CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Africa in a historical context
BILL KIRKMAN
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Much of the comment on Africa comes from Europe and is coloured by an element of post-colonial self-delusion.
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Photo: AFP
At the threshold of change: Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the Republic of Ghana, in Parliament in 1960.
ALMOST exactly half a century ago (on March 6, 1957) the Gold Coast became independent as Ghana. It was the first of the colonies of sub-Saharan Africa — French, Belgian and Portuguese as well as British — to do so. (Liberia, Ethiopia, South Africa and Sudan were independent before, but their situation was historically different.)
Landmark event
The significance of Ghana's move from colonial status cannot be over-estimated; it marked the beginning of a rapidly accelerating process of decolonisation. Within 10 years, 30 more colonies had followed Ghana into independence, 17 of them in one year, 1960. By 1990 there had been six more, and when South Africa finally threw off the yoke of apartheid with the election in 1994 the whole continent was free of colonial rule.
It could be argued that decolonisation came too quickly and that countries were not fully prepared for independence. There is something in this. No doubt with more time more could have been done. Educational opportunities could have been increased. More citizens of the colonies could have gained experience in government.
In fact, however, the political realities facing the colonial powers were such that significant delay would have been impossible. To put this in perspective, the independence of India and Pakistan, 10 years earlier, was a clear indication that the British Empire was at an end. Furthermore, there is a case for claiming that colonial status is dependency, and moving away from dependency does not really happen until the status changes.
Independent Africa has faced great problems, some, but not all, of its own making. In many places, the introduction of democratic rule has been ineffective. Corruption has been widespread. Education has not been improved as much as it should have been. There are huge health problems. In general African countries have had a bad press. The sad thing is that the failures have always been highlighted, and the good things all too frequently ignored. And the good things are real, and encouraging. The ending of apartheid, after a long struggle, but ultimately by agreement rather than war, is the most dramatic example, but there are many others. Ghana itself, for example, is now a stable democracy, where the last election was fought without allegations of corruption. Botswana has been an object lesson in the peaceful development of a successful democracy, in spite of the most appalling behaviour of British governments of both parties, which sacrificed the interests of the then Bechuanaland to the expediency of appeasing the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. More generally, the past year or so has seen significant economic growth in much of the African continent.
Inadequate coverage
Reflecting on the huge changes that have occurred in Africa since the dramatic moment of Ghana's independence, I have wondered why so little attempt is made to put them in a realistic historical context.
Part of the answer, I suggest, lies in the fact that much of the comment on what is happening in Africa comes from Europe, and is coloured by an element of post-colonial self-delusion. To put it bluntly, we are not good at looking critically at ourselves. European countries, for example, are not free of the kind of greed and corruption that we tend to see as endemic in much of Africa.
It is salutary to look at some examples from the recent history of Europe. In the Balkans, there has been political and ethnic turmoil since the disintegration in 1980 of the Yugoslavia that had been ruled by Marshal Tito. Greece had a military coup in 1967, and it was not until the mid-1970s that democracy was restored. Portugal was ruled by a dictator until 1974, and did not see a return to full civilian government until 1982. In its neighbour, Spain, the rule of the dictator Franco did not end until 1975.
Plenty of examples
Go back not much further, and we see the Nazis coming to power in 1933, and not being removed until the allied victory in the Second World War. The fascist dictatorship in Nazi Germany's ally, Italy, similarly continued until the end of the war.
I am not, of course, suggesting that there are exact parallels. Nor am I claiming that things that are wrong can be excused because examples of wrong things are found elsewhere.
What I do suggest is that we should appreciate that 50 years is quite a short time, historically speaking. Developments in Africa have been often disappointing, but Europe, with a far longer history of independence, does not offer an unalloyed success story.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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