The Next-to-Last Act in Africa

SHORTLY after Sir Winston Churchill remarked that he had not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire, the voters relieved him of that responsibility; he is alive to see a successor not merely presiding over that dissolution but eagerly speeding it up, the sails of his party set to catch the full force of the wind of change. By the end of 1962 it is unlikely that any part of Africa will remain under the control of any white-skinned race, except the Union of South Africa, alone and isolated, and perhaps the Portuguese provinces of Angola and Mozambique which, un like the territories until so recently controlled by France, Britain and Belgium, have had some 400 years of European government. Empires have broken up before?according to Toynbee, well over 20 have come and gone?but never, it is safe to say, so quickly and with so little bloodshed. Within the last five years, some 23 separate countries formerly under French or British rule have gained their independence, or are just about to do so, almost without the firing of a shot or even an exchange of insults?on the contrary, with goodwill and compliments all around. In these often despondent days, this is something to put to the credit side of the twentieth century. The wicked colonial oppressor, in fact, has been getting out just as fast as he can. This hotfoot exit has made embarrassing the task of those determined to build and sustain a myth of the ruthless white tyrant hanging on to power, and a matching myth of the gallant freedom-fighter wresting it from him?an illusion so necessary to an emergent nation's self-esteem. Mythologists have had to do the best they can with a few mishandled parades and displays of colonialist pique, as when the French removed telephones and typewriters after Guinea had opted out of the French Community. But the more realistic nationalist leaders have punctured the balloon by speaking of their departing over lords as human beings who, in the words of Nigeria's Premier, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, acted first as masters, then as lead ers, and finally as partners, but always as friends. It is in West Africa that the path to independence has run, by and large, so smoothly. In the east and center of the continent

Development economics · Economics · Political science · African cultural and philosophical studies · Legal Issues in South Africa