Nkrumah Weeps In His Grave

Kwame Nkrumah and former US president, Dwight D. Eisenhower

Kwame Nkrumah is the legendary leader of the African national liberation movement, and one of the main ideologists of Pan-Africanism.

Along with such prominent statesmen of the epoch of the first post-war decade, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesian President Ahmed Sukarno, Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nkrumah stood at the origins of the Non-Aligned Movement.

In May 1945, Nkrumah moved to the UK to continue his education and complete his doctoral dissertation in philosophy. After some time, he becomes a member of the Union of West African Students and was elected the vice-president.

His brilliant organizational skills were clearly manifested during the preparation and holding of the 5th Pan-African Congress, held in Manchester in October 1945.

Kwame Nkrumah was the secretary of the congress organizing committee and the author of one of two important declarations, the first was Dr. U. Dubuis, chairman of the Congress, - "Appeal to the workers, peasants, and intellectuals of the colonial countries."

At the congress, Nkrumah was elected General Secretary of the Working Committee established to implement the adopted program for the liberation of Africa.

In December 1947, Kwame Nkrumah returned to Ghana, where he became general secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention party. The brilliant speaker raised the masses to fight against colonialism in June 1949.

He created his own party, the Convention People's Party, which advanced the slogan “Independence immediately.” Nkrumah was arrested twice, but in the end, his struggle was crowned with victory. In March 1957, the independence of the Gold Coast became a reality known as Ghana today.

On the afternoon of February 24, 1966, at the Beijing Airport, was the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, standing in the cold wind, waiting for the Ghanaian leader and the father of African independence movement, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

Zhou Enlai has received many African leaders but Nkrumah’s visit was a special one, the fact that he was the friendliest leader of China. The coup plotters waited for Nkrumah to leave before he was overthrown.

The coup had just happened a few hours ago, and the plane sent by China to pick him up was still in the sky, therefore Nkrumah knew nothing about it. Zhou Enlai not only wants to inform him of this bad news but worried also how to receive and handle this diplomatic problem.

However, Nkrumah had information that the coup was planned with the help of the CIA and he finally decides to leave the affairs of Ghana alone and concentrate on his future.

After the coup, Nkrumah stayed in Beijing for four days and Zhou Enlai treated him with courtesy, accommodating him at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.

In China, he received a message from his friend, the Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Touré. Sekou Touré assured him that he would not only welcome him but also willing to treat him as a head of state.

Meanwhile, in Ghana, the Ghanaians were jubilating over his topple. Nkrumah was disgraced with his family after the overthrow. Newspapers in Ghana carried humiliating caricatures and cartoons of all creatures, including a snake about Nkrumah. Above all, his statue was broken down and trampled on by jubilating Ghanaians.

Confused and sad Kwame Nkrumah on February 28, left Beijing for Guinea. He never returned to Ghana, until his death in 1972, while receiving treatment after an illness in Romania.

As if Ghana is under a curse, the country’s buoyant rich economy starts declining without any slight knowledge that Ghana will one day be in such a deplorable state.

Successive change of governments, corruption, bad governance and the influence of foreign powers have destroyed the Ghanaian nation without remedy. Economic fluctuations and depressive currency continue to wear down Ghana’s already depressive economy.

In 1983, Ghana was in crisis. Hunger displaced citizens and drove thousands of Ghanaians to other African countries, especially, Nigeria in search of greener pastures. After the military to democratic rule by John Jerry Rawlings, Ghana now has been ruled by two major parties, namely, the NDC and the NPP.

Children trampling on Nkrumah's broken down statue in Accra

As a matter of fact, the political state of Ghana under the two parties hasn’t been very easy for the common Ghanaian. Suffering Ghanaians were calling for a change when the country was under John Mahama, who lost to Nana Akufo Addo. However, some of the same Ghanaians looking for a change have regretted voting for the NPP leader, Nana Akufo Addo.

God only knows how the state of Ghana politics will be in the next ten years. Ghana, which has enjoyed continuous respect because of Kwame Nkrumah, has turned to one of the most politically violent, corruptible, and assassination countries, with confused delusional politicians engaged in projects hoping for miraculous salvation for the country, in the midst of high rate of unemployment, poor environmental hazards and collapsed banking institutions.

Nkrumah is dead and gone but believing in Jesus’ statement: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;" Nkrumah lay in his grave now weeping over the chaotic unnerving political situation in the country he sacrificed his life for.