In Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries, there are countries that celebrate independence every year. In 2011, a number of countries celebrated 50 years of independence. In the Commonwealth, two countries, Sierra Leone and Tanzania, celebrated 50 years of independence, having achieved independence in 1961. For a country, one might ask: What does it mean to turn 50?
In most countries, the achievement of independence means gaining full democratic freedom. For countries that gained and therefore celebrate independence every year, it usually means they were colonies of other countries. It generally means that prior to independence they were forcefully governed by other countries or societies, against their will. Unfortunately, the Commonwealth bears the background and linkage to colonial rule for several countries, even though the majority became independent later on, and some turning 50 years now.
Dr William F. Shija Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association
Joining other post-50 independent countries, such as India, Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria, etc., the citizens of former colonies carry very negative and painful psychological images in their minds as life goes on. Then of course such psychological effects are more intensive in black Africans, their ancestors having suffered the untold physical, mental and social human pain of the African slave trade for 500 years. As a citizen of a former British colony called Tanganyika, now Tanzania (since 1964 upon uniting with Zanzibar and after Zanzibar’s revolution), I recall as a youth the wonderful and tumultuous independence celebrations on the night of 9 December 1961. This was after the British Parliament had considered and passed a Bill to give independence to the then Tanganyika. Tanganyika became independent after first being colonized by Germany (together with Rwanda and Burundi as German East Africa) from 1897, after the Scramble for Africa in Berlin in 1884. It then became a British United Nations Trusteeship (Protectorate) in 1916