In this essay, there shall be an exploration into whether independence movements represented the interests of their middle-class leaders and not of the rural poor. First, the definition of class shall be looked at and what the middle classes and rural poor hoped to gain through independence. Then, this piece will turn to the influence of African and Indian heroic leaders on the equalitarian nature of independence movements and examples where issues of communalism and racial discrimination were more prominent than the issue of class. Lastly, there will a comparison between examples where colonial elites and intellectuals stood to gain from independence and where socialist issues were at the heart of the nationalists' agenda and whether or not this was purely rhetoric.Under the capitalist mode of production, Marx described society as dividing into two classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
"Landlords and capitalists form the ruling class and secure an excellent standard of living, and political power, by using their ownership of the means of production. From this position they exploit the mass proletariat."1 The rural poor are made up predominantly of those peasants who mainly rely on a pre-capitalist mode of production. Many peasants constitute part of the modern capitalist economy in addition to the traditional subsistence economy, as they sell their labour power for instance.2 Unlike India and Ethiopia3, but characteristic of most of Africa, was that communalism rather than fuedalism preceeded capitalism.In Egypt, for instance, it was only with the colonial government permitting Egyptians to own land, as well as expanding educational opportunities, and raising some to officer status in the army that a middle-class emerged.
Non-marxists "seek other explanations of social interaction, and talk of 'elites' and 'groups' rather than 'classes'."4 The new elite of post-colonial states are referred to as the "administrative bourgeoise" or a "colonial elite" and this group of individuals occupied positions as civil servants, teachers, intellectuals, army officers and professionals. For the sake of simplicity, this piece shall deem the rural poor as the peasantry group working and/or desiring ownership of farming smallholdings, and the middle-class deemed as corresponding to the colonial elite.Independence movements can be viewed as a protracted struggle over a long period of time: from native resistance to colonisation, their opposition to specific policies, selling their labour-power and competing for social elevation, and lastly achieiving independence itself. The third period, effectively native acceptance of the colonial state framework, marked the creation of new elites who "realized they could use the new structures to pursue their own interests, which might or might be those of the masses.
"5 This small emerging middle-class, began perceiving the Europeans as harming their interests, even with colonial education having improved their socio-economic position. In Senegal, "as the African elite group increased in size and educational level, its members expected better jobs," 6 but they felt threatened with, post 1900, "an influx of Europeans coming to their country seemed to impede the advance of young Africans in business and administration."7Other groups also failed to oppose the whole colonial state, instead "acting when they percieved that specific colonial policies hurt their vital interests," 8 especially when "of a kind that upset traditional social, economic and political systems."9 Rural poor Kenyans became extremely rebellious though, as "within a space of a generation they had effectively been converted from independent peasants, producing cash crops for the new markets, into peasants dependent on agricultural wage-labour."10 They were initially undermined by land-grabbing tactics of the colonial government who favoured their own commercial interests above rural Kenyan wishes for self-sufficiency.
However, the emerging capitalist-minded, Kenyan middle-classes first supported traditionally-unfriendly colonial policies that subordinated the rural poor to their own economic ambitions and continued once they had displaced the imperial administrators.Three types of leader existed throughout the stages of protracted struggle: precolonial leaders and military specialists, pre-colonial leaders who espoused to socialist ideals of change and those with much European education and completely alienated from precolonial political systems. Harry Thuku, a Kikuyu leader11, can be considered non-middle-class as he never gained a formal education. Though, "the view several African nationalists who led their countries to independence was of a classless Africa,"12 the existence of traditional communalism was rife.
Prior to rebelling against the colonial authority, Thuku secured civil service employment because of his descendancy from early Kikuyu leaders.Even with wielding phenomenal influence within an independence movement, the national hero "is opposed by a traditional elite whose power is in rapid decline, and by the intellectuals, whose power is being neutralised or challenged."13 Mahatma Ghandi believed the real Indian struggle was between those fighting for preserving traditional feudal and communalist traditions and those fighting for India as one nation where its leaders conducted social service and not self-interest politics. He enshrined the nation with such belief in progress stemming from freedom from foreign domination, following uniting regardless of caste and custom. He uniquely rejected the lures of political power and is believed to have died a martyr to the cause of Muslim-Hindu unity against imperialism following his assassination shortly after independence.
Trow14 suggested that the new middle-classes, turn to a heroic leader whenever the economy seems to be failing them or whenever there are artificial blocks to their career. For instance, in the time of troubles in Ghana and the Ivory Coast between 1944-1951, "the increasing frustration of the new educated classes in finding outlets in the Civil Service (and the mercantile world)"15 were key to the rise of the nationalist movements in the region. In contrast, members of the Indian National Congress supported Ghandi's non-cooperation and civil disobedience programmes even though it jeopodised their chances of securing civil service positionsIn India, both the Congress and the League initially represented merely elitist Hindus and Muslims. Though later united under a liberal nationalist umbrella and calling for greater sovereignty from British rule, towards independence, the League declared itself a Muslim nationalist party and the secular Congress resorted to the language of caste and communalism in a bid to engage the rural poor. The Muslim elite had legitimate concerns for the plight of the Muslim rural poor, as they feared that a new majority Hindu democratic state would discriminate against all Muslims. However, the risk that "political power would shift in favour of other people who might be willing to put themselves at the head of the unemployed and landless"16 actually led to pre-empted demands for their own nation prior to the possible seizure and equitable re-distrubution of Muslim lands amongst the Indian population.
This contrasts to the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, where Kikuyus demanded "mixed farms in the highlands be transferred to Africans, beginning with some of the squatters and other unemployed and landless people from the towns and from the Kikuyu countryside."17 Furedi believed that the "leaders of the populist movements like Mau Mau were successful organisers because they lived near and with the African people, unlike educated Kenyan African Union politicans."18 Ironically, Kikuyu fighters having epitomised the impoverishment and frustration of the least economically secure Kenyans and their commitment to the cause of independence, gauranteed their relatively affluent, educated, middle-class tribesman a leading claim to governance following independence.For a long time, Europeans misunderstood or ignored African opposition, their views "influenced by an erroneous belief in their supposed superiority."19 British handing-over supreme control of independent South Africa to white-Afrikaners of European-origin rather than Black natives supports this.
The trade union movements that emerged from the industrial revolution transcended class divisions, but the Apartheid effectively hindered membership of the commerical bourgeioise to non- whites. Similar was the case in East Africa with Asians and in the West of Africa with the Lebanese population.The colonial authorities and post-colonial elite suppressed the economic potential of the non-african commerical bourgeiosie in hopes of maximising personal gains. For instance, "East African businessman soon discovered the advantages of maintaining the general fabric of state monopoly, which provided them with protected opportunities in the modern sector, rather than throwing the economy open to a competition which the Asians could quickly win."20 Independence increased middle-classs control over wealth accumulation, whereas decreasing the trickle-down-affect to the rural poor.Indian National Congress members initially wished for colonial benefits in the form of jobs and expanded business interests, but also "sought respect, as individuals, as Indians, which often British racial hauteur did not allow.
"21 In Kenya, for instance, "Africans paid the bulk of taxation, while Europeans received virtually the entire benefit of government service22 in addition to being subsidized through the customs tariff and having priveleged access to profitable markets, both external and internal."23 Such racial inequality during struggles for independence should have transcended class divisions.Kenya Colonial Government's Swynnerton Plan24, constructed in direct response to the Emergency25, consolidated the role of the Mau Mau fighters as political pawns of the Kenyan political elite considering "there were differences between what the constitutional leaders thought and what the fighters were hoping for."26 The Plan allowed wealthy and successful Africans to purchase more land and prevented inefficient and poverty-stricken farmers, thus creating a landed and a landless class. The emerging leadership was against freely distributing land as it would not provide the incentive for high yield production.In contrast, whilst fighting the Ethiopian occupation during 1977-1978, the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF), implemented land reforms which nationalised tracts of land in line with strengthening links with the rural poor.
The success of the Eritrean Liberation Movement (ELM), when opposing Italian imperialism, demonstrated the need to adopt a political platform challenging inter-elite alliances and a mobilization strategy that appealed especially to Eritreans of different economic class."27 Political support was partly organised through the EPLF's peasants' associations, "who launched demonstrations against the religious-landed-elites interests and in favor of the reforms.28Towards campaigning for an equal standard of living in relation to the economic sphere, both as a nation and as individuals, with the Western world, many independent movements showed a "distrust of European capitalist firms, a desire of industrialization, and a sympathy for socialist ideals."29 Even though the first generation of Algerian independence leaders were born into wealthy families, were university graduates and such professionals as lawyers and physicians, they asked for equality, "adopting as their message the motto of the French revolution, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."30 Similarly, Felix Houphoet-Boigny (Ivory Coast, nationalist hero) "went and built the Syndicate of African Farmers in order to prevent forced labor.
"31Naturally, following the transition to independence, "the middle-class who had benefitted most from the days of colonial rule and were set to profit yet again as the educated bureaucrats and professionals most closely associated with the institutions of the post-colonial state." 32 However, the vast majority of Africans at independence were peasants who carried out subsistence farming.In West Africa, industrialisation and 'socialism' were recommended by the departing French colonial authority to stimulate economic growth alongside satisfying calls for equality. However, "the nationalist movements have essentially been one of a nascent bourgeoisie - even the trade-union elements were largely white-collar.
"33 Not in line with industrialisation either was the peasants resorting back to pre-capitalist modes of production, following regaining land and self-sufficiency34 (producing largely for themselves). Although, they felt relatively safe from bourgeois exploitation.The bureaucratic bourgeoisie has proved very proficient in converting political power into economic gain.35 Ndva Kofele-Kale, for example, has calculated that the bueeaucratsic bourgeoisie makes up about two per cent of Cameroon's population, yet it grosses a massive one-third of the state's national income.36 Even if the rhetoric surrounding strong Indian economic growth and socialism was accurate, there is a strong case that "the Indian Assemblies even after Independence consisted mainly of professional men from the higher castes, whose motivation in freeing themselves from British rule as to share in the rulers' spoils, rather than to give up their own privileges.
"37In many cases, once the nationalist movements came to power it saw education as the cure for underdevelopment especially as it was promised to their followers. However, the rapid expansion of educational facilities was looked upon by the educated classes dubiously because "the theme became one of the sacrifice of quality to quantity, and complaints about the detoriation of the educational system became rampant among the educated."38 Since independence, "the emergent farmer has been the target group for most of the agricultural development plans."39 However, the overwhelming majority of the people in the rural areas in Zambia, for instance, constitute the poor section of the Zambian peasantry, and it is regrettably "this section of the Zambian peasantry that leads a very precarious life." 40 This is due to them having been marginalised, first by colonial polices and then by those of the post-independence government which has worsened both neocolonialism and rural underdevelopment.
As a class, the current "administrative bourgeoise" of past-colonial states have their historical roots within the colonial adminstration, as an educated African elite, they were employed by the colonial service to act as junior administrators and professionals. "As the group consolidated, this petty bourgeoisie of bureaucrats, doctors and teachers formed the backbone of the nationalist movements that won Africa's independence...
and their reward at liberation was accession into their former colonial masters' jobs."41 There is a stark difference between the approach taken by independence movements in French colonial states compared to British colonial states. In the build up to independence, it appears the former adopts a concerted socialist approach where the interests of the rural poor are not neglected, whereas with the latter attempts to strengthen the economic position of the middle-class colonial elite by helping to "keep the peasantry trapped between the old and the new modes of production."42
