Decolonization in Africa in the Shadow of the Cold War

Cold War Conflicts HIST 1301 | History Decolonization in Africa in the Shadow of the Cold War After World War II, the African peoples desired, like the Vietnamese, to elude Western rule. African nations sought to actualize the promise of self-determination for everyone in the Atlantic Charter, a 1941 agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom outlining their shared aims for the postwar world. Manchester, England hosted the Fifth PanAfrican Congress in October 1945. Calls for an end to colonialism were made by delegates from the Caribbean, the United States, India, Sri Lanka, and Central America in addition to the African colonies of Europe. The colonial empires of Europe had different ideologies. Some believed that the natural resources and markets of former African colonies were crucial to the reconstruction of their economies after the devastation caused by World War II. For instance, the United Kingdom, like other colonial powers, wanted to maintain control over its African holdings, as seen by the 1946 adoption of a new constitution for Britain's colony of Ghana. Legislative Council members were elected by African Americans on a regular basis, although the council's role was advisory solely. The governor of the colony was the only person with actual authority. The United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), founded by Ghanaians in August 1947, demanded that the United Kingdom provide the colony selfgovernment. Kwame Nkrumah was one of the UGCC's original members. Nkrumah and another UGCC member spoke to a group of former Ghanaian military personnel in January 1948. They intended to petition the governor because, like many others in the Gold Coast, they were incensed over the government's inaction on issues like inflation and unemployment. A few days later, riots broke out in the colony, and the government arrested Nkrumah and other members of the UGCC, blaming them for the unrest. Nkrumah established the Convention People's Party in 1949, and in January 1950 he issued a call to action for his supporters to launch a nationwide strike in order to pressure the British into granting permission for the creation of a new constitution. When he was elected to government in 1951—the first election in Africa to enable universal suffrage—he was already incarcerated and had been for some time. Ghana gained independence on March 6, 1957, and Nkrumah was appointed prime minister. Other British colonies gained independence after Ghana. To demand Kenya's independence from British control, the Kenya African Union (KAU) was established in 1944. Jomo Kenyatta became the organization's head in 1947. Kenya was a colony where many White people held more land and owned profitable coffee farms than Black Africans. The United Kingdom was hesitant to grant Kenya independence. The Kenya Land and Freedom Army, sometimes referred to as the Mau Mau, started their independence campaign in 1952. Violence was advocated by the Kikuyu nationalist movement, the Mau Mau, as a way of achieving their objectives. They assaulted White and Black civilians, murdering them with machetes or burning them to death, in an attempt to instill dread. Targeted were Africans who continued to support the British administration. The United Kingdom retaliated to the Mau Mau by outlawing all Kenyan political parties, including the KAU, that did not support violence. Numerous people were placed in detention camps. With the stated goal of shielding people from the Mau Mau, entire communities were forcibly relocated to new locations. British government-employed troops slaughtered innocent citizens. The rebellion had mostly been put down by 1956. Kenya was awarded independence in 1963, but negotiations about it had started in 1960 with the United Kingdom. Kenyatta was appointed prime minister of the nation. Powerful nationalism and the yearning for independence also existed in the colonies of other European nations. Initially, a few imperial powers tried to implement mild modifications. For instance, France suggested significant reforms for its colonies in Africa in 1946. Along with ending racial discrimination and forced labour, it also gave some degree of autonomy. Although independence was not offered, it was the main goal for which France's African subjects fought. The Malagasy Revolt, which raged in Madagascar from 1947 to 1949, claimed thousands of lives. In 1957, colonialism ended in Cameroon as well due to violence. Between 1954 to 1962, Algeria was embroiled in conflict. Following France's declaration of independence in 1962, over a million individuals of European heritage left Algeria. Tensions from the Cold War fueled bloodshed in the Belgian Congo, which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nationalist organisations like the Congolese National Movement and the Alliance of Bakongo answered in 1960 that they desired independence from Belgium right away when it was promised to them in thirty years. Black Congolese people refused to pay taxes and staged protests that frequently became violent. Many White neighbours became alarmed and launched citizen militias against Black inhabitants. When the Belgian government saw how strong the nationalist demonstration was, on June 30, 1960, it decided to grant Congo its independence. But this did not put an end to the violence. A few days after independence, Black troops in the Belgian Congo rebelled when Émile Janssens, the White leader of the Force Publique, the security force, told them that White commanders would still be in charge. Janssens was replaced by a Black commander of the National Congolese Army, which was renamed, and Black troops were elevated by Patrice Lamumba, the head of the Congolese National Movement and newly elected prime minister. But this was insufficient to put an end to the rebellion. Belgian army invaded the nation in response to attacks against white people. The mineral-rich southern region of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo declared its independence amid the mayhem. Lamumba urged the UN to put a halt to Katanga's independence, saying that the UN had dispatched peacekeeping troops to impose order. Nonetheless, the UN declined, arguing that independence was a domestic political issue and it was not the place of the UN to meddle. Lamumba then requested assistance from the US, but his plea was turned down. At last, he sought assistance from the Soviet Union, which furnished armaments and military consultants. Because of his acceptance of Soviet assistance, Lamumba was perceived by the West as a communist. Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, well known as Mobutu Sese Seko, took advantage of the confusion to throw Lamumba under house arrest and give the Alliance of Bakongo's leader, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, control of the country. The CIA, which gave Mobutu and Kasa-Vubu money and weaponry, knew about and supported the later assassination of Lamumba by Katangese forces. British leaders acted swiftly to free their colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia after realising the intensity of nationalist fervour in Kenya as well as other colonies and anticipating further carnage such to that saw in the Congo. The British prime minister Harold Macmillan travelled to Africa in 1960 and gave a speech titled "The Wind of Change." Even if White Britons might not want it, Macmillan claimed that the day of emancipation had arrived in Africa as a wind of change was sweeping the continent. Portugal, in contrast to Britain, France, and Belgium, adamantly refused to give up its colonies. They were seen as a part of Portugal by the patriotic, quasi-fascist administration of the Second Portuguese Republic, which had taken power in 1933 and saw Portugal as the protector of culture and order in Africa. As in other parts of Africa, a number of independence movements emerged in Angola, Portuguese Guinea (now known as Guinea-Bissau), and Mozambique. Certain factions aimed to institute autonomous governance patterned after Western democracies, but others supported the establishment of a communist framework. Portuguese troops fought against the Bakongo-dominated National Liberation Front (FNLA), a primarily rural organisation, the Marxist People's Movement of Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a primarily urban group, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), a primarily Ovimbundudominated rural group. The Marxist Mozambique Liberation Front battled for Mozambique's independence. The liberation movement in Guinea-Bissau was led by the Marxist African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde. The conflict in the Portuguese colonies was influenced by the Cold War. The different independence organisations received assistance from the Soviet Union, China, Romania, Cuba, and Yugoslavia. Because Portugal was a fellow NATO member, the US did not. Portuguese leftist military officers toppled the Second Portuguese Republic's government and installed a democratic one in 1974. Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe, islands off the coast of Africa, were all granted independence by the new administration, which put an end to the conflict with the African colonies. However, the bloodshed continued after independence. A civil war broke out in Angola in 1975 over the country's sovereignty. In their fight against the MPLA, the United States supported the FNLA and UNITA. There were also violent outbursts in Rhodesia, the former British colony that is today known as Zimbabwe. Rejecting the British government's aspirations for majority rule in its former colonies, White inhabitants declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 with Ian Smith as prime minister. Britain was against this action because White people would not acquiesce to a government run by Black Rhodesians. The Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkomo, and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), led by Robert Mugabe, both Black nationalist organisations, and the White government engaged in civil war. China supported ZANU, while the Soviet Union supported ZAPU. After the three sides eventually came to an understanding, Zimbabwe's independence was formally recognised by the UK in 1980. Thousands of Nkomo's supporters were tortured, imprisoned, or assassinated when Robert Mugabe was appointed prime minister until 1987, when he and Mugabe united their respective groups. Black Africans in South Africa fought for independence from White Africans rather than from a European force, much to the scenario in Rhodesia. A self-governing dominion within the British Empire was created in 1909 by the union of the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State with the British Cape Colony, Natal. But only the White minority had been let to reign, and Whites of British and Afrikaner (Dutch) ancestry had been fighting it out for dominance. Black Africans were prohibited by law from owning much of the nation's land and from exercising their right to vote. Some regions of the country denied them the ability to reside, and many of them were forcefully relocated to "homelands" distinct from those of White people. Apartheid was the official name given to the discriminatory policies and racial segregation that began in 1948. The Suppression of Communism Act, passed by the South African government in 1950, outlawed both the anti-apartheid South African Communist Party and any initiatives aimed at putting an end to racial discrimination. Because of this, the majority of South Africans were unable to cast ballots in the 1960 United Kingdom referendum on whether or not to remain a dominion. Although South Africa was formally proclaimed a republic in 1961, the real liberation struggle was still in progress. Organisations like the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) and the African National Congress (ANC) have opposed apartheid from the start, first via nonviolent protest. But after the 1960 ANC and PAC bans and the killings of nonviolent demonstrators in the Black township of Sharpeville, antiapartheid activists started using more nonviolent strategies like strikes in addition to sabotage and attacks on military and police targets. Black townships saw demonstrations in 1976 in opposition to a new rule mandating that Black African pupils study Afrikaans, the language of South Africa's Dutch colonisers. Over a hundred kids were killed when police opened fire on them in the Soweto township. Thousands of activists were detained and imprisoned over several decades, including ANC leader Nelson Mandela, and many of them were put to death. However, by the 1980s, international censure, foreign economic penalties, boycotts of South African companies, and persistent resistance to apartheid had started to have an impact. The official end of apartheid in South Africa occurred in 1991, and the first elections in which all citizens, regardless of race, could cast ballots were conducted in 1994. Nelson Mandela was elected president by the newly formed National Assembly after the ANC won handily.