Page 66 - Afrika Must Unite

FREEDOM FIRST 51

beneficiaries of the ruling country. Improvement in living
conditions for the bulk of the people will not come until political
power passes into their hands.
Thus, every movement for independence in a colonial
situation contains two elements: the dem and for political
freedom and the revolt against poverty and exploitation.
Resolute leadership is required to subordinate the understand­
able desire of the people for better living conditions to the
achievement of the prim ary aim of the abolition of colonial
rule.
Before the Second W orld W ar, a num ber of political demon­
strations and strikes took place in various parts of colonial Africa.
The most common demands were for reforms; few people
envisaged at that time the emergence of national political parties
demanding independence.
During the 1940s, however, m any African national organiz­
ations were formed. For example, in 1944, the National Council
of Nigeria and the Cameroons was founded, and, in the same
year, the Nyasaland National Congress.1 Two years later, the
Kenya African Union was formed; and the Rassemblement
Democratique Africain, a federation of the various organizations
which had developed throughout the French colonies in West
and Equatorial Africa. There followed, in 1947, the formation of
the N orthern Rhodesian African National Congress;2 and, in
our country the United Gold Coast Convention, with its aim:
self-government in the shortest possible time. O n 12 June 1949,
came the split with the U.G.C.C. when I founded the Con­
vention People’s Party with the declared aim of achieving ‘Self­
Government Now’.
The 1950s saw the emergence of the U ganda National
Congress (1952), the Tanganyika African National Union
(: 953)3 and the African National Congress in Southern
Rhodesia.3 There were also national organizations formed in the
1 This was banned in 1958 and the Malawi Congress Party set up in its
place.
2 W hen the Central African Federation was formed in 1953, this party split
up, and others emerged, e.g. The United National Independence Party
under Kenneth K aunda in 1958.
3 This was originally founded in 1920. It was banned in 1959, and the
National Democratic Party was formed.