To the Memory of Kwame Nkrumah

CPP COALITION, USA

Baltimore-Washington Metropolis


April 26, 2008


PRESS STATEMENT


REGARDING THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF AFRICA


To the Memory of Kwame Nkrumah April is the Month for Remembrance


OSAGYEFO Kwame Nkrumah, First President of Ghana, died April 27, 1972 in Bucharest, Romania after being denied the freedom to live the last days of his life in the country he led to liberate from European colonial rule.


A section of Ghana’s military and some senior police officers, backed by known foreign co-conspirators, overthrew the government of Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966. The military junta, National Liberation Council, NLC, and the subsequent civilian government that ruled Ghana up to January 1972, denied Kwame Nkrumah the political and human right to return to his native country for six years up to the time of his death in exile. For this unseemly act of extreme ingratitude to an individual who did most to secure the emancipation of the African from European colonization, the CPP COALITION, USA (Baltimore-Washington Metropolis) calls on Ghanaians, Africans, all people of African descent and genuine Africanists, wherever we reside, to consider April as the month to atone for not doing enough to rehabilitate the heritage of Kwame Nkrumah.


CPP COALITION, USA, urges those whose decisions and actions, as well as their supporters, forced the ostracism of Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana and his early demise, to consider April as the month for penance.

To those who had the opportunity to save Kwame Nkrumah from suffering during the last days of his life but failed or refused to do so, the CPP COALITION implores them also to consider April as the month for secular political atonement during which self–confession, repentance and sorrow will be considered, after the fact. In this instance, absolution in the interest of Ghana, Africa and humanity itself, will materialize only when the light that Nkrumah lit is carried to the logical conclusion of economic emancipation and total unity of Africa.


The task before true Nkrumahists today to rehabilitate the ideals of Kwame Nkrumah is as equally daunting as the problems the man had to contend with during all of his adult political life, all in the interest of restoring confidence and self-determination in all people of African descent who had been robbed through slavery and colonialism.


AfricaR17;s Man of Destiny


Although the period immediately following the end of imperialist World War II in 1945 was pregnant with possibilities of freedom for oppressed and subject people of the world, destiny placed the delivery of Africans on the continent from European hegemony on the shoulders of Kwame Nkrumah.


With the backing of such Pan-African nationalists in the Diaspora as Dr. W. E. B. DuBois (an American Negro), Mr. George Padmore (a West Indian journalist resident in London) and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, among others, Nkrumah initiated and executed one of the most significant social revolutions in the second half of the 20th Century, starting in 1949. The Gold Coast revolution culminated in new freedom and political independence for the people of the Gold Coast, subsequently renamed Ghana, on March 6, 1957.


The process and success of the post-war Gold Coast revolution were based on the conviction of self-identity of the individual citizen and self-determination of all the people as free Africans, as opposed to being subjects of the British Crown, headed by “Our glorious Queen.”


The Gold Coast revolution ushered in the beginning of the political epoch of the world when Africans regained their birthright to rule or misrule themselves; that is what freedom is all about.


As the short history of the world indicates, the phenomena of self-determination and new freedom experienced by the people of Ghana after independence transcended the borders of the new country and affected the populations of the other African social formations under colonial bondage who then began to agitate for their own freedom and independence. Certainly, Kwame Nkrumah had a role to play as the driving force behind the political wind of change that blew through Africa with such force that by 1960, a number of colonial African societies had won their independence.

After the liberation of Ghana had become a reality and emancipation of other African territories was in sight, Nkrumah focused on facilitating organizing economic co-operation and political integration of the continent of Africa. In that instance, Nkrumah’s mission was the direct outgrowth of the “Fifth Pan-African Congress” which took place in Manchester, England, in 1945. Nkrumah served as the secretary of the Congress chaired by Dr. W. E. B. DuBois.


In April 1958, Nkrumah hosted “Conference of Independent African States” in Accra, Ghana’s capital city. Leaders from Ethiopia, Liberia, Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Sudan, in addition to Ghana, attended the Conference. In spite of the diversity in the national orientations of the independent nations at the Conference, there was consensus towards decolonization of Africa. The conferees agreed to support armed struggle by Africans in Algeria and South Africa for their freedom from settler European regimes.


In December 1958, Nkrumah convened another conference of Africans in Accra. The “All African Peoples Conference” attracted a larger number of leading young African nationalists imbued with the desire for freedom and independence for their home countries in the greater interest of Africa.


Staying on the Pan-African agenda, Nkrumah became the prime mover behind the first conference of all African nations that saw the birth of “Organization of African Unity” (OAU) in May 1963 at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.


Nkrumah facilitated also formation of “All-African Trade Union Federation,” an organized labor establishment, headquartered at Addis Ababa.


As transparent and epochal as Nkrumah’s actions towards organizing African unity had been, he was confronted, every step along the road, by phenomenal opposing forces. For example, President Charles de Gaulle of France did his best to split the African leadership front with moves towards organizing the former French colonial territories under a separate umbrella. Nkrumah emerged as the counterpoint to de Gaulle’s misconstrued idea that France owned the Sahara Desert and decided to turn that real estate into bomb testing site. Nkrumah was a leader in the “World Without the Bomb” movement.


Through Nkrumah’s foresight, Ghana became a committed member of the Non-Aligned Movement founded in Indonesia in 1955.


Very significantly, the Cold War between the satellite of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), on one side, and United States-led western coalition, on the other, threw a monkey wrench in the attempt by Nkrumah and his compatriots to integrate Africa.

In addition, the African Unity movement had to confront the opposing forces of entrenched settler European regimes in southern Africa; Zimbabwe was the most challenging.


Posthumous Evaluation


Since the death of Kwame Nkrumah various writers, analysts, critics and admirers have tended to refer to him as an African statesman, a nationalist, e.t.c. However, Nkrumah did not shy away from describing himself as “a professional revolutionary.” Ultimately, Nkrumah’s vision, as a revolutionary, was based on a strategy to carry out the mission towards a concrete unitary continental African government. In his own words, Nkrumah saw his role in life as a savior of people from “man’s inhumanity against man,” through struggle and action.


Looking back at the strengths and weaknesses of the work and performances of Kwame Nkrumah after his death, David Birmingham, author of Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism, wrote:


R20;Ghanaians discovered that Nkrumah, who had been so bitterly denounced for failing to match up to the expectations that he had aroused, had faced problems which were generic rather than personal. His weaknesses were no greater than those of his contemporaries or rivals, but he had been the first to face the storms of statesmanship and there had been few navigational aids. Nkrumah came to be remembered as the bold visionary, the man of urgency and purpose.”


Challenge of the Nkrumah Legacy


Like social heritage, which is learned traditions and customs passed down from one generation to the other in a community, political socialization is another form of social heritage. In this instance, political thinking, ideas and partisan preferences are passed down from one generation to the other. In the specific case of Ghana, the evidence is that there has been deliberate distortion of the work and accomplishments of Kwame Nkrumah and it appears the detractors have been quite successful in socializing their wards politically.


In regard to the above, CPP COALITION wants to encourage the younger generation of Ghanaians whose minds have been poisoned through negative political socialization about the work of Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP by their social ancestry, to take time off to study the truths and myths about the social heritage bequeathed by Kwame Nkrumah in order to arrive at their own independent thinking and conclusions.

In December this year, Ghanaians will have a chance to vote to elect a new government. CPP COALITION, USA urges the young generation of Ghanaian voters to put a CPP government in place to complete the business of economic emancipation and total unity of Africa.


Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!


CONTACT:


Yaw Adu-Otu … aduotu1@yahoo.com; (703) 615-1821


Organizer