Gamal Nkrumah examines what African Liberation Day means to Africans today, charts the development of the Egyptian Broadcasting Corporation's African Services and asks whether they can function as effectively in the digital age as in their heyday during the African national liberation era? Click to view caption On 25 May, Africans all over the world celebrate African Liberation Day in commemoration of a glorious period in modern African history. A period when, beginning with Ghana's independence from British rule (the first country south of the Sahara to escape the colonial net), country after country tore off the imperial yoke. A period when the continent's people, long-used to being slaves to the interests of others, first learnt what it means to be free. Africa Day, as it is also referred to, marks the occasion of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the formal signing of the charter of the OAU in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on 25 May 1963. But that was only the start of a story. While a majority of African states had gained political independence by the time of the founding of the OAU, great swathes of the continent, especially in the south, remained under the control of minority white settlers. They monopolised political power and maintained an economic stranglehold over the region. They ruthlessly exploited mineral and agricultural resources; made vast profits through the use of what amounted to slave labour; forcibly appropriated the most fertile land; and herded the indigenous people into overpacked reserves, only letting them out for a day (and often night) of drudgery on a rich man's plantation. Collision was inevitable. Armed struggle for African liberation ensued, and hundreds of thousands died in the drawn-out, bloodthirsty battles that marked the battle for Africa's future. Soon it grew clear that the old ways were losing. The late British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, on arriving in South Africa shortly after visiting newly-independent Ghana, referred to the "wind of change" then sweeping across the continent. He foresaw that that wind would turn into a mighty hurricane ripping through the lands and leaving no monument to the past unshaken. The struggles commemorated on Africa Liberation Day were not confined to southern Africa. Kenya, too, was witness to one of the most brutal anti-colonial struggles on the continent, when the Mau Mau national resistance movement bitterly fought European settler colonialism in the country's so-called "White Highlands." These were lands reserved for European commercial farmers who used cheap African labour to reap huge profits from the rich and fertile soil. In North Africa, the anti-European settler liberation struggle was also ferocious, Algeria coming to be known as the land of a million martyrs. Yet for all the ghastly slaughter, those were heady days. Africa's people were full of hope for the future. Expectations were soaring and, having shrugged off foreign rule, it seemed as if there was nothing the proud young continent could not accomplish. But freedom has been a Promethean gift. For in latter days hope has shrivelled. Unless radical and immediate change is brought about, on this, and future Africa days, there will be little for a once-optimistic people to celebrate. This year, the continent's leaders are debating the launch of the African Union in July at the annual African summit which will take place, symbolically, in Durban, South Africa. The city played host to last year's United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism, and the choice of venue is significant; for it was in South Africa that the institution of racial segregation and white settler colonialism most famously fell apart. But even there in Durban are reminders of how much still needs to be done. Though Africa's 54 countries are politically liberated from colonial rule, they still face gigantic economic and social challenges. Petty wars and conflicts rage unchecked; AIDS is lashing Africa's children; debt is monstrous; and the steady decline in the commodity prices of Africa's traditional exports (mainly primary products), coupled with a fierce rise in the costs of imports (the manufactured goods and high-tech products produced by the industrially advanced countries of the North), is crippling economic growth. The European colonial powers may have lost their colonies: they have lost none of their power. Economically, and even militarily, the former European masters hold sway. In Sierra Leone only last week, Britain ended a brutal civil war by propping up, Afghanistan-style, a government that, in gratitude, will bow to British interests. But for all the despair, there is hope. And like the despair, its source is to be found outside the great continent itself. Africa Day is not celebrated in the liberated lands alone. People of African descent in Europe and the US will gather on 25 May to mark the political coming of age of their forefathers. The tradition of celebrating Africa Day in the US was begun in Washington DC in 1972, when more than 60,000 came together to remember. "With a decisiveness and force which can no longer be concealed, the spectre of Black Power has descended on the world like a thunder cloud flashing its lightning," Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, described the explosive entry of the militant Black Panther movement on to the US political scene. While the tempo has unquestionably mellowed, Africa Liberation Day still draws huge crowds in many US cities where there are sizeable communities of African-Americans. In some instances, Africa Liberation Day is celebrated even more enthusiastically across the Atlantic than in what the people of the African Diaspora affectionately refer to as the Motherland, or Mother Africa. Because for all the setbacks and suffering, all the torments and toils, they remember, and need to remember, what it is that Africa Day still stands for: a thing that all the chicanery, the factionalism, and the self-interest of politicians cannot tarnish. A thing called Freedom.
