A parody By Anis Haffar

[Often acclaimed the greatest statesman of his era – and a staunch imperialist – Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) was Prime Minister of Britain during World War II. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. This article is a parody mimicking Churchill’s literary style; it also highlights the visions of Nkrumah].

To have given his life, to have faced every trial and imprisonment, to have led the Gold Coast and other colonized African nations to independence during the perils of the mid 20th century, to have seen the new Ghana blossom from obscurity into a great reputation; and then suddenly be tossed by measly elements in the nation he was so proud of, of whose history and vision he was the embodiment – surely this was enough to try the soul of a mortal man.

Even those who fell off donkeys in dim, narrow lanes didn’t like it at all; but to have fallen off an elephant in the face of the whole world –!

Politicians rise by toils and struggles; they expect to fall; they must hope to rise again. Politicians know they are but creatures of the day. But, to President Kwame Nkrumah, it was he who held in his hands the golden parachute of Africa enshrining the treasures of the coming centuries.

I had the honour of meeting the new president when I visited Accra after Ghana’s independence in 1957. He invited me to luncheon, and afterwards we talked with great freedom and intimacy in a room nearby. I had come to Accra to play polo.

Presently the president said, abruptly: “Mr. Churchill, do you believe in African unity?”

I replied, “Sir, sometimes I do; sometimes I don’t.”

He said, “Mr Churchill, you remain a die-hard imperialist, despite the winds of change blowing over Africa. Mr Harold McMillan has wisely thrown in the towel.”

I replied, “Sir Harold and I are not cut from the same imperial cloth, sir; he’s not ballsy, but Lady Thatcher, whom you may meet soon, is.”

We discussed, openly, the various possibilities with which the future of Africa seemed loaded. His deep regard for Africa was evident in everything he said. No one could be surprised that Ghana preferred a neutrality in the cold war between the East and the West, through the Non-Aligned Movement. The historical barriers between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were not to be surmounted. In Ghana, the petty bourgeoisie were pro–capitalists; the masses pro–socialists. As the President said, “Only I and the veranda boys and girls are for socialism.”

The best that could be hoped for was that Ghana should forge the uneasy but happy medium between the two; and certainly she could prosper by her abstention from rigid adherence of either “ism”.

The deepest bitter memory of the Ghanaian leader was the murder of Premier Patrice Lumumba in the Congo crisis. But the real hatred was for the hypocrisy of the western leaders in aiding and abetting, and then going scot-free after a crime so hideous. It left an aching void in the breast of this proud African.

The President told me of attempts upon his own life. One in particular I remember. A Prime Minister in 1955, he and several others were sitting at a meeting, when a bright orange blaze suddenly lit up the whole back of the house in an explosion followed by another. Women and children screamed; and his mother, whose room was near the explosion, was speechless with tears. That adverse episode made me think of ‘Guy Fawkes’ night in Britain.

Nothing could rob the president of his natural gaiety and high spirits, but the assassination attempts staggered his confidence somewhat, and dented that fountain of almost boyish merriment and jollity. He could not now prowl about incognito to see and hear things for himself. He now depended upon party aficionados who themselves had personal axes to grind and private pockets to mind. That spelled the beginning of his end and the doom of his party – not least with the introduction of the Preventive Detective Act (PDA) which crowded the Nsawam prison, and the Ussher Fort.

His childhood of poverty at Inkroful would have discouraged most adolescents; but Nkrumah sought and became a teacher, a historian, a worldly statesman, and a writer. By the time he died in the mid 1970s, he had penned many notable books including Africa Must Unite, Neo–Colonialism, Class Struggles in Africa, The Challenge of the Congo, The Rhodesian Papers, and more.

There are certain things that can’t be stated simply: they must embody a living force in situation, character, and theme. Only Mr Bernard Shaw – with his unerring literary gifts, and the instinctive Irish distaste for the imperial characters at play in Nkrumah’s time – could illuminate for the modern eyes the witty scenes, dialogue and gestures appropriate for dramatizing subtle aspects of “Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah,” especially the scene where Nkrumah paced into the Christianborg Castle and met the colonial governor Sir Charles Arden-Clarke jaw to jaw.

The two had been opposing each other for so many months, and were now unhinged to pluck it out. The mutual feelings of suspicion and discomfort filled the inner spaces between the British Goliath and the African David. With his unsparing derision, Mr Shaw – our Fabian dramatist and philosopher – could render a service to posterity which never perhaps could have been seen rendered from any other quarter: the vanities of trumpery, mighty figures who float on airs only to be borne crashing down by the winds of change, in sync with Bob Marley’s lyrics: “If you’re the big tree, we’re the small axe, ready to cut you down.”

Coming from the small Nzema village of Nkroful – without a large ethnic following – Nkrumah deemed it opportune to claim, not a tribe, but a whole race through the vehicle of Pan-Africanism. His sole object was the strength and fame of this larger realm. He never recoiled from that tough but wise angle.

Most of Nkrumah’s political life he was pursued by a community of aggrieved forces: imperial powers about to lose hold of easy wealth; the opposition squeezed into a one-party socialist state; the native chiefs whom he had mocked to carry their own palanquins or run and leave their sandals behind; and the affected local intelligentsia whom he had rebuked for being selfish, cowardly, and more British than Lord Randolph Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough.

But all his life he pursued the idea of an African Personality to boost confidence in the African, and he freely trusted himself to the good will of the black race. He had found many admirers in every walk of life, and at home; he therefore felt sure that he had behind him the steady loyalty of a nation; and having laboured faithfully in its service, he felt he had deserved its affection. A lightning flash struck that wishful thinking. On February 24th, 1966, while the president was out on a peace mission to Hanoi, mutineers struck.

An epoch had closed. How shall we explain it? Are we to judge him better as a despotic statesman, or the true African of the millennium? Did he think only for Africa and neglect Ghana in the process; or did he merely enjoy the messianic accolades heaped upon him? Are we dealing with the annals of a nation or the biography of an individual?

History has emerged to answer these questions. But I shall not shrink from pronouncing now that Nkrumah was a determined, conscientious visionary whose ideals of African unity will continue to glow on the African horizon; his legacy will haunt the conscience of Africa’s leaders to go easy on personal comforts, and act in the interests of the people.

He deemed himself superior, not only in rank, but in the capacity and foresight, to both the ministers he installed and the various African leaders he encountered in international circles. He felt himself to be the one strong, stable pivot around which the life of Africans revolved. Nkrumah could not conceive of the day when he would cease to be identified with Africa, and Africa with him. It was a tall order, but history has so borne him out that history itself is to be credited.

Today, the sympathies of the modern world, including many of its advanced thinkers, are powerfully attracted to the sparkling visions of Africa’s key philosopher and freedom fighter.

In hindsight discerning Ghanaians, for once, remember that in lieu of the huge food import bills consuming Ghana’s foreign exchange today, Nkrumah had back in the day made bold allowances to make Ghana self-sufficient in grain, meat, vegetables, sugar, and important staples; in lieu of the mass youth unemployment he had initiated a workers brigade to spur young people for the world of work; to advance functional education he had initiated free compulsory education, mass education, teacher training, and science and technology; to lift high the flag of Ghana, he had originated the Ghana Airways and the Black Star Shipping Line. In short, in whatever mattered, he had thought, planned, and taken direct action – half a century ago – so that about this date they might have seen their fruit. Here was a leader, prescient, selfless and committed; when comes another?

Be they pharmaceuticals, energy, roads, mining, fishing, public works, distilleries, communications, he had thought them through to avoid potential neo-colonial traps which the nation today has unwittingly plunged headlong into.

Though misunderstood, feared, envied, let down, yet Nkrumah was sure of his value to the masses and strove prophetically to preserve their permanent interests, and to discharge his duty to them.

With Ghana’s adolescence today trapped on the streets, competing with vehicular traffic for speed and space to push imported catapults, toothpicks, matches, superstition and pornography, where’s the hope of this once proud nation? With the exquisite God-given landscapes, which in places Nkrumah enhanced with Parks and Gardens, now ravaged into slums and wastelands; with indiscriminate mining and toxins now poisoning the rivers, and ruining the lush farming hinterland; with other people’s Electronic -wastes imported and dumped into every nook and cranny; where’s the cleanliness that invites godliness?

With the continental ethnic murders in Sierra Leone, Darfur, Eritrea, the Congo, and Rwanda, what force could be better poised to stop the carnage than the bona fide African Command Nkrumah envisaged through African Unity?

Dogged by selfish and tribal interests, and deep private pockets; and blinded by a visionary range the size of a play pen, leadership in Africa has become almost extinct. Amid difficulties now obvious to Ghana in particular, and Africa in general, Nkrumah’s visionary pursuits remain adequate for progress in the 21st century.




Credit: Author’s Email: anishaffar@yahoo.com
Website: www.gateinstitute.org