Middle Africa: From the Tribe to the Town
Newman, William J.
Africa is a figment of the white man's fears. Actually, there is no political, economic or social unit which can be called Africa; there is only a collection of colonial areas, emerging...
...He never talks about politics for public expression, but is vociferous privately...
...With regard to the Negroes, then, I have coined the formula: 'I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother...
...The African, from a differentangle, was confronted by a similar dilemma...
...This Crusty Old Bismarck of the Spirit...
...The country bumpkin is moving within his civilization: the African is moving outside his civilization...
...in the superior educational facilities offered to white children, and in the economic legislation which, in Southern Rhodesia for example, discriminates against the African producer of agricultural goods...
...There is a road for economic advancement which Ieads to a controlled African economic elite...
...hence their willingness to see their vision of a greater Nigeria go by the board while they reach for local power...
...Within Middle Africa five states govern: Portugal, France, Belgium, Ethiopia, and Liberia...
...Social forces at work in all the territories of Africa may help...
...For politics and (rovernment is more than marching up to Government House with a banner: it needs organization, a political movement, and political parties which can govern...
...In the Copperbelt he is not only a businessman but a mineworker as well as a farmer...
...If so, what is this "balance" which they are to hold...
...The evolution of the established governments which have been erected by the British in settler-dominated Kenya and in the new Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland towards true numerical representation is going to take a very long time...
...the ironical aspect of that movement was the fact that the leadership was the semi-Christianized, semi-town dwelling members of the tribe who never quite jumped the gap between tribe and town...
...Here, where the white minority is in control, the attempts of the Africans to organize their protests and desires in a political framework face a cruel dilemma which demands an answer, and quickly...
...The NLM is in favor of a federal organization form of government and between this idea and Nkrumah's belief in a strong centralized unitary state there is not much in common...
...The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is the result of the agitation of the settlers for a large state which would give greater economic efficiency by constructing one economic unit where three had existed...
...but in those areas where the white settler has come, the conflict between white and black is so deep and so tragic that it, will affects the future of all of Africa and perhaps of western civilization itself...
...this new central government ruled three large states and had at its command considerable economic and political power over the whole area...
...Revolution will almost of necessity take on the bloody face of a Mau Mau and the idea of democratic self-government will go down the drain...
...The African—to use the traditional abstraction—today is still primarily a villager who lives off subsistence agriculture and gains his social sustenance from a traditional system...
...the fact that he is serving a technological and professional function even in the settler-dominated territories may provide a basis for class distinctions which can replace racial distinction...
...To state the dilemma is to indicate its futility...
...he is becoming Christian...
...social welfare in a colonial territory has already been described...
...So intense is this regional factionalism that the British, with the compliance of these three parties, have been forced to move away from the centralized constitution which they had set up in 1946 towards a looser federal constitution...
...Within one generation he can move from a tribe to giving orders to British civil servants...
...It is a paradox that the only way to break through this dilemma of economic development vs...
...The British administration is willing to make timid offers to the nationalists which may temporarily mollify them...
...Africa is well supplied with the raw material of revolutionary movements which have a mystique centered around a drive for power...
...He is, in short, one of those good old souls) who would like to see the white man stay on in 'colonial' areas forever...
...But it will certainly not be what they are asking for today: self government...
...Butit was equally impossible to make progress without modifying, and insome cases abandoning, many of the most important features of the tribalsystem...
...Whether it can emerge as a reality out of the contending forces of settler racialism, the African desire for an independent state and the facts of economic dominance and dependence is a question for the future...
...The African is trying to fulfill his needs in more ways than one, and an effort to become a member of a class is one way at least of losing the stigma of race which the whites have so gratuitously put upon him...
...In some areas he needs land...
...the transition from movement to party will be difficult and not without its disharmony but the African in this area has shown his ability at political negotiation and compromise...
...In the midst of the struggle between African and settler in East and Central Africa and the struggle between African and African in West Africa...
...even the communication marvels of the white man cannot overcome the brute facts of African variety...
...These are the problems which make it so hard to jump the gap between a political movement struggling against colonialism and a political party that is able to rule on its own...
...An increase, say, in cocoa production is economic development, but if it breaks up an old society it does not necessarily put a new society in its place...
...This sudden rush of loyalty to the British Government signifies that the problem of the African political movement in these areas is not so much that of the British Government or how to get rid of it, but that of the settler with his economic tie to the land, his racial view of the future, and his insistence that he shall rule till the African "grows up.,, IV...
...The CPP has shown a marvelous ability to administer the country since it was given virtual control in 1951, but it has yet to be proven that democratic parliamentary government is to be permanent in the Gold Coast...
...To meet the objections of the Africans, the British government and the settlers' leaders have enunciated the doctrine of partnership...
...The most that can be expected is a development, more or less swift depending on circumstances, toward a selective franchise giving the vote to Africans who have passed certain educational and financial tests...
...In Kenya, Tanganyika, and central Africa they are at their most intense because of the poverty of the land and because the white settler is most resistant to the demands of the African for equality...
...there is only a collection of colonial areas, emerging states, tribal divisions, towns, villages, cities...
...In Belgian Africa the problem is met by administrative fiat which attempts to control the social and political development of the Africa...
...The die is not yet cast here as it may be in Kenya...
...For before the British leave West Africa they will have much to do, and they must continue to hold the balance in the settler territories...
...The economic problem leads by a direct line of reasoning to the political problem: the one cannot be solved without the other and they represent to the African mind one problem, not two problems...
...there is no reason as of this moment to believe that the settler will ever allow it to take place in that form...
...But alas...
...social welfare is to make it possible for the African to move from the tribal way of life to a national way of life as fast as possible...
...For, by creating an independent nation and thereby giving the African control over its economic life, social welfare can he made to come out of the brute facts of economic development...
...The Northern Rhodesia African Congress and the Nyasaland African Congress have faced such a dilemma since these two states were included in a Federation dominated by the white settler...
...Again, these parties show all the characteristics of political movements and each is so dominant Older Brother or Big Brother...
...What are the policies of the Colonial Powers...
...Economic interest operated on all three sides, but no one can deny that the Copperbelt workers are divided by more than than economic interest...
...I would imagine that he has little if any belief in the capability of Africans—at least in his own area—for self-government...
...Am I to treat the black man as my equal or as my inferior...
...The same result is more in doubt among the African nationalist parties of British Central and East Africa...
...While it should not be assumed too quickly that the peasant in Middle Africa is always an inefficient farmer, it is nevertheless true that his techniques are based upon traditional methods of farming...
...The dilemma which thus confronted official policy lay in the fact thatthe desire to protect the African against the impact of modern influencesconflicted with the desire to create the new income which alone could make possible a rise in his Iiving standards...
...Schweitzer has never learned any African language or dialect— except .a few words of greeting...
...management is willing to bargain with it, and a purely economic relationship has been established...
...he is becoming a town dweller...
...For most Africans the tribe is still the "home" from which they may wander but to which they intend to return...
...These problems created by this demand for equality are more acute in some parts of Middle Africa than in others...
...The dilemma concerns the choice of political means to the end of self-government and democracy...
...In Southern Rhodesia the whites are in control and their native policy trembles on the edge of apartheid...
...I do not think he has ever encountered or exchanged a word with any contemporary African nationalist...
...This was what he was told, wasn't it...
...as practice it smacks of a heavy handed paternalism...
...But what is shocking is the spirit in which the settler carried out his political domination...
...The mere difficulty of communicating with illiterates drives the organizer to unique methods: it also drives him to rely on a personal approach to politics...
...In French Africa it is met by the political fiction that the French Revolution is still the sovereign remedy—provided that the African becomes French...
...Yet the obvious solution of better land use through education creates more problems than it solves...
...Although the impact of the West is beginning to shatter the tribal systems which previously existed in Middle Africa, it remains true that in one or another form tribalism is still the dominant fact of African life...
...V. Where and Who is the Settler...
...The former led to the abortive attempt at an East African Union composed of settler-dominated Kenya, and African-dominated Uganda and Tanganyika in the pre-World War II days...
...The same replacement of racial by class distinctions is beginning in the territories where African trade unions have become established, especially on the Copperbelt...
...For the African is in fact "growing up," much to the surprise and often the dismay of the white man...
...And both suffered from an inferiority complex in their relationship with the metropolis...
...He has to make himself a new home, and that home is to be his nation...
...And consequently the class divisions which are found in a European industrial city are also found within these African towns...
...Should the British remain to hold the balance...
...Other tribal units are loosely based on village life and their only political groupings are in terms of an extended family system...
...But if these problems of ends and means as they are found in western Africa are puzzling for a colonial power, what of the problems of a multi-racial colony...
...The tribe—ideally again—provides him with a 242 self-contained existence that is consistent with itself, and in which each of the parts—economic, social, religious, political—mesh together to form a unique mode of existence for each tribe...
...The tribal chiefs have even been urged by the mining companies to visit those of their members who live in the mining compounds...
...they are only beginning to produce a political party which can govern...
...We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression...
...If he is to be western man with western man's ethos of individualism and competitiveness, then let him possess what goes along with that creed—equal rights...
...It is the African's recognition of this fact that makes him demand equality and power as his primary need...
...In all parts of Middle Africa he has taken to town life with a rapidity that is disconcerting...
...But as a means of assuring dominance it cannot be equalled...
...How far this is to find complete expression in the sayings and doings of daily life must be settled by circumstances...
...Is There No Way Out...
...The African's needs go beyond the simple formulas of "economic development" but they start with that...
...Finding the area to be one in which poverty was due to lack of adequate resources, soil and rainfall, the Commission recognized that whatever economic expansion has occurred and would occur depended upon the coming of outside capital...
...It is these class divisions which are competing—on the West Coast especially— with tribal divisions for loyalty in the political arena...
...Like most dilemmas this one is too sharp to be real...
...It is the problem of welding together groups who are as yet conscious only of themselves, who have vet to discover their common interests and, most important, are at vary ing levels of social and economic development...
...There is no reason to be surprised at this state of affairs...
...The settler creates the most difficult problems...
...hence his plea to remain under the comparatively benevolent hand of the Colonial Office...
...What Does He Want...
...The Buganda of Uganda present one form of tribalism with their king ruling alongside an aristocracy based on land and cheap labor from neighboring areas...
...But whatever the reasoning of the settler and the British Conservative government which gave them their way, the African sees the establishment of the Federation simply and purely as an attempt to extend the domination of the settler over him...
...What Are the Needs of the African...
...The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland has been more a successful attempt by the settler to dominate the governmental process...
...The African has shown that he has patience and he is showing it again...
...in short, a good bourgeois...
...Leaving the tribe to go to the town or the mine is not parallel to the country bumpkin in the United States going to the Big City to earn a living...
...The settler has had to face the problem of how to "protect" himself against an expanding African population and for this purpose he has used political techniques of enormous ingenuity...
...It is imperative, therefore, to speed the growth of a new society if the fruits of economic development are to he retained...
...Another result was to protect the English settler from the aggrandizement of the Union of South Africa...
...The Negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority...
...But policy making and executive decision was still in the hands of the Colonial Office which tried to hold a balance between the demands of the settlers and the needs of the Africans...
...the African was having enough trouble trying to run his local affairs by a system of elections within the tribal areas without being concerned with the larger political affairs of the colony...
...it is a prejudice lying deep within western civilization itself...
...and the very fact of its uniqueness creates the intense feeling of uprootedness which the individual experiences when he is forced to leave it...
...Whether that will satisfy these nationalistic movements and groups is for them to decide...
...But where the settler lives he is not treated as a white man...
...ALBERT SCHWEITZER in its own area that none has an effective regional opposition to face...
...In the west coast of British Africa the problem is finding its best solution due to the relative prosperity of the area, the lack of settlers, and the consequent willingness of the British civil servant to move on...
...The outcrop of political movements in Africa since the end of the war has posed problems of organization, tactics, and ideology which the African never before had to face...
...Thus the peculiar situation in 1949 and after, of the African in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland begging the British to keep them under the protection of Her Majesty's Government in London...
...Nigeria presents a similar conflict between localism and centralism...
...The middle class African—though not always middle class to the core—is the most recent social phenomena in Africa...
...To remain in, or to revert to, asubsistence economy on the traditional lines was increasingly impossiblefor growing populations competing for limited areas of fertile land...
...I. Who is the African...
...Whether this was a, Pyrrhic victory is yet to be seen...
...Like Africa, there is no African...
...The Convention Peoples Party of Nkrumah led the charge against the British in 1948 and it has reaped the reward—power and the questioning of that power by more recent movements...
...And there is no reason to think that as the African becomes more educated, more capable of manipulating the mechanisms of western civilization that this race distinction will fade from the minds of the whites...
...the mob among those who find in social change the chance to display their abilities of leadership and to achieve upward mobility...
...He is the farmer who produces whatever surplus wealth is to he found in the area, which is not much...
...Albert Schweitzer, from Jom' GUNTHER'S Inside Africa...
...Africans so far have been fertile in producing political movements...
...East Africa Royal Commission Report, 1953-1955, p. 391...
...Especially on the West Coast, the African has become a worker (in the western sense of the term) , a lawyer (many of them;., too many) , a politician (both wardheeler and otherwise) and whatever else the town has to offer...
...One of the results of this federation was to protect the settlers of Northern Rhodesia from the push of the African for self-government...
...the African has no possibility of asserting himself...
...In the Copperbelt, for example, the mine workers are in a constante state of movement between their tribes and the towns...
...In fact both coincide and operate at the same time, as in the Gold Coast where the tribal loyalty of the Ashanti is combined with an economic class grievance which acts as a catalytic agent for a tribal movement against Nkrumah...
...It is whether to accept the constitutional framework established by the British and try to work within it in the hope that power will eventually go to the numerical majority (i.e., the African) ; or whether to become a revolutionary movement designed to take power, establish a representative system of government, and create a black state in which, at best,, the whites would be tolerated, at worst, ejected...
...If he is to live in an urban town instead of a tribal village, he must not only wear the clothes of the west, but he must have the political privileges of the west—a vote...
...Middle Africa south of the Sahara and north of the Union of South Africa presents varieties of geography which extend far beyond the classic conception of Africa as jungle...
...In Belgian territory the rigid hand of the mother country excludes politics and is busy ordering a hierarchy of social classes which in theory and to some considerable extent in practice is multi-racial...
...The White Highlands policy, in which much of the best land of Kenya is reserved to the white settler, is the color bar writ exceedingly large and is so manifestly unjust and unworkable that the East Africa Royal Commission had to recommend that the African have some rights to use this land...
...It was more successful because the settler had greater power and the African less power...
...In the west coast where the British are bowing their head for the coup de grace there are difficulties of state-building in an undeveloped area, but there is not the poison of racialism which negates the very concept of statebuilding...
...Thus the crisis in the African "soul...
...he has organized himself into a trade union which cuts across tribal lines and faces the employer in the Marxist stance—this, while he receives the visits of his tribal chief...
...The Kikuyu of Kenya are an example of such a segmental tribalism and one which never developed a form of government beyond the council of elders...
...It was to his mind the political counterpart of the color bar, a system of discrimination which ran far outside politics and touched every part of life...
...It is not a question of starvation—widespread famine is a rarity in Africa—but rather of enfeebling diets, low living standards and unprogressive farming which cannot support the future increases in population which European health measures will make possible...
...On the other hand...
...The establishment of true multi-racial politics where the vote is for the man instead of a race is far in the future— if indeed, it is in the future...
...he is becoming a technician...
...I must show him that I can respect the dignity of human personality in everyone, and the essential thing is that there shall be a real feeling of brotherliness...
...The typical characteristics of political movements are found all over the continent: to use Hannah Arendt's typology, the masses in the underfed villages and in the slum-ridden towns: the elite among underemployed lawyers, and poorly paid but school educated government clerks...
...Yet economic man is by definition not to concern himself with government, only with production...
...Before they meet one crisis, conditions change and another is on top of them...
...Yet, when the chips were down, the white worker admitted that some measure of African advancement should be permitted...
...In central Africa, however, the attempt to create a new state has been more successful...
...It is not being overly dramatic to say that in this comparatively small area, Southern and Northern Rhodesia and Kenya, the peoples of the western world see their own civilization face to face with a force they neither understand nor can conquer...
...Class warfare may become the milder form of conflict and replace the hatred and bitterness of racial conflict...
...The same is true of the African Copperbelt worker...
...The federation of Northern Rhodesia with Southern Rhodesia was a blow to their hopes of achieving self-government and democracy...
...Thus, the British have tried to establish the economic and social basis for multi-racial states which can stand alone...
...As for the French and Belgians, they have no intention of leaving at all...
...He is being asked to give up not just an inefficient system of production but a whole system of values...
...The scheme foundered on the objections of the Buganda to being included in a state with the Kenya settler and the objection of the Kenya settlers to not having sufficient power within Kenya at the time of the proposed federation...
...Such, for example, is the recent Coutts proposal for Kenya allowing the direct election of the six African representatives to the Kenya legislature who are now nominated by the British administration...
...This is the traditional content of tribalism in most of Middle Africa...
...The raw material of the national ist movement does not lie readily at hand and the organizational prob lem alone is staggering in its complexity...
...The British move, but all too slowly...
...This is so much the case that if they do not return they find themselves without a "home," without the kinship and moral framework which only the tribe can provide...
...They have failed so far in Kenya and success in central Africa is dubious at best, but whatever efforts they have made are along two lines: on the one hand, the amalgamation of various units into federations which will be economically viable, and on the other hand, the propagation of a doctrine of partnership which will lead to racial harmony...
...But not much legislation is needed to retain the economic dominance of the settler...
...But the process of exchanging the tribe for the nation is easier for the anthropologist to say than for the African to do...
...But this elite is not supposed to have political thoughts...
...The "National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons" of Azikiwe and the "Action Group" of Awolowo are the two strongest parties in each of their respective regions of Nigeria, the eastern and western, while a third party, the Northern Peoples Party, is as solidly based on the less developed north...
...For the productivity of the land is restricted by the inadequate methods of traditional farming...
...with the white man's union there is not a purely economic relationship...
...His newly aroused desirefor progress involved an active participation in the modern exchangeeconomy but that in turn, conflicted with his desire to retain his traditional sense of security and stability...
...It is the political and economic em• bodiment of racialism...
...Yet the time is coming when they will have to do so or watch government disappear...
...An opposition force, the National Liberation Movement, has arisen not merely to question the right of the CPP to rule but also to question its whole concept of the nature of the state...
...it certainly does not mean that the white worker has accepted the African worker as his equal, as a member, a brother, of the same class...
...Fortunately man is not quite a logical animal and these logical dilemmas do not prevent one from hoping that he can bungle his way to an illogical solution...
...In a recent conflict in the Copperbelt it was the white man's trade union which fought bitterly against any form of African advancement and management which fought to secure some measure of advancement...
...if he fails in the Federation he will have failed everywhere in Africa...
...Justifiably...
...Yet the African is amazing in his adaptability, and the Mau Mau is indeed the exception to the rule that the African can in fact adjust to town life...
...If he earns money as a white man does, and dresses in a white man's clothes and rides and talks like a white man he expects to be treated as a white man...
...He is, in short, the main producer of wealth, the most important source of skill and capital, the man who makes policy...
...When he is told by a Colonial Office to be patient, to develop his economic abilities so he can later on become a citizen in the western mold, the African's response is negative to say the least...
...The town African who means to stay in the town and make his way has not only to fight against the foreign ways of town life but also against himself and his tribal past...
...both acquired a love for their land which was jealous and exclusive...
...As to his attitude toward Africans en masse that is a mixture of benevolence, perplexity, irritation, hope, and despair...
...And since the tribe is a unique thing wherever it is found, the varieties of tribalism range from the disrupted tribes of Southern Rhodesia, where the cohesion of tribal life was broken by invasion in the early 20th century, to the tightly knit monarchical tribalism of the Uganda, who are powerful enough to influence British colonial decisions...
...III...
...Most of Middle Africa therefore is not caught in the trap of racialism...
...Here there is little possibility of leaving at all, for it might mean the unleashing of a racial war...
...The colonial powers have ceased to he the only directors of policy in Africa...
...but the test of the settlers' intentions may be closer than they expect, and the evidence of the past warrants no great optimism...
...The British are leaving some parts of Africa, and where they are doing so with great haste, as in the Gold Coast, they are putting the burden on a political movement to change into a political party...
...Here the whites acquired a sovereign legislative body with no Colonial office check...
...Class warfare as a solvent of conflict...
...the British have the guns and the settler will fight back with all the fury of an outraged racialist and with all the resources of the British government...
...V1...
...But there is to be no common electoral roll or Kenya-wide African parties...
...He is becoming educated...
...No one can dispute that assertion, but the Ashanti claim there are other values to be considered, namely, local autonomy...
...DR...
...Frustration and aggressiveness were and are the lot of both...
...Whatever institutional political development exists in Belgian African is strictly limited...
...How is the African Trying to Fulfill His Needs...
...Here a well organized African trade union movement has won a place for itself...
...but they have not ceased to he a major force in the shaping of economies, social structures and political organisms...
...With such a system politics was kept firmly out of the hands of the Africans and shared between the settler and Colonial Office...
...But the settler in Africa faces odds which the American frontiersman never had to face: the odds of a race conflict he himself has largely created...
...he and he alone has access to sources of capital...
...The white man is the businessman, although in Kenya this role is also taken by the Indian...
...This can be found in the policy of the white trade unions on the Copperbelt and the refusal of the Southern Rhodesian government to allow any African trade unions at all...
...in return he wants not only to be made into economic man but into a new man, he wants at least on the surface, to be modernized...
...Only the western bourgeois mind could invent such a monstrosity, and the African no more than the western worker is able to accept it...
...All that remains of the attempts at closer union is the post World War II East Africa High Commission which confines itself to technical cooperation and conducts common economic services...
...It was the failure of so many Kikuyu to achieve this metamorphosis that underlay the Mau Mau...
...The Northern Rhodesian African could only see such a Federation as an extension—an aggression, if you will—of the influence of the settler to an area where previously the British administration had held out some hope of democracy...
...Both committed themselves to life in a particular area and there is no turning back...
...But what the African needs and wants is everywhere the same: economic development and political equality at the same time...
...Yet the economic and social advance of the African may gain him the recognition he desires by giving him a role in a class structure...
...he is both a problem and a hope...
...what have the colonial powers to say...
...Between the African settler and the American frontiersman, there is an interesting though limited parallel...
...Instead, there is a conglomeration of tribal members, town people, and those half-way between town society and tribal society...
...Still, there is no reason to doubt the ability of the African of British West Africa to develop a democratically run state with its usual paraphernalia of parties and parliaments...
...Up to the Lyttleton constitution of 1954 these aims were most fully achieved in Kenya where the legislative council represented the settler and was increasingly powerful in the formation of government policy...
...And it is a better way than the race war which lies so close to the surface of so many of the nationalist movements...
...it leaves political issues sev erely alone...
...Rather the problem is that of land use...
...Ideally the tribal African is born into his age group within the tribe and progresses through maturity to old age within the structure of the tribe...
...This was the discovery of the recent report of the East Africa Royal Commission which faced these problems of land use as they exist within the territories of Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya...
...He hates oppression, of course, and believes devoutly in the brotherhood of man, but he has, it seems, almost no conception of the volcanic surges and stresses of modern Africa and its hungry zest for political advance...
...In theory it suggests brotherly love...
...The dilemma of economic development vs...
...Yet it is precisely the contact of this dynamic external force with the indigenous traditional institutions of the African which have created and will create social tensions...
...The other technique of dominance is an effort to keep a "natural" monopoly of economic power, education, and skill...
...Prominent among those features of the tribal system which called for revision were the customary forms of land tenure...
...Even as a geographical expression there is only diversity...
...For tribalism is still the norm of life not only for those Africans who continue to live in the tribal units scattered over this part of Africa but also for those who have moved to the towns of the area...
...Generally he has forced the British Colonial office to confine membership in the legislative council to the settler community and has pressed for control over the executive council where policy is really made...
...II...
...Its meaning is vague and the political intentions behind it are dubious, but presumably it holds the promise that the African shall have a place in the community commensurate with his abilities and a measure of equality...
...Africa, south of the Sahara and north of the Union, is not a unit today...
...Yet the need to leave is urgent: the resources of the British are not inexhaustable, the problems of governing such areas are increasingly complex and difficult and even here the British are formally dedicated to the creation of new states and nations...
...The other alternative is no more appealing...
...A Visit to Dr...
...The economic role of the white settler is the clue to his importance and self-esteem...
...The Africans can whip up an anti-British mob at the drop of a pan.ga—and an anti-Nkrumah mob too, as the Gold Coast is discovering...
...The fact that tribalism is a norm means that a conservative, traditional and "backward" institution retains a hold on the new town African, while for the older town African who may have acquired the sophistication of the town it has the symbolic significance of a cutting of roots, a killing of his past...
...in Southern Rhodesia he is again all three...
...But over the continent as a whole the problem of land shortage is not a pressing one...
...When the African leaves his tribal system to become an economic man, he is leaving a system which provides him not only with sustenance but with a form of government...
...That can only be done when the nation takes the place of the tribe...
...If these methods were adequate for old Africa, they are not adequate for the expanding market economy which the Europeans brought with them and for the support of an increasing town population...
...The racial prejudice of the white settler in Africa is not the prejudice of a small group of misguided farmers and businessmen...
...Nkrumah thinks in terms of a strong centralized state because the bureaucracy of such a state is the quickest way to bring a modern economy to the Gold Coast...
...And a fateful one: this is the last chance for the British settler to establish a successful multi-racial state...
...The individual is nothing without this tribal world...
Vol. 3 • July 1956 • No. 3
