Page 191 - Afrika Must Unite

176 AFRICA MUST UNITE

continue the classical relationship of a colonial economy to its
metropolitan patron, i.e. providers of prim ary products and
exclusive markets for the latter’s goods. Only now the relation­
ship is covered up under the guise of aid and protective solicitude,
one of the more subtle forms of neo-colonialism.
Since France sees her continued growth and development in
the maintenance of the present neo-colonialist relationship with
the less developed nations within her orbit, this can only mean
the widening of the gap between herself and them. If the gap
is ever to be narrowed, not to say closed, it can only be done
by a complete break with the present patron-client relation­
ship.
W hen neo-colonialism can make such effective penetrations
by other means, there seems a certain illogicality, viewed from
their standpoint, in clinging bitterly to political control of the
remaining territories in Africa. Unless, of course, it is to use time
to increase the differences and deepen the schisms, and to allow
South Africa to build up her military forces, to use, in alliance
with the Rhodesias and Portugal, against the fighters for
freedom and the new African independence. It is in this con­
text that the former insistence on the inviolability of the Central
African Federation in the teeth of African opposition must
be understood and met. There is discernible a curious variance
of purpose when one compares the British concurrence to the
demand for regionalism in Nigeria and their refusal for so long
to concede to African clamour for the dissolution of the Central
African Federation. It was claimed for the continuance of
Central African Federation that it made for economic cohesion
and progress. If a larger aggregate is good for one part of Africa,
the settler-controlled part, then surely it must contain the same
beneficent seed for the independent parts.
The conversion of Africa into a series of small states is leaving
some of them with neither the resources nor the manpower to
provide for their own integrity and viability. W ithout the means
to establish their own economic growth, they are compelled to
continue within the old colonial trading framework. Hence they
are seeking alliances in Europe, which deprive them of an
independent foreign policy and perpetuate their economic de­
pendency. But this is a solution that can only lead backwards,