The colonisation of Africa by European
powers provoked an enormous amount of resistance from different quarters
- both rulers and people - all over the continent.
British colonial rule was less centralised. French colonial rule was more
so. In the early 1900's a desire for change began to be expressed in the
form of regional movements and delegations to conferences overseas.
At this stage politics was not national in character, except in North
Africa, but rather centred on people's relationship to their chiefs
and rulers, on the one hand, and colonial officials, on the other.
An educated urban minority emerged which began to conceive of a new kind
of society which would be determined neither by Europe nor by traditional
rulers, neither by the past nor the present. It lay in the future, although
what that might be precisely was not yet clear.
Aborigines' Rights Protection Society was formed in the Gold Coast in
1897 as an association critical of colonial rule. In 1908, the People's
Union was founded in Nigeria. The Young Senegalese Club was founded in
1910. And in 1912, Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection
Society was founded in Nigeria.
was in Southern Africa that the first two political movements in Sub-Sahara
emerged in 1912.
to the sound of military drums, which slowly become African
Liga Angolana was formed by a group of educated civil servants (African
& mestico) with the rather vaguer aim of improving the lot of Angolans.
The ANC was founded under the name of the South African Native National
Congress. The issues at stake were loss of land and voting rights - the
Cape was the only part of the Union of South Africa with universal franchise,
irrespective of ethnic origin. The ANC was conceived as an organisation
representing the Rhodesias (modern Zambia and modern Zimbabwe), Basutoland
(modern Lesotho), Bechuanaland (modern Botswana) and Swaziland.
JOURNALISTS & WRITERS
The first newspapers
in Sub Saharan Africa appeared in Liberia and Angola. In the second half
of the 19th century they contained increasing criticism of the European
In West Africa two leading critics were: P.Jackson, the Liberian editor
of the Lagos Weekly Record, and Edward Blyden, who emigrated to Liberia
from the West Indies and believed that an European style education was
damaging to African people. He believed that Islam was better suited to
their customs and outlook. He argued for African history to be taught
and a university to be founded in West Africa.
must see at once that when a youth is sent for education from African
to Europe, he must lose a great part of the very training for which he
has been sent to school - viz to prepare for the work of his life. The
man who, in the process of his education has not imbibed a large race
feeling, in whom there is not developed pride of race, has failed in a
great part of his education.
And whatever else may be acquitted in Europe, it is evident that, for
the Negro, race feeling must be kept in abeyance. And what is a man without
this feeling? It is this strong race feeling - this pride of race having
been instilled in the mind of the Jew from his earliest infancy, which
has given to that peculiar people their unquenchable vitality."
In Angola a vociferous and energetic circle of writers and journalists
emerged in the 19th century. They have been described by historians as
'proto-nationalists' and include Jose de Nascimento (1838-1902), Joaquim
Dias Cordeiro da Matta (1857-94) and Jose de Fontes Pereira (1838-91).
In Mozambique, a comparable group of educated people formed the Associao
African, and in 1910, published one of the earliest protest journals,