African Decolonization: A Timeline

In the twenty-three years between 6 March 1957, when the Gold Coast became Ghana, and 18 April 1980, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, some thirty-five British African territories, with a population of more than 200 million people, achieved independence. The transformation is, in the words of John Lonsdale in the Oxford History of the British Empire (1999), “the most rapid and thorough reorganisation of sovereignty in the history of the continent.” The argument of this article is that the British African decolonisation was, despite the violence of Kenya, despite the failure of the Central African Federation, and despite the long agony of Rhodesia, the most successful of the British decolonisations: the British managed the transfer of power in almost all the territories without the partition of the Indian subcontinent, and the post-colonial African states have been, on the whole, more stable than their French and Portuguese counterparts.

The Post-War Context

The post-war context of African decolonisation was shaped by three developments. The first was the political change in Britain. The British electorate, exhausted by the war and inspired by the principles of the Atlantic Charter of 1941, had elected the Labour government of Clement Attlee in 1945 with a large majority. The Labour government was committed to the principle of colonial self-government, and the post-war British policy toward Africa was a policy of managed decolonisation.

The second was the political change in Africa. The returning African soldiers, who had fought for the British in the war, returned to a colonial system that denied them the rights of British citizens. The political pressure for African self-government, which had been building before the war, accelerated after the war, and the African political class — Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Hastings Banda, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo — was determined to achieve independence. The Fifth Pan-African Congress of October 1945 in Manchester, organised by George Padmore and W. E. B. Du Bois, with Nkrumah as one of the principal organisers, was the moment when the new African political class met the older Caribbean and American Pan-Africanists and the moment when the post-war Pan-African movement took its mature form.

The third was the international context. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945, and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, created an international context in which colonialism was increasingly seen as anachronistic. The Cold War, which emerged in the late 1940s, added a further element: the United States and the Soviet Union were both, for different reasons, opposed to the European colonial empires, and the United Nations became a major forum for the critique of colonialism. The Asian decolonisation, beginning with the independence of India in 1947, was a major example for the African political class. As Frederick Cooper has argued in Africa Since 1940 (2002), the post-war moment was the moment when the idea of a European colonial future in Africa became politically untenable.

The Gold Coast and Ghana

The Gold Coast was the first British African colony to achieve independence. The political mobilisation of the Gold Coast, led by the Convention People’s Party (CPP) under Kwame Nkrumah, was the model for the subsequent African decolonisation. The CPP, founded in June 1949, was a mass political movement that demanded “self-government now.” Nkrumah’s tactic of “positive action” — strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience — was a substantial innovation, and the British response was a mixture of repression (Nkrumah was imprisoned in 1950) and reform. The constitution of 1951, which provided for an elected African majority in the Legislative Assembly, was the first major step in the Gold Coast’s path to independence.

The Gold Coast became internally self-governing in March 1957, and achieved full independence on 6 March 1957, with the name Ghana. Nkrumah, who had been released from prison in 1951 to lead the new government, became the first prime minister of the new state. The independence of Ghana was a major event in the history of the African continent. Nkrumah’s speech on the day of independence, in which he proclaimed the new state as a centre of Pan-African activism, set the tone for the subsequent African decolonisations. The Ghanaian independence also had a major impact on the Pan-African movement, and Ghana became a major centre of Pan-African activism and the location of the Organisation of African Unity’s founding in 1963.

Nigeria

Nigeria, the most populous British African colony, achieved independence on 1 October 1960, after a political process complicated by the country’s ethnic and religious diversity. The Nigerian political class was divided between the three major ethnic groups — the Hausa-Fulani of the north, the Yoruba of the west, and the Igbo of the east — and the constitutional negotiations involved the gradual development of a federal system that would accommodate this diversity. The Nigerian independence was a model of negotiated decolonisation. The Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970, in which the Igbo attempt to secede as the state of Biafra was defeated, was the major test of the post-colonial state, and it has been the subject of substantial historical work by Frederick Cooper and the Nigerian historian Toyin Falola.

Kenya

Kenya’s decolonisation was the most violent of the British African decolonisations. The Mau Mau rebellion of 1952–1960, in which the Kikuyu-dominated Land and Freedom Army fought a guerrilla war against the British colonial government, was a major crisis. The British response was the declaration of a state of emergency in October 1952, the deployment of substantial British military forces, and the detention of large numbers of Kikuyu suspects in a network of detention camps and villagisation programmes. The most infamous incident of the conflict was the Hola massacre of March 1959, in which eleven detainees were beaten to death by the guards of a detention camp.

The conflict ended with the suppression of the Mau Mau, but the political consequences were substantial. The Lancaster House conference of 1960 produced a constitutional settlement, and Kenya achieved independence on 12 December 1963, with Jomo Kenyatta, who had been released from prison in 1961, as prime minister. The Mau Mau rebellion, and the British response to it, has been the subject of substantial historical work in the last twenty years. The most important book is David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged (2005), which documented the British atrocities in the detention camps, and the subsequent 2011 decision by the British government to compensate the surviving Mau Mau detainees. The Kenyan decolonisation, in the words of Bruce Berman in Unhappy Valley (1992), was the moment when the British were forced to confront the reality of what their colonial rule had been.

Rhodesia and Zimbabwe

Rhodesia was the most difficult of the British African decolonisations. The white settler population of Southern Rhodesia, who had enjoyed self-government since 1923, was determined to maintain its position, and the unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) of November 1965, by the Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith, was a direct challenge to the British government. The British response was a programme of economic sanctions against Rhodesia, but the failure of the sanctions, the inability of the British government to intervene militarily, and the persistence of the Smith regime meant that the Rhodesian problem was not resolved until 1979.

The Lancaster House conference of 1979, brokered by the British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, produced a constitutional settlement, and the subsequent elections of 1980, which were won by Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, produced the independent state of Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980. The Zimbabwean independence was a major British diplomatic achievement, and the Lancaster House settlement was, in the words of the historian Sue Onslow, “the most ambitious attempt at a negotiated decolonisation in the history of the British Empire.” The settlement, however, was also the moment when the post-colonial tragedy of Zimbabwe began, and the Mugabe government’s subsequent rule was the most substantial failure of any of the British post-colonial African settlements.

South Africa

South Africa was the most distinctive of the British African decolonisations. The South African settler state, which had been a self-governing dominion since 1910, was determined to maintain its position, and the National Party, which came to power in 1948, established the system of apartheid. The British response was a mixture of complicity and opposition: the British government had been, in significant part, complicit in the development of the South African racial system, and the post-war British policy toward South Africa was a policy of gradual disengagement. The Sharpeville massacre of March 1960, in which South African police killed 69 unarmed protesters, was the moment when the British position changed. Harold Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” speech in Cape Town in February 1960 had already signalled the British recognition that African nationalism would prevail. The South African government, having left the Commonwealth in 1961, was no longer subject to direct British pressure, and the international campaign against apartheid was the principal instrument of change. The end of the apartheid regime in 1990–1994, and the first democratic elections of April 1994, were the final acts in the British African decolonisation.

The Settler Colonies

The settler colonies — Kenya, Rhodesia, and South Africa — were the most difficult of the British African decolonisations. The settler populations were determined to maintain their position, and the British government, in the post-war period, was increasingly reluctant to use force to maintain colonial rule. The Kenyan case was a major test of the British commitment to decolonisation, and the British decision to defeat the Mau Mau, while also preparing for the eventual independence of Kenya, was a major element in the British post-war policy. The Rhodesian case was the most difficult of all, and the failure of the British government to resolve the Rhodesian problem until 1980 was a major political embarrassment. The South African case was a special case: the South African government, having left the Commonwealth in 1961, was no longer subject to direct British pressure, and the international campaign against apartheid was the principal instrument of change. The most thorough comparative treatment of the settler colonies is John Darwin’s “What was the Late Colonial State?” in the Oxford History of the British Empire.

The Decolonisation and the British State

The decolonisation of British Africa was a major transformation of the British state. The British government, having committed itself to the principle of colonial self-government in the 1940s, was confronted with a series of African demands for independence. The British response was a mixture of negotiation, reform, and, in the case of Kenya, military action. The British decolonisation of Africa was, in significant part, a model of “managed decolonisation” — a process in which the British government, in cooperation with the African political class, arranged the orderly transfer of power.

The British decolonisation of Africa was, in the most direct sense, a consequence of the post-war political changes in Britain. The British electorate, exhausted by the war and inspired by the principles of the Atlantic Charter, was increasingly unwilling to support the maintenance of the colonial system. The Labour government of Clement Attlee, in particular, was committed to the principle of colonial self-government, and the subsequent Conservative and Labour governments continued the process. The British decolonisation was the political consequence of a complex set of economic, political, and social forces that had been building for decades. The most thorough account of the British state in the decolonisation is to be found in the work of John Darwin, particularly The End of the British Empire (1991), and in the more recent work of Frederick Cooper.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of African decolonisation has been substantially revised since the 1990s. The older tradition, of which the work of D. A. Low and J. D. Fage is representative, treated the decolonisation as a consequence of the European retreat from the imperial system. The post-independence African historiography, of which the work of A. Adu Boahen, J. F. Ade Ajayi, and the contributors to the Cambridge History of Africa is the most distinguished representative, insisted on the active African role in the decolonisation. The most recent generation — Frederick Cooper, John Lonsdale, Bruce Berman, David Anderson, Toyin Falola — has produced a more nuanced picture in which the decolonisation is treated as a complex interaction between the British and the African actors. The current debate is over the question of causation: was the decolonisation the consequence of British weakness, of African political mobilisation, of the international context, or of some combination? The most recent work, of which Cooper’s Africa Since 1940 is the most distinguished example, has moved towards a more interactive reading: the decolonisation was the consequence of a process of negotiation and conflict in which the British and the Africans were both participants.

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