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Thirty African heads of state and government came together on that historic occasion to finalise and announce the creation of a continental body whose major objective was to help Africa undo what was conceived and subsequently created by the well-documented 1884-85 Berlin Conference of a number of European nations.
The Berlin Conference was a stage in what some historians later termed “The Scramble for Africa”. The conference was attended by Britain, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden and of course the host country Germany itself.
Those countries met to find and agree on a formula that would not produce or cause particularly armed conflict among themselves as they parcelled out the incredibly natural resource — rich African continent. Various African regions had either been colonised already or were seized by hook or crook after the Berlin Conference.
From the mid 1950s, some of those European colonialists were abandoning some of the colonies because of what the former British Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, termed “winds of change”, a reference to concerted demands by various colonised African people for their freedom.
The modern anti-colonial trend occurred after the Second World War (1939-45) and resulted in the then British colony known as the Gold Coast becoming the independent state of Ghana with Dr Kwame Nkrumah as the founding President in 1957.
A number of former French colonies in West and Central Africa also became free in the 1950s. Their leaders, together with Nkrumah, attended the OAU inaugural Addis Ababa meeting that is being commemorated as Africa Freedom Day on 25 May.
At the time of the founding of the OAU, the countries that were still under colonialism were Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, the Comoros, Seychelles, Sahraoui and Djibouti.
Of all these, the most difficult were the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique, the British colony of Rhodesia and the South African administered UN-mandated Namibia known at that time as South West Africa.
The Portuguese colonies were regarded by the metropolitan country as overseas territories, that is internal parts of Portugal. Portugal had ruled some parts of Angola since the 16th century while King Ngola was still alive, and had founded Luanda in 1575.
The Portuguese argued that Mozambique had been a part of Portugal since the 15th century when they occupied Sofala and other East African sea ports and their presence predated that of the Yao and the Makonde.
Their position was that they would not leave without a fight even in Guinea Bissau.
In Namibia, the Boers of South Africa were mandated to administer that land by the League of Nations after the First World War of 1914-18. They regarded that country virtually as a Province of South Africa — the other provinces being at that time the Cape, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The Boers too would not leave Namibia without a fight.
An attempt was made by Liberia and Ethiopia to have the World Court to declare that South Africa was breaking international law by remaining in Namibia. But that court (at The Hague) ruled in South Africa’s favour.
In Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the white minority settlers did not only deny the black majority the vote, but they also demanded full independence from Britain, the colonial power. They went further than that in 1965 by declaring it unilateral with their leader, Ian Smith, declaring publicly that there would be “no black majority rule in Rhodesia in my life time, not in a thousand years”.
With such words, coupled with several draconian security laws, it was clear to everyone that force would have to be used by the oppressed to free themselves.
As for the other colonies, it was quite obvious that the colonial countries (Britain and France) would grant them independence sooner than later virtually without any coercion being used.
It was in the light of these facts that the OAU was formed with the sole aim of helping materially and diplomatically the oppressed masses of Africa to liberate themselves. The wish of that organisation was that it should present a common front and take a common position at various fora on colonial issues involving African countries.
There were, however, occasions when countries such as Malawi and the Ivory Coast would take the exact opposite stance from that agreed upon by the OAU. Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, while ostensibly against South Africa’s apartheid policy, repeatedly refused to apply any sanctions, economic or diplomatic, against Pretoria.
His Government was the only African state that established diplomatic ties with the Boer regime of Johannes Balthazar Vorster, and he himself went on a state visit to South Africa.
Ivory Coast was at that time under the Presidency of the ebullient Felix Houphouet-Boigny, a man whose approachable personality was the exact opposite of Hastings Kamuzu Banda’s stern outlook. His government advocated dialogue with the Boer regime even when the Boer administration was callously executing freedom fighters such as Solomon Mahlangu of the African National Congress (ANC).
One of the good things the OAU did was to monitor the revolutionary programmes of the liberation movements. Its liberation committee would demand progress reports from liberation movements to justify the material and financial aid they repeatedly sought.
That was meant to encourage the freedom fighters to inject some urgency in their revolutionary programmes. Some pseudo-liberation movements were de-recognised because of lack of action inside their countries. Such was the fate of the South West African National Union (SWANU) and the Mozambique African National Congress (MANC).
The decision to change the OAU’s name to African Union was made to consolidate the organisation politically. Its chief proponent was the unpredictable, the late Muammar Gaddafi of Libya whose major political dream before his tragic death was to see the birth of the United States of Africa. Who will step in Gaddafi’s shoes to promote that grand ideal?
*Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired Bulawayo-based journalist and former freedom fighter. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 and email [email protected]
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