By Baba Galleh Jallow
At the dawn of independence, many African leaders moved to establish single-party states. The justifications given for the establishment of single party regimes included the purported existence of potentially explosive ethnic cleavages, the fragility of the newly independent colonial creations, the need for unity and concerted national effort, and the proclaimed convictions, on the part of the new leaders, that western-style democracy and multi-party politics were not suitable for Africa. The introduction of single party regimes necessarily entailed the introduction of the politics of infallibility, which, in most cases, led to the now chronic specter of military intervention and intractable developmental problems in Africa. Today, over four decades later, the single-party experiment has long proven untenable and most of those countries whose leaders so enthusiastically participated in “the first dance of freedom” (July, 1987) are still reeling from the effects of the historical mistakes of their founding fathers in trying to impose unity on their peoples.
African leaders of the independence era were particularly averse to notions of press freedom and opposition parties. Beset by all manner of challenges such as the provision of basic amenities like health care and education, the improvement of communication facilities, infrastructure and the building of more efficient bureaucracies than the ones they inherited from the colonialists, most leaders saw rival political parties and critical presses as needless distractions that must not be tolerated. Independent newspapers and smaller political parties that participated in the struggle for independence but could not clinch the leadership were accused of serving as instruments of neocolonial destabilization and sabotage. Extreme intolerance drove some newspapers out of business or into self-censorship, while some of the fledgling opposition movements went underground and became, in the eyes of their governments, illegitimate entities engaged in acts of sabotage and treason against the state.
While the politics of authoritarianism and the curtailment of press freedoms in the African postcolony can be read bas continuations of processes of authoritarianism and censorship that were the hallmarks of the colonial state in Africa, it is clear that Africa’s nationalist leaders of the independence era made a conscious choice to continue these processes. It is a cruel paradox of African history that nationalist leaders who fought against colonial authoritarianism and for their peoples’ right to self-determination did little more than appropriate the apparatus and instruments of the oppressive colonial state and redeploy them against their own people upon gaining independence. Needless to say, the colonial and postcolonial politics of exclusion spelled doomed for Africa because it is impossible to generate viable socio-economic and political progress when a significant pool of the people’s intellectual energies are suppressed or otherwise excluded from the national fund of ideas. All societies that have been able to register significant progress have done so by encouraging, or at least tolerating intellectual diversity, a free marketplace of ideas, from which those responsible for steering the affairs of state can pick and choose to propel the engine of national growth. Guinea’s Sekou Toure would have none of that kind of diversity; hence the mess that Guinea, one of the potentially wealthiest nations in the world, finds itself in today.
Sekou Toure was perhaps the most vehement exponent of the single-party system in Africa. Alone among the nationalist leaders of French West Africa, Toure voted No to De Gaulle’s referendum of 1958 for a Franco-African Community in which French colonies would enjoy limited self-government, opting instead to go it alone. He proceeded to assume grandiose titles such as “Supreme Guide of the Revolution”, “The Terror of International Imperialism, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism”, “The Doctor of Revolutionary Sciences” and “The Great Son of Africa” and plunged with remarkable gusto into the habit of condemning colonialism, neo-colonialism and those he considered agents and puppets of imperialism. Claiming that the leader was the ultimate symbol and representative of the culture of newly decolonized peoples, Toure declared at the Second Congress of Negro Writers in Rome, March 26, 1959, that “decolonization does not consist merely in liberating oneself from the presence of the colonizers: it must necessarily be completed by total liberation from the spirit of the colonized . . . from the evil consequences - moral, intellectual and cultural - of the colonial system” (Langley, 1979: 603). Ironically, he failed to see that the very nation-state system within which he worked was a creation of colonialism.
Totally convinced that he had the best ideas for the progress of the Guinean revolution, Toure attempted to create a single people with a single thought process and identical aspirations among a diverse population. He declared that the capacities of thinkers, artists, intellectuals or researchers “have no values unless they really concur with the life of the people, unless they are integrated in fundamental manner with the action, thought and aspirations of the populations” (Langley, 1979: 610). For Toure, intellectual decolonization required “a reintegration in the social background, a return to Africa by the daily practice of African life, so as to readapt oneself to its basic values, its proper activities, its special mentality” (ibid.).
Toure’s assumption that there was an “African life”, “basic values”, “proper activities”, and “special mentality” constituted a meaningless generalization that could be understood only within the context of a dictator’s desire to muzzle all forms of dissent and maintain the unquestioned supremacy of his party and its policies. In the name of authenticity and the call for authentic action, Toure systematically excluded and silenced all who would not subscribe to his ideas. He tried to impose an arbitrary commonality on a human society that was, like all human societies, intellectually and morally diverse and given to disagreement and dissent.
While dismissing diversity as divisive, Toure waged a relentless war against the notion of individuality. For him, individuality was a corrupt western cultural artifact that had no place in the new politics of national purification and healing. Everything associated with western notions of independent thought divorced from collective aspirations as represented by his government was a disease to be purged from the Guinean body politic. In a speech to the congress of his party, the Parti Democratique de Guinea (PDG) on September 14, 1959, Toure vehemently argued that the problem of the individual was not a concern of Guinea at that moment. “If the problem of the individual is a central concern in other continents - in countries that are free and independent - the first and only true problem for the colonial peoples is that of the attainment of independence” (Sigmund, 1972: 226). Political unity, he insisted, can only be “maintained and developed to serve the national interest if it involves unity of action on the part of the whole population” (ibid.: 229). Individual wills must be sacrificed on the altar of the common will as defined by the PDG. “Our desires for progress will be fruitless if individual wills are not identical and do not aim at attaining the same objectives . . . At all times, the party must be extremely vigilant, intransigent and severe, in order to force the unitary and dynamic character of its policy into the awareness and action of every citizen . . .” (ibid.: 237). Apparently, Toure did not realize that trying to make individual wills identical is in itself a contradiction in terms. He seemed oblivious of the fact that a difference of individual wills does not necessarily translate into mutually exclusive desires or interests.
For Toure, deviating from what he saw as the national struggle was unforgivable. If you must speak politics in Guinea, you must speak politics according to the PDG. For him, laws, decrees and similar legal instruments of governance had to play second fiddle to what, in his mind, constituted historic traditions, customs and the necessity for the maintenance of society. It is the party that is the supreme organ of state and every Guinean must submit his or her individual will and preferences to those of the party. “Everyone, as a matter of principle,” he declared, “must serve the party, and no one must serve himself” (ibid.:233).
To rebuff claims that his regime was a dictatorship, Toure argued that all governments were by nature dictatorships. Dictatorship, he claimed, “is the concentration of powers exercised by a man or group of men over the whole . . . If the dictatorship exercised by the governmental apparatus emanates directly from the whole of the people, this dictatorship is popular in nature and the state is a democratic state - democracy being the exercise of national sovereignty by the people” (ibid.: 234). It was in this sense that Sekou Toure espoused his anachronistic concept of “democratic dictatorship” whose three major principles he listed as follows: “(1) All leaders of the party are directly elected, democratically, by the party workers, who have complete freedom of conscience and expression within the party. (2) The concerns of the state of Guinea are the concerns of all the citizens of Guinea. The program of the party is discussed democratically. As long as a decision has not been taken, each one is free to say what he thinks or wishes. But when - after a long discussion in Congress or Assembly - the decisions have been taken by a unanimous vote or by a majority, the workers and the leaders are required to apply them faithfully. (3) There is no sharing of the responsibility of the leaders - only of the responsibility for a decision. Thus, discipline will not be undermined” (ibid.: 238).”
Toure’s pronouncements reveal a number of contradictions. While he condemned individual wills and freedoms, and would have the individual drowned in the sea of the general, and while he assumed a position of infallibility and acted as if he were infallible, Toure made remarks that ran counter to the grain of his usual demeanor. For instance, in his 1959 Rome speech, Toure declared that “the right of existence extends to presence, conception, expression and action. Any amputation of this fundamental right must be set down as a debit to mankind’s account” (ibid: 615). Later, in his speech to the PDG, he admitted that “there is no action without mistakes. Only a party that carries on no activity can avoid mistakes” (Sigmund, p. 231). Yet, how could the PDG realize its mistakes if it made no allowance for independent thought or criticism? Or if it insisted that it knew what was best for the people? Even more ironic was Toure’s declaration, in his exposition on the concept of democratic dictatorship, that “a first requirement for democracy is liberty . . . Without effective liberty, there is no possibility for men or societies to determine themselves freely . . .” (ibid: 235). How Toure could reconcile his concept of democratic dictatorship and the supremacy of the PDG with the type of liberty he espoused beats the imagination. Suffice it to say that in reality, no such liberty was possible in Guinea.
Toure was eventually to go down the annals of history as one of the most ruthless dictators of modern Africa. As Martin Meredith (2005) puts it, having imposed a dictatorship and assumed a position of infallibility and omnipotence, Sekou Toure was condemned to live in a world of conspiracies, real and imagined. Paranoia born of despotism led him into a constant tirade against both real and imagined imperialism, neocolonialism and “fifth column” elements out to kill him or destroy Guinea. Indeed, his voice could daily be heard over Radio Conakry railing against perceived enemies of the revolution and shouting down imperialism and neocolonialism. Toure, Meredith recounts, “used plots as a pretext for liquidating his opponents, whether there was evidence against them or not . . . His regime became notorious for show trials, public executions, arbitrary imprisonment and the use of torture . . . More than fifty ministers were shot or hanged, or died in detention, or served prison sentences” (Meredith, 2005: 271).
Among Toure’s many victims was the distinguished Guinean scholar and diplomat, Diallo Telli, the first Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity. Meredith reports that “Telli was imprisoned, tortured and then subjected to la diete noire, a drawn-out form of execution which consisted of depriving a prisoner of food and water until he died” (ibid: 272). Toure’s conspiracy theories started barely two years after independence. In 1960, an alleged conspiracy by French and Guinean nationals led to the death from torture of several people. In 1961, a teachers’ demand for pay was described as a plot to sabotage the PDG government and led to the expulsion of the Soviet ambassador. In 1965, some traders were condemned to death for forming a party and nominating a candidate to oppose Toure. In 1970, Toure carried out a massive purge in the process of which about fifty-eight people were publicly hanged for allegedly conspiring with the Portuguese government to assassinate him. Medical doctors, soccer players, villagers and market women all suffered from the despotic policies of Sekou Toure.
Contrary to widespread expectations that Toure would die of an assassin’s bullet, Guinea’s democratic dictator died in an American hospital undergoing heart surgery in 1984. The military scrambled for power with General Lansana Conteh coming out the victor. Until he reluctantly succumbed to the cold hand of death a few days ago, General Conteh hung tenaciously on to power while Guinea groaned under a weight of poverty and backwardness much worse than what prevailed at independence and during Toure’s reign of terror.