SAM NUJOMA: “A tribute to Kwame Nkrumah will be incomplete without reference to his role in the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on 25 May 1963. NKRUMAH WAS NOT JUST AN IDEAOLOGUE, BUT ALSO A PRACTICAL REVOLUTIONARY. SO WHY DO I CALL HIM A PROPHET? Well, judge for yourselves, after reading what he said on the eve of the formation of the AOU in Addis Ababa in 1963 (see Nkrumah ‘We Must Unite Now Or Perish’), and you would, nay should, agree with me that most of what he said and did more than 40 years ago are like a prophecy for African’s liberation” (our emphasis).
We continue from FINAL 1:
We should, however, make it clear that we do not take “self-autonomy” or “self-determination” to mean a state of complete politico-economic isolationism. Not even America, the world’s largest economy, and China, the world’s second largest economy, can stay off Africa, off each other, and Africa off America and China. Nation-states exist in vicious and virtuous cycles of interdependence, with globalization providing the bulk of intellectual and material impetuses for cultural, economic, and political miscegenation. National economies, for instance, find themselves in a tangled web of operational copulation under the controlling interest of the pimps of global capitalism.
Accordingly, Nkrumahism places its locational ingratiation in the philosophical centroid of unfettered capitalism, the controlling rigidity of imperialist economism, and Marxism extremism. Understandably, then, there is a high possibility that neocolonial mortal instruments of capitalist and imperialist exploitation will not accept the scientific and mathematical riposte of Nkrumahism as a moral critique of the sort of disturbing things Molefi Kete Asante, Chofor Che, Antoine R. Lokongo, and Mawuna Remarque Koutonin talk about (see Part 14 of the series). We may argue the point that the developmental waywardness of Africa today, possibly, results from African leaders’ intellectual opposition to Nkrumahism.
That much the scientific works of Prof. Dompere make unambiguously certain. What is more, the point of unambiguous certainty removes the unendarkened cloud of political hypocrisy accruing from the misconstrued aspects of Nkrumahism, and makes the normative context of cultural consciousness the centerpiece of individual and collective self-criticism, of individual and collective responsibility. We should equally bear in mind that culture represents the soul of a people’s collective consciousness across time and place, as well as of their circumstantial, material, and spiritual ontology; call it the fulcrum of their existential actualities, their perceptual or perceived extrapolations. Culture is nonetheless dynamic, all the more subject to the dictates of corrective self-motion and redefinition, which is mediated either through collision with other cultures or through internecine reconfiguration in situ. Nkrumah’s “categorical conversion” and “philosophical consciencism” demonstrate how adaptable, ductile, or conformable culture is, although ontologically stringy in challenging situations or unusual circumstances. Nkrumah in this unique context, therefore, promoted science and technology and African progressive ideas as the best candidates to provide the necessary corrective and modernizing oversight to the transformation of society.
Nkrumah therefore provided a scientific and philosophical template appropriate for eliminating agnosy, superstition, uncritical thinking, ethnic and continental balkanization, religious dogma, and mass internalization of inferiority complex on the continent. This template of critique defined the scientific sociology of his larger vision for re-orienting African psychology and transforming the continent from the standpoint of Africa’s strategic interests. This was the great thinker the combined forces of the West, Obetsebi-Lamptey, Danquah, Busia, police officer Seth Ametewe, R.R. Amponsah, Modesto Apaloo, Brigadier General Joseph E. Michel, kings, S.G. Antor, Captain Awhaitey, and the British Empire tried to physically eliminate from the political scene through terrorism and sniper assassins. One Tetter A. Kofi in his essay “The Elites and Underdevelopment in Africa: The Case of Ghana” mentions a piece, titled “Letter from Ghana” and published in the October 12, 1967 edition of the New York Book Reviews, in which the anonymous author of the letter describes Danquah and the rest of the leadership of the UGCC as “Black Englishmen.”
It is also clear the cluelessness, elitism, and unseriousness of the leadership of the UGCC led to the complete evaporation of their [Black Englishmen] political existence, upon which the conscientized masses thrust Africa’s greatest strategist, Nkrumah, onto the political scene. What is not also known is that Nkrumah’s plans for the Gold Coast and Africa were hatched out abroad before his relocation to the Gold Coast. Thus, he taught the leadership of the UGCC what to do to, and not the other way around. Yet urban myths persist to the contrary. “THE BOY [NKRUMAH] ORGANIZED THE MASSES, BUT, INSTEAD OF DELIVERING THEM TO HIS MASTERS, THE BLACK ENGLISHMEN, HE CHOSE TO LEAD HIMSELF,” the anonymous author writes of their [Black Englishmen’s] relationship with Nkrumah. “THE ELITE BURNED WITH INDIGNATION AND SET ABOUT TO DESTROY THEIR DISRESPECTFUL ‘BOY’ [NKRUMAH], WITH EVERY MEANS AVAILABLE TO THEM. THE MEANS INCLUDED EVERYTHING FROM VOTING BALLOTS TO PLASTIC BOMBS.” Danquah was to say of Nkrumah: “pataku (wolf) had been driven away” in the wake of the Positive Action. Danquah was also to say Nkrumah had to pay with his neck for his political scarlet sins, his political betrayals. Who did Nkrumah betray? Had Danquah taken an integral look at himself, he would have realized it was his empty elitist pride, failure to direct his insatiable greed toward his political aspirations, hatred for the masses, and visionless worldview that betrayed him, for he had all the time before him to realize his ambitions before Nkrumah appeared on the scene.
WE ALSO RECALL A LEADING HISTORIAN, RESEARCHER, SCHOLAR, AND PROFESSOR TELLING US SOME TIME BACK THAT S.B. DOMBO, BUSIA’S BUDDY, INSTIGATED HIS AUDIENCE TO FLUSH THE HEADS OF INDIVIDUALS CAUGHT DISPLAYING NKRUMSH’S PICTURES DOWN TOILETS. This episode is reminiscent of the passage of “a certificate of urgency” under the Busia Administration, seventeen hours after Johnny Hanson’s 1971 public display of Nkrumah’s picture in Kumasi. This bill criminalized the possession and display of Nkrumah’s pictures as well as the mentioning of his name. Burning and utter destruction of Nkrumah’s works including his books, his portraits, statues, and his general legacy followed the 1966 Western-orchestrated coup in conjunction with elements within the National Liberation Council (NLC), the latter of which Busia served in an advisory capacity, only for those Nkrumah’s gifts to the world to resurface in libraries, universities, and museums around the world. Busia’s chairmanship of the Center for Civic Education, an institution whose formation borrowed from Nkrumah’s Ideological Institute, also saw the destruction and reversal of some Nkrumah’s legacy. This was the kind of world, with its callous and Machiavellian humanity, that the greatest African strategist and humanist of all time had to confront in his attempts to decolonize the Gold Coast and Africa!
Finally, and quite controversially, it is appropriate to distinguish the likes of Profs. Dompere and Diop, scholars vigorously analytical in their mathematical, philosophical, and scientific methodological approach to the human condition, from say Prof. George Ayittey, much of whose academic work and public presentations is arguably steeped in self-serving, faulty interpretation of the African past and of her contemporary realities. Sentimental overgeneralization of “facts” as it pertains to Africa’s political economy, preaching to the choir, selective presentation of criticism, and confirmation bias constitute the trademark of Prof. Ayittey’s work on Africa. In other words, there is always an element of political hypocrisy in his critique of African leadership. Then also, while Profs. Diop’s and Dompere’s scholarly works are profoundly scientific, mathematical, diagnostic and prognostic, Prof. Ayittey’s are merely palliative and symptomatological at best, lacking analytic depth from the standpoint of scientific attestation. Simply, the difference between the two classes of scholars is not too far from the difference between a nocebo and a placebo in medical terminology.
Therefore, the philosophical cacophonies of Prof. Ayittey’s right-wing moral speechification, intellectual homiletics, and analytic apologetics get eventually lost in an emotional forest of unoriginality, largely derivative if you will, and in a self-originated perturbation of worn-out factual refurbishment of his intellectual ideas. His ideas being a typology of scholarly shadowboxing merely appropriate for protecting and sanitizing the bruised, guilty conscience of Western psychology! Of course, our fundamental argument does not point to the total rejection of thinkers like Prof. Ayittey whose work does not, purportedly, display the kind of scientific and mathematical rigor we associate with Prof. Dompere’s work on Africa and Nkrumah. Quite the opposite! What we are rather, in effect, saying here is that scientific attestation of ideational symbols and memes through mathematical modeling, optimization, and simulation adds a measure of situational legitimacy and philosophical credibility to an otherwise untested, latent conceptualization such as Nkrumahism.
Simulation and mathematical modeling give us an inkling of the scientific viability of an idea in a hypothetical situation and its possible dress of correlations to real life circumstances. You may call it scenario analysis (or planning). Game theory, forecasting, queuing in computer science and industrial engineering, budgeting and portfolio management, time series analysis, and military operational planning work similarly. These facts underscore the investigational depth which Prof. Dompere brings to bear on his study of Nkrumahism. Evidently, this represents the major advantage Prof. Dompere’s scholarship wields over Prof. Ayittey’s. We may have to bring everyone aboard for reasons of strategic unity, constructive diversity in political opinions and ideology and ethnicity and political philosophy and worldviews, and development priorities. The concept of morphological analysis requires this. In fine, we emphasize that Prof. Dompere’s scientific methodology more than likely has extensive praxis in its application to the human condition, Mazrui’s “African Condition.”
“There is nothing successful like success,” Nkrumah once wrote. Success is the ultimate agenda of Nkrumahism. In Part 14 of this series we associated Nkrumah with “forest husbandry” and Howard Gardner’s “naturalistic intelligence.” Here in Part 15 we invoke “forest husbandry” as a metaphor, in which case cutting a tree down for domestic or commercial usage does not necessarily kill the remaining trunk. There is always the possibility of a sapling growing out of the stumpy trunk. “Nkrumah never dies,” some prefer to put it. June Milne, Nkrumah’s literary executrix, editorial and research assistant June Milne recalls when Nkrumah made the following prophetic remarks on March 6, 1966: “THEY CANNOT DESTROY WHAT WE HAVE TAKEN YEARS TO BUILD. FOR WHAT WE HAVE ACHIEVED IS BUILD ON ROCK FOUNDATIONS AND IS INDESTRUCTIBLE” (our emphasis; see “The Coup That Disrupted Africa’s Forward March,” New African, Feb. 2006). One Abroni K. Thomas summarized this best: “THEY CAN’T DIM THE LIGHT THAT THE GREAT OSAGYEFO LIT MANY YEARS AGO” (see “Nkrumah, the Unmatchable and Big One”).
Let us recapture some of the moments surrounding the international recognitions bestowed upon Nkrumah:
1) WORLD PEACE PRIZE (World Veterans Federation, 1954)
2) AFRICA’S MAN OF THE MILLENNIUM (BBC, 1999)
3) GOLD MEDAL AWARD (Special Session, United Nations, 1978)
4) MILLENNIUM EXCELLENCE AWARD RECIPIENT: PERSONALITY OF THE CENTURY (Excellent Award Foundation, Ghana, 2000)
5) BIENNIAL KWAME NKRUMAH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE (Canada’s Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Lincoln University). The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Coca-Cola Foundation, the Office of Research and Scholarship and the Sociology Department of Kwantlen Polytechnic University have supported the conference.
6) AFRICAN UNION KWAME NKRUMAH SSCIENTIFIC AWARDS (African Union, 2008)
7) MOORLAND-SPRINGARN RESEARCH CENTER (Howard University, Nkrumah papers)
8) 100 GREATEST AFRICANS OF ALL TIME (“True Son of Africa”) (New African Magazine, 2004)
9) THE INTERNATIONAL LENIN PEACE PRIZE (1962; Paul Robeson, WEB Du Bois, Pablo Neruda (Nobel Prize in Literature), Linus Pauling (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Peace Prize), Nelson Mandela (Nobel Peace Prize) all received this Prize).
10) NKRUMAH HALL (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
11) NKRUMAH HALL OF RESIDENCE (Makerere University, Uganda)
12) THE KWAME NKRUMAH MONUMENT (STATUE) (Ethiopia, Addis Ababa)
13) GLO-CAF PLATINUM AWARD (Confederation of African Football, 2014)
14) KWAME NKRUMAH LEADERSHIP AWARD (West African Students’ Union)
In fine, then, theoretical-mathematical physicist Sylvester J. Gates, Jr.’s epigrammatic statement that “old physicists accept new ideas when they die” is appropriate for contextual interpretation of Nkrumah’s legacy. This is not so much an unfathomable conundrum as a philosophic clarification of the range of declarative choices he [Nkrumah] left Africa as part of his teachable bequests. In one sense, Prof. Gates, Jr.’s epigram redirects the relay of investigational and interpretive onus in the field of scientific curiosity and of inquests to a new generation of thinkers, which has a comparative advantage by way of an informed vista into the library of knowledge “dead physicists” leave behind. It is more like projecting into an uncertain future relying on the probabilistic certainty of the past as an ideational landmark. Milne’s afore-cited recollection of Nkrumah’s message to the coup plotters and Prof. Dompere’s scientific-mathematical validation of Nkrumahism reinforce the direction where Nkrumah’s scientific thinking, vision, and legacy should go. This statement constitutes an instrumentalist endorsement by the vast majority of Nkrumahists and well-meaning humanists who want to see Africa move along the progressive axis Nkrumah intended it.
Clearly Nkrumahism is not the holiest of places for political hypocrisy. Nkrumah did his best to avoid the plague of political history. Perhaps, the other essential point for consideration is the task of trying to figure out how Nkrumah was able to achieve so much for Ghana, Africa, and the world in nine years in the midst of terrorism, violence, subvention, armed insurrection, Western intrigue and sabotage; what colonialism failed to do in more than a century. The answer is certainly not that the British Colonial Government left funds for Nkrumah to start with. The British Colonial Government did not leave any money for Nkrumah. Whatever funds came into the possession of the CPP government for national development resulted from strategic planning, savings, and investment decisions Nkrumah undertook with the expert advice of Arthur Lewis, the 1979 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (see also Botwe-Asamoah, Richard Mahoney, Nkrumah). Therefore, the statement that the British Colonial Government left any money for the Gold Coast in Nkrumah’s care is not only a noble lie but a hyperbolic fraud. This canard has gained emotional currency in the Danquah-Busia Camp.
Unfortunately, debt resulting from the colonial enterprise is usually not factored into the equation, neither is it mentioned, if at all, how the internal government of Nkrumah redeemed the external debts of the Gold Coast when the British Colonial Government still controlled the Colony. The situation is, interestingly, similar to post-Apartheid South African politics when Nelson Mandela became the country’s first democratically-elected President. White South African critics of black leadership began attacking Mandela and his handling of the economy, here and there, by keeping explosive information on the debt carried over from the Apartheid era from public attention, when the White Nationalist Party ruled South Africa. It was as if F.W. De Klerk was never Mandela’s Vice-President or part of his [Mandela’s] cabinet. It is convenient for fair-minded social historians, black cultural nationalists, and scholars of race relations that Pres. Obama’s Vice-President is White!
Likewise, White American Supremacists would quickly jump on this convenient information invented by their South African White Supremacist brothers and sisters and use it to attack Mr. Barack Obama’s pre-President competence and his overriding aspiration to become the US President, like Nkrumah’s professional Confederate haters and ideological enemies are doing today to his [Nkrumah’s] matchless legacy.
What is more, colonialists came to Africa to make money and to destroy and exploit and plunder and enslave and oppress, after all it [colonialism] was not a charitable or philanthropic monster. Ama Mazama, Botwe-Asamoah, Cheikh Anta Diop, Walter Rodney, Eric Williams, Kwame Nkrumah, Noam Chomsky, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Mariamba Ani, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, W.E.B. Du Bois, Kofi Kissi Dompere, and several others have one way or the other dealt with the relationship among colonialism, dependency complex, and underdevelopment. But, one would have to understand Nkrumah’s scientific thinking in order to grasp the kind of radical thinking Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and those of the other leaders of the Asian Tigers put into their nations’ development strategies, to decouple their dependency complexes from the patronage and paternalism of Western imperialism and to give their economies and societies a degree of “independence.”
Relatedly, the anonymous author of the paper “Colonialism As A System for Underdeveloping Africa” puts it succinctly: “Ultimately, the ‘development’ of Africa is one of history’s greatest scams, as much of the wealth of American and European colonial countries was derived from the exploitation of African labor and the depletion of Africa’s resources. Through inherently racist policies that completely destroyed and restructured the continent’s diverse socio-economic, political and cultural traditions, European colonialists and the social structures they imposed under-developed, and continue to under-develop, Africa.” This critique of colonialism provides a vital backdrop to the protest which the US State Department mounted against Nkrumah when, in 1965, he distributed copies of his book “Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism” to African leaders. The State Department particularly protested the chapter which “exposes ‘the activities of the Peace Corps, the US Information Services, the US Agency for International Development and to the World Bank’” (see Botwe-Asamoah; Adam Hochschild’s “King Leopold’s Ghost”). Nkrumah said it like it was without having recourse to political hypocrisy or mincing words.
Given the conclusions he reached in the latter book, Nkrumah may not have disagreed with the anonymous author of the afore-cited paper. The anonymous author notes elsewhere: “Colonialism destroyed many people, traditions, and cultures, and rebuilt countries solely for the benefit of the colonialists themselves, and for the benefits of their counterparts in Europe and America…Through massive exploitation of African labor and resources, colonial powers created a legacy of victimization and dependency that continues today” (see also Tetteh A. Kofi’s/Asayehgn Desta’s “Saga of African Underdevelopment” and Estevan Hernandez’s “The Colonial Underdevelopment of Africa By Europe and the United States”). This is not to deny the role African leaders are playing in the continent’s underdevelopment or to say Africans should get endlessly intoxicated on their victimhood and, as a result, refrain from embarking on any meaningful project to reverse the negative impacts of colonialism on African psychology and African societies. Also, like the innovative leaders of the Asian Tigers, Nkrumah did not subscribe to the moral politics of victimhood and as a result proposed Nkrumahism in its stead, to cover African development economics and self-determination among others.
The question is, why did the leaders of the post-Nkrumah regimes fail to follow the strategic example of Arthur Lewis and Nkrumah to generate funds to underwrite their own development agenda for Ghana, at least where the former left off or maintain what were already in place, but instead chose to destroy the unprecedented development Nkrumah left behind, which Prof. Kwame Arhin described as “impressive foundations for the economic and social transformation of the country.”
Consider This Diversion:
Kofi writes of Busia and his “old guard” Progress Party: “But, unfortunately, this experiment in economic development, based as it was on unadulterated Western economic theories developed to fit the needs of Western societies with their different socio-cultural milieu, was bound to fail in Ghana…The ‘neo-old guard’ had no plan for development. In fact, neither of the two main parties which surfaced at election time had manifestoes to their credit; neither had a development strategy. THEY CAME TO POWER NOT TO REJUVENATE AN AILING ECONOMY WITH HIGH-POWERED IDEAS BUT TO PRESIDE OVER THE LIQUIDATION OF THE STATE ENTERPRISES. THE GHANAIAN CAPITALIST ELITE WOULD THEN BECOME THE AGENTS OF CHANGE: THEY WOULD SHARE THE FRUITS OF THE LABOR OF THE ILLITERATE COCOA FARMERS. SINCE 1966, THIS ELITE, AS ADVISORS TO THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT, HAD IN FACT PRESIDED OVER THE SALE OF ALL THE VIABLE GHANAIAN STATE ENTERPRISES TO FOREIGN CONCERNS OR TO THEMSELVES. THEY HOPED THAT LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM AND INTERNATIONAL MONOPLY WOULD, BY SOME MIRACLE, TURN GHANA INTO A FULLY DEVELOPED COUNTRY.”
He adds: “THE PROGRESS PARTY’S ATTEMPT TO PROMOTE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT WAS A DEPENDENCY STRATEGY AND CAN BE BRIEFLY CHARACTERIZED: IN THE 1971/72 BUDGET ALMOST EVERY NEW ECONOMIC ACTIVITY WAS TO BE FINANCED FROM ABROAD; ALL IDEAS FOR THE MODES OF ORGANIZING FOR PRODUCTION WERE WESTERN IMPORTS; ANYTHING TRADITIONAL ENCOUNTERED A DEEP-SEATED DISRESPECT. THE ELITE SOUGHT A TRANSPLANT OF WESTERNISM TO GHANA. SEVERAL SPECIFIC EXAMPLES OF THE PROGRESS PARTY’S DEPENDENCY STRATEGY CAN BE CITED. IN THE GOVERNMENT’S 1971/72 BUDGET, THE RUBBER INDUSTRY IS REFFERED TO AS ‘GHANA’S YOUND INDUSTRY”; FIRESTONE TIRE AND RUBBER, A UNITED STATES COMPANY, IS SUPPOSED TO TEACH GHANA HOW TO PRODUCE RUBBER IN THIS ‘YOUNG INDUSTRY.’ THE RUBBER INDUSTRY IN GHANA IS NOT YOUNG. FOR ABOUT FIFTEEN YAERS, FROM 1890 TO 1905, THE GOLD COAST COLONY WAS THE LARGEST EXPORTER OF RUBBER IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND RANKED AMONG THE FIVE LEADING PRODUCERS IN THE WORLD. GHANA WAS ALSO THE WORLD’S LEADING PRODUCER OF COCOA. THE MODES OF PRODUCTION IN BOTH INDUSTRIES WERE NOT WESTERN” (our emphasis).
Finally, Kofi notes in his bibliography: “IN 1965 THERE WERE 37 STATE-OWNED CORPORATIONS REPRESENTING AN INVESTMENT OF £82 MILLION. AFTER THE 1966 COUP, ALMOST ALL OF THESE ENTERPRISES WERE SOLD TO PRIVATE CONCERNS, MOSTLY FOREIGN-OWNED. GHANA LOST MILLIONS OF POUNDS IN THESE SALES. IN THE CASE OF ABBOT LABORATORIES, A UNITED STATES CORPORATION, THE TERMS OF THE SALE WERE SO BIASED IN THEIR FAVOR THAT IT PROVOKED A NATIONAL DEBATE. IN THE END, ABBOT WITHDREW FROM PURCHASING THE GHANA-OWNED PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING FACILITIES. AFTER THE ABBOT CONTROVERSY, FURTHER SALES OF STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES WERE NEGOTIATED IN SECRET” (our emphasis; also see “The Ghana-Abbot Controversy,” The Legon Observer, Vol. 11, No. 25, Dec. 8, 1967, p. 9-28; “The Firestone Agreements,” The Legon Observer, Vol. 111, No. 14, July 5, 1968, p. 18-19). According to him, the Busia Administration sold the state-owned rubber plantations in secret!
As a matter of fact, a number of Busia’s closest friends and ministers had become rich by the time his government was overthrown! Here, Kofi is invariably grafting the political picture of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” onto Busia’s Progress Party, thus placing the latter’s development strategies under the rubric “Animal Farmism.”
Here is how we allow Kofi to conclude: “BUT THE PROGRESS PARTY’S DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY RESULTED IN THE SUFFOCATION OF INDEGENIOUS ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES, THE RUBBER PLANTATIONS, THE FISHING INDUSTRIES, THE SALT-PROCESSING FACTORIES, AND SO ON…THE ELITE PROGRESS PARTY’S DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY CARED LITTLE ABOUT THE DISRUPTIVE NATURE OF THEIR POLICIES ON THE INDEGENIOUS TRADITIONAL ECONOMY, OR ON THE ECONOMY OF THE ENTIRE COUNTRY, SO LONG AS THE INTERESTS OF THE ELITE WERE SERVED…THE PROGRESS PARTY SIDED BLINDLY WITH THE WEST IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, HOPING FOR ECONOMIC AID IN RETURN. IN OCTOBER, 1971, GHANA CHANGED HER PREVIOUS POSITION AND VOTED WITH THE LOSING UNITED STATES BLOC AGAINST THE ADMISSION OF THE REPUBLIC OF CHINA TO THE UNITED NATIONS…” (our emphasis).
Discussion of Diversion:
In other words, the Busia Administration sold Ghana’s foreign policy commodities to the highest bidder in the West for a pittance. Ironically also, Kofi reveals how the Busia Administration took to the pages of the Daily Graphic on November 1, 1971 to plead for foreign aid from the Americans. This false expectation for a payback came about after the Busia Administration had sided with the US to vote against China’s. It turned the US Senate had rejected a bill [Foreign Aid Bill] the Nixon Administration had brought before the Congress for enactment. The point, according to Kofi, was that the US was not prepared to support Ghana’s economic development after the 1966 coup. Is it any wonder that Busia would tell Richard Wright in an interview that “I AM A WESTERNER…I WAS EDUCATED IN THE WEST”?
As it stands, the African-centered methodology and Nkrumahism provide the strongest critique of the neocolonial psychology and Eurocentric conditioning the likes of Busia carried around.
It is also clear from the foregoing that Nkrumahism, Nkrumah’s scientific thinking, populist democracy, ideological pragmatism, mixed economy, Garveyism, and the African-centered approach to Ghana’s economic development and technocratic advancement were superior to Busia’s Westernism, ideological sycophancy to Edmund Burke, unfettered free market capitalism, political hypocrisy, hatred for things traditional, and Eurocentric deceptions.
It is no wonder Sekou Toure referred to Nkrumah as “A UNVERSAL MAN,” Selwyn R. Cudjoe “THE PRIDE OF AFRICA,” Basil Davidson “BLACK STAR,” Kwame Botwe-Asamoah “ONE OF THE WORLD’S HISTORICAL PERSONALITIES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY,” Molefi Kete Asante “THE ESSENCE OF AFRICAN INTELLIGENCE,” and the international Canadian journalist-cum-writer Eric Walberg called “THE GREATEST AFRICAN.”
Nkrumah’s International Accolades:
Julius Nyerere: “GHANA’S INDEPENDENCE FROM COLONIAL RULE IN 1957 WAS RECOGNIZED FOR WHAT IT WAS: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF COLONIALISM FOR THE WHOLE OF AFRICA…SO 40 YEARS AGO, WE RECOGNIZED [GHANA’S] INDEPENDENCE AS THE FIRST TRIUMPH IN AFRICA’S FREEDOM AND DIGNITY. IT WAS THE FIRST SUCCESS OF OUR DEMAND TO BE ACCORDED THE INTERNATIONAL RESPECT WHICH IS ACCORDED FREE PEOPLES. BUT GHANA WAS MORE THAN THE BEGINNING, OUR FIRST LIBERATED ZONE. GHANA INSPIRED AND DELIBERATELY SPEARHEADED THE INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE FOR THE REST OF AFRICA…KWAME NKRUMAH WAS [GHANA’S] LEADER, BUT HE WAS OUR LEADER TOO, FOR HE WAS AN AFRICAN LEADER. HE HAD A GREAT DREAM FOR AFRICA AND ITS PEOPLE. HE HAD THE WELLBEING OF OUR PEOPLE AT HEART. HE WAS NO LOOTER. HE DID NOT HAVE A SWISS BANK ACCOUNT. HE DIED POOR…SO MY REMAINING REMARKS HAVE A CONFESSION AND A PLEA. THE CONFESSION IS THAT WE OF THE FIRST GENERATION LEADERS OF INDEPENDENT AFRICA HAVE NOT PURSUED THE OBJECTIVE OF AFRICAN UNITY WITH VIGOR, COMMITMENT AND SINCERITY THAT IT DESERVED…”
Antonio de Figueiredo: “NKRUMAH’S INFLUENCE FILTERED TO EXILES-CUM-INTERMEDIARIES LIKE MYSELF MAINLY THROUGH THE SUPPORT EXTENDED BY THAT GREAT STATESMAN [NKRUMAH] TO THE LEADERS OF THE PORTUGUESE AFRICAN LIBERATION MOVEMENTS WHO CONVERGED IN ACCRA, GHANA’S CAPITAL. EVEN AFTER NKRUMAH BECAME THE VICTIM OF WESTERN-INSPIRED COUP, AND WENT INTO EXILE IN CONAKRY (GUINEA), HIS GUINEA-BISSAU FELLOW EXILE, AMILCAR CABRAL, THE MOST INFLUENTIAL OF PORTUGUESE FREEDOM FIGHETERS, OFTEN VISITED HIM AND LEARNED FROM HIM.”
Abroni K. Thomas:: “NKRUMAH WILL CONTNUE TO STAND TALL IN THE HISTORY OF WORLD LEADERS…HIS IMAGE HAS BEEN LOOMING LARGE EVER SINCE HE SHOT INTO THE LIMELIGHT IN 1949; AND HIS RENOWN IS UNMATCHABLE…NKRUMAH’S MONUMENTAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD POLITICS ARE BEYOND DOUBT.”
Amilcar Cabral: “…ONE OF THE GREATEST MEN MANKIND HAS SEEN THIS CENTURY…IT FOLLOWS ONE TO GRASP THE TRUE STATURE OF NKRUMAH AS A POLITICAL GIANT…PRESIDENT NKRUMAH, TO WHOM WE PAY HOMAGE, IS PRIMARILY THE STRATEGIST OF GENIUS IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CLASSIC COLONIALISM…WE HAIL FINALLY NKRUMAH, THE PHILOSOPHER AND THINKER…LET NO ONE COME AND TELL US THAT NKRUMAH DIED FROM CANCER OF THE THROAT OR ANY OTHER SICKNESS. NO, NKRUMAH WAS KILLED BY THE CANCER OF BETRAYAL…NKRUMAH WILL RISE AGAIN EACH DAWN IN THE HEART AND DETERMINATION OF FREEDOM FIGHTERS, IN THE ACTION OF ALL TRUE AFRICAN PATRIOTS…AS AN AFRICAN PROVERB SAYS: ‘THOSE WHO SPIT AT THE SKY WILL SOIL THEIR FACE.’ THOSE WHO HAVE TRIED TO SOIL THE BRILLIANT PERSONALITY OF NKRUMAH SHOULD NOW UNDERSTAND VERY WELL THAT THE AFRICAN PEOPLE ARE RIGHT. ANOTHER AFRICAN PROVERB SAYS: ‘A HAND, HOWEVER BIG, CAN NEVER COVER THE SKY.’ THERE IT IS: THOSE WHO HAVE TRIED TO DISPARAGE THE MAGNIFICENT ACHIEVEMENT OF KWAME NKRUMAH MUST TODAY ADMIT THAT THIS AFRICAN PROVERB IS RIGHT…WE ARE CERTAIN, ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT FRAMED BY THE ETERNAL GREEN OF THE AFRICAN FORESTS, FLOWERS OF CRIMSON LIKE THE BLOOD OF MARTYRS AND OF GOLD LIKE THE HARVESTS OF PLENTY WILL BLOOM OVER THE GRAVE OF KWAME NKRUMAH; FOR AFRICAN WILL TRIUMPH.”
Kofi Hadjor: “NKRUMAH IS A REMINDER NOT OF WHAT AFRICA IS, BUT OF WHAT AFRICAN MUST BECOME.”
Kwame Arhin: “HIS POLITICAL ACHIEVEMENTS IN GHANA SERVED AS A MODEL FOR AFRICAN NATIONALISTS ELSEWHERE ON THE CONTINENT…HE WAS A PRE-EMINENT FOUNDER OF THE MOVEMENT FOR AFRICAN UNITY; MORE THAN ANY OTHER AFRICAN LEADER OF HIS TIME, HE SYMBOLIZED THE BLACK MAN’S SELF-IDENTITY AND PRIDE IN HIS RACE. HIS NAME SHALL ENDURE AS THE LEADING EMANCIPATOR OF GHANA, THE LEADING PROTAGONIST OF AFRICAN INDEPENDENCE AND UNITY, AND A STATESMAN OF WORLD STATURE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.”
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem: “IT IS A TESTIMONY TO NKRUMAH’S SUCCESS THAT 40 YEARS AFTER HE WAS OVERTHROWN GHANAIAN GOVERNMENTS AND LEADERS WILL STILL BE JUDGED (AND JUDGE POORLY) AGAINST HIM. EVEN HIS ENEMIES ARE FORCED TO ACKNOWLEDGE HIM AS A TRUE NATIONAL LEADER AND STATESMAN WHO WAS GENUINELY COMMITTED TO THE WELFARE OF THE PEOPLE OF GHANA AND AFRICA…TIME THEY SAY IS A FINAL ARBITER. THE IDEAS THAT NKRUMAH LIVED AND DIED FOR CONTINUE TO REVERBERATE ACROSS THE CONTINENT” (see “Nkrumah’s Legacy 40 Years After The Coup,” Pambazuka News, Feb. 28, 2006).
June Milne: “IT IS NOW 40 YEARS. YET THE REPERCUSSIONS ARE STILL FELT IN GHANA, AND WITHIN THE NKRUMAHIST MOVEMENT. IT IS NOT DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE THE GREATLY IMPROVED CONDITION OF THE AFRICAN PEOPLE TODAY IF NKRUMAH HAD CONTINUED IN POWER IN GHANA TO LEAD THE PAN-AFRICAN MOVEMENT...FOR DURING THE NINE SHORT YEARS BETWEEN GHANA’S INDEPENDENCE IN 1957 AND THE OVERTHROW OF THE CPP GOVERNMENT IN 1966, FOUNDATIONS WERE LAID WHICH COULD NEVER BE REVERSED.”
General J.A. Ankrah: “NKRUMAH’S PLACE IN AFRICAN HISTORY HAD BEEN ASSURED.”
Molefi Kete Asante: “THIS IS WHY I AM AN ARDENT CELEBRATOR OF NKRUMAH’S LIFE AND VOICE BECAUSE IN CELEBRATING HIM WE CELEBRATE THE BEST IN US.”
We shall, in this context, apply Friedrich Nietzsche’s epigram “SOME MEN ARE BORN POSTHUMOUSLY” to Nkrumah. If Ghanaians cannot bring themselves to celebrate one of the world’s acknowledged greatest heroes who rose to prominence from amongst them, then they should consign themselves to the worship of mediocrity and imaginary tomfools! Even the British and the Americans were interested in Nkrumah’s personal life, including his romantic life, as Carina Ray informs us: “DOCUMENTS DECLASSIFIED IN 1989 AND 2003 FROM BRITAIN’S DOMESTIC OFFICE AND COLONIAL OFFICE FILES, RESPECTIVELY, REVEAL THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE POWERS THAT BE WERE PREOCCUPIED WITH NKRUMAH’S PERSONAL AFFAIRS, AND MORE SPECIFICALLY HIS MARITAL PROSPECTS. THE SURPRISE WEDDING TO FATHIA WAS NOT, HOWEVER, THE FIRST TIME THE AUTHORITIES HAD TAKEN AN INTEREST IN HIS ROMANTIC LIFE. AS EARLY AS 1951, SIR THOMAS LLOYD, ASSISTANT PRINCIPLE AT THE COLLONIAL OFFICE, DISPATCHED A ‘PERSONAL AND SECRET LETTER’ TO SIR CHARLES ARDEN-CLARKE, GOVERNOR OF THE THEN GOLD COAST, TO ASCERTAIN THE VERACITY OF A RUMOR THAT NKRUMAH PLANNED TO WED AN ENGLISH WOMAN.”
Indeed, there was and still is no one else like Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in Africa’s entire political history. This was a man who had no tolerance for political hypocrisy, unlike his local enemies. Let us just say George Orwell did not know Danquah, Busia, Obetsebi-Lamptey and the other British Colonial Government’s and CIA’s stooges in Ghana inherited hypocrisy from the British. In that case, let us cut Orwell some slack in exercising his rhetorical freedoms and give him the benefit of the doubt on that account!
“To err is human, to forgive divine!” This is what Alexander Pope’s poem “An Essay on Criticism” says!
NOTE:
Readers will do well to read “NKRUMAH’S LEGACY: NEVER AGAIN!...40 YEARS AFTER THE COUP THAT DERAILED AFRICA’S PROGRESS,” NEW AFRICAN, FEB. 2006, ISSUE 448, P. 10 PLUS. NEW AFRICAN EDITOR BAFFOUR ANKOMAH ASSEMBLED SAM NUJOMA, JUNE MILNE, KENNETH KAUNDA, AKYAABA ADDAI-SEBO (FOUNDER OF BLACK HISTORY MONTH UK), CARINA RAY, AND ANTONIO DE FIGUEREDO TO DISCUSS NKRUMAH’S LEGACY AND THE IMPACT OF THE C0UP ON AFRICA’S PROGRESS. JULIUS NYERERE’S 1997 SPEECH GIVEN IN ACCRA AT GHANA’S 4OTH INDEPENDENCE ANNIVERSARY AND NKRUMAH’S “WE MUST UNITE OR PERISH” 1963 ADDIS ABABA SPEECH ARE INCLUDED IN THE COLLECTION OF ESSAYS.
Copyright © 1994 - 2024 GhanaWeb. All rights reserved.
