The ‘Partnership’ Hoax: How the British Government Deprived Central Africans of their Rights

Abstract

British governments connived with Rhodesian settlers to transform their ‘protected’ Central African wards into junior ‘partners’ of whites in an attempt to solve a series of Africa-wide problems that threatened sustainable colonial rule. Multiracial ‘partnership’ was a ruse to divert African self-rule initiatives and to concoct a compromise that would preserve white dominance. The genesis of the federation movement in central Africa is well-known, but not the precise invention of ‘partnership’. Without ‘partnership’ there would have been no Federation and, conceivably, different triumphs of African nationalism. This article examines the intellectual odyssey that resulted in the articulation of the idea of multiracial ‘partnership’; the role of the Colonial Office, governors, particular churchmen and the Capricorn Africa Society in promoting ‘partnership’; how cynicism and sleight of hand came to dominate the official imperial debate over African rights; the profound rejection of these initiatives by Africans; the immediate and lasting consequences in Central Africa of ‘partnership’; and what the failed foisting of ‘partnership’ upon wards of the Crown tells us about the underlying ethics of colonialism.