Paper short abstract:

The Pan-African Freedom Movement of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa built a network of solidarity among anti-colonial elites, but excluded those pursuing goals at odds with a strong centralized state. This transnational network ultimately reinforced the nation-state model of decolonisation.

Paper long abstract:

The Pan-African Freedom Movement of Eastern, Central (and from 1962 Southern) Africa (PAFMEC(S)A) presents an engaging case for scholars writing histories of decolonisation 'beyond the nation-state'. From 1958 until 1963 PAFMEC(S)A conferences and summits provided a space for the construction of transnational regional networks, a shared ideology, and a mutually reinforcing international legitimacy among anti-colonial activists pushing for rapid independence. Yet alongside expressions of solidarity and connection, PAFMEC(S)A also played an important role in excluding rival actors pursuing political agendas at odds with the dominant vision of PAFMEC(S)A's leading members, who overwhelmingly subscribed to a centralised vision of the nation-state after independence. Those who advocated more devolved political arrangements, which would grant a significant degree of autonomy to internal regions or 'traditional' kingdoms, and dilute the authority of central governments, were repeatedly excluded and denounced at PAFMEC(S)A gatherings. PAFMEC(S)A thus served as a means to prevent political elites who pursued alternative visions of independence from building their own transnational, regional solidarities. This cross-border political network was thus tightly regulated and exclusionary, even as it spoke the language of freedom and unity. Moreover, the vision of East African federation which was supported by PAFMEC(S)A from 1960 was one entirely consistent with the vision of strong centralised statehood, with its envisaged leadership to be drawn from the elite nationalist network articulated in PAFMECA conferences. In East Africa, PAFMEC(S)A's cross-border network ultimately served to buttress rather than transcend the nation-state model.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the role of the OAU's African Liberation Committee in managing, policing, and legitimating the several liberation movements that resided in Tanzania, to show how formal and informal networking produced cultural solidarities and political conflicts.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the role of the OAU's African Liberation Committee in managing, policing, and legitimating the several liberation movements that resided in and near Tanzania during the 1960s. Exiled liberation movements, made up of both formal and informal actors ranging from established leaders to raw recruits, became bound together by radical new networking forces to produce a new political culture of shared discourse and practice, yet also a culture that could be re-purposed as tools of conflict and intrigue. Surveying disputes that arose among liberation movements from South Africa (ANC & PAC), Mozambique (FRELIMO, MANU, UNAMI and COREMO), and Zimbabwe (ZANU and ZAPU), this paper shows how the OAU's African Liberation Committee, through its financial and political levers of influence, attempted to resolve conflict between large movements, usually ineffectively; but also acted quite effectively to help marginalize or vanquish smaller movements and factions that had fallen out with larger movements. Utilizing hitherto unused source material from the OAU's African Liberation Committee archive, this paper argues that the most significant aspect of the Liberation Committee was its 'gatekeeping' role that often exacerbated internal conflicts within liberation movements - conflicts which proved far more destabilizing in the long run than did inter-party rivalries.

Paper short abstract:

This paper uses an intellectual history of negritude's dissemination into Nigeria and America from 1947-66 to problematize the use of "network" in black internationalist scholarship and also center Africa within this literature.

Paper long abstract:

Among scholars of black internationalism, "network" has become a standard conceptual device used to trace the patterns of political, social, and cultural organization between the African continent and its diaspora. In fact, black internationalism itself is often thought of to be a history by default of such networks. In the case of an intellectual history of negritude's circulation at midcentury in the Anglophone African and diasporic world, specifically Nigeria and the US, "network" allows us to capture the history of affiliated cultural societies and transnational print culture between Dakar, Lagos, Ibadan, and New York. Yet the way in which "network" is often employed in this historiography generates as many difficulties as it resolves.

Primary among them is the tendency to collapse the meaning of "network" into a single unified front of political organizing. The affiliative links between Senegalese, Nigerian, and African American intellectuals who participated in negritude's dissemination from 1947-66 certainly formed a network of transnational cultural-political organizations coded around "Negro-Africanness." Yet their disputes over the notion of racial membership resist collapsing into a single vision. By using network to capture these organizational links, but reconstituting the ongoing debates over blackness as a meaningful form of transnational solidarity during decolonization, a more complex and problematized usage of network within forms of anti-colonial struggle becomes possible. Furthermore, focusing upon African-anchored iterations of black internationalism can also correct its typical Americanist emphasis, allowing us to think of the ways in which black internationalist practice was also crucial to African decolonization.

Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how Swaziland's local struggle for independence must be included in a wider context of continental and global connections which brought a crucial influence on Swati visions of Pan-Africanism and nationalism.

Paper long abstract:

The history of radical nationalism in Swaziland took a decisive turn when, in 1960, J.J. Nquku transformed the existing Swaziland Progressive Association into a Party (SPP). Nquku and Dr. Ambrose Zwane took advantage of the networks they had created internationally to promote the struggle for the Independence of Swaziland. These were later streghten by Zwane when he formed his own party in 1963: the Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC). Both the SPP and NNLC developed strong relationships with other African countries and particularly with Ghana, where they sent members for administrative and ideological training. Nkrumah also sponsored their trips abroad, influenced their political agenda and the constitutional talks with London. Through the international channels offered by Ghana and other African countries, radical Swati nationalists could put forward their progressive idea for post-colonial Swaziland and openly attack the Swati monarchy, perceived as conservative and allied with colonialism and apartheid. As a result, SPP and NNLC allowed Swati activists to widen their knowledge of Africa and the rest of the world. They also teamed up with other progressive movements in South Africa, Lesotho and Botswana, with a similar radical vision of Pan-Africanism and nationalism. This paper shows how the independence struggle in Swaziland developed along the lines of networks built by the SPP and NNLC around transnational hubs such as Accra. Swaziland's local struggle for independence must therefore be included in a wider context of continental and global connections which brought a crucial influence on Swati visions of Pan-Africanism and nationalism.

Paper short abstract:

This study explores networked approach in the process of mobilisation against the British colonial administration in Nigeria by examining connections and ruptures in the patterns of relationships that existed among the labour unions, newspaper press (the press) and the nationalists.

Paper long abstract:

Existing narratives on anticolonial movements in Africa have blurred various individual and institutional agitations into nationalist struggles. Such narratives have hardly recognised the importance of networks in the process of anticolonial struggles in Africa. This study explores networked approach in the process of mobilisation against the British colonial administration in Nigeria by examining connections and ruptures in the patterns of relationships that existed among the labour unions, newspaper press (the press) and the nationalists. The study argues that, in spite of the interconnection of labour agitations with nationalist movements during the colonial period, the former was both characteristically independent and interlinked with the latter. Similarly, not all human rights related activities by the press were anticolonial movements. Second, the nationalists, through networking process, benefited from labour agitations and press activism by expanding and moulding local protests as anticolonial movements. Third, that labour agitation only shifted from being the economic survival of workers alone to the economic liberation of the country when the nationalists exploited labour crises of the period for political independence. The proposed period, 1945-1965, represents the height of press activism, labour agitations and nationalist struggles for independence. The study uses empirical data from archival documents particularly colonial records, reports, gazettes, ordinances and bulletins obtained from the British National Archives and National Archives Ibadan. Other relevant sources of data include newspaper reports and editorials. The West African Pilot is selected for analysis for its national outlook and consistent agitation for human rights. These are subjected to critical historical analyses.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the rise of nationalism in the Belgian Congo, using the "Lulua Brothers" Association, created in 1952,as a case study.

Paper long abstract:

In 1952, as the Belgian colonial state was trying to find effective strategies to deal with the rise of Congolese nationalism and the pressure from the United Nations to decolonize, an outbreak of extreme violence erupted in Luluabourg between the "Luba," who were seen as "open to civilization" and the "Lulua," who had opposed colonial conquest and rule. Therefore, they were marginalized by the colonial administration. The conflict resulted in the division the Kasai Province into two provinces, Eastern Kasai for the "Luba" and Western Kasai for the "Lulua."

The "incidents of Luluabourg" or the "Baluba-Lulua Conflict," as these events were referred to in the press reports, demonstrated the inadequacies of the Belgian ethnic policies. However, most studies have neglected the role played by this association in the rise of nationalism in the Belgian Congo. This paper examines the colonial administrative policies and missionary practices that led to the emergence of a political identity, called "Lulua." It explores the ways in which Lulua leaders working in different provinces created a network, organized, and petitioned the colonial authorities as well as their achievements.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the debate among leaders about the existence of a federated or centralized state in the Belgian Congo during the 1950s. It places the arguments into the context of the Cold War, concepts of sovereignty in newly independent African nations and the economic interests of the Congo.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the transformation of concepts of nation, state, and sovereignty and their application and discussion in the wider context of the Belgian Congo and its relationship with the Eastern Provinces. The conventional narrative of political debates about of the Belgian Congo begins in the mid 1950s and center around Leopoldville, with a sudden explosion of political life immediately following independence. This narrative misses the longer roots of political activity and the diversity of political thinking in the Congo, especially with regards to Katanga and the Kivu provinces. Diverse opinions arose regarding the future shape that the Congo should take - the strongest of these were between a federal and a strong central government, with hints at separatism in the regional enclaves on the borders. The Leopold-centric histories of Congolese decolonization do a disservice to the reality and gravity of the political conversations taking place in that time. In particular, the paper will examine the the longer history of local political formations that sought to develop ethnic patriotisms across the country rather than pan-Congolese politics, and the deep history of political thinking relating to the question of whether a future Congo should be a loose-knit federation or a centralized state. This will all be examined in the forefront of the Global Cold War and the burgeoning fights for economic control over mineral deposits with the possibility of balkanizing the Congo.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the complicated legacy of the Malawi Congress Party's interventions in Southern Rhodesian nationalism. It suggests that the Party's fraught relationship with Rhodesian nationalists was shaped by its trailblazing role in anti - colonial activity in the Central African Federation.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing predominantly on published primary sources and archival material, this paper examines the Malawi Congress Party's support for two breakaway liberation movements in Southern Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe) in the early 1960s and reconsiders how this assistance redefined existing transnational nationalist networks that had hitherto coalesced in solidarity.

The paper considers the seminal role played by H. Kamuzu Banda and his Malawi Congress Party in the emergence of the Zimbabwe National Party (1961) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (1963), both of which were initially backed by the MCP. As Banda's authority and power in Malawi increased, he became increasingly overt in his criticism of Joshua Nkomo's leadership of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. Banda's support for alternatives to Nkomo incrementally assisted the efforts of Zimbabwe's breakaway nationalist parties to gain a substantive following, both locally and internationally.

The paper argues that the successful efforts of Zimbabwe's emerging nationalist parties to obtain backing from Banda both foreshadowed and helped consolidate a culture of political intolerance in both nations, and in Southern Rhodesia strengthened a tendency to rely on pan-African political expression and devote greater attention to external operations. The research also adds new perspectives to early expressions of xenophobia in Africa and ongoing debates about Banda's megalomaniacal tendencies. Finally, for white Rhodesia's political structures, these events provided critical lessons in the 'divide and conquer' tactics that would reach an apogee with the Zimbabwe - Rhodesia internal settlement.