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Commentary No. 208, May 1, 2007
"Africa, 2057"
The year 2007 marks the fiftieth anniversary of African independences. I date this from April 6, 1957, when the British colony of the Gold Coast became the independent state of Ghana, the first colony in what was then called sub-Saharan Africa to achieve this status. The leader of the movement that succeeded in its struggle for this independence was Kwame Nkrumah. The world hailed this day as a major turning-point in the history of Africa, and sent their leaders to take part in the celebrations in Accra. Great Britain sent the Princess of Kent and its Prime Minister, Sir Harold Macmillan. The United States sent Vice-President Richard Nixon.
I was myself in Accra at this time, and I can testify to the very enthusiastic and positive quality of the festivities and to the general optimism about the future of Africa felt in Ghana and throughout the continent. Nkrumah had said: "Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all other things shall be added unto it." Here was the test.
The independence of Ghana was followed by Guinea's bold refusal to stay within the French orbit in 1958, and then by a cascade of independences in 1960, sixteen countries in all. The year 1960 got the sobriquet of "the year of Africa." The year 1960 was also the year of the Congo crisis. It was independent Africa's first civil war, the first post-independence reentry of European troops into Africa, and the first assassination of an African head of government - Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
Nonetheless, what was called the "downward sweep of African liberation" continued several more years, until it hit the hard rock of mineral-rich, settler-dominated southern Africa - the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, the settler-controlled self-proclaimed independent state of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the South African-controlled state of Southwest Africa (now Namibia), and apartheid South Africa. It took another twenty years to achieve independent African governments in all these states, but it was done.
Meanwhile, the euphoria of 1957-1960 gave way to new realities - military coups, civil wars, even interstate wars, plus the severe economic difficulties of the 1970s and 1980s that were prompted by but not caused by the oil price rises. Afro-optimism gave way to Afro-pessimism. All other things were not being added unto political independence. Had Nkrumah been wrong?
Nkrumah himself had warned that the end of colonialism would be followed by neo-colonialism because of the continued economic dependence of African states on western Europe and North America. Nkrumah's remedy was African unity, for which he raised the standard high. He did manage to get the dimensions of Africa to be redefined to include North Africa. But the mountain that was the movement for African unity brought forth in the 1960s merely a mouse, in the form of the weak structure called the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The OAU was later renamed the African Union (AU) but it was not made any stronger.
In 2007, the overall political and economic picture of Africa does not at all match the hopes and expectations of 1957. Here and there, one can point to some small economic improvements. But overall, the statistics show that Africa has had the weakest performance of all the continents. And here and there one can point to some renewed vibrancy on the political scene. But overall, most states are in the hands of corrupt politicians who do not tolerate significant opposition to their regimes, and who do not do anything very much to improve the lot of their people.
What will Africa look like fifty years from now? Of course, no one can be sure. But one can have some reasonable expectations. First of all, it would be hard for things to get worse. In the international pecking order of states, African states are by and large at the bottom today. The younger generations react to this reality in two ways. Some emigrate, and some are beginning to structure new movements - trying to construct a second wave of national liberation struggles.
In the second place, the geopolitical scene will be very different in 2057. The ability of the United States and France to interfere directly on the African scene will almost surely have disappeared. Some say they may be replaced by new outside interferers, like China or some even suggest Brazil. This seems to me highly implausible, albeit not absolutely impossible. Rather, I believe that in the next twenty-five years, the relative geopolitical neglect of Africa will work in its favor, allowing neo-liberation movements to come into being and flourish. If these movements study well the history of Africa from 1957-2007, they may be able to forge movements that are more serious about what needs to be done to transform the economic structures, and what needs to be done to struggle against internal class polarization.
In the years before Nkrumah presided over the independence ceremonies in 1957, his more conservative internal opponents sneered at his supporters, calling them "verandah boys." This referred to the fact that many of the militants were relatively poor urbanites who had no permanent residence and had to sleep on the verandahs of other people's homes. It indicates the degree to which African nationalism in its heyday had an important class conflict element, something that has been obscured in much of the literature about Africa. Class consciousness may again become central to African politics. And if it does, given the structural crisis of the whole modern world-system and the chaotic geopolitical and world-economic conditions it is breeding, Africa's movements may play a much larger role in the outcome of the world political struggle than today most of us anticipate. Let us hope so.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
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