The Sunday News
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Ghana’s independence was attained in 1957, the year Algeria launched its armed struggle to free itself from French colonial rule. At the head of the unreservedly pan–Africanist newly proclaimed state of Ghana was Kwame Nkrumah whose anti-colonial campaign was led by a party, the United Gold Coast Convention, UGCC, that grouped lawyers, businesspeople, workers and peasant farmers.
In the UGCC top leadership with Nkrumah were EO Lamptey, J B Danguah, Edward Akufo Addo, and Willaim Afori Atta.
These men and Nkurmah were detained in 1948 after political disturbances in Accra.
Following their detention, the British government appointed the Watson Commission of Inquiry one of whose recommendations was a new constitution for the Gold Coast. That constitution was introduced in 1950. It granted much power to African legislative councillors.
A split occurred, however, in the UGCC as the lawyers and some businesspeople in its top leadership were for gradualist approach as opposed to Kwame Nkrumah’s “self-government now” demand.
Nkrumah broke away from the UGCC and on 12 June 1949 launched his own party, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), whose massive support came from market women, school-learners, small businesspeople and peasant farmers.
Schoolteachers and relatively few professionals comprising lawyers supported the CPP. The party’s large number of jobless school-leavers who used to mill around in front of its offices were derogatorily called “verandah boys” by Kwame Nkrumah’s critics.
The CPP adopted Nkrumah’s “positive action” strategy which comprised strikes and demonstrations. Nkrumah was arrested and imprisoned. While he was in jail, elections were held in February 1951, and the CPP won most legislative council seats.
From 1951, up to 6 March 1957, the CPP controlled Ghana’s legislative council with Nkrumah as the leader of Government business. The country became an independent sovereign State on 6 March 1957, and Nkrumah, as its founding president, delivered his famous speech in which he declared that Ghana’s independence would be meaningless if it did not assist the rest of Africa to be free.
He publicly thanked the last British Governor in the Gold Coast, Sir Charles Arden-Clarke, for co-operating with the CPP in its campaign for independence.
No sooner had Nkrumah assumed sovereign power over Ghana than he got his government to prepare for a conference of independent African States to be held in Accra, Ghana, from 15 to 22 April, 1958. At that time, independent African States were Ethiopia, the Sudan, Egypt, Liberia, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and, of course, Ghana itself.
These eight nations adopted a very long resolution the most important parts of which were on decolonisation, the Algerian situation and future conferences.
The resolution’s preamble referred in passing to an Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955. Nkrumah had attended that meeting which was chaired by Dr Sukarno, the president of the host State, Indonesia.
The Accra conference declared, among other things:
“We, the African States assembled here in Accra, in this our first conference, conscious of our responsibilities to humanity and especially to the peoples of Africa, and desiring to assert our African personality on the side of peace, hereby proclaim and solemnly reaffirm our unreserved loyalty to the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Declaration of the Asian-African conference held at Bandung to recognise the right of the African peoples to independence and self-determination and to take appropriate steps to hasten the realisation of this right: to affirm the right of the Algerian people independence and self-determination and to exert all possible effort to hasten the realisation of their independence; to uproot for ever the evil of racial discrimination in all its forms wherever it may be found . . .”
The eight heads of State, who attended the first conference of independent African States, were men of diverse cultural backgrounds, ranging from Liberia’s William Tubman who was a descendant of former slaves to Emperor Hailie Selassie of Ethiopia who was the 95th in the line of succession of the biblical king Solomon.
Also in attendance was a representative of King Idriss’ of Libya whose status was to all intents and purposes that of a caliph or sultan. He was overthrown by military officers led by Col Muammar Gaddafi on 1 September 1969 while he was on an Italian State visit. Gaddafi was an irrevesible Pan-Africanist of the same mould as Kwame Nkrumah. Tunisia was represented by President Habib Borguiba, a charismatic populist leader. Morocco was represented by an official sent by King Mohammad Hassan who claimed to be a descendant of the Prophet Mohammad founder of the Muslim religion.
Nkrumah was a visionary leader whose four-legged dream was well publicised: Liberation of the African continent, the creation of an African continental (union) Government, the formation of an African (continental) military high command, and the amalgamation of African States into the United States of Africa.
The Sudan was represented by the then prime minister, Abdallah Khalil of the historic Umma Party. Khalil was overthrown by the army in a bloodless coup on 17 November 1958, slightly more than six months after his return from Accra, and almost three weeks before the December 1958 Accra All-African Peoples Conference.
The most important issue at those Pan-African conferences was the decolonisation rather than the unification of the African continent.
Before Sudan declared itself independent on 1 January 1956, it had indicated that it would unite with Egypt should it become independent. It changed that positon, however, soon after attaining sovereignty that is immediately after Anglo-Egyptian condominium forces left the country.
We should realise that the 15 to 22 April, 1958 Accra conference was primarily for independent African States whereas the 5 to 13 December, 1958 meeting was really for African political parties.
Among prominent leaders who attended the December Conference were Patrice Lumumba of the then Belgian Congo (DRC), Kenneth Kaunda of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Joshua Nkomo of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika (Tanzania) Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Modibo Keita of Mali, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea and a large number of others most of whom represented political parties.
The conference was officially opened by Kwame Nkrumah, and after very emotionally heated anti- colonial presentations by various delegates, it resolved: “Whereas the imperialist powers of Great Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and the union of South Africa have, between them deprived various people of Africa have between them deprived various peoples of their freedom and liberty, and whereas the leaders of political parties in Africa gathered in Accra between 5 December, 1958 and 13 December, 1958, are irrevocably resolved to wage a final assault upon the denial of freedom, liberty, and fundamental human rights to the peoples of Africa, be it resolved that the All-African Peoples Conferences be established with a permanent secretariat in Accra with the following aims and objects:
a. To promote understanding and unity among the peoples of Africa;
b. To accelerate the liberation of Africa from imperialism and colonialism;
c. To mobilise rights and fundamental human rights to Africans;
d. To develop the feeling of one community among the peoples of Africa with the object to the emergence of a United States of Africa, and that the conference secretariat should be governed by rules approved for that purpose at this conference.”
The delegates then adopted above stated aims and objectives (a, b, c, d) as aims and objectives of the constitution of the permanent organisation whose secretariat was to be based in Accra.
The All-African Peoples Conference formed committees to be constituents of the secretariat. They were the steering committee, the preparatory committee, the working committee, and it also established a “freedom fund” which would consist of donations from governments of independent African States as well as self-governing African countries, with each member State contributing £10 (ten pounds sterling) yearly. Donations were acceptable but not from foreign governments.
Although records do not indicate the number of political parties represented at that historic occasion, it is clear from autobiographies and biographies of such personalities as Mandela, Nkomo, Nkrumah, Lumumba and Kaunda that it was most probably one of the largest, if not the largest, multi-party gatherings ever held on the African continent.
It was at that conference that many journalists met Lumumba for the first time. Even other political leaders, such as Joshua Nkomo noticed Lumumba’s presence by his ability to address impromptu meetings wherever and whenever people gathered.
He was a committed, courageous Pan-Africanist whose treacherous assassination by agents of Joseph Kasavubu, Moise Tshombe, Joseph Mobutu and Godefroid Munongo on the night of 17-18 January, 1961 at Elizaberthville (Lubumbashi) caused a wave of immeasurable indignation throughout Africa in particular and the whole progressive world in general.
He was murdered together with his two Cabinet colleagues, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, by about 10 Katangese men led by Godefroid Munongo who personally repeatedly bayonetted Lumumba whose hands were tied behind his back.
Mpolo died on his knees in prayer, and Okito was literally dead shortly after their arrival by an aircraft piloted by Belgian officers from Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). Lumumba was an ardent advocate of African unity, but he died before the launch of the Organisation of African Unity, the OAU, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 25 May 1963.
Before Lumumba’s death, however, a smaller conference had been held from 25 January to 30 January, 1960 in Tunis to, among other things, amend the All-African Conference constitution.
The amendments added the following to the aims and objectives:
e. To work for the emergence of a United States of Africa.
f. To work for the economic, social and cultural development of Africa.
g. To formulate concrete means and methods of achieving these objectives.
The Tunis meeting was held five months before Lumumba’s country, the then Belgian Congo (now DRC) became independent on 30 June 1960, with Patrice Lumumba as its founding prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu as the president. Lumumba was a unionist in outlook and Kasavubu was a federalist. Moise Tshombe was a micro-nationalist, a secessionist in thought, word and deed.
While the Tunis conference was in session, Lumumba and his countrymen were busy with the Belgian colonial administrators preparing for the Belgian Congo’s independence.
That conference reiterated most of what was resolved by the December 1958 Accra conference, but added a resolution on the need for continental trade union unity. The relevant part of the resolution read:
“The Second Conference of African Peoples gathered at Tunis on 25 to 30 January, 1960, fully conscious of the particular and decisive part to be played by the working class in the struggle of African peoples, for the total liberation and the unity of the continent, for democracy and social progress;
Considering the unanimous will of the workers of Africa to purse the struggle against under-development in order to create economic prosperity and install a regime of democracy, liberty and social justice, considering the urgent necessity of reinforcing trade unionism so as to allow it to play its decisive part in the economic and social battle; considering the resolution adopted on 9 November, 1959 by the steering committee of the conference of African Peoples, and inviting the workers of Africa to realise their unity in the interest of the struggle for independence and the affirmation of the African personality;
Considering that there is no contradiction between the aspiration of African workers, and that trade union unity will permit them to lead speedily to victory the combat for national independence and liberation from all forms of exploitation, appeals to the governments of all the independent countries of Africa and to all the democratic and popular forces of Africa to recognise the existence of trade union rights; hails and supports unreservedly the convocation in mid-May 1960 at Casablanca of an African Trade Union Congress, in the service of the African cause, open to all the authentic national trade unions who are sincerely working for the political and social emancipation of the labouring masses; the conference fully supports the efforts towards unity of the workers of Africa and of their trade union organisations. It invites them forthwith to redouble their ardour and to work with a view to assuring a resounding success for the Casablanca Conference, which should mark a decisive step in the realisation of the unity of the African trade union movement.”
The reason for involving trade unions in the political liberation of the African continent was to make it easy to organise strikes as part of Kwame Nkrumah’s “positive action” strategy. In Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the above resolution caused a split in 1962 in the Southern Rhodesia Trade Union Congress, SRTUC, founded in the early 1950s by Joshua Nkomo, J Z Moyo and Rouben Jamela in Bulawayo.
The split resulted in the formation of the Southern Rhodesia African Trade Union Congress led by Thomas Mswaka and Terry Jeremiah Maluleke who broke away from the Jamela-led SRTUC which called for a workers’ organisation divorced from polities. By that time Nkomo and Moyo were no longer directly associated with trade unionism but were fully engaged in the mainstream African nationalist liberation polities.
Continentally, there was also a difference of opinion on this issue as one group of African leaders headed by William Tubman of Liberian called for trade unions that were independent of political parties, and the other stood wholeheartedly behind the Casablanca resolution as quoted above.
It was because of that difference of opinion that the African continent was divided into two political strategies about the liberation struggle: the Casablanca group that represented a militant approach as advocated by Kwame Nkrumah, and the Monrovia group that called for gradualism as represented by Liberia’s William Tubman.
Monrovia is the capital city of Liberia, and Casablanca that of Morocco, a country that had become independent on 2 March 1956, about a year before Ghana.
In Southern Rhodesia, the split trade union movement led to violent clashes among the black people in the African townships. Reuben Jamela was himself assaulted into a pitiable bloody mess by Zapu youths in Mrewa at the burial of his former school mate, Dr Samuel Tichafa Parirenyatwa in 1962.
Some people were arrested, and among them was the then Zapu publicity and information secretary Robert Mugabe. He was found not guilty.
The Casablanca conference was followed by the second Conference of independent African States held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 15 to 24 June 1960. It was attended by a much larger number of heads of State following the attainment of the independence of several former French colonies.
(To be continued next Sunday)
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
