AFRICA AWAKENS MORE AND MORE
The Accra Conference, held in December 1958, marks a new stage in the emancipation of the African continent. This conference follows on that of Bandung, the Afro-Asiatic Peoples' Solidarity Conference, and the Conference of Independent African Countries.
It brought together some 300 delegates from 62 organizations representing 28 African countries and territories, independent or still under colonial control.
The conference adopted a declaration and five resolutions, and decided on the creation of a permanent secretariat for the purpose of coördinating the struggle for the total liberation and the unification of Africa. The main resolution, on colonialism and imperialism, stated the support of the conference for all the fighters for freedom in Africa, both those who use peaceful means of non-violence and civil disobedience (the national movement in South Africa) and those who are obliged to resort to violence to obtain their national liberation. The allusion to the case of Algeria is clear.
What is more, the Algerian delegation received the warmest welcome of all the African delegations, and a member of the F LN now forms part of the permanent African secretariat.
A special resolution of the conference treated the Algerian question, affirming the right of the Algerian people to independence, condemning the so-called integration policy of France as well as the results of the faked elections, and called on the French government to begin negotiations with the Algerian government in order to bring about the country's independence and put an end to the war. It also called on all countries to refuse all aid to, France in its war against the Algerian people, and to recognize the Algerian government. It appealed to the African countries to organize an "Algerian Solidarity Day" and to collect funds for the victims of imperialist repression.
Lastly the resolution saluted the African soldiers who are deserting from the French army and called on them to join the ranks of the Algerian Army of Liberation. The idea of an African brigade fighting in Algeria was
Another important resolution of the conference concerned the question of the artificial frontiers created by imperialism in order to divide Africa. The conference, this resolution declared, endorses Pan-Africanism and the desire for unity among the African peoples and declares that its ultimate objective is a Commonwealth of Free
African States. As its first step, the independent
States of Africa should amalgamate themselves into on the basis of geographical continuity economic interdependence, linguistic and cultural le resolution is a direct encouragement ding up se of unification which is currently spe Africa. A resolution on "tribalism and religious separatism" declared the conference strongly opposed to the imperialist tactic of using tribalism and religious separatism in order to perpetuate colonial policy.
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A special resolution was also voted concerning the question of Cameroon's rapid accession to complete independence and against the imperialist repression of the national movement of that country.
The dominant note at the conference was unquestionably the deep desire now stirring the African masses for the unification of a free Africa, administered by its native inhabitants, within a confederation. This confederation would be formed from the primary federations such as those now emerging in West Africa.
A similar unificatory step, this time in the trade-union field, was taken a month later, in January of this year, at the First Congress of the U G TA N (Únion Générale
Travailleurs d'Afrique Noir) at Conakry, pital of the newly independent state of Ghana. This congress decided to form a broader organization, the General Workers' Union of Black Africa, as president of which it elected Ghana's Prime Minister, Sekou Touré. One of its goals, it specified, was "to unite all African workers in a single trade-union movement," and as a step toward this, it issued a call for a Pan-African Trade-Union Conference. Politically in agreement with the decisions at Accra, and specifying that "the essential cause of the exploitation of the workers is imperialist domination, which must be combatted," it demanded complete independence for all the peoples of Africa.
The trend toward the liberation and unification of Africa is one of the determinant forces of our time. This force will inexorably sweep away all the residues of direct imperialist domination or of racial discrimination by minorities of European origin. The recent events at Leopoldville speak volumes for the fierce determination of the African masses to shake off the yoke of the tiny (eg, 75,000 Belgians in the whole Congo) European
This irresistible unification movement, like its equivalent in the Arab countries, like that which is now developing in Latin America, is for the moment encouraged and led by the circles of the native bourgeoisie now in the making. Despite its weakness, this bourgeoisie is emerging from its former compradore position, under the combined influence of the following factors: the decline of the power of British and French imperialisms; the growing interest in Africa shown by both American imperialism and the Kremlin, and their antagonism; the pressure brought by the peasant masses, the proletarians, and the petty-bourgeois intellectuals of Africa; the growing consciousness of the economic possibilities of Africa; the crisis currently raging in the African colonial-structured economy.
The dominant trait of recent developments in Africa is the gradual destruction of tribal economic and social life as market production becomes generalized, with the exodus of population to the cities, intense urbanization, and the beginnings of industrialization. The urban centres, where new social layers are being formed and developed, are dethroning the chiefs and gods of tribal life. Political movements and parties are being organized, suffused by an African consciousness, and it is to these that the new generations are thronging.
African nationalism is the reflection of the urban revolution, capitalized upon in its first stage by the nuclei of the native bourgeoisie in process of formation and by their intellectual ideologists. Economic and social needs drive them to free themselves from the fetters of imperialism, which exploits the agricultural and min-
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL. ing wealth of the African countries, to get back the best land occupied by the white settlers and by imperialist enterprises, to diversify the economy, often dependent on a single export product, to unify the African market, and to industrialize.
For several years the rise in the prices of products like tin, copper, peanut oil, coffee, cacao, rubber, tobacco, and cotton, the principal African exports, concealed the grave crisis that was ripening in African society as a result of galloping detribalization. On the contrary, the prodigious boom in the prices of these materials resulted in the extreme development of industrial crops to the detriment of food crops and produced an upheaval in traditional African agriculture.
The recession that has gone on since 1957 has particularly aftected the economy of all underdeveloped countries, by bringing down the prices of their main export products by more than 15 %. The industrialization of African countries - already slow except in the Con-
Rhodesia, and especially South Africa, nourished by investments of scarcely 1% of a meagre national income ... - was catastrophically checked.
An agriculture out of balance and not very productive, industrialization at a standstill while urbanization increased — these explain the explosive climate in which Africa is now living.
For lack of a rapid solution to these problems, the impatient masses of the dark continent, on whom there weigh neither conservative traditions nor defeats, will have a tendency to skip over the stages of bourgeois nationalism, reaching solutions of revolutionary socialism.
The native bourgeoisie is conscious of this danger. It thinks it will be able to stand up to it by driving for "primary" unifications and by speculating on competitive bidding about economic aid between imperialism, especially American imperialism, and the Kremlin.
Much remarked at the Accra Conference was the presence of a big delegation of American observers, among whom was the indispensable Mr Irving Brown. It is said that their role behind the scenes was neither ne- c gligible nor ineffective. Washington wanted in a way to get even for the Afro-Asiatic Peoples' Solidarity Conference at Cairo in December 1957, dominated by the Kremlin.
To the degree that Africa in its turn is becoming an epicentre of the cold war and the last economic and strategic reserve of imperialism, and also to the degree that Washington is despairing of winning over Arab Nase itica around neto polarge bist, ava, penin of awakening of tern, leaders. At a second stage, the operation can include a unified Maghreb, also "Bourguibist."
The fundamental problems of the current African revolution, however, cannot find even the most slightly satisfactory solution under a bourgeois leadership. As the old US negro fighter Dubois said so well in the message he sent to the Accra Conterence, the choice tacing Africa is not that between a capitalist development and socialism. For Africa has not the time to catch up with the advanced industrial countries by the capitalist road, and has no interest in experiencing the evils of such a regime of exploitation.
he only radical solution for its urgent problems i be tound in socialism and the socialist United state of Africa.