Andrée Blouin reflects on the failures of independence movements in her autobiography 'My Country, Africa'. Blouin served in Patrice Lumumba's government in the Congo, connecting with both workers and political leaders. She notes that the damage to Africa often comes from its own leaders rather than outside forces. Politicians neglected their constituents for personal gain, leading to challenges in post-independence governance. Similar themes were explored in 1970s African cinema and literature, highlighting the unfulfilled expectations following independence and the consequences of neocolonialism.
As I look back I think the hardest thing for us to bear during the long struggle for viable statehood has been the knowledge that it is not the outsiders who have damaged Africa most, but the mutilated will of the people and the selfishness of some of our own leaders.
These politicians often prioritized their own economic comfort over that of their constituents, and contributed to a precarious post-independence landscape as a direct result.
Films like Ousmane Sembène's 'Xala' (1975) and Souleymane Cissé's 'Baara'(1978) meditate on the disappointments littering post-independence African nations and assess the weight of unrealized expectations on their people.
They exist within the same family of work as Ayi Kwei Armah's melancholic 1968 novel 'The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born,' in which the Ghanaian writer considers the rugged terrain of the Gold Coast country in the afterglow of independence.
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