Time Of Decolonization Research Articles

Failing to ‘do a de Gaulle’? The break in Anglo-Algerian relations (1965-1968) and the reassessment of British policy

ABSTRACT On 18 December 1965, a little over a month after Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, in protest at the Labour Government’s decision not to use force against the white minority government in Salisbury. On one level, the diplomatic break seemed of secondary importance, and by the time relations resumed in April 1968, there had been no significant change in Britain’s or Algeria’s position on Rhodesia. However, as this article argues, the management of Britain’s relations with Algeria between 1965 and 1968 sheds important light on the place and views of Africa in Labour and diplomatic circles, at a time of decolonisation, of a second, unsuccessful, application to the EEC and of the creation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The article focuses on four areas of policy in turn: the place of Rhodesia in Anglo-Algerian relations; the influence of Labour contacts on the management of relations with Algeria; the influence of the crisis on Britain’s relations with the French in Africa and the impact of Franco-British exchanges on the evolution of British views and interests; and finally, the shifting place of Algeria in British diplomacy.

The rise and fall of a Swahili tabloid in socialist Tanzania: Ngurumo newspaper, 1959–76

ABSTRACT While historians of East Africa have examined the region’s rich print cultures in the era of decolonisation, they have viewed newspapers primarily in intellectual terms, rather than as businesses embedded in capital networks. Through the Asian-owned Tanzanian tabloid Ngurumo, this article examines the political economy of newspapers and printing during the time of decolonisation in Tanzania. It argues that Randhir Thaker’s printing firm played an essential yet overlooked role in sustaining nationalist expansion in the late 1950s, before then entering the newspaper market in a period marked by racial tensions. However, the same undercapitalised business model which allowed Ngurumo to become Tanzania’s most popular newspaper then constrained its ability to expand its operations. Ngurumo’s demise in the mid-1970s was not caused by direct government intervention, but by its lack of the infrastructural and financial support which sustained the state- and party-owned press through a time of economic hardship.

Challenges of Transformation in Higher Education Curriculum Development in South Africa during Time of Decolonisation

Globally, the universities are recognized as the centres of higher learning, which are considered as expedient agents of development in the nation building. Curriculums determine the skills and knowledge that will be obtained from the qualification, and these are vital in the progress and transition of one’s life. However, in South Africa higher education requires a synergy to engage the issues of redress. In addressing apartheid legacy, transformation in higher education curriculum remains a mechanism for achieving the needed change. Although, the general purpose of higher education may change overtime, as it remains important for individuals to gain access to education. This study is premised on the belief that, the purpose of higher education is to meet the socio-economic and developmental needs of a country. As a result, this study investigated the challenges of transformation in higher education curriculum development in South Africa. A qualitative approach was employed. The finding was that institutions of higher learning in South Africa are still mired in the past, as a result, the curriculum in place isn't geared towards meeting the residents' economic needs or the country's overall social goals. Furthermore, South Africa government raced towards reforming the higher education curriculum system shortly after 1994, when the new government took control, with the primary goal of repressing everything, notably in education. The researchers recommend that effective transformation for higher education curriculum in South African institutions requires an alignment of skills and knowledge taught in universities qualifications should address the need of the society.

Public Service, Leadership and Innovation in South Africa

In South Africa public service institutions are the implementing arm of government. These include services such as education, electricity, health, housing, transport and water. Government services such as municipalities are also part of this and have always bore the brunt of citizens who protest about the non-delivery of services. Community members demanding service delivery from government departments have been initiating unending strikes which are frequently destructive. Yet, various South African government departments have experienced employees’ non-commitment, corruption and wastage of government resources. The purpose of this article is to utilize literature review to examine the role of public service leaders in transforming public service for effective governance. Arguably, public service institutions with weak leadership and no vision will always falter. The discussion focuses on how conscientious leaders can employ values, ethics and ownership to strengthen the function of these public service institutions. Furthermore, the article examines how in a time of decolonization and transformation leaders could adapt strategies for revamped African public institutions. The conclusions show that it would not be enough for leaders to know the Batho Pele principles and the Constitution of the democratic South Africa of 1996, but it is being able to be a transformational and ethical leader that one can lead public service institutions.

Water Conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa

Freshwater is a strategic natural resource in any region of the world, and this is especially true for the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Sub-Saharan Africa states, where water ecosystems are strategic resources, are oriented towards regional conflict rather than cooperation. However, its fossil fuels—principally, oil and natural gas—have constantly been exposed to scientific scrutiny. To compensate for the scarcity of scientific literature on the issue, the article analyses the role of the unequal distribution of freshwater that has been generating conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa from the time of decolonization. Next, these conflicts are examined. Recommendations on the non-conflictual use of water are provided.

The Dilemma of Knowledge Transfer in Early Independent Indonesia

This article addresses the dilemma of knowledge transfer at the time of decolonization and early independence in Indonesian history. There was an urgently felt need to replace Dutch knowledge as far as possible with knowledge held by Indonesians or imported from foreign countries other than the Netherlands. Concurrently, from the time of Indonesia’s independence there was also a necessity to retain or gain access to practical knowledge required for economic development The article argues that this dilemma was resolved by a mix of policies geared towards different levels of sophistication of the knowledge involved. The article contains a brief theoretical treatment of this dilemma, followed by a global overview of policies implemented. A separate case study on the key banking sector serves to demonstrate the possibilities and constraints in effectuating a transfer of knowledge soon after independence.

Representing partition in the UK: an archive, an exhibition and a classroom

ABSTRACT In 2005 Rev. Michael Roden, the vicar at Church of England church of St Mary’s in Hitchin (a small town about 30 miles north of London) was invited to India to give a series of sermons to Indian Church of England congregations. He was struck during his visit by the scars in Indian society that he thought were the remnants of Partition’s aftermath. His visit set him thinking about the ways in which Partition has shaped British as well as Indian and Pakistani society, and about how little people in the UK know about the calamitous results of British policy at the time of decolonization. In particular, he wondered about why it was the case that Partition had never been taught in schools in the UK, and why children were coming out of school with no understanding of the forces which had created a multi-cultural society in the UK over the course of the twentieth century. Reverend Roden contacted the University of Cambridge’s Centre of South Asian Studies and set in train a series of events that would lead to Partition being included in the curriculum of all Church of England schools in England and Wales. This process was to engage politicians, academics, playwrights, television companies and members of the general public. It would lead to more than teaching in the classroom – a swathe of television documentaries, for example, were broadcast around he 70th anniversary of Partition in 2017, providing information about a part of the shared UK/South Asian past which has been largely neglected in Britain. Alongside this process, the Centre of South Asian Studies also prepared an exhibition of materials from its own archive collections which ran from August 2017 and drew in thousands of visitors. This paper will examine the ways in which the process of presenting Partition to the people of the UK was fashioned and followed, and the nature of the output which resulted from it, looking at the ways in which academe can interact with public opinion and public knowledge in meaningful and positive ways.

The Colonial Question before Colonization: Philosophical and Economic Reflections on the July Monarchy

The article examines the arguments of the discussion on colonization during the July monarchy. France had two colonial periods: one that ended around 1790 and one that began around 1860. The first concerned the American continent (West Indies, Canada, Louisiana) and India (Indian trading posts), the second - the African and Asian continents. Between these two periods, the debate on colonization was intense between its supporters and opponents. The French liberal school, led by men like Guizot, Tocqueville, or Passy, opposed colonization as well as slavery. Their arguments against this opposition are economic and humanitarian. Economic, because they consider colonization as something costly and useless for the country that carries it out, as it prevents the country from making the investments necessary for its development. Humanitarian, because they are shocked by the existence of slavery and the slave trade, which leads them to take political action to ensure that the trade is prohibited in areas held by Europeans. At the time of colonization, this movement was extended to the whole of Africa, which put an end to the slavery practised there. The arguments used during this period were taken up again from 1950 onwards at the time of decolonization.

Colonialism, Imperialism, and the League of Nations

The history of colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonial development is a global cross-cutting trend in world history, spanning several centuries. The research interest in the legacy of the League of Nations in the field of internationalization of mandate territories has been intensifing in recent years. In the last third of the 21st century, the term "imperialism" began to be applied to the active European colonization and division of the world. The First World War brought significant changes to the processes of colonialism and imperialism. The League of Nations, the first international organization, was shaped. The mandate system was developed in the League of Nations as a compromise option for transferring the former German colonies and possessions of the Ottoman Empire. However, the mandate system of the League of Nations was more than a cover for the colonial division of territories. The principle of international trusteeship and the internationalization of management has appeared in the mandate system. Open imperialism became a thing of the past. In the interwar period, the mandate system marked the beginning of the crisis of colonial empires. The Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) the League of Nations created a new network of political influence for change in the mandate territories. The mother countries was subject to these rules under the threat of being accused of non-compliance with international law and the terms of their respective mandates. The completely new practice of petitioning Geneva provided some political opportunities for residents and various groups in mandate territories to change the practices of mandate governments. The internationalization of economic and cultural life was also fruitful. Education and health services were developed in the mandate territories due to the practice of discussing these issues in the Permanent Mandates Commission . Despite the fact that at the time of decolonization, the result of the development of mandate territories was not very different from that of colonial countries, the League of Nations managed to change a lot in the world over a short period of time.

Digitalization and Decolonizing Education: A Qualitative Study of University of South Africa (UNISA) Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic that shook the world in 2020 forced all educational institutions to search for new ways of teaching and learning. Furthermore, education institutions such as the University of South Africa (UNISA), like all other universities, found themselves with a huge task of promoting digitalization. As a traditional distance education institution, UNISA had to refine digitalization in a time of decolonization in the Global South. This case study examined the role of educational managers in sustaining effective digitalization. Eight UNISA managers were selected and interviewed to understand how they perceived the role of digital leaders. Furthermore, the study sought to understand why it is critical that managers should be in the forefront of digitalization. The study found that at present in Africa it is critical for digitalization to be combined with decolonization. Additionally, when digitalization and decolonization are implemented simultaneously, they become vehicles for social justice and democracy. This then means that education can be a tool for liberation and achievement where the digital divide is minimized. When implemented well, education institutions become institutions with access for success. The conclusions show that a set strategy based on a new vision for a university will harness digital leadership. The participants also mentioned strategic documents at the university; on the one hand are the Five Pillars of Change whilst on the other are the Eight Dimensions of Transformation. Furthermore, the participants claimed that their institution was on the road to success whilst building UNISA as an institution “Towards the African University that builds futures.”

“A glorious future” for Africa: development, higher education and the making of African elites in the United States (1961–1971)

ABSTRACT At the time of African independence, the concept of higher education for development took hold in the programmes of the new African governments and in the aid projects of the former colonial powers, the United States, the USSR, and international organisations. All agreed on the need to place higher education at the service of Africa’s development and, to that end, to train the elites capable of carrying out the continent’s modernisation. It was for this purpose that the African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU) was created, which enabled nearly 1,600 Africans to study in the United States between 1961 and 1971. The objective of this article is to show, through the example of ASPAU, that beyond the almost unanimous support for the developmentalist project at the time of decolonisation, its conceptualisation and implementation have actually been shaped by differing expectations and relationships of domination. Governments, university officials, philanthropic foundations, and African students were all acting according to particular agendas that they tried to impose through different strategies. The training of African elites thus proved to be a much more tortuous process than was theoretically expected, fashioned as much by ideological concepts as by political interests, personal strategies and transnational flows of people and knowledge. In this sense, the history of ASPAU also highlights the deeply experimental dimension of decolonisation.

Race, Culture and Liberation: African Anticolonial Thought and Practice in the Time of Decolonisation

This article explores the contribution of Amílcar Cabral and his fellow militants to debates over culture, race and liberation which took place among Africans and beyond during the mid-twentieth century. By the late 1950s African struggles for independence had reached a point of urgency. Alongside complex negotiations over political settlement and many wars of liberation across the continent, equally complex conversations took place about race, culture and African-ness, and the form and futures of national liberation. In their thought and practice the leading figures of the liberation movements fighting against Portuguese colonial rule made a significant contribution to these debates. The key contribution of this article is to situate the thought of Cabral in the collaborative relations of the liberation movements and in broader debates. This reveals how understandings of culture and the consciousness of African-ness come to be articulated in very different ways, ultimately transcending the framing of race and arriving at a more radical understanding of culture. The thought of Cabral and his colleagues is situated within the continental and global context with reference to three key moments and sites of debate in Havana and Dakar in 1966 and Algiers in 1969.

Life and Times of HRH by Herman Ronald Hochstadt

Reviewed by: Life and Times of HRH by Herman Ronald Hochstadt Kevin Blackburn Life and Times of HRH By Herman Ronald Hochstadt, Singapore: NUS Press, 2020, xvii + 192 pp, ISBN 978-981-3251-19-9. In April 1971, Lee Kuan Yew famously quipped that Singapore’s progress depended on the efforts of a talented elite governing Singapore whose number was so small that they could all fit into a jumbo jet—300 people. If all these people were on the same plane and it crashed, he joked, Singapore would fall apart. Lee never gave an indication of who would be on his doomed metaphorical jet, but it is likely that Herman Hochstadt, one of Lee’s trusted trouble shooters in the civil service, would have had a ticket. He was Lee Kuan Yew’s Press Secretary from 1962 to 1965 and thereafter held key positions at a string of Ministries, such as Foreign Affairs, Defence, Education, Communications, Finance, and Law. His amusing and frank accounts of how he worked with Lee Kuan Yew during his long career in the Singapore civil service make his autobiography valuable to readers interested in knowing more about Lee’s relationship with his civil service. Hochstadt has written a very Eurasian autobiography of his life, with a self-deprecating style of humour. The first few chapters give insights into Eurasian life during the colonial era and how complex identities could be. Among them is the memorable story of his father, Henry Hochstadt, waving his birth certificate in front of the Japanese Occupation administrator Mamoru Shinozaki to prove his racial identity. At the time of decolonization, the ‘Malayanization’ of the civil service saw the departure of many of the British colonial administrators who were being replaced with fresh local graduates from the University of Malaya, such as Hochstadt. He entered the civil service in 1959, around the same time as other graduates who would also go on to be crucial key figures in the Singapore civil service—Sarjit Singh and Ngiam Tong Dow. Hochstadt describes how initially he picked up the work of departing colonial civil servant Tony Colton, who gave him much assistance, and remained his good friend after Colton took up a managerial position at the Straits Times. Hochstadt recalls during his first decade of his days in the civil service not just the successes, but quite a number of events that did not go according to plan or were near mistakes. The autobiography gives a thorough account of Hochstadt’s early career in the civil service, but as he moves into the period when he held high office later in his career, readers hoping for a detailed account of policy making and implementation will be disappointed. Like many civil servants, he invokes the Official Secrets Act, which they all sign, as a reason not to give such thorough accounts. Instead, he offers a number of anecdotes, which are amusing and interesting. They do give insights into decision-making. [End Page 244] From reading Hochstadt’s autobiography, the reader gets a sense of how crucial the well-educated University of Malaya graduates were to maintaining and increasing the civil service’s efficiency and expertise, working with the political leaders to implement their policies in an era of early nation-building. Yet, the small Singapore civil service of the 1960s would be unrecognisable to the staff of its present-day counterpart with its 85,000 civil servants working in the large concrete and glass air-conditioned towers today. Kevin Blackburn Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Copyright © 2020 Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Rural livelihoods and agricultural commercialization in colonial Uganda: conjunctures of external influences and local realities

Rural livelihoods and agricultural commercialization in colonial Uganda: conjunctures of external influences and local realities

Social Ecological Factors of Sexual Subjectivity and Contraceptive Use and Access Among Young Women in the Northwest Territories, Canada

Adolescent women in the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada, experience many sexual health challenges that are linked to a history of colonization and intergenerational effects of trauma. This study was informed by social ecological theory and explored how young women in the NWT develop sexual subjectivity within the context of contraception use and access during this time of decolonization. A total of 41 participants (aged 13 to 17 years) attended the Fostering Open eXpression among Youth (FOXY) body-mapping intervention in six NWT communities and then completed semistructured interviews. Framework analysis identified barriers to the development of sexual subjectivity that included a culture of stigma and shame surrounding sexuality; pervasive alcohol use in communities; predatory behaviors by older men; poor quality sexual health education offered in schools; and issues with accessing health services. In addition, analysis identified the following facilitators: comprehensive sexual health education; widespread access to free condoms; and positive health support networks with female relatives, peers, and some teachers. Our findings suggest the need for multiple intervention strategies within a complex social ecological framework, including arts-based interventions that focus on developing self-esteem and self-efficacy of youth, combined with interpersonal interventions that strengthen communication skills among supportive adults, and community-level campaigns that target stigma reduction and shift cultural norms.

‘An Uphill Job Demanding Limitless Patience’.The Establishment of Trade Unions and the Conflicts of Development in Sudan, 1946-1952

This chapter focuses on conflicts of development from the point of view of the entanglement between development, labour legislation, and labour conflicts during the time of decolonisation. It describes the origins of the trade union movement in Sudan, created after the Second World War, and covers the history of that movement up until 1952, the year in which its curve of radicalisation was stopped and it turned towards more conciliatory labour relations. Dwelling on internal sources emanating from the colonial government and the various labour attachés sent to Khartoum, the chapter aims to shed light on the reciprocal influences and feedback effect between the three main actors of these conflicts: the British government, whose agenda set colonial labour welfare as a top priority; a reluctant Sudanese government accustomed to decades of laissez-faire in matters of labour; and the workers, who quite suddenly discovered that they had the power to compel the government to listen to their demands.

Measuring rural welfare in colonial Africa: did Uganda's smallholders thrive?

Recent scholarship on historical welfare development in Sub‐Saharan Africa has uncovered long‐term trends in standards of living. How the majority of rural dwellers fared, however, remains largely elusive. This study develops a new approach to reconstruct rural living standards in a historical context. It builds upon a well‐established real wage literature, but moves beyond it to capture rural realities, employing sub‐national rural survey, census, and price data. The approach is applied to a case study of colonial and early post‐colonial Uganda (1915–70). The case study yields a number of findings. While the expanding smallholder‐based cash crop sector established itself as the backbone of Uganda's colonial economy, farm characteristics remained largely stagnant after the initial adoption of cash crops. Smallholders maintained living standards well above subsistence level, and while the profitability of cash crops was low, their cultivation provided a reliable source of cash income. Around the time of decolonization, unskilled wages rose rapidly while farm incomes lagged behind. As a result, an urban–rural income reversal took place. The study also reveals considerable differences within Uganda. Smallholders in Uganda's banana regions required fewer labour inputs to maintain a farm income than their grain‐farming counterparts, creating opportunities for additional income generation and livelihood diversification.

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle”: Xenophobia in the time of decolonisation, eRhini, 2015

abstractRhini (Grahamstown) in 2015 experienced xenophobic attacks at the very moment as the #RUShutdown student protests at the university currently known as Rhodes University (UCKAR). The students and supporters often referred to the popular Audre Lorde saying that “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle”. In so doing, the students affirmed intersectionality as well as the full participation of marginalised bodies in the process of decolonising institutional acts and practices of oppression in higher learning. In addition, the students in their efforts to decolonise institutions of higher learning (by, for instance, taking down symbols of exploitation and privilege) sought to connect what was happening at university campuses to larger social challenges, particularly around gender-based violence, inequality and xenophobia.In this briefing, albeit cognizant of the interconnectedness of student movements across the country, I focus primarily on the efforts of the Black Students Movement (BSM) at UCKAR. I narrate two key moments at UCKAR in 2015, these being: the #RhodesSoWhite moment exposing institutionalised racism at Rhodes, as well as #RUShutdown challenging fee increments and initial fee payments that exclude poor and low-income students. I narrate these moments through the microblogging site, Twitter. I tie these moments at UCKAR to the larger context eRhini which at this very same time was grappling with xenophobic attacks that displaced over 500 people. I look at what it means to have xenophobic incidences in a place where students are calling for the embracing of differences across class, geographical location, and social status through decolonisation. I argue that the student movements, as well as the xenophobic attacks, bring into question issues about otherness, disadvantage and inequality pervasive in socio-historical relations. Moreover, through the lens of gender (specifically #RapeAtAzania and more recently the #RUReferenceList), I contend that some of the intra-movement challenges the students have grappled with (including homophobia and sexual assault) show – despite the gains of the students – the limitations of the work of decolonisation occurring primarily in the higher education sector, and not reflected in wider South African societies.

Reuters and the South African press at the end of Empire

At the end of the Second World War, Reuters’ status as a leading independent world news agency was under threat. While seeking to be a ‘world agency’, Reuters’ ownership was vested entirely in the British press. Decolonisation threatened traditional sources of revenue. American agencies were rapidly extending their global reach. In response, Reuters sought to re-constitute itself as a ‘British Commonwealth’ agency by offering a stake in the company to the national press organisations of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and India. In the event, the plan largely failed. South Africa and Canada declined to join; India maintained its shareholding for just four years. Only the press associations of Australia and New Zealand remained enthusiastic supporters. This article examines the failed 1947 negotiations between Reuters and the South African Press Association (SAPA), which were aimed at securing a partnership between the two organisations. It critiques Reuters’ idea of a ‘commonwealth of interest’ in matters of international news, conceived at a time of decolonisation and emerging nationalisms. It examines SAPA's stance towards Reuters in the light of South Africa's political situation, including the growing influence of the Afrikaans press.

The Origins of Patronage Politics: State Building, Centrifugalism, and Decolonization

This article develops a two-part theory that accounts for both the origins and the persistence of patronage politics. First, greater centrifugal and disintegrative pressures at key moments in the state-building process give local elites more opportunity to institutionalize patronage at the subnational level. Second, decentralized patronage systems are more resistant to reform than centralized ones. Case studies of India and Ceylon illustrate how variation in centrifugal pressures allowed subnational elites to capture the state in the former but not the latter. Further data from the British Empire shows that greater centrifugal pressures faced by British colonies at the time of decolonization are correlated with the persistence of higher levels of patronage over time.