“Nearly 50 years ago on October 9, 1959, Patrice Lumumba spoke in Accra on the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah. He observed then at the Pan African Conference that he had three objectives: The independence of the Congo, the creation of the constitution of the United States of Africa, and the establishment of friendly economic relations with other countries. Unquestionably he had been influenced by the insistence of Nkrumah that Africa could not withstand the gathering forces of anti-Africanism in the political centers of the vanquished colonizers. Each nation, acting alone, would not be able to sustain its freedom. It would be shaken to its economic, political, and social core as France, England, and the United States had seen to it that Haiti, since Dessalines proclaimed independence, was shaken and abused…(“Nkrumah Celebration,” Sept. 20, 2009).
Where do we start? It turns out that the so-called liberal West may not be “liberal” after all! In fact, Freedom House, an independent American watchdog organization, has revealed that most democracies which parade as democracies are illiberal democracies, not liberal democracies, as we have been made to believe. The debilitating contradictions in and hypocritical nature of Western democracies are there for all to see (See Bennie A. Khoapa’s “The African Personality”). Ironically, Noam Chomsky sees American democracy as such, as illiberal democracy, that is. That aside, Samuel P. Huntington had this to say about electoral democracy: “Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good.”
These critical observations are very important as “democracy” is not necessarily a recipe for development and growth, a view we later explore in some detail. Huntington continues: “These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the relation to other public virtues and vices can only be understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from the other characteristics of political systems (see Fareed Zakaria’s “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Huntington’s “The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century,” and Inozemtsev’s “The Cultural Contradictions of Democracy”). Yet, equally true is the fact that many democracies are democracies in name only, granted that they may not necessarily be governed by principles of popular sovereignty and civil liberties. In effect, rigging, corruption, intimidation, insufficient planning, sectarianism, bribery, voter identification problems, gerrymandering, racism, lack of political education, ethnocentrism, quest for power, etc., may undermine the quality of democracy (See Spingola’s “The Ruling Elite: A Study in Imperialism, Genocide & Emancipation”).
On the other hand, let’s remind ourselves that there is no such existential idea as a monolithic Western democracy. Western democracy varies qualitatively, if philosophically, from Europe to Australia to Canada to America. Then again, American democracy has been plagued by a combination of these factors, mentioned above, since its founding as a republic. Generally, white supremacy, exploitation, slavery, imperialism, thievishness and banditry, scientific racism, chicanery, and colonialism have always, if collectively, served as the ideological chaperonage of Western democracies at one time or the other. Unfortunately, these problems have not been completely deracinated, chiefly in the American case, as the recent reversal of certain provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court confirms. Disenfranchisement of American minorities, especially African Americans, is public knowledge (See Thernstrom’s “Voting Rights—And Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections” and Phillips’ “The Emerging Republican Majority”). Ancient Greek democracy was for a privileged few. In other words, democracy has aesthetic mileage only in theory. In fact, elsewhere Zakaria argues that democracy is not intrinsically good (See “The Future of Democracy: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad”).
Ideally, the concept “democracy” is a human institution and fallible as such. However, in another context, democratization has assumed a conditional pretext under which the West, principally via the IMF/World Bank, fleeces the rest of the world. Again, granted, it makes more evaluative sense to grasp the generalized concept of “democracy” if not construed from the analytical, philosophical, chronological, and experiential complexion of cultural relativism. For instance, colonial America’s democracy may not have been necessarily better than Apartheid South Africa’s, nor is George W. Bush’s electoral catapulting to office necessarily better than the second electoral catapulting of Barack Obama to office! Nor should democracy be rigidly static, if not alternatively, that is, evolutionarily adaptable or culturally textile. Threats of terrorism and alleged complicity of Al-Qaeda in the terroristic dissolution of the Twin Towers, occurring in September 11, 2001, irreversibly forced the Bush administration to adopt draconian laws which include the Patriot Act.
Further, the Bush administration’s unjustified preemption of Saddam Hussein, the then President of a sovereign state, Iraq, who had nothing to do with the terroristic assault on America nor possessed weapons of mass destruction, and his subsequent Western-approved assassination, by hanging, were, according to Bush and his advisors, tactically, meant to deter future terroristic attacks on American soil as well as against American offshore investments and installations. Meanwhile, the Bush administration, against public objection, assumed an enormous extent of powers which enabled it to bend international and American laws out of exegetical shape just so his administration could give his unpopular decisions legal credence in the public eye. In the main, it appeared conservatives probably hijacked the executive prerogatives of Bush, whose legal mind David Addington, a graduate of Duke University School of Law, fully represented, as they used him as a “useful idiot,” while, on the other hand, he, ironically, subjected the American populace and the rest of the world, preferably as “village idiots,” to the sjambocracy of political bully.
This, despite the fact that popular sovereignty, at the very least, should have been given an emotionless elbowroom of political operationalizability, a measure of moral respectability, both of which, incidentally, were not the case. Perceived threats from shadowy terrorists were all that mattered. Similarly, America’s “Stand-Your-Ground” laws enjoy identical legal theory, jurisprudence-wise, of preemption, where a situational decision is based, for the most part, on perceived danger to one’s life, although elements bordering on prejudice, statutory miscomprehension, allegations, mental instability, suspicion, and subjectivity may interfere with situational or perspectival objectivity. Thus, Adam Klein and Benjamin Wittes, two American scholars, write: “Preventive detention is not prohibited by US law or especially frowned upon in tradition or practice. The circumstances in which it arises are not isolated exceptions to a strong rule against it; rather, they are relatively frequent. The federal government and all 50 states possess a wide range of statutory preventive detention regimes that are frequently used, many of which provoke little or legal controversy (See “Preventive Detention in American Theory and Practice,” published in the “National Security Journal,” Harvard Law School, Jan. 18, 2011; see also Blum’s “Preventive Detention in the War on Terror: A Comparison of How the United States, Britain, and Israel Detain and Incapacitate Terrorist Suspects”).
Quite convincingly, Andrew Harding and John Latchard canvas cases of “Preventive Detention” on a global scale (See “Preventive Detention and Security Law: A Comparative Study”). Yet again, sedition and criminal libel laws, for instance, harbor intrinsic instruments of retroactive and proactive utility. Karate, pugilism, duel (swordsmanship), romantic rivalry, kick boxing, judo, draughts, wrestling, soccer, game theory, chess, to name a few, have implicit and explicit rules governing operationalizability of oppositional preemption. Theoretically, concepts like castle doctrine, justified homicide, defense of property, and battered women defense, essentially, rely on the legality of self-defense. Finally, in Ghana the British enacted Criminal Code Amendment (# 21), in 1934, to stifle nationalist awareness and social strives, just so colonial dictatorship could deny legal mandate to oppositional rejection of foreign rule. It’s in these legal, moral, and political contexts that Ghana’s Preventive Detention Act, enacted in 1958 under the prime ministership of Kwame Nkrumah, and other draconian measures should be critically evaluated. Once more, contextually, the issue before us is a serious question of political morality, per se, and, to say the least, not necessarily of ideological defense, vis-a-vis Kwame Nkrumah’s existential decisionality.
Admittedly, it’s quite shocking and distressing to see Nkrumah’s opponents, in conjunction with the anti-African West, derail Ghana’s budding democracy. Meanwhile, Ekow Nelson and Michael Gyamerah write: “No one has suggested Nkrumah was perfect and had no faults. Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, ex-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana (who died recently) and himself a vehement critic of Nkrumah and supporter of the 1966 coup and its plotters provided a more objective assessment after Nkrumah was overthrown: ‘His dream had been a great one, his belief in his mission was strong, his talents many.’” They continue: “His actual achievements were considerable, the Volta Dam and the smelter, a greater expansion of education system and an extraordinary effervescence of buildings…He was not cruel, or militaristic, or racist. He took over the British colonial structure, which was essentially authoritarian like all other colonial systems, and retained the powers of past Governors, including the power to replace troublesome chiefs and detain fractious citizens. There was nothing novel about these things; what was novel and objectionable’ to his critics, O’Brien concludes,’…was that it was an African who was doing them (See “The Origins and the Case for Preventive Detention in Ghana”; see also the Feb. 27, 1966 edition of “The London Observer” and “Mandela’s Ghanaian Son-in-Law Speaks Out”).
Importantly, it appears Prof. Irving Markovitz shares similar progressive views about Nkrumah, writing: “Under Nkrumah Ghana was neither a terrorized nor a poverty-stricken country. In traveling overland to Accra from francophone Africa, for example, two things were striking: The visible wealth of Ghana, and the visible breath of its distribution. The number of cars, the condition of residential areas, roads, restaurants, shops, markets, office buildings, and department stores—and the widespread use of these facilities, not just the European commercial and technical elites—produced the image of a far from destitute country.” He notes elsewhere: “Beneath the surface there were chronic periodic shortages of imported goods, including basic foodstuffs, and mounting inflation (See “Ghana Without Nkrumah: The Winter of Discontent”).” Conversely, Prof. Markovitz acknowledges the political negatives of Nkrumah’s government: “Civil liberties were in a chaotic condition marked by the dismissal of judges and the retrial of cases which resulted in verdicts unfavorable to Nkrumah. The abuses of preventive detention and the outlawing of opposition parties were notorious…”
Again, in a different place Nelson and Gyamerah quote Geoffrey Bing who said: “JB Danquah had been heard assuring a diplomat, known to be not particularly friendly to the CPP government that everything was planned and that Dr. Nkrumah would be overthrown by Christmas by the Army.” They continue: “In December 1957, long before prevention detention was introduced, the leader of the opposition Dr. KA Busia was secretly soliciting funds from the United States government to undermine and destabilize the elected government of his own country. According to Mr. Wilson Flake, then the US Ambassador to Ghana, the leader of the opposition and member of Parliament approached him and requested ‘25 thousand dollars in the US to purchase vehicles and hire party workers…Dr. KA Busia, who was in self-imposed exile moved to provide proximate support to the strikers and other subversives, and was joined by a number of opposition leaders including Obetsebi Lamptey and Ekow Richardson. Dr. Busia disclosed he had been offered £50,000 to fight the democratically elected government of his country (See “Foreign relations,” 1955-1957, Vol. XVlll, pages 387-388).”
Then, contrast Ghana’s opposition subversive behavior with the hypocritical American government’s uncompromising crackdown on members of the Black Panthers, where, the American government, led by J.E. Hoover’s FBI, assassinated some members of the Black Panther Party, framed up others and sentenced them to long prison terms. Pointedly, the cases of Timothy McVeigh Nelson, Edward Snowden, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg easily come to mind. Unsurprisingly, the arrest of Neo-Nazis who plotted to assassinate President Barack Obama is another case in point (See “Arrest of Neo-Nazis in Obama Assassination Plot: A Reminder of Enduring White Supremacist Culture in Us,” Democracy Now, Oct. 30, 2008; see also Ridgeway’s “Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New Culture”). Relatedly, extraordinary rendition, internment of Japanese-Americans, wrongful killings and racial profiling of American Sikhs, and racial profiling of American Moslems are quite another. America has been politically, legally, and militarily proactive on these issues.
Then again, Nelson and Gyamerah quotes Geoffrey Bing, author of “Reap the Wind: An Account of Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana From 1950 to 1966,” writing: “’Of the seven hundred and eighty-eight detained persons that were released, some three hundred and fifty to four hundred’ were criminals ‘apparently let loose for the purely propaganda purpose of increasing the total number of freed.’ This led to an embarrassing upsurge in crime rates in the country after the coup.” Meanwhile, Prof. Markovitz also observes: “To assert, however, that the mass of the people lived in terror would be quite wrong. The commonly accepted estimate of the number of Nkrumah’s political prisoners is 1,100 and reports of individual beatings by prison guards may well be believed.” Take note of what Prof. Markovitz says next: “On the other hand, credible evidence of systematic torture has yet to be produced, and though the old regime sentenced people to death for participating in one of the assassination plots, no one in Ghana appears to have been executed for a political crime.”
Finally, the authors assert categorically: “For all the criticism Nkrumah received from much of the Western press and the opposition in Ghana, he did not kill any political opponents; neither did he massacre groups of people opposed to him.” Most critically, Nelson and Gyamerah position the political morality of Ghana’s Preventive Detention Act in its proper situational context (See Dennis Austin’s “Politics in Ghana: 1946-1960), writing: “In our view, the PDA was a necessary piece of legislation, which, along with the Avoidance of Discrimination Act might—just might—have helped us avoid some of the more dangerous conflicts that we have seen in other parts of the African continent. It served to quickly isolate potential and real leaders of violent and destabilizing acts and safeguard the security of the nation and people of Ghana.” Indeed, this is the extent to which any progressive nation-state that deems its internal stability and security strategic priorities will go to protect its national interests, if infringing the human rights of some of its citizens, supposedly culpable or seditious, guarantees intra-national cohesion.
But the question we are compelled to ask of ourselves is this: Why did Ghana pass the Preventive Detention measure into law? The authors, Nelson and Gyamerah, write: “In July 1958, the government introduced the Prevention Detention Act to extend the period of pre-trial detention for suspected terrorists, not dissimilar to the wave of anti-terrorist legislation passed in countries such as United Kingdom, United States of America, Australia, France and many countries around the world since September 11, 2001…In fact, under JK Harley and AK Deku (Commissioner and Deputy of Ghana under Nkrumah) much of the police force pleaded with the CPP government to extend the PDA to common hardened criminals by 1960.” Elsewhere, Nelson and Gyamerah painstakingly, if convincingly, lay out the terroristic circumstances leading up to the enactive moralization of Ghana’s Prevention Detention bill. Dennis Austin believed the stabbing death of EY Baffoe, an NLM supporter, at the hands of KA Twumasi Ankrah, a CPP sympathizer, on Oct. 9, 1955, may have initialized the terroristic violence later perpetrated by the NLM.
Let’s recall Ghana was not a republic yet. Nevertheless, the authorities charged Twumasi Ankrah with murder, tried him and subsequently hanged him for the crime, though the leadership of the NLM, still in emotional grips of crushing electoral defeat, would, as it were, anon, spread an unsubstantiated allegation blaming the leadership of the CPP for instigating Twumasi Ankrah. This, notwithstanding the fact that NLM terroristic violence and attempts to destabilize the country, possibly overthrow its democratically elected government, had circumstantial antecedence in March 1954 deriving from policy matters related to Nkrumah’s re-pricing cocoa in line with “Report on Finance and Physical Problems of Development in the Gold Coast,” authored by Dudley Seers and Claud R. Ross, to electoral distribution of seats for the 1945 Legislative Assembly elections (Justice Van Lare’s Report), to those parliamentarians like BF Kusi who said “Ashanti is a nation…Population does not make a country,” to those disgruntled members of the CPP who later joined the NLM, etc.
In principle, Nkrumah and Gbedemah had wanted to use the re-pricing of cocoa as a strategy to diversify Ghana’s economy, thereby placing the latter in a position to absorb the unforeseeable shocks deriving from the economy’s overreliance on a single commercial product. In other words, they intended to use diversification to expand Ghana’s economy. This radical policy decision flailed at the political solidarity that had previously existed between the CPP government and cocoa farmers, though, in retrospect, observers eventually came to realize that the farmers had a legitimate grievance. Soon, the subversive leadership of the NLM, always looking for political and social cracks through which to anarchize the nation, took undue advantage of the impasse between the CPP government and the aggrieved farmers to unsettle the national government, even going as far as rumoring that the CPP government had reneged on its promise to up the prices of cash crops, especially cocoa, upon resumption of political office, this, in response to its manifesto, though the CPP did not offer that as a promissory policy prescription to the electorate.
Let’s also recall the Asantehene christened the NLM 1954. Rather coincidentally, opposition terroristic violence intensified between 1954 and 1957, while it would take parliament to enact an appropriate bill, the Preventive Detention Act, in 1958, by which time Krobo Edusei’s wife, Mary Akuamoah, had become a lemonized victim of NLM terrorism, and, his sister, as well as CE Osei had already been assassinated via NLM terrorism. However, it is believed it was Krobo Edusei who had first recommended the PDA upon seeing an Indian version of it. The British, it turned out, made it part of the general legal instruments of the lands it usurped then colonized and ruled with unreserved brutality (See George Orwell’s “Burmese Days” and “Shooting An Elephant”). More importantly, Krobo Edusei himself had to flee to Kumasi for Accra after NLM terrorism destroyed his property.
Thus far, it was Krobo Edusei’s sister’s death, his wife’s lemonized victimhood, and RR Amponsah’s, Modesto Apaloo’s, and Captain’s Awaitey’s plot to assassinate Nkrumah that, finally, gave moral, political, and legal weight to have a Ghanaian version of “preventive detention,” a legal instrument meant to stem the tide of NLM terrorism, passed into law (See Nelson and Gyamerah). Other related dicey events, such as NLM’s importation of arms and military uniforms into Ghana, NLM’s possession of dynamites, and possibility of NLM’s stealing dynamites from mining centers, collectively, informed parliamentary deliberation on curtailing or extirpating NLM terroristic violence via constitutionalism. Also, in March 1955, RJ Vile, the Assistant Secretary at the Colonial office, essentially acknowledged the constitution of the NLM as “thugs.” In another place he wrote: “It is possible that Dr. Nkrumah’s peaceful approach may lead to the resolution of the differences between the NLM and the CPP on constitutional matters (See Nelson and Gyamerah).” Let ask this question: What did Kenya do when terrorists struck her in 1980, in 1998, in 2002, and, then, finally, in 2013? Did she have to wait to enact appropriate laws in 2013 to contain terroristic violence?
How did the Preventive Detention Act assume constitutional materiality? Interestingly, it was Chief Justice Sir Arku Korsah who gave “royal assent” to passage of the Preventive Detention Bill. Technically, Ghana was not yet a republic then and the Queen served as the Head of State, in whose absence the Governor-General took over and steered the state of affairs. Also, constitutional provisions demanded that a sitting Chief Justice assume the state of affairs in the absence of the Governor-General. Therefore, the absence of the Governor-General during the passage of the bill directly translated into constitutional powers of presentiality for Chief Justice Arku Korsah. If this is in fact true, then, technically, the bill was passed into law with Britain’s imprimatur. However, in relative terms, the prime ministership of Nkrumah came with packaged constitutional constraints on executive exercise of political power. The prerogatives and powers of the executive office will be transferred to Nkrumah once Ghana became a republic in 1960. This morsel of political and constitutional history is important to understanding of Nkrumah’s legacy.
But history and constitutionalism aside, why was and is Nkrumah still hated so much even by men who would probably have been nothing but professionals, academics, and intellectuals on account of Nkrumah’s foresight, selflessness, and generosity? That is, what were the actual nature of Nkrumah’s crimes to merit such explosive animus from the opposition? Was it because his Lincoln University and University of Pennsylvania education proved to be superior to the Oxbridge education of the opposition? Was it because he authored influential, groundbreaking books and developed more sophisticated theories, political, economic, philosophical, complicated ideas the opposition could only dream of? Was it because he outsmarted the opposition with his superior organizational insights, innate intelligence, political bravery, cosmopolitan understanding of the world, and mastery of statecraft? If not, why wasn’t KA Busia brought in to assume the responsibilities the UGCC assigned Nkrumah?
Was it not at the timely suggestion of Ako Adjei that Paa Grant brought Nkrumah to Ghana? Was it wrong and immoral for the masses to give Nkrumah their popular mandate at the polls? Why did the other five of the so-called Big Six betray Nkrumah following their arrest during the “Positive Action” campaigns? Why are the descendants of his ideological enemies making a mountain out of a molehill in respect of the historico-political fallout between Nkrumah and the NLM terrorists who tried to assassinate him, thereby providing a political justification for constitutional investiture of the PDA? What did Ronald Reagan and America do in the wake of John Hinckley, Jr.’s assassination attempt on him? Again, what is the concerted effort by Nkrumah’s detractors to distort his legacy for the sake of scoring cheap political points as a dubious strategy to mask the rotten historical gangrene of the opposition from the telescopic eye of moral truth, all about?
Yet others seem to have good reasons for historical revisionism where Nkrumah’s legacy is concerned. ”It is important to observe that the massive effort made to destroy Kwame Nkrumah had an intellectual component. Academics and intellectuals who were opposed to Nkrumah were commissioned to falsify and distort the nation’s history to depict Kwame Nkrumah as a ‘thief,’ ‘illiterate,’ ‘immoral,’ even satanic.” He concludes: “That was a poisonous strategy to mis-educate and mislead succeeding generations about the true stature of Kwame Nkrumah, the Founder of the State of Ghana (See Kofi B. Quatson’s “The Man Nkrumah: Those Who Betrayed Him”). Other scholars still feel history has vindicated Nkrumah (See Rodney Worrell’s book “History Has Vindicated Kwame Nkrumah”). Eric Walberg, a world-famous Canadian journalist, sees Nkrumah as the “greatest African” (See his essay “Kwame Nkrumah: The Greatest African”).
Then, the proceedings of “Kwame Nkrumah’s Day of Shame: Dr. Kwame Nkrumah Namibian Memorial,” edited by Etuna Joshua and Bankie F. Bankie, covering diverse presentations by seasoned politicians, activist-scholars, presidents, professors, medical doctors, writers, etc., from the African world attest to Nkrumah’s globality. In fact, Lang TKA Nubuor, another keen author, notes: “Certainly a new world is blowing over Africa. The spirit of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is awakened. This renewed presence is acknowledged across the continents. Not only are academicians and intellectuals reviving their interest in Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. They have also questioned and are questioning the decades of neglect in the study of the ideas of the man. Agitations are on foot at centers of learning to incorporate such studies into the curriculum of university studies in Africa.” This is how philosophically flowery he ends it: “The agitations do not resist the continued studies of Western philosophers like Thales, Plato, Aristotle, and others. They make a just and positive demand that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah be added to them (See “The Mind of Kwame Nkrumah”). This is what the African world need to do!
What had been the impact of the PDA? Ironically, Sir Arku Korsah, Ghana’s first black Chief Justice and co-founder of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, whom we mentioned earlier, would travel to Ethiopia on an official visit, in the aftermath of Nkrumah’s overthrow, where he hypocritically lambasted Nkrumah for capitalizing on the PDA to deny habeas corpus to his opponents! Was it not he who gave “royal assent” to its parliamentary passage? That is not all, however. Even with the PDA firmly in place several assassination attempts on Nkrumah continued nonetheless. His residence was also bombed. Again, Nelson and Gyamerah write: “By the fifth assassination attempt on Nkrumah’s life, a death toll of 30 Ghanaians, men, women, and children, had been recorded with the wounding of some 300 others.” Equally verifiable is the fact that historical revisionism could not entirely vindicate Yaw Manu, an opposition activist, and RB Otchere, an opposition member of parliament, both of whom pled guilty for their involvement in the Kulungugu bombing. Dennis Austin did indict ex-opposition leaders, principally Obetsebi Lamptey, for his role in hatching the Kulungugu bombing in Lome.
Our questions to you are: What if the opposition had worked alongside Nkrumah to develop the country? What if the opposition had put aside their ethnic differences? What if the opposition had relinquished their Eurocentric thinking, spanning their adopted European lifestyles, their spiritual emptiness, and their intellectual elitism, for an Afrocentric thinking? Notwithstanding the emotional outcry of historical revisionists against the moral investiture of the PDA, Nelson and Gyamerah remind us that “the UGCC leaders (the so-called Big Six) arrested after the 1948 riots in the Gold Coast were technically held in preventive custody and were neither charged nor tried.” In spite of all the above, what sort of democracy did Nkrumah want for us, us Ghanaians, us Africans? Didn’t Nkrumah try to have Africa have her way as far as development and democratization are concerned? Why did his enemies, self-proclaimed local apostles of democracy and the self-righteous West, team up to thwart his progressive and industrialization efforts?
What did the democratic dictatorship of the opposition, represented by Busia, achieve for Ghana after the overthrow of Nkrumah, referred to by others as “the Man of African Destiny”? Finally, was Nkrumah a socialist, statist, capitalist, communist, fascist, or humanist? Truth be told, wasn’t Nkrumah a humanist, and, if so, doesn’t humanism override ideology—communism, capitalism, fascism, socialism, and statism? How much did the so-called socialist Nkrumah achieve for Ghana and Africa as a whole compared to Ghana’s liberal and capitalistic administrations, clueless men who took over the reins of government after his overthrow, combined? What role did Busia’s NLM, JB Danquah, and the other federalists play in destroying the liberal democracy Nkrumah created? Yet we know without a doubt that most of the imperfections of Nkrumah were the creation of the leadership of the NLM! Besides, where did two of our finest and brilliant nationalists, Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah, go wrong?
We shall return…
Copyright © 1994 - 2024 GhanaWeb. All rights reserved.
