African continental integration: In defence of Kwame Nkrumah’s position

The struggle for African continental integration continues to be characterised on its ideological front by well-organised attempts to discredit and distort Kwame Nkrumah’s position on the fundamental and structural need to achieve African continental solidarity and unity so as to resolve Africa’s problems in its national, continental and international socio-political and economic relations. Adekeye Adebajo’s work on increasing African continental suspicions of Muammar Gaddafi’s political ambitions if it is not part of these attempts either justifies their legitimacy and credibility or can be used in justifying them.[i] Adebajo maintains that Gaddafi 'has shown a tendency to turn history and its precedents to his own ends for most of his political career'. This factor is the characteristic feature of some other African leaders. Some African leaders are willing spokespersons and spies of Gaddafi.

It is important to provide analysis of Nkrumah’s position on African continental integration and his contribution to the African continental politics of transformation as a means to protect them against direct and indirect attempts to discredit and distort them. Adebajo struggles in his work to justify the comparison he draws between the programme of action embarked upon by Nkrumah and that embarked upon by Gaddafi. In his words:

'The reality is that, between 1979 and 1987, Libya had become isolated at the OAU [Organisation of African Unity] after Gaddafi’s 1980 military intervention in Chad, underlined by an abortive summit in Tripoli in 1982. He also lost support among his peers – as had Nkrumah – for supporting dissident groups against "neocolonial" regimes in Africa. Gaddafi sent troops to bolster the regime of brutal Ugandan and fellow Muslim Idi Amin, between 1972 and 1979.'

Does this mean that the fact that Idi Amin was Gaddafi’s 'fellow Muslim' was one of the key reasons behind Libya’s support to the Amin administration? What is to be made of the fact that Amin’s religious affiliation is cited, given the fact that Gaddafi has called for the division of Nigeria into Muslim and Christian countries? This call should be criticised in theory and in practice, particularly by those who have the power and authority to ensure that Nigeria is not divided into two countries. These are Nigerian political leaders who have failed in the past and present to manage ethnic and religious conflicts in the country. Whether Nigeria is to become two countries or not will primarily depend on the failure or success of its leaders to manage and resolve its ethnic and religious conflicts. Since the achievement of political independence, how many Nigerians who are neither Christian or Muslim have served as its president? This is the valid question, not the theoretical interference in Nigeria’s internal affairs, or the questioning of who between Muslims and Christians should serve equitably as Nigeria’s presidents, or how the occupation between the state house should be shared between Muslims and those are not Muslims.

Adebajo maintains that Gaddafi’s 'ideas, like Nkrumah’s, were widely rejected by African leaders' and that after his 'defeat' at the African Union summit in 2007, 'Gaddafi was almost as isolated in Accra as Nkrumah had been at the birth of the OAU in 1963.' The issue is the content of Nkrumah’s ideas and the fundamental reasons why they 'were rejected' by African leaders and why Nkrumah was isolated at the formation of the OAU. This applies to those of Gaddafi and why he was isolated at the African Union summit in Accra in 2007.

To what extent was the rejection of their ideas and isolation linked to the strategic and tactical issues of advancing the process of socio-political and economic transformation nationally, regionally and continentally in Africa? This is the strategic question which should be answered by those who are using any means necessary, including 'ideas' of leaders' appropriated positions of progressive African leaders of the past for their own interests and those of their allies in either discrediting or distorting Nkrumah’s position on the African transformation agenda.

This is the case, among others, given the fact that central to the transformation of African countries and the continent has been the form and content of the socio-political, economic and ideological relationship between the state and the masses of the people and the ability of the state to satisfy the needs and demands of the people given its national obligation to them. The exercise of state political power has been central either in the realisation or the failure to realise the objectives of the transformation of Africa. The point is that, as the state is the material condensation of power relations within a society, underlying the process of achieving Africa’s transformation have been key questions concerning the exercise of state political power. These questions include: Which social class or class alliance exercised state political power in the African countries led by African leaders who 'widely rejected Nkrumah’s ideas' and who 'isolated' him 'at the birth of the OAU' in 1963, by what tactical means and to what strategic end? How was the exercise of the state political power, its means and end, supported and contested by other social forces in these countries? How was it supported and challenged by external socio-political and economic forces, by what means and for what strategic and tactical end or why? What was the programme of action of the state against that of external forces opposed to the national and continental transformation? These questions underline the centrality of the satisfaction of the needs and demands of the masses of the African people by these leaders through their exercise of the state political power. Underlined was also the credibility and legitimacy of the political governance or administration of these countries.

APPROACHES TO AFRICAN CONTINENTAL INTEGRATION

Since the achievement of political independence, African policy-makers and scholars have emphasised the importance of continental integration as a means to strengthen Africa’s political independence and to ensure that the continent’s enormous natural resources serve the development and progress of its people. In their call for continental integration, they viewed the process of solidarity and unity as an essential prerequisite to change the dominated role of Africa within the global social order, to end its entrenched dominated external dependence and to end the exploitation of its human and natural resources by the developed countries.

The issue of solidarity and unity has been viewed as essential, not only as far as the continental integration agenda is concerned, but also given the fact that for them, not a single African country can change the socio-political and economic relations with the global system and countries controlling it. Central to this view of solidarity and unity among African countries to achieve continental integration are several key issues. First is the issue of the effective right of African countries to national self-determination and the free, independent exercise of their sovereignty and foreign policy. Second is the structural and fundamental need to defeat neocolonialism and imperialism.

In other words, this achievement was viewed as the process to enable African countries to collectively and effectively meet challenges faced in their national, continental and international relations. This achievement was the constitution of the highest stage of continental solidarity and unity, the United States of Africa. This position was articulated in well-focused way by Kwame Nkrumah in his writings in his passionate call for African solidarity and unity to meet the needs, demands and exigencies of the African people in the post-colonial period. In his call upon Africa to unite, he maintained that:

'If we are to remain free, if we are to enjoy the full benefits of Africa’s rich resources, we must unite to plan for our total defence and the full exploitation of our material and human means in the full interests of all our peoples. To go it alone will limit our horizons, curtail our expectations, and threaten our liberty.'[ii]

Nkrumah was not alone in articulating this position. He was also not alone in calling for the United States of Africa. This is important to emphasise and over-emphasise. The point is that some African scholars create the impression that he was alone in this important call for the continental solidarity and unity. At issue is not only to isolate him from his comrades, but also to discredit and distort his position on the continental integration agenda.

Rededicating the commitment of Ghana to contribute to the continental socio-political and economic transformation through the support to the liberation struggles of other African countries in his independent speech, Nkrumah viewed the achievement of Ghana's political independence as directly interlinked with the total liberation of the African continent. He viewed the achievement of continental integration as of strategic importance in the African politics of revolutionary change. This achievement would enable African countries to collectively and effectively meet challenges faced in their national, continental and international relations. In his words:

'No independent African state today has a chance to follow an independent course of economic development, and many of us who have tried to do this have been almost ruined or have had to return to the fold of the former colonial rulers. This position will not change unless we have a unified policy … We need a unified economic planning for Africa. Until the economic power of Africa is in our hands, the masses can have no real concern and no real interest for safeguarding our security, for ensuring the stability of our regimes and for bending their strength to the fulfillment of our ends. With our united resources, energies and talents, we have the means as soon as we show the will, to transform the economic structures of our individual states from poverty to that of wealth, from inequality to the satisfaction of popular needs. Only on a continental basis shall we be able to plan the popular utilisation of all our resources for the full development of our continent.'[iii]

Nkrumah and other African policy-makers and scholars such as Modibo Keïta, Sékou Touré and Cheikh Anta Diop called for immediate African continental integration. Their approach to African integration was primarily political. They subscribed to the thesis of the primacy of the political factor over economic and trade factors in the effort to achieve continental socio-economic development and transformation, or what Diop referred to as 'the economic unification of Africa'.[iv] This thesis is articulated by Nkrumah and Diop in their works. The formulation and implementation of strategy and tactics to achieve socio-economic development and progress are primarily political. Development policies should be formulated and implemented collectively to achieve continental socio-economic objectives. Nkrumah articulated the danger of seeking to create and achieve economic union in isolation from a political union. He maintains that 'African unity is above all a political kingdom, which can only be gained by political means. The socio-economic development and progress of Africa will come only within the political kingdom not the other way round.'[v] Pointing out that to 'overcome the tremendous obstacles in the way of the economic unification of Africa, decisive political actions are required in the first place' and that 'political unification is a prerequisite' to 'economic unification', Diop also articulated the same position when he maintains that:

'The elaboration of a rational formula of economic organisation must come after the creation of a federated political entity. It is only within the framework of such a geopolitical entity that a rational economic development and cooperation can be inserted. The inverse leads to the type of results we have witnessed over the years.'[vi]

Central to Nkrumah’s view of solidarity and unity among African countries to achieve continental integration are several key issues. First is the issue of the effective right of African countries to their national self-determination and the free, independent exercise of their sovereignty and foreign policy. Second is the structural and fundamental need to defeat neocolonialism and imperialism. The issues characterising relations between African countries and developed countries are domination, control and the exploitation of African countries by developed countries. For Nkrumah, they should be resolved for African countries to satisfy the needs, demands and exigencies of their national socio-political and economic relations. Their resolution is necessary to defeat neocolonialism. Neocolonialism is structurally against the existence of solidarity and unity among African countries essential to achieve continental integration. It ensures that African countries continue having less horizontal relations among themselves and that their external relations remain vertical, more with developed countries rather than among themselves.[vii]

The relationship of domination, control and exploitation between African countries and developed countries is against the achievement of economic independence. It is against the achievement by African countries of control over their national economy and their formulation and implementation of free, independent development strategy and tactics. Economic independence essentially means 'control over economic decision-making and the national economy, the establishment of a firm industrial structure, leading to a self-generating and self-sustaining growth, and a diversification of external economic contacts consistent with the nation’s economic interests'.[viii]

Nkrumah maintains that neocolonialism is the last stage of imperialism.[ix] For him, imperialism, not only neocolonialism, must be defeated in Africa. African countries can defeat imperialism only when they are united on a continental basis. Imperialism is the structural mechanism used by the financial oligarchy of advanced capitalist countries[x] to manage antagonistic contradictions or contradictions between social forces whose strategic interests are antagonistic, such as those of labour and capital, and to reconcile secondary contradictions or contradictions within social forces whose interests are common, such as either labour or capital, and to prolong the life of capitalism on the global scale, particularly internally within developed countries. The forces of imperialism struggle to control the ratio of constant capital to variable capital. Their primary means is to obtain cheap mineral raw materials in the periphery of capitalism where the raw materials are primarily produced. These strategic raw materials occupy the central position within the operations of the manufacturing industies of developed countries. This socio-historical process has created and maintains in the developing countries antagonistic contradiction in the development of their national economies. It is antagonistic contradiction in that the domination, control and exploitation of their national economy by the financial oligarchy of developed countries, firstly, rules out antagonistically the possibility of the emergence of the independent phase of capitalism in the developing countries. This contradiction makes it impossible for these countries to become advanced capitalist or imperialist countries. As long as they are capitalist social formations, they will remain economically dominated and controlled by the financial oligarchy of developed countries. Briefly, they will not achieve economic independence on the basis of capitalism.

Central to Nkrumah’s view of solidarity and unity among African countries on the basis of the realisation of the continental integration agenda is also the issue of Africa's solving the problems it faces in international power relations. A united, powerful Africa will contribute towards the resolution of problems the rest of the world is facing in international relations. It will contribute towards the new global order, advancing the commonality of interests of all humankind. In his words:

'Divided we are weak; united, Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world. I believe strongly and sincerely that with the deep-rooted wisdom and dignity, the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race united under one federal, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength, but as a great power whose greatness is indestructible because it is built not on fear, envy and suspicion, nor won at the expense of others, but founded on hope, trust, friendship and directed to the good of all mankind.'

Nkrumah did not embrace illusions that it would be easy to achieve what he called for. He was fully aware that:

'For the weak to challenge the strong has never been easy. Neither will it be easy to challenge powerful vested interests on the current and entrenched orthodoxies about the modern world economy.'[xi]

He was confident that the progressive and revolutionary forces agree that:

'In as much as the slave cannot ask the slave-master to provide the strategy and tactics for a successful uprising of the slaves, so must we, who are hungry and treated as minors in a world of adults, also take upon ourselves the task of defining the new world order of prosperity and development for all and equality among the nations of the world.'[xii]

The position of the group consisting of Nkrumah, Keita, Touré and Diop that political integration is a prerequisite to other forms of integration was opposed by the second group of African policy-makers and scholars who called for the gradual continental integration. Consisting of leaders such as Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Jomo Kenyatta and Léopold Senghor, this group regarded regional economic communities as the organisational means to achieve continental integration. Its approach to continental integration was primarily economic, preferring a loose cooperation of regional institutions in the technical, administrative, economic and trade areas. Although he was not moderate or conservative, Julius Kambarage Nyerere was the leading credible and respected spokesperson of this conservative, moderate group. As its respected representative of this group, he spent time, energy and resources criticising Nkrumah’s articulation of the radical approach to continental integration.

The position of the first group was defeated and replaced with that of the second group. The consequence of this crucial development in the continental integration agenda has been that the position of the second group is the dominant and official approach of the African Union and of the decisive majority of African countries to the continental integration agenda. Despite its defeat and its replacement with the gradual approach to the continental integration agenda, which is basically the official African Union position on the integration project, the position of the group led by Nkrumah is appropriate in its view of the national, regional, continental and international challenges the continent is facing in realising the strategic objectives of its integration project. This is affirmed, among others, by the continued existence of domination, control and exploitation in the relations between Africa and developed countries from the colonial period to the present post-colonial period. Central to the relations of African countries with developed countries is the subordination of their national, regional, continental and international relations to the national needs, demands and exigencies of developed countries. These relations are characterised, among others, by:

'(a) the dominance in the national economy of foreign ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange; (b) the consequent foreign exploitation of indigenous resources; (c) various forms of socio-cultural and political dependence which sustain these ownership and exploitative relations; (d) the external orientation of the national economy; (e) the confinement of national participation in the international division of labor to primary production for export and the importation of manufactured goods; (f) confidence in the salutary nature of external conditions; (g) high hope of benefits from foreign relations; and (h) appeals to the humanitarian sentiments of the advanced [capitalist] countries, as the major means of international influence [and national development].'[xiii]

These characteristic features of relations between Africa and developed countries were and continue to be the problems the group led by Nkrumah aimed to confront and end. They were and continue to be its strategic targets. These are issues which the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) does not aim to end in its neoliberal approach to the resolution of Africa’s problems. They are key factors characterising the partnership between Africa and developed countries as proposed by NEPAD. It is through this partnership or alliance between the decisive majority of African leaders and leaders of developed countries that domination, control and exploitation of Africa within the global capitalist system is defended.

Shifts in Africa’s position in international power relations and their consequences support Nkrumah’s position on the structural need for the realisation of African continental integration. Africa’s position in international power relations substantially and negatively changed since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s. The decline in the bargaining power of African countries and the resultant increased decrease in their relative domestic and foreign policy autonomy, the unprecedented consolidation of the dominance within the global capitalist order by the United States and its national security interests in shaping the intensified globalisation process were some of the key factors characterising international power relations since the 1990s.[xiv] The decline in the bargaining power of African countries and the resultant greater decrease in their relative domestic and foreign policy autonomy has been that they have been formulating and implementing their economic policies increasingly in line with the requirements of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Contrary to the position that the state in Africa decreased its role in the economy, it actually increased its role by managing and directing the economy in the interests of the few. Its economic policies helped to increase the number of African capitalists. The continued active role in increasing the camp of the African bourgeoisie is articulated by the state in the name of expanding the camp of African bourgeoisie in the case of countries which achieved political independence in the 1960s and 1970s and in the name of creating African bourgeoisie in the case of social formations such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, which achieved political independence in the 1980s and 1990s. This socio-historical development has been necessary for the consolidation of the alliance of capitalists of developed countries and developing countries and the internationalisation role of the state in fulfilling not only the requirements of this alliance, but also those of the defence of capitalism on the global scale. The task of creating and increasing the camp of the African bourgeoisie has proved to be in line with the task of advancing the strategic interests of imperialism. Thanks to this development, the majority of African leaders and theoreticians of the state they control and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are allies formulating and implementing common or similar policies against the development and progress of African countries and the masses of their people.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and transnational corporations, benefiting from this socio-historical development in the consolidation of the alliance between the African ruling class and the ruling class of the developed countries, step by step increased their leverage over African countries. They also increased their dominant position within their national economic relations. NEPAD is areflection of this increased defeat of Africa in international power relations. According to Samir Amin, even in the 1980s, Africa was already 'the weakest and most vulnerable part of the Third World' and 'the underbelly of the world system'.[xv] This problem has been increasing particularly since the 1990s. Since the 1990s, the number of Africans with power and authority opposed to the task of promoting and achieving socio-economic rights of the masses of the people – of reducing and eliminating illiteracy, hunger, poverty, homelessness, unemployment and their causes – has increased. The revolutionary and progressive forces of the continent must have the political kingdom to restructure the continental socio-political and economic relations and those between Africa and the rest of the world.

TOWARDS THE CONCLUSION

The task to advance development and the progress of Africa is the responsibility of the African people. It is not the responsibility of leaders of developed countries and institutions and organisations controlled by developed countries. African leaders should and must demonstrate commitment to Africa’s development and progress. The continent’s resources should be used to achieve its development and progress. Unfortunately, the brutal reality is that they are being used by a decisive majority of African leaders and their national allies against the advancement of the continental development and progress. This brutal reality is camouflaged by African leaders and their direct and indirect allies and friends who spend time, energy and resources demanding that leaders of developed countries and institutions and organisations controlled by developed countries should demonstrate their commitment to the development and progress of Africa.

Nkrumah was against any means to further and rapidly integrate Africa. His was an 'any means necessary' method to liberate the continent from the system. Not challenging leaders of advanced capitalist countries, but asking them for support in the efforts for Africa’s development and progress and transformation is what he was opposed to. He opposed measures committing the continent to achieve the development path leaders of developed countries approve. The point is that, as Smangaliso Mkhatshwa pointed out in his keynote address at the Gilbert Murray Memorial Lecture in Oxford in October 1985: 'What poor countries and poor groups need is the type of development that is not modelled on that of the richer countries and regions. Indeed, a major element in the real development of the poor is that the rich should be stopped from imposing misdevelopment on the world. The notion of liberation through development needs then to be complemented by that of development through liberation.'[xvi]

Nkrumah warned African leaders of programmes for the further domination, control and exploitation of the continent by developed countries through the global capitalist system they control. He called upon progressive and revolutionary Africans to oppose in theory and in practice any attempt to increase the vulnerability of Africa. For him, at issue was not only to increase the continent’s vulnerability, but also to make it easy for it to submit to the rule of the continental and international forces of domination, control and exploitation against the development and progress of Africa and its people.

In paying homage to Kwame Nkrumah, Amílcar Cabral calls upon we the enemies of neocolonialism and imperialism to implement our understanding that despite the fact that it is true that ‘imperialism is cruel and unscrupulous', we 'must not lay all the blame on its broad back' and that 'so long as imperialism is in existence, an independent African state must be a liberation movement in power, or it will not be independent'.[xvii]

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* Dr Sehlare Makgetlaneng is the chief research specialist and the head of the Africa Institute of South Africa's (AISA) Governance and Democracy Research Programme.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[i] Adekeye Adebajo, 'Africa grows suspicious of Gaddafi’s bizarre ambitions,' Business Day (Johannesburg), 1 April 2010, p. 11.
[ii] Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (New York: International Publishers, 1970), p. xvii.
[iii] Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (London: William Heinemann, 1961).
[iv] Cheikh Anta Diop interviewed by Shawna Moore, in Ivan Van Sertima (editor), Great African Thinkers, Vol. 1: Cheik Anta Diop (New Jersey, New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1987), pp. 250-51.
[v] Kwame Nkrumah, quoted in Rodney Worrell, 'Whither Global Africa? A Case for Pan-Africanism,' Africa Quarterly, Vol. 41, Nos. 1-2, 2001, p. 52.
[vi] Diop interviewed by Moore, in Ivan Van Sertima (editor), Great African Thinkers, Vol. 1: Cheik Anta Diop, pp. 250-51.
[vii] On the meaning of neo-colonialism, see, among others, Johan Galtung, The European Community: A Superpower in the Making, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), p. 42.
[viii] Julian F. Rweyemamu, Underdevelopment and Industrialization in Tanzania: A Study of Perverse Capitalist Industrial Development (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 38.
[ix] Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1965, and New York: International Publishers, 1966).
[x] Organic crisis of capitalism is the crisis which may lead either to the end or the revival of capitalism in a given society.
[xi] Speech of the Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, at the Opening of the Ministerial Meeting of the X11 Summit Meeting of heads of State and Government of the Non-Aligned Movement, Durban, South Africa, 31 August 1998, X11 Summit Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Non-Aligned Movement: Basic Documents, 29 August to 3 September 1998, Durban, South Africa, Pretoria: Department of Foreign Affairs, 1998, p. 230
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Okwudiba Nnoli, Self Reliance and Foreign Policy in Tanzania: The Dynamics of the Diplomacy of a New State, 1961 to 1971 (Lagos: NOK Publishers, 1978), p. 7.
[xiv] Adebayo Olukoshi, 'Hope for a New Millennium,' CODESRIA Bulletin, Special issues, Nos. 3 and 4, 2002, pp. 1-2.
[xv] Samir Amin, 'Afro-Arab Cooperation: The Record and the Prospects,' Africa Development, Vol. X1, Nos. 2 and 3, 1986, p. 15.
[xvi] Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, quoted in Susanna Smith, Front Line Africa: The Right to a Future: An Oxfam Report on Conflict and Poverty in Southern Africa, Oxford: Oxfam, 1990, p. 159.
[xvii] Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral, New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1979, p. 116.