A Program for Africa:
WALLERSTEIN, IMMANUEL
A PROGRAM FOR AFRICA 'Kennedy could recover much lost ground by creating a political posture which indicates the U.S. is for independence, national integrity and African unity' By Immanuel...
...They are waiting, hopeful of the new Administration, as are so many in other areas...
...if it is preceded by a fundamental political option...
...The African nations all won their independence with difficulty, and without any significant outside help...
...It needs to be less surprised that African nations will vote for the admission of Red China...
...It should be...
...foreign policy since 1945...
...The degree to which nations have achieved this objective of establishing strong central governments depends largely on the extent of their success in constructing a national mass party, one which has been able to take the traditional rulers in hand and mollify the intellectuals sufficiently to allow the others to get about their business of building a modern nation...
...American intervention would not be magic...
...has arrived at its opposition to Lumumba because he is "proSoviet," whereas the correct statement of the situation is that the USSR is "pro-Lumumba...
...Of course, in the first six cases, the U.S...
...Such a case is the Congo...
...the six governments are going to survive pretty much in their present form...
...It is perfectly legitimate to feel that European countries, both the former and the present colonial powers and others, such as Germany, should continue their present aid and even expand it...
...As many have noted, he is the one Congolese to think Congolese...
...From their standpoint, too, their grievances are not in the past alone but in the present: Algeria, South Africa, Portugese Africa, Rhodesia, etc...
...This only earns the charge that the U.S...
...Washington followed this policy of inaction because in 1957 it did not expect that Guinea would be independent in 1958, or that the Ivory Coast or the Congo would be independent in 1960...
...A position in favor of independence (universal suffrage in Southern Rhodesia and the Union of South Africa) is not all that is needed, however...
...Are Dahomeans proud of their achievement...
...It has failed to see that a strong central government based on popular support, even with a marked neutralist line such as in Guinea, is a more effective bulwark, short-run and longrun, against Soviet infiltration than the semi-anarchy which the Congo seems destined now to enjoy for a long while...
...If Washington chooses the latter course, it cannot expect that all these countries will vote with the U.S...
...used with great success in the Marshall Plan days and which led to the Organization for European Economic Cooperation...
...It needs to give more than lip-service to the right to neutralism...
...The first problem on which a stand is called for is that of the remaining colonial territories—Algeria and all of southern Africa...
...Americans don't give it the same kind of support, because they don't trust the Africans as much...
...Is it working today on the assumption that Kenya will be independent in 1961 and Mozambique in 1962, or that the Union of South Africa will have a government based on universal suffrage by 1963 at the latest...
...may still be ahead of the game...
...And they will do so...
...It would encourage the emergence of sober and intelligent, even if often revolutionary, leadership in these countries...
...and Russia) that neutralism is a vote for the enemy...
...is participating in, indeed organizing, a neo-colonialist maneuver, which defeats much of the good will aid offers would otherwise earn...
...Consequently, Africans are on the verge of getting very angry at the United States...
...and both Ghana and Togo are moving toward this goal...
...2) It could take the lead in the UN in calling upon Portugal to supply information on its non-self-governing territories to the UN...
...Africans are hypersensitive and arrogant, it is said...
...Government to assume that the pattern of Guinea, Mali and Ghana is a crypto-Communist pattern, without noting that, in terms of the role of the party in the state and the attitude of the government party toward organized opposition, independent trade unions, etc., Tunisia, the Ivory Coast and Togo are following the identical pattern...
...It is the result of a growing impression that in the past 10 years (and, it is feared, in the next 10), whenever African interests conflicted with European interests in Africa, the U.S...
...What is it that Africans expect of the U.S...
...This has nothing whatsoever to do with their foreign policy...
...The U.S...
...weak positions on the various South African questions...
...African nations are new, and loyalties are not yet strongly imbedded...
...failure to control the use of American arms by the French in Algeria...
...Basically, Washington has two choices: It can select "our men" in Africa, and start down that slippery path which, in the present world situation, too often seems to land the United States with the duds—those without effective popular support at home, or whose support is undermined by our backing them on our terms...
...should of course expand its program of economic aid, technical assistance and educational exchange...
...This country will be called upon —indeed it is being called upon— to take a stand, implicitly or explicitly, on the three major problems of independent Africa: the maintenance of national integrity, the achievement of inter-African unities, and economic development...
...But Washington never did anything when it really mattered...
...And with the Congo crisis the U.S...
...The catalogue of past U.S...
...taking the lead to oppose UN-supervised elections in Cameroon...
...Here is one concrete way to encourage African unity...
...attitudes can make a difference...
...If this seems obvious, let me note that this is not the present policy, and there are persons urging us to be even "tougher" toward the "proSoviet" states...
...Tomorrow, other countries may pose the same issue...
...is for independence, national integrity and African unity' By Immanuel Wallerstein In the old days, the United States was well thought of by Africans: It had an anti-colonial tradition and stood for the right to self-government...
...Immanuel Wallerstein is an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia who lived in Ghana and the Ivory Coast in 1956-57 and has visited the continent twice since then...
...1) It could support UN-supervised elections in Algeria...
...put no significant pressure on European governments to move faster, or to make more concessions...
...It may be argued that Americans should not be overconcerned with such potential African reactions...
...It would be a force for rapid change and long-run stability...
...pressures...
...In recent years, however, Africans have come to judge America and Americans more severely...
...in the UN, keep out Chinese technicians, and promise never to suppress a newspaper...
...This, I repeat, would not be magic, but it would be a framework within which American diplomats could operate...
...As the U.S...
...President Kennedy could recover much lost ground by establishing a political posture which indicates that the U.S...
...On the contrary, members of all three parties talk of the shame they suffer, because Dahomey has not yet achieved the "unity" for which they all claim to be working...
...What is worse, the Africans suspect that this is what underlies their attitude...
...Congolese know this...
...against Patrice Lumumba...
...Whether clothed, in Marxian, liberal or Catholic verbiage (and there are instances of all three), the argument is the same...
...either sided with its European allies or lapsed into uncomfortable silence...
...The case of Dahomey can yield further instruction...
...But Washington should not enter into a consortium with them, as Under Secretary C. Douglas Dillon tried to organize last spring...
...It is simply a prerequisite to the establishment of a stance from which it will be possible to conduct a continuing, intelligent policy in Africa...
...After independence the problems become greater, and are filled with the pitfalls which have been the bane of U.S...
...Washington has forgotten once again that the wild men of today are the moderates of tomorrow, and that bolstering instead of subverting Lumumba might have established a figure who could have served tomorrow as a restraining force (a wise elder statesman, if one allows one's imagination to take a small but necessary jump) vis-à-vis some newly independent government in southern Africa...
...All the new African nations are attempting to establish strong governments...
...Yet the ideal is a sound ideal and should command at least as much support as we give to European unity...
...individual Americans seemed less afflicted with that supreme mark of the colonialist outlook, paternalism, than Europeans...
...Many divisive forces are at work—regionalist, tribalist, sometimes religious...
...could still make a contribution to Africa's struggle for freedom by taking three rather elementary steps...
...The central government usually stands for modernization, universal education, economic development, the possibility for the peasant to express himself and participate in government for the first time...
...They were America's allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and they pressed this point to an illogical conclusion...
...Africans know they can exploit the shift in the basic world power situation—the rise of China, the growing attraction of Castroism in Latin America—to their advantage...
...So are Mali and the Ivory Coast...
...Most of all, they want an appreciation that the primary problems of Africa today are political ones, and that increased economic assistance or educational exchange (not offered, of course, to areas where the colonial power objects) is not central...
...Economic and educational aid is needed, but it will only affect African attitudes toward the U.S...
...It needs rather to expect this and learn to live with it...
...The U.S...
...non-recognition of Guinea...
...began to repeat the most absurd and elementary error previously made in Asia and the Middle East: simplistic division of African governments and statesmen into good and bad, on the basis of their (sometimes transitory) position toward the Soviet world, rather than on what they represent in the internal structure of their own countries...
...so do other Africans...
...The correct procedure is for African nations to come together to determine their mutual needs, a method the U.S...
...Perhaps, but they are no longer powerless...
...The road to African unity is a long and rocky one, and there have been many false starts...
...Without undertaking here an analysis of the Congo crisis, it seems to me it has been a fundamental error in the Congo situation to throw the weight of the U.S...
...has dragged its feet at best when confronted with attempts to establish internal unity, so it has been lukewarm and skeptical at attempts to build larger African unities...
...It is in the cold, hard interest of the United States, therefore, to put aside its petulance and ignorance and analyze African developments in their own context and in their own terms...
...This disillusionment did not occur overnight, nor can it be traced to any single blunder...
...The U.S...
...They need the U.S., both for the aid it can give and for the balance it can offer to Soviet interest, and the myth of its anti-colonial heritage is not entirely undone...
...Lastly, the U.S...
...position is not yet desperate in Africa...
...Such declarations would reshape Africa's image of the U.S...
...3) It could publicly state its disapprobation of the apartheid policy of the Government of the Union of South Africa, and indicate that it might consider further (economic) measures to back up its position...
...Alone of the former French African areas, it has a flourishing multi-party system, with three parties equally balanced...
...Furthermore, Washington is still partially afflicted by that earlier analysis of the postwar period (made by both the U.S...
...All Washington can do is be equally friendly to all six...
...errors is long: voting against the inscriptions of the various North African questions at the United Nations...
...Or, it can opt for all those parties and movements which stand for modernization and development, on the assumption that national unity and economic growth are the prerequisites, the necessary if not sufficient conditions, for the establishment of democratic societies...
...Furthermore, these divisive forces are usually not the beacon-forces of liberalism and dissent, as occasionally pictured in the West, but the forces of tradition, sometimes allied with disgruntled university graduates...
...It is hypocritical and foolish of the U.S...
...position will not change matters...
...But Washington might thus speed up and ease the transition, lessening the likelihood of cumulative and unnecessary tension...
...But in the real world of real men, the U.S...
...They threaten to pull apart a rather thin fabric that has been weakened by the partial disappearance of the external enemy, the colonial power...
...To be sure, when Britain extended independence to Nigeria, or President de Gaulle to the various states of the Community, Washington applauded—relieved that it no longer had to suffer the embarrassment of its reluctance to act...
...They are still hesitant...
...The U.S...
...There will, however, be cases where the choice is larger because the political situation is less settled, where U.S...
...There is one error, however, to avoid at all costs...
...For in the Congo situation he still represents, symbolically and in terms of actual and potential political organization, the one force which might be able to hold the country together and build a modern nation...
...They tended to argue that their membership in NATO was almost a favor to the U.S., for which they deserved to be recompensed by unconditional support of their policies in Africa...
...Both Guinea and Tunisia are prime examples of strong single-party rule, where the party is both popular and without any organized opposition...
...They also would serve as very powerful pressures on the French, Portugese and Afrikaners to move in directions they eventually will have to move in, with or without U.S...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 5
