Kwame Nkrumah: The Pan-African Revolutionary Who Freed His Country and then Lost it

Francis Kwame Nkrumah, or simply Kwame Nkrumah, is revered as one of the foremost heroes of anti-colonialism in Africa. In 1952, he became the first prime minister of the British colony of the Gold Coast and 5 years later, led his country to independence.

As president, he decided to change the country’s name from Gold Coast to Ghana, after the eponymous ancient West African empire. The renaming was also a way of shedding an ugly colonial past.

Nkrumah was a quintessential symbol of Pan-Africanism and so supported the independence movements of other African states.

In this article, we will discuss how Nkrumah came to be such an important Pan-African icon, his controversial rule in Ghana and his indelible mark on African history.

The Making of a Revolutionary

Nkrumah came to the public’s attention in 1945. At the time, he was in England furthering his postgraduate studies, having previously obtained a Bachelor’s and multiple Master’s degrees in economics, philosophy, sociology and theology from American universities. It was during his studies in the US that he first became acquainted with Pan-Africanist ideologies and embraced socialism and Marxism.

Nkrumah had caught the fire, but didn’t quite know how to direct it. C.L.R. James, a Trinidadian activist and co-founder of the International African Friends of Abyssinia(IAFA), recognised this and sent a letter to George Padmore, changing the course of Nkrumah’s life. James had urged Padmore, also a Trinidadian IAFA member, to provide political education for Nkrumah, since he was “not very bright but determined to throw the imperialists out of Africa”.

At the time, Padmore had played an integral part in shaping the international discourse on pan-African anti-imperialism, making him an ideal person to assume the role of mentor and advisor to Nkrumah. Padmore involved Nkrumah in the planning of the Fifth Pan-African Congress, although his contribution to the discussions that took place were not as substantial as that of more established activists like Jomo Kenyatta.

Meanwhile, back home in the Gold Coast, Nkrumah’s activism had caught the attention of politicians, who invited him to join them in the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). In December 1947, Nkrumah made it down to Accra from London in order to serve as the UGCC’s general secretary. Concurrently, disgruntled trade unions had begun to incite violence in the country, which later culminated in the Christianborg riots of February 1948.

Nkrumah and other UGCC excos had no hand in the riots, but they used it to their political advantage, earning them a brief arrest. Nkrumah called for an election for a “constituent assembly” and became increasingly famous after sending copies of his telegram to the New York Times, the Daily Worker (London), the New Times (Moscow) and other international media. He also sent copies to the UN Secretary General and to a communist member of parliament in England. The latter correspondence gave the colonialist government the impression that he was a communist, and consequently made him their scapegoat.

Of course, the more the government opposed him, the stronger his reputation as an anti-colonial force became. The government used antics to drive him out of the UGCC, causing Nkrumah to form the Committee on Youth Organisation in August 1948.

This new committee, which mostly comprised the lower middle class, detested chiefs, colonialism and the powerful elite in the UGCC. They helped to galvanise the masses in support of Nkrumah’s anti-colonialism movement. In March 1949, he charged them saying, “Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all things will be added unto you”, an adaptation of Matthew 6:33 from the Bible. In June, he formed the Convention People’s Party (CPP) in opposition to the UGCC leadership.

When the constitutional commission, which comprised UGCC officials, produced its report in October that year, Nkrumah dubbed it “bogus and fraudulent”. He also called for “positive action”, which was to involve non-violent protests, strikes and non-cooperation with the colonial authorities.

Concurrently, he tried to continue negotiating with the government. However, rampant strikes by the Trade Union Congress put a dent in the negotiations. Nkrumah was forced to endorse a strike that had grown out of the CPP’s control. Consequently, he was arrested once again and jailed, thus making him a political martyr and further elevating the CPP’s popularity.

Interestingly, even in prison, British Governor Charles Arden-Clarke sought some sort of government participation from Nkrumah. Thus, the prison officials helped Nkrumah present his registration papers for the election of February 1951 and in the end, Nkrumah was elected to Parliament. Arden-Clarke then released him from prison and asked him to form the government. He was first leader of business before he was appointed prime minister the following year.

From then till 1957, he struggled to prove to the colonial masters that his rule was safe. He was, after all, a Black African prime minister in an African colony. It was an unprecedented arrangement that invoked something called Gold Coastism, a fear of black rule in other settler colonies.

A Nuanced Legacy

Today, Nkrumah is widely credited as the first man to lead an African colony into self-government and subsequent independence. Under his rule, Ghana became the first Sub-Saharan African country to gain independence.

However, some have described him as a tyrant, plunderer and megalomaniac who aspired towards dictatorship. His government’s legalisation of imprisonment without trial of individuals considered as security risks only pointed to said dictatorship.

Even his seemingly noble advocacy for the unification of independent African states was considered sinister by many.

Yusuf Maitama Sule, a Nigerian politician and diplomat, expressed at a 1960 conference in Liberia, “Nkrumah’s individual ambition and greed for power may spoil everything…it will spoil the good work we have done and ruin the good work we are capable of doing in the future”.

Even if some African states did like the idea of African unity, they did not take kindly to the idea of aiding Nkrumah’s closeted ploy for power.

In focusing on this African league idea, he lost touch of the pressing needs of his own nation. Previously, he had earned public favour by building new roads, schools and health facilities, and instituting an Africanisation policy that created better job opportunities for Ghanaians. Now, his administration established disastrous projects that plundered the nation’s resources.

In 1961, his government’s Second Development Plan, which had been announced 2 years prior, had to be dumped when the deficit in the balance of payments soared to over $125 million. The labour force protested the economic recession and carried out wildcat strikes in September 1961.

Nkrumah was forced to quit his holiday in the USSR and restore order in his nation. He outlawed all political parties apart from his CPP, essentially establishing a one-party state. He also began to lean more on communist countries for support.

In August 1962, there was an attempted assassination of Nkrumah’s life at Kulugungu, a small town in the Upper East region of Ghana. Subsequently, he led a more secluded life and tightened internal national security forces. He also preoccupied himself with the ideological education of a new crop of Black African political activists, while his nation suffered in the hands of his corrupt administration.

Richard Nixon, the 37^th president of the US, opined that Nkrumah was “very successful in tearing down the old system” but lacked the ability to build a viable new system. In other words, he was a great revolutionary, but not necessarily a builder.

On 24^thFebruary, 1966, while on a visit to China, Nkrumah was overthrown. Thereafter, Nkrumah sought asylum in Guinea, where he now solely focused on building his reputation as a philosopher and political theoretician. He spent his last days battling and ultimately losing out to cancer in Romania in April 1972.

In spite of the controversy surrounding his reign, Kwame Nkrumah’s contribution to Africa’s fight against colonialism cannot be overstated. He was a visionary who inspired other African peoples to fight for their own freedom and for that alone, history will always be kind to him.