Not Yet Uhuru: The Unfinished Revolution in Africa

Introduction

The 1960s had been described by observers as the golden age of Africa as Europe began to grant limited independence to their colonies, especially in Africa south of the Sahara. Peaceful transition to independent nationhood produced new problems that continue to haunt most of the continent today. The initial euphoria of independence was quickly replaced by a sense of hopelessness as the new elite found the pains and burdens of sustaining the new independent nations, all across of Africa, unbearable. In less than five years of attaining independent nationhood, large parts of the continent declined into one sort of anarchy or another as new political elites could not agree on the direction in which to move their nations. Totalitarian regimes, in the form of military oligarchies, soon became the order of the day with some countries degenerating into civil wars. This was the case in the Sudan and Nigeria. In the Belgian Congo, the brutal assassination of the newly-elected president, Patrice Lumumba, and the installation of Mobutu Sesse Seko as the new head of state were clear indications that independence for Africans was only a dream yet to be realized.

In east, central, and southern Africa, where there were large populations of White settlers during the colonial period, the problems of independence took a new form. For instance, in Portuguese settler colonies in southern and western Africa, the achievement of independence was delayed due to the lack of will on the part of military dictators in Portugal to grant independence to her colonies. The majority of Portuguese citizens who had relocated to the colonies as farmers or merchants could not reconcile themselves with the idea of ‘their’ colonies in Africa being controlled or ruled by indigenous Africans. The guerilla wars that were waged in these Portuguese colonial enclaves by African fighters gave a new meaning to liberation struggles in Africa. These revolutionaries focused not only on the achievement of independence from colonial rule but on a complete transformation of the colonial structures, and the building of a new society based on the principles of African socialism. As we shall see later, this was not to be the case as the Cold War was being played out between the Soviet Union and the United States (US) on African soil. The Cold War, which lasted more than 30 years, foreclosed the possibility of building a new Africa that would embody fairness, equity, justice, and freedom from colonial domination.

Colonial Ideologies and Patterns of Resistance

In grappling with the issue of Africa’s transition or non-transition to an independent democratic governing entity, one must first understand how the different colonial ideologies brought to Africa shaped the discourse of decolonization. It is also crucial to note that the rigidity of the various colonial ideologies, as I shall demonstrate throughout this article, produced specific forms of local resistance to colonization and European domination. With the exception of Algeria, the French and British patriarchal colonial ideologies produced the least resistance, especially in west Africa, where the nationalist elite sought cooperation rather than confrontation with the colonizing powers. On the other hand, the more degrading Portuguese colonial ideology, with its attendant racially-demeaning discourse, produced the most radical and revolutionary response from the nationalist elite in territories or colonies controlled by Portugal, particularly Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau. In all its particularities, settler colonialism was perhaps the most engaging form of European oppression in which notions of racial supremacy found new forms of justification and which, in turn, led to regional isolation of indigenous peoples in designated areas that functioned as labor reserves. I have in mind here apartheid South Africa under White rule, and Rhodesia, now re-named Zimbabwe, after independence in 1980.

As it turned out, anti-colonial struggles in the French and British colonies led to the development of neo-colonial states and the emergence of indigenous elite that continues to reproduce colonial economic interests after decolonization. Whereas, in the Portuguese enclaves, anti-colonial discourse focussed essentially on the transformation of the colonial structure and the institution of socialist institutions that would transform the persistence of colonial dependence. With the cessation of hostilities in these enclaves around the mid-70s, new relations with the colonial countries were redefined. Unfortunately, these revolutionary states were later to be destroyed by hostile forces from Europe and America through wanton assassinations of leaders of these countries, and through the sponsoring and financing of internal wars by outside anti-communist forces, especially in areas where anti-imperialist forces were gaining the upper hand.

Settler colonies, on the other hand, became transformed into one-party authoritarian states, with economic power still firmly in the hands of White settlers. This was clearly the case in Zimbabwe, and in the emerging fraudulent racial democracy in South Africa. Ironically, settler states, primarily in east and southern Africa, continue to be controlled by the tiny White settlers while African leaders settle for the administration of the neo-colonial settler states. Indeed, the on-going racial problems and civil disorder in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, is a direct consequence of the peculiar nature of the transformation of the colonial state in this haven of European power.

Origins of the Decolonization Movements in Sub-Saharan Africa

It was at the end of the Second World War (WWII) that the liberation struggles for Africa’s decolonization from European rule gathered revolutionary momentum. Previous revolts against colonial rule were restricted to demands for better wages and living conditions but, by the end of the war, local agitations began to challenge the legitimacy of colonial rule. Indeed, many leading Africanist scholars credited the 1945 Pan-African Conference in Manchester, England, as the first platform where the idea of total withdrawal of European rule in Africa was first concretely articulated. Among those attending the conference were young African students like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya; they all left the conference with the hope that one day their countries would be freed from European domination. However, other scholars (Campbell and Worrel, 2006; Thompson, 1969) traced the roots of Pan-Africanism to the ideology of ‘Ethiopianism’, which was prevalent in the African nation of Ethiopia around the early phases of the 1900s. In its larger discourse, ‘Ethiopianism’, as a liberation ideology, called for a total unity of Ethiopian territories as a precondition for the formation of a modern empire that would rival European imperial states. In fact, when Ethiopia was invaded by Mussolini’s soldiers in 1935, in a desperate attempt to annex the country as an Italian colony in Africa, ‘Ethiopianism’ became the rallying ideology to repel the invading Italian forces. Although ‘Ethiopianism’ did not directly address the idea of a continental unity of all African people at the time, it later produced a lasting impact on the notion of the African spirit and the necessity for a united Africa to repel and impede European colonization of the continent and the further subjugation its peoples.

A new generation of African scholars that included Leopold Senghor ¹ began to propound the ideology of ‘Negritude’ – that is, the authentic African ‘essence’ and ‘being’ – to challenge European characterization of Africa as a continent without history or a place where civilization was never touched. Other leading scholars of African descent, especially from the Diaspora, like WEB Dubois, George Padmore, Amie Cesaire, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Martin R Delany, also began to provide the political framework and strategies, in their various writings, for the total liberation of Africa from European colonial oppression. More so, the demand for immediate and speedy de-colonization of Africa from colonial rule, at the Manchester conference, set in motion the desire among Africans across the continent to be free from colonial occupation.

At the grassroots level, colonialism itself sharpened class contradictions in the colonies as ordinary Africans saw their livelihood deteriorate by each passing year of colonial rule. The failure of the Europeans to deliver on their promises of a better life to returning African soldiers, who had fought for them during WWII, further galvanized Africans to demand for an end to colonial rule. The basis for a new and bold alliance among the urban middle class, rural peasants, and the masses of poor rural dwellers that had moved to the cities in search of better life, became stronger and stronger with each passing day of colonial rule (Davidson, 1991). It became clear, given the depression that gripped Europe at the end of the war, and the falling commodity prices worldwide, that European colonial projects in Africa could no longer be maintained without resort to further use of force. Basil Davidson, a British historian and journalist, described the atmosphere in the colonies at the time most elegantly below:

Little by little, and then with gathering speed, the nationalist cause spread outside of the limits of educated minority which had first proclaimed it, and assumed mass dimension as it drew within its orbit ever-larger numbers of towns people and peasants. These movements soon thrust ahead of the few concessions which British or French colonial governors were ready to accept as necessary; and the dozen years after 1945 were accordingly full of violent clashes and upheavals, repressions, shootings and imprisonments. Yet the onward drive of African opinion, coupled with growing British and French awareness that nothing but a major political change could meet this crisis, gradually achieved important constitutional changes. (Davidson, 1991: 331)

For Africans who had earned Western education, especially those who studied abroad, the reality of colonial rule became more poignant with every passing day with the realization that their economic conditions were hardly any different from the ordinary folks who toiled daily in European plantations and other colonial establishments. These educated elite, returned home with ivy-league education from overseas, found themselves in a second-class citizen status, and with the majority of them unable to find gainful employment commensurate to their educational qualifications, it became necessary for them to become part of the revolution. These educated nationalist elite saw the colonial bureaucracies staffed and headed by poorly-qualified Europeans, brought yearly from Europe, to occupy positions that could have been offered to Africans. In addition, they realized that wages paid to indigenous employees in colonial bureaucracies were at levels that could not even secure their reproduction, let alone that of their families. Similarly, returning African soldiers could hardly find jobs either in the mines or the colonial bureaucracies either and, coupled with the unfair colonial taxes that were arbitrarily imposed on Africans, the contradictions of the colonial societies were reaching levels of irreconcilability.

The rising inflation in the colonies that followed the end of WWII made matters even worse as many Africans in the colonies could no longer see the benefits of colonization. These scenarios soon gave rise to anti-colonial sentiments among the masses. The resentments of colonial administration were made worse as the colonial state was ready to use force to clamp down on popular expressions of ordinary people that often took the form of peaceful demonstrations. A case in point was the November–December 1929 Aba women anti-tax uprising in the southeast parts of the lower Niger that came under the sway of British colonial rule in the late 19th century as the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, and later on in January 1914 as Nigeria sequel to the amalgamation of that Protectorate with the Proptectorate of Northern Nigeria in the upper Niger by Frederick Lugard, that was brutally repressed by colonial military force recruited predominantly from inhabitants of the upper Niger and under the command of British officers, and the frequent protests against colonial administration by naked market women in Kenya who gathered daily in front of colonial offices protesting the skyrocketing cost of living especially in the urban areas.

Paradoxically, while the status of local chiefs was elevated incrementally by colonial officials who appointed them in an arbitrary manner in most cases to head the new native authority administrations, the returning educated elite – the majority of whom were lawyers and men of letters – saw theirs diminished. These elite saw no other avenue for reward but to start their own organizations, and these organizations were later transformed into political movements. A parallel development was also taking place among the ranks of the urban working class, some of whom were soldiers who had fought gallantly for Europeans in Burma and north Africa. The returning soldiers could not find meaningful employment and with their irregular military pensions hardly enough to support them and their families, they were left with no alternative than to show their frustrations with colonial rule (Boahen, 1966). These soldiers had also lost their belief in the invisibility of the ‘White man’ as they saw White soldiers withdraw to the back of the frontline when the enemy attacked, leaving them (African soldiers) on their own to repel such attacks with unimaginable casualties. This eventually translated into the hatred of the colonial officers, whom they had fought alongside during the war. These resentments among the rank-and-file of the returning soldiers and the urban working class were later exploited by the educated elite who saw their own situation worsen with every passing day of colonization. These structural conditions soon gave way to mass protests, occupation of colonial offices, and outright demand for the end of colonial rule (Davidson, 1991).

The colonial state responded to this rising consciousness among the urban workers and rural peasants with brutal force; however, it soon discovered that very little could be achieved in the long run using this option. In the case of Kenya, the British colonial officials used brutal force against the Mau Mau uprising, led by Dedan Kimathi, killing and maiming thousands of villagers and rural peasants whom they had suspected of harboring the Mau Mau fighters. These fighters were noted for their tenacity in attacking British military bases when they least expected. The British soon discovered that the Mau Mau, whom they originally thought were marauding thugs, had developed into a movement against British rule. In the end, the British colonial administrators had no choice but to make a deal with the educated elite, including Jomo Kenyatta, who had been thrown into British jail upon his return home from England.

In the French-occupied territories especially in west and north Africa, the story was slightly different. Indeed, the defeat of the French forces in Algeria together with the increasing importance of the Muslim Brotherhoods in major cities in Algeria, Mali and Senegal in west Africa, marked the end of French rule in Francophone Africa. Instead of making the same mistake it made in Algeria, the French authorities decided to engage in dialogue with the rest of their colonies, especially in west Africa, where anti-French sentiments had gained enormous momentum. Leaders, including Sekou Toure in Guinea Conakry, who had become the leader of the anti-French movement and a symbol of opposition to French rule in west Africa, demanded an immediate withdrawal of France from their countries. In the end, the French had no other option but to relinquish political control of their territories in the region after the failure of the referendum that was supposed to decide whether French colonies in west Africa would remain part of greater France. The failure of the referendum forced the French administrators to engage in dialogue with the African elite who, by this time, had resisted all sorts of intimidation and offers of better positions in the colonial administration if they collaborated with the colonial officials in prolonging, and not aborting, decolonization.

Unfortunately in west Africa, independence dialogue led to a new form of domination, which many scholars have referred to as neo-colonialism. Adopting neo-liberalism as ideology of political rule, most of the new independent states in west Africa continued the same economic models imposed by their departing bosses. In Francophone west Africa, monetary union with France ensured that French economic interests in the former colonies continue to be maintained while pro-French leaders ruled on behalf of the French imperial state. In the former British colony of Ghana, progressive ideology of Pan-Africanism propounded by its new leader, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was later suppressed by successive military coups that were inspired and financed by the West. And in Nigeria, the neo-colonial nationalist elite that succeeded the British rulers were soon to make corruption and political ineptness as cardinal principles of the state.

In the previously-revolutionary states of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, and Cape Verde (Cabo Verde), the consolidation of socialist structures after independence was met with hostility by the West, especially the US and the United Kingdom (UK). Using the Boer-controlled government in South Africa, revolutionary consolidation in Angola and Mozambique was arrested through numerous military invasions, senseless assassination of progressive and anti-imperialist leaders, and through the use of anti-revolutionary forces like the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) in Angola, and the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) in Mozambique, to destabilize the new socialist states. In succession, leaders of these emerging socialist states were assassinated by the combined forces of both American and South African secrete agents beginning with Eduardo Mondlane, and followed by Amilcar Cabral in Guinea Bissau, and Samora Marcel in Mozambique, whose plane was purportedly booby-trapped by apartheid South African agents after attending the peace meeting in Nkomati. Countless other revolutionary brothers and sisters, who had agitated for and spoken against racist colonial domination in South Africa, were secretly disposed of by paramilitary forces funded from Europe and America. Under the administration of President Ronald Reagan in the US, several billions of dollars were funneled through South Africa to destroy the revolutions in Angola, Mozambique and, later, Namibia.

In the settler states of Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, settler farmers continue to control major sectors of the economy including agriculture, commerce, banking, and other major financial institutions. Political participation in these enclaves is reduced to choosing which segments of the African elite can be trusted enough to oversee the economic interests of the old oligarchy. This situation was recently played out in the election in Kenya in 2008 where the White farmers backed the sitting president, Mwai Kibaki, who lost the election to his opponent, Riala Odinga, who was not trusted enough by the old elite to run the neo-colonial settler state on their behalf. The same is true of Zimbabwe where Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are fronting for White farmers and their business establishments.

The on-going chaotic and sad situation in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe is fighting internal enemies, primarily White settler farmers and their African collaborators, and outside detractors, especially the UK and the US, is slightly different. The problem in Zimbabwe today is not caused by Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) but by the resolution of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDF) declared in 1965 by the White farmer leader, Ian Smith, a former British Royal Air Force jet pilot. Under Ian Smith, Zimbabwe was run much the same way South Africa was run under the apartheid regime. The prolonged guerilla warfare fought by the Zimbabwe Africa Patriotic Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU; ZIPRA and ZANLA) offered real hope of transforming the racist White rule into an authentic revolutionary state. But, unfortunately, it was never to be. The intervention of the British government, after it noticed that the White settlers’ army was losing the war to the combined forces of ZANU and ZAPU fighters, clearly aborted the consolidation of people’s power in Zimbabwe; and Robert Mugabe is partly to blame for that.

The Lancaster Talks that started in 1979 and ended in 1980 with the signing of the peace or independence agreement clearly created the political conditions that exist in Zimbabwe today. The agreement granted majority rule to Black Zimbabweans with serious qualification. First, the peace accord signed by Mugabe restricts the new Black rulers from touching White-owned land with the British government promising to buy out White farmers within 10 years of independence. In 1990, the British government reneged on that promise. It was not a surprise to observers because the British government has never kept a single promise it gave when departing its colonies in Africa. Perhaps a serious overlook on the part of Robert Mugabe was the clause in the agreement (similar to the Property Clause in South Africa’s multi-racial constitution) that stated clearly that, in the course of purchasing White-owned or controlled land, which is more than 86% of all arable land, there must, according to the Lancaster Agreement, be ‘a willing buyer and a willing seller’. As history now shows, 10 years after independence, in 1990 none of the less than 6% White settler farmers was willing to sell, divide or legally share their land with several millions of landless Blacks Zimbabweans.

Transition to Neo-Colonial States

In hindsight, the granting of political independence to colonial territories in Africa, as I have argued elsewhere (Badru, 2008), was largely a farce as independence only encompasses a nominal transfer of political power to local elite whose charge was to continue the propagation of elite rule and the advancement of the economic interests of former colonial powers. With the exception of previously-revolutionary states like Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea Bissau, and to some extent, petty bourgeois states like Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia, as has been alluded to earlier, peaceful transition to independent nationhood in much of Black Africa only reinforced the historic link of dependence between the former colonies and the metropolitan states of Europe.

In his book, Front Line Nationalism in Angola and Mozambique, David Birmingham (1992) described in the most succinct way the short-lived independence in Africa and the transition to neo-colonial states in much of the continent thus:

The colonial interlude in Africa was unexpectedly short-lived. Within 50 years, a new ‘neo-colonial’ contract had replaced the old colonial presence in tropical Africa. The colonial legacy was nevertheless profound. The new states adhered almost exclusively to the often very artificial boundaries devised by the Europeans. The new rulers retained the colonial languages for their administration, and in many cases, the colonial currencies for their external trade. The colonial tradition of military authority rather than democratic consent was preserved in a majority of the new states, despite the several attempts to transform the dictatorial colonial legacy into a broader-based system of government. The largest of the ex-colonial states failed to hold together and civil war interrupted the evolution of Sudan and Ethiopia, and more temporarily, Zaire and Nigeria. (Birmingham, 1992: 4)

It is this same neo-colonial arrangement that produced dictatorial leaders, the likes of Mobutu See Seko in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), Idi Amin in Uganda, Omar Bongo in Gabon, Gnessingbe Eyadema in French Togo, Ibrahim Babangida and Sanni Abacha in British-controlled Nigeria. Therefore, analyzing the crises of transition in Africa in terms of elite conduct, as some scholars have suggested (Ayittey, 1992, 2005; Ihonvbere and Mbaku, 2003), is a-historical at best. The neo-colonial states function, primarily, and irrespective of actors at the helm of affairs of those states, to reproduce the economic interests of the former colonial states. This is more obvious in territories controlled by the French where monetary union to the old master’s state, until more recently, ensured economic dependence and indirect political control.

It should be stressed, though, that the current neo-colonial states, in their present forms, are playing their historic roles of perpetuating European domination (and in the case of South Africa, Boer hegemony); and they can only be transformed through popular uprisings and not by any ‘democratic constitutionalism’, as prescribed by many international observers and institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, the degree to which neo-colonial structures, both at the economic and political levels, in all of Africa can be transformed to produce more equitable societies will be determined essentially by the extent to which Europe and the US will allow such a radical transformation in Africa to take place.

South Africa

The collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa was welcome all across Africa, and in the African Diaspora, as an end to the last vestiges of institutionalized racism in one of the most racially diverse countries in the world. It was an event that was meant to end the last edifice of European domination on the continent; but after more than 20 years of transition to a multi-racial democracy, the progress towards a just and equitable society is disappointingly slow. Indeed, the decolonization of South Africa presented the most difficult challenge to the African elite both inside and outside of the country. This is because of the problematic nature of the apartheid system, introduced by the Boers in 1948, after the Nationalist Party (NP) won the majority of the seats in parliament. Because of the large population of White settlers in South Africa, which is more than double those in other settler territories of Kenya and Zimbabwe, the decolonization process becomes more difficult, and requires a different strategy beyond those adopted in other colonies ruled by Europeans.

In his eloquently written book, In the Twilight of the Revolution (2009), Kwandiwe Kondlo takes a critical look at the liberation struggles in South Africa and the role played by the ANC and other smaller groups, including the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC). Focusing specifically on the power struggles between the ANC and the PAC, and the deals that were made with the ANC by the Boer establishment in the final days of the struggle against White rule, Kondlo’s project in the book was partly to reinstate the role the PAC, in exile, played in the liberation struggles against apartheid, and its marginalization from the political process during the crucial negotiation period of 1990–4.

The PAC was a breakaway faction of the ANC. It was initially led by Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, the founder and the driving force of the new organization. The faction broke away from the ANC because of what Sobukwe and his comrades perceived then as the dangers posed to the liberation struggles in South Africa by the decision of ANC leadership to establish a working relationship with the South African Communist Party (SACP), a largely White-dominated political organization. For reasons that have to do with this ideological division, the PAC was formed in 1959 and was immediately banned in 1960, forcing its leading members to flee into exile in the neighboring country of Lesotho. The PAC was formed to propagate the nationalist views of its founding leader, Robert Sobukwe, who was opposed to the participation of Whites in the liberation struggle. Immediately after Sobukwe was incarcerated, the PAC moved to Lesotho where it began to operate as armed guerilla force with clandestine activities inside of South Africa.

Kondlo’s book passionately tells the story of the national liberation struggles in South Africa and the pivotal role played by the PAC. The book, according to Kondlo, seeks to ‘to reverse the historical marginalization of “other” heroes and heroines and other liberation movements whose stories now sit on the sideline of history’ (Kondlo, 2009: 3). This marginalization, according to Kondlo, could be attributed to the poor organizational structure of the PAC during the liberation struggles, and the deep division within the organization after its founder and first leader, Robert Sobukwe, was imprisoned on Robben Island in 1960. Under the leadership of Dr. PK Leballo, from 1962–79, the PAC moved its operational center to Tanzania from Lesotho, and by the time the independence negotiations began in 1990, with the release of Nelson Mandela from Robben Island, the organization had been led by four different leaders, none of whom, according to Kondlo, had the vision, leadership quality, and ideological commitment of Sobukwe. Due to poor leadership, and the deep division within the organization in the years leading to the crucial talks of 1990–4, Kondlo argues that the PAC was unable to participate in the dialogue that led to the subsequent transition to multi-racial democracy in South Africa.

In Kondlo’s view, independence fell short of expectation because of the ANC’s numerous errors and capitulations during the dialogue with the Boer ruling elite represented by the sitting president, FW De Klerk. The final deal with the ANC, which included the inclusion of the ‘Property Clause’ in the new post apartheid constitution, Kondlo contends amounted to a ‘withdrawal from revolutionary liberation struggle to an acceptance of defeat’ (Kondlo, 2009: 5–7). Attainment of independence in South Africa, Kondlo argues, only abolished formal structures of apartheid but retained intact all formal inequalities based on race and the denial of access to economic empowerment to the large majority of poor Blacks in South Africa. Kondlo concludes pessimistically by observing that:

The material dividends of democracy in the new dispensation have not accrued for the poor majority and this situation is likely to continue for the generation to come. Hence the gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase, leaving South Africa, 15 years after the advent of democracy, among the most highly unequal societies in the world. White domination in its institutional form may have been removed, disparities in material wealth continue to widen in a way that threatens democratic consolidation. (Kondlo, 2009: 7)

There is a parallel here between the civil rights movement in the US in the 1960s, which led to the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act, and the de-colonization of South Africa. In the case of the US, the Black Panther Movement was maligned and marginalized from the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement after the White establishment had turned to the more peaceful movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; fearing that allowing the Black Panthers, and other radical Black organizations like the wing of the Nation of Islam led by Malcolm X, to control the discourse and direction of the Civil Rights Movement would have led to an outcome that many White Americans would have found difficult to live with.

In the particular case of South Africa, the Boer elite, borrowing a page from the US, began dialogue with the softer wing of the liberation movements, in this case Nelson Mandela and the ANC establishment, because allowing the PAC, which by then had grown bold enough on its clandestine activities inside South Africa, and which was on the threshold of winning the guerilla war against the White apartheid state, would have produced a new democratic South Africa in which mass migration of Whites out of the country would have been a new reality.

In this respect one would agree with Kondlo, and others who hold similar views, that the transition to the current multi-racial democracy in South Africa is a defeat of the popular struggles waged for many years for a genuine de-colonization. But taking a defeatist position, as Kondlo appears to have done (maybe not), leaves very little hope for a real change in the new South Africa. What needs to be done, at this point of the unfinished revolution in South Africa, is for popular progressive forces within both the ANC and the PAC to form a new alliance to continue the struggle for national liberation. I have in mind here groups like the Congress of the People (Cope), the latest splinter group from the ANC, and other radical organizations of the Azania people to unite and continue the struggle for a genuine national liberation.

In sum, what I have discussed here in this article is the troublesome issue of transition to independent nationhood in most of Black Africa. By relating the struggles and experiences of the people in different parts of Africa I have shown that, even if those struggles were unique in their geographical locations and contexts, they all revealed a commonality, which was the desire of all Africans to be freed from the historically-imposed shackles of oppression that previously defined their humanity and essence. This ‘being and essence’ is what the late Leopold Senghor referred to in his novel work as ‘Negritude’.