Kwame Nkrumah
I | INTRODUCTION |
Kwame
Nkrumah (1909-1972), first prime minister (1957-1960) and president
(1960-1966) of Ghana and the first black African postcolonial leader. Nkrumah
led his country to independence from Britain in 1957 and was a powerful voice
for African nationalism, but he was overthrown by a military coup nine years
later after his rule grew dictatorial.
II | EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION |
Kwame Nkrumah was born in the town of Nkroful
in the southwestern corner of the British colony of the Gold Coast (now Ghana).
Nkrumah was an excellent student in local Catholic missionary schools. While
still a teenager, he became an untrained elementary school teacher in the nearby
town of Half Assini. In 1926 Nkrumah entered Achimota College in Accra, the
capital of the Gold Coast. After earning a teacher's certificate from there in
1930, Nkrumah taught at several Catholic elementary schools. In 1935 he sailed
to the United States to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He graduated
from Lincoln University with B.A. degrees in economics and sociology in 1939,
earned a theology degree from the Lincoln Theological Seminary in 1942, and
received M.A. degrees in education and philosophy from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1942 and 1943.
III | NATIONALIST LEADER |
While studying in the United States, Nkrumah
was influenced by the socialist writings of German political philosopher Karl
Marx, German political economist Friedrich Engels, and Russian revolutionary
leader Vladimir Lenin. Nkrumah formed an African students organization and
became a popular speaker, advocating the liberation of Africa from European
colonialism. He also promoted Pan-Africanism, a movement for cooperation between
all people of African descent and for the political union of an independent
Africa. In 1945 he went to London, England, to study economics and law. That
year he helped organize the fifth Pan-African Congress, in Manchester, England.
This congress brought together black leaders and intellectuals from around the
world to declare and coordinate opposition to colonialism in Africa. At the
congress, Nkrumah met many important African and African American leaders,
including black American sociologist and writer W. E. B. Du Bois, future
president of Kenya Jomo Kenyatta, and American actor and civil rights activist
Paul Robeson. In 1946 Nkrumah left his academic studies to become secretary
general of the West African National Secretariat, which had been formed at the
fifth Pan-African Congress to coordinate efforts to bring about West African
independence. That same year, Nkrumah became vice president of the West African
Students Union, a pro-independence organization of younger, more politically
aggressive African students studying in Britain.
Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast in 1947
when the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), a nationalist party, invited him
to serve as its secretary general. In this capacity he gave speeches all over
the colony to rally support for the UGCC and for independence. In 1948 a
UGCC-organized boycott of foreign products led to riots in Accra, and Nkrumah
and several other UGCC leaders were arrested by British colonial authorities and
briefly imprisoned. In 1948 Nkrumah split with the UGCC leadership, which he
viewed as too conservative in its efforts to win independence, and formed his
own political party, the Convention People's Party (CPP). After organizing a
series of colony-wide strikes in favor of independence that nearly brought the
colony’s economy to a standstill, Nkrumah was again imprisoned for subversion in
1950. However, the strikes had convinced the British authorities to establish a
more democratic colonial government and move the colony toward independence. In
1951 elections for the colonial legislative council, the CPP won most of the
seats and Nkrumah, while still in prison, won the central Accra seat by a
landslide. The British governor of the Gold Coast released Nkrumah from prison
and appointed him leader of government business. The following year he named
Nkrumah prime minister. Reelected in 1954 and 1956, Nkrumah guided the Gold
Coast to independence in 1957 under the name Ghana, after an ancient West
African empire.
IV | RULER OF GHANA |
Nkrumah built a strong central government and
attempted to unify the country politically and to muster all its resources for
rapid economic development. As a proponent of Pan-Africanism, he sought the
liberation of the entire continent from colonial rule, offered generous
assistance to other African nationalists, and initially pursued a policy of
nonalignment with either the United States or the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR). When most other African colonies became independent in the
early 1960s, Nkrumah urged them to unite with Ghana to form a United States of
Africa. His goal was never realized, but his efforts helped bring about the
African Union, which promotes peace and cooperation between African nations. In
1960 Ghana became a republic and Nkrumah was elected president.
Between 1961 and 1966 Nkrumah spearheaded an
ambitious and very expensive hydroelectric project on the Volta River that was
highly successful. He was accused of economic mismanagement in the Volta River
project and several other expensive developmental schemes over this same period.
Nkrumah did not hesitate to use strong-arm methods in implementing his domestic
programs. These measures included passing laws allowing the imprisonment of
political opponents without charge, and dismissing the nation’s supreme court
and pronouncing judgments himself. Although he remained popular with the masses,
his tactics made enemies among civil servants, judges, intellectuals, and army
officers. Nkrumah also fell out of favor with Western powers in the mid-1960s by
courting development aid from the USSR and other Communist states. He was
accused of fostering a personality cult, as his supporters called him
Osagyefo (“the redeemer” or “warrior”), and became increasingly
influenced by government ministers and businesspeople who used flattery to
obtain favorable decisions from him. Assassination attempts in 1962 and 1964
made him grow more and more paranoid; he had numerous critics of his regime
arrested, and in 1964 he declared the CPP the only legal party. While Nkrumah
was visiting China in 1966, his government was overthrown in an army coup.
Nkrumah lived in exile in Guinea, where Guinean president Sékou Touré appointed
him honorary co-president of Guinea. He died in 1972 in Romania while receiving
treatment for throat cancer. Nkrumah's remains were returned to Ghana for burial
in his home town of Nkroful.
V | EVALUATION |
Kwame Nkrumah’s legacy in African history is an
uneasy dichotomy. On the one hand, he was a hero of African nationalism; on the
other, he was one of Africa’s first postcolonial dictators. Despite the
authoritative tone his regime took on, Nkrumah’s positive achievements of
guiding Ghana to independence and helping other African colonies achieve the
same are undeniable. Nkrumah was also a prolific writer; his published books
include Autobiography (1957), Towards Colonial Freedom (1962),
Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965), and Dark Days
in Ghana (1968).
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