Problems that nationalist faced during the struggle for independence
1. Tribalism or ethnicity. The colonial government tried to divide the African chiefs. Apart from that, some nationalist attempted to struggle for independence in ethnic grounds
2. Religious difference. In some territories people were divided in the basis of religion. That means people identified themselves as Roman catholic, protestants, Muslims and traditionalist e.g. in Nigeria, Muslim were found in northern part of the country and were poor while Christian found in southern part were rich.
3. Language difference. The difference in language among people were another obstacle to the development of their nationalism to some territories. For Example, the Kenyans had linguistic differences among them something that was a problem towards achievement of independence.
4. Lack of fund. The political parties faced a problem of limited funds, because they did not have enough fund as their source of income, depended on the members of the party whom many of them were poor.
5. Lack of weapons. Many nationalists in Africa lacked weapons. They weak weapons (traditional weapons) such as bush knife, sticks, arrows compared to modern weapons used by Europeans.
6. Arrest of association and nationalist leaders. Africa n nationalist leader were arrested. they were arrested and killed, that was done to demoralized Africa n leaders e.g. Kwame Nkrumah was imprisoned. Julius Nyerere was arrested to court towards 1950’s.
7. Illiteracy. Many Africa n were illiteracy, did not understand completely about nationalistic struggle and what they meant to them. So, this problem forced the nationalist leaders to spend most of their time to educate the Africans.
8. Assassination of nationalistic leaders, for example the Mozambican nationalist Eduardo Mondlane was assassinated by the Parcel Bomb in Dar-es-Salaam in 1969, Also the colonialists assassinated Steve Biko and Robert Sobhukwe in South Africa.
9. The strong hand of the colonial government, the colonial government was another challenge since it imprisoned African leaders but also it banned political activities in African colonies, for example, FRELIMO was banned in Mozambique and therefore had to operate from Tanganyika, The Umkontho We Sizwe, ANC military wing was banned in south Africa hence it had to operate from outside hence the colonial governments were challenges towards achievement of independence.
10. Presence puppet political parties, for example United Tanganyika Party of Martin Kayamba was formed in 1956 in order to oppose TANU but also ANC of Zuberi Mtemvu was formed in 1958 in order to oppose TANU’s Anti-colonial Movements in Tanganyika hence this also was a challenge towards attaining independence for the African people.
