held in Accra in April, i960, the delegates stated the "obligation" of all free African states to contribute to a "liberation fund", requested the United Nations to set a time-table for
liberation, and called for the expulsion of South Africa from the British Commonwealth and the creation of a "corps
AO of volunteers" to support the FLN in Algeria.
The common struggle against the colonial enclaves and the "white laager" was one of the few essentially non-
controversial issues in. Africa. Few statesmen (at least after I960, when most francophone states became independent) could afford to temporise with South Africa or Portugal
in particular without completely losing face among their colleagues. Hence, the need for common action against non-African administrations was probably the most effective argument supporting African union, and the one least subject to criticism. Nkrumah wrote in Africa Must Unite! that
"To the African, the European settler, whether living in South Africa, Kenya, Angola, or anywhere else in Africa is an intruder, an alien who has seized African land. No amount of arguing about the so-called benefits of European rule can alter the fundamental right of Africans to order their own
A1 affairs."
AO Conference de l 1action positive pour la paix et la
sdcuritd en Afrique (Community Centre, Accra, 1960)pp.13-16. A1 Africa Must Unite I p.11
The de-colonisation issue was a major theme of Nkrumah's speeches on foreign policy and world affairs.
When he spoke before the General Assembly in September, I960, he levelled a general attack against the idea that Africa,
42 or any part of it, could ever be "an extension of Europe". He called for NATO pressure to force Portugal to withdraw from Africa, for a negotiated settlement in Algeria, and for a general boycott on trade with South Africa. In Belgrade a year later, he suggested December 31? 1962, as
the deadline for the withdrawal of all colonial powers from Africa.
Nkrumah always realised that Portugal, among the
colonial powers, presented a special problem. Dr. Salazar stated Portuguese colonial theory in the following terms in 1963
The concept of Nation is inseparable, in the
Portuguese case, from the idea of civilising mission... Wherever the Portuguese were given time by their
competitors to instal themselves, cling to the land, live together and mix with the population and guide them after the Portuguese manner; where and when this was possible, the Portuguese either left an indelible mark of their Lusitanism or purely and simply extended Portugal. And thus it is that we are also, besides other things and with a better title than others, an African nation. -14
42 Osagyefo at the United Nations: Address to the General Assembly (Accra, I960) p.12~~
43 Appeal for World Peace (Accra, 1961) p*7
44 Dr. Oliveira Salazar, Declaration on Overseas Policy
95
Salazar spoke of a bicontinental nation whose unity was founded on miscegenation. The concept must have seemed alien to someone who had experienced the alien mores of Anglo-Saxon rule, under which miscegenation was conceived of as an error under the bushes rather than the path to ethnic harmony. ^
The multi-racialism, which today begins to be
mentioned and admitted by those who had practically never accepted it before, may be said to be a
Portuguese creation. It derives, on the one hand, from our character and, on the other, from the moral principles of which we are the bearers. 4-6
4-5 cf Gilberto Freyre's The Masters and The Slaves trans. S. Putnam (New York, 196?)• (On the special aptitude of the Lusitanians for cheerful miscegenation.) It would be very wrong to brand Nkrumah as a "black racist", as some of bis critics (including Bretton) have attempted to do. He was surrounded by white advisers and friends, and in the mid-1960's evolved a class-theory of international relations akin to Eldridge Cleaver's. But he certainly visualised continental union as predominantly a union of black men Even s o , his good relations with the Arab nations should be kept in mind.
The claims of the independent African states were denounced as "black racism" alien to the historical destiny of Portugal and to the ultimate establishment of world equilibrium
through miscegenation. Against the "clamour" and the "strange judgements of m e n " , Salazar upheld the historical role of the Portuguese Nation as "trustees of a sacred mission" (multi-racialism and anti-communism)
This was surely the funeral pomp of a dead century - and Salazar actually concluded by insisting in an undertaker's tones that "we will have to mourn the dead if the living are
/lO
unworthy of them." Salazar's remarks disclosed that the African lobby in the United Nations (working in concert on this) had actually succeeded in moving world opinion
decisively against Portugal: although isolation and
expulsion from special agencies, as is now clear, were not necessarily the keys to Portuguese rule in Africa, as strongly rooted as the South African regime in settler-commitment
and the conviction of destiny.
Nkrumah made a frontal assault on Portuguese colonial policy in a speech delivered in May, 1961. He argued that the survival of Portugal in Africa was made possible only by two alliances: NATO ("Portugal is herself a kind of colony") and the "unholy alliance" of Portugal with Rhodesia and
South Africa. The "Mozambique Convention" was an agreement 47 Declaration, p .35
48 Declaration, p.37
The Portuguese myth about their colonial record in Africa is exploded in James Duffy", Portugal in Africa (Penguin African Library, 1962). Duffy used official statistics to show what "assimilation" policy meant in practice. Live centuries of Portuguese rule had produced by 1950 a harvest of 0.39% "civilised" in Guinea Bissact, 0.7^% in Angola, and 0.44% in Mozambique.
49 Tragedy in Angola. (Accra, 1961). Tbe quotation is from page 13. On the problem of Portuguese colonialism, see especially Basil Davidson. Portugal in. Africa (Penguin African Series, 1964).
97
according to which the Portuguese were to export labour to South African mines, and in return the South Africans
contracted to use Laurenco Marques as the entrepot for some 50% of sea-borne imports to the mining zones. The "Mozambique Convention", a "barter deal in human beings" was an indication of the tightening alliance between Portugal and the white
settler-belt. Nkrumah punctured the official appeal to the principle of "multi-racialism" by giving details of the use of forced labour in Portuguese Africa. He quoted the
suppressed Galvao Report, commissioned by the Portuguese Government, which showed the colonial administration working as a recruiting and distributing agent for settlers who came to the Department of Native Labour to request "labour supplies"
(a survival of the colonial South American repartimiento). In conclusion, Nkrumah raised the question, "What Can We Do?" He stressed the need to continue to provoke debate in the United Nations and stated the general principle that informed his own public role as a spokesman for Africa:
Our immediate task is the enlightenment of the conscience of mankind. We must build a machine in co-operation with all other independent
African states to expose in detail exactly what is taking place in Angola today.
Yet Nkrumah's public stand on principle and his
patronage for the independence movements through the Accra