when I wrote about Kwame Nkrumah’s strong and timely call for a United Africa as the surest mean to stand collectively against neo-colonialism, one of the comments I received from one of the readers is captured as follows:
“Yes, Nkrumah helped the Gold Coast to gain indenpendence, but, what we haven’t acknowledged as citizens is that the very man we are told to gloried with praises let this small country called Ghana down by sharing the little resources we should have used to build strong foundation for the future generation with other African countries for his personal and Selfish interests.”
Sincerely, this comment was not anything new or surprising to me because I was born into a family which was not in support of Nkrumahism (Kwame Nkrumah’s ideology) and before I attained the age of 10, my mother had on several occasions and repeatedly (on bedtimes and on our ways to our farms) told me how Kwame Nkrumah lavishly dashed out Ghana’s money freely to Guinea, how Nkrumah did this and how Nkrumah did that all in a negative light.
As a child, I believed everything my mother told me, and I am pretty sure that she also accepted the common narratives in her home and from her community while she was a child. That is a common indoctrination practice to set families apart along Ideological and tribal lines.
Unlike my mother who grew old with this negative indoctrination, I was fortunate to get to a stage in life, where, I am able to free my mind of whatever ‘knowledge’ or belief I have been fed with by subjecting them to verification and critical thinking. With time, Nkrumah, whom I had many negative notions about his personality and his life on Earth as an African has become one of my greatest heroes of all time. Why so? This will be a story for another time.
However, before I miss the central issue in this post, let me ask a simple question to set the context and help to guide us forward: did Nkrumah actually dashed Ghana’s money out and if yes for what purpose?
We cannot forget about the fact that Kwame Nkrumah has a vision that, Ghana’s Independence is meaningless unless that independence on that small land of Gold is linked-up with the total liberation on our big continent of Africa with abundance of resources. Nkrumah therefore, was not just a freedom fighter for Ghana but a servant for Africa as a whole. He organised and supported many strong personalities in many parts of the continent as agents to champion the continental independence and liberation.
Not long after after Ghana’s independence in 1957, Guinea, led by Sekou Toure became the first French Colonized Africa who the French couldn’t contain the pressure of demanding for independence, hence, the French agreed to grant them their independence.
In an exchange for independence, the French set up a condition which was to see a poorly managed Guinea Conakry to pay colonial tax to France for the rest of the lifespan of the existence of the newly independent nation for benefiting from Colonialism and French assimilation (that is according to the French).
A foresighted Sekou Toure triggered what has come to be known as “the abandonment of the France colonia pact”, as a respond to this action, the French government ordered home three thousand Frenchmen and officials from the country.
This men who had been asked to come home by the French authority were asked to take with them, all ‘their’ possessions and everything that was under French control in the country and destroying all that could not be moved to France.
Among the things that were destroyed across the country were schools, nurseries, buildings of public administrations, important national records and plans, cars, books, and medicines.
The gigantic destruction includes also, instruments belonging to research institutions, tractors for agriculture, roads; killing of horses, cows and other domesti farm animals; and poisoning or burning of stored foods to enable the people of Guinea to go hungry.
In solidarity and as a concern for this horrible act against the people of Guinea, the President of Ghana at the time, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah had to offer £10 million of Ghana’s economic reserves to support Guinea in order that the country can survive this turmoil!
How can any reasonable man be happy seen his brothers and sisters suffer without going to their aid, especially, when he or she is in a position to offer a little support? We are not just Friends, we are brothers and sisters to each other, and if not because of colonial divisions and boundaries our thinking of seen one of us as been more closer to us than other wouldn’t have been the case. Ubuntu was in Nkrumah’s blood and we must all go for this blood and fill it in our bloodstream.
Be part of the new Africa, the African that will create opportunity for every African. Join the African Continental Unity Party -ACUP
Register your membership at www.africanacup.org
This is a true message for Africans. Indeed Africa is really suffering because of the debris of colonial mustermind who still planed to enslave our minds so that even after independence we will still feel that be had better been under their rule