| Tuesday, November 24, 2009 07:05:50 PM A parody By Anis Haffar
 [Often acclaimed the greatest statesman of his era – and a staunch imperialist – Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) was Prime Minister of Britain during World War II. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. This article is a parody mimicking Churchill’s literary style; it also highlights the visions of Nkrumah].
To have given his life, to have faced every trial and imprisonment, to have led the Gold Coast and other colonized African nations to independence during the perils of the mid 20th century, to have seen the new Ghana blossom from obscurity into a great reputation; and then suddenly be tossed by measly elements in the nation he was so proud of, of whose history and vision he was the embodiment – surely this was enough to try the soul of a mortal man.
Even those who fell off donkeys in dim, narrow lanes didn’t like it at all; but to have fallen off an elephant in the face of the whole world –!
Politicians rise by toils and struggles; they expect to fall; they must hope to rise again. Politicians know they are but creatures of the day. But, to President Kwame Nkrumah, it was he who held in his hands the golden parachute of Africa enshrining the treasures of the coming centuries.
I had the honour of meeting the new president when I visited Accra after Ghana’s independence in 1957. He invited me to luncheon, and afterwards we talked with great freedom and intimacy in a room nearby. I had come to Accra to play polo.
Presently the president said, abruptly: “Mr. Churchill, do you believe in African unity?”
I replied, “Sir, sometimes I do; sometimes I don’t.”
He said, “Mr Churchill, you remain a die-hard imperialist, despite the winds of change blowing over Africa. Mr Harold McMillan has wisely thrown in the towel.”
I replied, “Sir Harold and I are not cut from the same imperial cloth, sir; he’s not ballsy, but Lady Thatcher, whom you may meet soon, is.”
We discussed, openly, the various possibilities with which the future of Africa seemed loaded. His deep regard for Africa was evident in everything he said. No one could be surprised that Ghana preferred a neutrality in the cold war between the East and the West, through the Non-Aligned Movement. The historical barriers between the U.S. and the Soviet Union were not to be surmounted. In Ghana, the petty bourgeoisie were pro–capitalists; the masses pro–socialists. As the President said, “Only I and the veranda boys and girls are for socialism.”
The best that could be hoped for was that Ghana should forge the uneasy but happy medium between the two; and certainly she could prosper by her abstention from rigid adherence of either “ism”.
The deepest bitter memory of the Ghanaian leader was the murder of Premier Patrice Lumumba in the Congo crisis. But the real hatred was for the hypocrisy of the western leaders in aiding and abetting, and then going scot-free after a crime so hideous. It left an aching void in the breast of this proud African.
The President told me of attempts upon his own life. One in particular I remember. A Prime Minister in 1955, he and several others were sitting at a meeting, when a bright orange blaze suddenly lit up the whole back of the house in an explosion followed by another. Women and children screamed; and his mother, whose room was near the explosion, was speechless with tears. That adverse episode made me think of ‘Guy Fawkes’ night in Britain.
Nothing could rob the president of his natural gaiety and high spirits, but the assassination attempts staggered his confidence somewhat, and dented that fountain of almost boyish merriment and jollity. He could not now prowl about incognito to see and hear things for himself. He now depended upon party aficionados who themselves had personal axes to grind and private pockets to mind. That spelled the beginning of his end and the doom of his party – not least with the introduction of the Preventive Detective Act (PDA) which crowded the Nsawam prison, and the Ussher Fort.
His childhood of poverty at Inkroful would have discouraged most adolescents; but Nkrumah sought and became a teacher, a historian, a worldly statesman, and a writer. By the time he died in the mid 1970s, he had penned many notable books including Africa Must Unite, Neo–Colonialism, Class Struggles in Africa, The Challenge of the Congo, The Rhodesian Papers, and more.
There are certain things that can’t be stated simply: they must embody a living force in situation, character, and theme. Only Mr Bernard Shaw – with his unerring literary gifts, and the instinctive Irish distaste for the imperial characters at play in Nkrumah’s time – could illuminate for the modern eyes the witty scenes, dialogue and gestures appropriate for dramatizing subtle aspects of “Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah,” especially the scene where Nkrumah paced into the Christianborg Castle and met the colonial governor Sir Charles Arden-Clarke jaw to jaw.
The two had been opposing each other for so many months, and were now unhinged to pluck it out. The mutual feelings of suspicion and discomfort filled the inner spaces between the British Goliath and the African David. With his unsparing derision, Mr Shaw – our Fabian dramatist and philosopher – could render a service to posterity which never perhaps could have been seen rendered from any other quarter: the vanities of trumpery, mighty figures who float on airs only to be borne crashing down by the winds of change, in sync with Bob Marley’s lyrics: “If you’re the big tree, we’re the small axe, ready to cut you down.”
Coming from the small Nzema village of Nkroful – without a large ethnic following – Nkrumah deemed it opportune to claim, not a tribe, but a whole race through the vehicle of Pan-Africanism. His sole object was the strength and fame of this larger realm. He never recoiled from that tough but wise angle.
Most of Nkrumah’s political life he was pursued by a community of aggrieved forces: imperial powers about to lose hold of easy wealth; the opposition squeezed into a one-party socialist state; the native chiefs whom he had mocked to carry their own palanquins or run and leave their sandals behind; and the affected local intelligentsia whom he had rebuked for being selfish, cowardly, and more British than Lord Randolph Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough.
But all his life he pursued the idea of an African Personality to boost confidence in the African, and he freely trusted himself to the good will of the black race. He had found many admirers in every walk of life, and at home; he therefore felt sure that he had behind him the steady loyalty of a nation; and having laboured faithfully in its service, he felt he had deserved its affection. A lightning flash struck that wishful thinking. On February 24th, 1966, while the president was out on a peace mission to Hanoi, mutineers struck.
An epoch had closed. How shall we explain it? Are we to judge him better as a despotic statesman, or the true African of the millennium? Did he think only for Africa and neglect Ghana in the process; or did he merely enjoy the messianic accolades heaped upon him? Are we dealing with the annals of a nation or the biography of an individual?
History has emerged to answer these questions. But I shall not shrink from pronouncing now that Nkrumah was a determined, conscientious visionary whose ideals of African unity will continue to glow on the African horizon; his legacy will haunt the conscience of Africa’s leaders to go easy on personal comforts, and act in the interests of the people.
He deemed himself superior, not only in rank, but in the capacity and foresight, to both the ministers he installed and the various African leaders he encountered in international circles. He felt himself to be the one strong, stable pivot around which the life of Africans revolved. Nkrumah could not conceive of the day when he would cease to be identified with Africa, and Africa with him. It was a tall order, but history has so borne him out that history itself is to be credited.
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 once, 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; 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, in whatever mattered, he had thought, planned, and taken direct action – half a century ago – so that about this date they might have seen their fruit. Here was a leader, prescient, selfless and committed; when comes another?
Be they pharmaceuticals, energy, roads, mining, fishing, public works, distilleries, communications, he had thought them through to avoid potential neo-colonial traps which the nation today has unwittingly plunged headlong into.
Though misunderstood, feared, envied, let down, yet Nkrumah was sure of his value to the masses and strove prophetically to preserve their permanent interests, and to discharge his duty to them.
With Ghana’s adolescence today trapped on the streets, competing with vehicular traffic for speed and space to push imported catapults, toothpicks, matches, superstition and pornography, where’s the hope of this once proud nation? With the exquisite God-given landscapes, which in places Nkrumah enhanced with Parks and Gardens, now ravaged into slums and wastelands; with indiscriminate mining and toxins now poisoning the rivers, and ruining the lush farming hinterland; with other people’s Electronic -wastes imported and dumped into every nook and cranny; where’s the cleanliness that invites godliness?
With the continental ethnic murders in Sierra Leone, Darfur, Eritrea, the Congo, and Rwanda, what force could be better poised to stop the carnage than the bona fide African Command Nkrumah envisaged through African Unity?
Dogged by selfish and tribal interests, and deep private pockets; and blinded by a visionary range the size of a play pen, leadership in Africa has become almost extinct. Amid difficulties now obvious to Ghana in particular, and Africa in general, Nkrumah’s visionary pursuits remain adequate for progress in the 21st century.
Credit: Author’s Email: anishaffar@yahoo.com
Website: www.gateinstitute.org
| | Balancing the single African story: Dr Apaak`s chapter
By Benjamin Tawiah, Ottawa, Canada, Tuesday, November 24, 2009
“The problem with stereotyping is not that it is untrue; it is that it is often incomplete.” This is the truism that underlies what Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian writer, calls the danger of relying on the single story. The African story is not a single narrative laced with depressing vignettes of hunger-stricken children with shrivelled buttocks, wars, corruption and failure; there are triumphant versions that have often been overlooked or simply subsumed in the failing single story. Celebrated novelist, Chinua Achebe calls it a balance of stories. There are good stories of individuals who are telling their own African story to balance the single story of Africa usually told by the West. One of such individuals is Dr Clement Apaak, a Ghanaian academic in British Columbia who is fast becoming an important public intellectual. The Global Citizen The academic calls himself a global citizen who is committed to improving lives through education and advocacy. This global worldview has seen him champion many humanitarian initiatives as a radio presenter, lecturer, human rights activist and popular speaker at various social and educational forums. Presently as Founder and Chair of the Association of Canadian Students for Darfur and founding member of United African Communities, Dr Apaak has raised funds and drawn attention to human rights abuses in Darfur and other conflict areas in Africa. Dr Apaak began his story ten years ago when he left Ghana for the University of Bergen, where he was president of the International students Union. Soon, the single African story syndrome would hit him: “There is still some level of doubt and disbelief about what an African is capable of doing and can achieve,” he says. The university student population wondered what he could do “being an African.” But he wrote a good story to balance the popular single African story of non-achievement and failure, becoming a chairperson of the African students association of the university. He was to deal with even bigger manifestations of the single story when he migrated to North America. He is quick to add: “Even here in Canada, I have had instances where at initial contact, people ask: what can he do?” These instances are his carpe diem moments, because he sees them as an opportunity to prove himself and educate people on the dangers of telling a single story about a people and holding on to it until it becomes true. “When I am undervalued, underrated or written off, I see it as a chance to prove myself substantially in terms of what I can do”, he adds. Dr Apaak’s role as an activist is to prove wrong the single African story. And he knows that it will take the efforts of ordinary Africans to change the old narrative. He is emphatic: “The UN is not going to be the organisation that will solve the problem in Darfur.” He advocates a more proactive style of governance by African leaders, particularly the African Union and the Arab league, to end the crises. The Darfur Project He has made Darfur a project because of the apparent evidence that this is a conflict that is driven by racial motivation. The approach of the international community to the crises has been haphazard, according to the Ghanaian academic. He would want to see members of the G8 and other world powers deliver on promises they have made to Africa. He regrets that the world’s attention has been diverted to other pressing problems in the wake of the global recession. “But we haven’t given up; not when 6 year old girls are victims of multiple rapes.” And it is not all words; the activist is collaborating with some Canadian academics to issue a paper on the position of Canada on the conflict. He opines that the Darfur conflict is a unique one that demands the attention of everyone because of the strategic location of Sudan, which shares borders with the rest of the continent. His understanding of the conflict is insightful: “It is all about the distribution and sharing of resources.” But in very precise diction, he points out the disturbing details that make the conflict a serious one. According to him, the Darfurians are asking for three things: “A reasonable level of autonomy in the governance of Sudan, a share in the oil revenue and a return of their people to their homeland.” These are negotiable, he surmises. Darfur is a regrettable chapter in the African story, but the Sandema born scholar sees promise in the potential on the African continent. “We have good things in Africa. We have very good resources in Africa. This is the reason why Europeans came to Africa several years ago. And these resources still exist. The key is for us to identify the good things and implement policy that will expand the growth of institutions.” He adds that the only way we could become self-sufficient is when we grow our own institutions, building on our strength and learning from the successes of China, the United States and Canada, to develop our continent. Next, he asks himself a searching question: “Have we suffered damagingly from colonialism? He tags along his own answer: Yes. Then, almost impatiently, he follows it up with a biting query that appears to answer itself: “Can we today blame colonialism for all the problems on our continent?” No, he hastens to add. The story of Failure So, why is Africa still being told, and continually retold as a single story of failure? “The problem that Africa faces is real leadership”, he wades into the popular narrative on the continent’s management crisis. Africa needs visionaries who would recognise that leadership is not about being served; it is about service. In Dr Apaak’s thinking, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Mozambique’s Joaquim Chisano and ex-president Jerry Rawlings are some of the visionaries that left good examples for their countries. But he believes the continent needs a lot more visionaries in the 21st Century. “That is the only way Africa can harness the potential on the continent”, he submits. He admits that Africa is being left behind: “For a continent that has given the greatest gift to the world-humanity-we are not progressing as we should. There is no reason why we should not be trading effectively with each other”, he adds, rather poignantly. Yet, bad leadership is not the only deviation in the plot of the single African story; “a lot has been taken from Africa by the rest of the world,” says Dr. Apaak. He dismisses Dambisa Moyo’s position on aid as a simplification of the problem. “There is no reason to be shamed of getting assistance from the rest of the world. What we have to do is to ensure that the aid that is being provided get to those who need it. They have an obligation to do that.” However, that there is a dependency syndrome which must be stopped. So, the aid taps should not be closed. Instead, African leaders should use it to “set the foundation towards self-sufficiency”, he opines. Africa’s vulnerable position The academic acknowledges Africa’s vulnerable position in global governance. Dr Apaak completes the thoughts of economists who see globalisation as a phenomenon outside the control of a single entity and for that matter any one nation state. “Not even the USA or China has total control of a form that is today defined as globalisation.” “Africa has to find ways to live within it in a way that will be beneficial to us,” he adds. So, as he goes back to his home country of Ghana after years of studying and advocating, he is proud to find a country that has left important footprints on the global democratic landscape. But he also has mixed emotions, because he is eager to see how he can reengage and reconnect to his local networks within the context of the way business is conducted in the country. He is pleased with the political management of Ghana but he believes that the country can do more. He identifies the main challenge as ensuring district level participation in national politics, training and equipping local folks with essential tools to participate in the affairs of the state. And he does not see this as a task for only the political managers of the country; he believes every individual has a role to play. So unlike other academics who only talk and write about the problems, Dr Apaak is going home with funds he has raised to help girl child education at Sandema Secondary School, his Alma Mater. He believes that “the key to productive Africa is its women, and to help Africa, we must focus on educating the girls.” Now as an oil-producing country, Ghana risks writing the sad single story of mismanagement and violence that has been associated with other oil rich countries like Nigeria and Angola. But Dr Apaak thinks Ghana will have a different script: “The Ghanaian spirit has always been one of sharing, which we can thank our great leader Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah for leaving us that legacy. The average Ghanaian is a peaceful, law-abiding citizen.” The challenge, the academic believes, is for Ghanaians “to set the bar even higher to show the rest of the continent that Africans have what it takes to build and develop the democratic system of governance that allows every citizen to enjoy all the freedoms enshrined in the UN Charter of Rights.” The activist also believes Ghana would avoid the problems other oil-producing countries are encountering because of the social democratic system presently practised under President Mills. As a strong social democrat, he is confident President Mills would put in place policies that would ensure the smooth management of the oil industry, to benefit the whole of Ghana. Difficult times However, Dr Apaak identifies the difficulty with the time in history that Atta-Mills became president: “Ghanaians have become too accustomed to former President Jerry Rawlings and after that to Kufour. Professor Mills is sort of in between. So, there is the tendency for Ghanaians to judge him against Rawlings or Kufour.” “The President needs to be judged on his own merit, and so far he is doing well”, he adds. The academic believes that Ghanaians are so caught up in the mundane and the obvious that we are not paying attention to the policies being put in place in terms of the oil concession, education and other important areas. The President, according to him, is moving at a very steady, methodical pace, doing the right things. And at the end of his tenure, people would be shocked at his achievements. A very well-intentioned scholar, Dr Apaak believes Africa is in the process of writing a very different script, as he continues to teach and advocate for a rejection of the single African story. The new script, he believes, would balance our old chequered tale of mismanagement and poverty. “The next big place is going to be Africa,” the Vancouver -based academic says - with a great deal of conviction. Source: The Chronicle
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