Issa G. Shivji
7 May 2009
(Page 2 of 4)
Mwalimu's was a consistent anti-colonialism; Nkrumah's a militant anti-imperialism. Mwalimu sneered at imperialists; Nkrumah stung them. Mwalimu saw African unity as a goal, which could be achieved by small steps. Any number of African states uniting in any form - economically or politically, regionally or otherwise - was, for Mwalimu, a step forward. For Nkrumah, national liberation and African unity were two sides of the same coin, the coin being an anti-imperialist, Pan-Africanist struggle. Mwalimu conceptualised the task of the first generation of African nationalists as twofold: national liberation (meaning independence), and unity. By 1994, when South Africa formally ended apartheid, the first task was complete. In Mwalimu's assessment, the first-generation African nationalists succeeded in the task of national liberation but failed in the task of African unity. To an extent, a kind of stagiest approach is implied here - independence first, then unity. Within unity, too, there is a stagiest notion, regional unity leading to continental unity. To be fair, Mwalimu recognised the difficulty of his stagiest theory. He forcefully argued, for example, that the proposed East African Federation should precede the independence of individual countries, otherwise, unity would become difficult. He made this argument strongly and history has proved him right. But the basis and logic of his argument for regional unity first, before independence, was similar to Nkrumah's one for immediate continental federation. Nkrumah's position was that regional unities would make continental unity even more difficult. He viewed 'regionalisation' as being balkanisation on a larger scale.
Fifty years later, we are less regionalised and even more balkanised. In his Reflections on his 75th birthday, Mwalimu once again returned to the theme of the balkanisation of Africa. He said the Balkans themselves are being Africanised as they are absorbed in the larger European Union, while, we, Africans, are being tribalised! Mwalimu said:
'...these powerful European states are moving towards unity, and you people are talking about the atavism of the tribe, this is nonsense! I am telling you people. How can anybody think of the tribe as the unity of the future, hakuna!'
There is, I think, another underlying difference between the gradualist and radical approaches of Nyerere and Nkrumah, which has not been sufficiently analysed. I will only hint at it. I think for Nkrumah unity itself, just as liberation, was an anti-imperialist struggle, not some formal process of dissolving sovereignties. AmÃÂlcar Cabral captured the national liberation struggle as an anti-imperialist struggle well when he said, '[S]o long as imperialism is in existence, an independent African state must be a liberation movement in power, or it will not be independent.' The notion of an independent African state being a 'national liberation movement in power', I suggest, gives us the core of the ideology and politics of Pan-Africanism as a vision of not only unity but liberation. African liberation is not complete with the independence of single entities called countries. 'Territorial nationalism' is not African nationalism. African nationalism can only be Pan-Africanism or else, as Mwalimu characterised it, it is 'the equivalent of tribalism within the context of our separate nation states'. Pan-Africanism gave birth to nationalism, not the other way round. This is a powerful argument implied in Mwalimu's ideas on African unity. This brings me to the second element of his justification for African unity, the non-viability of African states.
NON-VIABILITY
Mwalimu spent a lot of time demonstrating the irrationality and non-viability of African states. He used the Kiswahili diminutive vinchi to describe them. Without intending to offend linguists, I would translate vinchi as 'statelets' (as in islets!). These statelets had neither geographical nor ethnic rationality. There are 53 independent African states, all members of the United Nations. 'If numbers were horses', Mwalimu quipped, 'Africa would be riding high!' Yet Africa is the weakest continent. World councils make decisions without regard to the interests of Africa. Let us not glorify nation-states inherited from colonialism, Mwalimu used to tell his fellow state leaders. Mwalimu admonished the new generation of African leaders to reject the 'return to tribe'. He characterised the current upsurge of ethnic, racial, and other forms of narrow nationalisms (which we are witnessing all over Africa, including in our own country) as fossilising 'Africa into the wounds inflicted upon it by the vultures of imperialism.'
Colonial boundaries were artificially carved up by the colonialists, of the colonialists and for the colonialists. They have little to do with the history or cultures of Africa. The map of Africa is full of straight-line boundaries, compared to other continents. It is as if someone sat with a geometrical set to draw them. That is what, more or less, happened when colonial powers met at the Berlin Conference in 1885 to slice up their newly acquired booty. Teaching us the map of Tanzania, I remember my geography teacher telling us to start by drawing a hexagonal tilted at the bottom and then modify it to get the map. The greatest modification would of course be the shores of the Indian Ocean - the only side of the boundary the colonialists could not get straight!
Related to the argument on non-viability was the third element of sovereignty or self-determination.
SOVEREIGNTY
Mwalimu argued that the mini-states of Africa could not, on their own, exercise their sovereign right to make their own decisions in the global world dominated by the powerful. He emphasised, particularly in his early writings, that our erstwhile colonial masters would divide us based on our sovereignties to continue ruling us. There is no doubt that in his political outlook, Mwalimu placed a great premium on the right of the people to make their own decisions. That was the fundamental meaning of independence - the right to make our own decisions ourselves.
But Mwalimu was a head of state, a political leader. Underlying his position on the right of the people to make their own decisions was the un-stated assumption of state sovereignty. People make their decisions through their states. In fact, the dichotomy and the contradiction between people's sovereignty and state sovereignty were pretty fudged in Mwalimu's thought and much more so in his political practice. I shall not go into his political practice except to state that that aspect is closely connected with the other strand in his thought, the question of agency.
AGENCY
Having forcefully argued for African unity, the basic questions of history arise: Who will bring it about? Which social agency will be the carrier of this great historical task? Neither Nyerere nor Nkrumah raised these questions in this form, at least not while they were in power. But implied in their position it was clear that the agency to bring about unity was the state. Partly this was an acknowledgement of the historical formation of the state in colonial Africa; partly it was realpolitik. The state in Africa was a colonial imposition. It did not develop organically through social struggles within the African formation. Thus when we raised the flag of independence, sang our national anthem and proclaimed sovereignty, it was the sovereignty of the state inherited from colonialism. In that sense, it was not our state; we took over the colonial state. There was no internal social class to shoulder the task of nation-building and economic development. The only available organised force was the state. The colonial heritage thus left the first generation of African nationalists with no option. The task of transformation fell on the state, almost by default. This is where the real contradiction lay. For the state which was supposed to undertake the task of nation-building was itself a colonial state, the very antithesis of a national state.
When it came to the task of building African unity, the contradiction was even more blatant. First, independence meant attaining state sovereignty. Independence before unity meant recognising and reinforcing colonial boundaries. Ironically, the man who condemned colonial boundaries most was the same man who moved the motion on the sanctity of colonial boundaries at the 1964 Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Cairo. To compound the irony, it was the same man who recognised secessionist Biafra and marched into Uganda without regard to borders. That man was Mwalimu Nyerere. As intellectuals and historians, we may say it was ironical. But Mwalimu was not simply an intellectual. He was a head of state. The king and the philosopher combined in him, and they could not always sit together comfortably.
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