Africa Finds Its Voice

...Ranging from the violent out burst in Kenya to the more ' evolutionary developments in West Africa, African nationalism is a vital and unique force that bears little resemblance to either its European predecessor which formed the nationstates of Western Europe in past centuries, or to Asiatic nationalism which based itself on ancient nations and cultures...

...The emerging African states cannot live on parliamentarism, one-crop or metal ore export economies and amorphous political parties...

...Algeria, then, symbolizes in its most tragic form the renaissance of the Moslem world, a renaissance which, as Edouard Roditi describes it, has both its positive and disturbing elements...

...At the same time, the weakness of Russian and Communist penetration in Africa provides further favorable circumstances for the growth of the African freedom movements...

...Nor, let us frankly admit, can African nationalism look to the Western democratic or socialist world with much enthusiasm or hope...

...This is the inescapable conclusion of the section we present on Algeria...

...In our second section we move into what 'is known as Sub-Saharan Africa...

...Even the most advanced views of Western revolutionaries— for example, that industrialization in "backward countries" would bring with it a revolutionary working class under a vanguard socialist leadership, or that the formation of urban classes would create focal points of strength which in turn would unify peoples and bring Africa into the Twentieth Century (that is, our image of the Twentieth Century) — all this has proven faulty, in part at least, and has shown itself not to be sufficiently related to the intimate and complex realities of African life...

...if they try to, they are likely to degenerate into authoritarian caricatures such as the American-inspired Liberia...

...This fact alone would justify devoting the bulk of an issue of DISSENT to a special section on Africa...

...And here it is our duty to record the disgrace of the French Socialist Party—the party of Jaures who first won fame by his denunciation of the rape of Algeria in the Chamber of Deputies!—the party whose present leadership is trying to reconquer Algeria, a task which the French Right could never have undertaken, let alone accomplished, on its own...

...We should like here to express our appreciation to our contributors, particularly those who are new to DISSENT, for having made this issue possible...

...and particularly to George Houser of the American Committee on Africa whose assistance and advice were both generous and invaluable...

...The conquest of independence or1 semi-independence by such countries as Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and the Sudan, together with the process that has set such countries as the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Togoland onto the road to freedom, is much more the consequence of those complex inner developments that we lump under the general label of nationalism...

...Though the West, despite itself, has helped train an African leadership that is sufficiently educated in order to set nationalism into motion, henceforth the West has little to offer Africa...

...This political theme is common to that whole vast area between the Islamic North and the Union of South Africa...

...the role of tribal life, racial and ethnic groups...

...In our concluding section on South Africa, where the tragedy of imperialism reaches its starkest form, both Peter Abrahams and George Houser underscore this point...

...the growing conflict between the Westernized African intellectual and the traditional or indigenous leadership...

...Half a million armed men, under a "socialist" proconsul named Robert Lacoste, are attempting by military "saturation" to uproot and exterminate physically the incipient Algerian nation...

...Here William Newman introduces the reader to the key issues of social and political life in Central Africa, where the question of liberation becomes still more complex and sharply different from the forms familiar to Western political thought...

...It is this idea that is developed in concrete detail and is the main theme of the articles that follow...

...In the main, however, our contributors concern themselves primarily with questions of political growth and conflict...

...Keith Irvine describes West Africa's political evolution and points up growing sources of inner disturbance within African nationalism itself, as seen in Nigeria and the Gold Coast...

...To understand this new Africa, however, more is required than a grasp of the international background...

...No more dramatic illustration of this fact could be provided than by the present struggle in Algeria, to which we have devoted a series of short articles and documents...

...Martin Kilson, Jr...

...The shameful effort of the Mollet government to preserve French domination in Algeria is in no way superior, either morally or politically, to the imperialism of the West or the imperialism of the East...

...The European colonial powers, though they painfully and fanatically resist each step, are being forced to recognize emergent Africa as an historical reality...

...And if Africa, hard upon the heels of Asia, has turned against the West which, for two centuries, treated this continent of 250 million people as a source of exploitation and an object of derision, then important revisions in our thinking and our attitudes become imperative...

...The United States, transfixed by an inflexible policy that has caused it to lag behind and hesitantly acquiesce in traditional colonialism, has made little progress in its bid to inherit influence in colonial Africa through an exertion of its economic strength...

...No sooner had the upheavals in Asia that followed upon the Second World War begun to subside a little than new and still more elemental social forces made themselves felt in the world...

...analyzes in scholarly detail the origins and causes of the Mau Mau, warning that the factors behind its growth remain as potent as ever and that they are to be found, incipiently, wherever white settlers and their racialist outlook predominate...

...Political solutions, as Mendes-France has recognized, must be found...

...Africa, oldest of the continents in terms of life and perhaps of civilization, has burst into the arena of world affairs with a remarkable vitality and creativeness...

...And F. Oladipo Onipede, in an essay that perhaps clears new ground, probes to certain basic problems that lie at the heart of African nationalism— the place of traditional African culture in the free states of tomorrow...

...It is in response to these problems that African nationalism proves itself to be so distinctive...

...If "the world's last great uncommitted area," to employ Peter Abraham's description of the African continent, has finally entered the stream of modern history, then vast and revolutionary changes must be underway...

...Enormous social, economic and political tasks demand accomplishment with primitive means in telescoped time...

...If Africa is to know a- better fate than that of Western progressive and revolutionary movements, its leadership will have to find ways of blending the intellectual and technological achievements of the West with the needs and traditions of African life itself...

...Tribalism, urbanism and industrialization, agrarian problems and the impact of Western education and ideas, are a few of the central issues...

...No matter how much blood continues to be shed, the French cannot win, just as they could not win in Indochina...

...the task of finding a viable economic base for the new countries...

...It is this theme of African nationalism that binds together our three sub-sections (North Africa, Middle Africa and South Africa) , a division based not on an obvious geographical demarcation but on the fact that the problems of each of these three areas, while deeply related to one another, tend to take distinct forms...

...If national states that are to live and thrive must be constructed out of a conglomerate of tribes, groups and races at all levels of development, and if they must be built on the flimsy foundations of backward economies, then the traditional forms of nationalism alone will hardly do...

...African nationalism is still in its infancy, but its enemies have been shrewd enough to see how enormous is its potential and have used every weapon of deceit and force to destroy it...

...They cannot succeed...