PRESS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE BOLGATANAGA COLLECTIVE

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PRESS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE BOLGATANAGA COLLECTIVE OF THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT OF GHANA IN COMMEMORATION OF THE BIRTHDAY OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF GHANA ON THE 21^ST DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1909

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Without going into details of where Nkrumah was born, when he was born, his life as a little boy in Nkroful and how he became a stowaway boy in a ship bound for Nigeria, the Bolgatanga Collective of the Socialist Movement of Ghana would state emphatically that no African political leader, past or present, has more completely personified the political, economic, and cultural liberation and unity of Africa than Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. He stands out distinctly as the rock of Gibraltar in the entire generation of African leaders in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He advanced the cause of African liberation in its totality and engendered an understanding of imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and the character of class struggle in Africa using Marxist analytical tools and advocating the socialist alternative to capitalism. Although Nkrumah’s unparalleled accomplishments regarding African liberation as well as his leadership skills and achievements in terms of a political philosophy for Africa’s development, industrial projects, etc. came to be buried under an avalanche of misinformation warfare; orchestrated by the C.I.A and its hirelings represented the Busia-Danquah tradition, his writings continue to provide inspiration to many African people all over the world. Among his many books are, (a) Nkrumah (1961), I Speak of Freedom: A statement of African Ideology (b) Nkrumah (1963), Africa Must Unite (c) Nkrumah Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism Nkrumah (1970) Class Struggle in Africa and Nkrumah (1966) Conciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for decolonisation and development with particular reference to the African Revolution.

In this submission, we cannot leave out one of the most noteworthy tributes to Nkrumah that was made by one of the architects of the 1966 coup, Gen. Akwasi Amankwa Afrifa. After denouncing Nkrumah as “ruthless and dishonest and a father divine and Cassius Clay rolled into one”, Afrifa ended his polemic with the following observation: “The irony of the present situation in Ghana is that, it is quite probable that President Nkrumah and the CPP would command the support of the electorate even in a genuinely free elections.” Afrifa went futher to describe the deposed president as having represented the hopes and aspirations of people all over the world. Ghana became a beacon to the millions of Black people who inhabit the African continent. Nkrumah was a man of great personal charm”. To Amilcar Cabral, Nkrumah was above all “the strategist of genius in the struggle against Classical colonialism”. Nine years after breaking his long political relationship with Nkrumah, C. L. R. James wrote, “Kwame Nkrumah was one of the greatest political leaders of our century. We must be on guard that his years of exile do not remove him from our constant study, and contemplation of the remarkable achievements of the great years”.

For us in Bolgatanga, this is the essential paradox of Nkrumah and Marxists, that a young African intellectual could mesmerise and capture the imagination of the entire Ghanaian people and for that matter the world but failed to lead a successful social transformation of his own nation in the years that followed. Nkrumah should be examined within the context of a combination of factors that he inherited and how those factors shaped his thinking and philosophy instead of blaming him as an individual.

For Marx, “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality, it is the ensemble of social relations”. But in examining the decisive role of objective processes in social development, the individual or personality is not a passive force whose actions have been fatalistically predetermined by social relations. The real question that arises in appraising the social activity of an individual is: what conditions would ensure the success of his actions, what guarantee is there that those actions will not remain an isolated act lost in a welter of contrary acts?

“The great man” wrote Georgi  Plekhanov “is precisely an originator because he sees further than others and desires more than others….” (G. V. Plekhanov, On the Role of the Individual in Works Vol. 8 p 305). There is no doubt that Kwame Nkrumah was one of the great men in world history but in a long article written by Frederick Engels and latter published as The Peasant War in Germany, Engels makes a case for what happens in the event of a premature capture of power: “The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government when society is not yet ripe for the domination of the class he represents and for the measures”

Were the conditions ripe for the capture of power by this man of extraordinary vision? Should he be abstracted from the existing social and economic relations of his time and be condemned? This is for members of the Socialist Movement of Ghana using Marxist tools to discuss.

To conclude the view of the collective is that if the socialist objective for which the Socialist Movement of Ghana stands for is to be realised, the great majority of the working class, would have to fully understand and accept the implications of what they are consciously setting out to achieve. Dictatorship exist in various forms at the present time, basically because of the political immaturity of the working people all over the world. Instead of being united by worldwide consciousness, they are divided by the poison of ethnocentrism, religion, racism and superstition.

Aidan Adongo

Convener, Socialist Movement of Ghana, Bolgatanga Collective