SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA

Social Movements In Africa

Social Movements In Africa

Introduction

The overthrow of colonialism depended upon the development of nationalism, which marked a break with primary forms of resistance to colonialism in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century northern Africa. Initial resistance was based on regional and Muslim solidarity, like the resistance of 'Abd al-Qadir to the French in Algeria between 1830 and 1847. Meanwhile, in Tunisia and Egypt, there was a renewal of ideological leadership through the development of nationalist ideologies and the reform of Islamic thought. Nationalist and Islamist ideologies were formulated by those exposed to modern European thought and appealed to new social categories created by the modernizing programs of African state builders such as Tunisia's Ahmed Bey and Egypt's Muhammad 'Ali. Educated in Western languages and political concepts, administrators, professionals, and entrepreneurs identified their interests within the nation-state (Diop, 2002).

They provided the personnel of the colonial state system after the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881 and the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. In Algeria the colonial state enabled the formation of similar social groups by the early twentieth century, as it did in Morocco after the French occupation in 1911. Muslim clerics, heads of religious brotherhoods, and lineage groups of the traditional type also played a role in the overthrow of colonialism. For instance, the Sanusiyya brotherhood in Libya led the resistance against the Italian occupation until 1932 and thereby won the recognition of the British after the Allied occupation in 1943. As a result, when Libya became independent in 1951 the leader of the Sanusiyya founded a new, ruling dynasty. In Morocco, the Rif rebellion in the early 1920s was led by 'Abd al-Karim, who combined the ideology of Islamic reformism with a social base among Berber lineages. This movement was unsuccessful, though it did topple the French resident, General Lyautey, who had attempted to win the support of the Berbers for the French colonial state.

Liberal Ideas, Modernization And Anti-Colonial Nationalism

In the 1930s and 1940s liberal-democratic ideas about human rights and liberties, about national self-determination, the rule of law and the equality of peoples and races, and about tolerance and justice gradually percolated into Africa. Africa's new elites absorbed these ideas at British, French and American universities, through their contacts with French socialists and British Labour leaders, and through the teachings of liberal-minded missionaries in Africa. Nkrumah, Azikiwe, Tanganyika's Julius Nyerere, Kenyatta and his fellow Kenyan Tom Mboya, Senghor, Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasavuvu from the Belgian Congo, Banda, Uganda's Milton Obote, Northern Rhodesia's Kenneth Kaunda, Eduardo Mondlane of Mozambique and South Africa's Nelson Mandela all fought against Western colonialism in the name of Western liberal values. They demanded that the West realize its own goals and values, but this time in Africa and for Africans.

The liberal ideas of freedom did not grow in a vacuum. Socio-economic change - such as urbanization, modern transportation, the spread of Western education, growing literacy, commodity agriculture replacing subsistence agriculture, international trade, the rapid rise of Christianity and ...