The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  Britain was the only colonial power even to contemplate the possibility of self-government for its African territories, having established precedents in Asia. It nevertheless expected to hold sway there at least until the end of the twentieth century. As seen from the Colonial Office in London, Britain’s African empire was a quiet and orderly domain. Few issues ever emerged from the sleepy capitals of Africa that required urgent attention. Through many years of experience, its African territories were efficiently administered and, insofar as the British exchequer was concerned, they were cheap to run. Strategically, as the war had shown, they were useful in providing raw materials, military bases and large numbers of troops. In the bleak aftermath of the war, as Britain struggled with food rationing, bomb damage, war debts and a desperate financial crisis, the colonies were looked on principally as useful assets. Nevertheless, as a more enlightened approach to colonial rule took root in the post-war era, British officials began to consider what plans were needed for the long-term.

  The system of administration that Britain had devised for its fourteen territories in Africa allowed them to operate separately and with a marked degree of independence. Each one had its own budget, its own laws and public service. Each one was under the control of a governor, powerful enough in his own domain to ensure that his views there prevailed. Each one was at a different stage of political and economic development.

  Britain’s west African territories were the most advanced. In the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the black professional elite – lawyers, doctors, teachers and merchants – had been given some role to play in ruling institutions since the end of the nineteenth century. In the Gold Coast, the first African to be nominated to the local legislature made his debut in 1888. In each of the three territories, the first direct elections had taken place in the 1920s, allowing a small minority of local representatives to sit alongside British officials and chiefs on legislative councils. During the war, Africans had been admitted to executive councils advising governors and, in the case of the Gold Coast, a few had been introduced to the senior ranks of the administration. A further measure of political advancement was granted after the war under new constitutions drawn up for the Gold Coast and Nigeria. In the Gold Coast, Africans in the legislative council outnumbered colonial officials for the first time. The effect was limited, however. Only five out of thirty-one members were elected directly; and, with customary prudence, the British ensured that the governor retained real power. Members were able to criticise policy rather than formulate it. In the case of the Gambia, a miniature colony consisting of little more than two river banks, it was thought to be too small and too poor ever to achieve self-government.

  In Britain’s colonies in east and central Africa, political activity revolved around the demands of white settlers for more political power. In Southern Rhodesia, the white population, numbering no more than 33,000, had won internal self-government in 1923. Britain retained certain reserve powers, including the right to veto legislation that discriminated against the African population. But not once in the next forty years, as white Rhodesians proceeded to construct an economic and social edifice based principally on discrimination in land, jobs and wages, did the British government seek to intervene. In 1931, the Land Apportionment Act divided land into white and black areas, allocating the white population 49 million acres and one million Africans 29 million acres. Only the franchise remained non-racial, but the qualifications, based on income, were so high that by 1948 only 258 blacks had the vote, compared to 47,000 whites. Unhampered by the British government, white Rhodesians became increasingly hostile to any suggestion that they were not entitled to complete control over their own affairs.

  In Kenya, the small white population agitated for similar gains. Though numbering only 10,000 by the 1920s, they managed to obtain representation in the local legislative council, exerting considerable influence there. The white farming community, a motley collection of pioneer farmers, rich European aristocrats and Afrikaner expatriates, were especially vociferous, demanding an ever expanding section of the highlands for the exclusive use of Europeans. When finally defined, the White Highlands extended for 12,000 square miles of the best agricultural land in the country, a prosperous region of coffee plantations, tea estates, dairy farms and cattle ranches.

  But having set the Rhodesian precedent, the British government then stuck to the notion that African interests should be properly protected. In practice, this did not always amount to much. Because the African peoples of east and central Africa had come into contact with European ways relatively recently, several generations behind west Africans, the Colonial Office took the view that the future prosperity of this part of Africa depended largely on encouraging white communities which provided the economic mainstay there. Thus, even though African land grievances were mounting, more land – a quarter of a million acres – was made available in the White Highlands after the war to British ex-servicemen. The pace of African advancement, meanwhile, was minimal. The first African to sit in the legislative council in Kenya was appointed in 1944; in Tanganyika and Uganda in 1945; in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1948; and in Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1949.

  In post-war years, Britain’s colonies in east and central Africa, offering a superb climate, spectacular scenery and cheap labour, became the destination for thousands of emigrants escaping the drabness and austerity of Britain and seeking to establish a grander, tropical version of an English way of life. In Southern Rhodesia and in Kenya, the white population doubled. Bolstered by rising numbers and foreign investment, white politicians in Salisbury (Harare) and Nairobi confidently set their sights on establishing new white-led British dominions in the heart of Africa.

  While remaining cautious about political advancement, the Colonial Office moved with far greater vigour to promote economic development. Whereas the guiding principle before the war had been that the colonies should pay their own way, afterwards large sums of British government money were allocated for their development. By gradual process, concentrating first on economic and social advancement, the colonies were to be transformed from poor and backward possessions into prosperous territories, where, in due course, the local people could be introduced slowly to the business of government.

  So, provided with a generous budget, the Colonial Office in the years after 1945 came alive with new schemes, new committees and a new sense of purpose. While other parts of the empire were slipping away, Africa at least seemed set for an era of imperial renaissance. Technical experts and specialists on agriculture, education and health services were recruited by the score. New public corporations were launched. Hundreds of young men were dispatched to the furthest corners of Africa with the assurance that a lifetime’s work lay ahead of them.

  The French, too, embarked on major development programmes in the post-war era and introduced political reform. At a conference of colonial administrators that de Gaulle convened in Brazzaville in 1944, even while the Germans were still occupying Paris, he promised a new role for African colonies. Like most Frenchmen, whether Free French or pro-Vichy, de Gaulle was adamant that the links between metropolitan France and the colonies were indissoluble. Whatever setbacks had occurred during the war, the colonies would continue to be governed as part of la plus grande France. Indeed, de Gaulle looked on the empire as the key to rebuilding France’s power and prestige in the world. But in recognition of their war effort, de Gaulle undertook to abolish old colonial practices such as forced labour and the indigénat and to give African populations greater political representation.

  Unlike the British, the French regarded their colonies not as separate entities but as integral parts of France, allowing them to send representatives to the French parliament in Paris. In Senegal, the most advanced of France’s colonies in L’Afrique Noire, black residents in four old coastal towns had exercised the right to elect a representative to the French parliament since the nineteenth century. The first African deputy elected from Senegal arrived
in Paris in 1914 and rapidly rose to the rank of junior minister. Outside Senegal, in the fourteen other French colonies, no organised political activity had been permitted. But in the winter of 1945, as some six hundred delegates arrived in Paris to devise a new constitution for the Fourth Republic, they included a group of nine from L’Afrique Noire.

  In conducting their ‘civilising mission’ in Africa, the French had been highly successful in absorbing the small black elite that emerged from their colonies. In outlook, they saw themselves, and were seen, as Frenchmen, brought up in a tradition of loyalty to France, willingly accepting its government and culture, and taking a certain pride in being citizens of a world power. As their main aim they hoped to secure for Africans the same rights and privileges enjoyed by metropolitan Frenchmen. No one dreamed of independence. Not once at the Constituent Assembly was any voice raised in favour of breaking up the empire. ‘Our programme,’ said a delegate from Senegal, ‘can be summarised in a very simple formula: a single category of Frenchmen, having exactly the same rights since all are subject to the same duties, including dying for the same country.’

  Under the Fourth Republic, Africans made considerable gains. All Africans received French citizenship and some – more than a million – the vote. In the Paris Chamber, black Africa was represented in all by twenty-four deputies. At home, local assemblies were established for each territory, and federal assemblies for the two main regions of French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. For the first time, political activity flourished throughout France’s African empire. Social and economic reforms were also introduced, in accordance with de Gaulle’s promise.

  However much these measures benefited French Africa, the central purpose of the Union Française, as the post-war empire was called, was still to bind the colonies tightly to metropolitan France. French politicians were tacitly agreed that too much power given to colonial subjects in Paris or in the colonies might threaten the government or weaken the empire. By virtue of their numbers, the colonies were ultimately in a position to swamp metropolitan France – if the principle of equal rights for all citizens embodied in the constitution of the Fourth Republic was followed through to its logical conclusion. The fear that France might eventually become a ‘colony of her colonies’ helped to ensure that only a cautious pace of political progress was pursued.

  In the dual system of voting adopted in black Africa, far greater weight was attached to the votes of metropolitan Frenchmen than to the votes of Africans. The territorial assemblies set up in Africa were given limited scope. Real power still lay with officials at the Rue Oudinot, the Ministry of France d’Outre-Mer, and with local French administrations. Most of the political parties that emerged in black Africa at the beginning of the Fourth Republic were sponsored by French officials determined that their own approved candidates were elected to national and local assemblies.

  Algeria under the Fourth Republic was treated differently to all other French territories. As before, the three northern départements, Algiers, Constantine and Oran, where most of the European population lived, were considered to be part of France itself, having the same status as départements in mainland France. The towns of Algeria possessed an unmistakable French character. Algiers, cradled in steep hills dotted with red-tiled villas overlooking one of the most spectacular bays in the Mediterranean, seemed just like a Riviera resort. Its broad boulevards and avenues were lined with expensive shops, kiosks, trottoir cafés and bookshops; along the waterfront stood grand, arcaded buildings housing banks and mercantile companies. A third of the population in Algiers was white.

  After 115 years of la présence française in Algeria, French colons – or pieds-noirs, as they were called – had achieved a total grip on political power, commerce, agriculture and employment, effectively relegating the majority Muslim population – Arab and Kabyle – to a subservient status and stubbornly resisting all attempts at change. Both groups sent deputies to the National Assembly in Paris, but Muslims numbering eight million were allocated no more than fifteen seats, the same as for the one million pieds-noirs. In Algeria itself, the local assembly was effectively subject to the control of the French administration. Elections were blatantly rigged to ensure that amenable Muslim candidates – ‘Beni-Oui-Oui’, as government collaborators were known derisively – won their seats. The upper echelons of the administration were virtually an exclusive French preserve: of 864 higher administrative posts, no more than eight were held by Muslims. In rural areas, a thin layer of 250 administrators ruled over four million Muslims.

  The gulf between the two communities was huge. The vast majority of indigènes were illiterate, poor and unemployed. Their numbers were fast growing. In fifty years the Algerian population had nearly doubled, prompting fears among pieds-noirs that they were in danger of being ‘swamped’. In urban areas, most lived in wretched bidonvilles – tin-can slums – on the outskirts of towns. Algiers was surrounded by more than a hundred bidonvilles, built on wasteland and demolition sites and in the ravines that ran down to the sea. In the Casbah, the old fortress-palace of Algiers, some 80,000 Muslims were packed into an area of one square kilometre, an Arab town embedded in a European city. There were limited job prospects for Muslims; preference was usually given to petits-blancs. Nearly two-thirds of the rural population was officially classified as ‘destitute’. Revisiting his native land in 1945, the writer Albert Camus was horrified to find Kabyle children fighting with dogs for the contents of a rubbish bin.

  Outwardly, the French remained in firm control. But strong under-currents were building up. In the 1930s, a religious movement known as the Ulema gathered momentum, advocating a return to the first principles of Islam and rekindling a sense of religious and national consciousness among Algerians. The creed it adopted was simple: ‘Islam is my religion, Arabic is my language, Algeria is my country . . . Independence is a natural right for every people of the earth.’ In 1944, in the wake of de Gaulle’s announcements in Brazzaville, a new political grouping called Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté was formed, its aim being ‘to propagate the idea of an Algerian nation, and the desire for an Algerian constitution with an autonomous republic federated to a renewed French republic, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist’.

  In May 1945, a sudden eruption of violence in the small provincial town of Sétif, eighty miles west of Constantine, provided a stark warning of the extent of internal pressures gathering momentum. A predominantly Muslim area, Sétif had suffered from months of drought and economic hardship. A demonstration by Muslim activists carrying banners demanding independence ended in attacks on Europeans that spread across the Constantine region. In five days of havoc, 103 Europeans were killed. The French authorities responded with ferocious repression, subjecting suspect Muslim villages to systematic ratissage – a ‘raking-over’ – in which about 6,000 Algerians died.

  On the surface, Algeria returned to its tranquil ways. French officials expected no further disturbances. But for a small group of activists, many of them former soldiers in the French army returning home after the war in Europe, the only way forward was armed resistance.

  Belgium looked on the Congo essentially as a valuable piece of real estate that just required good management. Since the demise of Leopold’s Congo Free State in 1908, the Congo’s affairs had been rigidly controlled from Brussels by a small management group representing an alliance between the government, the Catholic Church and giant mining and business enterprises, whose activities were virtually exempt from outside scrutiny. In essence, the government provided administration, the Church attended to education and moral welfare and the mining corporations produced the revenue to support the whole enterprise. By convention, colonial matters were kept out of Belgian politics. No one gave them as much attention as politicians in England and France. Overall, the Belgian public were content to own the richest colony in Africa without being concerned with what happened there. From the Congo itself, no views other than official ones were heard. Neither the Be
lgians living there nor the Congolese had a vote; no one was consulted. Edicts and directives were simply passed down from Brussels.

  The only interruption to this orderly state of affairs came in Belgium itself, when the Germans overran the country in 1940 and the government retreated to London. On its return to Brussels in 1944, the same colonial policies were employed. Government ministers saw no reason for change. The system, it seemed, was good enough to last indefinitely.

  The Congo remained an immensely profitable venture. No other colony in Africa possessed such a profusion of copper, diamonds and uranium. All this enabled Belgium to maintain a framework of law, order and development which far surpassed the efforts of other colonial powers. Even in the more remote rural areas the firm hand of Belgian authority was to be found, ensuring that villagers produced crops efficiently, maintained the roads and were available for work on mines and plantations. Missionaries were active in building an impressive network of primary schools and clinics across the country; in the post-war era, more than a third of the population were said to be professed Christians. Mining companies in the eastern Congo provided their employees with housing, welfare schemes and technical training. The assumption on which Belgian rule was based was that the African population, given strict upbringing, wise leadership and enough material benefits would be content with Belgian rule for the rest of their lives.

  Beyond that, though, the Congolese were kept in a subservient role. They had no political voice, no rights to own land or to travel freely. They were subject to curfews in urban areas and forced labour in rural areas. Though primary schools abounded, there was no higher education available except in Catholic seminaries. Nor were students allowed to study in Belgium. Not until 1950 were Congolese children seeking higher education permitted for the first time to enter white secondary schools. While Africans were encouraged to train as clerks, medical assistants or mechanics, they could not become doctors, lawyers or architects. Quite deliberately, the Belgians set out to isolate the Congo from any outside influence and to stifle the emergence of a black elite which might demand a change in the system.