by Guy Arnold
In British East Africa, the outbreak of war led to a suspension of politics, both white and black, and when Italy entered the war on the side of Germany in 1940 the government of Kenya suppressed a number of African political organizations, including the most important one, the Kikuyu Central Association, and interned their leaders. On the other hand, Commander F. J. Couldrey, editor of the Kenya Weekly News, was the first leading European in a colony dominated by white settlers, to say openly in a BBC broadcast to East Africa, that the colony could not achieve self-government by Europeans alone but that it had to be on the basis of all races ‘co-operating’.4 Indeed, World War II was to prove an event of major importance for the peoples of Kenya: ‘Out of a total of 280,000 men recruited in the East African Forces (including men from Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and British Somaliland, as well as from the East African territories proper), some 75,000 came from Kenya, a figure representing a little under 20 per cent of its total adult male African population.’5 Over the war years a considerable amount of money in family allowances was paid into the African reserves; at the same time the demand by the army for agricultural and livestock products ensured a steady market for the tribes that were able to supply them.
But the main consequence was certainly the immense widening of the experience of most of the men recruited. Many served in the Middle East and the Far East, as well as nearer home in other parts of Kenya, Madagascar and Ethiopia. They came into contact with men of other tribes, and with Europeans, Indians and Arabs of all classes. They saw that the traditional superiority of European and Asian was by no means accepted outside East Africa. And in their army training they were given both formal and informal education – it was, for example, the policy of the army to make as many Askari as possible literate and also able to speak basic English. Many soldiers received technical training of various kinds, and after the end of the Japanese war the army opened schools of general and technical training, at a simple level, for soldiers before their disbandment.6
Another outcome of the war for the three territories of East Africa was the growth of co-operation between them. It was necessary to co-ordinate a plan of defence and to develop joint action in providing manpower and foodstuffs. On 1 August 1940, an East African Economic Council was created. Ironically, foreshadowing events that still lay in the future, the Ugandans complained that such co-operation was working too much in favour of Kenya.
As Waruhiu Itote, better known as the Mau Mau General China, was to write in his book Mau Mau in Action, ‘Several of our leaders had been in the Kenya African Rifles during World War II, including Dedan Kimathi and myself.’7 In Uganda ‘The Second World War did much to disturb [the] state of unruffled calm. There was, in the first place, some draining away of manpower. At the peak of recruitment in 1944 nearly 55,000 men were serving in the army, and many more spent short periods in military labour organizations.’8 During the years 1919 to 1945 there was no African political activity against colonial rule in Uganda but in 1945 disturbances in Buganda indicated that Uganda, like much of Africa, was moving into a more hostile political stance although there had been little evidence of open hostility towards Britain while the war lasted and many Ugandans (a total of 76,957) had enlisted in the Pioneer Corps, the East Africa Medical and Labour Services and the King’s African Rifles. Tanganyika became similarly engaged in the war effort as Kenya and Uganda. Its soldiers, serving with the King’s African Rifles, took part in the campaigns against Italy in Somaliland and Ethiopia that destroyed the Italian empire in East Africa. Later troops from Tanganyika were involved in the campaign of 1942 to overthrow the Vichy French Government in Madagascar. In June 1943 soldiers from Tanganyika formed part of the 11th East African Division that sailed to Ceylon in preparation for the Burma campaign. It was the first occasion in which the King’s African Rifles were to serve in active operations outside the African continent. Altogether, 87,000 Tanganyika Africans were conscripted for war service; it was assumed by the colonial authorities that when they returned home demands for African rule would become more insistent. Given its small size, Zanzibar made a substantial contribution to the imperial war effort and large numbers of Zanzibaris served in medical, signals, transport, docks and education units of the armed forces. The sum of £12,000 was raised for war charities and an additional £15,383 was subscribed for fighter aircraft for Britain. Zanzibar also raised a local naval force, a volunteer local defence force, and turned the police into a military body.9
It was a somewhat different story in British West Africa where the army had a bad reputation as a symbol of foreign rule. Nonetheless, in the Gold Coast, over the years 1946–51, ex-servicemen played a critical role in the general political upsurge that occurred in that territory. Despite the fact that the West African colonies did not have white settler minorities to contend with and were generally seen as more politically advanced than those of East Africa, official white attitudes were no further advanced. ‘Though African soldiers had rendered distinguished service to the Commonwealth in World War II, little consideration was given at that stage to the possibility of commissioning officers from the ranks.’10
The war also eliminated two European powers from the African colonial scene. It ended any possibility of Germany making a colonial comeback, an outcome that would certainly have been on the cards had Hitler been victorious, and Italy lost its African empire. Instead, ‘British, Indian, white South African and Rhodesian troops, as well as Sudanese, King’s African Rifles and soldiers from the Royal West Africa Frontier Force, invaded Italy’s East African possessions. By July 1941 the last Italian forces surrendered in Ethiopia.’ By May 1945, the total number of Africans serving in British military units (combatants and auxiliaries) came to 374,000 while the total from all colonies (excluding India and the Dominions) came to 437,000 so that Africans formed the majority of these colonial forces. White soldiers from South Africa numbered 200,000 while Southern Rhodesia contributed 10,000 whites, 14,000 Asians and 76,000 black soldiers in auxiliary services. South African losses amounted to 8,681 men, the combined losses of the colonies to 21,085 men.11
Many of these black soldiers learned new skills, for example, as clerks or truck drivers, and they travelled widely to India, Burma, Palestine and other countries where they learned new ideas and obtained a broader outlook on the world and its politics. Another aspect of the war was an increase in colonial government controls: for example, trade through government marketing boards set the foundations for the state infrastructures of the future. All together ‘The importance of overseas experience in India and Burma in World War II by both East and West African troops can scarcely be overestimated: more than any other single factor this exposure helped to bring the colonies politically into the modern world.’ Contacts took place with the Indian Congress Party but ‘the total effects of Asian service were to open the eyes of African soldiers to developments in other territories under imperial rule, to dispel the notion of European invincibility and to develop personal maturity. The respect which ex-servicemen afterwards commanded both in urban and rural areas gave them an important status in subsequent political, social and economic development.’12 This was certainly true but, as the returned African soldiers also found, they were not accorded the respect as fighting men by Britain that they deserved. In November 1945 West Africa magazine published letters from West African soldiers still in India, under the heading ‘Appeal for more recognition’. One such letter, signed ‘Yours very faithfully, R.W.A.F.F. Boys in India’, began as follows:
Sir: -We have been reading in the Times of India, and other allied newspapers since V. J. Day. Once and again we have heard it beamed to the world on the wireless – a phrase, ‘and others.’ This embarrasses us and hundreds of our country-mates who hold this view; that causes tears to becloud our sense of vision when we ask to who on earth these six letters – ‘others’ – might refer…
Later in the letter they list the numbers of allied prisoners released from Japanese camps – British
, Australian, Dutch, American, Indian, Others. According to a note from Delhi, the Indian press revealed that
more than 77,000, and 49,000, West and East African troops respectively took part in most of the strongest battles, fought under the worst conditions, at one time or the other in Burma since late in 1943 up to V. J. Day.
Later, in this revealing letter, the writers continue as follows:
We were only too pleased, however, when the RWAFF News Victory Supplement of Sept. last carried pictures of our regiment and national heroes and ‘happy warriors’. Equally when West Africa, on 22 September, revealed, under the heading: ‘You have learnt to be leaders’ that ‘A special correspondent of The Times, present on the occasion, commented acidly the other day that, at the Japanese surrender after the Burma campaign, the Indian Army was not officially represented; although out of a million troops engaged, about 700,000 were Indians – and nearly 80,000, he added, were West Africans (whose ultimate total in the Far Eastern campaign substantially exceeded 100,000, making it the largest of any of the Colonial Forces engaged)…
Africans, they discovered, were not the only imperial subjects to be downgraded or to have their contributions ignored on such occasions.13
DE GAULLE AND FRENCH COLONIAL AFRICA
On 30 January 1944, General Charles de Gaulle presided over the opening session of a conference in Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, to discuss French colonial policy after the war, most especially that relating to sub-Saharan Africa. De Gaulle had called the conference in his capacity as chairman of the Free French ‘Committee of National Liberation’. Back on 18 June 1940, when de Gaulle had broadcast that France was not finally defeated, he had done so on the basis of the existence of an empire as yet untouched by the Germans. ‘Had there been no empire, there would have been no Free French territory. For two and a half years Brazzaville, capital of French Equatorial Africa, was also the provisional capital of what claimed to be the government of France.’14 De Gaulle was able to draw much support from French Equatorial Africa (AEF) and many Africans volunteered for service with his forces. AEF came to be described as ‘the cradle of the French resistance movement.’ By 1942 there were 10,000 men from AEF alone serving with General Leclerc’s Free French Army and many of them were to take part in Leclerc’s trans-Saharan march from Chad to Bir Hakeim. In Dahomey in 1948, 58 per cent of the electorate of 54,000 were either ex-servicemen or serving soldiers whose military service had given them French citizenship rights and thus the vote. African soldiers from areas with strong martial traditions had a high respect for their French officers whom they regarded much as they did their chiefs. Their officers responded to this regard with a paternalistic sense of responsibility.
Thus, although in general both Britain and France (the two principal colonial powers in Africa) had received remarkable support during the war from their African colonial subjects, this was not true everywhere, and at Setif in Algeria an ominous incident warned of grim times ahead. Situated in the Tell Atlas range, Setif was the centre of the Setif province of Northern Algeria. In 1945 it was the scene of an angry uprising against French rule that acted as a prelude to the Algerian war of 1954–62. On 8 May 1945, riots broke out in Setif when the police challenged Algerian Muslims who were carrying nationalist flags during the celebrations of the Allied victory over the Germans in Europe. Their action was a protest at continuing colonial rule. In the disturbances, which followed the first demonstration, about 100 European settlers were killed; then, in retaliation, between 6,000 and 8,000 Muslims were massacred. Official French statements claimed that 88 Frenchmen and 1,500 Algerians had been killed as a result of the anti-riot operations carried out by the police and military. On the other hand, the nationalists claimed that 45,000 Algerian people were killed. Independent observers placed the death toll at between 10,000 and 15,000, which was far higher than the official French figures but much lower than the nationalist ones. The accuracy of the figures was less important than the fact of a massive and brutal reprisal, which ‘gave notice’ that the French settlers and the colonial authorities would oppose ruthlessly any moves towards independence. Ferhat Abbas, then the outstanding Algerian nationalist figure, was arrested and his organization, Les Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté (AML), was proscribed. Further disturbances took place in October 1945 and May 1946. A pattern of violence had been established which would erupt again in 1954 to dominate Algeria for the next eight years.
By the end of the war the African colonies faced two kinds of challenge: the need to rebuild and redirect economies and services that had been geared to a war effort; and the fact that vast new horizons had been opened up to those Africans who had served with the British or French forces, sometimes thousands of miles away from the African continent. ‘Although the prognostications of many officials in 1945 – that the experiences of the troops would lead to immediate disturbances after their return to the reserves – were not fulfilled in the event, none the less these experiences were to have a lasting effect.’ One immediate result was the remarkable growth of African associations in the various colonies. Though, as historians have noted in relation to Kenya15:
In 1945 there were many lines of dissension apparent – pastoralists against agriculturalists, Bantu Kavirondo against Luo of Kavirondo, all other tribes against the Kikuyu. This last antagonism became very apparent when the Mau Mau movement failed so signally to spread beyond the borders of the Kikuyu. In short, the tribalist had become the nationalist – had had to become so if he were ever to be more than a petty local politician.
Here indeed was one of the most fraught questions that would face the new generation of African leaders that was soon to make its bid for independence from colonial rule. Only as nationalists could they appeal across tribal divisions for solidarity against the common colonial enemy. And, once successful, they were likely to find their new nations again splitting along tribal lines.
INDEPENDENT AFRICA
In 1945 only four African countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia and South Africa – were independent and even in these cases independence was only partial. Although Britain had formally ended its protectorate over Egypt in 1922, the country had remained within its ‘sphere of influence’ and was to continue to do so until Nasser’s rise to power in the 1950s. The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which allowed Britain to station troops in the country, only came to an end in 1954 when Britain agreed, reluctantly, to remove its Suez base to Cyprus. During World War II Egypt had been a major British base and from it British forces had eventually driven the Germans out of Libya, which Britain then occupied to end Italian imperial control. The Suez Crisis of 1956 represented a final attempt by Britain to employ old-style imperial gunboat diplomacy in order to dictate policy to Egypt. It was a spectacular failure and thereafter Egypt was fully independent.
Ethiopia’s independence goes back to antiquity, at least as far as the Kingdom of Aksum (circa 500BCE). A powerful nation had been created in the nineteenth century and alone in Africa Ethiopia was able to repel the European advance during the Scramble for Africa when Menelik II defeated the invading Italians at Adowa in 1896. Mussolini’s Italy avenged this defeat when his forces invaded Ethiopia in 1935 although they only established their control over the country in 1936 after protracted fighting. Ethiopia was liberated from the Italians in 1941 and South African forces captured Addis Ababa on 6 April. Haile Selassie (who had fled as an exile to Britain in 1936) wished to enter the capital at once but was held back by the British on the grounds that they feared the Italians in the city would be massacred. Haile Selassie decided to ignore the British and went ahead to enter Addis Ababa on 5 May 1941, just five years after the Italians had seized the city in 1936.
Immediately, difficult relations developed between Selassie and the British liberators who now became the effective occupying power. Prior to the fall of Ethiopia (January–March 1941) the British had rejected the idea of a protectorate but once they found themselves in control of
the whole country they procrastinated over recognizing full Ethiopian sovereignty until 1948, thus proving Haile Selassie to have been right in mistrusting their motives. When the Emperor appointed his first cabinet on 11 May 1941, the British representative Brigadier Lush said this could not be effective ‘until a peace treaty had been signed with Italy’. Later, Britain chose to regard the Emperor’s ministers as no more than advisers to the British administration. Meanwhile, the South African troops who had liberated Addis Ababa tried to maintain the colour bar that had been instituted by the Italians. Sir Philip Mitchell, chief British political officer in the Middle East, urged a hard line on London and pressed the Emperor to abide by British advice ‘in all matters touching the government of Ethiopia’ and to levy taxes and allocate expenditure only with ‘prior approval of HMG’. Haile Selassie regarded these and other proposals of Mitchell’s as intolerable and telegraphed Winston Churchill to ask why a treaty between the two countries was so long delayed. Finally, on 31 January 1942 an Anglo-Ethiopian agreement recognized Ethiopia as an independent sovereign state.
