Decolonization in Africa and the Struggle against Apartheid

"Ghana, your beloved country, is free forever"

On the night of March 6, 1957, crowds in Accra cheered as Kwame Nkrumah announced the independence of Ghana, formerly the British Gold Coast. It is often celebrated as the first sub-Saharan African colony to win independence (Sudan, a joint British–Egyptian territory, became independent in 1956). Nkrumah declared that Ghana's independence was meaningless unless it was linked to the total liberation of the African continent.

Within twenty years, almost all of Africa was independent. But each country's path was different, from negotiation to long wars, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa lasted until 1994.

Forces for independence

• African nationalism grew after the Second World War. More than a million Africans had served in the war; many came home expecting rights.
• Pan-Africanism, the idea of unity among African peoples at home and abroad, connected leaders such as Nkrumah, Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta and the Caribbean thinkers who organized Pan-African Congresses.
• Unions, students, women's groups and political parties organized strikes and campaigns. Women such as the market traders of Accra and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti in Nigeria led mass protests.
• International pressure: the UN, newly independent Asian states and both superpowers criticized colonial rule.

1960 became known as the "Year of Africa": 17 countries became independent, including Nigeria, the Congo, Senegal, Madagascar and Somalia.

When colonial powers fought back

Where many European settlers lived, independence often came only after violence:

• Kenya: the Mau Mau uprising (1952–1960), mostly among Kikuyu people who had lost land to white settlers, was crushed by the British. Tens of thousands of Kenyans were held in detention camps, where many were tortured. In 2013, the British government acknowledged the abuse and paid compensation to more than 5000 surviving victims. Kenya became independent in 1963, with Kenyatta as its leader.
• Algeria: France considered Algeria part of France itself, and about a million European settlers lived there. The National Liberation Front (FLN) began an armed revolt in 1954. Both sides used terror; French forces used torture widely. Hundreds of thousands of Algerians died (the Algerian government gives a far higher figure). Algeria became independent on July 5, 1962, and most settlers left for France.
• The Portuguese colonies (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau) fought long wars from the early 1960s. When Portugal's dictatorship fell in 1974, the new government granted independence in 1974–1975.
• Rhodesia: white settlers declared independence from Britain in 1965 to keep minority rule. After a liberation war, the country became independent as Zimbabwe in 1980.

Challenges after independence

• Colonial borders: European powers had drawn borders that split some peoples and combined others. The Organization of African Unity (OAU), founded in 1963, resolved in 1964 to keep the existing borders to avoid endless wars. Civil wars such as the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), when the Biafra region tried to secede, still broke out.
• Economies built for export: colonies had been organized to send raw materials to Europe. Many new states depended on one or two commodities, such as cocoa or copper, and were hurt when prices fell. Nkrumah called continued outside economic control neocolonialism.
• Cold War interference: as in the Congo, outside powers backed leaders who served their interests.
• Politics: many states became one-party states or military regimes; Ghana's Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup in 1966. From the 1990s, many countries moved toward multi-party elections, and the OAU became the African Union in 2002.

Historians today avoid explaining every problem by colonialism alone, but they recognize its long shadow on borders, economies and institutions.

Apartheid and the struggle against it

In South Africa, the white minority already held power when the National Party won the 1948 election and built apartheid ("separateness"): a legal system of racial segregation and domination.

• The Population Registration Act (1950) classified every person by "race". The Group Areas Act (1950) forced people of colour out of areas reserved for white people. Pass laws controlled where Black South Africans could live and work. Black South Africans were assigned to impoverished "homelands".
• The African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, led mass nonviolent campaigns and adopted the Freedom Charter (1955), which declared that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it".
• At Sharpeville on March 21, 1960, police fired on people protesting the pass laws, killing 69. The government banned the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress. The ANC turned to armed struggle in 1961.
• Nelson Mandela and other leaders were sentenced to life in prison in 1964. At his trial Mandela said that a democratic and free society was "an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."
• On June 16, 1976, students in Soweto marched against being taught in Afrikaans. Police opened fire; hundreds died in the uprising that followed. The Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko died after police beatings in 1977.
• In the 1980s, resistance grew inside the country, and the world imposed sanctions, sports and cultural boycotts. Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. Canada's government under Brian Mulroney pressed for sanctions in the Commonwealth.
• President F. W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC in February 1990 and released Mandela on February 11, 1990. On April 27, 1994, South Africans of all races voted for the first time, and Mandela became president. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Tutu, heard testimony from victims and perpetrators.