“Freedom’’ in Africa (1964)

By European standards, the recent mutinies in East Africa were very small beer. It was crushingly ironical that when the trouble started the new governments turned to the hated and despised British ex-rulers for help. If this proves anything, it is that ruling classes all over the world, whatever the colour of their skin, have common cause in the maintenance of their privileged position.

The troubles turned a spotlight upon Africa which is very disconcerting for the organisations which can always be relied upon to support any movement (especially in Africa) for national independence. These organisations have argued that the nationalist movements stood for freedom against the oppression of a foreign power. But how has freedom fared in the newly independent states?

Only five of them now make any pretence at being democratic. Ghana —the favourite example, of course—is now what the pro-Nkrumah Accra Evening News calls a one party democracy. Uganda has promised that it will also become a country where only one political party is allowed.

On all sides there is a developing African patriotism which is as pernicious and as nauseating as the Blimpishness which it ousted. Nkrumah and Kenyatta have both done their part in fomenting this patriotism; only last January Uganda’s Prime Minister said that there is what he called “an urgent need to cultivate national consciousness.”

This indicates what will happen when the workers of Kenya, Uganda and the rest start their first organised struggles to improve their wages and working conditions. They will be foolish to expect their new, African masters to take seriously the promises they made, in the days when they were opposing British rule, about freedom and human rights.

Capitalism laughs at such concepts. That is something which, we hope, the African workers will come to appreciate. It may even also get through to the people who like to call themselves progressive, the people who unfailingly speak up for Uhuru and other swindles which promise freedom and happiness but which only bring the customary repression and poverty.