The Kwame Nkrumah Trust

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah was the first Black Prime Minister of the Gold Coast under British Imperialism and colonial rule and in the whole of modern Africa. He was also the first President of the First Republic of Ghana in West Africa. He was born on 21 September, 1909 at Nkroful in the Nzima area of the Western Region of Ghana, when Edward VII was the Monarch of the British Empire and Cambridge was under the influence of the anti-utilitarian G. E. Moore. His father was a goldsmith.

He was at Prince of Wales College at the time of the great 1929 Depression, when capitalism as a socio-economic system of resource allocation was openly brought into question. After initially training as a teacher at Achimota College, which had been set up by A.G. Fraser, with the help of Moores’ young Cambridge disciples, he left for America, that land of the Free, in 1935 in order to pursue the American dream through education at Lincoln University on the advice of Nnamdi Azikiwe, a Nigerian Patriot. This was a year before John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory was published. It was there, in Lincoln University and The University of Pennsylvania that he got all his formal qualifications.

He left the USA in 1945 for the United Kingdom where he enrolled at the London School of Economics, set up by the English Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb to pioneer the management of society on applied scientific principles through a new breed of technocrats. In England, he was made the General Secretary of the West African National Secretariat and Joint Secretary of the Pan African Congress. There had been previous Pan African congresses in 1900 (London), 1919 (Paris), 1921 (London), 1923 (London), 1927 (New York). The 5th Pan African Congress took place in October 1945.

He became very popular among black students and workers of African and Asian origin. He formed a lifelong friendship with many. These included Kojo Botsio the Ghanaian later to become a Minister under his Prime Ministership; George Padmore, the great West Indian Pan Africanist; Fenner Brockway, the British Fabian Socialist and the British June Milne, who became the Executrix of his literature. It was with George Padmore that The Circle, a secret revolutionary society, was formed. Through The Circle, George Padmore and himself as Organisers planned the Congress that was to produce most of the political leaders in the various countries of Africa and Asia in the fifties and sixties (Nyerere, Mugabe, Sekou Toure, D.S. Senanayake). India, Pakistan and Sri-Lanka got independence within two years of the Congress.

In the meantime, the wheel of nationalism in the Gold Coast had started with the formation of a political party called the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). Kwame Nkrumah was invited to become the Secretary General. He agreed to come. From the moment of his arrival in the Gold Coast in December,1947, the people hailed him at his first public appearance at the West End Palladium in Accra. Cheers that greeted him were great as thousands upon thousands of people from all walks of life crowded into this cinema hall (the Palladium). Those who could not squeeze themselves inside, climbed trees, and roof-tops in order to catch a glimpse of this young man and also to listen to what he had to say.

The crowd listened avidly and cheered and clapped their utter approval. Here was someone who talked their kind of language, and the language of all oppressed people across the world, and who put into words the same ideas that were on their minds – FREEDOM NOW.

However, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah broke off from the UGCC because of its conservative ideology of maintaining the colonial socio-economic system and replacing the whites at the head of the colonial machinery, with black faces. The UGCC aimed to perpetuate an ethnic and educated tribal aristocracy, rather than a modern democracy in which ordinary people were ruled by a government of their own choice. The UGCC planned to leave out the interests of ordinary black people and were not very keen about the idea that self-government and its full implications was better than the best form of colonial government. So he formed with K. A. Gbedemah and others the Committee on Youth Organisation (CYO) in Saltpond, which had started as a study group in the latter’s house. This emerged as the revolutionary Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP) on Sunday 12 June, 1949 in Accra at a capacity rally with a crowd of over 60,000. At this point no Sub-Saharan African country was free. By 1966 the CPP would spearhead the liberation of 33 African countries. What then remained was their unification to achieve the Pan African dream of Dubois, Marcus Garvey and George Padmore. These Stalwarts of Pan Africanism gave Dr. Kwame Nkrumah their leadership..

In 1951, Dr. Nkrumah was elected as Legislative Assembly member for Accra the capital of today’s Ghana with 22,780 votes out of a possible 23,162, the largest individual poll so far recorded in the history of the Gold Coast. The election that followed whilst he was in prison and this sweeping victory led to his release on 12th February 1951 to become the Leader of Government Business of the Gold Coast Government.

On July 10, 1953, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah tabled his famous MOTION OF DESTINY that was to pave way for Ghana’s (Gold Coast) Independence and the beginning of the dream to Unify Africa into one continental nation state.

A Government White Paper containing the proposals for the Independence of the Gold Coast was debated in April 1956 and unanimously approved, subject however to certain amendments.

The following year, in February, 1957, the revised proposed Constitution for Independent Gold Coast was presented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Gold Coast Assembly at the orders of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 11 through the Governor, Sir Charles Noble Arden Clark. Wednesday, 6th March, 1957 was fixed for the Independence of the Gold Coast. The colonial Gold Coast from midnight of 6th March, 1957 was to be named GHANA. History was made as Dr Kwame Nkrumah answered the question that Marcus Garvey raised when he asked where on earth was an African nation with its own black government with its own army, navy, police force and so on. Such has been the humiliation of Africa since the occupation of Black Egypt through the military aggression of Alexander the Greek whose African-trained teacher was Aristotle. Alexander’s conspiratorial military occupation of Black Egypt enabled his African-trained teacher Aristotle to remove and plagiarise Black works from the libraries of Egypt. Thus was born and began the modern Myth of the Greek Origin of Civilisation with Alexander himself as that fountain.

On this memorable occasion in the modern history of Africa and of the British Empire, her cousin, the Duchess of Kent Princess Marina, represented Queen Elizabeth II. The Press Houses of the world were all there and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah gave a press conference that was supposed to start the promotion of positive images of Africa in the World’s media and the practical reversal of black humiliation and feelings of inferiority.

On the eve of Independence Day, 5/3/57, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, in a characteristic fiery speech at the Old Polo Grounds in front of Parliament House declared that:

“The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African Continent.”

With this call, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah lighted the torch of African liberation. He gave the warning that Africa will not be the same again. Colonialism will not be tolerated on the Continent. His primary desires were freedom and his dearest love was Ghana, Pan Africanism and the unity of the African continent and of black people everywhere, the peaceful co existence between all nations and all peoples and the world-wide recognition that all men are created equal.

He made a historic peace mission to Vietnam, (Hanoi) to meet with the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. His Ministers, Party functionaries and members of the Diplomatic Corps saw off the President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah at the Accra International Airport on 21st February 1966. Three days later, on 24 February, 1966, members of his Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service, rebelled against their President and Supreme Commander. They seized power by the force of arms, assisted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America (USA), itself a democracy, and overthrew the constitution that they had previously sworn to uphold on behalf of the people of Ghana and colonised Africa. It was a bloody coup d’etat that set in train rebellious events in Ghana’s military and in Africa as Frantz Fanon’s writings had predicted. The CPP remains banned under a military decree.

His development achievements include Ghana’s Volta Dam Project, the Tema Harbour (and its modern Township) and factories (eg Cocoa Processing factories, Meat Processing Company at Bolga, Glass Factory at Aboso) to name a few.

His accelerated educational policy launched in 1951, put many in schools and his free University education and liberal scholarship schemes for study abroad helped many youth to reach the highest level of learning. He also set up The Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute at Winneba in Ghana to conduct research and publish works on the ideology of decolonisation.

Unable to set foot in Ghana, since the unconstitutional seizure of power by army and police rebels, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah died in Bucharest, Romania on 27th April, 1972 at 8.40 a.m. local time at the age of 62. His body was flown to Guinea and finally to Ghana for a State burial at Nkroful, his birth-place.

There is today a monument called The Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum as a lasting testament to the unbelievable achievements of this radical and revolutionary philosopher politician and Pan-African Strategist born in colonised Edwardian Gold-Coast and set free by the government of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. He looked forward to a world in which Africa, where the Greeks Aristotle,Plato, Empedocles and Herodotus among others were taught, would once again become the metropolis of science and learning and development.

Under his leadership, Ghana remained in the Commonwealth. It became a forum to which African issues could be taken. In the wider context, he initiated friendship with former colonisers and showed the way to inter-racial collaboration and harmony. He redefined the idea of separate camps for whites and blacks and Asians engaged in strategic partnerships. He also showed that the cleavage between East and West had a middle ground. The strategic aim of a United Africa was to be attained by all means necessary. He gave a speech to the Prime Ministers’ Conference in London on 9th July 1965. He saw the Commonwealth as an example of strategic partnership in international relations and a multi-racial organisation working together for a peaceful world. He also saw it as a strategic partnership between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere of the world. As a multi-racial organisation, it also meant that people from different cultures will be co-operating together and within that exchange technology will also be transferred. There was no need for anger and hatred towards imperialists, colonisers and racists. Indeed there was no need to engage in Marxist inspired violence and revolutions to overthrow hegemonic regimes. It did not mean however that Armed revolution was never necessary for freedom-fighters. Dr Nkrumah showed that what was required was a thorough grounding in a comprehensive, combative and radical ideology that did not accept and legitimise unequal social relationships, which were not conducive to human dignity, social justice, development and world peace. Great achievements do not always require guns and bombs. Sometimes it is one’s voice, a pen, paper and a pulpit. It was about appreciating the world as free men and women. The African then, can project, the African Personality in world affairs while sharing common values and traditions in a spirit of fraternity and equality. He suggested the creation of the present Commonwealth Secretariat.

Ghana under Dr. Kwame Nkrumah joined the list of seven independent African states on 6th March 1957. Apart from the North African States, Ethiopia was the only Sub-saharan African State that was never colonised. Liberia on the other hand was founded as an independent State.

The First Conference of Independent African States was held at Accra on 19th April 1958. The eight participating states were Ethiopia, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Liberia, the Sudan and Ghana. Pan Africanism moved from the United States of America and the United Kingdom onto African soil. In December 1958 there was the All-African Peoples’ Conference. Delegates from 62 African nationalist organisations attended the conference.

In June 1960, a second conference of Independent African States was held in Accra. Ghana hosted the freedom fighters and members of nationalist organisations all over Africa. For the first time in modern history, Africans fighting for the liberation of African States could meet together on African soil, in a Sovereign African State and talk of African matters.

The aim was to embark on what has come to be called The Kwame Nkrumah Agenda:
1. the attainment of freedom and independence;
2. the consolidation of that freedom and independence;
3. the creation of unity and community between the free African states and black people everywhere;
4. and the economic and social reconstruction of Africa.

Dr Nkrumah set up an African Bureau to offer direct financial, propaganda and military support to the struggle for independence.

Ghana, Guinea and Mali signed The Charter for African States’ Unity. This was a union of African States, which was to be the nucleus of a United States of Africa. This is known as the Sanniquelle Declaration in July 1959. He helped the creation of an All African Trade Union Federation which met in Accra in November 1959.

The Conference on Positive Action and Security in Africa was held the following year in April 1960. The government of Ghana called the conference to consider the situation in Algeria and South Africa. In Algeria for instance, where the Algerian civil war was in progress, it was natural for native Algerians to pull out their knives or made sure it was close by, when they heard talk of European civilisation. The idea that Europeans had come to civilise Africans was not borne out by the practical experiences of the native peoples of the world wherever Europeans went with their civilisation. Their civilising mission was contradicted above all by their denial of natives’ human rights. The most important of these rights was the right to be treated as human beings and on equal terms.

On 18th July 1960, the first ever conference on African Women on black soil to discuss their common problems was held in Accra. The black women delegates who attended spoke of freedom and unity and they also spoke of the urgent need for social and economic progress. Dr Kwame Nkrumah was later to state in an axiom that “the degree of a country’s revolutionary awareness may be measured by the political maturity of its women.”

An All-African People’s Conference met again in 1961 in Cairo, Egypt, following the problems in South Africa and Algeria. 200 delegates attended this conference. They were warned of neo-colonialism and of religious or philanthropic organisations as imperialist agents.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah helped form The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on 25th May 1963. The political and economic development of any African State must be placed within the continental African context.

The Voice of Africa, an external broadcasting service was set up in Ghana to help countries still under colonial domination and to advance the political unification of Africa.

He proposed along with others the idea of a Pan-African News Agency and under his leadership Ghana proposed the establishment of PANAF, which would be an inter-African news agency whose aim would be to correct the distorted image of Africa which is promoted in Foreign media. The Ghana News Agency was seen as part of an All-Africa News Agency with offices across the Continent. In this regard Journalists were seen not as national but as African Journalists. The Ghana Institute of Jornalism was part of a continental training organisation to train African Journalists for the new challenges.

He wanted Africa to have a common foreign policy, a common economic and domestic policy and a common army to be called an African High Command.

Ghana’s Republican Constitution of 1960 made Ghana a part of a future continental union.

He married a pretty African from Egypt called Madam Fathia and they had two sons and a daughter. This helped to Unite Africa North and South.

Dr Nkrumah addressed the US Senate on 24th July 1958. In that speech he announced his acceptance of all the provisions of the United Nations. He saw the United Nations (UN) as part of the strategic partnership required for a peaceful world.

The UN and its various agencies came to establish their regional head-quarters in Accra. Africa should not take sides in international ideological warfare and so he pursued a policy of positive neutrality and non-alignment. The post-second world war era was one of nuclear and cold war politics. Peace in the world became a premium. The rise of black Nationalism was a dimension of world politics following the 1945 Pan African Congress in Manchester. It was not necessary for Africa to take sides in world politics and ideological battles between world powers should be kept out of Africa. Dr. Nkrumah’s achievements in Ghana and Africa inspired many across the world: the Civil Rights Movement in America in the 1960s; the achievement of independence by 33 African States by 1966; Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa. On the international stage it was to be a call for the end to imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism and the furtherance of world peace and global harmony.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah studied radical theory under C.L.R. James and George Padmore. He also read widely including the Bible, Sergus Gortan, Black Egyptian Philosophy, William Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Blyden, Gandhi, Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels, Shakespeare, Lenin, Hitler, Hannibal, Cromwell, Napoleon, Mussolini, Mazzini and Freud amongst others. He held degrees in economics and sociology, theology, education and in Philosophy.

He synthesised their beliefs and later published his own philosophy Consciencism in 1963. That synthesis was the basis of his geo-political economic philosophy and practice. His exposition of socialism and Positive Action for example derive from it.

His strategic socio-economic aim was freedom, self-reliance and the social reconstruction of a united Africa. His strategic development policy was not aimed at strengthening mercantilist international relations between Africa and the rest of the world because it would lead to the neo-colonisation of the balkanised economically weak independent states. On the contrary, it was to be aimed at increasing the geopolitical power of Africa for Black people everywhere.

The African personality was promoted as the core of a new African Paradigm challenging the fundamental assumptions of human nature that underpins the ideologies of Liberalism, Conservatism, Social Constructivism, Marxism and recently The New Right. For the first time and since then, black women and men no longer felt inferior and the desire to project the African Personality became paramount. His anti imperialist policy brought a feeling of pride into many black people and a little Ghana became a force to reckon with in the countries of the world. All across the world, on questions of the future of the African continent it was to Kwame Nkrumah that one looked for answers. To further the African Agenda he made speeches all across the world, wrote prolifically and published:

1. Towards Colonial Freedom
2. Autobiography
3. Neo-colonialism – The Last Stage of Imperialism
4. Challenge of the Congo
5. Dark Days in Ghana
6. Voice from Conakry
7. Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare
8. Class Struggle in Africa
9. The Struggle Continues
10. Revolutionary Path
11. Rhodesia File
12. Africa Must Unite
13. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation
14. What 1 Mean By Positive Action
15. Axioms
16. Ghana
17. I Speak of Freedom

The Future

The Kwame Nkrumah Historical and Research Foundation has been set up in memory of he who was the Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. His ideas, speeches and books have inspired the world. His aim of a united Africa and a Continental African Government bore its first fruits in the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa. The Kwame Nkrumah Agenda has since stalled and a new Operation African Unity (OAU) has become a necessity for international freedom, brotherhood and racial equality in the global village.