The African revolution; Out of the dark
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The African revolution program number one out of the dark. This is the sound of celebration. Frantic drummer of the three way across a continent the same message of freedom as Africa emerges out of the box. This is the sound of Africa from. The African revolution a sound all to say to a continent in turmoil. A six point study of Africa south of the Sahara. They've done a 15 country tour with a tape recorder by broadcaster Harry russkie. This first program in the center is a program titled Out of the dark and sets the scene for the series exploring the general picture of Africa past and present. And with a look to the future. It is an enormous continent 11 and a quarter million square miles
as big as the United States Western Europe India and China together. It stretches them from the Mediterranean to the Antarctic 5000 miles and across from the Indian to the Atlantic Oceans four thousand five hundred miles. Africa produces 98 percent of the world's diamonds. Fifty five percent of our gold. It is a continent of massive vivid beauty part desert part grassland only a small part jungle less than 10 percent of its total land. Is our a bull. Yep. There is no crop known to man that cannot grow somewhere in its soil its 200 million people are as varied as its topography. They speak about 700 different languages and dialects but only one African and Tim can read and write. These very people on this vast continent are changing the face of the world and the African revolution. In the years since the end of the war more than two thirds of what was
colonial territory has dynamically emerged into independent countries. This is an account of that volcanic force the African revolution. Well what is the sound of Africa today. My tour took the south of that sea of sand the Sahara beginning in the one dark African country that has retained its independence except briefly through old time Ethiopia and even here in this biblical land ruled by his Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie the first conquering Lion of Judah elect of God King of Kings and emperor of Ethiopia. Even here the African revolution has had its impact. When the garbled sound of a radio voice announcing in the M. Herrick language that the
direct lineal descendant from the union of wise king Solomon and the beautiful Queen of Sheba the news was proclaimed that even he the Emperor was not secure from the forces loose on the continent. This recent coup d'etat backed by angry young men of Ethiopia was short lived but was ample proof that after the Emperor dies Ethiopia too will be swept by the wild winds of change that blow across the continent. Then south down the East Coast to Kenya. God was God in Kenya which stands on the ledge of Independence freedom was called to whom and this is the sound outside the home a bearded say Tenach looking dome old
flaming spear can ya. It is the sound of Africans chanting Uhuru Kenyatta and warrior bring us freedom bring us happiness. Oh my God. South again and along the East Coast to tell you a country of 9 million containing Africa's highest mountain its deepest lake and one of the continent's most brilliant leaders. Julius Newberry. Its new national anthem heralded the things to come in East Africa as Kenya and Uganda wait their turn. Freedom and Tang is the sound of a song of praise and welcome to Julius near every
occasion. Now Southwest of the Federation of the Rhodesians and yes the land where Dr. Hastings Banda in an angry urge to free himself from white domination is sworn to destroy the federation by proclaiming an independent Yes a land. The little over. OK now I'd like you to explain what that song means. We ask you good to hear but as I am what I am what we are going to do ahead of us is that we are going to a different level of new government. We Mello Yes we are going to fall in love with government. You want this country to be rude but oh oh oh and ourselves.
That's the chorus of the song. The voice and a song recorded in the rain in the city of Blantyre. But they could have come from anywhere in the mass of federation that is the heart of the continent with the expression of the desire of the Africans to rule themselves. Then south again to the dark beauty of tragic South Africa where the African revolution is yet to come. I know the. Show was oh my God I'm up here in South Africa. The song is a sideline. Freedom has not come for the black. Here's is a work song a chance for working the white man's mind. OH MY GOD I'M ABOUT YOU KNOW MY GOD MY GOD I AM GOD. Then north and west to the two Republics that span the river Congo one of these
the former Belgian Congo was born in chaos and almost dragged the world into war. And on the other side of the wide weed filled river the French had left quietly slyly a jungle country in Demy freedom. But on both sides the word was unmistakable. On day pong balls. Independence has been a frantic thing here and it will be a long time before the aftermath of the hurricane winds of change can be set in order the African revolution has sometimes been and will continue to be violent. West south again to the place called the province of Portugal Angola hear the song as our soldiers are arm symbols of the Portuguese theme that they will never leave Africa and they have taught the African children to sing sweetly of their
fatherland. But all the sweet songs cannot stop the fight for freedom here in the northern jungles the rebel forces place their revolutionary plea in guerrilla warfare then swiftly north and west into West Africa where freedom has its deepest roots. To Nigeria where it has its greatest promise freedom came a little slower to the great mass of people that make up Nigeria. But it came carefully and with great hope its echo was heard everywhere in this most colorful of all African lands in a multi tribal democracy and allowed in free press even in the song of a group of children along a warm Atlantic Beach. It was.
A cross again westward to gunna hear where black African freedom got its start where one man climbing the crew must still believes he is the Messiah of independence for all of Africa and where independence has not necessarily meant freedom. The words in modern Africa are not necessarily the same. Seven horns made from elephant tusks alone not to sound freedom but to pay tribute to the man they call show boy president new Chroma. And western north to the complex and balkanize states of French West Africa where once
again the cry assumes the sound of on day puddles at the beginning of 1958. There was a huge block of land more than 45 million people ruled from Paris in a sudden move the land was dissected into 12 separate states under the abstract heading the French community Commonwealth of the Fifth Republic along the red Chivery coast the site pre-dates the French. But it means all £9. We're still a little more to Mr. Williams Shadrach Tubman's Liberia. Not long ago it was an embarrassment to the cause of African independence. Even It has calls for change in the changing times of Africa. Founded by slaves it is only lately stopped engaging in slavery itself but slowly it is being forced to keep step with fast moving Africans think
this step is the highlight of the modern dance of West Africa. In Liberia where the official currency is the U.S. dollar the highlife have an extra bit of American jazz to it. And finally north the last time to get me here is second tour a the handsome president turned his back on de Gaulle of France as no man ever has. He has embraced the Russian the Czech the East German to find himself trapped by a surplus of communist benefits newly independent his countrymen are trying to give that independence a meaning tied to neither east nor west. But for the moment there is confusion in this most anti-white about African lands. The sounds of Africa are a complex conglomeration of a dozen
centuries traveling from one country to another and some time from one town to another. You feel that you have travelled not from place to place but from time to time. African history is in fact a mystery. None is recorded only in strange rooms and rock paintings are clues found to a past that gave the continent its name dark Africa. The word Africa itself is something of a mystery. Some say it derives from the Latin word meaning sunny or the Greek word freak without cold. Nothing is certain. I asked historian journalist Basil Davidson to help fill in some details of pre-colonial Africa. The stronger centers of government undoubtedly in pre-European Africa lay in West Africa and to some extent in Central Africa. You know West Africa and the Sudan and in the forest belt states of Miley
got up to sun right. The forest belt states of the new mean later on of the shanty. And of course in central Africa you had the one state loosely confederated states of the Bantu peoples who had developed a mature Iron Age on the plateau of what is now Southern Rhodesia and built the ruins which will no doubt see in the remarkable ruins of Zimbabwe. And I was like them. What went wrong with that civilization. Well I don't think that anything went wrong as simple as that. To begin with of course one has to remember that the Europeans who went into Africa in the 19th century were firmly convinced that they were civilized and the Africans were savages. And they almost totally mis understood most of what they saw or heard and found this states of the western Sudan and didn't degenerate very much they remained fairly strong and they defended themselves as well as they could but they were of
course pre-industrial pre-scientific. And the gap the cultural gap by that time between the invading Europeans and the African states which survived was very wide indeed along the coast I think myself and I said it in a recent book of mine. The main trouble lay in the consequences of the slave trade which debilitated and on the whole degenerated strong African states which had existed along the coast inland from the coast in the forest belt and East Africa. It was partly the fault of the Portuguese partly the fault of the internal internal wars and partly of course there again the total misunderstanding of the Europeans who went in who found as they thought a savage chaos which had endured Fromm for ever from all eternity and which was in fact a sharp social crisis following in the wake of Portuguese destructiveness in the East Coast and in turn it was especially those of the Zulu matter Billy peoples who in turn had been pushed northward by the Boers coming up from the Cape of Good Hope.
On the other hand the critics of African nationalism today are very fond of pointing out that perhaps two of the most backward countries in all of Africa are Ethiopia and Liberia which have been governed themselves for numbers of years and they say well this just shows that these people can't do it. What is your comment about that. Well you know Mr. rescue if one were to apply that scale of judgment what would an Englishman a Canadian or an American say about Portugal. What would he say about Spain. What would he say about some other countries in advanced parts of the world which somehow or other have not managed to tall to keep up with the progress of other peoples. You have to take each country it within its own context you have to see what its difficulties lay. These are not these differences are not the result of racial superiority inferiority is that all is the result of differences in environment. In the case of Ethiopia it has been a mountain fortress cut off from the Tods and
currents of change in Africa due to them ruin Ethiopian woman delegate to the United Nations gives her reason why her country has remained so isolated. Well it's very difficult to Tad if your base is not developed in Silence of audience transportation and whatnot and then perhaps it's our own history. More or less trying to. Consolidate you know good leaders in Ethiopia. Well more or less conscious about consolidating Ethiopia rather than to go in Ethiopia and attract a lot of people. Perhaps one of the reason maybe it's because all the others were under the cologne colonial systems and were independent. It was not conducive to have direct contact with the people. Ethiopia is like a land out of the Bible. Even though modern planes roar into the airport's goats stray along the runways and camels lumber down its main
streets so primitive as this country that when the United Nations recently wanted to spread a fever struck area for disease carrying insects the witch doctors had to be locked up for two weeks to make it possible. Illiteracy is almost universal. Some attribute Ethiopia's backwardness to the fact it was never colonized. This is Canadian educated teacher uptake. I really believe that of course caught on it is it has its own wood points as a lot of its own bad points and if you see that but it's not up enough mind it so happened in so many of these African countries clad colonial countries have it all they have given the benefit of education which they have had before they come to this country I think to that extent discounters have benefited. Colonialism in a strange indirect way brought some good. What the white man did in Africa was mostly selfish but in establishing his
white settlements and his European way of life. He brought what we call civilization or its beginnings. One woman in Nigeria her face still scarred from the tribal markings at birth said to me the white man came and opened our eyes. The white men brought communications even if they were too European capitals rounded them to other African states. He brought the gift of language even if it was only to facilitate his business transactions. He helped eliminate disease even if it was only to produce stronger workers and protect himself. His selfish ways and their fringe benefits helped open a continent but also planted the seeds of bitterness in Tang Nneka Duryea sneery one of Africa's most brilliant and moderate leaders finds little in colonialism to speak kindly but suggest that indirectly it may have had some virtue. Dude every cloud has a silver lining and you must have it must
have done some good. For instance as a result of colonialism his stead of inheriting a hundred and twenty separate tribes I mean headed to a country which is one country with a single administration if things like that have taken place I have a single rail line which was built by a colonial power and if you do things like that so I could point to a few quite good things which have been done by colonialism but but quite frankly they're no excuse for colonialism. In Kenya Tom Boyle on the subject of colonialism. Well let us define what we mean by colonialism. I mean if you ask me whether the act of colonizing the act of governing and drilling of other people has brought any good. My answer is No. It has brought no good whatsoever. It can never be justified or condemn condoned. And I would have a pretext. But if you mean that the opening the opening of contact between
Africa and Europe and the introduction of European medicine education and so on whether this has brought any good the answer is certainly yes like every other country Africa enjoys relations with the rest of the world. She cannot be in isolation and she lives in this present century with everybody else she benefits from it draws from it. And I believe gives something to it just as much as Africa has contributed to the building of friends Europe Britain the Belgian part you go through the exploitation of its resources by these powers. So we have made a contribution and we have received something too in that process. The colonizers made the near Aries the boy as possible. Both these men received their education from Christian missionaries in the whole story of the opening of Africa to traditions battled side by
side one exemplified by their remarkable sessile John Rhodes whose object was to extend British rule throughout the world. He symbolize the exploiters and the industrialists who work the soil the ROC and the Africans for the greater good of empire. The other tradition was symbolized by Dr. David Livingston the educator the reformer the missionary. But even the kindly missionary in his urge to spread the word of God spread a good deal of unhappiness and confusion. He brought ideas and concepts that have no relationship to the world he found around him. Consider the sounds. Of the. Book. This is part of the miners song on a Sunday morning in a church in Brownsville run by a group of French Canadian missionaries.
And. Her consider the pagan sounds of worship to gods who are close to the soil or the sun or things that the African can understand what it is. I asked a young missionary about the confusion that the church had brought in its desire to bring religion to a pagan people. Dr Andrew Haight who teaches and preaches in a poor section of Nairobi. The fact that there are so many different churches and traditions here in one church it's practically a crime to smoke another church. Not he said about heat and conflicting teaching especially on ethical problems like smoking drinking dancing and so on. This kind of thing does confuse the African people as you can well understand.
Well certainly not every church could be right. It seems to me if there's so many varying variations on the theme you know as I walk down the streets of Nairobi and I saw see the Sikhs and their outfits and I see the African women with the rings through their ears and the westerners somehow to me it just sort of seems I'm a mass of confusion. And I wonder whether the churches and bringing their varying creeds have not added to it. I think you've got to distinguish between the different religions here like Sikhs Hindus Muslims and so on and the Christians on the other side. What I said before I was really talking about confusion in the Christian camp. But I think that I had an experience in a rather isolated community of about 3000 people 70 miles from Nairobi where for a time I had some responsibility of the life of that church and you could look at it as though everything was pulling people apart. There were different tribes different
vernaculars different cultures different races different denominations and so on. But I tried to look at it out of this. What could one not be part of the creation of a wonderful community drawing in people from every race and tribe something really if you like he was wear something really Catholic something really universal all embracing which is what the church should be. And I think this can be our role in this country. But we haven't risen up to the occasion as perhaps we could. The European too has brought a great confusion in culture or tribal traditions breakdown in the cities and men look for new values. Some time copying many of the worst characteristics of Western civilization. A young man in Uganda expresses his dismay. I think me worse thing that can befall a people is to be ashamed of themselves. We have been made to feel ashamed of our way of life and this is terrible.
We in fact find people proud of being all looking like British all Europeans. People will feel good if they're using European food and proud of dressing like Europeans and this is really terrible. The thing is we have been made to feel that these things are inferior. The missionaries teach that African names are no good as Christian names. They teach that African dancing is connected with them. They get an exam and the devil and all the rest of it which is which is of course not true in fact I think dancing and Jackie Chan all the sort of Western things connected with the devil and then African dancing. One of the battles the Christian Church has waged continuously has been turned some rights for women. Women in Africa have the status of property. They are bought by dowry and in many places a man measures his wealth by the number of wives he owns.
Everywhere along the roadsides an all African countries you see women carrying bundles of wood loads of food on their heads babies strapped to their backs as they work. This is their song. GARRETT Yeah. It was. And I was. Here and there they have gained some status but they're reluctant to push too hard or fast to change the common lot of women. This is Mrs. adieu K. Moore of Nigeria a woman active in her own country. I have no objections to a man having more than one wife. If he can satisfy the wife I think polygamy has stayed a custom of the country because it was an economic value in the old days. One did not have anybody to work but your own family on your farm and so you
mow wives you had them all work you got done on the farm. I think with education and with a different economic value it is going up you will find by force the man will not be in a position to have more than one wife and the women as they become all independent but not want to have their husband having more than one wife. And so it will correct itself. Naturally the number of African leaders resent the imposition of European standards on the African way of life. Flamboyant job. What UK foreign minister of Nigeria is one of these. He took his stand on polygamy to the United Nations. You know an African society in my own country anyway. As far as I know it the history or tradition monogamy and polygyny as a marriage or one man and more than one woman consent to still have existed side by side probably legally in our society has its own function. The principle that it had we must not be extinct
is very fundamental and marriage is not only a mad dash for one man and one woman alone. So it is a family must not be extinct. Suppose you have a good woman who is battered or not hard to have now it would be a sad thing in fact it's a tragedy from the African point of view to say that this man had lived and died as no succession no continuity in the family. Now it's a bruise he happened to be her son of a family who was supposed to succeed after succeeding. He's a father doesn't mean that he must die and then the whole family dives to be a tragedy we're not like that to happen in his time and therefore his wife would meet instrumental to encouraging him to marry somebody else to enable him to create a succession of continuity because she would not like to be noted down as a person who had lived and died and caused the eventual death of the family into which she's married.
So to her it would be a tragic thing to say that because of my jealousy hat and me I agreed that this family had become extinct. No African women were like that to be equated to her. Now this has happened through education through centuries of discipline. Now we begin in a subsistence economy. There's economic crack down in their marriage. A more hands more land cultivation and so on you have many people. Even polygamy was a means of alliances in the days when you have war entire. Tribal and entire. State into a village into a community and international. Where I was if you have a person with about 12 children with six males six females. Each male marries into six families and the other six girls married a two or six are
that if you have alliance with about 12 different towns or villages and according to our custom Once you have that married to one family to another the two villages cannot go into war or if there's any quarrel they always settle it by calling some other of their was connected with them to seem to them and assist them to settle them so that they use this. On occasion the white man chose to ignore the structure and meaning of African society. Sometimes he did not understand it. Sometimes he used it. The marriage of groups of families led to tribes and sometimes the white man chose to shamelessly exploit tribal feelings. He put village elders on his payroll but chiefs and ruled by sub contract as a result tribal jealousies and feuds still are one of the great problems of modern Africa. The national boundaries are strictly the white man's creation and African nationalism. Their byproduct nationalism is a force
fostered by the educated minority who have become largely tribal ised. But even if the lowly peasant in the village compound does not understand nationalism he embraces it. One difference he is aware of and that is the sense of being an African. The observer in Africa soon learns he must never use words like Negro or native. The new man of Africa is clearly and simply an African. Then one of the whites and those who emigrated to Africa from Asia generally speaking all through Africa. Anyone who is white is called a European. Anyone whose ancestors were born in India or Pakistan is called an Asian can they to be called African. Mr want to go on the subject who is an African. My own attitude is this. Just as one person can lose and naturalized in
France there is no reason why a European would feel that it would be quite happy and comfortable to not do the same thing and I do God knows people who have settled in Africa and I had generations who know about home in the what if Africa. I'm going to bed. Except that the Africans provided the Africans we must all to recognize there were others who were African before they became Africans. But the position of a family that is a valuable member of society he will contribute to that. The government is making the problem of the white man in Africa the problem of the white man seems to vary according to the ratio of white men to black in Nigeria Mr. what you cous tolerant country. There never were more than 12000 white Europeans who were temporary officials mostly they were outnumbered about twenty five hundred to one. But in South Africa the numbers
1 to 4 in Central Africa 1 to 25 and across the continent in Kenya where the ratio was about 1 to 100. The white man now has to admit that he has made his mistakes. Mistakes that may be too late to correct this is expressed by a progressive thinking Yorkshireman Michael bundle unhesitatingly. I think that early European thinking the second I thinking in Kenya was wrong. They sincerely thought and I stress the word since it is thought they could create a white dominion in East Africa. Of course such a notion was absolutely impossible and I believe that if the European I had come into these kind of trade is less in the mind and the way of creating a dominion and more with the mind of working hand in hand with the African people for an eventual future. The Africans would obviously be the most intervention people we would
have been better off even in Rhodesia which till recently flirted with the white supremacy policies of neighboring South Africa. The Europeans thought and in fact many still do that they could create strictly a white dominion. However the tide of events has proven that this is not the case. I asked the prime minister of Southern Rhodesia ser Edgar WHITEHEAD If he sees the day when the man sitting in his chair might in fact be a black African. Yes I think it's inevitable. I wouldn't care to give any dates at all and I go something for out of them that I not only believe that one day I will be a black man but I believe he will be a member of my poetry Mohabbat on wasteful cabinet. Two areas in Africa have chosen to ignore the winds of change that how across the continent the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique and the great wealthy Republic of South Africa. The Portuguese have chosen to ignore the
inevitable and they have designated Mozambique and then Goa overseas provinces of Portugal a Baptist missionary Mr. Clifford Parsons who worked in Angola for 20 years puts the Portuguese claim in perspective. You can't make another country and your loss just by calling it set. And the Africans just shrug this off they say it's ridiculous. They have the whole point is this that Portugal came to Angola nearly 500 years ago and it's true 48 too. But her association was really only with the land. It wasn't until the middle of the last century that explorers began to penetrate Portugal would like it to be Portugal that it isn't a fact of life. But the Portuguese who were the first into Africa will undoubtedly be the last to leave in these days of crumbling empires. Here a Portuguese spokesman in Angola. We will never leave these places and I can give you an
example. We the story in a very important meeting in Paris in one thousand handed 58. Before maybe 57 when all this changing in Africa it started once. Sweet I think a Pulitzer was attending that meeting. What would we do. And the answer was We will stay because either one of three things will happen. I think nothing happens and we stay. Either something happens and then we are killed and you stay dead I think we win and we still stay alive. The stronghold of white supremacy in Africa is of course South Africa. Here the white men of Dutch descent call themselves Afrikaners and they call the black man band too. In other words they consider themselves the true Africans and the black strangers in their midst. They show no signs of
changing their ways or thinking and the change will be slow to come to that deeply troubled land. This is Chief Albert le throughly winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. I really hesitate to put time said you and liberation movement you can have a tat. All I can say that we continue to work hard to see that it comes about. But I think that it is the pressmen who determines the pace right until present and so soon as this. We have reached the reasonable is that one of the I think that white South Africa will have to come to a point when some are deeply pessimistic about South Africa's future. This is the feeling of basil Davidson now banned from South Africa because of his views. South Africa is a tragedy it's a tragic situation precisely because it's impossible to see any way out of it except by
violence. I say that with great regret and I must say that I think that me or my friends would agree with me that such is the equation of force there. And such is the. Such of the policies of the present South African government and so tightly have they screwed the screws of repression that it's extremely difficult to see how a peaceful solution can be found. One must hope that it can be found but it seems very very unlikely. And one is in the presence almost of a Greek tragedy. However there are indications elsewhere in Africa that the white man the so-called European and the African can live side by side at peace. This is expressed by a longtime observer of the African scene. Elspeth Huxley the relations between individuals are very very good in most places. I think there's very little individual and paganism. But isn't it the same everywhere and the other
pin nations are still not living at peace and they haven't been over the last 2000 years. Once you get governments and politics coming into it perhaps that are difficulties and the rpm's make a very good scapegoat or something like that is that the feeling is always apt to be whipped up when there are difficulties in many cases of course the blame is clearly with good reason. It is generally accepted for instance that the chaos of the Congo was the fault of avariciously Belgians. Outside of South Africa the most controversial country in the continent is gunna in Nigeria there are many critics of President and groomers autocratic ways. Ebenezer Williams one of Nigeria's most outspoken newspaper man summed up life in nearby Ghana this way. May be I'm say it is because of my own. Selfishness because I do know that a person like myself I don't have it living down I mean yeah I say what I like and yeah I'm going to privatise that's conference and ask many questions that wish he would have freedom here to be able to
express our minds to be able to tell him and he says to be a part of the deck up is he going to ask what changes within the law but in a situation such as that I think is in Ghana where it is impossible to see anything critical about government. Would I get into trouble. I think it would be most unfortunate if I came to Nigeria. I don't we should and I'm sure it will happen. Why in his opinion has this loss of freedom taken place in Ghana and not in Nigeria. Both had been under British rule. Both had received the same kind of training for independence. The 10 is that thing done and that is a different country from Niger in time it is true that people tend to get out of a time and the police at the scene but I'm not aware we have different cultural backgrounds and the need to wind down aphorism and I know the countryside away tumbling and. And it will I see it put it's invaded another as patient as we are and is going to defend us talking to one another.
No country in Africa has received a more critical press in Britain the United States and Canada then gunna when Gunner received its independence on the 6th of March 957 the people across 11 million square miles of African territories celebrated it as the beginning of the great awakening. But with freedom of the press suppressed and opposition in jail there has been a certain disillusionment more outside the continent than him. The man who has all the answers there grants no interviews. He is of course the subject as he is called by his government controlled press. The Messiah. Why has gone a been so criticized. This is answered by President chromos chief spokesman. The gun a minister of information you know as a British. When we became independent. The thought do it good to behave like good boys to be told by a big brother what to do wet wed to step whether to step
on Sun sofa. Well to their dismay the father's frightfully independent. Well Bo might I would do exactly what you want to do without anybody having to tell us. Naturally then he sent and that there would there wouldn't be human if they were they did he said. But the British press for that matter has gone too far because they are sorry for it. They think we are a bad example. We are liquidating their empire. Everybody's up in arms and then nothing at all. Positive action we have stated that our own independence meant nothing unless it was linked up with the total liberation of Africa. We are throwing out the ruler who is not really by the consent of the people. But we are not throwing out white men. I said they can they can be here they can live with Africans. They can leave because some of them have for generations their roots in Africa. We can say that
because they are white they should be packed out. No but we are saying that they are minority and they can rule the majority and therefore power must pass into the hands of Africans and they resent it. And Ghana is the most vocal in this regard. Therefore we are hated everywhere. Not only that then we came out you know the Western line of economics is mostly capitalistic. We have come out boldly instead of the socialism. Of course people won't like it because they will know it affects their interest immediately. If we are we are going socialist. Then what about the firms in this country their profits will be assumed. Now we are controlling we've brought in exchange controlled imports. Export control all of these are measures designed to keep in fit in with our socialist policy. They would resent their friends else elsewhere sublet up to reset if they don't then they're stupid but they're out there he said. And if we went deposition we simply got to say
that is why we get such bad press from the west. If Ghana gets a bad press in the West. Her policies are treated with remarkable tolerance by other African leaders with the one exception of Nigeria. Across the continent I asked Julia sneery of Tanganyika if he feels any alarm at autocratic tendencies in such countries as Ghana. I think I first let me say I see no I lie because the authoritative rule is sides and that is not something very new drafted before the coming of colonialism. We had our own democracy. We discussed problems before decisions were made that. The kind of government we were used to was in authoritative government what kind of government where the chief after his council had spoken debated about something the chief decided with authority to achieve that. After this discussion this is what I
think ought to be done. This echo effect was what happened to during the colonial situation itself. And until we begin now to establish institutionalized government democratic government parties and balance. And therefore I think for a long time and this is not whether it is desirable or not for a long time governments in Africa are bound to to be more authoritative then might be acceptable to western countries. Long time observers of the African scene feel that Africa is generally in for a time of strong central governments. One party rule and perhaps one man rule. This is the view of Elspeth Huxley. I think we make a profound mistake to look at them in our own terms simply to see them as as new young countries exactly like ourselves with the same political
problems and looking to have the same political institutions their problems a different debt problems of those of divided countries with very little central authority and you've got to have a strong central authority to keep them together. African leaders do not like to be told that Western countries are concerned with autocratic tendencies in Africa. As far as they are concerned they want to be left alone to develop their own way. Julius very frankly I don't see why we should give any other surest Western observers about anything. I mean the the unity of Africa is our own business at the machinary in the east as we set out by completely I don't business the individuals who emerge out of this to head whatever unit we build up must be left to a democratic process in Africa. What seems almost certain is that the kind of governments that are emerging and will continue to emerge will be able to socialist nature a kind of African
socialism. What it is and how it differs from other kinds of world socialism is explained by Basil Davidson. In most of ex colonial Africa you have societies with no developed economies. Consequently the societies becoming independent have faced immediately with the acute problem of which road as they put it will they take in order to make their countries modern and to industrialize them as rapidly and as painlessly as possible. And African socialism in the in the in the mouths of most contemporary African leaders as means rarely in the collective choosing of different solutions from different parts of the world. Based on the knowledge of the fact which is really the key point that there are no developed investing classes in any of these countries. African socialism is not so much a matter of ideology as necessity. A country without any indigenous capitalists cannot follow a path of
capitalism in their urgency to develop quickly governments must act. Reaching for aid from all sides and thus they find with almost awkward innocence that they are tangled in the battlefield of the Cold War. African leaders face this fact with great foreboding foreign minister what you call up Nigeria. If there is rain gauge and we only dig out me and fight it out from Africa then Africa will not be back in a Cold War but maybe decide to use Africa as a battle. Well naturally whether the Afghan likes it or not. Suppose they're fighting and they fall in African territory and continue their fight there. Naturally whether we like it or not involuntary they will find us every mob. That's why we had all these ideological conflicts should be confined within their respective areas and Livy African develop
according to his own tenets and his own understanding of his own society and his own objectives and his own purpose. Because if you're going to you know just play that in the society you know in the other person from different parts of work and just pick up and begin to put in the zone mode. The African was a human being with human is Dushan with his own tradition with culture which he can develop his opinion other people have developed. I asked Elspeth Huxley whether she thought the Cold War could be avoided in Africa I don't think it can be avoided altogether as I think it would be unrealistic to assume that if you have the world divided into two parts luck so long as those two blocs are competing and contesting against each other you can't say that an entire continent could be isolated could be put into some kind of zoo of bars around it. The African leaders themselves are most anxious to do it I mean their great policy is neutral ism.
Non-alignment and I'm sure that they will try and do it and I'm sure that as far as they're concerned they will. They wish to. And so therefore I don't see I think it's unlikely that they will join either the Western group or the Eastern Bloc openly as a whole I think we may get one or two here and that I mean you can't generalize again for such a vast continent. I asked Mrs. Huxley as one who has studied Africa all her life time for a generalization about the huge landmass that is Africa. Is she optimistic or pessimistic about the future tide of events in Africa. It would be unrealistic to think that everything in the garden is going to be lovely that you can bring to great empires to an end and to have a melting pot out of which a great many new nations are going to emerge without immense troubles and difficulties. And after all there are still. Some very intractable questions I mean the future of South Africa which he does not agreed to this. To this it to to to the African nationalists taking over and I don't see that he ever will agree. So I think you're going to have a very
difficult time for the next 20 or 30 years. I don't know that I think that's pessimistic a man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. We have troubles you will never going to have a garden of Eden back again. But I don't think I think that the I don't mean that by that that they won't they won't in the Benchley hammered out the kind of government that they want. And I think that if and that's the big IF you something can be done to control this enormous population explosion then I think we shall see Denny rate a rising standard of living more happiness perhaps more people than it has been for many hundreds of years past now because I am hopeful that you could say it's what you might call God you don't miss him. It would be convenient to end this program here on this note of optimism. It would be convenient but false. The story of the African revolution is only at its beginnings. The Agony and the anguish of Africa has just begun. It's complex problems are
immense. Consider some sounds. That way. Glad. That you got that. Shit out like that. I mean. This is the sound of old Africa and it is the sound of New Africa as well. It is the sound of poverty of beggars on the street it is the moan of millions. The problems of oppressive poverty must be battled. The cacophony of disease and despair is yet to be muffled intrusion which I'm going to tell a group but being the open metal African National Congress had an emulated initial Independence Party but. I still got it as a barn is our Liberal Party African National Congress and United Nation or Independence Party when the north in the DDR. I
commend anybody even in Holland it was soccer. So I did. Unknown Northern Rhodesia Libra bitin African National Congress night united national independence Benten. I did when I governed not even one mistake I lived in them when I was shot. I'd surely you're Canadian. Even today the sound of freedom must be translated into hundreds of tongues communications from country to country and within countries are barriers per progressive thought and Democratic ideas. Roads telephone telegraph mail service to most areas are primitive beyond belief. The cost of living the cost of living at peace and unity will be immense. The new leaders are not always scrupulous.
A vast populace of an educated and innocent can be whipped up by the demagogues the opportunists the ever riches which possibly could set the scenes for Palace revolts and coup d'etat laws to make the history of Latin America seem mild by comparison. There is danger here. Change is not enough. It must be change with purpose. A black dictator is no satisfactory substitute for a white master except to that dictator. That said they did eat that and eat it eat it eat eat eat it eat in a continent where less than one in 10 can read or write his own name. The challenge is education. For years the Africans were told by their white rulers they could not have independence before they had education.
Now they have that independence. And the question of whether they can hold that valued freedom will depend on how quickly the book of knowledge is the common possession of the common man. We can no longer ask were they ready. Is it the time. The process of evolution has become the process of revolution. The drumbeat of change can no longer be silenced. I can no longer be ignored. The sound of that distant drumming is no longer so far away. And unless we understand its message its meaning will be lost. And so too will be the African revolution for us. Out of the dark program number one in a six part series on the African revolution it was there as was prepared by broadcaster Harry Ross. After a tour with
tape recorder of 15 African countries south of the Sahara the African revolution was produced in Toronto by BERNARD MURPHY. Thank.
You.
- Series
- The African revolution
- Episode
- Out of the dark
- Contributing Organization
- University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/500-ng4gs04w
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/500-ng4gs04w).
- Description
- Episode Description
- This first program sets the scene for the series, exploring the past and present of Africa, as well as taking a look to Africa's future.
- Series Description
- A six-part study of Sub-Saharan Africa, based on a fifteen-country tour that was undertaken by broadcaster Harry Ruskie.
- Topics
- Social Issues
- Subjects
- Colonies.
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 01:01:05
- Credits
-
-
Host: Ruskie, Harry
Interviewee: Mboya, Tom
Interviewee: Davidson, Basil, 1914-2010
Interviewee: Habte, Aklilu, 1929-
Producer: Murphy, Bernard
Subject: Nkrumah, Kwame, 1909-1972
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
University of Maryland
Identifier: 62-ex1-1 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:30:00?
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “The African revolution; Out of the dark,” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed September 8, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-ng4gs04w.
- MLA: “The African revolution; Out of the dark.” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. September 8, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-ng4gs04w>.
- APA: The African revolution; Out of the dark. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-ng4gs04w