Celebrating the Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah-A continental African leader of massive proportions
It was tempting to take this week off to prepare for a pending meeting but it dawned on me that this Monday is a most precious one – a day set aside specifically to celebrate, in my opinion, one of the greatest continental leaders the world has ever known.
My one and only sight of the Osagyefo in the flesh was some time in 1957, at the dawn of Ghana’s independence.
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I was in Class Three at St Peter’s Primary School, Kumasi; and we had been summoned to gather at the Amakom Roundabout to welcome him.
So we marched that morning from St Peter’s – on the Roman Hill – past the Jackson’s Park, past Asem Boys School in Fante New Town, past Wiawso Training College, and I was about ten years old and had no idea what independence or freedom was all about but we were still anxiety ridden to meet the liberator dubbed the Osagyefo.
He duly arrived, led by an escort of vehicles, and waved enthusiastically to the crowd from an open car.
The road was quite narrow then and the cars drove slowly so we got quite a picture of the man.
Little were we to realise, then, how this singular person was about to pivot history.
It was said, from that time, that when any other African accosted a Ghanaian anywhere, the salutation ended with: “You people are lucky!”
The Flagstaff House - when Nkrumah finally settled there became the very epicenter of the African liberation movement.
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The tectonic shifts and uncertainties dangled precariously but assuredly from Nkrumah’s Ghana. There was no challenger!
The following were culled from an earlier paper:
Kofi Annan reflects on Nkrumah
Kofi Annan was to reflect in his memoirs “Interventions: A Life in War and Peace” that “As in many other African colonies, it was soldiers returning from the Second
World War, who had served in the British army who began to question more fundamentally the iniquities of colonial practices.
“They witnessed white British soldiers alongside whom they had fought and bled receive generous pensions, land and other benefits in Africa – none of which were available to Africans. Together with leading members of Ghana’s professional classes – lawyers, doctors, and engineers – these veterans began a campaign for independence.”
The group formed “the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) as their party, and decided to appoint as secretary a fiery, courageous activist, Kwame Nkrumah.
A member of one Ghana’s smaller tribes, and the son of a village goldsmith who had gone on to educate himself in the United States and Britain, Nkrumah brought to the cause an impatience and a passion that could not, in the end, abide the gradualist tempo of Ghana’s elite. He broke away from the UGCC to found the Convention People’s Party.”
Annan asserted that “Nkrumah possessed more than just impatience, however; he had a keen strategic mind and an ability to organise people that far surpassed that of his former colleagues.
He soon became the indisputable driver of Ghana’s independence.”
Annan himself was deeply influenced by Nkrumah and wrote, “I was emotionally drawn to the passion and urgency of Nkrumah’s calls for ‘Independence now.’ Some of the statements that he was making – that we must stand on our own, that we must have our destiny in our own hands – resonated deeply with me.”
Fighting the reactionaries
From the very beginning, Nkrumah had to fight on four fronts. First, the colonial governments which he called imperialistic parasites sucking the life blood of the African continent.
Secondly, the educated elite whom – he noticed - were more British than the British themselves and could hardly feel the pain of their poorer uneducated compatriots.
Thirdly, the traditional chiefs who sold natural resources for a pittance and kept their people uneducated, and whom he threatened “would run away and leave their sandals behind them.”
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Lastly, he was incensed by the religious bodies whom, he held, were so unwittingly paralysed by the trials and tribulations of ancient biblical characters, but paid no heed to the trials and tribulations of their own kith and kin in real time.
For Nkrumah, heaven could wait so that Ghana could seek first the political kingdom.
Sparkling visions of Nkrumah
In citing Nkrumah’s genius in modeling Ghana for emulation by the larger African continent, I wrote in my book, “Leadership: Reflections on some movers, shakers and thinkers”, that, “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 one, 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.”
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And “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, whatever mattered, he had thought, planned, and taken direct action.
Here was a leader, prescient, selfless and committed; when comes another?”
I noted that “The life of Nkrumah is modern Africa’s history.
He was the battle hardened mover and shaker and the cornerstone on which the continent’s future depended.
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African and Pan-African issues were his issues.
No matter what lightnings flashed, he knew exactly where he stood with every thunder that jolted any part of the continent.”
— The author is a trainer of teachers, leadership coach and quality education advocate
Email: [email protected]
Blog: www.anishaffar.org