Discuss the armed struggle in settler economies

Armed struggle in settler economies
Nationalism is a political force which promotes the idea of a nation, it mobilizes mass support to make this idea a reality. The idea of a nation exists before the nation itself exists before the nation itself exists; the idea is formed in the minds of political leaders operating within a particular territory (Colin Legum).
The Second World War (1939-1945) was the great divide between the old world of imperialism and the new world of great powers and scores of new, small independent states.
First was the Pan-African conference held in Manchester in 1945.
Second, was the first Bandung conference of Afro-Asian states in 1955 where the sense of unity of all coloured people of the world found common expression. At the Manchester conference, the leading participants included Africans from Africa not just negroes of new world e.g. Dr. Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta. The man who brought together negroes and Africans was George Padmore, born in 1903 in Trinidad. He devoted his life to the cause African independence and the promotion of pan-Africanism.
North Africa’s nationalist movement is based on 3 conflicting opinions i.e. the Afrikaners (Boers), the English/British and the African Bantu speakers. The conflict between Boer and Bantu followed on the 1st European settlement in the Cape Province in 1652 while the Boer/Briton began when the British occupied the cape in 1795. The British and the Boers united to fight against the African tribes until 1994 when South Africa got independence.
The English speaking people of South Africa failed to produce their own distinctive nationalism. Instead, they preferred the idea of merging all the whites into a single South African nation based on two languages (English and Afrikaans). Afrikaner leaders such as Louis Botha and Field Marshall J. C. Smuts and they formed the United Party. The common feature of Afrikaner nationalism and South African nationalism is apartheid or separation, to exclude certain groups such as African Bantu. But African nationalism had always been inclusive i.e. it includes the idea of a single nation all peoples, irrespective of their origin, who regard South Africa their only homeland.
But Afrikaner Nationalism was the most militant and most effective of the nationalist movements in South Africa. Afrikaner nationalism took root in the Eastern Cape among the Boer frontiersmen and they were very individualistic.
Modern Bantu African nationalism began when there was fear that the British decision to remove its colonial role in South Africa would result in the Africans being handed over to the white minority. There was the pass laws to control the movement of Africans. No adult Africans could move freely without a permit (pass). The land Act made the Africans not just slaves but a pariah in the land of his birth. The African National Congress (ANC) later organized bush war against the white South Africans.
The liberation movement in central Africa was more violent. In the British territories, the Malawi congress party (in Nyasaland) and the United National Independence Party (in N. Rhodesia-Zambia) mobilized all African opposition to the settler dominated central African Federation. The civil disobedience in Nyasaland in 1959 and Northern Rhodesia in 1961 convinced Britain that repression would be intolerably costly. The federation disintegrated in 1963, leaving Nyasaland and N. Rhodesia under African governments as Malawi and Zambia but African nationalists in S. Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) launched guerrilla warfare, but with little success until 1975 when Mozambique’s independence enabled young guerrillas to enter Zimbabwe’s Africa reserves. Escalating violence and military stalemate led both sides to accept an election in 1980. The victory went to Shona dominated liberation movement led by Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
There were revolts in the Portuguese colonies of Angola in 1961 and Mozambique in 1964 provoked by Portuguese settlement absence of political rights and the example of African independence elsewhere. In Mozambique the United FRELIMO movement liberated much of the north. However, Angola’s struggle became divided into different factions that took time to unite and later Namibian fighters were based in Angola as they fought South Africa until 1990 when they won independence.
In Algeria, young militant, mostly former soldiers, took advantage of French weaknesses in 1954 to launch urban terrorism and guerrilla war in the mountains. For eight years half a million French troops defeated the Algerians. But in 1962, the Front de Libération Nationale, FLN forced France leader de Gaulle to accept complete Algerian independence and soon 85% of European settlers left immediately, often destroying what they could not carry.
In conclusion, nationalist leaders and metropolitan statesmen had little perception of social forces underlying Africa’s liberation after 1950. The African nationalists wanted to seize central power in each colony and use it to entrench their own authority and create modern nation states but this was achieved through violence due to opposition from colonial powers.

---

jerop5614 answered the question on January 15, 2019 at 06:43