Kwame Nkrumah
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Kwame Nkrumah (September 21, 1909 – April 27, 1972) was an African anti-colonial leader, founder and first president of the modern Ghanaian state and one of the most influential Pan-Africanists of the 20th century.
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Early life and education
He was born in Nkroful, Gold Coast (Ghana) as Francis Nwia-Kofi Ngonloma. Educated at Achimota School, Accra and the Roman Catholic Seminary, Amisano, he taught at the Catholic school in Axim. In 1935 he left Africa for the USA, receiving a BA from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1939. He also earned a Master of Science in Education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942 and a Master of Arts in Philosophy the following year. While lecturing in Political Science at Lincoln he was elected president of the African Students Organization of America and Canada.
During his time in the United States, Nkrumah visited and preached in black Presbyterian Churches in Philadelphia and New York City. He read books about politics and divinity. He encountered the ideas of Marcus Garvey. He also tutored other students in philosophy.
He arrived in London in 1945 intending to study at the LSE. But following a meeting with George Padmore he helped to organise the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England. After that he began to work for the decolonisation of Africa and became Vice-President of West African Students Union.
Return to Africa
In the autumn of 1947, Nkrumah was invited to serve as the General Secretary to the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) under Joseph B. Danquah. This political convention was exploring paths to independence. Nkrumah accepted the position and set sail for the Gold Coast. After brief stops in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast, he arrived in the Gold Coast in December 1947.
In February 1948 police fired upon a protest by African ex-servicemen who were protesting the rapidly rising cost of living. The shooting spurred a series of rioting in Accra, Kumasi and other towns. The government suspected the UGCC was behind the protests and therefore arrested Nkrumah and other leading members of the party. Realizing their error, the British soon released the convention leaders. So it was that Nkrumah was unjustly imprisoned by the colonial government and emerged as hero and leader of the youth movement in 1948.
After his release, Nkrumah began to hitchhike around the countryside. In community after community he proclaimed that the Gold Coast needed "self-government now." He built an impressive power base. The cocoa farmers rallied to his cause because they disagreed with British policy concerning the containment of swollen shoot disease. He appealed to women to be a part of the political process at a time when women’s suffrage was new to Western Democracy. The Unions also allied with his movement. By 1949, he had organized these groups into a new political party called The Convention People’s Party.
Not wanting to be held responsible for storm and stress within the Gold Coast, the British called for the drafting of a New Constitution that made Africans more responsible for policy decisions. Under the New Constitution, drawn up by a commission of middle class Africans, men of education and property would control the parliament. Nkrumah called his own “People’s Assembly” composed of representatives of party members, youth organizations, trade unions, farmers, and veterans. Their proposals called for universal franchise without property qualifications, a separate house of chiefs, a responsible cabinet, and self-governing status under the Statute of Westminster. These amendments, known as the Constitutional Proposals of October 1949, were rejected by the Colonial Administration.
The Colonial Administration’s rejection of the People’s Assembly’s recommendations led directly to Nkrumah’s call for “Positive Action” in January 1950. Positive Action included Civil Disobedience, Non-Cooperation, Boycotts, and Strikes. The Colonial Administration retaliated by arresting Nkrumah and sentencing him to three years in prison. Once again Nkrumah was a martyr in the cause of liberty and now the people flocked to the Convention People’s Party. This set the stage for his meteoric ascent to power.
Facing international protests and internal resistance the British decided to leave the Gold Coast. Britain organized the first general election to be held in Africa under universal franchise in 1951. Though in jail, Nkrumah won the election by a landslide and his party gained 34 out of 38 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Now the Leader of Government Business, Nkrumah was released from prison on February 12, 1951. The Governor Charles Arden-Clarke asked him to lead the new government in cooperation with the British to lead to independence, he agreed. In 1952, upon the withdrawal of the British Governor, he was appointed to the office of Prime Minister. Finally, winning the election of 1960, Nkrumah became the first President of Ghana.
Independence
As a leader of government, Nkrumah faced three serious challenges. First, he needed to learn the art of government. Second, he needed to create a unified nation of Ghana from the four territories of the Gold Coast. Third, he needed to win his nation’s independence. Nkrumah was successful at all three goals. Within nine years of his release from prison, he was the executive president of a unified nation with complete political freedom.
Under Nkrumah’s leadership, Ghana took enormous steps forward. To lift the nation out of poverty, Nkrumah created a welfare system, started various community programs, and established schools. He ordered the construction of roads and bridges to further commerce and communication. In the interest of the nation’s heath, he had tap water systems installed in the villages and ordered the construction of concrete drains for latrines.
At 12 AM on March 6, 1957 Ghana was declared independent. Nkrumah was now styled "Osagyefo" - which means "victorious leader" in the Akan language. Ghana was declared a republic in 1960 and became a charter member of the Organization of African Unity in 1963.
Politics
He generally took a Marxist perspective on economics, and believed capitalism's malign effects were going to stay with Africa for a long time. He argued that socialism was the system that would best accommodate the changes that capitalism had brought, while still respecting African values. He distanced himself from the African socialism of many of his contemporaries.
Economics
See also: Economy of Ghana
Nkrumah attempted to move Ghana’s economy toward a more industrial model. His reasoning was that moving Ghana out of the colonial trade system by reducing its dependence on foreign capital, technology, and material goods would allow it to become truly independent. Unfortunately, he moved to industrialization at the expense of his country’s cocoa growing sector, which had been a strong economic sector until then. In the end, the various economic projects that he undertook were generally unsuccessful and, especially in the case of the Volta Dam, hugely expensive. Neither did they remove Ghana from dependence on Western imports. By the time he was deposed, Ghana had gone from being one of the richest countries in Africa to one of the poorest.
Decline and Fall
The year 1954 was a pivotal year in the life of Kwame Nkrumah. In that year, he won the Independence Election with an astonishing 80% of the vote. However, the same year, saw the planting of the seeds of his ultimate political demise. In 1954 the world price of cocoa rose from £150 to £450 per ton. Rather than allowing the cocoa farmers to reap the benefit from this windfall, Nkrumah decided to divert the additional profit to national development. This new policy caused him to fall into disfavor with one of the major constituencies that helped him come to power in the first place.
The year 1958 saw the introduction of two pieces of legislation that would lead Ghana down the path towards totalitarianism. In the wake of the Gold Miner’s Strike of 1955, Nkrumah introduced The Trade Union Act which made strikes illegal. In reaction to a suspected plot on the part of an opposition member of parliament, The Prevention Detention Act made it possible to arrest and detain anyone charged with treason without the involvement of the nation’s court system.
When the railway workers went on strike in 1961, Nkrumah ordered strike leaders and opposition politicians arrested under the Trade Union Act of 1958. Though Nkrumah, himself, had organized strikes a few years before; there was no longer any place for them in his plan for rapid industrial development. He told the unions that their days as advocates for the safety and just compensation of miners was over. Their new job was to work with management in the mobilization of human resources. Wage incentives must give way to patriotic duty. In his eyes, the good of the nation as a whole superseded the good of individual workers. In the eyes of the people, Nkrumah had changed from hero to villain. The trade unions would never support him again.
The Prevention Detention Act led to widespread corruption and fear within Nkrumah’s administration. Some of his men used the law to have innocent people arrested so that they could acquire their political offices, business assets, or sexual partners. Advisers close to Nkrumah became too afraid to discuss Ghana’s true situation with him for fear that they might be seen as being critical. When the nation’s clinics ran out of pharmaceuticals, no one dared to notify him. The people believed he no longer cared, the advisers trembled, and the police came to resent their role in society. Meanwhile, Nkrumah, consumed by paranoia and the fear of assassination, became increasingly reclusive and inaccessible. He declared Ghana a one-party state with himself as Life President in 1964 in order to minimize mass protest.
Nkrumah’s commitment to industrial development at any cost led to his decision to construct a hydroelectric power plant on the Volta River. American corporations would build the dam for Nkrumah, but they would also place numerous restrictions on what could be produced using the power that it generated. It was a bad deal, but Nkrumah would not back away from it. He used borrowed money to build the dam. This placed Ghana in serious debt. Financing the debt incurred by building a dam in the north required higher taxation of the cocoa farmers in the south. This accentuated regional differences and jealousy. The dam project was completed and officially opened by Nkrumah amidst world publicity on January 22, 1966. To the outside world, Nkrumah must have appeared to be at the zenith of his power. In reality, the end of his regime was only days away.
Despite Ghana’s limited financial resources, Nkrumah wanted Ghana to have armies, jet fighters, and war ships. He acquired cheap, worthless aircraft and ships. He introduced a peacetime draft and sent a large portion of Ghana’s young men to the Soviet Union to receive cheap military training. Nkrumah’s military strategy was the straw that broke the camel’s back. When Nkrumah threatened to attack a larger, better trained, and better armed military force 3,000 miles away in Zimbabwe in order to secure the political sovereignty of Zimbabwe’s native population, the army planned to topple him. In February 1966, while Nkrumah was away on a diplomatic mission to Beijing, China, his government was overthrown in a military coup which some suspect may have been supported by American Intelligence forces.
Exile, death and memorial
Image:Kwame nkruma memorial.jpg Nkrumah never returned to Ghana, but he did continue to push for his vision of African unity. Nkrumah went into exile in Conakry, Guinea where he was the guest of Sekou Toure. He spent his time reading, writing, corresponding, gardening, and entertaining guests. Despite his retirement from public office, his paranoia did not abate. When his cook died, he began to fear that someone would poison him and he took to hoarding food in his room. He suspected that foreign agents were going through his mail. He lived in constant fear of abduction and assassination. In failing health, he was flown to Bucharest, Romania for medical treatment in August 1971. He died of cancer in April 1972. He was buried in Ghana in a tomb (still present) at the village of his birth, Nkroful, but his remains were later transferred to a large national memorial tomb and park in Accra.
Works by Kwame Nkrumah
- Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957) ISBN 0901787604
- Africa Must Unite (1963) ISBN 0901787132
- African Personality (1963)
- Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) ISBN 090178723X
- Axioms of Kwame Nkrumah (1967) ISBN 090178754X
- African Socialism Revisited (1967)
- Voice From Conakry (1967) ISBN 9017870273
- Handbook for Revolutionary Warfare (1968)
- Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation (1970) ISBN 0901787116
- Class Struggle in Africa (1970) ISBN 0901787124
- The Struggle Continues (1973) ISBN 0901787418
- I Speak of Freedom (1973) ISBN 0901787140
- Revolutionary Path (1973) ISBN 0901787221
External Links
- [1] Excerpt from Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
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