The Sunday News
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
The Versailles Peace treaty that ended the First World War mandated Britain, France, South Africa, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand to each administer some former German colonial territories and prepare their indigenous people for eventual self-rule.
It is that “trusteeship” system that resulted in the former German East African territory of Tanganyika being administered by Britain, and German West Africa becoming a South African administrative responsibility.
Cameroon was split up between Britain and France, and Ruanda-Urundi became a Belgium mandatory territory although the League of Nations formalised that only in 1923.
African nationalist leaders regarded these trusteeship territories as a League of Nations responsibility, and later as that of the United Nations Organisation (UNO), a successor of the League of Nations.
Between 1919 and 1939, some Africans went to study or work in Britain the US or in France. Among them were Hastings Kamuzu Banda from Nyasaland, Kwame Nkrumah from the Gold Coast, Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya.
These people played very significant roles in the second Pan-African Congress held in Manchester in Britain in 1945.
Before then, colonial powers had consolidated their grip on their territories, and had not shown any wish to allow, let alone to enable, those territories to attain sovereignty.
Britain had declared Kenya a protectorate in 1920. It immediately thereafter brought in large numbers of British settlers and gave them farms on the country’s highlands, an extremely fertile region that was the traditional home of the Kikuyu people, Jomo Kenyatta’s tribe.
To make room for the white setters, Britain removed many Kikuyu communities and dumped them in arid, hostile areas. Many of the white British settlers were former First World War soldiers.
The Kikuyus were literally forced to seek employment from these British settlers on the basis of what was called the Kipande system, a regulation under which an African worker would be given a certificate by a white employer after completing a given contract period.
That certificate confined the holder to a particular type of job. The system constrained the holder a great deal in addition to making him or her unable to ever be paid an amount higher than his or her very first wage as indicated in the certificate.
The Kikuyu responded in 1921 by forming the Young Kikuyu Association (YKA), Kenya’s first African-led political organisation. The YKA changed its name to Kikuyu Central Association (KCA) in 1928 with a young man name Johnstone Kamau Ngengi being elected its general secretary. In 1930, Ngengi was sent to London to present the Kikuyu’s land grievances to the British colonial secretary. Ngengi stayed in Britain for 15 years and changed his name to Jomo Keynatta.
Nyasaland, Dr Banda’s country, played a prominent role in the First World War. The British Government had declared Nyasaland a protectorate in 1891 following close consultation between Germany which was the colonial master of Nyasaland’s northern neighbour, Tanganyika, and Britain.
In the First World War, Britain formed an army known as the King’s African Rules (KAR) comprising some 18 920 black men from Nyasaland in addition to more than 19 100 Nyasaland porters, referred to as Carrier Corps.
At the end of the war, some of these people got disillusioned and left their country for South Africa. One of them was Clements Kadalie who later founded the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICWU) of which Masotsha Ndlovu became an official.
Kamuzu Banda had left the country earlier, walked southwards and stopped at Hartley, now Chegutu, in Zimbabwe, where he worked for a couple of months in a district hospital before proceeding to South Africa.
In Johannesburg, he worked for a mining company during the day and studied in the evening. He was later helped by an elderly white woman to go to the United States where he worked and studied to become a medical doctor.
He graduated as a medical doctor and left the United States and went to Britain to open a practice in London. It was while he was in London that he got involved in the Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945.
Dr Banda, Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah met other prominent African leaders at Manchester, but tended to consult one another more since they were all from British colonies.
Nkrumah was a US university graduate, having studied social anthropology before moving to Britain and ultimately back to his country, the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1947. In fact, he was invited by the top leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) in Accra to return home to be that organisation’s secretary-general.
He had actually played a leading, if not the leading, role in the organisation’s and success of the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress. Among well-known Afro-American pan-Africanists who attended the occasion were WEB du Bois, George Padmore and JR Makonnen. The Manchester conference adopted a resolution that highlighted the local political and social environmental grievances as well as those of the delegates’ colonial home countries.
However, it was much more wide ranging than the 1919 one, and condemned colonialism in stronger terms.
It is easy to detect Kwame Nkrumah’s and Kenyatta’s hands and voices in that historic declaration which read:
“To secure equal opportunities for all colonial and coloured people in Great Britain, this congress demands that discrimination on account of race, creed or colour be made a criminal offence by law.
That all employment and occupations shall be opened to all qualified Africans, and that to bar such applicants because of race, colour or creed shall be deemed an offence against the law.
In connection with the political situation the congress observed:
(a) That since the advent of British, French, Belgian, and other Europeans in West Africa, there has been regression instead of progress as a result of systematic exploitation by these alien imperial powers.
The claims of “partnership”, “trusteeship”, “guardianship”, and the “mandate system” do not serve the political wishes of the people of West Africa.
(b) That the democratic nature of the indigenous institutions of the peoples of West Africa has been crushed by obnoxious and oppressive laws and regulations, and replaced by autocratic systems of government which are inimical to the wishes of the people of West Africa.
(c) That the introduction of pretentious constitutional reforms in West African territories are nothing but spurious attempts on the part of the alien imperialist powers to continue the political enslavement of the peoples.
(d) That the introduction of Indirect Rule is not only an instrument of oppression but also an encroachment on the rights of the West African peoples.
(e) That the artificial divisions and territorial boundaries created by imperialist powers are deliberate steps to obstruct the political unity of the West African peoples.
Economic
(a) That there has been a systematic exploitation of the economic resources of the West African territories by imperialist powers to the detriment of the inhabitants.
(b) That the industrialisation of West Africa by the indigenes has been discouraged and obstructed by the imperialist rulers, with the result that the standard of living has fallen below subsistence level.
(c) That the land, the rightful property of West Africans, is gradually passing into the hands of foreign governments and other agencies through various devices and ordinances.
(d) That the workers and farmers of West African have not been allowed independent trade unions and co-operative movements without official interference.
(e) That the mining industries are in the hands of foreign monopolies of finance capital, with the result that wherever a mining industry has developed there has been a tendency to deprive people of land holdings, eg mineral rights in Nigeria and Sierra Leone are now the property of the British government.
(f) That the British government in West Africa is virtually controlled by a merchants’ united front whose main objective is the exploitation of the people, thus rendering the indigenous population economically helpless.
(g) That when a country is compelled to rely on one crop (eg cocoa) for a single monopolistic market, and is obliged to cultivate only for export while at the same time its farmers and workers find themselves in the grip of financial capital, then it is evident that the government of that country is incompetent to assume responsibility for it.
The resolution then referred to what it called the social needs of the region.
(a) That the democratic organisation and institutions of West African peoples have been interfered with, that alien rule has not improved education, health, or the nutrition of the West African peoples, but on the contrary tolerates mass illiteracy, ill-health, malnutrition, prostitution, and many other social evils.
(b) That organised Christianity in West Africa is identified with the political and economic exploitation of the West
African peoples by alien powers.
1. The principles of the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter be put into practice at once.
2. The abolition of land laws which allow Europeans to take land from the Africans. Immediate cessation of any further settlement by Europeans in Kenya or in any other territory in East Africa. All available land to be distributed to the landless Africans.
3. The right of Africans to develop the economic resources of their country without hindrance.
4. The immediate abolition of racial and other discriminatory laws at once (the Kipande system in particular) and the system of equal citizenship to be introduced forthwith.
5. Freedom of speech, the Press, association and assembly.
6. Revision of the system of taxation and of the civil and criminal codes.
7. Compulsory free and uniform education for all children up to the age of 16, with free meals, free books, and school equipment.
8. Granting of the franchise, i.e. the right of every man and woman over the age of 21 to elect and be elected to the Legislative Council, Provincial Council, and all other Divisional and Municipal councils.
9. A state medical, health, and welfare service to be made available to all.
10. Abolition of forced labour, and the introduction of the principle of equal pay for equal work.
Declaration to the Colonial Powers:
The delegates believe in peace. How could it be otherwise, when for centuries the African people have been victims of violence and slavery? Yet if the western world is still determined to rule mankind by force, then Africans, as a last resort, may have to appeal to force in an effort to achieve freedom, even if force destroys the world.
We are determined to be free. We want education. We want the right to earn a decent living; the right to express our thoughts and emotions, to adopt and create forms of beauty. We demand for black Africa autonomy and independence, so far and no further it is possible in this One World for groups and people to rule themselves subject to inevitable world unity and federation.
We are not ashamed to have been an age-long patient people. We continue willingly to sacrifice and strive. But we are unwillingly to starve any longer while doing the world’s drudgery in order to support by our poverty and ignorance a false aristocracy and a discarded imperialism.
We condemn the monopoly of capital and the rule of private wealth and industry for private profit alone. We welcome economic democracy as the only real democracy. Therefore, we shall complain, appeal, and arraign. We will make the world listen to the facts of our condition. We will fight in every way we can for freedom, democracy, and social betterment.”
Declaration to the colonial peoples:
The 1945 Congress departed from the 1919 position by appealing to the oppressed people to act to free themselves.
The call to the colonially oppressed stated:
“We affirm the right of all colonial peoples to control their own destiny. All colonies must be free from foreign imperialist control, whether political or economic.
“The peoples of the colonies must have the right to elect their own governments without restrictions from foreign powers. We say to the peoples of the colonies that they must fight these ends by all means at their disposal.
“The object of imperialist powers is to exploit. By granting the right to colonial peoples to govern themselves that object is defeated. Therefore, the struggle for political power by colonial and subject peoples is the first steps towards, and the necessary prerequisites to complete social, economic and political emancipation. The Fifth Pan-African Congress, therefore, calls on the workers and farmers of the colonies to organize effectively. Colonial workers must be in the front of the battle against imperialism.
Your weapons — the strike and the boycott — are invincible.
We also call upon the intellectuals and professional classes of the colonies to awaken to their responsibilities. By fighting for trade union rights, the right to form co-operatives, freedom of the Press, assembly, demonstration and strike, freedom to print and read literature which is necessary for the education of the masses, you will be using the only means by which your liberties will be won and maintained. Today there is only one road to effective action – the organisation of the masses. And in that organisation, the educated colonial peoples must join. Colonial and subject peoples of the world, Unite!”
The resolution is mostly about West Africa because the Pan- Africa congress organisers were from that region. Nkrumah was the organisational moving spirit. We should remember that the Gold Coast had been exposed to western education since the eighteenth century when a few Africans from coastal villages went some to Britain, some to Germany and some to Holland for education.
By the last decade of the 19th Century the Gold Coast had black lawyers, such as JE Casely Hayford, whose granddaughter, Sally, became President Robert Mugabe’s wife. Other educated Gold Coasters were JEK Aggrey, prominent educationist and founder-principal of the famous Achimota College, and of course the Rev, SRB Attoh Ahuma who was the celebrated principal of the Acra Grammar School and also editor of the Gold Coast Methodist Times, not to forget Dr BW Quantey — Papafio who was a prominent legislative councillor.
Some of these people loomed large over the Pan-African politics of that period.
The resolution referred to “black Africa” to distinguish the countries represented from Arab-dominated north African territories such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt,Sudan and Mauritian.
It is of much historical interest that the resolution refers to the Manchester conference as “the Fifth Pan-African Congress” as that indicates that some three such meetings must have been held in addition to the 1919 Paris Congress. Those three conferences seem not to have been exposed to the media.
It is clear that the political temper of the African people was more militant in 1945 than it was in 1919. By 1958 when the next Pan-African conference was held in what was by then an independent Ghana, the mood of the Africans had become more confrontational than before.
To be continued next week.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]
