Giving

“NO MAN was ever honoured for what he received. Honour has been the reward for what he gave.” - [Calvin Coolidge, 1872-1933, (30th US President, 1923-29)].

IT SEEMS to me the discussions ignited by whoever ushered in the centenary anniversary of the birth of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, (1st President of our Republic) must have in him, (them), wits more than a genius. The event is likely to be sustained a lot beyond one year that it was originally talked about.

Indeed, from my observation, the populace, and encouragingly so, the youth and the educated, seem to want to know more of exactly the genesis of the enthusiasm that surrounded his supporters, and the disgust of his political opponents, enough of whom were on the same side of the fence with him, to begin with.

Exactly what happened? What might have happened if that, which happened, hadn't happened, the way it did? Many a young man, armed with “reasonable stand of education”, (ladies seem less inclined, even if splendidly brilliant), in my observation, in battling with the rationale behind Dr. Nkrumah's urge in the late fifties/early sixties, to so “readily give” Ghana's money to neighbours like Upper Volta and Guinea, countries which weren't so endowed like Ghana.

“But, wouldn't Ghana have benefited far more, had we kept the money right here at home, where it belonged?” asked an angry young man, in a discussion at a private party the very last Christmas, (AD, 2009).

You could rightly predict each time you were invited, and there were up to a dozen or two guests, and among them, freshly graduated young men looking for non-existent jobs. That would always make a good ingredient.

So, the question always arises and stands; “is there anything amiss with giving, or is it only when you give out something valuable, or money from a nation's coffers to another, that makes it wrong?”

If Calvin Coolidge was right in his thinking, you do not have to complicate the issue by adding more quotations from the Holy Bible, or the Holy Quran. It seems every religion embraces the issue where the glory of giving is thickly underlined. We do however have needy nationals as well as world citizens, far and near.

Americans you happened to meet in post World War II West Germany would talk about how so uneasy life was in America during “Hitler's” war and long thereafter.

That not withstanding, America found some US$40 billion to dole out, especially on Germany, but to other European countries too. This was to make Germany and Western Europe prosperous, so that they would not drift readily into dictatorial regimes any longer. This is President Harry Truman's thinking. America felt the pinch of the war back at home, not to talk of three-quarters of a million young men and women that laid down their lives thousands of miles away from home, for the sake of Democracy. That was not enough sacrifice, it seemed, and a “huge sum” of money to Europe for a good purpose had to be added. It was the American tax-payer's money.

Future generations came to know it as the “Marshall Plan”, after World War II. Following the events that circled the world from 1939 till 1945, which devastated what was known as the advanced world, parts of the world which were before then known as colonies (and Ghana was part of that world), had “nothing left which could provoke laughter!”

In Africa South of the Sahara, only Liberia had the unique history that after the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, freed former slaves from the America and Europe were settled there in 1847. Ghana gained independence from Great Britain 110 years later, in 1957. Whether by chance, or out of good-will, the British left Ghana not that impoverished.

We inherited some gold reserves, making us, related to time, then as rich as OIL came to make the Middle East countries, like Kuwait, or Saudi Arabia. We were only 4.5 million Ghanaian citizens.

Diamonds were mined in the Eastern Region of Ghana, and timber departed from our Takoradi Port-Harbour on giant ocean-going vessels on a daily basis. Bauxite existed in huge quantities, estimated to last for a century.

Ghana alone produced one-half of the cocoa marketed in the entire world at the time, and it fed European and American chocolate factories, waiting hungrily for it.

The keys to 13 secondary schools, and a University College at Legon, near Accra, were handed over to us. This was the way the British behaved. Clearly, the abolition of the Slave Trade which the British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce had toiled tirelessly to achieve was partly one of the reasons that made, for the Europeans, sustaining the colonies no longer tenable.

The French were equally motivated, if you so will, to behave in a similar manner and grant former French colonies independence. The French, however, conducted themselves quite differently when they granted their colonies independence, (e.g. Guinea, and the then Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso). The two countries obtained independence from France in 1958, and 1960 respectively. It was strongly alleged that offices and government bungalows were depleted of even such common-utility-items as toilet-rolls, and type-writers. Ghana had more than a decade of experience with independence, than the two “newly-born” baby-nations.

They had untold problems to solve, and “Kwame Nkrumah of Africa” could not sit unconcerned and watch his brothers, Yameogo of Burkina Faso, and Sekou Toure of Guinea, swim in dangerous waters. He chose to help them.

What a lot of our countrymen/women Ghanaians may not know, is that whilst Nkrumah did what he did, paid with Ghanaian gold and cocoa money, Ghanaian young men and women were being flown to the USA, France, Britain, Germany, and Scandinavian countries, to study whatever they had brains to study. Scholarships were paid by the Americans, as well as the European former colonial masters, and that helped Ghana too.

For your reminder, there was once a world where the stronger went on a rampage and took from his neighbour, what he (the neighbour) possessed, but he was too weak to stick to.

Alexander the Great, 536-323 BC, conquered what was then known as “the world”. Caesar, Julius, 100-44 B.C., who invaded Britain and crushed the army of his political enemy, Pompey, 106-48 BC, took what belonged to others. Pope Urban II (1088-1099), who sent young Christians in 1095 to capture Jerusalem from the Moslems for Christians, was in a way a usurper.

Nkrumah was for “Pan-Africanism”, and was prepared to share what he and Ghana had with the rest of Africa. Whoever pre-occupies his mind with a little bit wit, is likely to fall in love with his concept.