DECOLONIZATION IN AFRICA II:VIOLENT STRUGGLES

1. Nigeria: Britain grants independence in 1960, but bloody civil war erupts in 1967 (Springhall, 122-28).

2. Congo: Belgium grants independence in 1960 but engineers the secession of mineral-rich Katanga Province (Springhall, 135-39).

3. Kenya: The British defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in 1956 but grant independence to Jomo Kenyatta in 1963 (Springhall, 157-66).

4. Algeria: National Liberation Front launches uprising in 1954, gaining independence in 1962 after perhaps one million deaths (Springhall, 147-56).

MAJOR LANGUAGE GROUPS OF NIGERIA

The Republic of Biafra (1967-70)

Starving children in Biafra, 1970:Over one million people died in this civil war

The Belgian

Congo in 1896:

The capital was named after Henry

Stanley; oil-rich

Katanga Province

lies in the far south….

Moise Tshombé and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld meet at Elizabethville Airport, August

15, 1960

Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, after his arrest by mutinous soldiers in Leopoldville on

December 3, 1960

Those soldiers sent Lumumba to

Katanga, where

Tshombe ordered his death by

firing squad on January 17, 1961.

A wounded UN Peacekeeper in the Congolese Civil War, January 1961. The UN ended Katanga’s

secession by 1963.

General Mobutu Sese Seko ruled “Zaire” from 1965 to 1997

Map of Kenya, which became

a British colony in 1890

Major ethnic groups of Kenya:

Kikuyu 23%Luhya 14%Luo 13%

Kalenjin 11%Kamba 10%

Kisii 6%Meru 5%

Other African 17%European & Asian

1%

A Mau Mau insurgent band

with crude rifles, 1952/53,

and a British cartoon from

1952

Jomo Kenyatta, sworn in as Prime Minister of Kenya, June 1963

Sir Anthony Eden and Guy Molletreached a secret agreement with David ben-Gurion

in October 1956 to bring Nasser down

Mollet had just sent another 300,000 troops to

Algeria

FRANCE CONQUERED ALGERIA FROM 1829 TO 1892

The 3rd Republic integrated it into metropolitan France, but suffrage was limited to the 1 million European settlers. After 1945 France allowed the 8 million Muslims to elect an equal number of delegates.

The National Liberation Front rebelled in November 1954, but all French parties replied, ici,

c’est la France!

The grant of independence to Morocco and Tunisia in 1956 fueled the rebellion.

With 500,000 troops the French conquered most rural strongholds of the FLN in 1956

The Battle of Algiers began in June 1956, when the FLN declared that 100 Frenchmen would be

killed for every comrade executed; 49 white men were shot at random in the next 4 days, and

bombs began to explode….

French paratroopers take charge of urban policing during the “Battle of Algiers,” January 1957. Torture

was authorized.

Rumors that the politicians in Paris planned to surrender caused

a military coup in Algiers and threats to invade the mainland in

May 1958.The party leaders appealed to

Charles de Gaulle to restore state authority.

Here the paratrooper

commander in Algeria, General Massu, presides over Marianne’s

wedding

Charles de Gaulle in Algiers, 1959:The colons cheered his supposed will to resist

majority rule…

The secularist FLN leaders Ahmed ben Bella (left) and

Houari Boumedienne in Algiers, September 1962

Africa as of 1964, decolonized except

for Angola, Mozambique,

South Africa, and Rhodesia

POSSIBLE LESSONS?

UN “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries” (1960): “Lack of preparedness” is never an excuse to deny independence.Founding charter of the Organization of African Unity (1963): All member states are obliged to respect the “territorial integrity” of all other members, i.e., never to question existing borders, and to respect the principle of noninterference in the domestic affairs of another member state.