Chapter 27 The Era of Decolonization

Section 7 Decolonization and Nationalism In Africa

As elsewhere in the world, World War II was a watershed in Africa. Despite the initial European determination to hold on to their colonial possessions in the continent, the tide of imperialism had already begun to ebb. In the face of Cold War contingencies and their own weakness, after World War II the colonial powers had neither the will nor the resources to maintain imperial rule in the face of any determined opposition. As colonial nationalism succeeded in Asia, it quickly spread to Africa. Although initially resisting demands for immediate decolonization, within less than two decades after the end of the war virtually all of the colonial powers had conceded the principle of independence.

Having achieved independence, however, the new African nations soon confronted the problems as well as the promise of their new status. Although most had achieved independence through a relatively peaceful process, their success at maintaining peace afterwards was varied. The small groups of western-educated nationalist leaders faced above all the task of trying to create for their peoples a true sense of national identity in place of their traditional ethnic and cultural loyalties. Often, the new democratic states gave way to military dictatorships as they struggled to accomplish this transformation. 

Decolonization in British Africa

Like World War I, World War II was a watershed in the history of imperialism. For many colonial peoples, the Atlantic Charter seemed to promise self-determination after the war. The war itself had contributed to the growing pressure for decolonization—the withdrawal of the colonial powers from their colonies and spheres of influence. During the war, for example, the Allies had established a regular supply route through Africa, the so-called African line of communication, or AFLOC. As men and materiel flowed through Africa many Africans became aware of a larger world beyond their borders.

            After the war, the first major moves toward full decolonization came in Britain’s colonies. In 1948, the British publicly declared their colonial policy: 

“The central purpose of British colonial policy . . . is to guide the colonial territories to responsible self-government within the Commonwealth in conditions that ensure to the people concerned both a fair standard of living and freedom from oppression in any quarter.” 

Ghana. The first of Britain’s formal colonies to achieve independence after World War II was the Gold Coast in West Africa. African nationalism had emerged in the Gold Coast even before the war. Members of the colony’s westernized African elite had established the United Gold Coast Convention, or UGCC, to demand greater participation in government. Instead of fighting the British these African leaders had preferred to cooperate and gain influence as peacefully as possible. In 1946, however, a young charismatic African named Kwame Nkrumah, who had been educated in the United States, returned to the Gold Coast as secretary of the UGCC.

            Nkrumah was heavily influenced by pan-Africanism. In 1945 he had attended the first Pan-African Conference in England. Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast determined to transform the UGCC into a mass party with popular support from the entire African population of the colony. His aim was complete self-government and rapid independence. In 1948, he started a newspaper, in which he openly criticized British rule and called for “self-government now.”

            Nkrumah’s tactics alarmed the older leaders of the UGCC. In 1949 he established his own political party, the Convention People’s Party, or CPP. Leading strikes and demonstrations, and spending time in British jails, Nkrumah transformed the CPP into a major political party with massive popular support. Under this kind of pressure, eventually the British agreed to grant a new self-governing constitution and allow national elections in 1951. Nkrumah’s party swept the elections.

            Although the fiery young nationalist leader had formerly rejected participation in any constitutional process that did not grant immediate, full self-government, calling it “bogus,” he changed his mind and formed a government under the new constitution. As he continued to press for full self-government, in 1957, Britain granted Gold Coast a new, fully self-governing constitution. Nkrumah became the first prime minister of the newly proclaimed state of Ghana. Ghana became the model for the rest of Britain’s African colonies to follow the path toward self-government and independence. The process did not go smoothly everywhere, however, especially where there were substantial numbers of white settlers. 

Kenya. In Kenya, for example, the struggle over land between the Kikuyu people and European settlers in the so-called White Highlands, led to the outbreak of a major uprising in the 1950s. The Kikuyu were especially angry that growing white settlement had kept them from what they considered part of their ancestral homeland. Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu who attended university in England and obtained a degree in anthropology before becoming the leader of the African nationalist movement in Kenya once described the importance of land for his people: 

“It is the key to the people’s life; it secures them that peaceful tillage of the soil which supplies their material needs and enables them to perform their magic and traditional ceremonies in undisturbed serenity.”[49] 

            As the white settlers continued to deny the Kikuyu access to land in the highlands, in 1950 many Kikuyu joined a movement known as Mau Mau. Drawing on traditional Kikuyu ceremonies and traditions, the Mau Mau bound themselves with blood oaths to fight for their land against all who resisted them. For about four years, the Mau Mau terrorized the central highlands of Kenya, murdering all who opposed them—mostly other Africans who continued to cooperate with the Europeans. The British responded to the crisis by declaring an Emergency and jailing Kenyatta, whom they mistakenly believed to be the ringleader of the movement, along with some 90,000 other suspected Kikuyu. In the bloody struggle that followed over 10,000 Mau Mau and their sympathizers were killed.

            Although the British did eventually regain control of the colony and put down the Mau Mau, by the late 1950s they were also convinced that they must make concessions to the African nationalists. In 1961 the British finally released Kenyatta from prison and began to plan for Kenyan independence. In 1963, Kenya became independent and Kenyatta took office as its first prime minister.

French Africa

While the British colonies followed a fairly straight path of constitutional development toward self-government and practical independence, a different pattern prevailed in France’s African colonies. Like the British, during World War II the Free French forces of General Charles de Gaulle had obtained much support from the African colonies. One of his most ardent supporters was Felix Eboué, the French colonial governor of Chad.

            Born in French Guiana in 1884, Eboué was educated in the West Indies and in France. After rising through the colonial service, in 1939 he became Governor of Chad, the first black French colonial governor. He soon developed a reputation as an innovative colonial administrator. Eboué was especially well known for his respect of African cultural traditions. He also advocated the encouragement of African political development. He published many of his ideas in journals of colonial administration. His influence was also felt beyond the boundaries of France’s colonial empire. His articles on administration were required reading for the Sudan Political Service, the British administrators of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

            Shortly after the fall of France to the Germans, in August 1940 Eboué publicly declared his support for General de Gaulle and Free France. Shortly thereafter, the rest of the colonial governors in French Equatorial Africa also declared their support for the Free French movement. During the war, Eboué raised troops for the war effort from among the African peoples he administered. He also supplied food and other materials fro the war effort, and was in frequent consultation with his British colleagues in the Sudan as well as with the other French colonial governors. His death in a plane accident in 1944 was mourned by both the British and Free French governments as well as by many of the peoples he had governed in Chad and other African colonies.  

Toward decolonization. Eboué’s support for Free France reflected his commitment to the traditional direction of French colonial policy. Unlike the British, the French had always insisted that their goal was to incorporate the African colonies into France itself. As Eboué realized, such a policy would be unlikely to continue under a government allied with Nazi Germany. After the war, de Gaulle tried to continue this policy, while at the same time responding to calls for greater African participation in colonial government.

            The African colonies were joined together in a huge federation, from which African representatives were elected to the parlement in Paris. Although many Africans gained political experience in this way, they also continued to feel that their interests were subordinated to those of France. Soon, popular political parties began to emerge even in the French colonies that resembled that of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana.

            In Senegal, for example, Leopold Senghor, who during the 1930s had lived in France and proclaimed himself a monarchist, returned to establish a party dedicated to self-government and eventual independence. Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Cote d’Ivoire, and Sekou Touré in Guinea also established nationalist parties and worked for greater self-government. Meanwhile, events in France’s North African territories soon transformed the entire colonial situation. 

Algeria. With roughly a million European settlers, known as pieds noirs, or “black feet,” Algeria had long been a departement, or province, of France itself. French policies of assimilation, however, coupled with attitudes of racial superiority adopted by the pieds noirs toward their Arab neighbors, had also led to the emergence of a strong Arab nationalist movement. Supported by other Arab countries such as Egypt and Syria, in 1954 the Algerian National Liberation Front, known by its French initials FLN, launched a guerrilla war to obtain independence as an Arab state. As the war became more and more bloody, eventually Charles de Gaulle stepped in to resolve it. Instead of crushing the Arab rebels, however, as many expected him to, de Gaulle instead negotiated with them. Eventually, in 1962, Algeria became independent.

            As with India for the British, Algeria was a turning point for France. In the wake of the Algerian rising, Arab nationalists in both Morocco and Tunisia, both French protectorates, also demanded independence. In the name of King Muhammad V, for example, Moroccan nationalists attacked French troops and waged a general campaign of non-cooperation against all French nationals in the country. With their resources already being drained by the Algerian war, as well as the on-going colonial war in French Indochina, in 1956 France recognized the independence of both Morocco and Tunisia. 

The French Community. As more and more African leaders clamored for control over their own affairs in 1958 de Gaulle offered them all a simple choice. They could either remain associated with France in a new French Community, or they could become immediately independent. If they joined the Community they would be given internal self-government, but France would retain control of their foreign relations. They would also continue to receive French economic and development aid. If they chose independence, they would be cut off from France completely—including from further funds for development.

            Only Guinea opted for complete independence under Sekou Touré. “We have to tell you bluntly, Mr. President,” Touré personally told de Gaulle, 

“what the demands of the people are. . . .We have one prime and essential need: our dignity. But there is no dignity without freedom. . . We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery.” [50]

Although Guinea did become independent, it was also immediately shunned by the other nations of the Community. With little alternative, Touré turned to the Soviet Union and the Communist world for help. Alarmed by this appeal to the Soviets, eventually de Gaulle reversed his previous policy and the rest of France’s colonies were allowed to obtain complete independence without being cut off from continuing French ties.

Belgian and Portuguese Africa

While Britain and France generally made some accommodation for their African colonies to achieve self-government or independence, other colonial powers were not so foresighted. Portugal, the first European power to establish colonies in Africa, was also the last to relinquish them. As Portugal continued to hold on, African leaders emerged in Angola, Portuguese Guinea, and Mozambique to organize “liberation armies.” Many drew support from the Soviet Union and long years of bloody warfare marked the last decades of Portuguese rule in Africa.

            Eventually, in 1974, as the colonial wars continued to drain Portugal’s economy, a military coup overthrew the Lisbon government. The new military government immediately made arrangements to withdraw from the colonies and allow them at last to become independent. In the meantime, however, the colonies had not had time to establish a firm infrastructure for either their economies or their administration.

            A similar problem confronted Africans in the Belgian Congo. Like the Portuguese, the Belgians had never really considered preparing Africans in their huge colony for self-government, much less independence. The Congo had a vast number of ethnic groups, speaking many languages, and living in an enormously diverse country. Although the Belgians had encouraged primary education—the Congo had the highest literacy rate in Africa at the time of independence—there were almost no Congolese with any sort of higher education. Industrialization had proceeded rapidly in the last decades of Belgian rule, but was almost exclusively in the hands of Europeans. Moreover, most Congolese had little conception of a national identity.

            As a nationalist movement emerged after World War II, however, the Belgian government agreed that the colony should be prepared for self-government. Realizing how far behind the Congolese were in both the institutions and the skills to manage a modern nation-state, Belgium proposed a 20-year timetable for preparation and eventual independence. Distrusting this offer, the African nationalists demanded immediate self-government. Consequently, in 1960 Belgium suddenly announced that it would withdraw completely within the year.

            With little preparation, some 20 political parties representing various ethnic groups, geographical regions, and ideologies participated in the first elections ever held in the new Democratic Republic of the Congo. Patrice Lumumba, a former postal clerk, became prime minister, while his rival and political enemy Joseph Kasavubu became president. Lumumba’s antagonistic attitude toward continuing European domination led Belgian technicians and experts to leave the country in droves.

            Soon, a mutiny in the army and the secession of the copper-rich province of Katanga plunged the country into chaos. Lumumba himself was assassinated and Kasavubu assumed full power. Nevertheless the chaos and violence continued. Intervention by the United Nations helped end the secession of Katanga, but not until 1965 was order restored when general Joseph Mobutu seized power from Kasavubu and established a strong, but ruthless military dictatorship. Mobutu’s military coup foreshadowed events in many other African countries after independence.

Independent Africa

Despite the promise of independence, by the 1990s many Africans felt disillusioned and hopeless about their futures. Instead of freedom and prosperity, the end of colonial rule had brought most falling standards of living and oppression from their new African leaders. Many blamed such problems on the legacies of the colonial era. After 30 years of independence with little improvement, however, by the mid-1990s many younger Africans had begun to question the habit of blaming all their ills on the European imperialists. Instead they called for concrete solutions—including greater freedom—to resolve the problems.

Economic problems. Although the colonial powers had done much in the last few years of their rule to bring African colonies into the mainstream of world markets, they had often done so by making them dangerously dependent on one or two cash crops. Ghana, for example, depended on cocoa and gold. Copper supported Zambia and Zaire, as cotton did the Sudan. Nigeria’s great asset was oil. Compounding the problem was a lack of balance between the agricultural or mining sector and the other parts of the economy. Apart from the white-dominated regime of South Africa, most African countries had not industrialized.

            Some African leaders turned to socialism in an effort to achieve economic growth as rapidly as possible. In Tanzania, for example, president Julius Nyerere instituted what he called ujamaa, from the Swahili word for family—local cooperative villages that were supposed to increase productivity and standards of living among the peoples of Tanzania. Instead, they proved a bitter failure. By the mid-1980s, Tanzania was even having to import sugar and salt, commodities in which they had once been self-sufficient.

            Not all countries followed the Tanzanian example. Kenya in east Africa and Gabon in west Africa, for example, both retained their free market economies and adopted capitalism as the best method of development. Kenya also encouraged its white settler population to stay in the country and contribute to its growth. Even these capitalist states, however, went deeply into debt in an effort to fund their development. In addition, growing corruption among African governments often siphoned off funds that had been intended for development.

Social and Ecological problems. The new African states also faced major social and ecological problems. The process of urbanization, which had begun under the colonial regimes, accelerated after independence. As more and more people crowded into the cities of Africa, they frequently overwhelmed the local services. As elsewhere in the world, under the impact of modern medical developments the death rates began to fall in many African countries. This in turn led to a rapid population increase. Soon, many African countries could no longer feed their own people.

            As farmers began to expand their crop production they often overused the land. In some cases they planted crops in dry areas and on hillsides, where dry African winds soon stripped away the topsoil. Compounding the problem, in many parts of Africa the growing number of people cutting down trees for firewood led to massive deforestation. In regions south of the Sahara Desert in particular, these practices contributed to desertification, the steady spread of the desert.

            Desertification and major droughts confronted African peoples with a major human and ecological disaster. The first major drought hit the sahel region of Africa in 1972. Others soon followed. In the 1980s and 1990s, countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Sudan experienced drought and mass starvation despite efforts by international relief organizations to alleviate the suffering. Civil war and looting made relief efforts difficult if not impossible. During the 1992 drought some 300,000 people died in Somalia alone as warring factions stole the food provided by international agencies for the starving.[51] One relief worker viewing the misery observed, “I’ve become sick and tired of seeing kids dying when I know thieves are taking their food.”[52]

New diseases. In the 1980s, health officials in Africa also had to confront new diseases that threatened the population. Many people believed that as the rain forests were cut down in Africa, viruses that had long remained unknown were suddenly brought into contact with humans. The HIV, or human immuno-deficiency virus, which produced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, not only spread rapidly through the African populations but also into the world beyond Africa’s borders. In 1995, an outbreak of the deadly ebola virus in Zaire led the government to close its borders in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease. By the 1990s many health officials were predicting disaster for Africa as a consequence of the new diseases.

Political Problems

Perhaps the most challenging problem the newly independent African nations faced was increas­ing political instability. The new African leaders discovered what the colonial officials had known: that their diverse and varied peoples had not yet developed a real sense of national identity. To rule them, many leaders resorted to the same kind of autocratic methods used by earlier colonial rulers.

The case of Ghana. Perhaps the best example of this pattern was Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana . Although he began as a popular leader, his popularity began to slip, in part because prosper­ity declined with a drop in cocoa prices. Nkrumah responded to criticism by tightening his control over Ghana. "All Africans know that I represent Africa," he once said, "and that I speak in her name. Therefore no African can have an opinion that differs from mine." Nkrumah also believed that political unity in Africa was the key to future success:

"African unity is above all a political kingdom, which can only be gained by political means. The social and economic development of Africa will come only within the political kingdom, not the other way around."

Such sentiments led to the creation of the Organization of African Unity, or OAU. In 1966, however, Nkrumah's harsh policies cost him the support of the people, and he was overthrown by a military coup. After his fall, civilian and military governments came and went, matching the rising and falling prices of the cocoa and gold markets and the consequent prosperity or poverty in the country.  

Over the next several decades, similar political instability affected most African countries as immediate post-independence democracy turned more often than not into one-party rule or military dictatorship. Brutal dictators like Idi Amin of Uganda and Bokassa of the Central African Republic killed thousands of their own citizens in the quest for personal power and wealth. By 1990 only five countries in the continent had democratic governments.[53]

Ethnic conflict. Nkrumah's fall discouraged many African leaders in their efforts to achieve Pan-African unity. In fact, unity became next to impossible as many African countries experi­enced the same sort of instability as Ghana. A major part of the problem was ongoing eth­nic conflict as rival groups competed for control of the new states. Such conflicts often led to destruc­tive civil wars. Perhaps the worst occurred in Nigeria in 1967 when tension between the Ibo-speaking people of the east and the Hausa-speakers of the north, who dominated the federation, led the Ibo to proclaim their own independent state of Biafra. The result was a long and bloody civil war, in which as many people died of starvation as from actual fighting. After almost four years of war, and some two million deaths, Biafra capitulated and the territory was incorporated back into the Federation of Nigeria. Over the next 20 years Nigeria continued to suffer further military coups interspersed with brief periods of civilian government in which corruption flourished. Despite promises of a return to democracy, the military remained in power into the 1990s.

       Similar patterns occurred in other African countries. In the Sudan, civil war broke out between the Arabized north and the African south in 1956 and continued into the 1990s. Even Liberia, one of the only African countries not to experience colonial rule nevertheless fell under military dictatorship and eventual civil war. In the mid-1990s, a major civil war broke out in Rwanda between the two major ethnic groups, the Bahutu and Batutsi. In late 1993 Tutsi soldiers and civilians massacred about 150,000 Hutu. Marie Kaboinja, a Hutu survivor of the massacres, told of the violence her family had endured:

"Tutsis charged us with spears

and pangas [machetes]. Then came the soldiers .... We ran away with my family. But many of us were killed, including my grandfather, father, mother, aunt and my three children."

The violence escalated in 1994, but this time it was the Hutu slaugh­tering the Tutsi. By October the Hutu had killed half a million Tutsi, and an additional 2 million Tutsi fled Rwanda. In refugee camps in neigh­boring Zaire, Burundi, and Tanzania, thousands of refugees died of disease, hunger, and thirst in the makeshift camps. Meanwhile, in Rwanda, ongoing civil war continued to take its toll.

Movements toward democracy. While mas­sive violence kept some African nations unstable, other nations moved toward greater democracy. In the 1980s and 1990s, minority white govern­ments in Rhodesia and South Africa finally began to share control with the black majorities, ending many years of white rule.

In 1961 a new constitution in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, a British colony with internal self-government, had officially restricted voting in order to keep whites in power. In the face of continuing African opposition, the Federation dissolved in 1963. The following year the minority white government in Southern Rhodesia proclaimed the independent state of Rhodesia. Britain, however, considered the decla­ration of independence illegal. A new constitution in 1969 once more prevented full black represen­tation in Rhodesia's parliament. Throughout the latter 1970s negotiations between the Rhodesian government and black nationalist groups contin­ued, and in 1979 the first universal suffrage elec­tion brought a black majority to parliament. In 1980 Britain recognized the independence of Rhodesia, which became the state of Zimbabwe.

In the 1980s South Africa also increased its slow pace toward racial equality. In the 1940s, while still a member of the British Commonwealth, South Africa had instituted a policy of apartheid, which called for separate development and residential areas for white Afrikaners, black Bantu, Asians, and people of mixed race.

Under this system, only whites could vote or hold political office. Blacks, who made up nearly 75 percent of the population, were restricted to certain occupations and were paid very little for their work. The South African government cre­ated separate black territories, called homelands, for each ethnic group, then gave all blacks citi­zenship in the homeland of their ethnic group, regardless of whether or not they lived there. Eventually, the government denied South African citizenship to blacks living outside their homeland.

These restrictive laws led to major protests. Antigovernment violence erupted in many black townships, while black nationalist groups, such as the outlawed African National Congress (ANC), fought to end apartheid. Much of the international community responded to South African apartheid by imposing trade sanctions, or restrictions, on South Africa in an attempt to force the nation to abandon apartheid. Finally, under President F. W. de Klerk, South Africa legalized the ANC in 1990 and began negotiations to enact a new constitution that would end apartheid. In 1994 the homelands were abolished, and the first multiracial elections were held. The ANC swept the elections, and the African nationalist Nelson Mandela, leader of the ANC, who had been imprisoned for over three decades by the apartheid regime before being released by President de Klerk, was elected president.

Other countries in Africa also began to move toward democracy in the 1990s. By mid-1993, some 26 countries had established democracies, and the rulers of 15 others had publicly agreed to hold free elections.

Cold War complications. For some African countries, the Cold War between the superpowers also presented special problems in their search for stability. The desperate need of the new countries for financial and technical aid provided opportunities for the superpowers to compete for their allegiance. In Angola, for example, Cold War rivalries resulted in a bloody civil war between the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, supported by 50,000 Cuban troops, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, UNITA, supported by money and arms from the United States and South Africa. The fighting went on even after the end of the Cold War despite efforts to achieve peace. Similar civil wars wracked the strategic Horn of Africa, encompassing Ethiopia and Somalia, as warring sides drew support from both the West and the Soviet bloc. War also broke out between the two countries with the Soviets backing a communist regime in Ethiopia and the West supporting Somalia.

            Eventually, both Ethiopia and Somalia also ended up fighting internal rebels as well as each other, and the entire Horn of Africa gradually descended into chaos and anarchy. Drought, famine, and disease made matters even worse. Somalia in particular became a place of human misery, which led to an abortive and ill-fated intervention by the United States and the United Nations in the early 1990s. Efforts to stop the devastating civil war and the effects of famine, however, proved ultimately useless.

Cultural Revival

Confronted by all these problems, however, in the years following independence many Africans also began to reassert their own sense of identity through a revival of African culture. During the colonial period, most local African culture had been overshadowed among the western-educated elites by western culture. For many, African art seemed crude and primitive. The magnificent oral literature of traditional African societies counted for little to most Europeans—or to those Africans who adopted European views of cultural development.

Literature. At the same time, African culture had also been a means of expressing dissatisfaction with colonial rule. Consequently many African arts had continued to be preserved and celebrated. In east Africa, for example, many Africans continued to study Swahili as they had done for hundreds of years in the mosque schools of the coastal towns. Swahili had been a written language since the 1600s and it remained a vibrant literary language. As the national language of both Kenya and Tanzania after independence (along with English), Swahili continued to develop and maintained a strong tradition of poetry, plays, novels, even scholarly journals.

            In West Africa a new literary tradition emerged from the use of French and English. African authors often protested against the evils of colonial rule with an eloquence that earned them international recognition. Leopold Senghor, for example, the first president of Senegal, had been world renowned for his poetry in French even before independence. Senghor had inspired and been one of the leaders of the Negritude or “blackness” movement, which called on people of African descent everywhere in the world to celebrate their African heritage.

            By the 1950s, a new literature had begun to emerge from African writers aimed at exposing and satirizing the evils of colonialism. In 1958, for example, Chinua Achebe of Nigeria published Things Fall Apart, a classic story about the dislocation caused by European interference in traditional African societies. In 1962, Ousmane Sembene of Senegal published God’s Bits of Wood, a fictionalized account of the struggle of Senegalese union workers against colonial authorities in the late 1940s. Sembene directly attacked the problem of racism in colonial attitudes, as he demonstrated through one of his characters, an African railway worker, in the following passage: 

“From the hall Tiemoko interrupted him.

‘We’re the ones who do the work,’ he roared, ‘the same work the white men do. Why then should they be paid more? Because they are white? And when they are sick, why should they be taken care of while we and our families are left to starve? Because we are black? In what way is a white child better than a black child? In what way is a white worker better than a black worker? They tell us we have the same rights, but it is a lie, nothing but a lie! Only the engines we run tell the truth—and they don’t know the difference between a white man and a black.’”[54] 

In Kenya, Ngugiwa Thiong’o addressed similar themes in novels such as A Grain of Wheat.

            By the 1980s and 90s, however, many of these earlier authors had taken up new themes. After nearly 30 years of independence, many were disillusioned by Africa’s experience of freedom. Thiong’o in Kenya and Achebe in Nigeria, for example, both began to publish ruthless satires of their own independent governments and politicians. As writers faced censorship and harassment by the governments they satirized, many found it easier to live and write outside their countries in practical exile. Similar problems of government interference and censorship laws led many South African writers, both black and white, to live in exile while writing of the evils of apartheid.

Art. While literature was becoming a new means of expressing African identity, so too were more traditional arts such as sculpture and music. In workshops in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and many other countries, African artists began to produce traditional pieces for a growing world market—ceremonial masks, magnificently decorated weapons, traditional African musical instruments, statues carved from wood or cast in bronze, and many other kinds of art. In many places, African artists combined age-old techniques with new materials available from beyond their borders. Their willingness to incorporate new ideas and materials into their work gave the revival of African art forms a new vitality and creativity that appealed to many consumers from other parts of the world.