Third Lecture, Aggrey-Fraser-Guggisberg Memorial
lectures, University of Ghana Legon, Accra, 2002
NKRUMAHISM AND THE TRIPLE HERITAGE: OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Why is this third lecture subtitled "Out of the Shadows"? Partly because the first two lectures emphasized the shadows of globalization and counter-terrorism. But in addition this lecture is out of the shadows and more with some of the key personalities of Africa's anti-colonial history. Africa also seeks to be out of the shadows and more with the quest for a creative African revolution. Indeed, we shall examine once again how Africa seeks to be out of the shadows and in quest of an empowered and constructive role in a global order.
Africans during Nkrumah's period often revered revolutionary presidents; Americans, on the other hand, respect warrior presidents. Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya was revered because his name was associated with the Mau Mau war in Kenya and with the armed struggle for independence -- was that a revolution?
Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania was regarded as revolutionary partly because he became the most radical voice of Pan Africanism after the overthrow of Nkrumah. Nyerere was also regarded as a revolutionary innovator in socialism and a left-wing experimentalist -- was that a revolution?
Milton Obote was regarded as a revolutionary because of his Common Man's Charter, his move to the left and his serving as a disciple to Nkrumah on the issue of continental African unity.
All of the former Portuguese countries started independence with Marxist or neo-Marxist regimes. They had strong revolutionary credentials. None of the former British countries started independence with genuinely Marxist or Leninist regimes. Kwame Nkrumah described himself as Marxist-Leninist, but his government was far from that. Neither was the government of Robert Mugabe as a regime.
If all former Portuguese colonies started as Marxist or neo-Marxist, and none of the former British colonies did that, what about Francophone regimes? They were mixed -- a few Marxist-Leninist and others deeply capitalist. Countries like Congo (Brazzaville) experimented with Leninism. Countries like the Ivory Coast explored the open market and its capitalist ideologies.
In this lecture we shall pay special attention to African leaders who claimed revolutionary credentials and were at the same time historically connected to Kwame Nkrumah. Sékou Touré was a great benefactor of Kwame Nkrumah's. When Nkrumah was overthrown Touré invited him to Conakry. Here was a debt being graciously paid back. When Sékou Touré and his people voted against France in 1958 -- thus rejecting colonialism by consent -- Kwame Nkrumah made important gestures of solidarity, including funds to Guinea and the creation of the Ghana-Guinea Union.
Sékou Touré in 1958 said "No" to French colonialism, but not to friendship with France. The former colonial power rejected Sékou Touré more totally.
Nkrumah extended a hand of support to Sékou Touré in his hour of need.
In 1966, the soldiers of Ghana and half the population rejected Kwame Nkrumah. This time it was Sékou Touré who extended a hand of support to Kwame Nkrumah in his hour of need. Nkrumah had created the Ghana-Guinea [and later Mali] Union as a territorial expression of solidarity with Sékou Touré when Touré was thrown out in the cold by France. Sékou Touré created the Co-Presidency for Nkrumah, as a co-ruler of Guinea when Ghana threw out Nkrumah in the cold.
Touré was a fascinating triple heritage figure. Guinea was predominantly a Muslim country. Touré himself was Muslim enough to be elected Chair of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Touré was also neo-Marxist enough to be widely regarded as one of the tough left-wing dictators of post-colonial Africa. Nkrumah found his second post-colonial home in Touré's Guinea. Guinea was later to be also Nkrumah's first burial ground.
The story of Kwame Nkrumah and Sékou Touré as political friends needs to be written in full. They were indeed political friends rather than personal buddies. But their loyalty to each other was movingly exemplary. A Francophone former trade unionist and an Anglophone who nearly became a priest forged a political friendship which -- in spite of its ups and downs and its imperfections -- had the magnitude of Greek drama.
If Touré helped Nkrumah to bridge the divide between Anglophone and Francophone Africa, where did Nkrumah look for other bridges? In bridging the divide between Black Africa and Arab Africa, Nkrumah found an ally also in Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Nasser even published a book entitled The Philosophy of the Revolution as part of his credentials as a revolutionary.
In bridging the divide between armed liberation and Gandhian non-violent decolonization, Nkrumah found an ally in Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, whom the British regarded as the founder of the Mau Mau movement.
In the debates between incremental Pan Africanism and rapid unification Nkrumah found a rival in Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania.
But Nyerere was a revolutionary in other senses as well. He pushed the cultural revolution of Swahilization, as a national language and national culture. He translated Shakespeare into Kiswahili (Julius Caesar and Merchant of Venice). And he was among the first Africans to give a name to his party in an indigenous language – Chama Cha Mapenduzi [Party of the Revolution] .
Four Revolutionaries in History
Of the three founding fathers of Anglophone post-colonial East Africa – Kenyatta, Obote, and Nyerere – the most consistent admirer of Kwame Nkrumah was perhaps Milton Obote of Uganda. In some ways it is odd that this should be so. Nkrumah had links with Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, which were more obvious than his links with Obote. Nkrumah knew Kenyatta many years before the nationalist movement in Africa gathered momentum. He was involved with Kenyatta in organizing the historic 1945 Pan-African conference in London which brought together Africans, African Americans, and West Indians. The meeting had a more effective African component than any of the major Pan-African conferences which preceded it. The preceding meetings had been more overwhelmingly led and controlled by Black people from the Americas. But the Pan-African Congress in 1945 signified the beginning of African dominance in Pan-Black movements. Jomo Kenyatta was the secretary of the Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945. Kwame Nkrumah was also an important participant in organizing the conference. The comradeship in arms between Kenyatta and Nkrumah had therefore a longer standing significance than any relationship that Nkrumah ever evolved with either Obote or Nyerere, but far less profound than the friendship between Nkrumah and Sékou Touré.
There was also the link of the shared experience as “prison graduates” which bound Nkrumah and Kenyatta. Part of the mystique they acquired as nationalistic fighters was heightened by a period spent behind political bars. As symbols of Africa’s fighting spirit during the colonial period Nkrumah and Kenyatta had perhaps no equals. Nyerere’s reputation came much later as a symbol of post-independence African radicalism rather than of pre-independence African militancy. Obote’s international reputation was acquired mainly after independence. His achievements between 1962 and 1971 were in the field of mediation abroad and unification at home rather than in radical militancy, either nationalistic or socialistic.
Kenyatta and Nkrumah became household names among nationalists all over Africa and among their sympathizers abroad. The Mau Mau movement in Kenya associated Kenyatta with violent revolutionary insurrection against colonialism, while the techniques of “positive action” enunciated by Nkrumah associated his name with agitation and non-violent resistance in Ghana.
Nyerere’s position in relation to Nkrumah was of course different from Kenyatta’s. Many would argue that the torch of African radicalism, after the coup which overthrew Nkrumah in 1966, was in fact passed to Nyerere. The great voice of African self-reliance, and the most active African head of government in relation to liberation in Southern Africa from 1967 until the 1980s was in fact Julius Nyerere. Tanzania was a triple heritage country. By some estimates there are more Muslims than Christians in Tanzania. Yet Nyerere as a revolutionary was popular across religions.
In reality Nkrumah and Nyerere had already begun to be rivals as symbols of African radicalism before the coup which overthrew Nkrumah. Nkrumah was beginning to be suspicious of Nyerere in this regard. The two most important issues over which Nyerere and Nkrumah before 1966 might have been regarded as rivals for continental pre-eminence were the issues of African liberation and African unity. It was soon clear that the most difficult problems of decolonization were likely to be the Portuguese dependencies and Rhodesia. The Organization of African Unity, when it came into being in May 1963, designated Dar es Salaam as the headquarters of liberation movements. The choice was partly determined by the proximity of Dar es Salaam to southern Africa as the last bastion of colonialism and white minority rule. But the choice was also determined by the emergence of Nyerere as an important and innovative figure in African politics.
Nkrumah’s Ghana did make a bid to be the headquarters of liberation movements but Nkrumah lost the battle. If the reason had simply been that Dar es Salaam was closer to the arenas of colonial conflict, Nkrumah might have accepted this more readily. But at least as important a reason for the success of Dar es Salaam in being designated the Mecca of liberation movements was the fact that Nkrumah, by mid-1963, had already accumulated several enemies, especially in French-speaking Africa. Nkrumah’s encouragement of dissidents from neighboring countries, although it had yet to reach the proportions it reached in 1965, had begun to rear its head as a grievance among neighbors. As the years went by Nkrumah felt that freedom fighters were not simply those who were fighting against colonial rule but also those who were fighting against their own African neo-colonial regimes. This was domestic revolution versus anti-colonialism first phase. The hospitality he extended to rebels from his French-speaking neighbors, and even to dissidents from Nigeria, made him less and less acceptable as a patron of major Pan-African ventures, especially if these depended on the blessing of the Organization of African Unity. In 1963 suspicion of Nkrumah was already strong enough to make it unlikely that Accra, Ghana, would be acceptable as the official liberation capital of the African continent. Nkrumah strongly resented this reaction.
Degrees of Pan-Africanism
The other major arena in which Julius Nyerere was a rival to Nkrumah was the arena of regional integration. For years Nkrumah had been the eloquent voice of Pan-Africanism and the symbol of the continent’s quest for greater integration. On a more modest scale Nkrumah had even attempted to lead a union first between Guinea and Ghana, and later between Guinea, Ghana and Mali. Guinea and Mali were Muslim societies; Ghana was predominantly Christian. But these triple heritage attempts at unification which Nkrumah had led proved abortive.
Then in 1961 and 1962 it appeared as if Nyerere was going to succeed in leading the East African countries to a regional federation of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. By June 1963 the three heads of government in East Africa – Kenyatta, Obote, and Nyerere – felt confident enough to announce plans to form an East African federation before the end of the year. In 1960 Nyerere had already stolen the limelight on federalism in Africa by announcing his readiness to delay Tanganyika’s independence until Kenya and Uganda became independent if this would facilitate the formation of an East African federation. In June 1963 Kenya was still not independent, but the other two had attained theirs. This time the clarion call was not for Tanzania to delay its independence but for Kenya to speed up its own timetable of decolonization. The British were called upon to grant Kenya independence by December 1963 so as to enable it to join in a federation with the other two. It was in this sense that Nyerere had by that time become a symbol of African unification, apparently standing a greater chance of success in effective inter-territorial integration than Nkrumah had stood in his own ventures with Guinea and Mali.
Nkrumah’s reaction was not overly subtle. He propounded a new thesis that sub-regional unification of the kind envisaged in East Africa was in fact simply “Balkanization writ large”. Further, the enterprise was likely to compromise the bigger ambition of a continental union in Africa. It was a case of the good being the enemy of the best – and East Africans who accepted the minimally good achievement of sub-regional federation would no longer have the incentive to embark on continental union as more a effective bulwark against neo-colonialism and poverty. Nkrumah pointed out that his own country could not very easily join an East African federation. This proved how discriminatory and divisive the whole of Nyerere’s strategy was for the African continent.
Nyerere treated Nkrumah’s counter-thesis with contempt. He asserted that to argue that Africa had better remain in small bits than form bigger entities was nothing more than “an attempt to rationalize absurdity”. He denounced Nkrumah’s attempt to deflate the East African federation movement as petty mischief-making arising from Nkrumah’s own sense of frustration in his own Pan-African ventures.
Nyerere was indignant. He went public with his attack on Nkrumah. He referred to people who pretended that they were in favour of African continental union when all they cared about was to ensure that “some stupid historian in the future” praised them for being in favour of the big continental ambition before anyone else was willing to undertake it.
Nyerere added snide remarks about “the Redeemer” (Nkrumah’s self-embraced title of the Osagyefo).
On balance, history has proved Nkrumah wrong on the question of Nyerere’s commitment to liberation. Nyerere was second to none in that commitment.
At that Cairo conference of 1964 Nkrumah had asked “What could be the result of entrusting the training of Freedom Fighters against imperialism into the hands of an imperialist agent?” Nyerere had indeed answered “the good Osagyefo” with sarcasm and counter-argument. But Nyerere was also already trying to sharpen his country’s militancy in anti-colonial policy. At Cairo he took the posture of a leader disillusioned with the arts of persuasion in matters of liberation. He now demanded rigorous action to expel Portugal from Africa. As he put it:
“I am convinced that the finer the words the greater the harm they do to the prestige of Africa if they are not followed by action …Africa is strong enough to drive Portugal from our Continent. Let us resolve at this conference to take the necessary action.”[i]
Nyerere did indeed attempt to take the lead in this new militancy. He became the toughest spokesman against the British on the Rhodesian question. His country played a crucial role at the OAU Ministerial meeting at which it was decided to issue that fatal ultimatum to Britain’s Prime Minister, Harold Wilson – “Break Ian Smith or Africa will break with you.”
While Africans in the early decades of independence have often revered revolutionary presidents like Nkrumah and Nyerere, Americans have always saluted warrior presidents all the way from George Washington to George W. Bush.
Now a major point to note. World War I, World War II and the Cold War – though global in their consequences – were primarily conflicts between Northern powers. The confrontations were either between different European powers or between the United States and the Soviet Union. Fundamentally these were inter-Northern (or intra-Northern) conflicts.
But is George W. Bush right that the struggle against terrorism is the first war of the twenty-first century? Or should we view it as the first global war which is South against North [rather than North against North], with the South as the initiator?
Is it also the first global conflict in which one side consists of non-state actors (e.g., Usama bin Laden and Al-Qaida) and the other consists of states?
While globalization has afforded Africa a more visible role in diplomacy, it has also made Africa vulnerable when diplomacy degenerates into violence. The dates August 7, 1998, and September 11, 2001, dramatized this transition to violence.
Usama bin Laden may or may not be the man behind the atrocities committed against the United States Embassies in East Africa on August 1998 and the atrocities in America on September 11, 2001, but he has become a symbol. It may be time to divide the passions between Usamaphobia, the hate or fear of Usama and what he stands for, and Usamaphilia, the secret admiration he definitely enjoys among the frustrated and desperate masses of those humiliated by either Israeli policies or American power and global reach.
The politics of Usamaism have affected me in ways of the Triple Heritage – in my capacities as a Kenyan national, as a long time African resident in America, as a Muslim and as a human being (hopefully citizen of the world). The destruction of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi on August 7,1998, killed over two hundred Kenyans and twelve Americans – the brunt of the attack was therefore borne by Kenyans. Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998 were ghastly dress rehearsals for New York and Washington three years later.
My eldest son is a U.S. citizen working for the U.S. Federal Government in Washington, D.C. My son works for a department other than Defense, but hypothetically he might have been visiting a friend at the Pentagon. However, that morning he happened to be at his own desk at a safe distance. He and I grieved for those who were at the Pentagon.
As a Muslim I am Chairman of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and a member of the Council of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. I am also one of the Directors of the American Muslim Council in Washington. All the Islamic organizations to which I belong in the United States promptly distanced themselves from the atrocities on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. American Muslims had, ironically, voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush in the presidential elections of November 2000.
In my capacity as a citizen of the world I have seen the phenomenon of terrorism become globalized. Innocent pedestrians on a street in Nairobi were killed in the hundreds in 1998 because a Saudi sympathizer of oppressed Iraqis and Palestinians, orchestrating world conflict from Afghanistan, held the United States responsible for the deaths of innocent children in Baghdad and Gaza. This was real international complexity. But this is also assuming Usama bin Laden was indeed responsible for the destruction of the U.S. Embassies in East Africa.
It is estimated that among the dead in the World Trade Center in 2001 are dozens of Africans and hundreds of Muslims – ranging from Nigerian and Arab investors to Bangladeshi restaurant waiters.
But it is not just terrorism which has become globalized. It is also its causes – the frustrations and desperation of people affected by decisions made in Washington, New York, Paris, London and Moscow. A global coalition against terrorism would only make sense if it included addressing the causes of terrorism.
The single most explosive cause of anti-American terrorism is the perceived alliance between the United States and Israel against major Muslim concerns. Nkrumah saw Zionism as dangerously allied to imperialism. The world needs a coalition today more than ever to seek a permanent solution to the Middle Eastern conflict, especially the Arab-Israeli core. Palestinians and Israelis cannot solve their problems on their own. The United States is too pro-Israel to be an honest broker. We need a coalition of representatives of the European Union, the United States, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the League of Arab States, and Russia to help the Palestinians and Israelis find a permanent solution to the problem. Without such a solution we can forget about a world without terrorism.
There was a time when the Zionist movement considered establishing a Jewish state in East Africa. At the turn of the 20th century Joseph Chamberlain, Britain’s colonial Secretary, offered Theodor Hertzel parts of what is today Kenya and Uganda. The real estate offered to the Jews included what were later known as the White Highlands of Kenya. Fortunately for East Africa the Zionist movement could not reach consensus. Britain’s offer to the Jews was turned down.
In order to recover the White Highlands, Africans in Kenya had to wage a guerrilla war, denounced by the British as terrorist. The Mau Mau war nearly became a war against the Jewish Highlands of Kenya.
But while terrorism has since then been in the process of globalization, the concept of an "act of war" has by no means found a global standard. How many Americans would acknowledge that the Anglo-American no-fly zones imposed on Iraq for the last decade are a continuing act of war? Iraqis are not allowed to fly planes in their own air space. And yet the no-fly zones over Iraq have no United Nations authorization or legal validation. Iraqis get bombed if they challenge American or British planes over Iraqi territory. African territory was bombed by President Ronald Reagan (Libya) and President Bill Clinton (Sudan).
How many members of the Bush administration would accept that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are what a Foreign Minister of India once described as "permanent aggression"? Indeed, are not the Israeli settlements on occupied land illegal and tantamount to belligerency? President George W. Bush's father came close to declaring them as such.
Every American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has engaged in some act of war or another. Americans still have a fascination for warrior presidents. Roosevelt was inevitably embroiled in World War II; from Harry Truman onwards the United States' military casualties have been primarily in the Third World. Truman helped to initiate the Korean War; Dwight Eisenhower ended the Korean War but started planning for the Bay of Pigs operation on Cuba; John F. Kennedy unleashed the Bay of Pigs operation and helped to initiate the Vietnam War; Lyndon Johnson escalated the Vietnam war; Richard Nixon bombed Cambodia; Gerald Ford sent the Marines in a disagreement with Cambodia over a U.S. cargo-ship, the Mayaguez; Jimmy Carter attempted to thwart the Iranian revolution and paid heavily for it; Ronald Reagan perpetrated acts of war in Lebanon, the Caribbean, Libya and in shooting down a civilian airline in the Persian Gulf; George Bush Senior invaded Panama and is most famous for Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf; Bill Clinton led military action against Yugoslavia over Kosovo and bombed Sudan and Afghanistan; George W. Bush has already inherited a decade of bombing Baghdad and subsidizing half a century of Israeli militarism against Palestinians. Now this younger Bush has embarked on what he once called a "crusade against terrorism," starting with bombing Afghanistan. Apart from former Yugoslavia, all casualties of U.S. militarism have been in the Third World.
Every American president since Franklin Roosevelt has regarded an act of war as the equivalent of a rite of passage. The Commander-in-Chief has to "act presidential". His popularity dramatically rises. Americans continue to love the warrior president. And yet the United States hardly ever calls these engagements "acts of war". Even the war in Vietnam which cost nearly sixty thousand American lives and millions of Vietnamese lives, was never officially declared by the United States. America needs to find more humane rites of passage for its leaders. Why are presidents at their most popular when they find a war to fight?
Terrorism is getting globalized, but the definition of an "act of war" is not. Such a definition is still highly selective, depending upon the power of the perpetrator or the status of the victim. For the immediate future it may also depend upon making sure that Usamaphobia does not degenerate into Islamophobia.
The blood of the innocent cries out not just for a coalition against terrorism but for a coalition in search of genuine peace.
I grew up in a Kenya engulfed in a war of liberation which the British called "terrorist" – the Mau Mau war of the 1950s. I have personally met people like Nelson Mandela and Yassir Arafat, men once denounced as terrorists, but who lived to win the Nobel Prize for Peace. Some of their acts of war were in the past localized and regional. But now it is not just terrorists "who can run but cannot hide." Such a situation has become the human condition itself.
What happened at the World Trade Center has no excuse. Even terrorism as a style of war ought to have rules. It is a pity there is no Geneva Convention laying down the rules and ethics of terrorist engagement.
For example, the terrorists could have avoided hitting the World Trade Center at the peak hour of 9 o’clock in the morning, and attempted instead to high jack an evening flight at 9 o’clock at night, thus cutting down the casualty rate by three quarters. Or more ethically the terrorists could have avoided the World Trade Center altogether, and gone only for the Pentagon.
Just as there is sometimes honour among thieves, there ought to be restraint among terrorists. Any ethical rules of engagement would surely have regarded an attack on the World Trade Center, at a rush hour of the day, as a dastardly act without honour or humanity.
September 11 may certainly be on its way towards affecting the “brain drain” from Africa as well. The nineteen dead Arabs who were accused of having blown up the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and highjacked the fourth plane on September 11 were all cases of the brain drain from their own countries in one degree or another.
The impact of September 11 on immigration policies in the Western world seems to be towards greater scrutiny and reduced Western hospitality. There was a time when high scientific and technological qualifications were regarded as attractive credentials for immigration into the West.
The superb skills of those Arabs who apparently perpetrated the atrocities of September 11 must surely reduce the attractiveness of technical skills as qualifications for new immigration. Who would want immigrants who are clever enough to highjack and fly four passenger jets in one morning within the most advanced technological power in history?
There was a time in the annals of the United States when unique technical qualifications were a passport to the green card. After September 11 an Arab who is "too clever by half" is more likely to be seen as a threat than as a potential asset to the society.
When he was President of Ghana Jerry Rawlings used to worry especially about losing too many Ghanaian doctors. I once heard him address this issue with singular passion. We were both attending the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In his presentation at the conference Rawlings got angrier and angrier as he talked about how newly skilled doctors in countries like Ghana started packing their bags for Canada, Britain, France or the United States almost as soon as they were professionally qualified to reduce infant mortality or unsafe motherhood in their own countries. Jerry Rawlings' anger rose higher and higher as he reflected on this issue.
At question time I congratulated the President on his passionate concern for vulnerable groups in a country like Ghana and their need for the services of qualified professionals. But I pointed out that the brain drain as a whole was caused by two sets of forces. There were the pull-in factors in the host countries – factors like greater freedom, wider opportunities, better rewards, and professional recognition. The push-out factors were in the countries being left behind – factors like lack of freedom, limited resources, restricted professional opportunities, and inadequate professional recognition.
I suggested to President Jerry Rawlings (as he then was) that the push-out forces in African countries included the policies of African governments which were often hostile to intellectuals. Bad government policies often also had the effect of damaging the economy or reducing freedom at home.
I suggested to Jerry Rawlings that there would have been fewer African doctors packing their bags to migrate to the West if African governments had been more supportive of African professionals, or more sensitive to the wider needs of their societies.
Jerry Rawlings and I continued the banter a little longer. He then invited me to Ghana on a future date to conclude our debate in a leisurely fashion.
My Davos dialogue with Jerry Rawlings occurred in 1998 – about three years before September 11, 2001. The question which arose after September 11 was whether in the aftermath the West had already begun to close its doors to new immigration from developing countries. Would there be fewer Ghanaian doctors and other professionals packing their bags in the future to migrate to the West? However inadvertently, is the aftermath of September 11 going to help Africa keep the doctors needed for infant mortality, unsafe motherhood and other health hazards? Has Usama bin Laden helped Jerry Rawlings realize his dream of arresting the brain drain, at least for a while? The answer is still in the womb of future history.
Rawlings was a revolutionary turned democrat; Nkrumah was a democrat who turned revolutionary.
Kwame Nkrumah started as a democrat and ended his political career as a dictator; Jerry Rawlings started his political career as a brutal dictator and ended it as a democrat.
There were stages in both these trends. On attainment of independence Ghana was for awhile an open society. But Nkrumah's electoral success was more vulnerable than many realized. The Convention People’s Party (CPP) won only 57 percent in the last national election in Ghana before independence. Its opponents won 43 percent of the poll in the 99 contested constituencies. The CPP was also out-seated and out-voted in Ashanti and in the North.
And even after making allowances for the five unopposed seats, Nkrumah's popular support was not overwhelming – and certainly far less than that of Julius K. Nyerere in Tanganyika or Houphouët-Boigny in the Ivory Coast.
In any case, the poll in Ghana in that crucial pre-independence election represented only 50% of the registered electorate, and probably something under 30 percent of the total adult population. This was not an avalanche vote for the CPP. The temptation to consolidate its power became great, and perhaps irresistible.
The Nkrumah regime moved towards monopoly of power with the one-party state. It also moved towards undermining the judiciary as an independent body. The CPP regime also succumbed to the temptations of preventive detention.
In his Pan-African politics Nkrumah had a positive destiny with history. He remains a great African visionary. But in his domestic politics he left Ghana less free than he himself had helped to make it.
He gave Ghana freedom from British colonial shackles – and then took away Ghana's freedom with new chains of his own. It is in that sense Nkrumah entered the state of Ghanaian history as a liberator – and left the stage of Ghanaian history as dictator.
Jerry Rawlings' destiny was in the reverse direction. Here was a man who first came to power in a military coup. He then returned to power in another military takeover. The style was sometimes brutal – including the phenomenon of multiple "regicides", executing former rulers of the land.
Then Jerry Rawlings came to power a third time through the ballot box. Many of his opponents and critics cried foul, but there was indeed considerable support for the man in the Ghanaian countryside. Jerry Rawlings rose to power a fourth time in absolute frequency – but the second time through the ballot box. This second electoral victory is conceded even by the opposition as a free election even if the outcome were resented by the losers.
Fifthly, the man stepped down from power without changing the constitution to give him yet another term in office. Indeed, he let the electoral system be sufficiently free that his own party was defeated at the polls.
These are the six stages of Jerry Rawlings route of democratization:
First brutal military coup of 1979
Second another military takeover of 1982
Third triumph through the ballot box but not acknowledged by the opposition (1992)
Fourth triumph through the ballot box and accepted by the opposition as free and fair (1996)
Fifth Stepping down from power without attempting to change the constitution (2000)
Sixth Allowing the electoral system to be free enough to defeat his own party. (2000)
Is it really true that Jerry Rawlings had no choice but to give up power without attempting to manipulate the system? After all, Robert Mugabe tried his best to manipulate the system in spite of sanctions from the European Union and the United States, and the threat of suspension from the Commonwealth.
In Zambia, Chiluba wanted to change the Constitution for a third term as president, and was thwarted more by his own party than by Western disapproval. In Kenya, Daniel arap Moi is still keeping his people guessing about whether he would play by the rules and bow out of power at long last.
Rawlings in 2000-2001 was not Mubage, Chiluba or Moi. He accepted the rules of the game and bowed out. Why should he not be given credit for not manipulating the system – Mugabe-style? African rulers who relinquish power voluntarily should be given credit for doing so.
We all know how tough it is to be a gracious loser. But in Africa it seems to be equally tough to be a gracious winner. Chiluba won against Kenneth Kaunda – and then proceeded to humiliate Kaunda and even seek to deprive him of his Zambian citizenship.
In Ghana in the year 2002, is it the losers who are being ungracious – or is it the winners? Is it the supporters of the old regime who are being ungracious – or is it the members of the new dispensation?
"Fool! Said my muse to me
Look in thine heart and ponder."
Perhaps there is a need for graciousness among both winners and losers in Ghana. In politics good manners are sometimes almost as important as good morals.
Out of the Shadows? A Conclusion
Meanwhile globalization, when it is out of the shadows, has also permitted the emergence of Black and African moral leadership on a world scale. It began with the Nobel Prize winners for peace. Over the years these have included Ralph Bunche (1950), Albert Luthuli (1960), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964), Anwar Sadat (1978), Desmond Tutu (1984), Nelson Mandela (1994), F.W. de Klerk (1994) and Kofi Annan (2001). Black Nobel prizewinners in literature or economics are not necessarily moral leaders.
Globalization has also witnessed the rise of Africans to positions of leadership in global organizations. But here, as I said in 2001 in my W.E.B. DuBois lectures in Accra, it may be worth distinguishing between Africans of the soil and Africans of the blood. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the first African Secretary-General of the United Nations, was an African of the soil. Kofi Annan, the second African Secretary-General, is an African of the blood and the soil. North Africans like Boutros-Ghali belong to the African continent (the soil) but not to the Black race (the blood). On the other hand, African Americans are Africans of the blood (the Black race) but not of the soil (the African continent). Sub-Saharan Africans like Kofi Annan are in reality both Africans of the soil (the continent) and of the blood (the race). Globalization has given Africans of the soil and of the blood new opportunities for leadership at the global level itself.
Even before the two African Secretaries-General of the United Nations, Africa had already produced a black Director-General of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in Paris. He was Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, an African of the blood and of the soil from Senegal. His openly pro-Third World policies infuriated the United States, which finally withdrew from UNESCO in 1985, followed by its compliant ally, the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom returned to UNESCO in 1997 after the sweeping victory of the Labour Party in the 1996 elections.
With regard to the United Nations itself, Africa is the only region of the world apart from Europe to have produced more than one Secretary-General for the world body. Europe has produced three Secretaries-General, Africa two, and the other regions of the world have produced either one each or none so far.
The International Court of Justice at The Hague elected in 1994 an African of the soil for its President – Mohammed Medjauni of Algeria. The World Bank in the 1990s has had two African Vice-Presidents – Callisto Madivo, an African of the blood and the soil from Zimbabwe, and Ismail Serageldin, an African of the soil from Egypt. In 1999, Serageldin was also a serious candidate to become the first UNESCO Director-General of the new millennium.[ii]
The Commonwealth (former British Commonwealth) had Third World Secretaries-General for two decades – Ramphal of Guyana and Emeka Anyouku of Nigeria.
Ralph Bunche and Martin Luther King, Jr. were of course African American Nobel Peace Laureates and therefore Africans of the blood in our sense, but not of the soil. Anwar Sadat and F.W. de Klerk were as Peace Laureates Africans of the soil but not of the blood. Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were Africans of both the soil and the blood. All three were South Africans, as was F.W. de Klerk. But we should note that F.W. de Klerk is an “African of the soil” by adoption rather than by indigenous roots to the continent. Most North Africans, on the other hand, are indigenous to the continent, although there has been considerable racial mixture with immigrants over the centuries.
As the twentieth century was coming to a close Nelson Mandela achieved a unique status. He became the first truly universal Black moral leader in the world in his own lifetime[iii] Martin Luther King, Jr. achieved universal status after his death. When Dr. King was alive half of mainstream America rejected him and regarded him as a troublemaker. Mandela was fortunate to have achieved universal moral admiration without having to undergo an assassination beforehand. No other Black man in history has pulled off such a “pre-humous” accomplishment (as distinct from a posthumous elegy). In the recognition of Mandela the human race may have taken one more step forward in the search for universalized ethical sensibilities.
Mandela languished in jail for 27 of the best years of his life – ostensibly punished for acts of terrorism. He later won a Nobel Prize for Peace. Osama bin Laden is unlikely to win the Nobel Prize for Peace, but if caught and in good health he should be tried by an International Tribunal like the fate of Milosevic of Yugoslavia, rather than tried by his enemies as Nelson Mandela was.
Positive globalization needs new legal and moral standards.
The shadows in Africa itself are not yet fully lifting. Poverty, underdevelopment, disease and instability are still rampant. But the shadows of Africa's role in world affairs are indeed more clearly lifting. The Secretary of State of the United States, Colin Powell, is an African of the blood and a compatriot of Martin Luther King, Jr.. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, is an African of both the soil and the blood –and a compatriot of Kwame Nkrumah. As for W.E.B. DuBois, he was a compatriot of both Colin Powell (fellow African American) and a compatriot of Kwame Nkrumah (fellow Ghanaian).
To paraphrase an English poet:
Deign on global Africa
To turn thine eyes
And pause a while from surfing
To be wise.
[i] This pledge was given by Nyerere on July 20, 1964. See also The Addis Ababa Summit 1963, publication of the Government of Ethiopia, Ministry of Information, 1963.
[ii] See the report in the New York Times (August 18, 1999), p. 8 on Serageldin's candidacy.
[iii] Consult the report on Nelson Mandela in the New York Times (March 23, 1999), p. 1.
* This was the third of the 2002 Lecture series under the general theme "Nkrumah's Legacy and Africa's Triple Heritage: The Shadow of Globalization and Counterterrorism" (March 11-13, 2002). This third lecture was delivered on March 13, 2002 at the University of Ghana, Legon, under the chairmanship of Professor Akilagpa Sawyerr, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana and Director of the Research Association of African Universities, Accra.