When Dancers play Historians and Thinkers - Part 6

It goes without saying that Kotoka's poignantly accurate characterization of the Nkrumah-led C. P. P. regime is amply reflected by the former's maiden radio announcement to an unmistakably euphoric Ghanaian populace, regarding its salutary liberation from the abominable tentacles of indigenous neocolonialism cynically disguised as unfettered sovereignty from British imperialism:
“After Ghana's accession to independence, a new class was formed whose principal occupation consisted in emptying the Treasury and perpetrating crimes of all kinds under the pretext of creating a socialist state. Today Kwame Nkrumah and this new class have ceased to exist” (Fitch and Oppenheimer 1).

But that the C. P. P. regime was peculiarly typified by rank corruption and naked theft may be amply and aptly envisaged from the fact that the Party's supreme chieftain was deliberately unsalaried. In other words, President Nkrumah, literally, envisaged Ghana's national treasury as his personal property and simply dipped his two hands into the country's till, as it were, in order to liberally siphon any monetary catch at whim, just as an Accra or Cape Coast fisherman would do with his net at sea.
In sum, unlike our analogical fisherman, there is absolutely no doubt, whatsoever, that the over-celebrated African Show Boy instituted the flagrant culture of political thievery which has been studiously, religiously and doggedly pursued by successive postcolonial Ghanaian governments, both civilian and military, elected and unelected.

In his quite instructive essay titled “An African Tragedy: Kwame Nkrumah & Mr. Bing (Q.C.),” Professor Kweku Folson writes: “Nkrumah's supporters have pooh-poohed accusations of corruption against their hero on various grounds. One is that he did not distinguish between his private pocket and public coffers, 'like an African chief.' But still, under Nkrumah, humble public servants were jailed for failing to make this elementary and healthy distinction. Another ground is that in his will Nkrumah gave everything to the State. Does this mean that the right to purloin from the public chest on condition that the remainder will be handed back to the state on one's death-bed should be conceded to every public official? A last ground is that in every developing country and, indeed, in every political system there is corruption. And does this mean that since in every society there are common burglars, no one need complain about burglary? In any case, Nkrumah is accused not of political corruption but of personal corruption having nothing to do with politics (e.g., dishing out public funds to jujumen and numerous paramours). It is important that Africans should not be taken in by 'theories of corruption' in developing countries[,] because in our [patently deplorable] conditions[,] the type of corruption we have experienced [in the megalomaniacal name and guise of pan-Africanism] is a fundamental factor in retarding our economic development” (Encounter, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1 [1969]: 40).

It is quite interesting to observe, at least in passing, that on the parenthetical question of “paramours,” in the wake of the publication of my book titled “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (2005), which had earlier on been serialized in the Accra Daily Mail, the New York Beacon and Ghanaweb.com, among other media outlets, Neo-Pharaoh Abu Jihad, a fanatical Nkrumacrat, telephoned this author to self-righteously claim that the putative Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics maintained quite a number of mistresses. To what purpose Neo-Pharaoh Abu Jihad aimed for effect was never made quite clear to this author, except, of course, the obviously jaundiced and sophomoric attempt to reducing Dr. Danquah to the level of Neo-Pharaoh Abu Juhad's own sacred idol, the ineffably libidinous and obstreperously lecherous African Show Boy.
Significantly and interestingly, however, we hasten to point out the fact that this discourse is hardly about the personal lives or peccadilloes of any postcolonial Ghanaian politician or statesman (or even woman), for that matter. It is squarely and ineluctably about the objective documentation and irrepressible elicitation of the truth as it has been brought forth to us by the commendable scholarship of ardent students of postcolonial Ghanaian history and historiography.

Even so, we must also heartily acknowledge the fact that Neo-Pharaoh Abu Jihad's snide attempt at besmirching the hard-earned achievements and dignity of the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics will not work. It will not work not merely because we intend to battle the fanatical Nkrumacrats word-for-word, boot-for-boot and bazooka-for-bazooka, but, perhaps, more importantly, we intend to diligently ferret out the truth and let it stand, stark naked and unabashed, in the inviolable courtyard of the collective Ghanaian, national conscience.

For starters, even if one brazenly decides to reduce the level of the Doyen's personal morality – in romantic terms, at least – to that of the African Show Boy, the fact still remains that unlike the putatively morally incontinent African Show Boy, the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics did not misappropriate the proverbial Ghanaian tax-payer's money in order to underwrite, sponsor, or maintain, his personal peccadilloes. And so in a real, documentary and historical sense, the over-celebrated African Show Boy may also be aptly credited with being the Father of Postcolonial Ghanaian Political Corruption (see also David Apter's Ghana In Transition).

In view of the preceding, indisputably abject state of affairs on the Ghanaian political landscape on the eve of the Kotoka-led 1966 military coup, it verges on outright puerility for anybody to even remotely suggest that the ouster of President Nkrumah and his Convention People's Party (C. P. P.) The Party, as it was cynically dubbed by many an Nkrumacrat, was almost exclusively the breastwork of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America. For such “simple-minded” outlook, apologies to Mr. Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, appears to flagrantly imply that, somehow, Ghanaians were too obtuse to look out for the inviolable preservation of their fundamental human rights, among which the right to be free of indigenous, neocolonial tyranny is paramount.
But that there was virtually no popular resistance to the 1966 putsch which, literally, brought down the veritable political house-of-cards erected by Nkrumah's C. P. P. regime, eloquently points to the fact that Ghana's seminal foray into an otherwise laudable state of sovereignty was akin to a pathetic cast of scrawny Sheridanic comedians in the sterling but woefully oversized roles of a highbrow Shakespearean drama, has never quite ceased to puzzle the minds of serious students of postcolonial African politics. Consequently, Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy were to write the following vis-à-vis the first Ghanaian coup:

“We had never been taken in by the myth of Ghanaian socialism – propagated by both friends and foes of the regime – but we knew that Ghana was the first black African colony to win its independence, that Kwame Nkrumah had an outstanding record as an opponent of colonialism and as a champion of African unity, that the Convention People's Party which he headed was a mass party, and that in some fields, such as education and health, notable progress had been made in the nearly ten years of independence. Against this background[,] it seemed hard to believe that Nkrumah could be overthrown in an almost bloodless coup which, according to all press reports, was greeted with popular approval rather than resistance. How could one explain such an apparent anomaly?.... And this leaves us where we started, without any clue to the ease with which the coup succeeded and the apparent total absence of popular resistance then and later. Only one conclusion seemed possible [plausible?]: that the situation in Ghana was quite different from the appearance which we, along with many others, had all too uncritically accepted as reflecting the reality” (Ghana: End of an Illusion ix).
In part, Folson plausibly explains the preceding in terms of Nkrumah's high-powered and capital-intensive propaganda machinery. In an insightful footnote to his book-review essay titled “An African Tragedy,” the late Oxbridge-educated Ghanaian political scientist writes: “An example is Africa and the World, a review published in London, which has been carrying scurrilous attacks on post-coup Ghana. The magazine was set up with [unauthorized?] Ghanaian public funds by Nkrumah, but it is completely under the control of an Englishman. See Report of the Commission of Enquiry on the Commercial Activities of the Erstwhile Publicity Secretariat.(Ghana Information Services, 1967). Par. 86-98 and 185-186. See also Nkrumah's Deception of Africa (Ghana Information Services, Accra, 1966) ch. XII.”

It, indeed, appears that both the C. P. P.'s internal and external propaganda machinery were under the political oversight of Mr. Nathaniel A. Welbeck, the Minister of State for Propaganda on the eve of the 1966 coup.

The much-touted involvement of the CIA in the historic ouster of Nkrumah's C. P. P. notwithstanding, it appears that much of the higher moral ground claimed in justification of the coup rode almost squarely on the crest of Nkrumah's apparently pathological megalomania. For by the eve of the Kotoka-led putsch, quite a remarkable number of the most prominent C. P. P. stalwarts were reported to be deeply disaffected by their supreme commander's hawkish and erratic attitude towards his minions: “In houses, offices, and factories, Dr. Nkrumah's picture was enthusiastically ripped from the walls. Almost immediately, without waiting for more complete information, Ghana's embassies from Peking to Paris began to wire their support. Defections began to occur even within the 74-man delegation accompanying Dr. Nkrumah on his 'peace mission' to Peking. The outstanding international figure of the regime, Alex Quaison-Sackey, was sent by Dr. Nkrumah from Peking to Addis Ababa to protest the seating of the new Ghanaian government's delegation at the Organization of African Unity meeting. Quaison-Sackey flew instead to Accra[,] where he pledged his loyalty to the police/military government. On his arrival[,] he announced: 'The military has taken power to liberate the people from oppression. The Ghanaian people will now have a free country and will not idolize a single man”( Ghana: End of an Illusion 2).

In a significant and critical sense, as shall be made evident in due course, in the epic, historical contest for the soul of Ghana between the Doyen of Gold Coast and Ghanaian politics and the African Show Boy, it was the Doyen who handily emerged victorious. In sum, President Nkrumah might have won the battle for the postcolonial political destiny of Ghana, but it was Dr. Danquah who decisively won the inviolable war over the preservation of the rule of law and the fundamental human right of the average Ghanaian to liberty and freedom from neocolonial tyranny.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of twelve books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana”(iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].