Independence by Negotiation: Ghana and Zambia

1Midnight at the Old Polo Ground

At midnight on 6 March 1957, at the Old Polo Ground in Accra, Kwame Nkrumah and his fellow leaders, dressed in northern smocks, stood before a huge crowd and declared the Gold Coast free as Ghana. Six years earlier he had been in James Fort prison. Read two lines from that night, then ask what he meant by linking one country's freedom to a whole continent's.

2Ghana: from riot to republic

Why was Ghana's road relatively peaceful and fast? There were almost no European settlers to defend their land; the cocoa economy produced an educated middle class and the money to fund a state; the CPP was well organised down to village level; and Britain decided that it was better to hand power to an elected leader than to fight him. The nationalists' unity was not complete, however: the NLM's challenge showed regional fears that later troubled independent Ghana.

3Zambia: from welfare societies to a republic, 1944–1964

Northern Rhodesia was a different kind of colony: its wealth was copper, mined on the Copperbelt by large companies, and a few tens of thousands of white settlers and miners held the best jobs. African politics grew in four steps.

1. Associations and unions (1940s). Urban welfare associations came together in a federation in 1946 and became the Northern Rhodesia African Congress in 1948. Copperbelt miners had struck in 1935 and 1940, and in 1949 they formed the African Mineworkers' Union.
2. Fighting the Federation (1953–1959). In 1953 Britain joined Northern Rhodesia to settler-ruled Southern Rhodesia and to Nyasaland in the Central African Federation, against strong African opposition. Africans feared that Southern Rhodesia's settler rule would spread north. The African National Congress under Harry Nkumbula protested, but younger leaders found it too cautious.
3. A new, militant party (1958–1961). In 1958 Kenneth Kaunda broke away to form the Zambia African National Congress, which was banned in 1959; Kaunda was imprisoned. On his release in January 1960 he became president of the new United National Independence Party (UNIP). When a British constitutional plan of 1961 still favoured the settlers, UNIP launched the Cha-cha-cha campaign of civil disobedience: burning identity certificates, blocking roads and destroying bridges, especially in the Northern and Luapula provinces.
4. Elections and independence (1962–1964). Britain revised the constitution. After the 1962 election UNIP and the ANC formed a coalition government with an African majority. The Federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963. In the January 1964 election UNIP won 55 of the 75 seats and Kaunda became prime minister. On 24 October 1964 Northern Rhodesia became the independent Republic of Zambia, with Kaunda as president.

4Compare the two roads

Analysis. Both countries won independence through a mass party, non-violent pressure and elections. Zambia's road was slower and more confrontational because settler power, organised through the Federation, had to be broken first. Ghana's example helped: by 1960 Britain's prime minister, Harold Macmillan, spoke in Cape Town of a "wind of change" blowing through Africa.