Nkrumah Was the Consummate Opportunist

He was perfectly aware that his pro-socialist ideological leanings made it highly unlikely for him to be able to seamlessly collaborate with the Grant- and Danquah-led United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). And yet, the young and intensely ambitious Mr. Kwame Nkrumah, by his own autobiographical account, accepted the offer from the leaders of the relatively more conservative, deliberate and methodical UGCC to serve as this seminal political organization’s General-Secretary. We must quickly and emphatically add that however indefatigable he might have been, Nkrumah was the only executive operative of the UGCC who served on a salary. So much for altruistic patriotism!

And, of course, when the chance came for him to outwit his largely unsuspecting and much older benefactors, this ruthless political opportunist struck out without remorse. He would also set up a mechanism to systematically eliminate both his real and perceived political enemies. Even the plagiaristic manner in which he named his new breakaway political party, the so-called Convention People’s Party (CPP), smacked of deep-seated opportunism. But what was even more scandalous was the clearly facile, albeit understandably naïve, manner in which UGCC leaders like Dr. Danquah and Mr. Grant had let him get away with such gaping intellectual property theft in hopes that, somehow, this rhetorically bombastic, cold-calculating con-artist would eventually crash and burn like a failed rocket launch.

It is therefore rather risible for Ms. Samia Yaba Nkrumah, the daughter of Ghana’s most formidable political con-artist par-excellence of the twentieth century, to accuse the leaders of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) of using her father’s memory to launch their self-serving political comeback (See “Opportunistic NDC Supports Nkrumah Just to Score Political Points – Samia” MyJoyOnline.com / Ghanaweb.com 9/21/17). The fact of the matter is that it is all too natural and logical to expect those who claim their political heritage from the man to be equally opportunistic in their political gamesmanship. After all, haven’t they also read and gloated over the opportunistic exploits of their hero against the leaders of the erstwhile United Gold Coast Convention, in both the canonical and apocryphal history books?

Among the Akan, there is that maxim which perspicuously observes that “A crab does not beget a bird.” Fundamentally speaking, there is absolutely no difference between the ideology and operation of both the present-day Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the main opposition National Democratic Congress. Strategically and policy-wise, the leaders of both of these Left-leaning parties are veritable clones. It is also rather amusing to hear Ms. Nkrumah accuse the NDC operatives of unconscionably pursuing economic policies that are unpardonably hostile to the interests of the working poor, such as the divestiture of state-owned enterprises and its attendant crony capitalism, propagandistically projected in the dubious name of social democracy, when one also reckons the fact that as Ghana’s president, Mr. Kwame Nkrumah chose Apartheid South Africa as his favorite and largest trading partner on the African continent.

Ironically, President Nkrumah also claimed to be vigorously working towards the complete overthrow of the Apartheid regime. Now, I don’t know what Ms. Nkrumah thinks of this inescapably conflicted and hypocritical dimension of her immortalized father’s personality. Not that it matters anyhow.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 21, 2017
E-mail: [email protected]