Leadership in Colonial Africa

LEADERSHIP IN COLONIAL AFRICA
Palgrave Studies in African Leadership
Series Editors: Baba G. Jallow, Faith Wambura Ngunjiri

Palgrave Studies in African Leadership fills a gap in the production of
knowledge and scholarly publishing on Africa and provides a much needed
outlet for the works of scholars interested in African leadership studies around
the world.
Where many studies of leadership in Africa focus solely on one country or
region, this series looks to address leadership in each of the different regions
and countries of the continent. This comes at a time when business and
academic discourse have begun to focus on the emerging markets across Africa.
The wide-ranging scholarly perspectives offered in this series allow for greater
understanding of the foundation of African leadership and its implications for
the future.
Topics and contributors will come from various backgrounds to fully explore
African leadership and the implications for business, including scholars from
business and management, history, political science, gender studies, sociology,
religious studies, and African studies. The series will analyze a variety of
topics including African political leadership, women’s leadership, religious
leadership, servant leadership, specific regions, specific countries, specific
gender categories, specific business entities in Africa, and more.
Books Appearing in This Series:
Leadership in Colonial Africa: Disruption of Traditional

Frameworks and Patterns
Edited by Baba G. Jallow
Leadership in Post-Colonial Africa: Trends Transformed by Independence
Edited by Baba G. Jallow
Leadership in Colonial Africa
Disruption of Traditional Frameworks
and Patterns
Edited by
Baba G. Jallow
LEADERSHIP IN COLONIAL AFRICA
Copyright © Baba G. Jallow, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 20
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978–1–137–47795–8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
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Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2014
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ISBN ISBN (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/
Contents
Preface vii
Chapter 1
The Case for African Leadership Studies and Leadership
in Colonial Africa: An Introduction 1
Baba G. Jallow
Chapter 2
Chiefs and Protectorate Administration in
Colonial Gambia, 1894–1965 23
Hassoum Ceesay
Chapter 3
Human Rights and National Liberation: The Anticolonial
Politics of Nnamdi Azikiwe 55
Bonny Ibhawoh
Chapter 4
The Diplomatic Achievements of Amilcar Cabral: A Case
Study of Effective Leadership in a Small African State 69
David Fistein
Chapter 5
The Warrior and the Wizard: The Leadership Styles of
Josiah Tongogara and Robert Mugabe during
Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle 101
Nyasha M. GuramatunhuCooper
Chapter 6
Voortrekker or State Builder? John Vorster and
the Challenges of Leadership in the Apartheid State 115
Jamie Miller
vi C O N T EN T S
Chapter 7
Leadership and Liberation: Southern African Reflections 139
Chris Saunders
Chapter 8
Leadership for Democracy and Peace: W. E. B. Du Bois’s
Legacy as a Pan-African Intellectual 153
Phillip Luke Sinitiere
List of Contributors 183

Index 187
Preface
I n early September 2013, I logged on to my Gmail to check postings

from several H-Net listservs I subscribe to. The H-Africa posting had
the usual weekly job guide. As I scrolled down the list, a posting from
the University of Richmond caught my eye. “The Jepson School of
Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond invites applications
for a tenure-track, assistant or tenured associate professor of leader-
ship studies with a specialization in history or a related field.” Further
down, I saw in parentheses, “Applicants who are new to leadership
studies are invited to visit our website, http://jepson.richmond.edu/,
for more information.” I clicked on the inviting link. That marked my
first step into the engrossing field of leadership studies and was the
precise genesis of this book and the African leadership studies project
of which it is a part.
For the next few weeks, I visited the Jepson website at every possible
opportunity. I clicked on faculty links, searched on JSTOR and printed
some of their works, and soon found myself on Amazon ordering J.
Thomas Wren’s The Leader’s Companion. By the time I read halfway
through the collections in Wren’s book, I had ordered six other books
on leadership studies: James MacGregor Burns’ Leadership, John
Gardner’s On Leadership, Robert Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership,
Terry Price’s Leadership Ethics, Goethals and Sorenson’s The Quest for
a General Theory of Leadership, and Robert Rotberg’s Transformative
Political Leadership. In subsequent weeks, I found myself ordering
Barbara Kellerman’s Bad Leadership, Price and Wren’s The Values of
Presidential Leadership, and Rotberg’s The Worst of the Worst. While
engaged in what had quickly become a seemingly insatiable appetite
for leadership studies, I was not particularly surprised when I read
Gardner’s prophetic statement: “Leadership is such a gripping sub-
ject that once it is given center stage, it draws attention away from
everything else.” I still read other books and articles, but most of my
reading time is now taken up by leadership studies.
viii P R EFA C E
I was intrigued by the very idea of leadership studies. Up until this

point in my life, I had been immersed in advocacy for good leadership
in Africa, but leadership studies as a field of inquiry was, at best, mar-
ginal to my consciousness. I did not know that such a field existed,
during all my years of trying to understand leadership especially as
practiced in contemporary Africa. Since my undergraduate days at
Fourah Bay College, I have been totally convinced that poor leader-
ship had the most to do with the tragic conditions of underdevelop-
ment and conflict afflicting the African continent. I had read widely,
observed, lived, and written about the need for a “mind revolution”
that would privilege good leadership as a way out of what seems to
be Africa’s intractable developmental crises. As a journalist and editor
of two newspapers in my native Gambia, my insistent hammering at
the need for just and ethical leadership landed me in trouble multiple
times with the emergent dictatorship of President Yahya Jammeh.
Over the course of four years, I was six times arrested and jailed with-
out trial for up to three days and thereafter asked to report regularly
to the police every morning or week for months on end. My crime was
writing and publishing articles critical of Jammeh’s leadership style,
his constant breaking of constitutional rules, and his government’s
habitual human rights abuses. My crime was to emphasize that the
conflict generated through arbitrary arrests, detentions, and media
closures was inimical to the well-being of the nation. It stifled creativ-
ity and smothered the inventive capacities of the Gambian people. It
turns them into passive spectators to their own destruction.
Forced into exile in the United States after the arrest and interro-
gation of my illiterate parents in 2000, I continued writing about the
need for just and ethical leadership in my native Gambia and in Africa.
Having encountered leadership studies, I soon recognized that this
was a field destined to stay with me. Not only does African leadership
urgently stand in need of studying; leadership failure explains Africa’s
seemingly chronic development crises. And then it suddenly dawned
upon me that I had not noticed any works on African leadership dur-
ing my forays into Amazon. Perhaps, I thought, I was not looking.
And so I went back to Amazon and typed in “African leadership.” A
single volume popped up, which I promptly ordered. The volume,
Leadership in the African Context, turned out to be a textbook-style
work that, in my opinion, did not adequately capture the wealth of
leadership cultures in Africa.
It then occurred to me that I could contribute to the field of lead-
ership studies by putting together an edited volume on African lead-
ership studies. And so I drafted a call for chapter proposals and sent
P R EFA C E ix
it out to the various H-Net listservs I subscribe to. I indicated in

the call that proposals may focus on precolonial, colonial, or post-
colonial male or female African leaders and may deal with political,
environmental, academic, religious, or traditional/cultural African
leadership. Interested contributors were asked to demonstrate in their
proposals how their chapters will engage the scholarly literature on
leadership studies and advance debates and analyses on various con-
temporary approaches and theories of leadership, broadly conceived.
Finally, I said that proposals must be grounded in specific case studies
of African leaders either as individuals or in comparative perspective
to other leaders, African or non-African. A few days later, I got my
first proposal from Chris Saunders, Emeritus Professor of Historical
Studies at the University of Cape Town. That a professor of Saunders’
caliber found the project worthy assured me that this was one project
that must be made to work. I spent the next several weeks actively
seeking contributors to the volume.
As I awaited responses to my call for chapter proposals, it occurred
to me that I could emulate participants in the search for a general the-
ory of leadership (the GTOL project) initiated by James Macgregor
Burns and resulting in Goethals and Sorenson’s The Quest for a
General Theory of Leadership by recording my own experiences. That
volume opens with a chapter by Wren outlining the project’s genesis
and progress from November 2001 when Burns invited colleagues
to join him in a quest for a general theory of leadership and contains
the reflections of various GTOL participants on the feasibility of a
general theory of leadership. Wren’s chapter represents the GTOL
participants’ conviction that documenting the process of the search
for a general theory of leadership is an important component and con-
tributes to “building a leadership DNA.” It was a convincing argu-
ment. And so I decided I would try to capture and share the process
that culminated in putting together this volume on African leader-
ship studies. I believe that constructing a general theory of leadership
must necessarily include insights on leadership norms, values, and
styles from Africa and other parts of the non-Western world. Since
leadership is a universal phenomenon and “part of the human condi-
tion” (Burns 1978), African leadership studies might have a strand or
two to contribute to “a leadership DNA.”
For many days after I received Chris Saunders’ proposal, I heard
nothing else. I was soon cured of the illusion that Africanists would
jump at the opportunity of contributing to a field that is almost
literally nonexistent. Determined to make it work, I looked up the
contacts for some of the veteran Africanist historians I had read in
x P R EFA C E
graduate school and sent them personalized invitations, generally

in the mode of asking whether they might have an unpublished
piece on the subject to include in a volume on African leadership
studies. I also looked up African studies programs, centers, and
institutes in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Africa
and sent enquiries and invitations seeking their interest in contrib-
uting to the project. Of the roughly 200 or so queries and invita-
tions I sent out, less than 20 elicited responses. About four or five
of the major Africanist historians who I approached sent back what
appeared to be a standard three-sentence response, thanking me for
the invitation, regretting to have to decline, and wishing me luck
with the project, which at least a couple of them thought important
and worth pursuing. A vast majority of invitations seemed merely
to disappear into a deep well of silence. Undaunted, I continued
looking up programs, centers, institutes, and individual scholars
and sending them the call for chapter proposals. The effort paid
eventually off.
The project scored a major breakthrough when I received a response
from Professor Robert I. Rotberg, author of Transformative Political
Leadership offering to do a theoretical introduction to the volume.1
When Rotberg offered to do a theoretical introduction to the volume,
he included a question in his email: “Who will be your publisher?” I
had a ready answer: I was planning on sending a proposal to the edi-
tors of the Jepson Studies on Leadership series at Richmond. After
all, the project grew directly out of my encounter with Jepson. What
better place to start looking for a publisher? And so I accordingly put
together a publishing proposal for the Jepson series. The editors duly
acknowledged receipt and promised to get back.
They did. Terry Price, one of the series editors and Associate Dean
at the Jepson School wrote a couple of times assuring me they would
soon be reviewing the proposal at a forthcoming meeting with their
acquisitions editor at Palgrave. Terry’s message came in due course.
Because it is hard to say what exactly Jepson did, I reproduce Terry’s
email message below. It was dated November 13, 2014:
Dear Baba,
The other series editors and I have now had a chance to review
your project and to discuss it with our acquisitions editor at
Palgrave, Brian Foster. While the volume has many strengths,
we have come to the conclusion that its scope is too broad for
the Jepson series.
P R EFA C E xi
However, you and Brian might have a conversation to see if

there might be other potential opportunities with Palgrave. I’ll
ask him to get in touch with you in the near future.
Thank you again for asking us to consider your work for the
Jepson Studies in Leadership series.
Best,
Terry
I was soon contacted by Palgrave’s Casie Vogel. Below is her email,

dated February 4, 2014:
Dear Dr. Jallow,

Please allow me to introduce myself as the Associate Editor
of the Business and Management list here at Palgrave. I was
forwarded your proposal for Studies in African Leadership¸ by
Brian Foster, Head of Business, Economics, and Finance after
he had reviewed it for the Jepson Leadership Series. We both
agreed that while the project may not fit into this series, Studies
in African Leadership has huge potential for a bigger publishing
opportunity and a better fit elsewhere in our list.
It is clear that you’ve had a huge response from submitters
and that even now the project is rather large. For such a crucial
and relevant topic, I’m not surprised. I’d love to place this proj-
ect in a broader context and explore creating a Palgrave series
around the topic. This project could be the cornerstone of an
African Leadership series. If you’re interested, I feel that your
expertise could lend itself greatly as an editor for the series and
it is clear you’ve already had an overwhelming response. Let me
know your thoughts on this. Regardless, I would love to set up
a time to chat and discuss publishing avenues.
Please let me know what your availability is like and we can
set up a telephone call. I look forward to the potential of work-
ing together on such an exciting project. If you have any ques-
tions, thoughts, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out
to me. All of my contact information can be found in my sig-
nature below.
Best,
Casie
Long story short, Casie proceeded to offer the leadership and

careful direction, which resulted in the publication of this
xii P R EFA C E
book and the launching of a new Palgrave Studies in African

Leadership series. Thank you Casie, for your good leadership.
And thank you Jepson, for your good leadership. Please allow
me to welcome you to African leadership studies and Leadership
in Colonial Africa.
BABA G. JALLOW
May 23, 2014
Note
1. Rotberg could not write the introductions because his schedule did
not allow him to meet our publisher’s submission deadline. We remain
grateful for his kind support and encouragement of the project as it
unfolded.
Chapter 1
The Case for African Leadership

Studies and Leadership in Colonial
Africa: An Introduction
Baba G. Jallow
The Case for African Leadership Studies

Studies on African leadership are largely absent from the rapidly
growing field of leadership studies. Yet, no other continent faces the
magnitude of leadership crisis Africa faces. This volume and the series
of which it is a part seek to encourage the process of bringing Africa
into the field of leadership studies and encouraging a broader under-
standing and more systematic study of leadership issues and concepts
in Africa. One key objective is to raise questions over how we might
theorize African leadership. What new theories or concepts of leader-
ship might an Africa-centered approach contribute to the field? How
might contemporary theories of leadership studies—organizational,
situational, contingency, transformational, transactional, construc-
tionist, and servant among other approaches—be applied to the study
of African leadership? How might organizational theory be used to
understand and reframe (Bolman and Deal 2003) the chronic sys-
temic dysfunction plaguing the continent? What are the linkages
between, especially, the failure of leadership and the failure of devel-
opment in Africa?
African leadership studies has no shortage of questions to grapple
with: Why do corrupt and tyrannical rulers win election after elec-
tion in Africa? Why do Africans generally not protest at rulers who
oppress them and stay in power for as long as they can?1 Why do
African rulers continue to be celebrated and supported by millions
of people who cannot afford to have three square meals a day, who
do not enjoy adequate healthcare, and whose children drop out of
2 BABA G. JALLOW
school for lack of money to pay fees? How could a new nation-state
like South Sudan be embroiled in deadly civil conflict so soon after
independence? While scholars who study African leadership and gov-
ernance crises rightfully expose the venal, tyrannical, and unethical
nature of African rulership and show how African rulers have suc-
ceeded in reducing their countries and their peoples into the ultimate
paupers of the global community, they seem to focus more on assess-
ing the failure of democratic experiments rather than the failure of
leadership itself. Some scholars decontextualize African leadership
and developmental crises by attributing them to the mistaken and
untested assumption that Western theories and styles of leadership
are not appropriate for African and other non-Western cultures. It is
my contention that the problem lies not with the Western theories or
styles of leadership per se, but with the nature of African leadership
and the cultural context from which it emerges, within which it is
embedded, and within which it is exercised. Africa’s developmen-
tal failures reflect first and foremost a failure of leadership. And the
theoretical exceptionalism that theories of leadership studies are not
suitable tools of analysis for African leadership should be rejected in
favor of experimentation.
One may be forgiven for observing that the vast literature of lead-
ership studies reads as if leadership cultures exist only in the West.
Their preoccupation with their immediate environments and audi-
ences obscures the presence of other environments and audiences
equally invested in solving leadership problems in their communities.
Organizations and managers are studied as if they only exist in Western
societies, and remedies are suggested that are specifically designed
to solve problems in Western organizational cultures. The “we” we
encounter in so many works on leadership studies often refers to
“we” Westerners, not we human beings. San Diego’s Bob Donmoyer
speaks of a certain culture of “regionalism” in leadership studies that
urgently needs to be addressed.2 Not only is there a need for African
leadership studies, Asian leadership studies, Latin American leader-
ship studies, and Middle Eastern leadership, but scholars of Western
leadership studies may find much that is useful in looking at other
organizational and leadership cultures beyond their immediate spatial
and academic environments.
The point is that as valid generalizations on human nature, theo-
ries of organizational and cultural leadership apply to their subjects
regardless of spatial or temporal differences. Once created, knowledge
becomes a universal artifact that recognizes no cognitive boundaries.
Organizational culture and leadership theory lends itself particularly
AFRICAN LE ADERSHIP STUDIES 3
well to the study of leadership failure in Africa. Edgar Schein’s (2010)

insights help us visualize the African nation-state as an organizational
“macroculture” within which many levels of organizational “microcul-
tures” exist. Schein suggests that understanding the “shared assump-
tions” of group members is a key to resolving intraorganizational
conflict and maintains that “leadership and culture are two sides of
the same coin” (2010, 3), both insights useful to an understanding of
African leadership cultures. Culture “is ultimately created . . . by lead-
ers” (Schein 2010, 3). The cultures of material poverty and political
intolerance in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe or Jammeh’s Gambia were created
and nurtured by these leaders. They are no mere accidents of history.
The saying that people get the leadership they deserve may perhaps
more usefully be rendered people’s leadership determines the nature
of the culture they get. Leadership as a process cannot be divorced
from its cultural context.
Bolman and Deal speak of leaders as often incarcerated in a “psy-
chic prison” that prevents them “from seeing old problems in a new
light or finding more promising ways to work on perennial chal-
lenges” (2003, 7). This is particularly true of postcolonial African
leaders. Determined to hang on to power at any cost, many indepen-
dent African leaders, from behind the bars of their psychic prisons,
commit unspeakable crimes against their fellow humans. Bolman and
Deal’s concept of psychic prison might help us understand just why
they commit these crimes, often in broad daylight, in front of every-
one, and with a nonchalant attitude. African leaders of the postcolo-
nial era often wield a “vision” in one hand and a club in the other.
It is follow my vision or shut up. They are the subject of this book’s
companion volume, Leadership in Post-Colonial Africa.
That Western theories of leadership studies can be applied to African
situations is demonstrated in this volume by Chris Saunders, a histo-
rian of Africa, who uses transformational and transactional leadership
theory (Burns 1978; Rotberg 2012) in his comparative study of the
leadership styles and cultures of Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and
Jacob Zuma. He characterizes Mandela as a transformational leader,
and Zuma as a transactional leader. Nyasha GuramatunhuCooper, a
product of Gonzaga University’s doctoral program in leadership stud-
ies, applies theories of charismatic and revolutionary leadership to the
study of the two leaders of Zimbabwe’s liberation movement, Robert
Mugabe and Josiah Tongogara (this volume). She further translates
these two concepts into Bolman and Deal’s (2006) notions of the
“wizard” and the “warrior” through which she assesses the leader-
ship styles and cultures of Mugabe and Tongogara. In essence, many
4 BABA G. JALLOW
sorts of Western leadership studies theory may usefully be appropri-

ated for the study of African leadership.
Adding to this theoretical exceptionalism is an equally mistaken
and very damaging political exceptionalism, namely that democracy,
human rights, and the rule of law were not suitable for African condi-
tions. Even as harsh a critic of Africa’s irresponsible and brutal lead-
ership as David Lamb (1983) could write that “at this stage most
African countries are best served by benign dictators. Democracy can
come later, if it is to come at all.” As a widely held belief in Western
circles, this political exceptionalism represents a damaging mindset
that helps perpetuate bad leadership in Africa. For hearing it come
from the West itself, Africa’s postcolonial rulers loudly repeated it
at home and used it to justify brutal regimes of repression and dubi-
ous “indigenous” philosophies of authenticity. Kwame Nkrumah, a
leader of Sub-Saharan Africa’s first independent nation, proclaimed a
philosophy of Nkrumahism to prevent “the evil influences of west-
ern capitalist political cultures” from spreading in Ghana. In former
Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), Mobutu Sese Seko,
head of Africa’s most kleptocratic regime, proclaimed and imposed
a national philosophy of “authenticity” to protect his people from
the evil influences of Western political cultures. Western economic
cultures, however, were quite another thing. Mobutu owned and fre-
quently and lavishly wined and dined in majestic Western chateaux.
He is in good company.
Chris Saunders (this volume) has written that after independence:
“The new governments, challenged by critics, sought to bolster their
legitimacy by drawing upon a new ‘patriotic’ style of history writing,
in which the (liberation) struggle was seen as leading to a great tri-
umph, achieved by the liberation movement on its own.” Specifically
used to describe the actions of former guerrilla nationalist leaders
who had become presidents, Saunders’ “patriotic” style of history
writing is as much popular with military as it is with civilian rulers.
In fact, the most outstanding experts in patriotic history writing
were civilians. In Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, a former “freedom-lov-
ing” nationalist leader, used the Preventive Detention Act of 1958
to eliminate any Ghanaian who dared suggest other forms of history
writing.
Despite all protestations and assumptions to the contrary, as orga-
nizational macroculture the African nation-state system is unequivo-
cally Western in origin and character. Brought in through the process
of colonization, the African nation-state system bears all the trappings
of the Western nation-state system: it has executive branches of gov-

ernment, legislatures, judiciaries, flags, and constitutions modeled on
its Western counterparts; its rights and responsibilities of citizenship
and electoral processes are derived from and based on Western models;
it has its own national flags, national anthems, and national days, just
like the Western nation-state. African leaders are called presidents and
prime ministers just like their Western counterparts. And Africans are
just as human as Westerners.3 How and why then could the cultures
of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law that underpin the
Western nation-state system be unsuited to the African nation-state
system? The answer, of course, is that they are not. African societ-
ies are merely suffering from a particularly bad case of chronic bad
leadership.
African leadership studies is aware of the important need to recog-
nize and accommodate cultural idiosyncrasies. No theory or model
of Western government may be applied wholesale anywhere, not least
in non-Western cultures. But while the culture of democracy, for
instance, need to be attuned to local customary sensibilities, it may
nevertheless be substantially nurtured regardless of cultural location.
This is because democracy, in its ideal form, is kind human behavior
welcome in any human society. A democratic spirit would respect all
legitimate differences and, therefore, the rights of others to hold con-
trary political opinions. This spirit is as good for Western societies as
it is for African societies. So much, therefore, for the unsuitability of
Western leadership studies theory or democracy, human rights, and
the rule of law for non-Western cultures.
That said, first experiments in African leadership studies like this
project should not be expected to draw too much on leadership stud-
ies theory. Few of the contributors to this volume are leadership stud-
ies scholars. Most are historians, political scientists, theologians, etc.
who have an interest in leadership studies and in the study of African
leadership. Their works at this early stage in the growth of the field of
African leadership studies therefore often lack an infusion of leader-
ship studies theory. Our expectation is that more and more Africanists
interested in the study of African leadership will increasingly famil-
iarize themselves with the leadership studies literature and employ
leadership studies theory in their works. It is comforting to note in
this regard that some of the greatest leadership studies scholars did
not study leadership in graduate school. Many, like James Macgregor
Burns, were historians, political scientists, psychologists and sociolo-
gists drawn to the field by its multi-disciplinary nature.
6 BABA G. JALLOW
Leadership in Colonial Africa

There is no doubt that the African nation-state was born under inaus-
picious circumstances and faced formidable obstacles to its proper
development from the very beginning. Merely a shadow of the fully
grown Western nation-state system that gave birth to it, the African
nation-state had to contend not only with the cruel legacy of colo-
nialism but also with the unfeeling and alarmingly callous dictates of
the global politics of ideological containment that characterized the
cold war era. It had to contend with the impersonal forces of global
capital and manage economies that, while immensely endowed with
potential, were extremely rudimentary and unable to survive without
a significant degree of external intervention. However, the African
nation-state was also born with immense resource potential waiting
to be exploited; immense deposits of natural resources were com-
plimented by an eager and hopeful population ready to grow, work
for, and enjoy the promised fruits of independence and freedom from
colonial oppression. Unfortunately, their leaders appeared to have
promptly built “psychic prisons” where they incarcerated themselves
and proceeded to translate the relations of forceful subjugation and
exploitation between colonizer and colonized into relations of subju-
gation and exploitation between the new rulers and the ruled. Little
has changed with time.
The power of the state over the individual seems to have dramati-
cally increased with African independence. For while the colonial
state had to tolerate nationalist dissent and criticism, the postcolonial
state did not and could not be made to feel so obliged. Where colo-
nial rulers considered their subjects as divided into collaborators and
resisters, Africa’s new rulers considered their citizens as divided into
patriotic collaborators and unpatriotic resisters “out to sell the coun-
try to the enemies.”4 Patriotic collaborators are rewarded with posi-
tions and other enticements, or at the least left at peace. Unpatriotic
resisters are branded threats to national security and subjected to
forms of repression worse than those inflicted by the colonial state.
Where something needed to be dealt with urgently such as closing
down a radio station that translated the newspapers into local lan-
guages, harsh colonial laws were recycled and enforced on indepen-
dent citizens.5
Following independence, the leader’s former colleagues in the
struggle against colonialism were transformed into bitter enemies
who had no right to speak on behalf of the nation and who, therefore,
deserved to die for speaking out. Men like Guinea’s Diallo Telli and
Ghana’s J. B. Danquah died at the hands of former colleagues who

had benefitted greatly from their support. Across the board, African
leaders of the independence era managed to replicate some the most
repressive and unproductive structures and mechanisms of the colo-
nial state in what had now become independent nation space. They
woefully failed to properly adapt to the changed circumstances of
independence. And they failed mainly because they would not listen
to good advice or tolerate criticism.
The focus of Leadership in Colonial Africa is on the nature of
leadership cultures that characterized colonial Africa. Since the most
powerful among the powerful creates culture, the nature of colonial
African leadership cultures was largely determined by imperial pri-
orities. The chapters in this volume reveal processes of imperialism
at work and the various ways in which African leaders responded to
these processes. Three different types of leaders are studied: colo-
nial administrators, chiefs, and nationalist leaders. The latter category
consisted of two subcategories: nationalist politicians and guerrilla
leaders. Colonial administrators operated as either metropolitan
or settler colonialists. Chiefs existed in all parts of Africa and offer
intriguing insights into the workings of the colonial administrative
system. The three categories of leaders operated in conceptually dis-
tinct but empirically intersecting fields of leadership. Their shared
theater of leadership was the imperial cultural framework and, after
1945, the emergent global culture of international human rights dis-
course that heralded the end of colonial rule in Africa. In what fol-
lows, we give a brief outline of each of these categories of leadership
in colonial Africa.
Colonial Administrators
Colonial administrators were the patriotic foot soldiers of Empire:
governors, district officers, security chiefs, and other political offi-
cers; their letters of appointment came from or were tacitly endorsed
by imperial governments located in Western capitals. Their job was to
rule the colonies on the Crown’s or Republic’s behalf. They managed
the colonial trust and implemented colonial policy in pursuit of impe-
rial goals. And they governed mostly through coercion. Key examples
of colonial administrators in British and French Africa were Frederick
Lugard, architect of British Indirect Rule; Louis Faidherbe, architect
of French Assimilation; Cecil Rhodes, “founder” of Rhodesia, and Ian
Smith of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); Gordon Guggisberg
of the Gold Coast (now Ghana); Alfred Milner, Godfrey Lagden,
8 BABA G. JALLOW
and Theophilus Shepstone of South Africa. They were littered across

Africa’s colonial historical landscape like so many white lords rul-
ing mini black empires. Some of them were entrusted with “showing
the flag” in British Africa; others appointed themselves absolute rul-
ers of white settler colonies in Africa. The white rulers of Apartheid
South Africa belong to this category. Men like D. F. Malan, Johannes
Strijdom, Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster, P. W. Botha, and F. W. de
Klerk ruled black, colored, and Asian South Africans much like the
subjects of colonial rule elsewhere in Africa. Miller (this volume) pres-
ents a fine study of the leadership challenges, motivations, roles, and
styles of Vorster, Verwoerd’s successor as prime minister of Apartheid
South Africa.
Colonial administrators were extremely powerful and influential
in shaping political Africa as we know it today. They pacified resist-
ing African leaders, negotiated colonial boundaries with parties to
the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, created and oversaw “native”
administrative units or other structures, promoted commerce, and
controlled the chiefs through whom most colonial policy was imple-
mented. They were also relatively few in Africa.
As Ronald Robinson puts it, “Europe’s policy normally was that
if empire could not be had on the cheap, it was not worth having
at all” (1972, 120). Because “recourse to strong central direction,
to direct rule, implied the employment of large numbers of admin-
istrators and their staffs,” British colonial rulers approximated and
redeployed local administrative structures as instruments of colo-
nial administration (Rathbone 2000, 10). This practice was particu-
larly obvious under the British policy of Indirect Rule: In order to
appease key home constituencies that objected to their tax monies
being used to fund distant colonies, and constituencies that objected
to their government’s interference in the cultures of other peoples,
the British government came up with its policy of Indirect Rule.
This policy allowed them to claim that they were not interfering in
the cultures of their colonial subjects because they were ruling them
through their own traditional leaders. It also allowed them to claim
that British taxpayer’s money was not being used to fund the colonies
because Indirect Rule placed the burden of funding the colonies on
the colonized subjects. Traditional leaders were required to enforce
harsh tax rules to generate funds required to pay colonial officials and
finance colonial projects. Where traditional leaders did not exist—as
in “stateless” societies, they were invented. Under British colonialism,
all traditional leadership structures were either invented, mandated,
or tolerated by colonial administrators. And while there were subtle
differences between British, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese

colonial policies in Africa, the tactics of colonial rule were similar in
that they were all heavily coercive. Colonial rule created a culture of
violent repression that survived independence and remains unchanged
in twenty-first-century Africa. The chief culprit is bad leadership of
the sort Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe personifies.
The colonial state in British Africa was a large wobbly structure
held in place by equally wobbly substructures of coercion and extrac-
tion: Under strict orders to have empire on the cheap, British colonial
administrators relied heavily on local intermediaries and traditional
power structures to accomplish their goals. One of these traditional
power structures was the chieftaincy institution, occupied by chiefs
who, from a leadership studies perspective, might usefully be termed
“subject leaders.”
Chiefs as “Subject Leaders”

That followers matter in the leadership process is generally agreed
upon by scholars of leadership studies. Leaders and followers make
leadership happen. A focus on these two elements of the leadership
process has not precluded studies on other individuals and groups
that play leadership roles in society. Leadership processes in colonial
Africa suggest that, historically at least, there are individuals and
groups that, judging from their organizational positions and the kind
of authority they wield, cannot strictly be categorized as either leaders
or followers. They are rather “subject leaders.”
The “subject leader” is not a common presence in democratic cul-
tures, except under exceptional circumstances such as an uncompro-
mising employment contract in a legally correct private organization.
Subject leadership happens mostly under oppressive regimes, other
authoritarian states and organizations, environments, and situations
in which recourse to redress, legal or otherwise, is fraught with mor-
tal or other danger.
At once both powerful and powerless, subject leaders exhibit a
“split leadership personality” deriving from and manifested through a
set of opposite and contradictory roles they play in their field of lead-
ership. The chief in British colonial Africa is a good example of a sub-
ject leader. On one hand, even where invented, chiefs were regarded
by significant numbers of their constituents as leaders. They were
custodians of a leadership institution that long predated colonial rule
and that symbolized and signified a plethora of traditional norms,
customs, rites, and other cultural artifacts that colonialism did little
10 BABA G. JALLOW
to obscure. On the other hand, they were often mere appendages to

an oppressive foreign state that insisted on total submission and abso-
lute loyalty. Reduced to salaried native colonial officers, the chiefs
were often more concerned with executing their administrative func-
tions than with leading their people. As subject leaders, African chiefs
were expected to behave at once like monarchs to their people and
unquestioning subjects to the Empire. The two roles required dis-
tinctly different sets of behavior and attitudes that must have made
their performance patently awkward, if not neurotic. Forced to act as
both powerful and powerless, the chief in colonial Africa personified
the dilemma of those who, for whatever reason, wilfully succumb to
unjust regimes of any kind.
Used in the context of colonial Africa, the term “chief” is preg-
nant with cultural symbolism. For one thing, some chiefs in colonial
Africa were not chiefs in precolonial Africa. They were kings. The
Asantehene in Ghana was a king, not a regional chief, and so were
many other rulers across colonial Africa. However, one fine day and by
imperial fiat, all African kings were ordered to assume the title chief.
Great Britain’s decision to summarily transform all African kings into
chiefs was inspired by unease about the existence of multiple kings in
the British Empire. Rathbone (1964, 9) writes thus: “After Queen
Victoria’s death and the subsequent imperial supremacy of a sequence
of British kings, the older colonial use of the word ‘king’ seems to
die out; the most obvious reason was perhaps the avoidance of the
literary chaos which would have resulted from the coexistence of a
British king with imperial subjects who were also kings.” Rathbone is
perhaps being modest, or cynical. The most obvious reason was that
there simply had to be only one Male Crown in the British Empire.
Empire was a very phallocentric institution.
An interesting feature of this enforced titular transition in the
British Empire was that African societies never ceased calling their
leaders Asantehene or Almami. Among the Mandinka of Gambia, the
word “chief” was conveniently reframed into “Seyfo” and added to
the local vocabulary. In French Guinea, the Futa Fullani continued
calling the Almami Almami and the chief chef de canton. In other
words, the universal imposition of the title “chief” on African rulers
was not universally adopted by African societies. The colonial state
sought and failed to “impose” chieftaincy on African monarchy in
order to assuage imperial sensibilities. Nevertheless, the position of
the chief in colonial Africa, regardless of his precolonial status, was
not particularly enviable. Chiefs were often badly treated by colonial
administrators.
Michael Crowder writes that “the relation between the British

political officer and the chief was in general that of an adviser who
only in extreme circumstances interfered with the chief and the native
authority under him. However, where chiefs governed small political
units, and in particular where their traditional executive authority was
questionable, the political officer found himself interfering in native
authority affairs more frequently than ideally he should” (1964, 198).
What Crowder describes might also usefully be construed as a series
of interactions rather than a genuine “relation” between the political
officer and the chief. In the eyes of most political officers, the chief
was little more than just another privileged native presiding over an
important arm of state. While the British colonial officials might have
acted as “mere advisers” in their interactions with the chief, no one
needed to be reminded that the club of imperial authority was always
near at hand. African colonial chiefs were often told they were the true
and natural leaders of their people. They were often reminded that
they were merely elevated subjects of Empire who could be brought
crashing down at the wag of a finger. According to the British impe-
rial code, the modernization of native Africa required that the chiefs
were never allowed to go too far—too far being as far as the impe-
rial code allowed or the political officer permitted (Crowder 1964;
Rathbone 2000). Incidentally, most political officers proved brutally
permissive, allowing chiefs to evolve into petty tyrants over their peo-
ple so long as they paid unquestioning homage to Empire.
Subject leaders often know they have somewhere a little window
of opportunity to exercise some power through an essential psycho-
logical need of their overlord. In colonial Africa, chiefs saw this win-
dow of opportunity in the colonial regime’s almost absolute need
for law, order, and finance (Rathbone 2000). If they must tame the
people and exploit the colony’s material resources, colonial adminis-
trators knew they must give the chief sufficient leeway to get the job
done. They must not undermine local authority by too frequent inter-
ventions. And so recognizing this colonial need for law, order, and
finance, some colonial chiefs exercised as much personal and impe-
rial power as the political officer would permit. Constituted into the
“heads” of Native Administrative units, colonial chiefs presided over
Native Courts and heard all but the most serious crimes in the colony.
Rathbone highlights the painful dilemma of the colonial chief as a
subject leader: “Many chiefs and their Native Authorities employed
their own, usually small Native Authority police forces and estab-
lished local jails . . . They were required to ensure that the local physi-
cal infrastructure—and especially roads—was both extended and
12 BABA G. JALLOW
maintained . . . they had to ensure the tidiness and sanitary respect-

ability of their towns and villages . . . They were expected to provide
and then pay for the labour of these tasks . . . they acted as licensing
authorities for market traders, letter writers, purveyors of medicine
and even for the establishment of animist shrines . . . These obligations
were onerous. Many of them involved the coercion, in greater and
lesser degrees, of their subjects and generated a great deal of local
resentment” (2000, 13).6
In chapter 1 of this volume, Hassoum Ceesay argues that the colo-
nial project succeeded to the extent it did in Gambia, largely because
“unlike in other British colonies in West Africa, colonial rule in
Gambia was anchored largely on the support and loyalty of district
chiefs and traditional authority, and not on military might, complex
colonial bureaucracy or massive propaganda.” In support of the colo-
nial project, colonial Gambia’s subject leaders sent their children to
school, supported Britain by recruiting, often forcefully, and supply-
ing men in both world wars, dutifully presided over native authority
structures, presided over native courts, and, in a case or two, sent out
a carefully worded protest note to the governor. The “net result of this
symbiotic relationship,” Ceesay writes, “was the forging of Gambia’s
reputation as the ‘most loyal’ British colony, stable and quiet during
the entire period of formal colonial rule.” Ceesay shows how in the
immediate postwar era, and in order to protect their privileges, the
chiefs stoutly opposed “extending the franchise to the Protectorate,
and to women,” thereby strengthening the position of the colonial
authority and impeding the emergence of mass nationalist move-
ments in Britain’s tiniest African colony.
However, not all colonial African chiefs willingly subjected them-
selves to colonial injustice or rampantly oppressed their people in pur-
suit of colonial objectives (Crowder 1964; Rathbone 2000; Ceesay,
this volume). Some chiefs in British Africa refused to be treated like
merely a first among equal natives. Some successfully petitioned
the governor for redress against bullying by district officers. Some,
like the Asantehene in the Gold Coast (Ghana), Bai Bureh in Sierra
Leone, Lat Jor in Senegal, Bambatha in Zululand, and Samori in
Guinea, questioned and resisted imperial authority, often fighting
long-running wars against imperial forces in Africa. The only direc-
tion toward which a colonial chief may lead his people was revolt, and
that was often drastically punished. He worked under an imperial
structure that presumed to know best what was good and what was
bad in African society and that acted as the supreme censor whose
duty it was to excise anything considered repugnant to imperial
sensibilities or in violation of imperial notions of “natural justice.”

However, British colonial rule never succeeded in turning all African
traditional leaders into subject leaders.
If the colonial chief was “powerless” under British colonial rule,
he was even more so under French colonial rule. Under French colo-
nial authority, the subject leader was a chef de canton who, unlike his
counterpart under British rule, had no power of action beyond clearly
stipulated rules and directives (Crowder 1964). And unlike his coun-
terpart in British Africa, the chef de canton “did not head a local gov-
ernment unit nor did the area which he administered on behalf of the
government necessarily correspond to a pre-colonial unit” (Crowder
1964, 199). Under the French colonial policy of Assimilation, the
chef de canton was just another deserving colonial civil servant who
could be promoted, demoted, or dismissed like any other civil ser-
vant. He was not a subject leader in the manner of the British African
chief because any and all authority he had and exercised over his con-
stituents was direct colonial administrative authority. He could not
build his own jails, recruit his own police forces, or lay claim to any
traditional institutions of leadership. Unlike the British, the French
saw no need to pretend that they were not interfering with African
customs or that they were ruling Africans through their own tradi-
tional authorities.
Finally, for the purposes of this introduction, it may legitimately be
suggested that the culture of subject leadership in colonial chieftaincy
exists to this day in many parts of former British Africa. Present-day
African chiefs, where they exist, often operate within dictatorial sys-
tems that, like their colonial predecessors, demand absolute loyalty
to the government. The main difference between a colonial and a
postcolonial chief as subject leader is that the latter, much like his
counterpart in French colonial Africa, had no power to establish a
police force, build his own jail, or lay claim to traditional author-
ity structures and institutions. The postcolonial subject leader while
spared the pain of “split leadership personality” is more preoccupied
with keeping his job and his life than with pretending to exercise any
sort of leadership, the very idea of which is often anathema to some
powerful quarters. Of course, to every rule there is an exception.
However, the exceptional chief who would openly oppose an oppres-
sive postcolonial government is likely to suffer as much as the colonial
chiefs, if not worse. At least the colonial chief was not afraid of being
abducted by government agents in broad daylight or in the darkness
of night and never seen again. We now turn to our third category of
leaders studied in this volume, the nationalist leader.
14 BABA G. JALLOW
Nationalist Leaders
In addition to political officials and chiefs in colonial Africa, there
existed a third category of leaders, the educated elite who became
leaders of the nationalist movement for independence. Born and bred
in colonial space, this category of leaders attended European schools,
often visited European capitals, and, with some exceptions, held sala-
ried positions within the colonial civil service. They included ordi-
nary people who rose to prominence by sheer personal effort and the
sons and relatives of chiefs for whom education was provided earlier
than for others. They were mostly journalists, lawyers, teachers, and
doctors disenchanted with, among other grievances, what Partha
Chatterjee (1993) called “the rule of colonial difference.” Often as
much or more educated than their European counterparts, they were
placed in subordinate positions and paid lesser salaries. The national-
ist leader might or might not have started off as a subject leader of
sorts, heading a particular unit or position in the imperial service.
With some exceptions, what distinguished the nationalist leader most
from the chief was that in most cases he could lay no claim to a natural
constituency or to long-standing symbols of traditional authority.7
Exposed to and deploying “the language” and “idea of human
rights” (Ibhawoh, this volume), and evidence of the success of the
imperial civilizing mission, the nationalist leaders found themselves
pitted against both the colonial government and the chiefs whose
authority they sought to diminish. Disowned and despised by both
the colonial government and the chiefs, they were called apes in trou-
sers, detribalized Africans, deracinated and anomalous natives, and
other uncomplimentary names. They were also famously branded
communists or capitalists and closely monitored by the CIA, British
intelligence, and the KGB in pursuit of cold war objectives. Ignored
and brushed aside by colonial governments, their vision of a more
Africanized colonial civil service gradually evolved into a vision of
independence that led to the formation of anti-colonial political par-
ties and guerilla movements through which they agitated for and
eventually gained independence for African colonies. The late 1940s,
the 1950s, and early 1960s were the main theaters of African nation-
alist leadership.
Rathbone writes that “it was understandably galling” for African
nationalist leaders “to see their colonial rulers looking to mostly pre-
literate chiefs rather than to educated men and women like themselves
as shareholders and auxiliaries in the evolving colonial enterprise”
(2000, 11). They were deeply offended because “despite their
credentials they were not destined to become tropical English men

and women dominating a modernizing colonial state. Unsurprisingly,
they began to oppose colonialism and anyone who supported it,” most
notably the chiefs (Rathbone 2000, 14). The “usually confused colo-
nial officials” who ruled Africa through chiefs and urban municipal
and other councils initially considered African nationalist agitation
“the petulant bleats of a small but utterly unrepresentative minority”
(Rathbone 2000, 14).
Increasingly in the postwar period, however, the British real-
ized that the “petulant bleats” of this “utterly unrepresentative
minority” could no longer be ignored since Uncle Sam was himself
uttering similar noises. Wartime and postwar America’s insistence
on the universal applicability of the principle of self-determina-
tion enshrined in the Atlantic Charter of 1941 represented one
sticky point among many between Washington and London. While
Roosevelt insisted that the Charter’s principle of self-determination
applied to colonized peoples, Churchill insisted that it “referred
exclusively to the conquered peoples of Europe under Nazi yoke”
(Louis and Robinson 1982, 32). While America persistently insisted
on a time table for an end to European empire, Churchill was ada-
mant that “he had not become the king’s first minister to preside
over the liquidation of the British Empire” (Louis and Robinson
1982, 33). Britain firmly rejected America’s doctrine of interna-
tional trusteeship of parts of Empire, seeing in the proposal a pos-
sible “camouflage for the beginning of a gigantic, even if informal,
American empire” (Louis and Robinson 1982, 32). When Roosevelt
sent Isaiah Bowman to discuss the idea of international trustee-
ship with the Colonial Office in April 1944, Bowman returned to
report that “the British bitterly resented the Americans sticking
their fingers into colonial pies.” In response, Stanley Hornbeck, an
adviser on Far Eastern Affairs at the State Department, said “he felt
like replying to the British that it happened to be their pie which
was under our nose and which did not smell good to us” (Louis
and Robinson 1982, 37).
Fortunately for Washington and the nationalist leaders, invaluable
support was at hand with the coming into power of Atlee’s Labor
government in 1945. Eager to improve British finances, calm a rest-
less public, and appease a powerful ally, Atlee reintroduced the for-
merly hated question of time tables into British foreign policy. Cutting
imperial losses by granting independence also fulfilled for Labor their
campaign promises “to carry out the ideals of social democracy” and
bring to an end “capitalist exploitation” and “laissez-faire stagnation”
16 BABA G. JALLOW
(Louis and Robinson 1982, 50). To “preempt the emergence of

nationalism in the colonies” and “to delay the political impact of the
nationalist movements,” the British introduced a modicum of consti-
tutional rule into their African colonies. In 1947, the Cohen-Caine
Committee set up to develop a new approach to the progress of the
Crown’s African subjects recommended that within a generation
Britain’s major colonies in Africa should have attained internal self-
government within the Commonwealth (Louis and Robinson 1982,
43). The first experiment in the Gold Coast (Ghana) backfired as
the nationalist leaders appropriated and redeployed the language of
constitutional and universal rights against the vulnerable paradox of
“ending empire to keep it”.
In chapter 3, Bonny Ibhawoh argues that “leaders of anticolonial
movements in Africa explicitly sought to link their domestic antico-
lonial activities with the nascent universal human rights movement.”
Using Nigeria’s Nnamdi Azikiwe as a case study, Ibhawoh shows how
African nationalist leaders participated in, contributed to, and actively
drew from universal rights discourses enshrined in the Atlantic
Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other doc-
uments proclaiming the doctrine of universal equality to further their
nationalist aspirations. Mainly conceptualized as bulwarks against
Nazi and potential further aggression against European societies, the
Atlantic Charter and Universal Declaration became potent instru-
ments for use against colonial aggression. As Ibhawoh writes, “It was
inevitable that discourses of anticolonialism and universal human
rights would intersect as colonized people drew on the emergent lan-
guage of universal human rights in their ideological struggles against
imperial powers and their demands for national self-government.”
The Atlantic Charter and the Universal Declaration proclaimed the
rights of all people to self-determination and the enjoyment of equal
rights and dignities. When Churchill tried to argue that the rights
enshrined in the Atlantic Charter were meant to apply only to vic-
tims and potential victims of Nazi atrocities, “Azikiwe considered
Churchill’s narrow interpretation of the Atlantic Charter duplicitous
and a betrayal of the efforts and sacrifices of African soldiers who
fought with Britain to defeat German Nazism during the Second
World War. He claimed that Africans had been ‘bamboozled into
participating in a war which was not of their making,’ ” and that they
deserved to be treated as equals by Westerners. Ibhawoh effectively
dismisses the idea that anticolonial rhetoric was not rights-based or
that human rights were a new idea in the postwar world. It was an
idea as old as Socrates. The colonial powers needed to emerge from
the shadows of Plato’s cave and face the reality of independence, and
they did, eventually.
In chapter 4, David Fistein argues that “the diplomatic achieve-
ments of Amilcar Cabral provided the groundwork to his success as
a modern African leader.” Cabral was the revolutionary leader of the
Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde. He is
one of the few African nationalist leaders accorded almost universal
respect both for his leadership and his scholarship. Cabral espoused
a philosophy of revolution (Return to the Source) that required edu-
cated nationalist leaders to renounce their pretensions to Portuguese
culture and totally identify with the masses they sought to lead.
Fistein looks at a side of Cabral’s leadership that has been little stud-
ied, his skillful and successful navigation of the international system
in pursuit of support for his troops and freedom and welfare for his
people. The image of Cabral that emerges from Fistein’s study is one
of a sincere and dedicated revolutionary leader who was also a great
thinker and world-class diplomat. Unfortunately, Cabral was assas-
sinated in 1973, shortly before the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon
that toppled the Salazar dictatorship and dismantled the Portuguese
Empire in 1974.
In chapter 5, Nyasha GuramatunhuCooper offers fascinat-
ing insights into the leadership dynamics of the Zimbabwe African
National Union (ZANU) by showing how leadership of Zimbabwe’s
liberation movement was almost evenly shared between Robert
Mugabe as civilian leader of ZANU and Josiah Tongogara as mili-
tary commander of ZANU’s Zimbabwe African National Liberation
Army. GuramatunhuCooper shows that the leadership roles of
Mugabe and Tongogara ran parallel to each other within ZANU.
Mugabe the “wizard” took care of popular mobilization in support
of the struggle; Tongogara the “warrior” designed and executed mili-
tary strategy. While both were present at the Lancaster House talks
at which Zimbabwean independence was finally negotiated, neither
often interfered in the work of the other. Tongogara died in a car
accident shortly before independence, allegedly eliminated by Robert
Mugabe in his bid to be the sole contender for the leadership of inde-
pendent Zimbabwe.
In chapter 6, Jamie Miller shows how the leaders of apartheid
South Africa had to wear “two crowns”; one as Hoofleier or leader of
Afrikanerdom, and the second as prime minister of all white South
African members of the National Party. As Hoofleier, Miller argues,
they had to pander to the racist wishes of right-wing Afrikanerdom
over and against both their “liberal” colleagues in the National Party
18 BABA G. JALLOW
and over their white English-speaking compatriots in South Africa.

Apartheid-era leaders before Vorster tended to privilege their Hoofleier
status over their role as prime minister of all white South Africans.
However, writes Miller, “Vorster understood apartheid’s place in the
world very differently from his predecessors.” The apartheid regime’s
increasing international isolation had begun feeling untenable by the
time Vorster came to power. And so privileging his role as prime min-
ister over his role as Hoofleier, Vorster embarked upon a diplomatic
campaign “to corrode other’s identification of his regime as the last
vestige of colonialism by redefining the white polity as an African and
post-colonial entity.” Miller quotes a Vorster speech of 1971 in which
the prime minister “explained the essence of (his) new agenda”:
What is the basis of separate development? It is, in the first instance,

the right of the Whites to preserve their white identity. Nobody can
deprive them of that right and they will not allow anybody to do so.
But what he wants for himself he does not begrudge those of other
colours in South Africa . . . If [the black man] comes to you and says,
I want political rights, then I say to him you may have your political
rights, but not in my territory . . . I say to him he can develop into a free
independent nation in his own territory.8
Miller observes that “unwilling to fundamentally change what apart-

heid was, Vorster instead resolved to change what it meant.” Bolman
and Deal have remarked of some leaders that “when they don’t know
what to do, they do more of what they know” (2003, 7). Vorster
tried to both enforce and excuse apartheid; it was no surprise that he
failed.
In chapter 7, Chris Saunders, Emeritus Professor of History at the
University of Cape Town, compares the leadership styles of national-
ist leaders during the struggle for independence with their leadership
styles after they came to power. He finds that the culture of coercive
leadership inherent in liberation movements often carried over into
independent governments. Of his five case studies of Robert Mugabe
in Zimbabwe, Sam Nujoma in Namibia, and Nelson Mandela, Thabo
Mbeki, and Jacob Zuma in South Africa, only Mandela was able to
successfully handle the transfer of power into their hands without
abusing it. Mandela, suggests Saunders, may have been helped by his
long incarceration that removed him from the factionalism and hostil-
ity inherent in liberation movements and gave him the time to think
especially of how South Africans could dismantle Apartheid and come
out in one piece as a “rainbow nation.” Mandela’s two successors,
Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, argues Saunders, exhibited alarming

levels of bad leadership that threatens to derail South Africa’s pros-
pects. Cozying up to obvious tyrants like Robert Mugabe, Mbeki
and Zuma departed from the justice-loving legacy of Mandela and
fostered a culture of political intolerance unworthy of people who
fought so long and so hard for political tolerance. Saunders writes
of Mugabe that “his amoral style of leadership, using force to stay in
power, has been at the cost of massive damage to his country and its
people.” It is also the most common style of African political lead-
ership. Saunders’ chapter serves as a bridge between Leadership in
Colonial Africa and Leadership in Post-Colonial Africa.
In chapter 8, Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Professor of History at the
College of Biblical Studies, Texas, explores the intellectual leader-
ship and pan-African legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois. Alongside Marcus
Garvey, George Padmore, and Aime Cesaire, beside others, Du Bois
played a crucial role in the growth of the pan-African movement and
the organization and facilitation of six pan-African conferences over
a period of 45 years. He was an active leader in both what Mazrui
called “the pan Africanism of Liberation” and “the pan-Africanism
of integration.” In these visions of pan-Africanism, African countries
needed both to be free of colonial domination and to emerge into one
united states of Africa. The “pan-Africanism of liberation” succeeded
to the extent that formal colonial rule ended. It failed to the extent
that African people continued to suffer similar and worse injustices
than they suffered under colonial rule. The pan-Africanism of inte-
gration remains a challenge to current African leaders. Du Bois spent
his last years in Accra, Ghana, where he died on August 27, 1963,
three years before Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a combined
police-military coup, dubbed “Operation Cold Chop.”
Taken together, the chapters in this book represent a tapestry of
leadership cultures in colonial Africa. Every chapter speaks to issues
inherent in every other chapter. They all explore the nature and evo-
lution of leadership cultures born of the colonial encounter between
white colonialists and native Africans. They reveal that the nature
of relationships between Europeans and Africans during the colo-
nial period requires much more than thinking in terms of colonizer
and colonized, or rulers and subjects, among other binary catego-
ries. They also show that grand narratives of Empire valorizing the
domination by “superior” imperial forces of yielding Africans lack
credibility. The evidence revealed in these chapters show that Africans
were not so helpless and compliant after all, and that some aspects of
the colonizers’ leadership cultures were in fact appropriated by the
20 BABA G. JALLOW
nationalist leaders who took over from them at independence. Finally,

this study makes a strong statement that African leadership needs to
be paid abiding and more scholarly attention. Welcome to African
leadership studies and to Leadership in Colonial Africa.
Notes
1. The use of rulers instead of leaders in these questions is deliberate
and a statement of agreement with James Macgregor Burns and other
scholars of leadership studies who insist on the distinction.
2. Personal communication.
3. This fact is obvious enough. But it is not so obvious in some quarters
of Western societies.
4. Personal communication from arresting secret police agents, Banjul,
Gambia.
5. In 1998, the Gambia government used the Telegraph Act of 1913/1914
to ban and confiscate Baboucarr Gaye’s Citizen FM Radio. Its crime
was translating the content of the local newspapers into the vernacular
for audiences of illiterate, eager listeners around the country. The pre-
text was that Citizen FM did not own a valid license as required by the
colonial Telegraph Act.
6. The existence of local police forces answerable directly to the chief
reveals yet another layer of subject leadership in colonial Africa. As could
be expected, designated heads of these police forces were expected to
pay unfailing loyalty to the chief. Failure to do so could attract swift
retribution from the chief. So that while they lead their men, they were
directly ruled by the chief much in the same way as the chief is ruled
by the colonial officer. In the execution of their contradictory roles,
these subject leaders also exhibit a “split leadership personality.” Like
chiefs, this category of subject leaders presents an interesting approach
for the study of colonial African leadership cultures.
7. Some nationalist leaders like Ghana’s J. B. Danquah and William Ofori
Atta belonged to traditional royal lineages.
8. Quoted by Miller (this volume), Vorster speech at Naboomspruit, June
17, 1971, in Geyser, ed., Select Speeches (1977), p. 144–147.
References
Bolman, L. G., and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organizations: Artistry,
Choice, and Leadership (Third Edition), San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass,
2003.
Brown, D. J., Kristin Scott, and Hayden Lewis, “Information Processing
and Leadership,” in Antoniakis, Cianciolo, and Sternberg (Eds.), The
Nature of Leadership, London, UK: Sage Publications, 2004.
Burns, J. M., Leadership, New York, NY: Harper, 1978.
Chatterjee, P., The Nation and its Fragments, Princeton, NJ: The University
of Princeton Press, 1993.
Crowder, M., “Indirect Rule: French and British Style,” Africa: Journal of
the International African Institute, Vol. 34, No. 3 (1964), p.197–205.
Geyser, O. ed., Select Speeches. Blomfontein, INCH: 1977
Louis, W. M., and Ronald Robinson, “The U.S. and the end of British
Empire in Tropical Africa,” in Gifford and Louis (Eds.), The Transfer of
Power in Africa, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982.
Ranger, T., “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in Hobsbawm
and Ranger (Eds.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Ranger, T., “The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial
Africa,” in Ranger and Vaughan (Eds.), Legitimacy and the State in 20th
Century Africa, , London, UK: Mamillan, 1993.
Rathbone, R., Nkrumah and the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana,
1951–1960, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000.
Robinson, R., “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: A
Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in Owen and Sutcliffe (Eds.),
Studies in the Theories of Imperialism,London, UK: Longman, 1972.
Schein, E. H., Organizational Culture and Leadership (Fourth Edition),
San Francisco, CA: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2010.
Chapter 2
Chiefs and Protectorate Administration

in Colonial Gambia, 1894–1965
Hassoum Ceesay
District chiefs represented a tangible example of African leadership

during British colonial rule in Gambia. Even when the educated elite
that comprised mainly Aku fell out of favor with the colonial rulers
from the 1920s onwards, chiefs continued to play a very important
yet little studied role in the strengthening and, ironically, the dis-
mantling of colonial rule in Gambia. Through the Indirect Rule sys-
tem perfected by Lord Lugard in Northern Nigeria from 1914, the
British used the traditional leadership roles of chiefs to augment their
minimal administrative capacity in their West African colonies such
as Gambia. The abysmally low literacy levels in Gambia during the
colonial era, coupled with the almost complete absence of communi-
cation infrastructure, such as roads or railways, and the peculiar shape
of its territory, meant that British rule had to depend on traditional
leadership agents, initiatives, and structures—including chiefs—to
maintain a firm grip until independence in 1965.1
Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

Chiefs and their position in colonial West Africa have always fascinated
historians since the 1960s. Crowder (1964, 197–205) compared the
British and French colonial systems and concluded that, in fact, even
though both powers “relied heavily on the chiefs and exploited” the
institution in order to make their rule effective, the French placed the
chief in a “subordinate role to the (French) colonial official,” while
in the British system, the relationship between the chiefs and the
colonial officials was merely “advisory,” alluding to a more significant
role for chiefs in the running of the affairs of British possessions in
24 H A S S O U M C E E S AY
West Africa. However, Crowder fell short of delineating the roles that
chiefs in British colonies performed to make them so relevant in the
affairs of colonial administration. While Rathbone (2000) explored
the link between Nkrumah and Ghanaian chiefs in the decade lead-
ing to independence and republican status, he concentrated on their
political, and not administrative, clout.
Much of the literature on the colonial period in Gambia tends to
focus on the role of the “outsiders,” such as governors and lesser British
colonial officials like the commissioners and soldiers, in the adminis-
tration of the oldest British possession in Africa. Colonial historians
like Gray (1940), Reeves (1906), and Southern (1946) have stressed
the importance of travelling commissioners such as Ozanne, Sitwell,
Macklin, and Lorthimer, and of governors like Denton, Armitage,
and Blood in the establishment and relatively smooth running of the
Gambia Protectorate administration. This approach marginalizes
the salient role of chiefs in the social, economic, and administrative
aspects of the colonial state. More recent works on Gambian history,
such as by Hughes and Perfect (2007, 2008), Ceesay (2008), and
Saine (2013), have delved into political history since independence
and, in particular, the chiefs’ roles in nationalist politics, but have
not specifically addressed their roles in colonial administration. Orde
(1965) critically explored the attempts at modernizing Gambian local
government administration in the 1960s with the establishment of
area councils and paid particular attention on the geographical cri-
teria for the demarcation of ward boundaries. However, he did not
address the threat the new development would pose to chiefs’ author-
ity and prestige.
The multiple responsibilities of chiefs as tax collectors, dispensers
of “native justice”, and guardians of “law and order” in their districts
made them an indispensable tool in colonial rule, which is why it is
important to examine their contribution to the success of colonial
rule in Gambia.
This research shall be premised on various theoretical paradigms
such as colonial governance (Agbor et al. 2010), which cites indi-
rect rule in British West Africa as an example of governance technol-
ogy. Agbor posits that indirect rule falls under the category of the
“co-optive governance strategy of colonial rule” and further explains
that this strategy “assumes rationality on the part of all agents namely:
the colonisers, the indigenous elites and the general population.”
Agbor et al.’s notion of “co-opted agents” with “administrative roles”
of maintaining law and order, collecting taxes, and supplying labor
remarkably illustrates the roles of chiefs in colonial Gambia under
the Indirect Rule system. In examining the ever-present threat of
C H I EF S A N D P R O T E C T O R AT E A D M I N I S T R AT I O N 25
and infliction of punishment on chiefs to secure consent and loyalty

through fear, we shall find Galtung’s (1969) theory on colonial vio-
lence very appropriate. He divides the dynamics of colonial violence
into physical, psychological, and structural; physical violence involved
torture and bodily harm; psychological violence targeted the psyche
and morale; and structural violence was inflicted through divide-and-
rule and patronage: depriving the recalcitrant and satisfying the needs
of the obedient. Violence was inevitable in the colonial state as it
sought always to control power and confirm loyalty of the conquered
masses and their leaders, chiefs in this case.
It must also be stated that my overall aim is to highlight African
chiefs’ leadership agency by examining the role they played during
colonial rule in Gambia, which has been understated and under-
studied. Here we must veer toward Molefi Kete Asante’s theory of
Afro-centricity (1988), which seeks to find “the subject-place of
Africans in any social, political, economic, phenomenon,” such as
colonial rule. As “subject leaders,” chiefs were the critical plank in
the entire “colonial process of conquest, rule establishment, and
maintenance of colonial domination” and, if I may add, disengage-
ment (Kabwegyere, 305).
Broader Research Questions

The chapter hopes to shed light on important questions such as: (1)
Why did Indirect Rule through chiefs succeed in colonial Gambia;
what specific roles did chiefs play in Protectorate administration? (2)
What benefits did chiefs receive in return for their loyalty and leader-
ship, and how did these benefits affect Gambia’s nationalist politics
in the late 1950s? (3) What was the legal framework for chiefly rule
in Gambia, and how did it help or hamper the colonial system? (4)
As traditional leaders, were chiefs more or less accountable to their
subjects before or during colonial rule?
Unlike in other British colonies in West Africa, colonial rule in
Gambia was anchored largely on the support and loyalty of district
chiefs, and not on military might, complex colonial administra-
tive machinery, or massive propaganda. It is also demonstrated that
Gambian chiefs expressed keen loyalty to the British throughout the
colonial period through confidence-building measures such as send-
ing their children to school, support to Britain during the two world
wars, mobilizing local resources and labor for infrastructure devel-
opment, and by running efficient Native Tribunals and Treasuries
that provided the social and fiscal control needed for colonial stabil-
ity and exploitation. However, to fully appreciate the critical roles
played by district chiefs in colonial administration in Gambia, I shall

also explore the status, obligations, and responsibilities of traditional
African leaders before the advent of formal colonial rule in 1889 and
how colonial rule altered these precolonial patterns of chiefly rule.
Gambian Precolonial States and Leadership

The precolonial societies that constituted the modern state of Gambia
had strong sovereigns who commanded political, social, economic,
and spiritual powers. In the Wollof state of Pakala, which formed the
present-day districts of Upper and Lower Saloum on the North Bank
of the Gambia river, the King or Burr (Burr-Pakala or Burr Saloum)
was an all-powerful ruler with power of life and death. Indeed, in the
1853 Gambia Annual Report, the Burr-Saloum was said to possess
“arbitrary powers” and the leader of “a brave and independent people.”
However, the monarch’s arbitrary powers were checked by a panoply
of court officials such as the Farang, who was the smaller king of a
district; the Bumi, who had power to settle small village matters such
as divorceand farm land disputes; and the Borom Dekk (village head),
who was answerable to the Bumi but could also handle village issues.
The Wollof Farba or Jaraff looked after the Bur-Saloum’s property
and personal belongings, while the Saltigi was the commander of
the army. Equally strong were the monarchs (Mansa) of precolonial
Mandinka states such as Kaabu, Niumi, and Niani. Bakary Sidibe
writes that the “The Kaabu Mansa was like father to his people . . . His
words were extremely powerful; he could bless and curse; he could
consult his fetishes and predict the future.”2 The Mandinka Mansa’s
powers were bewilderingly writ large: he “settled disputes between
lineages and villages, coordinated planting and harvesting, oversaw
relations with traders and dealt with matters related to warfare.”3 In
addition, the Mansa was surrounded by pomp and pageantry befit-
ting a monarch. Reverend John Morgan, a Methodist missionary in
Gambia, gives an eye witness account of an encounter he had in 1833
with the King of Barra, the ruler of the Niumi Kingdom, which cov-
ered a greater part of the North Bank of present-day Gambia: “The
King and his retinue are usually heralded by firing of muskets to the
accompaniment of drummers, women singing and clapping . . . 50 or
60 mounted warriors, and a large number of infantry. The king is
mounted on a charger surrounded by lesser chiefs. Two bullocks in
the rear for slaughter.”4
Precolonial African leaders also commanded military might.
Kemintang Kamara (died 1841), the ruler of Niani state in the Upper
River region of present-day Gambia, mustered an army strong enough

to defeat “a 120-man force” British expedition near the Niani capital
of Ndugusine in 1834.5 Galloway (1975) explains that in the preco-
lonial Mandinka state of Wuli in present-day Gambia, rulers needed
more than military might to survive and were also always under the
watchful eyes of their council of elders. She wrote thus: “For a king to
survive long in power, he must have eloquence, jujus and diplomatic
skills (fero); moreover, his ‘generosity’ and ‘age’ could determine the
length of his reign.”6 This explains why the death of sovereigns was
kept secret until the electoral colleges had chosen the right succes-
sor to prevent struggles for power among rival factions. Moreover,
the new ruler was sent into a long period of seclusion to enable him
to prepare himself spiritually to face the task of ruling and keeping
his enemies at bay (Gamble 1985, 21). Wollof rulers became wealthy
from taxes collected, from the proceeds of royal farms tended by free
labor from subjects, and from gifts (such as slaves) from people who
wanted favors from the court. Armed with this wealth, the rulers
were able to strengthen their positions through patronage and a well-
armed force.
Kaabu emperors had Farring Mansas (vassal rulers) who admin-
istered the subjugated states of Kaabu, and Kanto Mansas (guardian
rulers) of border states who were answerable to him.7 In the Wollof
states, the Queen mother, or Linguer, had political clout, which
served as a counterweight to the powers of the Burr. The Linguer
served on the Grand Jambour, the electoral college that appointed
the Burr who could not go to war without the Linguer’s consent.
The foregoing suggests that at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, Gambia consisted of a number of states organized on a ter-
ritorial basis, with recognized monarchs assisted by state officials. But
from 1860 to 1880s, the political and economic landscape was dis-
rupted by religious wars in which Muslim warriors sought to conquer
and convert traditional animist rulers. These wars, fought by Muslim
reformers like Foday Kabba Dumbuya, destroyed the old ruling elite
in almost the entire country. The leadership of the few who survived
was disrupted by the advent of British rule in the 1890s. Gamble
(2007) noted that a further disruptive influence on traditional orga-
nizations was the division of the land around the river between French
and British spheres of influence:
By an early treaty the British had been given the right to trade in the
river, but nothing was stated about possession of the land on each
bank. There were no natural boundaries known to the politicians, and
it was conceded that the British should be allowed territory extend-

ing 10 km from the river on each bank, with a wider distance being
granted on the western side.8
This meant that the boundaries often divided traditional kingdoms,

placing part under British influence and part in French territory.
Ruling families that were on the British side of the frontier were rec-
ognized by the government and the people as rightful rulers, now
called chiefs.9 In some cases, the traditional ruler preferred to stay on
the French side of the frontier, and the government had to appoint
their own “chief” on the British side. From 1894 onward, the British
started to carve out 36 districts from the ancient states and kingdoms
subdued by treaties or force of arms. By 1901, the district boundaries
had been completed with a chief and native council of village heads in
place ready to strengthen British rule.
The British Indirect Rule System in West Africa

In order to have a clear understanding of the role of chiefs in colo-
nial administration in Gambia, it is essential to assess the British
colonial policy of Indirect Rule formulated by Lord Lugard, gover-
nor general of Northern Nigeria. Indirect Rule enabled the British
to administer their colonies through preexisting traditional author-
ities and leadership structures. It sought to “conserve what was
good in indigenous institutions” and use it to rule the colonies.10
Under Indirect Rule, the chiefs, newly minted from the destroyed
states, were the undisputed bosses. Richard Rathbone states that
the British (in Ghana) faced the dilemma of “how to create an effec-
tive administrative structure with inadequate local revenue” insuf-
ficient to pay for the services of a large colonial bureaucracy.11 This
logic could be extended to Gambia, the least endowed of the four
British colonies in West Africa, where total revenue at the onset of
Protectorate rule in 1893 was a mere £25,000 and the expenditure
£20,000 (Armitage, 816).
Created in 1894, the Gambia Protectorate was one of the earliest
spaces for British experimentation with the policy of indigenizing the
colonial state through the use of local customary institutions and
values to meet their need for cheap, yet effective administration in
their colonies. In addition to chiefs, Indirect Rule also involved the
use of other traditional power loci such as village headmen and elders
in Protectorate administration. That the British were able to rule the
200,000 people in the Gambia Protectorate with only two travelling
commissioners in the first 20 years after 1900 underscores the salient

role played by the chiefs and other traditional authorities.
Hereditary and Nonhereditary Chiefs

There were two types of chieftaincies in colonial Gambia: hereditary
and nonhereditary chiefs. The latter comprised chiefs who did not
hail from former ruling families; they were minted by the early British
travelling commissioners to rule in areas where the British did not
find any clear centralized administration, such as in the Foni districts
inhabited by stateless peoples. The fiercely independent Jola did not
have a ruling class. They “lived in isolated villages under village heads
who were actually independent of each other” (Mahoney, 32). The
British were not able to win their support and could not find any
one among them to accept the new title of chief. Therefore, chiefs
for the three original Foni districts were appointed from among the
Mandinka settlers in Foni. Nonhereditary chiefs were paid much
less stipends and were elected to the chieftaincy by village heads.
Hereditary chiefs were from a line of successive rulers dating to the
pre-Protectorate era. Sawallo Ceesay of Upper Saloum, Mama Tamba
Jammeh of Illiasa, and Cherno Bandeh of Upper Fulladu were exam-
ples of hereditary chiefs. Sawallo was a captain in the army of Gedel
Mboge, the last king of Saloum. They were paid handsome stipends
in compliance with treaties of cession of territory their ancestors had
signed with the British in the 1890s. However, the British expected
all chiefs to wield strong powers to enable them to fully control their
districts. In the minds of the people also, chiefs, like the kings before
them, were supposed to be strong, ruthless, and powerful. This dual
expectation of absolute power made chiefs authoritarian and to be
obsessed with control and discipline.
When a vacancy existed in a district with a hereditary chief, the
travelling commissioner for that province will confer with the elders
and village headmen to see a suitable replacement within the ruling
family. In case no suitable person was found, a chief would be selected
from outside the ruling family by the commissioner and approved by
the governor in Bathurst. Thus, a chieftaincy could be hereditary one
time to be nonhereditary the next time. However, when a qualified
person later appears from the former ruling family, they could claim
back the chieftaincy at the next vacancy.
How did a colonial chief’s seat become vacant? According to the
Protectorate Ordinance 1894, the governor had the powers to appoint
chiefs and also to dismiss them. Thus, many chiefs lost their seats
thanks to a dismissal from the governor in Bathurst, acting upon the

advice from the commissioner of that province. Accusations of cor-
ruption, embezzlement of tax revenue, and witchcraft torture were
common reasons for the dismissal of chiefs. In many cases, these were
merely subterfuge for the commissioners to settle vendettas against
chiefs they did not like. Evidently, under colonial rule the chiefs
were not answerable to the people, who had no power to remove
them. In fact, chiefs were allowed wanton powers by the Protectorate
Ordinance to keep their districts under a firm grip. The colonial offi-
cials were ready to turn a blind eye as long as necessary in the pretext
of maintaining “peace and stability.”
District Hierarchy
Kabwegyere (1972, 304) discusses the processes by which British
colonial rule in Uganda transmitted orders and directives from the
Colonial Office down to the village. He cites the inductive and con-
ductive systems of transmitting “inputs from the metropolis and
receiving compliance from the colony.” Conductive system was the
flow of commands from London to the provincial commissioner,
while the involvement of African chiefs and Native Authority com-
prised the inductive system. Colonial rule, therefore, depended on a
two link chains of command that were mutually supporting. Yet, the
inductive system was more on the spot and critical as it indigenized
the colonial master’s directives and made them digestible to the sub-
jects through the use of native languages, motifs, and contexts. The
district hierarchy, therefore, comprised the inductive system of colo-
nial rule in the Protectorate. While the chief was head of the district
according to the Protectorate Ordinance, he was supposed to rule in
consultation with the Native Authority, later called District Authority,
comprising elders and headmen of big villages in the district (Alkali).
The Authority was a sort of council that advised the chief. The coun-
cil, in many ways, played the same role as its precolonial counterpart.
However, most chiefs ignored the Authorities and ruled in autocratic
manner, which made the Authorities almost moribund. Next to the
chief was the village headman, called Alkali. Gray (490) admits that
both the chief and the Alkali were supported by badge messengers.
The badge messenger wore uniforms replete with emblems, was
charged with executing chiefs’ orders, and had police powers in the
early decades of the Protectorate. It should be noted that these grades
of power of chief, village headmen, and badge messengers predated
the declaration of the Protectorate; as leadership roles, they existed in
the former kingdoms and states under various guises. All the British
did was to codify their respective duties and powers. This codification
was contained in the Protectorate Ordinances, which were passed
from 1902 onward.12
The Protectorate Ordinance 1902 an overview

Powers and Duties of the Governor
The Ordinance gave the governor of the colony “full power and
authority for the maintenance of law and order, the suppression of
disorders, riots or insurrections”; it also empowered the governor
in Bathurst to banish “troublesome persons” from the Protectorate.
This was one of the more draconian provisions of the Ordinance,
which was used with much zest by colonial governors, especially
against chiefs who have fallen in disfavor. The Ordinance further
authorized the governor to divide the Protectorate into districts as
he may deem convenient for judicial and executive purposes, alter or
vary district boundaries, and appoint and dismiss district chiefs and
village headmen.
Power and Duties of the Commissioners

The 1902 Ordinance created two travelling commissioners for both
banks of the Gambian territory, North and South Bank. In later
years, the commissioners were increased to four, then five, each
based at Mansakonko, Basse, Georgetown, Kerewan, and Brikama.13
In the 1940s, a senior commissioner was appointed to coordinate
the work of the four divisional commissioners. These commission-
ers were superintendents of the districts under their purview, and
all chiefs and village headmen were answerable to them. The com-
missioners were men-on-the-spot for the governor and, therefore,
enjoyed almost unlimited powers of action. Poor communications
with Bathurst meant that they took decisions first before letting the
governor or the colonial secretary know about the issue. In many
cases, commissioners bypassed the chiefs in matters such as tax col-
lection and judicial matters, which is why some of them wondered
whether at all they were engaged in “direct rule”; the provision of
the Ordinance, which gave commissioners the powers to run any dis-
trict where a chief had died or was incapacitated until a replacement
was found, further gave them “direct rule”–like powers. The typical
commissioner had to multitask: he was required to keep daily and
monthly diaries of activities, keep the accounts of the province, issue

gun licenses, carry out inoculations against diseases, supervise road
construction and sanitary awareness, etc.
The earliest travelling commissioners were Ozanne for the North
Bank and Sitwel for the South Bank, both appointed in 1893. Their
duty was to tour the length of the country explaining the meaning
of Protectorate administration to the people, identifying the right
people as chiefs and village headmen, signing treaties with the few
unconquered kings and chiefs such as Musa Molloh of Fulladu, and
establishing the boundaries with French Senegal. It was a hazardous
job; of the first 12 commissioners, 3 died on duty, 2 were killed at
work, and 2 were declared insane and sent back to England.
Perhaps the travails of one of the earliest commissioners, J. K.
McCollum, is worth noting here as it reveals some of the many pitfalls
these stout defenders of the gospel of Indirect Rule had to contend
with in dealing with the more powerful chiefs. In 1919, McCollum
accused Chief Sawallo Ceesay of high-handed action against the
inhabitants of the town of Bantanto that made the town’s inhabit-
ants to flee to a neighboring district. McCollum recommended to
the governor that the chief should suffer dismissal, banishment, and
that the chief’s village N’jau should be burnt. At the same time as
McCollum sent his report to Bathurst, Sawallo wrote to the governor
and to the judge alleging that one lady called “Fatoo (sic) Khan made
herself Queen Victoria in McCollum’s presence, that she was in fact
now the Commissioner, and that she wanted Sawallo dismissed” to
be replaced by a man who had given her money.14 Sawallo also alleged
that Fatoo was so powerful that she exacted rice and coos from the
villages in the district, which she then shipped to Bathurst for sale.
The allegations warranted Governor Sir Edward Cameroon to con-
duct an investigation, which reported to him in February 1919. The
report confirmed chief Sawallo’s allegations that McCollum had lived
with Fatoo for many years and had several other local women in con-
cubinage, and that such conduct would produce a belief in the minds
of locals that Fatoo possessed the power of swaying his judgment.
More relevant to our discussions are two of the inquiry findings: that
Fatoo in fact ran the division for several months when McCollum was
away on holidays in England. It emerged that through the official
interpreters Fatoo would have official letters read to her, and she dic-
tated responses and signed them as McCollum had taught her how
to forge his signature! Moreover, she was able to protect her uncle
Sawallo by prevailing on McCollum to send positive reports on the
chief to Bathurst.15
The McCollum mistress affair rattled the Protectorate administra-

tion to its core. The commissioner was suspended and later retired
from service, and henceforth all commissioners were forbidden to
maintain any sexual liaisons with local women. Sawallo, one of the
senior chiefs, was forced to retire in mid-1919 on account of his strong
arm tactics on Bantanto. This affair brings to light the little-noticed
behind-the-scene influence of women in Protectorate administration,
including the usually hidden roles of chief’s wives in their husband’s
courts. It also shows the determination and ability of certain chiefs
to defend their integrity when they felt slighted even by their colonial
supervisors.
Powers and Duties of District Chiefs and Village Headmen

According to the 1902 Ordinance, the district chief “is responsible to
the Governor for the good order of his district.” However, the chief
was at the mercy of the governor who “may in case of misconduct,
punish by fine, suspension or removal as the Governor may deem
fit.” Many chiefs, including Omar Ceesay of Upper Saloum, Cherno
Bandeh of Upper Fulladu, and Mansajang Sanyang of Kantora, were
to suffer dismissals without judicial hearing, at the hands of the gov-
ernors. The Ordinance delineated the duties of district chiefs as to
maintenance of peace, prevention of crime, collection of taxes, and
enforcement of judgements given out by courts. The village headmen
worked directly under the chiefs and were responsible for the order
and maintenance of their villages. The headmen of leading villages in
the district formed the Native Authority, which was an advisory body
for the chief who chaired it. In districts led by nonhereditary chiefs,
the Native Authority elected the chief when a vacancy occurred.
The Native Authority Ordinance of 1933 gave chiefs and their
native authorities the power to require groundnut (peanut) farmers
to deposit five bushels of seed nuts in the village seed stores, some of
which were to be returned to the farmers around the planting sea-
son. Through this provision, the government was eased of the burden
of having to give healthy seed nuts to farmers every year, and farm-
ers were also expected to be freed from the perennial indebtedness
that arose from seed nuts given by government on credit.16 Through
the chiefs, therefore, the government was able to win a major battle
against declining revenue and hunger as the farmers spent less on
buying seeds.
The Ordinance also spelt out the duties of the chiefs regarding the
dispensation of customary law and collection of taxes. However, Gray
(1940) states that one of the most important provisions of the 1933
Ordinance is that “which confers certain limited powers of legisla-
tion upon the Native Authority by enabling them, subject in some
cases to the approval of the Commissioner and in others to that of
the Governor, to make orders or pass rules dealing with a variety of
matters” in regard to the people in their districts. Now, both the gov-
ernor and the commissioner had to be consulted on issues that were
hitherto the exclusive preserve of the chiefs. This legislation irked
the chiefs who felt that it curtailed some of their powers and made
them even more answerable to the governor and commissioner. To
further erode the powers of chiefs, in the same year, the government
enacted the Native Tribunal Ordinance, which now gave commis-
sioners their “separate courts” distinct from the Native Tribunals of
the chiefs. The commissioners still had to review the proceedings of
the chiefs’ tribunals. The commissioners’ courts dealt with all cases
that the chiefs handled in their Native Tribunals but, in addition,
could also deal with cases “in which one of the parties is not subject
to the jurisdiction of the Native Tribunals” (Gray, 1940). This devel-
opment came as a result of pressure on the colonial government by
the Bathurst-based merchants and elite who did not want to be tried
by the chiefs outside Bathurst. The inhabitants of Bathurst had peti-
tioned the governor expressing fears of they being subject to chiefs’
courts soon after the Native Authority Ordinance was enacted.17 The
Native Tribunal Ordinance was, therefore, meant to allay the fears of
the colony people and also check the judicial powers of the chiefs.
As a matter of fact, despite the formal attempts to control the
chiefs, they were expected to exercise “power” by both their sub-
jects and the colonial government. Such that when in 1919 the Upper
Saloum Chief burnt down the entire village at Bantanto forcing its
inhabitants to seek refuge in nearby Nianija district, a subsequent
inquiry exonerated the chief. It stated thus: “The crimes were very
common, and were not crimes in the eyes of his people . . . In fact,
they were committed to show ‘power.’ The chief’s people were not
tired of him.”18
Chiefs as Agents of Law and Order: Native Tribunals

The 1902 Ordinance created Native Tribunals for each district,
which had jurisdiction over both civil and criminal matters in the dis-
trict. The Tribunal had a minimum of three and not more than seven
members selected by the governor. The size of the tribunal depended
on the size of the district such that small districts like Nianija had
only three members, while Illiasa had a full house of seven. The chief
sat in the Tribunal as president and, in case of a tie in votes as to a

verdict, was given a “casting vote in addition to his original vote.” In
criminal matters, the Native Tribunal had powers to hear cases that
the Police Magistrate in Bathurst and other parts of the colony would
have heard; in civil matters, the Native Tribunal could hear cases
that the Court of Request in the colony would hear. For the Native
Tribunal to be competent to hear a case, one of the defendants would
have to be a resident in the district. The commissioner could sit in the
Native Tribunal and had the powers to overturn any decision of the
Tribunal. This is another indication of the huge powers invested in
the commissioners by the Ordinance.
The Tribunal had powers to hear 20 offences, such as assaults,
defamation, seduction, sorcery and witchcraft, and beating of drums
without the permission of the chief or village headmen. Fines imposed
by the Native Tribunals were collected by the chief and handed over
to the commissioner to be paid into the Colonial Treasury. For many
districts, such fines formed the bulk of their revenue, and in the
1940s, when District Treasuries were established, court fines formed
a source of revenue for district development projects. Court records
were taken in local languages using Arabic script before English-
literate court scribes became widespread in the districts.
In 1933, a new Native Tribunal Ordinance was enacted, which pro-
vided for a separate court for the commissioners, who could no longer
sit in the Native Tribunals. The commissioner was now empowered to
hear cases in which one of the parties is not subject to the jurisdiction
of the Native Tribunals, and cases that are not cognizable by those
tribunals19 (table 2.1). Yet, cases tried by the chief and his Tribunal
members were still subject to review by the commissioners.
Table 2.1 Summary of cases heard before Native Tribunals, 1943
District Criminal Civil Total
Fulladu West 66 32 98
McCarthy Island 34 10 44
Sami 26 35 61
Niani 31 87 118
Nianija 9 12 21
Western Niamina 5 2 7
Eastern Niamina 2 10 12
Niamina Dankunku 13 5 18
Lower Saloum 43 23 66
Upper Saloum 20 9 29
Source: ARP 34/1, Divisional Report, 1943.

The 1902 Ordinance was the framework around which the admin-
istration of the Gambia Protectorate rested for over six decades.
Although amended many times over the years, its basic tenets had
remained until the end of the colonial rule in 1965. In the 1940s,
the Native Tribunals were renamed District Tribunals, and District
Treasuries were established to take charge of fiscal matters.
Chiefs as Efficient Tax Collectors: District Treasuries

The District Treasuries were created by the Protectorate Treasuries
Ordinance of 1945, which provided for the establishment and man-
agement of treasuries for a district or groups of districts, managed by
Finance Committees that consisted of a chair and three members in a
district, or a chair and at least one member representing each district
in the group. The Finance Committee for each Treasury prepared
its estimates after consultation with the District Authority for the
senior commissioner and for approval or amendment by the gover-
nor. The District Treasuries were the fiscal lifeline of the colonial
Protectorate administration, and their emergence could be attributed
to the belated “developmental colonialism” (Jallow 2014, 2), which
the British started after the end of the Second World War to improve
the infrastructure and well-being of their subjects.
From 1945 onward, only gunpowder and firearms taxes collected
at the district level went to central government coffers. The Treasuries
were meant to bring about a more judicious use of tax monies for
development projects at the district level, such as building causeways,
schools, and dispensaries. David Gamble has opined that the treasur-
ies also brought about better management of district revenues, saving
many chiefs from falling into the temptation of misusing tax monies.20
However, between 30 and60 percent of the newly created Treasuries’
expenditures were for salaries and allowances of chiefs and other dis-
trict officials, such as court scribes and market masters, allowing little
money for development projects. In 1955, for example, the Western
Division Group Treasury (this grouped the Foni and Kombo districts
on the South Bank) spent nearly £9,000 out of its £25,000 revenue
on recurrent costs, and only £942 on education.
Chiefs as Mobilizers for First and Second World Wars

Gambian chiefs used the First and Second World Wars to consolidate
their loyalty and support to the British crown by zealously assisting
in the conscription of men into the allied armies, contributing to
the various war funds, and putting up infrastructure such as military

camps for the soldiers. In April 1917, 400 Gambian men were con-
scripted by local chiefs and sent to fight the Germans in East Africa.
The Gambian soldiers excelled, and six of their ranks received decora-
tions for gallantry at the front.21 Chiefs also contributed cash and kind
toward various war fundraising efforts of Britain from 1914 to 1918.
In the Second World War, chiefs again led the massive conscription
drive of the British that began in 1941. Over 700 men were provided
to the British army by the chiefs of North Bank province during the
war. A massive conscription drive supported by Chief Jewru Krubally
also occurred in the Upper River region in 1943.
Furthermore, the pages of the Bathurst press were full of notices
on chiefs and village headmen contributing to the war fundraising
schemes. For example, in 1941 the Upper Niumi chief raised £11
from his district toward the War Charities Fund; in 1942, chiefs of
the North Bank province donated £18 toward the War Charities
Fund, and another £50 toward the Spitfire Fund; the chief of
MaCcarthy Island gave £75 collected from his people toward the
HMS Gambia Fund in 1943. 22 North Bank chiefs like Abu Khan
assisted in the construction of the Essau military camp for the West
African Royal Frontier Force Gambia Company in 1941, which
housed hundreds of soldiers positioned to fend off any attack from
Vichy Senegal. When demobilized soldiers started to arrive home
in 1946 and colonial authorities began to worry about their fate,
chiefs undertook to keep them busy in district public works projects
or allocated them land to cultivate. Moreover, chiefs were also keen
to ensure the comfort of the mind and spirit of colonial officials in
more practical ways.
Comfort Zones for the Masters: Chiefs and Rest Houses

Before the introduction of motor cars in Gambia in the 1920s, colo-
nial officials spent days on the road on trek and so needed com-
fortable accommodation in the form of rest houses in each district
headquarter. It was one of the unwritten obligations of chiefs to pro-
vide well-kept rest houses in the major villages in their district. The
chiefs posted unsalaried keepers and servants at each rest house. The
rest houses, made from straw or cane, were usually the most beautiful
homes in the village. They symbolized the aloofness of colonial offi-
cials as they were usually built on spots with a view of a creek, a forest
patch, or sometimes perched on the highest spot of the village. The
colonial officials took their rest houses very seriously that the chiefs
who maintained them well earned kudos in the annual confidential

reports on chiefs prepared by the commissioners.
Chiefs, Debts, and Fineries

Chiefs frequently fell afoul of the colonial government over embezzle-
ment of tax monies. Because of their status, the chiefs were expected
to be cordial to a number of relatives, families, and guests such as
the touring colonial officials (as years passed, the number of such
officials who require chiefly welcome continued to grow). Moreover,
as chiefs, they could order the finest clothes and accoutrements such
as saddled stallions. In order to maintain the physical infrastructure
in the district, chiefs used the tax monies to motivate the work gangs
since forced labor had been banned.23 These were fiscal obligations
their commissions of £8 to £40 per annum could not meet. Thus,
many of them began to fall into debt with Syrian traders or were
reported to have pawned their silver medallions awarded for good
service by the colonial officials. Indeed, so many of them were in
debt with Syrian traders that in 1938 Governor Richards enacted an
Ordinance that required the chiefs’ tax commissions for the year to
be paid in lump sum to prevent them from falling into debt. Said the
Governor in a cable to the Colonial Office in London: “Chiefs are in
the same position as regards debt as anyone else, however, if a chief
becomes hopelessly insolvent he could hardly be able to discharge his
duties properly.”24
Appeasement: Chiefs and Slavery

Although slavery was banned in all British territories in 1807, it con-
tinued on a small scale in Gambia, fuelled by the outbreak of the
religious wars of Maba Jahou, Foday Kabba, and Foday Sillah in the
North and South Banks from the 1860s to 1900. After the declara-
tion of the Protectorate in 1894, the British had to curtail slavery but
were faced with two formidable issues. First, domestic slavery that
predated the obnoxious Atlantic Slave Trade was deeply entrenched in
the traditional social set-up and, therefore, institutionalized. Second,
while it could abolish the trade and traffic in slaves, the status of
slaves was going to be harder to end.
In order not to antagonize the chiefs, the colonial authorities were
hesitant toward an outright ban on slavery even after the declaration
of the Protectorate in 1894. This cautious move is one good exam-
ple of tact employed by the British in their attempt to maintain the
loyalty of the chiefs. In 1894, the Slave Trade Abolition Ordinance

made slave dealing a crime punishable by seven years of imprison-
ment and freed all slaves imported into the Protectorate after 1894.
But this law did not abolish the status of slavery itself. As chiefs and
other traditional elite owned most of the slaves, this was indeed a
deliberate attempt to appease them. In 1906, a further step was
taken toward abolition with the enactment of another Slave Trade
Ordinance, which provided that slaves were no longer transferable
and were to be freed upon the death of their master. In 1930, the
Affirmation of the Abolition of Slavery Ordinance was promulgated,
which finally categorically outlawed slavery in the Protectorate. The
colonial historian J. M. Gray argues that “the absolute prohibition of
slavery would have been useless until there was a free labour market
for the freedmen.” This step-by-step approach toward ending slavery
was informed by the fear of colonial authorities that a one-off freeing
of slaves could lead to multitudes of freed men and women roam-
ing the villages unable to do any productive work and and who may
have been wage labor migrants from neighboring territories.25 This
is, however, just the stated reason; the unwritten explanation for the
slow move toward ending the institution was the desire of the British
to appease the slave-owning elite, especially the chiefs, who depended
on slave labor for their farms and district public works such as road
building.
The Annual Conference of Chiefs

An Annual Conference of chiefs, started in 1944, provided an oppor-
tunity for all the chiefs to meet and listen to the policies proposed by
government officials and respond with their views. It took several years
for the chiefs to receive the idea that the government was interested
in the viewpoints of the chiefs and it regarded them as representatives
of their districts. The first such meeting with the governor was held
in 1897 when Governor Goldsbury invited all the chiefs to Bathurst
to explain government policy. It was revived 50 years later, and the
occasion had political and social significance. The annual gathering
gave chiefs the opportunity to voice their opinions on matters rel-
evant to their people and themselves as leaders. Chief Lamin Bakoto
Mboge lamented the lack of ambulance services between Bansang and
Kudang at the 1961 conference held in Brikama, while L. O. Sonko
asked whether chiefs could have VHF telephones installed in their
homes! A senior chief, Omar Mbacke, said in 1961 that the annual
gathering of chiefs should be credited for the “unity and progress” in
the Protectorate during the last two decades of colonial rule because
it afforded a forum for honest interaction between the colonial mas-
ters and the chiefs who represented the interests of the vast majority
of Gambians.
Indeed, chiefs used the annual meetings to assert themselves and
win concessions from the colonial masters. For example, in the 1949
conference, they wangled for a chiefs’ rest house in Bathurst where
they would stay at government expense during visits to Bathurst.
Chiefs used the 1958 conference to carve out a niche for themselves
in Gambian nationalist politics. 26 The conferences also afforded
chiefs the opportunity to showcase their cultures and traditions; the
pomp and pageantry was palpable as chiefs outdid each other in cul-
tural manifestations led by their retinue of griots and musicians. For
the colonial officials, the annual conferences were auspicious occa-
sions for Public Relations and charmed offensive toward winning the
hearts and minds of the chiefs; all facilities such as free passage in
the government river vessels for chiefs and their retinues and wives
and comfortable boarding were put at the disposal of the traditional
leaders.
Chiefs Educate Their Children: Muhamedan

and Armitage Schools
While chiefs and ordinary subjects in other parts of West Africa
resisted colonial rule by refusing to send their children to Western
schools, Gambian chiefs embraced colonial schools with open arms
as far back as 1903 when the Muhamedan School was opened in
Bathurst. Chiefs like Sawallo Ceesay, Kebba Sanneh, and Jatta Selung
Jatta sent their sons to the school, all of whom were to become chiefs
in the 1920s and 1930s.27
In 1927, Governor Sir Cecil Armitage opened Armitage School
on MaCcarthy Island specifically to provide elementary education for
the sons of chiefs who were expected to work in the Protectorate
administration as chiefs, court clerks, and interpreters. Many chiefs
sent their sons to the school, which always received much attention
from successive governors and commissioners. In 1945, Armitage was
upgraded to a secondary school; in 1949, it had a Teachers’ College
attached to it, and in 1961, it was expanded and completely rebuilt. Its
school roll of 1947 included the sons of chiefs and other protectorate
boys who were to occupy senior positions in the government in the
years leading to independence in 1965.28 In a letter to the Secretary
of State for Colonies in 1944, Governor Sir Hillary Blood explained
the need for upgrading Armitage to a secondary school: “There is an

urgent need for Protectorate youths with higher education in a num-
ber of branches of Government service . . . the inauguration of Native
Treasuries will call for staff with secondary education, and I am
repeatedly asked by chiefs to open village schools, which I refuse due
to lack of trained teachers.”29 By embracing Western education, chiefs
were able to help sustain the colonial system by ensuring a good sup-
ply of educated protectorate people ready to work in the Protectorate
administration. Moreover, as Kingsland (1977, 651) noted, “since the
sons of chiefs received special encouragement to acquire European
education during colonial days (at Armitage School), (chiefs) often
had a higher level of education than other locally influential persons,
and a number of them had risen to national prominence.” Armitage
School, therefore, succeeded in moulding a tiny coterie of educated
elites from chiefly families who became prominent in not only local
government and nationalist politics but also in the civil, security, and
diplomatic services of Gambia postindependence.30
Punishment
Colonial rule was generally based on the elements of fear and con-
sent. As Kabwegyere notes, “any agent of change alien to the peo-
ple whose way of life this agent is determined to change radically,
always uses violence as a main means to bring about the change.”31 If
this statement is anything to go by, violence in one way or the other
was unavoidably used against colonial subjects to ensure assent. The
British required consent from the chiefs, and they were able to wangle
this through fear and, in some cases, by building a hollow aura of
“prestige.”32
In the Gambia Protectorate, brutal military force was never used,
from 1901 until independence, to secure consent from the chiefs.
However, a measure of subtle violence was employed to secure total
loyalty and consent from chiefs. But this violence of the colonial state
was neither reckless nor unscripted; it was coded in legislation such as
ordinances and edicts that the governor in Bathurst could fall onto to
discipline errant chiefs and ordinary subjects.
Violence meted against the chiefs by the colonial officials was psy-
chological; however, for the chiefs to be seen doing their work well
and avoid punishment, they resorted to physical violence against their
subjects to keep them obedient.33 Therefore, the threat to suffer vio-
lence made chiefs to inflict a more explicit form of violence such as
physical torture, false imprisonment, seizure of farm produce, and
forced exile. This violence was, however, not codified; it was arbitrary
and wanton such that it was sometimes a source of embarrassment
to the colonial officials who used it to punish the chiefs. It could be
argued, therefore, that it was a marriage of the chiefs’ violence against
their subjects and the threat of violence against the chiefs by the colo-
nial rulers that ensured a relatively hitch-free half a century of colonial
rule in Gambia.
The favorite form of violence British officials used against chiefs
found wanting was banishment. This was an enforced resettlement
of a former chief from his district to a faraway district where he was
forced to depend on the goodwill of another chief. Thus a chief who
used to welcome and feed strangers was often forced to survive on the
generosity of another chief. It was a terrible experience for chiefs. They
were sequestered from family and friends, forced to live in extremely
modest circumstances in alien parts of the country, and denied fam-
ily visits. The punishment was meant to dampen the morale of the
dismissed chief. Most of the chiefs would return home chastened and
repentant, while a few such as Omar Ceesay and Mansajang Sanyang
resisted and forced the colonial authorities to rescind the banishment
orders. Sanyang, former chief of Kantora, was banished to Kombo
East (200 miles away) in the 1930s on flimsy grounds. He wrote a
petition to the governor in Bathurst lamenting the decision: “If I have
done wrong, I ought to have been taken to court, and if the court
found me guilty I ought to have been punished, but I have not been
taken to court, but merely dismissed. I ask for a public inquiry, for in
England no man can be punished unheard in his defence.”34 Another
notable case of banishment was that of Omar Ceesay, chief of Upper
Saloum, who in 1928 was banished to the island of Georgetown on
the River Gambia upon allegations of embezzlement of tax revenues
and illtreatment of prisoners. He successfully fought the banishment
order with the help of Edward Francis Small, a newspaper editor and
fiery nationalist leader. On the other hand, chiefs who satisfied the
amorphous expectations of the commissioners stood to benefit from
perks such as sponsored trips to England and decorations such as the
silver medallion, the brooch, and Certificate of Honour.
Chiefs’ Powers Curtailed: The Establishment

of Area Councils
For much of our discussion so far, we have seen the evolution of leader-
ship roles of chiefs in colonial administration as tax collectors, guard-
ians of customary law, and responsible for infrastructure development
in their districts. These duties and many more were spelt out in the
various ordinances promulgated from 1894 to 1945. From the end
of the Second World War to 1960, no serious attempt was made to
modernize local government structures in which chiefs played the
lead role.
However, in 1962, the government established the Area Councils
in rural areas. Now in addition to the Bathurst Town Council estab-
lished in 1931 and the Kombo Urban District Authority created in
1948, the country was divided into five Area Councils, based largely
on economic potentials and population density (Orde 1965, 53).
Hughes and Perfect (2006, 153) assert that the chiefs suspected
that the Councils “would serve as alternative sources of authority
in rural districts,” and the chiefs successfully pressurized the gov-
ernment against the implementation of the Area Council Ordinance
from 1959 until 1962, when the newly elected People’s Progressive
Party (PPP), which had antichief sentiments, went ahead to estab-
lish the Councils.35 The Area Councils’ mandate removed the task
(and therefore benefits) of tax collection and infrastructure develop-
ment from the chiefs.36 The Area Councils reduced the authority of
chiefs as they no longer controlled district finances and development
programs.
The structures of the Councils also threatened the power base of
chiefs. Each Council was to consist of wards, from where council-
lors are elected.37 The elected ward councillors were, therefore, a new
power base that chiefs had to contend with. The chair of the Council
was elected from among the ward councillors. In 1964, in order to
appease the chiefs, an amendment was made to the Ordinance to pro-
vide for a chiefs’ representative on the councils elected by all chiefs of
the districts (Kingsland 1977, 651).
Chiefs in Politics: 1947–1965

Chiefs’ involvement in Gambian nationalist politics started only in
1947, following the enlargement of the Legislative Council, which
was an advisory and law-making body chaired by the governor. Prior
to 1947, the Protectorate was completely left out of politics; Bathurst
politicians filled the two seats in the Legislative Council set aside
for Gambians. Apparently, chiefs were more concerned with cement-
ing their traditional power bases in the Protectorate than meddling
in colony politics, which a few could aspire to be involved in due
to limited knowledge of English and limited constitutional develop-
ment. Another reason for their late involvement in politics was that
the Bathurst political elite and press were vociferously opposed to

extending any form of representative politics to the Protectorate. Like
in Ghana, the urban elite in the Gambia colony were suspicious of an
unholy alliance between the chiefs and the colonial government to
delay or scuttle their nascent nationalist political aspirations.
Moreover, the colony-Protectorate divide meant that while the
colony had evolved a tiny educated elite who could aspire to political
office, the Protectorate was virtually cut off from the socioeconomic
development needed to produce candidates suitable for politi-
cal office.38 Yet, chiefs were neither oblivious of nor ill-informed
about the political strides that had begun to gel in the colony from
1942, because the key political players such as E. F. Small, W. D.
Carrol, Sheikh Omar Faye, J. C. Faye, and P. S. Njie were linked to
the Protectorate by professional and business ties. Some of them
gave distressed chiefs legal advice, assistance to pen petitions to the
Colonial Office, or were business partners in the lucrative ground-
nuts trade.39 Within a decade after 1947, chiefs had become the
dominant force in nationalist politics, even becoming kingmakers in
the period after the 1960 elections. Their spectacular rise to politi-
cal prominence terrified the Bathurst political elite who now had
to lobby the support of chiefs if they were to remain relevant in the
political field.
Chiefs in the Legislature: 1947–1964

The 1947 Constitution started the principle of an unofficial majority
and enlarged both the Legislative Council and Executive Council to
include elected Gambian officials and three chiefs’ representatives.
Matarr Ceesay, Karamo Kabba Sanneh, and Mama Tamba Jammeh
were among the chiefs’ representatives on the two Councils. In the
1954 Constitution, which introduced a legislature of 16 members
and a speaker, chiefs’ representation in the Legislative Council was
increased to seven, and Chief Omar Mbacke of Sami was given a min-
isterial portfolio in October 1954. He led other chiefs to lobby for
additional seats in the legislature. Thus, in the 1960 Constitution
that brought universal adult suffrage to Gambia, chiefs were given
8 out of the 34 seats in the legislature, and Omar Mbacke remained
in the cabinet as Minister of Works. This was the apogee of chiefs’
political clout in preindependence Gambia. The 1962 Constitution
reduced chiefs’ representation in the legislature to four, but they con-
tinued to hold a seat in the cabinet until Omar Mbacke was removed
in 1964.40
Chiefs and Nationalist Political Parties: 1954–1964

The 1954 elections were the first to be fought under a party system
with the United Party (UP) of P. S. Njie, the Democratic Party of J.
C. Faye, the Muslim Congress of Garba Jahumpa, and the National
Party of St. Claire Joof contesting for the three elected seats for
Bathurst and Kombo. Although the elections and the parties were
colony-based, some chiefs personally supported the Bathurst politi-
cians. For example, J. C. Faye had support from chiefs in the Upper
River region because of his missionary work at Kantora in the 1940s;
Garba Jahumpa was well known up-river for his work while serving as
the first minister of agriculture.
Chiefs had great influence in the formation and running of the PPP
and the UP. Indeed, from 1960 to 1964, Gambian chiefs were evenly
divided between the two parties: older chiefs like Jewru Krubally,
Silaba Dibba, and Omar Mbacke were sympathetic to the UP, while
younger chiefs like Abu Khan, Touray Sanyang, and Omar Ceesay
supported the PPP.41
Chiefs played a leading role in the formation of the PPP, which rep-
resented Protectorate interests. Indeed, the party was formed by cer-
tain chiefs at the sidelines of the 1958 Chiefs’ Conference in Brikama,
in consultation with the then veterinary director Dawda Jawara, who
was to emerge party leader. It was not until he got the consent and
full support of a majority of the chiefs present at the meeting that he
went ahead to launch the party in February 1959. This is a clear indi-
cation of the political influence that chiefs had during this time.
P. S. Njie’s UP also had a strong chiefs’ support. His law practice
had given legal aid to many chiefs who were in dispute with Syrian
traders over debts. This won him many friends among the chiefs who
rallied to his party. Indeed, the UP had a larger support than the
PPP had among the chiefs at least after the 1960 elections; this is
why, in 1961 when chiefs favored the appointment of P. S. Njie as
chief minister over the PPP leader, Governor Windley went ahead to
appoint Njie as head of the government in March 1961. Chiefs were
represented and played a key role at the 1961 and 1964 constitutional
talks in London to chart Gambia’s course toward independence.
Chiefs Shifted the Center of Gambian Politics

In 1958, chiefs flexed their muscle and radically altered the face of
Gambian politics by ending the decades-long domination by Bathurst
politicians. At their conference of that year, the chiefs, led by Mama
Tamba Jammeh, called for the decentralization of party politics to

the Protectorate. They urged for the creation of political parties that
will work for the development of the Protectorate. Mama Tamba’s
forthright speech was prophetic and revolutionary and deserves an
extensive quote: “We the chiefs did not say that there would be
anger or hatred with Bathurst. We said at the election, our sons and
young brothers who can read and write and are living in Bathurst,
none of them were elected. For the next election there are our sons
and young brothers who can read and write and can travel. After
the last elections those people who are ministers, none came to see
our work . . . We want our literate men who can go into the mud and
climb the hills . . . Even if we get ten ministers or one, that is what
we want. There is no (quarrel) between us and the Bathurst people.
There are also no Mandingos in the Bathurst parties.”42 This speech
set the stage for the storming of Gambian politics by politicians of
Protectorate origins under the banner of the Protectorate Peoples’
Party, later renamed the Peoples’ Progressive Party. At the confer-
ence, chiefs suggested that six out of nine future ministers should hail
from the provinces. They also opposed extending the franchise into
the Protectorate in the fear that Bathurst parties will gain foothold
in the provinces. They only agreed to it in 1959 following the forma-
tion of the PPP. The PPP identified with the needs and aspirations
of protectorate people. It promised to revolutionize farming through
mechanization, bring about better prices for farmers’ produce, and
provide better medical, educational, and cultural facilities. Although
the Bathurst politicians had mentioned improving rural communities
in their manifestoes, they did not have rural people in their parties
and so the chiefs were more inclined toward the PPP.
The Decline of Chiefs

Before we discuss the decline in chiefs’ political influence, we should
pause briefly to assess the political liaisons between the PPP and
thechiefs during 1959 to 1965. From 1959 when the PPP was formed
to 1961, the party benefitted from the support of many chiefs largely
because it professed the concerns of the Protectorate and also sought
to widen the participation of provincial people in national politics. As
chiefs were yet to see the composition and demeanor of PPP leader-
ship, they were prepared to give provisional support. However, when
in the 1960 elections the PPP failed to give the ticket to many sons or
relatives of the chiefs, disappointment led chiefs like Jewru Kruballyto
quickly transfer support to the UP. To be fair, the PPP tried to appease
the chiefs because not less than 5 of its 12 candidates in the 1960 elec-
tions were sons of chiefs or came from chiefly families.43 But even this
was not enough to satisfy the chiefs. Moreover, as the bulk of the PPP
leaders had protectorate origins, the chiefs were suspicious of having a
new class to rival their stranglehold over the rural areas.
Another event that led some chiefs to disown the PPP was the
party’s radical Independence Manifesto published in 1960, which
called for independence from the United Kingdom in the shortest
possible time. Governor Windley interpreted this to the chiefs at their
1960 conference to mean that the PPP was poised to abolish chief-
taincy and sever all ties with the United Kingdom. This shocked and
angered the older chiefs, who now saw the PPP as antichief and out
to destroy their power and influence. Thus in March 1961, when the
coalition government fell, the chiefs supported Windley’s appoint-
ment of P. S. Njie as chief minister. Henceforth, the PPP could no
longer trust the support of chiefs, and chiefs also became apprehen-
sive of the intentions of the party that they helped to form in 1959.
From 1961 to 1965, many chiefs remained antagonistic to the PPP;
however, they were unable to nullify the newly found support for the
PPP among their people.
A death blow to the political power of chiefs landed on March 15,
1965, when the government of newly independent Gambia sacked
or retired 13 chiefs in order to “make the authority of the new gov-
ernment respected and all obstacles to progress removed.” The PPP
government further justified its drastic decision by claiming that the
sacked chiefs were “heavy handed,” old, and negligent of the inter-
est of their people.44 While many chiefs would be guilty of these
accusations, it was easy to note that many among those removed,
such as Omar Mbacke and Jewru Krubally, were unapologetic sup-
porters of the opposition UP. Therefore, the dismissals were politi-
cally motivated and had the lasting effect of frightening chiefs into
submission to the ruling party. David Gamble has rightly noted that
while the colonial government had treated chiefs with respect as tra-
ditional leaders, the new PPP regime regarded them as civil servants
who could be dismissed or retired at the whim of the ruling political
party. The new politicians felt that chiefs should support their policies
and were not showing the respect due to them.
Conclusion
The institution of chieftaincy has changed greatly both in style and
substance since Gambia’s attainment of independence in 1965. After
the end of the colonial rule, chiefs could no longer enjoy the vast, some-
times wanton, powers they enjoyed under the colonialists. Colonialism
thrived more on threat and naked force than on consensus, which is
why the proclivity of chiefs toward excesses against their subjects was
sometimes tolerated as far as it was justifiable under the vague concepts
of “peace and security.” The new political elite who assumed power
after 1965 fought against colonial rule to end such abuses and were,
therefore, not going to allow chiefs abusive powers anymore. This is
why while the colonial authorities dismissed chiefs mostly over alleged
embezzlement of funds, the postindependence government removed
chiefs usually over charges of torture and heavy-handedness.
Moreover, after independence, the Gambia government machinery
became distended as a new plethora of power bases sprouted in the
provinces around ruling party chairmen, “yai compins” (party women
leaders), and newly minted government officials. Chiefs, therefore,
began to lose much of their influence and stranglehold over their
people. Once they were the undisputed overlords in their districts
under the watchful eye of and with the full support of the colonial
government. The rulers after independence did not trust the older
generation of chiefs who, the rulers feared, would not pay obeisance.
This is why in 1963 and 1965, more than half of the chiefs were
summarily sacked or retired. (There were even whispers of the new
rulers abolishing the institution altogether.) The younger chiefs were
more compliant and soon doubled as ruling party stalwarts. In fact,
whenever a ruling party lost an election, the chances were great that
the chief of that electoral district lose his job.
With the passing of each decade since 1965, Gambian chiefs have
seen their powers and authority eroded by the political class, which
is why it seems a miracle that the institution has survived for 50 years
after independence. Yet, politics is not the only hostile wind blowing
against the institution: rapid urbanization, high literacy rates, women
empowerment (there are no women chiefs yet), and globalization are
also credible challenges to the traditional base that chiefs purportedly
preserve.
Notes
1. Gambia attained independence on February 18, 1965, from
Great Britain as the thirty-sixth independent African country; see
“Gambia is Now Free Forever,” Daily Graphic (Accra), February
19, 1965, p. 1.
2. Sidibe, A Brief History of Kaabu and Fuladu (1300–1930), Turin:
L’Harmattan Italia (2004), p. 10.
3. Wright, The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of

Globalization in Niumi, The Gambia, New York: M.E. Sharpe
(2010), p. 35.
4. Morgan, Reminiscences, London (1864), p. 88
5. See Ceesay, “Kamara, Kemintang,” edited by Oxford American
Studies Centre, http/www.oxfordaasc.com/article/t356/e0032
(accessed February 14, 2014).
6. Herein lays a distinction between precolonial and colonial chiefs.
Among the Wollof, the ruler was expected to be able to protect his
people, through magic and supernatural powers of the juju, from
witches and evil eyes. Colonial legislation against witchcraft and sor-
cery meant that chiefs were no longer seen as medium men, which
greatly reduced their relevance in the eyes of their communities; see
Gamble, The Peoples of the Gambia, p. 22.
7. Kaabu empire encompassed the present-day Gambia, Guinea
Bissau, and Southern Senegal. It fell in 1867 under the assault of
the Fula confederacy led by Alfa Moloh. See Sidibe, A Brief History
(2004).
8. In a commentary published on Gambia’s Independence Day on
February 18, 1965, Ghana’s Daily Graphic bemoaned the funny
geographical size and position of the new country: “A strip of land
300 miles long and no more than 20 miles wide on each side of
the River Gambia . . . there could be no more vivid witness than this
country to the recklessness of the scramble for Africa at the end
of the nineteenth century . . . The boundary cuts through ethnic
groups . . . Geography is ignored. The Gambia’s shape only reflects
the policies of Britain and France at the time the boundary was
fixed”; see “The Gambia—The New African Nation,” Daily Graphic
(Accra), February 18, 1965, p. 5.
9. See Gamble (2007) p. 15–16.
10. Crowder, “Indirect Rule-French and British Style” in Klein and
Johnson (Eds.), Perspectives on the African Past, Boston: Little Brown
(1972), p. 359–362.
11. Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in
Ghana 1951–1960, James Currey: Oxford (1999), p. 10.
12. For a full text of the Ordinance, see Archer, The Gambia Colony and
Protectorate: An Official Handbook, Frank Cass: London (1906), p.
160–166.
13. The formation of new divisions continued until 1968 when a new
North Bank division with headquarters at Kerewan, 70 km from
Banjul, was created. In 2002, the divisions were renamed regions
and now headed by governors. See, for example, “North Bank
Division Created,” The Gambia News Bulletin (Bathurst), October
31, 1968, p. 1.
14. See Ceesay, “Fatou Khan” in Akyeampong and Gates Jr. (Eds.),
Dictionary of African Biography, Oxford University Press (2011).
See also Ceesay, Gambian Women: An Introductory History, Banjul:

Fulladu Publishers (2007), p. 72–73.
15. Price (1958) wrote that “McCollum delegated more and more of his
official responsibilities to Fatou, who although illiterate, was able to
run the division through the official interpreters, who would read
over official letters to her and take down in English the replies which
she dictated and signed . . . Consequently, even after he went on leave,
Fatoo was still sending letters to the colonial secretariat in Bathurst”;
see Price, “Some Notes on the Influence of Women on Gambian pol-
itics,” Proceedings of the Institute of Economic and Social Research
Conference (1958), p. 76–84.
16. Gray (1940) states that the debts owed to government by groundnut
farmers from seed nut credits amounted to £33,000 in 1925, which
had to be written off at a cost to the treasury.
17. For more details on the petition, see The Gambia Gazette, March 13,
1933, p. 198–200.
18. See “Notes on the History of the Upper Saloum District,” PUB1/2,
Gambia National Archives, Banjul.
19. See Gray, A History of the Gambia, p. 491.
20. See Gamble, A Review of Development Schemes., p. 18.
22. See Gambia Echo (Bathurst), January 12, 1942, p. 1, 3; October 6,
1941, p. 3.
23. This ban on forced labor in the colonies in the 1920s meant that chiefs
could no longer have enough labor to work in their farms unlike their
precolonial predecessors, and therefore they became unable to gener-
ate enough wealth to cater for the lifestyle expected of them.
24. See “Debts of Chiefs,” CSO 3/128, Gambia National Archives,
Banjul. The governor further opined that “apart from chief Omar
Mbacke of Sami, all other chiefs are in debt to an unnecessary large
degree to small private traders.”
26. See “Annual Conference of Chiefs,” 1958, ARP3/16, Gambia
National Archives, Banjul.
27. Here are a few examples: Sawallo’s son, Matarr, was chief of Upper
Saloum from 1935 to 1961; Tamba Jammeh was chief of Illiasa from
1928 to 1964, and Karamo Kabba Sanneh was chief of Kiang East
from 1940 to 1965.
28. See “Armitage School Report,” EDU1/157, Gambia National
Archives, Banjul; see also “Armitage School,” EDU2/2, Gambia
National Archives, Banjul. According to information in this file,
Armitage opened on January 12, 1927, with a roll of 16 boarders and
14 day pupils, with a staff compliment of three.
29. “Armitage School,” EDU2/2, Gambia National Archives, Banjul.
30. I interviewed Pa Lang Sanyang (born 1924), a son and a grandson of
a chief of Kombo East, who told me that the travelling commissioners
for South Bank in 1931 came to his village of Faraba and volunteered
to take him to Armitage School. When he completed Standard Seven,
another commissioner assured his father (now chief) of employment
for Pa Lang Sanyang. The young school leaver was asked to choose
between working at the Victoria Hospital in Bathurst or in the veteri-
nary department. He chose the latter and went on to pursue a successful
career until his retirement in 1979. He admitted that, indeed, educated
sons of chiefs were highly favored elite in colonial Gambia. Interview
with Pa Lang Sanyang (son of Fa Ture Sanyang, chief of Faraba, Kombo
East, 1939–1972), Brikama Town, December 12, 2013.
31. Kabwegyere, “The Dynamics of Colonial Violence: The Inductive
System in Uganda,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1972),
p. 303–314, http://www.jstor.org/stable/422513 (accessed February
05, 2014).
32. Cashmore, “Studies in District Administration in the East Africa
Protectorate (1895–1918),” PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge,
http://www.african.cam.ac.uk/images/files/titles/cashmore.
33. Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 6, p. 167–191, distinguishes between physical and psy-
chological violence.
34. “Banishment of Mansajang Sanyang,” CRN 1/6, Gambia National
Archives, Banjul.
35. According to Hughes and Perfect (2006), the “PPP criticized the
(UP leader) P. S. N’jie for his failure while serving as Chief Minister
(1961–1962), to bring about the establishment of the Area Councils’
in order not to antagonize the chiefs from among whom he had over-
whelming support” (p. 153).
36. With the Area Councils were established, the District (Native)
Treasuries were abolished. Area Councils now collected taxes with
the help of their staff and village headmen. Each Area Council pre-
pared a development budget and was responsible for the development
of infrastructure in the wards, such as sinking of wells, fencing of
pasturage grounds, building causeways, bridges, and award of schol-
arships to deserving pupils in their wards.
37. Chiefs were also elected at the district level by compound owners
and served until they died or were removed by the government; ward
councillors, however, faced reelection every five years.
38. See Hughes and Perfect, Political History of the Gambia, p. 50–51.
39. For example, Mr Small vociferously defended Upper Saloum chief
Omar Ceesay in 1927 when the government dismissed and banished
him; in 1952, he took up the case of another chief, Cherno Bandeh,
who the British wanted to force into retirement; Mr Fye had business
partnership with chiefs such as Jewru Krubally of Basse and Mama
Tamba Jammeh of Illiasa.
40. Ceesay, “Chiefs in Gambian Politics (1894–1994),” Daily Observer
(Banjul), September 4, 1996.
41. Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP), The Story of the PPP (1959–1989),
Banjul: Baroueli Publishers, 1992, p. 27.
42. Quoted in Gambia Echo (Bathurst), “Chiefs Conference 1958,”
December 5, 1958, p. 1.
43. Among them were Omar Ceesay, son of chief Matarr Ceesay of
Saloum; Sheriff Ceesay, son of chief Sekuba Ceesay of Niamina;
Sheriff Dibba, son of chief Silaba Dibba of Badibu.
44. Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP), The Story of the PPP (1959–1989),
Banjul: Baroueli Publishers, 1992, p. 66.
References
Unpublished Archival Sources (Gambia National
Archives, Banjul)
“Armitage School Report,” EDU 1/157.
“Armitage School,” EDU 2/2.
“Annual Conference of Chiefs,” 1958, ARP3/16.
“Banishment of Mansajang Sanyang,” CRN 1/6.
“Conditions in Upper Saloum District,” CRM 1/3.
“Confidential Report on Chiefs,” CRN 1/24.
“Debts of Chiefs,” CSO 3/128.
“Divisional Report,” ARP 34/1, 1943.
“Divisional Report,” ARP 34/4, 1946.
“Notes on the History of the Upper Saloum District,” CRM 1/2.
Newspapers and Magazines

Daily Observer (Banjul)
Daily Graphic (Accra) (National Archives of Ghana)
Gambia Echo (Bathurst)
Gambia Gazette (Bathurst)
Gambia News Bulletin (Bathurst)
Interview
Pa Kakai Sanyang (son of Fa Ture Sanyang, chief of Faraba, Kombo East,
1939–1972), Brikama Town, December 12, 2013.
Books, Articles, and Dissertations

Agbor, J. A., J. W. Fedderke, and N. A. Viegi, Theory of Colonial Governance,
http://web.up.ac.za/sitefiles/file/40/677/a%20theory%20of %20colo-
nial%20governance%2028_01_2010.pdf.
Archer, Francis Bisset, The Gambia Colony and Protectorate: An Official
Handbook, Frank Cass: London, 1906.
Armitage, Sir C., “The Gambia Colony and Protectorate,” Journal of the
Royal African Society of Arts, Vol. 76, No. 3944 (1944), p. 88–98.
Ceesay, Ebrima, The Military and “Democratisation” in the Gambia, Victoria,

BC: Trafford Publishers, 2006.
Ceesay, Hassoum, “Chiefs in Gambian Politics (1894–1994),” Daily Observer
(Banjul), September 4, 1996.
———, Gambian Women: An Introductory History, Banjul: Fulladu
Publishers, 2007.
———, “Kamara, Kemintang,” edited by Oxford American Studies Centre,
http/www.oxfordaasc.com/article/t356/e0032 (accessed February 14,
2014).
———. “Fatou Khan” in Akyeampong and Gates Jr. (Eds), Dictionary of
African Biography, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Crowder, Michael, “Indirect Rule-French and British Style” in Klein and
Johnson (Eds), Perspectives on the African Past, London: Little Brown,
1972.
Galtung, J., “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace
Research, Vol. 6 (1969), p. 69–71.
Gamble, David, A Review of Development Schemes in the Gambia, Brisbane,
CA, 2007.
Gamble, David, Linda K. Salmon, and Alhaji Assan N’jie. The Peoples of the
Gambia: The Wollof, Brisbane, CA, 1985.
Gray, J. M., A History of the Gambia. London: Frank Cass, 1940.
Hughes, Arnold, and David Perfect. Historical Dictionary of the Gambia.
Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2008.
Kabwegyere, Tarsis B., “The Dynamics of Colonial Violence: The Inductive
System in Uganda,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1972), p.
303–314.
Kingsland, James, “A Gambian Chieftaincy Election,” The Journal of Modern
African Studies, Vol. 15, No. 4 (1977).
Mahoney, F., Stories of the Senegambia, Banjul: BPMRU, 1986.
Price, J. H., “Some Notes on the Influence of Women on Gambian politics,”
Proceedings of the Institute of Economic and Social Research Conference
(1958), p. 76–84.
Orde, M. H., “Development of Local Government in Rural Areas in the
Gambia,” Journal of Local Administration Overseas, Vol. 4, No. 1
(1965), p. 3–5.
Peoples’ Progressive Party (PPP), The Story of the PPP (1959–1989), Banjul:
Baroueli Publishers, 1992.
Rathbone, Richard. Nkrumah and the Chiefs: Politics of Chieftaincy in
Ghana, 1951–1960. James Currey: Oxford, 1999.
Saine, Abdoulaye, E. Ceesay, and E. Sall (Eds). State and Society in the
Gambia, Trenton, NJ: Third World Press, 2013.
Southern, Lady Bella. The Groundnut Colony, London: Longman, 1946.
Chapter 3
Human Rights and National

Liberation: The Anticolonial
Politics of Nnamdi Azikiwe
Bonny Ibhawoh
Introduction
Anticolonial struggles for self-determination had significant impact
on the development of the idea of universal human rights. In the
second half of the twentieth century, colonized people drew on the
emergent language of universal human rights in their ideological
struggles against European imperialism and to articulate demands
for independence. Anticolonial movements in Africa were among the
first mass movements to draw on the language of human rights in
the post–Second World War era. Yet, some scholars have argued that
anticolonialism was not a human rights movement because its pri-
mary aim was collective national liberation rather than the reduction
of state power over the individual. The anticolonial politics of African
nationalist leaders such as Nnamdi Azikiwe provide grounds for chal-
lenging this argument. Leaders of anticolonial movements in Africa
explicitly sought to link their domestic anticolonial activities with the
nascent universal human rights movement. Drawing from Nnamdi
Azikiwe’s nationalist activism, this chapter argues that anticolonial
struggles for self-determination were driven by both nationalist ideal-
ism and human rights impulses. In an age when European imperial
powers sought to isolate struggles for independence in the colonies
from the discourse of universal human rights, Azikiwe’s anticolonial
activism reflected the fundamental interrelatedness of human rights
and national liberation.
56 B O N N Y I B H AW O H
Delinking Anticolonialism from Human Rights

The scholarship on the history of human rights in the twentieth cen-
tury has sought to separate “Third World” anticolonial movements
from the postwar universal human rights movement.1 Scholars who
argue that anticolonialism was not a human rights movement hinge
their argument on three key premises. The first is the supposition that
anticolonialism was already fully formed before post–Second World
War human rights rhetoric had a chance to have a serious impact on
it. Proponents of this argument point to the fact that there were only
minor and occasional invocations of “human rights” in anticolonial-
ism. One human rights scholar argues that because many anticolonial
activists did not often mention the term “human rights” in their writ-
ings, it is doubtful that they associated their struggles for self-deter-
mination with the human rights idea.2 The conclusion, therefore, is
that the discourse of self-determination within anticolonialism was
fundamentally distinct from the post–Second World War discourse of
universal human rights.
The second premise for delinking anticolonialism from human
rights is the supposition that anticolonialism privileged popular lib-
eration over “human rights” (narrowly defined as individual-centered
rights). In his comprehensive study of Human Rights and the End of
Empire, Brian Simpson argues that the primary aim of anticolonial
activists in Asia and Africa was to liberate collective national entities
from the grip of imperial arms and not to reduce the power of the
state over the individual, which is “the defining character of all human
rights activism.”3 According to Simpson, the real connection between
the human rights movement and anticolonialism lies in a common
commitment to the notion of human dignity.4 Anticolonial activism,
he argues, focused more on collective liberation and empowerment
and less on “human rights” as inalienable entitlements that individu-
als hold against the state. Within this conceptual framework, human
rights are essentially about curtailing state power, not the quest for
the collective freedom of colonized people.
The final premise for excluding anticolonialism from the human
rights story is what I term the “human-rights-as-political-strategy”
argument. This posits that anticolonial activists rarely invoked
human rights, and if they did at all, they did so only as a discur-
sive political strategy to achieve national sovereignty.5 The broader
implication here is that anticolonial invocations of human rights
were born out of sheer political expediency rather than ideological
commitment. This is perhaps the weakest of all three premises. The
H U M A N R I G H T S A N D N AT I O N A L L I B E R AT I O N 57
history of human rights in the twentieth century, from the adop-

tion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to
cold-war-era invocations of human rights, is essentially the story of
how nations and regional blocs have used human rights language to
further their strategic geopolitical agendas. The politics of human
rights rhetoric was not unique to anticolonialism; it is integral to
the history of human rights. The analytical pitfalls of the blanket
inclusion or rejection of human rights in regard to decolonization
have already been well articulated elsewhere. 6 The place of human
rights in decolonization was more complex and more ambiguous.
The nationalist activism of Nnamdi Azikiwe epitomizes this com-
plexity and exemplifies the multiple ways in which “Third World”
anticolonialism intersected with the post–Second World War idea of
universal human rights.
The Idea of Universal Human Rights

The defining character of contemporary notions of human rights
was shaped by the reformist impulse of the late nineteenth century.
Nineteenth-century abolition of the slave trade, the development of
factory legislation, mass education, trade unionism, and the spread of
universal suffrage, all served to broaden the horizons of human rights
and stimulate an increasing international interest in their protection.
The Nazi holocaust perhaps had the most profound impact on the idea
of universal human rights in the twentieth century. The world united
in horror and condemnation of the state-authorized extermination
of Jews and other minorities, the promulgation of laws permitting
arbitrary police search and seizure, and the legalization of imprison-
ment, torture, and execution without public trials. Nazi atrocities,
more than any previous event, brought home the realization that law
and morality cannot be grounded in any purely utilitarian, idealist, or
positivist doctrines.7 Certain actions are wrong, no matter the social
or political context, and certain rights are inalienable no matter the
social or political exigencies. It also led to a growing acknowledgment
that all human beings are entitled to a basic level of internationally
recognized rights and that it was the duty of states to protect and pro-
mote these rights. Discussions about universal human rights within
the framework of the United Nations in 1945 and the adoption of
the UDHR in 1948 were contemporaneous with decolonization
movements in Africa. It was inevitable that discourses of anticolonial-
ism and universal human rights would intersect as colonized people
drew on the emergent language of universal human rights in their
ideological struggles against imperial powers and their demands for

national self-government.
The new postwar international consciousness of the need to protect
the basic rights of all peoples by means of some universally accept-
able parameters partly influenced the Charter of the United Nations,
which reaffirmed a “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dig-
nity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and
women and of nations large or small.”8 It further stated the United
Nations’ commitment to fostering the development of friendly rela-
tions among nations, based on respect for the principle of equal rights
and self-determination for all peoples and the promotion of human
rights and fundamental freedom for all without distinction as to race,
sex, language, or religion.9 The commitment to the promotion of
human rights expressed in the United Nation’s Charter was followed
by the UDHR in 1948 and international human rights conventions
that have come to be collectively known as the International Bill of
Rights.10 The contemporary idea of human rights, therefore, stems
from a universalization of rights defined through a political pro-
cess by international agreements. Indeed, most contemporary stud-
ies on rights refer specifically to “human rights” and define them as
those embodied in the UDHR and subsequent UN covenants. The
claim that anticolonialism was not a human rights movement rests
on this historically specific definition of “human rights” centered on
the UDHR and the curtailment of state power within post–Second
World War internationalism.
The idea that the UDHR marked a paradigmatic shift in the under-
standing of the notion of the human in relation to other historic rights
discourses has become a canon of human rights scholarship. Political
scientist Jack Donnelly argues for distinguishing between the con-
cepts of distributive justice and human rights. Distributive justice, he
argues, involves giving a person that which he or she is entitled (his
or her rights). Unless these rights are those to which the individual
is entitled simply as a human being, the rights in question will not
be human rights. Thus, rights assigned on the basis of communal
membership, family, status, or achievement would, strictly speaking,
be “privileges” rather than human rights.11 The origin of the modern
idea of human rights is, therefore, linked specifically to the UDHR
by the United Nations in 1948.
Admittedly, the UDHR was a ground-breaking document, per-
haps indeed an epoch-making event. It heralded a global milestone in
the long struggle for human rights, promising “a magna carta for all
humanity.”12 Its language of universal rights provided a framework
for articulating new and long-standing demands for fundamental

freedoms and political autonomy across the globe. However, credit-
ing the UDHR and its drafters with “inventing” the notion of human
rights, as some have suggested, may be stretching its historical signifi-
cance. The idea that human beings are born free and equal certainly
did not emerge in 1948. The articulation of this universalist principle
under the auspices of an institution representative of nations of the
world is what is unique about 1948.13
But even this process of articulating a universal humanity was pro-
foundly flawed. It is well documented that in the discussions lead-
ing to the establishment of the United Nations and adoption of the
UDHR, representatives of the key players in the United Nations
negotiated the meaning of human rights in such a way that it did not
encroach upon their sovereignty and, in some cases, the possession of
colonies. Many Western states at the forefront of drafting the UDHR
defended their sovereignty and evaded the glaring contradiction of
colonialism among other contradictions. In some instances, the prin-
ciple of sovereignty and the concept of human rights were viewed as
fundamentally opposed to each other; one had to do with the rights
of states, and the other with the rights of individuals. Anticolonial
activists like Azikiwe did not see a fundamental distinction between
their struggles for sovereignty and independence, on one hand, and
the emergent postwar idea of universal human rights, on the other.
Liberation and Universal Human Rights

Nnamdi Azikiwe, the nationalist and anticolonial activist who became
the first president of independent Nigeria, epitomizes the connections
between anticolonialism with human rights. After his primary educa-
tion in European missionary schools in Nigeria, Azikiwe studied at the
historically black Howard University and Lincoln University (where
he also taught) in the 1920s and 1930s.14 His experiences of colonial
rule in Africa and racial segregation in the United States shaped his
political ideology and understanding of human rights. In articulat-
ing his human rights ideology, Azikiwe drew on an eclectic tradition
of rights discourse and was deeply conscious of the contradictions in
imperial rights discourse. His human rights ideas were influenced
by traditional African thought, Christian theology, Enlightenment
liberalism, American republican idealism, and the postwar univer-
sal human rights idea. He was among the first in a steady stream
of African students studying in the United States who would go on
to become leading figures in postwar nationalist movements in the
continent. For many of these students, the United States represented

both the promises and failures of human rights idealism. On one
hand, their experiences of racial discrimination intensified racial con-
sciousness and fostered an uncompromising determination to achieve
equality at home. On the other hand, they “shared a loyalty to the
American ideal, the confident expectation of improved status, and
the admiration for a dynamic society.”15
Perhaps more than any other African anticolonial activist of his
era, Azikiwe came to represent a “militant” intellectual nationalism
that challenged the legitimacy of colonial rule both domestically and
internationally.16 For Azikiwe and many Africans in the anticolonial
movement, a turning point was the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in
1934. Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, which was seen as a symbol of
African independence, stirred a pan-Africanist impulse within the
African anticolonial movement. In Nigeria, leaders of the nascent
nationalist movement formed the Abyssinia Association to protest
Italian aggression and support the Ethiopian cause. A new generation
of African leaders began to question the reformist approach to resist-
ing colonial rule, proffering instead a more radical anticolonialism.
“Coming of age was a generation that took pride in things African
and possessed the education and the experience to challenge the colo-
nial regime effectively.”17 Like Kwame Nkrumah in the Gold Coast,
Azikiwe typified this new generation of West African political lead-
ers who had grown impatient with the reformist agenda of an older
generation of conservative African political leaders. Opposing ideas
of imperial restructuring and gradual progression toward self-gov-
ernment, they proffered an agenda for the complete and immediate
dismantling of the colonial order.
Upon returning to Nigeria after his studies in 1937, Azikiwe estab-
lished two newspapers, West African Pilot and the Daily Comet, which
became platforms for his anticolonial activism. West African Pilot
became one of the most famous and widely circulated newspapers in
sub-Saharan Africa in the 1940s and 1950s.18 His connections with
intellectuals and institutions in the United States also provided an
international forum for Azikiwe’s anticolonial activism. At Howard
University, he was exposed to the Black Nationalist movement of
Marcus Garvey and encountered the African American intellec-
tual and activist George Padmore.19 Azikiwe and Padmore cooper-
ated later on several projects, including founding the Pan-African
Federation and organizing the Pan-African Congress in Manchester
in 1945, which called for “the implementation of the principles of
the Four Freedoms and self-determination in the Atlantic Charter,
everywhere.”20 His stay in America also exposed Azikiwe to the
influence of pan-Africanism and the African American press with its

constant theme of racial injustices and inequalities, all of which had
made him very race-conscious.21
In 1941, Azikiwe led a delegation of West African journalists to
London with the intent of clarifying the application of the Atlantic
Charter to European colonies in Africa.22 The delegation considered
the Atlantic Charter, which expressed an American and British vision
of the post–Second World War world, crucial to the fate of those liv-
ing under colonial rule in Africa. The main focus was on the third
clause of the Charter, which affirmed “the right of all peoples to
choose the form of government under which they will live.”23 In a
statement to the House of Commons shortly after the agreement was
signed, Prime Minister Churchill stated that the right to self-deter-
mination outlined in the Charter would apply to those living under
Nazi occupation but not to Britain’s colonial subjects still in need of
“progressive evolution” toward self-government.24 Churchill would
later add that the existence of the Atlantic Charter would not compel
him “to preside over the liquidation of the British empire.”25
As leader of the delegation of West African journalists, Azikiwe
submitted to the British Secretary of State for the Colonies a memo-
randum entitled “The Atlantic Charter and British West Africa.” The
document sought clarification of British policy on self-determination
in the colonies and proposed, based on the Atlantic Charter, the abro-
gation of the crown colony system; immediate “Africanization” of the
colonial government; and the institution of representative govern-
ment in the colonies with the goal of “full responsible government.”26
Invoking the third clause of Atlantic Charter, the memorandum
envisaged that by 1958 all West African territories would be indepen-
dent and sovereign political entities.27 The memorandum submitted
by the West African delegation evoked no immediate response from
the Colonial Office. Disappointed, Azikiwe retuned to West Africa
where he expressed his frustrations at the hypocrisy and indifference
of British officials.28
Azikiwe considered Churchill’s narrow interpretation of the
Atlantic Charter duplicitous and a betrayal of the efforts and sacri-
fices of African soldiers who fought with Britain to defeat German
Nazism during the Second World War. He claimed that Africans had
been “bamboozled into participating in a war which was not of their
making.” He stated thus:
In spite of their war efforts, the people of Nigeria and the Cameroons
have been denied political freedom, economic security, and social
emancipation . . . Our national identity has been stifled to serve the
selfish purposes of alien rule. We are denied elementary human rights.

We are sentenced to political servitude, and we are committed to eco-
nomic serfdom. Only those who accept slavery as their destiny would
continue to live under such humiliating conditions without asserting
their right to life and the pursuit of freedom, and joining forces with
progressive movements for peace.29
Azikiwe also sought to use the Atlantic Charter to delegitimize

colonialism and reaffirm anticolonialism within postwar interna-
tionalism. In a speech delivered to the graduates of Storer College
in the United States on the occasion of his conferment with an hon-
orary doctorate degree in 1947, he linked the struggles for self-
determination in the colonies with President Roosevelt’s “Four
Freedoms,” the Atlantic Charter, and the emergent idea of universal
rights:
According to the leaders of the Allied Nations, we fought the last war in
order to “revive the stature of man” and to make the Four Freedoms a
living reality. I interpret those war and peace aims to mean the enjoyment
of political freedom, social equality, economic security, and religious
freedom, everywhere in the world. . . . [but] when we demand to exercise
elementary human rights not only are we silenced by our self-appointed
rulers, but the outside world seems to close its eyes, stuff its ears, and seal
its mouth on the subject of what is to us a righteous cause.30
After the adoption of the UDHR in 1948, Azikiwe increasingly

invoked the Declaration and the idea of universal human rights in
his speeches and writings. Speaking to his fellow fraternity members
of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity in Washington, DC, in 1949, he
asked: “What forces have been at work to intensify this struggle of the
African for self-determination?” In answering the question, he refer-
enced Eleanor Roosevelt’s vision of a postwar world where individu-
als all over the world would have freedom. “World peace,” he stated,
could only be assured if this vision of universal rights was “true for
men all over the world . . . regardless of race and religion.”31
Azikiwe’s invocations of human rights were not limited to refer-
ences to the UDHR. In 1943, before the UDHR was adopted by
the United Nations, he published his Political Blueprint of Nigeria
in which he outlined a comprehensive rights-based vision for Nigeria.
He referred to the Atlantic Charter and Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen
Points, using both to support his uniquely anticolonial human rights
agenda. At a time when colonial powers sought to drive a wedge
between self-determination in the colonies and discussions about
universal human rights at the United Nations, Azikiwe insisted on

the fundamental interrelatedness of both ideas. He countered British
attempts to delink anticolonial movements from universal human
rights. The memorandum on “The Atlantic Charter and British West
Africa,” which he submitted to the British Secretary of State for the
Colonies in 1943, was part of a strategy of assailing the legitimacy
of colonial rule by showing the inconsistencies of Britain’s posi-
tion on the right to self-determination.32 Following Prime Minister
Churchill’s statement that the Atlantic Charter was not intended to
apply to British colonies, Azikiwe wrote that it was imperative for
Africans to prepare their own political “blueprint” rather than rely on
“those who are too busy preparing their own.”33
Azikiwe did prepare his own blueprint of rights in the form of
a document entitled Political Blueprint of Nigeria, published in
1943. In it, he listed the basic rights that should be guaranteed to
every “commonwealth subject.” These included the rights to health,
education, social equality, material security, and recreation.34 The
Blueprint also included provisions for religious freedom, protection
of life and property, collective bargaining, and the rights to public
assembly, discussion, and demonstration.35 Azikiwe recommended
that the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776, which served as a model for
the American constitution, should also serve as a model for preparing
Nigeria’s constitution. The Virginia Bill of Rights, he argued, was
ideal because “it embodies all the basic rights for which democratic-
loving humanity had fought to preserve in the course of history.”36
He also idealized the Declaration of Independence of Liberia of 1847
and its recognition of “certain inalienable rights of all men.”37 Thus,
Azikiwe’s vision of human rights appears to have hinged more on
Enlightenment liberal rights tradition than on the uncertain promise
of the Atlantic Charter.
Under the auspices of his political party, the National Council for
Nigeria and the Cameroons, Azikiwe led the drafting of the Freedom
Charter in 1948.38 The Charter affirmed a wide range of political,
economic, and social rights, including the rights to life, freedom of
opinion, freedom of association, and self-determination. It also called
for the establishment of states on ethnic and linguistic basis as a guar-
antee of political representation.39 Alluding to the Atlantic Charter,
the preamble of the Freedom Charter affirmed the right of all peoples
to choose the form of government under which they may live. The
Charter’s preamble proclaimed: “The tribes, nations and peoples of
Nigeria and the Cameroons undertake, as of right, to arrogate to
themselves, the status of an independent self-governing political
community.”40 The Charter included a condemnation of slavery, ser-

vitude, and imperialism; an affirmation of the equality of all per-
sons; the right to basic education and health and even the right to
recreation and leisure. Also inspired by the Atlantic Charter, Nelson
Mandela and the leaders of the African National Congress in South
Africa drafted their own Freedom Charter in 1955.41
Azikiwe went on to play a key role in decolonization and postcolo-
nial politics in Nigeria. His activism inspired a group of young enthu-
siastic Nigerian nationalists who called themselves the “Zikists.” The
Zikist movement pledged to defend Nnamdi Azikiwe against attacks
by opponents and sought to bring about the downfall of colonial rule
through strikes, boycotts, and the use of violence.42 They continued
in his tradition of linking anticolonial struggles for self-determina-
tion with the universal human rights idea. When Nigeria gained inde-
pendence from British rule in 1960, Azikiwe was appointed its first
indigenous Governor-General. Three years later, Nigeria became a
republic with Azikiwe as its first president, an office he held until his
government was ousted from power in 1966.
Conclusion
The argument for delinking anticolonialism from human rights rests
on a narrow definition on human rights associated with postwar inter-
nationalism and the early debates about the UDHR at the United
Nations. These debates were dominated by Western colonial powers
that often did not represent the perspectives of their colonized sub-
jects.43 There were only four African member states represented at
the United Nations in the early 1950s. By 1960 there were still only
nine. African voices in the human rights debate were largely expressed
through nationalist anticolonialism in the colonies. Those who over-
look these voices as not being part of the human rights story fail to
adequately consider the historical realities of the imperial order and
the limits it imposed on political participation by colonized subjects.
As earlier stated, one argument for delinking anticolonialism from
human rights rests on the assumption that anticolonialism was little
more than a struggle for political self-determination. This assump-
tion is mistaken. Just as colonialism was more than simply the denial
of the right to self-government, so too was anticolonialism more than
a struggle for popular liberation. The alienations and dispossessions
that colonial rule inflicted on colonized subjects cannot solely be mea-
sured in political or even collective terms. Quite apart from the denial
of the right to collective political self-determination, colonial states

were implicated in the violation of individual liberties. There are well-
documented incidents of colonial “punitive expeditions” resulting in
the massacre of indigenous people, arbitrary arrests and imprison-
ments, forced labor policies, restrictions on expression and movement,
torture and killings, all underpinned by institutionalized racism.44
One recent study has shown how Africans in UN Trust Territories
of Cameroon petitioned the United Nations in the 1950s, invoking
human rights not only for collective liberation but also for the pro-
tection of individual rights canonized in international law. They sent
lists of the names of persons who the French and British administra-
tors had deported, arrested, and killed, appealing to the international
community to protect specific individuals.45 Anticolonial movements
were, therefore, not limited to struggles for political and collective
self-determination. They were also concerned with individual rights.
Azikiwe’s nationalist activism shows that anticolonial struggles for
self-determination were connected in many ways to the post–Second
World War universal human rights movement. Colonized people all
over the world drew on an emergent international human rights lan-
guage in their ideological struggles against imperial powers and their
demands for independence. Anticolonialism did not develop in isola-
tion of the universal human rights discourse. Rather, it was integral
to the development of the postwar universal human rights ideology.
By focussing on the anticolonial activities of “Third world” nation-
alist leaders and intellectuals like Azikiwe, we are able to construct
anticolonialism and human rights not as disparate ideologies but as
intersecting social and intellectual movements.
Notes
1. Moyn, The Last Utopia; in particular, Chapter 3; Samuel Moyn,
“Imperialism, Self-Determination, and the Rise of Human Rights”
in Iriye et al. (Eds.), The Human Rights Revolution: An International
History, New York: Oxford University Press (2012), p. 159–78.
2. Eckel, “Human Rights and Decolonization: New Perspectives and
Open Questions,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human
Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2010), p.
115.
3. Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire: Britain and the
Genesis of the European Convention, Oxford: Oxford University Press
(2004), p. 301.
4. Simpson, Human Rights and the End of Empire, p. 301.
5. Moyn, The Last Utopia, p. 117.
6. See Eckel, “Human Rights and Decolonization,” p. 115; Terretta,

“We Had Been Fooled into Thinking that the UN Watches over the
Entire World: Human Rights, UN Trust Territories, and Africa’s
Decolonization,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2012),
p. 34.
7. Patterson, “Freedom, Slavery, and the Modern construction of
Rights” in Hufton (Ed.), Historical Change and Human Rights: The
Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1994, New York: Basic Books (1995), p.
176.
8. Preamble, Charter of the United Nations (1945), https://www
.un.org/en/documents/charter/. (assessed April 4, 2014).
9. Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations (1945), https://www
.un.org/en/documents/charter/ (assessed April 4, 2014).
10. These include the International Covenants on Civil and Political
Rights and the International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights
introduced in 1976.
11. Donnelly, “Human Rights and Human Dignity: An Analytic
Critique of Non-Western Human Rights Conceptions,” American
Political Science Review, Vol. 76, No. 2 (1982), p. 303.
12. United Nations Department of Public Information, “A Magna
Carta for all Humanity,” http://www.un.org/rights/50/carta.htm
(accessed February 6, 2012).
13. Even this point is subject to dispute. At the signing of the UDHR
in 1948, many African and Asian countries were still under colonial
rule and were not represented at the United Nations.
14. Azikiwe also spent some time studying at Storer College, Harvard
University, and the University of Pennsylvania. For a discussion of
how Azikiwe’s education in the United States shaped his political
activism, see Furlong, “Azikiwe and the National Church of Nigeria
and the Cameroons: A Case Study of the Political Use of Religion in
African Nationalism,” African Affairs, Vol. 91, No. 364 (1992), p.
433–452.
15. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, Berkeley: University
of California Press (1971 [1958]), p. 245.
16. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism, p. 240.
17. Idemili, “What the West African Pilot Did in the Movement for
Nigerian Nationalism between 1937 and 1957,” Black American
Literature Forum, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1978), p. 85.
18. Ibid., p. 85.
19. For a discussion of the influence of the Garvey Movement on anti-
colonialism and African nationalism, see Okonkwo, “The Garvey
Movement in British West Africa,” The Journal of African History,
Vol. 21, No. 1 (1980), p. 105–117.
20. “Resolutions of the Pan-African Congress Manchester 1945,”
http://www.law.emory.edu/wandl/Literature/Documents/africa
/Pan%20African/20.htm (accessed 6 March 2014).
21. Idemili, “What the West African Pilot Did in the Movement for
Nigerian Nationalism,” p. 85.
22. The trip was originally sponsored by the British government as part
of a cultural exchange program with the colonies.
23. Atlantic Charter, August 14, 1941, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii
/atlantic.asp (assessed 7 March 2014).
24. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History, New York:
Enigma Books (2008), p. 363.
25. The Times, November 11, 1942. Prime Minister Churchill was not
alone in seeking a restrictive interpretation of principle of self-deter-
mination in the Atlantic Charter. The Soviet leader Josef Stalin who
saw the Charter as an “anti-Soviet tract” also asserted that it did not
apply to regions of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. See Plummer,
Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960,
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1996), p. 64.
26. National Archives of the United Kingdom (NAUK), “Memorandum
on the Atlantic Charter and British West Africa by the West African
Press Delegation to the United Kingdom, 1 August 1943,” CO
554/133/3.
27. “Memorandum on the Atlantic Charter and British West Africa,”
NAUK, C0554/133/3.
29. Azikiwe, Zik: A selection from the Speeches of Nnamdi Azikiwe,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1961), p. 159 (my
emphasis).
30. Ibid., p. 82.
31. Ibid., p. 7.
33. Azikiwe, Political Blueprint of Nigeria, Lagos: African Book
Company (1945), p. 72 (my emphasis).
34. Ibid., p. 44–45.
35. Ibid., p. 2.
36. Azikiwe referred specifically to the Magna Carta, the English
Petition of Rights and the Habeas Corpus Act of the United States.
Ibid., p. 40.
37. Azikiwe, Renascent Africa, London: F. Cass (1968) [1937]), p. 174.
38. National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons, “Freedom
Charter,” West African Pilot, January 4, 1949.
39. Ita, The Freedom Charter and Richard’s Constitution in the Light
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed by the United
Nations Assembly, Calabar: WAPI Press (1949), p. 14.
40. Freedom Charter.
41. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson
Mandela, Boston: Little Brown (1995), p. 95–96.
42. Dibua, Modernization and the Crisis of Development in Africa: The
Nigerian Experience, Burlington, VT: Ashgate (2006), p. 67. For
a discussion of the Zikist Movement, see Olusanya, “The Zikist

Movement: A Study in Political Radicalism, 1946–50,” The Journal
of Modern African Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1966), p. 323–333.
43. Some scholars have argued that small states played a more prominent
role in the drafting of the UDHR than previously assumed. What is
not in dispute, however, is that the early debates about the UDHR at
the United Nations were shaped by the interest of Western nations.
See Waltz, “Universalizing Human Rights: The Role of Small States
in the Construction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,”
Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2001), p. 44–72.
44. For example, legal scholar Jeremy Sarkin has described the German
colonial campaign against the Herero between 1904 and 1908 as
the “first genocide of the twentieth century.” See Sarkin, Colonial
Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century: The Socio-Legal
Context of Claims under International Law by the Herero against
Germany for Genocide in Namibia, 1904–1908, Westport, CT:
Praeger (2009).
45. Terretta, “We Had Been Fooled,” p. 329–360.
Chapter 4
The Diplomatic Achievements of Amilcar

Cabral: A Case Study of Effective
Leadership in a Small African State
David Fistein
T he argument forwarded in this chapter is that the diplomatic

achievements of Amilcar Cabral provided the groundwork to his suc-
cess as a modern African leader. They were not just an added bonus.
Being a fantastic diplomat is key to the success of any African leader,
but it is twice as important for those leaders from the many small
African states in the world system. There are two parts that must be
considered here: the relations with African neighbors and a produc-
tive relationship (one that is beneficial to the small African state) with
countries outside of Africa. Both are indispensable to nation building
and the implementation of domestic policies and programs intended
to improve the quality of life of domestic constituencies.
In the literature on African leadership, Cabral is generally con-
sidered a shining example for others to follow, rightly so. He was
a superb organizer, a visionary leader, whose integrity, accountabil-
ity, and willingness to listen to and learn from ordinary people set
him apart from contemporaries and continues to inspire scholars of
African leadership to this day.1 “Cabral remains a source of inspiration
for the progressive forces of meaningful change in not only Guinea-
Bissau, but also in the rest of Africa.”2 However, most of these stud-
ies3 tend to stress his ability to harness the power of traditional social
structural attributes and his ability to convert them from a perceived
weakness into a strength for state building through his exemplary
leadership. By restoring the communal and democratic practices of
his African ancestors and precolonial African society,4 he was able to
mobilize and lead the ethnically diverse people of Guinea-Bissau to
70 D AV I D F I S T E I N
nationhood and independence. His diplomatic skills in gaining sup-

port from a variety of European countries (East and West) as well as
numerous African countries are generally treated as complementary to
his true endeavors: the national liberation war and creating a national
consciousness. Although admired, his diplomatic achievements are
viewed as a type of special bonus that Cabral was able to generate
in support of his primary objectives.5 Some authors also focus on
Cabral’s writings such as “the new theory of imperialism,”6 and some
of his comments on this topic, made in speeches with international
significance, mesmerized audiences around the world. In Warriors
at Work, Dhada (1993) provides an impressive itinerary showing all
his travel dates and reasons for the trips, but the theme of the book
is reflected in the title and focuses on the fact that Cabral regarded
the liberation war as a necessary evil to create a society where people
enjoy the fruits of their labor free from exploitation. In a 1995 article,
Dhada points out that none of these works, including his own, have
paid enough attention to Cabral’s “diplomatic front” and that “this
front was just as important as the others.”7
This chapter treats his diplomatic accomplishments as the decisive
factor that enabled Cabral to defeat the Portuguese, a NATO mem-
ber, and lead his people toward independence (before the other coun-
tries in Portugal’s miniature colonial empire). Students engaged in the
study of African leadership tend to acknowledge the fact that African
leaders are constrained by world historical structures,8 but Cabral
turned common wisdom on its head and used these “constraints”
to his advantage. First of all, he spent an enormous amount of time
courting leaders of various nearby African states. Although he found
them initially reluctant to help him,9 he continued to lobby them on
his movement’s behalf until his persistence eventually paid off, and he
was able to secure logistical support and safe havens for his fighters
from the Republic of Guinea at first and much later from Senegal as
well. Before he even initiated armed struggle during the early years of
the rural organization drive, Cabral traveled to over 21 countries,10
and in 1970, he managed to have an audience with the Pope, which
bestowed considerable legitimacy upon his endeavors.11 He lobbied
the United Nations relentlessly for 10 years to gain humanitarian aid
and recognition and had to endure many setbacks and disappoint-
ments before finally achieving success.12 He found indispensable
early allies in Morocco and Algeria, followed by Tunisia, Ghana, and
many others that helped out through the Organization of African
Unity.13 On the world stage, Cabral courted the anticolonial forces in
D I P L O M AT I C A C H I E V E M EN T S O F A M I L C A R C A B R A L 71
the “socialist camp” and received sophisticated weapons and military

training (mostly from China and the Soviet Union), and with these
weapons and fighters who knew how to use them, he was able to put
Portugal permanently on the defensive from a military point of view.
He secured regular arms shipments from Morocco, China, Russia,
and Czechoslovakia, only after he was able to convince his African
neighbors to commit to being a hub for these shipments and his mili-
tary endeavors in general. Overcoming their reluctance was one of his
greatest diplomatic achievements that set the stage for a successful
war of liberation. At the same time, he courted Western countries
by firmly denying that he was a “socialist.”14 He secured humanitar-
ian aid from Yugoslavia and school supplies for the many schools he
was building as well as consumer goods from the Scandinavian coun-
tries, the Netherlands, India (and other countries) that were made
available to ordinary people through the barter network of people’s
stores.15 These efforts dramatically improved living conditions and
undermined Portuguese efforts to cajole the rebellious population
to return under the Portuguese umbrella with an economic develop-
ment program of their own.16 Even more important was the fact that
Cuban and Yugoslav medical volunteers staffed small mobile hospitals
that brought medical care to and routinely treated villagers in the
liberated areas.17 This is what allowed Cabral to achieve his domestic
accomplishments and eventual military victory.
This chapter focuses on Cabral’s diplomatic activities through-
out the years of the liberation struggle and draws lessons from it for
twenty-first-century small African states. I will try to establish the
connections between major diplomatic achievements and signifi-
cant domestic advances that moved forward the national liberation
struggle. Furthermore, I argue that the lesson contained in this case
study should be interpreted so that you have to secure foreign sup-
port for the things that people actually need and want and things
that immediately improve their living conditions. As Cabral put it,
“with hospitals and schools we can win the war.”18 Medical supplies,
school books, building materials, and consumer goods are politically
neutral and provide a good opportunity for the governments and the
publics of wealthier countries to engage in humanitarian activities.
Convincing foreign powers to help is never an easy task, and Cabral’s
accomplishments in achieving beneficial relations with a variety of
countries, and against all odds, is the true genius of his leadership
and should be emulated by African leaders if they truly want to help
their countrymen.
Cabral and the History of the Liberation Struggle

Early life experiences stimulated Cabral’s interest in the political
economy of colonialism and the cultural reidentification with com-
mon Africans and their rural traditions. Soon after Cabral was born
in Guinea-Bissau, his parents returned to Cape Verde where his father
belonged to a landed family on the island of Sao Tiago.19 After gradu-
ating from the only secondary school in the archipelago in 1944, he
was awarded an extremely rare scholarship and departed for Lisbon,
Portugal, to study agronomy.20 Cabral joined the colonial service
as an agronomy engineer and returned to Guinea-Bissau in 1952.21
He had already made the political decision to mobilize his coun-
trymen against Portuguese colonialism by awakening in people the
sense of freedom that came with rediscovering their African roots.22
At first, Cabral attempted in vain to organize cultural and sports
clubs, which had served as a vehicle for political discussion in other
African countries, but these were prohibited by the Portuguese with
the fitting explanation that his proposed clubs did not distinguish
between “assimilados” and “natives.”23 While he was completing an
agricultural survey of Guinea-Bissau where he paid particular atten-
tion to the sociopolitical underpinnings of land use and took the time
to listen to ordinary people and their grievances, 24 the governor of
Portuguese Guinea cautioned Cabral “if you start making trouble for
me, I shall jail you.”25 He returned to work in Lisbon from 1955 to
1958 and received several assignments in Angola, but in a brief visit
to Guinea-Bissau in 1956, Cabral and five others founded the Partido
Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC) in a secret
meeting.26 He clandestinely traveled to Ghana and (French) Guinea,
which were on the verge of independence, and he participated in the
founding of the liberation movement in Angola while improving his
knowledge of Portuguese colonialism.27 Cabral would soon use his
experiences and detailed knowledge of his own country, including
the cultural data about ethnic groups and factors that set them apart
from each other, as well as those they had in common, to prepare for
the eventuality of a people’s war should the Portuguese not listen to
reason.28
The decision to abandon all peaceful forms of protest and end the
demonstrations in the urban centers followed the Pigiguiti massacre
when dockworkers and sailors went on strike on August 2, 1959, and
the Portuguese regular military confronted them the next day killing
at least 50 people and wounding many more. 29 The realization that
“the Portuguese had weapons and were prepared to kill” to prevent
nationalist activities caused Cabral to abandon his original plan of

peaceful political activities and to go with the military confronta-
tion option instead.30 An external political development made this
decision much easier: the independence of the Republic of Guinea-
Conakry allowed him to establish a headquarters there and a train-
ing ground for the political cadres who would swarm out into the
countryside after 1960.31 Before he went to Guinea-Conakry, how-
ever, he quit his lucrative job in Portugal at the end of 1959 and
secretly traveled in Europe (France, Switzerland, and England) and to
China—an important future ally.32 Becoming a freedom fighter does
not occur spontaneously. “It is not the degree of suffering and hard-
ship as such that matters; even extreme suffering does not necessarily
produce the prise de conscience required for the national liberation
struggle.”33According to some, Portuguese colonial rule was gener-
ally “the meanest, most cruel, most exploitative of all the colonial
powers, even worse than the Belgians.”34 Basil Davidson says it was
slightly better, but it was worse than simple slavery.35 Cabral said that
Portuguese exploitation was equivalent to slavery, “yet an explanation
of a technico-economic kind that they are the most exploited people
will fall on deaf ears.”36
Cabral’s strategy to awaken the ordinary people and start a revo-
lutionary movement was simple and highly scientific as much as it
was based in traditional culture. The political organizers, who were
being trained in Guinea-Conakry, learned to act out standardized
scripts designed to highlight Portuguese exploitation and offer an
alternative. The political work focused on animist groups such as the
Balanta, the Oinka, and the Bijagos islanders first, because Cabral
had identified them as groups that were most likely to receive the
nationalist message favorably.37 The other groups were hierarchically
structured, and their chiefs were easily co-opted by the Portuguese.
The Portuguese economically and militarily tied these chiefs to their
own interests and controlled the rest of the people through the tra-
ditional social structure.38 On the other hand, the animist groups
were more egalitarian, practiced family-oriented communal farming,
generally resented authority, and had a “praetorian social memory” of
fighting the Portuguese well into the 1930s.39 This enabled PAIGC
organizers to tap into their traditional social structural attributes
and begin building up a following for the PAIGC.40 Many of the
new converts would go to Guinea-Conakry for political and military
training and, eventually, into other villages and continue the propa-
ganda cycle. Cabral’s party used modern organizational techniques
along with culturally specific methods. The phrase he coined, which
was soon celebrated by intellectuals in East and West alike, “Return

to the Source,” was actually a combination of modernity and tradi-
tion acted out in a historically specific location, and Cabral himself
pointed that out many times.41
Good leaders must recognize and fully take advantage of the
ever-changing world historical opportunities that “naturally” occur/
develop in the world system, and Cabral meticulously built a relation-
ship between his party/emerging state and the Republic of Guinea
that would serve as a base and the country through which the PAIGC
could import weapons and humanitarian aid. Cabral used his inter-
personal skills as a fantastic communicator to take advantage of a
world political development, the independence of Guinea-Conakry
from France in 1958, to create a successful liberation movement in his
own country. The base in Guinea-Conakry was secured as a result of
much preparatory political work done by Cabral inside the Republic
of Guinea (when it was still a colony of France) during his early visits,
while he was still living in Lisbon and working in Angola. Convincing
President Sekou Touré to support the PAIGC or at least allow it to
operate political and military schools was a difficult task.42 In fact,
the PAIGC was not allowed to import weapons through the Republic
of Guinea for several years,43 which significantly limited the kinds
of operations the liberation movement could undertake in the early
years and forced the fighters to rely mostly on weapons captured from
the Portuguese.44 “We had three weapons,” recounts a fighter in an
interview with Basil Davidson, “There were ten of us. We ambushed
three of their vehicles and killed seven of them.” After seizing some
weapons, the rebels left the scene emboldened and better prepared for
future ambushes.45
The diplomatic feat of overcoming Sekou Touré’s initial reluctance
to help the PAIGC laid the foundation for the coming of the libera-
tion war. However, Cabral’s task was “revolutionary politics placed
on its head,” because he tried to secure international political sup-
port for the liberation movement before there ever was one. Then
he used his diplomatic achievements as a foundation upon which to
build up a peasant-based liberation movement to wage a long but
successful war against Portugal. Sekou Touré did not immediately
embrace Cabral, because several other émigré groups from Guinea-
Bissau already operated in Conakry when Cabral arrived there. Cabral
had to outmaneuver the other groups that also claimed to represent
the national aspirations of their countrymen and establish the pri-
macy of the PAIGC as the Guinean people’s most ardent advocate46
and most likely to establish a Touré-friendly nation-state in Guinea
D I P L O M AT I C A C H I E V E M E N T S O F A M I L C A R C A B R A L 75
Bissau. “Many people do not remember that one of our most impor-
tant battles was to gain the support of the Republic of Guinea against
the opportunists who were there before us.”47 What the President of
newly independent Guinea-Conakry feared the most about helping
the nationalists from Guinea-Bissau is that it would incur the wrath
of the Portuguese and trigger possible operations on their part to
destabilize the Republic of Guinea, which did happen in the early
1970s.48 However, Cabral had gained the decisive support of Touré
much earlier,49 and Guinea-Conakry remained a key base for political
and military training until Cabral’s death as well as the location of the
PAIGC’s large modern hospital built with donations from Yugoslav
trade unions.50
The importance of Guinea-Conakry’s support must be placed
in the proper international perspective where Senegal, Guinea-
Bissau’s other neighbor, not only refused to lend aid to the rebels,
but President Senghor prevented the PAIGC from using his coun-
try as a refuge or a supply route, which significantly hampered the
effort to extend the war of liberation into the northern region of
Guinea-Bissau.51 With the borders to Senegal sealed off, and peasants
fleeing the area due to a combination of drought and Portuguese
bombardment, the freedom fighters were essentially trapped, and
they endured hardship living in the forests in small groups, forag-
ing for food, and trying occasionally to attack Portuguese convoys
to capture machine guns and ammunition.52 Leopold Senghor was
an obstinate adversary before he became a friend in the late 1960s.
Although many of the people who lived in northern Guinea-Bissau
had relatives in southwestern Senegal, they could not visit them.53
Senghor initially opposed the PAIGC because he assumed it was a
communist movement; he became more tolerant after meeting with
Cabral.54 It was only through his interpersonal skills and persistence
in the face of adversity that Cabral eventually convinced Senghor to
let the PAIGC operate inside his country starting in 1967.55 Similar
as in the Republic of Guinea, there was a splinter group named Frente
de luta pela independencia national da Guine-Bissau (FLING).56 It
was based in Dakar and competed with Cabral’s PAIGC for influ-
ence in Senegal.57 It was only after he neutralized their influence on
Senghor58 that he was able to press forward with his biggest domes-
tic project and extend the PAIGC state into northern Guinea-Bissau
in such a way that protected human lives and gained the support
of villagers in an area where the liberation movement had been met
with suspicion and found it difficult to gain momentum in previous
years.59 The biggest issue here was the ability of both fighters and
villagers in the northern region to cross into Senegal safely, seek ref-
uge from Portuguese aerial bombardment (increasingly with napalm,
fragmentation bombs, and white phosphorus), get a rest from the
war, visit the PAIGC hospital, and receive supplies efficiently.60 This
particular diplomatic breakthrough enabled Cabral’s party to con-
tinue to expand territorially and significantly improve its delivery of
humanitarian services to almost the entire nation by the early 1970s.
The schmoozing of both leaders, Touré as well as Senghor, took
up an enormous amount of Cabral’s time and effort as can be seen
by the sheer number of official visits to these countries,61 but it was
an indispensable part of waging a successful liberation war in Guinea-
Bissau, because they controlled access to vital supply routes.62 Neither
of these leaders liked Cabral at first. Senghore thought Cabral was a
communist, while Touré believed he was an adventurist.63 Sadly, the
future international stature of Cabral elicited jealousies among his
comrades, the Portuguese, and Sekou Touré, his “gracious” host.64
Touré had given good support to the PAIGC but always with an air of
condescension.65 The possibility that Touré would later betray him66
should not obscure the fact that Cabral managed to convince Touré
that it would be to his benefit to allow the PAIGC to operate inside
the Republic of Guinea at a time when he needed his help the most.
Between 1960 and 1963, while the rural organization drive was
gaining momentum in Guinea-Bissau, Cabral traveled to 21 countries
in search of military backers willing to guarantee him a steady supply
of arms and to train some of his men.67 This international relations
campaign was carried out to prepare the way for the initiation of a rev-
olutionary war to overthrow the Portuguese state and replace it with a
sovereign nation-state that would be composed of politically conscious
and patriotic citizens and to receive international recognition.68 That
he accomplished this goal well before the advent of independence
is remarkable given the socioeconomic structures in his small and
unique country with a long tradition of complex “native-colonizer”
relations including genocide and civil war.69 While he was organizing
international support, the structures set in place by him and his party
were bearing fruit in terms of forging a nationalist movement inside
Guinea-Bissau, creating the first “liberated zones” through armed
confrontation, and holding them against Portuguese counterattacks.
These activities of organizing a revolutionary party among the peas-
ants and initiating military conflict against the Portuguese with little
resources that swiftly and irreversibly put them on the defensive are
what amazes people about Cabral, but people rarely analyze how he
managed to use his talent for statesmanship to determine the future
of his nation by creating a diverse group of allies in the international

state system for Guinea-Bissau before it even existed as a state in the
Westphalian anarchic world order.
Convincing leaders of countries who are respected members of
the international community that you are the only spokesperson for
the national aspirations of your countrymen is the very definition
of statecraft. This was Cabral’s true primary objective, and he never
missed an opportunity to speak at pertinent international conferences
to make new contacts and get members of the international commu-
nity to recognize the PAIGC as the only legitimate representative of
the Guinean people. As he was organizing international support, he
had to be confident that the structures set in place by him and his
PAIGC party comrades in the Guinean countryside would continue
to bear fruit in terms of politically organizing the peasants, creating
a national consciousness, and continued successful guerilla attacks on
Portuguese military installations and convoys. Some of the highlights
include the first Tricontinental Conference of the Peoples of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America in 1966 in Havana, Cuba, where he gave one
of his most memorable speeches, entitled “The Weapon of Theory,”
that made him the darling of “antiimperialists” around the world.70
In another remarkable speech at the Franz Fanon Center in Milan in
1964, he analyzed the social structure in Guinea-Bissau, essentially
debunking classical Marxism and Maoism in one breath.71 He spoke at
the First Conference of the Heads of State and Governments of Non-
Aligned Countries in Belgrade in 1961, where he made contacts with
future Yugoslav benefactors, and at the Second Conference in Cairo,
he gave another one of his memorable speeches, entitled “National
Liberation and Peace, Cornerstones of Non-alignment.”72 He also
took interest in attending conferences on Afro-Asian affairs, where
he was most likely introduced to the Cubans by other Afro-Asian
delegates.73 He attended the International Conference of Solidarity
with the Peoples of Southern Africa and the Portuguese Colonies
in Khartoum in 1969, and “in June 1970 an international confer-
ence was held in Rome attended by delegates from 74 countries” to
discuss Portugal’s African Wars.74 The Conference was closed with
a papal audience being granted to representatives of the liberation
movements, including the PAIGC.75 This was a great international
victory for all the anti-Portuguese liberation movements, because the
majority of Portugal’s population is Catholic, and they listen to the
Pope.
Cabral testified before various bodies of the United Nations
on numerous occasions and secured a number of UN Resolutions
proclaiming that the struggle of his people against Portugal is legit-

imate. He issued appeals to member states to extend assistance to
the African liberation movements, and recommendations to spe-
cialized UN agencies to cooperate with those movements through
the Organization of African Unity.76 His first appearance before
the Fourth Committee (Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories)
occurred in 1962, before the initiation of armed struggle, show-
ing that he understood the importance of international support and
the significance of international law right from the beginning. As a
matter of fact, Cabral was still hoping for a peaceful solution as evi-
denced by “an impassioned plea for a peaceful way to decolonization
through the exercise of UN pressure on Portugal.”77 He submitted
a document, almost 100 pages long, where he examined Portuguese
colonial rule in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. His visit resulted in
UN Resolution 1819 of December 18, 1962, condemning Portugal’s
colonial wars and recognizing the colonies’ rights to self-determina-
tion.78 In July 1963, the Security Council requested that member
states refrain from supplying Portugal with military equipment that
could be used in its colonial wars, and by 1964, a number of UN
organizations had taken action against Portugal.79 In 1965, another
General Assembly Resolution requested international institutions to
withhold assistance to Portugal.80 In his second appearance in 1972,
Cabral was preparing the ground for the soon-to-follow declaration
of independence by Guinea-Bissau.81
Also in 1972, Cabral helped organize a visit to the liberated
PAIGC-controlled areas of Guinea-Bissau by a team of high-ranking
diplomats from the Special Committee on Decolonization, a subor-
gan of the General Assembly also known as the Committee of 24.82
“One of the Committee of 24’s most dramatic undertakings was its
unprecedented decision to send a special mission to the liberated areas
of Guinea-Bissau in April 1972.”83 The Portuguese did everything to
prevent this mission, including an intensified bombing campaign that
specifically targeted the areas that were being visited, and they only
barely missed the UN delegation.84 The significance of the visit was
that for 130 hours the UN flag was flying over Guinea-Bissau. The
Committee on Decolonization recognized the PAIGC as the only
legitimate representative of the people of Guinea-Bissau, exposed
Portuguese cruelty and cowardice, confirmed PAIGC control over
“liberated territories,” and made recommendations that directly
influenced the future decision of the United Nations to recognize
Guinea-Bissau as a member state.85
The role of Cuban advisors present in Guinea-Bissau during the

heavy war years of 1964to 1972 is probably the most intriguing ques-
tion from an international relations point of view, and in spite of
Cabral’s denials (smartly so), they may have made a significant contri-
bution to the liberation war.86 Cuba certainly has a substantial track
record of meddling in “liberation wars” on several continents, which
is impressive for such a small state.87 In the case of Guinea-Bissau,
Cuban and Yugoslav medical doctors took care of injured people from
the countryside and even traveled into zones where the war was still
raging to operate on the critically injured after Portuguese bombing
raids.88 After that, it all becomes murky. There is significant evidence
from various sources, but especially from the Cubans themselves, that
they were training locals to use East European canons inside Guinea-
Bissau.89 On the other hand, Cabral always vehemently denied the
existence of Cuban military commandos operating in Guinea-Bissau:
“We have no Cuban people fighting with us in our country.”90 Basil
Davidson, who based his books on actual visits to the liberated parts
of the country during the heavy war years, says that “the ‘mythical
soldiers’ were surgeons who practiced under primitive conditions,”
and Patrick Chabal and Lars Rudebeck concur.91 However, the pre-
ponderant evidence seems to suggest that Cuban advisors indeed
helped the freedom fighters by training them on how to use artillery.92
Davidson also concedes that Cuban aid proved valuable in the provi-
sion of “small teams for training in the use of artillery.” 93 “They were
still there in 1972 when Castro himself visited Guinea- Bissau.” 94
The morale of this story has to be that small states can help
one another overcome incredible obstacles emanating from the
Westphalian system of nation-states. The agency of smaller players on
the international stage has received next to no attention until recent-
ly.95 Everything scholars admire about Cabral turns around him hav-
ing created a viable nation-state in a place where the only thing in
common was Portuguese possession that lasted anywhere from 500
to a mere 30 years. Portuguese rule had extended into some areas
only in the 1930s after a series of brutal extermination wars.96 Cabral
united the various ethnic groups that lived in the territory known
as Portuguese Guinea through a combination of monumental politi-
cal work of teaching people about their history and their common
interests, but it was the liberation war that undeniably heightened
the sense of community and allowed Cabral to consolidate his politi-
cal successes.97 Nevertheless, the decisive help from small states in
the international system (Bulgaria, Cuba, Finland, Denmark, Ghana,
Hungary, Mauritania, Norway, Senegal, Tunisia, and some others)

enabled Cabral to deliver the goods that solidified support for the
PAIGC in the liberated areas and that he was most proud of: medi-
cal supplies, school books, teachers, building materials, and con-
sumer goods for the people’s stores, as well as modern weapons and
training.98
East European Trips

Equally important to the eventual course of the liberation struggle
were Cabral’s early trips to Eastern Europe gaining humanitarian and
military aid for early on in the struggle, improving those relationships
over the next ten years, and gaining increased military support. As
a matter of fact, the connections made in Eastern Europe afforded
the chance to bring large amounts of world-class weapons, mostly
small arms at first, without even having a way to bring them into the
country, which obviously worried his donors, and they wanted to see
some proof that Cabral would be able to take care of the logistical
situation.99 The permission by the Republic of Guinea and much later
Senegal’s approval for weapons transfers opened the way to a success-
ful war of liberation against Portugal.100 In addition to international
recognition, emerging nation-states need humanitarian aid including
such items as textbooks for school children to learn about their coun-
try and to build a national consciousness. “Education is seen there-
fore both as an important part of the emancipatory struggle against
imperialism and underdevelopment , and as an instrument to be used
in the more immediate struggle for concrete material improvement
of the people’s situation.”101 Educational aid proved vital for the
PAIGC to carry out its commitment to basic literacy as well as politi-
cal education.102 This kind of aid makes donors look good as long
as it can be provided to a legitimate group or country, and it is here
where being able to claim that the PAIGC is the only true represen-
tative of the people in Guinea-Bissau was tremendously important.
Being treated like a country, a state, by the international community
changes everything.
As early as 1961, Cabral visited Czechoslovakia for an unknown
purpose, although history later recorded that he met his second wife
there.103 He was in the Soviet Union in 1962 to discuss the supply
of arms.104 He was there again in 1968 to discuss antiaircraft weap-
ons such the well-known SAM-7 heat-seeking missiles, which dealt a
decisive blow to Portuguese air superiority and inaugurated the final
phase of the war when they finally arrived in 1973 along with men
trained in the Soviet Union on how to use them.105 But, he was also
in East Germany to discuss the printing of schoolbooks, and he had
been to Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and North Korea (the land of
freedom)106 earlier that same year in search of military and humani-
tarian aid.107 Maybe more decisively, because of the outstanding skills
and hard work of Yugoslav doctors108 and aid from Yugoslav trade
unions to build a modern hospital in the Republic of Guinea as well
as material aid to build a large educational complex there,109 Cabral’s
visits to Yugoslavia for the Non-Aligned Conference in 1961 and then
again in 1962 must be regarded as key moments in his diplomatic
career.
Cabral made the conscious choice to grow his liberation move-
ment’s good relations with the Soviet Union and its satellites, while
trying to avoid Chinese aid from becoming half-hearted by staying
out of the Sino-Soviet split that was in vogue in the 1960s.110 Not
all eastern European countries supported the nationalists, however,
and Poland, for example, provided naval support for and sold the
Portuguese a big freighter to transport more troops and equipment to
Guinea-Bissau,111 although it had provided scholarships for vocational
training in 1966.112 “It is disappointing that some Eastern European
countries are among the countries delivering ships.”113 Nevertheless,
in the mid-1960s, one could find in Guinea-Bissau artillery from the
Soviet Union, “Czechoslovak automatics, and Cuban-made uniforms
out of Chinese cotton.”114 Nurses trained in Moscow tended to the
sick and the wounded inside the liberated areas.115
The number of Cuban and Eastern European doctors rose steadily
from 9 in 1965 to1966 to 23 in 1971 to 1972, and there were a
small number of medical assistants and medical technicians as well.116
Cabral also worked very hard to organize overseas educational trips
for PAIGC cadres to learn how to use world-class weapons but also
to become doctors, nurses, and teachers, technical cadres in the field
of agriculture, child psychologists, mechanical engineers, electri-
cians, motor mechanics, and managers of socialist cooperatives.117 In
October 1967, according to Cabral, the PAIGC had 470 members
under training in the Soviet Union and the rest of Eastern Europe.118
“Around one hundred boys and girls were selected this year 1971
to go and continue their studies in friendly countries.”119 According
to Dhada, 700 PAIGC cadres received vocational or some form of
higher education training between 1964 and 1973 in the Soviet
Union alone.120
Cabral courted the Soviets, because he needed them, and he had
much to be thankful for. At the celebration of Lenin in Kazakhstan
in 1970, Cabral proclaimed that “Lenin was and continues to be,

the greatest champion of the national liberation of the peoples.”121
Speaking in the Kremlin at the fiftieth anniversary of the USSR, he
expressed fraternal gratitude on behalf of the Guinean people to the
Soviet people. He did not, however, change his “uncompromising
policy of nonalignment” for them.122
I must admonish the reader not to rush to judgment on a man
who was trying to find allies to counteract the power of NATO,
which continued to supply Portugal with state-of-the-art weapons
throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.123 American, British, and
German-made bombers and fighter jets, Dutch troop carriers, French
helicopters, Belgian and Italian spareparts, all allowed Portugal
to step up its vicious war against civilian targets in Guinea-Bissau
including heavy use of Napalm.124 “They deliberately attack hospitals
and schools, and . . . their victims are mainly children and the old.”125
NATO officials believed, and the Portuguese encouraged them, that
Guinea-Bissau would become a base from which the Soviets would
capture the Cape Verde islands that command a key position in the
Atlantic.126 As late as 1972, NATO officials were working on plans to
blockade ports on the east and west coasts of Africa to prevent “ter-
rorist organizations” from receiving arms and ammunition.127 “With
little hope of sympathy from Western countries, allied with Portugal
through NATO, Cabral had to turn to the Eastern Bloc.”128 He told
the Americans, “We don’t ask for weapons” [he was asking for the
discontinuation of military aid to Portugal, especially the napalm],
but if you were also to help us in this field, “it would be very nice,”
and “it would be possible for us to develop a new force, you see.”129
Cabral was not the type of person who gives up easily, and he did
not abandon his search for allies in the West. Particularly from the
Scandinavian countries and later from the Netherlands as well, he
asked for and received humanitarian aid that significantly influenced
the war in Cabral’s and his comrades’ favor by helping consolidate
PAIGC’s control over the liberated areas that would never revert
back to Portuguese control. On his many trips to these countries, he
stressed the good they were doing by improving the lives of regular
people in a faraway country.130 He knew how to provide a scientific
backbone with numbers (this many children have attended school),
facts, and figures in addition to his personal views and opinions—
which were brilliant and for which he gained great admiration in
those countries. That gained Cabral more aid to improve people’s
lives in the countryside of Guinea Bissau. People’s stores, mobile
hospitals, and schools were all built with the use of humanitarian
aid Cabral gained from the international community.131 Thorough

and lengthy information campaigns in Western countries outside of
Scandinavia popularized the struggle, and action groups would col-
lect substantial amounts of money. In Holland, for example, several
thousand people went knocking on doors, explained the struggle,
and collected 70,000 blankets and $80,000 in cash for the libera-
tion struggles in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique.132 The
PAIGC received much support from the people of the Netherlands,133
who alone contributed $250,000 in just cash annually to the libera-
tion movements in Portuguese Africa, while the Dutch government
continued to supply the Portuguese colonialists with aircrafts.134 It
is important to “make special reference to the courageous attitude
taken by the Norwegian Foreign Minister” when he denounced colo-
nial wars of Portugal as being against the interests of humanity and
incompatible with the principles spelled out in the NATO Charter
at a high-level NATO meeting in Lisbon.135 (Neutral) Sweden was
the first and the largest Scandinavian contributor of humanitarian
aid to Guinea-Bissau, although Finland, Norway, and Denmark also
made significant contributions.136 Norway, Sweden, and Denmark all
voted in 1968 already in favor of a General Assembly Resolution 2395
(XXIII) calling on all member states to support the liberation move-
ments in the Portuguese colonies.137
The special role of the people’s stores as the main economic enter-
prise of the PAIGC to improve village life was inextricably tied to
Scandinavian and East German aid. They provided an economic hub
for the liberated areas, and material aid from Cabral’s benefactors
including the Auto Workers’ Union was exchanged for rice and other
foodstuff that could be used to feed the small regular army or other
villagers who had lost their crops, houses, and livelihoods due to aer-
ial bombardment.138 However, the problems of transportation and
obtaining regular supplies of desirable goods remained throughout
the war.139 With all their problems, the people’s stores remained the
best place to get some cloth, pots and pans, mosquito nets, farming
tools such as hoes and machetes, building materials, bicycles, needles,
soap, sandals, or school materials.140 Starting in 1970, Sweden con-
tributed to stabilizing the supply of goods.141
Africa and China

Every leader of a small state should know and recognize that his or her
main objectives should include the promotion of congenial relations
with regional powers, regional intergovernmental organizations, as
well as at least some of the world powers. Cabral had outstanding

relations with many of the countries in the Organization of African
Unity and with the organization itself.142 In 1964, the PAIGC
achieved recognition by the Organization of African Unity as the only
legitimate nationalist movement in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.143
Cabral also realized the strategic significance of China as an emerg-
ing world power. The Chinese began taking great interest in Africa
in the early 1960s and were looking for new client states, and they
already had friendly relations with the Republic of Guinea and were
training Sekou Toure’s people’s militia.144 Cabral secured training at
the Nanking Military Academy for his first few batches of fighters in
1960, who ultimately initiated the serious phase of armed conflict
with the Portuguese in 1962 to 1963.145 China remained an impor-
tant arms supplier throughout much of the liberation war, although it
eventually discontinued its support due to Cabral’s friendly relations
with the Soviet Union and its satellites.146
Cabral always made relations with African states a priority.147 While
he was still officially living in Lisbon, Cabral attended the 1958 All
African Peoples Conference in Accra, Ghana, to establish contacts
with other African nations.148 Many of his numerous trips to other
African countries were actually trips to meetings of interregional
and international organizations such as the OAU summit meetings
or the United Nation’s 67th meeting of the Special Committee on
Decolonization in 1965, the 451st session of the Committee of 24
in 1966, and the Security Council meeting in 1972 in Ethiopia, as
well as other important conferences.149 The goal was always the same:
to publicize the nationalist struggle of the Guinean People and to
elevate his countrymen to the status of nation-state; to speak about
the lives of ordinary people under everyday Portuguese bombard-
ment and helicopter raids, while having elections and making social
and economic progress at the same time.150 His early trips to Tunisia
and Morocco were certainly connected to weapons procurement and
training, as were those to Algeria in the mid-1960s, but a number of
other African countries were helping with “unspecified war materi-
als” or light arms (Congo, Ghana, Mauritania, Nigeria, Tanzania, and
Zambia just to name a few).151 At the OAU Conference of Heads of
State in Addis Ababa in 1971, the PAIGC was elected as spokesmen
for all liberation movements (Cabral 1971, 36). He received financial
and military aid as well as international support from various African
states throughout the war,152 but, as Cabral pointed out, “this aid
was very useful, but not sufficient,”153 because many states that prom-
ised to help by contributing funds to the Liberation Committee set
up by the OAU never did.154The revenue contributed by member

states to the OAU Liberation Committee was only slightly more than
the aid provided by the Nordic countries and the World Council of
Churches. Herein lies Cabral’s genius: Guinea-Bissau was receiving
aid from both—along with other sources.155
The number of military operations often increased following
substantive diplomatic advances by the Cabral-led PAIGC regime.
One of the most significant cause-and-effect chains of events can
be observed between getting the permission of Guinea-Conakry to
import weapons, receiving the promised aid from North Africa and
Eastern Europe, and then ratcheting up of military activities by the
PAIGC starting in 1963.156 The arrival of mortars, bazookas, and
artillery from Eastern Europe and Cuban advisors in the mid-to-late
1960s allowed the PAIGC to assault the previously impervious forts
of the Portuguese.157 After several visits to the Soviet Union between
1968 and 1972, SAM-7s arrived in March 1973 and put an end to
Portuguese aerial supremacy, which caused them to completely aban-
don any offensive operations.158 As international support from both
the capitalist and the socialist worlds grew, it translated into mate-
rial improvements in Guinea-Bissau, which enabled the PAIGC to
consolidate support in the liberated territories. Especially after 1968,
Sweden provided generous amounts of material aid,159Yugoslav dona-
tions built a modern hospital,160 the American United Auto Workers
sent medical supplies and textiles,161 East Germany as well as Sweden
printed textbooks for school children,162 and the OAU increased its aid
budget by 50 percent after the summit meetings in Rabat, Morocco,
in 1972.163 Much of the increase in material aid since 1968 also helped
the PAIGC improve the quality and quantity of goods exchanged in
the people’s stores for local produce, which was important to consoli-
date support in the liberated areas.164 This kind of material support
was obviously of immense political importance to the PAIGC.165 If
this “highly political function” is not performed to the people’s satis-
faction, the entire credibility of the PAIGC suffered.166
International successes such as increased recognition of the regime,
the opening up of new trade routes, or the procurement of heavy
weapons, mostly artillery, that came alongside with fighter training
were great accomplishments for the leader of a small and insignificant
country. The first substantive group of fighters trained in China but
also in Algeria and Morocco from where Cabral was receiving the
earliest military aid. Subsequent groups trained in Russia, learning
how to shoot SAM-7 missiles that proved decisive in the waning days
of the war, after Cabral had already been killed.167 The confluence
of increased acceptance by Touré and Eastern European “backers”

beginning to provide weapons that could be used for ambushes of
small convoys, and the very important river traffic, and their ability
to throw bombshells into the Portuguese garrisons that were ini-
tially everywhere in the country enabled the PAIGC to make rapid
progress in the mid-1960s.168 Not all weapons received from Eastern
Europe were first class, but they boosted civilian morale, such as the
multibarreled antiaircraft cannons with hand-moved aiming levers
from Czechoslovakia that were useless against fast-moving jets, but
occasionally shot down helicopters169 carrying ruthless mercenaries
coming to burn the village.170 When the long war reached its zenith
in the early 1970s, Cabral and the PAIGC had secured a steady supply
of weapons including cannons to start turning the fortunes of war in
the nationalists’ favor. Reporting from mid-1971, a major escalation
of the war was afoot,171 which combined with increased humanitar-
ian aid and diplomatic successes of the early 1970s to allow Cabral
to proclaim “our situation is that of an independent state, part of the
national territory of which—notably the urban centers—is militar-
ily occupied by a foreign power.”172 Although Guinea-Bissau still
lacked legal status in the Westphalian state system, Norway and
Denmark appeared to have granted a de facto recognition to the
PAIGC, and the same can be said for Sweden, the Soviet Union, and
its satellites.173
While Guinea-Bissau’s liberation war and most others have been
relegated to the annals of history, Cabral’s thoughts and activities
remain relevant for the twenty-first century. Carmen Neto said: “I
think his philosophy and ideas are very much still valid in the prac-
ticalities of international diplomacy and relations” and much can be
learned from the ideas of that time.”174 It is urgent to have a positive
political leadership, which unites the people in relation to peace and
to a better future.175 A diplomat first and foremost, Cabral identified
with the aspirations of common people as well. Although Guinea-
Bissau gained its independence shortly after his death, his vision of a
“better future”—free of exploitation176 —was never realized, because
the PAIGC quickly became just another corrupt organization that
takes care of its leaders and oppresses the common people.177 Cabral
is not without fault in this development. For all the democratic prac-
tices he introduced (Rudebeck 1974; Chabal 2003; Davidson 1981),
he built a one-party state and remained the undisputed charismatic
leader who micromanaged every single detail of the liberation strug-
gle, setting an example for those who would replace him after his
death.178
At the same time, nobody is perfect, and his practical, democratic

idealism and diplomatic exploits remain his legacy for future genera-
tions of African leaders as well as those in other parts of the world.179
Specifically, the leaders of small African states would be well advised
to emulate Cabral in at least three specific areas. Participation in inter-
national organizations, and especially regional ones, must be placed at
the forefront of all political activities. The benefits of this strategy may
seem intangible at times, but in the long run, prestige and respect in
the international system are everything.180 In spite of Representative
Derwinski’s sarcastic remark that “in their [Soviet bloc countries] scale
of priorities, you don’t rate as high as Nasser evidently, so you don’t get
the type of equipment Mr. Nasser gets” (Congress Hearings 1970, 13),
the truth is that Guinea-Bissau received proportionally more military
and humanitarian aid from East and West as well as from African states
during the liberation war than any other country. The moral and polit-
ical support from the United Nations such as the fact-finding mission
by high-level diplomats should not be underestimated either. There was
no such high-level mission going to Angola or Mozambique during
that time. Guinea-Bissau is a small and internationally unimportant
country, but Cabral’s activities elevated it to a high-profile status in
the 1960s and early 1970s. “The country had gained recognition and
often respect from a wide range of countries despite its political, eco-
nomic and strategic insignificance,” and the PAIGC was unique among
revolutionary parties to have secured links with African, European,
and Asian countries as a result of Cabral’s unyielding nonalignment
policy.181 One should quickly add that personal relationships, such as
Cabral’s genuine friendship with Swedish Social Democrats and those
with various African leaders, were instrumental in his quest to improve
the lives of ordinary people back home. Backward peasants received
the benefits of modernity for the first time: medical care, education for
their children, and some modest material improvements as a result of
Cabral’s activities. Select your best diplomat, and send him or her to
speak at universities like Cabral did in the United States, Western, and
Eastern Europe to capture the hearts and minds of young people who
will then form “liberation” committees and reach out to other sectors
of society. This brings me to the second point.
There is a huge disconnect between what ordinary people want
and what their leaders gain from favorable relations with the interna-
tional community. Ghana is probably the best example that grandiose
projects are not necessarily beneficial. If I had to choose between a
dam or a giant aluminum smelter and a little modern hospital, based
on Cabral’s model, I would choose the hospital. But who am I to say,
I do not live there. Why do not they simply ask the people what they
want like Cabral did in his agricultural survey and continued to do so
in his travels around his little country. The combination of making
his country seem interesting in the eyes of the international com-
munity and knowing what ordinary people want enabled Cabral to
generate the kind of foreign aid that benefited the country as a whole
and not just the military or the elites. Do not forget to popularize
these benefits on the international level after achieving them either,
because it warms the hearts of donors and increases the chances of
future foreign aid. Call this the virtuous cycle, or call it what you
want, just do not squander it away as the leaders of Guinea-Bissau
managed to do within a few years after Cabral’s death.
Persistence was the hallmark of Cabral’s entire enterprise. There
were “no easy victories,” and his diplomatic efforts rarely brought
immediate benefits. His motto seemed to be “if at first you don’t
succeed, try again.” Examples abound. His early trips to England
were a failure. France seemed like a victory but quickly turned into a
disaster. The Soviets and their satellites refused to support him until
he established supply routes, which opened up only as a result of his
relentless courting of government officials in the Republic of Guinea.
It took much longer to get Senegal on board, which actively worked
against him in the mid-1960s. His propaganda campaign in the West
developed only slowly and certainly not in proportion to the amount
of time he devoted to it, but starting in 1968, it turned into one of
his greatest achievements. Even his relations with the OAU were com-
plicated at first. Leaders of small states have to have a long game. Set
the pieces in place by working hard on establishing beneficial foreign
relations and do not be discouraged by setbacks. Do not dismiss small
amounts of help, they can add up. Do not underestimate the power
of small states in the international system, and do not underestimate
your own importance. Your small state is as important as you want it
to be. Cabral elevated small Guinea-Bissau to an interesting country
that everybody wanted to know about in Western and Eastern Europe
alike, and one that everybody talked about at the United Nations in
the early 1970s. There is much one can learn from Cabral.
Notes
1. Mende, “Amilcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau:
Context, Challenges, and Lessons for Effective African leadership,”
African Identities, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2006), p. 7–21; Hotep, “African-
Centered Leadership-Followership: Foundational Principles, Precepts,
and Essential Practices,” The Journal of Pan-African Studies, Vol. 3,
No. 6 (2010), p. 11–26.
2. Mende, “Amilcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau,” p. 8.

3. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, London, UK: Zed
Books Ltd (1981); Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, Athens, GA:
Ohio Univ. Press (2003); Lopes, Guinea-Bissau, Boulder, CO:
Westview Press (1987); Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, Uppsala, Sweden:
The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies (1974).
4. Hotep, “African-Centered Leadership.”
5. Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s
War, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press (1983); Chabal,
Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, Trenton,
NJ: Africa World Press (2003); Galli and Jones, Guinea-Bissau,
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers (1987); Rudebeck, Guinea-
Bissau.
6. McCulloch, In the Twilight of Revolution, Boston, MA: Routledge
& Kegan Paul (1983), p. 110–128; Chilcote, Amilcar Cabral’s
Revolutionary Theory and Practice: A Critical Guide, Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner Publishers (1991).
7. Chabal (2003) does point out that diplomacy was an integral part
of the nationalist struggle for Cabral (p. 83), and that the freedom
fighters in Guinea-Bissau received substantial assistance from a wide
variety of international donors, and that “this success was almost
entirely Cabral’s doing” (p. 97), and that Cabral’s diplomacy ensured
that Guinea-Bissau would not have to surrender its independence in
“exchange for material, financial and political aid” (p. 160).
8. Cartwright, Political Leadership in Africa, New York: St. Martin’s
Press (1983), p. 76–80.
9. Chabal, Amilcar Cabral, p. 57–58; Dhada, Warriors at Work, Niwot,
CO: University Press of Colorado, 1993, p. 7–8, 40; Galli and Jones,
Guinea-Bissau, p. 68.
10. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 15.
11. Cabral, Unity and Struggle, translated by Michael Wolfers, New
York, NY: Monthly Review Press (1979), p. 183; Chabal, Amilcar
Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, p. 96. Dhada,
“Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,” Portuguese
Studies Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1995), p. 20–39; Rudebeck, Guinea-
Bissau, p. 56.
12. Dhada, “Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,” p.
20–28.
13. Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War,
p. 63; Dhada, “Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,”
p. 28–30; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 13, 180.
14. Cabral, “Report on Portuguese Guinea and the Liberation
Movement,” in US Congress, House Committee on Foreign
Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Hearings, February 26, 1970,
Washington DC: Government Printing Office; Chabal, Amilcar
Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, p. 96–97; Lopes,
Guinea-Bissau, p. 57; Mendy 2006: 16–17.

p. 94; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 92; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p.
56.
16. Cabral, Unity and Struggle, p. 181; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral:
Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, p. 94; Davidson, No Fist
Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 124; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p.
92–93; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 64.
17. Davidson 1981: 130, 133; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 43; Rudebeck,
Guinea-Bissau, p. 184–95.
18. Cabral in Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and
People’s War, p. 114
p. 29.
20. Ibid.
p. 47; Lopes, Guinea-Bissau, p. 29.
22. Mario de Andrade in Cabral, Unity and Struggle.
p. 49. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” reprint of speech
and questions/answers at Central Hall, London, UK: Committee for
Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau (1971), p. 15.
Assimilados comprised 0.3 percent of the population, were consid-
ered to be civilized, and had the same rights (on paper) as Portuguese
citizens, while the rest of the population was governed by “native
laws.”
p. 49, 52–53.
25. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 16; Rudebeck,
p. 51–54; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 1.
p. 51–52.
28. Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, translated and edited by Richard
Handyside, New York, NY: Monthly Review Press (1972a), p. 42–43;
Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 46.
p. 56; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 4.
30. Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, p. 37; Cabral, Return to the Source,
edited by African Information Service, New York, NY: Monthly
Review Press (1973a), p. 16. Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” Vol. 5,
No. 1, New York, NY: United Nations Office of Public Information
(1973b), p. 2.
p. 57. Chaliand,Armed Struggle in Africa, New York, NY: Monthly
Review Press (1969), p. 22.

p. 52. A few years later, he received significant medical aid from French
progressives, but the French authorities put a stop to it, impounded
the goods (blood plasma, firstaid kits, and analgesics) and banned
Cabral (Dhada 1995, 32).
33. Cabral (1964) in Fogel, Africa in Struggle, San Francisco, CA: Ism
press (1986), p. 265.
34. The Point 2009, http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/article/amilcar
-cabral-patrick-chabal-hurst-and-company-272-pages.
35. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 12–13.
36. Cabral (1964) in Fogel, Africa in Struggle, p. 265.
War, p. 69–70; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky,
p. 34; Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, p. 185; Lopes, Guinea-
Bissau, p. 28.
38. Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 11.
39. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 11; Forrest,
Lineages of State Fragility, p. 85–90,105, 114, 185, 188–89.
40. Fistein, Social Revolutions in Small States, Saarbruecken, Germany:
VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller (2010), p. 282–83, 309, 362. Forrest,
Lineages of State Fragility, p. 185, 188; Lopes, Guinea-Bissau, p. 28.
41. Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 11; Cabral, Return to the Source, p.
59(!), 39–69.
42. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 13; Galli and Jones, Guinea-Bissau, p. 57.
43. In the early 1960s, ammunition disguised as canned fish from
Morocco almost undid all the political ground he had gained with
Guinean authorities and put his reputation as a straight talker at stake
(Davidson 1981, 60–61).
44. Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa, p. 83–84; Davidson, No Fist Is
Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 70.
45. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 70.
p. 57–8; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 7–8.
People’s War, p. 84.
48. The landing party attacked toward an expensive suburb where by now
the PAIGC had its headquarters and fighting went on for 40 hours.
The goal was to overthrow Touré and kill or kidnap the top leader-
ship of the PAIGC at the same time (Chabal 2003, 95). A 5-year-
old Yugoslav girl was among the dead. “The fact that white men
had been in the landing party infuriated other black African govern-
ments (Cloudy days). University students in Lagos displayed placards
reading ‘Down with NATO and ‘Go home Pigs!’: “Cloudy Days in
Conakry,” Time, December 7, 1970, Vol. 96, No. 23, p. 56. The
mission was a complete failure and did much to discredit Portuguese
policies in Guinea (Chabal 2003, 95).

War, p. 74–76; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 10, 16; Gali and Jones,
52. Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa, p. 82. Fistein, Social Revolutions
in Small States, p. 326.
Movement,” p. 14, 17.
54. Neto, “Amilcar Cabral’s Vision of Diplomacy,” an address at the
4th Annual Amilcar Cabral/Martin Luther King Day Conference,
January 17, 2000, www.umassd.edu/specialprograms/caboverde
/netopresentation.html.
Movement,” p. 11; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership
and People’s War, p. 84; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the
Sky, p. 61.
p. 84.
57. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 61. Senegalese
diplomats who supported the FLING were able to delay PAIGC rec-
ognition by the OAU as the sole representative of the Guinean peo-
ple at the Dakar conference in August 1963 and again at a meeting
of OAU ministers in Accra on October 22 (Dhada 1995, 31–32).
p. 84–85.
p. 74–76; Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa, p. 82; Davidson, No
Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 41; Galli and Jones, Guinea-
Bissau, p. 68.
60. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 10, 16, 21; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p.
195. See map; Senegal’s border with Guinea-Bissau runs from north-
west to northeast.
61. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 174–75.
Movement,” p. 16.
63. Neto, “Amilcar Cabral’s Vision of Diplomacy.”
64. Ibid.
66. “President Senghor told the Guinea-Bissau Ambassador in Dakar
in 1976 that Sekou Touré ordered the killing of Cabral” (Neto
2000). Senghor was probably lying, because investigative journalist
Bruno Crimi wrote in 1975 that it was the Portuguese intelligence
that killed him (Chabal 2003, 132). Famous scholars of Cabral’s
life and those who knew him tend to support the thesis that the
PAIGC fighters who had been released from jail by the Portuguese
paid for their freedom by carrying out the Portuguese plan to
assassinate or maybe even capture Amilcar Cabral (Chabal 2003,
132–143; Davidson 1981, 140–44). However, in Paris, an asso-
ciation of Guinean exiles blamed Touré as well. They accused the
highhanded dictator of encouraging Cabral’s rivals because he had
his own designs on Guinea-Bissau’s territory (“The Gentle Rebel,”
Time, Feb. 5 1973, vol. 101, No. 6 p. 50). They were certainly right
about the second part. Touré laid claim to Guinea-Bissau’s territorial
waters in the mid-1960s when it was still Portuguese Guinea and
then again in 1980 (Davidson 1981, 142).
68. Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 5.
69. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 4–5; Cabral, Unity
and Struggle.
70. http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1966/weapon
-theory.htm
71. Fogel, Africa in Struggle, p. 265.
72. Cabral, “National Liberation and Peace, Cornerstones of Non-
alignment,” Extracts from a speech made in Cairo to the Second
Conference of Heads of State and Governments of Non-Aligned
Countries, 1964, http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral
/1964/nlp.htm
73. Dhada, “Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,”
p. 31.
74. McCulloch, In the Twilight of Revolution, p. 30–31.
75. McCulloch, In the Twilight of Revolution, p. 30–31; Chabal, Amilcar
Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, p. 96.
76. Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 6–7.
p. 87.
p. 87–88; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 24.
p. 88.
80. Mittelman, “Collective Decolonization and the U.N. Committee of
24,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 14, No, 1 (1976), 52.
81. Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 4, 7; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral:
Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, p. 96, 137.
82. Cabral, Return to the Source, p. 22, 29–30; Cabral, “Objective:
Justice,” p. 7; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership
and People’s War, p. 83; United Nations, “Mission to Guinea
(Bissau),” United Nations Office of Public Information: Report on
the United Nations Mission to Guinea-Bissau, April 2–8, 1972, 1–13
(OP1/471—10954).
83. Mittelman, “Collective Decolonization and the U.N. Committee

of 24,”p. 50.
84. United Nations, “Mission to Guinea (Bissau),” p. 6–10.
85. Ibid., p. 3–13; Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 7; Cabral, Return to
the Source, p. 29–30.
86. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 23, 52; Fistein, Social Revolutions in
Small States, p. 332.
87. Gleijeses, “The First Ambassadors: Cuba’s Contribution to Guinea-
Bissau’s War of Independence,” Journal of Latin American Studies,
Vol. 29, No. 1 (1997), p. 45–88.
Movement,” p. 12. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky,
p. 130.
89. Gleijeses, “The First Ambassadors: Cuba’s Contribution to Guinea-
Bissau’s War of Independence,” p. 49.
Movement,” p. 12. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,”
p. 38; Cabral, “A Brief Report on the Situation of the Struggle,”
Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1972b), p. 22.
War, p. 120; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p.
62,130; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 190.
92. Foss, “Cuba in Africa,” History Today, Vol. 60, No. 3, (2010),7);
Gleijeses, “The First Ambassadors: Cuba’s Contribution to Guinea-
Bissau’s War of Independence”; Lawrence, “Hot Wars in Cold
Africa,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2004), p.
117–119; book Review of Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana,
Washington, and Africa 1959–1976, Chapel Hill, NC: U of NC
Press (2002).
94. Foss, “Cuba in Africa,” p. 10.
95. Lawrence, “Hot Wars in Cold Africa,” p. 121.
96. Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility; Galli and Jones, Guinea-Bissau.
97. Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 5; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral:
Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, p. 185.
98. Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 2, 5; Cabral, Revolution in Guinea,
p. 17–18, Ufamahu; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary
Leadership and People’s War, p. 114–20.
War, p. 63; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 13–14; Galli and Jones,
100. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 36; Davidson,
No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral:
Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War.
102. Dhada, “Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,” p. 36.

104. Ibid.
143; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 50; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p.
52.
106. One should not gloss over the fact that the 1970s were a period of
retrenchment, stagnation, and oppression in all of Eastern Europe.
109. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 182; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p.
195.
Movement,” p. 13; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary
Leadership and People’s War, p. 86–87.
111. Cabral, , “Objective: Justice,” p. 33.
115. Ibid
War, p. 121.
117. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 35; Cabral, Revolution
in Guinea, p. 18, Ufamahu; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to
Hide the Sky, p. 63; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 182.
118. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 62–63.
119. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 34; Rudebeck,
Guinea-Bissau, p. 201–226.
121. Cabral as quoted in African Communist, No. 53, second quarter,
1973, http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/history/dadoo-19.html. Also
see Cabral, “Report on Portuguese Guinea and the Liberation
Movement,” p. 12.
Movement,” p. 18; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary
Leadership and People’s War, p. 97, 160.
123. Cabral, Return to the Source, p. 23.
Movement,” p. 5, 15–16; Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 33;
Cabral, Return to the Source, p. 27–28; Cabral, “Our People Are
Our Mountains,” p. 33, 37; Cabral, “Objective: Justice,” p. 6;
Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 6–9.
125. Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, p. 22; Cabral, “Report on Portuguese
Guinea and the Liberation Movement,” p. 16.

Movement,” p. 17.
War, p. 86
Movement,” p. 19.
130. Cabral’s propaganda campaign also included inviting as many for-
eign journalists as wanted to come to the liberated territories and
included film crews from Italy and East Germany in 1964 (Chabal
2003, 85), several of the authors cited in this chapter, as well as
young Finish journalists (Chabal 2003, 268) and journalists from
the USSR and Romania (The Point).
131. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 129–30;
Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 186–194.
Movement,” p. 31.
Movement,” p. 10; Neto, “Amilcar Cabral’s Vision of Diplomacy.”
135. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 37.
136. Dhada, “Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,” p.
33–34; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 56; Dhada, Warriors at Work,
p. 181–185.
137. http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/9030905.96199036.html.
138. Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, p. 121; Cabral, “Report on
Portuguese Guinea and the Liberation Movement,” p.10, 19.
War, p. 113; Rudebeck, Guinea-Bissau, p. 180.
140. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 91–92; Fistein,
Social Revolutions in Small States, p. 316–317; Rudebeck, Guinea-
Bissau, p. 178–86.
142. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 36.
War, p. 86.
144. “Cloudy Days in Conakry,” p. 56. Ismael, “The People’s Republic
of China and Africa,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol.
9, No. 4 (1971), p. 524.
p. 52, 63, 98; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 62.
War, p. 86; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 62,
133.
Movement,” p.12.

War, p. 57.
149. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 174–76.
150. Even Africans believed Portuguese propaganda about the Luso-
tropical paradise. A delegate at the Second All-African People’s
Conference in Tunis told Cabral: “oh, it’s different for you. No
problem there- you’re doing all right with the Portuguese” (Cabral
in Davidson 1981, 1). Cabral seized every opportunity to expose
these lies at international conferences.
152. Cabral, Return to the Source, p. 81, 84, 89; Dhada 1993: 180–86.
155. Ibid.
War, p. 76; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 42,
66, 70–84, 125.
157. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 38–39; Davidson, No
Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 77.
War, p. 103–04; Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p.
143–44.
159. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 133; United
Nations, “Mission to Guinea (Bissau),” 6.
Movement,” p.19.
162. Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 177, 179.
163. Cabral, Return to the Source, p. 81; Dhada, Warriors at Work, p. 175.
164. Cabral in Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 91.
143–44.
War, p. 75–76.
169. Davidson, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, p. 8, 143.
170. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 33, 38; Cabral,
Revolution in Guinea, p. 21–22; Chabal, Amilcar Cabral:
Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, p. 102.
171. Cabral, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” p. 38–39; Cabral,
Revolution in Guinea, p. 16, 22–25.
173. Dhada, “Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,” p. 33.

175. Ibid.
War, p. 181. Says Cabral, “There shall be no more exploitation of
our people, either by foreigners or by our own people.”
178. Fistein, “Guinea-Bissau: How a Successful Social Revolution Can
Become an Obstacle to Subsequent State-Building,” International
Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2011), p.
443–455.
179. “At the heart of Cabral’s sociopolitical theories lies a practical ideal-
ism which is the greatest legacy Cabral has left us.” McCulloch, In
the Twilight of Revolution, p. 131.
War, p. 89, tells us that Cabral received criticism from his comrades,
because diplomacy seemed to be a “soft alternative” to the “front
line,” and PAIGC cadres did not see any immediate benefits.
War, p. 87, 160. Few revolutionary parties that had close links to
the Eastern Bloc and China were able to acquire sympathy and sup-
port in the West (p. 160).
References
“Amilcar Cabral—Outstanding Leader of African Liberation Movement—A
Tribute,” African Communist, Vol. 53 (1973), http://www.sacp.org.za
/docs/history/dadoo-19.html
Cabral, Amilcar, “National Liberation and Peace, Cornerstones of Non-
alignment,” Extracts from a Speech Made in Cairo to the Second
Conference of Heads of State and Governments of Non-Aligned Countries,
1964, http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/cabral/1964/nlp.htm
———, “The Weapon of Theory,” speech given at the first Tricontinental
Conference of the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America held in
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/cabral/1966/weapon-theory.htm
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Printing Office.
———, “Our People Are Our Mountains,” reprint of speech and ques-
tions/answers at Central Hall, London, UK: Committee for Freedom in
Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau, 1971.
———, Revolution in Guinea, translated and edited by Richard Handyside,
New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1972a.
———, “A Brief Report on the Situation of the Struggle (January–August

1971),” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3 (1972b),
p. 5–25.
———, Return to the Source, edited by African Information Service, New
York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1973a.
———, “Objective: Justice,” Vol. 5, No. 1, New York, NY: UN Office of
Public Information, 1973b.
———, “Objective: Justice,” Vol. 5, No. 3, New York, NY: UN Office of
Public Information, 1973c, p. 30–33, 56.
———, Unity and Struggle, translated by Michael Wolfers, New York, NY:
Monthly Review Press, 1979.
Cartwright J., Political Leadership in Africa, New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1983.
Chabal, Patrick, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War,
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
———, Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War,
Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003.
Chaliand, Gerard, Armed Struggle in Africa, translated by David Rattray
and Robert Leonhardt, New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1969.
Chilcote, Ronald H., Amilcar Cabral’s Revolutionary Theory and Practice: A
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p. 56.
Davidson, Basil, No Fist Is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, London, UK: Zed
Books, 1981.
Dhada, Mustafah, Warriors at Work, Niwot, CO: University Press of
Colorado, 1993.
———, “Guinea-Bissau’s Diplomacy and Liberation Struggle,” Portuguese
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Bavaria, Cuba, Guinea Bissau, Haiti, and Hungary, Saarbruecken,
Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Mueller, 2010.
———, “Guinea-Bissau: How a Successful Social Revolution Can Become an
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Revolution, San Francisco, CA: Ism Press, 1986.
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Rienner Publishers, 1987.
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Bissau’s War of Independence,” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol.
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of Modern African Studies, Vol. 9, No. 4 (1971), p. 507–529.
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History, Vol. 32, No. 1 (2004), p. 114–121 (book review of Pierro
Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa 1959–
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Westview Press, 1987.
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Kegan Paul, 1983.
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Fourth Annual Amilcar Cabral/Martin Luther King Day Conference,
January 17, 2000, www.umassd.edu/specialprograms/caboverde/neto-
presentation.html
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Institute of African Studies, 1974.
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2009).
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Information, 1972, p. 1–13.
Chapter 5
The Warrior and the Wizard: The

Leadership Styles of Josiah Tongogara
and Robert Mugabe during Zimbabwe’s
Liberation Struggle
Nyasha M. GuramatunhuCooper
S tudying Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle is not an easy task. There

are various aspects to consider that give insight to ideologies, philoso-
phies, identities, and narratives that make up the history of the libera-
tion struggle.1 Raftopolous and Mlambo (2009) provided a concise
history of Zimbabwe’s political legacy since the days of Rhodesia.
Bhebhe and Ranger (1996) examined how Africans experienced life
during and after the war, essentially tracing Rhodesia’s metamorphosis
into Zimbabwe and its impact on African life, beliefs, and traditions.
Kriger (1991) examined the complex relationship between liberation
fighters and African civilians. Although the aforementioned works
provide insight into various aspects of Zimbabwe’s liberation history,
scholarship is underdeveloped in the discussion of leadership as an
important element of Zimbabwe’s armed struggle.
The types of leadership exhibited during the liberation struggle
are an important aspect to study as they provide students and scholars
of Zimbabwean history a chance to examine how different leader-
ship traits made an impact on the structure, goals, and outcomes of
the liberation struggle. This chapter discusses the leadership of two
prominent leaders: the charismatic Robert Gabriel Mugabe, and the
revolutionary Josiah Magama Tongogara. Mugabe and Tongogara’s
leadership will be examined within the framework of charismatic
and revolutionary leadership: styles that are prevalent and necessary
in social movements. Where Weber (1964) and Burns (1978) spoke
of the attributes and conditions of charismatic and revolutionary
102 N YA S H A M . G U R A M AT U N H U C O O P E R
leadership, Bolman and Deal (2006) presented contemporary expres-

sions: the warrior and the wizard. The concepts of the warrior and the
wizard examine the specific characteristics and actions of charismatic
and revolutionary leadership, providing an updated and perhaps intel-
lectually accessible understanding of the two types of leadership.
By designating Mugabe as a charismatic leader or wizard, and
Tongogara as a revolutionary leader or warrior, the intent is neither to
paint one as more legitimate than the other, nor to suggest that these
two were the most important or valuable leaders in terms of advanc-
ing the liberation struggle. Rather, the contrast points to the mani-
festation of two types of leadership that had a significant effect on
Rhodesia’s transformation to Zimbabwe. A key feature of this chapter
is that Mugabe and Tongogara’s attributes of leadership are presented
through personal reflections and analysis of former liberation fighters
and scholars Fay Chung (2006), who studied Tongogara’s leadership,
and Zvakanyorwa Sadomba (2011), who studied Mugabe’s leadership.
Their work provides firsthand accounts that add personal history and
scholarly analysis to the leadership attributes and practices of Mugabe
and Tongogara.
To understand the context and importance of Mugabe and
Tongogara’s leadership, it is important to examine how leadership
functions in social movements, particularly at times of crisis. Though
there is a paucity of African-influenced scholarly work on leader-
ship in social movements, the ability for scholars to discuss Mugabe
and Tongogara with literature spurred from a Western lens speaks
to the versatility of African leadership and how it can be analyzed
using different worldviews. This chapter will review literature on
leadership in social movements, early and contemporary literature on
charismatic and revolutionary leadership, and discuss Mugabe and
Tongogara within the context of Bolman and Deals’ warrior and wiz-
ard. Identifying Mugabe and Tongogara as wizard and warrior in the
context of charismatic and revolutionary leadership highlights their
roles as leaders who had a decisive impact on defining, articulating,
and executing the goals of the liberation movement.
Leadership in Social Movements

Through careful and calculated measures that define and articulate
movement goals, collective identity, and political processes, lead-
ers have the ability to influence the success or failure of a social
movement (Rupp and Taylor 2003). A review of early and con-
temporary scholarship on leadership in social movements provides
T H E WA R R I O R A N D T H E W I Z A R D 103
an understanding of how leaders are located and act within social

movements. In earlier scholarship on leadership in social move-
ments, Gusfield (1966) noted that leaders occupied a highly visible
role that comes with expectations and demands from internal and
external forces. As such, it behooves leaders in social movements to
be prepared to operate in a dynamic and changing environment that
requires a keen sense of anticipation of needs, goals, and functions.
Rather than thinking of leadership as a single role within a social
movement, Gusfield’s work suggests that it is a role with many lay-
ers, subjecting the leader to an ebb and flow of responsibilities and
audiences. What is emphasized is Merton’s (1957) role set theory,
the idea that leadership within a social movement exists and func-
tions within a dynamic state wherein a leader must reorient quickly
between different audiences and needs, delivering the appropri-
ate content with each interaction. Yet, the leadership structure of
Zimbabwe’s liberation movement seems to go against this concept.
Leadership was divided into political and military arenas. This divi-
sion, operating under the unified goal of liberation, presented a sort
of parallel leadership, where military and political leaders held and
practiced finite roles. The military commanders focused on tactics
and mobilization, while the political leaders worked to define and
execute political strategy and to develop the language, symbols, and
messages of the movement. Conflict within the liberation movement
occurred when political leaders were thought to be interfering in
military leadership and vice versa (Sadomba 2011).
Gusfield’s (1966) work presents the idea that when managing the
demands of a social movement, a leader experiences a metamorphosis
where he or she is no longer just an individual, but the symbol of a
movement. Within and outside the movement, there is tacit acknowl-
edgment that a particular leader personifies the movement. The per-
ception of a leader as a symbol of a movement provides important
contextual cues or explanations for actions, philosophies, and expec-
tations (Hayward and Dumbuya 1983). This could be a cumbersome
post to carry as the personage of the leader, regardless of his or her
own personal beliefs and opinions, may be used to frame and critique
the recorded successes and failures of a social movement, a process
hastened by the spread of mass media (Gusfield 1996). Both Mugabe
and Tongogara became symbols of the liberation movement in their
particular streams of leadership. Speaking to national and interna-
tional audiences, Mugabe became synonymous with the liberation
struggle, a designation that is part of his identity in African politics
and history. Tongogara, branded as a magnetic figure with impressive
success in military operations, seems to overshadow the involvement

and contributions of the other military wings associated with the
liberation struggle such as the Zimbabwean People’s Army. When a
leader within a social movement is branded as a magnetic figure or
a symbol, focus shifts to the accomplishments that make him or her
great, which leaves little room for inquiring about and critiquing any
leadership flaws. However, Gusfield’s work is a reminder that behind
a symbolic or magnetic figure there are individuals who are navigat-
ing the demands of leadership placed upon them by competing needs
from members and goals of a social movement (Gusfield 1996).
Contemporary scholarship regarding leadership in social move-
ments shifts focus onto the leader’s influence on a movement rather
than the demands a movement places on a leader, as Gusfield’s work
suggests. Beginning in the late 1980s, scholarship on leadership in
social movements introduced the leader as a social or political entre-
preneur. As an entrepreneur, a leader is able to control a movement’s
image for increased relevance and external support, emphasizing that
power rests with the leader and not with the movement (Zald and
McCarthy 1987). In more recent scholarship, leaders as entrepreneurs
are described as influencers or brokers who can nurture cohesion
among members who hold opposing views and have resources and
networks to harness support for the mission and goals of their partic-
ular social movement (Diani and McAdam 2003). Entrepreneurship
allows leaders to adopt different variations of their leadership per-
sona to get what they need or steer the movement toward a particular
direction. However, the concept of leaders as entrepreneurs seems to
promote a leader-centric lens, which would suggest that by promot-
ing the goals of a movement a leader might also be promoting his or
her personal profile.
Early and Contemporary Scholarship on Charismatic

and Revolutionary Leadership
Revolutionary Leadership
In Leadership, Burns (1978) describes revolutionary leaders as “pas-
sionate, dedicated, single-minded, ruthless, self-assured, courageous,
and tireless” individuals who take on a stewardship role in an envi-
ronment plagued by “oppression, wide popular discontent, and the
failure of reformism.” Writing before Burns, Boggs and Boggs (1973)
postulated that revolutionary leadership becomes historically nec-
essary and justified when the contradictions and antagonisms of a
particular society trouble the denizens, whose needs cannot be satis-

fied by reform save for an upheaval that takes power away from those
in power. It is important to note that while there may be certain
generalizable characteristics, there is no blueprint to revolutionary
leadership. Guinean revolutionary leader Amilcar Cabral supported
this view stating thus: “We have to create and develop in our particu-
lar situation the solution for our country” (quoted in Chabal 1983).
Cabral’s point is particularly important because as a peer of Mugabe
and Tongogara, he understood that the success of revolutionary lead-
ership is contingent upon situational analysis, taking into account the
social, political, historical, and economic milieu of a society.
Revolutionary leaders serve the function of escalating the vision
of a new society and leading the masses from a sense of grievance or
unsatisfied wants to an awareness of social needs, or what is necessary
to remedy their grievances (Weaver 2000). Escalating the struggles of
the masses raises consciousness for the populace to depend on its own
efforts, power, and responsibility to bring about real change (Baker
et al. 2001). Achieving such a shift in thinking places the burden on
revolutionary leadership to utilize less rhetoric and more calculated
action. Engaging in calculated action as a revolutionary leader appears
in contemporary scholarship as generalship: the ability to use author-
ity to translate the goals of a social movement into a set of clear terms
for negotiation while directing and coordinating resources and forces
to advance and retreat as circumstances shift (Weaver 2000, 104)
Weaver (2000) warned that scholars and students must not roman-
ticize revolutionary leadership. Critiquing Burns’ (1978) work,
Weaver noted that revolutionary leadership is at times presented in
idealistic terms that advance “utopian elements” in an effort to pursue
an “alternative future” (Weaver 2000, 16). By romanticizing revolu-
tionary leadership, the “many dangers, conflicts and difficulties” that
leaders will face are repressed or misrepresented. To avoid a myopic
view, Weaver exhorted scholars and students to critically evaluate the
risks and rewards of revolutionary leadership.
Charismatic Leadership
Based on the work of sociologist Max Weber, charismatic leadership
emerges in a time of societal crisis, when the public looks to a leader
with an extraordinary ability to lead toward fundamental change.
According to Weber (1964), individuals thought to be charismatic are
endowed with exceptional powers or qualities of divine origin that are
not accessible to the ordinary person. Set apart from most of society,
individuals with charismatic authority are validated by the hero wor-

ship and absolute trust they receive from followers. Discussed in the
context of prominent figures in history and society, charismatic lead-
ership is often used to denote a flamboyant and powerful speaker who
can persuade others of the importance of his or her message (Bryman
1992). What sets apart charismatic leaders from other types of leaders
is their ability to create and convey a single extraordinary vision and
mission to their followers. As such, charismatic leaders enjoy a mea-
sure of formal authority and perceived extraordinary characteristics
(Wilner and Wilner 1965, 77–88).
According to House (2010), charismatic leaders are differentiated
from other leaders in that they employ a combination of four personal
characteristics: dominance, self-confidence, need for influence, and a
strong conviction in the moral righteousness of their beliefs. Based on
the aforementioned hypothesis, House opined that charismatic lead-
ers employ the four personal characteristics with the following spe-
cific behaviors: goal articulation, role modeling, and personal image
building (2010, 252).
Complimentary to Weber’s work is Burns’ (1978) commentary of
charismatic leadership. Discussing the conditions in which charismatic
leadership flourishes, Burns stated that charismatic leaders emerge in
societies in profound crisis (similar to revolutionary leaders), neces-
sitating a leader “equipped with rare gifts of compassion and compe-
tence” who would replace established authority and customary ways
of doing things (1978, 244). The difference in Weber and Burns is
whether charisma is an individual quality possessed by leaders and
independent of society, or dependent on recognition by followers, a
case of nature versus nurture (Burns 1978, 243). Taking a clear posi-
tion, Burns stated that charismatic leadership was not simply a quality
possessed by someone, but a type of relationship between a leader and
the led. Emphasis is mistakenly placed on qualities and characteristics
rather than the leader’s appeal that is validated by the perceptions of
followers (Wilner and Wilner 1965). Essentially, Burns introduces a
new and follower-centric dimension: Charismatic leadership relies on
reverence, trust, and satisfaction in the leader from his or her follow-
ers. In contemporary scholarship, Stutje (2012) adds to this discus-
sion, stating that charismatic leadership is a result of face-to-face and
public interactions. In other words, the making of charismatic leader-
ship requires a leader to be made known to the people in a physical
manner where they are able to hear and see him or her. However, this
means that a leader’s persona has to be packaged or presented in a
way in which his or her public interactions and messages are able to
resonate with the public, with a physical commanding presence that

instills confidence in the people to be led.
The Wizard and the Warrior

What Bolman and Deal (2006) offer is a contemporary discussion of
charismatic and revolutionary leadership. In this new scholarship, the
concepts of the warrior and the wizard examine the specific charac-
teristics and actions of revolutionary and charismatic leadership, pro-
viding a deeper understanding of the two types of leadership. Bolman
and Deal explain the roles of the warrior and the wizard: “The wiz-
ard role enables them to bring imagination, creativity, meaning and
magic. The warrior role mobilizes strength, courage, and willing-
ness to fight as hard and as long as necessary to fulfill their mission”
(2006, 3).
Bolman and Deal’s warrior is one who “welcomes battle and
competition rather than fear or avoid it” (2006, 21). The warrior
challenges those who oppose his or her group’s interests and will
protect the group when it is under attack. The warrior is success-
ful because of four elements: heart, mind, skill, and weapons. With
heart, a warrior is able to harness passion, courage, and tenacity to
confront or overcome challenges and danger. The mind of the war-
rior is a way of thinking based on strategy and critical analysis, giv-
ing insight on potential threats or downfall. A warrior’s skill is based
on his or her experience with and interaction with others. In these
interactions, the warrior has learned how to forge alliances, decipher
weaknesses in opponents, and exercise authority in a manner that
advances his or her mission. Lastly, the warrior’s weapons are the
tools and resources that he or she uses to move the cause forward.
A combination of these four elements gives the warrior momentum
to push past potential obstacles and to recover and reorient quickly
from setbacks.
Using symbols, myths, stories, and ceremonies, the wizard is a
change agent whose appeal lies in the ability to shape attitudes and
beliefs in the quest to bring about significant social transformation
(Bolman and Deal 2006, 91). The wizard appears at a time of pro-
found crisis, when there is a lack of faith in leadership and expressed
frustration with the social systems promoting power and influence
invested in an elite few. The wizard emerges as a passionate reformer
who is able to dismantle an undesirable past and push forward for a
new reality (Bolman and Deal 2006, 100). The appeal of the wizard
is based on the intangible. As a visionary and through mastery of
weaving stories, myths, and truths, the wizard gets people excited and
committed about the mission and goals of their movement (Bolman
and Deal 2006).
Tongogara the Warrior

As a warrior who embodied the essence of revolutionary leadership,
Tongogara was described by Chung (2006) as a charismatic and bril-
liant leader who studied the needs of the liberation struggle and
determined military strategies that would impose physical pressure
on the colonial government. Chung spent time around Tongogara
within the military camps and was able to reflect on his leadership
style, including his strengths and weaknesses. In Re-living the Second
Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle, Chung
devoted an entire chapter to Tongogara, giving a familiar yet reflec-
tive perspective of his role as a military and liberation leader. Though
she mostly discussed him in favorable terms, describing him as one
of “indubitable brilliance and courage,” she is able to present some of
his flaws as a leader and their impact on his leadership legacy (Chung
2006, 127). In War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution: Challenging
Neo-colonialism, Settler and International Capital, Sadomba (2011)
strictly analyzes Tongogara’s leadership and its impact on the libera-
tion effort, void of personal history.
Tongogara was the military commander of Zimbabwe African
National Liberation Army (ZANLA), a military wing of the
Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).2 He was elected as
Chief of Defense in 1973, directing the efforts of guerilla war tac-
tics. From humble beginnings, Tongogara worked as a farm hand
on a farm owned by the family of Ian Smith, the Prime Minister of
Rhodesia and the man whose proxies Tongogara would later engage
in war to bid for Zimbabwe’s freedom from colonial rule (Nyarota
2006, 110). Described as “tall, bearded, and charismatic,” Tongogara
is often lauded as the military strength behind the success of the armed
struggle (Nyarota 2006). In a short amount of time, Tongogara had
to harness the four elements of the warrior. Chung praised Tongogara
as a skilled military specialist who was “feared on the one hand by
his enemies as an ambitious, ruthless, and implacable fighter and
was loved and respected by his supporters and followers as a faithful
and caring leader who deserved to be followed” (2006, 124). Chung
explained that Tongogara had little use for political ideology. Instead,
he focused on military tactics and strategy and command of soldiers
in the front lines. This paints Tongogara as a warrior who measured
the success of the liberation struggle by the execution of military

strategy, rather than the application of intellectualism.
In Tongogara, the freedom fighters saw qualities essential to revo-
lutionary leadership: “passionate, dedicated, single minded, ruthless,
self-assured, courageous, and tireless” (Burns, 1978, 239). In 2013, I
interviewed three former liberation fighters, Patrick, Chengetai, and
Michael, for a study that examined the personal narratives and war
experiences of Zimbabwe’s liberation fighters (GuramatunhuCooper
2013). The narratives of the aforementioned included their reflec-
tion of the leaders of the liberation movement and their impact on
their experiences as fighters. Patrick recalled Tongogara as one of the
liberation movement leaders who “would come and visit and give us
morale so that we could get ready to fight.” According to Patrick,
Tongogara “was a very good guy” who would encourage troops
by telling them, “We are not going there to die. We are not on a
suicide mission. We are going to liberate the country and we want
to see it after it has been liberated.” Michael also shared Patrick’s
favorable view of Tongogara. He noted that Tongogara’s speeches
“helped tremendously.” After Tongogara’s speeches, Michael recalled
feeling “as if we were the best troops and that made us feel good.”
With a command of military strategy and the ability to bolster troop
morale, Tongogara was instrumental in the success of the liberation
struggle.
Even with his military prowess, Tongogara’s leadership was marred
by controversy. As a warrior, Tongogara had weaknesses that cast a
shadow on his leadership. While Chung noted that Tongogara cared
for his troops, she also recalled his complicity in the sexual exploita-
tion of women in the military camps (Chung 2006, 124–125). This
reprehensible behavior undermined his care for his troops and sug-
gests that women, part of those he was supposed to protect and train,
were dispensable and not seen as legitimate freedom fighters as their
male counterparts (Lyons 2004). Tongogara also spent time in prison
from 1963 until 1975, after being accused of having a part in the
death of Herbet Chitepo, the leader of ZANU. Such an accusation
diminished his status to a weakened warrior embroiled in political
scandals that could have overshadowed the goals of the liberation
struggle. In another instance, Chung revealed Tongogara’s involve-
ment in the execution of a group of liberation fighters who became
part of a rebellion against Tongogara’s leadership.3 Such a callous
action suggests that the power Tongogara enjoyed as a prominent
leader allowed him to subvert ethical concerns and use his power
against those he perceived resistant to his authority.
Mugabe as a Wizard and Charismatic

Though many men and women of valor dedicated their lives to attain-
ing freedom for Zimbabwe, Mugabe seemed to emerge as the star in
the drama of social change. The deficiencies of the colonial regime
and the unmet needs of the majority population required the emer-
gence of a dynamic figure, and Mugabe rose to the occasion. While
Chung (2006) devoted a chapter to Tongogara, Sadomba (2011,
40–63) devoted a chapter to discuss what he calls the “Mugabe era.”
Acknowledging Mugabe’s longevity, Sadomba notes that Mugabe’s
leadership had the most significant impact on the liberation movement
(2011, 40). As a skilled orator and shrewd political leader, Mugabe
resembles Bolman and Deal’s wizard. Though he has been criticized
for not being directly involved in combat (Sadomba 2011), Mugabe
had the ability to create what Bolman and Deal (2006, 21) refer to
as “magic” through his words by calling for Africans in Rhodesia to
imagine the possibilities of a majority rule. As the symbolic leader
of the liberation movement, Mugabe’s strength was similar to what
Bolman and Deal (2006, 3) describe not as bravado but the ability
to make others consider and eventually believe that “something new
and better really is out there.” These characteristics were evident in
the way Mugabe delivered impassioned speeches to civilians and free-
dom fighters, urging them to take on the duty of the armed struggle.
As such, he was viewed as “the greatest influence” on the liberation
movement (Sadomba 2011, 40).
Mugabe’s first public and noted foray into politics was on July 20,
1960. Speaking to rousing applause from a crowd of 40,000 people
in the township of Harare (now Mbare), Mugabe relayed his vision
for the future of Zimbabwe (Meredith 2008, 26–27). His persona
as a charismatic leader depended on his ability to articulate the goal
of freedom. Mugabe emerged as what Burns described as a dynamic
and resourceful rebel against authority (1978, 244). Among local and
international audiences, Mugabe strongly articulated that complete
emancipation was not to be negotiated. His decade-plus prison term
for alleged crimes against the Rhodesian government became a mani-
festation of the kind of sacrifice he was willing to make to overthrow
colonial rule (Blair 2002).
Mugabe’s leadership in the liberation struggle also had its contro-
versies. His ascension to power has been questioned as a power grab
that abandoned the principles of the movement (Moore 1995, 375–
402). O’Brien (2009) suggested that as the symbol of the movement,
Mugabe became bigger than the goals of the movement, developing
a personality cult. From the outside, the liberation movement had

a zealous leader who was committed to bringing about indepen-
dence and black majority rule; however, the movement suffered
from fissures, creating factions that disagreed in policy and strategy.
Sadomba’s (2011) analysis and testimony suggests that Mugabe’s
appeal as a charismatic leader advancing the cause of the liberation
struggle began to wane as the political drama within the movement
displayed a leader who emphasized “unequivocal loyalty to nationalist
authority at the expense of commitment to organizational objectives
and ideology.”4 This was something that Mugabe could not success-
fully repair and his wartime leadership faced resistance.5
Conclusion
For Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle to be successful, there had to
be competent political and military leadership. In his analysis of the
liberation movement, Sadomba (2011, 46–52) indicated that the
liberation fighters needed to have political, military, and ideologi-
cal understanding of the war. Therefore, Mugabe and Tongogara
as articulator (wizard) and mobilizer (warrior), respectively, had to
operate in parallel leadership streams that would allow them to keep
the momentum of the liberation struggle. As a wizard or charismatic
leader, Mugabe had to galvanize the masses about the need for a lib-
eration movement and the urgency for independence. In his speeches,
he consistently exhorted Africans in Rhodesia to take up arms to dis-
mantle the colonial structure and not settle for anything less than
independence and black majority rule. On Tongogara’s part as a war-
rior or revolutionary leader, he had to command the troops and instill
a sense of purpose within them as liberation fighters. A show of con-
fidence and competency as a military specialist served as motivation
for the liberation fighters to stay and fight, even with the possibility
of death as shown by testimony from Michael, a former liberation
fighter. While this chapter is limited to identifying leadership styles
by two prominent leaders, there is more work to be done in examin-
ing how leadership was manifested within the liberation struggle and
its direct and indirect impact on Zimbabwe’s independence.
Notes
1. Social change in Zimbabwe was a long and arduous journey. The trajec-
tory of events in Zimbabwe’s history differed from that of most coun-
tries in Africa in many ways. Whereas a number of them attained their
independence in the 1950s and 1960s, developments in Zimbabwe,
then called Rhodesia, took a different turn. While Britain claimed

to be committed to black majority rule, whites were determined to
preserve Rhodesia as a “white man’s country”. See Blair, Degrees in
Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in Zimbabwe, New
York: Continuum (2002).
2. There were many involved; however, the two main parties of the lib-
eration struggle were Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU)
and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). ZANLA was the
military wing of ZANU, and Zimbabwe People’s Army was the mili-
tary wing of ZAPU. There were notable ideological and tactical dif-
ferences between the two parties, among other differences that caused
tension.
3. Scholars like Sadomba might argue that the factionalism of the lib-
eration movement paved the way for Mugabe’s leadership, rather than
any foresight or extraordinary skill he may have possessed. See War
Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution, Harare: Weaver Press (2011).
4. Though discipline was necessary to keep the guerilla movement cohe-
sive, Mugabe’s heavy handedness added to the stresses and tensions
that the liberation movement was facing. What should have been an
exercise in discipline seemed to turn into centralization of power. See
Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution, p. 47.
5. According to Sadomba, Mugabe used incarceration as a means of dis-
cipline and coercion for those who did not agree with him. See War
Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution.
References
Barker, Colin, Alan Johson, and Michael Lavallette, eds., Leadership and
Social Movements, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
Blair, David, Degree in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power in
Zimbabwe, New York: Continuum, 2002.
Boggs, James, and Grace Boggs, The Awesome Responsibility of Revolutionary
Leadership, Detroit: Advocators, 1973.
Bolman, Lee, and Terrence Deal, The Wizard and the Warrior: Leading with
Passion and Power, San Francisco: Josey-Bass, 2006.
Chung, Fay, Re-Living the Second Chimurenga: Memories From Zimbabwe’s
Liberation Struggle, Stockholm: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2006.
Diani, Mario, and Doug McAdam, eds., Social Movements and Networks:
Relational Approaches to Collective Action , Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003.
GuramatunhuCooper, Nyasha, “Alternatives to the Single Story: Personal
Narratives of Zimbabwe’s Freedom Fighters,” PhD dissertation, Gonzaga
University School of Professional Studies, Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI,
2013.
Gusfield, James, “Functional Areas of Leadership in Social Movements.” The

Sociology Quarterly, Vol. 7 (1966), p. 137–156.
Hayward, Fred, and Ahmed Dumbuya, “Political Legitimacy, Political
Symbols, and National Leadership in West Africa,” The Journal of Modern
African Studies, Vol. 21 (1983), p. 645–671.
Kriger, Norma, “From Patriotic Memories to ‘Patriotic History’ in Zimbabwe,
1990–2005,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 27 (2006), p. 1151–1169.
Merton, Robert, “The Role-Set: Problems in Sociological Theory,” The
British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 8 (1957), p. 106–120.
Moore, David, “Democracy, Violence, and Identity in the Zimbabwean
War of National Liberation: Reflections from the Realms of Dissent,”
Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 29 (1995), p. 375–402.
Nyarota, Geoffrey, Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman,
Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2006.
O’Brien, Stephen, “From Comrade to His Excellency: Mugabe’s Rise to
Power,” The Australasian Review of African Studies, Vol. 30 (2009), p.
26–48.
Rupp, Leila, and Verta Taylor, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Sadomba, Zvakanyorwa W., War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution:
Challenging Neo-Colonialism and Settler and International Capital,
Harare: Weaver Press, 2011.
Stutje, Jan, Charismatic Leadership and Social Movements: The Revolutionary
Power of Ordinary Men and Women, New York: Berghahn, 2012.
Weaver, Mark, “Machiavelli and the Modern Narrative of Political
Leadership,” in Holliday (Ed.), Classical and Modern Narratives of
Leadership, Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2000, p. 45–68.
Zald, Mayer, and John McCarthy, Social Movements in an Organizational
Society, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1987.
Chapter 6
Voortrekker or State Builder? John

Vorster and the Challenges of
Leadership in the Apartheid State*
Jamie Miller
I n any history of the apartheid regime, two titans cast immense shad-
ows: Hendrik Verwoerd (1958–1966) and P. W. Botha (prime minis-
ter 1978–1983, president 1983–1989). Verwoerd was the ideologue
of the apartheid order. Eloquent, commanding, and captivating, he
convinced an entire generation of Afrikaners (and other whites) that
the physical separation of South Africa’s various ethnic communities
was a feasible, moral, and logical model for securing their self-deter-
mination and prosperity.1 P. W. Botha was the would-be reformer,
always looking for ways to finetune Verwoerd’s model; both his
single-mindedness and his inability to revitalise apartheid attracted
scholars from a range of disciplines. He was also the enforcer, presid-
ing over the most widespread and systematic violence of the apartheid
era, which guaranteed a recurring role on the front pages of newspa-
pers the world over and an enduring presence in public memories of
apartheid.2 Yet it was John Vorster, the fourth and longest-serving
apartheid prime minister (1966–1978), Verwoerd’s successor and
Botha’s predecessor, who sought to rebrand racial segregation and
bolster new networks of legitimacy for the apartheid regime. It was
Vorster who met with Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda at Victoria
Falls in August 1975 and welcomed Henry Kissinger to Pretoria in
August 1976. It was Vorster who was at the helm during both the
Angolan intervention and the Soweto riots. And it was Vorster who
presided over the hinge of fate for the regime, as it descended from a
halcyon era of economic growth and white control to instability and
uncertainty and, finally, into rudderless chaos.
116 JA MIE MILLER
Yet Vorster was never supposed to be prime minister at all. When

Verwoerd was assassinated, the Minister of Justice, Police, and Prisons
was only thirteenth in National Party (NP) hierarchy and devoid of
any personal political base. With a reputation as a hardliner, he was
the compromise candidate that the party factions settled on when
they could not reconcile their own priorities. Vorster was, therefore,
little known by his colleagues in 1966 and, despite the turmoil and
tribulations of his tenure, remains little better known by scholars
today. His last and only biography was published in 1978. 3 The pre-
vailing images in the historical memory are of an ineffectual leader
at home, the “chairman of the board” operating his Cabinet as pri-
mus inter pares,4 and an ambitious, out-of-his-depth bridge-builder to
black Africa abroad.5 This chapter explains what Vorster was trying to
achieve in each of these forums of leadership—and how his priorities
at home and overseas were deeply interconnected. It thereby uses the
elusive Vorster as a focus for its analysis of the parameters and context
of leadership in the apartheid state.6 First, this chapter explains how
Nationalist leaders of pre-Vorster era developed their goals and under-
stood their power bases. This was a much more complex process than
it would first appear, for leaders of the NP wore two distinct crowns:
as the leader of Afrikanerdom on the one hand and as political lead-
ers of the white electorate on the other. Tensions and contradictions
between the two paradigms of leadership in an ongoing dialectic were
at least as common as synergy. Constituents’ demands, the range of
political tactics available, the limits on the leader’s freedom of action,
and the consensuses behind different courses of action all differed
according to which paradigm of leadership the leader chose (or was
forced to operate within) on a given issue. Then, the chapter focuses
on Vorster specifically, illustrating how he endeavored to manoeuvre
within these parameters to lead the regime and his people in new
directions. Although in 1966 his colleagues above all wanted some-
one who could sustain the certainties of the Verwoerd era, Vorster
understood apartheid’s place in the world very differently from his
predecessor. After finding that his efforts at achieving even limited
reform provoked a bitter backlash within the party, he realized that
his aims as Prime Minister—entrenching long-term white superiority
under NP leadership—and his responsibilities as Hoofleier—keeping
Afrikanerdom together behind a unified vision—were coming into
increasing conflict. He, therefore, presided over and encouraged
a distancing of the two crowns, increasingly favoring the former:
Instead of allowing himself to be constrained by the heavy weight of
Afrikaner nationalist history, he resolved to surge ahead, often alone,
V O O R T R E K K E R O R S TAT E - B U I L D E R ? 117
and use high-profile successes to bring the party behind his vision of
a new identity for the regime.
Ethnic-Nationalist Leadership
As leaders of Apartheid South Africa, D. F. Malan, Hans Strydom,
and Verwoerd essentially wore a double crown. The first was that of
Hoofleier, or leader of the NP. Being the leader of the party was seen
as synonymous with leadership of the ethnic-nationalist community
of Afrikanerdom; the term Hoofleier itself was a legacy of the title-
accorded leaders of Afrikaner voortrekker groups. To a large extent,
therefore, the central job of the Hoofleier was to build and maintain
support for policies within the party.
Being an effective ethnic-nationalist leader required action both
inside and outside the party. Inside the party, the Hoofleier had to bal-
ance the interests of the different factions and coalesce them behind
a unified final position. In this context, the importance of the party’s
provincial caucuses was crucial. If members of parliament were subject
to party discipline in true Westminsterian tradition, then at the party
level they were equally beholden to their provincial leader.7 Each of
the four original political entities within the state—the Transvaal,
the Cape, the Orange Free State, and Natal, and later also Southwest
Africa, in descending order of electoral importance—had their own
NP caucus with its own constitution or charter. They also had their
own priorities, interests, and character. The Transvaal and Orange
Free State caucuses were traditionally hardline supporters of racial
segregation and repositories of the most crude baasskap racist think-
ing. They regarded the Cape NP as dangerously “liberal” on race rela-
tions. At various times during the pre-Vorster era, prominent Cape
leaders supported enfranchisement for Cape Coloureds, advocated the
creation of a republic that stayed within the British Commonwealth,
and even questioned, in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre,
the very basis of the government’s racial policies.8 Afrikaners, as a
rule, voted with notable consistency and homogeneity for the NP,
but meaningful, vibrant, and even heated policy debates took place
behind closed doors within the party. In an effort to both weigh in
on existing debates and to build consensus, the Hoofleier addressed
each provincial caucus personally at their annual congress.
The Hoofleier also sought to maintain Afrikaner unity behind the
party in external forums. None of these involved simple propaga-
tion of the party line: Afrikaner elites sought input and recognition
and could be mollified with patronage or engagement. One of these
118 JA MIE MILLER
forums was the Afrikaner Broederbond. The Bond was not, as out-
siders both at the time and since have claimed, a secret organization
pulling the strings behind the scenes.9 It was, however, an important
body that linked many (though not all) Afrikaner elites from differ-
ent sectors of the economy and society. Skilful Hoofleiers used this
network to their advantage. They met with the Bond’s executive com-
mittee (Uitvoerende Raad) and relied on the Bond’s regular dissemi-
nation of information to members to achieve a wide penetration at the
elite level.10 A second forum consisted of religious organizations, par-
ticularly the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederduitse Gereformeerde
Kerk). Afrikaners of the era were overwhelmingly devout. The party,
therefore, sought to ensure that the mainstream churches lent their
substantial moral support to both the overall apartheid vision and any
major individual policies of the day—which they did.11 Finally, there
was the press. NP leaders were politicians of the newspaper age. (Due
to pressure from conservative elements within Afrikanerdom wary of
the new system as a medium for foreign influences, South Africa only
received television in January 1976). They maintained a keen inter-
est in what the newspapers said and seized upon opportunities to
influence what they would say tomorrow. Newspapers published in
the Transvaal and the Free State, like Die Transvaler, Oggendblad,
Hoofstad, and Die Vaderland, strongly reflected the racial and other
policy tendencies of the home caucuses.12 Nasionale Pers and its flag-
ship paper Die Burger strongly reflected the views of the Cape faction.
Key cabinet ministers, especially if they were the heads of provincial
party caucuses, featured very prominently on the boards of the parent
companies of the newspaper blocs predominant in their province.13
They frequently used their influence to fight policy battles through
the press.14 Again, Hoofleiers had to avoid favoring one press group
too heavily over the other and had a strong interest in persuading all
newspapers regardless of inclination to toe the party line. To this end,
they utilized informal briefings to keep the Afrikaans press one step
ahead of their English competitors and provide broad support in the
public sphere for government policy.
The second crown was that of prime minister of South Africa, first
as a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth and
then, from 1961, as an independent Republic.15 The political system
in which the leader operated was a Westminster system, replete with
no-confidence debates each year, a bicameral legislature, elections
called at the will of the governing party, votes on bills and amend-
ments, party discipline and whips, and cabinet rule and responsi-
bility. The mechanics of the political system were overall similar to
those in former British settler colonies like Canada, Australia, and

New Zealand. White South Africa duly regarded those countries as
their peers, societies of the same type forged in what it saw as similar
historical circumstances, those of colonialism, the frontier, and inter-
cultural encounter. The form and shape of the South African politi-
cal system was heavily vitiated by severe restrictions on the franchise
on racial grounds. However, this fact alone did not negate the fact
that apartheid leaders understood their role as prime minister and
the historical, political, and legal context for that office in funda-
mentally Westminsterian and indeed democratic terms. The key role
of the prime minister was to push legislation through parliament.
This reality has often been obscured behind the nationalist political
identity and character, which with its dominant traits of unity, defi-
ance, and (often brash) resolve, not to mention the extreme nature
of its policies, often sat uneasily with the traditions of the system
in which it had to operate. In her classic study of the formation of
the apartheid system, Deborah Posel observed that “The nationalist
regime was ideologically far more fervent and cohesive than any of
its predecessors, and implemented many of its policies with patent
determination, sometimes bordering on fanatical zeal.”16 As Posel
points out, however, in order to construct the legal framework for
apartheid, nationalist leaders engaged in much the same processes
of compromise, negotiation, and parliamentary process as they did
on any other issue. The prime minister was the focal point for the
“patent determination” needed to mobilize the party behind given
tranches of legislation.
In general, therefore, before Vorster, South African prime min-
isters conceptualized their goals in ethnic-nationalist terms and
worked behind closed doors to ensure that the party remained the
very political embodiment of Afrikanerdom. Once goals were defined
and the ranks closed, the political sphere was merely the setting for
their achievement. It was the needs of the Afrikaner community in
narrow nationalist terms that dictated the prime minister’s agenda.
The responsibilities he had under the constitutional political system
were simply those required to sustain the most important of those
needs: Afrikaner socioeconomic primacy over nonwhite racial groups,
and Afrikaner control of the white political sphere vis-à-vis the
Anglophone community. None of this should obscure that the result
of NP rule was the widespread suppression and exclusion of nonwhite
political voices. However, central to understanding how the leaders of
the apartheid regime thought and acted is the realization that intra-
party diversity of viewpoints, conflicting interests, and “domestic”
120 JA MIE MILLER
political pressures were as real a constraint on their freedom of move-

ment as for any other political leader.
Breaking the Mould

Verwoerd understood the importance of political achievement in each
sphere—both building nationalist unity and creating a broad appeal
across the white electorate. As Hoofleier, he managed to coalesce
diverse Afrikaner interests behind his political platform of racial sepa-
ration. Hermann Giliomee recently revisited the degree and range
of opposition to Verwoerd’s plans within Afrikanerdom; Verwoerd’s
ultimate success required skilful manoeuvring within the party and
Afrikanerdom as a whole to promote a rigid brand of apartheid at the
expense of his Cape colleagues’ own more moderate prescriptions for
racial policy.17 In doing so, Verwoerd successfully asserted his claim
to represent Afrikaner nationalist interests over those of rivals in his
own party, academics, newspaper editors, or other elites. By the end
of his tenure, there was a broad understanding across Afrikanerdom
and his party that apartheid was ethical, practical, sustainable, and
feasible. Black Africans would be forced to express their political
rights through ethnic homelands (grand apartheid), while simultane-
ously being denied basic day-to-day equality in shared areas (petty
apartheid). As prime minister, meanwhile, after the achievement of
the Republic in 1961, long a hallowed cause for Afrikaner national-
ists, Verwoerd slowly began to reach out to English-speaking voters
on the basis that what was good for Afrikaner supremacy was good
for other whites’ prosperity too. At the celebration of the fifth anni-
versary of the Republic in Pretoria in 1966, Verwoerd declared: “My
friends, the Republic was once the one-sided ideal of many, but it has
become the fulfilment for most. I dare say with great assurance that
through these eventful five years many who were not prepared for
this constitutional development in 1961, are now happy that it actu-
ally did come to pass . . . this is our country, the country of all of us.”18
Electoral success followed: at the 1961 election, the NP gained only
16.7 percent of votes in the predominantly English-speaking Natal
electorate, but by the 1966 election, Verwoerd’s last, that figure had
grown to 40.6 percent.19 In this way, Verwoerd did what all clever
politicians do: he articulated his preferred policy in a range of terms
and concepts according to audience in an effort to gain broader sup-
port. The liberal Rand Daily Mail, the flagship of the liberal English
press, commented upon Verwoerd’s death that he had broadened the
crude domination of apartheid into “a sophisticated and rationalised

philosophy of separate development.”20
Verwoerd understood Afrikanerdom’s dilemma—the necessity
of holding on to power as a minority entity—in largely neocolonial
terms, norms and discourses not far removed from the “Three C’s”
of the Scramble for Africa—Christianity, free commerce, and civi-
lization. His successor saw things differently. While Verwoerd had
spent decades thinking about which racial structures could best
secure Afrikaner independence and control, upon his unlikely ascen-
sion, Vorster was perhaps only seriously considering these issues on
his own, as a leader, for the first time. He slowly realized that the
old framework of norms, values, and institutions that sustained the
South African regime both domestically and abroad was losing cur-
rency in the postcolonial era. He, therefore, sought to cultivate new
frameworks to legitimize Pretoria’s place in the world. Citing the
Afrikaner’s extensive anticolonial history on the continent, Vorster
emphasized the identity of the regime as an inherently African rather
than European entity. “We are in every respect a part of Africa,” he
declared after only six months in office.21 The erstwhile language of
unbridled white dominance was increasingly eschewed. Instead, the
watchword became coexistence of white and black on an equal foot-
ing, both inside the Republic’s borders between the regime and the
homelands, and on the continent as a whole. If the foundation stones
of the postcolonial world were nonracialism, anticolonialism, and
self-determination, Vorster was determined to appropriate the very
same principles that South Africa’s enemies used to attack the regime,
adapt them to the Verwoerdian gospel, and use them to justify white
independence in Africa. In a typical speech in 1971, Vorster explained
the essence of the new agenda:
What is the basis of separate development? It is, in the first instance,

the right of the Whites to preserve their white identity. Nobody can
deprive them of that right and they will not allow anybody to do so.
But what he wants for himself he does not begrudge those of other
colours in South Africa . . . If [the black man] comes to you and says,
I want political rights, then I say to him you may have your political
rights, but not in my territory . . . I say to him he can develop into a free
independent nation in his own territory. 22
None of this was inconsistent with Verwoerd’s model, but it did

constitute a dramatic change in emphasis in the overall separate devel-
opment vision. Unwilling to fundamentally change what apartheid
122 JA MIE MILLER
was, Vorster instead resolved to change what it meant. He duly began

to embed South Africa’s existing apartheid order, with some mini-
mal changes, in a different network of values and norms. Apartheid
would be conceptually reshaped around development and coexistence
rather than dominance and hierarchy. Vorster proceeded to embark
upon a most unexpected political campaign for a Hoofleier: an effort
to corrode others’ identification of his regime as the last vestige of
European colonialism by redefining the white polity as an African
and postcolonial entity.
In an endeavor to increase his regime’s legitimacy and security,
Vorster tentatively broached reforming Verwoerdian apartheid around
the edges. First, he broached the possibility of a new order in South
African sports. In a landmark speech at Loskop Dam just a year before
his death, Verwoerd had announced that racially mixed sporting teams
like New Zealand’s All Blacks, which often featured Maori rugby play-
ers, would not be allowed to tour the Republic.23 Vorster announced
a reversal of a policy very much in the public eye, although individual
sportsmen from different ethnic groups would still not be able play
against or alongside each other in South African teams or domestic
competitions.24 Second, Verwoerd had seen no need to reach out to
black Africa. “It is not that we are not willing to enter into friendly
relations with any well-disposed African state,” he explained in 1962.
“But they must first abandon their hostility towards South Africa.”25
Vorster now opened the doors to black African diplomats, persuading
the cabinet to accept a permanent diplomatic presence from Malawi.
The first envoy, the Malawians promised, would be white, but his
staff would not.26 Finally, Verwoerd’s vision of the future white polity
was one in which Afrikaner interests would be rigorously promoted.
So long as the NP held power, it was widely accepted that it would
use that power to promote Afrikaner culture, socioeconomic inter-
ests, and language and ultimately to infuse the white polity with an
increasingly Afrikaner identity. Vorster made it clear from the out-
set of his tenure that the NP explicitly sought support from English
speakers behind a more panwhite and less exclusively Afrikaner iden-
tity. For Vorster, the white polity in the overall future apartheid vision
of interdependent, ethnically based entities was a “nation which is
being built out of [both] Afrikaners and English-speaking people
here in South Africa.”27
In the broader white public sphere, Vorster’s unexpected moves
were often welcomed.28 He attracted substantial support from the
emerging verligte faction of Afrikanerdom: those prepared to coun-
tenance some minor reforms of apartheid in order to keep separate
development compatible with the shifting realities of South African

society and the changing world. He maintained electoral support
from English speakers and even attracted occasional approval from
the traditionally hostile English language press. However, within the
party, and indeed among Afrikaners as a whole, Vorster’s program
provoked an alarmist backlash from what came to be known as the
verkrampte wing of Afrikanerdom: those who saw any mitigation of
total racial separation under Afrikaner leadership as opening the door
to the eradication of white self-determination, culture, privilege, and
prosperity.29 In the Broederbond, Chairman P. J. Meyer led the resis-
tance. At the Bond’s annual conference just a month after Verwoerd’s
death, Meyer had outlined the Bond’s view of the NP’s future mission
in uncompromisingly pro-Afrikaner terms: “the English-speaker has
to make the Afrikaans world-view his own; [to promise] that he will
integrate his ideals and life style with those of the Afrikaner; that he
will adopt Afrikaans history as his own; that he will accept Afrikaans
as his national language, alongside English as the international com-
munity language.”30 Meyer could only look on with contempt as,
less than a year later, Vorster publicly referred to “my ancestors,
Afrikaans and English-speaking” and described those mobilizing
one group against the other as “stupid” and “foolish.”31 Meanwhile,
in the party, the arch-conservative cabinet member Albert Hertzog
questioned—at first behind the scenes, and then publicly—the claim
of the party to be the sole political incarnation of Afrikaner national-
ism. In April 1969, he delivered a speech in which he argued that only
Afrikaners, as Calvinists, rather than “liberal” English speakers could
be the guardians of white independence in South Africa.32
In what became a defining feature of his leadership approach, to
assert his primacy as Hoofleier, Vorster used the powers of his office
as prime minister. In early 1968, he stripped Hertzog of his Posts and
Telegraphs portfolio. In August, when the renegade refused to toe
the line, Vorster dropped him from the cabinet entirely. In September
1969, he forced a vote on his reform agenda at the annual congress
of the Transvaal NP. When Hertzog and his fellow travellers refused
to support party policy, they were expelled. Meanwhile, Vorster con-
fronted Meyer on two fronts. First, he publicly emphasized the pri-
macy of the party as the guardian of Afrikaner interests and values.
The implication was clear: the Bond did not speak for Afrikanerdom
in the political sphere, but instead occupied only a secondary role
restricted to the promotion of Afrikaner unity, language, and cul-
ture.33 Second, Vorster unexpectedly fronted at the Bond’s annual
congress in October and accused Meyer of threatening party unity.
124 JA MIE MILLER
Again, the message was clear: it was Vorster as the political leader
of Afrikanerdom and not the verkramptes in the Bond who defined
who was really an Afrikaner and what was in the best interests of
the nationalist group.34 Meyer backed down. Without his support,
Hertzog’s breakaway Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) was annihi-
lated in the 1970 elections.
What Vorster ended up with was a political victory but at a substan-
tial cost. On the details of his reform agenda, he had been forced into
unwieldy compromises. For instance, he had fought hard to ensure
that South Africa’s Olympic teams would in future be multiracial.
However, this measure was undercut by the upholding of the ban on
mixed-race trials for the team. This ensured that the International
Olympic Committee would not allow South African participation at
the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, thereby undermining the entire
point of the policy. Moreover, while Meyer had been brought to heel
and the HNP driven into the political wilderness, their ideals had
not. Vorster had not crushed the evident diversity in Afrikanerdom
over his plans for the future. Many found Vorster’s reforms a sharp
and destabilizing departure from the Verwoerdian gospel; more than
a few of these remained within the party fold.35 The very fact of the
schism, successful or not, had damaged whatever unrealistic assump-
tions existed of a homogenous Afrikanerdom, with all Afrikaner
interests represented in the political sphere by the same party with
one set of policies.36 In the years to come, the persistent claims of
Far-right wing politicians like Jaap Marais and Hertzog, and Meyer’s
successor Dr Andries Treurnicht (who later entered the political fray
and came to be known as “Dr No” for his opposition to any and all
reforms) to be the true representatives of Afrikaner values and history
substantially undermined the party’s identity as the sole guardian of
Afrikaner nationalism.37 This critique, voiced both within and out-
side the party, formed an emotive intellectual and political counter-
point for any debate over the future direction of the polity, as well
as a substantial obstacle to any further effort at domestic reform or
deviation from Verwoerdian doctrine.
Vorster, therefore, decided to change tack. He would hence-
forth avoid getting embroiled in debates about Afrikaner national-
ist purity—debates in which he had little more claim to authority
than leaders in the Afrikaner public sphere. The rest of his tenure was
notable for the lack of expected (or, from the verkrampte perspective,
feared) further domestic reform. At home, Vorster instead sought to
maintain a consensus between different factions within his party, cab-
inet, and Afrikanerdom. He allowed his ministers substantial leeway
to run their portfolios as they saw fit and governed by cabinet consen-
sus. In meetings of all types, the prime minister almost always allowed
his interlocutors to present their case first, reflecting his reluctance
to dictate and his instinctive preference for ruling by accord. P. W.
Botha’s authorized biography tellingly related: “Often you did not
know what [Vorster] was thinking, and you just had to come to your
own conclusions.”38 This consensus-based approach was well suited
to Vorster’s power base, as well as his pragmatic and undomineer-
ing personality: without a strong personal following in any one of
the provincial caucuses, he instead sought to balance between differ-
ent interests and cliques. Whereas Verwoerd focused his energies on
bolstering his power base as Hoofleier, Vorster chose the identities of
peacemaker and consensus builder.
Instead, he moved the focus of his energies to a most unlikely
plane: foreign relations. Most of his colleagues had no interest in
or feel for foreign affairs. Partly due to the country’s ever-growing
isolation and partly due to an Afrikaner ethos that was distinctly
introspective, few had travelled abroad at all, let alone widely. One
observer was not far from the mark when he wrote that Afrikaners
“knew little about the outside world and only wished to be left alone
to run their own affairs and those of other South Africans as they
saw fit.”39 In light of the clamor over his every move during his first
term as prime minister, this suited Vorster just fine. For he perceived
an opportunity to use the power and independence of his office as
prime minister to lead his party and his people to where he wanted
them to go: acceptance as part of the international community, rather
than apart from it.
On one front, in 1972, Vorster authorized the Department of
Information to wage a vigorous and underhand campaign designed to
shape the debate on apartheid within Western countries themselves.
Under the direction of its minister, head of the Transvaal NP, Connie
Mulder, and the department’s young and brash secretary, Eschel
Rhoodie, Department of Information worked assiduously behind the
scenes to cultivate ostensibly independent foreign mouthpieces for
South Africa’s views. Its clandestine efforts included attempting to
buy the Washington Star newspaper, cultivating influential American
and other Western politicians through expensive lobbyists, and orga-
nizing visits to Western capitals by South African ministers operating
in ostensibly private capacities, thereby circumventing foreign gov-
ernments’ efforts to avoid public meetings with South African offi-
cials.40 The campaign’s budget, operations, goals, and activities were
all secret.
126 JA MIE MILLER
At the same time, Vorster pursued relations with black Africa as a

means of mitigating African-led antiapartheid hostility and effecting
a dramatic counterattack against the prospect of international isola-
tion. The prime minister placed the execution of this bold and highly
sensitive “outward policy” in the hands of a small team of trusted
advisors, comprising Foreign Minister Hilgard Muller; his unflap-
pable and inscrutable Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Brand Fourie; and
Bureau for State Security (BOSS) chief, Hendrik van den Bergh. Such
emphasis on personal relationships and ad hoc decision-making net-
works rather than established bureaucratic procedures allowed Vorster
to insulate his plan for South Africa’s future from the damaging intra-
party squabbles and extraparty controversy that had dogged even the
minor reforms he had proposed in his first term as prime minister.
Together, the three men worked discreetly, reporting directly back
to Vorster. For African leaders, outward policy cannily brought into
alignment three dynamics: their dire economic needs, their fear of
communist penetration on the continent, and—given Pretoria’s rude
health—their powerlessness to dismantle apartheid.
Vorster’s “outward policy” achieved limited success in persuading
black African states to modify their identification of apartheid with
their own colonial experiences. However, it did succeed in displac-
ing confrontation as the overwhelming (if not sole) theme in black
Africa’s relations with South Africa, broadening those relationships
in a wider matrix of concerns and interests. The archives reveal that
Fourie, Muller, and van den Bergh met very regularly with moderate
African leaders. By 1974, South Africa traded behind the scenes with
almost all anticommunist African states.41 That same year, Vorster
met with both Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny and his
Senegalese counterpart Léopold Senghor in Côte d’Ivoire in Abidjan,
as well as Liberian leader William Tolbert in Monrovia in February
1975. While expressing their opposition to apartheid, all agreed that
“dialogue” with South Africa rather than confrontation was the way
forward.42
Yet for all the refusals from black Africa to explicitly validate the
apartheid model, the “outward policy” was as much aimed at dissem-
inating Vorster’s new philosophical framework for apartheid at home
as it was at doing the same thing abroad.43 Vorster’s new “South
Africa in Africa” national identity became entrenched in Pretoria as a
strategic template for the future that combined South Africa’s domes-
tic program with its foreign policy in a seemingly cogent master plan
for survival and prosperity. Bureaucracies competed to be entrusted
with speaking to black Africa. As Pretoria began to accelerate the
development of the homelands in the early 1970s, it increasingly

expressed its program for cohabitation alongside other ethnic groups
within South Africa (or “nations” as Pretoria labelled them) on the
same basis as its desired coexistence with the postcolonial African
states to its north.44 Far from apartheid constituting a barrier to the
regime’s acceptance on the continent, it was especially in black Africa,
as Muller asserted in one speech in 1973, that South Africa’s “bona
fides [would] not be generally accepted until we have taken our policy
to its full consequences, in other words, until the homelands have
become independent states.”45
This was, on close inspection, a remarkable shift from the Verwoerd
era not only in policy content but also in leadership style. Verwoerd’s
political strength, culminating in his crushing triumph in the 1966
national elections, derived largely from his ability to articulate and
even personify a vision of the future expressed in the language of
Afrikaner nationalist mission. In his famous 1958 speech commemo-
rating the voortrekker victory over the Zulus at Blood River in 1838,
Verwoerd powerfully articulated that the Afrikaner had been “planted
here at the southern point” of Africa “so that from this resistance
group might emanate the victory whereby all that has been built up
since the days of Christ may be maintained for the good of all man-
kind.”46 This was, in essence, a populist model of leadership, whereby
Verwoerd encouraged very close identification between himself and
a given nationalist teleology; he was also not averse to using emo-
tive language and religious tropes to galvanize that identification.
By contrast, instead of deriving political strength as prime minister
from his power base as Hoofleier, Vorster had realized that the sec-
ond crown came with substantial baggage, precisely because of the
increasing diversity within Afrikanerdom.47 He, therefore, sought to
use his powers as prime minister to pursue his twin goals: first, to use
major diplomatic victories to bolster an unlikely image as a statesman,
thereby effecting an end-run to winning over Afrikaner support and
maintaining nationalist unity; and second, to utilize the increasing
prominence of black Africa in South Africa’s diplomatic profile to
provide intellectual ballast for his rebranding of apartheid around the
coexistence of white and black communities.
Success and Failure

This strategy was improbably successful, at least in the short term. As
news of secret high-level meetings with African leaders trickled out
in carefully planned leaks, the white public sphere—and especially
128 JA MIE MILLER
the Afrikaans press—was excited by the prospect of an end to the

regime’s long isolation.48 The highpoint for Vorster came in the
Southern Hemisphere winter of 1974–1975, as he worked together
with Kenneth Kaunda’s Zambia to broker talks between Ian Smith’s
rebel regime in Salisbury and the nationalist leaders challenging him.
Not everyone was pleased by the idea that Vorster might be distancing
Pretoria from other whites in Southern Africa. From the NP’s own
backbenches, Treurnicht lamented the “voices in South Africa urg-
ing that South Africa should dissociate itself from Rhodesia . . . and
that Rhodesia should stew in its own juice.”49 In October 1974, Ben
Schoeman, Vorster’s recently retired former deputy prime minister
and arch-conservative leader of the Transvaal NP, launched a blister-
ing attack on the new foreign policy in Kimberley:
I think that we as White people must be under no illusions. The Black

military states with their Communist allies have only one aim and
object in view and that is the surrender of the White man in South
Africa. Nothing less than Black majority rule will ever satisfy them.
Those misguided people who believe that appeasement will satisfy
them are living in a fool’s paradise . . . I do not trust President Kaunda
and have no faith in him. He is not and never will be a friend of South
Africa.50
Such was the high-level opposition that Vorster had to either

neutralize or avoid—and he overwhelmingly chose the latter path.
Within his government, much as he allowed his ministers a good
deal of autonomy over their own portfolios, similarly he felt little
compunction to share the details of his secretive foreign endeavors
with them. For instance, it was not until mid-November 1975, when
press reports alleged that South African troops were involved in the
Angolan Civil War, that he confirmed to his shocked cabinet that
Pretoria was heavily involved in a power struggle in black Africa, with
regular forces on the ground for over a month.51 Similarly, when in
1976 he once more tried to negotiate a transfer of power in Rhodesia,
he deliberately misled his cabinet so as to create the impression that
the impetus for abandoning Smith was coming from the Americans,
and not from him.52
Simultaneously, Vorster skilfully used the press to convey his mes-
sage directly to the electorate, bypassing the opposition from the
right wing in his cabinet, the party room, and the public sphere
entirely. Personal briefings to the Afrikaans press were nothing new
for NP leaders; indeed, leaks in favored newspapers were a common
means of fighting intraparty policy battles. However, Vorster took

this tradition to a whole new level. While his team of personal emis-
saries engaged in their shuttle diplomacy across the continent, the
prime minister conducted regular briefings for editors of the major
papers, often in the prime minister’s own office. He also included
the English language press on a regular basis—probably a first for a
Hoofleier—and to great effect.53 In his memoirs, Schoeman recalled
a rare “unholy alliance between the liberal English press and cer-
tain of our Afrikaans newspapers . . . on Rhodesia they spoke with one
voice.”54 Specifically, the press was careful to avoid any implication
that South Africa was interfering in Rhodesia’s affairs and explicitly
assured readers that a settlement there would not create momentum
toward a transfer of power in South Africa because the racial orders in
the two were completely different. In the short term, Vorster reaped
the rewards. “For Mr Vorster, the present progress has been a personal
triumph,” observed Die Vaderland. “He is a statesman of interna-
tional stature and if peace comes to southern Africa, his name will be
immortalized as the man who took the initiative.”55 Die Transvaler
concurred. Vorster “deserve[d] the honour and admiration he was
receiving on all sides for his détente success in Africa.”56
The Contradictions of Leadership

In the long term, however, this idiosyncratic model of leadership
proved ineffectual. Foreign successes were intoxicating to the elec-
torate, papering over the widening divisions within Afrikanerdom
as a whole. As prime ministerial achievements, rather than Hoofleier
triumphs, they could also be shared in equally by English-speaking
voters. However, the new identity that Vorster was trying to construct
for the state—an apartheid model predicated on mutual self-deter-
mination for each of South Africa’s ethnic communities—remained
incompatible with the dominant values of white society and under-
mined by the actual strata of the social order, which remained racially
vertical. Vorster could sidestep damaging open disputes about the
future of race relations in South Africa and the feasibility of the apart-
heid model. However, without a commitment on his part to confront
verkrampte opposition and denounce the fundamentally hierarchi-
cal racism that pervaded white society, his vision for South Africa
could only ever have limited acceptance abroad. Vorster’s outward
policy targets made it clear that they needed some domestic reform to
accompany the new international openness. “In some respects I am
a man for dialogue [with Pretoria],” Senghor told the Department
130 JA MIE MILLER
of Information’s magazine To the Point in April 1973. “[However i]

n the first place dialogue would have to take place, not between us
and Mr Vorster, but between the Vorster government and the black
majority in South Africa.”57 His liberal opponents at home likewise
realized the importance of at least fostering an atmosphere of change.
Long-time parliamentary opponent Helen Suzman recalled that even
in the mid-1970s, “if only Vorster had offered something concrete,
even if it was only putting blacks in the Senate, he would have turned
the process of polarization around.”58
Vorster’s refusal to spend more time fostering Afrikaner unity and
building a personal power base in the party left him distinctly vulner-
able to any reversals in his diplomatic campaigns. When his stature as
a statesman collapsed in 1976, following the humiliating intervention
in Angola, the alienating hardline response to the Soweto riots, and
the failure of the Kissinger Initiatives on Southern Africa, he quickly
found himself with no support base to fall back upon. His only
option was to tack hard to the right in a desperate effort to reclaim his
Hoofleier crown. In 1977–1978, he cracked down on dissident news-
papers and political organizations, revelled in the politics of xenopho-
bia and chauvinism, and cleaned up at the polls. However, in doing
so, he lost any and all credit he had earned as a bridge builder. His
vision for the future, of a South Africa of interdependent but sepa-
rate entities accepted by the world community, evaporated. His prime
ministership as a whole promptly collapsed into dysfunctionality.
Notes
*
I would like to thank Hermann Giliomee, Riaan Eksteen, and Simon
Stevens for their helpful comments.
1. Kenney, Architect of Apartheid: H.F. Verwoerd—An Appraisal,
Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers (1980); Scholtz, Dr. Hendrik
Frensch Verwoerd, 1901–1966, 2 vols, Johannesburg: Perskor (1974).
2. De Villiers and De Villiers, PW, Kaapstad: Tafelberg (1984);
Pottinger, The Imperial Presidency: P.W. Botha the First 10 Years,
Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers (1988); Rhoodie, PW Botha:
The Last Betrayal, Melville: S.A. Politics (1989); Prinsloo, Stem uit
Die Wildernis: ‘N Biographie van Oud-Pres. PW Botha, Mossel Bay:
Vaandel (1997); Alden, Apartheid’s Last Stand: The Rise and Fall of
the South African Security State, Basingstoke: Macmillan (1996).
3. D’Oliveira, Vorster: The Man, Johannesburg: Ernest Stanton (1978).
D’Oliveira had regular one-on-one meetings with Vorster over
the preceding years. For a study of Vorster’s early political life, see
H. O. Terblanche, John Vorster: Ob-Generaal en Afrikanervegter

(Roodepoort: CUM-Boeke, 1983).
4. Giliomee, “Afrikaner Politics: How the System Works” in Adam
and Giliomee (Eds.), The Rise and Crisis of Afrikaner Power, Cape
Town: David Philips (1979), p. 202–203; O’Meara, Forty Lost Years:
The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948–94,
Randburg: Ravan Press (1996), p. 205–207.
5. Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders: A Supreme Test of Power, Cape
Town: Tafelberg (2012), p. 116–138. A much more sympathetic
approach is evident in Swanepoel, “Die Diplomasie van Adv. B. J.
Vorster,” Bloemfontein: University of the Orange Free State (1982).
In this regard, the contrast between James Barber and John Barratt’s
1990 treatise on South Africa’s foreign policy, still the dominant major
text in the field, and their (separate) views at the time is highly illustra-
tive. In 1990, with the apartheid regime on the brink of collapse, they
depicted Vorster’s efforts to influence the political order in Southern
Africa as a set of futile demarches doomed to failure from the outset:
“Vorster was deceiving himself . . . No black state could accept apart-
heid. Whether militant or moderate, they saw that it compulsorily
segregated people according to race, and then discriminated against
those who were black. That was a divide of principle which made it
impossible for them to accept South Africa on Pretoria’s terms.” See
Barber and Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: The Search for Status
and Security, 1945–1988, Johannesburg: Cambridge University Press
(1990), p. 150, 190. However, in 1972, Barratt had oozed optimism
about the very same, describing outward policy as “a new and exciting
phase . . . away from confrontation and isolation [and] towards co-ex-
istence and co-operation in Africa.” Barratt, “South Africa’s Outward
Policy: From Isolation to Dialogue” in Johannes Rhoodie (Ed.),
South African Dialogue: Contrasts in South African Thinking on
Basic Race Issues, Johannesburg: McGraw-Hill Book Co. (1972), p.
561. Barber, writing the year after, appeared to agree: “South Africa’s
foreign policy reveal[s] a new vigour and confidence”: Barber, South
Africa’s Foreign Policy, 1945–1970, London: Oxford University Press
(1973), p. 308.
6. Studies of leadership specifically in the apartheid state are rare. See
Schrire and Boulle, Leadership in the Apartheid State: From Malan to
De Klerk, Cape Town: Oxford University Press (1994). Particularly rel-
evant for the approach here is Nic Olivier, “The Head of Government
and the Party” in Schrire and Boulle (Eds.), Leadership in the Apartheid
State: From Malan to De Klerk, Cape Town: Oxford University Press
(1994).
7. For the federal structure of NP and its influence upon party poli-
cies and practice, see Giliomee, “Afrikaner Politics: How the System
Works,” p. 197–205.
132 JA MIE MILLER
8. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years, p. 104–109; Schoeman, Van Malan Tot

Verwoerd, Kaapstad: Human and Rousseau (1973). The Natal NP,
the fourth caucus, was both numerically small and politically weak.
9. For studies that at least indulge this thesis, prevalent especially in
the English press at the time, see Wilkins and Strydom, The Super-
Afrikaners, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball (1978); Serfontein,
Brotherhood of Power: An Exposé of the Secret Afrikaner Broederbond,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1978).
10. I am grateful to Riaan Eksteen, a former member of the Broederbond,
for helping clarify my knowledge of how the Bond operated.
11. Ngcokovane, Religious and Moral Legitimations of Apartheid in
Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk, Nationalist Party and Broederbond,
1948-Present, Atlanta, GA: Emory University (1986), p. 217–253.
Wilkins and Strydom, The Super-Afrikaners, p. 290–325; Schoeman,
Die Broederbond in Die Afrikaner-Politiek, Pretoria: Aktuele
Publikasies (1982), p. 106–129.
12. After a merger in 1971, all were published by the same company,
Perskor, which formed a counterweight to Nasionale Pers.
13. Fourie, Media Studies: Institutions, Theories, and Issues, vol. 1,
Lansdowne, South Africa: Juta (2001), p. 199.
14. Schoeman, Vorster se 1000 Dae, Kaapstad: Human and Rousseau
(1974), p. 177–203.
15. The domestic political system did not change fundamentally after the
shift to a Republic in 1961, though it did under the 1983 “tricam-
eral” constitution.
16. Posel, The Making of Apartheid, 1948–1961: Conflict and Compromise,
Oxford: Clarendon Press (1991), p. 5.
17. Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders, p. 38–51.
18. Speech at the Voortrekker Monument, May 31, 1966, in Pelzer, ed.,
Verwoerd Speaks: Speeches, 1948–1966, Johannesburg: APB Publishers
(1966), p. 723.
19. Heard, General Elections in South Africa, 1943–1970, London, New
York: Oxford University Press (1974), p. 113, 172.
20. Rand Daily Mail, September 7, 1966.
21. Vorster speech in Bloemfontein, March 18, 1967, in Geyser, ed.,
Select Speeches, Bloemfontein: INCH (1977), p. 74.
22. Vorster speech at Naboomspruit, June 17, 1971, in Geyser, ed., Select
Speeches, p. 144–147.
23. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years, p. 158.
24. Hansard, House of Assembly, April 11, 1967, cols. 4108–17,
4144–45.
25. Meiring, Die Lewe van Hilgard Muller, Silverton: Promedia
Publikasies (1985), p. 77.
26. du Pisani, John Vorster en Die Verlig-Verkrampstryd, Bloemfontein:
Instituut vir Eietydse Geskiedenis (1988), p. 42–43.
27. Vorster speech, House of Assembly, September 15, 1970, in Geyser,

ed., Select Speeches, p. 118.
28. du Pisani, John Vorster en Die Verlig-Verkrampstryd, p. 37.
29. du Pisani, John Vorster en Die Verlig-Verkrampstryd; Schoeman,
Vorster se 1000 Dae; Serfontein, Die Verkrampte Aanslag, Kaapstad:
Human and Rousseau (1970).
30. Serfontein, Brotherhood of Power, p. 238.
31. Vorster speech, Bloemfontein, March 18, 1967, in Geyser, ed., Select
Speeches, p. 77.
32. Schoeman, Vorster se 1000 Dae, p. 224–239.
33. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years, p. 160–161; Serfontein, Die Verkrampte
Aanslag, p. 234–236.
34. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years, p. 161; Schoeman, Die Broederbond in
Die Afrikaner-Politiek, p. 47–48.
35. du Pisani, John Vorster en Die Verlig-Verkrampstryd, p. 183.
36. Adam, Modernizing Racial Domination: South Africa’s Political
Dynamics, Berkeley, London: University of California Press (1971),
p. 178; Adam and Giliomee, The Rise and Crisis of Afrikaner Power,
Cape Town: David Philips (1979), p. 215.
37. O’Meara, Forty Lost Years, p. 138–142.
38. De Villiers and De Villiers, PW, p. 99.
39. Kenney, Power, Pride and Prejudice, p. 224.
40. For an account of the campaign of the Department of Information
by an outsider, see Rees, Muldergate: The Story of the Info Scandal,
Johannesburg: MacMillan South Africaillan (1980); for the best
account by an insider, see De Villiers, Secret Information, Cape
Town: Tafelberg (1980).
41. SADFAA, 1/99/19, 16, Africa: SA Policy in Africa and Relations
with African States, “RSA Invoer van en Uitvoer na Afrikalande 1972
en 1973”; SADFAA, 1/99/19, 13, Africa: SA Policy in Africa and
Relations with African States, report, author unknown, “Houding
van Afrika-State teenoor Suid-Afrika,” April 1972. Most radical states
did not trade with South Africa at all, though Congo (Brazzaville)
and Algeria both appear from the Department of Foreign Affairs’
(DFA) records to have done so to a very limited degree.
42. Pfister, Apartheid South Africa and African States: From Pariah to
Middle Power, 1961–1994, London: I. B. Tauris, (2005), p. 68–79.
43. Miller, The Alchemist and the Hammer: The Struggle to Preserve
Apartheid, 1974–1980 (book manuscript under review).
44. Vorster speech, House of Assembly, February 4, 1974, Geyser, ed.,
Select Speeches, p. 207–217. See also US National Archives (USNA),
Access to Archival Databases (AAD), Central Foreign Policy
Files, Record Group 59, Records of State Department, Hurd, US
Embassy, Cape Town, to State Department, “Homeland Leaders
See Homelands as Basis for Possible Solution to SA’s Race Problem,”
134 JA MIE MILLER
January 18, 1974; USNA AAD, Central Foreign Policy Files, Record
Group 59, Records of State Department, US Embassy, Pretoria, to
State Department, “A Comment on Significance of Meeting between
Homeland Leaders and Vorster,”March 8, 1974.
45. SADFAA, 1/99/19, 14, Africa: SA Policy in Africa and Relations
with African States, Speech by Muller at Opening of Stellenbosch
University, February 19, 1973.
46. Speech, December 16, 1958, Pelzer, ed., Verwoerd Speaks: Speeches,
1948–1966, p. 211.
47. For stimulating analyses of this diversity, see Giliomee, The
Afrikaners: Biography of a People, Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press (2003), p. 542–560; O’Meara, Forty Lost Years, p.
115–148; Serfontein, Die Verkrampte Aanslag, p. 84–117; du Pisani,
John Vorster en Die Verlig-Verkrampstryd, p. 56–87.
48. The headlines alone convey the mood of the times. For the domes-
tic press, see “Secret SA trip . . . Vorster summit next,” Sunday Times,
November 24, 1974; “Vorster ‘Questioned’: Secret Zambia Mission
to SA”, Cape Times, November 25, 1974; “Vorster se ‘Geheime tog’:
Diep in Afrika vir vrede, sê gerug,” Die Burger, November 30, 1974;
“Well-planned Move Led to Détente”, Sunday Times, December 1,
1974; “Nog groot deurbrake vir SA kom gou: Vorster in Swart Afrika:
‘n Naweek-reis na Ivoorkus”, Rapport, December 1, 1974; “Did PM
Visit Ivory Coast?”, Cape Times, December 3, 1974; “Rhodesië
bespreek? Swart leiers byeen in Lusaka,” Die Burger, December
5, 1974; “Dit is vir SA einde van ‘n lang swart tonnel,” Hoofstad,
December 12, 1974; “Einde aan terreur: Swart leiers praat,” Die
Burger, December 13, 1974. For the international press, see see
“Vorster in Talks with Zambia,” London Observer, November 24,
1974; “Kaunda ‘Has Sent Envoy for Détente Talks with Vorster,’ ”
London Financial Times, November 25, 1974; “Vorster’s Secret Trip
Might Bring African Summit,” London Daily Telegraph, December
2, 1974; “Mr Vorster’s Secret Diplomacy,” editorial, London Times,
December 2, 1974; “Secret Diplomacy,” editorial, Scotsman,
December 3, 1974; “Lusaka Waits for ‘Historic’ Summit Talks,”
London Financial Times, December 5, 1974; “Is the Grand Plan for
a ‘Southern African United Nations’ Nearing Fruition?”, London
Times, December 6, 1974; “Vorster Aim Is Normal Links with Black
Africa,” Times, February 21, 1975.
49. Hansard, House of Assembly Debates, April 25, 1975, col. 4820.
50. Schoeman, My Lewe in Die Politiek, Johannesburg: Perskor (1978), p.
408.
51. South African National Archives (SANA), 1/1/6, 1, Kabinet
Notuleregister, November 18, 1975. Even so, full details of the inter-
vention only came to the cabinet later and in a decidedly piecemeal
fashion. Others in the political sphere and the general public were
even more in the dark.
52. Miller, The Alchemist and the Hammer: The Struggle to Preserve
Apartheid, 1974–1980.
53. Vorster took care to brief the Afrikaans editors and the English-
speaking editors separately: Archive for Contemporary Affairs
(ARCA), PV 132, B. J. Vorster, 5/1/19–22, Aantekeninge en
Dagboeke, Vorster’s Dagboek.
54. See Schoeman, My Lewe in Die Politiek, p. 411.
55. Cited in Tamarkin, The Making of Zimbabwe: Decolonization in
Regional and International Politics, London: Cass (1990), p. 47.
56. Cited in Tamarkin, The Making of Zimbabwe, p. 47.
57. To the Point, April 21, 1973, p. 20.
58. Giliomee, The Last Afrikaner Leaders, p. 93.
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Chapter 7
Leadership and Liberation: Southern

African Reflections
Chris Saunders
I n the aftermath of the death of Nelson Mandela on December 5,

2013, there was much discussion in South Africa and elsewhere of the
quality of his leadership. Many contrasted it with that of the present-
day leaders of Southern African countries. There was no doubt that
Mandela was an exceptional leader, not least for emerging from almost
28 years of imprisonment without bitterness toward those who had
imprisoned him and then rallying the nation behind him as the first
president of a democratic South Africa. While his age was a factor, his
decision to serve only one five-year term as president—the constitu-
tion provided for two—was widely seen as an example in the region
to others not to cling on to power. Mandela’s leadership in this regard
is in obvious stark contrast to that displayed by Robert Mugabe, who
became leader of independent Zimbabwe in April 1980 and 34 years
later, in February 2014, still in power, celebrated his ninetieth birth-
day in lavish style and with defiant rhetoric, in a country reduced to
a shadow of its former self, with perhaps one third of its population
having fled abroad. Such contrasting styles of leadership in Southern
Africa provoke reflection on the kinds of leadership displayed, on
the one hand, in the liberation struggles waged against colonialism
and apartheid, and, on the other, after liberation movements came
to power. Were different kinds of leadership required in struggle and
after coming to power? If that is the case, has adaption to the new
circumstances proven too difficult for most leaders? In what ways did
leadership in the liberation struggles help shape leadership in the very
different context of governing? Is the famous aphorism attributed to
Lord Acton correct, that power necessarily corrupts leaders?
140 C H R I S S AU N D E R S
It is not, of course, possible, on the basis of a limited set of Southern

African examples, to do more than hint at answers to such questions,
but exploration of how a few leaders fared may not only prove instruc-
tive in itself, but may prompt others to examine leadership in similar
transitions, from struggle to governance, both elsewhere in Africa
and globally. The study of leadership in Africa remains a relatively
neglected one, and none of the few studies of African leadership in print
(e.g., Wambu 2007; Mtonqana and Pennington 2009; Van Zyl 2009)
consider specifically leaders of liberation movements both during the
years of struggle and after they have come to power. Ali Mazuri, the
veteran African political scientist, raised the issue, commenting that
great liberation fighters are not necessarily great nation builders, but
he did not take the subject further (Mazrui 2007, 43). Though there
has been an outpouring of works on the South African struggle in
recent years—most notably in the form of memoirs by those involved
and biographies of key people in the struggle—and a much more lim-
ited literature on other countries in the region, and though much of
this literature is concerned with leaders, it does not address leadership
as such or analyze the influences that have shaped the kind of lead-
ership to be found in Southern Africa in recent decades. The work
that most closely does this is a volume edited by Roger Southall and
Henning Melber (2006) entitled Legacies of Power: Leadership Change
and Former Presidents in African Politics, but the essays in that book
are mainly concerned with leaders in office, not with comparing their
roles before and after they came to power, and Legacies of Power does
not explicitly compare leadership across the region.
Southern Africa is a particularly good regional case study for con-
sideration of leadership before and after “liberation,” for settler colo-
nialism fought its last battles in Africa there, making the struggles
for liberation intense, and different liberation movements came into
power sequentially. A fuller study of leadership in the context of lib-
eration might include the role of leaders in the British colonies where
a constitutional process led to independence in the 1960s—the role
of Seretse Khama in the case of Botswana could be contrasted, say,
with that of Kenneth Kaunda before and after he became leader of
independent Zambia—and might well examine the leadership of the
two movements that came to power in the former Portuguese colo-
nies of Angola and Mozambique in 1975—the Popular Movement
for the Liberation of Angola, and the Front for the Liberation of
Mozambique. Here only the cases of Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South
Africa will be considered, where liberation movements came to power
in 1980, 1990, and 1994, respectively.
L E A D E R S H I P A N D L I B E R AT I O N 141
There are, of course, many different kinds of leadership. In his

recent study of what he terms “transformative political leadership,”
Robert Rotberg sees such leadership as informed by a set of qualities
he terms “critical competencies” (2012, passim). They have enabled
a small group of outstanding leaders to move toward implementing
noble visions. Rotberg argues that inspiring people by having such a
vision is a fundamental component of transformative leadership. Such
leadership demands courage, integrity, and intellectual honesty. It
uses emotional intelligence, which includes a capacity for empathy, to
inspire and mobilize and keep followers onside when difficult deci-
sions are taken, while earning the respect of others.
Mandela is a prime example of such transformative leadership. At
his death, he was acknowledged globally as an outstanding leader,
both for his role in bringing freedom to his people and for then, when
president, helping to heal the wounds of the past and build a new
nation through his policy of reconciliation (cf., e.g., Mandela 1995;
Barnard 2014). By contrast, most leaders who have come to power
as leaders of liberation movements in Southern Africa have been far
lesser leaders in government, lacking the ability to take their coun-
tries forward to new heights of achievement. While some will empha-
size personal factors to explain this, one can ask whether the way
in which leaders emerged from liberation struggles may help explain
the different forms of postliberation leadership that have emerged.
Though Rotberg does not do this, he does suggest that responsible
and enlightened leadership is especially needed where political insti-
tutions are still embryonic, as they were when the various liberation
movements came to power in the countries of Southern Africa.
This chapter will explore some aspects of how leadership in libera-
tion struggles in the three countries was transformed into leadership
in government, through a series of five short case studies. The leaders
considered here are Mugabe, leader of the Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF); Sam Nujoma, the founding
leader of the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO); and
the three main leaders of South Africa’s African National Congress
(ANC) who held presidential office since the transfer of power in that
country in 1994: Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and Jacob Zuma. While the
emphasis in this discussion will be on the way individuals performed
leadership roles, any study of leadership should place it in context and
consider the structural factors that influence it, for there is always
the danger, in considering leadership, of placing too much emphasis
on the agency of individuals. In all three countries considered here,
Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa, liberation movements waged
armed struggles before coming to power. Inevitably, then, those who

moved into government were shaped, at least in part, by the armed
struggles against colonialism and apartheid in which their movements
had engaged. Their cast of mind was, therefore, often a military one.
Over decades of struggle, they had, with few exceptions, tended to
categorize people as either being with them in their struggles or ene-
mies. Such leaders had demanded obedience from their supporters
and sought to eliminate, whether physically or in other ways, those
they saw to be working against them, even within the struggle itself.
The culture in which these leaders worked, often for decades, was
one of exile, away from their own countries, and in exile they were
often under threat from the powerful enemy they were fighting (Ellis
2012; Macmillan 2013). Not surprisingly, therefore, the cultures that
developed in exile were highly authoritarian and secretive. Many of
those in leadership positions focused much of their attention on not
being ousted, while the main external allies that supported them—
the Soviet Union and China—had themselves authoritarian and
secretive cultures.
As the struggles for liberation began to reach their conclusion,
however, the leaders of these three countries were involved in nego-
tiated settlements in which, inevitably, compromises were made,
which included providing for transitional arrangements of one kind
or another before independence was achieved or, in the South African
case, a transfer of power from a white minority government to one
democratically elected. After “liberation,” there was inevitably disil-
lusionment and disappointment. Some of those who had fought in
the struggles had wanted, and expected, far more radical economic
and social change than took place. Others had anticipated that the
struggles would result in democratic regimes based on concepts of
human rights and civil liberties and free from corruption. They were
dismayed when the new regimes took on some of the characteris-
tics of the old ones, did not observe human rights, and sank into
corruption and other forms of maladministration. When such crit-
ics began to challenge the new governments, those in power sought
to bolster their legitimacy by propagating a set of myths about the
past, sometimes called “patriotic history,” which included seeing the
armed struggles as being primarily responsible for the great triumph
of “liberation,” a triumph achieved by the liberation movement itself
(cf. Melber 2003c; Saunders 2003, 2007; Couper 2009). The lib-
eration movements now in power in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South
Africa have all continued to seek legitimacy by emphasising their roles
in the armed struggles they waged and playing down the negotiated
settlements through which they came to power, though this was less
apparent in South Africa’s 2014 general election than in the previous
one in 2009, when Zuma still sang liberation songs from the years of
the armed struggle and exile, one of which included the words “Bring
me my machine gun” and seemed to call for the killing of enemies
(e.g., Beresford 2009).
Let us now turn to consider some examples of leaders in liberation
struggles who subsequently came to power. Robert Mugabe, having
been brought up in a Jesuit environment and working as a school
teacher in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana, returned to the then Rhodesia
and became active in nationalist politics in the early 1960s. Imprisoned
for a decade, he emerged from detention to take over the leadership
of ZANU through getting rid of opponents and creating a personal-
ity cult around himself (e.g., Moore 1995). Though ZANU briefly
joined the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) in a Patriotic
Front, it fought a separate armed struggle from Mozambique, and in
that bitter struggle, in the course of which peasants were dragooned
into supporting the war (Krige 1995), Mugabe showed a ruthlessness
that was not to leave him once he was in power. In 1979 he was per-
suaded by the leader of Mozambique, Samora Machel, to attend the
all-party conference the British government had called in London,
and there, again very reluctantly, for he would have preferred to con-
tinue the armed struggle, he signed the Lancaster House agreement
for a transition to independence via a general election held under
British auspices. When ZANU triumphed in that election, Mugabe
became Zimbabwe’s first prime minister.
Immediately on coming to power, Mugabe appeared reconciliatory
to the white minority that had lost political power, but the violent
character of the new regime soon revealed itself, for from 1982 a spe-
cial unit in his security forces, acting on Mugabe’s instructions, com-
mitted genocide in Matabeleland, the ZAPU heartland, where an
estimated 20,000 people were killed. Mugabe refused to acknowledge
what had happened, accusing ZAPU of having links with the apart-
heid regime to the south, and he moved to incorporate ZAPU into
ZANU. When, over a decade later, a new opposition party emerged
as a serious competitor to ZANU, Mugabe called for a new struggle,
or Chimurenga, and, after his government lost a referendum on a
new constitution in 2000, he again unleashed state violence to ensure
he remained in power. White farmers were attacked and some were
killed, along with many others seen to be his political opponents. In
2005 he authorized Operation Murambatsvina, which forced those
thought to support the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) out of informal settlements in urban areas. State-authorized

violence again reached such a peak in 2008 that his main opponent,
the leader of the opposition MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, had to aban-
don his bid to challenge Mugabe in the presidential election of that
year. This did have the result that the regional body, the Southern
African Development Community (SADC), insisted on a process of
mediation that led to an agreement providing for the formation of a
unity government with the MDC, but Mugabe then did everything
he could to avoid effective implementation of the agreement he had
signed and, vitally, retained control of the security forces, which con-
tinued to back him. So over decades, Mugabe did everything neces-
sary to retain power, showing no regard for the rule of law or the
prosperity of his country. His amoral style of leadership earned him
much international notoriety, but his anticolonial stance, along with
a veneer of constitutionalism, enabled him to retain support among
most other Southern African leaders. While no one could deny that
he had been a key figure in achieving Zimbabwean independence, the
way he then stayed in power for decades was at the cost of massive
damage to his country and its people.
Within Southern Africa, the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980
was widely seen as a major step forward in the regional struggle against
colonialism and apartheid. For Sam Nujoma, the leading figure in the
Namibian liberation struggle, Mugabe was a heroic liberation fig-
ure, one to look up to, but Nujoma came to power in Namibia in
1990 in a different context; while in power, he was not challenged as
Mugabe was and therefore did not engage in the same kind of oppres-
sive leadership. Born to a peasant family in the Ovamboland region
of what is now northern Namibia, Nujoma was not able to go beyond
secondary school, but emerged to play a central role in Namibia’s
liberation struggle (Nujoma 2001; Saunders 2003). After becoming
the founding president of SWAPO in 1960, he worked tirelessly for
the cause of Namibian independence, travelling the globe in support
of allies and assistance and galvanizing international aid for his cause.
When SWAPO launched its armed struggle in 1966, he became com-
mander of its armed wing, soon called the People’s Liberation Army
of Namibia (PLAN), so he played an active role both in diplomatic
activity and in the armed struggle itself. When the independence plan
agreed with the international community was finally about to be
implemented on April 1, 1989, he sent PLAN fighters across the bor-
der into northern Namibia, then still occupied by South Africa, where
over 300 people were slaughtered (Baines 2014, Chapter 7). Within
SWAPO such a culture of respect for his leadership had developed
that he was not criticized for this gross blunder, and after decades of
struggle, he became the first president of an independent Namibia on
the day that country achieved independence in March 1990.
Though, as president, he never unleashed state violence on the
scale that Mugabe did, Nujoma had also proved a ruthless leader
during the years of struggle, in which he saw those who presented
alternative views or took other courses of action as enemies or “coun-
ter-revolutionaries” (cf. especially Nujoma 2001, passim). Under his
leadership of SWAPO in exile, massive human rights violations took
place, first in Zambia in the mid-1970s and then in Angola in the
early 1980s. At Lubango in southern Angola, SWAPO imprisoned
thousands of its own members in dungeons, accusing them, in most
cases falsely, of spying on behalf of South Africa. Many died (cf.
Saul and Leys 2003). When attempts were made to “break the wall
of silence” about these atrocities in the years after independence,
Nujoma, by then president, refused to listen or take action and
instead launched a public campaign against those who called for an
investigation. He did not retire as president of the country after two
terms, as required by the Namibian constitution, but had the con-
stitution amended by the National Assembly—on the pretext that
he had first been elected president before independence—to allow
for him to serve a third term. After he stepped down as president
in 2005, he remained president of SWAPO for another two years
and continued to exert political influence, having ensured that his
successor as president of the country was a close ally. After retiring
as SWAPO president, he continued to be respected as the “father of
the nation.” Though SWAPO was even more politically dominant in
Namibia than the ANC in South Africa, Nujoma retained the fear
of opposition he had shown during the decades of exile and encour-
aged a culture of secrecy within his party, along with the idea that
SWAPO was destined to rule forever. Any challenge to its dominant
position was unacceptable and should be met by any means necessary.
When a new party emerged as a break-away from SWAPO in 2009,
SWAPO used violence and hate speech against it in the run-up to the
parliamentary and presidential elections, denying it the right to cam-
paign freely, for SWAPO declared that in certain areas nobody else
was entitled to campaign. Though Nujoma spoke of his attachment
to the Namibian constitution and its values of liberal democracy and
nonracialism, he was given to outbursts in which he revealed himself
as bigoted and racist (Melber 2007). Under his leadership, however,
and that of his successor, the country prospered and there was noth-
ing like the outflow of people from Zimbabwe.
How different from Mugabe and Nujoma were the qualities of

leadership shown by Mandela. He had, of course, shown many of
these qualities long before he became president in 1994. Already a
key figure in African nationalist politics in the 1950s, first as the chief
volunteer in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and then when he and oth-
ers were put on trial for treason by the apartheid government, he had
become the first commander-in-chief of the newly formed Umkhonto
we Sizwe (MK), later to become the armed wing of the ANC, in
1961. Instead of leading an armed struggle from exile, however, he
was arrested in 1962 soon after returning from an overseas visit on
which he received military training, and from then he languished
in apartheid jails. It was in those jails that he became recognized
as South Africa’s most famous political prisoner, and he gradually
became an iconic figure, symbolically representing apartheid oppres-
sion. On Robben Island and then in Pollsmoor prison on the main-
land, he succeeded in winning even some of his warders to his cause
(Brand 2014). It was as a prisoner in Pollsmoor that in the mid-1980s
he struck out on his own, not even taking his closest colleagues into
his confidence, and began the process of initiating talks with the gov-
ernment, a process that finally led to his release in February 1990 and
the beginning of the process of negotiation. In the four years before
the first democratic election was held in April 1994, he retained the
support of his followers while making major concessions to achieve a
settlement. At the same time, he showed great political courage. To
give just one example, three weeks after his release from jail, he flew
to Durban, where his followers were calling for arms to be given them
to fight. He told them bluntly to “Take your guns, your knives, and
your pangs, and throw them into the sea!” (Maharaj and Kathrada
2006, 242). He was able not only to carry his followers with him
through the negotiations that followed but increasingly won support
even among those who had been his political opponents as a leader
with vision and integrity.
When Mandela was sworn in as president in May 1994, it was in
a country facing enormous problems and only emerging slowly from
a very conflicted and violent past. He had to be concerned above all
with producing stability, but he went out of his way to encourage a
new form of nation building, now for the first time an inclusive one.
In his reconciliatory approach, he showed the leadership qualities of
empathy and inclusiveness. His leadership was not beyond fault, for
it was on occasion patriarchal and authoritarian, but as a charismatic
figure he won over whites critical of the advent of an ANC govern-
ment and became the symbol of South Africa’s relatively peaceful
transition to democracy and of its “miraculous” move from apart-

heid to democracy. He was able to forge a broad base of support for
the new order, persuading such disparate and disconnected groups as
white capitalists and communists that under his leadership the coun-
try had its best chance to avoid slipping into anarchy and chaos. And
he showed flexibility in the face of new realities, ditching ideas of
nationalization in the early 1990s and accepting the need for a new
macroeconomic strategy to bring about economic stability. He grace-
fully accepted court decisions that went against his government and
embraced the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
when his own movement, the ANC, was critical of them.
How to explain his remarkable leadership? The decades Mandela
had spent in prison had not only given him time to think of how
to achieve a negotiated settlement, but had kept him away from the
intrigues and infighting that seem to be an inevitable part of any exile
politics. In prison he was able to keep alive, through force of person-
ality, a spirit of human compassion and tolerance that he might not
have been able to maintain had he been active in the armed struggle.
Having been removed from such power struggles within the libera-
tion movement, he could emerge from jail as a unifier within the
ANC, as well as a man free of bitterness and antagonism to his former
enemies. Though the source of his considerable wealth—on his death
in December 2013 he left an estate worth some R40 million—re-
mains unclear, he was able to project himself as free of any corruption
or desire to benefit personally from the spoils of office. No one could
question the sacrifices he had made in the interests of his people or
the skill he had shown in forging a new democratic South Africa.
His two main successors as president turned out to be flawed char-
acters, not only lacking his leadership qualities but acting in ways that
helped to undermine the legacy that Mandela had left. By choos-
ing Thabo Mbeki to be his deputy president in 1994, Mandela in
effect anointed him as his successor, but became aware of at least
some of his faults, advising him, when he passed on the baton of the
ANC presidency, to seek advice and act with caution (e.g., Pottinger
2008, Part I). Son of an ANC elder imprisoned with Mandela on
Robben Island, Mbeki had had a distinguished career in exile, not
in the armed struggle—though he briefly received military training
in Russia, he was not actively involved with MK—but in the diplo-
matic service of the ANC. In that capacity he had taken the lead in
meeting with white South Africans in the late 1980s, in England,
Zambia, Senegal, and elsewhere (Gevisser 2010). He was able to proj-
ect himself as an amiable, pipe-smoking Anglophile who, when he
met a group of Afrikaners in Dakar, Senegal, in 1987, won them over

by introducing himself as an Afrikaner (e.g., Esterhuyse 2013).
After 1994 Mandela allowed Mbeki to become a de facto prime
minister, in effect virtually running the country while Mandela
mainly acted as a global icon on the world stage. When the country’s
final constitution was agreed in May 1996, Mbeki made his greatest
speech, beginning “I am an African” (Mbeki 1998), suggesting a
vision of an inclusive nationalism, and when he took over as president
of the country in 1999, he proved himself even more of a visionary
in regard to Africa as a whole than Mandela had been. Like Mandela,
Mbeki hoped to promote a new African renaissance (Gumede 2007,
62ff), to disprove negative perceptions of Africa in the global com-
munity, and to win for Africa what he regarded as its rightful place
in world affairs. He was successful in getting the Organization of
African Unity to transform itself into the African Union and was
responsible for the birth of the New Economic Program for African
Development and the African Peer Review Mechanism to promote
good governance. Believing in “African solutions to Africa’s prob-
lems,” he mediated successfully in the Democratic Republic of Congo
and elsewhere. But though he promoted Africa on the global stage,
he also showed a strong anti-Western sentiment and was a techno-
cratic leader who lacked charisma and Mandela’s common touch. Not
comfortable in his role as leader of his own country, he took a leading
role in advocating and supporting a disastrous program of acquiring
new arms for South Africa at great cost, and he long denied that HIV
caused AIDS. Not only did he believe in crackpot theories about the
cause of AIDS, but he refused to support the distribution of antiret-
rovirals to those with AIDS,and, therefore, was indirectly respon-
sible for what a Harvard study estimated at 300,000 deaths (Boseley
2008). With less and less support, even within his own movement,
he became a more and more remote leader, until he was finally told
by the ANC, in what was a de facto coup, that he must step down as
president of the country.
Under Mbeki, the government became more authoritarian and
instead of pursuing Mandela’s nation-building approach, he left a
legacy of severe internal divisions. But his chief rival, who, after a
brief interlude, succeeded him as president, was an even more flawed
character. With little education—he learned to read from another
prisoner on Robben Island—Zuma had become active in the ANC’s
armed struggle in exile, working in MK and rising to head the ANC’s
intelligence division in Lusaka, Zambia, from 1987 (Gordin 2008).
In that role he was closely associated with the ANC’s security section
known as Mbokodo, which became notorious for its harsh treatment

of dissidents. Zuma had then worked closely with Mbeki in the early
stages of the transition—the two men were the first to hold a for-
mal meeting with the South African National Intelligence Service in
Switzerland in September 1989—and when Mbeki became president
in 1999 he chose Zuma to be his deputy, probably out of loyalty
and not expecting him to succeed him. When it was revealed in a
court case that Zuma had received numerous payments for corrupt
purposes, Mbeki dismissed him as deputy president. Though sub-
sequently charged and acquitted of rape, Zuma managed to stage
a remarkable comeback, becoming president in 2009 after a string
of charges against him were dropped by the National Prosecuting
Agency on highly dubious grounds. By then the split with Mbeki had
led to the emergence of a new break-away party, the Congress of the
People (Southall and Daniel 2009), and further divisions in the ANC
followed, for in office Zuma showed not only that he had no vision
of how to take the country forward, but that his main concern was to
avoid seeing the charges against him reinstated. He, therefore, sur-
rounded himself with those whom he thought could best prevent that
from happening. Proud of his Zulu heritage and a polygamist, Zuma
allowed authoritarian tendencies and factionalism to increase. In early
2014 it became public knowledge that he had authorized the spend-
ing of a vast amount of state funds on his private residence in Nkandla
in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Reelected in May 2014, he certainly belongs to
Rotberg’s category of transactional leaders concerned merely with
managing affairs and holding on to power, with no vision of how to
meet the main challenges facing the country, those of poverty, unem-
ployment, and inequality.
Towards a Conclusion
This brief survey of some of the leading figures in liberation struggles
in Southern Africa who subsequently came to power has revealed
strikingly different styles of leadership before and after “liberation.”
Mugabe illustrates most clearly the liberator who became an oppres-
sor, using many of the same means to rule as those whom he had
fought against. The culture forged in the armed struggle, of the use
of repressive means to survive and to challenge an oppressive regime,
survived in the new order. Though shown in its most extreme form
in Zimbabwe, traces of this can be found in Namibia and even South
Africa as well. Mandela failed always to distinguish between the lib-
eration movement and the democratic state and he too saw the former
liberation movement as the legitimate source of power, though it was

left to Mbeki and Zuma to make this explicit, with Zuma going so far
as to say that the ANC would rule for ever. Influenced by ideas from
the Soviet Union and the South African Communist Party, Mbeki
and Zuma both called for cadre deployment and democratic central-
ism as a means to ensure maximum discipline and loyalty. So attitudes
and approaches from the armed struggle often shaped the new politi-
cal leaders’ understanding of politics and their idea of how to wield
power.
Not surprisingly, close links remained between the former libera-
tion movements in the new era when they were in power. Mugabe
saw Mandela, after his release, as a competing figure within SADC,
and relations between the two men were often strained. Mbeki and,
even more so, Zuma developed close ties to Mugabe. This “liber-
ation solidarity” showed a lack of leadership, for they should have
made clear their rejection of the way in which Mugabe had trampled
on the rule of law in his country. As critics of the liberation move-
ments in power emerged, as a result of disillusionment with what
some saw as a betrayal of the struggle and others as a failure to offer
good governance, they were often discredited as part of an imperial-
ist conspiracy to sabotage national independence. This again showed
a failure of leadership, an inability to rise above short-term interests
and offer a bold vision of where these countries should go and how
they should tackle their most important problems. We can, therefore,
perhaps conclude from the Southern African case that the influence
of liberation struggles on postliberation leadership has, on the whole,
not been beneficial.
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Conflicting Memories, London: Bloomsbury, 2014.
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February 22, 2009, http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Insight
/Article.aspx?id=944076.
Boseley, Sarah, “Mbeki Aids Denial ‘Caused 300,000 Deaths,’ ” The
Guardian, November 26, 2008.
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2014.
Couper, S. E., “An Embarrassment to the Congresses?: The Silencing of
Chief Albert Luthuli and the Production of ANC History,” Journal of
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———, The Lusaka Years. The ANC in Exile in Zambia, Auckland Park:
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.na/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=1503.
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Liberation in Namibia. Political Culture Since Independence, Uppsala:
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Changes for Whom?, Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute, 2007, p.
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Chapter 8
Leadership for Democracy and Peace:

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Legacy as a
Pan-African Intellectual*
Phillip Luke Sinitiere
“
D r. Du Bois’s more than 70 years of struggle, the great body of his
writings, speeches and diverse pronouncements, the very example of
his consistently active involvement,” David Graham Du Bois wrote in
the journal Black Scholar in 1978, “places him in direct confrontation
with the objectives of the diabolical oligarchy that rules the United
States today.” David Graham Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois’s stepson—
whose mother Shirley Graham became Du Bois’s second spouse in
1951—felt troubled about his stepfather’s legacy as he pondered the
relationship between the US ruling class and the black populations
of America and Africa at the end of the 1970s. At the time of his
Black Scholar essay, David Graham Du Bois resided in Cairo, and
the contemporary question of apartheid in South Africa animated
his critique. With this in mind, Graham Du Bois issued a six-point
proposal to ensure the enactment of his stepfather’s legacy: a com-
mitment to scientific, research-based facts; a joy in work and occu-
pation; a wide love for all of humanity; an abiding devotion to the
betterment of black people; the eradication of racialized capitalism,
colonialism, and imperialism; and a purposeful support of social-
ism and communism. “Those of us upon whom the mantle of Du
Bois has fallen . . . must . . . confront and expose the distorters of the
Du Bois legacy,” Graham Du Bois concluded his essay, “That legacy
must be spread among our youth and made the subject of study and
emulation. It must spread throughout Africa and the world of colored
peoples.” Offering a distinct Pan-African perspective on W. E. B. Du
Bois’s scholarship and political orientation, Graham Du Bois’s con-
cern over his stepfather’s legacy illustrates the contested terrain over
154 PHILLIP LUK E SINIT IERE
which Du Bois’s memory hovered toward the end of the twentieth

century. Since Du Bois was a leader in activism and scholarship dur-
ing his 95 years of life—particularly Pan-African work that sought to
link and liberate the lives of black people across the globe—Graham
Du Bois was possessed of the conviction that his stepfather’s work
could still speak to contemporary global concerns as the twentieth
century marched forward. Strikingly, many of the Pan-African issues
on which W. E. B. Du Bois wrote—and which David Graham Du
Bois addressed in Black Scholar—remain vital for Africans and black
Americans in the twenty-first century. Among the most pertinent
are formulations of leadership in today’s neoliberal global economy,
coupled with capitalism’s captivating temptations and promises, and
monetized pressures to focus solely on the bottom line, and its rela-
tionship to democracy and peace.1
Focused on contemporary concerns surrounding African leader-
ship, democracy, and peace, the aim of this chapter is not to chronicle
Du Bois’s Pan-African thought—a task ably documented by scholars
already, particularly his biographers—but rather to account for Du
Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual in the five decades since
his death in Ghana on August 27, 1963. Monumental global changes
during the past half century for peoples of color have demanded swift
and strategic responses, from postcolonial concerns to post–cold war
political maneuverings. In the process, various political, activist, and
scholarly constituencies drew from Du Bois’s work to take advantage
of timely opportunities and forge solutions to a whole host of diffi-
cult political and economic problems. Drawing on studies devoted to
W. E. B. Du Bois and historical memory, this chapter explains the
development of Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual and
leader in light of his twilight years between the 1930s and the 1960s,
accenting his memorialization and commemoration as a crusader
devoted to democracy and peace.
Scholarship on Du Bois and historical memory currently cuts in two
directions. One body of work examines how Du Bois himself used his-
torical memory to archive and express a black past at once inspirational
and political. Art historian Amy Helene Kirschke has written most
compellingly on Du Bois’s use of historical memory. In Art in Crisis:
W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African American Identity and
Memory, Kirschke (2007) persuasively zeroes in on Du Bois’s 25-year
tenure as editor of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People’s (NAACP) magazine to explain how he employed
a “visual vocabulary” in the service of racial and economic justice.
Not only did Du Bois target lynching in his visual protests in The
LE A D ERSHIP FOR D EMOCR ACY AND PE AC E 155
Crisis, but also Kirschke demonstrates how the powerful black edi-
tor routinely addressed Africa through artistic imaginings. Although
Du Bois’s depictions of Africa in The Crisis sometimes reflected a
naïve romanticism of the continent, Kirschke argues that the eminent
scholar “hoped the power of images that represented moral, intel-
lectual, and emotional symbols of Africa would . . . [enhance] [African
Americans’] personal connection with Africa and their interest in the
events and circumstances relevant to African life.” The vitality of cur-
rent scholarship on Du Bois’s use of historical memory exhibits his
concerns about black freedom in both a national and distinctly Pan-
African perspective.2
Other work on Du Bois and historical memory focuses on Du Bois’s
political and intellectual legacy and how he is (or is not) commemo-
rated and memorialized. It is to this second stream of scholarship that
this chapter is most specifically oriented. The leading study of Du Bois
in historical memory is Amy Bass’s Those about Him Remained Silent:
The Fight over W. E. B. Du Bois (2009). Bass’s engaging book begins
in the late 1960s when for many in Du Bois’s hometown of Great
Barrington, Massachusetts, the radicalized political orientation of its
most famous black son divided the town over efforts to commemorate
his legacy. Du Bois’s choice to join the Communist Party in 1961 was
the unforgivable sin. Bass carefully shows how op-eds and letters to
the editor in local Great Barrington newspapers reflected typical cold
war ideological combat. Opposition expressed in racially coded lan-
guage manifested fears and anxieties swirling about militant aspects
of the civil rights movement by the late 1960s with movements such
as Black Power in full bloom. Despite stiff resistance, some of it likely
instigated through the Boston, Massachusetts, office of the FBI, in
1969 a biracial memorial committee succeeded in hosting an event to
honor Du Bois. The contest over Du Bois’s legacy would continue to
divide friends and foes alike in Great Barrington, Bass writes, since
many refused to remember this towering African American intellec-
tual apart from his support of communism and socialism. Uneasiness
enveloped western Massachusetts well into the twenty-first century
when controversy erupted in 2004 over naming an elementary school
in Du Bois’s honor. Although a localized study centered on west-
ern Massachusetts, Bass’s concentration on the politics of memory—
especially when we recall David Graham Du Bois’s comments that
opened this chapter—nevertheless illustrates universal themes have
often been at the center of the bitter contests over Du Bois’s legacy
during the half-century since his death. As Bass indicates, the “bat-
tle” over Du Bois rages today.3
Building on Bass’s focus of how various constituencies remember

and commemorate Du Bois shows that contemporary questions and
theories about leadership, while concerned with the present execu-
tion of statecraft, are always built on historical examples. In this way,
historical memory is one variable in the complex calculus of modern
leadership. In what follows, this chapter chronicles Shirley Graham
Du Bois’s role in shaping her late spouse’s Pan-African future. It also
investigates historian Herbert Aptheker’s role in capturing Du Bois’s
Pan-African intellectual legacy by editing Du Bois’s massive archive.
In addition, this chapter addresses Du Bois’s legacy by exploring the
use of his work in the Black Studies movement of the 1970s and
the antiapartheid activism of the 1980s. Finally, this chapter histo-
ricizes the growth and maturation of Du Bois scholarship over the
past several decades by offering reflections on two contemporary Du
Bois scholars—Reiland Rabaka and Gerald Horne—to underscore
how their work has cemented Du Bois’s uncontested legacy as a Pan-
African intellectual leader of global proportions.4
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Late Career: A Brief History

To set the scene for grasping how I interpret the significance of Du
Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual primarily in light of his late
career (ca. 1930s to 1960s), it is helpful that we quickly review Du
Bois’s closing decades.
Upon his resignation from the NAACP in 1934, W. E. B. Du
Bois entered the second half of his astonishing eight-decade career
as a scholar, intellectual, and activist. Aged 66 at the time, Du Bois
remained active for nearly three more decades. In 1934, he returned
to college teaching at Atlanta University, his occupational home for
the next ten years. While in Atlanta, Du Bois traveled across the globe
to places such as Germany, Russia, and Japan, and published impor-
tant studies like the Marxist-framed Black Reconstruction (1935)
and an autobiography Dusk of Dawn (1940). By the late 1940s—in
his seventies—Du Bois’s international perspective on global justice
found a home with Left organizations such as the Council on African
Affairs and the antinuclear Peace Information Center. The aging but
still insightful scholar even ran for the US Senate in 1950. Amidst the
cold war hysteria over Communism, Du Bois’s pointed critiques of
the deep collusions between capitalism, colonialism, and racism—in
short, the color line that enveloped the globe—raised the ire of
rabid anticommunists. As a result, Du Bois found himself arrested
for refusing to register as the representative of a foreign government.
Acquitted in November 1951, Du Bois’s experiences steeled a resolve

that focused on bringing a socialist solution to a world gripped in
the chaos of gross injustice, a message he committedly proclaimed
in numerous speeches throughout the 1950s. Since the State
Department seized Du Bois’s passport for most of that decade, Du
Bois’s stateside sequester limited his global travel but did not pre-
vent his socialist vision from impacting the world. Du Bois’s writ-
ings continued to make their way into the hands of hungry readers,
such as his autobiographical In Battle for Peace (1952), the summary
of his McCarthy persecution. During 1958 and 1959 with passport
in hand, Du Bois commenced another global excursion, traveling to
England, Sweden, and France. In Russia, Du Bois sojourned for five
months and, in a conversation with Nikita Khrushchev, persuaded
the premier to sponsor an Africa Institute. Continuing eastward, Du
Bois’s two-month stay in China included meetings with Mao Zedong
and the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. Thousands turned out to greet
Du Bois in February 1959 when he delivered a lecture in China the
day he turned 91.
While Africa had figured into Du Bois’s work for the entirety of
his life, during the second half of his career, African history, poli-
tics, culture, and economics—including published ruminations on
Africa’s future—occupied considerably more space in his intellec-
tual agenda. For example, three of Du Bois’s 11 books published
after 1935 focused specifically on Africa: Black Folk Then and Now
(1939), Color and Democracy (1945), and The World and Africa
(1947). Each text was a continuation of early career reflection on
the intersection of war, white supremacy, capitalism, and colonialism
such as his 1915 article “The African Roots of War.” Du Bois’s news-
paper columns throughout the 1940s and 1950s, particularly writ-
ings in Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, People’s Voice, National
Guardian, and Freedom both informed readers about contemporary
events in Africa and consistently advanced arguments for a postco-
lonial future. Similarly, Du Bois’s midcentury lecture tours featured
speeches that educated the masses about African affairs while prais-
ing developments in the direction of an independent Africa. For
example, a 1953 address in Los Angeles, “World Peace and Revolt
in Africa,” argued that black Americans, particularly the working
class, should devote themselves assiduously to the study of economics
in order to engage decolonization struggles in Africa. He suggested
that the outcome of anticolonial struggles in African nations would
serve as indexes of a future world peace. In addition to speeches,
organizations printed Du Bois’s speeches, further disseminating his
teachings about Africa. In 1960, for instance, the Afro-American

Heritage Association in Chicago distributed “Africa: In Battle against
Colonialism, Racialism, Imperialism.” After canvassing a brief history
of the African continent, Du Bois concluded this 12-page pamphlet
with a hopeful prophecy by noting “a strong trend toward United
African nationalism . . . [n]ew black nations are emerging daily, includ-
ing former colonies of Great Britain and France, with beginnings in
Belgium Congo, stirrings in the Portuguese colonies. It will be but a
few years before European colonialism supported by American capi-
tal will cease to control Africa. Thus the Colonialism which began
with the African slave trade will end with the Twentieth Century.”
Although Du Bois’s hopeful forecast for Africa’s economically inde-
pendent future did not pan out exactly how he envisioned it, the
fact that these observations remain relevant to twenty-first-century
African politics highlight both the integrity and power of his role as a
Pan-African intellectual leader for democracy and peace.5
In conjunction with these activities of a busy life, persistent pub-
lications, and active speaking schedule, two major developments
occurred in October 1961. On October 1, Du Bois penned a let-
ter to party leader Gus Hall, formally requesting membership in the
Communist Party of the United States. “I have been long and slow
in coming to this conclusion,” Du Bois wrote, “but at last my mind
is settled.” The same month he penned his membership letter, at the
invitation of Ghanaian leader and Du Bois’s student Kwame Nkrumah,
Du Bois and his second wife, Shirley Graham, departed for Ghana.
In Ghana, Du Bois continued work on a long-germinating project,
the Encyclopedia Africana, and welcomed a steady stream of guests
and disciples at his comfortable Accra abode. It was also in Ghana
where Du Bois visited the American Embassy to renew his passport.
Officials refused, citing anticommunist-inspired legal requirements
that no member of the Communist Party could have a US passport.
Deeply disappointed yet again with American hypocrisy but with
principled poise, Du Bois became a Ghanaian citizen. Du Bois spent
his remaining days under US surveillance. Despite a weakened con-
stitution, he continued to think and plan the Encyclopedia Africana.
Du Bois died in late August 1963, the day before Martin Luther King
proclaimed his iconic dream for America’s future in Washington, D
C. NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins announced Du Bois’s
death at the March on Washington; Wilkins praised Du Bois’s work
on behalf of racial justice, but reflecting a cold war anticommunism
lamented Du Bois’s increasingly radical late career turn. At Du Bois’s
state funeral in Ghana, mourners heard a number of eulogies as they
processed to his final resting place. The journalist William Branch

reported in Amsterdam News that as the ceremony concluded a tor-
rential rain pelted those present, a sign Africans took as a libation
from heaven in recognition of Du Bois’s life well lived.6
Marking a Legacy: The Genesis of W. E. B. Du Bois’s

Life after Death
Kwame Nhrumah, in this spirit of marking Du Bois’s transition to the
realm of the ancestors, dispatched a telegram on August 29, 1963, to
announce his intellectual father’s passing. The day after his death,
Nkrumah’s comments served to begin establishing Du Bois’s legacy
as a Pan-African intellectual. “We mourn the death of Dr. William
Edward Burghardt Du Bois a great son of Africa,” Nkrumah stated,
“He was an undaunted fighter for the emancipation of colonial and
oppressed people . . . he has been personally a real friend and father
to me.” Highlighting the political contributions of Du Bois and his
personal relationship with the distinguished scholar, Nkrumah’s clos-
ing comments portended Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellec-
tual leader. “May he live in our memory not only as [a] distinguished
scholar,” Nkrumah stated, “but as a great African patriot. Dr. Du
Bois is a phenomenon may he rest in peace.”7
What Kwame Nkrumah began, Du Bois’s second wife and widow
Shirley Graham Du Bois continued with tremendous energy. The
daughter of a Baptist minister, in the 1920s and 1930s Graham
Du Bois became an author, musician, and playwright. She traveled
internationally and sought to use art as a vehicle for political protest.
Graham Du Bois also worked for the Works Progress Administration
during the New Deal era and later the NAACP during the Second
World War. In time, she became acquainted with activists in progres-
sive circles on the political left, gradually adopting a Pan-African per-
spective while at times advocating a black nationalist position. Owing
in part to her radical politics and to her continued residence in Africa
following W. E. B. Du Bois’s death in 1963, Shirley Graham Du
Bois’s comments and publications about her late spouse’s historical
significance worked to establish his legacy as a Pan-African intellec-
tual leader.8
A special issue of the radical magazine Freedomways devoted to
W. E. B. Du Bois in 1965 illustrates how Graham Du Bois sought
to create her late spouse’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual. A
longtime associate of James and Esther Cooper Jackson, editors of
Freedomways, Graham Du Bois assisted her comrades and offered a
decisive editorial hand in the early years of the magazine’s tenure.

Early on, the Jacksons consulted with W. E. B. Du Bois before the
launch of the magazine, which remained a leading progressive pub-
lication during the 1960s and 1970s and well after. The Du Bois’s
involvement was central to the start and substance of the magazine.
In fact, Freedomways staff and writers held a social at the Du Bois’s
home in Brooklyn upon the publication of the first issue in 1961.
“We toasted the first issue with champagne as we read from the first
editorial,” Esther Cooper Jackson recalled, “which pronounced that
we were going to struggle to see that this magazine continued. It was
an inspiring evening.”9
In the commemorative Du Bois issue, Graham Du Bois’s com-
ments spoke not only to the international perspective Freedomways
adopted, but also reflected her attempt to secure Du Bois’s Pan-
African intellectual legacy. She wrote:
For W. E. B. Du Bois there must be no idle mourning. He lives in

greater abundance than ever before. He lives on both sides of the
Atlantic . . . In Africa they pass on the words of “Our Father,” some-
times “The Oldest Freedom Fighter,” as Pan-Africanism unfolds over
the vast continent, and his valiant, noble son, Kwame Nkrumah,
steadily, undaunted, presses forward, leading Africa ever nearer to
strong, united, continentinenal oneness!10
Graham Du Bois, in the space of only a few words, referenced Du

Bois’s reception within the larger context of the African diaspora
(“He lives on both sides of the Atlantic”) while she also pinpointed
that she saw one of Du Bois’s living Pan-African legacies in the person
of Kwame Nkrumah. Connecting her comments to the descriptors
“He lives” also suggests Graham Du Bois’s conscious attempt to carve
out Du Bois’s Pan-African legacy as an intellectual and as a leader.
Two additional publications further illustrate Graham Du Bois’s
attempt to present Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual. In a
1971 memoir of her marriage to and life with Du Bois titled His Day
iIs Marching On, Graham Du Bois recalled the couple’s residence in
Brooklyn during the 1950s. When he was not traveling on lecture
tours, Du Bois taught classes at the Jefferson School in New York
City. He offered courses on contemporary African politics and impe-
rialism and delivered Negro History Week lectures on similar topics.
About the Jefferson School classes of this period, Graham Du Bois
recalled, “His lectures were on African and Afro-America history. In
his classes were many Africans who were studying at various colleges
in the city. At the end of each term, we invited the classes for an
evening in our home. Class members were told they could bring any
other African students who could come.” While Graham Du Bois did
not mention specific names, she not so subtly connected Du Bois’s
Jefferson School lectures to the contemporary moment of African lib-
eration. “During recent years I have met more than one now highly
placed African official who told me how much he appreciated such
evenings in our Brooklyn home,” she commented.11
The final three chapters of Graham Du Bois’s memoir on Du Bois
focused on Africa. She recalled the couple’s personal and political
relationship with Kwame Nkrumah and his family. She wrote of their
home in Accra and the students and dignitaries with whom they shared
conversations and meals. Graham Du Bois wrote glowingly of Du
Bois’s honorary doctorate from the University of Ghana conferred on
February 23, 1963, the day he turned 95. Particularly relevant in His
Day Is Marching On are the comments Graham Du Bois remembered
Africans making to her accomplished spouse. At an intimate dinner
following Nkrumah’s inaugural ceremonies in July 1960, the new
president spoke of his plans for the country and pitched to Du Bois
the idea of living in Ghana to work on the scholar’s long-proposed
Encyclopedia Africana. Graham Du Bois recalled Nkruma’s words to
her husband. “You, Doctor, inculcated into our souls the necessity of
Pan-Africa—a united Africa.” Similarly, Graham Du Bois wrote of an
official invitation the couple received to attend the inauguration in
November 1960 of Nnamdi Azikiwe as both Governor-General and
Commander-in-Chief of the Federation of Nigeria. In a short conver-
sation during inaugural festivities, Azikiwe told Du Bois: “We had
to stop and welcome you and your wife to our land—which is your
land. After all the big doings are over, we’ll have some long talks. You
are our Father. Your sons in Africa cherish your advice.” Three years
later in August 1963, Algerian leader Ben Bella paid Du Bois a visit:
“You are the Father of all New Africa,” he told the noted scholar only
weeks before his death. In Graham Du Bois’s retelling of the story,
Du Bois’s twilight sojourn to Africa gifted the noted intellectual with
the Pan-African appreciation, notoriety, and recognition denied him
in the United States of the 1950s and early 1960s. In this sense, for
both Du Bois and Graham Du Bois, Africa was home.12
In her memoir, Graham Du Bois recalled that as Du Bois put his
affairs in order during the waning summer days of 1963—only a short
time before his death—the couple spoke of Herbert Aptheker’s edit-
ing of his massive archive. Graham Du Bois also persuaded her spouse
to publish a selection of his poems that she prepared for publication
with the newly formed University of Ghana Press. Fittingly, Nkrumah

penned the Foreword. In the Introduction, Graham Du Bois
expressed excitement for a new generation of independent Africans
who might find inspiration from Du Bois’s poetry. “Night fell for
him,” Graham Du Bois concluded her Introduction, “But his pursuit
of Truth remains with us—unchanged.” Published in 1964, the slim
volume of poems serves as another example of Graham Du Bois’s
work to preserve her late husband’s legacy as a Pan-African intellec-
tual and leader.13
Shirley Graham Du Bois’s final publication, W. E. B. Du Bois: A
Pictorial Biography stands as a very self-conscious project to continue
framing her late spouse’s legacy. Published the year after Graham Du
Bois’s death in 1978 with Chicago’s Johnson Publishing Company—
the same corporate outfit associated with midcentury black magazines
Ebony and Jet—Graham Du Bois believed in chair John H. Johnson’s
work and his ability to assist in reaching a wide audience. In the
Foreword to his mother’s book, David Graham Du Bois alluded to
this very fact. “She felt strongly that a Johnson-published book on Dr.
Du Bois would ultimately find its way into far more Afro-American
homes than one done by any major, white owned publishing house,”
he commented, “This is what she passionately wanted.” The decision
to go with Johnson Publishing Company proved a perceptive choice
for Graham Du Bois to place her late spouse’s legacy in front of a
new generation of black Americans. Notable black historian Lerone
Bennett, Jr’s Introduction also worked to assist in the book’s popu-
larity, as well as the book’s way of attending to Du Bois’s legacy as a
Pan-African intellectual. “When he died at 10:40 on Tuesday night,
August 27, 1963, the Ghanaian Times printed a bold black head-
line: “THIS DAY A MIGHTY TREE HAS FALLEN IN AFRICA,”
Bennett began the Introduction, “This is a photographic essay on
one of the tallest trees of Africa and African-America.” While photos
of the Du Bois’s in Africa appear at the end of the book—including
images of inaugural ceremonies in the Federal Republic of Nigeria,
of dinner and fellowship with the Nkrumah family, and of Ben Bella
and Du Bois shaking hands—several pages of funeral shots conclude
the book. A final shot of Du Bois’s wreath-laden headstone visu-
ally marked Du Bois’s Pan-African legacy. Up until her final days,
Graham Du Bois believed in the power of art and images to make
political statements.14
If Shirley Graham Du Bois’s popular publications assisted in the
creation of her late spouse’s Pan-African intellectual legacy, then so
too did the extraordinary efforts of W. E. B. Du Bois’s close confidant
and comrade Herbert Aptheker. From the 1960s to the early 2000s,
Aptheker edited and published Du Bois’s massive archive. In addition,
the second half of the twentieth century witnessed Aptheker’s long-
standing affiliation with the Communist Party of the United States,
his role as editor of Masses and Mainstream and later Political Affairs,
along with his work at the American Institute for Marxist Studies and
his numerous publications as a historian of African American history.
Aptheker’s editorial accomplishment not only provided access to the
core of Du Bois’s Pan-African thought by making widely available his
published and unpublished writings, but it also ensured the future of
Du Bois’s Pan-African legacy as an intellectual and leader.
The Du Bois-Aptheker connection began in the early 1940s after
Du Bois responded to Aptheker’s review of his 1940 book Dusk of
Dawn. The two later shared office spaces at the NAACP during Du
Bois’s second stint with the association, and shortly after the Second
World War, Du Bois asked Aptheker to edit his massive correspon-
dence and published works. “I considered this charge to be sacred and
a great honor,” Aptheker gushed. The massive editorial project almost
got off the ground during Du Bois’s lifetime with both Arno Press
and Lippincott Press, but both publishing houses rescinded offers and
violated contracts—something Aptheker attributed to both his and
Du Bois’s radical politics. Aptheker contended that “I do not think
it was a coincidence that Lippincott went public on Wall Street just
before the Du Bois project was called off.” In 1973, the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst purchased the bulk of Du Bois’s archive
from Shirley Graham Du Bois, and subsequently Aptheker’s volumes
of Du Bois’s correspondence and other writings began to pour off
the presses. Under Aptheker’s careful editorial eye, Du Bois’s writ-
ings appeared with the University of Massachusetts Press, Kraus-
Thomson, and Monthly Review Press. While Aptheker’s work on Du
Bois covered the expanse of his 95 years, he often commented on Du
Bois’s later years as well as his legacy as a Pan-African intellectual. In
1997, Aptheker recalled that “W. E. B. Du Bois has filled my life—
first as a teacher, then as a guide, inspiration and father . . . Happily I
devoted much of my life to him and his work in scores of volumes. I
had the opportunity and honor of bringing forth his writings . . . Let
those who remain emulate Du Bois’ courage and persistence and
help realize his dream of a decent, equitable, and peaceful world.”
A 1998 lecture “Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois” at Berkeley’s Graduate
Theological Union, for example, featured a synopsis of Du Bois’s clos-
ing decades. Aptheker also insisted that Pan-Africanism constituted
an integral part of Du Bois’s intellectual and political legacy. “Africa
is a refrain in Du Bois’s life from its earliest moments until its end,
after ninety-five stirring and fruitful years,” wrote Aptheker in Pan-
African Biography. Published in 1987, Aptheker tasked contemporary
readers with preserving Du Bois’s Pan-Africa intellectual legacy by
supporting antiapartheid work in South Africa. “It is for those of
us who remain and who comprehend and cherish the legacy of Du
Bois,” Aptheker insisted, “to finish the great work he had begun and
so mightily advanced, in particular, to help bring to South Africa
and thus to advance immeasurably the prospects for a stable world
peace.” Aptheker’s efforts, perhaps more than any other scholar in
recent memory, assisted in the preservation of Du Bois’s Pan-African
intellectual legacy by making widely available Du Bois’s thoughts and
reflections on Africa that would continue to have far-reaching global
impacts.15
Both Graham Du Bois’s books and Herbert Aptheker’s volumes
appeared during important decades in the history of modern black
intellectual and political life, both in the United States and interna-
tionally, particularly in relation to the emerging legacy of Du Bois
as a Pan-African intellectual. An intellectually fertile and politically
complicated period in the wake of the US civil rights movement and
decolonization abroad, the decades of the 1970s and 1980s witnessed
continued student protests, unrest related to the Vietnam War, the
explosive struggles over Black Power, the vocal antiapartheid move-
ment, and the emergent discipline of Black Studies (also known as
African American Studies or Africana Studies). It is the latter two—
antiapartheid activism and the Black Studies movement—that are rel-
evant for the present discussion of Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African
intellectual leader.
Born from strident student activism in the 1960s, the Black
Studies movement that enveloped the 1970s drew part of its inspira-
tion not only from intersections with Black Power but also from Du
Bois’s scholarship, including published works on Africa. For example,
the eminent scholar of Africana Studies, James Turner, recalled that
books such as Du Bois’s The World and Africa constituted an inte-
gral part of his intellectual formation that led to his decades-long
academic work in Black Studies at Cornell University. Around the
same time, the renowned poet and Black Arts pioneer Sonia Sanchez
included Du Bois in courses she taught at San Francisco state, which
drew the attention of the FBI. Sanchez located the power of the
Black Studies movement in reading and discussing radical authors
such as Du Bois and Paul Robeson. “We resurrected people who had
been hidden,” Sanchez stated about her classes at San Francisco state.
Including both Du Bois and Robeson in curriculum suggests a dis-

tinct Pan-African perspective, thus illustrating another way Du Bois’s
Pan-African legacy affected Black Studies during the 1970s.16
Amidst the same flush of advocacy and activism, in 1978—in
recognition of Du Bois’s hundred and tenth birthday—dignitaries,
politicians, ambassadors, and civil rights activists collectively con-
demned apartheid by offering public testimony for the UN Special
Committee against Apartheid. Connecting specifically Du Bois’s
Pan-African leadership and intellectual legacy to the antiapartheid
struggle, speeches drew on Du Bois’s intellectual work, commitment
to peace, and international perspective to condemn racial oppres-
sion in South Africa. William H. Booth, president of the American
Committee on Africa, criticized those who had long questioned Du
Bois’s national loyalty to the United States, while in the same breath
he praised the late scholar’s ability to forge alliances between those
in the diaspora. “Too little has been said, heard or understood about
Du Bois’ work with African leaders in counselling them to seek closer
ties, one with another,” Booth stated, “Too little has been said, heard
or understood about Du Bois’ successful efforts at causing Caribbean
black people and American black people of a wide spectrum of politi-
cal beliefs to seek a unified front.” Oleg A. Troyanovsky, the Russian
ambassador to the United Nations, praised Du Bois’s anticolonial and
antiimperial “heritage” both in Africa and across the globe. “In com-
memorating the 110th anniversary of the eminent thinker and public
figure,” stated Troyanovsky, “we can say with full justification that
Du Bois’ cause lives on in the irreversible process of the final disin-
tegration of the colonial system.” The most pointed support of Du
Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual came from Andrew Young,
the US ambassador to the United Nations and former aide to Martin
Luther King, Jr. Young innovatively connected the argument from
Du Bois’s Marxist-influenced book Black Reconstruction to colonial-
ism abroad in Africa. Offering a particularly provocative, even politi-
cally radical statement, Young observed:
I think an understanding of Dr. Du Bois’ concept of reconstruction in

this country is also relevant for an understanding of neo-colonialism
in Africa and around the world. I would contend that the first book on
neo-colonialism or the recolonization of a people who had fought for
their liberation in a civil war and achieved it only to have it undermined
through very sophisticated, political and economic forces, occurred in
this country with Dr. Du Bois’ analysis of black reconstruction . . . His
calling attention to the presence and power of those political and
economic forces at work in this country is extremely relevant for those

same political and economic forces are at work all across the globe . . . as
we attempt to put an end to apartheid in Africa, we are also putting an
end to apartheid in America . . . What we are attempting to do is pro-
vide a pattern of liberation which not only includes political liberation
but which includes with its economic freedoms and independence to
secure the permanent freedom and self-determination of people is very
much in the tradition of Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois.
Young’s connection between black reconstruction in the United

States and Africa, along with Booth and Troyanovsky’s comments
about Du Bois’s anticolonial and antiimperialist outlook, points to
concrete applications of the accomplished intellectual’s Pan-African
legacy nearly 20 years after his death—and only a decade before the
cold war’s conclusion. Strikingly, the UN testimony from 1978 in
many ways presaged academic observations that were to come from
the ivory tower as black intellectuals worked to extend Du Bois’s Pan-
African legacy into the twenty-first century.17
Publishing a Pan-African Legacy: Contemporary

Du Bois Scholarship
W. E. B. Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual lives on in
contemporary scholarship devoted to Du Bois. Amongst the scores
of US-based scholars writing about Du Bois, particularly biogra-
phers who include Du Bois’s Pan-African work within the contours
of his long life, the work of Reiland Rabaka and Gerald Horne has
done the most to assiduously configure Du Bois as a Pan-African
intellectual. Rabaka’s reflections situate Du Bois’s intellectual work
firmly within the field of Africana Studies, whereas Horne’s scholar-
ship links Du Bois’s vision for global justice to his Left-wing political
orientation.18
Affiliated currently with the University of Colorado at Boulder,
Reiland Rabaka trained in the field of Africana Studies. With familial
roots in Texas, Rabaka first encountered Du Bois’s book The Souls of
Black Folk in primary and later in intermediate school as his teach-
ers and a librarian encouraged his pursuit of learning. Du Bois’s
lyrical writing and eloquent description of black life—particularly
in the context of the cultural and artistic production of the Harlem
Renaissance—eventually drew Rabaka into an academic career that
prized not only intellectual work but also social activism. Throughout
graduate school, Rabaka’s appreciation of Du Bois’s radical politics
persuaded him that framing analysis of the black scholar in terms of

“critical theory with practical intent” would most fruitfully engage
the tremendous range of Du Bois’s intellectual work.19
Rabaka’s scholarship on Du Bois focuses specifically on excavat-
ing a black radical political tradition while drawing from Du Bois’s
intellectual work and the philosophical architecture of critical social
theory. Four book-length publications (along with numerous articles)
address these matters: Du Bois’s Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and
the Reconstruction of Critical Social Theory (2008), Africana Critical
Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition, from W. E. B. Du
Bois and C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral (2009),
Against Epistemic Apartheid: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Disciplinary
Decadence of Sociology (2010), and W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems
of the Twenty-First Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory
(2012). The broad-ranging theoretical and disciplinary landscapes
across which Rabaka’s work moves in these books routinely explores
questions related to Pan-Africanism. In what follows, I will strand
these theoretical interventions together to demonstrate how Rabaka’s
work contributes to Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intellectual
leader.
Rabaka first contributes to promoting Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-
African intellectual by insisting that scholars and activists appreci-
ate the demonstrable fact that Du Bois’s work both transcends and
contributes to multiple disciplines. Put another way, the multidisci-
plinary nature of Africana Studies, the discipline in which Rabaka
resides, positions itself to read Du Bois’s work from many vantage
points and theoretical perspectives. Second and closely related to
Rabaka’s primary contention about Du Bois’s work across disciplines
is the necessary analysis of Du Bois’s full corpus of publications, espe-
cially his late career writings. Finally, Rabaka’s extension of Du Bois’s
Pan-African intellectual legacy is his connection of Du Bois’s work to
contemporary Pan-African political and economic concerns such as
reparations.
In Africana Critical Theory, Rabaka points out that the many dis-
ciplines to which Du Bois’s work contributed—such as gender studies,
political science, history, sociology, and literary studies—have gener-
ated much scholarly commentary. Building on these many contribu-
tions, Rabaka’s ambitious reading of Du Bois’s work seeks to explicate
its impact in a theoretical framework by connecting it to many fields
of inquiry. In other words, Rabaka suggests that Du Bois’s schol-
arship possesses an internal coherence insofar as a cross-disciplinary
frame informs reading and analysis. Rabaka’s scholarly concerns in
Africana Critical Theory contend specifically with Du Bois’s intel-

lectual legacy, in particular, “the ways he constructed, deconstructed,
and reconstructed theory and the aims, objectives, and outcomes of
his theoretical applications and discursive practices. [Du Bois] consis-
tently appropriated, revised and rejected disparate concepts, integrat-
ing what he perceived to be the most radical (and later revolutionary)
thought into his critical and socio-historical discourse.” For Rabaka,
Du Bois’s cross-disciplinary work “lends itself to critical social theory
because it provides an alternative model and methodology to chart
and affect progressive social change.” The progressive social change
to which Rabaka links Du Bois’s work ideally springs from the “trans-
disciplinary” nature of Africana Studies due to the complex nature of
political and economic challenges (e.g., wars, poverty, and neocolo-
nialism) that encircle the globe. Similarly, in W. E. B. Du Bois and the
Problems of the Twenty-First Century, Rabaka argues that Du Bois’s
work “cuts across several disciplines and, therefore, closes the chasm
between Africana Studies and critical theory, constantly demanding
that intellectuals not simply think deep thoughts, develop new theo-
ries, and theoretically support radical politics, but be and constantly
become political activists, social organizers and cultural workers.”20
The fact of Du Bois’s cross-disciplinary work leads to Rabaka’s
second contribution to keeping his Pan-African legacy alive: consider-
ation of Du Bois’s full corpus of work, especially his later career writ-
ings. Addressing a scholarly focus on Du Bois’s earliest publications in
W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century, Rabaka
strongly asserts that “Contemporary intellectuals and activists who
start and stop with Du Bois’s early work . . . do Du Bois a disservice
when they praise or criticize these works as though he never wrote
another word. In other words, and in essence, contemporary critics
customarily intellectually assassinate Du Bois at thirty-five, the age
at which he wrote his most famous work, The Souls of Black Folk. It
is as if he did not live another sixty years and die at the ripe old age
of ninety-five.” Rabaka resists a scholarly “quarantine” of the earliest
decades of Du Bois’s 80-year public presence as a leading intellectual,
scholar, and activist. Rabaka’s strongest argument on this score targets
the field of sociology that, he contends, reads Du Bois’s sociological
work too narrowly, thus engaging in “epistemic apartheid” against
Du Bois by practicing “intellectual segregation” and trafficking in
“conceptual incarceration.” For Rabaka, Du Bois understood colo-
nialism in terms that would become commonplace as this theoretical
convention gained academic ascendancy. Rabaka explains that some
of Du Bois’s late career publications such as Color and Democracy
(1945) represented a leading edge of Pan-African thought by offer-

ing a more nuanced and complex analysis of colonialism—in essence
advocating an intersectional understanding of both its economic dev-
astation and cultural carnage, all the while framing it in terms of
global historical significance.21
If the full scope of Du Bois’s work transgressed traditional dis-
ciplinary boundaries drawing on a host of theoretical approaches
to pursue social and economic justice, then Rabaka maintains that
Du Bois’s wide-ranging analysis of the colored peoples of the world
should and must speak to contemporary issues. Rabaka’s explora-
tion of the complex concerns surrounding reparations illustrates
the third and final way he extends Du Bois’s Pan-African intellec-
tual legacy. To make this claim, Rabaka turns specifically to Du
Bois’s 1947 Appeal to the World, in which he finds the basis for Du
Bois’s critical reparations theory. Composed during his second stint
at the NAACP between 1944 and 1948 at the dawn of the cold
war, Du Bois’s Appeal demanded the recognition of the humanity
of African descended peoples. Most consequential for Rabaka’s for-
mulation of Du Bois’s critical reparations theory is how Du Bois
explains contemporary injustices of Jim Crow in light of racialized
slavery’s legacy. Rabaka argues that Du Bois connected the techno-
logical and industrial prowess of the United States to “several cen-
turies of coerced African labor under enslavement.” Du Bois thus
implicated the American government in this racialized crime against
African humanity “because the United States and its citizens have
received economic and social benefits and privileges as a result of the
enslavement of Africans, and because even after their enslavement
African Americans’ human, civil, social, political, and economic
rights continue to be violated.” Despite its mature argumentation,
Rabaka points out that Du Bois’s critical reparations theory lacks
teeth because it failed to address compensation. In this way, Rabaka
fashions Du Bois’s critical reparations analysis as part of his Pan-
African intellectual leadership legacy because it serves as a compel-
ling “model and map for our liberation theory and praxis.”22
While Rabaka’s academic labor in sustaining Du Bois’s Pan-African
intellectual legacy offers sophisticated, cross-disciplinary theoretical
proposals useful for contemporary concerns, Gerald Horne’s contri-
bution to the maintenance of Du Bois’s Pan-African intellectual heri-
tage persuasively contends that Du Bois’s work—particularly that of
his latter decades from the 1940s to the 1960s—is only comprehensi-
ble when considered in a distinct international perspective. In Horne’s
view, Du Bois’s Pan-African orientation yielded an extraordinarily
rich analysis of the color line’s global reach. In turn, through expan-
sive archival documentation, Horne effectively locates Du Bois’s radi-
cal political commitments in his socialist and communist solutions to
the color line’s diabolical impact.
In contrast to Rabaka, Horne’s first encounter with Du Bois
occurred by reading Black Reconstruction and The World and Africa,
along with In Battle for Peace and the posthumous Autobiography.
Horne recalls that these works solidified his emerging Left political
commitments. Speaking of The World and Africa and In Battle for
Peace, Horne stated that “both [books] were catalytic in helping me
to understand the impact of the international situation on the plight
and/or progress of black Americans in particular, and the concomi-
tant necessity for black American leaders and intellectuals to engage
forcefully on the global stage as a pressure point here on the North
American mainland.” Originally from Saint Louis, Missouri, and
currently the Moores Professor of African American Studies at the
University of Houston, Horne’s working-class upbringing coupled
with an Ivy League education at Princeton and Columbia and legal
training at Berkeley resulted in a rigorous, even obsessive commit-
ment to careful archival research. Horne’s work as a journalist around
the world and devoted antiapartheid activist in the 1980s while presi-
dent of the National Conference of Black Lawyers oriented him to the
necessity of a Pan-African analytical frame of reference and an equally
vigorous vision of black history framed in international perspective.
Horne’s global perspective works in “trying to break free from the
manacles of so-called ‘American exceptionalism,’ which tends to see
the United States as an island unto itself and totally unique and doesn’t
take into account the global currents that have shaped this nation
inevitably and inexorably.” For Horne, decentering a US-centric bias
is integral to effective global action. “I think we need to de-center
the idea of U. S. sovereignty,” he emphasizes, “because our progress
has come when U. S. sovereignty has been circumscribed, and I think
that even though we should always welcome allies within the four
corners of the United States, we shouldn’t limit our allies to the four
corners of the United States. I think that would be a grave mistake.”
Horne contends that Pan-African alliances are both historically sig-
nificant and politically powerful: “As well, I think—particularly in
terms of the destiny of Africans in North America—our destiny has
also been shaped indelibly by global alliances.” Horne’s three-decade
exploration of Du Bois’s Pan-African legacy has culminated in sev-
eral notable publications: Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the
Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963 (1986), W. E. B.
Du Bois: An Encyclopedia (2001), and W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography

(2009).23
Horne’s Du Bois Encyclopedia contains entries on his late career
publications, the organizations with which Du Bois affiliated during
his closing decades such as the Council on African Affairs, as well
as the diverse cast of individuals with whom his life intersected. The
Encyclopedia’s international dimension is particularly strong, thus
working to extend the life of Du Bois’s Pan-African intellectual leg-
acy. “There are many legacies of Du Bois,” Horne comments in the
Introduction, “but, conceivably, the most fecund is his international-
ism.” Similarly, Horne’s 2009 Du Bois biography accents Du Bois’s
twilight years to show that the accomplished scholar was an unfortu-
nate casualty of America’s decision to rescind Jim Crow—not in the
interest of justice, but to save face internationally when enemies of the
United States spotlighted the contradictions of trumpeting democ-
racy abroad while denying it at home. “In a perverse irony,” Horne
writes, “Du Bois was unable to reap the harvest to which he had
contributed so much, as he died before the passage in Washington
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
Far beyond any legislative success on the civil rights front, Horne also
insists Du Bois’s legacy resides in an expansive Pan-Africanism that
attempted to forge ties of solidarity between African peoples through
the production of scholarship, the work of activism, and the organiza-
tion of meetings, conferences, and political work.24
However, it is in Horne’s first book on Du Bois that he makes the
most forceful claims about Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intel-
lectual devoted to democracy and peace. Orienting his study to the
last two decades of Du Bois’s distinguished life, Horne zeroes in
on some of the aging scholar’s most important international activi-
ties. Horne points out that Du Bois’s convictions about peace and
democracy emanated from a multilevel understanding of racism’s
deep connection to colonialism. Both worked “as a crosscut saw that
bled both Black and white.” Horne writes that Du Bois “felt that
the enormous profits to be gained in the colonized world inevitably
induced competition amongst Western nations for their subjugation
of these peoples, resulting in war and slaughter of Asians, Africans,
and North Americans.” Du Bois’s critical perspectives on such global
affairs inspired a seemingly indefatigueable commitment to the lib-
eration of African peoples seen most clearly with his work for the
Council on African Affairs. Whether he was raising money, writing
newspaper columns, or teaching about African history and the con-
tinent’s contemporary scene, Horne perceptively points out that a
Pan-African perspective drove his internationally framed intellectual

work with regard to places like Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.
Africans responded with unflinching support for Du Bois’s opinions,
writing letters and sending messages of support. Du Bois was vital
to an independent Africa, as his admirers understood. In addition,
Africa was vital to Du Bois; it not only marked part of his identity,
but Du Bois’s Pan-African perspective knew world history would play
out on the continent in decisive ways. As Horne’s Black and Red
painstakingly details, Du Bois’s Pan-African intellectual work and
leadership at midcentury possessed a prescient edge that continues
to yield critical insight into Africa’s role in the twenty-first-century
global affairs.25
In the half century since his death, countless constituencies have
worked to preserve W. E. B. Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African intel-
lectual. Beginning with Du Bois’s comrade Kwame Nkrumah fol-
lowed by his second wife Shirley Graham Du Bois, who established
the foundation of Du Bois’s Pan-African legacy, in many ways Du
Bois’s final resting place in Africa has been at the center of scholarly
reflection and popular memory of the distinguished black intellec-
tual—particularly in relation to the anticommunist political situation
in the United States that in part prompted Du Bois’s pilgrimage to
Ghana. Whether in relation to the rise of Black Studies programs,
ambassadorial gestures in support of apartheid’s end, or the produc-
tion of theoretically grounded, historically framed scholarship on Du
Bois, the noted black scholar’s Pan-African intellectual legacy remains
as vibrant as ever on either side of the Atlantic. In Accra, for exam-
ple, the W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture,
established in 1986, preserves Du Bois’s legacy on the continent. Yet,
as Jonathan Scott Holloway’s 2013 memoir reveals, the physical, even
spiritual, space Du Bois occupies in Ghana calls Americans of African
descent to pilgrimage to Du Bois’s final resting place. Such trans-
atlantic intersections result in persistently pondering the historical,
cultural, and political meaning of Du Bois’s legacy as a Pan-African
intellectual. It is in this way that Du Bois’s “life after death” remains
vital to contemporary leadership for democracy and peace. 26
Notes
*
The author thanks Baba Jallow for the invitation to contribute to this vol-
ume and for his encouraging comments throughout the course of the proj-
ect. Special thanks also goes to Lindsey Swindall for helpful feedback on an
earlier draft of this chapter.
1. Du Bois, “The DuBois Legacy under Attack,” The Black Scholar, Vol.
9. No. 5 (1978), p. 2–12. On David Graham Du Bois’s international
perspective, see Feldman, “Towards an Afro-Arab Diasporic Culture:
The Translational Practices of David Graham Du Bois,” ALIF: Journal
of Comparative Poetics, Vol. 31 (2011), p. 152–172.
2. Kirschke, Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for African
American Identity and Memory, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press (2007), p. 131–166. Kirschke expands her work in “Art in Crisis
during the Du Bois Years,” in Kirschke and Sinitiere (Eds.), Protest
and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and American History,
Columbia: University of Missouri Press (2014), p. 49–117. On African
American history and memory, see also Blight, “W. E. B. Du Bois and
the Struggle for American Historical Memory,” in Fabre and O’Meally
(Eds.), History and Memory in African-American Culture, New York:
Oxford University Press (1994), 45–71.
3. Bass, Those about Him Remained Silent: The Fight over W. E. B. Du
Bois, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (2009).
4. All of Du Bois’s biographers address the question of his Pan-
Africanism through his theoretical musings and organizational work
on Pan-African Congresses. See Broderick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Negro
Leader in a Time of Crisis, Stanford: Stanford University Press (1959);
Rudwick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest (sec-
ond edition), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (1968);
Marable, W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (updated edition),
Boulder, CO: Paradigm (2005); Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography
of a Race, 1868–1919, New York: Henry Holt (1993); and Lewis,
W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century,
1919–1963, New York: Henry Holt (2000); Horne, W. E. B. Du Bois:
A Biography, Santa Barbara: Greenwood (2010). See also Khalfani,
“Pan-Africanism,” in Horne and Young (Eds.), W. E. B. Du Bois: An
Encyclopedia, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press (2001), p. 157–162.
See also the work of Conyers, ed., Reevaluating the Pan-Africanism
of W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey: Escapist Fantasy or Relevant
Reality?, New York: Edwin Mellen (2006).
5. Du Bois, “World Peace and Revolt in Africa,” February 20, 1953,
Pacifica Radio Archives # KZ2230 (North Hollywood, CA); Du Bois,
“Africa: In Battle against Colonialism, Racialism, Imperialism,” in
Aptheker (Ed.), Pamphlets and Leaflets by W. E. B. Du Bois, White
Plains, NY: Kraus-Thomson (1986), p. 334–341.
6. W. E. B. Du Bois to Gus Hall (October 1, 1961), in Du Bois, The
Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. 3, Selections, 1944–1963,
edited by Herbert Aptheker, Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press (1978), p. 438–440; Lester, “Introduction,” in Lester (Ed.), The
Seventh Son: The Thoughts and Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, New York:
. Vintage Books (1971), p. 147–152. See also Sinitiere, “A Legacy of

Scholarship and Struggle: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Political Affairs
of His Twilight Years,” Political Affairs, August 27, 2013, http://
politicalaffairs.net/a-legacy-of-scholarship-and-struggle-w-e-b-du
-bois-and-the-political-affairs-of-his-twilight-years-2/.
7. Nkrumah, “Du Bois Western Union Telegram,” August 29, 1963,
Claude Barnett Papers, Part 3, Series I, Reel 6 (microfilm, Rice
University, Houston, TX).
8. Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, New
York: New York University Press (2000); Horne and Stevens,
“Shirley Graham Du Bois: Portrait of the Black Woman Artist as a
Revolutionary,” in Gore, Theoharis, and Woodard (Eds.), Want to
Start a Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle,
New York: New York University Press (2007), p. 95–114.
9. Jackson, “Introduction,” in Jackson (Ed.), Freedomways Reader:
Prophets in Their Own Century, Boulder: Westview Press (2000), p.
xxi. On the Du Bois’s engagement with Freedomways, see Horne,
Race Woman, p. 217–242, and Nash and Leab, “Freedomways,”
in Lewis, Nash and Leab, Red Activists and Black Freedom: James
and Esther Jackson and the Long Civil Rights Revolution, New York:
Routledge (2010), p. 57–67. On Esther Cooper Jackson’s black radi-
cal politics and her commitment to public, printed protest in the con-
text of the literary activism of Freedomways, see McDuffie, “Esther
V. Cooper’s ‘The Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to
Trade Unionism’: Black Left Feminism and the Popular Front,” in
Red Activists and Black Freedom, p. 33–39; Sojourning for Freedom:
Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left
Feminism, Durham: Duke University Press (2011).
10. Du Bois, “Tributes,” in Clarke, Jackson, Kaiser and O’Dell (Eds.),
Black Titan W. E. B. Du Bois: An Anthology by the Editors of
Freedomways, Boston: Beacon (1970), p. 5.
11. Du Bois, His Day is Marching On: A Memoir of W. E. B. Du Bois,
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott (1971), p. 212–213.
12. Ibid., p. 304–311, 363.
13. Ibid., p. 358–359, 363. Du Bois, ed., Selected Poems by W. E. B. Du
Bois, Accra: University of Ghana Press (1964), p. 9, John Henrik
Clarke Africana Collection, Clark Atlanta University (Atlanta, GA).
14. Du Bois, Du Bois: A Pictorial Biography, Chicago: Johnson Publishing
Company (1978), p. ix-xii, 136–167.
15. Kelley, “Interview of Herbert Aptheker,” The Journal of American
History, Vol. 87, No. 1 (2000), p. 151–167; Aptheker, “Vindication
in Speaking Truth to Power,” in Bowser and Kushnick with Paul
Grant (Eds.), Against the Odds: Scholars Who Challenged Racism in
the Twentieth Century, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press
(2002), p. 216–219; Foner, Lemisch, and Marable, “Epilogue: The
Historical Scholarship of Herbert Aptheker,” in Foner and Marable

(Eds.), Herbert Aptheker on Race and Democracy: A Reader, Urbana:
University of Illinois Press (2006), p. 246–257; Murrell, “Herbert
Aptheker’s Unity of Theory and Practice in the Communist Party
USA,” Science & Society, Vol. 70, No. 1 (2006), p. 98–118; African
American History and Radical Historiography: Essays in Honor of
Herbert Aptheker, edited by Herbert Shapiro, Minneapolis: Marxist
Educational Press (1998), Part I; Aptheker, “Du Bois: The Final
Years,” Journal of Human Relations, Vol. 14 (1966), p. 149–155;
Aptheker, “Personal Recollections: Woodson, Wesley, Robeson and
Du Bois,” Black Scholar, Vol. 27, No. 2 (1997), p. 42–45; Murrell,
“On Herbert Aptheker and His Side of History: An Interview with
Eric Foner,” Radical History Review, Vol. 78 (2000), p. 6–26;
Aptheker, “The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois,” February 13, 1998,
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, Herbert Aptheker
Papers, Series 2, Box 124, Folder 7, Stanford University; Aptheker,
“W. E. B. Du Bois and Africa,” in Hill (Ed.), Pan-African Biography,
Los Angeles: Crossroads Press (1987), p. 97–117.
16. On James Turner, see Fenderson and Katungi, “Committed to
Institution Building”: James Turner and the History of Africana
Studies at Cornell University, an Interview,” Journal of African
American Studies, Vol. 16 (2012), p. 121–167. On Sonia Sanchez,
see Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus, Berkeley: University
of California Press (2012), p, 47. Biondi’s study also notes the work
of W. E. B. Du Bois Clubs, one manifestation of his Pan-African
legacy, on student movements in New York City (p. 117, 123–124,
129). Other studies that link Du Bois’s work to the intellectual
and ideological foundations of Black Studies include, among many,
Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical
Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press (2007); Peniel Joseph, “Dashikis and
Democracy: Black Studies, Student Activism, and the Black Power
Movement,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 88, No.
2 (2003), p. 182–203; Manning Marable, “Black Studies and the
Racial Mountain,” Souls, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2000), p. 17–36; James B.
Stewart, “The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois for Contemporary Black
Studies,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 53, No. 3 (1984), p.
296–311; and James Turner and C. Steven McGann, “Black Studies
as an Integral Tradition in African-American Intellectual History,”
Issue: A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 6, No. 2–3 (1976), p. 73–78.
17. See Booth, “A Well-Known Internationalist and Fervent Supporter
of Pan-Africanism,” Troyanovsky, “An Advocate of Peace and
Friendship Among Peoples,” and Young, “An Advocate of Black
Reconstruction in America,” in Pan-Africanism and the Liberation
of Southern Africa: International Tribute to William E. B. DuBois,
New York: United Nations Centre against Apartheid (1978), p. 6–7,

9–10, 20–22.
18. While the present chapter focuses on Rabaka and Horne, also rel-
evant is the work on Du Bois’s Pan-Africanism published by the late
Manning Marable. See Marable, Black Radical Democrat and Black
Leadership: Four Great American Leaders and the Struggle for Civil
Rights, New York: Penguin (1998), p. 75–96.
19. Author phone interview with Reiland Rabaka (February 2014);
Reiland Rabaka, W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-
First Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory, Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books (2007), Preface and Acknowledgments.
20. Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical
Tradition, from W. E. B. Du Bois and C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon
and Amilcar Cabral, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (2009), p.
4–6, 38–39; and W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First
Century, Preface. The “transdisciplinary” nature of Africana Studies
to which Rabaka refers focuses on “a discipline that transgresses,
transverses, and transcends the academic boundaries and intellectual
borders, the color-lines and racial chasms, and the jingoism and gen-
der injustice of traditional single phenomenon-focused disciplines,
owing to the fact that at its best it poses problems and seeks solutions
on behalf of Africana (and other struggling) people employing the
theoretic innovation of both the social sciences and humanities, as
well as the political breakthroughs of grassroots radical and revolu-
tionary social movements” (2009, 5).
21. Rabaka, Against Epistemic Apartheid: W. E. B. Du Bois and the
Disciplinary Decadence of Sociology, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books
(2010), p. 1–45, 337–362; W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the
Twenty-First Century, Preface, ch. 3.
22. Rabaka, Du Bois’s Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and the
Reconstruction of Critical Social Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books (2008), p. 159–181.
23. Author phone interview with Gerald Horne (February 2014). For
Horne’s antiapartheid work, see “Call for Action: New York State
Divestment,” January 25, 1986, African Activist Archive, Michigan
State University, East Lansing, MI, http://africanactivist.msu.edu
/document_metadata.php?objectid=32–130–1B9; “W. E. B. Du
Bois in Global Contexts, an Interview with Gerald Horne,” Political
Affairs, December 6, 2010, http://politicalaffairs.net/w-e-b-du-bois
-in-global-contexts-an-interview-with-gerald-horne/; and the
Spring 2011 issue of The Journal of African American History (Vol.
96, No. 2), which hosted a forum on Horne’s scholarship. In par-
ticular, see Taylor, “Introduction: The Shaping of an Activist and
Scholar,” p. 204–214, and “Combing the Archive, Tracing the
Diaspora: The Scholarship of Gerald Horne,” p. 215–220; Plummer,
“African Americans in the International Imaginary: Gerald Horne’s

Progressive Vision,” p. 221–230; Frazier, “Sketches of Black
Internationalism and Transnationalism,” p. 231–235; McDuffie,
“Black and Red: Black Liberation, The Cold War, and the Horne
Thesis,” p. 236–247; and Horne, “One Scholar’s Journey,” p.
248–254.
24. Horne and Young, eds., W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia, p. xxii;
Horne, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography, p. xii.
25. Horne, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American
Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, Albany: State University of
New York Press (1986), p. 6–7, 113–124, 183–199, 331–353.
26. Schramm, “Pan-Africanism as a Resource: The W. E. B. DuBois
Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture in Ghana,” African
Identities, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004); Holloway, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory
and Identity in Black America since 1940, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press (2013), p, 214–229. See also Gaines, American
Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era, Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press (2006), p. 147–151.
References
Archival Collections
African Activist Archive (online, Michigan State University, East Lansing,
MI).
Claude Barnett Papers (microfilm, Rice University, Houston, TX).
Herbert Aptheker Papers (Stanford University, Stanford, CA).
John Henrik Clarke Africana Collection (Clark Atlanta University, Atlanta,
GA).
Pacifica Radio Archives (North Hollywood, CA).
W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (online, University of Massachusetts at Amherst,
Amherst, MA).
Books and Articles

Aptheker, Herbert, “Du Bois: The Final Years,” Journal of Human Relations,
Vol. 14 (1966), p. 149–155.
———, “W. E. B. Du Bois and Africa,” in Hill (Ed.), Pan-African Biography,
Los Angeles: Crossroads Press, 1987, p. 97–117.
———, “Personal Recollections: Woodson, Wesley, Robeson and Du Bois,”
Black Scholar, Vol. 27, No. 2 (1997), p. 42–45.
———, “The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Herbert Aptheker Papers,
February 13, 1998, Graduate Theological Union, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA.
———. “Vindication in Speaking Truth to Power,” in Bowser and Kushnick
with Paul Grant (Eds.), Against the Odds: Scholars Who Challenged
Racism in the Twentieth Century, Amherst: University of Massachusetts

Press, 2002, p. 193–226.
Bass, Amy, Those about Him Remained Silent: The Fight Over W. E. B. Du
Bois, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
Biondi, Martha, The Black Revolution on Campus, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2012.
Blight, David, “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American Historical
Memory,” in Fabre and O’Meally (Eds.), History and Memory in African-
American Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 45–71.
Booth, William H., “A Well-Known Internationalist and Fervent Supporter
of Pan-Africanism,” in Clarke (Ed.), Pan-Africanism and the Liberation
of Southern Africa: International Tribute to William E. B. DuBois, New
York: United Nations Centre against Apartheid, 1978, 6–7.
Broderick, Francis L., W. E. B. Du Bois: Negro Leader in a Time of Crisis,
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959.
Du Bois, David Graham, “The DuBois Legacy Under Attack,” The Black
Scholar, Vol. 9, No. 5 (1978), p. 2–12.
———, “Tributes,” in Clarke, Jackson, Kaiser, and O’Dell (Eds.), Black
Titan W. E. B. Du Bois: An Anthology by the Editors of Freedomways,
Boston: Beacon, 1970, p. 5.
———, His Day is Marching On: A Memoir of W. E. B. Du Bois, Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott, 1971.
———, Du Bois: A Pictorial Biography, Chicago: Johnson Publishing
Company, 1978.
Du Bois, W. E. B., Selected Poems by W. E. B. Du Bois, edited by Shirley
Graham Du Bois, Accra: University of Ghana Press, 1964 (John Henrik
Clarke Africana Collection, Clark Atlanta University. Atlanta, GA).
———, “World Peace and Revolt in Africa,” February 20, 1953, Pacifica
Radio Archives, # KZ2230. North Hollywood, California.
———, “Africa: In Battle against Colonialism, Racialism, Imperialism,” in
Aptheker (Ed.), Pamphlets and Leaflets by W. E. B. Du Bois, NY: Kraus-
Thomson, 1986, p. 334–341.
“Du Bois, W. E. B. to Gus Hall,” in Aptheker (Ed.), The Correspondence of
W. E. B. Du Bois, Selections, 1944–1963, vol III, Amherst: University of
Massachusetts Press, 1978, p. 438–440.
Feldman, Keith P., “Towards an Afro-Arab Diasporic Culture: The
Translational Practices of David Graham Du Bois,” ALIF: Journal of
Comparative Poetics, Vol. 31 (2011), p. 152–172.
Fenderson, Jonathan B., and Candace Katungi, “ ‘Committed to Institution
Building’: James Turner and the History of Africana Studies at Cornell
University, An Interview,” Journal of African American Studies, Vol. 16
(2012), p. 121–167.
Foner, Eric, Jesse Lemisch, and Manning Marable, “Epilogue: The Historical
Scholarship of Herbert Aptheker,” in Foner and Marable (Eds.), Herbert
Aptheker on Race and Democracy: A Reader, Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2006, p. 246–257.
Frazier, Robeson Taj P., “Sketches of Black Internationalism and

Transnationalism,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 96,
No. 2 (2011), p. 231–235.
Gaines, Kevin, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil
Rights Era, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Holloway, Johnathan Scott, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in
Black America since 1940, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2013.
Horne, Gerald, Black and Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American
Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1986.
———, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois, New York: New
York University Press, 2000.
———, W. E. B. Du Bois: A Biography, Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2010.
———, “W. E. B. Du Bois in Global Contexts, an Interview with Gerald
Horne,” Political Affairs, December 6, 2010. http://politicalaffairs.
net/w-e-b-du-bois-in-global-contexts-an-interview-with-gerald-horne/.
———. “One Scholar’s Journey,” The Journal of African American History,
Vol. 96, No. 2 (2011), p. 248–254.
———. Phone interview with author. February 23, 2014, Houston, Texas.
Horne, Gerald, et al., “Call for Action: New York State Divestment,”
January 25, 1986, African Activist Archive, Michigan State University,
East Lansing, MI, http://africanactivist.msu.edu/document_metadata.
php?objectid=32–130–1B9.
Horne, Gerald, and Mary Young, eds., W. E. B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia,
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.
Jackson, Esther Cooper, “Introduction,” in Jackson (Ed.), Freedomways Reader:
Prophets in Their Own Century, Boulder: Westview Press, 2000, p. xxi.
Joseph, Peniel, “Dashikis and Democracy: Black Studies, Student Activism,
and the Black Power Movement,” The Journal of African American
History, Vol. 88, No. 2 (2003), p. 182–203.
Kelley, Robin D. G., “Interview of Herbert Aptheker,” The Journal of
American History, Vol. 87, No. 1 (2000), p. 151–167.
Kirschke, Amy Helene, Art in Crisis: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle
for African American Identity and Memory, Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 2007.
———, “Art in Crisis during the Du Bois Years,” in Kirschke and Sinitiere
(Eds.), Protest and Propaganda: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Crisis, and American
History, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2014, p. 49–117.
Lester, Julius, “Introduction,” in Lester (Ed.), The Seventh Son: The Thoughts
and Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, vol. I, New York: Vintage Books, 1971,
p. 147–152.
Lewis, David Levering, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919,
New York: Henry Holt, 1993.
———, W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century,
1919–1963, New York: Henry Holt, 2000.
Marable, Manning, Black Leadership: Four Great American Leaders and the
Struggle for Civil Rights, New York: Penguin, 1998.
———, “Black Studies and the Racial Mountain,” Souls, Vol. 2, No. 3
(2000), p. 17–36.
———, W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat (updated edition), Boulder,
CO: Paradigm, 2005.
McDuffie, Erik S., “Esther V. Cooper’s ‘The Negro Woman Domestic
Worker in Relation to Trade Unionism’: Black Left Feminism and the
Popular Front,” in Lewis, Nash, and Leab (Eds.), Red Activists and Black
Freedom: James and Esther Jackson and the Long Civil Rights Revolution,
New York: Routledge, 2010, p. 33–39.
———, “Black and Red: Black Liberation, the Cold War, and the Horne
Thesis,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 96, No. 2 (2011),
p. 236–247.
———, Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and
the Making of Black Left Feminism, Durham: Duke University Press,
2011.
Murrell, Gary, “On Herbert Aptheker and His Side of History: An Interview
with Eric Foner,” Radical History Review, Vol. 78 (2000), p. 6–26.
———, “Herbert Aptheker’s Unity of Theory and Practice in the Communist
Party USA,” Science & Society, Vol. 70, No. 1 (2006), p. 98–118.
Nash, Michael, and Daniel J. Leab, “Freedomways,” in Lewis, Nash, and
Leab, Red Activists and Black Freedom: James and Esther Jackson and the
Long Civil Rights Revolution, New York: Routledge, 2010, p. 57–67.
Plummer, Brenda Gayle, “African Americans in the International Imaginary:
Gerald Horne’s Progressive Vision,” The Journal of African American
History, Vol. 96, No. 2 (2011), p. 221–230.
Rabaka, Reiland, W. E. B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First
Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2007.
———, Du Bois’s Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and the Reconstruction of
Critical Social Theory, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.
———, Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical
Tradition, from W. E. B. Du Bois and C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon and
Amilcar Cabral, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009.
———, Against Epistemic Apartheid: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Disciplinary
Decadence of Sociology, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010.
———. Phone interview with author. February 20, 2014, Houston, Texas.
Rojas, Fabio, From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social
Movement Became an Academic Discipline, Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Rudwick, Elliott M., W. E. B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest (sec-
ond edition), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968.
Schramm, Katharina, “Pan-Africanism as a Resource: The W. E. B. DuBois
Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture in Ghana,” African Identities,
Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004), p.151–171.
Shapiro, Herbert, ed., African American History & Radical Historiography:

Essays in Honor of Herbert Aptheker, Minneapolis: Marxist Educational
Press, 1998.
Sinitiere, Phillip Luke, “A Legacy of Scholarship and Struggle: W. E. B. Du
Bois and the Political Affairs of His Twilight Years,” Political Affairs,
August 27, 2013, http://politicalaffairs.net/a-legacy-of-scholarship-and-
struggle-w-e-b-du-bois-and-the-political-affairs-of-his-twilight-years-2/.
Stewart, James B, “The Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois for Contemporary
Black Studies,” The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 53, No. 3 (1984),
p. 296–311.
Taylor, Ula, “Introduction: The Shaping of an Activist and Scholar,”
The Journal of African American History, Vol. 96, No. 2 (2011), p.
204–214.
———, “Combing the Archive, Tracing the Diaspora: The Scholarship of
Gerald Horne,” The Journal of African American History, Vol. 96, No. 2
(2011), p. 215–220.
Troyanovsky, Oleg A., “An Advocate of Peace and Friendship among Peoples,”
in Clarke (Ed.), in Pan-Africanism and the Liberation of Southern Africa:
International Tribute to William E. B. DuBois. New York: United Nations
Centre against Apartheid, 1978, p. 9–10.
Turner, James, and C. Steven McGann, “Black Studies as an Integral
Tradition in African-American Intellectual History,” Issue: A Journal of
Opinion, Vol. 6. No. 2–3 (1976), p. 73–78.
Young, Andrew, “An Advocate of Black Reconstruction in America,” in
Clarke (Ed.), in Pan-Africanism and the Liberation of Southern Africa:
International Tribute to William E. B. DuBois, New York: United Nations
Centre against Apartheid, 1978, p. 20–22.
Contributors
Hassoum Ceesay is Director of Heritage at the National Centre for

Arts and Culture, Banjul, Gambia. He specializes in Gambian wom-
en’s history and has published a widely acclaimed book titled Gambian
Women: An Introductory History (Fulladu Publishers, 2007). His
second book, titled Gambian Women: Notes and Historical Profiles
(Fulladu Publishers, 2011) has also received positive reviews. He was
features editor at the Daily Observer in Banjul and editorial writer
from 1999 to 2006. He has contributed six entries on prominent
Gambian women personalities in the Dictionary of African Biography
edited by Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
published by Oxford University Press. He was curator of the Gambia
National Museum from 1999 to 2008.
David Fistein is associate professor of Political Science and Model
UN Coordinator at Gulf Coast State College. He is the author of
Social Revolutions in Small States (2010). His work on revolution-
ary leadership, postrevolutionary leadership, and state building has
appeared in the Journal of Haitian Studies and the International
Journal of African Historical Studies.
Nyasha M. GuramatunhuCooper, PhD, is an assistant profes-
sor of leadership at Kennesaw State University. With an interest in
African leadership, her scholarship examines leadership narratives in
Southern African colonial societies and liberation movements. She
earned her doctorate in leadership studies from Gonzaga University.
Her research interests include examining the telling and retelling of
African colonial history through personal narratives, interrogating
voice and power in the relationship of the colonizer and the colo-
nized, and investigating the impact of revolutionary and charismatic
leadership on liberation movements.
184 CONTRIBUTORS
Bonny Ibhawoh is professor of African, Global, and Human Rights

History, and associate dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the
Faculty of Humanities, McMaster University. He also teaches in the
McMaster Centre for Peace Studies and the Institute on Globalization
and the Human Condition. Dr Ibhawoh is a former director of the
McMaster Centre for Peace Studies. His research interests are African
history/politics, international human rights, peace/conflict studies,
and legal and imperial history. Previously, he was a professor at Brock
University, Canada; professor of Political Science at University of North
Carolina at Asheville; Human Rights Fellow at the Carnegie Council
for Ethics and International Affairs, New York; Research Fellow at
the Danish Institute for Human Rights, Copenhagen; and associate
member of the Centre for African Studies, School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London. His book, Imperialism and
Human Rights (SUNY Press, 2007), was named Choice Outstanding
Academic Title. He is also the author of Imperial Justice (Oxford,
2013).
Baba G. Jallow is assistant professor of History and director of
the African Studies Program at Creighton University. His publica-
tions include “A Sign of the Times: Catholic Advocacy for Social
Justice in Nkrumah’s Ghana” (2014), Rambler’s Chats: Ghanaian,
African and Global Histories through the Eyes of a Nkrumahist
Columnist (2012), and “Guinea: From Democratic Dictatorship to
Undemocratic Elections, 1958–2008” (2011). His work has appeared
in Interventions, the Journal of Asian and African Studies and the
Journal of Critical Southern Studies. He is coeditor for the Palgrave
Studies in African Leadership series.
Jamie Miller is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, a Fox
International Fellow at Yale University, and a visiting assistant profes-
sor at Quinnipiac University. His dissertation looks at the strategies
used by South Africa to preserve its apartheid regime during the cold
war (1974–1980). Jamie was the winner of the Ruth Saki Dockrill
Memorial Prize for best paper jointly awarded by the University of
California Santa Barbara, the London School of Economics, and
George Washington University during the International Graduate
Conference on the Cold War (2011). Jamie also received the Best
Graduate Paper Prize from the African Studies Association (2013).
His work has appeared in Cold War History (2012) and the Journal of
Cold War Studies (2013).
CONTRIBUTORS 185
Chris Saunders is Emeritus professor at the University of Cape

Town, South Africa, where he taught in the Department of Historical
Studies until his retirement. He completed his doctorate at Oxford
University. He is the author of many works in the history of Southern
Africa and coauthor of the most recent edition of South Africa: A
Modern History. He has been a visiting academic at numerous univer-
sities, including Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, and the London
School of Economics.
Phillip Luke Sinitiere is professor of History at the College of
Biblical Studies, a multiethnic school located in Houston’s Mahatma
Gandhi District. Dr Sinitiere holds degrees from Sam Houston State
University (B.A., M.A. in History) and the University of Houston
(PhD in History). A scholar specializing in American religious his-
tory and African American studies, he is coauthor of Holy Mavericks:
Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace (New York
University Press, 2009). He also coedited and contributed to
Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by
Faith (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Protest and Propaganda:
W. E. B. Du Bois, the Crisis, and American History (University of
Missouri Press, 2013). Dr Sinitiere is completing a book titled
Salvation with a Smile: Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church and American
Evangelicalism ,and an edited volume on W. E. B. Du Bois’s late
career is under review with Duke University Press. In addition to
scholarship, Dr Sinitiere has organized and cotaught several African
studies workshops for secondary history instructors, and in 2009 he
received an National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People Faculty Freedom Fighter Award from the Sam Houston State
University college chapter.
Index
African National Congress, 64 charismatic leadership, 101–13

African Peer Review Mechanism, Chatterjee, Partha, 14
148 chef de canton, 13
Afrikaner Broederbond, 118, 123 Chimurenga, 108, 143
Afrikanerdom, 17, 116, 119–37 Chitepo, Herbert, 109
Alkali, 30 Christian theology, 59
Almami, 10 Churchill, Winston, 15, 16, 61
American republican idealism, 59 colonial administrators, 7, 8
American United Auto Workers, 85 Colonial Office, 38, 61
Annual Conference of Chiefs, 39 Commonwealth, 16
apartheid, 18, 115–37 cultural idiosyncrasies, 5
Armitage, Governor Sir Cecil, 40
Asantehene, 10, 12 Danquah, J. B., 7
Atlantic Charter, 16, 55–68 de Klerk, F. W., 8
Azikiwe, Nnamdi, 16, 55–68, 161 Defiance Campaign, 146
democracy, 4, 5
Bambatha, 12 democratic spirit, 5
Bah, Maba Jahou, 38 Dibba, Silaba, 45
Bandeh, Cherno, 33 District Treasuries, 36
Bella, Ben, 161 Du Bois, W. E. B., 19,
Boigny, Felix Houphouet, 126 153–85
Botha, P. W., 8, 115 Dumbuya, Foday Kabba, 27, 38
British Commonwealth, 117, 118 Dutch Reformed Church, 118
British Indirect Rule, 7, 8, 23
Bureh, Bai, 12 Enlightenment liberalism, 59
Burr, 27
Faidherbe, Louis, 7
Cabral, Amilcar, 17, 69–100 Fanon, Frantz, 77
Cameroon, Governor Sir Edward, Farring Mansa, 27
32 Faye, J. C., 44, 45
Carnation Revolution, 17 Faye, Sheikh Omar, 44
Carrol, W. D., 44 Fourie, Brand, 126
Ceesay, Omar, 33, 42, 45 Freedom Charter, 64
Ceesay, Sawallo, 29, 32, 33, 40 French Assimilation, 7, 13
188 INDEX
Front for the Liberation of McCollum, J. K., 32

Mozambique, 140 Meyer, J. P., 123
Milner, Alfred, 7
Garvey, Marcus, 60 Molloh, Musa, 32
Goldsbury, Governor, 39 Movement for Democratic
Guggisberg, Gordon, 7 Change, 143
Mugabe, Robert, 9, 17, 18, 101–13,
Howard University, 59, 60 139, 141–52
human rights, 5, 55–68 Mulder, Connie, 125
Muller, Hilgard, 126
International Conference of
Solidarity with the Peoples of National Council for Liberia and
Southern Africa, 77 Cameroons, 63
Italian invasion of Ethiopia, 60 Native Authorities, 11
Native Authority Ordinance, 33
Jahumpa, Garba, 45 Native Tribunals, 25
Jammeh, Mama Tamba, 29, 45–6 New Partnership for African
Jatta, Selung Jatta, 40 Development, 148
Jawara, Dawda, 45 Njie, P. S., 44, 45
Joof, St. Claire, 45 Nkrumah, Kwame, 4, 19, 60, 143,
158, 159, 161
Kaabu Mansa, 26, 27 Nkrumahism, 4
Kamara, Kemintang, 26 Non-alignment, 77
Kanto Mansa, 27 Nujoma, Sam, 141–52
Kaunda, Kenneth, 115, 128, 140
Khama, Seretse, 140 Operation Murambatsvina, 143
Khan, Abu, 37, 45 Organization of African
Kissinger, Henry, 115, 130 Unity, 70, 84
Krubally, Jewru, 45, 47 organizational culture, 2, 3
Ovamboland, 144
Lagden, Godfrey, 7
Lat Jor, 12 Padmore, George, 60
Lenin, 81, 82 pan-Africanism, 19
Linguer, 27 People’s Progressive Party, 45,
Lugard, Lord Frederick, 23, 28 46, 47
phallocentric, 10
Machel, Samora, 143 political exceptionalism, 4
Malan, D. F., 8 Pollsmoor prison, 146
Mandela, Nelson, 3, 18, 139–52 Popular Movement for the
Mandinka, 10 Liberation of Angola, 140
Mandinka states, 26, 27 President Roosevelt, 62
Mansa, 26, 27 Preventive Detention Act, 4
Matabeleland, 143 Protectorate Ordinance, 29, 31
Mbake, Omar, 39, 44, 45, 47 psychic prison, 3, 6
Mbeki, Thabo, 3, 18, 141–52
Mboge, Lamin Bakoto, 39 Queen Victoria, 32
INDEX 189
regionalism, 2 Tongogara, Josiah, 3, 17, 101–13

revolutionary leadership, 101–13 Toure, Samori, 12
Rhodes, Cecil, 7 Toure, Sekou, 74, 76, 84
Rhoodie, Eschel, 125 transformative leadership, 141
Robben Island, 146 travelling commissioners, 24, 32
Treurnicht, Dr. Andries, 124, 128
Sanneh, Kebba, 39 Trust Territories, 65
Sanyang, Mansajang, 33, 42 Truth and Reconciliation
Sanyang, Touray, 45 Commission, 147
Schoeman, Ben, 128 Tsvangirai, Morgan, 144
Senghor, Leopold, 75, 126
Sese Seko, Mobutu, 4 Umkhonto we Sizwe, 146
Shepstone, Theophilus, 8 United Nations, 57–68
Sillah, Foday, 38 Universal Declaration of Human
Small, Edward Francis, 42, 44 Rights, 16, 55–68
Smith, Ian, 7, 128 universal human rights, idea of,
Sonko, L. O., 39 55–68
South African Communist
Party, 150 Van der Bergh, Hendrik, 126
South West Africa People’s Verwoerd, Hendrik, 8, 115
Organization, 141 Virginia Bill of Rights, 63
Southern African Development Vorster, John, 8, 18, 115–37
Community, 144, 150
Special Committee on War Charities Fund, 37
Decolonization, 78 Weber, Max, 105, 106
split leadership personality, 9 West African Royal Frontier
Strijdom, Johannes, 8 Force, 37
subject leadership, 9–13 Windley, Governor, 45
Suzman, Helen, 130
Zimbabwe African National
Telli, Diallo, 6 Liberation Army, 17, 108
theoretical exceptionalism, 2, 4 Zimbabwe African National Union,
Third World, 56 17, 108
Tolbert, William, 126 Zuma, Jacob, 3, 18–19, 141–52

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Palgrave Studies in African Leadership

Series Editors: Baba G. Jallow, Faith Wambura Ngunjiri

Books Appearing in This Series:

Leadership in Colonial Africa: Disruption of Traditional

ISBN  ISBN  (eBook)

List of Contributors 183

I n early September 2013, I logged on to my Gmail to check postings

I was intrigued by the very idea of leadership studies. Up until this

it out to the various H-Net listservs I subscribe to. I indicated in

graduate school and sent them personalized invitations, generally

However, you and Brian might have a conversation to see if

I was soon contacted by Palgrave’s Casie Vogel. Below is her email,

Dear Dr. Jallow,

Long story short, Casie proceeded to offer the leadership and

book and the launching of a new Palgrave Studies in African

The Case for African Leadership

The Case for African Leadership Studies

well to the study of leadership failure in Africa. Edgar Schein’s (2010)

sorts of Western leadership studies theory may usefully be appropri-

of the Western nation-state system: it has executive branches of gov-

Leadership in Colonial Africa

Ghana’s J. B. Danquah died at the hands of former colleagues who

and Theophilus Shepstone of South Africa. They were littered across

differences between British, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese

Chiefs as “Subject Leaders”

to obscure. On the other hand, they were often mere appendages to

Michael Crowder writes that “the relation between the British

maintained . . . they had to ensure the tidiness and sanitary respect-

sensibilities or in violation of imperial notions of “natural justice.”

credentials they were not destined to become tropical English men

(Louis and Robinson 1982, 50). To “preempt the emergence of

and over their white English-speaking compatriots in South Africa.

What is the basis of separate development? It is, in the first instance,

Miller observes that “unwilling to fundamentally change what apart-

Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, argues Saunders, exhibited alarming

nationalist leaders who took over from them at independence. Finally,

Chiefs and Protectorate Administration

District chiefs represented a tangible example of African leadership

Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

and infliction of punishment on chiefs to secure consent and loyalty

Broader Research Questions

played by district chiefs in colonial administration in Gambia, I shall

Gambian Precolonial States and Leadership

River region of present-day Gambia, mustered an army strong enough

it was conceded that the British should be allowed territory extend-

This meant that the boundaries often divided traditional kingdoms,

The British Indirect Rule System in West Africa

commissioners in the first 20 years after 1900 underscores the salient

Hereditary and Nonhereditary Chiefs

thanks to a dismissal from the governor in Bathurst, acting upon the

The Protectorate Ordinance 1902 an overview

Power and Duties of the Commissioners

monthly diaries of activities, keep the accounts of the province, issue

The McCollum mistress affair rattled the Protectorate administra-

Powers and Duties of District Chiefs and Village Headmen

Chiefs as Agents of Law and Order: Native Tribunals

sat in the Tribunal as president and, in case of a tie in votes as to a

Table 2.1 Summary of cases heard before Native Tribunals, 1943

District Criminal Civil Total

Source: ARP 34/1, Divisional Report, 1943.

Chiefs as Efficient Tax Collectors: District Treasuries

Chiefs as Mobilizers for First and Second World Wars

ISBN ISBN (eBook)