Africa's Answer to Schweitzer

AT THE close of his long and remarkable life, Albert Schweitzer was widely mourned and honored, especially in the United States and in Western Europe. For millions of white people he had become a symbolic figure, the archetype of the good man, his peaceful and devoted life standing in sharp contrast to the epoch of violence and terror which opened in Europe in the year following his departure for Africa. More than that; I believe he had become something of a symbol of atonement. In the symbolic life of Albert Schweitzer, we whites administered to ourselves our own absolution for our African sins.

It is true that toward the end a few clouds had darkened this picture a little. Albert Schweitzer’s reputation had never stood quite as high in the medical world, or indeed in the missionary world, as it did among laymen. It came to be known that the views of Schweitzer, to the effect that simple people needed a simple hospital, had become a barrier to medical progress. But the fact that Schweitzer, in advanced old age, was not progressive either in policy or practice did not seem either strange or particularly discreditable. The ramshackle little hospital at Lambaréné, in an Africa which now had some excellent and well-equipped modern hospitals, added a touch of pathos to his last years but could not diminish the credit due to his pioneering work and sacrifice. And though the word paternalist came to be heard in relation to Schweitzer even in the West, I doubt whether the word was actually considered to be any kind of charge outside certain restricted liberal and left-wing circles. In general, what we may call the Schweitzer legend remained in being.

When I speak of the Schweitzer legend, I do not mean to stigmatize as fable the view that Schweitzer was a man of exceptional virtue — in every sense of that word — a man who had an exacting faith, and acted on it, a man who made great sacrifices in order to go out and help the most helpless people he could find. That much I believe to be not legend but truth. It is also true, I believe, that Schweitzer held, and never significantly modified, the narrow and above all incurious opinions about Africans which were prevalent in the Europe of his day — and are indeed still widely held both in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in America, although the character of their formulation has changed and diverged. Under these opinions the African is a naked being in more than a physical sense; he is a being without history, without traditions other than bestial superstitions, without any art or music of importance, without skill or energy, and with only dubious capacity for acquiring any of these things. Such, generally, were Schweitzer’s opinions, if we may judge by both his statements and his silences.

Those who uncritically admired Albert Schweitzer largely shared these opinions and approved this attitude. The sanctification and perpetuation of this set of habits around the name and fame of a good, old-fashioned, prejudiced man is what I mean by the Schweitzer legend. In Europe and America, this legend has not met significant challenge. Africa, however, is another matter.

AFRICAN reservations about Schweitzer are not based solely on exception taken to a broadly paternalist attitude, or on statistical computations of the balance of good and evil in the colonial heritage, or even on the implicit racism which Africans have discerned in his writings, though that is not without importance. The immediate and specific reason for Schweitzer’s unpopularity among most Africans who have heard of him, with the exception no doubt of his patients at Lambaréné, is the political stand he took, after the end of the Second World War, when African demands for independence became insistent. At this time Albert Schweitzer put the weight of his great authority and reputation as a lifelong friend of Africa against any early granting of independence. Inevitably, African nationalists came to regard him as an enemy; nor has this view been modified by the lapse of time.

It is curious that the very essay of Schweitzer’s, “Our Task in Colonial Africa,” which was most objectionable from an African nationalist point of view at the time contains insights into certain realities which many strong African nationalists are today actually concerned to emphasize. Schweitzer wrote, about ten years before the first African colony emerged to independence:

Colonies can become independent only in the sense of remaining nominally free political creations that belong to the former motherland as members of her empire. This means a more or less far-reaching limitation of their freedom, a limitation in which they voluntarily acquiesce. . . . The problems of this limited freedom may be concealed in formulas but they may not be done away with. They will give rise to continual conflicts. . . . A freedom that can only be a limited freedom creates a false situation whose consequences no one can foresee.

African nationalists would reject this formulation as it stands, but they increasingly recognize the phenomenon which Schweitzer predicted: the phenomenon of neocolonialism. No region in tropical Africa has better exemplified the fulfillment of Schweitzer’s prophecies than the region he knew best: Gabon. Gabon became independent in 1960. Its first President, Léon M’ba, immediately gave proof of that voluntary acquiescence in the limitation of freedom of which Schweitzer spoke. “Without very substantial external aid,” said M’ba, “we cannot ensure our defense, the stability of our currency, the development of our country and the improvement of our standard of living. These are considerations that must guide us in our common attitude. . . of loyalty vis àa vis the Community, France and General de Gaulle.”

It was clear from this that Gabon was indeed what Schweitzer said it would be: a nominally free political creation belonging to the former motherland as a member of her empire. This was achieved mutually by the voluntary acquiescence of men like M’ba. Then the conflicts, which Schweitzer had also predicted, began. The natives, as he had pointed out, found it hard Lo understand why complete freedom could not be given them. A popular uprising broke out. M’ba was deposed; the epoch of voluntary acquiescence was over. Then the French Army intervened and restored M’ba. The limitations of freedom were fixed; they did not in this case depend on voluntary acquiescence.

On an enormously greater scale, with greater complexities and on the heights of tragedy, the Belgian Congo went through an essentially similar experience. There, however, it began with a failure on the part of Patrice Lumumba to yield the voluntary acquiescence expected of him—this, after many vicissitudes, led to the installment in his place of the acquiescent Moise Tshombe, and to the acceptance by the Republic of the Congo, in relation to Belgium and Western interests, of essentially the same limitations of freedom which most of the rest of French-speaking Africa had had to accept in relation to France.

As a result of more flexible and farsighted policies pursued by Britain, and of more mature African leadership, the newly independent countries of English-speaking Africa have not been made to undergo political subordination. But their leaders are aware, and some of their followers even more acutely aware, that economic independence has so far eluded their grasp, and they become more conscious of the long-term political implications of this. Thus African nationalists, who formerly had stressed the readiness of their countries for freedom, now tend to stress the partly illusory nature of the political freedom which they have in fact obtained.

On the other hand, those who, with Schweitzer, had stressed in the days before independence that political freedom in Africa could be only nominal, not real, now profess not to understand the meaning of the word neocolonialism in any part of Africa and affect to believe that those statesmen like M’ba and Tshombe and President Tsiranana of the Malagasy Republic speak the free and unimpeded voices of their countries.

ALL of tropical Africa remains in economic dependence on Western Europe and the United States; most, though not all, of tropical Africa remains under some degree of political tutelage, ranging from preponderant influence of outside powers and interests to full and effective political control by these interests. And to the south of this “neocolonial” zone stretches the “palaeocolonial” territory of southern Africa, the Portuguese territory of Angola, the territory of Mozambique, settlerruled Southern Rhodesia, and the ultimate bastion of ruthless and open racism in the Republic of South Africa.

In the earlier heady days of African independence, when Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change” had not lost its freshness, African nationalists seem to have thought that the independence of tropical Africa would speedily and almost automatically bring about the deliverance of the Africans under white rule in southern Africa also. What has happened, however, is that instead of tropical Africa spreading its power and influence south, southern Africa has spread its influence north. Moise Tshombe, a friend of the rulers of South Africa since his Katanga days, has been installed as prime minister of the largest and richest country in tropical Africa; South African mercenaries have crushed, for a time at least, the sporadic Congolese rebellions against what he represents. And the independent African states, because of their economic and military weakness and because of their divisions, have been unable to do anything effective in reply to this challenge.

To transform this false situation of limited freedom — to use Schweitzer’s terms—two possible solutions are being urged. One is the solution of “African unity now,” the constitution by the independent African countries of a continental African government. This is publicly and strongly urged, most prominently by President Nkrumah of Ghana. The second solution, which, for obvious reasons, is less openly referred to, is that genuinely revolutionary mass movements of workers and peasants will sweep aside the present bourgeois nationalist governments and that revolutionary forces on a scale comparable with those of the Far East will be unleashed.

How realistic is either expectation?

President Nkrumah of Ghana is a shrewd tactician, and it may be granted that his slogan of “unity now” serves for the moment a much needed purpose of raising the morale of African nationalists in various parts of the continent. The ideal is a noble one, and has the power of capturing young imaginations. Ghana’s own borders, so frequently sealed, are a reminder of the distance between hope and reality. The divergencies between the real concerns and aspirations of not merely individual countries but whole regions of the continent remain profound.

I heard a gifted and enthusiastic young Sudanese lecture a Ghanaian audience on “African Unity and Arab Nationalism.” His theme turned out to be mainly Israel, with reflections on how non-Arab African states had betrayed the cause of African unity by failing to give support to the Arabs against Israel. His Ghanaian audience heard him politely. At the end, being chairman, I called for questions. The first question put to the speaker was: “Mr. Salah, when we have African unity, won’t you have to stop being an Arab?” After hearing this and other similar questions and the speaker’s impassioned replies, I left the meeting with the feeling that African unity was not around the corner.

As for mass revolution, I remember a conversation with the Chinese ambassador in Accra, a scholarly diplomat. We had been talking about the Congo, and I had said something about my depression at the recent turn of events in that country — it was just after the installation of Tshombe and his mercenaries in Léopoldville. The ambassador smiled a very Chinese smile and said: “There is no reason for discouragement — think of all this as part of one process of political education — theirs, Doctor O’Brien, and yours.” It was clear from his conversation that he saw developments in Africa eventually taking the same course as in Asia and that he believed that the installation of an obvious foreign puppet, under the protection of foreign mercenaries, was favorable to this process and therefore to be welcomed at the present stage — just as the Japanese puppet government in Manchuria had played its part in the process leading to the creation of Communist China.

It must be said that this concept is both intellectually and otherwise more formidable than the concept that a genuine African Union government, with real powers, is likely to be established by the present African governments, some of which have hardly any independent power themselves. It is certainly true that the Western powers have comported themselves in the Congo in the manner best calculated to convince the Congolese of the desirability of Communism. That said, the Congo is not the Yangtze, nor do the history, economy, and social, cultural, and linguistic composition of Africa at all closely resemble those of China. The Chinese, like all the other protagonists in what is now a multilateral cold war, seem to see Africa through an intellectual grid established by the pattern of their own experience, hopes, and fears. But Africans have their own patterns and are not likely to fit entirely into any of these grids.

Nor can they keep entirely out of them: the cold war is, and is likely long to remain, one of the greatest forces fashioning African destinies. It is true that no one admits to waging cold war in Africa. Arnold Rivkin in Africa and the West has told us, for example, that the United States “sought persistently to keep the cold war out of the Congo.” For the other side, Jack Woddis in Africa: The Way Ahead says that “closer relations between Africa and the socialist states, far from bringing the cold war into Africa, would serve notice on the cold war mongers to keep out and leave Africa in peace.” These official pictures are strikingly similar: for each side “the cold war” is a term descriptive of the other fellow’s activities; “keeping the cold war out” means keeping the other fellow out, or pushing him out, as in the Congo; “peace” means the attainment of one’s own predominant influence in an African country or in Africa generally.

The cold war, though few speak well of it, has brought benefits as well as damage to Africa. For its sake most of the metropolitan powers speeded up colonial development plans and programs for self-government; for its sake too East and West have competed in offers of economic and technical aid. Without the cold war it is not likely that the economic development of either Ghana or Nigeria would have been as rapid as it has been.

The cold war is not a uniform phenomenon: that which brought benefits to Ghana and Nigeria brought only ruin to the Congo. There are coldwar variants which are as near to “peaceful coexistence” as our imperfect world is likely to yield for some time to come; there are other variants in which combinations of Machiavellianism, greed, overconfidence, and panic produce disaster and the risk of war. In situations of the latter type, Chinese faith in the impending triumph of Communism throughout the world has played a part — a part, however, of which the importance in Africa has certainly been exaggerated. A larger part has been played by the crusading or galloping form of anticommunism which is likely to grip certain politicians and diplomatic representatives and which is so easily exploited by international financial interests in places like the Congo.

Those of us who do not believe in the impending collapse either of capitalism in the United States or of Communism in the Soviet Union and China are obliged to attach most of our hopes for the future to a reciprocal decline in the crusading spirit and to a spread of that salutary stodginess which has marked Russian foreign policy in recent years. Such a decline, implying a diplomatic sophistication of the cold war rather than its unlikely cessation, would give Africa a breathing space.

If the day comes, as I believe it may, when the news of a “right-wing” coup in Fada N’Gurma or the capture of Nyunzu by the Kitawala no longer engenders either panic or undue elation in either camp, then the time will also be ripe for a more radical reconsideration of policies and attitudes involving the discarding of the element common to the thinking of Schweitzer and Woddis: the assumption that we, as heirs to history — however we interpret it — know better than the unhistorical inhabitants of Africa how their future history should and will run. We have already set our ideas loose on the continent; what Africa needs from us now is not so much our further exhortations as better prices for cocoa, coffee, rubber, and mineral exports, and technical aid which is both more abundant and less dubious in its nature and intent. The cold war, in its less dramatic and more benign forms, could favor this development.

Ghana derives real benefits from the teachers of the American Peace Corps as well as from the Russian medical mission. The most interesting and encouraging feature about both these groups is that their members give the impression of having come to Africa not merely to teach but also to learn. Increasingly, too, the universities of Africa have become places for the diffusion of European knowledge, which was their original function, and also for learning about Africa.

The independence of the African states, precarious though it is in most cases, has also yielded fruit. The outsiders who now come to Africa have to adapt themselves, by learning, to a world which has not indeed been totally transformed from the old days but which has been very significantly changed. As for Africans themselves, they are learning rapidly not only about outsiders but about one another by the experience of independence, and learning even more from its disappointments than from its fulfillments. That is the great, though not quite the expected, justification of rapid decolonization and the real refutation of Schweitzer’s warnings, forceful though they were, against early independence. Those who sought first the political kingdom, as Kwame Nkrumah advised, now know much more about what has been found and who found it and what else is to be sought.

Nor is there now any reason to believe that Africans must learn more slowly than others; on the contrary, the indications are that they are learning faster in politics and in other fields because they know they must. We are often reminded in the press that the future of Africa depends on the maturity of African leadership. It also depends on the degree of maturity shown by non-African leaders. This implies a willingness to learn, a sense of specific African realities — as distinct from alien preconceptions — and a respect for African opinion.