The Second World War took on a more popular character, with the German attack on the Soviet Union and the growth of the Resistance among the people of Europe subdued by Nazism, and when the Americans deliberately insisted, against British wishes, on the universal application of the principles of the Atlantic Charter. Yet Britain and France, in spite of American pressure, managed to evade the application of the principle of self determination in their African colonies, by granting inadequate and piecemeal concessions to their African subjects concessions which served only to disillusion the nationalists and goad them to more militant activity, especially in the Gold Coast, Kenya, the Ivory Coast and Algeria.

The accession to power of the Labour Party in Britain in 1945, with a large majority, raised nationalist hopes that were soon dashed by the new government's adoption of a gradualist approach to Africa. The Labour government brought about far-reaching plans to transform the British Empire into a Commonwealth. But if its policy towards the Indian sub-continent was revolutionary India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma were all granted independence within a few years of the end of the war its African policy was evolutionary.

Governor Burns' new constitution in the Gold Coast in 1946 was an example of the piecemeal concession to nationalise opinion that failed to satisfy the revolutionary demands stimulated by the war. There was now an African-elected majority in the Legislative Council, and the Gold Coast was the first colony in Africa to be granted such a majority. Yet nationalists were intensely disappointed that the Council's powers were limited to advisory functions, and that of the 18 elected members, 13 were chiefs elected by their peers and only 5 were members elected by the people. The response to the new constitution was an upsurge of radical nationalist activity.

Danquah formed the United Gold Coast Convention in 1947 to press for greater political change". Nkrumah became the party's secretary. The UGCC launched its active career by supporting the spontaneous riots of 1948 against 'conditional sales' and price fixing by big European companies. European firms sold you the goods you wanted on condition you bought some of their unsaleable goods as well. For example, if you wanted to buy only cotton cloth you might be forced to buy enamel plates too. The riots led to 29 deaths and two million pounds' worth of damage, the placing of Danquah and Nkrumah under preventive detention for a time, and the setting up of the Coussey Committee in 1949 to prepare another constitution.

The Coussey Constitution was clearly a landmark on the path to independence. It provided for many more elected members in the Legislative Council, and for 8 out of the 11 cabinet ministers to be Africans. At the same time 1949 Nkrumah broke away from Danquah's UGCC to set up the more radical Convention People's Party. The new CPP demanded immediate independence and had more mass support than the UGCC.

In Nigeria there was similar nationalist dissatisfaction at the new 1946 constitution of Governor Richards. It was similar to Burns' in that the great majority members were either nominated by the colonial government, or elected by the chiefs. Only four out of 45 members were to be elected by the mass of the people.

Kenya, dominated by white settlers, saw a very slow advance of African political rights in the postwar period. In 1944 Eliud Mathu was nominated as the first African on the Legislative Council. In 1946 there were two Africans on the Council; there were four in 1948, and five in 1951. Five was a derisory number: none of these five was elected by popular vote, and true nationalists were not nominated. The response to this slow rate of political advance was the development of two types of nationalist militancy in the late 40s and early 50s.

First there was the rise of the Kenya African Union (KAU) under Kenyatta from 1946, committed to radical but peaceful political and economic change, not only in Kikuyuland but in the country at large.

Secondly there arose the ex-servicemen's under ground violent organization the Forty Group, out of which grew the Land Freedom Army, which in 1952 took to the forests of Kenya's Central Province to battle for the return of land lost to the white settlers. The Mau- Mau, as the Land Freedom Army came to be called, rejected the KAU's largely Gandhian approach of non-violent passive resistance, in favour of armed resistance.

France, like Britain, followed an unsuccessful end of war policy of trying to assuage deeply aroused nationalist feeling by granting minor political concessions. And as in the case of British Africa, the outcome was increasing militancy on the part of Africans. The Brazzaville Conference of 1944 has often been portrayed as a great seep forward in the political development of French Africa. But in reality the conference demonstrated a complete failure on the part of the French to understand African nationalise demands.

The conference was held because Free French politicians and colonial officials were alarmed at American anti-colonial influence in French Africa, especially in the Maghrib where American troops had fought and where Roosevelt had convened the Sultan of Morocco to nationalism. Further, economic dislocation and the harsh treatment of Africans in the war effort intensified African demands for change which the French could not completely ignore.

The very composition of the conference indicates its essentially conservative character. No Africans took part. The only black man present was Felix Eboue, the black evolue governor-general of French Equatorial Africa. Eboue was born in French Guyana, and had become the symbol of the French policy of assimilation. Like the other members of the conference mainly white governors and governors-general of French Africa and Madagascar Eboue wanted a reformed colonialism, not a free Africa. Eboue was a true black Frenchman.

De Gaulle, the leader of the Free French, made the opening speech at the conference. On the surface it was revolutionary. He said it was France's duty to raise the Africans 'to the level where they will be capable of participating, within their own country, in the management of their own affairs'. Yet the key sentence in his speech was; 'As always, war speeds up evolution. The word 'evolution' was used instead of 'revolution'. De Gaulle and his colonial governors rejected any idea of African self-government. The Recommendations of the; conference made this abundantly clear:

The aims of the work of colonization achieved by France in the colonies make it impossible to entertain any ideas of autonomy, any possibility of evolution outside the French empire: an ultimate self- governing Constitution for the colonies, even at a distant date, is to be rejected.

 

GENERAL CHARLES DE GAULLE, addresses the Brazzaville conference in 1944

The conference proposed a number of minor changes in colonial policy, notably the establishment of freedom of labour within a period of five years. However, one year's labour service was made obligatory for all young men not enlisted in the army!

The Brazzaville Conference, then, maintained the sanctity of the principle of colonial sovereignty. Perhaps this was its main purpose.

The new French Constitution of 1946 was apparently more radical in its provisions for Africa than the Brazzaville. Conference. There was not only provision for greater African representation in the French parliament, but also territorial and regional assemblies in Africa, with considerable local budgetary powers, were set up. Forced labour was suppressed. The colonial penal code was made more humane and the indigenat (native status) was abolished. Civil liberties were extended from France to the overseas territories, thus allowing the creation of African political parties. The creation of numerous assemblies, with frequent elections, led to electoral fever in the colonies, from which the new African political parties could benefit: they gained experience and spread their nationalist ideas to the masses.

In many ways, however, the 1946 constitution simply maintained French colonialism. The French parliament remained legislatively supreme over the African assemblies. Territorial governors and commandants of the cercles, or smaller administrative units, retained strong administrative and executive powers. The African franchise was severely limited. The electorate was only just over one million in a population of 16 million. There was a two-tier electoral system based on white racialism. Except in Senegal, electors were divided into two categories, French citizens and non-citizens. French citizens consisted of white Frenchmen (the majority) and a few evolues, black Africans who were considered to have evolved into Frenchmen. The non-citizens consisted of all those Africans who had not yet evolved into Frenchmen. These two categories voted in separate 'colleges' to elect their own representatives to the territorial assemblies. The second college of non-citizens always had a majority. But the first college of whites and evolues were given much higher representation than their number warranted. As for elections to the French parliament, French West Africa was allowed only 13 seats out of 622 in the Assembly in Paris. And in the voting for deputies for these 13 seats, only French citizens mostly whites participated. The French colonial concept of 'Eurafrica' was maintained.

As for the opening given by the 1946 Constitution to the development of African political parties, this was made a mockery of by the ruthless suppression of the one true nationalist party of the post-war period in French Africa: the RDA.

The Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA)

In 1946 the Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) was founded at Bamako in Mali, under the leadership of Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast. It was a federation of parties over French West and Equatorial Africa. It was allied with the French Communist Party, and adopted a strong anti-colonial stance though it did not demand outright political independence for African territories. Its radicalism was limited to two objectives:

First, trying to achieve the unity of French African territories against the colonial power, in order to force France to carry out more radical reforms within the colonial system; and secondly, trying to achieve the autonomy of African political parties from French socialist political parties while allying with the communists.

In the later 1940s the RDA won 700 000 members, and was the main party of Ivory Coast, Mali. Guinea, Volta, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Congo. Yet by 1951 it had been crushed by the French government, which resorted to mass arrests, shooting of demonstrators and banning of pro-RDA newspapers. The RDA's attempts to organize workers' strikes and boycotts of French firms were defeated by the government's free use of the colonial army against the workers.

In the early 1950s the RDA, hard pressed to survive, changed its policy. Houphouet Boigny broke with the communists and dropped the more radical demands of his party. He agreed on 'constructive collaboration' with France in return for a promise by the colonial administration to co-operate with the RDA. Once again, the principle of Eurafrica had triumphed.

In Algeria, after the war, the northern territories continued to be considered as part of metropolitan France, not as an Overseas Territory entitled to a separate constitution. However, the 1947 Statute for Algeria bore some resemblance to the constitutions established in Overseas Territories.

First, the number of members from Algeria in the French Union Assembly was raised from 13 to 18, and half of this number were to be Muslims.

Secondly, an Algerian Assembly was set up, with two colleges; an all-Muslim one and a mixed Muslim-European college. Collaborationist candidates were elected under this system. The Algerian nationalists had little alternative but to start armed revolution, and the Algerian War of Independence began in 1954.