Kevin Okoth and Jeremy Harding join Tom to discuss two recent books reassessing decolonisation. Textbook histories used to describe African independence as more or less complete by the mid-1960s, but millions of people were fighting white minority rule into the 1970s and 1980s, while Cold War rivalry between the US, the Soviet Union and China played out across the continent, often with catastrophic consequences. As countries continue to vie for Africa’s natural resources, its postcolonial future remains, at best, unresolved.
Music by Kieran Brunt / Produced by Anthony Wilks
Image: a mourning protest in Ghana for the murdered prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, 1961.
