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20.09.2014 Opinion

Nkrumah's Birthday – How He Braved Demeaning Stories – His Correct Birthday Is September 25

By Apostle Kwamena Ahinful
Nkrumah's Birthday – How He Braved Demeaning Stories – His Correct Birthday Is September 25
20.09.2014 LISTEN

(As a political scholar, I have already written lots on Kwame Nkrumah's birthday.

Today, I consider it expedient to edit and republish what I wrote on Nkrumah's 100 th birthday celebration held in 2009, since the facts are the same, to refresh our memory.)

On Sunday, September 21, 2014, there will be the cel-ebration of the much expected 105th centenary anniversary of the greatest African of the 20th century, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the founder of our modern Ghana. To all my ideological and CPP comrades and all compatriots, I say:

Hip…hip…hip…hurray!
Hip…hip…hip…hurray!
Hip…hip…hip…hurray! May God bless Ghana.
May God bless the soul of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah forever and ever.

Amen, and Amen and Amen!
However, let me re-emphasise the fact that the actual birth of Nkrumah occurred on September 25, and not September 21, since the reference calendar depicting the dates spanning from 1801 to 2200, indicates unmistakably that Kwame Nkrumah, born on Saturday, came from his mother's womb on September 25, 1909, and that he was not born on Tuesday, September 21. And I have been wondering why my writings pin-pointing the September 25 truth appear not to have received the concern of any government to effect the necessary change.

In fact, it's a pity to celebrate the 105th birthday anniversary of such a great man on a false birth date.

Doesn't the retention of such a glaring inaccuracy amount to intellectual dishonesty? I am pretty sure a government will sooner or later come to place Dr Nkrumah's birthday in its proper historical con-text.

Meanwhile, as we joyously celebrate Dr Nkrumah's 105th birthday, let's go the down memory lane of his political exploits and see how he unperturbedly braved the insults and demeaning stories that his opponents flung about him.

First, observe this remark about him in 1949: 'At this advanced stage around 40 years, this Kwame Nkrumah is still not married. He is impotent (a 'Saadwe', in local parlance). And how can a 'saadwe' lead this country or govern it. 'Saadwes' don't have children of their own.

They have no family-rais-ing experience and wisdom.

How can the white people give this Kwame Nkrumah independence to rule us?

This impotent Kwame Nkrumah must get out of our political scene and leave everything to Dr Danquah to fight for us…Danquah has children and is a wise politician…'

Yes, such was the 'popular' opinion of Dr Kwame Nkrumah's political opponents who fiercely sought to belittle or denigrate or humiliate him so that he could bow out of Ghana's politics out of frustration. At Breman Asikuma where I was born and thus schooled, the NLM (National Liberation Movement) of Dr Danquah, which later became U.P. (United Party), openly and repeatedly proclaimed this and other nasty things on their political platform in the centre of the town.

When I went on holidays to my other hometown, Breman Esiam, I often heard those disparaging words about Nkrumah. And when my mother took me to Agona Nyakrom, my real ancestral hometown, I also heard this at a political rally.

In 1967 when I visited my uncle Nana Nyarkoh-Eku VI (now deceased), then the Omanhene of Agona Nyakrom, we reflected on such 1947-1957 politics of the Gold Coast, and we laughed over such nasty remarks, condemning Dr Kwame Nkrumah. Definitely, these were all part of the hurly-burly damning politics of the 'uncivilised' Gold Coast. And it was a pity that Dr Kwame Nkrumah, our eventual redeemer, was mysteriously made a condemnable political 'ware' being sold on platforms and jeered at in various towns by his political enemies.

Anyway, the impotency proclamation was not heard much in my father's home-town, Saltpond, where we often visited, but according to my royal uncle, Nana Nyarko Eku VI, who had travelled far and wide in the then Gold Coast, the insults and degrading stories about Dr Kwame Nkrumah as pro-pounded by his opponents were almost everywhere when he began to form his CPP in 1949.

When the CPP replied that he had had a son before he went to the United States for studies (this referred to his first born, now Prof Francis Nkrumah) the opponents changed their humiliating tactics.

The impotency charge was then submerged under a new indictment, namely, that Nkrumah was married to the sea-goddess 'Maame Wata' whom he had affairs with secretly, pushing to her Ghana's money and thus making Ghana poor. Dr Nkrumah heard all these as he later intimated to me and regarded them as jokes. His bachelorship was indeed geared towards a purpose— to obtain sanctity and chastity to interact with Jesus for power and protection necessary to propel him to win independence for Ghana.

Dr Nkrumah followed India's Mahatma Ghandi's spiritual style by which, even though he had married (with children around) he thought it more expedient to practice chastity on the full under-standing and acceptance of his wife.

Mahatma Ghandi was rewarded with success in his anti-colonial struggles for India's independence, all guided by the motto: 'Satya-graha', meaning 'non-violence' to the colonialists, just as South Africa's Nelson Mandela practised when he became the electioneering leader of the ANC to become his nation's President. Dr Nkrumah ignored the 'Maame Wata' accusation and was silent over it, taking it as a joke which came from spiritual ignoramuses and political desperadoes of the NLM who were being con-fronted with electoral defeat.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah was again described as not learned since he obtained his degrees from the United States which supposedly used to award inferior degrees. Dr Danquah was extolled as a learned man with a 'Doctor cum laude' degree, whilst K.A. Busia was a learned man with a professorial title which Dr Nkrumah didn't have. It was argued that because of his so-called 'little' education, Dr Nkrumah moved with the masses, the unlearned common people, and the generality of workers whom he had instigated to form the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

Such pungent diatribes against Nkrumah's educa-tion were exacerbated when, after his overthrow in the 1966 coup, his philosophical book, titled 'Consciencism', was said to have been written by Prof W. Abraham, a Legon lecturer then, who confessed that he discussed a few naughty points with Dr Nkrumah when he was 'editing' the book, and that the book itself was indeed writ-ten by Dr Nkrumah himself.

Dr Nkrumah had already written that he imbibed phi-losophy in Lincoln and Pennsylvania Universities and earned a degree in Philosophy. He was also a Dr of Divinity (DD) and Dr of Political Science. You can compare these with Danquah and Busia's 'single-single' doctorate degrees, and thus judge whether Nkrumah was not a very learned scholar.

You can also see his extraordinary scholarship in the over 20 books he wrote, and compare them with the not more than seven books Prof Busia or Dr Danquah wrote, and you can judge for your-self whether Dr Kwame

Nkrumah was a half-baked scholar who was then often described by his political opponents as 'inferior' to Danquah and Busia. Their logical contradictions were very apparent. After all, a person's scholarship is attested to by the good quality books, essays and articles he produces; and if Dr Nkrumah were to teach in a university then, he would have been given the title 'Professor-Professor' or 'Professor Emeritus et Emeritus. Of course, Dr Nkrumah heard such degrading remarks about his scholarship; but because he knew what he was, he never replied to his opponents but kept mute, which was a mark of his greatness.

The other most debasing myth about Dr Kwame Nkrumah was that he had permanently strung a pregnant woman into death with a spear from the head down-wards, and embroiled the standing corpse with besmeared juju by which he ruled the country with success. During his overthrow in 1966, the gates of his offi-cial residence, the Flagstaff House, were flung open for people to go and see this mummified and exorcised body.

But nothing of this sort was in any of the rooms of Osagyefo Dr Nkrumah.

What many people, including myself, found were two pieces of waist talisman exposed on his bed. Whether these were his own or were thrown there by someone as an exhibit of his penchant for juju was never clear.

One fact which I wrote some time ago was that Dr Nkrumah reached a stage in his life where, here and there, he was being haunted with bomb-blasts aimed at killing him, and that he was deceived or cajoled by Ambrose Yankey, his Chief Security among his Aide-de-camps, to receive juju talisman for the sake of his (Nkrumah's) own protection - an act which displeased the Mighty God to cause his overthrow.

This was indeed revealed to me in 1963 and in 1965.

But it was never true that he had embalmed a pregnant woman as juju. No, it wasn't true, except that this piece of news was being circulated merely to do damage to Nkrumah's high international image. Dr Nkrumah was sent by God to emancipate Ghana and Africa and unite the African continent into a single government, and this latter was what he couldn't achieve immediately, due to the many and varied machinations of his political opponents.

But even then his successful struggles for Ghana's independence, and his assis-tance (material and moral) to many dedicated African leaders gave them impetus to successfully fight for the inde-pendence of their various countries. Nkrumah was indeed the black star of Africa, whose extraordinary political works will never be forgotten. Long live Africa! Long live the memory of Nkrumah!

From Apostle Kwamena Ahinful

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