First Lecture, Aggrey-Fraser-Guggisberg Memorial lectures
University of Ghana
Legon, Accra, 2002
You can imagine my astonishment when the Vice-Chancellor at the time wrote to say that a series of lectures on Nkrumah on such an occasion would be politically divisive, rather than historically celebratory.
A quarter of a century after Ghana’s independence, and ten years after Nkrumah’s death Ghana’s founder president continued to have passionate and uncompromising critics at home at that time.
In the end those particular Distinguished Lectures at the University of Ghana by Ali Mazrui were, in the end, never delivered.
It is now two decades later, some of the healing has taken place concerning Ghanaian responses to Kwame Nkrumah. The name of Nkrumah still evokes emotions one way or the other, but at least we are now able to come to terms with his significance for both Ghana and Africa.
In this lecture we deal with globalization as both a positive and negative force. Globalization is positive when it enhances human communication, improves levels of human productivity, enhances our awareness of being inhabitants of a fragile planet, and facilitates empathy between societies across vast distances.
Globalization is negative when it allows itself to be a handmaiden to ruthless capitalism, increases the danger of warfare by remote control, deepens the divide between the haves and have-nots, and accelerates damage to our environment.
Four forces have been major engines of globalization across the generations – religion, technology, economy and empire. Kwame Nkrumah flirted early with religion and had once even considered training for the priesthood. It was out of his fascination with religion that Nkrumah’s concept of conscienciasm was born. Through “Consciencism” Nkrumah saw Africa as a product of three spiritual forces – the force of Africanity and indigenous African religiouns, secondly, the force of Islam and Islamic culture; and thirdly, the force of what Nkrumah called “Euro-Christianity” – Westernism secular and religious.
Many years later I gave this configuration of three civilizations in Africa a different name from what Nkrumah had given it. I named the triad of civilization: “
a triple heritage.”
When Gamel Nkrumah saw my television series The Africans: A Triple Heritage (BBC & PBS 1986) he asked me once in what sense my concept of Africa’s triple heritage was different for his Dad’s consciencism.
I said to Gamel that on this issue of three civilizations converging oo Africa I had three great teachers – one was Edward Blyden who wrote CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM AND THE NEGRO RACE in the 19th Century; the second great teacher was Kwame Nkrumah.
My third great teacher was my own life. When I was growing up in Mombasa, Kenya, I crossed those three civilizations to and from several times every twenty-four hours. I was getting Westernized at school, Islamized at home and at the mosque, Africanized at home and in the streets.I crossed and recrossed the borders of the triple heritage every single day. I was myself a triple heritage in the making.
It is not often realized that Africa has more Muslims than any Arab country, and that Africa is probably the first continent to have a Muslim majority. The three civilizations differ in weight from country to country. I have done nine hours of television about the triple heritage, and written a book about it. What is different about these three lectures is that I relate the triple heritage to Nkrumahism, to globalization and to the emerging era of counter-terrorism.
The second engine of globalization after religion has been technology. Kwame Nkrumah was eager to push technology forward as motor for Ghana’s development. The building of the Akosombo Dam had grand ideas behind it about the electrification of Ghana’s countryside. Nkrumah’s configuration of the project of a nuclear reactor in Ghana was an assertion of Africa’s right to enter the nuclear age – Nkrumah insisted that “socialism without science is void.”
The third engine of globalization was economy. Nkrumah was keenly aware of the link between the mini-economies of Africa and the mega-economies of the capitalist world.
He was sensitive to the negative side of globalization.He recognized clearly the dependency consequences of Africa’s associate status with the European community at the time. He correctly diagnosed that kind of African relationship with the European Economic Community as a form of neo-colonialism.
Nkrumah saw the link between the global economy and global imperialism. Nkrumah’s last book while he was still in power was Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism.
It was a deliberate echo of V.I Lenin’s more famous book Imperialism: The Last Stage of Capitalism. In reality, both books were identifying the negative side of globalization.
Globalization in governance has been leading towards political pluralism and multiparty systems from the former Soviet Union to Zambia, and from Indonesia to Ghana. Different political parties compete to control the power of the central government within each country.
On the other hand, globalization in governance is also leading to dilution of sovereignty within each country and the reduction of the power of the central government. Those European countries which have adopted the EURO as their currency have lost some sovereignty in the arena of monetary control. Regional unification in Europe is reducing the sovereignty of each member.
When one-party states become multiparty systems, more political parties compete for the power of the center. That is one face of globalization at the same time regional unification reduces the power of each national government that is another face of globalization.
Where does the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah fit into this? And where does the legacy of the triple heritage come in?
Nkrumah’s ideas ran counter to globalization in his views against political pluralism and in favour of the one-party state. But Nkrumah’s ideas ran ahead of globalization in his views of continental unification and regional integration.
Nkrumah’s philosophy ran counter to history in his policies concerning Ghana. Nkrumah’s philosophy was ahead of history in his policies concerning Africa. That is why I reached the conclusion as far back as 1966 that although Kwame Nkrumah was a great African, he fell short of becoming a great Ghanaian.
Nkrumah’s greatest bequest to Africa was the agenda of continental unification. No one else has made the case for continental integration more forcefully, or with a greater sense of drama than Nkrumah. Although most African leaders regard the whole idea of a United States of Africa as wholly unattainable in the foreseeable future, Nkrumah even after death has kept the debate alive through his books and through the continuing influence of his ideas.
But here we must pause and remind ourselves of the great paradox about Kwame Nkrumah – that although he was one of Africa’s greatest sons, he was not one of Ghana’s greatest servants.
Nkrumah stood for the single-party state and the single-state continent. His dream of trying to create “one-Africa by abolishing separate states” was an inspiration. His policy of trying to “create one Ghana by abolishing separate political parties” was usurpation. Let us first address the negative side of Kwame Nkrumah before we return to his enduring significance as a prophet of Pan-Africanism.
Between the Single Party State and the Single-State Continent
But Nkrumah was also the man who shackled Ghana with a one-party state, and who utilized the Preventive Detention Act to harass and imprison political opponents. He even dismissed the Chief Justice of Ghana for disagreeing with him. To that extent, Kwame Nkrumah started the whole tradition of Black authoritarianism in the post-colonial era. He was the villain of the piece.
It was thirty-six years ago (in 1957) that Ghana gained independence, the first sub-Saharan Black African country to liberate itself from the colonial yoke. Kwame Nkrumah was at the helm. He was soon to become the symbol of some of Africa’s deepest aspirations.
I was a graduate student at Columbia University when I first met Kwame Nkrumah in New York. He had come to address the United Nations in 1960 and 1961, and I was invited to one of the parties in his honour. As a young African my encounter with him captured the very euphoria of the end of colonialism – in spite of the fact that independence for Kenya at that time was still at least two or three years away. In later years I did meet Nkrumah in Ghana as well, but it was nothing to compare with the historic Pan-African excitement of 1960-61 when over fifteen new African countries became members of the United Nations. Ghana had set the grand precedent of Black African independence.
What went wrong in Ghana after independence? How did this hero of African independence and African unity become the villain of the one-party state and preventive detention?
In a hotly contested article in the 1960s, I described Kwame Nkrumah as “ a great African but not a great Ghanaian.” In his dedication to Pan-Africanism he was a hero to our race and to our continent. But he succumbed to two contradictory tendencies within Ghana at the time – the monarchical tendency, which increasingly turned him into a Royal figure, on the one hand, and the Leninist tendency towards the vanguard party and the single-party state, on the other hand. When the monarchical and the Leninist tendencies fused, they basically produced “a Leninist Czar” – a figure using sacred symbolism like Osagyefo (“Redeemer”) for himself, on the one side, and class-analysis for the rest of the society, on the other. Kwame Nkrumah became increasingly aloof from Ghananian society – while he bowed to the applause of the rest of Africa at the same time. He became Africa’s hero and Ghana’s dictator simultaneously.
The question arises whether we should hold Kwame Nkrumah responsible for the origins of the one-party state in Black Africa. As the first Black African country to win independence, Ghana had immense responsibility. And poor Kwame Nkrumah was the beast of burden on whom Africa had piled her weighty hopes. The rest of Africa looked to Nkrumah for a sense of direction. Some of us looked to him for immortal precedents. Was it fair to Nkrumah?
For better or for worse, the two most historically significant Ghanaian heads so far have been Kwame Nkrumah and Jerry Rawlings. They both had enormous consequences for Ghana. But while Jerry Rawlings started off as a brutal dictator and ended his career as a democrat, Kwame Nkrumah started his career as a democrat and ended it as a dictator.
Three factors led Kwame Nkrumah towards the one-party state. The first factor was the belief that the country was ethnically and regionally too dangerously divided for a multiparty system. Did he genuinely believe that the one-party state was the only way of integrating Asante (Ashanti) into Nkrumah’s Ghana? Was the one-party state the antidote to political tribalism?
The second factor which persuaded Nkrumah towards the single-party was the cultural argument that African political systems operated on the basis of a consensus. It was therefore better to look for manipulated consensus than allow for free dissent.
The third factor which moved Nkrumah towards one-partyism was Leninism. In his years as a student in the United States, Nkrumah acknowledged that the most powerful influences on his mind had been Marcus Garvey (a Black nationalist) and V.I. Lenin. In reality the Leninism in Nkrumah outlasted the Garveyism. Indeed, Kwame Nkrumah, after he was overthrown, became more Leninist than ever. But while he was in power in Ghana between 1957 and 1966 pragmatic, cultural and Leninist considerations pushed Nkrumah towards the historical role of setting for Africa the dubious precedents of the one-party state, detention without trial, the destruction of the independency of the judiciary (when Nkrumah dismissed the Chief Justice), and the erosion of academic freedom (as Nkrumah attempted to subjugate the University of Ghana at Legon).
Nkrumah’s cultural argument in favour of the one-party state became quite popular among subsequent African regimes. Multipartyism was supposed to be alien to African tradition. President Robert Mugabe gave me that doctrine when I interviewed him two years after his country’s independence. I am not sure if Comrade Sally Mugabe, the late and dearly missed Ghanaian wife of the President, made a contribution to her husband’s cultural interpretation of the case or the one-party state. At any rate Robert Mugabe eloquently made the cultural case for me against the idea of a multi-party Zimbabwe. African indigenous traditions did not institutionalize regular opposition to its own rulers. The concept of a loyal opposition was, through African eyes, a contradiction in terms – Mugabe argued to me. Mugabe has since made such an African opposition increasingly difficult to remain loyal.
Julius K. Nyerere even earlier bought Nkrumah’s cultural case for the one-party state. But Nyerere’s pragmatic case was very different from Nkrumah’s. While Nkrumah had argued that independent Ghana was too dangerously divided to risk a multiparty system, Nyerere argued that Tanzania was too happily united to afford the “absurdity” of an artificial multiparty system. At independence the ruling party in Tanzania had virtually swept the board. Why create an artificial opposition? Nyerere’s pragmatic argument was therefore fundamentally different from that of Kwame Nkrumah’s fear of Ghana’s disintegration.
Kenya was for so long only partially convinced. That is why Kenya’s one-party state was only de-facto (in fact) rather than de-jure (in law) from 1964 to 1982. Kenya was definitely not converted to Nkrumah’s Leninist argument of the vanguard party. But the cultural argument that Africans preferred consensus to competition was for a while sponsored by the ruling party. The pragmatic argument in favour of the one-party state in Kenya arrived after the 1982-attempted coup against President Daniel arap Moi. A constitutional amendment turned Kenya into a de jure one-party state for the first time since independence. Was Kenya at long last catching up with Kwame Nkrumah’s single-party legacy in its fuller ramifications? Fortunately the people of Kenya were already restless for a more representative political order. Multiparty politics returned to Kenya after 1992.
During Kwame Nkrumah’s day the francophone foil to Nkrumah’s Ghana was supposed to be the Ivory Coast of Felex Houphoet Boigny. Both countries entered into independence with apparently strong economies; both were led by strong and charismatic political leaders.
The big difference between the two countries was supposed to be ideological. Nkrumah had been moving further and further to the left, and had become increasingly alienated from the former imperial power, Great Britain. The Ivory Coast at the time appeared to be a model experiment in the free market economy and a hospitable environment for foreign investment and for friendship with the West.
The two leaders Nkrumah and Houphoet Boigny – are even supposed to have taken a wager between themselves - a bet as to which country would be ahead in a decade or two. The Ivory Coast won the bet at that stage.
But the other West African Francophone country with which Ghana could be compared was SENEGAL. Both countries were cultural vanguards in an African context. Both had charismatic leaders – Nkrumah in Accra and Leopold Sedar Senghor in Dakar. Both countries had a vision of Pan-Africanism – Nkrumah was committed to the dream of political Pan-Africanism, Senghor was committed to the vision of cultural negritude.
As Aime Cesair put it:
My Negritude, my Blackness is no tower and no cathedral
It delves into the deep red flesh of the soil.
Negritude was part of what Senghor called “the Civilization of Universal” – a new global force.
But Ghana and Senegal were famous for slave forts important to the self-definition of the African Diaspora – Senegal had Goreë, Ghana had Elmina Castle and Cape Coast. The slave trade was one of the earliest negative forces of globalization.
Both leaders married beyond their ethnic boundaries almost as a political statement – the First Lady of Senegal under Senghor was originally French; the first Lady of Ghana under Nkrumah was originally Egyptian. Inter-racial and inter-continental marriages are manifestations of globalization at the level of personal lives.
Both Nkrumah and Leopold Senghor were also “philosopher-presidents”. They were both prolific writers and public intellectuals.
But there were also major difference between Ghana and Senegal. In fact, Senegal and Ghana in some respects defy usual stereotypes. If I said to my class in the United that there were two important African countries called A and B. Country A had had many military coups, country B has had none; country A had executed some former Heads of States, country B never has; country A has executed judges, Country B has not. Country A has often been a dictatorship; country B has consistently had a relatively open society.
And then I said to my students that one of those countries is primarily Christian, and the other is over 90% Muslim.
Is it the Christian or the Muslim country, which had had military coups, assassinated former presidents, murdered judges and had had difficulty maintaining a free and open society?
Most of my students in the United States would surely say that the country with a record of such with militarized violence and tyrannical governance must surely be the Muslim one. Yet you and I know that the fact of the case is that Muslim Senegal has had a better record of political pluralism and civilization supremacy.
If political pluralism is one measure of positive globalization, Senegal qualifies. The percentage of Muslims in Senegal is higher than the percentage of Muslims in Egypt. Senegal is 94% Muslim, yet Senegal had a Roman Catholic President for twenty years without riots in the streets calling for Jihad fii Sabill el Llah
Abdol Diouf succeeded as a Muslim President – but with a Roman Catholic First Lady – for another twenty years. Then Diouf was defeated in an election in the year 2000. A President who had been in power for 20 years, and a political party in power for 40 years, graciously accepted defeat in this overwhelmingly Muslim society.
Indeed, Senegalese Muslims were empowering Senegalese Christians at a time when metropolitan France was resenting the arrival of so many Muslims into France. Right-wing groups in France have been known to complain as follows:
In France there has been a cultural conflict between Islam and French nationalism since the 1970s. In Senegal there has been accommodation between Islam and Senegalese Christianity throughout the post-colonial period.
The percentage of Muslims in France had equalled or will soon equal the percentage of Christians in Senegal – that is 6%. Yet while Senegal has already experienced the rule of a Roman Catholic President, it will be many generations before French voters elect a Muslim President of France.
The United States – which separated church from state two centuries ago – has never strayed from the Christian fraternity in its choice of President. American Jews have excelled in almost every field of endeavour – but have so far left the presidency alone. On this issue of the ecumenical presidency Senegal has been more positively globalized than either France or the United States.
On international solidarity, the Muslim leader Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt had a different “triple heritage” from Nkrumah’s. Kwame Nkrumah saw the triple heritage in terms of the convergence of Africanity, Islam and Western culture all over Africa.
Gamal Abdel Nasser saw his triple heritage in terms of the convergence of Arabness, Islam and Africanity. For Nasser the three areas of solidarity were Pan-Arabism, Pan-Islamism and Pan-Africanism. He regarded Western culture as an intrusion into Africa, rather as a profound element of the soul of Africa. Nkrumah, on the other hand, regarded European versions of Christianity (what he called “Euro-Christianity”) as part of new legacy of Africa.
Nkrumah’s triple heritage was a better nucleus of Africa’s globalization. For Nkrumah, Islam was the cultural wind from the East into Africa; European culture and Christianity were the culture winds from the West into Africa: African culture itself was the cultural foundation.
What about winds into Nkrumah’s own soul? Within his own soul Kwame Nkrumah had a different East and West. In fusing religion with secular ideology, Nkrumah proclaimed “I am a Marxist-Leninist and a non-denominational Christian – and I see no contradiction in that.” Marxism-Leninism was an ideology of the East; Christianity was the religion of the West. This was globalization at the level of marrying religion to secular ideology.
In fusing socialism with nationalism, Kwame Nkrumah regarded himself as a disciple of both V.I. Lenin (the leader of the Communist revolution in Russia) and Marcus Garvey (the leader of Black nationalist movement in the United States).
This was globalization at the level of fussing international socialism with inte-continental Black nationalism. What was missing in Kwame Nkrumah’s own soul was the Islamic factor of his own triple heritage. He himself embodied Africanity and the West. But where was the Islamic factor?
Part of the answer may be sought in Kwame Nkrumah’s marriage to Fathiyya. He got married to the Arabic language rather than to Islam – thus bringing him closer to Gamal Abdul Nasser’s version of the triple heritage.
Abdul Nasser’s triple heritage was Arabism, Islam and Africanity. Nkrumah’s concept of the triple heritage had never directly included Arabism. It was his marriage to Fathiyya and the resulting Arabic language of his children, which forged an Arabic component of the cultural soul of Kwame Nkrumah.
Although Nkrumah was Westernized, he was not necessarily pro-Western. A leader can be pro-western and not Westernized – like King Idris of Libya before Qaddafy or King Ibu Soud of Saudi Arabia. These were pro-western Arab leaders who were not themselves westernized.
On the other hand, a leader can be westernized culturally and not pro-western in policy-orientation or attitude. Today this includes Robert Mugabe. He is substantially westernized in cultural lifestyle, but is far from being pro-western. Kwame was a little like Robert Mugabe – politically anti-western but culturally westernized.
But while Mugabe’s anti-westernism is reducing his relevance as a global leader, Kwame Nkrumah’s anti-westernism partially enhanced his globalist credentials. Kwame Nkrumah was taking sides in international conflicts far from the shores of Ghana, whereas Robert Mugabe has been creating conflicts deep within the borders of Zimbabwe.
When India and China were engaged in a border conflict, and Harold Macmillan sent military support to India, Nkrumah criticized Macmillan for extending that support. Nkrumah argued that external support to one side or the other would only worsen the situation.
When Macmillan argued back that it was right and proper that Britain should come to the aid of another Commonwealth country under military attack, Nkrumah retorted that Commonwealth was not a military alliance.
Long before Israel became so merciless in its treatment of Palestinians, Nkrumah criticized Israel as far back as 1961. Today African leaders are silent about the brutalization of Palestinians – although Yassir Arafat was once in the forefront of the fight against apartheid in South Africa. In 1961 Kwame Nkrumah joined the Casablanca group of African states in denouncing Israeli arrogance of power against its Arab neighbors, and Israel as a tool of Western imperialism.
With regard to the American war in Vietnam, Kwame Nkrumah insisted on trying to solve the problem. To his fatal undoing Nkrumah traveled all the way to Beijing in 1966 seeking a solution to the Vietnamese impasse in Asia. His globalizing ambitions were claiming Africa’s right to have a say in the conflicts of others – the way others had often had a say in the conflicts of Africa.
In his absence in Beijing Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown form power on February 24, 1966. He tried to reach the world – and lost the home front in the process.
Conclusion
Has the torch of radical Pan-Africanism been passed from Black Africa to Arab Africa? Is Muammar Qaddafy the new voice of militant Pan-Africanism? Like Krumah before him, is Qaddafy neglecting his own country while serving the wider triple heritage.
In the new millennium African leaders have started discussing once again concepts like “continental union” and regional integration. In October 2000 I spent three hours with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafy in his tent in Tripoli discussing Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism. The ghost of Kwame Nkrumah was present in that tent in Libya.
Pan-Africanism is a system of values and attitudes, which favour the unity and solidarity of Africans and of people of African ancestry. At its most developed, Pan-Africanism can amount to an ideology in its own right – a vision of the past, the present and the future and a guide to policy and political action. At another level Pan-Africanism is an emotional pre-disposition, which identifies with African cultures. Qaddafy was definitely one of the architects of the new African union which is succeeding the Organization of African Unity
Although leaders like Qaddafy, Julius K. Nyerere and Nelson Mandela have been important in the annals of African unification, Kwame Nkrumah remains the biggest name in the politics of Pan-Africanism in the last one hundred years. No other single individual in this period of history has been more symbolic of the Pan-African dream than Nkrumah. His Pan-African symbolism has continued and will persist long the centenary after of his death in Romania in 1971.
A variety of books have been written about Nkrumah’s domestic, regional and global concerns. His flirtation with radical socialism, his struggle against imperialism and neo-colonialism, the balance sheet of his policies within Ghana itself have all featured in different works as have debates about his leadership style (charisma, demagoguery, Leninism, Czarist).
By a strange irony what is perhaps one of the most exhaustive debates on the meaning of Nkrumah which Africa has conducted so far was conducted in the magazine which was published in Uganda and later found asylum in Ghana. The magazine was Transition, and the debate started with an article by Ali Mazrui entitled “Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar”. Africans, African Americans and others participated in the magazine debate. Kofi Busia, an old antagonist of Nkrumah’s and the leader of the civilian wing of Ghanaian politics after the coup, was interviewed by the magazine in relation to the debate. And Nkrumah himself, on receiving a copy of Mazrui’s article, wrote through his secretary to Transition saying that while admiring the literary skill of Mazrui’s analysis, Osagyefo was not provoked enough to reply.
Internally in Uganda the image of Transition as a magazine began to suffer among the more radical members of the Obote government partly as a result of the Nkrumah debate. President Obote actually received letters of protest from Nkrumahists outside Uganda, indignant that his regime should permit a “disparagement” of Nkrumah’s achievements. For other reasons Obote later imprisoned Editor Rajal Neogy and ended the Uganda phase of Transition magazine. The magazine found asylum in Ghana after Nkrumah’s fall. It was edited first by Neogy and later by Wole Sonyinka.
The students in East African colleges the 1960s also displayed a great interest in analyzing and re-analyzing the meaning of Nkrumah for Africa. In virtually every academic year from 1966 until Nkrumah’s death, there was at least one major event concerning Nkrumah. There were debates, lectures, panel discussions and the like. One particularly lively event was a public lecture by the American political scientist, David E. Apter, in January 1969 in the main hall of Makerere on the topic “Kwame Nkrumah: Was he a Charismatic leader?” The main hall was packed with hundreds of enthusiastic Nkrumahist fans. The American scholar gave one of the most pro-Nkrumah lectures ever heard at Makerere. David Apter, who had known Nkrumah personally and had written about Ghana extensively, captured the Nkrumahist mood of the Makerere crowd in those days. Apter later became a professor at Yale University in the United States.
Apter’s address at Makerere was part of a continuing debate about the meaning and significance of Kwame Nkrumah for the African experience. This son of Ghana had had a decisive impact on the Agenda for post-colonial Africa. Africa’s relations with the European Economic Community (later European Union), relations between Muslim Africa and non-Muslim Africa, Africa’s role in the tensions between East and West, in the Cold War, Africa’s struggle for her own liberation and her commitment against what Nkrumah called “Neo-colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism”—all these began to take shape in Africa’s post-colonial Agenda under the influence of Kwame Nkrumah. But perhaps his greatest contribution to Africa’s Agenda is the doctrine of unity as the basis of all those other African roles, including unity between Black Africa and Arab Africa. Sometimes his vision of Africa was global – encompassing people of African ancestry everywhere. But the heartland of Pan-Africanism had to be Africa itself. When Nkrumah said that the two greatest ideological influences on him were V.I. Lenin and the Diaspora Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey, Nkrumah gave us a glimpse of the parameters of his dream. The Osagyefo’s clarion call echoed both Garveyism and Leninism. “Africans of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
In much of Africa many were listening to that clarion call – others were not. That is the story of this legacy. And the ghost of Nkrumah is still our griot. His legacy is the Odyssey of pan-Africanism as the Odyssey of Pan-Africanism as the new millennium unfolds. He might not have been Ghana’s best servant, but he remains one of Africa’s greatest sons. Long may he be, not only remembered but debated – in books and ballards, in plays and sonnets, in the media, in the hearts of men and women – and in the lectures at the University of Ghana at Legon.
* This was the First of the 2002 series of lectures under the general theme “Nkrumah’s Legacy and Africa’s Triple Heritage: The Shadow of Globalization and Counter terrorism”, (March 11-13, 2002). This first lecture was delivered on March 11, 2002, at the University of Ghana, Legon, under the Chairmanship of Professor Ivan Addae-Mensah, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Amen.