Middle Africa: The New West African Nations

...An example of this is offered by the quasiCommunist uprising in the French-administered U.N...

...The Ibos, in short, are taking up a position in the van of the emerging Nigerian middle class which will rule at least the Southern part of the country when the day of independence comes, as it is imminently expected to do after the constitutional conference to be held in London in September 1956...

...West Africa is entering upon a period of national revolution as intense as any which have shaken the old societies of the past...

...11I Separate geographically, the British West African colonies— Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the tiny Gambia—must also be considered separately...

...Immediately, however, the prospect is the granting of independence to the British enclaves, accompanied by the creation of armed forces...

...M. A. S. Margai of the Sierra Leone People's Party will completely satisfy the volatile voters of the Sierra Leone hinterland (who recently rose in armed revolt against taxes and the rising cost of living) , there is no doubt that for the time being they will find him acceptable, if only because he is a Mende, and not a Creole from the capital...

...Although no close parallel is possible with the Kikuyu of East Africa (whose rule is traditionally through "age groups" and not through "chiefs") nevertheless this tribe, in the course of the Mau Mau uprising, has dramatically illustrated the strength of the emotions which African tribal institutions can tap...

...Behind the cartoon stereotype of the indignant African nationalist (an outraged patriot or an irresponsible fanatic, according to the social views of the cartoonist) lie other realities which the American public is, as yet, far from understanding to the extent, for example, that they understand the social structure in Europe...

...Upon this composite social mass play external forces from the outside world—sometimes weakening and undermining traditional authority by introducing new concepts which the traditionalists are unable or unwilling to recognise...

...That night, as she went upstairs on her final rounds, an unaccustomed silence reigned...

...With the "bourgeois" it becomes difficult to distinguish between a middle-class misfit and a "loyal" member of the middle class who is using a Marxian vocabulary for its rhetorical effect—Nkrumah used to speak of creating a "Union of West African Soviet Socialist Republics...

...sometimes— through challenge—stimulating a reassertion of traditionalism, as, for example, in the revival of Ewe and Ashanti nationalism since the Second World War, following the subordination of the interests of these tribes to the exigencies of colonially created state boundaries...

...What are the choices before West African society...

...In West Africa it is the age of individualism which is now at hand...

...Even those Communist- trained trade union leaders who return periodically from Soviet countries are more likely ultimately to use their training as a means to personal advancement than to forward the Communist cause...

...Yet, while they have often assumed the role of modernizers and democrats, and have thus frequently become the instruments of change and adaptation, it must never be forgotten that at heart they still remain passionate nationalists, and that in no way do they resemble the "black Englishmen" of an earlier generation...

...These resources, however, are often scattered over vast areas, lacking in communications, and divided into multifarious population patterns by such traditional, ethnic, religious, and tribal feuds as we have outlined above...

...Both territories are relatively small in size, both have populations of approximately a million and a half, and both have been endowed with a coastal ruling caste descended from freed slaves who were resettled in Africa—the Americo-Liberians of Monrovia, and the Creoles of Freetown...

...Here the issues become so problematiq that it is unrewarding to contemplate them further...

...the entire Ashanti tribe and other dependent groups...

...Drawing its strength from the determination to place foundations under a newly-won independence, to achieve a voice in the affairs of the world, to support national revolutionary movements in other parts of the continent, and to defeat what are regarded as the neo-colonialist plans of the West, this upsurge may, in time, produce responses more adequate than those hitherto produced, for example, by Latin America...

...However, the situation of the French settlers is likely to become increasingly precarious when the North African revolution, now in progress, reaches its political fulfilment with the ending of French rule...

...As it is, too large a proportion of West Africans remain uneducated...

...Theirs is the task of putting through a middle-class revolution, and of consolidating it, which is to say of supplanting the traditional aristocracy at home, while at the same time frustrating the neo-colonialist plans of various foreign agencies to obtain for themselves a firm economic grip upon the national windpipe...

...the disgruntled cocoa farmers of all tribes...

...In time the hinterland due North of these coastal zones also became Britishadministered...

...The rest has disintegrated, leaving little trace...

...l'Afrique Occidentale Francaise) and the even more neglected expanse of the A.E.F...

...Since the second world war, however, differences in the two territories have been further accentuated...

...Here a brief outIine of the political conditions prevailing in differing territories will at least permit us to grasp the difficulties of formulating generalizations about the West African future...

...sometimes recognising and reinforcing the status quo—as, for example, do the British in supporting the Sultans of Northern Nigeria...

...Among themselves they are inter-related by a complex of religious, political, economic, and traditional allegiances...

...This revolutionary upsurge may yet succeed in forcing coastal and hinterland societies, when faced with overwhelming threats to the entire area, into concluding working agreements...

...By such time, however, one may confidently predict that a new generation of African leaders will have begun to emerge...

...Of the four territories, the Gold Coast is the most advanced.It is also, perhaps, the most archetypal of West African colonies, for with in its borders every kind of West African problem may be discerned...

...That is to say, the inhabitants of French tropical Africa have the power to refuse or to oppose policies but not yet to initiate them...

...West Africa may also be expected to produce an unprecedented social response...

...In general, however, the vast territories of the A.O.F...

...On the other hand, however, the situation may not change at all, but may harden further, possibly deteriorating into a traditional coast versus interior war in which foreign powers might or might not intervene...

...Politically introverted, West African emotions center upon the problem of winning emancipation from colonial rule...

...Furthermore, it has other resources which will be available for export—iron, tin, gold, aluminum, manganese, tropical hard woods, rubber, cocoa, palm-oil, and peanuts...

...However, against the forces of disintegration are pitted strong emotional forces toward cohesion, the manifestations of which are not to be underestimated...

...She was about to congratulate herself on the success of the new method when her train of thought was interrupted by the sight of a lifeless child's body swinging to and fro in the stair well...

...In Nigeria, as in the Gold Coast, we find the same polarization of interest occurring between the producers of the interior and the distributors of the coastal region...

...Today it is the Ibo—the most aggressive, the most adaptable, and the most modern-thinking Nigerian tribe—who are bidding to become the rulers of the new Nigeria...

...Both Americo-Lib erians and Creoles have acted as conductors of Western commerce and culture to the tribal territories in which they are situated...

...Problems, therefore, remain local, or else are related to those of French parliamentary politics...

...But here the fortune teller falters to a stop, and the shapes in the crystal blur beyond recognition...

...For the first time in West African history we find coming to the fore a type of man who has no traditional or religious authority behind him, and who, while Westernized in tastes, and to a great extent in thought, nevertheless rejects both direct Western rule, and also the example of those who, in an earlier generation, patterned themselves too closely on European behavior...

...With the American construction of a deep-water port at Monrovia, and with the American discovery of the richest iron ore deposits in the world at Bomi Hills, Liberia has entered upon a period of economic development for the benefit of foreign interests on the one hand, and internal political repression on the other...

...It should be understood that the European colonial system penetrated Africa by two geographic routes...

...Fundamentally a nationalist, the present Communist, in effect, is either a bourgeois qui s'ignore or an aristocrat trying to retain power by adapting to the modern world in this way...

...To the West African the question "Are you for the East or for the West...

...If the peoples of the coast and those of the hinterland cannot eventually come to terms, then the only possibility is social disruption and economic paralysis until such a time as the outside world breaks in once more in some arbitrary fashion...

...Traditionalists, with a strongly developed national consciousness, the aggressive Ashanti are a group of tribally disciplined conservatives—keepers of the old African religious values...

...However, West Africa is less under American economic domination than most South American states, and is also more open to rival influence by no means exclusively communist in character...

...It also has a considerable hydro-electric power potential...

...To know the form the decision would take might be to know the future course of West African history, for it implies many decisions of which it may be considered the sum total...

...There has been no want of voices to proclaim that the progress of West African states towards self-government will have equally gruesome results...

...In large part MosIemized, reached by vague but stimulating back-currents of change and unrest in other parts of the world, the inhabitants of these lands, so often forgotten by the world, must depend for the form of their future not upon decisions taken in Dakar, Bamako, or Brazzaville, but upon what happens in Cairo, Lagos, and Accra—and yet a further geographic remove—in Washington, Paris, Moscow, and even, perhaps, Peiping...

...The role of the West African Communists in contemporary politics may be compared either to that of the foetus or to the appendix—i.e., the importance of the Communists depends upon future developments...

...Therefore the choices which present themselves to the West African arise solely within the context of the present West African reality...

...Most of these eventually passed into British hands...

...Due to the herculean difficulties confronting the French in developing land communications over an area more than half the size of Siberia, it is therefore the British-administered areas, with their ports open as thresholds to the trade and ideas—if not of the world— at least of the British Commonwealth, which have become more advanced...

...She therefore hit upon the expedient of persuading her pupils to draw up their own code of behavior, together with their own rules and punishments—a system which she calculated would reduce her work to a minimum...

...At the same time the "Gold Coast" yokes together in unwonted peace, if not in concord, the Ashanti, Fanti, and Ga peoples, as well as, among others, the totally dissimilar Dagomba, Mamprusi, Gonja and Moshi tribes of the North...

...Fanning out of the entire area they are everywhere to be found in key technical positions, and are zealously entering commerce, politics, and education...

...In Sierra Leone, however, which has been less stagnant where social progress is concerned, the British Colonial Office policy of granting independence by stages to effect a transition to a democratic state has meant that the Creole majority has been challenged by a new and more numerous middle class recruited from the tribes of the hinterland...

...We are left to turn questioningly to one another, vainly seeking an answer—our reason assailed by grim warnings, our emotions irrevocably committed to hope...

...The future of West Africa ultimately depends upon the achievement of harmony between the coast and the interior—this is the crux of the problem...

...Over the centuries the seagoing nations established "factories," or trading stations, along the coast...

...Today, therefore, the conflict between Fanti and Ashanti—a century ago being fought out with muskets and cutlasses—has been transferred to the political plane...

...This possibility is not to be dismissed...

...If, in this situation, existing conflicts should be further fomented by outside interests—whether Russian Communist, American business, or European colonial—a complete social breakdown might result...

...are likely to receive not one but a variety of answers, depend ing upon regional conditions and local sentiments...

...While cartographically convenient, this will, of course, imply a certain blurring of detail...

...The situation, however, is further complicated by the division of the coastal region into East and West—the West being largely given over to the Yoruba tribe, who are city-dwelling traditionalists by inclination, whereas their rivals, the Ibo, are an individualistic tribe from the barren lands of the East, living in villages under a more decentralized form of rule...

...Trust Territory of the Cameroons last year...

...Nor is the "new," as we sometimes too readily tend to assume, necessarily the more virtuous of the two...

...A number of commentators, however, have foretold that, following the withdrawal of colonial power, conflicts will break out which will destroy the progress already made, after which West Africa will enter upon a period of stagnation...

...West Africa, to begin with, is evidently capable of supporting its population from its own resources, for despite the scarcity of certain nutritionally necessary foods, such as milk, it is nevertheless an agricultural region whose population by no means exceeds its food-growing potential...

...Since the Primary instrument of change is now the political state, we must, for the time being, abandon the viewpoint of past and present ethnic reality—which is to say that of the tribal groupings—for the sake of examining West Africa from the standpoint of political administration...

...Crudely exploited in the early days (vide Andre Gide) and then largely neglected, the lands beneath the tricolor have only within the last decade begun to experience any substantial progress...

...by themselves and under present conditions West Africans will not...

...For there will be no communism (as we understand the word) in Africa for decades, if indeed ever...

...Land tenure which is already communitarian in character...

...Communications, let alone trade, industry, and education are insufficiently developed to permit the inhabitants to establish ultimate control of their own political destinies...

...One of the children had infringed the new rules...

...In short, it may be said that future convulsions would seem probable, if not certain, in Sierra Leone with the advent of independence, possibly in 1961, and in Liberia with the retirement of President Tubman, possibly in 1959...

...and lastly the British gold mining interests and other agents of the British colonial system, seeking any expedient method to defer the imminent independence demanded by the party in power, the CPP...

...But before this can happen we must anticipate a period of simultaneous change, intrigue, economic development, educational progress, and political confusion...

...For some this type of word borrowing will add flavor to Elspeth Huxley's remark about the "jackdaw continent," but in point of fact what we have is a society feeling its way forward in unprecedented circumstances, and picking out those words and ideas which feel like useful tools, equally regardless of their original context and of their possible associations for outsiders...

...Azikiwe with his plan for an ethnically decentralized 16-nation Nigeria...

...Whether or not such men have traveled to Europe or America...

...Before continuing, however, one point requires clarification...

...whether money was lavished on their education or they are missionschool or self-educated—men of this stamp, to whom the future seems bright with promise, speak with the authority of their class, and sometimes (but not perhaps as often as they think) with the true voice of their people...

...the relative absence of a "race question...

...IV At the American end, as it were, of the West African coastline lie two further adjacent territories—Sierra Leone and Liberia...

...This means that a greater degree of international rivalry will offer Africans a more successful chance of weathering the long period ahead, when independence will by no means be secure, by playing off one foreign influence against another in order themselves to retain control of their economic resources...

...the absence of white settlers...

...The supreme task, therefore, is to integrate these disparate elements into a relatively harmonious interrelationship, if anarchy is not to supervene...

...The Anglo-French rivalry— long since locked in stalemate in the form of sea versus land power —therefore reproduced its reflection in the establishment of the West African states...

...Though their power is also subject to traditional checks not always noticed by the outsider, this nevertheless gives the traditionalists a weapon that many a Western politico might envy...

...West Africa today is part of Africa where tribalism, although dented, is nevertheless the most firmly established, because it is the most adequately adjusted to such economic demands as the Western world has yet made upon it...

...In the meantime, fresh developments may occur as a result of the vital electoral battle to be fought out later this year...

...Upon the exact terms of the victory, therefore, the future happiness of the West African peoples will depend...

...These two respective coalitions, however, are in the nature of "united fronts," and may be fragmented, recombined, or subjected to all the quirks of sudden growth and change that are characteristic of politics in general and West African politics in particular...

...1 Firstly, the traditional authorities—the chiefs and the "stool families," the aristocrats, the hereditary possessors of power...

...In Sierra Leone, however, the Creoles formed a middle class subservient to British colonial rule, whereas in Liberia the Americo-Liberians, nominally independent, have relied ultimately upon American protection and support, just as the Portuguese of Angola and Mozambique have relied ultimately upon the protection of Great Britain...

...Nevertheless, let us attempt to consider what the prospects for West Africa appear to be...

...Even in the writings of less pessimistic authors we find the same questioning note struck, as stress is laid upon the blackness of the past, the promise which lies ahead, and the difficulties besseting the transitional period...

...The African South Africans might conceivably evolve a communistic form of state...

...In view of its strategic significance in the development of world history, it is as well to distinguish a third group, insignificant though it may appear in the present situation—the West African Communists...

...Even should, by some hitherto unrevealed chain of events, West Africa fall within the Communist zone of power, or should West African leaders contract treaties and alliances with Communist heads of state, West Africans as a whole are no more spontaneously "going Communist" than they are going spontaneously to become Episcopalians...

...Secondly, an equally important section of society—the emergent middle class...

...The British West African colonies, therefore, thrust inland from the coast, like separate fingers...

...Both these groups regard the "bush-Africans" of the hinterland as "beyond the pale" in much the same manner as the Anglo-Irish of Dublin once looked down upon the "bog-Irish" of the interior...

...Much of the "new" may be inevitable and must be accepted, but that it will often destroy long-established social harmonies, and that it will engender some of the worst features of Western life, must also be remembered...

...Leaving aside the relatively complex and various societies which the area contains, let us detach for examination those political strata which are the most likely to determine the future values by which West African society will be formed...

...hardly seems to apply...

...So far the political struggle between "interior" and "coast," of which the NLM (National Liberation Movement) and the CPP (Convention People's Party) have become the respective symbols, is said to have aligned behind the NLM the majority of the traditional rulers...

...Although it may be doubted whether—eventually—even so indubitably African an African as Dr...

...II The struggle, therefore, becomes limited to that between the traditionalists and the modernizers...

...All are committed to self-government, which the Gold Coast and Nigeria may perhaps attain this year, and which Sierra Leone may reach in 1961...

...Jean Cocteau tells the story of a young governess in a school in pre-revolutionary Russia, who found the task of disciplining her turbulent pupils beyond her powers...

...Its boundaries bisect the Ewe tribe in the East, and cut through the linguistic groupings of less consciously united peoples in the West...

...From the dulcet English cadences of Elspeth Huxley to the racially sensationalist expostulations of the South African Stuart Cloete, external commentators have frequently prophesied doom, destruction, human sacrifice, and cannibalism...

...An increasing influx of French-speaking European settlers has been flowing into the area of late, bringing, as white settlers in other parts of Africa have done, the threat of future conflict...

...The Gold Coast is, of course, entirely a colonial creation, and as such in conflict with underlying ethnic reality...

...Though frequently, but not always, lacking ultimate control of such instruments of power as telephones, guns, and railroads, these conservative aristocracies are often able to rely upon a virtually unanimous popular support upheld by the sanctions of race and religion...

...The French, however, sending expeditions due East from their base at the mouth of the Senegal river, claimed the backlands, and also all the "vacant" (sic) littoral between the interstices of the British colonies...

...Up to now however, in West Africa, French policy has been on the one hand to back settler interests, and on the other to repress African nationalism in such a harsh fashion as to turn the thoughts of local nationalists inevitably towards the East...

...Economically the cocoa-growing Ashanti, who occupy the gold and timber-producing heartland of the colony, are themselves the primary producers, while it is the Fanti, and other tribes of the coast who control the means of distribution to the world market...

...Three types may be considered...

...Sporadic conflicts may be anticipated, and the whole area will continue to be subject to strong social undercurrents inappropriate to the conditions needed for the maintenance of modern industrialized states...

...Unlike the Ashanti (who speak of throwing a customs barrier round the cocoa-growing area) , they direct their allegiance not to any local region, but to the Gold Coast (to be renamed "Ghana") as their nation-state...

...and too large a proportion of those who return are trained in verbal rather than technical skills...

...Should, however, the necessary educational investment take place, the creation of the only proposed form of West African society which does not come into collision with traditional institutions might then become feasible—that is to say the federation of multi-nation states based on ethnic groupings regardless of whether at this stage the internal structure of each state be traditional or democratic in character...

...The custodians of these institutions are these traditional rulers...

...For exam ple, the British Colonial Office, paradoxically more progressive than the British Foreign Office where African affairs are concerned, is reported to have tried to safeguard the coming Gold Coast independence by at tempting to wean recalcitrant chiefs from the NLM to the CPP camp with offers of salary increases...

...whether they are from a well-to-do trading background or of peasant parentage...

...The best hope for ultimate stability lies in the investment in West Africa of a sufficient sustained educational effort, above all in technical skills...

...This fragmented pattern of response inevitably brings to mind the familiar Latin Amer ican pattern of foreign exploitation and social paralysis, while local strongmen struggle, successfully or otherwise, to maintain themselves in power...

...Prime Minister Nkrumah, too, at one time an advocate of an inter-African federation of the European-created states, is now also moving towards serious consideration of some form of regional federation...

...At the moment, the West African Communist finds himself swimming against the current contemporary circumstance, and presently may find himself stripped of every identifying characteristic save name and vocabulary...

...In this situation the Liberian True Whig Party (in power since the 1870s) has been playing the classic part that Karl Marx, referring to colonial exploitation in the Far East, assigned to the "comprador" class, by which he meant the major-domo or "native" manager class which, in return for local privileges and a share in the profits as "hush money," could be trusted to supervise and control the local population in the interests of foreign businessmen...

...The Northerners, moreover, are living under the rule of the tradition-directed sultanates, such as that of Sokoto, whereas the Southern society, although here and there subject to traditional authoritarian patterns, is changing over rapidly to democratic forms of government...

...too large a proportion of trained personnel elect to remain abroad...

...and the existence of a well-developed and enthusiastically pursued trading system, with its roots deeply embedded in local custom, are factors which preclude the indigenous development of communism...

...After this brief survey of individual territories, the difficulties of evaluating the future will be appreciated...

...The jackdaw continent," Miss Huxley calls Africa, saying that from successive civilizations Africa has "picked out the bits that caught her fancy and built them into a subtle, ruthless and ancient society, cruel as Tamerlane's, which ingenuous foreigners have dismissed as childlike because its material wants are few...

...Premiers Azikiwe and Nkrumah spring naturally to mind as the best known representatives of this class, although, while being members of it, they by no means typify it...

...A number of West African leaders have already envisioned such a development, including Dr...

...Kwame Nkrumah's CPP, on the other hand, advocating Gold Coast unity and "Self-Government Now," is proving the rallying point for the coastal tribes, traditionally fearful of Ashanti domination, the majority of the African intelligentsia, the official trade unionists, and all those persons African and British—usually government-employedwho are in favor of liquidating colonialism and of substituting governmental responsibility for private economic interest whenever this is necessary— as it is, more often than not, on the West African terrain...

...V In the meantime such questions as "Is it safe to accept West ern capital?," "Shall we solicit any degree of Communist support?," or "Shall we attempt to raise ourselves, as it were, by our own boot straps...

...The Fanti and other coast tribes, on the other hand, are the traditional allies of the west...

...They provide an interesting comparison, in some respects, as offering alternative prototypes of West African development...

...Here, however, the areas and populations involved are considerably larger, and the conflict is accentuated by the fact that the peanut producers of the North are Moslems of FulaniHausa blood, whereas the Southerners are Negroes of animist or Christian faith...

...Conditions involving stagnation, anarchy, and the exploitation of African by African may, indeed, come into being...

...Even here, however, a modicum of historical background is necessary...

...The West African tribes may broadly be divided into two types—those who inhabit the savannah lands to the immediate South of the Sahara, and those who inhabit the rain forests towards the coast...

...l'Afrique Equatoriale Francaise) are difficult to organize politically on any but the most restricted regional basis...

...These risks are in no way lessened by the fact that many who care nothing for the future of West Africa will be trying to fish in the troubled waters which lie ahead...

...Their job, they perceive, is to modernize their countries, and to give them a voice in the counsels of the nations...