Africa: Is 6d, 15c (SA)/U.S.A., Canada 50c/Rest of the World 2s 6d

"The role of African nationalismis different-or should bedifferent-from the nationalismof the past. We must use theAfrican national states as aninstrument for the reunificationof Africa, and not allow ourenemies to use them as tools fordividing Africa. Africannationalism is meaningless, inanachronistic, and is dangerousif it is not at the same timePan-African ism." J. K. Nyerere

SeptemberSMTWTFS

1 2345 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 1617 18 19 20 21 22 2324 25 26 27 28 29 30

30 Botswana (1966)

OctoberSMTWTFS1 2 345 6 78 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 23 24 25 26 27 2829 30 31

1 Nigeria (1960) 9 Uganda (1962)2 Guinea (1958) 24 Zambia (1964)4 Lesotho (1966)

NovemberSMTWTFS

1 2345 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 1819 20 21 22.23 24 2526 27 28 29 30

28 Mauretania(1960)

DecemberSMTWTFS

1 2345 6 789

10 11 12 13 14 15 1617 18 19 20 21 22 2324 25 26 27 28 29 3031

12 Kenya (1963) 24 Libya (1951)

206/DECEMBER 1966

Vol. 5 No. 10 December 1966

207 THE RISE AND FALL OF GRACE IBINGIRA: Andrede la Rue

209 U.N. AND THE SOUTH AFRICAN STRUGGLE:Raymond Mazisi Kunene

2'11 THE ARROGANCE OF ABILITY: Robert McDonald

222 BOTS WANA INDEPENDENCE: N'aomi Mitchison

224 HARSH WORDS AND HARSHER FACTS: ReginaldHerboldGreen

226 NIGERIANS: Suzanne 'Cronje

BOOKS AND THE ARTS

212 "THE USE OF A FEW STROKES": O. R.Dathorne

213 NOTES ON WEST AFRICAN LITERATURE INFRENCH: Maryse Conde

215 RETOLD FROM THE FRENCH V : Poems byOuologuem Yambo and Thomas R'ahandraha

215-221 Reviews by Mofolo Bulane, KhadambiAsalache, Effa Okupa, Hollis R. Lynch,Martin Legassick and C. F. Goodfellow

205 and ,228 Calendar; 206 Leader; 210 To theEditor; 223 Inside America

CALENDAR ILLUSTRATIONS

(Reading from top left to right)Wole Soyinka - Benin 'bronze plaque - Etchingby Twins Seven Seven - Dance School - ZakesMokae in The BloodknotThe quotation is from Freedom and Un#y-Uhuruna Umoja, by Julius K. Nyerere, Oxford Univer­sity Press, Nairobi and London 1966 and 1967

EDITOR: Randolph Vigne

LITERARY EDITOR: Lewis Nkosi

DESIGNER: James Currey

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60 PADDINGTON STREETMARYLEBONE LONDON ,wlENGLAND

Published by Gransight Holdings Ltd., 12 Gayfere Street,London. W.!. and Printed by Goodwin Press, Ltd. (T.V.),IJS Fonthill Road, London, ~~.., ,Bngland~

Come what may

AT TIMES IT MAY be permissible for a joum'al to say something of itself. As we endour fifth year ()f, publication, our 47th issue, a word on our past, present and futureseems due. '

The past was the years of publication in South Africa, when we tried to showAfrica and itself to a South Africa cut off from the continent to the north. Equallywe tried to help plan change' and the system to succeed it. We looked for writers­names like Ekwensi, Soyinka, Ngugi, U Tarn' Si were still new in our early issues.We tf.ied to dissociate from a Cold War' that 'was and is irrelevant or harmful toAfrica. Potekhin and A. B. Davidson appeared among British and American writers.We wrote as we pleased.

DISASTER WAS GRADUAL but inevitable. From tributes in Cape Tin'les leaders andcirculation by the all-powerful CNA newsstand chain we slid to police raids, confis­cation of whole lssues, a range of attacks to close us short of an image-harming ban.There was light relief, 'a touch of police-state humour such as when a Special Branchwag pinned on our door " Moved to Caledon Square" (Security Police HQ) after heand his men had emptied our office for a prolonged investigation. There was pain too- victimisation of writers 'and agents, sometimes isolated men in country areas. Thegrim techniques of censorship by threats and intimidation. Unhappy far-off things butthe memory revived here should indicate why the problems of our present and futurewill not be 'allowed to stop The NeW African where Baas Vorster's hatchet-men failed.

WHAT ARE THESE PROBLEMS?' Of the present, they have been reorientation to'an independent African position, when ,all who could run the magazine had leftSouth Africa, difficulties of publication in a new environment, personal problemsin new lives that had to 'be made in exile, the struggle to reach South Africa, whenThe New African and two successors had been banned from importation into thecountry. These, even the last, are problem'S which time solves. Solid African b~ses

in East, West and Central Africa have been built. Gaps in Francophone and NorthAfrica may start to close in 1967. ,As Africa's need to find new directions becomesmore pressing, the magazine grows strong enough to provide another place where theym'ay be looked for. If the future allows.

THE PROBLEM OF OUR FUTURE is Africa's in microism - how to develop without aid- :...,;i',

that carries strings. We !have been blessed since 1962 with financial support, mainlyfrom the Congress for 'Cultural Freedom, which has on no occasion tried to influenceour policy. For reasons that are, we accept, not connected with policy, this aid hasdwindled and now ceased. Well-wishers have made survival possible thus far. Butviability is not yet wIthin our grasp. Small circulation means no advertising; noadvertising means 'a deficit; a deficit means no money for development, which, toclose the vicious circle, means small circulation. Money for development must be foundwithout independence 'being forfeited. Every reader Who believes in the value of anindependent forum for ideas on African political and 'cultural development, for thecreative writers and poets of Africa, for the freedom-fighters whose countries are stillin slavery, for the spread of African non-racial !ideas and values in the third worldand beyond, can 'help to crack this vicious circle by introducing The New African to awider circle - to bookshops 'and news-stands, libraries, colleges, governments, and toindividuals. Supplies of order forms ,will be sent to all who wf.ite for them andcommission paid. Help us in every way you 'can.

WE END 1966 WITH MORE than just this appeal for help. We write also to explain thatthe problem of 1967 is one of economic survival until the magazine can pay its way.And to pledge the continued independence of The New African come what may.

InsideVolume 5 closes with the first of ail important mree-part analysis of Ugandanpolitics by the pseudonymous ANDRE DE LA RUE. The s'eries remedies the complaint bythe late DR. CLEM GOODFELLO\V, in a posthumously published review, that" accountsof modem Africa are too often content to describe spectacular politics personalities,with on1y fleeting references to their economic and social origins". Taxation in EastAfrica is 'a'1so dealt with in depth 'by DR. R. H. GREEN, who is shortly to becomeEconomic Adviser to the Tanzanian Treasury. Following November''S BrasiHa seminarreports, RAYMOND KUNENE of the African National Congress considers the UN's futurerole 'in the South Afridln revolution. So to the world student movements and theirmeaning for the third world - ROBERT MCDCNALD, an Australia~ teaching inZambia, reports on ISC 12, held in Nairobi, September 1966. More is written ofWest African literature than politics - by MOFOLO BULANE, the French West IndianMARYSE CONDE, and in WILLFRIED FEUSER~S translation from Mali and Senegal poets.RONALD DATHORNE, of Unesco, Sierra 'Leone, outlines evidence of pre-colonial scripts inWest Africa; in reviews EFFA OKUPA ,write5 of religions old and new, and HOLLIS

LYNCH, biographer of Edward Blyden, o'n the old empires. A -personal view of Nigeria'shum'an relationships, in t!he n-ation'al hour of tri'al, is given by SUZANNE CRONJE. Thereare book reviews by the ~·;,Kenyan KHADAMBI ASALA.CHE and South African MARTINLEG'AS SICK. ' ' •

The riseand fall ofGrace Ibingira

A study in factionalism,

nationalism and

machiavellianism -in

Uganda politics

DECEMBER 1966/207

ANDR-E DE LA RUE

GULU TO THE NEW CONSTITUTION

IN APRIL 1964 at its Gulu Conference, the ruling Uganda People'sCongress elected a new secretary-general, Grace lbingira, a ministerof state in the Uganda government. Backed by the President ofthe UPC, Dr. Milton Obote, prime minister of Uganda, Ibingiraousted John Kakonge by two votes. In the summer of 1965Kakonge became a specially-elected member of parliament ­again by two votes. This time, however, he was Dr. Obote'·scandidate and his opponent was backed by Grace Ibingira.

On February 4, 1966, ·Grace Ibingira led the cabinet in reversinga key decision of the then absent Prime Minister. The issue wasthe handling of corruption and seditious conspiracy charges whichhad been brought by the opposition. On the floor of Parliamentonly one MP stood against the reversal - John Kakonge.

On February 22, 1966 the police Special Force swooped ona cabinet meeting and carried five ministers - headed by Ibingira- into detention. In a series of rapid moves, Dr. -Obote assumedfull powers, suspended the 1962 (Independence) Constitution,removed the President and Vice-President, and appointed aJudicial Committee of Inquiry into the corruption charges. OnApril 15 a new constitution was announced, immediately endorsedby Parl'iament, and Dr. Obote elected Executive President ofUganda, while on April 30 a cabinet and administrative reshufflebrought in four Junior Ministers and three new faces - includingthat of John K'akonge at Economic Planning and Development.

What lis the meaning of this sequence of events? Do theyillustrate, as claimed, Dr. Obote's lust for power and ruthlessdisregard for legality? Or is the gradual reinstatement of JohnKakonge - vocally " anti-American" and often accused of being"the USSR's man" - evidence of a slide into East-alignedneutralism? Was Grace Ibingira the moderate, pragmatic exponentof due process and constitutional democracy swept aside by awave of one-party absolutism and neo....;M·arxist chauvinism? Or,again, has the whole spectacle been one of a political machine'sruthless elimination of its own leaders and of Michel's iron lawof oligarchy?

o BOT E 's AND I BIN G I RA' S p. 0 \V E R B A S E S

UGANDA POLITICS 1964-66 is not the story of three men. However,the recurring' trio - Milton 'Obote, (Gra'ce Ibingira, John Kakonge- do symbolise key strands in the intricate tapestry of Uganda'spolitical system. Grace Ibingira, still an MP, sometime Ministerof State and UPC secretary-general, at one time appeared a lessintelligent -but more intellectual version of Dr. Obote. Moreconservative, aristocratic and cautious than Obote, Ibingira was

AND RED E L A RUE is the pen-name of an -observer ofAfrican affairs, resident in East Africa. Two." Jurther articles

'bring his account of the recent critical Uganda political situationup to date.

less widely popular but more orientated towards party notables thanhis president.

Dr. Milton Obote, Prime Minister and now President, is anastute and exceedingly able machine politician, and not a charis­matic leader. He is a pragmacist and in social outlook a moderate- at least in African terms. Ideology is not of central concern tohim; the maintenance, consolidation, and use of power are. Onthe other hand, Dr. Obote is deeply dedicated to Uganda's unity,social development, and economic progress. His real concern forhis people's welfare is widely accepted and respected in Uganda.

In political 'tactics, Dr. Obote's pragmatic idealism takes ,the formof cautious waiting and of quick advance at times of his ownchoosing. He allows his opponents to muster strength, to let theiraims become known, to build up internal factions within their owncoalitions, to overextend themselves in grasping for power just outof reach. Meanwhile, he consolidates strength and removes minorweaknesses. At times he gives the impression of losing controlover the situation. Then, even as rumours begin to herald hiscoming defeat, he moves rapidly and decisively. His immediateobjective attained and. the whole opposition thrown into disarray,he gains speedy adoption of major changes whose mere proposalcould have cost him his office before the crisis.

President Obote's political power rests on three overlappingbases: (a) respect 'and trust by a majority of Ugandans in alldIstricts other than Buganda; (b) regional suppon in most ofNorthern Uganda, based on belief held by this economically back­ward area that he provides an effective force for its developmentthrough state action; (c) majority suppon at the UPC nationaldelegate level as the man who led the UPC to power and has thebroadest favourable image with the electorate.

As a politician and statesman, the term Machiavellian mightwell be applied to President Obote. Not the distorted, diabolicalMachiavel of polemics, although that is his image for a majorityof Buganda. 'Nor even the slick, cynical one-upmanship of ThePrince, that tract written for Caesere Borgia, Duke of the Romagna,who fell by not following it. Rather Obote acts on the principlescontained in The Discourses: faith in the people not the aristo­cracy, belief in the necessity of national unification, concern for asystem of operational justice and individual liberty, emphasis onpolitical timing and thoroughness, recognition that to carry outhigh aims one must retain power but that power without aimsbeyond its own retention is ultimately unavailing and unretainable.

This image was always somewhat misleading. Ibingira rarelycommitted himself on issues unless he could do so in terms that allmajor forces felt supported their position. His speeches weremodels of platitudes dressed in superficially new and intellectuallanguage. His forums were the corridors and ante-rooms, not themarket places, of power. His tools were the private conversationand the mutual special interest, not the public address or theshared concern for national welfare. In shon Grace Ibingira hadthe courage of all the day's popular convictions and the convictionthat more -power should be his.

He and his close :·al.ly - then Vice-President and Kyabazingaof Busoga - Sir Wilberforce Nadiope, had wide contacts amongthe more conservative and· aristocratic U'Pc local notables. Ibingira

20S/DECEMBER 1966is a Bahima, that is a member of the cattle-raising aristocracywho ruled the Kingdom of Ankole on watered down Tutsi lines.He is therefore a Southerner, but not strictly speaking a Bantu.He and Nadiope were instrumental in convincing Dr. Obote thatKakonge was a danger to him and in securing his removal infavour of Ibingira.

Ibingira's support sprang from four sources: (a) the Ankole'UPC Machine, which he later lost to a commoner who had crossedthe floor from the Democratic Party, Basil Bataringaya, now Mini­ster of the Interior; (b) a collection of ambitious Southern localand district leaders ,who wanted power and feared what they sawas Prime Minister Obote's populism; Cc) a coterie of relativelyconservative intellectuals who viewed 'Obote as pedestrian andlacking in polish and glitter (which most of his speeches are); and(d) a growing working relationship with Mengo Palace and the" separatist" Kiganda, aristocracy headed" by the then Presidentand Kabaka Sir Frederick Mutesa.

Until October 1965 Grace Ibingirawas a Machiavellian ofThe Prince. Thereafter, he seems to have become intoxicated bythe nearness of power and forgotten the danger of wounding hisopponent while leaving him the pov"er to strike back at a timeand place of his own choosing.

KAKONGE'S ROLE

JOHN KAKONGE, 'Minister of Economic Development and Planning,is a very different man. He is a radical nationalist. Despite hisaristocratic Nyoro background he has no roots there. A professed"scientific socialist" he has more in common with Yugoslavrevisionism, the quasi-Marxist radicalism of Michael Foot, or thephilosophy of 'African radical social reconstruction enunciated invague words and concrete actions by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere andT ANU, than with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. A strong proponentof East African federation and co-operation, he is well thoughtof both in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam. .

The most striking point about John Kakonge, however, is thathe is basically not a politician either by inclination or naturalability. As upe Secretary-General (1960-64), he built the massbase and party structure that won the 1962 elections - a baseIbingira allowed to erode away within a year of taking office. AsDirector of Planning (1963 onward) he supervised the creation ofWork for Progress. He was and is 'an effective -speaker: charismaticta mass audiences, studiously grounded and substantive to intellec­tual ones. No one would deny that John Kakonge has definiteideas how Uganda should develop in the interest of Ugandansor that he believes that the political system and political power arecritical to realising them. However, Kakonge has never shownadequate understanding that to carry out his aims for Uganda hemust hold and use political power nor a fortiori that he, as aradical and a man with power in his hands, inevitably has politicalenemies who seek his downfall.

At Gulu, he might have held the Secretary-Generalship againstObote and Ibingira had he not believed up to the last moment thatboth. were his friends. (He held to this faith despite the warningsof hIS supporters.) After Gulu he did not fight back. His excursioninto Buganda politics in 1965 like his condemnation of US-'Congopolicy early in that year and of " hired agents of foreign powers"(Ibingira and 'Co.) in October were fairly clearly in loyal support,and partly at the behest of, Prime Minister Obote. Apart from hislonely vote on the Ocheng Inquiry motion and an earlier muddledand \vithdrawn, criticism of the, Nyoro aristocracy (whom h~destests as did his father, a member of the puritan Balokale sectof the 'Anglican Church of Uganda) when such criticism seemedto attack Obote's Bunyoro supporters, John Kakonge took noactive part in the 1966 political events. i\ man of ideas and idealsbut also of programmes and organising ability, an intellectual bytemperament and ambition if not fully by training nor uniformlyby performance, John Kakonge is not fully a politician. Perhapsthis is largely because he is very unwilling to believe any individualhe knows can be basically hos.tile to his ideals or to him, a nobleillusion but a very dangerous one in political life.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND

THE POLITICAL system in which these three men operate (oroperated in the case of Ibingira) is in many respects complex andconfusing and certainly radically different from that of Kenya,Tanganyika, Ghana, or even Nigeria. Uganda before independencecomprised one strong, separatist national group, namely theBaganda, and a number of other peoples all to some extentinternally divided. Except for Buganda no district or kingdomwished to secede from Uganda. All were at least moderatelynational in outlook and united in suspicion of the Baganda, originalagents, allies, and beneficiaries of the British conquest. True theSebei in the East and the Bamba and 'Bakonjo in the Ruwenzorifoothills of the West had waged near civil wars for separatedistricts. Until Sebei had won their district and the Bamba­Bakonjo, while still titularly in the Kingdom of Toro, had directCentral Government rule replacing that of Mtoro chiefs. In eithercase, their object had not been secession from Uganda itself, merelyfrom Bugisu and Toro respectively

Outside Buganda, nationalist politics had been primarily acampaign to inherit British power and to ensure that Bugandaremained effectively part of Uganda. Opposition to the colonialregime was a useful symbol but few seriously believed independencewould be denied or even long withheld. Partisanship turned ondistrict and clan loyalties, on social groupings and on religion, theDemocratic Party being seen as Roman Catholic, the UPe asChurc;h of Uganda and, to an extent, Moslem. Thus it was fairlyeasy for most wlPs to cross the floor from the DP once it hadlost office.

Factionalism within the UPC was, however, inherent in thebase of the political system, and was strengthened by intellectualdiscontent among both radicals and conservatives, at the rate anddirection of progress. A further factor was the quasi-educated,semi-employed group which crystallised into the UPC YouthWing. This had originally been a radical" direct action" groupbut was later to fragment into basically Kakonge and basicallyIbingira factions.

Buganda politics centred on the Kabakaship and on Bugandanautonomy within Uganda. The events leading to the deportationof Kabaka Sir Frederick Mutesa in 1953 were far more to dowith Bugandan opposition to Ugandan unitarism, as promotedby the Governor, Sir Andre\\T Cohen, than with anti-British oranti-Asian nationalism. The 1962 constitution entrenched separatepowers, including indirect election of Buganda central governmentMPs by the Buganda Lukiko. This body had a de fa~to majorityof aristocratic Saza chiefs, appointed by the Kabaka, and theirrural, feudal, pocket constituency members.

At and after the 1962 elections the Kabaka's Kabaka Yekka(yekka==alone) party made an alliance with the UPe'. This waspartly because the KY saw the DP, with its strong RomanCatholic backing and quasi-populist programme, as a moreimmediate challenge in Buganda. In 1963 Sir Frederick becamepresident of Uganda by parliamentary election. The vice-president,Sir Wilberforce Nadiope, Kyabazinga of Busoga, was, at leastup to that point, a sharp political foe of the Kabaka's. e

[To be continued

U.N.and theSouth Africanstruggle

RAYMONDMAZISIKUNENE

DECEMBER 1966/209

a post-Brasilia assessmentof the relevance of theworld body to a revolutionthat must be made by thepeople themselves

TI-fE NATURE OF OPPRESSIVE REGIMES is such that as they growmore and more oppressive they employ wide censorship on newsand information reaching the country they control. Since theadvent of the Afrikaner Nationalist party to power, rnore andmore laws have been passed to restrict publications. One reasonfor this is the belief that oppressed people will revolt not onlybecause of the harshness of the laws but also because there is acollective sense inspiring such revolt. In a vvay this assessment iscorrect. All revolutions must by their very nature be a collectiverejection of the oppressive regime'. This sense of collectivity isachieved not only through a sophisticated underground corI1muni­cation system, but also through a sense of solidarity expressedby the outside world.

For South Africa, this sense of solidarity has assumed an evengreater importance since the emergence of ..r\frica as a force ininternational affairs. This is one of the reasons for the militancy ofthe resolutions on colonial affairs passed by international bodies.The creation of Decolonisation Committees, Trusteeship con11:nit­tees and others, is a direct result of Africa's participation in UNaffairs. Yet throughout the history of the Ul~, it is the big pOvversthat have played the decisive role. Indeed the very conception ofUNO was, as it were, an attempt at finding a forn1ula by whichbig powers should avoid having to make war in their maraudingthrough the \vorld. Of course this was dressed up in s\veet languageas representing the high ideals of a united \vorld. That tb,e v/orldand unity meant the world of big powers is clearly illustn:-tted bythe initial participation of such countries as South !~frica. Thesecountries, whilst paying lipservice to the ideals of humanity, \verein their own countrii~S Inai!1taining vicious and barbaric systfrr.s.1\ forlnula was found to reconcile these contradictions.

Article 2 Section 7' of the UN Charter states that there shallbe no interference in internal affairs. At the same time a provisionwas made in Article 39 of the UN Charter that if any situationthreatens world peace the UN is entitled to intervene. Of coursethe definition of a threat to peace was left to the Security Council,\vhich was and is still controlled by big powers.

IN RECENT YEARS THE BIG POWERS have had to evolve ne\v devicesto meet the increasing pressure from the Afro-Asian bloc. Thusthe volume of words condemning apartheid has increased by leapsand bounds, sometimes reaching such virulent proportions that one\vould assume a threat to peace was finally defined by the veryintensity of the condemnation. But alas, the hypocrisy of nationsknows no bounds. The very countries that viciously condemn South...-\.frica continue supporting her with economic, m-ilitary, anddiplon1atic support. In fact there is evidence that some of t.hesespeeches of condemnation are discussed \vith South Africa beforer:and. Small ,vonder then that she does not take them seriously.

A large number of resolutions have been passed against SouthAfrica's apartheid and against her colonisation of South \VestAfrica. Only a few however have been half-heartedly implemented.

RAY ?vi 0 N D lvi A Z I S I K U 1" E 1'\ E is tIle EUTopean representa­ti-ve of the African National Congress of South Africa.

Of these the most relevant is the resolution against the supply ofarms to South Africa. Britain, whilst giving the impression' thatshe is implementing the resolution, continues in fact to providemilitary cover to South Africa, and to supply spare parts. Theresolution itself has lost its meaning since South Africa has, withthe help of big powers, built her own industries for militaryequipment. This is often achieved through the granting of alicence or with the co-operation of a third country which is notimplementing the resolution. The building of. the engines forthe Macchi 11 in Italy by a joint Anglo-Italian firm is a casein point. France, Germany and Italy continue their militarydealings with South Africa uncensored by the very UN thatpressed the resolution.

There are other resolutions, of course, which have been carriedout, but on the whole they are of an innocuous character. TheUl'~ assembly resolutions present no serious threat to the powersviolating UN rules so long as those powers have the supportof the big powers. This has been very clearly demonstrated inthe re~olutions concerning South Africa's violations. I-Io~.v can asmall state of this size defy the UN without the support of thosepowers vvith a stake in the maintenance of the status quo? Britain,France and the lJS:A are the most violent opponents of sanctionsand yet they never cease to condemn apartheid. We can reachonly one conclusion, that no UN action is possible with a chartero.pen to 'so many interpretations and a structure so heavilv loadedin favour of big powers. "

S!,1ALL \VONDER THAT OTHER NATIONS find their roles are no morethan the exerting of pressure. The ~ffectiveness of thi's pressuredepends entirely on whether the big powers can afford to shifttheir position or whether the shifting of position is politicallYbeneficial to their international positon. Furthermore in times o~fgreat crisis tnle alignments en1erge outside the UN. The CongoUN operation was bungled by big powers: not only did theycarry on round-table conferences outside the UN but also usedthe UN force as an instrument of their own policies.

I t is clear also that the South African governnlent is no exceptionin the operations of these manoeuvres. It may well be asked,therefore, whether the South African liberation movement, whichby its very nature is acting contrary to the interests of the bigpowers, can possibly expect to appeal to the Ul'-J? '--

To answer this question one must look carefully at the Ineanil1gof revolutionary action. It can only be so called if it tak~s intoconsideration all factors favourable to its goals. The present-daypolitical alignments are such that no serious revolutionary organi~a­

tion can ignore their relationship to the purpose of its operations.

SINCE THE UN IS THE GREATEST single asselnbla;:;e of nations, it isurgent and necessary for a revolutionary n10ven1ent to Inake itsdemands within the available facilities of this body. But it errsif it puts all its hopes on such intervention. In fact it is doubtfulif UN intervention can ever be the solution of the problems be­setting the oppressed. In SOlue cases UN intervention has deprivedthe oppressed of their victory, as in the Congo..A,t the same tirl1.e,

210/DECEMBER 1966

to ignore this assemblage would be utter folly. The UN in takingup issues presented by the liberation movement crystallises thealignments and isolates those powers whose intentions are sinister.'"This is exactly what has happened in the debates about sanctionsagainst southern Africa, be they military or economic.

It is also within the U that sympathetic countries get theirbriefing about the dimensions of the problem. It is clear that nationsact only when they are confronted with the full reality of theproblem facing other countries. Yet it is wrong for any liberationmovement to put all its trust in an amorphous body such as theUN. Its importance is only in so far as it is part of a "vholeseries of international drives to swing \;vorld opinion to its side.For world opinion has two most important effects on the liberatoryforces. First it isolates the enemy politically and puts supportingpowers in an identical position with the policies and practices ofthe enemy country. Secondly its effect is to boost the morale ofthose seriously fighting the enemy, thus creating for the liberationforces a worldwide context for their actions.

l\.lany a revolution has slowed up almost to a halt by itsisolation. If a revolution is in essence an action carried out by awhole people, it is necessary to recognise that the dictates of

revolutionary organisation involve revolutionary zeal, realitiesof disillusionment, real,ities of mental isolation, etc. For thesereasons also, the UN, in spite of its feeble position, can be usedto benefit the South African revolutionary effort. This does not meanthat the country must be sold to the UN or to South Africanliberals, who will be only too happy to see a partial victory.

The battlefield for the South African revolution is neither inBritain, France nor the~ UN, but in South Africa itself. The factthat the UN has failed to carry out the terms of its resolution onSouth Africa constitutes no great catastrophe. The only catas­trophe will be the failure of our revolution in South Africa andit can never fail if we ourselves resolutely take up arms to effectour O\\7n victory.

Needless to say, no revolution is true revolution that dependsfor its success on intervention from outside. Ideologically and other­wise it must reflect the history of the South African struggle.N or can non-violence, an ideology of the weak, and stronglyfavoured by those with a stake in the country, be the answer.In this sense then, UN is irrelevant to our struggle for it canneither provide arms with which we must fight nor can it trulyreflect our ultimate goal. e

Future of KPUSIR,-While agreeing with M. D. Odinga'sdemocratic sentiments, I must protest at hisunwarranted assertion that "his present policiescould safely carry Jaramogi Oginga Odingainto State House". Throughout the "littlegeneral election", 'KANU had easy or resound­ing victories on a provincial basis except inCentral N yanza and M'achakos districts. Yeteven in KPU's Central Nyanza stronghold, outof 244,027 registered voters only 55,014 sup­ported KPU - and all rhis at a time when KPUwas a "nine-days' wonder ". It is now a spentforce, whose offer of " free things" to the peopleof Kenya ha s been dismissed by them. ­P.G. Kisumu L. MATHENGE

The ,4frican CommunistSIR,-Really one wonders where one is. Vorsterand Nkoana both industriously ferreting out theReds from beneath the Beds. And The NewAfrican again embarking on its highly-equivocalanti-left line.

Unlike Nkoana I found the articles in TheAfrican Contmunist about the origins andpolicies of P AC sober, remarkably balanced(considering the intemperate attacks by PACupon practically everyone), sensible and accurate.

Nkoana's concern about Nelson Mandela's

loyalty to principles is touching. But, one mightask, is not the more balanced part of the P ACprogramme taken (with precious little thanks)from the earlier programmes of the ANC, fromwhich the PAC hastily, petulantly and impa­tiently broke away?

I am glad, sir, that I didn't meet Nkoana bychance, for perhaps if I had he might haveaccused me of writing dle -articles that Nkoanathinks are so wicked. Why should Micha~l

Harmel- or anyone else - have to account toNkoana? Why should Nkoana think it so sinisterthat Michael Hannel meets the attacks with asilence that many of us would 'call restrained anddignified?

South Africa does tend to encourage paranoia.Exile also encourages it. I wish that The NewAfrican would do sometl1ing to discourage itby giving the noisy Nkoana a rest. - L. BLOOMDepa1·tment of Psychology~ University Collegeof South Wales and Monmouthshire, CathaysPark, Cal'diff

[Mr. Nkoana writes: "The so-called SouthAf"ican c left ~ ought to be quite pleased withme for exploding the myth of a Cleft' in WhiteSouth Africa, a myth which has been assidu­ously built up by Vorster. Will Mr. Bloompe1'haps care to explain why anyone who writessuch C sensible and accurate ~ articles should soobviously lack the courage of his convictions,alld write under a pseudollyrn? Mr Bloon'z's ig­norance abollt political trends in South Africais pathetic. His allegation that the PAC liftedANC policies is without foundation. But let anentry in MandellaJs diary written during the laststages of his visit abroad, shortly before he wasbetrayed and arrested, give the lie to Mr Bloom'sclaims and also substantiate the main basis ofnzy argUi71ellt in the article in question: (TheP:lC has started off with trenzcndous advantagesideologically: and has skilfully exploited opposi­tion to Whites and partnership. Sharpevilleboosted thent up alld1l nthnen stand of theirleaders, i1nprisonnzent of Sobukwe, fostered thebelief that they were 1nore l1tilitallt than theANC. In the PAFMECSA area the NobelPeace Award to Chief Luthuli has created theinzpressioll that Luthuli has been bought by theif'est. . . . LuthlfliJs boo/?' and sonle of his,tareJ.;lfnts ha'i..-'e 'l.'i" ated an i'Jl pressioll of a nzanv.,!7o is a stooge of the ~V'hites.' JJ - EDITOR]

Under slaverySIR,-I would like to thank you and your com­pany for mailing Frontier to me. I am verygrateful because Frontier gives me more know­ledge about the development of other countries,and very glad of your support in our greatstruggle for the liberation of African peoplewho are under slavery. Hoping for your supportuntil we achieve freedom. (Name and addresswithheld)Johannesburg

SIR,-I most sincerely thank you and yourorganisation for your kindness. I hope youwill convey my th'anks to the well-wisher whoso kindly came to my aid. Since I was bannedI have had no other book or letter sent to me.I will be only too 'happy to know who the well­wisher is but please do not force the issue if ithas to :be that way. I now need the previousissues of Frontier and if possible a sample issueof The New African. Is it possible to obtainthem through you? Wishing you and yourorganisation a bright future for the work youare doing. (Nanle and address withheld)Durban NOTth[The well-wisher's name has been sent, 'with hispennission. The New African is banned in SouthAfrica so will not be sent. - EDITOR]

SIR,-While we appreciate the kindness of theunkno~Nn well-wisher who has been sending usthe magazine Frontier~ and find some of thearticles very interesting, there are others whichseem likely to attract the unfavourable attentionof the South African authorities; and havingalready had to face one charge of being inillegal possession of a banned book, I do notwish to run any further risks in this directionand should therefore prefer not to receive thismagazine. (Nanze and address withheld)Port Elizabeth

[Possession of Frontier does not constitute anoffence though for the recipient to distribute itmight do so if the particular issue containedarticles by banned persons. - EDITOR]

The arroganceof ability

THE 12TH INTERNATIONAL STUDENT CON­FERENCE elSe) met in Nairobi, Kenya, from9 to 27 August and brought together repre­sentatives of National Unions of Students inover sixty countries. I t was significant,apart from anything else, in being the firstmaj or conference to be staged in an inde­pendent African state by either of the twointernational students' organizations - theother being the Communist-dominatedInternational Union of Stucents, IUS) ­although the 7th ISC had met in pre­independence Nigeria.

To say that the IUS is "Communist­dominated" is immediately to suggest thatthe ISC might be Western-dominated: andit is a charge that seems to me to be equallyvalid. Since 1950, when the ISC split from'the IUS on grounds of excessive Sovietinfluence, the two organisations have, ingeneral, pursued their respective partisanlines with a single-minded stolidity un­worthy of the students they allegedlyrepresent.

During the last fe\v years - and especi­ally at the 11th ISC and the 8th IUSCongress (both held in 1964), the twobodies have given every appearance of beingfrozen immovably in the postures of a ColdWar that is fast receding on the inter­national scene itself. The major achieve­ment of the 12th ISC was that it bothrecognised this situation and began to movebeyond it.

Relations between the delegates to theConference and the group of Observersfrom the IUS \:vere more friendly and con­structive than anyone would have dreamedpossible at the bleak Conferences of 1964,in cold 'Christchurch and even colder Sofia.Time and time again in ,Nairobi speakersurged an end to Cold War claptrap andtime and again the 'Conference demonstratedits warm approval of these sentiments. TheResolution on Universal Student Co-opera­tion (i.e. ISC-IUS relations) that waseventually passed was felt by many to bethe first sincere statement on this subjectthat an ISC has ever made - and it waswelcomed as " constructive and much betterthan we had hoped for" by the IUSObservers.

This new and more genuine movementtowards rapprochement within the inter­national student community was reflectedmost clearly in the prevailing climate of

A report onthe twelfthInternationalStudent Conference

the Conference's political discussions. Inevit­ably, of course, there were divergences ofopinion) but for the most part these wereless frequent, less serious and less divisivethan have been the divergence at any silnilarstudents' conference in the last fifteen years.The change vvas perhaps most striking inthe outspoken positions adopted by Unionssuch as those of Canada and Australia,which had previously been notable for vary­ing degrees of conservatism. (These andsimilar " defections" had the side-effect ofleaving the National Union of Students ofEngland, Wales and Northern Irelandstranded as the sole remaining anachronisticadherent to the apolitical concept of "stu­dents as such". Ludicrous or painful­depending on one's viewpoint.)

On many major questions the 'Conferencewas unanimous in supporting progressiveand radical resolutions. Particularly pleasingwas the united acclaim with which theConference: demanded the immediate useof force in order to free Zimbabwe; reviledthe World Court decision on South WestAfrica, and urged the revoking forthwith ofSouth Africa's mandate; and gave vehementsupport to the revolutionary struggle inAngola and Mozambique. Other issueswhich produced similar unanimity of out-­look were South Africa; the DominicanRepublic; Aden; Haiti; Morocco; and Iran.

In fact, apart from the Arab-Israeliquestion (which, for most delegates, con­stituted a special and non-ideological prob­lem of arduous complexity rather thanheated involvement), the only major politi­cal debate of the Conference centred on theVietnam War - and even here the divisionof opinion ultimately came down to t\VOpoints only. These were: (a) whether stric­tures on "foreign involvement" in SouthVietnam should be applied to North Viet­man as well as the USA and her allies, and(b) whether withdrawal of foreign troopsshould come before or after the commence­ment of negotiations for a settlement. Onthe other major issues in Vietnam (immedi­ate cessation of hostilities; US culpability;urgent need for the free election of onegovernment for the whole of reunified Viet­nam; etc) there was general agreement.

IT J\.iIGHT BE CONCLUDED, on the basis ofthe broadly radical political concensus thus

DECEMBER 1966/211

ROBERTMcDONALD

In both Ise and IUS thedeveloped countries dominate,imperilling their movements'relevance for the third world ifthe povver structure does notchange

achieved, that the 12th ISC was a success­ful and satisfactory gathering. But, fromthe point of view of the developing coun­tries, and especially oJ Africa and herstudents, it was very Jar indeed from beingsatisfactory. "Politics is about power"­and so is student politics; and, in terms ofthe ISC power-structure as it now existsafter the 12th 'Conference, the developingcountries of Africa, Asia and Latin Americahave as little control, as little effectivepo\ver, as ever - in other words: preciouslittle.

As an organisation the Ise rerrlains se­curely dominated by what has COIYle to beknovvn as the "leading group" - i.e. the\vealthy, highly-organised students' unionsof Western Europe, North America, and the'" old" British 'Commonwealth. The resili­ence of this group is remarkable - and isclosely parallelled by the very similar resi­lience of the Soviet and Eastern Europeanstudents' unions in their dominance 0'£ theIUS power-structure.

In practice the controlling of the IS C bystudents from the developed countries iskept as inconspicuous as possible, for obvi­ous reasons. Whenever they can be man­aged more or less token concessions aregladly made - for example the appoint­ment of a Nigerian as Chairman of theNairobi 'Conference. But the crunch comeswith the elections. Each ISC elects thefollowing: seven full-time administrativeofficers; eleven students' unions to be mem­bers of the Supervision Com_mittee (theISC's highest authority between 'Confer­ences); and five student leaders to make upthe ISC's political wing, the Research andInformation Commission (RIC). All of thesehold office for the two-year period betweenone Conference and the next.

As a result of the elections at the 12thISC, power 'for the next two years has beenlodged very firmly in the hands of theWestern Europeans and the" white" Com­monwealth vlith a few inclusions fromamongst the developing members of theCommonwealth and the more conservativenations of Latin America. The new Super­vision Committee is made up of: Canada,Malaysia, Britain, 'Ghana, Costa Rica,Australia, Kenya, Sweden, El Salvador,Switzerland and 'Angola - i.e. 55% Com­monwealth, a fact which prompted some ofthe less "reliable" delegations to give a

what is known of the forms of vJriting in theold Africa is merely a pointer to thepossibilities of what may have been

"The use of a few strokes"o. R. DATHORNE

212/DECEMBER 1966

derisively spontaneous rendition of "GodSave the Queen" when the election resultswere announced! Similarly the twelve indi­viduals elected either as full-time officers ormembers of RIC included six from theCommonwealth and four from the USA orWestern Europe.

NOW, I AM NOT SUGGESTING that thisdominance of the ISC by developed Westernnations is the result of a deliberately-pur­sued policy of neo-colonialism. In largemeasure I believe it to be inevitable - forthe present. But this is no reason foraccepting the situation on anything otherthan a temporary basis; or for being happywith it.

Basically the problem is one of resources.For a students' union to reach the level ofviability where it is producing experienced,well-trained) student leaders who are cap­able of going on to take positions in anorganisation like ISC or IUS, it must haveconsiderably more money than any students'union in a developing country can possiblyhave. It must be able to employ its topofficers on a full-time basis; it must beable to send them overseas to seminars andconferences; and it must be at the centreof a real and comprehensive programme ofactivities in the country in question, suchthat large numbers of students are beinggiven the opportunity to test their patenti­alities. For developing countries this is thestuff of dreams.

Because of this situation the developednations, in the ISC and the IUS alike, sufferfrom an over\vhelming arrogance of ability.They assume because they are in the fortu­itous position of turning out nearly all ofthe capable student leaders that thereforethey have the right to dominate indefinitely;and they seerrl to believe th2t by adopti~:.g

radical political positions they vvill be ableto preserve inviolate the status QUO \.vithinthe po\ver-structures of the two- organisa­tions. The sooner they realise that this is notso, the sooner \vill the ISC and the IUScon1e to represent in then1-selves the loftysentiments wllich they so regularly endorse.

Until the situation changes, however,both the ISC and the IUS will continueto be of minimal relevance to the third\vorld, except in the crudest sense as sourcesof patronising "aid". Perhaps what isneeded is some reciprocal aid - in the formof mass-distribution to student leaders inthe developed countries (both Western andCOlnmunist of tbe works of FrantzFanon. / -.

BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY TO H THE USE OF A FEWSTROKES" (p. 212). L'Anth1A opologie (1899);Dugast, I and Jefferys, M. D. W. L'Ecriture.Bamun'l (Paris, 1950); Evangelische Heindenbote(1907); Forbes, Lt. F. E. Despatch communicat-

, ing .the discovery of a native written character(London); Gelb, 1. J., _4 Study of W'l riting(Chicago, 1952); Johnston, H. H., Liberia(London, 1906); Journal of the African S ocietv"(1909, 1920); 'journal of the Royal Anthropo-logical Society (1909): Klingenheben, £1.frica(1933); Koelle, S. W., Narrative of an expedi­tion into the Vy country (London, 1849),Outlines of a gTa1'n1nar of the Vei language(London, 1854).

IT \VAS ~N 1~th Janua~, 1849 that LieuteI~­

ant F. t. Forbes excItedIv v/rote to .t._~S

con1n1anding Officer: -

Si,." - It hc.s fallen to P'l'y lot to r/i'c:;]a discovery of such iJnportance to / ;'.?

civilisf3tion of Africa" that I QP! 1]7::. ;;0'.':.':

mv O:7JJrl profession shoulc! bt·.'{!:r ~/:"c .hor:­ol~r tl!ot £t 1:Yl,a-v deserve.

The clisco;;ery consists of a ,"!{}yiUcnlan?uage of the ]-;)houetic order.

I-Ie \vas later to add in a lecture tha t hegave to the R,oyal Geographical Society:

It 'Nill be observed t..l)at the Janguageis or the Phonetic order; that the' chara'~­ters are not symbolical and, according tomv teacher; it vias invented te:l or tive~'tty

years ago ... by eight men. .

But it \vas I{ijelle, a German rnissioTI2.rystationed in Sierra I ..cone, \;vho vvent morethoroughly into the matter. He first sp~nt

five months in Liberia and recorclpd con­versations that he had ,vith the svpposeclinventor of written Vai -- Doalu Bukele.~oelle says that Bukele died of sleepingSIckness at for4-y, that he was assisu'd in hisinvention by five other people and thatBukele saw it all in a dream in \vhich D.

vvhite man explained the advantages of vvrit­ing to hiD1. Yaelle added that they ~7rou~

"with pens of reed" and they m2.~{e theirink from. a special type of leaf. There were215 different ~,yl1ables, the \vriting \VriS fraIn.left to right 2~nd it was dependent on neitherPirabic nor I.atin. In another book vvritten

five years later he added that the script ,!Vas" independent, original, syllabic and phone­tic." H ~re he pointed out that there v/ereoriginal signs which originated in picture\vriting such as signs for" to die" and" tokill" \vhich yvere represented by a witheredtree and branches; in addition there weresif)1S, probably due to the addition ofdiacritical marks. For instance the sign for" Inother" was the fan1iliar encircled dot\vhich IZoelle felt indicated the child in the\vomb.

The actual age of the WrItIng is nots~lbject to a great deal of dispute. Delafosseargues quite plausibly that the script wasmost likely with the Vai before the Islamicinvasion; if not they would most certainlyhave used the Arabic script. He feels thatthe probable date could be as early as thebeginning of the sixteenth century, and thereis some support for this. For thou£!h~1igeood feels that the Vai only settled inLiberia in 1700, there is anlple evidenceto support Kup that there \vas a movementof the Vai from Sierra L.eone after tbe de­feat of the troops of the Songhai eI~pire in1590 bv the Sult2.11 of i\tlorocco. It A is notsvrprising therefore that P. E. Hair, in anarticle "An early seventeenth - centuryvocabulary of Vai ", added that " a vocabu­lary of Vai had been collected and printedt\VO centuries earlier under another name.".It'is more than possible that these attemptson the part of Europeans to reduce Vai to awritten form might have stimulated indigen­ous interest to attempt the same. This '-'was

not, as Johnston has claimed, "clumsy adap­tations of Roman letters or of conventionalsigns employed by Europeans" but rather asKlingenheben has suggested, a developmentfrom the "ancient and imperfect mode ofindicating conceptual contents by picturesinto the phonetically perfect system ofsyllabic writing." Vai was a developed formof writing which was widely used and whichcontained a literature.

A DEVELOPIv1ENT ON THE VAI \vriting, butwith some outside influence, was a form ofwriting kno\vn in the Cameroons. Actuallythere were two types, one in the area ofBagam and the other, the more elaborate,near Bamum. The Bagam script \vhich isthe written form of the Eyap language hasbeen summarily dismissed by L. W. C.Malcoln1 as "imitations or perversions ofRoman capitals or else of the trade marksstencilled on the goods of European trad­ers." But Bamum \vriting is given morerespectability - it is said that it was in­vented by a Cameroonian chief, Njoya.During his father's reign Hausa traders in­troduced him to books in Arabic whichinterested him, and he determined to ex­periment with some form of writing. Ac­cording to Dugast and Jeffreys it was be­t\veen 1895 and 1896, when he \vas thirty,that he produced his first alphabet, \vhichwas pictographic and had over 500 signs.He went on improving and about 1900 re­duced it to 437 signs.

I-lis third attempt was partly syllabic andhad 380 signs. He was encouraged in hisefforts (to what extent it is not known) bythe Basel missionary, Gohring, and in 1910he produced his sixth alphabet which wasfully syllabic. He had by then reduced hissigns to 80, and had added 10 numerals;all resemblance to pictographic writing hadcompletely disappeared. His final alphabetwas his seventh in which he reached thephonetic stage.

Another version is that Nj oya, \vhen hebecame chief, called a number of \varriorstogether as a result of a dream. He gaveeach one the task of inventing a sign forevery monosyllable in the language anda series of signs for polysyllables. He thenmade a selection, bought slates from then1issionaries, gave them to his subjects, andstarted to instruct them. It is said that hewrote letters to his pupils, kept his accountsand recorded important events. Severalmanuscripts survive, of \vhich one is thehistory and customs of the Barn.um, anotheron religion, a third on medicine and a fourthin the form of a map of the country. What­ever may be the truth of the actual con­tribution by Njoya, it would seem againlikely that he merely improved on a wellknown form of writing which had beenextant for a long time. Gelb adds that thesyllabary now consists of 70 signs whichare "showing certain tendencies towardsalphabetisation." Bamum, like Vai, wouldseem to have been indigenous and to havegained some measure of development fromthe ingeniousness of an individual.

IN NIGERIA THERE ARE a number of scriptswhich are worthy of attention, but it is notknown, with the exception of the mostimportant, ho\v far it would be correct toregard them as "indigenous." The excep­tion is Nsibidi, used in the Calabar area ofEastern Nigeria, a form of writing perfectedby the Ekpe Secret Society and probablydating from the seventeenth century. Theextent to which several other such scriptsmight have survived in Africa can only beguessed at; so, for instance, quite by chanceat a court trial in 1931, the fact emergedthat there was a developed form of writingin another part of Eastern Nigeria. Thisscript had 32 symbols. When it was firstused people wrote on sand, leaves, and treesand later on paper, a.fter the coming of themissionaries. Similarly there exists a booklet,obviously intended for church use, whichhas an alphabet of 32 large and small letters.This script is used for the commandmentsof the church, although Roman letters wereemployed for the rest of the book, whichcontained extracts from Genesis and Exodus.

With regard to N aibidi it must be saidthat the signs appear fairly conventionalised,consisting mainly of bent or straight linesin a number of combinations. Originallythese Vlere cut or painted on slit paltn leafstalks. This writing could be used to recorda court case, for instance, and McGregorhas written:

I have in my possession a copy of therecord of a court case from a town onthe Enion Creek taken down in it, andevery detail, except the evidence, is mostgraphically described - the parties inthe case, the witnesses, the dilemma ofthe chief who tried it, his sending outlllessengers to call other chiefs to helphim, the finding of the court and thejoy of the successful litigants and oftheir friends are all told by the use of afew strokes.

From the N sibidi "sketch" McGregorcarefully works out the precise details ofmeaning. But he vr'ould seem to be emphas­ising the ability of N sibidi to communicatein a spasmodic kind of \vay - in partsrather than as a whole.

BY NO·"V IT SHOULD be apparent that it isquite wrong to say that \vriting, or for thatmatter a written literature, did not exist inAfrica. As has been shown, \vriting existed­writing that was not unrelated to literatureand which was pictographic. Side by sidewith this existed highly developed forms of\vriting \vhich \vere in some cases appliedto literature. \Vhat has been consideredhere is by no nleans exhaustive; it is merelya pointer to possibilities. But it has beenshown that prehistoric representations, picto­graphs and developed alphabets exist withone another, and are an indication of theimaginative ability of the African to riseabove the temporal impositions of his world.His art is a unity of time. e

DECEMBER 1966/213

SOUNDS FROMA GREAT SILENCE.

Notes onWest African:Literaturein French

I

MARYSE CONDE

IT IS TODAY undoubtedly a thing of thepast to talk of African literature in theFrench language. In effect, since the chainof semi-independence which followed thereal independence of Guinea in 1958, verylittle of value has been written in Franco­phone A!frica. This fact is something of asurprise, coming after a veritable literaryoutburst in the 'Cameroun, Senegal, and theIvory Coast - not to mention the fore­nlnning works of L. S. Senghor, associ­ated with the Negritude movement.

I t is true that African literature has beenessentially a literature of crisis, the expres­sion of ca conflict. The Alfrican writer was,by definition, a colonised person, living ina colonial society and reacting to colonialoppression. Whether he painted only theoutward forms 'of this oppression, whetherhe rebelled against them, or whether hetried to avoid these forms by dreaming oflove or death, the centre of his work wascolonialism.

Must we then conclude that since inde­pendence and semi-independence put anend to colonialism and brought peace, hap­piness and prosperity, our writers shut up- as people who are happy have nothingto talk about? The answer is quite decid­edly: No. The causes of malaise and con­flict in Aifrica have by no me'ans disappearedvvith independence (it seems in fact thatthey have been multiplied) and the reasonsfor saying something should all be there.

Would it then be true that the generationwhich wrote Mission Terminee or Le Vieux"}.legre et la Medaille or Le Regard du Roihave become too directly involved in thesenew conflicts, and thus, compromised andincapable of transcribing them into a literarywork? It would perhaps be difficult for aminister or an ambassador to make pro­nouncements on the neo - colonialist oroppressive political situation of his country.Or, is it perhaps that the young generation,still bogged down by the mystique of achief and a leader does not dare to say quiteplainly that nothing has changed, and there-

M R S. M A R Y SEC 0 N DE, a FrenchWest Indian, was educated at the Sor­bonne, lived in Guinea, and is now Headof the French Department of the GhanaInstitute of Languages.

~14/DECEMBER 1966

fore keeps quiet and waits? It is in any casesuperficial to pretend that the socio-politicalturmoil which ranges across Africa does notfavour literary creation. These worlds where"things fall apart" without automaticallyassuming new forms could give rise to aliterature of chaos, the portrait, one mightsay, of a world, partly unfamiliar and thusdisturbing, rising from this confusion. Thefact is that in Francophone Africa there isno Chinua Achebe.

IT \VOULD PERHAPS be long-winded andpointless to catalogue the reasons why thereis silence in the literary quarters of theFrench-speaking African. We may thusproceed to discuss African literature inFrench as it exists today.

In prose as in poetry, the essential theme,as we have said, is the revolt against coloni­alism. But the forms which this revoltnow takes are more complex. First of all,there is the purely passive reaction. Thisamounts to nothing more than the affectedportrayal of typically African custo:ns,opposed consciously or unconsciously to thecustoms of Europe, the great Destroyer. Ifsome of the contemporary ,vorks resembleold-fashioned fables (viz. Karim d'OusmaneSoce Maimouna d'Abdoulaye Sadji), theydo not any less represent the de ire to re­evaluate despised local traditions and per­sonality. At the risk of creating displeasureor even shocking, I would say that underthis category we should ShOVl a relativeinterest in L'enfant "f\loir of Camara La re.His idealised Guinea never existed. WhatLaye was familiar \vith was as in the c. '"'eof everybody else, an Africa ravaged bvcoloniali m. i\1.r. Laye's pages of descrip­tion of the ,vork 6f his father, of the mani­fold tasks of his mother, of the ritual ofcircumcision of the countryside read likeselected passages which recapture a wholevork a" if the author was \vriting a pL.J~ce

to a future anthology.

T~~~ SECO.D ST.,GE of this r~volt is theravages of coloniali m in a given societ .This is the most frequent literary form.From d'Abdoulaye Sad·ji, we move -throughto Cheikh H8midou Kane, bypassing thegreat C. meroonians Mongo Beti and F.

Oyono. These writers portray for us humanbeings made absolutely ridiculous, hideousand pitiable by the colonial drama. Clearlythe difference between the first two writersis great. The universe of d'Abdoulaye Sadjiis a small one. His Senegalese mulatress is avery small person, preoccupied with thecolour of her skin and obsessed by herdesire to marry a white man, eventually tohave fairer descendants. Never behind herpitiful story is there drawn the grandeur ofa people led to dislike itself.

The works of d'Abdoulaye Sadji are onlyvaguely alive. There is no comparison be­tween them and the works of Mongo Betiand F. Oyono. The weapons of these lastt\\ 0 are irony and humour. I prefer LePauvre Christ de Bomba (Oyono) to Mis­sion Terminee (Beti), the first work beinga biting satire, an unequivocal denunciationof the religious and sentimental falsehoodswhich are made to cover up economicoppression. In the same \-vay, I prefer LeVieux egre et la A1.edaille to V·ie de Boy)the o~d Meka receiving his ridiculous medal,being more human than Toundi examininghis n- \stress over the edge of his glasses.

Tonetheless, these two writers give a mea­sure of implication and nuance to thecolonial drama.

One may be surprised that I mentionalol1 side these two writers the name ofChei1 h l-fan ido1 Kane. throl1f.?;h \-vhon ... n~o­colonialism made such a resou~ding success.The 'fact is that however irritating the sideh~ took to ma"e an epic of his AventureAr1lyiaUt~ \\,j.th its ra ~p of stereotr ech3.racters (the Master':"- the Great R·oy­alt with its verbose evocation of an ex­clusively spiritual dralua - Fulani chi fsforc cl to adopt the way of the 'X'est­ho vever negative and nebulous his conclu­pion is (the murder of the hero by a mad­man and the dialocrue with an omni. resentGod), Hamidou Kane experiences no lessthe f t lhar the t!~'!edv _., ~ h 0, ~.s un isthat of two civilisations: nvo cult~res m~ t­'ng i1 an u ..~C! al C !llhDt ,l0(-t. ~; h~rc o ...eat' :h p t'A 0 i~ faulty.

THE TI-fIRD TAGE of the revolt shol Id bethe revolt its.Jf, that is, the direct denu cia­ion of a situation which should ot exist~

th portra~ a1 of the strl1g le ~ :ai!l:S~ it:

'The only example of this is Sembene Ous­mane's Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu. Thiswork is an isolated phenomenon. It is thestory of a strike in the old Sudan, started bythe men and supported by the women andending in a popular victory. The book ofS. Ousmane which followed, L'Harmattan)did not fulfil the promise of his first book.One has to deplore the appearance of thevery traditional \vhite woman, interveningto pose the problem (really dated todayexcept Jor an Afro-American and WestIndian minority) of the mixed marriage.

The \veakness of this third stage is notspecifically an African phenomenon, but ageneral literary one. Outside Russian litera­ture, one can find few examples of authorsechoing the armed or unarmed struggles ofthe ordinary people. 1'his is the domain ofjournalism, or otherwis it is necessary forthe stor outlining the struggle to imbue itwith an epic nature. In this category, onehas to list D. T. Niamc Soundjata ouI'Epopee Mandingue. Could this perhapsbe called the first African historical novelin French? The story certainly maintainsthe senli-lea endary flavour or the griotrecitals.

FRE CH-SPEAKI G AFRICAN poets are num­erous. Many of them believe that sincerityof emotion is the only precondition to thewriting of valuable literary work. We couldquote B. Dadie or B. Diop. But the greatestFrench-speal ing African poets are withoutdoubt Leopold Senghor and David Diop.

Senghor belongs to the first stage, thatof passive revolt. Even the word revolt, inits passive form, causes some surprise ,vhenapplied to the poet-president, so I mustexplain that I take revolt in this sense tomean '"' n a\vareness on the pan of thewriter that his country and people consti­tute an original entity. (But, vvould this notconstitute one of the definitions of eari­tude ?)

" Elephant of Mbissel hear my piousprayer

Grant me the burning knowledge of thegreat doctors of Timbuctoo,

Grant me the will of Sonni Ali, son ofthe froth of the lion .

- a tidal wave in its conquest of acontinent.

B eathe on me the wisdom of the Keitas."Senghor is a great poet a very great

poet, even if one has to deplore in hisworks rh , e18.boration of his political obedi­ence and hi th,.or_ of the complimentarynature of the races (Emotion is ours asReason is .11 nic). Yet no O~.1e etter thanhe ha~ sho, n the power to paint Africa ingrand 0 ltline~ to ~ive orne inkling of itslost beautyj and to retriev ·ts noble strain.

David Diop belongs to the third sta. e,that of direct r volt. His poetr is m~ant

to df~ f~,. t1.~ 8:- .( rurns. Pis r;. ith_., itha t of war-drums. It is not peculiarly Afri­C2 n. It is an expre sion of revolt among allthe colonised peoples.

(T?·o11."!af?d by 0 .!IP,c! ;.'\.a:·~l'ille

LC)

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~@@~~ ~~@@)~ THOMAS RAHANDRAHA

OUOLOGUEM YAMBO Madagascar

tVlal1

People think I'm a cannibalbut you know the way people talk

People see my red gums but who has got'white onesHail the tomatoes

People say that far less tourists are comingbut you knowthis is not Arnerica and nobody's gotanything in his pocket these days

People think it's 1ny fault and are scaredbut look heremy teeth are white and not redI didn't eat anybody

People are evil and claiJn I boltboiled tourist01~ grilled maybeboiled or grilled I aS/~ed

they kept silent and looked apprehensively at my gumsHail the tomatoes

E'verybody knows that an agricultural country engages in agricultureHail the green cabbages

Everybody clai1ns that vegetablesdon't feed their manand that l'n2 too brawny for an underdeveloped charactermiserable punks living on touristsDown 'lvith my teeth.

4.f)uddenly they were all over metied 1ne upthrew Jne to the groundat the feet of the Law

Cannibal or no cannibalyou have a case to answera.h, you think you're smartand put on airs

TVe'II see to that I'll fix you for good'what's your last word

.::: before your execution

~ I hurled hail the tomatoes~

] People are evil and wornen curious you }?1Z0W

\0 ~ \0 there was one in the curious crowd\0 ~\O0\ -..- 0\ 'lDho in a corn-crake voice gurgling like grease

,...,~ ..;::~

~ ~ ~ ~ in a broken pot(/) ~ .~ ~ yelped~ ...~~ 0 c::> 0 open his belly~Z ~ZfiS ~f ~ ~ I'm sure father's still there

~.5 ~.s Since there were no knives at hand~ f1 ~ f1 which is quite understandable among Western~:.E ~.~ vegetarians~< ~~;> ~ they grabbed a Gillette blade~ ~ ~ ~~ c:= ~ ~ and patientlyo ~ ~ & crlSSw"~ C 'a;~. ~ ~ p: cross~ plop~ ~ they opened my bellyet: 0~ ~ A tomato plantation bloomed

11)atered by streams of palm-wineH ail the tomatoes.

DECEMBER 1966/215

Y ou who1rl the gods have chosenthat our springs 1nay brim over with song

and our forests vibrate 'Zvith sapthat whether drought-ridden or luscious with grass

our mountains may be mountainsthat earth may be earth

fervour our breathfaith our heartsmen our men

f10m the bottom of your soulfrom the riot of your bloodfrom the hallucination of your dreamsfrom the heart of the hun~icane of your desirefrom the peak of intensity of your incantations

oh, to spout the power of your faiththe cry of their deliverance

you will speakyou u,ill speak the language of your purityfor those v)hose voice is walled inand life suspended

you 'Zoill speak the language of your innocencefor those crushed under the weight of calumnyuntil their skin exudes ityou '{Dill speak the language of your justicefor those whose sight is blindedby bars of iron

you will speak of your lovefor those they strikefor those they slnothertor those they torturefor the hunted

you will speakfor the condenzned

you will speakfOl' the deported

you will speakfor those a'lL'aiting judgment. you will speakfor the detained

you will speakf011' those deprived of their rights

you will speakfor the defenceless

you u,ill speak

For the thoughts of beings dead among the deaddestined to rage and hatred

in the darkness of prisonsyou will speak

tor you hate violenceyou hate calumnyvou hate liesyou hate hate

you "will speakto them, to, you will speak

you will speak till the end of night and the seathat the day may comethat for them once againour springs may brim over with songour forests vibrate with sapour mountains whether drought-ridden or

luscious with grass1nay be mountainsthat earth m.ay be earthfervour our breath .faith our heartsmen our men

your being is word which reconciles with liftspeak . . '.

216/DECEMBER 1966

Cameroon!Cameroon!!

Mofolo Bulane

Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono, translated byJohn Reed (Heinemann, 18s)

THE CAMEROONIAN NOVELIST, in the evolutionand development 'Of character, refuses to remainat the home base. While the starting point isthe beautiful Cameroon he loves so much, thephenomena he is dealing with are characteristicof the world of m'asters 'and servants, the worldof superiors and inferiors. Our main interesthere is the depiction of the events and characterstogether with the solution, within the limits ofliterary expression, that logically follows.

Thus, Ferdinand Oyono in his Houseboy setsthe 'scene in D'angan, C'ameroon. The book,written in tlhe fonn of a diary kept by aCameroonian houseboy, consists of two parts.The story is a searing agony of the deep-rootedconflict between two groups of people whohappen to live together. On the one hand, it is astory of cynicism, moral depravity, hypocrisy,the white man's arrogance; 'and, on the other,naivete, 'Complacency, fierce struggle and resist­ance in an occupied territory.

The v/hole power structure has come underattack in this novel; the Church, the State andthe Police, in literary images and in the logicof the plot, all stand naked in their waveringmission 'which, the author proves, is murderingthe innocents. It is significant that all thosetorturing the innocents are foreigners, and thatthe author does not stress the racial issue as tk~e

cause of the tragedy. While, however, the racialissue does play a part, it is true that the wholearea of human relations is dominated by fac­tors of larger dimensions.

We have Father Gilbert; and, after his death,Father Vandermayer, who takes charge of theSaint Peter's C'atholic Mission at Dangan. Wemeet the Commandant, Gullet, the Chief ofPolic,e, whose name derives from "his longflexible neck like a tick-hird's". Moreau, Agri­cultural Engineer, the Commandant's wife andothers complete the gaHery of the strong breed.The perpetual 'chiefs also figure.

At the other pole stand Toundi, Baklu, thecook, tlhe sentry, Kalisia and others.

"I SHALL BE THE CHIEF European's boy. Thedog of the ,King is the King of dogs". Whenwe consider that as Toundi's chief dream, we

conle to appreciate the impact the bitter experi­ence in stark reality had on him. An innocentvillage boy at the beck land call of the priest,Toundi ran the gauntlet. From the altar ofGod, where he served till the skin 0'£ his kneesfonned into crocodile scales, it dawned uponhim that there was something wrong with themasters. It \vas in the house of God that theEuropeans receive Communion separately.Toundi records in his diary:

"In the churdh of Saint Peter at Danganthe whites have their seats in the transeptbeside the altar. There they can follow theMass comfortably seated in cane armchairscovered with velvet cushions. Men andwomen sit shoulder to shoulder. Mme. Salvainwas sitting next to the Comm·andant. In therow behind, Gullet and the agriculturalengineer leant over as in a single movementtowards the two fat girls. Behind them thedoctor now and then pushed up the goldbraid that hung down from his over-largeepaulettes. His wife pretending to be lost tothe world in the perusal of her missal fol­lowed out of the corner of her eye what wasgoing on between Gullet, the agriculturalengineer, and the two fat mademoiseUesDuoois...." (p. 40).

The attitude is quite clear in the 'way the wordshave been chosen. The author fin'ally tears themask by way of contrast:

"The nave of the church is completelyreserved for Mricans. They sit on tree trunksinstead of benches and these are arranged intwo rows. The faithful are supervised bycatedhists ready to pounce 'at the least signof inattention. These servants of God marchup and down the central, a1isle that dividesthe men from women, carrying sticks. . . .The ,faithful 'Stand up, kneel, stand up again,sit and 'stand to the rhythm of ... smackingnoises. ,Men and '\\Tomen deliberately turn theirbacks to be sure they won't look at oneanotJher. The catechists watch for the flickerof an eyelid." (p. 40).

Those sticks! One is persuaded to believe thatAfricans are treated -as animals or big children,even in church. While the African laity is thushumiliated, notes Toundi:

" Down at the front, Gullet seizes his oppor­tunity 'at the elevation of the Host to squeezethe hand of 'his neighoour. Mme. Salvain'slegs move imperceptibly closer to the Com­mandant's". (ibid.)

When the Catholic ritual was over, the whitesleft through the "Europeans onlry" sacristy.The Africans were forced to remain for FatherVandermayer's pulpit harangue in an unintel­ligible vernacular, "a sermon full of obsceni­ties." .

The above picture, for all its being local,

attains truthfulness and universality. This brow­beating of tile lambs of God is not confined toDangan 'alone. It is characteristic of the colonialera everywhere. Hence, the politician's ,:hargethat the spiritual land the temporal power arebed-fellows, two sides of the same coin.

The chief is shown in his own setting, wherehe is

" Akoma King of Kings, King of wives,White man one ringAkoma has more than 'the white menAkom'a King of rings, King of wives . . ."

and before the Commandant, where, pretendingto understand French, he clucks " Yes, yes"like a hen.

THE GATHERING STORM breaks upon Toundi,the King's dog proper, tbefore !he could becomethe king of dogs. It ~s here in the Command­ant's 'Residence, in contact with the forces atwork in the world 'corrupting with greed andimpotence, that the m'ain hero embarks upon thehigh road of disenchantment and revolt. "TheCommandant", to borrow from Wole Soyinka,"in his uncircumcised nakedness ", losesToundi's respect. In this the Houseboy seesthe weakness and unmanly character of thehousemaster.

Toundi ~dmires the beauty of the Commfl~d­

ant's ·wife. He celebrates her in moving proseonly to be disappointed when she had an affairwith .the Prison Director. Here ·the authorabandons the brief sentences of 'a diary. ili~

syntax becomes more involved, the charactersdiversified and true to type. There is men'sgossip and comic remarks on seeing the Co~

mandant's wife whose vicious character, as ~­

unfaithful 'wife and typical member of hersocial group, greatly contribute to Toundi'sdestruction.

There is a midnight raid in the location. Herethe reader gets to know about injustice wherethe enforcement of unpopular law is left topolice baroarity. It is exactly the police as anorgan of the -state apparatus that has physicallyextenninated many a m'an.

The sentry's words and counsel are repletewith the wisdom of the common folk, while thewasherboy and the cook combine together tosupply the local 'colour. ,One should have ex­pected the author to use pidgin in portraying hisminor characters. He has effectively done so byother techniques: the use of idiom 'and patternsof behaviour true to the situation. And aboveall in the humour in ,which some of his char­acters abound. It is, however, ,the kind ofhumour that goes into the flesh and blood ('~

the novel, that sheds light on the peculiaritiesof this or ,that character.

In this connection, imagine Toundi sweepingthe floor and incidentally coming 'across thewet rubbers he did not know. Later on the

Commandant's 'wife, crushed by shame, con­fessed to Toundi that they are contraceptives.At this juncture, the sentry 'fails to understandthe whiteman's stupidity in loading his uncir­cumcised self -with a rubber. Baklu, the washer­boy, rushing into the kitchen witih soiled towelsand, having been turned out, coming with hisdripping finger 'in the 'air, his twitched face anunmistakable sign of stenCh! Here there is amoral victory of the underdog over those wholord it over him. In fact, all ,these happeningslend dynamism to the action and deepen theconflict.

The affair of Sophia with the Engineer eventu­ally drives Toundi to prison. He is suspectedof secretly dealing with Sophie, who has dis­appeared. Kalisia is needed by the author fortwo reasons: by way of contrast, the more topenetrate into the essence of the personality ofthe Commandant's wife and, coming from thelower rungs o'f the society, to relieve the figureof womanhood in a setting bedevilled by in­humanity of man to man. The constables andthe catechists, in their fluctuations between thet\VO worlds 'at w,ar, are thrown in to bring thewhole tragedy into sharp focus. They are thelost ones, unaccepted by the world they serve,because their respective interests are diametricallyopposed.

ONE MIGHT LEVEL this remark: despite the diffi­cult conditions in which the peopile in Danganfind themselves, it would seem that they are stillunconscious of the force they are. In the circum­stances, t!hey should have been resolute in theiraction. They should have been aroused by hatredto the enemy. Thus, the night Toundi, allcovered in blood, is brought home in a land­rover " ... skidding through the maze of decay­ing mud houses" (p. 126), people can't decideon action. The whole location came to see andto lament.

Back in the police camp, Toundi had a fulldose of the whiten1an's bestiality:

" 'Give him twenty-five blows of the sjam­bok " 'Gullet told the constable. . . .

I lay down on my stomach in front of theconstable. Gul'let handed him the hippo­potamus-hide whip he always carried. Theconstable made it hiss down on to my buttockstwenty-five times. When it started I deter­mined not to cry out. I must not cry out.I clenched my teeth and forced myself tothink of something else. The image of Kali­si'a came up before my eyes. It was follo\vedby Madame's image and then my father's... the day's events passed before my eyes."(p. 130).

This is Toundi's resistance, his detenninationnot to please the enemy by \veeping or cravingpardon. The a~rh'Or symp-athises with his heroand shows his courage and indomitable spiritagainst all odds. In his defiance he 'assumes alarger proportion, one representative of theCameroonian character in its dialectical develop­ment.

Although Toundi is crushed on the white­man's juggernaut, we feel that he lives on inthe stark reality depicted by F erdinand Oyono.He lives on as a symbol of right conqueringmight. The significance here being that the scopegoes beyond the borders of Cameroon.

The English translation relied on the Frenchtext. All things considered, the vitality of theoriginal has rem'ained without deteriorating intothe category of exotica. It escapes the "idyllicand pastoral" style spotted by Lewis Nkosi insome categories of African writing.

With Mango Beti's Poor Christ from BO'mbain mind, Houseboy breaks 'fresh ground. A must

.for students of the modem novel in Africa. •

Storyand history

Khadarnbi Asalache

A V' iew of Vultures by Alan Scholefield (Heine­m'ann 25s)

On Trial For Aly Country by Stanlake Sam­kange (Heinemann 18s)

I AM. UNFORTUNATELY one of those bad readerswho, after starting a novel, tend to leave ithalfway read if the plot does not register inthe mind early. And apparently no compromisenlethod, like reading a chapter e'ach day, is asolution \vhen the work is long; the thread ofthe story is disjointed. I am making the pointbecause when I started reading A View ofV ultures my interest was nearly s\vitched off bythe first part of the book. It is possible thatwhat I consider to be impressions is only a care­fully thought-out strategy, scanty sketches forthe purpose of the full portrait one finds in thelatter half of the back. If this be the case, thenI wilt confine my comments to the general plotleaving the direction of the book as a matterof individual opinion.

James Black, a young Scot convict beingsent to New South Wales in 1806, escaped fronlthe ship \vhen it reached the Cape. Lying IO~T

to avoid contact with the Cape authorities he,\v1th the escapees, bluffed his way throughnative country. But his progress ,vas hinderedby the fact that he was handcuffed. To repairthe inconvenience someone offered to cut thehandcuffs off with an axe. Lack of care endedin one of James's hands being chopped off. Thepsychological effect his hooked arm had on tpenatives, after the tragedy \vas forgotten, turnedthe physical impa'innent into an asset, as \\~e

later see.Ra'cial relations!hips bet"hTeen the black and

\\i~hite in this pioneer period in the history ofSouth Africa were conditioned, as they still are,by the law of the jungle; a system that guaran­tees the supremacy and survival of the strongest.The pioneers had the guns and the Bible, theBushmen had arrows: in terms of power arather sad balance. The Dutch who had madethe Cape a colony might have settled dOVlnquietly for some more years yet, but for Britishintervention. The Old Testament minded Dutch,feeling the weight of British occupation, turnedto the holy book. And behold the Word of theLord! One couldn't miss it, in black and whiteit was writ of a land to the north "flowingwith milk and honey." Fami'1ies took to thewagons, missionaries to their Bibles, social

DECEMBER 1966/217

scientists to their pens; and the trek was on.Alarmed Bushmen, ala-nned because their

land was being cleared of game, made sporadicefforts to rid their land of the trek boers, raidingtheir stock whenever the occasion arose, to nogood end. To the trekkers, Bushmen were peststo be cleared from the land to make it livablefor white families. The justification for thisview was in the Book " ... he that fleeth ofthem shall not flee away, and he that escapethof them shall not be delivered. Though they diginto hell, thence shall mine hand take them;though they climb up to heaven, thence will Ibring them down ... "

J ames Black fitted himself into this mentallandscape, cynically though, for he was a non­believer of sorts. But although the settlers carriedthe Tablets, they needed to satisfy their sexualdesires and the shortage or difficulty of courting\vhite women led the white men to the nativewomen. Black was apparently happy of thisservice using his white girl friend for a luxuriousemotional satisfaction, when one day she startledhim by the news that she was pregnant. Heresigned himself to marrying her but since thefarnl he had been living in had been destroyed,he decided to move further into the interior.His journey provides one of the most movingpass'ages of the whole story, its colour beingadded by a faithful Bushman sen'ant.

STANLAKE SAMKANGEJS On T1A ial for My Coun­try is a shorter novel. It seem's meant to be ahistorical novel but the plot is done in such away that it looks (to me) forced, and the workdoesn't successfully emerge from this initialdifficulty. The story, or the history (whicheverone chooses) goes like this. The hero, who hadbeen attending a 4 Methodist service in Bula,wayo,suddenly decides to drive some thirty milesaway from town to call on friends. A happeningon the way brings him into the presence of aspirit that had just come back from a heavenlyindaba, a tribal gathering where Lobengula andRhodes, two protagonists in Rhodesia's history,are under examination.

A historical novel -about Southern Rhodesiais no doubt a good undertaking, -and especiallyif it puts into perspective the facts leading tothe understanding of the present political mud­dle. But noble sentiments, alas, don't necessarilym-ake literature, however one might agree withthem in another context. Even so, a certain pass­age in the novel aroused my interest. Rhodes issupposed to have been brought up by. his fatheron the principles of love, purity, honesty andunselfishness (p. 27), principles which I know,despite their Christian origin, to have a strongMRA flavour (the four absolutes). Such anobvious historical error, and other MRA echoes,seem to indicate MRA associations. •

218/DECEMBER 1966

Africanising

christianity

Effa Okupa

Katigondo: Presenting the Christian Message toAfrica edited by Robert Ledogar, MM (GeoffreyChapman, London and Dublin, 21s)

CHRIS TIANITY LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE wants totag along with African Socialism, A'frican Per­sonality, African Virility. African Christianitymeans that the black man's relationship withGod must be expressed according to his way ofthinking and acting in daily life.

In the autumn of 1964 a group of catecheticalexperts met at Katigondo in Uganda to discussways of adapting and presenting the message ofChrist to modern Africans and Katigondo is theresult of the proceedings.

The rapid social, economic and politicalchange in Africa in the last ten years has beenphenomenal and has caught the evangelists un­aware. Because they were not prepared for thematerial progress of the Africans, the Christianteachers condemned, ignored and did not inte­grate material progress among its precepts. Theyoverstressed the dangers of materialism to apeople who only want a teeny weeny bit of thematerial things of Hfe. The African cannot livein the twentieth century by prayers alone.

The survey of the Pan-African Catecheticalstudy week revealed that, "there is an urgentneed for a faith so deep that it will overflow intoevery sphere of personal and social life".

And in order for Africans to achieve this trueunderstanding of the Christian faith, the teachingof the Christian message has to inculcate accept­able aspects of African belief and interweave itinto Christianity.

"In imitation of Our Lord's teaching byparable, catechesis must absorb the realities ofAfrican life and use them as signs, developingtheir potentialities by way of biblical symbolism.

"In this connection, since catechesis has itsgreat basic sign in the ecclesial community, itmust recognise and make the most of the Mricancommunity sense and direct it towards member­ship in the People of God. Similarly, to makeknown the Covenant that God establishes by hisWord, ratifies by the Supper and the Cross andoffers for participation in the Eucharistic Sacri­fice, catechesis can utilise the African apprecia­tion of the spoken word as a source of com­munion and life, and the African familiarity with

blood pact and with the ritual meal as a sign offraternal communion.

"Many elements of Mrican life seem to beprovidential signs that catechesis can place at thedisposal of the great signs common to all thepeople of God - Bible, liturgy and livingChurch."

The Christian message must not appear assomething imported by the white man, so theyagreed. But yet, many elements of African lifeare invaluable for christianisation, such asrhythmic music, that's fine, goes well withChurch music and choral singing, let's cluistian­ise it. Why should the devil have all the besttunes? Africa's love of dances and display ofcolour, bright idea, let's have it. It's all in theliturgy. Well, then vvha't about assimilating poly­gamy? A cesspool, a purulent barrier to cate­chesis! It is contra ry to the Law of God for aman to have luore than one wife, but with thebiblical folks God tolerated polygamy, perhapsHe even understood. Why can't He be sympa­thetic once again?

Polygamy in its pre-Christian setting in Africawas essentially family planning, as tribal ethicsforbade husband and wife to have relations untilthe newly born child was nearly three years old.A healthy interval should be left between thebirth of one child and the next, otherwise themother would not be able to look after her~e)fand the growing child. Jvteinwhile, the hus t

- 3;1-1

took anoti1er wife because infant and adult mo"'­tality wa high and the tribe had to be replenish­ed. But modern catechists deride it as if Africanswere more sinful than the folks of Sodom ~n :Gomorrha.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AFRICANS and otherpeople \vhere the word God is involved has beengrossly exaggerated. The essence of Christianityis essentially the same to all men. Besides thelife of Jacob is closer to that of a Gulu villageboy than to that of a Knightsbridge school boy.The problem of the modern evangelists is how tokeep up with Africanisation without destroyingChristianisation. What do we do about the lapsedchristians?

"But Christianity in Africa also reveals thatit has not really sent down its roots withsufficient depth into the people as a whole. Thechildren have grown up now, and the lives whichsome of them lead as adults h'ave revealed to usthat their human nature had by no means beenfully Christianised. How many of them there arewho, in sickness, misfortune or hostilities reactnot in a Christian way, but in their pre-Christianmanner! How many problems arise from this inthe form of trial marriages, broken marriages andpolygamy, even among Christians! How few arethe Christians who are really prepared to standup for their faith in times of trouble, and to

make sacrifices for it. How many there areamong the youth, especially among those in themiddle and higher schools who no longer practisetheir faith and now are neither truly Christiannor truly pagan? "

Surely, this problem is universal. One couldnear the bishops of N ew York and Londonspouting out the same tale.

But the experts agreed on one vital point, thatthe remuneration of the catechists is lousy.

The problem confronting the Catecheticalexperts in Africa today is not so much anurgent need for a catechetical renewal or a Te­juggling of the old church, but of dragging theChristian churches and all those who serve inthem out of the Victorian age into the fresh airand realities of the latter half of the twentiethcentury.

•The Origin of Life and Death edited by VIIiBeier (Heinemann Educational Books)"I THE BEGINNING, THE SKY \vas very close tothe earth. In those days men did not have to tillthe ground, because whenever they felt hungrythey simply cut off a piece of the sky and ateit. ..."

But becau e man was incorrigibly wa5tefcl 8;1d

greedy, grabbing more than he could eat, "Thesky became very angry indeed, and rose up highabove the earth, far beyond the reach of men.And from then on men have had to \vork fortheir living."

This collection of creation myths from differ­ent parts of Africa is extremely subtle andcolourful. Man, in his eternal pursuit for areason to justify his existence, where he wasbefore he was born and what would become ofhim after the unconsciousness of death, hascreated many myths to solve the mystery of lifeand death. In their simplicity, these myths adapt­ed themselves to the ideals of village society;they had good insight into human frailty andwere more sympathetic than Hebrew mythology.Strangely enough, there were no threats of hellfire and brimstone. In a few of the myths, whenthe dead were not restored to life they escapedinto immortality.

"When death first entered the world, mensent a messenger to Chuku, asking him \vhetherthe dead could not be restored to life and sentback to their old homes."

Among the Ijaw of Nigeria, a man chooseshis own fate before coming into the world anddoes not blame his creator for his misfortune.Some of the myths show striking resemblance tobiblical mythology but without thou shalt notdo this or that.

African Genesis should provide enough stim­ulating m'aterial for those who want to AfricaniseChristianity. •

Gloryresplendent

Hollis R. Lynch

~4frica}! C?!'l'''':.r - f!,C S!n1Y cl r".lllisl!ed l\"egroEmpires by J. c. de Graft-Johnson (Walker& Co., Kew York)

IT IS WORTH emphasising that Africall Glory,written by a Ghanaian economics lecturer andrecently republished, was first written in 1954- the year that the Gold Coast became thefirst black colonial African country to achieveself-governme"t. (Later, on 6 March 1957, theGold Coast renamed Ghana also became thefirst of these to achieve full political inde­pende!1ce).

Dc Grdft-]ohnson's book was intended to dis­pel the myth that African peoples were withouta worthwhile history; to make available to Afri­ca;1S a history of their past which if not un­biased was at least written from the Africanpoint of view; a history that would stimulate3Pl{)!i7 A[ri..:~1t~· p_~;J(' in tl~eii- pJst and ser';e2S a necessary accompaniment to the not !1eWbut intensified African nationalism which al­ready in 1954 was beginning to turn back theEuropean imperialist tide in Africa. But let meadmit that the author does not explicitly makethese large claims; he sets down his aim,modestly, as providing" Glimpses of the NegroPast" - the title of a lecture series of hisfrom w'hich his book grew.

Thus, the author does not set out to give usa comprehensive history of Africa; he prefersto select and dwell on those aspects whichreflect ,. African glory".

In the first ~even short chapters the authorc;Jtlines North African history to "the Arabconquest of North Africa". And obviously, itis this part of his work which least justifieshis subtitle: The Story of Vanished NegroEmpires. But even here the autl~or does attemptto isolate distinctively Negro contributions: forexample, he observes that "there is no doubtthat . Dynastic Egyptians had Negro bloodin thei r veins"; that in the reign of Pepi IMerira, the third ruler of the Sixth Dynasty,"an army of full-blooded Negroes from theSudan" took part in an Egyptian attack onPalestine; that" during the Thirteenth Dynasty.. Nehsira, n full-blooded Kegro" took the

throne of Egypt by force, and that the black

Nubians provided Egypt with its twenty-fifthdynasty.

MOST PERTINENT to the title of his book is theauthor's treatment of the West African empires- Ghana, Mali and Songhai. Here from thethird to the sixteenth century was resplendent"African glory"; here was undisputed proofof Negro capacity for political organisation:here was a succession of three empires which hadthrown up such highly talented leaders asMansa Musa (1307-32) of Mali and AskiaMohammed I (1493-1528) of Songhai, menwhose reputations for munificence and as patronsof scholarship went far beyond their realms.The author" pays tribute" to these leaders who

~~~E!C ne3rest (0 building <l united WestAf,'ic3 "; 2nd, of ccmse, im:Jlies that it was anachievement worthy of emulation by contem­porary African leaders.

Also interesting, and controversial, is the iauthor's claim that the Akan people" migratedfrom somewhere in the Ghana empire" after itsfall in 1076 from the assaults of the Almora­vids, and eventually settled in present-dayGhana: such a theory, no doubt, provided somehistorical justification for renaming the GoldCoast Ghana.

The author next discusses the Portuguese onthe West African coast, in the Congo, and inEast Africa and concludes that the Africansocieties they encountered gave evidence ofsocial and political sophistication.

The decline from what he sees as the medie­val grandeur of Africa the author attributessolely to the influence of the slave trade; inhis view, it perpetrated "the rape of African~~llti.!··t' .'nd ~i\"ilis3tion". De Graft-Johnsonapparently does not agree with the conven­tional view that the slave trade also stimulatedthe growth of African states, among them theAsha:1ti.

In a final chapter the author demonstratesthat Gi1anaian nationalism had roots going backto the mid-ninetee:1th century: that J. B.Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah had predeces­sors, among others, King John Aggery, lamesBrew, John Mensah Sarbah and Casely Hay­ford, a view that has since been minutely docu­mented by David Kimble in A Political History(If Givlla (London, 1962).

DE GI,/\7:-JOHNSON'S book is stimulating andcompetently written. It is perhaps a book prim­-arily for the intelligent layman, although theserious student, too, might be rewarded by thechallenge of some of his interpretations as well3S by the historiographic value of his work asone of the first attempts by an African, ormdeed any scholar, to reconstruct aspects of thehistory of 3 large pOI·tion of the Africancontinen:.

Finally, there is an interesting disclosure int:Je author's brief epilogue - the only part ofhis book that was slightly revised for thisedition. The author, who is from a J:'fominc!1tGhanaian family who have long been :lfnongthe leaders of that country's nationalism, wasimprisoned for 11 months in 1964 for failureto display "unqualified sycophantic loyalty" toex-President Nkrumah. He thus takes the oppor­tunity of warning African political leaders'};:;a~:-:,~~~ deny:r:.~ ...~.. fr:':I.:1s "freed{'m of speechand freedom of movement". Typically, despiterecent evidence of instability in Africa, he re­mains optimistic about its future: "there ismuch that is stable about the continent, muchthat wiIl confound the predictions of the pessi­mists". •

DECEMBER 1966/21.

Counter­Insurgency

Martin Legassick

South Africa's Defense: The Problem of InternalControl by]. E. Spence and ElizabethThomas (Security Studies Project, Universityof California, Los Angeles, Paper Number 8,1966, $1.50).

BOTH THE TITLE of this pamphlet and the aus­pices under which it was written (The UCLASecurity Studies Project has informal ties withthe notorious Rand Corporation) may makeit appear a little suspect. However, it grew outof a seminar paper with the serious intentionsof studying the forms revolutionary activitymight take in South Africa and the prospectsfor success, which marks an advance in academicthinking about South Africa over discussions ofthe nature of apanheid and the prospects forsanctions: the paper was written by ElizabethThomas for a seminar which Jack Spence wasconducting while a Visiting Professor at UCLA.Because it is one of the first academic attemptsto explore such a topic, it is worth some atten­tion, though it has serious deficiencies.

Most of the 19 pages are - unfortunatelyfor the South African reader - taken up withthe description of familiar background pheno­mena: the pre-1960 non-violent nationalistactivity, the change to violence after 1960, thecorresponding re-orientation of Governmentdefence policy towards counter-insurgency, andthe Bantustan chimera. Spence and Thomas areon surer ground in their analyses of Governmentmeasures (based partially on papers by theInstitute of Strategic Studies in London) thanwht'n they discuss African nationalism, for whichGwen Carter's Politics of Inequality and EdwardFeit's biased and selective account of the AfricanNationalist Congress are not the best sources,nor, by themselves, even adequate. The authorsdo refer in passing to Leo Kuper's AfricanBOllrgcoi.,ie, Govan Mbeki's Peasant's Revolt,and the collected writings of Nelson Mandela- but there is no mention of Mary Benson,Leo Kuper's earlier books, or other secondaryliterature, nor the vast wealth of analysis andprimary material in post-1960 African nationalistpublications. South African Freedom News, theeditorials in Spotlight on South Afl"ica, TheAfrican Communist, The New African, areamong the periodicals illustra ting the thinking

220/DECEMBER 1966

of tIre South African liberation movement, notto mention earlier journals such as Africa South,New Age, Fighting Talk, Torch, Contact, TheAfricanist, and speeches and ephemera availableelsewhere.

In a short article, the authors could of coursenot have assimilated this material, though thereis little evidence that they have read much of it.For academics or revolutionaries these journalsare necessary reading - nor is their any reasonwhy the two roles should be separated. Indeedin most successful revolutions, the revolution­aries themselves have been the most successfulpre-revolutionary 'analysts. This is why it isdepressing to find that the authors, after suchlimited investigation, jumping so readily to nega­tive conclusions: the paper, as Richard Rose­crance phrases it in his preface "does not suc­cumb to easy illusion".

BUT IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE to \vrite optimistic­ally about prospects Jor South African revolu­tion without succumbing to illusion. Enoughcold water has been thrown on the prospectsfor other successful revolutions to 'allow MaoTse-tung to swim from Peking to Washington.I hope, in later article in these pages, to explorein some depth some of the directions for analy­sis. For the moment, though, I shall indicatewhere I think Spence and Thomas have slippedtoo readily to conclusions.

What are rheir conclusions? SABOTAGE:

(Vmkhonto and tihe ARM) "under present cir­cumstances, counter - productive". TERRORIShi:

(Poqo) "a weak and self-limiting form ofaction" "a sophisticated but costly ano1nie".Why? Chiefly because the authors claim thatneither of these actions were part of an overallrevolutionary plan, and 'also because, stateSpence and Thomas, "the African communitylacks social cohesion." To state that Vmkhontowas not part of an overall plan is to readhistory backwards, or 'at any rate to succumbto myopia: why should the plan have been dis­closed, despite the trial of the leaders and theirdenial of planning guerilla warfare? What sortof strategy is it to disclose such a plan? Thecase for Poqo is more doubtful, 'and the ARMcould only be considered a serious organisationif it had planned to 'link up with either theANC or the PAC or both, which was not, Ibelieve, out of the question. The second critic­ism, which recurs later (" trust, cooperation andcommunication" are lacking among the Africancommunity), will be discussed presently.

GUERILLA WARFARE (which the authors regardas the next stage): This is unlikely to succeedbecause:

(a) the South African Government enjoys" anabsolute monopoly of effective political po~\Ver,

complete 'Control over the means of force". Ifthis were true, one might as well give up. But itis patently absurd - just as, despite her over­whelming (ldvantage in hardware and firepowerin Vietnam, the United States cannot be said tohave "complete control over the means offorce". The aim of revolutionary movements isto generate political power, to make manifestuntapped sources of political power: no regimehas a monopoly on political power, or cOlnpletecontrol of means of force. If the South AfricanGovernment is militarily strong, or if it hasthe solid unshakeable backing of three millionwhites, this only means that it needs to be out­thought and out-manoeuvred.

(b) Land configuration, demography, andborders are unfavourable. This aspect is dis­missed in a paragraph: but can we really kno\vwhat is suitable terrain for various forms ofguerilla warfare? The skill of the great revolu­tionary leader - or any military leader - liesin the adaption of strategy and tactics to theterrain and the forces he has available. Eachrevolution creates not only its own ideology,but its own military tactics, and there is no moredangerous military plan than to base one'sstrategy on earlier wars (as the French experi­ence in the two World Wars showed).

(c) The freedom movement lacks an appropri­ate ideology. Spence and Thomas do not discussexplicitly the specific ideological disputes whichloom still so tragically large over the liberationmovement, but they do dismiss "non-racialdemocracy" as a statement of purpose andintention v/hich would not be " easily intelligibleand con1pelling" to the African peasantry.(They also introduce certain red herrings suchas "driving the white man into the sea", and" tribal nationalism ").

This is too big a question to go into here;one can only say that "the end of white supre­macy" is a suitable starting point for revolu­tionary thought, which has positive implications(of different sorts) for all non-whites and manywhites, and that non-racial democracy is asuitable constructive alternative. Both are vagueideas, but so are any utopias capable of unitingmen in common revolutionary action for aperiod: the destruction of the capitalist systemand the creation of a socialist state were equallyvague, unrealisable in the form promised, andyet these were the ideological premises of 1917.And if, as the authors maintain, "Whateverdifferences divide white South Africans, virtu­ally all agree on their right to survive", couldjt not 'also be true that whatever differences (orsecondary contradictions, to use a more appro­priate phrase) divide non-white South Africans,

all are united in wanting an end to whitesupremacy?

WHICH BRINGS ME BACK to the earlier point ofdivisions in the African community, and theauthor's final criticism - that the liberationmovement lacks sources of guerilla leadership andtraining. Amongst potential leadership groups­now that the existing leadership is in jailor exile- they list the " African bourgeoisie", migrantworkers, disaffected peasants, or tribal chiefs.They believe that rural areas vvil1 be the focusfor revolutionary action, and deplore the earlierna tionalist emphasis on the urban areas, whichthey now regard as lacking in revolutionarypossibilities because of stringent 'Social control.These ideas are important, but unsupported byevidence; ,vhen examined they betray a rathermuddled view of social structure. Now of courseall communities have stratification systems, andin South Africa there are intersecting divisionsin the non-white community of class and eth­nicity. These are not static, and from thedia1ectic of their developm~nt certain predic­tions can be made.

For the development of South African revolu­tionary ideology and strategy the greatest needwould seem to be an analysis of the non-whitesocial system, and the changes of certain groupsin it, \vith regard to their objective situationand their subjective perception of their situation.Every revolutionary ideology, each revolutionarymovement, 'has grouped together classes indifferent social situations by appealing to theircommon 'interests, 'and has excluded others bystanding in the way of their interests. PerhapsSouth Africa needs some more flexible thinking,analysis which proceeds beyond classifying non­\vhites into " oppressed" and " stooges", beyondthe facile disputes about the role a couple ofhundred ·white affiliates should play in liberation,beyond the belief that revolution must be eitherentirely rural- the "reconquest" theory - orentirely urban - the "general strike" theoryI still hear some people propound.

Perhaps exiles need to stop the sort of irrele­vant polemics such as a South African FTeedo1nNews, dated 12 July, 1966, that I receivedrecently (is the precise wording of the peacefulcoexistence resolution at the Cuba conferencethat important for South Africa ?), 'and the sortof dishonesty that leads Matthew Nkoana toquote Brett's survey of some hundred middleclass Johannesburg Africans as conclusive proofthat the PA'C has majority support in SouthAfrica.

The social structure in South Africa is com­plex - perhaps uniquely complex - and onlyby paying attention to it can the liberationmovement get nearer a resolution of the prob­lems of terrain, cadres, and ideology whichSpence and Thomas have raised. •

Hostages

I C. F. Goodfellow

South Africa's Hostages by Jack Halpern(Penguin Books, 1965)

THIS IS A VERY WELCOME and timely bookindeed. 'I"he ne\v 1<. :pI.lhljc of Dots7,'c,na cc~r::Je ~

into existence as an independent state in Sep­tember this year, while in Lesotho the recentvote 'in the Senate, despite predictions to thecontrary, 'has made it virtually certain that bythe end of 1966 the Republic of South Africawill have a second independent African-ruledneighbour. As the title of a recent book by an.A.£rikaner Nationalist has put it, "the fireburns 'closer" to Verwoerd's - highly inflam­mable arsenal.

To the majority of mankind. hopeful tha~

the developments may somethow assist theLiberation of South Africa from her presentregime, however, Mr. Halpern offers littleencouragement. As the title of his book sug­gests, he assumes throughout that Botswana,Lesotho and Swaziland, by their extreme vul­nerability to pressure from the Republic, willconstitute liabilities rather than assets when theworld loses patience with the rule of AfrikanerNationalism and decides to replace it with et

South African Democracy. He is concernedthroughout with showing just how vulnerablethese countries are, why they are so, and withthe problem of how !hey migi.-;t sLl:C'T~Tive ·vvhen theRepublic's rulers are brought to bay. Only timewill show whether this pessin1istic appraisal is

I entirely justified.I Meanwhile, M~. HalI?ern has. provided aL:~~-ne~ed and_lm~~sslve warmng. His main

[We are proud to publish this review by thelate Clem Goodfellow, a good friend of thismagazine, whose efforts for African freedom ledto his withdrawal to Lesotho from SouthAfrica. In 1963 he was held for two weeks inU mtata gaol under the Transkei's Proclama­tion 400, and was later cc warned JJ under theSuppression of Communism Act. In 1964 theSouth African government cancelled his pass­port making him a prisoner within Lesotho'sborders. Clement Francis Goodfellow, M.A.(Oxon), Ph.D.(Cantab) was found dead at thefoot of a mountain pass near Ron'la, Lesotho, on5 October, 1966. A tribute to him will bepublished here in January.

His review of South Africa's Hostages waswritten for African Studies (University of Wit­wateTsrand Press), but was returned when thename of the author, Jack Halpern, appearedon a list of cc persons whon'l it is unlawful toquote ".]

theme is as follows: Britain has consistently!1eglected her responsibilities in the three coun­tt:es L'Grn ~Le tiLr:; of her assu:2:-!ption of ruleover them up to the present; 'it is this neglectvv~hich has placed them in the almost defence­less state in which they will find therDselvesafter independence; it is therefore Britain'sduty to redeem herself as far as possible by aneleventh-hour programme of aid, which willenable her in Mr. ~Ialpern's closing words "towrite a decent finis to her colonial history inAfrica". f-lis method of presentation is to setthe stage with a dramatic account of the kid­napping of Anderson Ganyile and KennethAbrahams; to proceed to historical accounts ofBritain's dealings with the three countries;thence to descriptions of " the territories today",and finally to end with a section outliningpossibilities and recommendations for the future.

The difficulties in Mr. Hulpem's way wereenormous; there is no acceptable historicalaccount of any of the three countries in print;and basic statistical information about thepresent is almcst non-existent. On the vlholehe has coped 'with these daunting obstaclesfairly creditably, and had made the most of\vhat sources do exist and of his own first-handresearches. It must be confessed, ho\vever,that he is irritatingly careless over propernames: he writes "Freedom Marerna TlouParty" instead of "Marema Tloll - FreedomParty", and confuses the general reader byinterchanging the old-fashioned "Basuto" and" Bechuana" \vith the modern "Basotho" and" Botswana". One may be excused for wonder­ing v/hether this carelessness extends to moreimportant matters than names.

DECEMBER 1966/221

BY FAR TI-IE MOS T effective section of the bookis that which describes the three countries today.Mr. Halpern's account could hardly have beenbettered: it is lucid, detailed, and convincing,providing a searching analys'is of the economy,social dynamics, and pol;iticai movements ineach 'country. Economic and social questions aredealt with in impressive depth, making the bookstand out among accounts of modem Africa,which are too of.ten content to describe spec­tacular pol'itical personalities and events withonly fieetiOg references to their economic andsocial origins. I t is in dealing with economicdevelopmeot that the indictment against GreatBritain is most damning: not only has sheheld back the comparatively small sums whichwould have made -significant -development inLesotho aod Botswana possible, in particularin the caseS of the former's Ox-Bow scheme andthe latter's Okavango project; but in the case ofSwaziland, where the country's very rich naturalresources have attracted large-scale capital fromoutside her borders, Britain has abdicated herrole of trustee for the Swazi people. No seriousattempt has been made to secure Swazi partici­I.:;atio:l ·in pioduct." 0::.1 er ow'nership, and the diffi­culties in the way of any future government ofSwaziland which wishes to transfonn the eco­nomy in a socialist direction have been enorm­ously and unnecessarily increased by Britain'sassumption that foreign capitalists should beencouraged to entrench themselves in everysignificant sector of SVlaziland's economic life.

THE LAS'l" SECTION of the book, which is con..cerned with the future, combines warnings ofthe intentions of the Republic of South Africa,and of the circumstances in each country whichmay make it succumb to South African pressure,with a suggested remedy, namely that Britainshould at once give economic aid "freely andgenerously". The whole section, while it con­tains much sound common sense, suffers frombeing somewhat diffuse and repetitive, and as aresult it lacks punch. If it is intended, further­more, to appeal to British politicians, would itnot have been realistic to have coupled what isessentially an appeal to the conscience witharguments showing that such aid would be inBritain's long-term interest? Finally, there isthroughout the book, and particularly in theconcluding section, surprisingly little referenceto the United Nations Organisation: is notthat organisation likely to be a more willingguarantor of the ·three countries' politicalindependence and a more hopeful source of -aidthan Britaio, who even under a Labour govern­ment has shown herself over the issue ofRhodesia as reluctant to disturb her profitablecommercial partnership 'with the Republic ofSouth Africa? •

222/DECEMBER 1966

Hauling downthe flagat Mochudi

SO THERE ViAS BESSIE HEAD in Francistownand me in Mochudi, and all the top peoplein Gaberones, the capital. Did Bessie thinkof me? I know I thought of her! I t is partof the white myth that Francistown, whichis really a wretched little place, like a 'wildwest town in an old fashioned movie, isdignified as a tov/n while Mochudi withalmost 18,000 people living in it, and forthat matter Serowe with 30,000, are offi­cially villages. Sorne funny things are donewith translation, both in Africa and India;we are beginning to known that.

We had a full programme of Indepen­dence events in Mochudi, but most of themhad stayed on paper. Far too much of itwas imitation European, organised sportsand lunches and cocktail parties. If that sortof thing is to come off, it has to bethoroughly organised beforehand. It 'vvasn't.How much better to have had everythingspontaneous, African fashion! It \vas allmuch more casual at Bokaa where 'I wason the afternoon before Independence, andgoodness, what fun it was, how we all laugh­ed and sang! Earlier, I had got Bokaa

NAOMIMITCHISON

some money from the Glasgoyv cOll1ll1ittee ofWar on Want; it wasn't very 'much, perhaps,but it was their own to spend, people topeople. And now they had a splendid dam;today it must be brimming with water afterthe rain. They were cutting the bushes belowfor a big vegetable garden for the village.Coming back, hand in hand vvith ChiefRaditladi of Bokaa, we ran into a singingregiment, Machalna, I think. I would havewithdrawn lTIodestly, as befits a v/oman,circling round the edge and tongue shrilling,eyeing the warriors; but dear Raditladididn't let go my hand, \ve were both sur­rounded.

FOR ME, INDEPENDENCE "vas the singing ofthe regiments. It had been going on eveningafter evening at Mochudi. That last evening,I had lost everyone in the general chaos,and drove up to Sethebong to see \vhat \vason. A man with a war axe jumped in frontof the car; I stopped, pretending to befrightened, and another man \vith a spearrushed up. They pulled me out: "Mother,see how sharp they are! See hOVl we are

Lady Mitchison, a nlemberof the Ba~<gatla tribe inBotswana, visits herpeople for Independence.

gUJJ.'C:Eng: you!~' .A.cd then " Mother, comeand greet your sons!" For there were thereglE1ents-, dr.:nking, singing, happy andproud. For 'the regiments, the 1naphato, arethe pride of the tribe, the hean of 'thetribal organisation. People have to be proud,they have to have confidence. For threegenerations the people of Botswana havebeen told, b missions and colonial service,that the white man kno"Ns best about every­thing from electricity to God; our own bestwas never good enough. That dies hard. Butthe rnaphato were ours, even if the missionsinterfered with some of what they once didror people. The older ones had built theschools, made roads; Mochudi \vas theirdoing, our dear Mochudi. When I dancewith my O\VD 1nophato, Matshego, I feelour sisterhood in every movement, everygust of laughter, every touch of hands orcheeks. And this confidence - we shall needevery last ounce of it if we are going toInake a success of our difficult indepen­dence.

Then it was midni{!ht. I had \vrittenearlier on to ask if I ~ight haul dO~7n the

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flag in kgotla. I felt it was my right. Thatwas agreed. But there were frew peoplethere; it was a terrible night of cold sandstorms and I had given my coat to my dearlittle daughter, our new queen, the Mohu­magadi Kathleen. For her, one of the tribebut brought up in Johannesburg, this wasvery moving. Think of her, an African girl,educated, intelligent, but because she hadto live under apartheid, never able to cometo flo\ver, then accepting 'whole-heartedlytwo things - life among a tribe and a \vhitemother. As to the first, I heard her sayfiercely to a friend from the Republic" This is civilisation!". For the second, Iknow.

SO THERE I WAS IN kgotla, looking carefullyat the halyards on the flag pole, determinedto make a good job of it. That union jackI'd seen so often. I said to myself thatthere were two flags I might have minded

pulling down; one the saltire of Scotlandwhich was eaten up by the union flag, theother the Dannebrog of Denmark, which isnot stained by colonialism. But this one?No. I pulled it down carefully, avoiding theguy wires. The new flag went up. And 'thespearman of the mophato leaped in front ofthe small crowd, raising his spear and shout­ing " Lefatse, lefatse " - the land, the land.He was perhaps People's Party. Do theselabels matter? ~ put my hand over hison the wooden shaft of the spear, looking upat our new flag; he put his arm round myshoulder and then behind there were friendsspeaking about me. Mmarona, our mother.

But there was one more thing, the bonfireon the top of Phapane; it had been lit atmidnight. South in Gaberones they couldsee it against the sky. We climbed in thedark, the cold wind biting at us. It wasthe Scouts who had organised this. I aminclined to think that a country like Bots-

DECEMBER 1966/223

wana can absorb Boy Scouts, turn theminto its own, make them another source ofconfidence. If we leave them as alien im­portation they will do us no good. Vpthere I met another white, our v.s.a.printer. He has managed to start a smallbut essential industry and is training boysinto at least a semi-skill position, and adecent wage. Like me, he wanders aboutMochud'i, listening to the singing, becomingabsorbed, sometimes finding a hand slippedinto his. As someone said to me "Oh, wedon't think of Johnnie as a white."

There was singing too on ·the top ofPhapane, round the bonfire; I shelteredunder half of somebody's coat. But comingdown the steep path was difficult; I kepton slipping, my sandals got full of littlestones. And all the time I was being helped,holding on to a strong arm, with laughterand friendship all round me, the dearBatswana, of whom I am one. e

nervous as I was.Before evening I managed to talk private­

ly with the two other people in the firecamp who were not overt racial bigots. Wediscarded the idea of one of us standingup and giving the assembled camp a lectureon racism, concluding that all we coulddo was try to assure that the same thingwould not happen to Tex as had to thenaive and awkward 18-year-old from Wattswho had not returned to the camp from hisfirst days off. His week of ridicule hadculminated in a viciously jocular good oldAmerican "snipe hunt" - on which theunexpecting is taken far out into the nightto wait holding an open bag for non-exist­ent snipe to enter. The refinements of theWatts boy's snipe hunt had been diverseand racialistically very imaginative.

him glumly and try to change the subject.

IN COMPLIANCE \VITH FEDERAL Governmentpolicy, not long ago the Forest Serviceissued a directive to the effect that eachdistrict in each National Forest in the landmust have, at all times, at least two Negroesin its employ. In this way officialdom feelsthat it has done about all it can to erasediscrimination in its sphere. But almost toa man the career Forest Service officers whocame 'in contact with Tex were vociferousracists 'behind his back. It was a conflict withone of these men, Tex's immediate super­visor, which helped to bring Tex's life asa firefighter to a close.

TEX HAD A BROTHER back in Corpus Christi,a Protestant minister, 'who was to be marriedearly in September. Tex was to be the bestman. Weeks before the event he asked his

BUT TEX HAD NONE of the innocent glaucous supervisor for permission to take leave soof the fool from Watts. Tex, it turned out, that he could attend the ceremony. Repeat­was an accomplished athlete and musician, edly the supervisor mockingly accused Texrecently moved to Los Angeles from Corpus of lying, refusing all along to grant theChristi, Texas. A delightful individual, he leave. When Tex left the camp for his reg­captured the attentive interest of everyone ular days off a few days before the wedding,in the fire camp within a matter of hours. he told me that he would not be coming

Tex went on his first fire just a few days back for nearly a week. He knew that theafter his arr'ival. We were flown by helicop- Forest Service was not allowed to dischargeter to the depths of burning canyon and an employee unless he was absent for tenthere spent a day and a half halting the days.fire's advance. Tex worked well and never While Tex was away, we were flown to aflagged, even though the smoke and heat large fire in Northern California which last­conditions were extreme. He did much ed for more than a week. When we returnedbetter on his first fire than most others had Tex was not around the camp. I found outdone. later, when I located him in the city, that he

It also developed that Tex was a walker had come back to camp, found nobody there,and climber of unusual capacity, qualities and, knowing that his ten days were up, hadwhich are held very high among forest fire left-the job for good.fighters. So ostensibly he fitted 'into our crew He told me that he had not minded leav-very well. ing the job anyway because he was due to be

But the behind-the-hand r3cial abuse con- drafted into the Army in a matter of weeks.TEX CAME SWINGING in, his equipment tinned - th~re \vas even one Inan, the son of And he said that he \vas not unhappy to gohanging loose in his arms. He dropped his an insurance n1a.n from one of the \vealthy and join the Army with its lTIOre strictlythings on one of the three em.pty beds, suburbs of l-,os A!l2:cles~ yvho v'lould use the enforced desegregation policies, even though Istraightened up., grinned at all of us and word" !:.i~ger " in f~ont 'of Tex vlithout even he realised that he \vould most probably be I1sauntered back outside. He looked as a break £or- apology. Tex \vould just look at in ~vietnam for Christmas. e__________________________________-----------1

LIVING WITH "THEM"New York, November 1966

BETTER THAN A FULL decade into the legalchanges initiated by the Supreme Court'sSchool Desegregation Decision, the pers'is­tent hope has been that the social changeswill be coming along sooner or later. Butracial attitudes in particular seem to remainossified in America.

Tex joined my V.S. Forest Service fire­fighting crew late in July. "There's a newone over by the office. It's a nigger." Thiswas called to all in the barracks by anearnest young California Mormon who spenthis days off surfing and is now finishinguniversity.

" Not another nigger . . . ," was thefirst reaction of a Papago Indian fromArizona. Then for the few ,minutes untilTex walked into the room to claim his bed,the profane conversation \vas man afterman'; vilest testimony against having to livewith "them."

Taxation and developmentin East Africa

REGINALDHERBOLD GREEN

224/DECEMBER 1966

HARSH BUDGETS &HARSHERFACTS

THE POWER TO TAX is the power to govern. A state withouteffective taxing authority is either powerless or dependent on itsinanciers. The more pressing the popular demand for publicservices and the fruits of national development and the moreambitious the government's plans (whether sound or foolish,popular or elitist) the greater the share of domestic productionwhich must be collected in taxes.

In 1964 Professor Paul Clark and Dr. Brian van Arkadie posedthe warning that capacity to raise taxes would prove tightestconstraint on East African development over the next decade.Economists - unlike Treasury officials - have usually viewedthe question of raising tax revenues as a matter of fairly minortechnical and rate adjustments. Public finance is usually the studyof details of different taxes and collection systems. Economists andTreasury officials alike rarely try to forecast their government'srequirements in tax receipts in the medium run. Nor do they tryto build a tax system capable of raising these sums while conform­ing to national criteria of equity or social justice.

In 1965-66 domestic recurrent budget receipts of the threeEast African states totalled £ 127-million. In the middle 1960'srecurrent expenses have tended to exceed domestic revenues withreserves or foreign aid filling the gap. Development finance raisedfrom domestic tax has become negligible. In half a decade domes~icrecurrent budget demands will total nearly £250-million anddomestic finance for development will call for over £30-millionannually. The latter is vital both because a development plan whosepublic sector is totally financed by foreign aid is - in fact ifnot in name - designed and determined by the donors, andbecause relatively litrle foreign aid is normally available withoutdomestic finance to cover local costs.

FOUR ISSUES FACE EAST AFRICA in the tax field. One, what canbe done to attain full coverage of recurrent budget expendituresand a surplus toward development spending now? Two, to whatextent can the tax system be revised so receipts will growparallel to expenditure needs without constant rate increases ornew taxes? Three, how can an equitable and operational taxsystem resulting in a just distribution of public costs and uniformcollection from all tax payers be achieved? Four, what does taxreform mean for the East or Eestern Africa economic communitv?

These questions - and the roads toward answering them" ­are most clearly read from 1965-66 Ugandan experience. Ugandaarrived at a fiscal crisis earlier than its neighbours and has faced itforthrightly - at least on the short-term front. Kenya - buoyedby much higher foreign receipts - has a longer period to adjustits tax system. Tanzania - where the key liIPjtations are personneland (thanks largely to UDI) foreign development assistance - hasadopted a consolidation budget as a prelude to serious mx structurereform within two years. Uganda is not inique - its experiencecan be highly relevant to Kenya and Tanzania as well as toother African States, not least in showing pitfalls to avoid, andthe limited times won by even draconic short-run measures.

The year 1965-66 saw Uganda run a £1.6-million deficit onrecurrent expenditure. This came despite receipts that were

£2-million over the initial estimates, because expenditures alsoovershot, although only by £1.5-million. Adding developmentspending financed by Ugandan resources, the deficit came to£5.8-million, very largely ending as a drain on foreign reserves.These fell to perhaps £18-million (counting Uganda's share ofcurrency board tssets) in January 1966. With anticipated 1966deficits from private and marketing board transactions estimatedat over £4-million, the reserve position left no room for coverin:further development or recurrent revenue-expenditure gaps.

THE IMMEDIATE CRISIS was the result of 1965-66's " soft" budget.Had it been balanced on recurrent account initially and hadrecurrent spending been held to estimates, then 1966-67 couldhave been an interim budget with some use of the £4-millionin reserves thus husbanded on development account. However,the basic problems run much deeper - sharp changes \n~re

inevitable by 1968-69 if not in 1966-67.On the one hand Work for Progress calls for a rise in govern­

ment recurrent expenditure from £43-million to £63-million and indevelopment spending from £12-million to £22-million over1966-67. All of the recurrent. and at least £8-1O-million of thedevelopment, costs must be raised locally, as against about £41­million total domestic revenue in 1965-66. The annual rate ofincrease needed is about 13.9% over 1965-66-19'70-71 or about1.75 times as fast as domestic produce growth goals of 7.3%.

On the other hand, Uganda's tax system is not buoyant. Thenature of taxes is such that a 1% increase in monetary domesticproduct results in a .6-8% increase in tax revenue at constantrates and levies. The progress of industrialisation (reducing theshare of imported manufactures in national product and thus slow­ing the growth of customs receipts) and the expected price trendsfor major exports (slashing export duty receipts relative to domesticproduct and perhaps even absolutely) underlie this unsatisfactorypattern. If monetary output grows 7.3% a year as planned, proceedsfrom present taxes at present rates cannot be expected to growmore than 5-6% a year - providing less than half of the requireddomestic revenue growth.

Further, the tax system is not fully in accordance with theprinciples of social justice emphasised in the plan. Income taxalone is really progressive. Customs duties have a mixed impactbut on balance may be regressive as a number of low incomegroup consumption needs are highly taxed. Excise duties arealmost certainly regressive at least for tr:ose with cash incomesover £75-100 a year.

Even in the case of income tax, equity problems arise. Thosewith total incomes under £1,000 - 30 times the national average- pay very little tax unless single. The parallel income in relationto average product in the USA would be on the order of £35,000and attract very considerable taxation indeed. Further there is awidespread belief that self-employed professionals, individual busi­nesses and corporate entities avoid or evade tax on a large scale.

Certainly the 1956-6 tax system could neither hope to cover1966-71 expenditure requirements nor to distribute the costs ofdevelopment to its beneficiaries. In particular the £100-600income group - who should benefit substantially and be joined by

many additional farmers and wage earners­would pay very little ~nd the over-£600 groupwould remain lightly taxed considering theirrelative income status.

The 1966-7 Budget faces the first questionwith a vigour deserving the title of draconic.Recurrent expenditures are to be held to onehalf million over 1965-6 estimates - £ 1 millionbelow 1966-7 outturn. Domestic revenues areto be boosted by £6 million - all in taxes­to £44.5 allowinga £.5 million recurrent sur­plus \for the development account.

The overall domestic revenue increase is15.6%, somewhat above the needed trend rateand allowing a 12% annual rate over the nextfour years. Let us assume that recurrent expen­diture can be held in line - doubtful in the caseof security, 'given the aftermath of insurrection,and in health, because staffing of new facilitiesand services to additional patients seem inade­quately covered. Let us also assume that thetax estimates are correct, and this is probablya valid assumption - indeed they may be con­servative. These assumptions being correct, thenthe immediate fiscal crisis has been hurdled.

Ex-amination reveals a number of problems,however. The 1966-7 monetary product isexpected to rise between £8 and £10 millionover the 1965-6 figure. To take 60-75% in taxes(up to 100% if reductions in cotton and coffeeboard prices to break-even levels are carried outin full this year!) is practicable for one or tw'Oyears but scarcely for more. Indeed, the politicalcourage shown in taking the risk of unpopu­larity now in order to achieve fa higher growthrate, which in turn would make future taxincrease requirements less unpalatable, is of ahigh order. It will payoff if 6.5-7.5% growthrates (14 million rising to £20 million annualoutput increases by 1971) result speedily. Thisis in paN a gamble on weather 'and worldprices, and in part 'a staking of political stabilityon the effectiveness of economic policy.

Of the new tax revenue only a quarter is tocome from rises in existing sources respondingto higher income. About ·a third is sought fromhigher customs, excise, and consumption duties,a seventh from copper export taxes, and aquarter from a 5% development levy on in­comes over £200 a year. For long run purposesthese -taxes are less than fully satisfactory.

They are not very progressive - albeit mildlyso. While they plug some losses due to importsubstitution excise-consumer-use taxes the man­ner is specific not co-ordinated. The copper taxyield cannot be expected to rise over time. Adevelopment levy of this type does affect the£200-600 group and shotrld be 'buoyant but itis a rather blunt instrument and likely to proveunpopular if the stated "once for all" periodshould turn out to be ~, all time" and not thisyear or this plan. It is, indeed, an index ofpopular support for government economic policythat a not inconsiderable number of people havethought the levy for the plan period C'five years)reasormble and !accepted it - if resignedly notenthusiastically - as such.

A LONG-RUN BOUYANT tax system must be basedprimarily on those portions of monetary incomewhich rise rapidly with development and/or onthose types of purchases which expand at arate at least equal to domestic product. Externaltrade levies - while very significant absolutely

for the foreseeable future - will necessarilyyield revenues growing less 'rapidly than outputbecause there is no prospect of imports, let aloneexports, growing 'as rapidly as the overalleconomy.

Obstacles to rapid rises of income tax revenuescentre on assessment 'and collection for other thanwage- 'and saliary-earners, on rates in the £ 100­1,000 range, and on public acceptability. Unlessthe first problem is solved :the latter two areinsoluble. Wage and salary earners in the under­£1,000 bracket cannot equitably be rtaxed ifbusinessmen and independent profession1a'ls canavoid or evade tax. To try is to create s·een in­justice of sacrifice, which is to undennine thepolitical basis of the entire tax,and for thatmatter political, system.

More efflective assessment and collectiondepends on making it worthwhile to prepareaccurate returns 'and providing the staff tocheck a1'1 large (say over £ 1,000 tax due) and asample of all returns. A two-pronged attackcould be devised posing "'arbitrary assessment"or accurate :accounts as options to the taxpayerand greatly expanding the assessing, auditing,and legal staffs.

The first would apply to self-employed bygroup: e.g. an independent lawyer would pay taxon £5,000 earnings unless he could demonstratehe had lower net receipts, a taxi owner-operatoron, say, £500. Assessment levels s'hould beraised until most people found it "profitable"to produce adequate 'accounts not pay the arbit­rary figure. For businesses a parallel systemapplying rough profit margin rates to turnoverestimates could be used. Great 'accuracy is notneeded - what is essential is to make it expen­sive not to keep and produce accurate accounts.

Auditing ·and l'egal services in East Africa­as in other former British colonies - are horri­fyingly inadequate. Often they 'amount to liittlemore than adding up returns for internal con­sistency ·and prosecuting the most obvious casesof fraud and delinquency. The careful scrutinyof data presented and the rigorous prosecutionof delinquents, combined with legal revisionsto eliminate loopholes, char-acteristic of UK orUSA revenue authorities, is all too noticeablyabsent. So long 'as w,ealthy individuals and largefirms have :access to first-rate accounting andlegal talent, !So must any government hoping tocollect the taxes genuinely due it.

Broadening the tax base to in'clude lowerincome groups than at present faces severeoperational probl'ems. If the efflective incomelevel for the tax were £200 \before deductions)not £1,000 there would be about 200,000returns as opposed to 20,000. An alternative­espec·ially for transferring the share of localgovernment costs now met by the CentralGovernment to l'Ocal :authorities - 'would be torestructure the graduated personal tax. If itbegan at 25/ :and ran to 1,000/ on a scalewhich rendered it truly progressive, substantiallyincreased revenues 'would result.

However, consumption levies hold moremedium-run promise than dO income taxes. Theyare easier to fonnulate and coUect and are morefavourable to savings promotion. l'f levied ratesare tied to budget study data on consumptionpatterns, they can be progressive at least to£2,500 (after which surt'ax would be effectivein achieving progressiveness). Again a two­pronged 'approach is needed.

First, a 4-6% wholesale level sales tax shouldbe placed on rents over £10 a month, construc­tion of dwellings over £200 in value, and all

DECEMBER 1966/225consumer goods except unprocessed and· hand­processed foodstuffs -and charcoal.

The exceptions both m'ake the tax burden onthose with cash incomes under £ 100 }light andmake collection - at point of import, factory,or wholesale outlet - ftairly simple.

Secondly, "purchase" taxes of 20-50%(above present import duties) fshould be leviedon th'at approximate fifth of oonsumptiion whichis made up of amenities 'and luxuries marginallyconsum·ed by the £200-600 income class anddominantly by the £600-plus salariat and busi­ness-professional community.

Examples include: residential constructionover £ 1,000 per family, rents over £20 a month,automobiles and equipment, electrical appliancesand high quality furniture and furnishings,high-'oost clothing and textiles, luxury foods andbeverages, photographic equipment and supplies(now subj'ect to no duty or excise), radios costingover £10 and gramophones, tape recorders andrecords.

The programme proposed is fairly ruthlessfor hiigh income groups (including the author!).It has four virtues. The taxes are collectable.Overall tax burden is related to income and tobenefits from government expenditure, e.g. thesalariat are largely the products of public educa­tion, 'the business community benefits fromgovernment-stimulated develbpment. All the newtaxes 'are buoyant - their balses will grow asfast or faster than gross domestic product. Fin­ally, and vitally, t1his set of taxes would yieldthe needed revenue.

The needed growth in domestic revenue(1965-6 - 1970-1) is in the order of £32 million.Of 11hisabout £6 was acquired in the 1966-7Budget. Of the remainder perhaps £10 millionwill come from growth existing tax revenuesat present rates and £2 milHon from non-taxdom'estic revenues.

The two consumption taxes outlined cOll1c1yield £10-12 million.

Better income tax assessment 'and collectionshould be able to increase proceeds by £2.5million land a revised GPT by £1.5 - 2.5 millionfora total of :£14-17, asagainst la gap of £ 14million unmeetable from growth of presentsources of domestic revenue.

The power to tax is - if misused - thepower to destroy, but it also is the power todevelop. There is noway to secure rapid eco­nomic growth in Africa without even morerapidly rising tax revenues. To attain these willrequire more !Careful overall planning of taxpolicy in the framework of expenditure require­ments on the one hand and social justice on theother. Alike, these considerations require thatthe beneficiaries of development - includingthos'e in the £200-600 cash income range aswell a'S the over-£600 African economic elite­pay 'higher taxes both absolutely and as ashare of income immediately and for the fore­seeable future.

Failure to layout and implement such astrategy can lead only to increased dependenceon foreign financing, fiailure to achieve develop­ment goals, rapid inflation, and an erosion ofthe social ·and political cohesion necessary toall phases of nlational development. The priceof economically sU'ccessful and politically viabledevelopment in Africa today is aust'erity forthe rich 'and the semi-rich, a's well as for thelow income groups, wh~ areaH too used to it.Refus·al by the economic elite to pay this pricewill doubtless be pleasanter in the short run. ­Facile descensus avernum. •

226/DECEMBER 1966

Nigerians

THE FIRST NIGERIAN I GOT to know wellenough to discuss politics with was aFulani, Alhaji Ismaila. In 1957 independ­ence and even self-government were stillwell over the horizon as far as the Northwas concerned. Northerners were afraidthat the educated and westernised South ­Yoruba as well as Ibo - was waiting totake advantage of the British departure toexploit and dominate their backward region.Few Northerners were sufficiently qualifiedto be appointed to the technical, administra­tive and even clerical posts of the civilservice, or to take advantage of the oppor­tunities offered by the region's growingcommercial and industrial enterprises. Thechaos in which the Ibo exodus in recentweeks has left the Northern Region indi:cates that the progress which has beenmade since then is far from spectacular,but it is not too late to bridge this edu-

- cational gap which divides Nigeria. Nor isit too late to overcome the tribal differenceswhich are not nearly as static and ingrainedas they appear to many people today.

Alhaji Ismaila was an exception: shrewdand hard-working, he had been able to drawon his peoples' traditional knowledge ofcattle and herding to work his way up toa senior post in the Ministry of AnimalHealth. In this capacity he had travelledextensively in the South, particularly inthe Ibo Ea'stern Region and the Cameroonswhich then were still administrated as partof the country. He often told me about thisexperience, and how on .these jou~neys .hehad always tied a long pIece of strIng WItha rooster at the other end to his toe atnight. With the aid of this home-madealarm clock he rose at cock-crow everymorning to study until breakfast.: he hadset himself the task of translatlng unre­corded Fulani literature - traditionaldrama - into the Hausa language, workfor which he was later recognised.

He was certainly a scholar, but he wasnot unduly concerned about the Northernlack of education. "Tell me who is morecivilised," he demanded of me, " the God­fearing, law-abiding communities in theNorth - illiterate though they may be ­where strangers can walk safely, by day andby night; or the Southern communitieswhere nobody is safe, where people areafraid to travel unaccompanied betweenvillage and village, and where strangers- are

SUZANNECRONJE

apt to disappear at night. I don't care howliterate they are, and even if everyone ofthem can read and write English, people likethat are not civilised! "

I asked him what he meant; why werestrangers unsafe in the southern regions?He shrugged. "'Christianity there is onlya veneer." Pressed further, he brought outthe old stories of ritual murder and can­nibalism which the Moslem North believesabout -che High Forest tribes. I remonstrated\vith him. "Surely you don't believe that?Have you personally come across any evi­dence in support of it?" There may beoccasional cases, of ritual murder, but can­nibalism of the cooking-pot variety - thecatching and eating of strangers - is notand never has been practised in Nigeria, oranywhere else in Africa, despite generationsof hear-say reports. .

Ismaila admitted as much. What, then,was his real reason for disliking the peoplefrom the other regions? "I will tell you:wherever you see a double-storey, it belongsto an Ibo," he said, flashing me a ruefulsmile.

Double-storey houses are a sign of consid­erable affluence and social standing inNigeria, where ,most buildings are of ,thebungalow type. They usually contain a store,workshop or office, the premises in which thewealth to build them was derived. That somany of them in the North belonged toIbos from the Eastern Region was a measureof Ibo industry and enterprise. Of course,Ismaila's feelings were representative ofmost Northerners whose political awarenessincorporated the resentment of the materialsuccess achieved in their region by membersof the southern, tribes who were often verytactless in flouting their advantage and thepower that went with it, panicularly whenthey occupied official positions. But theNorthern resentment was anti-Ibo onlyinsofar as Ibos happened to form the largemajority in the southern communities which'were growing up throughout the North.It is was a tribal antagonism which wasdictated by economic conditions; intrinsic­ally it was free from racial feeling and itwas not hallowed by tradition, ~s somepeople maintained, though religious preju­dice had something to do with it.

THIS, WAS THE SITUATION in 1957. By1959 - when the NPC of the North had

will unalterable facts ofregional hostility keepNigeria's major groups apart?An individual's experience

entered into a coalition with the NCNC inthe East to provide Nigeria with the gov­ernment under which it attained indepen­dence - tribal attitudes had already startedto change. This shift was reflected in manyways through public utterances by leadingfigures, in ne\vspaper columns and inter­regional traffic, but to me it was broughthome by the amazing transJormation in theoudook of an old friend, a senior Councillorfrom Kano. This gentleman was an ultra- 'conservative traditionalist who before inde­pendence had told me that he would " neversit next to one of those Ibo pagans." Hewas elected to the Lagos House of Repre­sentatives in 1959, and when I met him ayear later, I asked him how he got onwith his Iba colleagues in parliament." Allah!" he laughed. "They are almosthuman!" Then, more seriously: I don'tonly sit with them, I also eat with them!"In Nigerian terms this denotes social inti­macy. One does not share a meal with adespised inferior. Now that the Ibos werepolitical allies, they had ceased to be un­welcome intruders. Tribal feelings were re­sponding to political reality.

It was now the turn of the Yorubas tobecome the hated tribe in the North. TheYorubas were synonymous to Northernminds with the hated Action Group whoseleader, Chief Awolowo, had conducted anelection campaign employing helicopters,which were said to intrude on the privacyof Moslem households, and a regiment ofWestern 'Region lawyers who threatened theauthority of the Northern customary courts.I was in Lagos during the Nigerian inde­pendence celebrations, and a well-knownLondon journalist who wanted to learnsomething about tribal relations within thenew nation asked me, to introduce him toa friend of mine, a Nigerian diplomat whomI regarded and still regard as representativeof the most liberal type of Northern intel­lectual. The atmosphere was relaxed - thetwo men knew each other by reputation ­and in the conversation that ensued myNorthern friend denied that there had everbeen reason to believe that Northernerswould be unable to get on with their East­ern fellow-citizens. ' We must forget allthat tribal talk now," he said. "We m~st

cease to regard ourselves as Ibos or Hausasor Fulanjs or Tiv~, we must think of our­selves as ~igeriaris rather, tha~ ,,~nything

DECEM8ER 1966/227the massacre of thousands of innocent Ibosin Northern towns.

else." There was a slight pause. Then headded, "With one exception,· of course -:­you can never trust a Yoruba. They are anirresponsible, corrupt and utterly unreliabletribe." Despite our shocked silence he stuckto this opinion and would not even concedethat it is dangerous to generalise on suchpoints.

The Yorubas remained the target ofNorthern antagonism until 1962, when thepolitical crisis in the Western Region andthe trial of Chief Awolowo on charges oftreasonable felony put a different govern­ment in power in the West, providing anew Yoruba ally for the Northern Region.This came at a time when the NCN'C/NPCcoalition was beginning to crack under thestrain of the census controversy and a hostof other differences between the regions,and President Azikiwe - an Ibo - becamethe target of vicious political attacks fromthe North. I met my friend, the diplomat,again at that time and heard him defendthe honesty of Chief Awolowo's successor,Chief Akintola, and I reminded him ofwhat he had said about the Yorubas atthe time of independence. He could notremember the incident at first, but after awhile his memory returned. "Ah, well,"he said, "we live and learn. Besides, the

truth is now beginning to emerge ab~~t ourso-called allies from the East~" He ,reciteda long list of incidents to show how the·NCNC was trying to undermine the author­ity of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the.Prime Minister, who was of course a North­erner. "Perhaps we were foolish to expectmore from these people. They have notradition of civilised government, these Ibopagans.". I would like to say he did not reallymean it, but he meant it - at the time.The animosity against the Ibos continue'dto grow in the North, recalling all the oldresentments and adding a host of newgrievances. The stories about Ibo cannibal­ism received new impetus through scurrilouscartoons of the cooking-pot variety whichappeared in Northern papers, and the trendaccelerated with the January military coup- allegedly engineered by Ibos on behalfof their tribe - which seemed proof of theIbo detennination to dominate and exploitthe helpless North. In reality it was nothingof the kind, but the North was convincedthat it was about to lose not only its econ­omic and political self-determination, butalso its cultural and religious heritage tothose "pagan upstarts" from the Easternregion. The \\Thole affair culminated with

10 MANY OBSERVERS THESE recent eventshave put pa'id to any hopes of forging thevarious tribes of Nigeria into a singlenations. To me, this judgment seems pre­mature. I believe tribal feelings in Nigeriato be detemrined by economic and politicalconsiderations, and not by any inherentand unalterable factors of tribal life. Theyresemble the national and patriotic feelingsof European nations. The hated Germanswhom the British fought at the cost ofso much suffering a couple of decades agoare now valued allies and, to many peoplein Britain, preferable to ~eir French cqm­rades of yesterday" Who would have pre­dicted in 1945 that this change of attitudewould be publicly stated in 1965? Thereare those who argue that no comparison canbe made between the power-pattern ofEuropean nations and African tribal rehi­tions, hut I think that the only difference isthe degree of soph1istication - or, to be:more precise, the amount of hypocrisywhich cloaks diplomatic exchanges., I have not touched on the ups and downsof Ibo-Yoruba relations, or the relations be­tween the many other tribes which formpart of the Nigerian state and which ofte'nhave the power to affect Nigeria's precariousbalance of power. But they are subject toeconomic factors and they change as poli­tical attitudes change. Last week an Ibofriend told me that he wO,:!ld prefer tosee his region in alliance with the Northrather than with the " treacherous" YorubaWest. As he had been most violent lin hisreaction to the persecution suffered by hispeople in the North - at the time, thedepth of his bitterness and his desire forrevenge seemed to know no bounds - thischoice, however mistaken in its motives,indicates that the chances for a reconcili­ation in Nigeria are greater than may appearfrom current accounts. e

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Ten issues-20-32 pages ofthe politics, economics,cultural and social life of modern~Africa-by the established writers and.~artists of and about Africa, and ·'many new:voices.

1967Anniversaries and years of Africa's 37 inde­pendence days are shown below each month.Ethiopia has been independent since ancienttimes. Angola, Mozambique, PortugueseGuinea, Rhodesia, South Africa, South WestAfrica, Swaziland et al to follow.

(1956) 1 Cameroon (1960)

nuaryM T W T F 5234 5679 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 2122 23 24 25 26 27 2829 30 31

1 Sudan

FebruarySMTWTFS

1 2345 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 1819 20 21 22 23 24 2526 27 28

MaySMTWTFS

1 2 345 67 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 2021 22 23 24 25 26 2728 29 30 31

JuneSMTWTFS

1234 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 1718 19 20 21 22 23 2425 26 27 28 29 30

18 Gambia (1965) 28 UAR (1922) 22 ~lali (1960) 30 Congo (Kinshasa)26 Madagascar (1960)

(1960) 30 Rwanda (1962)30 Burundi (1962)

1 Somalia (1960) 6 Malawi (1964)3 Algeria (1962) 7 Liberia (1847)

13 CAR (1960)'15 Congo (Brazza)

(1960)17 Gabon (1960:20 Senegal (1960

1 Dahomey (1960)3 Niger . (1960)5 Upper Volta

(1960)7 Ivory Coast

(1960)11 Chad (1960)

August5 M T W T F 5

1 234 56 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 1~ 19:20 21 22 23 24 25 26 ~

27 28 29 30 31

July5 M T W T F 5

1234 5 6 7 89 10 11 12 13 14 15 ..

16 17 18 19 20 21 2223 24 25 26 27 28 2930 31

(1960) 27 Sierra Leone(1961)

SMTWTFS1 234

5 6 7 8 9 10 1112 13 14 15 16 17 1819 20 21 22 23 24 2526 27 28 29 30 31

2 Morocco (1956) 20 Tunisia (1956)6 Ghana (1957)

AprilSMTWTFS

134567 8o 11 12 13 14 15

./ 16 7 18 19 20 21 22 \3 24 25 26 27 28 29