Page 72 - Afrika Must Unite

C HA P T E R SEVEN

A C H I E V I N G O U R S O V E R E I G N T Y

I t i s becoming axiomatic that colonial powers do not willingly
retire from political control over any given land. Before they go
they make superhum an efforts to create schisms and rivalries
which they hope to exploit after they have gone. India, with its
division into two separate parts, leaving its sad legacy of com-
munalism and religious feuding, is the most glaring example. But
the rifts in Burma, Ceylon, The Cameroons, Viet-Nam, the
breaking down of the two federations of French West Africa and
French Equatorial Africa into separate states of the French Com­
munity, all stand as eloquent witnesses to this extended policy of
‘divide and rule’. So also does the federal division of Nigeria into
three regions, where the British administration had previously
most carefully built up a unitary form of government out of a vast
conglomeration of different peoples.
Looked at superficially, it is difficult to understand the ways of
the colonial powers. They will not leave Africa alone, even when
they realize full well that they are clutching at a straw in trying
to prevent the total and final liquidation of the colonial system.
They act as if the right to meddle in the internal affairs of newly-
emergent states is still theirs, and even presume to dictate which
things are right and which are wrong among the acts performed
by us. Examined closely, these manoeuvres are seen to be part of
the strategy o f‘divide and rule’, wielded from afar.
During our struggle for independence, and even after, all the
armoury of the British press was brought into play against me
and against the Convention People’s Party. Special corre­
spondents were sent to discover that we ‘were not only Com­
munist, but deep in bribery and corruption’. They came to
interpret the tussle between the C.P.P. and the National
Liberation M ovement over the issue of our Constitution as one of