Introduction



Mandela versus Nkrumah: Defining Human Rights in Africa

Dr. Emil Nagengast

Professor of Politics

Juniata College

Huntingdon PA16652

nagengast@juniata.edu

Abstract

Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah are the two dominant figures in the history of African decolonization, but their visions of selfdetermination and human rights differed in important ways.  These differences are key factors in understanding the shortcomings of postcolonial African governments in the realm of human rights.  Whereas Nkrumah defined freedom in terms of ending white rule and defending the sovereignty of African leaders, Mandela fought for individual rights and popular sovereignty.  Over the past 50 years African politics has seen a shift away from Nkrumah’s model and toward Mandela’s. Loyalty to state sovereignty is still a powerful obstacle to the promotion of human rights in Africa, but the “African Renaissance” represents an important step away from Nkrumah’s authoritarianism.

Presented at the Annual Conference of the Western Political Science Association, March 28-30, 2013

ROUGH DRAFT

‘Our mistake was not in our demand for freedom; it was in the assumption that freedom – real freedom – would necessarily and with little trouble follow liberation from alien rule.’[1]

Julius Nyerere

‘The paradox is that state violence is committed in the name of correcting past injustices, combating neocolonialism, restoring the dignity of the African people, fighting the British government, and preventing the recolonization of Zimbabwe. As activists we have been put in the position of defending our Africanness, our blackness, our patriotism, our love for country and continent, and our vision of an egalitarian society, against a regime which excels at mixing radical rhetoric with reactionary repression.’[2]

Grace Kwinjeh

Introduction

What role did the concept of selfdetermination play in the decolonization of Africa? Did African anticolonial freedom fighters and postcolonial African leaders view this concept primarily as a means to gain national independence or did they see this concept as inherently linked to democracy and human rights? Why were postcolonial African politics characterized by dictatorship and human rights abuses? How did Kwame Nkrumah and Nelson Mandela differ in their understandings and applications of selfdetermination? In what ways did these two African giants represent competing models of selfdetermination? Why do these two former leaders still generate such intense political opinions across Africa? These are the questions that guide this essay.

I start with a theoretical and historical review of the struggle for selfdetermination in Africa. I then examine how postcolonial African leaders implemented selfdetermination. I compare the views and policies of Kwame Nkrumah and Nelson Mandela and review some of the opinions that are commonly expressed for and against each leader as a model for African politics. I conclude with the suggestion that while Nkrumah’s model dominated African politics from the 1960s to the 1990s, there has been a shift away from Nkrumah’s statism and toward Mandela’s model of individual human rights.

Defining and Implementing Selfdetermination

The principle of selfdetermination took on magical powers around the world in the twentieth century as the most powerful force for liberation from oppression. Paradoxically, although this principle has been universally accepted as the foundation of any meaningful human rights agenda, there has always been much confusion about what it means in practice. What is the entity that will engage in selfdetermination, the colonial administrative units or the hundreds of ethnicities? More importantly for this study, there is an inherent tension between the collectivism of national selfdetermination and the individualism of liberal human rights.[3]

There are many complications surrounding the principle of selfdetermination in the African context.[4] Because all of Africa’s political borders were drawn by Europeans it would have been understandable for the Africans to demand selfdetermination at the level of the ethnic groups, but this path was rejected and independence was interpreted narrowly to encompass only the colonial ‘nations.’ The collective rejection of ethnical selfdetermination was enshrined in the charter of the Organization of African Unity. Hurst Hannum summarizes the logic behind this approach: ‘Africa may simply be more honest that the rest of the world in admitting that selfdetermination of the state has replaced the theoretical selfdetermination of peoples that, if taken to its logical conclusion, could result in some instances in secession.’[5] The result, however, was that the members of the sovereign polities that emerged from the anticolonial struggle shared no positive traits.[6]

Woodrow Wilson played a crucial role in legitimizing the concept of national selfdetermination as a fundamental step for the promotion of world peace and human rights. He also helped to set in motion the nationalist movements that culminated in the decolonization of Africa.[7] The radical element of Wilson’s selfdetermination was that a government’s legitimacy should not be judged by its ability to exercise sovereignty over a region on the map, but primarily by ‘the nature of its internal regime, which had to be based on popular consent.’[8] This view of selfdetermination assumes that ‘self-rule’ means ‘meaningful participation in the processes of government.’[9]

Roland Burke provides an excellent review of the debates concerning selfdetermination in the 1950s and 1960s. The essential conflict was between those who had a democratic view of selfdetermination, meaning that selfdetermination is secured by giving full rights and representation to the people, and those who were indifferent to democracy and individual rights and who saw selfdetermination as a rejection of foreign rule and of any constraints on state sovereignty.[10] The representatives at the 1955 Bandung Afro-Asian Conference reached an agreement that the right to selfdetermination was closely linked to the struggle for individual human rights. But many of these same governments refused to condemn the USSR after the 1956 invasion of Hungary. Despite the agreements reached at Bandung, Burke argues, the “third world representatives” did not apply the principle of selfdetermination universally. It was applied only to western colonialism.

At the UN in 1960 the African and Asian representatives affirmed the link between individual rights and selfdetermination, but this was, according to Burke, the high point of this rhetorical link. After 1960 the reality of postcolonial political systems showed that selfdetermination meant state sovereignty and not individual rights or popular representation. The end of European colonialism also meant that there was no further need of the right to selfdetermination. Burke notes that one of the few exceptions was Tanzanian president Nyerere who condemned this hypocrisy: “We will soon be tolerating fascism in Africa as long as it is practiced by African governments against African peoples.”[11]

Goran Hyden argues that African postcolonial leaders created an ‘informal context’ in which they could ignore formal rules by promoting the idea that the ‘essential experience during the colonial period was exploitation of the local people’ by outsiders.[12] An example of such formal rules is that most governments, and especially those that have gained power through liberation struggles, are expected to perform certain basic tasks, such as promoting political freedoms and economic prosperity. But African political actors did not face these restrictions because they managed to construct an overarching objective: ending colonial rule. The lack of the formal rules of legitimate government is clear when we consider that the National Resistance Movement in Uganda was the first time that an African opposition group took up arms against bad governance in the same way that the nationalist and liberation groups had fought for decolonization.[13]

It would be too simplistic to view the corruption of the principle of selfdetermination into a justification for tyranny and nonintervention as merely “opportunistic elite posturing.”[14] One of the most important debates on human rights in Africa has been over the compatibility of traditional cultures with a communitarian versus individualistic rights agenda.[15] However, on a deeper level, there is a psychological element of ‘pigmentational selfdetermination’ that played a vital role in allowing the postcolonial leaders to impose their own conception of liberation.

The African elite who fought for independence learned important lessons from the centralized colonial system, namely, ‘bureaucratic parasitism, clientelism, and dictatorship.’[16] In his famous book about Kikuyu culture, Jomo Kenyatta explains that colonialism destroyed the tradition among his people of participatory decision making and accountable leadership.[17] Ayittey provides a detailed list of the democratic, decentralized aspects of African political culture that he believes were the norm prior to the European invasion, but that had been swept away during the colonial era. One of Ayittey’s strongest complaints concerning African politics is that African leaders made no effort to revive the traditional political culture. Instead, he argues, the leaders adopted the belief that Africa could develop only by rejecting itself.[18] Likewise, van der Veen points to the ‘poverty of ideology’ and the resulting ‘Africanization of the colonial state’ as the root of Africa’s crisis of democracy.[19]

Jean Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon were two of the most famous writers who condemned any form of colonialism as a systematic human rights violation. Fanon asserted that colonialism dehumanized the colonizers. Specifically, he demonstrated how French policies in Algeria had made a mockery of the proud ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood.[20] Sartre argued that colonialism had made it impossible for the West to criticize the democratic shortcomings of African regimes.[21] The central argument here is that in their extensive attacks on colonialism Fanon and Sartre, among others, helped to foster the popular misconception that decolonization would automatically advance the cause of human rights. When external selfdetermination was equated with liberation it was easy for postcolonial leaders to defend their autocratic ‘communitarian’ approach to democracy as a reflection of African culture. In this way authoritarian rule became an assertion of African values against the external imposition of western individualism. As Sakah S. Mahmud argues, even if we accept that the ‘communitarian ideal’ characterized precolonial African society, collective rights are meaningful only at the level of a ‘traditional community,’ such as in a village, but the ‘checks and balances that were available to communities do not apply to the constitutional state as operated in Africa today.’ Furthermore, the communitarian ideal centralizes ‘privileges [that] are used as social sanction either to reward or punish individuals… The modern state structure in Africa has turned state resources into the private property of the few in power.’ In short, the communitarian ideal has been used ‘to defend the state against demands for human rights protection in Africa.’[22]

Kwame Nkrumah

Nkrumah was the most influential African advocate of the communitarian ideal and of external selfdetermination. For Nkrumah there was a simple, iron logic to decolonization. He argued that since the purpose of colonialism was to oppress politically and to exploit economically, decolonization would bring freedom and prosperity to Africa.[23] Martin Meredith summarizes Nkrumah’s philosophy: ‘To those without money, without position, without property, freedom [from colonial rule] was an offer of salvation. “Seek ye first the political kingdom,” Nkrumah told them, “and all else will follow.’”[24] The fact that Nkrumah pointed to both the USA and the USSR as similar historical examples of the benefits of ‘selfgovernment’ is a clear indication that he viewed selfdetermination much differently than did human rights advocates. Nkrumah spent ten years in the US and he was convinced that America’s political stability and economic prosperity were the direct result of its break from Great Britain. There is little indication that he understood that the US war of independence was a struggle about rights, not about the location of the government.

By convincing many Africans that decolonization was a panacea Nkrumah played an important part in keeping people from understanding that oppression and poverty were the result of bad governance, not of government by the wrong race. When the reality of decolonization showed that oppression and poverty had increased in the era of postcolonial ‘freedom’, Nkrumah simply adjusted his ideology and blamed neocolonialism for the continent’s problems. Leaders like Nkrumah promulgated the belief that decolonization was the end rather than the beginning of the difficult political struggle. A powerful theme of much African literature in the early postcolonial decades was the ‘passage from messianism to disillusion’ after independence,[25] but Nkrumah’s arguments concerning neocolonialism continue to undermine democratic movements today. Stephen Ellis writes: ‘The golden age of decolonization and nationalism in Africa did not lead, in most cases, to successful sovereign states. This fact may be hard for Africans to admit, but it is even harder for them to live with.’[26]

African leaders could not define their struggles in terms of liberal individualism or continued deference to the colonial authorities. If they had demanded an end to oppression (as opposed to an end to colonial rule) it would have been easy to question the need for national independence. African nationalists, such as Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Toure, the first postcolonial leader of Guinea, ‘were not content with merely demanding their rights as individual subjects.’[27] Mazrui argues: ‘For many nationalists in Africa and Asia the right to sovereignty was not merely for nation states recognizable as such in a western sense but for “peoples” recognizable as such in a racial sense, particularly where differences of color were manifest… It is from this fundamental consideration that there emerges not so much national sovereignty as racial sovereignty in terms of the color of the skin… The implication of this rationalization is that in the alleged vocabulary of African nationalism the right to selfdetermination is only operative in a situation of interracial domination while intraracial domination does not create the occasion for the exercise of selfdetermination.’[28] Kamanu and Mazrui use these concepts in an effort to explain the problems that the Africans faced in dealing with postcolonial secessionist movements, but this troublesome view of ‘intraracial domination’ has important implications for the widespread disregard for the rights of citizens to demand that their governments treat them as ends rather than as means.

Nkrumah eloquently described his devotion to equality, inalienable rights and the protection of minority groups.[29] But during the negotiations for independence Nkrumah was outraged that the UK demanded a constitution that protected minority opposition groups. Once in power Nkrumah dismantled the state mechanisms that protected individual rights and political parties, calling the opposition groups agents of neocolonialism. He crushed labor unions – that he had previously helped to build. In 1964 he drew up a new constitution that made Ghana a one party state and that made Nkrumah president for life.

Interwoven with the idea of racial sovereignty was the strategy of creating the cult of the ‘Big Man.’ Nkrumah asserted: “This nation is my creation. If I should die, there would be chaos.”[30] This conception of political legitimacy pretended that the leader embodied the nation, even though the African ‘nations’ were artificial European constructions. Senegal’s first president, Leopold Senghor, explained: ‘The President personifies the nation as did the Monarch of former times his people. The masses are not mistaken who speak of the “reign” of Keita, Toure and Houphouet-Boigny, in whom they see, above all, the elected God through the people.’[31] Malawi’s first president, Hastings Banda, explained: ‘Anything I say is law. Literally law.’[32] Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba asked: ‘System? What system? I am the system.’[33] Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980 and he is the best contemporary example of someone who has exploited the anticolonial mandate to legitimize his authoritarian rule. In response to massive international criticism of his government’s human rights abuses, he asserts: ‘Our whole struggle was a rejection of such imperious attitudes and claims to privilege… I am the pastor of my people.’[34]

Ali Mazrui blames Nkrumah for “starting the whole tradition of black authoritarianism in Africa.”[35] Some leaders, such as Nkrumah’s closest ally, Sekou Toure, sought to legitimize their regimes by turning African traditional values into an ideology of obedience to the postcolonial state. He asserted that colonialism had undermined the ‘network of mutual obligations which created communal solidarity.’[36] In an effort to celebrate the alleged contrasts between African and European values Sekou Toure developed the concept of ‘communaucracy.’ He rejected the universality of liberal conceptions of human rights and asserted that Africa’s problems had to be solved within the ‘African context.’[37] Sekou Toure explained: ‘It is clear that paternalism, or any desire of intervention in Africa beyond the authentically African will and aspirations will be condemned to failure. We wish to alert the United Nations against operations still under way designed to impose upon our continent ideas or principles foreign to its own will.’[38] He viewed rights as being collective: Individuals are required to embed themselves in the collective. Whether or not his political principles reflected traditional values, it provided an ideological justification for one of the most authoritarian governments in Africa.

In 1960 an African-American journalist, Louis Lomax, traveled across Africa to meet several nationalist leaders. He was disturbed by the racism he encountered among these leaders who ‘adulate everything black and deprecate everything white.’[39] Lomax learned that the fight for ‘freedom’ was not a human rights movement. This ‘liberation racism’ was understandable, Lomax writes, considering that the colonial powers had ignored ‘the most elementary forms of civilized behavior.’[40] He saw that decolonization would end the human rights violations committed by the Europeans, but he also saw that the essence of the anticolonial struggles was revenge, rather than democracy and human rights: ‘What one sees in Africa is change, not progress; betterment for the black man, but disappointment for the humanist… For racism is the irritant on Africa’s raw nerves – not colonialism, but that white people have colonized black people; not economic exploitation, but that white people have exploited black people, not social discrimination, but that white power structure sets itself apart from black masses, not denial of civil rights, but that white people deny black people their civil rights.’[41]

Nkrumah was the most prominent voice of panAfricanism during the period of decolonization, but his determination to promote African integration was grounded in the antiwhite outlook that Lomax witnessed. Opoku Agyeman summarizes the overpowering sense of revenge that led the African leaders to focus on ‘liberation’ and to disregard the argument that the purpose of African selfdetermination was to advance the cause of human rights: ‘The moral vision of panAfricanism – the normative element in the ideology – centered on values rooted in the redignification of the black race, in answers to the colonial view that black stood for the servile inferiors… The process of doing away with powerlessness and indignity entailed obliterating the perpetual suffering of the people of Africa, by providing tangible answers to their long unfulfilled aspirations.’[42]

There were some African leaders who criticized the obsession with decolonization and who argued that the priority should be to improve the economic and political condition of the Africans. Prior to becoming the first president of independent Cote d’Ivoire, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, defended the belief, which was common among the African elite of French West Africa, that a union with France was preferable to full independence: ‘I am the leader of the most powerful African political movement – a movement which continues to this very day to denounce the abuses and errors of colonialism, and to call untiringly for justice and equality.’[43] In contrast to Nkrumah and most of the other panAfricanists and nationalists, Houphouet-Boigny made it clear that the problem was the human rights abuses of colonialism. He saw independence as the ultimate goal, but he understood that Africa first needed assistance to secure rights, create stable political institutions and to promote economic development: ‘We want to cooperate within this great aggregate which is the French Union, because it is there that we can safeguard the advantages and the interests of the black people of Africa… We know what France asks of us – to share in her institutions and to share in them as equals.’[44]

Nkrumah agreed that the independent African states would be too weak to achieve economic development alone, but he saw African integration, rather than continued colonial paternalism, as the answer. The clash between these two visions of Africa’s future was a central element of West African politics in the late 1950s, but Houphouet-Boigny’s sympathetic view of French colonial policy was no match for what Nkrumah described as ‘the wrenching realities of the humiliation, impotence and contempt afflicted on all Africans by the victimizing history of the last 500 years.’[45] Sekou Toure shared Nkrumah’s messianic view of independence. His famous rallying cry, ‘We prefer dignity in poverty to affluence in slavery.’[46] was a direct challenge to Houphouet-Boigny’s advocacy of a gradual move toward independence for French West Africa. Sekou Toure was the only leader in French West Africa to thumb his nose at Charles de Gaulle’s proposal for a union with France. Sekou Toure’s charisma and his rejection of any gradualism in the process of decolonization made him a hero to many Africans even today, despite the fact that he built a ruthless regime in Guinea.[47] During Sekou Toure’s 26 years in power almost one third of the population of Guinea fled the country.[48]

Once the process of decolonization began, all efforts to reshape the colonial relationship into a union based on equality and partnership between France and French West Africa were swept aside by the bitterness that colonialism had generated.[49] Houphouet-Boigny’s emphasis on rights and development was quickly buried by Nkrumah’s and Sekou Toure’s doctrine of racial sovereignty at all cost.

The OAU

In 1963 all 32 of the independent African states came together in Ethiopia to create the Organization of African Unity. The OAU charter made it clear that the postcolonial African leaders were focused squarely on ending white rule in Africa and protecting themselves against any intervention in their internal affairs. The creation of the OAU marked the end of Nkrumah’s vision of African integration, but it also was a formal declaration by the heads of state that human rights would not be a priority of postcolonial African politics. The charter’s preamble asserts that the OAU members are: ‘Convinced that it is the inalienable right of all people to control their own destiny’ and are: ‘Determined to safeguard and consolidate the hard won independence as well as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our states, and to fight against neocolonialism in all its forms.’ In the charter’s list of ‘purposes’ the only mention of human rights is the vague reference to showing ‘due regard to the Charter of the UN and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’ A much clearer purpose is the need to ‘eradicate all forms of colonialism from Africa.’ The charter’s ‘principles’ emphasize the degree to which the OAU was concerned solely with external selfdetermination: ‘1. Sovereign equality of all member states. 2. Noninterference in the internal affairs of states. 3. Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each state and for its inalienable right to independent existence.’

The OAU charter proclaims that the priority of postcolonial politics was the protection of the state, not of individuals. The protection of human rights was limited to selfdetermination in the context of decolonization and Apartheid. According to the charter, threats to human rights come from outside the continent, which is why state sovereignty was enshrined as the first, essential step toward the end of oppression in Africa. Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, explained: ‘The OAU charter spoke for the African peoples still under colonialism or racial domination, but once the countries emerged to nationhood, the charter stood for the protection of their heads of state and served as a trade union which protected them.’[50]

The OAU had the reputation of being a ‘big men’s club’ whose devotion to the principles of noninterference and nonintervention was essentially a policy of ‘blind solidarity.’ Not only did the OAU shield criminal regimes from criticism, the OAU undermined its own legitimacy severely by choosing several of the world’s worst dictators (such as Amin, Mengistu and Mobutu) to preside over the OAU.[51] In his analysis of the OAU’s failures to promote human rights in Africa, Claude Welch writes, ‘The name of the game [in the OAU] is preservation of autonomy in domestic affairs.’ In short, ‘hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil typified the views of most OAU summiteers.’[52]

The Emergence of Liberal Democratic Rhetoric

In 1986 the OAU adopted the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the Banjul Charter). The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights was created as the instrument for ensuring that the member states observed the Banjul Charter. Following the tradition of noninterference, however, this new commission was subordinated to the OAU Assembly of Heads of State. The commission’s mandate was limited to a ‘promotional’ role in the realm of human rights.[53]

The Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA) was a meeting in 1989 of African scholars and politicians that was inspired by Nigerian president Obasanjo. In 1991 the CSSDCA generated the Kampala Movement. The Kampala Principles, which Franics Deng and William Zartman describe as ‘one of the most important works of statesmanship of the postwar era,’ were grounded in two assumptions.[54] First, the OAU had failed the people of Africa. Second, Africa would be marginalized in the post-Cold War era if it did not put its house in order. The most revolutionary aspect of the Kampala Principles was the call for a focus on the internal affairs of African states.

On the invitation of Muammar Qaddafi, an extraordinary summit of the OAU was held in 1999 in Sirte, Libya. The theme of the summit was: ‘Strengthening OAU capacity to enable it to meet the challenges of the new millennium.’ The result of this summit was the Sirte Declaration which called for: ‘Addressing the new social, political and economic realities in Africa and the world’ and ‘Revitalizing the continental organization to play a more active role in addressing the needs of the people.’ To achieve these aims, the Sirte summit decided to: ‘Establish an African Union in conformity with the ultimate objectives of the charter of our continental organization and the provisions of the treaty establishing the African Economic Community.’[55]

The constitutive act of the African Union was adopted at the Lome summit in 2000. The 2001 Lusaka summit was the last meeting of the OAU. The 2002 Durban summit was the first meeting of the AU. In contrast to the limited, externally oriented aims of the OAU, the constitutive act of the AU spelled out a new set of internally directed goals: ‘Promote democratic principles and institutions, popular participation and good governance; Promote and protect human peoples’ rights in accordance with the African charter on human and peoples’ rights and other relevant human rights instruments.’[56] In contrast to the OAU’s reverence for the principle of nonintervention, the African Union took a revolutionary step in accepting that intervention is a necessary part of the commitment to human rights. The AU is the first international organization that formally recognizes the right to intervene for humanitarian purposes.

At the same time that the AU was replacing the OAU, in 2001 NEPAD became the AU’s socioeconomic development program. From its inception, NEPAD represented a ‘vision,’ a ‘strategic framework’ and a ‘pledge,’ rather than a formal organization with binding commitments. The aims of NEPAD are comprehensive and ambitious: ‘To eradicate poverty; To place African countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development; To halt the marginalization of Africa in the globalization process and enhance its full and beneficial integration into the global economy; To accelerate the empowerment of women.’[57] The framers of NEPAD asserted an impressive set of principles as the means to achieving these aims: ‘Good governance as a basic requirement for peace, security and sustainable political and socioeconomic development; African ownership and leadership, as well as broad and deep participation by all sectors of society.’[58]

In order to get a flavor for the overall orientation of NEPAD, it is important to cite a few of the many passages from the NEPAD full text that stress the necessity of democratic reforms for African development:

Paragraph 7: Across the continent, Africans declare that we will no longer allow ourselves to be conditioned by circumstance. We will determine our own destiny and call on the rest of the world to complement our efforts. There are already signs of progress and hope. Democratic regimes that are committed to the protection of human rights, people centered development and market oriented economies are on the increase. African peoples have begun to demonstrate their refusal to accept poor economic and political leadership.

Paragraph 43: Democracy and state legitimacy have been redefined to include accountable government, a culture of human rights and popular participation as central elements.

Paragraph 49: To achieve these objectives, African leaders will take joint responsibility for… Promoting and protecting democracy and human rights in their respective countries and regions, by developing clear standards of accountability, transparency and participatory governance at the national and subnational levels.

Paragraph 79: It is now generally acknowledged that development is impossible in the absence of true democracy, respect for human rights, peace and good governance.

Paragraph 83: In order to strengthen political governance and build capacity to meet these commitments, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development leadership will undertake a process of targeted capacity building initiatives. These institutional reforms will focus on: Administrative and civil services; Strengthening parliamentary oversight; Promoting participatory decision making; Adopting effective measures to combat corruption and embezzlement; Undertaking judicial reforms.

Mandela versus Nkrumah

In 2004 New African (the largest panAfrican magazine) conducted a poll of its readers to determine the “100 Greatest Africans.” The readers picked Mandela first and Nkrumah second.[59] Mandela and Nkrumah are also at the top of the list of leaders who have the most public places in Africa named after them (Mandela has 41, Nkrumah has 32).[60] These two leaders are giants of African politics, but they represent opposing models of selfdetermination. The remainder of this paper describes their contrasts and reviews the role that these leaders play in contemporary public debates about human rights in Africa.

Mandela’s influence was a significant reason for the shift from the OAU’s prioritization of state sovereignty to the AU’s focus on democracy and accountability. He addressed the OAU summit in 1994 with the message that became the central theme of the African Renaissance: ‘We must face the matter squarely that where there is something wrong in how we govern ourselves, it must be said that the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are ill-governed.’[61] Four years later he delivered the same message, again at the OAU summit: ‘I believe that we must all accept that we cannot abuse the concept of national sovereignty to deny the rest of the Continent the right and duty to intervene when, behind those sovereign boundaries, people are being slaughtered to protect tyranny. In all instances, this takes place with no regard whatsoever to the fact that the legitimacy of our governments derives from our commitment to serve the interests of the people on the basis of mandates given by the people themselves.’[62]

In 1964 Nkrumah published Consciencism. This book laid out his views about the differences between the European and the African personalities. He argued that Africans cannot develop if they embrace the ideology of their colonial masters. According to Nkrumah, the spiritual needs of the African masses can only be met through socialism because African culture is grounded in the awareness that the development of the group is the condition for the development of the individual. He saw Europe’s “abstract idealism” as something that placed individuals above the community. In this way, opposition to his government’s policies reflected a dangerous idealism that was “alien to the African conscience.” His arguments for a communalist African personality provided philosophical justification for his oppressive policy of “democratic centralism.” In real terms, this meant that his severe restrictions on press freedoms and public meetings, the elimination of all opposition parties, the centralization of economic decision making, and the declaration that Nkrumah would be president for life were all far more compatible with the African personality than were the abstract ideals of individual rights. Nkrumah’s Consciencism, Leopold Senghor’s Negritude, and Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa are examples of the spirit of African nationalism that characterized the decolonization struggles. These efforts to assert a distinct African essence have been described as “anti-racist racism.”[63]

In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom Nelson Mandela describes his own struggle with “Africanism.” In the 1940s he was greatly influenced by the thoughts of Anton Lembede. Lembede called for militant African nationalism and, similar to Nkrumah, he called on Africans to reassert themselves and stop the “idolization of the West and their ideas.”[64] Mandela summarizes his outlook in his early years of the liberation struggle: “I was angry at the white man, not at racism.”[65] But in 1955 he turned against Lembede’s Africanism and became one of the main proponents of a new approach that was expressed in the ANC’s Freedom Charter, namely, the demand for a “democratic, nonracial South Africa.”[66]

Andrew Nash writes that, in addition to abandoning Africanism, Mandela saw African tribal political institutions as close to the “formal ideals of Western liberalism.”[67] According to Nash, Mandela saw no incompatibility between Africa’s past and the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, and the American Congress.

Mandela was, and remains, the target of intense criticism from many Africans because when he became president in 1994 he grounded postApartheid governance in tolerance, reconciliation, and individual rights. As a specific example, he writes that he was relieved that the ANC did not win two-thirds of the national assembly seats in the 1994 election. He was relieved because it required the ANC to work with the other political parties to construct the new constitution.[68] Mandela’s contentment that the ANC would not have too much power stands in stark contrast to Nkrumah’s bitterness in the 1950s that the British demanded that the postcolonial Ghanaian constitution included a two-thirds majority for amendments. Mandela welcomed the need for democratic compromise and cooperation, while Nkrumah defined democracy as national solidarity around his policies.

Hero or Traitor?

Aside from Robert Mugabe, the African leaders who have generated the most intense support or criticism among political commentators in Africa are Nkrumah and Mandela. It is possible to provide only a few examples of the thousands of editorials concerning the legacies of Nkrumah and Mandela. It is rare to find someone who admires both of them.

Nkrumah holds a special position as the first postcolonial leader in subSaharan Africa. He is widely revered as the father of African nationalism and for his dedication to panAfricanism and to the decolonization of the whole continent. Nonetheless, there are many who blame him for legitimizing dictatorship. Mutumwa Mawere captures this perspective: “The lessons we learn from Nkrumah are many but the enduring one is that leaders ought to know when to liberate their countries by not over bearing on their people to the extent that the military or pedestrian options become the only viable solutions for reclaiming their future.”[69]

Ama Biney argues that it is wrong to blame Nkrumah for creating the model of authoritarianism that became the norm in postcolonial Africa.[70] She asserts that leaders of differing ideologies adopted authoritarian control despite their differences with Nkrumah. According to Biney, Nkrumah’s authoritarianism created national unity and avoided ethnic disunity, but she also notes that this model of centralization allowed leaders to plunder their countries.[71] William Mpofu takes this criticism much further: “From Kwame Nkrumah to Robert Mugabe, African dictators have invoked the spirit of African unity and black solidarity against vampiric western imperialism with the right hand while with the left hand subjecting their people to cruel bondage and violence… Africans treat tyranny like an embarrassing family secret by pretending that it does not exist and only western imperialism is our problem.”[72]

Davidson Kaiyo refuses to put Mandela in the same esteemed category as Nkrumah because Mandela wasn’t willing to defend African interests in South Africa: “Mandela is just a model of how the West expects an African to behave. Any African leader who dares to rock the boat is labeled a tyrant and anyone who dances to their tune a democrat.”[73] Winnie Mandela has been one of Nelson’s strongest critics. She believes that he betrayed the antiapartheid movement by not nationalizing and redistributing the nation’s wealth. She is also angry that he allowed many of the apartheid government criminals to escape punishment through the “Truth and Reconciliation charade.”[74]

In his autobiography Mandela acknowledges that some of his policies angered many people – in particular, those who had fought for liberation from white rule. Rather than socialism, Mandela set South Africa on the course of what he called “African-style capitalism.”[75] His (and the government’s continued) refusal to pursue nationalization has become increasingly controversial as the socioeconomic status of black South Africans has declined over the past decade. In the years prior to the end of Apartheid and then during his presidency Mandela went out of his way to show the whites that he would not seek vengeance and that he would protect the rights of all citizens. He knew that his insistence on a “nonracial multiparty democracy” caused many blacks to complain: “Madiba has become soft. He has been bought off by the authorities.”[76]

Conclusion

The African colonial experience was not that some people had rights and others did not. Instead, colonialism meant that white people had all the power and wealth, while the colonial system was constructed to keep the blacks powerless and poor. It is understandable that the racial basis of this exploitation and humiliation led the Africans to seek a radical solution that was motivated more by the desire to create African governments than to create liberal democracies. The helplessness of the colonial era produced a social psychosis of nonintervention that was an ideal environment for charismatic tyrants who portrayed themselves as the fulfillment of national selfdetermination. A. Adu Boahen captures the essential negative impact of colonialism on African politics. The nationalism that emerged after the colonial experience “was not the result of a positive feeling of identity with or commitment or loyalty to the new nation-state but a negative one generated by a sense of anger, frustration and humiliation caused by some of the oppressive, discriminatory, humiliating and exploitative measures introduced by colonial rule.’[77] Until the African Renaissance provided some hope that a culture of pluralism and government accountability might be taking hold, there was no meaningful space in postcolonial Africa for an agenda of internal selfdetermination.

Anthony Daniels summarizes the problem of selfdetermination that must be addressed: ‘The reason most African leaders find it so difficult to condemn Mugabe’s rule is that to do so would put in question the whole concept of African liberation. The crimes of colonialism are only too well known; but the crimes of anti- and postcolonialism are still too recent, and too current, to be talked of with frankness by their beneficiaries… What Africa desperately needs is liberation from the liberators. But who is to do it without renewing the catastrophe?’[78]

Nkrumah’s model of using selfdetermination as justification for authoritarianism can be found across Africa. The European Union recently threatened to cut aid funds to The Gambia as a way to curtail Gambian restrictions on the freedom of speech. In February 2013 Gambian president Yahya Jammeh made it clear that he would not allow “the descendants of former colonial masters and slave traders” to violate Gambian national sovereignty. He also explained that he would not allow individual Gambians to violate the “people’s sovereignty.” He announced: “In defence of the nation, we are conscious also of the fact that interference or violations of our sovereignty can emerge from both within the nation and without.”[79]

Uhuru Kenyatta won the Kenyan presidential election in March 2013, even though he was indicted by the ICC for his role in ethnic massacres in 2007. During the presidential campaign his team demonstrated the strength of Nkrumah’s legacy when they dismissed the ICC accusations as “neocolonial western political interference.”[80]

There is hope that Mandela’s focus on democracy and individual rights will replace Nkrumah’s “black authoritarianism”, but the economic crisis and growing sense of frustration among black South Africans might turn Mandela’s model into yet another negative lesson for Africa. Perhaps we can take hope that South Africans prefer to move beyond postcolonial ideological debates. Bill Keller summarized the current view in the country: “Spare us the liberation cant, send us someone who can just get the damn job done.” This disillusioned pragmatism is, in many ways, an adverse product of Mandela’s model, but Nkrumah would not have tolerated or comprehended this way of thinking.

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[1] Cited in Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia: 2010) p.35

[2] Grace Kwinjeh, ‘Zimbabwe’s Crisis, Civil Society’s Responsibility: Robert Mugabe, the memory of colonialism and the real neocolonialism,’ Harold Wolpe Lecture Series, University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, Durban (23 August 2007)

[3] Tom Farer, ‘The Ethics of Intervention in Self-Determination Struggles’ Human Rights Quarterly 25 (2003)

[4] Duara argues that ‘western historical frameworks’ are inadequate for describing the process of decolonization in: Prasenjit Duara Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (Routledge, New York: 2003)

[5] Hurst Hannum Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Selfdetermination: The Accomodation of Conflicting Rights (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia: 1990), p.47; See also: Francis M. Deng Identity, Diversity, and Constitutionalism in Africa (United States Institute for Peace Press, Washington D.C.:2008); Obiora Okafor ‘After Martyrdom: International law, substate groups, and the construction of legitimate statehood in Africa’ Harvard International Law Journal 41(2) 2000

[6] Jonathan Derrick Africa’s Agitators: Militant AntiColonialism in Africa and the West, 1918-1939 (Columbia University Press, New York: 2008), pp. 65,66

[7] Erez Manela The Wilsonian Moment: Selfdetermination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford:2007); Louis and Robinson describe the gap between the rhetoric and policy concerning the US approach to selfdetermination and decolonization in: William Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson ‘The United States, European Disengagement, and African Nationalism’ in Robert O. Collins, James McDonal Burns, Erik Kristopher Ching (eds) Historical Problems of Imperial Africa (Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton: 1994)

[8] Ibid, p.35

[9] Hannum, p.30; See also: Dov Ronen The Quest for Selfdetermination (Yale University Press, New Haven: 1979)

[10] Burke

[11] Ibid, p. 56, 57

[12] Goran Hyden African Politics in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2006), p.32

[13] Hyden, p.39; Museveni’s NRM seized control of Uganda in 1986.

[14] Bonny Ibhawoh Imperialism and Human Rights: Colonial Discourses of Rights and Liberties in African History (State University of New York Press, New York: 2007), 26

[15] Ibid; See also: Bonny Ibhawoh “Human Rights and Cultural Relativism: Reconsidering the Africanist Discourse” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 19, 1 (2001); Mahmood Mamdani (ed) Beyond Rights Talk and Culture Talk: Comparative Essays on the Politics of Rights and Culture (St. Martin’s Press, New York: 2000); Osita C. Eze “Is the Protection of Human Rights and Democracy Strange to African Traditions?” in Tunki Abayomi (ed) Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (Human Rights Africa, Lagos: 1993); Rhoda Howard “Group versus Individual Identity in the African Debate on Human Rights” in Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim and Francis M. Deng (eds) Human Rights in Africa: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (The Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.: 1990)

[16] Basil Davidson The Black Man’s Burden (Three Rivers Press, London: 1992)

[17] Jomo Kenyatta Facing Mt Kenya (Vintage Books, New York: 1962)

[18] Ayittey (1999)

[19] Roel van der Veen What Went Wrong with Africa? A Contemporary History (KIT Publishers/Stylus Publishing, Amsterdam: 2004)

[20] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Grove Press, New York: 1965)

[21] Jean Paul Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism (Routledge Press, New York: 2001)

[22] Sakah S. Mahmud ‘The State and Human Rights in Africa in the 1990s: Perspectives and Prospects’ Human Rights Quarterly 15 (1993), 489-491; Michael Crowder writes: “Botswana is unique in Africa as the only state that has effectively maintained intact the constitution whereby power was transferred by its former colonial rulers.” He argues that Botswana’s democratic success is the result of the application of traditional democratic political practices at the national level. Michael Crowder, “Botswana and the Survival of Liberal Democracy in Africa” in Prosser Gifford and W. Roger Louis (eds) Decolonization and African Independence (Yale University Press, New Haven: 1988), p.461

[23] Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (Praeger Press, New York: 1963)

[24] Martin Meredith, The First Dance of Freedom (Abacus Press, New York: 1984), p.44

[25] Neil Lazarus Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction (Yale University Press, New Haven: 1990)

[26] Stephen Ellis ‘How to Rebuild Africa’ in Foreign Affairs vol. 84, No.5 (September/October 2005), p.148; Ayittey criticizes the continued application of Nkrumah’s logic as ‘the same old colonialism claptrap.’ See: George Ayittey, Africa Unchained (Palgrave MacMillan, New York: 2006), pp.317,318; See also: Robert I. Rotberg ‘Strengthening African Leadership: There is another way’ in Princeton N. Lyman and Patricia Dorff (eds) Beyond Humanitarianism: What You Need to Know about Africa and why it Matters (Council on Foreign Relations, New York: 2007)

[27] Onyeonoro S. Kamanu, ‘Secession and the Right of Selfdetermination: an OAU Dilemma’ The Journal of Modern African Studies 12, 3 (1974), p. 356

[28] Ali A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana (Chicago, 1967); cited in Kamanu. (Italics added)

[29] For examples, see: Kwame Nkrumha Africa Must Unite (Praeger Publishers, New York: 1963) and Kwame Nkrumah “African Prospect” Foreign Affairs (vol. 37, No. 1, October 1958)

[30] Gwendolen M. Carter Independence for Africa (Praeger Press, New York: 1960), p.134

[31] Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa (Public Affairs, New York: 2005), p.162

[32] Meredith (2005), p.165

[33] Meredith (2005), p.169

[34] Henry F. Carey, ‘The Postcolonial State and the Protection of Human Rights’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East vol XXII, No. 1&2 (2002), p.70

[35] Ama Biney “The Intellectual and Political Legacies of Kwame Nkrumah” The Journal of Pan African Studies (vol. 4, no. 10, January 2012), p. 138

[36] Peter Schwab Designing West Africa (Palgrave MacMillan, New York: 2004), p.117

[37] Ahmed Sekou Toure ‘Africa’s Future and the World’ Foreign Affairs (October 1962)

[38] Ahmed Sekou Toure ‘African Independence as an International Issue’ in Rupert and Martin Kilson (eds) The Political Awakening of Africa (Prentice-Hall, Inc, Englewood Cliffs: 1965), pp.159,160

[39] Louis Lomax, The Reluctant African (Harper, New York: 1960), p. 3

[40] Lomax, p.68

[41] Lomax, pp.114, 116

[42] Opoku Agyeman, Nkrumah’s Ghana and East Africa: PanAfricanism and African Interstate Relations (Associated University Press, London: 1992), p. 31

[43] Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Black Africa and the French Union (1957), p.265 (Italics added)

[44] Hourphouet-Boigny, pp.266,267

[45] Agyeman, p.187

[46] Martin Minoque and Judith Molloy African Aims and Attitudes: Selected Documents (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1974), p.244

[47] Lansine Kaba ‘From Colonialism to Autocracy: Guinea under Sekou Toure’ in Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis Decolonization and African Independence: The Transfers of Power, 1960-1980 (Yale University Press, New Hvaen: 1988), pp.225-245; Victor T. Le Vine Politics in Francophone Africa (Lynne Rieder, New York: 2004), pp.87-161

[48] Michael M. Cernea and Chris McDowell (eds) Risks and Reconstruction: Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees (World Bank Publications, Washington DC: 2000); Kenneth Ingham Politics in Modern Africa: The Uneven Tribal Dimension (Routledge, New York: 2000)

[49] Tony Chafer The End of Empire in French West Africa: France’s Successful Decolonization? (Berg Publishers, New York: 2002)

[50] Rachel Murray, Human Rights in Africa (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 2004), p. 8

[51] Wafula Okumu, ‘The New African Union and the Integration of Africa,’ in Festus Eribo and Charles Okigb (eds.), Development and Communication in Africa (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 2004), 195,196.

[52] Claude Welch Jr, ‘The Organization of African Unity and the Promotion of Human Rights’ Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 4 (1991), 535.

[53] Welch, 538-540.

[54] Francis M. Deng and I. William Zartman, A Strategic Vision for Africa: The Kampala Movement (Washington D.C: Brookings Institution Press, 2002), p. 139

[55] Sirte Declaration (1999)

[56] Constitutive Act of the African Union (2000)

[57] “What are the NEPAD Primary Objectives?” NEPAD in Brief: Website of NEPAD (inbrief.html).

[58] “What are the Principles of NEPAD?” NEPAD in Brief: Website of NEPAD (inbrief.html).

[59] “100 Greatest Africans” New African (August/September 2004)

[60] Based upon research on Google Earth conducted in December 2012 by Meg Hourigan

[61] Nelson Mandela: Address to the Summit Meeting of the OAU Heads of State and Government June 13, 1994

[62] Nelson Mandela: Address to the Summit Meeting of the OAU Heads of State and Government June 8, 1998

[63] Colin Legum Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide (Praeger Publishers, New York: 1965), p.96

[64] Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom (Little, Brown & Co., New York: 1994), p.84

[65] Ibid, p.98

[66] Ibid, p.151

[67] Andrew Nash “Mandela’s Democracy” Monthly Review (vol. 50, Issue 11, April 1999), p.23

[68] Mandela, p.539

[69] Mutumwa Mawere “Lessons from Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana” (December 11, 2009)

[70] Ama Biney “The Legacy of Kwame Nkrumah in Retrospect” The Journal of Pan African Studies (vol 2, no.3, March 2008)

[71] Biney (2008), p.140

[72] William Mpofu “The Scourge of African Tyrants” Sowetan Live (online edition) (Sept 22, 2011)

[73] Davidson Kaiyo “Mandela: Magic or Betrayal?” Zimbabwe Herald (July 31, 2012)

[74] Nadira Naipaul “How Nelson Mandela Betrayed us, says ex-wife Winnie” The London Evening Standard (March 8, 2010)

[75] Mandela, p.469

[76] Ibid. p.498

[77] A. Adu Boahen Africa under Colonial Domination 1880-1935 (James Currey Publishers, 1990: London), 328,329

[78] Anthony Daniels ‘The failure of Nelson Mandela’ The First Post - British Daily Online Magazine (27 June 2008)

[79] Independence Day Speech by Gambian President Yahya Jammeh (Feb 20, 2013)

[80] Katrina Manson “Charges facing Kenyatta cast shadow over Kenyan election” The Financial Times (Feb 26, 2013)

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