Three Case Studies in African Nationalism

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Three Case Studies inAfrican Nationalism
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• Kwame NkrumahGold Coast/Ghana
• Léopold SenghorSenegal
• Jomo KenyattaKenya

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Kwame NkrumahPan-Africanism and Development
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Kwame Nkrumah

• Born 1909 to a fairly poor family
• He excelled in school and became a teacher, but
  in 1935 managed to secure a scholarship to study
  theology in the US
• In the US he combined study with networking and,
  in particular, friendships with Marxists from the
  African diaspora
• He returned to Ghana following the Pan-African
  Congress of 1945

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Nkrumahs Rise

• 1947 Formation of the United Gold Coast
  Convention, made up of coastal lawyers and
  businessmenNkrumah was elected president
• 1948 Police open fire on peaceful
  demonstration, which prompted riotingcolonial
  government arrested Nkrumah
• Nkrumah had nothing to do with the rioting, but
  his arrest made him a celebrity
• Following his release from prison, Nkrumah
  founded Convention Peoples Party, a more radical
  version of the UGCC.

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• The CPP campaigned for independence with an
  emphasis on the areas industrial development and
  progress
• British began incremental moves towards
  self-government for Gold Coast
• 1954 elections were held for internally sovereign
  government
• In 1957, Nkrumah became the prime minister of the
  independent nation of Ghana, but some British
  officials remained

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Significance of Ghana

• NamePan-African reference to the medieval
  kingdom (actually located in present-day Mali)
• Transition to independence dominated by one party
  (Convention Peoples Party)
• Small, relatively coherent country (population of
  approx. 5 million)
• Ghana set the precedent for African independence
  but also proved to be an atypical case

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Nkrumah and Ghana

• Nkrumah envisioned Ghanas independence in the
  first step towards African unification
• He believed such a unification was necessary to
  be able to compete economically and politically
• In order for Africa to claim its place among
  other nations, he believed, it would have to
  experience the same kind of industrial revolution
  or technological shift that other areas had
  experienced

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Léopold SenghorThe Triumph of Assimilationism?
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Léopold Senghor

• Born into a polygamous family in Joal, Senegal
  (near but outside the Quatre Communes) in 1906
• He went to Catholic boarding school at the age of
  8 and considered becoming a priest
• His skill in such subjects as Greek and Latin won
  him a scholarship to study in France at the
  Sorbonne
• In 1935 he became the first African certified as
  a lysée teacher

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• Senghor taught in a number of French schools
  while also writing poetry
• He became a major proponent of the Negritude
  movement
• In 1939, he enrolled in the French army
• He was captured in 1940 and became a POW

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Prayer for Peace, Léopold Senghor, 1940

• Lord God, forgive white Europe!
• Yes, it is true, Lord, that for four centuries of
  enlightenment
• She has thrown her spit and her baying watchdogs
  on my lands
• And Christians, renouncing Your light and Your
  gentle hear
• Have lighted their camps with my parchments,
• Tortured my followers, deported my doctors and
  scientists.
• I want to pray especially for France.
• Lord, among white nations, place France at the
  Fathers right hand.
• Oh, I know she, too, is Europe, that she has
  snatched my children
• Like a cattle-rustling brigand from the north
• To fatten her lands with sugarcane and cotton
• Since black sweat is fertilizer.
• Yes, Lord, forgive France, who hates occupying
  forces
• And yet imposes such strict occupation on me
• Who offers a heros welcome to some, and treats
• The Senegalese like mercenaries, the Empires
  black watchdogs.
• Oh, Lord, take from my memory France that is not
  France,
• This mask of meanness and hate on the face of
  France

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Towards Independence

• Senghor did not actively campaign for
  independence from France
• He was the head of the local council of Senegal
  when he was elected president of the newly
  independent nation in 1960
• Senghor retained French advisors and remained a
  strong supporter of French language education and
  francophonie

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Jomo KenyattaThe Power of Ethnicity
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Invention Paradigms

• T.O. Ranger, The Invention of Tradition
• Leroy Vail, The Invention of Tribalism
• Culture is shaped and deployed in ways dictated
  more by the present than by the past
• Invention can be conscious or unconscious
• Invention does not occur in a vacuumpeople use
  the cultural materials available to them
• Critics have argued that the invention
  paradigms are condescending and do not take
  seriously peoples self-descriptions and
  self-conceptions

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Anthropology and Colonialism

• The discipline of anthropology developed during
  the last quarter of the 19th century
• Interested in studying human difference
  (especially in primitive settings)

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• Anthropology tended to assume a divide between
  dynamic civilized societies and static
  uncivilized societies
• Anthropology provided an intellectual foundation
  for European ideas about tribalism and tradition,
  while individual anthropologists often worked
  within colonial administrations
• In the 1920s, Bronislaw Malinowski pioneered
  so-called functionalist anthropologyaimed at
  understanding the function, rather than the
  meaning, of culture

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Culture Brokers

• Term coined by Leroy Vail
• Refers to African elitesoften mission
  educatedwho sought to reinforce what they saw as
  tradition
• Often used the ideas of tradition and tribe
  in attempts to strengthen African position in
  negotiations with colonial authorities

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Jomo Kenyatta

• Born Kamau wa Ngengi in 1889, educated in mission
  schools and baptized as John Peter, later went by
  the name Johnstone Kamau
• Worked as a clerk in the colonial administration
• In 1924, joined the Kikuyu Central Association,
  an explicitly tribal political group
• In 1929, the KCA sent him to London to lobby the
  British government on Kikuyu land claims
• Attended several schools in the UK and the USSR
  before enrolling in University College London to
  study anthropology with Bronislaw Malinowski

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• Facing Mount Kenya, an ethnography of the Kikuyu
  was his doctoral dissertation, published in 1938
• Remained resident in London until 1946during
  this period he married a (white) English woman
  and had a child with her
• He returned to Kenya and became president of the
  newly formed Kenya African Union, campaigning for
  independence from British rule

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Mau Mau

• Diffuse uprising in Kenya, 1952-1960
• Land and Freedom Army, mostly Kikuyu (but did
  not include all Kikuyu)
• Oathing system played on established ritual
  frameworks
• Mau Mau conflicts largely rural, involving
  guerilla type actions
• Draconian British response included the arrest of
  Kenyattanot a Mau Mau leader

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Towards Independence

• Despite his background in ethnic organizing,
  Kenyatta was elected prime minister in 1963 on a
  platform of national unity
• He sought reconciliation with the white settler
  community, asking them to remain in Kenya
• Despite this emphasis on unification, the tension
  between Kenyattas Kikuyu identity and the
  nations Kenyan identity remained