Nyerere and Nkrumah: Towards African Unity
From the Book written by Godfrey Mwakigile
Book title "Nyerere and Africa End of an Era"
From the Book written by Godfrey Mwakigile
Book title "Nyerere and Africa End of an Era"
THEY WERE some of the most influential African leaders in the twentieth century; probably the most influential. They also shared a vision of a united Africa under one continental government. But they differed on how to achieve this goal.
Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to become the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence as Ghana on March 6, 1957. Four years and nine months later, Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika to become the first country in East Africa to win independence on December 9, 1961. Both countries won independence from Britain.
In May 1963, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was founded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by the African heads of state and government from 32 independent countries. The other 21, out of a total of 53 African countries, were still under colonial or white minority rule. The founding of the OAU was also marked by another event: publication of Kwame Nkrumah’s book, Africa Must Unite.1 The book was released around the same time African leaders met in Addis Ababa in May 1963.
It was a timely release of a book that said Africa Must Unite at the very same time that African leaders met to form the Organization of African Unity. Nkrumah thought the book was appropriate for the occasion, to capitalize on the momentum provided by the founding of the OAU towards achieving continental unity under one government.
Most of his colleagues thought otherwise. They saw it as an attempt by Nkrumah to dominate Africa and realize his ambition to become the president of a United States of Africa. Earlier in 1960 during the Congo crisis, his proposal for an African high command to defend Africa with a continental army and liberate the remaining colonies and other countries still under white minority rule - South Africa, South West Africa, and Rhodesia - had been equally rejected by other African leaders, except a few, who believed that Nkrumah would control and dominate the Pan-African force and use it to overthrow them.
In many fundamental respects, he was ahead of his time and most of his colleagues, but was later vindicated by history when Africa remained weak and powerless as a divided continent composed of non-viable independent states because they did not heed his call to unite under one government as he urged them to, back in 1963. If he were alive today, in his 90s, he would probably be tempted to say, “I told you so!”
While Nkrumah advocated immediate continental unification, Nyerere sought a regional approach as the more realistic way to eventually achieve continental unity under one government, and became the strongest proponent of an East African federation as a step towards achieving this goal. Because of his opposition to this approach which he called “balkanization on a grand scale,” and for other political reasons as Nyerere’s rival whom he felt posed a challenge to his leadership of the continent and would make history - before he did - as the first African leader to unite independent countries even if on a regional scale, Nkrumah intervened in East Africa to thwart attempts by Nyerere to form an East African federation. As he stated in Africa Must Unite:
“The idea of regional federations in Africa is fraught with many dangers. There is the danger of the development of regional loyalties, fighting against each other. In effect, regional federations are a form of balkanization on a grand scale.”2
Nyerere dismissed Nkrumah’s opposition to regional federations as “attempts to rationalize absurdity.” As he stated on the third anniversary of Tanganyika’s independence on December 9, 1963 - the three East African countries of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika had agreed to form a federation before the end of that year but failed to do so - reiterating his call for an East African federation as an imperative need and as a step towards African unity:
“We must reject some of the pretensions that have been made from outside East Africa. We have already heard the curious argument that the continued ‘balkanisation’ of East Africa will somehow help African unity.... These are attempts to rationalize absurdity.”3
Nkrumah’s opposition to the East African federation, and his interference in East Africa in an attempt to thwart any efforts towards consummation of such a union, tarnished more than enhanced his image as a Pan-Africanist in the eyes of many people, and was seen as an attempt on his part to further his own political ambitions. It also vindicated the position of many African leaders who felt that Nkrumah wanted to undermine their governments and replace them with those subservient to him, while professing African unity to hide his real intentions. As Basil Davidson says about Nkrumah’s involvement in East Africa and his attempts to block formation of the East African federation, in his book, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah:
“Some, like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, chastised Nkrumah for his interference. East Africa, Nyerere believed, could best contribute to continental unity by moving first towards regional unity. Although knowing little about East Africa, Nkrumah not only disagreed but actively interfered to obstruct the East African federation proposed by Nyerere.... It was one of Nkrumah’s worst mistakes.”4
Although the three East African countries failed to form a federation in 1963, Nyerere never gave up and continued to advocate African unity at the regional level, as well as on a continental scale. He told Jomo Kenyatta, the least interested of the three East African leaders, that Tanzania would renounce her sovereignty right away if Kenya was ready to unite. And he reiterated that in different forums. As he stated on June 25, 1965, in an address to the International Press Club during his visit to London for the Commonwealth Conference: “We stand for unity in Africa. In particular we still urgently desire an East African Federation. If Mzee Kenyatta today says he is ready, then we will federate tomorrow.”5
And as Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s vice president under Kenyatta but who resigned to form the opposition Kenya People’s Union (KPU), states in his book Not Yet Uhuru:
“As late as 8 July 1965, Nyerere said that Tanzania was still ready for East African Federation no matter that outside influences had interfered in the hope of blocking its formation. He said ‘If we listen to foreign influence we should be made to quarrel with Kenya and Uganda, but this we will not do.’ He had already told President Kenyatta that if his country was ready to unite, Tanzania was also ready.”6
But, in spite of their differences on the East African federation and regional federations in general, Nyerere and Nkrumah continued to work closely because of their ideological affinity and the Pan-African vision they shared. They even corresponded on numerous occasions on a number of issues, including ways to achieve African unity, as Nyerere himself said in an interview with Ikaweba Bunting in December 1998 not long before he died, published in the New Internationalist, and cited earlier in this book.
They may have taken divergent paths - immediate continental unification for Nkrumah, and a gradualist approach for Nyerere - but were united in their passionate quest for one government for the whole continent.
Nyerere was not, on principle, opposed to immediate continental unification as advocated by Nkrumah, but felt that Nkrumah underestimated the suspicion and animosity such an approach generated among other African leaders - most did not trust him - and would not get the necessary support needed to achieve a continental union immediately; a point he underscored during the 40th anniversary of Ghana’s independence in March 1997 when he was invited to Accra by President Jerry Rawlings as one of the honoured guests to participate in the celebrations on that momentous occasion, as we will learn later on.
He also told his audience in Ghana that African leaders should have set up a special committee under the auspices of the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU) to work on ways to achieve continental unification in the same way the OAU Liberation Committee was created to coordinate the struggle for the liberation of the countries still under white minority rule on the continent.
It was Nyerere who first proposed and introduced a resolution at the OAU summit in Cairo in July 1964 to retain the colonial boundaries inherited at independence. The resolution was adopted by his colleagues and became one of the bedrock principles of the OAU, enshrined in the OAU Charter, maintaining territorial integrity of the new African nations and barring interference in the internal affairs of another state.
Unfortunately, other African leaders saw this as a way of maintaining their separate sovereignties and consolidating their independence without pursuing continental unity, something Nyerere never intended. He remained firm in his commitment to continental unification, a Pan-African goal and ideal he shared with Nkrumah more than any other African leader, besides Obote, Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, and Kenneth Kaunda. As he stated in the interview with the New Internationalist:
“Kwame Nkrumah and I were committed to the idea of unity. African leaders did not take Kwame seriously. 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 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 ‘regionalization’ was only balkanization on a larger scale. Later, African historians will have to study our correspondence on this issue of uniting Africa.”7
Nyerere and Nkrumah worked closely on other issues, especially the liberation of southern Africa. Together with Nasser, Ben Bella, Sekou Toure, and Modibo Keita, they even had their own group, known as the Group of Six, within the OAU and coordinated their efforts on a number of issues, such as the Congo crisis during which they were infuriated by Tshombe and his Western backers, and had little regard for other OAU members whom they felt were not doing enough to unite and liberate Africa. Kenya, for instance, did virtually nothing for the liberation struggle in southern Africa. And President Jomo Kenyatta hardly spoke about it - let alone contribute material and financial support to the freedom fighters - in spite of his status as the Grand Old Man of the African independence movement who inspired, though he did not lead, Mau Mau in Kenya.
He was just one of the leaders the Group of Six found to be useless in pursuit of Pan-African goals, especially the liberation of southern Africa and Congo from Western domination. As Ben Bella said about the Congo crisis, progressive forces had arrived too late in the Congo.8 He was equally blunt on the Group of Six in an interview in 1995 with Jorge Castaneda, who became Mexico’s minister of foreign affairs in the late 1990s. As Castaneda states in his book Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara: “According to Ben Bella, these leaders had a group of their own within the OAU; they regularly consulted and conspired among themselves.”9
Before he died in October 1999, at 77, Nyerere was one of only two surviving members of the Group of Six. The other one was Ben Bella who outlived Nyerere but lived in exile in Switzerland. He was overthrown in June 1965 and was imprisoned for 15 years. But he did not continue to have much influence like Nyerere who remained a revered international statesman even after stepping down from the presidency in November 1985.
The other members of the Group of Six who died before Nyerere were Nasser who died of a heart attack in Egypt in September 1970 at the age of 52; Nkrumah, of cancer, at a hospital in Romania in April 1972, when he was 62; Modibo Keita in Mali in May 1977, also at 62, when he was under house arrest since he was overthrown in November 1968 - mass demonstrations at his funeral against the government of President Moussa Traore (military-turned-civilian head of state) who overthrew him led to the invocation of emergency powers by the despotic regime; and Sekou Toure during an emergency heart operation in the United States in March 1984, also when he was 62. Nyerere remained on the scene as the most ardent supporter of African unity and the liberation movements on the continent.
And just as Nkrumah released his seminal work Africa Must Unite in 1963, Nyerere’s article on the same subject was published about two months before Nkrumah’s book was. The article was entitled, “A United States of Africa,” and was published in The Journal of Modern African Studies in March 1963, about two months before the African heads of state and government met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and formed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) towards the end of May. In that article, Nyerere advocated continental unification but, unlike Nkrumah, took a regional approach as the most practical way to achieve this goal.10
The two leaders had a heated exchange on the subject the following year at the second summit of the OAU in Cairo in July 1964 - Malcolm X also addressed the conference and asked African leaders to raise the issue of racial discrimination and injustices in the United States at the UN - and Nyerere won majority support for his approach towards continental unification. As he put it: “When you set out to build a house, you don’t begin by putting on the roof; first you start by laying the foundations.”11
Nkrumah, on the other hand, contended that a regional approach towards continental unification would only benefit the enemies of Africa as they continued to exploit the weaknesses of a divided continent. It would also make it impossible for the whole continent to unite. And time was critical. Africa must unite now. The proposed East African federation would accomplish exactly the opposite.
And he probably underestimated Nyerere and did not expect a sharp response from him and saw him as his junior, given the age difference between the two, 13 years apart; and because of his status as the trail-blazer of the African independence movement, having led Ghana to become the first black African country to win independence in 1957. And as Professor Ali Mazrui stated in his lecture at the University of Ghana in 2002:
“Nkrumah pointed out that his own country could not very easily join an East African federation. This proved how discriminatory and divisive the whole of Nyerere’s strategy was for the African continent.
Nyerere treated Nkrumah’s counter-thesis with contempt. He asserted that to argue that Africa had better remain in small bits than form bigger entities was nothing but ‘an attempt to rationalize absurdity.’ He denounced Nkrumah’s attempt to deflate the East African federation movement as petty mischief-making arising from Nkrumah’s own sense of frustration in his own Pan-African ventures.
Nyerere was indignant. He went public with his attack on Nkrumah. He referred to people who pretended that they were in favour of African continental union when all they cared about was to ensure that ‘some stupid historian in the future’ praised them for being in favour of the big continental ambition before anyone else was willing to undertake it.
Nyerere added snide remarks about ‘the Redeemer,’ Nkrumah’s self-embraced title of the Osagyefo.
On balance, history has proved Nkrumah wrong on the question of Nyerere’s commitment to liberation. Nyerere was second to none in that commitment.
At that Cairo conference of 1964 Nkrumah had asked ‘What could be the result of entrusting the training of Freedom Fighters against imperialism into the hands of an imperialist agent?’ Nyerere had indeed answered ‘the good Osagyefo’ with sarcasm and counter-argument.”12
Despite their shared Pan-African vision, and genuine Pan-African commitment, there was rivalry between the two leaders, fuelled by their strong personalities and charisma as well as militancy. And their different approaches to African unity only intensified this rivalry, as did Nyerere’s increasing prominence on the African political scene Nkrumah saw as his exclusive domain and himself as the brightest black star in the African firmament:
“In reality Nkrumah and Nyerere had already begun to be rivals as symbols of African radicalism before the coup, which overthrew Nkrumah. Nkrumah was beginning to be suspicious of Nyerere in this regard. The two most important issues over which Nyerere and Nkrumah before 1966 might have been regarded as rivals for continental pre-eminence were the issues of African liberation and African unity.... The Organization of African Unity, when it came into being in May 1963, designated Dar es Salaam as the headquarters of liberation movements. The choice was partly determined by the proximity of Dar es Salaam to southern Africa as the last bastion of colonialism and white minority rule. But the choice was also determined by the emergence of Nyerere as an important and innovative figure in African politics.
Nkrumah’s Ghana did make the bid to be the headquarters of liberation movements but Nkrumah lost the battle....
The great voice of African self-reliance, and the most active African head of government in relation to liberation in Southern Africa from 1967 (after Nkrumah was overthrown in February 1966) until the 1980s was in fact Nyerere.... He became the toughest spokesman against the British on the Rhodesian question. His country played a crucial role at the OAU Ministerial meeting at which it was decided to issue that fatal ultimatum to Britain’s Prime Minister, Harold Wilson - ‘Break Ian Smith or Africa will break with you.’”13
While Nyerere will always be remembered as the most relentless supporter of the liberation movements in Africa among all the heads of state on the continent after Nkrumah was overthrown; Nkrumah will, on his part, be always acknowledged not only as the leader who blazed the trail for the African independence movement when he led the Gold Coast (renamed Ghana) to become the first country in black Africa to win freedom; he will also be always remembered for his bold initiatives, including his call for immediate continental unification, a Pan-African quest given eloquent and forceful expression in his seminal work, Africa Must Unite. As he stated from exile in Conakry, Guinea, on April 22, 1970, almost exactly two years before he died in April 1972:
“The wave of military coups, and the stepping up of imperialist and neocolonialist aggression in Africa since 1963, when Africa Must Unite was first published, have proved conclusively the urgent need for political unification. No single part of Africa can be safe, or free to develop fully and independently, while any part remains unliberated, or while Africa’s vast economic resources continue to be exploited by imperialist and neo-colonialist interests.
Unless Africa is politically united under an all-African Union Government, there can be no solution to our political and economic problems. The thesis of Africa Must Unite remains unassailable.”14
Nkrumah’s thesis that Africa Must Unite indeed remains unassailable. But why has Africa failed to unite? Africa has failed to unite because of nationalism more than anything else. Countries on the continent jealously guard their independence and don’t want to surrender their sovereign status to a higher authority for the sake of African unity. That Africa is still not united 40 years after the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was formed in 1963, also vindicates Nyerere’s position that immediate continental unification was not a realistic goal - more than just a tough proposition - and would have been rejected by most African leaders, as it indeed was, back in 1963 and through the decades.
But it also vindicates Nkrumah’s position that if African countries don’t unite now, they probably never will, but will only drift farther and and farther apart. Ironically, Nyerere shared the same position, in terms of divided loyalties as each country consolidated its independence and separate identity the longer it took to unite, even regionally, thus making it virtually impossible for them to form such a union.
That is one of the strongest arguments he made when he called for the establishment of the East African federation right away at independence or soon thereafter. But after the three countries - Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika - failed to unite, he no longer saw such an approach, immediate unification, as a practical proposition. The concrete blocks of nationalism built since independence had to be whittled away, and transcended, gradually in order to achieve continental unity. Otherwise Africa will never unite.
And it is an approach that has been accepted by most African leaders, thus vindicating Nyerere, and has been validated by experience even in contemporary times; as has been clearly demonstrated by the formation of such regional blocs as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); the Southern African Development Community (SADC); the East African Community (EAC); and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
It is our hope that these regional bodies will one day merge to form a continental union under one government as advocated by Nkrumah and Nyerere; two African titans who remain an embodiment of Pan-African ideals cherished by millions across our beleaguered continent whose only salvation lies in unity.
Although dismissed as a Utopian ideal, Nkrumah’s quest for immediate continental unification had emotional and rhetorical appeal on this divided continent, especially among the young. And his Pan-African militancy resonated well across the continent. It inspired many people, especially in the euphoric sixties soon after independence and during the liberation struggle in southern Africa, to pursue higher goals that transcended parochial nationalism to affirm what Nkrumah called the African personality in a world where Africans are not accorded due respect.
Nelson Mandela was one of those who greatly admired Nkrumah, as he states in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.15 So did Robert Mugabe and millions others across Africa and beyond.
Nkrumah remained a source of inspiration to Mandela, Mugabe and their compatriots during their years in prison, as much as Nyerere was, and through the liberation struggle in southern Africa. In fact, Mugabe even went to live and taught in Ghana during Nkrumah’s reign and got married to a Ghanaian, Sarah, who became Zimbabwe’s First Lady when Mugabe became president.
Nyerere also saw Nkrumah as an embodiment of Pan-African ideals he shared with him and strongly condemned those who overthrew him in February 1966. Tanzania never recognized the government that replaced Nkrumah. And Nkrumah himself paid tribute to Nyerere for his support and for his bitter condemnation of the Ghana coup, as he states in the book he wrote in exile in Conakry, Guinea, after he was overthrown, and appropriately entitled, Dark Days in Ghana.16
And both went down in history probably as the most revered statesmen Africa has ever produced, together with Nelson Mandela who was also a close friend of Nyerere. Tragically, they died before their goal of African unity was realized.
The quest for African unity is going to be the biggest challenge Africa faces in the twentieth-first century. Without unity, all talk of an African renaissance is no more than empty rhetoric. African countries are too weak to be viable entities. They just don’t make any sense. None.
Kwame Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to become the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence as Ghana on March 6, 1957. Four years and nine months later, Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika to become the first country in East Africa to win independence on December 9, 1961. Both countries won independence from Britain.
In May 1963, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was founded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by the African heads of state and government from 32 independent countries. The other 21, out of a total of 53 African countries, were still under colonial or white minority rule. The founding of the OAU was also marked by another event: publication of Kwame Nkrumah’s book, Africa Must Unite.1 The book was released around the same time African leaders met in Addis Ababa in May 1963.
It was a timely release of a book that said Africa Must Unite at the very same time that African leaders met to form the Organization of African Unity. Nkrumah thought the book was appropriate for the occasion, to capitalize on the momentum provided by the founding of the OAU towards achieving continental unity under one government.
Most of his colleagues thought otherwise. They saw it as an attempt by Nkrumah to dominate Africa and realize his ambition to become the president of a United States of Africa. Earlier in 1960 during the Congo crisis, his proposal for an African high command to defend Africa with a continental army and liberate the remaining colonies and other countries still under white minority rule - South Africa, South West Africa, and Rhodesia - had been equally rejected by other African leaders, except a few, who believed that Nkrumah would control and dominate the Pan-African force and use it to overthrow them.
In many fundamental respects, he was ahead of his time and most of his colleagues, but was later vindicated by history when Africa remained weak and powerless as a divided continent composed of non-viable independent states because they did not heed his call to unite under one government as he urged them to, back in 1963. If he were alive today, in his 90s, he would probably be tempted to say, “I told you so!”
While Nkrumah advocated immediate continental unification, Nyerere sought a regional approach as the more realistic way to eventually achieve continental unity under one government, and became the strongest proponent of an East African federation as a step towards achieving this goal. Because of his opposition to this approach which he called “balkanization on a grand scale,” and for other political reasons as Nyerere’s rival whom he felt posed a challenge to his leadership of the continent and would make history - before he did - as the first African leader to unite independent countries even if on a regional scale, Nkrumah intervened in East Africa to thwart attempts by Nyerere to form an East African federation. As he stated in Africa Must Unite:
“The idea of regional federations in Africa is fraught with many dangers. There is the danger of the development of regional loyalties, fighting against each other. In effect, regional federations are a form of balkanization on a grand scale.”2
Nyerere dismissed Nkrumah’s opposition to regional federations as “attempts to rationalize absurdity.” As he stated on the third anniversary of Tanganyika’s independence on December 9, 1963 - the three East African countries of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika had agreed to form a federation before the end of that year but failed to do so - reiterating his call for an East African federation as an imperative need and as a step towards African unity:
“We must reject some of the pretensions that have been made from outside East Africa. We have already heard the curious argument that the continued ‘balkanisation’ of East Africa will somehow help African unity.... These are attempts to rationalize absurdity.”3
Nkrumah’s opposition to the East African federation, and his interference in East Africa in an attempt to thwart any efforts towards consummation of such a union, tarnished more than enhanced his image as a Pan-Africanist in the eyes of many people, and was seen as an attempt on his part to further his own political ambitions. It also vindicated the position of many African leaders who felt that Nkrumah wanted to undermine their governments and replace them with those subservient to him, while professing African unity to hide his real intentions. As Basil Davidson says about Nkrumah’s involvement in East Africa and his attempts to block formation of the East African federation, in his book, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah:
“Some, like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, chastised Nkrumah for his interference. East Africa, Nyerere believed, could best contribute to continental unity by moving first towards regional unity. Although knowing little about East Africa, Nkrumah not only disagreed but actively interfered to obstruct the East African federation proposed by Nyerere.... It was one of Nkrumah’s worst mistakes.”4
Although the three East African countries failed to form a federation in 1963, Nyerere never gave up and continued to advocate African unity at the regional level, as well as on a continental scale. He told Jomo Kenyatta, the least interested of the three East African leaders, that Tanzania would renounce her sovereignty right away if Kenya was ready to unite. And he reiterated that in different forums. As he stated on June 25, 1965, in an address to the International Press Club during his visit to London for the Commonwealth Conference: “We stand for unity in Africa. In particular we still urgently desire an East African Federation. If Mzee Kenyatta today says he is ready, then we will federate tomorrow.”5
And as Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s vice president under Kenyatta but who resigned to form the opposition Kenya People’s Union (KPU), states in his book Not Yet Uhuru:
“As late as 8 July 1965, Nyerere said that Tanzania was still ready for East African Federation no matter that outside influences had interfered in the hope of blocking its formation. He said ‘If we listen to foreign influence we should be made to quarrel with Kenya and Uganda, but this we will not do.’ He had already told President Kenyatta that if his country was ready to unite, Tanzania was also ready.”6
But, in spite of their differences on the East African federation and regional federations in general, Nyerere and Nkrumah continued to work closely because of their ideological affinity and the Pan-African vision they shared. They even corresponded on numerous occasions on a number of issues, including ways to achieve African unity, as Nyerere himself said in an interview with Ikaweba Bunting in December 1998 not long before he died, published in the New Internationalist, and cited earlier in this book.
They may have taken divergent paths - immediate continental unification for Nkrumah, and a gradualist approach for Nyerere - but were united in their passionate quest for one government for the whole continent.
Nyerere was not, on principle, opposed to immediate continental unification as advocated by Nkrumah, but felt that Nkrumah underestimated the suspicion and animosity such an approach generated among other African leaders - most did not trust him - and would not get the necessary support needed to achieve a continental union immediately; a point he underscored during the 40th anniversary of Ghana’s independence in March 1997 when he was invited to Accra by President Jerry Rawlings as one of the honoured guests to participate in the celebrations on that momentous occasion, as we will learn later on.
He also told his audience in Ghana that African leaders should have set up a special committee under the auspices of the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU) to work on ways to achieve continental unification in the same way the OAU Liberation Committee was created to coordinate the struggle for the liberation of the countries still under white minority rule on the continent.
It was Nyerere who first proposed and introduced a resolution at the OAU summit in Cairo in July 1964 to retain the colonial boundaries inherited at independence. The resolution was adopted by his colleagues and became one of the bedrock principles of the OAU, enshrined in the OAU Charter, maintaining territorial integrity of the new African nations and barring interference in the internal affairs of another state.
Unfortunately, other African leaders saw this as a way of maintaining their separate sovereignties and consolidating their independence without pursuing continental unity, something Nyerere never intended. He remained firm in his commitment to continental unification, a Pan-African goal and ideal he shared with Nkrumah more than any other African leader, besides Obote, Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, and Kenneth Kaunda. As he stated in the interview with the New Internationalist:
“Kwame Nkrumah and I were committed to the idea of unity. African leaders did not take Kwame seriously. 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 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 ‘regionalization’ was only balkanization on a larger scale. Later, African historians will have to study our correspondence on this issue of uniting Africa.”7
Nyerere and Nkrumah worked closely on other issues, especially the liberation of southern Africa. Together with Nasser, Ben Bella, Sekou Toure, and Modibo Keita, they even had their own group, known as the Group of Six, within the OAU and coordinated their efforts on a number of issues, such as the Congo crisis during which they were infuriated by Tshombe and his Western backers, and had little regard for other OAU members whom they felt were not doing enough to unite and liberate Africa. Kenya, for instance, did virtually nothing for the liberation struggle in southern Africa. And President Jomo Kenyatta hardly spoke about it - let alone contribute material and financial support to the freedom fighters - in spite of his status as the Grand Old Man of the African independence movement who inspired, though he did not lead, Mau Mau in Kenya.
He was just one of the leaders the Group of Six found to be useless in pursuit of Pan-African goals, especially the liberation of southern Africa and Congo from Western domination. As Ben Bella said about the Congo crisis, progressive forces had arrived too late in the Congo.8 He was equally blunt on the Group of Six in an interview in 1995 with Jorge Castaneda, who became Mexico’s minister of foreign affairs in the late 1990s. As Castaneda states in his book Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara: “According to Ben Bella, these leaders had a group of their own within the OAU; they regularly consulted and conspired among themselves.”9
Before he died in October 1999, at 77, Nyerere was one of only two surviving members of the Group of Six. The other one was Ben Bella who outlived Nyerere but lived in exile in Switzerland. He was overthrown in June 1965 and was imprisoned for 15 years. But he did not continue to have much influence like Nyerere who remained a revered international statesman even after stepping down from the presidency in November 1985.
The other members of the Group of Six who died before Nyerere were Nasser who died of a heart attack in Egypt in September 1970 at the age of 52; Nkrumah, of cancer, at a hospital in Romania in April 1972, when he was 62; Modibo Keita in Mali in May 1977, also at 62, when he was under house arrest since he was overthrown in November 1968 - mass demonstrations at his funeral against the government of President Moussa Traore (military-turned-civilian head of state) who overthrew him led to the invocation of emergency powers by the despotic regime; and Sekou Toure during an emergency heart operation in the United States in March 1984, also when he was 62. Nyerere remained on the scene as the most ardent supporter of African unity and the liberation movements on the continent.
And just as Nkrumah released his seminal work Africa Must Unite in 1963, Nyerere’s article on the same subject was published about two months before Nkrumah’s book was. The article was entitled, “A United States of Africa,” and was published in The Journal of Modern African Studies in March 1963, about two months before the African heads of state and government met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and formed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) towards the end of May. In that article, Nyerere advocated continental unification but, unlike Nkrumah, took a regional approach as the most practical way to achieve this goal.10
The two leaders had a heated exchange on the subject the following year at the second summit of the OAU in Cairo in July 1964 - Malcolm X also addressed the conference and asked African leaders to raise the issue of racial discrimination and injustices in the United States at the UN - and Nyerere won majority support for his approach towards continental unification. As he put it: “When you set out to build a house, you don’t begin by putting on the roof; first you start by laying the foundations.”11
Nkrumah, on the other hand, contended that a regional approach towards continental unification would only benefit the enemies of Africa as they continued to exploit the weaknesses of a divided continent. It would also make it impossible for the whole continent to unite. And time was critical. Africa must unite now. The proposed East African federation would accomplish exactly the opposite.
And he probably underestimated Nyerere and did not expect a sharp response from him and saw him as his junior, given the age difference between the two, 13 years apart; and because of his status as the trail-blazer of the African independence movement, having led Ghana to become the first black African country to win independence in 1957. And as Professor Ali Mazrui stated in his lecture at the University of Ghana in 2002:
“Nkrumah pointed out that his own country could not very easily join an East African federation. This proved how discriminatory and divisive the whole of Nyerere’s strategy was for the African continent.
Nyerere treated Nkrumah’s counter-thesis with contempt. He asserted that to argue that Africa had better remain in small bits than form bigger entities was nothing but ‘an attempt to rationalize absurdity.’ He denounced Nkrumah’s attempt to deflate the East African federation movement as petty mischief-making arising from Nkrumah’s own sense of frustration in his own Pan-African ventures.
Nyerere was indignant. He went public with his attack on Nkrumah. He referred to people who pretended that they were in favour of African continental union when all they cared about was to ensure that ‘some stupid historian in the future’ praised them for being in favour of the big continental ambition before anyone else was willing to undertake it.
Nyerere added snide remarks about ‘the Redeemer,’ Nkrumah’s self-embraced title of the Osagyefo.
On balance, history has proved Nkrumah wrong on the question of Nyerere’s commitment to liberation. Nyerere was second to none in that commitment.
At that Cairo conference of 1964 Nkrumah had asked ‘What could be the result of entrusting the training of Freedom Fighters against imperialism into the hands of an imperialist agent?’ Nyerere had indeed answered ‘the good Osagyefo’ with sarcasm and counter-argument.”12
Despite their shared Pan-African vision, and genuine Pan-African commitment, there was rivalry between the two leaders, fuelled by their strong personalities and charisma as well as militancy. And their different approaches to African unity only intensified this rivalry, as did Nyerere’s increasing prominence on the African political scene Nkrumah saw as his exclusive domain and himself as the brightest black star in the African firmament:
“In reality Nkrumah and Nyerere had already begun to be rivals as symbols of African radicalism before the coup, which overthrew Nkrumah. Nkrumah was beginning to be suspicious of Nyerere in this regard. The two most important issues over which Nyerere and Nkrumah before 1966 might have been regarded as rivals for continental pre-eminence were the issues of African liberation and African unity.... The Organization of African Unity, when it came into being in May 1963, designated Dar es Salaam as the headquarters of liberation movements. The choice was partly determined by the proximity of Dar es Salaam to southern Africa as the last bastion of colonialism and white minority rule. But the choice was also determined by the emergence of Nyerere as an important and innovative figure in African politics.
Nkrumah’s Ghana did make the bid to be the headquarters of liberation movements but Nkrumah lost the battle....
The great voice of African self-reliance, and the most active African head of government in relation to liberation in Southern Africa from 1967 (after Nkrumah was overthrown in February 1966) until the 1980s was in fact Nyerere.... He became the toughest spokesman against the British on the Rhodesian question. His country played a crucial role at the OAU Ministerial meeting at which it was decided to issue that fatal ultimatum to Britain’s Prime Minister, Harold Wilson - ‘Break Ian Smith or Africa will break with you.’”13
While Nyerere will always be remembered as the most relentless supporter of the liberation movements in Africa among all the heads of state on the continent after Nkrumah was overthrown; Nkrumah will, on his part, be always acknowledged not only as the leader who blazed the trail for the African independence movement when he led the Gold Coast (renamed Ghana) to become the first country in black Africa to win freedom; he will also be always remembered for his bold initiatives, including his call for immediate continental unification, a Pan-African quest given eloquent and forceful expression in his seminal work, Africa Must Unite. As he stated from exile in Conakry, Guinea, on April 22, 1970, almost exactly two years before he died in April 1972:
“The wave of military coups, and the stepping up of imperialist and neocolonialist aggression in Africa since 1963, when Africa Must Unite was first published, have proved conclusively the urgent need for political unification. No single part of Africa can be safe, or free to develop fully and independently, while any part remains unliberated, or while Africa’s vast economic resources continue to be exploited by imperialist and neo-colonialist interests.
Unless Africa is politically united under an all-African Union Government, there can be no solution to our political and economic problems. The thesis of Africa Must Unite remains unassailable.”14
Nkrumah’s thesis that Africa Must Unite indeed remains unassailable. But why has Africa failed to unite? Africa has failed to unite because of nationalism more than anything else. Countries on the continent jealously guard their independence and don’t want to surrender their sovereign status to a higher authority for the sake of African unity. That Africa is still not united 40 years after the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was formed in 1963, also vindicates Nyerere’s position that immediate continental unification was not a realistic goal - more than just a tough proposition - and would have been rejected by most African leaders, as it indeed was, back in 1963 and through the decades.
But it also vindicates Nkrumah’s position that if African countries don’t unite now, they probably never will, but will only drift farther and and farther apart. Ironically, Nyerere shared the same position, in terms of divided loyalties as each country consolidated its independence and separate identity the longer it took to unite, even regionally, thus making it virtually impossible for them to form such a union.
That is one of the strongest arguments he made when he called for the establishment of the East African federation right away at independence or soon thereafter. But after the three countries - Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika - failed to unite, he no longer saw such an approach, immediate unification, as a practical proposition. The concrete blocks of nationalism built since independence had to be whittled away, and transcended, gradually in order to achieve continental unity. Otherwise Africa will never unite.
And it is an approach that has been accepted by most African leaders, thus vindicating Nyerere, and has been validated by experience even in contemporary times; as has been clearly demonstrated by the formation of such regional blocs as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); the Southern African Development Community (SADC); the East African Community (EAC); and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
It is our hope that these regional bodies will one day merge to form a continental union under one government as advocated by Nkrumah and Nyerere; two African titans who remain an embodiment of Pan-African ideals cherished by millions across our beleaguered continent whose only salvation lies in unity.
Although dismissed as a Utopian ideal, Nkrumah’s quest for immediate continental unification had emotional and rhetorical appeal on this divided continent, especially among the young. And his Pan-African militancy resonated well across the continent. It inspired many people, especially in the euphoric sixties soon after independence and during the liberation struggle in southern Africa, to pursue higher goals that transcended parochial nationalism to affirm what Nkrumah called the African personality in a world where Africans are not accorded due respect.
Nelson Mandela was one of those who greatly admired Nkrumah, as he states in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.15 So did Robert Mugabe and millions others across Africa and beyond.
Nkrumah remained a source of inspiration to Mandela, Mugabe and their compatriots during their years in prison, as much as Nyerere was, and through the liberation struggle in southern Africa. In fact, Mugabe even went to live and taught in Ghana during Nkrumah’s reign and got married to a Ghanaian, Sarah, who became Zimbabwe’s First Lady when Mugabe became president.
Nyerere also saw Nkrumah as an embodiment of Pan-African ideals he shared with him and strongly condemned those who overthrew him in February 1966. Tanzania never recognized the government that replaced Nkrumah. And Nkrumah himself paid tribute to Nyerere for his support and for his bitter condemnation of the Ghana coup, as he states in the book he wrote in exile in Conakry, Guinea, after he was overthrown, and appropriately entitled, Dark Days in Ghana.16
And both went down in history probably as the most revered statesmen Africa has ever produced, together with Nelson Mandela who was also a close friend of Nyerere. Tragically, they died before their goal of African unity was realized.
The quest for African unity is going to be the biggest challenge Africa faces in the twentieth-first century. Without unity, all talk of an African renaissance is no more than empty rhetoric. African countries are too weak to be viable entities. They just don’t make any sense. None.
