Feature Story from civilrights.org
Marc H. Morial
May 24, 2007
Marc H. Morial is President and CEO of the National Urban League. His column is published weekly.
In early March, thousands of Ghanaians hit the streets of their West African nation to celebrate a truly momentous event – the 50th anniversary of its independence from Britain. On March 6, 1957, Africa's Gold Coast became Ghana, the continent's first black state to break the shackles of colonial rule, a bloodless handover of power that set off a wave of independence elsewhere in Africa and the world.
By 1960, 17 more colonies gained independence, and Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah emerged as one of the most influential Pan-Africanists of the 20th Century. The independence campaign in Africa coincided with the rise of the civil rights movement among African Americans trying to break free of oppression in the South. Both movements fed off the success of the other. In fact, Martin Luther King, Jr., joined Nkrumah for ceremonies celebrating Ghana's independence.
"For years and years, Africa has been the foot stool of colonialism and imperialism, exploitation and degradation. From the north to the south, from the east to the west, her sons languished in chains of slavery and humiliation, and Africa's exploiters and selfappointed controllers of her destiny strode across the land with incredible inhumanity without mercy, without shame and without honor. But these days are gone and gone forever. And now, I, an African, stand before this august assembly of the United Nations and speak with the voice of peace and freedom, proclaiming to the world the dawn of a new era," Nkrumah told the United Nations General Assembly in 1960, according to a transcript of the radio show Democracy Now!
Born in the coastal region near the Ivory Coast border, Nkrumah was educated in Ghana and left the country to go to college in the United States, where he met many prominent Pan-Africanists such as Marcus Garvey and W.E. B. DuBois. As president, Nkrumah conferred Ghanaian citizenship upon DuBois, who died there. He became very active in the Pan-African movement in the United States and Britain, serving, as his son observed on Democracy Now, as the first link between continental Africa and Africans in the diaspora. This had a great influence upon his vision and ideas, helping frame the liberation movement when he returned to his homeland in 1947.
Educated elites had formed a political party so they asked him to serve as secretary general, based on his activism in Britain and the United States. But he soon realized that they were more interested in keeping what little power Britain granted them than gaining independence. Subsequently, he launched his own party – the Convention People's Party. With the rallying cry, "Independence now!", he succeeded in unifying the country's ranks.
His immense popularity paved the way for his imprisonment by colonial authorities. But by that time, it was too late for the colonial government to stifle the independence cry. It was forced to hold elections in 1951, in which Nkrumah won by a landslide. After the British governor left the country, he was appointed prime minister in 1952 of a transitional government headed toward independence. In 1957, Ghana finally came out from under the British Crown. But Nkrumah realized that Ghana's independence would have little meaning if the rest of Africa didn't follow suit.
"After independence, he was convinced that the only way forward for Africa is African continental unity … That is, the whole continent would be united into the United States of Africa. And that includes both North Africa and Africa south of the Sahara. It also means that the African diaspora would have the right to return and to have African citizenship, if they so wish," observed son Gamal Nkrumah on Democracy Now!
Nkrumah had a "meeting of minds" with Malcolm X. Both were convinced that the "only way" forward was for Africans and displaced Africans to band together. "It is this vision of the two men, that the most important thing is the networking of oppressed people, and the unity is paramount to the success of the struggle," the junior Nkrumah notes.
Pan-Africanist vision of Ghana's first president also included redressing wrongs done to the inhabitants of a continent that endured centuries of invasion, slavery and colonialism. "The onus would be on social justice, that those who suffered the most, the masses of Africa, would have access to free health and free healthcare and free education," his son added.
As a result, hundreds of schools and hospitals were built – in both urban and rural areas. Nkrumah set the industrialization of Ghana, which he believed vital to breaking the nation's economic dependence on the West, into motion by building the Akosombo Dam, which proved immensely expensive, and Tema Harbour. His industrial efforts came at the expense of the country's cash crop -- cocoa.
But the country, under Nkrumah's rule, was hardly a Shangri La for individual freedoms, according to current-day standards at least. In addition to declaring himself president for life, he imposed the Preventative Detention Act, which allowed imprisonment of anyone for up to five years without trial, and the Trade Union Act, which made strikes illegal.
Seemingly authoritarian moves brought about international sanctions that coupled with a collapsing world cocoa market put the country's economy on very shaky ground, paving the way for a CIA-backed coup that cut his tenure short in 1966. Nkrumah went into exile in Guinea, where he continued to advocate for African unity and died in 1972 of skin cancer.
Ghanaians learned all too well that democracy is the least efficient and messiest forms of government to implement. Since then, the country has undergone successive military coups, until 1981 when Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings took the reins and suspended the nation's constitution and banned political parties. In 1992, Ghana veered back to a democracy when a new constitution that restored multiparty politics was adopted. Rawlings was freely elected that year and in 1996 but was constitutionally barred from running for a third term. His successor, John Kufuor, is in his second term.
But despite some detours along the road, Ghanaian democracy has stood the test of half a century. That is quite an achievement that we should all celebrate. Much like the civil rights movement here in the United States, Ghana's government is far from perfect but at least on the road to the realization of the high hopes Nkrumah had for it.
