African Nationalism in East and Central Africa

Abstract

EVERY country is in a sense multi-racial, for there is hardly any country in the world which is peopled entirely by one racial stock alone. Where, however, peoples of different racial origins and cultural backgrounds live together peacefully and regard themselves politically as one people, where there is a high degree of national consensus or agreement about the basic socio-economic structure and the distribution of political power, where the different racial elements mix more or less freely and are not subject to crippling suspicions and fears of each other, there the description multi-racial has only an ethnographical and sociological but not a political meaning. Such, I would take it, is Britain's case, or America's. But where the various racial communities tend to regard themselves as autonomous entities and to vie for political ascendance, there the term multi-racial is replete and pregnant with political meaning, underlining unresolved dilemmas. In East and Central Africa, one can cite Kenya, Tanganyika, the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, the Portuguese Territories of Mo,ambique and Angola, and, in a way, the ex-Belgian Congo as multi-racial in this sense. Uganda falls into a slightly different category, for there the real issue is not so much the multi-racial question as the powerful position of the Kingdom of Buganda versus the rest of the Protectorate. The distinguishing characteristic of the multi-racial societies in East and Central Africa is the presence of a settled European minority and, in some cases, Asian minorities, amidst an overwhelming African majority, which itself is more often than not multi-tribal and therefore atomized in its own ranks. Thus in Kenya there are 66,ooo Europeans and 2I0,000 Asians compared with an African population of 6-5 million; in Tanganyika, 43,ooo Europeans, Ioo,ooo Asians, and a total African population of 8-5 million; in Nyasaland, 8,ooo Europeans, I2,ooo Asians and Coloureds, and 3 million Africans; in Northern Rhodesia, 75,000 Europeans, 9,ooo Asians and Coloureds, and 2.4 million Africans; in Southern Rhodesia, 2Io,ooo Europeans, I5,000 Asians and Coloureds, and 2-7 million Africans; in Mo,ambique, 50,000 Europeans and 6 million Africans; in Angola, 8o,ooo Europeans and 5 million Africans; and in the Belgian Congo, ioo,ooo Europeans and I3 million Africans.'