ABSTRACT
A crucial feature of the African policy enunciated after the Second World War was the new emphasis given to educated Africans. British power had been conserved by alliance with the chiefs, but so inevitably had traditional African customs. In order to accelerate the pace of change, it was necessary to secure the support and co-operation of the intelligentsia, whose collaboration could only be bought by introducing the kind of political changes they wanted to see. In order to westernize Africa, western political power would have to be relinquished. Thus, while the war had seen the attempt to prevent the divergence of the chiefs and intelligentsia, the years after the war saw the emphasis of British policy shifting clearly to the educated Africans, with the chiefs having the main function simply of preventing the premature transfer of power to an elite whose own progress meant they might be divorced from the needs of their society. This goal was formulated in the Colonial Office in 1947. The war had seen great changes in the African ‘world-view’ which help explain the novel importance the educated African assumed for British policy. The effects of the war on the African consciousness were certainly profound and have been compared with those of World War I on India.1 It has been argued that the war had an essentially liberating effect on the African in that, by exposing him to new experiences and a paradoxical situation, he was able to explode the imperial myth. This is well voiced by Sithole:
During the war the African came into contact with practically all the peoples of the earth…. He saw the so-called civilized and peaceful and orderly white people mercilessly butchering one another just as his socalled savage ancestors had done in tribal wars. He saw no difference between so-called primitive and so-called civilized man. In short, he saw through European pretensions that Africans were savages. This discovery… had a revolutionizing psychological impact on the African. But more than this, World War II taught the African most powerful ideas. During the war
the Allied Powers taught their subject peoples… that it was not right for Germany to dominate other nations. They taught the subject peoples to fight and die for freedom…. After World War II, the Africans began to direct their British-aroused anti-domination spirit against the Allied Powers who had extensive colonial empires in Africa.2
