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Kwame Nkrumah
was no hero and Pan-Africanism is dead?
E. Ablorh-Odjidja
April 23. 2015
So said a piece written by a special
correspondent for the Mail & Guardian
Africa, published on Wednesday, April 22,
2015.
Ostensibly, at a high-level
meeting held in Ethiopia to consider
security challenges facing Africa, one Ali
Mufuruki had declared that " former Ghana
president Kwame Nkrumah was no African
hero."
The theme for the forum was
"Secularism and Politicised Faith."
For a special undisclosed reason, Mufuruki
found the excuse to gleefully link Nkrumah to the
theme on faith, in the services of an
anonymous special correspondent.
And for the forum,
Mufuruki said he studied the biography of Nkrumah for several
weeks to prepare his lecture.
"I was first
surprised, then disappointed, and petrified
about what I found," said Mufuruki.
The piece never said what Mufuruki found or
why Nkrumah shouldn't be a hero.
But we must note that he said he studied
Nkrumah for weeks before the lecture.
Meanwhile, some of us have been studying
Nkrumah for years. And we find his
ideas potent and still relevant for the continent
today.
Even
the entire AU universe has agreed that the man
was a profound thinker and a true African
hero.
So much for history. So much
for the credit paid so far to this tireless
hero who was truly committed to Africa's liberation.
But now, here comes Mufuruki's
attempted hit job on Nkrumah.
And,
when you find seven African leaders, current
and one former head of state, listening to
this crap from a Mufuruki, you get to
understand why the AU has not been a
progressive organization.
The meeting
was chaired by former Nigerian president
Olusegun Obasanjo who was said to have
"praised the contrarian tone, as political
leaders, academics and delegates weighed in"
for the talk.
"What we heard is
exactly what we want at Tana, contradictory
points of view that are debated and discussed," said Olusegun Obasanjo.
Obasanjo could have been more candid.
Either
he had humorously mistaken Mufuruki for a
mischievous drunk, hired purposefully to
cause embarrassment at a funeral of a
distinguished citizen, or, we must assume
that Obasanjo's time as a former president
of Nigeria was a waste.
But Pan
Africanism is dead, who killed it and then
to ask Obasanjo
and Mufuruki when they attended the funeral?
So, what other philosophical concept out
there must we replace Pan-Africanism with?
Would
or could Mufuruki or any member of the
current crop of African leaders help bring
out a substitute concept at that
intellectual level?
Pan Africanism propelled the formation of the AU. By
all means, it is this noble, unifying, and
edifying concept that has sought to lift us
from our current groundings as "hewers of
wood and drawers of water," as Nkrumah said.
Pan Africanism should be no more dead than
federalism is for Nigeria, a sovereign state
that the British colonial powers cobbled
together. Same as they did for many
countries in Africa.
Obasanjo should be familiar with the
issues of Biafra.
But thanks to the
effort of our feckless leaders at the AU,
Mufuruki would be given the platform to
challenge the idea of Pan Africanism and
then go on to deride Nkrumah.
Nkrumah's
ideas for the formation of the OAU, now AU,
were along the lines of; a continental
government, an African Military High
command, the eradication of flawed colonial
boundaries, the pursuit of self-rule for the
then yet to be free African countries, and
the need for Africa to speak with one voice
as a political and economic federation or a
continental government. (Read
his speech at Addis Ababa in 1963.)
He said "colonialism does not end
with the attainment of national
independence. Independence is only the prelude to
a new and more involved struggle for the
right to conduct our own economic and social
affairs; to construct our society according
to our aspirations, unhampered by crushing
and humiliating neo-colonialist controls and
interference."
Now, how could these
objectives be considered ignoble, flawed, or
have harmed the fortunes of the continent to
the extent that a character like Ali
Mufuruki would be given the chance to declare Nkrumah a non-hero
and for a special correspondent for the Mail
& Guardian (suspicion withheld) to reflect
admiringly on Mufuruki's sentiment?
The
topic for the forum was on security, under
the theme "Secularism and politicised
Faith." How did Mufuruki find the link
in this to target Nkrumah so negatively?
And having
found Nkrumah, did Mufuruki, before the
forum, bother to read
the chapter on religion in Nkrumah's book "Consciencism"?
In "Consciecism," Mufuruki could have found a better approach
to the subject of "politicised Faith."
But using
this theme at the forum as a platform to attack Nkrumah only
suggests that he was the hired proverbial
drunk brought in by some of the organizers
of the forum.
Mufuruki
did not truly read Nkrumah for weeks as he
claimed. If he had done so, he would have
found some answers to the security
challenges facing Africa along the lines of Nkrumah's
visionary thoughts that he
anticipated and addressed in copious
writings and speeches. (Again,
read the speech at Addis Ababa.)
As for what happened to the idea of the
OAU is another story. The watered-down
approach of the now AU organization is what
Nkrumah did not propose.
By way of a reminder, Nkrumah's
presidency in Ghana lasted only six years.
His influence as a founding member
of the OAU was limited to those years,
but not in an executive capacity.
His long running impact on
some of the members of the organization was
through the freshness of his ideas.
In contrast, the five leaders Mufuruki
met at the forum have had more years of
physical contact and the opportunity to influence current AU
members than Nkrumah ever had with his
short time.
Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Uhuru Kenyatta
(Kenya), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), Ibrahim
Boubacar Keita (Mali), Abdiweli Mohamed
Ali (Puntland), Hailemariam Desalegn
(Ethiopia), and Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmake
of Somalia were the leaders at the forum.
On the average, these leaders have ruled their countries longer
and have had more years
influencing AU affairs than Nkrumah had in
his entire life.
What did Mufuruki have to say about the
contribution of the leaders he met with at
the forum?
Sad to note that he had nothing to
say to Museveni, who alone has had close to
30 years in office and still going strong in
his dealings with the AU.
Or perhaps, the egos of these leaders
preferred to hear Mufuruki speak and insult Nkrumah,
rather than showing him the door?
The only sensible
statement at the forum came from the Ethiopian
Prime Minister Hailemariam who said, "In
Ethiopia, we developed tolerance of religion
without knowing the colonialist definition
of secularism. Why then do some politicise
religion? To serve their ideological
ambitions to come to power for political
rent."
And from
Mufuruki, we heard
that Nkrumah "the father of Ghana's
independence and pan-Africanism had his dark
moments. The pan-Africanist dream still
struggles to be fully implemented. Shouldn't
we consider it dead at this time?
Abort Pan-Africanism because Mufuruki read
and misunderstood Nkrumah, while also
misapprehending how religiosity was always
infused into what he deemed to be the
secular in Africa
was his message.
And these gang of African leaders sat
there and listened to
Mufuruki, knowing fully well that the confusion in the current state of affairs in Africa
had nothing to do
with Pan-Africanism.
And that the confusion
at the AU, now expanded to some 53 members
and counting, had nothing to do with the ideal that visionaries like
Nkrumah expounded.
Hopefully,
Mutufuri would one day wake up sober and
understand that the neo-colonialist ideal at
Nkrumah's time is
still alive today.
And that the schism that came with
this colonial idea was what Nkrumah
and the Pan-African visionaries fought
against.
That understood,
Mufuruki can
then propose that Nkrumah was and still is a
hero.
But I have no faith that such
statement can come out of
his special correspondent, the ventriloquist from the Mail &
Guardian.
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher
www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, April 23,
2015.
Permission to publish: Please feel
free to publish or reproduce, with credits,
unedited. If posted on a website, email a
copy of the web page to
publisher@ghanadot.com. Or don't publish at
all.
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