‘Shining vistas’ and false passports: recipes for an anticolonial hub
The ‘anticolonial hub’ has, more often than not, appeared to us in the form of the colonial metropole. Indeed, for historians of interwar London or Paris there is certainly justification for arguing that these locales held certain potential for anticolonial actors travelling from the global South. Historians of post-war African anticolonialism, however, have neglected the emergence — proliferation even — of anticolonial hubs such as New Delhi, Algiers, Cairo, Accra and later Dar es Salaam, all brought into being precisely by the decolonisation process whose momentum they hoped to perpetuate.
When John Kale sat down in his Cairo office in 1958 to write a political pamphlet, the significance, to him, of this hub could not have been clearer. Kale (or Kalekezi), a little-known figure in the narrative of Uganda’s liberation struggle, had recently travelled to Cairo on a false passport. He had been expelled in 1957 from Makerere College, Kampala (the only higher education institution for Africans in British East and Central Africa) after having attended without permission a Soviet-sponsored student conference. And so, with the support of President Nasser, he decided to set up a Cairo office for the Uganda National Congress (UNC), Uganda’s first political party, formed in 1952.
Overland travel to North Africa had become considerably easier for East Africans in the wake of Sudanese independence in 1956, a fact that colonial authorities noted with anxiety. The anticolonial hub that the Colonial Office had grown used to — London — was to some degree protectable, controllable and observable. Cairo was not. The UAR capital, imbued with fresh symbolic value by the Suez fiasco, had also recently become the seat of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO). Cairo granted access to resources and channels of influence to which Kale’s contemporaries in London were systematically denied.
Kale’s pamphlet, ‘Colonialism is Incompatible with Peace’ (1958), brings to light some of these opportunities, not least the fact that Cairo provided fertile ground for publishing ventures. The pamphlet argued that world peace was unsustainable as long as colonial rule continued. Kale posited violent anticolonial uprisings as an inevitable result of the colonial situation, warning that although the UNC advocated non-violence, Uganda ‘may at a certain time welcome the very physical clash’ that had been witnessed in Algeria and Kenya. He recognised, with Fanonian echoes, that colonialism is ‘in essence… a forcible militant rule’: it is inherently violent. Such a suggestion would not have sat well with anticolonial groups on the British establishment Left, whose willingness to publish the views of resident nationalists was dictated by concerns over ‘reputation’ and pressure for pamphlets to sell profitably in Britain.
The pamphlet hints too at the sorts of contacts that could be forged from Cairo. Kale refers to the Conference of Independent African States (Accra, April 1958) which, remarkably as a colonial subject, he was able to attend as part of the Guinean delegation. Unlike political figures residing within colonial-controlled borders, Kale did not have to seek special permission to attend the All-African Peoples Conferences (AAPC) in Accra (1958) and Tunis (1960). Cairo also held specific geographical and political significance for Afro-Asian projects, which, Kale argued offered ‘immense possibilities’ based on ‘mutual respect and equality’. He even (rather ambitiously) assured UNC colleagues that from Cairo he would be able to put Uganda’s grievances before the UN. The 1950s, the pamphlet proclaimed, had ‘opened up shining vistas’.
But Cairo was not, of course, a city of free men and unbridled possibility. President Nasser’s willingness to host sub-Saharan anticolonialists and the AAPSO headquarters reflected his own drive for regional prestige and influence — Kale provided him with a link to East Africa, where many rising political figures were suspicious of Afro-Asian projects.
Moreover, Cairo’s utility for the UNC came with limitations. In October 1958 fellow UNC member and Makerere expellee, Abu Mayanja, passed through Cairo on his way back to Uganda from London. Arriving at Entebbe airport with a suitcase full of Kale’s pamphlets and AAPSO material, Mayanja was arrested by colonial authorities, the publications confiscated. What use was international networking if, all the while, the colonial state fought frantically to isolate national anticolonial movements?
Cairo is part of a larger story of how anticolonial actors were able to circumvent, negotiate and categorically refuse the attempts of an anxious colonial state to control where they went, who they met and what they published. As Mayanja’s arrest reveals, however, this was a process of frustration and risk as much as one of triumph. Moreover, freedom from colonial restraints certainly did not mean political freedom full-stop — not in a decolonising world, where newly independent states were asserting themselves in continental and international forums. As historians seek to unearth entanglements, encounters and hubs, we must be careful not to obscure the systemic blockages faced by historical actors.
And what of John Kale? What of his efforts to reconcile diverse interests in a nascent anticolonial hub? The story is a familiar one. In August 1960 Kale was killed in a seemingly uninvestigated Russian aircraft accident. Colonial authorities reported that the news ‘did not cause much interest’ in Uganda. Given the difficulties of integrating anticolonial work abroad with the internal nationalist struggle, this perhaps contained an element of truth. But certainly it was not the whole story.
Ismay Milford is a PhD Researcher at the European University Institute, Florence, where she carries out research on the anticolonial work of East and Central Africans during the 1950s and 60s. She can be contacted at ismay.milford@eui.eu.
