African unity: Feeling with Nkrumah, thinking with Nyerere

© Africa WithinThe debate on how to unite African states has not changed significantly since Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere locked horns on the matter in the early 1960s, writes Chambi Chachage. Exploring Nyerere’s ‘step by step’ approach to building African unity in relation to Nkrumah’s desire to ‘fast track’ the creation of a Unites States of Africa, Chachage concludes that while Nkrumah’s Pan-African vision remains powerful, his approach is unrealistic even today.’ ‘To that end, I will feel with Nkrumah, yet I shall think with Nyerere’, he writes, ‘Africa must unite, albeit pragmatically’.
RECLAIMING AFRICA’S WIND OF CHANGE

The times have indeed changed. What was known as the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) is now called the African Union (AU). It is just a matter of time before we see a United States of Africa (‘USA’) in our lifetime. At least that is what Pan-Africanists envision.

Any change tends to be characterised by both discontinuity and continuity. Discontinuity of what was/is meant to be changed. Continuity of the vision associated with a mission of bringing that change.

It is such continuity that this article seeks to address. Why? Simply because the terms of the debate on how to unite African states has not changed significantly since Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere locked horns on the matter in the early 1960s.

REPOSITIONING NKRUMAH – NYERERE’S DEBATE ON UNITING AFRICA

The thoughts and sentiments of these two great Pan-Africanists on how to achieve African Unity still divide us today. There are those who side with Nkrumah. Others side with Nyerere. Yet some of us are caught somewhere in between.

Note, for instance, the position advanced by Ebou Faye in Dr Kwame Nkrumah: Remembering Africa’s Most Influential and Greatest in the 21st Century. Therein he claims that it was Nyerere who frustrated Nkrumah when he ‘cunningly pushed through a resolution which urged the OAU to accept the colonial borders as permanent, recognised frontiers of the OAU member states.’ Nyerere indeed admitted in 1992 and 1997 that he was responsible for moving that resolution which was carried by a simple majority at the 1964 OAU Summit in Cairo with two reservations: Morocco and Somalia.

This move, Faye further asserts, ‘was in collaboration with Emperor Haile Selassie, who one year earlier had annexed Eritrea’ and that ‘though Nyerere claimed that the intention was to minimise border conflicts in Africa,’ the ‘underlying motive of the resolution was to frustrate Nkrumah and his Pan-Africanist ideals.’ These ideals called for a speedy continental unity as early as 1965.

For the likes of Faye the choice was and is as clear as crystal: Nkrumah’s speedy way toward a United States of Africa, rather than Nyerere’s gradual way toward African Unity. And to the Fayes, Nyerere was ‘the architect of the OAU status quo’ because he ‘cunningly pushed through’ that resolution which allegedly made OAU cease ‘to be an instrument of the Pan-African revolutionary change.’

As such, they contend, even ‘the liberation of the remaining colonies was conceived in the context of maintaining this status quo’ and that the OAU became its ‘apologist’. The situation became worse, they further contend, to the extent that in 1972 Nyerere himself publicly admitted that ‘the OAU had become no more than a ‘trade union of Africa’s heads of state.’

Then there is another relatively less polarised position advanced by the Mwalimu Nyerere Professor in Pan-African Studies at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Issa Shivji, in his Bill Dudley memorial lecture on ‘Pan-Africanism or Imperialism? Unity and Struggle towards a New Democratic Africa’ on 17 July 2005. Shivji sides with Nkrumah’s position yet bails out Nyerere’s supposedly recanted position. After quoting in full Nyerere’s speech at the 40th independence anniversary of Ghana in 1997, Shivji concludes that in that quote ‘Nyerere is no doubt vindicating Nkrumah’s position’ and asks rhetorically if thus Nyerere ‘is also critiquing his own position of step by step, any unity?’

Ironically, that same quote – coupled with what Nyerere went on say prior to his untimely death in 1999 – proves that he never abandoned his own pragmatic position of step by step continental unity. In fact it shows how impractical Nkrumah’s position was vis-à-vis Nyerere’s practical approach. To get the context, lets revisit this quotable quote of Nyerere’s that Shivji was referring to.

As ‘the greatest crusader for African Unity’, generously notes Nyerere, Nkrumah ‘wanted the Accra summit of 1965 to establish a Union Government for the whole independent Africa’. But, he admits, they failed. ‘The one main reason’, Nyerere further notes, ‘is that Kwame, like all great believers, underestimated the degree of suspicion and animosity which his crusading passion had created among a substantial number of his fellow heads of states.’

The major reason, however, confesses Nyerere, is that already too many of them ‘had a vested interest in keeping Africa divided.’ He then echoes his 1960s prophetic warning on the necessity of establishing an ‘East African Federation’ prior to independence by reiterating why Nkrumah encountered such resistance.

Such opposition, affirms Nyerere, naturally happens because once ‘you multiply national anthems, national flags and national passports, seats at the United Nations, and individuals entitled to 21 guns salute, not to speak of a host of ministers, prime ministers, and envoys, you would have a whole army of powerful people with vested interests in keeping Africa balkanised.’

Tellingly, Nyerere reminisced how in that summit he heard ‘one head of state express with relief that he was happy to be returning home to his country still head of state.’ Even though he was not sure if this leader was serious or joking – although Nkrumah ‘was very serious and the fear of a number of’ leaders ‘to lose’ their ‘status was palpable’ – Nyerere thus reiterates his then pragmatic scepticism:

‘But I never believed that the 1965 Accra summit would have established a union government for Africa. When I say that we failed, that is not what I mean, for that clearly was an unrealistic objective for a single summit. What I mean is that we did not even discuss a mechanism for pursuing the objective of a politically united Africa. We had a liberation committee already. We should have at least had a unity committee or undertaken to establish one. We did not. And after Kwame Nkrumah was removed from the African political scene nobody took up the challenge again.’

Contrary to what some Pan-Africanist revisionists would want us to believe, Nyerere was solidly consistent in his pragmatic position. While it is correct to argue, as Shivji does in his Bill Dudley lecture, that Nkrumah had much earlier held the gradualist position but was quick to learn from experience and switch to a fast-track position, it is equally correct to argue that Nyerere had also earlier held a fast-track position in the context of regionalisation but was quick to learn from experience and switch to gradualism.

In his 1960s call for an East African Federation prior to the independence of Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda and Zanzibar, Nyerere ridiculed what he referred as the camps of the ‘bados’, that is, those who were saying ‘bado kidogo’ as in ‘we are almost ready but not yet so lets wait a bit’ to federate. He even asserted that this was the same argument that imperialists used to delay our uhuru.

Therein Nyerere used case studies of Somaliland/Somalia, India/Pakistan, Nigeria, Canada and USA among others to prove it was relatively easier to federate prior to independence, paying homage to what he hailed as ‘the most brilliant and far-sighted sons of Africa’, that is, Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Toure, for managing a then exception to that rule by uniting Ghana and Guinea after they became independent.

This is the Nyerere who was ready to delay the independence of Tanganyika so as to fast-track the East African Federation. ‘The balkanisation of Africa,’ he insisted, ‘is a source of weakness to our continent’ and that the ‘forces of imperialism and neo-imperialism will find their own strength in this basic weakness of our continent.’ Thus he saw that golden chance of removing the balkanisation of East Africa as a chance to undo part of the harm of continental balkanisation and as a step toward continental unity.

Barring conspiracy theories about being a stooge of Anglo-American Imperialism, it is this experience that made Nyerere lock horns with Nkrumah on the feasibility of fast-tracking unity. Out of this experience there is no way, unless conspiracy theories hold water, that Nyerere displayed what Shivji’s (2008) ‘Pan-Africanism or Pragmatism: Lesson of Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union’ refers to as ‘his limited appreciation of Nkrumah’s analysis of imperialism as a world system in which Africans could stand tall only as a politically united continent’ when he thus responded to his criticism at the 1964 OAU Summit:

‘To rule out a step by step progress towards African Unity is to hope that the Almighty will one day say, ‘Let there be unity in Africa’, and there shall be unity; or pray for a conqueror, but even a conqueror will have to proceed step by step. To say that the step was invented by the imperialists is to reach the limits of absurdity. I have heard the imperialists blamed for many things, but not for the limitations of mankind. They are not God!’

Indeed Nyerere lacked the economic sophistication of Nkrumah, but that by no means means that he did not then have a deep sense of the neo-colonial dynamics of imperialism. To prove that, one only has to reread his writings prior to the 1960s, such as his 1958 pamphlet on ‘National Property’ to see how he apprehensively foresaw, and tried to avert, the ongoing neo-colonisation of land tenure in Tanzania.

REVISITING THE DILEMMA OF THE PAN-AFRICANIST

What then made Nyerere ‘oppose’ Nkrumah? The answer, I think, lies buried in Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer’s 1992 interview with Nyerere on ‘Mwalimu, Tanzania, and the Meaning of Freedom’ and in Ikaweba Bunting’s (1998) ‘The Heart of Africa. Interview with Julius Nyerere on Anti-Colonialism’:

In the case of the former interview, Nyerere thus reminisced:

‘My differences with Kwame were that Kwame thought there was somehow a shortcut, and I was saying that there was no shortcut. This is what we have inherited, and we’ll have to proceed within the limitations that that inheritance has imposed upon us. Kwame thought that somehow you could say, “Let there be a United States of Africa” and it would happen. I kept saying “Kwame, it’s a slow process.” He had tremendous contempt for a large number of the leaders of Africa and I said, “Fine, but they are there. What are you going to do with them? They don’t believe as you do – as you and I do – in the need for the unity of Africa. BUT WHAT DO YOU DO? THEY ARE THERE AND WE HAVE TO PROCEED ALONG WITH EVERYBODY!” And I said to him in so many words that we’re not going to have an African Napoleon, who is going to conquer the continent and put it under one flag. It is not possible. At the OAU Conference in 1963, I was actually trying to defend Kwame. I was the last to speak and Kwame had said this [OAU] charter has not gone far enough because he thought he would leave Addis with a United States of Africa. I told him that this was absurd; that it can’t happen. This is what we have been able to achieve. No builder, after putting the foundation down, complains that the building is not yet finished. You have to go on building and building until you finish, but he was impatient because he saw the stupidity of others.

In the case of the latter interview, Nyerere thus recollected:

‘Kwame Nkrumah and I were committed to the idea of unity. African leaders and heads of state did not take Kwame seriously. However, I did. I did not believe in these small little nations. Still today I do not believe in them. I tell our people to look at the European Union, at these people who ruled us who are now uniting. Kwame and I met in 1963 and discussed African Unity. We differed on how to achieve a United States of Africa. But we both agreed on a United States of Africa as necessary. Kwame went to Lincoln University, a black college in the US. He perceived things from the perspective of US history, where the 13 colonies that revolted against the British formed a union. That is what he thought the OAU should do. I tried to get East Africa to unite before independence. When we failed in this I was wary about Kwame's continental approach. We corresponded profusely on this. Kwame said my idea of ‘regionalisation’ was only balkanisation on a larger scale. Later African historians will have to study our correspondence on this issue of uniting Africa. Africans who studied in the US like Nkrumah and [Nigerian independence leader] Azikiwe were more aware of the diaspora and the global African community than those of us who studied in Britain. They were therefore aware of a wider Pan-Africanism. Theirs was the aggressive Pan-Africanism of W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. The colonialists were against this and frightened of it.

Such was a context in which Nyerere clashed with Nkrumah. In his own words, ‘it was when we were very close to a federation of East African states and Kwame was completely opposed to the idea.’ His, then, was the most practical solution given the fact that organic movements of the people, such as the Pan-African Movement for East and Central Africa (PAFMECA), had made strides toward regionalisation whilst the preamble of the OAU Charter that stated ‘we the heads of state’ rather than ‘we the people’ was ironically creating a bureaucratic Pan-Africanist political project. Later on these groupings would have come together naturally to form bigger units and, ultimately, a greater African unity. This is a position that Nyerere consistently held, as his ‘Reflections’ during his 75th Birthday celebration in 1997 thus attest:

‘The small countries in Africa must move towards either unity or cooperation, unity of Africa…if we can’t move towards bigger nation states, at least let’s move toward greater cooperation. This is beginning to happen. And the new leadership in Africa should encourage it… southern Africa has a tremendous opportunity… because of South Africa… but you need leadership, because if you get proper leadership there, within the next ten fifteen years that region is going to be the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) of Africa… West Africa. Another bloc is developing there, but that depends very much on Nigeria… The leadership will have to come from Nigeria…’

It is people’s loyalties to these regional blocs as well as nations that pose what Nyerere referred to in 1966 as ‘The Dilemma of the Pan-Africanist’. ‘On the one hand’, he noted, ‘is the fact that Pan-Africanism demands an African consciousness and African loyalty; on the other hand is the fact that each Pan-Africanist must also concern himself with the freedom and development of one of the nations of Africa.’

It is not surprising, then, that the latest Afrobarometer Survey conducted in 2008 showed that the majority of Tanzanians do not support the political and military unification of East Africa even though they are supportive of its economic integration. Interestingly, the majority of Tanzanians also told the presidential committee that collected public views in 2007 on fast-tracking the proposed East African political federation that they were in favour of a gradual approach. Once again most citizens are on the side of Nyerere’s pragmatism. One can easily guess what they would say to a proposed United States of Africa.

CONCLUSION: RETHINKING PAN-AFRICAN NATIONALISM

My heart is with Nkrumah. I still get moved when I read his electrifying ‘Address to the conference of African heads of state and government’ on 24 May 1963 in Addis Ababa. But it is as unrealistic now, especially with Colonel Muamar Gaddafi at the helm of the AU, as it was then when Emperor Haile Selassie was the head of OAU. As such, my mind is with Nyerere. His pragmatic way is still valid today.

Thus to me the question is not Pan-Africanism or pragmatism? Rather, it is wither pragmatic Pan-African patriotism? To that end, I will feel with Nkrumah, yet I shall think with Nyerere.

Yes, Africa must unite, albeit, pragmatically!

* Chambi Chachage is an independent researcher, newspaper columnist and policy analyst. Source : Pambazuka - African unity: Feeling with Nkrumah, thinking with Nyerere