Harkening back to sixty-five years ago
By Charles Quist-Adade, PhD
At 65, Ghana stands at the crossroads of mid-life and “senior citizenship” of nationhood. In the life of a nation, 65 years is but a short time. However, in the lives of its citizens 65 years is a long time indeed. For both the nation and its citizens, it is a time filled with realized and unrealized aspiration, fulfilled and dashed hopes.
It’s, I am convinced, such thoughts of mixed feelings of promise and premonition that filled the heart of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, our pioneer president on Independence Day on March 6, 1957, on the hallowed Old Polo grounds in Accra, the new nation’s capital.
Flanked by his comrades and facing hundreds of thousands of his compatriots, tears streamed down his cheeks as he declared the immortal words: “At long last the battle has ended, and thus Ghana, your beloved country is free for ever… Freedom!”
Those were tears of joy and hope, but also tears of premonition of the peril that lay ahead of him, Ghana, and Africa. Like Moses, Dr. Nkrumah feared he would never see the Promised Land of his country’s independence. He also feared that we would live long enough to his pet dream of an African Union Government come into fruition. But another ominous fear that drew those tears was what former Guinea-Bissau leader, Amilcar Cabral described at Nkrumah’s funeral as “the cancer of betrayal.” Nkrumah feared that his own people would betray him and thus jettison his dream of turning African cities into “the metropolises of science, technology, medicine, education,” and hub of commerce, art, culture and all areas of human endeavour.
Referring to Marcus Garvey, leader of the Back-to-Africa Movement, his hero and from whom he drew so much inspiration, Nkrumah said: “He looked through the world if he could find a government of a black people. He looked through but did not find one. And he said he was going to create one. Marcus Garvey did not succeed. But here today, the dreams of Garvey, Aggrey, Ato Ahuma, Casely Hayford, Toussaint Louverture, and all those who have gone before us have come to reality at this present moment.”
The illustrious African Martinique psychiatrist, writer, philosopher, and pan-Africanist extraordinaire, Frantz Fanon once said: “Every generation, out of obscurity, must discover its mission and either fulfill it or betray it.” The Big Six, and before them, the Yaa Asantewas and legions of valiant Ghanaian patriots discovered their mission and attempted to fulfil it. Their mission was to throw off the colonial yoke of subjugation, exploitation, dehumanization, and humiliation of Africans by European colonialists and slavers.
Nkrumah captured the essence of this mission in the following two noble sayings: “We prefer independence with danger to servitude in tranquility.”
“It is better to govern and misgovern ourselves than to be governed by someone else.” These sayings by Nkrumah are testimonies to the fact that there’s nothing greater and more precious than liberty. Indeed, there is no price to liberty! Although Ghana at mid-life may be suffering “mid-life crisis”; although the price of freedom may seem so costly to some, I dare say we are better off as a free people to “manage or mismanage our own affairs” than to be ruled by someone else.
The question to us, our generation is: Have we discovered our mission? And if we have, have we betrayed or fulfilled it? Our independence leaders fought for the political independence of our country. But that independence turned out to be nominal, in name only in many areas. Some call it “flag and anthem independence.” Our country is still heavily dependent on our former colonial masters, economically and one dares to say, politically. Thus, the mission of our generation and our children’s is to liberate our country economically.
Trans-hemispheric unity
But we cannot do this alone. As we take a step on the next 65 years of our country’s nationhood, let’s rededicate ourselves to the Pan-Africanist and Global Africanist cause Nkrumah lived and died for. Nkrumah once observed: “If in the past the Sahara divided us, today, it must unite us.” In the same vein, I would like to say that if in the past the slave trade, the Atlantic Ocean, and the hemispheres divided us, today they must unite Continental Africans and brethren and sistren in the Diaspora. Let’s therefore, form economic alliance, to build micro-enterprises; let’s build social and cultural bridges between us and our cousins in the Diaspora.
The need for trans-hemispheric unity cannot be over-emphasized. Africa is home to over 1.3 billion people. The economic and commercial potentials of the world’s second largest continent are enormous. Many have pointed to the continent’s vast and untapped natural resources and to the potential wealth that be generated to improve the lots of peoples of both sides of the Atlantic through the creative combination of the skills and talents of People of African Descent in the Diaspora with the natural resources and the underutilized talents and skills of Africans on the continent.
All Africans—continental, African Canadians, African Americans, African Jamaicans, African Brazilians, etc—are bound by a common destiny. The great Pan-Africanist, Dr. Nkrumah declared on Independence Day that, “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked with total liberation of the entire African continent.” The same sentiments were echoed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, when he said of relations between Black American and Africa.” “…we are tied together in a garment of mutuality. What happens in Johannesburg affects Birmingham, however indirectly. We are descendants of the Africans. Our heritage is Africa. We should never seek to break ties, nor should the Africans.”
Today, it can be said in the same vein that the emancipation of Africa from the shackles of colonialism is meaningless unless it is linked with the total liberation of the entire African Diaspora. The reverse is also true, that is, the emancipation of people of African descent from slavery is meaningless, unless it is organically linked with the complete liberation of the continent. For, no person of African descent can walk anywhere in the world chest up and proud until Africa is economically and politically free and prosperous. A prosperous and booming Africa is a boon, not a bane, to all people of African descent.
The pioneers of the African liberation movement and their counterparts in the Pan-Africanist movement in North America and Europe understood this message and took it seriously. Throughout the heady years of Pan-Africanism, Africans on the continent and their cousins in the Diaspora worked together to uplift our peoples.
Pan-Africanism in Practice
Many of the pioneer Pan-Africanists from the Diaspora did not only work together with independence leaders like Jomo Kenyetta, Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, etc. from the continent while they were on sojourn in the West, but many of them also moved following their comrades to Africa to help build their newly liberated countries.
For example, George Padmore from Trinidad was Ghana’s Minister of African Affairs, African American Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois was Nkrumah’s adviser and was working on the Encyclopaedia Africana project until his death in 1963. If it was possible then for Continental Africans and Diasporic Africans to work together it is possible today also.
Nkrumah wrote about the need for “a re-awakening [of] consciousness among Africans and Peoples of African Descent of the bonds that unite us - our historical past, our culture, our common experience, and our aspirations.” Nkrumah also admonished that “the close links forged between Africans and peoples of African descent for nearly a century of common struggle must inspire and strengthen them. For, he continues, although the outward forms of our struggle may change, it remains in essence the same, a fight to death against oppression, racism, and exploitation.” And the late Afro-Guyanese historian, Walter Rodney made the same point when he wrote that: “What we need is confidence in ourselves, so that as Africans we can be conscious, united, independent, and creative. A knowledge of African achievements in art, education, religion, politics, agriculture, medicine, science, and the mining of metals can help us gain the necessary confidence which has been removed by slavery and colonialism.” And Dr. Clarke rightly observed that “If African people are to save themselves, they must first know themselves. They may first know where they have been and what they have been, where they are and the significance of what they are.”
Admittedly, forging a pan-African agenda among peoples of African descent will not be easy. The lack of any meaning cultural communication and cultural links between continental Africans and people of African heritage in the Diaspora has made communication and understanding quite difficult. The greed and misrule of a handful of African leaders is compounded by the Tarzan image of Africa portrayed by the mainstream Western media. The portrayal of Africa as a backward continent of suffocating sunshine, prowling, man-eating crocodiles, and lions and plagued by ending civil strife has led to two devastating consequences: self-hatred and mutual suspicion among peoples of African descent.
Black or African?
Many are embarrassed, to say the least, to be identified with Africa. Some go to all lengths to deny their African heritage. They claim they do not know what their heritage is or how proud they can be of their African heritage.
But such an argument is a red herring. The real reason lies in the fact that much of Africa is in economic throes and socio-political turmoil. Were Africa to be flourishing economically, not many of us would disown the continent. We would all probably be competing to be called African. That is why it is pertinent that Africans in Africa and those in the industrialized West must begin, as a matter of urgency, to build bridges of economic unity. We must begin to forge economic and commercial links through joint ventures. But we must be keenly aware that economic liberation cannot be won without the correct political strategies and programmes. Economics without politics is empty and politics without economics is blind, to paraphrase Dr. Nkrumah.
The Way Forward
Global Africa must act now and boldly! Time has come for what I will call the three Rs of Africa’s political, economic, and cultural Emancipation—the Global Africa Renaissance, Reeducation and Reconscientization Project (GAR3P). The three Rs must aim to decolonize, de-racialize, detribalize, and de-Westernize/Europeanize our educational system. The GAR3P must radically restructure the existing pro-White/European, anti-African educational system, which peddles the falsity of African inferiority and non-contribution to human development and progress. The GARRRP must be a counter-narrative that captures Africa’s enormous contributions to the world’s stock of knowledge in various fields, including, astronomy, mathematics, metallurgy, medicine, engineering and so on historically and contemporaneously, stretching back to Egyptian science and technology.
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