By Mwalimu George Ngwane
“As far as I am concerned, I am in the knowledge that death can never extinguish the torch which I have lit in Ghana and Africa. Long after I am dead and gone, the light will continue to burn and be borne aloft, giving light and guidance to all people” - Kwame Nkrumah
Tomorrow March 6th 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of the Ghanaian nation. Activities have been put in place to give Ghana’s golden Independence jubilee the global significance it deserves. But who can mention Ghana’s Independence without remembering its founder Francis Kwame Nkrumah (the Osagyefo)? After all do we not remember that prophetic and pan African slogan of his which said “Ghana’s Independence would be meaningless until all of Africa is united”?
Dr Nkrumah led Ghana to political independence from Britain in 1957 and became Ghana’s first president, serving until 1966, when he was toppled by military junta.
Kwame Nkrumah is remembered most for his consistent obsession with the principle of African unity. Not only did he attend the first Pan-Africa congress while a student in the Diaspora, but he organized the first All African Peoples’ Congress on African soil, between December 5-13 1958. His ideas about African unity still stand the test of time: until they are incorporated in mainstream African politics, Africa will remain a marginalized continent living on the periphery of global relations.
Nkrumah’s original panAfrican vision
As early as September 20 1956, Nkrumah had written: “African nationalism is not confined to Ghana. It has to spread throughout the whole continent.” In 1958, Ghana and Guinea decided to unite and form the core of a future United States of Africa. Such a decision was of reasonable importance to Africa, as it created a formal leverage on which African unity could be built.
In his book African Must Unite, Nkrumah asserts that “African unity must necessarily take the form of a continent-wide political unification. There will have to be continental government charged with the management of all essential functions, notably the economy, defence and foreign affairs.” In the formative years of the Organization of African unity (OAU), Nkrumah stood against the loose organization that borrowed its charter from the Organization of American States and from the decisions of May 1961 Monrovia conference.
During the OAU conference of May 1963, Nkrumah apocalyptically warned that “unless we achieve African unity now, we who sit here today will become victims and martyrs of neo-colonialism”. And right after the summit, African Heads of State at the time tenaciously clung to Article 111 (on sovereignty and non-interference) of the OAU Charter, sticking to the status quo they inherited from the colonialists.
The Africanist historian, Basil Davidson, commented “the new leadership accepted the colonial legacy-whether of frontiers or of bureaucratic dictatorship-on the rash assumption that they could master it. It mastered them instead”. The result is that the O.A.U became hamstrung and could not do much about Nkrumah’s dream and the people’s aspiration to continental unity. Much still needs to be seen in terms of radical ideological change within the African Union to confirm that it is being imbued and inspired by Nkrumahism. Many think that unless the African Union, together with the African people, are doctored with Nkrumahist opium of immediate African unity, we, as a people, run the risk of remaining-in spite of great resounding chaos of democracy-in a parlous condition of helpless misery, conflict and dependency.
A pan African civil society Congress
The early pan-Africanism, which can be termed as ‘anti-racist pan-Africanism’, was concerned with the search of a common African ancestry. It bordered on a common identity and took a cultural dimension. The later Pan-Africanism, which could be termed “anti-colonial Pan-Africanism”, was concerned with the search for a political kingdom. It focused on a continental Independence and assumed a political dimension. Today’s Pan-Africanism can be termed “African nationalist pan-Africanism”. It must be concerned with the search of an indigenous African statehood and must take a multilateral dimension.
Although African nationalism has existed under the banner of other Pan-African movements, “it was the product not of kleistian chauvinism but a mixture of anti-racism and, which amounted in practice to the same thing, of anti-colonialism. Let freedom come and freedom would bring its own solution”.
In the spirit of Nkrumahism and in tandem with the renascent spirit of the African Union, Africa needs a civil society Congress that will take stock of our failures and achievements in a bid to forge a New African Order. The task of this Congress will be to inculcate in Africans a vision of Africa, with a view to completing Nkrumah’s agenda for a United States of Africa. This civil society Congress will review the institutional development crises which have provoked neo-colonial economic theories, cultural self denial and ideological harlotry among Africans. It will be a congress that will renegotiate the terms of Western assistance to Africa, especially in the areas of debt, development, trade and democracy. It will be a Congress of Africans who are conscious of the fact that Pan-Europeanism (through the European Union) which stemmed from neo-colonial overkill, can only be checked through Pan-Africanism, in the form of a people-oriented African Union.
This Congress will call for the urgent and instant implementation of Afrocentric structures like a single African currency, a common continental language, and indigenous belief system, a functional not decorative African parliament, an African Media organ, and an African Common Market-all under the aegis of the African Union.
Bridging panAfrican visions
The pan African agenda within the African Union still needs to bridge the yearning gap between Gadaffi’s vision and Mbeki’s theory today like it failed to do between W.E.B Dubois and Marcus Garvey, and the Monrovia bloc and Casablanca group yesterday. The various regional blocs in Africa (SADC, ECOWAS, Maghreb, CEMAC) and EAC) must share ideas on economic, political and socio-cultural development in their regional blocs, with the aim of harmonizing them into an African whole. Nkrumah’s original concept of the “Union of African States” that was put in place in Accra on July 1st 1961 with Ghana, Guinea under Sekou Toure and Mali under Modibo Keita acting as pioneer pivotal members was a bold experiment that makes mince meat of the present African Union. Little wonder the present Chairman of the African Union Alpha Oumar Konare has already declared his intention to throw in the towel come July 2007 for reasons related to ineptitude of some African Union staff, insensitivity to African Unity by Heads of state and an ill-defined role of the Chairman of the Union among others.
Remembering Kwame Nkrumah without implementing the ideals for which he lived and died is meaningless. As Moa Tse-Tung gave life to China as Lenin gave life to Russia, as Charles de Gaulle gave life to France, as Che Guvera gave life Cuba, so did Kwame Nkrumah give life to Africa. Of course, Nkrumah needed people like Patrice Lumumba, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Amilcar Cabral and Tom Mboya to stand above their Francophonie, Anglophonie, Lusophonie and Arabophonie tendencies, to see only the interest of an AFRICAphonie.
Ghana’s new panAfrican challenge
The Ghanaian leadership has the patriotic challenge to extend its national success story to the cardinal points of Africa so as to rekindle the Nkrumah flame within the African Union. And the last January 2007 African Union summit held in Addis Ababa provided this political leverage and legacy for Ghana by electing Ghana’s leader John Agyekum Kufuor the Chairman of the African Union, by making Ghana the host of the July 2007 African Union summit and by choosing the Nkrumahian topic ‘United States of Africa’ as the theme for the July 2007 African Union summit. This is an opportunity Ghana and its leadership must not afford to let go.
As Africans join Ghanaians in celebrating let us all remember that we have no choice today but to live the Kwame Nkrumah’s dream. And this will mean eradicating the petty rivalries between egocentric leaders, involving non-state actors in the pan African machinery, and braving the tempest of neo-colonial wrath. Happy Anniversary Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah is watching.
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