REBUILDING THE FREEDOM WALLS OF GHANA: NKRUMAH'S BLUEPRINT FOR A UNITED CPP IS THE KEY

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

“Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought” – Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

Between the extremes of the self-confessed 'self-seeking idiots' and 'greedy bastards'; the 'property-owning new patriots' and 'property-loving social democrats', Ghana definitely, needs a real change - a change which needs not be either 'positive' or 'better' by the standards of the NPP and NDC respectively.

Indeed, between the recent analogous “Positive Change” and the “Better Ghana” Agenda of the NPP and NDC, all right-thinking Ghanaians, without a scintilla of doubt, would rather another Party with a different set of Agenda convened the best of our hopes and the best of our values; the best of our aspirations and the best of the trajectories of political governance, in order to get us, in a record time, to the promised land of economic emancipation the nation's founding father, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, spoke of when he led us to experience a taste of political freedom first in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Hence, this piece of a write-up seeks to emphasize the plain truth that political leadership has mostly been the cause of our woes ever since Dr. Nkrumah and the CPP were deliberately, hounded out of the political scene, giving true meaning to the maxim that 'strike the shepherd, and the sheep invariably, would get scattered'. And that our salvation as a nation, a continent's ambassador and a true representative of the black race, only lies in rebuilding the CPP up again with Nkrumah's blueprint!

Yes! It is true that Rawlings was in the trenches of dignity-of-work with a disillusioned generation to at least offer it hope, even if it was for a short time and with a grave human rights record as well; Kuffour obviously, meant well at least on paper, with his social interventions, including the 'free' maternal care/national health insurance system; and Mills arguably, is still trustworthy when he says proceeds from our newly found oil and gas at the Jubilee Fields (Cape Three Point) “would be invested in the people”.

But it is also true that as a nation with a relatively young population, most of our citizens have, in a straight line, only tasted the 'hollow leadership' of Rawlings' 19 year rule; we have only felt the 'senile leadership' of Kuffour's 8 year government, much as we have already started questioning the 'dithering leadership' the Mills' administration is needlessly, offering the good people of this country, as far as the nation Ghana's true aspirations are concerned.

Indeed, the similarity between the leadership concave lens of the NPP as well as that of the convex lens of the NDC is that both ultimately produce bleak images of lack of purpose, poverty, organized crimes, armed conflicts, famine, diseases and general lack of advancements in Ghana's socio-cultural settings on their focal points of corruption (or what their moral relativists may choose to call “indiscretions”).

OUR BEGINNINGS AND OUR PRESENT
In the beginning, our founding father, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, showed us the only way to true freedom and justice, yet we see nothing but economic servitude and collective injustice still entrenched among us today;

He emboldened us all to participate with courage and not to leave our destiny in the hands of few 'men of property and standing', yet the nation now feels only the heat of subservient indifference and sponging elitism; He spoke of self-worth and patriotism to us, yet we only hear demoralizing ignominy and incorrigible cynicism among the nation's population;

He also inspired us with his words that 'we, as a united people, are capable of managing our own affairs when given the opportunity', yet we seem to permanently, occupy the fringe areas of man's progress - the true taste of the Ghanaian/African life today;

And most importantly, he got us to know the scent of the colourless enemy flower- 'western imperialism' - and its nectar - 'colonialism' and 'neo-colonialism' - in our garden of political freedom, yet we now smell more of its globalised odour of “corporatocracy” in the economic, political and social Edens of our nation and that of the larger African continent.

Like that “Christian” character in John Bunyan's “Pilgrim's Progress”, Ghana's journey to the heaven of national/continental unity and dignity has always been strongly 'challenged' by the numerous 'obstacles' this enemy – western imperialism - places on our way, oftentimes with our own complicity, to sidetrack us from the original aim of the nation's independence – a united Africa's political freedom leading to the Blackman's economic emancipation globally.

In fact, it has rightly been observed that the NPP invariably does the wrong things the right ways, whilst the NDC consistently does the right things the wrong ways and so none of them does things right for this nation.

Truly, both the NPP and NDC – if the most ardent of their supporters would be honest with themselves – have lost the cause; the cause of our dear nation and the cause of Africa.

They – these two political parties – seem not to have any greater purpose for this nation and the larger African continent beyond their commitments to their own survival and the self-interest of their respective leadership much as their words and actions often meet the well-known tag of 'political posturing at best, and criminal deception at worst'.

The leadership of NPP and NDC and their numerous ivory towered bootlickers, often with passions and sentiments, pontificate about which western 'democracy', 'good governance' and 'free market economy' skills, practices, techniques and strategies Ghana and the larger African continent must unavoidably, emulate as the starting point to ironically, free ourselves from the western-made cauldron of poverty now placed on the hottest coals of G8-led globalization.

Thus, the NPP and NDC rather waste more resources by way of time, energy and money through organizing local events, and also through its participation in international conferences, seminars and workshops, in dealing with the self-inflicted effects of not following our original reconstruction blueprint bequeathed to us by our founding father.

Nevertheless, the current emancipatory sloganeering by both the NPP and NDC and often accentuated by their academic, religious, cultural and media brotherhoods seem, in practice, to only radiate a neo-colonial mentality which has essentially been the causality of our nation's post-Nkrumah era problems, as raw power without much of an assistance of sound judgements rooted in true pan-African ideals and ideas, has become the only constant phenomenon in their equation of shallow leadership, which evidently misses the all-too-important lessons of how people build great nations even among greater enemies.

The general efforts of the NPP and NDC-led governments to brand Ghana as a desirable corporate entity with a Pan-African cultural renaissance, admittedly, may occasionally find expressions in remarkable acts like changing our westernized 'identities' for African ones and also through the romantic pursuit of African arts and crafts and occasional visits to the slave dungeons to connect to our past.

But these ritualistic acts of emancipatory tokenism - with their obvious limitations – often miss the 'essence' that the wobbling 'superficial Africaness' in them easily give way to the 'photographic negatives' of westerners and other foreigners they ardently wished they were.

Both the NPP and NDC, to all intents and purposes, readily forget the two most important lessons our history must clearly, teach us even as the nation-state which should still carry the longing hopes of a united African Continent alive: that imperialism has no guiding principle beyond it own interest; and that just as no nation state can practice socialism without having socialists, no nation state, no matter how 'lofty' the promise of capitalism may sound to its lost, hungry and greedy oligarchs, can also succeed on this complex journey without first helping its children to build up 'the capital', or at least, without first fighting for equal and equitable opportunities in the world markets which, by capitalism's imperialistic nature, never happens without 'a drastic change' engineered by that particular state on its own terms anyway – the lopsided WTO negotiations for all these years and how China charted its own cause towards global economic dominance today sum this up.

In fact they, the NDC and NPP, reject Thomas Paine's commonsensical proposition to any enslaved group of people that “the power which has indefinitely subdued us is of all others, the most improper to defend us”, much as they have discarded Warren Bennis' proven truth that the West often “have a love affair with the manipulative ethos”.

Again, the NDC and NPP are extremely indifferent towards John Perkins' self-confessed crime (by the western world) that “... what we were perpetuating through this new, highly subtle form of imperialism was the financial equivalent of what we had attempted to accomplish militarily in Vietnam. If Southeast Asia had taught us that armies have limitations, the economists had responded by devising a better plan, and the foreign aid agencies and the private contractors who served them (or more appropriately, were served by them) had become proficient at executing that plan”.

And even worse, they do not understand F. Scott Fitzgerald's timeless admonition to the leadership of any disillusioned nation that “Either you think – or else others have to think for you and take power from you, prevent and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.”

In other words, the NPP and NDC should have, as George Washington once wrote in a letter to the US Congress, known that “it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest”, much as J. F. Kennedy's self-evident principle of life - “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names” - should have become their watchwords.

But these time-tested emancipatory truths obviously, are not worth even an ounce on the respective leadership scales of the NPP and NDC.

Indeed, these honest pieces of advice are not mere pan-African effusions from some green-eyed 'freedom fighters' in the jungles of Africa seeking for political validation to lord over their own for our stick-in-the-mud stooges of the western world to even begin to doubt the true motives of their dispensers.

In any case, if the NPP and NDC ever had a sense of purpose beyond who merely received the Mo Ibrahim Award, then Mo Ibrahim's counsel, based on his personal experience with the western world, should have indeed, served as a lighthouse to the starless midnight of our subjugation on the turbulent sea of the long struggles against the slave masters of the world.

According to Mo Ibrahim, “even before the economic downturn, most financial institutions were not interested in investing in sub-Saharan Africa in a sustained manner, despite the fact that for the past 10 years the rate of growth has exceeded that of Europe. It is implausible that they will be interested now.”

“I ran a successful mobile phone business in Africa that was profitable and ran according to the highest standards of corporate governance, but we failed to raise any tangible finance from the same banks that were investing endless funds into the US sub-prime market. Shortly before Celtel was sold, to raise less than $200 million in debt, we had to pledge telecoms operations in 14 countries across the continent, generating $1 billion in annual revenue. Those same banks lent $2.5 billion of the 3.4 billion to a Kuwaiti firm to buy the same asset. For now, financial markets do not understand Africa. This must change.” - Daily Graphic, Friday, June 5, 2009 – Pg 7.

And this is coming from a man who is supposed to be part of that 'engine' in the only rickety vehicle of economic growth the NPP and NDC see on the political economy management road of Ghana and Africa! May be it is even needless to say that it is the NPP and NDC and for that matter the current African leadership, including Mo Ibrahim, who rather do not still understand western financial markets. Because, our nation's founding father and the architect of the African Integration Struggle wrote extensively, in his eternal “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism” book, about how the western world, through its manipulation of the international finance capital system, often, shifts the goal posts on the pitch of Africa's economic and cultural resurgence by 'having the stranglehold of its monopolies perpetuates the paradox of Africa: poverty in the midst of plenty'.

And it is, as Mo Ibrahim's personal experience does confirm to us, therefore, implausible that the western world generally wants to give Africa a dog-chance to be free unless a truly united Africa acts boldly and pragmatically on her own accord.

But, this also, is not to suggest by any stretch of imagination, that every single westerner wants to rob the African of his dignity; and obviously, not every westerner is a direct beneficiary or even an originator of Africa's recent cultural and economic demise.

Indeed, quite a number of western nationals have become avowed well-wishers and co-labourers in the vineyard of Africa's progress since our decolonization days just as much as some misguided Africans, on the contrary, have rather become the Achilles' heels of our continent's resurgence.

To wit, one's allegiance to the African cause in the 21st century is not necessarily based on his skin colour or geographic location, as clearly shown by the leadership of both NPP and NDC respectively, in recent years. And truly, some westerners have demonstrated their commitment to the African cause, oftentimes through countless genuine opportunities thrown at individual African citizens and governments to work out their own salvation of finding meaning and purpose for their personal lives as well as for their respective countries.

These 'conscious citizens' of the West even do occasionally risk their lives by staging violent protests to put forward the heartbreaking stories of Africa and other enslaved peoples of the word deliberately, written in accordance of with the collective dictates of western domestic and foreign policies before the seared conscience of their national leaders, particularly at the self-absorbed political and economic fora organised by the latter.

Western pop stars have genuinely sung out Africa's enslavement and starvation experiences; and its celebrities have walked against the continent's unwarranted debt obligations to their respective governments. Africans have married some of them, and some of them have also married Africans, accounting for a good number of Africa's sons and daughters with mixed cultural heritage and brotherhoods.

Moreover, its well-known selfish and predatory nature notwithstanding, I also concur that western civilization holds the patents to some important 'development constructs' that have become the fundaments of man's progress, and for which we Africans only need to modify them in addition to our own-made 'development constructs' to suit our peculiar challenges.

And without a doubt, some western liberal educational institutions ironically, did sharpen some of the “Iron like Lion in Zion” of the African liberation movements.

However, all these efforts of these genuine 'partners of freedom' from the West, although very much appreciated, are yet to meaningfully yield far-reaching results in the life of the average African today.

Hardly have their unbigoted sentiments and moral effusions which are occasionally punctuated with personal acts of magnanimity towards Africans, really altered the mindsets and hearts of general western leadership even as the West collectively keep on adopting new strategies and tactics to rob from Africa, often with the support of Africa's own leadership. Indeed, the smoke screens of the western world's solemn fights for republicanism across the world are not in anyway in line with the thinking patterns of its 'silent majority' which consciously subordinate its 'natural intelligence' to its 'overriding practical interests and purposes' that ultimately seek to constantly venerate the vicious and imperialistic motives of general western leadership.

Thus, 'the silent majority' of the western world, by its daily actions and inactions, still strongly shows common conviction that its progress must unavoidably come at the expense of that of Africa just as the promise of western enlightenment thinkers centuries ago, was strictly constricted to 'God's white children only' across the world (Haiti's independence experience exemplifies this better).

That is, in order for economic independence to exist for them (westerners) as masters, Africans had to remain dependent on them as their servants; that the temperate grapes of western freedom must necessarily be plucked from the tropical vines of Africa's enslavement even as the west still crudely paints Africa's positioning in the current globalised world with its zero-sum brush of racial and cultural superiority, Obama's landmark election to the White House notwithstanding.

And to this end, nothing has really changed in the life of the modern African to really believe in the illusion that the joint heirs of the French, British, Spaniards, Portuguese and Belgians of yesteryears who, for obvious reasons, enslaved Africa's children; scrambled for her resources and vehemently opposed Haiti's independence as well as Africa's decolonization process under Chapter XI of the UN Charter now in truth, do wish Africa well; but the NDC and NPP as well as their likes across Africa still do!

Yes, Africans would still have to deal with the slave masters of old whose god's name is still spelt Deceit in a new globalised world!

But how does the historical 'high-maintenance friendship' mistakenly stroke between our forefathers and that of our supposed 'development partners' centuries ago, mean anything to the policy makers of NPP and NDC-led governments, when they sit in the negotiated markets with these direct heirs of the main actors of Africa's predicaments, and bargain for Africa's share of the world's fortunes often created through her painful experiences; and her contributions to the world's misfortunes mainly born out of the provable excesses of the western world?

Indeed, we as a people deserve more than being permanently, turned into the palm wine tappers in this so-called global village by the 'developed' world and we must therefore make every effort to fight against and change this western pigeonholing.

But sadly, both the NPP and NDC leadership, even with the benefit of hindsight into our immediate post-colonial experiences and also in the face of awesome present evidence, are just not ready to extricate the nation Ghana and the larger African continent from “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” of being beggars in the midst of our own riches.

They - NPP and NDC - have knowingly and conveniently urged us on as a people to live only for today, and also under the mere vagaries of permanent western munificence, which as its pre-condition, rather makes us strive to endear ourselves to the Western world by taking more dosages of its prescribed venomous social, cultural, economic and political tranquilizers, certain to daze the ever noble aspirations of this nation and for that matter, that of the African continent.

And as a result, they have at best, succeeded in consistently running our political economy for the benefit of the certificated-but-often-lazy-in-thinking-and-in-action one-tenth of the population, whilst the masses wallow in a devil-may-care despondency; and at worst, their governance style ensures that the milk and honey of Ghana, our motherland, belong only to the children and protégés of their leadership.

THE IMPRINTS OF NPP AND NDC The NPP, for example, frittered away about one trillion Cedis on Ghana@50 Celebrations (needless to say what the celebrations were meant for), only to invite Vodafone into the country to confirm that we, as a people, still cannot not think on our own and are therefore incapable of achieving anything good since Nkrumah was given a sack from our national life by their 'tradition' with the support of Western imperialists.

And even though the leadership of NPP had every fanciful reason why Vodafone had to take over Ghana Telecom in its sleeves, it is obvious that they 'covertly', gave Ghana Telecom away to Vodafone so that they alone could live that narrow, poverty-of-ambition, 'platinum life' promised by the beatitudes of western corporatocracy, much as they characteristically, followed the broad Danquah-Dombo-Busia road of unrestrained selfish and predatory opportunism, which unarguably, sealed the otherwise bright future of millions of Ghanaian citizens and generations yet unborn in the ever profitable telecommunication industry as envisioned in our founding father's dreams.

Indeed, we did not need the best of our 'rocket scientists' to use Albert Einstein's energy-mass relativity formula to show to us that our SSNIT pension fund, far from being gambled away in casinos and the hospitality industry by the Kuffour-led NPP government, could, at least, have been invested in Ghana Telecom to lay those golden eggs for our future, especially after the incidental one trillion Cedi golden jubilee celebration of our supposed independence.

For, British Petroleum with all its challenges, after all, is constantly being propped up with the pension funds of the British people - who also have a huge stake in Vodafone - in order for them to make enough 'capital' to support an ancillary 'corporate social responsibility programme' like 'fighting against maternal death' in Ghana!

Of course, the NPP leadership, with incorrigible support of our media moguls, made the gold deposits in Obuasi irrelevant to the realisation of the Ghana's independence dream; sold the assets of Ghana Airways in the name of liquidation to themselves and their imperialist friends from the US even after signing away our rights as a nation in a non-extradition treaty with the US government; bartered acres of our independence avenue lands - such a priceless heirloom - in return for scholarships packages for their children from a religious sect in the US; auctioned the SSB to the French; told some Norwegians to decide if Ghanaians should live or die by given them our water (which they claim is life) to be mismanaged for us; deadened the hopes of our local fishermen, poultry, shea butter, cotton and rice farmers at the behest of World Bank/IMF/EU and G-whatever, and still had the audacity to tell us to “Believe in Ghana”!

The NPP leadership built more mansions on state lands for themselves than the “So Far So Good' model senior high schools they spoke of in their recycled manifestos and in their various national budgets they hurriedly put together to give us a false sense of hope year after year.

And they, with a warped sense of judgment, also thought it was more expedient for Ghana to purchase laptops from the US for every school-going Ghanaian child, even when a lot of these school children, especially in rural Ghana had neither classrooms to study in nor seats to sit on in their classes where rooms existed, not to talk about the indefensible gap in the teacher-student ratio, especially at the public basic, junior and senior high schools across the country - some of our school children even in the nation's capital Accra spend only four tuition hours a day in the classroom because of the shift-system which still exists in our public basic schools.

Building up and maintaining these millions of laptops right here in Ghana or Africa however, could at least, have created the much needed employment opportunities for our youth and also save the nation/continent from 'capital flight'. But that obviously, did not occur to an NPP governance team with a “Positive Change” Agenda for Ghana and Africa.

In fact, of the all the Presidential Special Initiatives of the NPP-led government for the good people of this nation, only the one which required mere talking in an air-conditioned room for the cameras without much thinking and practicality, noticeably, stood the test of time!

And it is therefore, unthinkable that the NPP which by its posturing clearly thinks no Ghanaian/African can ever manage any state establishment, paradoxically, strongly believe only its 'tradition' can give us economic freedom when its adherents are in charge of the nation's affairs!

The story of the NDC, on the other hand, is full of shocking complexities and ignorant contradictions, and particularly so because of its origins.

Nonetheless, both NDC 1 and NDC 2 governments have also wasted billions of the Ghanaian taxpayer's Cedis during the Ghana@40 and Nkrumah's Centenary Celebrations just to prove to the world that “Truly, Nkrumah Never Dies” because of the noble ideas and ideals he promoted especially for Africa, whereas the NDC intrinsically, is dead to the said ideas and ideals.

The NDC 1 administration was really a true sad labyrinth of a leadership tale since Rawlings himself is said to have lamented at the latter stages of his government thus: “My government has done every thing the IMF/World Bank/EU said we must live by, but my people are still poor”.

The truth is, Rawlings and his team, although full of passion to get something worth-mentioning done for the nation amidst revolutionary rhetoric and gestures, it is obvious, played by the imperialism textbooks published by western destabilizing institutions but never by the commonsensical pragmatism notes prepared by the nation's founding father.

And thus, with Rawlings as the western-contracted auctioneer, religious bodies bought over some of the nation's factories as part of their real estate empires here on Earth, whilst the foreign 'strategic investors' with their local NDC party activists as partners, eventually turned our assembly lines into mere warehouses for 'cheap' foreign imports, all as part of Rawlings' ill-informed 'Marshal Plan' to improve supposed unproductive state ventures with deliberate unemployment schemes and later mitigate the nation's economic downward spiral with more less-value-for-money agreements with the enemy.

That notwithstanding, the leadership of NDC 2, without much deep thinking, also quickly rushed to the decoys of western corporatocracy in Brazil and the South Korea to be conscripted into that large army of neo-colonial watchmen over the general 'developed' world's imperial agenda in Africa, just for the sidepiece of the economic trumperies such cheap and lazy symbiotic alliances easily offer the leadership of current African governments and their henchmen.

NDC 2 is, in fact, reading to the nation Ghana from the same page NDC 1 left on the neo-colonial grand piano, as its decision to sell out the CPP-government built Abosso Glass and Kumasi GIHOC Shoe Factories to the 'highest bidders' echoes the classical music of Rawlings' auctioning orchestra, which ultimately, perpetuates the culture of turning our great nation into a mere supermarket for foreign manufacturing firms whilst a swarm of unemployed Ghanaian and African youth lived in doldrums for the rest of their lives.

The last time I checked however, Libya, among other African countries, had billions of dollars lodged in European banks, which under certain win-win conditions - which requires a little bit thinking though – could, for example, be given out to Ghana to design and build our own National Housing project as well as engaged in mechanised farming on our own terms.

The huge profit margin on such internal economic partnerships would have at least stayed in Africa as part of our conscientious efforts to stem the illicit flows of the continent's finances to the developed world, which is conservatively estimated to be US$1.8 trillion between 1970 and 2008 - more than enough to wipe of Africa's total outstanding external debt of only $250 billion (December 2008 estimates) and leave over US$1 trillion for poverty alleviation and economic growth without depending on any aid/grant from phony development partners who have proven to be anything but 'friends of Africa'.

Again, I do not know who did the research on 'the positive correlation between teachings in local languages and children's performance in the classroom or during examinations', especially when the examination questions are not set in local languages; and most importantly, which organisation paid for the said research for it generates such heat among its adherents.

But, contrary to the Chief Examiners' reports that most of our children often tend to write their exams in languages that are neither western nor African much as they have difficulty understanding the questions as well as putting their thoughts on paper in the Ghanaian/African English language the examination questions are set, the NDC 2-led government, with the ever-present support of USAID, is rather creating more towers of Babel in the thinking and understanding of our children by promoting a worn out, resource-wasting state policy of using of some local languages as the foundation of our public education system.

Whatever the case may be, US citizens, due to their enormous racial and ethnic differences, speak and write in different languages more than the citizens of any other nation in the world. But how many of such languages are being used as the foundation of the American public education system as a means to improve education across America, and for which the US tax payer is footing the bill?

Yet, the NDC 2-led government has obstinately, refused to see either the grand old 'confuse, divide and conquer ways' of the enemy or the wisdom in the African experience of old that it is only when one consistently and persistently, pass out urine at a particular place before he is likely to see foam for his performance.

In the US, and I guess, all across the world over, the time-tested evidence of educational reforms that work ultimately for school children and the taxpayers, and which must rather be the preoccupation of NDC 2-led government, according to President Obama, are: “a more challenging and rigorous curriculum with emphasis on math, science, and literacy skills; longer hours and more days to give to children the time and sustained attention they need to learn; early childhood education for every child, so they're not already behind on their first day of school; meaningful, performance-based assessments that can provide a fuller picture of how a student is doing; and the recruitment and training of transformative principals and more effective teachers.”

And Obama is also in accord with the universal truth that “the single most important factor in determining a student's achievement is who the child's teacher is” and not whether his father speaks and teaches his native Akan, Ga or Hebrew language to that child at home, or whether we merely change the children's school uniforms and rebrand their names but not at least, improve the brand images of the schools as the NPP-led government did with its obtuse educational reforms. (The Audacity Of Hope/ Opportunity – Pg 161).

It is quite reasonable, however, that a nation which is supposed to serve as the nucleus of Africa's unification and economic emancipation would strategically, rather spend part of its resources - in a joint private-public venture, and sometimes even outside the formal educational setup - in the teaching and learning of Swahili, Hausa, French, Arabic and Chinese in addition to our official language, Ghanaian/African English only to her children, since majority of the African populations see these languages as common denominators across the continent and among the world business community today.

For, much as we are often tempted to be proud of our individual ethnic origins as the source of our 'Africaness, the hard truth is that none of our so-called native ethnic languages that seem to divide us more than they unite us truly, goes beyond even all the regional borders of our nation state for us to waste one Ghana Cedis of the tax payer's money on as a means of instruction to our children in our public schools.

And any unofficial holding on to these local languages as the lingua franca of this nation arguably, does only one thing: the deepening of the artificial divides long created by the once slave master across the Africa Continent based on the differences in our over 2000 ethnic languages.

That is, our true identity in this 21st century - if we are to survive as a true one nation, one people with a common destiny to help free the African continent at last - must be the total Ghanaian/African identity and not that of the sectionalist Akan, Ga, Ewe, Dagomba, Mamprusi, etc as being projected by the NPP and NDC-led governments today.

OUR FUTURE In fact, where is the pan-African Dream of the nation's founding father who sought to help forge out a united and peaceful self-reliant Ghana on an anvil of self-determination with a constantly maintained nexus joined to the hip of the larger dreams of the African Continent?

What motivations really inform decisions made by the average Ghanaian in his daily life of sweat and anguish, as he looks on helplessly, whilst his noble expectations on his own God-given land are eternally deferred?

And how come the future of successive generations of Ghanaians, is now being permanently mortgaged on daily basis by the leadership of both NPP and NDC who without much of a conscience, feel that the doctrine of self-determination by our founding father must permanently be prostrated by the blows of self gratifications, inordinate personal ambitions and western-instructed, poverty-acclimatizing lessons, sexed up to conveniently consign the African to the way things are – the wretched of the earth - instead of the way things ought to be - the princes of the world - on his own land full of wealth?

Doubtless, the précis of Ghana's post-Nkrumah/CPP state-of-affairs report, especially since the NDC and NPP begun their I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-my-back political stagecraft under 1992 'democratic' Constitution, and which also reflect generally across Africa, speaks for itself:

That nothing has really changed for the Ghanaian voter with whose ever-increasing taxes private hospitality industries are conjured, foreign expensive school fees are paid for, state assets are given away for a song, mansions are built, SUV's are insured and ex gratia payments are secured by the first families and their looting brigades;

That the challenges to most of the nation's social, cultural, political and economic establishments rather seem to have become too mountainous to overcome, whilst a greater number of the citizenry stand in the valley of hopelessness.

That the ease with which the Ghanaian is able to live in 'chaos, filth and stench' - the hallmarks of all indiscipline - from the Capital, Accra, to the various Metropolises, Municipals and Districts across the country in this 21st century simply tells a story of a people without a shepherd and a conscience in a dysfunctional 'democratic' local government system.

That the way and manner important official documents including, national ID Cards, driving licenses and passports are easily acquired by unqualified persons with influence, and business regulations and standards are feebly enforced by mandated government institutions confirm that the safety of the citizenry mean nothing to the current leadership of the nation.

That our collective security as a nation is still a mirage to the extent that recruits into various security agencies of the country, for varied reasons, have enormous difficulty buying into the 'individual sacrifice, common good' precept of the nation's founding father;

That the ultimate aim of our criminal justice system - which has apparently, become the raw material of money, power and fame for its 'shareholders' - is to increasingly make the Ghanaian society less safe for law abiding citizens by actively fostering human rights violations, extra judicial arbitrations and crime recidivisms, even as our judiciary, in exercising their discretion, mostly resolves the doubts in favour of the minority have's against the majority have-not's and also as the nation's 'political monarchs' who engage them may so dictate;

That our public education policy craftsmen as well as the teachers in most of our public basic educational institutions that are supposed to serve as the true foundations of our progress, are far less convinced about the prospects of their products and are therefore, extremely anxious about enrolling their own sons and daughters in these same public schools which apparently, have become sources of their teach-to-the-text-and-just-finish-the-month paycheques, much as our higher institutions of learning kill too many a talent, defer so many hopes and nurture great number a failure with poverty of ambition in life;

That over half a century into our nation's independence we still waste billions of dollars - at foreign embassies, and board their airlines into their least-rated educational institutions - which could have been used to build and improve our own ark of ivy league centres of training, research and learning against the torrential floods of foreign paternalism and its associated brain drain at the expense of the African continent;

That our media and the art and culture industry - the most powerful tools for shaping lives as well as visions and missions of even generations of Ghanaians/Africans yet come - often look after foreign interests, entrench negative enculturation, dramatise ignorance and superstitions cloaked in traditionalism and religion, glorify mediocrity, extol the 'virtues' of alcoholism and instant gratifications, especially among our youth, as well as promote violent and sex-sells projects and programmes to our children all in the name of free speech, media education, talents hunting, entertainment and marketing communications, whist the Media Commission and Commission for Arts and Culture gleefully watch on approvingly;

That the managers of our health system are rather less enthusiastic about meeting an integrated, cost effective healthcare needs of the citizenry and instead, only provide more entrepreneurial opportunities to western pharmaceutical conglomerates from Washington to New Delhi, that specialize in the manufacturing of fake and substandard drugs for third world countries and their local agents, as well as promotes investment opportunities to the growing cabal of mercantile spiritual/herbal consultants with an 'unction of healing' across the country.

That our parliament is progressively becoming the casino of Western, Asian and Middle East interests, especially as our corporate and investment laws are eventually written by their neo-colonial political lobbyists and economic gougers who determine the extent to which our national budgets are 'supported' by their governments at the same time as our self-serving MPs' campaign funds are brought up to the brim towards subsequent elections; That the best among the nation's auditors and tax men have now become part of the larger fraud, tax evasion and money laundering experts for self-serving Ghanaians and their business entities as well as for general western corporatocracy whose agenda is to rob out Africa's eyes of wealth blind;

That our political economy is still inundated with the buy-and-sell petty 'bourgeoisies' who – often through no fault of theirs - have basically become parts of the contraptions with which the 'developed' world fine-tunes its discordant sound of capitalist imperialism into the ears of the nation's children;

That the nation's banking and other financial institutions mainly owned by anti-pan African interests openly, steal from our hand-to-mouth peasant farmers, fishermen and market women as well as kill too many an initiative of even well-run indigenous Ghanaian and African SMEs with their usurious and profiteering accounting systems and processes which often makes the ill-advised IMF and World Bank loan facilities the West baits African governments with looks like gifts from God;

That thanks to the all-in-all-out, more-catholic-than-the Pope liberal economic policies of the NPP and NDC, our nation has not only become the dumping ground of western, Asian and Middle East shoddy goods and services, but also the very graveyard of foreign civilizations even as Ghana among other African countries, also get to be at the receiving ends of western orchestrated financial and health crises, environmental pollutions, and the ubiquitous global warming;

That although they are yet to help build a single major industry or any meaningful trans-generational asset for posterity, the nation's natural resource exploratory and divestiture of national assets laws are still being written – based on exploitative western legal templates - by the NPP/NDC and their supposed economic and legal luminaries with the object aim to make only their families and crony capitalists westernized among the flotsam and jetsam in the tributaries of African life canalized for us by the western slave master.

That the nation's 'bureaucrats', 'technocrats' and 'consultants', as a surest means to also secure and preserve their own, have unashamedly developed 'the entitlement mentality' too, and therefore, easily inosculate with our existing breed of sectionalist, “red carpet, chandeliers and wine-happy, money-grabbing, philandering” and award-loving, winner-take-all political entrepreneurs, instead of being that vanguard of value-for-money, people-centred, planned infrastructure, systems and processes that seek to master nature, as well as harness the best in, on, of and around our lands in a genuine effort to give real meaning to the self-determination struggles of our nation and the larger African continent in a record time;

That more of our country's capital is frittered away by the leadership of NPP/NDC in the name of groping for non-snaring western, Asian and Middle East capital which hardly comes to our Capital, Accra, let alone reach our thousands of villages sprawled across the country;

That although many of our sister States in Africa are part of the primary source of the energy needs of the world today, the energy supply to our country is still as erratic as the transportation system and industrial setups meant to provide descent jobs and good standards of living for our citizenry;

That drug and human trafficking, piracy and counterfeiting, illegal migration and prostitution, fraud and illegal mining, as well as gunrunning and armed robbery are apparently, by default, becoming the 'redemptive paired crimes' of the Ghanaian youth today even as he flounders in the dark for the practice of the employment opportunities his half-baked, institutionalized, western-acclimatizing, FCUBE/WASSC/tertiary syllabus with no sense of direction promised.

This staggering summary clearly, shows how almost impossible it is for the average Ghanaian today to get to know a meaningful 'pensionable life' even as the monopolistic contractual life insurance policy he currently holds with his insurance brokers – NPP/NDC leadership and western imperialism – evidently insures only the brokers but not the intended insured.

And the Ghanaian/African, by all thinking, therefore, pays more for the least opportunities in the world, as a maze of these contributory factors of low life expectancy makes him constantly question the purpose of a rugged life with longevity of a lighted candle in the 'jungles' of Africa.

THE MANDATE OF THE CPP
“Rallying round me all those who genuinely wished for progress I resisted both the opportunist element and the reactionary forces and sought to establish the CPP as the democratic instrument of the people's will and aspirations” – Kwame Nkrumah

The CPP founded by Dr. Nkrumah, on the contrary, is characteristically, meant to be that revolutionary, nationalist movement which thinks as a party of action, and acts as a party of thought. It is, in fact, meant to be the party of progressive, pragmatic masses deeply steeped in the black man's creative effort to get rid of 'the white man's burden' as well as the shackles of the African 'natural ruler', irrespective of our over-amplified historical ethnic divisions, man-made religious dissimilarities and differential positions on the rungs of the social and economic ladders of life.

This CPP, for example, envisaged and strongly advocated for a free, united, trained Ghanaian and other African scientists and engineers working in state-of-the-art laboratories and assembly lines across the continent to deal with the challenges confronting us and the rest of humanity on our own terms, long before western hit men, financial institutions and media moguls clandestinely, stage-managed the 2010 FIFA World Cup for us on African soil.

And by extrapolation, a CPP-led government of Ghana, based on its proven-record of proactive, people centred approach to development, would have long made the treatment of the malaria pandemic - still the main cause of death of our people and the loss of productive hours among the citizenry - free across the country and Africa, as well as helped to complete the search for malaria vaccines and possibly that of the HIV/AIDS scourge, long before the World Health Organisation - which mostly promotes the interests of western pharmaceutical businesses - ordered us to waste our taxpayer's money on an expensive N1H1 National Immunization Programme which in some cases brought death to our people. But these walls of our freedom, as a nation-state and to some extent a continent, was indeed, breached ever since the 'natural rulers' and their 'spin artists' shouted based on flawed assumptions, that Nkrumah was the idol-worshiper, dictator who 'dreamt all the African dreams and saw all the African visions only for the new Nation Ghana, to take the resultant collateral damage'.

Nkrumah's detractors made us believe – through western sponsored educational textbooks - that he was that power-drunk Saul of Ghanaian Politics who singlehandedly, took us to the road of communist Damascus and therefore, had had his vision of a freed, united Africa blighted out by the shinning lights of Christian 'redeemers', 'progressives,' 'saviours', 'patriots' and 'democrats' whose true allegiances, it eventually turned out, were undoubtedly, to their bellies and their neo-colonial masters only, but certainly not to the God they claimed they knew better!

But Nkrumah, his demonization by these 'white goats among black sheep' notwithstanding, was, with time, rather vindicated as the down-to-earth Paul of Africa who had had an encounter with 'how to do God's work here on Earth' with the CPP, and therefore had become all things to the black race and all the other exploited people of the world “that they may be saved”.

For Nkrumah knew about the sense of shame and dependency syndrome we as a people, were likely to permanently spawn, should we continued to rely on the 'Good Samaritan' who incidentally, happened to be the same robber on the Jericho Road to our freedom. And thus, he sought to do something about the said Jericho Road so that the robber did not get to us in the first place for us to even require his aid afterwards.

Nkrumah definitely knew that the enemy would later, come in like a flood from different directions and overwhelm us. And he rightly thought he and his generation therefore, needed to intelligently set a standard against it, as he consistently maintained the principles of how the foundations of a Blackman's political kingdom could be rebuilt within the shortest possible time, but also reasonably varied the methods which worked only at particular times within particular settings in order to achieve the ultimate aim of a free and united nation, a continent and a race.

And be that as it may, Nkrumah became a pragmatic, evolvable leader as much as he was an idealist, revolutionary who understood too well that “to be a man is to be a nonconformist” and that “every people should be the originators of their own designs, the projector of their own schemes, and creators of the events that lead to their destiny - the consummation of their desires”.

But, like a wolf in a sheep's clothing, the post-Nkrumah leadership of this country however, has only managed to cloak itself with pseudo-nationalism, whilst its newly found highway to 'liberation' has always pointed to the cul-de-sac of western imperialism which, incidentally, is enhanced by their acts of national divisiveness and ethnocentric dirigisme.

In fact, we Ghanaians, since the defeatist 1966 coup d'état, and especially under the leadership of both NPP and NDC and their respective traditions, have rather allowed ourselves to be turned into the specimens of Western, Asian and Middle East experiments as part of the 'developed' world's larger scheme to rob us of our dignity as Africans in the new lab of western imperialism – globalised corporatocracy.

And thus, the supposed weavers of Ghana and Africa's fabric of civilization today – NPP and NDC – obviously, give more tuition-based heat of revolutionary talk, but hardly reflect any accompanying intuitional light of emancipatory deed by way of leadership, even as they mostly show their predilection for exterminating only the confluence of effects instead of the tributaries of the causes of the nation's and the African continent's conundrums.

But this must change; and this the good people of this nation shall work together to change, as the red cockerel which is the symbol of the larger Africa's enlightenment and deliverance is indeed, coming home to roost!

GHANA & AFRICA'S GREATEST HERITAGE Truly, I am unequivocally, convinced that only a united Nkrumahist family could get something meaningful done for majority of the good people of this Nation and also lead the way for the larger African continent's economic, social and cultural emancipation. But the million Cedi question is where must the red cockerel roost? Must it roost in the comfortable bosoms of the few half-hearted, self-conceited personalities among the leadership of the current 'custodians' of the Nkrumahist family who oftentimes are more NPP than Kuffour and more NDC than Rawlings in character?

That certainly would not be the change Ghana desperately needs; that would be more of the same!

Yes! The current CPP and PNC must unite. For that is the nation's only hope. But must we unite around mere political opportunists and economic reactionaries, their-likes Dr. Nkrumah resisted at the outset of our true emancipation', or the majority right-thinking Ghanaians who love this nation so much that they are ready to stick their necks out - polling station by polling station, constituency by constituency and region by region (bottom--top approach) - to make sure the years ahead of Ghana and indeed Africa, do not become otiose just like the last 44 years of post Nkrumah era?

The CPP of yesteryears which unreservedly, put laughter in the mouth of the black race worldwide was indeed, built around the youth, students, farmers, market women, teachers and other professional bodies of this nation - the educated and the uneducated for a common purpose; and the Nkrumahist family of today must definitely, do the same in order to change the current circumstances of the Ghanaian and to that extent, the African as envisaged in our founding father's dreams.

But I also have enough humility to accept the fact that this anticipated change can only come to Ghana when all members of the Nkrumahist family, and indeed all right-thinking Ghanaians and students, go back to that timeless blueprint bequeathed to us by our founding father.

Of course, Dr. Nkrumah's blueprint was not in any way related to those of the G8, Bretton Woods institutions and their numerous NGO's and think tanks which, for obvious reasons, plainly seek, at best, to merely rearrange Africa's sufferings and at worst, to increasingly keep them up for her progeny; or that of Tony Blair's 'Commission For Africa' which essentially, seeks to be another addition to the numerous baits attached to the hooks of Western leadership in its injurious political and economic escapades in Africa for over half a millennium.

Nkrumah's blueprint also means more than the master plan by which the UN Millennium Development Goals – which are nothing more than another well thought-out modern palliative care of development signposts for the exploited peoples in the world by the 'developed' nations, and which would not be met by the current NPP/NDC leadership anyway - were designed.

And neither does the blueprint bear any resemblance to the various road maps both the NDC and NPP and their kind of predecessors have often cheerfully, etched for this nation, and for that matter, the Africa Continent, as the only conceivable natural necessities in their insincere and haphazard efforts to actualize something meaningful for Ghanaian citizens, the African people and the larger black race.

Nkrumah's blueprint, instead, was woven with the finest treads of landmark African and universal values and ideals which meet standard principles of statecraft since man signed the first social contract. They included the lighthouse values and ideals of 'self-determination', 'freedom', 'justice', 'common purpose', 'transparency', 'accountability', 'passion', 'patriotism', 'hope', 'love', 'faith', 'sacrifice', 'integrity', 'endurance', 'dignity of work', 'discipline', 'motivation', 'creativity' and 'excellence'.

And this blueprint which is neither communist nor capitalist by nature, was conspicuously, encapsulated in his 'Motion Of Destiny', 'The Eve of The Independence Proclamation'; our 'National Flag', 'The National Anthem', 'The National Pledge', 'The Coats Of Arms', and 'The Independence Arch' - these surely, became the composite bricks with which the 'independence generation' of Ghana started the reconstruction works for a new Africa with dignity as the definitive identity for the black race worldwide.

Dr. Nkrumah's blueprint also became the ever familiar banner of hope which, once again, animated Diaspora Pan-Africanism and the Civil Rights Movements, especially in North America. They attracted W.E.B Dubois – the father of Pan-Africanism - to renounce his US citizenship and communist connections in order to become “the first citizen of Africa”, as it did equally help reinforced the living hope of Martin Luther King Jnr. to dream up, even in his sleepless nights of racial segregation, that someone of a racially mixed parentage like Barack Obama could, on the basis of his character and not merely his skin colour, one day also 'overcome' and become a Commander in Chief of such a centuries-old, predominantly white supremacist-led 'democracy' with a two-faced creed that “all men are created equal”.

Perhaps, Nkrumah, understandably, also did make his own good share of genuine mistakes, as it is the case of every trying-the-untried, particularly in a situation as worse as fighting an entrenched imperialism, ethnocentric bigotry and mental enslavement as a result of long colonial experiences and western clandestine aggressions, and for which successive generations must still correct.

That notwithstanding, Nkrumah - our example to follow - most importantly, lived by the convictions of his thoughts based on this blueprint, or at least, demonstrated his personal commitment to its composites as the rock-solid foundation for rebuilding the African Civilization of old during his lifetime, as his timeless economic development plans and social policies exemplified that.

CONCLUSION Even though the issues confronting Ghana today may not necessarily, be the same as what Dr. Nkrumah and his team of patriots had to grapple with during the independence struggle era, his blueprint for Ghana and for that matter, Africa's resurgence is indeed, eternal. For it is the only way we can solidly secure the future exploits of our children and give real meaning to the sacrifices of our pensioners in their lifetime. Truly, the general Pan-African walls of our freedom may be broken but it is our turn in that amazing Ghanaian story to fix it once again with the best of our heritage – the heritage which clearly shows how we, as a people, could pragmatically develop the capacity and a commitment to rebuild these broken walls, and the willingness to pay the price thereof, which obviously pales in the face of the true freedom our founding father spoke of; to rise up together to defend the sanctity of his independence declaration that our independence is truly meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African Continent!

Yes! Our times may be different, but religiously following this blueprint is the only way a united Nkrumahist Family could stave off the constant play-back loops of reducing the nation's once blazing aspirations of economic and cultural freedom into mere dying embers of wishful thinking (as the NPP and NDC characteristically, are noted for settling for the latter) when the good people of this nation, sooner than later, once again, give the CPP the mandate to re-build these broken walls of our freedom based on the “African Personality” Agenda – the true blueprint for the economic and cultural renaissance of the African Continent and the black race worldwide.

For this is a united Nkrumahist Family's charge to keep, especially for generations of all Africans unborn yet.

Long Live CPP!
Long Live Ghana!
Long Live the African Integration Struggle!
And May God Bless Africa!
BY E. KOFI PANFORD
The writer is a farmer, a publisher, a creative writer, a marketing communications specialist, community organiser and a pan-African Activist who urges for a fresh faith in Ghana's independence dream of becoming a Star of Hope on the African Continent - which still awaits its true consummation. He is also the Executive Director of the Pan-African Youth Parley, an international Nkrumahist youth think-tank which unreservedly, advocates for, and exemplifies equal opportunities, civil rights and proportional responsibilities germane to the African's push for a more dignified life in a better world.

E-mail: [email protected]