Internal factors and external factors for the rise of African mass Nationalism

Is the Mass feelings and attitude of demanding independence by using a nationalist struggle in form of unified parties beyond the class, tribe or ethnic background.

It denotes the period in which many Africans formed many political parties for struggle for Africans independence rather than the changes in colonial system. Generally, when speaking of development of mass nationalism in Africa started soon after the end of WWII (1945).

Internal Reasons for the Rise of Mass African Nationalism.

1) Colonial exploitation: These include intensive economic exploitation exercised in the colonies by the colonialist this ranged from forced labour, taxation, land alienation, bad working condition, low wages, low prices of cash crops, thus Africans had to fight for independence and remove all of these colonial injustices.

2) Colonial political, social and cultural oppression. Colonialism oppressed Africans in all sphere of life.

Ø Politically; people had no democracy since colonial government gave no room for colonial subjects to elect their own leader. Example, the Legistrative council had dominated by colonial masters hence discontent among the Africans.

Ø Socially, the major social discontent were discrimination, where Africans masses were racially discriminated in all forms of life, in urban areas there were discrimination in education, health, sports and in many other field.

Ø Culturally, Christianity and western education were used to impart western culture to Africa, example; Christianity came into conflicts with traditional beliefs, polygamy which were strongly opposed by whites Christianity missionaries.

3) The presence of independent existing countries in Africa such as Liberia and Ethiopia. They thus became source of inspiration to the emerging nationalists.

4) Emergence of many young elites with radical nationalistic movement such as Sam Nujoma (Namibia), Augustino Netto (Angola), Keneth Kaunda (Zambia), J.K Nyerere (Tanganyika), and Kwame Nkurumah (Ghana) e.t.c. These Africans who were educated from colonial school and Missionaries schools contributed to the rise of Nationalism.

5) Emergence of Bourgeois group: This was the group created by the colonial system. It include the civil servant i.e. teachers, wealth people, traders, businessmen and commercial farmers. This group aimed at taking over the colonial state in their own ambition and descent wealth from foreigners to indigenous hand. Generally, the group was reformist rather than revolutionist as they adopted for superficial changes and not a complete and fundamental changes.

6) The role of Independent African Church movement. These were the churches formed by Africans to challenge European church leaders. The movement was not merely, but also addresses economic, social and political discontent such as land alienation, forced labour, taxation, involvement of Africans in European wars and colonial discriminatory policies. The movement laid the foundation

7) Development of communication system by 1945. During this period there was a little development of communication system such as Roads, Railways, Newspaper, radios etc. These in turn were used by Africans leaders to awaken nationalism to the masses. Also they facilitated the nationalists to travel from one side/point of a country to another in order to arise political consciousness to the people.

External Reasons for the Rise of Mass African Nationalism.

1) The role of the Second World War (WWII): The war led to the intensification of exploitation due to the colonial economic policies introduced in the colonies. This was mainly in agriculture and mining sectors faced harsh treatment such as forced labour and land alienation which led to the wide spread discontent from the Africa.

Also during the WWII Africans from different areas were recruited to fight against the German and the colonialist. They were told that they are fighting for human dignity, justice, equality and right for all people to self-determination. They were also promised that at the end of the war the colonialist will improve the colonial social services and they will be employed and given good salaries. However these promises were not fulfilled hence it in increased frustrations among the Africans where by the some of them took up arms to fight against the whites.

2) The rise of USA as the world superpower, this was due to the following;

The wars (WWI and WWII) were not fought in the USA ground and didn’t experience disasters, destruction of her colonial infrastructures, eg. Transport and industrial sectors. During the war she rose to the status of supplying military weapons to the Europeans powers. At the end of the war she came out with the policy of “the open door policy” so as to get the areas of investment and market for her manufactured goods. She supported decolonization in Africa so that at the end she could spread capitalism ideology so as to reduce the spread of socialist ideology by USSR.

3) The role played by UNO. UNO was formed after the WWII (1945), and one of the characters of UNO was the “Colonization violated human rights”. Therefore its role was to support decolonization. Its purpose was to maintain international security and peace to different nations. Due to all these objective UNO was against all forms of oppression and exploitation exercised by the colonialists in Africa.

4) The emergence of USSR as a socialist world force, Russia supported decolonization process in Africa so that she would spread her ideology (socialism) and get areas from the economic motives/interests.

5) The role of Pan Africanism movements. PAN-Africanism was the movement which opposed the oppression over all the black people in the world. The movement founded in America by the people of Africa by origin and it held in Manchester in 1945.

The conference was mostly gathered by representative of Africa national and labour organization among of them were Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Kamuzu Banda (Malawi), Nandi Azikiwe (Nigeria), Peter Abraham of South Africa e.t.c

Also Pan-Africanism provided morally and materially support to the nationalists, moral support entailed the giving of ideas and advices on the strategies which had to be used by the Africans to eradicate colonialism. Materially Pan-Africanism gave funds to assist the leaders during the struggle for independence.