Nkrumah's Ghana and East Africa: Pan-Africanism and African interstate relations 9780838634561, 0838634567

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NKRUMAH’S GHANA AND EAST AFRICA

NKRUMAH’S GHANA AND EAST AFRICA Pan-Africanism and African Interstate Relations

Opoku Agyeman /■ s

$ 1 $

Rutherford • Madison • Teaneck Fairleigh Dickinson University Press London and Toronto: Associated University Presses

94 Needless to say, the Minister of Information’s spirited denials failed to prevail against the charges.95 Nor did Obote’s own contribution to the defense: “We have heard a lot about Ghana . . . and I continue to say . . . this is Uganda. . . .’,96 The right wing of the UPC, known for its lukewarm attitude to PanAfricanism, however, took a different line on the issue. Thus Mr. Grace Ibingira, disturbed that “the interference of some Embassy

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officials had been quite apparent”—that “some foreign embassies were actively engaged in local party politics to the extent of attempting to influence expressions of opinion or the trend of thinking among the local population,” pointed out in September 1964 that the UPC “would not be used as the puppet of any foreign power.” A diplomatic mission’s functions, he continued, were well defined under interna­ tional law and in diplomatic practice. “They did not include meddling in the internal politics of the host state.”97 But Ibingira’s protests, as also those of the Baganda traditionalists, the Opposition DP and the UTUC, did not really matter. For, in the final analysis, as Rosenau reminds us, the boundaries of political systems “are defined by ac­ tivities and processes, not by legalities.”98 All this exposition of Nkrumah’s influence is not meant to lessen the Buganda problem and its contribution to Obote’s wariness toward the East African federation idea. However, even if one were to draw from this a conclusion that Obote’s subscription to Nkrumah’s continentalist logic was not the only crucial element in the equation, that would not detract from Nkrum ah’s ideological impact in the matter. As Nye has observed, “almost as important as whether an ideology is believed is whether it is used.”99 Even if the Ugandans were influenced by factors additional to their amenability to Nkrumah’s continentalism, it is still a reflection of Nkrumah’s pre-eminent influence that Ugandan leaders, seeking to avoid a federation on multiple grounds, could find a way out of their quandary only in Ghanaian idiomatic radicalism. Meanwhile, Nkrum ah’s presence asserted itself in other directions, as the former Parliamentary leader of the Ghanaian Opposition, Dr. K. A. Busia, found to his chagrin when he attended an All-African Church Conference in Kampala. A press conference arranged by the Secretary General of the conference to enable Busia to amplify “the sociological material that he presented” was quickly cancelled by the Ugandan government, which charged that Busia had departed from the theme of the conference by asserting that “nowadays in Africa, besides white oppressing black, there was black oppressing black.” When upon this Busia suggested that the Ugandan government was “frightened” that it might offend N krum ah,100 the Minister of Inter­ nal Affairs retorted furiously: “It ill-becomes Dr. Busia, who is fright­ ened of his country, Ghana, ran away from it, and now lives in exile, to suggest that the people of Uganda . . . are too frightened to allow him to speak. . . .” 101 In the face of the government’s mounting hostility, and amid rumors that he was to be arrested and sent to Ghana to face Nkrumah, Busia stole away from the country, but not before other developments had added a significant side-piece to this fluster of the Ghanaian opposition leader in Kampala. For instance, it was to the

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Kabaka, Buganda’s counterpart of the Asantehene (to whom Busia was firmly bound in politico-traditional sentiment) that the Ghanaian re­ paired for a reception after his repudiation by the Obote govern­ m ent.102 And it was on the self-same day that Busumtwi-Sam’s voice rang out in championship of a one-party system for Uganda, an Nkrumaist prescription that must have jarred on Busia’s ears.103 Aside from the Kabaka, other political Samaritans rose to Busia’s rescue. In a statement on the incident, the Opposition DP said the government’s action in preventing Busia from speaking was “unwar­ ranted” and “dictatorial.” 104 From Kenya, the Secretary-General of the African People’s Party stated that what the Ugandan government had done in denying Busia “the freedom of expression” was “side with one section of the Ghana Community against the other”—a “short­ sighted” thing to do.105 N krum ah’s presence in Uganda survived his fall from power. Prompdy, Obote rallied to the cause of his fallen mentor, all to the detriment of the embatded Ghanaian High Commission.106 In time, Uganda’s “Independence Tune,” acclaimed next to none as the symbol of the country’s future aspirations, became one of the most stimulating avenues for expressing this ongoing Nkrumah-Uganda solidarity. It took on an all too familiar scenario. UPC members would assemble to conduct some business. But before it would start, Milton Apollo Obote would lead the host of the faithful in singing the militant refrain: “With Nkrumah, we are marching forward. . . .” 107

Conclusion We have sought to demonstrate in this chapter that in the areas of national integration, trade unionism, and Pan-African unity, there were hardly any effective boundaries between outputs of the Ghanaian political system under Nkrumah and the responses of the Ugandan society during the Obote era. The direct and authoritative participa­ tion of the Ghanaian High Commissioner, of a “labor attache” , of a “senior Parliamentary legal Draftsman,” and of a Ghanaian linkage organization, the U FL , in Ugandan politics, were to significandy affect the structure and dynamics of the internal political processes of the East African country. In 1962, Uganda had an Independence Constitution entrenched with “feudal institutions” and complete with “the personification of such institutions with individuals and their power, pomp and pres­ tige.” 108 However, in 1970, Obote could say that “when we talk about one people, one country, one government, one Parliament, we are not

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expressing a slogan; we are in effect expressing an achievement and a reality, and a matter of substance” 109—an outcome that had enjoyed more than a little inducement and direct contribution from Ghana, and which was seen as necessary to stave off neocolonialist intrigues that tend, by fishing in the muddy waters of national divisiveness, to draw radical states back from the Pan-African road. In this matter of integration, as in the others, one continued to discern outcomes in Uganda that paralleled Ghanaian precedents. For instance, when The People commented that by the abrogation of the Independence Constitution Obote swept aside “the forces of reaction, of entrenched privilege and of tribal emotionalism . . .” , planting in their place a “new supreme Parliament which does not have to bow to regional assemblies with chiefs sitting in them,” 110 it might have been speaking of the Ghana of the 1960 Republican Constitution. A “penetrated political system”—one in which “nonmembers of a national society participate directly and authoritatively, through ac­ tions taken jointly with the society’s members, in either the allocation of its values or the mobilization of support on behalf of its goals” 111— is usually marked by the unequal and exploitive relationship of a powerful state to a weak one. In this chapter, a novel case was postu­ lated of the penetration of a small state by another small state at the impulsion of a shared ideological vision. Given that Ghana was itself a poor, “newly independent,” economically underdeveloped country, its successful penetration exertions on Uganda, which shared the West African country’s attributes of small size and resource limitations, is a tribute to the transcendent motive force of Pan-Africanist nationalism in the Ghana of the Nkrumah era.

5 Nkrumah and Mboya: “Nonalignment” and Pan-African Trade Unionism Origins of Conflict At the time Nkrumah named Tom Mboya chairman of the All-African Peoples Conference in Accra in 1958, in tribute to the heroism of the Land and Freedom Army, it seemed least likely that the two of them— the Pan-Africanist leader and his Kenyan protege—would soon move into bitter antagonism over the issue of Pan-African trade unionism. Yet, by the end of the conference, the seeds of just such a discord had been sown, for it was at this very conference that Nkrumah spurred the desire for Pan-African trade unionism—for the establishment of a single All African Trade Union Federation (AATUF)—a proposal that, while at first receiving the unanimous support of delegates, was soon to run into strong opposition from Mboya and his supporters on account of its insistence on the disaffiliation of national trade union centers from non-African labor internationals. Thus was the 1961 Casablanca inaugural meeting of the federation itself characterized by angry scenes and walkouts. Colin Legum has observed that this issue was “the source of the angriest of all divisions in the Pan-African front” 1, and this is largely true.

Interpretations of “Nonalignment” The division itself, in the final analysis, boiled down to a conflict over different interpretations of nonalignment2 and, throughout the continent, came to be symbolized by the positions taken by Nkrumah on the one hand, and Mboya on the other. For all that, it is to be noted that at the early stages before shifts in emphasis gave rise to new conceptions, both leaders appeared to share a similar bipolar view of the world—that of the cold war ideological bifurcation—that argued a posture of “equidistance” from both the “Western bloc” and the

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“Eastern bloc.” Nonalignment, as Nkrumah saw it, was a political doctrine “that came into existence as a protest and a revolt against the state of affairs in international relations caused by the division of the world into opposing blocs of East and West.” With “East” and “West” two power blocs of roughly equal strength poised, it seemed, on the brink of nuclear warfare, “there appeared to be reprieve for the world only in the holding of a balance of power by some third force which would prevent either of the two sides from starting a major war.”3 In other words, given the constant threat of universal destruction posed by the two antagonistic blocs, the point was that “the more unaligned nations there are, the wider the noncommitted area of the world, the better the chances of human survival.”4 When the industrial and military power concentrated behind the two great powers in the cold war was surveyed, it became clear to Nkrumah that no military or strategic act of Africa could “make one jot of difference to this balance of power, while our involvement might draw us into areas of conflict which so far have not spread below the Sahara.” Africa did not wish to be involved. In addition, it was clear that Africa could not affect the outcome. But above all, “we believe the peace of the world in general is served, not harmed, by keeping one great continent freed from the strive and rivalry of military blocs and cold wars.”5 Besides, it was the case that, as to the issues between the “East” and “West” , “neither bloc could claim to be permanently right or permanently wrong. . . .”6 Africa, in sum, “could not afford to face either the East or West but rather forward towards her indepen­ dent development.”7 “Neutralism” or “positive non-alignment,” to Mboya, meant that African states would not take sides permanently or automatically with either the U.S. or the Soviet Union. Another aspect of African neu­ tralism, as he saw it, was “its rejection of military alliances with either East or West, and its refusal to have military bases on African soil.” This policy, he said, was followed not only so that African states could protect Africa from embroilment in an East-West conflict—“If they had one side’s bases on their soil, they would be an immediate tar­ get”—but also so that they would be free to censure the foreign and military policies of any nation when they deserved censure. Econom­ ically, neutralism “allowed African states to determine for themselves what was their best program without being committed to any foreign nation, and so having to accept its direction” : They are able to trade with East and West alike, and so create for them­ selves an economy which is not based on the circumstances in another particular area. In the period of economic reconstruction, we can avoid the

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hangovers of colonial days when we were forced to pursue Western eco­ nomic theories and build a structure of their design.8

Since politics and economics are intertwined, the African states receiv­ ing European Economic Community (EEC) development fund money would find the package “necessarily tied with French bows and strings.” If Africans did not practice neutralism, “they would in the early years of independence find themselves drawn deeper and deeper into the political network of other nations and would never have room to develop their own institutions and economic systems.”9 All these amount to a shared conception between the two leaders of a bipolar international system and the imperative of equidistance. Yet the extrapolations made by the two from these identical formulations turned out to be diametrically opposed. As we shall see, the divergence would turn on a dynamic versus a static signification of “nonalignment. ”

“Nonalignment” and Disaffiliation Nkrumah’s conviction was that the trade union movement was indissolubly linked up with the struggle for the political freedom, independence, and unity of Africa and that, therefore, any affiliation by it with non-African bodies was downright dangerous in that it could frustrate the attainment of those ends. His commitment to the independence of the African unions was also in answer to the obvious pressures of international trade union organizations to commit African unions to rigid cold war politics. As I. Davies has noted, the methods adopted by these interested outside bodies did display “in microcosm the extent of international interference in Africa and the basic social problems on which foreign powers seek to capitalize.” 10 Nkrumah’s answer to this problem of “interference” in Africa was to invoke the doctrine of nonalignment: There is a constant endeavor to use the African trade union movement as a protagonist in the cold war conflict and some of the leaders, through flattery and the acceptance of financial assistance for their unions, have allowed themselves to be suborned. This is a dangerous situation as it can drag Africa into active participation in the cold war politics and deprive us of our safeguarding weapon of independent nonalignment. Unfortunately, there are some leaders of the African independent states who cannot see this danger. . . . The African trade union movement must promote the independence and welfare of the African worker; it cannot run the risk of

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subordinating the safety of African independence and the needs of African development to other, non African influences.11

At the meeting called to inaugurate an AATUF, following the Ghana TUC’s disaffiliation from the ICFTU, Nkrumah once again projected his vision of a united and independent African trade union organiza­ tion not affiliated to either the W FTU or the ICFTU—a “positively neutral federation” that would be a dynamic and positive instrument for drawing together the peoples of the African continent, and would give the working classes “a new African consciousness” and the right to express themselves in the councils of world labor “unfettered by any foreign view and uncoerced by external force.” 12 Mboya’s position, in conscious opposition to Nkrumah’s, was that the linkage of nonalignment to disaffiliation was preposterous and unnecessary. As far as his own Kenyan labor movement was con­ cerned, it had evolved useful links with the ICFTU which he was not going to sacrifice just to suit the Ghanaian prescription. Indeed he thought, there was an obligation of gratitude to the Western interna­ tional which could not be ignored: When the nationalist movement was completely muzzled in Kenya the only organ through which we could appeal to the world was ICFTU. This is something which those who have experienced such assistance cannot now ignore. Friendships were made in those hard days which you do not flippantly discard.13

He further counterargued that a demand for disaffiliation in effect amounted to a call for African isolation. This, he contended, was not what neutralism meant: African states are members of the Commonwealth. Some African leaders are members of the Queen’s Privy Council. These are both African connec­ tions with Britain and Britain is in the Western bloc, yet who would say these leaders or countries are compromising their neutralist principles?14

If Nkrumah had an Achilles’ heel in the debate, this was it. Given that Ghana was the first black country to attain independence, the future of the Commonwealth in Africa depended a good deal on what kind of precedent Nkrumah set. Since the Sudan a year before had declined membership, Ghana’s accession caused surprise in some quarters where it had not been anticipated that Ghana, after emerging from colonial status, would choose of its own free will to remain within the club.is Nkrumah had done this, it would seem, on the conviction that the Commonwealth did not constitute any kind of

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league or alliance—that it imposed no species of obligation on its members, and that the emphasis in the club was on voluntary coopera­ tion and consultation. This conviction would also explain his often passionate rejection of any equation of the relations pattern within the Commonwealth with the kind that attached the francophone African States to France—the latter, as he saw it, by the almost complete link of their economies to France, being clearly “neocolonialist.” In this regard, a francophone country like the Ivory Coast’s careful avoidance of any move in its foreign policy that France might find objection­ able—like its persistent support of France on the Algerian question at the United Nations and its constant approval of French nuclear tests in the Sahara, all at the price of alienating the Afro-Asian bloc16—is the kind that would buttress the distinction Nkrumah sought to establish, especially when this is viewed against Nkrumah’s positive assertion of Ghana’s sovereignty on the above and other issues like opposing any Commonwealth assistance to India during the invasion of the Asian Commonwealth country by China in 1962. It also seems fair to note, at this point, Nkrumah’s strong convic­ tions as to the paramountcy of the “African nation”—“to us Africans, neither the Commonwealth nor the French Community can be a substitute for an African Community” 17—as well as his commitment to the abandonment of the Anglo-African club in favor of African unity at any time. Thus, for instance, the secret agreement providing for the Union of Ghana and the Congo (Zaire) in August 1960, presupposed Ghana’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth.18 From this reckoning, the occasion of a unanimous African decision to form a Union Government would certainly call for individual na­ tions’ withdrawal from EurAfrican organizations such as the Com­ monwealth and “Francophonia” , in much the same way that the unanimous decision to establish an all-African labor international now demanded the disaffiliation of individual national centers from both the ICFTU and the WFTU. What Mboya’s arguments missed up to a point in juxtaposing the AATUF with the Commonwealth was the crucial temporal factor surrounding the two cases. The bell had tolled for the materialization of the former; the latter remained only a prospect. A good rationale for abandoning either the Commonwealth or the ICFTU, in this sense, would derive from the expectation of membership of, and blessings from, a new massively potent African fellowship. Such an opportunity existed in the unanimous decision to set up an AATUF—and not in the far cry of a continental government at the time. The coupling of the two in the same argument was therefore quite improper. For all that, a residual difficulty remained for Nkrumah in Ghana’s

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membership of the Commonwealth. If an African continental govern­ ment presupposed Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth and “Francophonia,” by the same token African membership in the two clubs made the attainment of a continental government alm o st impos­ sible. While membership in the Commonwealth might not have im­ posed any insidious obligations on Ghana, it certainly made it easier for the francophone African countries to retain their neocolonial asso­ ciation with France. Moreover, did not the chances of continental unification recede in circumstances where Africa was fractionated into Franco-African, EurAfrican, Belgo-Congolese, and Anglo-African communities? The answer was provided by Nkrumah himself: However loose . . . a relationship may be, if it should tend in the slightest degree to impinge upon the African state’s relations with other African states, its retention becomes indefensible. Pan-Africa and not EurAfrica should be our watchword, and the guide to our policies.19

Whatever the source of his hesitancy, the fact of the matter is that the Osagyefo failed to take his own counsel. Ghana stayed glued to the British club to the end with implications that, at least on the surface, vitiated the force and integrity of Nkrumah’s stance on nonalignment. At the close of 1965 he was in a position to admit culpability in the matter—to disclose that Ghana’s continued membership of the Com­ monwealth had definitely hampered the country’s efforts towards the attainment of African unity; African unity and our endeavors to establish a Union Government of Africa are imperilled by African states forming links with their ex-colonial masters. Our unity can only be preserved and a Union Government achieved and stabilized if we sever links with former colonial powers whose continuing interests in our continent only breed disunity amongst us.20

Mboya had his share of conceptual difficulties, even if they were of a different tint. In one breath, he conceded that “the issue of whether or not African trade unions should retain affiliations with international bodies is of importance in interpreting the policy of neutralism.”21 Let us, in this connection, consider the part of his definition of neutralism which argued the rejection of military alliance with “East” or “West” . In November 1961 he moved a Legislative Council motion that Britain cease all further development on Kakawa and other camps such as at Gilgil, and take steps to remove naval, air force and army bases—in response to which government supporters (KANU, his own party, was in opposition then) argued that British troops brought into Kenya £10 million a year in spending money and that, therefore, their

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withdrawal would be disastrous to the country’s economy. Retorted Mboya: “How can such people call themselves nationalists if they are prepared to sell their country’s independence for the pocket money of foreign soldiers?”22 The point of interest here is that it does not appear that Mboya felt able to bring the same logic to bear on his country’s trade union alliance with the ICFTU which he was unwilling to sever by reason of the considerable money he got from it. There is an element of unprincipled self-interest here that is worthy of note. The Kenyan Federation of Labor (KFL) was by 1962 receiv­ ing twelve thousand British pounds a year from the ICFTU alone.23 One effect of these regular subsidies, according to Davies, is that they turned the Mboya-led movement “into a large bureaucracy which gradually lost the efficiency and dynamism of their earlier days. Gov­ ernment and workers began to notice the high proportion of income that went into administrative costs and the expenses of federation officers.”24 It was not difficult, then, he further observes, for the resistance of union executives to disaffiliation from the IC F1U “to be linked with the comfortable standards of living that ICFTU funds had made possible for them.”25 Mboya could also compliment Sekou Toure as “nobody’s puppet” for forming the Union General des Travailleurs d’Afrique Noire (UGTAN) against the interference of the WFTU in francophone West African trade union affairs without appreciating the ironic relation of this to his own links with the ICFTU. Again, despite his own stated objections to military alliances and associate membership in the EEC as practices which undermine neutralism, he was later on to be a party to Kenya’s military deal with Britain and to the East African Com­ munity’s associate links with the EEC without as much as another word of reservation about them. In another breath, Mboya was inclined to treat “disaffiliation” as an issue of monumental levity. As far as he was concerned, there was a general African agreement on a charter and the principles of a PanAfrican trade union organization. What went wrong with the inaugu­ ral Casablanca meeting, according to him, was that the Ghanaian delegation was determined to make disaffiliation the big issue and that “this concentration on the disaffiliation issue sent the conference down the wrong track.”26 At one point, he came to concede that reliance on money from outside one’s country for running a trade union move­ ment could lead to “serious problems of international involvement, with leaders being bought off by this or that group in the international or even the Pan-African scene.”27 On another occasion, he declared that “no African trade union should be committed to ICFTU, W FTU or IFTU C at the expense of any of our basic pledges (of independence

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and non-alignment).”28 And still on another, he said that if indeed there were agencies that operated “in the interests of a power bloc or an ideology and sought to nullify our policy of neutrality, then the African trade union movement would be best advised to keep clear of such involvements. The question is whether the ICFTU has tried to commit us to the West.”29 As far as he was concerned, then, Kenya could continue to enjoy the ICFTU bounty without ever finding the package tied with Western “bows and strings.” The ICFTU, as far as he was concerned, had never tried to commit African affiliates to the West. On the contrary, it had courageously taken up Africa’s causes.30 On this, it is difficult not to suspect that Mboya was conveniently turning a blind eye to the full facts. For although the Americans, for instance, had provided much needed support for African Unions in their battles with the British and French administrations and the “imperialism” of the British TUC, the Force Ouvriere and the Belgian unions, their hostility to all forms of socialism and nonalignment became during the late 1950’s more evi­ dent than their support for African nationalism and trade union growth. It was difficult, asserts Davies on the matter, to avoid the conclusion that the AFL-CIO, the American Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency were working together closely in a common offensive. “Any such suspicions were more than justified by the evidence.”31 The Americans, then, were less concerned to develop a labor movement than to recruit troops for an anticommunist crusade. Anticommunism, indeed, became an important objective of trade union policy as far back as the first world war when the American government began to see trade unionism as a major element in pro­ moting its policies. By the 1960s, the American government was spending over $13 million a year on international labor affairs, with forty-eight labor attachés in developing countries supported by a host of trade union advisers. It was at this time that George Lodge, a former Assistant Secretary of Labor for International Affairs, urged Americans to use their “vast influence, as appropriate, to encourage the regimes of newly developing countries to foster those actions and programs which will encourage the growth of strong, non-Communist workers organization.”32 Nor was Lodge’s a lone voice. Several leading American trade unionists were also to go out of their way to attack the neutralism of developing countries. Harry Goldberg, a former AFL representative in Indonesia, for example, was in 1960 to attack Ghana and Guinea trade union leaders for “opening their movements to Communist control by their neutralist ideas.” And at the 1962 world congress of

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the ICFTU , as a member of the U.S. Department of Labor staff noted, “a subtle attempt was made through the very presence of the Congress in Berlin to strengthen the commitment of Afro-Asian par­ ticipants against the Soviet bloc.”33 N or were the British affiliates of the ICFTU any less guilty of cold war crimes against Africa. It is significant that it was no less an ally than the American AFL-CIO that increasingly between 1956 and 1961 attacked the British TUC and linked it with British colonial domina­ tion. The colonial Labor Advisers, the Americans charged, were “saboteurs” of trade union development because they acted as spies for the colonial government.34 The British role was one of a campaign of paternalism and intrigue that, as Tettegah’s later exposures showed, was to redouble in independent Africa. In his letter to “a prominent member of East Africa” , Tettegah, the Secretary General of the Ghana TUC, quoted “a most secret document,” an annexure to a British Cabinet Paper on policy in Africa and a general review of the Sixth Congress of the ICFTU, which indicated what was seen as the new role of the ICFTU in the circumstances of “the gradual abdication of direct British and other European rule in Africa in favor of measures to establish local independence” , which made the maintenance of African connections by the development of “non political means” even more ncccssary. Elaborated the “secret paper” : Recent developments there have greatiy increased the importance of the Unions as an alternative instrument of Western influence and especially as a brake on unchecked political and national movements. Since it is difficult to accuse trade unions of securing colonial ends, with their aid it should be possible to establish harmonious relations with the new social and political institutions in Africa now being created and with the administration of industrial and agricultural interests which we hope to maintain after any political changes. Trade union help will be needed to check irresponsible nationalization and to maintain control in the key sectors of the economy in the newly created African states. The principal aim should be the develop­ ment in Africa of a genuine trade union movement as we know it in Britain and on the continent. This must be done with our help and under our influence from the start.35

The ICFTU, then, had its other side all right which Mboya deliber­ ately refused to see. It is not without significance that, at the AATUF preparatory conference in Accra in 1958, it was, ironically, the gradu­ ates of the ICFTU College in Kampala who were loudest in their condemnation of the “splitting and subversive activities” of the West­ ern confederation.36 The W FTU too, for sure, had its sordid side, for it occupied the

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other side of the line in the ideological battle for influence in Africa. After the split in its ranks, the rump W FTU came to be dominated by the Russians who sought to create, from it, an international organiza­ tion that would mirror their national foreign policy preoccupations. Thus, like the ICFTU, it tended to give aid that would make the recipients financially and politically dependent on it—a sure way to reducing the cohesion and strength of the African unions. Again, like the ICFTU, it saw Africa as not only a battleground for rival interests but also as a kind of laboratory where various experiments could be conducted for their own sake. It rarely set out to analyse African conditions and meet African needs. All that the Russians, like the Americans, were concerned to do was further their own ends by proposing programs, educational schemes, and other activities that fitted into their preconceived political categories.37 The AATUF then, in the final analysis, was a product of this struggle between the ICFTU and the W FTU for control in Africa. “The need to create a common front” , wrote Tettegah, “arose from these contending ideological factors (of ICFTU and WFTU) which were not only weakening the fight against colonialism, but delaying the liberation of the African continent, to the advantage of the exploit­ ing colonisers. . .”38 Given the reality of the confrontation of the two ideologically-opposed internationals in Africa, the Nkrumah argu­ ment, as opposed to that of Mboya, was that it was better for one strong Pan-African labor center—an AATUF—to choose Africa’s friends in the promotion of Africa’s interests, rather than allow the various national centers, weak and vulnerable as they were, the option of affiliating with one side or the other in the ideological duel, an eventuality that could only reinforce Africa’s amenability to imperi­ alism.

“Dynamic” Versus “Static” View of “Nonalignment” In all, Nkrumah’s demand for disaffiliation and Mboya’s insistence on affiliation were respectively determined by their divergent orienta­ tions on nonalignment—one dynamic, the other static. On the dy­ namic view of nonalignment, the achievement of “national independence” is only the first stage in a long, drawn-out process of “decolonization” that must mean a complete reconversion of colonial economic and political structures. Genuine equidistance between the Western and Eastern blocs is achieved only after decolonization is complete. This point bears emphasis. In the context of the multi­ farious “colonial links” of the new states with the former colonial

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powers (which are also the leading part of the “Western bloc” ), gen­ uine nonalignment “must mean an active and systematic disengage­ ment from, and repudiation of, Western economic and political links that already exist, as well as refusing and resisting new military and political links with either the East or the West.”39 In other words, it was all right for new states to talk about preserv­ ing their independence and not becoming “a little boat towed by a great power” . But, first of all, they had to “break away from the imperialists” before having any independence to preserve. Any other conception of nonalignment amounted to “muddled thinking.”40 President Nyerere who, from the first, saw eye to eye with Nkrumah on the issue, put the case squarely: Historically, Tanzania was part of the Western bloc; this was part of colonialism and there was nothing we could do about it. But to move to nonalignment from being part of one bloc means moving away from the bloc; the question which really matters is whether you move right over to the other side or whether you move into and stay in an independent position. The movement itself is inevitable. . . .41

From this analytical framework, Mboya’s hostility to any “move­ ment” away from the ICFTU reflected Kenya’s underlying antipathy to nonalignment, all its protestations notwithstanding. The heart of the matter was Kenya’s status as a Western-penetrated system. The activities of the British armed forces in post-independence Kenya, for instance, constituted a flagrant violation of one of the basic tenets of nonalignment. Then there was the matter of the inverterate affinity of Mboya for the West, in return for which Britain and the United States did everything to cultivate and groom him. Through connections made “with men like Walter Hood of the British TUC and Edgar Parry, then Labor Adviser to the Colonial Secretary,” he was given a generous scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford, to study industrial relations, after which course he toured the United States, pre­ sumptively at the sponsorship of the ICFTU.42 In time, with the help of the ICFTU, Mboya as leader of the K FL went on to establish ICFTU affiliates—the Tanganyikan Federation of Labor (TFL) and the Uganda Trade Union Congress (UTUC)—in neighboring Tan­ ganyika and Uganda. Soon after, thanks to continual flow of ICFTU aid, he led the way, as he wrote, in setting up “a regional trade union group throughout East and Central Africa, of which I became chair­ m an.”43 So much congenial entanglement with the West was bound to give nonalignment a disagreeable smell in Mboya’s nostrils. It is also worthy of note that the repercussions of this remarkable affinity

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between Mboya and the West were hardly confined to the trade union sphere. As Odinga wrote: Much of the difficulty of our work in the African Elected Members Organization (AEMO), and in latter years, especially in 1960, was caused by the concerted world press campaign to elevate Tom Mboya to the unchallenged leadership of Kenya Africans. . . . In the early years he was as much victim as culprit, in the interests of a British-U.S. strategy to build a leader who would overshadow and make the people forget Kenyatta. His political colleagues resented this imposed promotion. . .

In the event, Mboya’s colleagues sought to exclude him from the deliberations on the formation of a nationalist movement, the Kenya African National Union (KANU). “There was apparent antagonism against me,” wrote Mboya himself, “because . . . I had been given too much prominence” in the Western press.45 But Mboya’s political colleagues were hardly the only ones alarmed by his Western prepossessions, as he found out during a visit to Kiambu where he was, by his own account, assailed by “hostile placards and heckling” by youths who accused him of being “too close to the U.S.”46 His customary reaction to any such charge was to protest his nonalignment: Perhaps I have been called pro-West because I have not yet visited the Eastern countries. Such a conclusion is, of course, very superficial. I have been unable to visit the East simply because of the circumstances prevail­ ing in Kenya and not in the least because of any ideological reason.47

The argument here, of course, attacks a straw man, as clearly Mboya’s accusers had more to worry about Kenya’s “nonalignment” than the fact that Mboya had scrupulously avoided having to visit the East. But even if it came to that, one could counterargue that the same “circumstances prevailing in Kenya” never did prevent Oginga Odinga from visiting the East on a number of occasions.48 In the end, Mboya would, in his own way, concede that Kenya’s allergy to “disaffiliation” derived from the constraints it took on albeit as a selfsatisfied neocolonial state: The question before those of us who wish to see a Pan-African trade union movement does not rotate around affiliation, but rather around whether we can lay down what every African country must do before we can move towards Pan-African unity. . . . We have got to be prepared to accommo­ date people who may not be able to move all the way towards a given stand. Above all, it means recognizing strictly that each country is sovereign and all institutions will of necessity reflect their country’s interest and policies.

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In effect each country must in principle be free to determine its own policies without interference or coercion by another African state.49

The AATUF and the Dynamic Conception of Nonalignment: Theory Versus Practice In the politics of the formation of the AATUF, then, Nkramah ran into a head-on collision with neocolonialism in Kenya’s structural linkages to, and predilections for, the West. The superior policy merits of nonalignment in the cold war were obvious and acknowledged as much by Mboya as by Nkramah. As the Kenyan reiterated the point on yet another occasion, when all was said and done, “the problem in the international labor movement is that the two bodies—the ICFTU and the WFTU—have become involved in ideological battles which as yet have little meaning in Africa and which are identifiable with Eastern and Western ideology.”50 When it came to the question of disengagement of national centers from the two labor internationals in order to inaugurate a nonaligned AATUF, however, the dictates of neocolonialism won out, compelling Mboya to proclaim disingeniously that regardless of affiliation, our first effort should be to create an All-African trade union federation. . . . If we had worked more for unity along these lines, and refrained from emphasizing disunity by virtue of our different affiliations, we would have succeeded in creating effectively the AATUF. . . .51

How was it possible to retain colonial ties and be nonaligned at one and the same time? A nonaligned policy in the cold war politics of East-West contest for influence in Africa was inescapably linked to the dynamic denotation of the platform and its concomitant imperative of disengagement from the West. The debate on the merits of dynamic versus static conceptions of nonaligmnent therefore brought to the surface the fundamental antithesis between Pan-Africanist na­ tionalism and neocolonialism, and the location of N krum ah and Mboya on the two sides of the fence. But establishing unimpeachable developmental policy line is one thing; implementing it flawlessly and effectively quite another. In activating “dynamic nonalignm ent,” the Pan-Africanists in Accra bungled and fumbled and stumbled badly by committing the fallacy of the excluded middle—by moving from the West, not into a middle, independent position, but “right over to the other side.” The essence of the matter was fiscal and was captured in Mboya’s penetrating

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question on his return from the Casablanca inaugural meeting: who would finance the AATUF under conditions of the disaffiliation of African labor centers from the WFTU and the ICFTU? The answer should have readily turned on the principle of self-sufficiency—the touchstone of Pan-Africanist nonalignment—but, tragically, it did not. The point must be appreciated that, to Pan-Africanists, nonalign­ ment as an ideological principle predated the cold war and has been more weighty and pervasive in its concerns than the political predica­ ment posed by the cold war alone. The issues of “cold war nonalign­ m ent,” in effect, were subsumed by those of “Pan-Africanist nonalignment.” As far back as 1922, well before the emergence of the cold war, Marcus Garvey articulated the general Pan-Africanist view of the world as one in which “the powerful nations arranged among themselves to oppress the weaker ones, and to keep the more unfortu­ nate of humanity in serfdom, and to rob and exploit them.”52 Since the advent of the cold war, Pan-Africanist nonalignment has, neces­ sarily and deductively, been predicated as much on the reality of the West’s underdeveloping and continuing exploitation of Africa and its people universally, as on the cognizance that the Soviets resorted to the tactics of “boring from within” by infiltrating the Garvey move­ m ent,33 sold oil to Mussolini when the fascist was planning his inva­ sion of Ethiopia,54 and that, generally, the East’s interests in Africa and its people have been “dictated by the ever-changing, opportunistic tactics of Soviet foreign policy. . . .” 55 By the time of the Fifth Pan-African Congress at Manchester, according to the authoritative George Padmore, the challenge of the Pan-Africanist movement was perceived to lie in having to meet the ideological opposition from the Communist “hypocrites” on the one hand, and the “racist doctrines of the fascists on the other,” and to defend Pan-Africanism “as an independent political expression of black aspirations for complete national independence from white domination—capitalist or communist.”56 A derivative of this view is the ideological postulate of financial selfreliance. “The first law of revolution,” proclaimed the Pan-Africanists in this regard, “is the law of self-sufficiency.”57 “Aid” given in the name of development was nothing but a rationalization of prior politi­ cal interests—a subterfuge that hid the realities of interference and manipulation. No matter what kind of aid was involved, the end product was the facilitation of intervention in the recipient’s affairs.58 Whatever the source of the “aid” , East or West, in the words of A. Philip Randolph, “that will also be the source of . . . ideas, policies and control. . .”59 Emphatically, then, the tenet that all “aid” is conditional applied as much to capitalist as “socialist” sources.

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For all that, in a memorandum of June 1964 to the Presidential African Affairs Committee, the Secretary General of the AATUF, John Tettegah, after reiterating that AATUF’s purpose was to perform as a “pressure apparatus for effective continental actions,” and despite his recognition that the expressed ambition to make of the AATUF “an apparatus of an international organization which must compare in efficiency and status to the W FTU or the ICFTU”60 required that the AATUF acquire the capacity, at the very least, to hold its own finan­ cially, nevertheless went on to stress the need for its reliance “not only on die financial subscriptions by member organizations, etc., but more substantially from grants in aid by the government of Ghana and the U S S R .”61 From then on until its dissolution in April 1973, the AATUF, with varying degrees of success, made the solicitation of “aid” from the USSR-WFTU the bedrock of its financial structure.62 The explanation of this resort of the AATUF to Soviet-WFTU subventions, in spite of its vociferous articulation of the dangers inherent in “every form of dependence” of the African trade union movement on the external environment, and this even before the ideal of African fiscal self-reliance had been given a chance, lies in a 1961 strike in Ghana by the Sekondi-Takoradi Railway workers which, springing from grievances caused by some serious disparities between the socialist theory and practice of Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party (CPP), attained a high intensity in governmental defiance, to a point where it even threatened to seize a political role independent of the party, with which it had hitherto been in alliance in the prosecu­ tion of radical causes.63 The evidence suggests that this defiant assertiveness of Ghanaian labor induced the political class to rethink its whole conception of the role of the workers in the “African Revolution.” Now the concern was not so much how best to forge a partnership between labor and party in the cause of radicalism as jointly conceptualized by the two, as how best the party could harness the labor movement in the service of radicalism as it singly conceived and defined it. The CPP elite cer­ tainly remained wedded to transformation in Ghana, but at the same time they were concerned that “the economic and social changes, with their political concom itants,” which they themselves engineered, “should not undermine or endanger their own preeminence,” politi­ cally or economically, within the country.64 Thus, implicit in the straightjackets imposed on the Ghanaian workers after the strike was a policy of measured demobilization expressed in the form of, for in­ stance, a fifty per cent reduction in check-off, calculated to deny the TUC the resources it needed for independent development and pro­ gram expansion.65 The urge to contain the threat of labor’s “excesses” on the domestic

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front did logically entail a reexamination of the whole mission of the AATUF in a manner calculated to avoid adding the organizational motor of an international institution to an already restive labor with­ out the assurance of a capacity to manage events. Ghana remained committed to “radicalization,” particularly as this applied to the outand-out neocolonies. Whatever its own sins of radical imperfection, it saw itself as qualitatively different from such “reactionary” states as Kenya. While an organizationally autonomous AATUF would likely be disinclined to respect any self-serving subjective distinctions be­ tween “reactionary” and “progressive” states, an AATUF dependent on some governments for sustenance and direction would surely come to accept the benefactors’ views as to which states were the workers’ true adversaries, and which were their true friends. Thus was the domestic policy of arrested mobilization of labor extended to the AATUF. As in the case of the Ghana TUC, this entailed a fate of financial dependence for the AATUF. It is worth remembering, in this regard, that in terms of the original conception, it had been envisaged that the payment of fixed annual contributions by the affiliate national centers would constitute the financial mainstay of the federation.66 The official view of the matter was that the strengthening of the affiliated national trade union movements on a sound fiscal basis “must be given priority by AATUF this early state of the struggle. . . . We realize that it is the strength of the affiliates which will largely determine the strength of AATUF.”67 Such fiscal viability at the affiliated centers would itself, of course, be a function of organizational vigor, which in turn would depend on a sustained grassroots political work, a large and cohesive union membership, and an articulate and accountable leadership responsive to the needs and aspirations of the membership. In the aftermath of the jolting Sekondi-Takoradi railway workers’ strike, the Ghanaian leadership moved to foreclose as far as possible this avenue of workers’ organiza­ tional virility and financial self-sufficiency, for fear that it might in­ volve an excessive, uncontainable mobilization of a sometimes “misguided” proletariat. In the opening stages, Ghana showed a determination to meet the bulk of the federation’s needs.68 The trouble was that it could not keep this up by itself, plagued as it was by resource limitations.69 Against this, as also in view of the fact that the ICFTU, which had much more to lose by AATUF’s disaffiliation battle cry, had already braced itself to fight the Pan-African structure,70 the Ghanaians settled on reliance on the East as the way out of the self-inflicted quandary. Even though the ensuing financial ties between the AATUF and the W FTU were maintained largely clandestinely, it soon came to be

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strongly suspected,71 particularly on account of AATUF’s sudden vociferous pronouncements of a shared cause between it and the Eastern federation, bora of an “identical and therefore united interests against the common enemy [capitalistic imperialism] that should be fought together.”72 This, in the face of a woeful lack of altruism in Soviet dealings with Africa,73 and even while the same “nonaligned” federation insisted that it “cannot and will not countenance the antiAfrican schemes of the ICFTU in Africa.”74 Originally, in its separate, autonomous view of the matter, imperi­ alism or domination, the enemy, had always flowed from any economic dependence on any outside source, East or West. But in the collective AATUF-WFTU formulation, it was only economic subordination to the West that threatened African independence. This, without ques­ tion, marked a move away from the original definition of nonalign­ ment as a cause seeking independence from the great powers, into a view of the movement as nothing more than an anti-Western alliance. Without a doubt, this liaison with the W FTU damaged the cause of African unity, precisely because it made the rallying cry of disaffilia­ tion no longer convincing. It also introduced a damaging hypocrisy into the AATUF’s ideological makeup by reason of the fact, as African Labor Ministers noted uneasily, that the AATUF which “so fiercely” reproached ICFTU affiliates for their “intransigence” with regard to the issue of disaffiliation, did itself maintain “very close, if not priv­ ileged, relations with the W FTU .”75 Once knowledge of, or at least suspicion of, W FTU’s funding of AATUF grew, it was no longer possible for the AATUF to be taken as seriously as it might have been. Its strength and morality had lain in its Pan-Africanist ideology that proclaimed the imperative of African independence. Once it lost this moral essence, it lost much of its strength.

AATUF’s Efforts to Penetrate Kenya Even though the Ghanaians’ transgression of nonalignment (in mov­ ing from the West right over to the East) proved to be more forgivable to many politicized labor circles, in Kenya as elsewhere on the con­ tinent, than Mboya’s violation of it (through his blatant adherence to the colonial status quo), an assortment of formidable obstacles in the Kenyan situation all added up to some severe odds against AATUF’s penetration of the East African country. These included the wily tripartite conspiracy of the colonial regime, the ICFTU and the Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) against genuine African inde­ pendence; the maneuvers, dating from December 1963, of a neo­

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colonial regime bent on the retention of colonial structures and ethos to the point of making common cause with the CIA;76 and, of course, the organizational infirmities wrought on AATUF and its affiliates by Accra’s policy of financial manipulation. Even before AATUF was inaugurated, the battle lines were drawn. As far back as 1952, the unions had been split between those support­ ing the Land and Freedom Army fighting for independence, and those opposing it—between those linked to “the locally evolved militant ‘populist’ conception of unionism” and those attached to “the moder­ ate ‘economist’ conception fostered by the colonial regime.”77 The Kenya Federation of Registered Trade Unions (KFRTU), formed in 1950 and later renamed the Kenya Federation of Labor, or K FL (with both headed by Mboya), were both the joint creations of the colonial government and the ICFTU, and represented the latter; the Kenya Trade Union Congress (KTUC), formed in September 1959 by A. Ochwada (after he quit office as the deputy general secretary of the KFL), typified the former.78 The rise of the KFRTU/KFL reflected the government’s determination to separate the union movement from the developing nationalist movement by ousting the most militant elements in the leadership of the movement—as it would do in the arrest of over 180 national and trade union leaders in October 195279—and by insisting that the KFRTU/KFL cooperate with the Labor Department as a condition for its survival.80 Early in 1960, Ochwada, the leader of the KTUC, undertook a worldwide trip sponsored by Accra’s Bureau of African Affairs, dur­ ing which he made his anti-K FL-ICFTU intentions absolutely clear: The African people are frankly and openly against the so-called Master­ ship of the Metropolitan cities of Brussels and London-Paris which control the ICFTU. We are determined to break away from it and build our own Trade Unionism independent of any tie with colonial cities and Commu­ nism. . . .81

In November of the same year, the contest took on a higher intensity with the release of a pamphlet identifying Mboya as the chief instru­ ment of the ICFTU’s “great conspiracy” to return Africa to the former imperial powers. Mboya called the allegation “a malicious falsehood” and tied it to “the on-going campaign of the Accra TUC against him .”82 Soon, it would be the turn of Gideon Mutiso, the new deputy general secretary of the K FL, to attack the K FL “as being under American influence and the victim of imperialism,” and to proceed to announce that he would join the KTUC, which was then expecting assistance from Ghana “in the struggle with the K F L .”83 In May

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1%1, the KTUC did not only send a delegation to the founding conference of the AATUF at which Tettegah delivered his “declaration of war” against the likes of Tom Mboya and his K FL on the disaffilia­ tion question, but Vichy Wachira, the assistant general secretary of the KTUC, subsequently denounced the K FL for failing to associate with the new Pan-African labor structure.84 From the time of Tettegah’s announcement of war intent, Kenya became the setting for a most vigorous competition between the AATUF and the ICFTU. Kenya’s opposition to the radical thrust in Africa “made that country a prime target” for penetration directed from Accra.85 But the colonial regime was hardly a spent force. Taking up the gauntlet, it moved in August 1962 to outlaw the KTUC by requesting it to furnish proof of its existence or be dissolved. This, in spite of the fact that the Congress enjoyed the support of such important organizations as the Building and Construction Workers’ Union, the National Seamen’s Union, and a number of branches within other unions.86 Flustered and cornered, the KTUC submitted a fresh application for registration which was, predictably, rejected, prompting Fred Kubai to echo Tettegah’s declaration of “total war” on the K F L .87 Meanwhile, thanks to the reinforcing efforts of the FK E, a system of collective bargaining geared to the preemption of potential radi­ calism was unfurled in an Industrial Relations Charter of October 1962 embodying the traditional position of the colonial Labor Depart­ ment—a “nonrevolutionary symbolism” that was to continue with only minor modifications for the next decade.88 The FK E was as fundamentally opposed to the AATUF idea as other federations of corporations elsewhere in Africa that rallied “to concede considerable wage rises to ‘Western’ unions in their attempts to support them” and thereby undermine the Pan-Africanist cause.89 Elated, the ICFTU praised the charter as bearing the “primary value” of “a voluntary agreement entered into by all parties without recourse to legisla­ tion.”90 As independence for Kenya neared, the radical unionists still operating within the K FL like worms in its entrails, Dennis Akumu (assistant general secretary), Walter Otenya (deputy general secretary), and Ochola Mak’Anyengo (the Director of Organizations) pressed the K FL to set a definite date for the disaffiliation of the K FL from the ICFTU. When a meeting of the K FL General Council convened over these demands for “disaffiliation from the ICFTU now” ended in the suspension, and later expulsion, of the three radicals from their K FL posts,91 the radicals, with AATUF’s help, moved in May 1964 to form a Kenya Federation of Progressive Trade Unions (KFPTU—to be

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renamed the Kenya African Workers’ Congress, or KAWC) “as an alternative body which would fight unremittingly for genuine trade union nonalignment.”92 Predictably, the KAWC committed itself to “African unity and Pan-Africanism,” “genuine independence and nonalignment,” and “full support for the AATUF.”93 Also predictably, the ICFTU reviled the KAWC as an organization that received “support from Ghana and, through certain Kenyan politicians acting as intermediaries, from Eastern bloc countries.”94 And predictably still, the new AATUF affiliate center faced a difficult task in getting the new body registered. With Mboya, now the Minis­ ter of Justice, declaring that the KAWC was “an unlawful society, since the industrial charter signed in October 1962 allowed only one national union central body,” the new radical center was frustrated in its efforts to achieve official registration and recognition until June 1965. Neither these governmental maneuvers, which earned Mboya the radicals’ enduring contempt for “forsaking the Pan-African cause,”95 nor the official favoritism that recognized the K FL as the only repre­ sentative body of Kenya workers at the ILO (as well as allowing it alone to sit on the Labor Advisory Board, a statutory body96), nor the fact that post-independence legislation was to leave the Industrial Relations Charter arrangements “substantially unchanged and to leave Kenya proprietor of wage settling procedures not substantially dif­ ferent from those prevailing in many Western economies,”97 suc­ ceeded in breaking the new center. On the contrary, boosted by its attainment of Pan-African significance with the election of Mak’Anyengo as AATUF’s assistant secretary general (a calculated counter­ poise to the representation on the ICFTU’s executive board of the K FL ’s secretary general), it soon created “dissension and bitter power struggles all along the industry-wide front and down the shop floor.”98 This dissension caused the Dock Workers Union, the Oil Workers Union, the Common Services Union, the Railway, Building and Con­ struction Union, the Quarry and Mine Workers Union, as well as the Salaried Workers’ Union to break from the K F L .99 Needless to say, AATUF’s financial assistance to KAWC helped the process. For instance, soon after its formation, Nkrumah approved an assistance of two thousand British pounds as well as the supply of fifty motorcycles, six typewriters, four duplicating machines, and rent for eight offices at 120 British pounds per month each, paid in advance.100 Also helpful was the political educational work through the pages of the Kenya-owned but Nkrumah-influenced Pan-Africa, which seized every opportunity to emphasize the uprightness of AATUF’s ideolog­

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ical line. For instance, an article headed “ICFTU: the Facts About Dollar Trade Unionism,” stated, among other things, that Anyone who has followed the trade union situation in Africa in the past decade cannot help but be struck by the constant and quite blatant interference by U.S. agencies into African trade union matters. The open use of dollars to buy African trade union leaders became so much of a scandal that the U.S. has had to find more indirect ways of carrying on this activity. . . . 101

On another occasion, under the title “Exposure ICFTU: Con­ fessions of An American Agent,” the paper took George Lodge to task on account of his book, Spearheads o f Democratic Labor in Developing Countries. In writing this book, observed Pan-Africa, Mr. Lodge shows complete contempt for the workers in whom he is apparently so interested. He treats them as pawn in his cold war game, and it never seems to cross his mind that the workers may have other views, let alone that they may get to know the contents of his book and strongly resent this open admission of U.S. interference in overseas trade union organization. . . . Sponsored by a tie-up of big business, the military and espionage, the book openly explains the aims and tactics of U.S. neo­ colonialism. . . . It is one more warning that behind its mask of ‘anti­ colonialism’, U.S. imperialism is full of trickery.102

By far the most intense of the KFL-KAWC struggles took place in Mombasa where a major leader of the anti-KFL forces and the leader of the Dock Workers Union, Dennis Akumu, stormed K FL bases and enlisted workers of all trades stationed near the waterfront into his union and hence the KAWC. “In so doing,” Amsden writes, he “poached the rank and file of unions affiliated to the K FL. . . . Violent jurisdictional battles ensued, for workers switched loyalties in considerable numbers.” 103 When the violence led to the appointment of a Board of Inquiry, the FK E, in one more demonstration of the perennial opposition of the corporations to AATUF’s purposes in Kenya, gave extensive evidence before it, showing Akumu “to be in violation of established trade union demarcation rule” in venturing to form one large general union similar to that in Ghana.104 Meanwhile, the Board of Inquiry’s conclusion that Akumu had succeeded in “shaking the whole structure [of labor] in Mombasa,” 105 as well as the escalation of violence in the trade union movement, compelled the nervous Kenyatta to appoint a Ministerial Committee to examine ways of forging unity in the movement. In time, Kenyatta

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accepted the committee’s recommendation that unity be imposed from above in the form of a new structure, a Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU), created from the enforced merger of the K FL and the KAWC; that the three leading executives of COTU be appointed at will by the President; that all trade unions disaffiliate immediately from “all outside bodies” ; and that, furthermore, all sources of money coming into Kenya to either individuals or labor organizations be declared forthwith. For all that, for a while this official intervention failed to put an end to the AATUF-ICFTU confrontation in Kenya. In spite of the merger, “the K FL seemed determined to continue clandestinely its association with the IC FTU ,” 106 while the KAWC faction, for its part, continued to be sustained by the AATUF whose unflinching interest was in “maintaining a radical opposition to Kenyatta in the labor movement to the end.” 107 For a while the leadership of COTU seemed to gravitate into the hands of the KAWC militants. As a message from a Ghanaian Labor Attaché in Kenya to Tettegah ran late in 1965: Happy . . . to report that KAWC has won ten out of fifteen . . . in national union elections. . . . Akiunu elected Secretary-General of Customs Union. Control over dock union still continues. Grateful appeal to Osagyefo for further funds . . . to complete national election and also COTU elections. Our enemies have been rudely shocked by fighting desperately. Treat matter as extremely urgent. Standing by.108

In his note covering a copy of this appeal to Nkrumah, Tettegah eagerly recommended that “we give this assistance and hold Kenya.” 109 Before long, the KAWC militants were to extend their trade union war against the KFL-ICFTU and Kenyatta’s Kenya African National Union (KANU) government directly into the political arena. From 1964, the divisions within KANU, which polarized around Mboya (at the head of the “conservatives”) and Odinga (at the head of the “radicals” ), correlated with increasing confrontation between the KFL-ICFTU and the KAWC-AATUF in the trade union movement. Particularly remarkable was the growing convergence of radical inter­ ests as between the labor and political leaderships, in terms of the personnel interpenetration of the two. Thus a senator, Tom Gichoni, was KAWC’s president, while two members of Parliament, G. F. Oduya and Gideon Mutiso, were its vice-president and financial secre­ tary, respectively. Furthermore, a member of a Regional Assembly was its assistant financial secretary. Dennis Akumu, the director of organi­ zations of KAWC, became chairman of the Odinga-dominated Nyanza branch of KANU in early 1966. It is no wonder that the interests of

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KAWC were defended within the House of Representatives by mem­ bers of Odinga’s faction—as, for instance, on the matter of the regis­ tration of the new center—while members of Parliament linked to Odinga also addressed several KAWC rallies in various parts of the country.110 Also remarkable were the vital political links that were, all along, being established by Accra with the militant dissidents inside KANU. Tettegah’s letter to Vichy Wachira, deputy secretary general of KAWC, announcing his plan to visit Nairobi for two days in order to contact Odinga, then the Minister for Home Affairs, Achieng Oneko, the Minister of Information, and Dr. Waiski, then the parliamentary secretary, Ministry of Internal Security and Defense, bears witness to this, in as much as all of these personnages would soon be identified by the Kenyan government as “disloyal” and “subversive” elements.111 But if this internal closing of ranks between the Kenyan radical political and labor leaderships and the linkages this radical fraternity developed with Ghana proved to be a troublesome issue for Kenyatta, he was to be even more perturbed by developments arising from AATUF’s operations elsewhere in Africa. It is to be noted that, on the relationship between the trade unions and the government, the AATUF, at its inaugural Casablanca meeting, drew a distinction between “those states firmly set on the revolution­ ary road and those politically liberated but linked with neo-colo­ nialism by political and military domination of reactionary forces supported from outside.” In the former, trade unions were to collabo­ rate with the State in raising productivity and training competent leaders for society; in the latter, as in states not yet independent, trade unions were to be the spearhead of revolution. It is significant, in this connection, that in at least one country, the Upper Volta, the affiliate organ of the AATUF, Union Syndicate des Travailleurs de Volta (USTV), proved to be just such a “spearhead of revolution,” attracting elements opposed to the Yameogo regime and eventually overthrowing it in the heat of trade union agitation during which the embattled Yameogo accused the chairman of the Trade Union Movement Joint Action Committee of “trying to hand over Upper Volta to Ghana.” 112 This was certainly a frightful precedent in trade union revolutionary agitation and, soon, the Kenyatta government would demonstrate that it did not care to suffer Yameogo’s fate. Following 1966, the entrench­ ment of state supervision of COTU’s internal affairs proceeded apace. Increasingly, the activities of COTU leaders came under “one firm, informal rule” : they were not only to be loyal to the government, they were also to support the ruling party.113 The rule would be invoked in all its ferocity following the break-away by Odinga and his

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followers from KANU to form the Kenya People’s Union (KPU). The political reasons for the break were soon published in Odinga’s N ot Yet Uhuru, with Nkrumah writing a foreword to it and saluting Odinga as “my friend and fellow freedom fighter.” 114 Swiftly, the Kenyan system moved against this new radical asser­ tiveness. As the opening shot, the Executive Council of COTU sus­ pended Akumu, Mak’Anyengo and Wachira (three of the thirteen trade unionists who helped to found KPU) from their posts in COTU, on the grounds that COTU had agreed to cooperate with the govern­ ment, and that since the government was run by KANU (and since, furthermore, the three had joined the anti-KANU KPU) they had acted in contravention of COTU policy. COTU, it was emphasized, would “resist and discipline severely” any trade union leader who might “be tempted to use his position in the trade union movement to try to undermine . . . the ruling party and the government.” 115 The coup de grace would soon come in the form of a preventive detention act that permitted the government to detain without trial in the interests of national security. Akumu, Mak’Anyengo, and Wachira were soon detained in the company of other unionists. This would be followed, as a matter of course, by the detention of the KPU leader himself, Odinga. It was obvious, as KPU administrative secretary Kimani Waiyaki noted, that the government sought not only “to destroy the KPU, but also had certain interest in weakening the rights and powers of the trade union movement in Kenya.” 116 In October 1969, the KPU was outlawed altogether. The cause of labor radicalism now seemed well and truly dead in Kenya. Significantly, neither the detentions of 1966, nor the subse­ quent ones in 1969, stirred the ire of the rank and file workers. No protest strikes occurred in response to the systematic strangulation of the leadership. The political loyalties of the leaders appeared to be now of little consequence to the workers. As for Dennis Akumu, he apparently learned his lessons well in detention. For, soon after his release, he disassociated himself from the KPU and formed an Action Group, subsequently renamed the Kenya Group, which lost no time in accommodating itself to “the basic economic policies of KANU,” 117 as well as being fraternal toward the ICFTU .118 Becoming the new general secretary of COTU in 1969, he moved to crystallize the COTU-KANU alliance that he had so fiercely fought against before his incarceration: “We shall support President Kenyatta, his government, and KANU . . . [We shall] pray for long life, as we all know his wise leadership and fatherly image have made the country stable.” 119 There were simply no countervailing trends or forces in Kenya to

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reverse this crystallization of conservatism in the remaining years of AATUF’s career. Everything, observed Amsden, pointed “in the direction of sharper business practices and more bureaucracy,” as well as an increasing adoption of the characteristics of the F K E .120 In 1970, over the protests of union leaders and ordinary workers, the COTU leadership signed a Second Tripartite Agreement requiring a “temporary” wage freeze. This was done even in the face of astronom­ ical pay raises for members of Parliament and superscale civil ser­ vants. “By 1972, in short,” Sandbrook wrote, “the scope for independent political action by unions was negligible. It was, in fact, far more confined than it had been between 1958 and 1962.” 121 Indeed, if organizational autonomy is measured in terms of the ability of the organization to define and pursue its own goals and to regulate its own internal affairs, “then clearly,” wrote the same Sandbrook in 1970, the trade unions in Kenya “possess less freedom today than under the colonial regime.” 122

Conclusion The AATUF idea of a united army of African workers, independent of manipulations from either the East or West, infused with the PanAfricanist vision of a powerful and dignified Union of African States, and operating as “the spearhead of the social and political forces” in the various countries in the service of African political radicalization and integration, was a sound and forceful one and readily excited the imagination and enthusiasm of the dynamic labor circles on the con­ tinent. Even with its nonalignment disfigured, AATUF’s world view proved to be overall more appealing to those with a longing and passion for African self-determination and self-respect than Mboya’s static and sterile ideological fare of colonial-neocolonial orthodoxy. Thus, when in January 1962 Mboya led a countermove of some thirty-five affiliates of the ICFTU and Christian unions in the fran­ cophone countries (ICTUF) to establish an African Trade Union Confederation (ATUC) “as an act of mutual protection in the face of their ‘declaration of war,’ ” 123 this turned out to be a holding operation only, unable, from the first, to gain wide recognition as the legitimate spokesman for the African trade union movement. As Roger Scott wrote, there was something of an “inevitable failure” in the attempt of the ICFTU-ATUC to identify itself with anticolonialism and support for African interests.124 For a while, then, radicalism seemed tri­ umphant as, at the Second Congress of the AATUF at Bamako in June 1964, several new centers, breakaways from the ATUC-ICFTU,

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joined a host of delegates from thirty-six countries to plan strategy against “colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism.” 125 For all that, AATUF’s great potential was never fully realized. Underneath the surface of resolute commitment and buoyant spirits, it was organizationally hamstrung, and its mobilizational capacity sharply reduced, by the central contradiction between its profession of nonalignment and its de facto alignment to the East, itself the result of imperfections in the domestic radicalization process of the federation’s host country, Ghana. As a result of a policy of self-inflicted straightjacket, the efforts to overthrow “puppet” regimes and absorb affiliates of extra-African labor organizations achieved only a modest and tran­ sient success, as the Kenyan case shows. Whatever was accomplished related to the period when Nkrumah remained in power and when the Ghana government and the WFTU made fairly steady contributions to AATUF’s operations. Once Nkrumah and Tettegah were swept from the center of the African stage in February 1966, the AATUF was left with little internal impetus to carry on. Its achievements prior to Nkrumah’s ouster had derived from “activism from above” in the performance of Nkrumah, Tettegah, and the East. Since the drama had not been rooted in effective machineries at the national grassroots levels that might have generated a durable internal self-sustaining energy for the federation, the post-Nkrumah AATUF turned out to be a spent force, maintaining a Secretariat starved of funds.126 In Kenya, after the Ghana coup, the now highly vulnerable KAWC, the AATUF affiliate, was left not only to fend for itself, but also to face the backlash of the hostile Kenyan government against Nkrumah and the AATUF. Since KAWC’s effectiveness before 1966 had been due largely to the flow of external subventions from Accra and not to any appreciable “growth from below” mobilization of the Kenya workers, the contest between the Kenyatta government and the radical union­ ists was a foregone conclusion.

6 East African Diplomatic Reactions to Nkrumah’s Overthrow Perspective It is an understatement to say that Nkrumah’s fall from power in Ghana in February 1966 caused a stir in the African universe. In the eyes of his ardent supporters, notably the radical studentries across Africa, the Osagyefo “recovered his heroic standing by his sheer fall from power.” 1 Wounded and cornered, these “true believers” moved to join battle. The militant Federation of African Students in France, FEANT, issued a “blistering communique” condemning the forces behind the Ghana coup d ’etat,2 while, in the U.S., a group of students from the Pan-African Students Union picketed the Ghanaian mission at the United Nations chanting Nkrumaist slogans and thundering “puppets go home.”3 At Dakar University, student demonstrations against the coup re­ sulted in a major crisis, bringing life on the campus to a halt and taxing the resources of officialdom to the limit. In the end, nearly two hundred students from Dahomey (now Benin), Mali, Mauritania, and the Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), left the University in protest. Since none of the Ghanaian students at the University took part in the protest, the besieged Senegalese Minister of Information was impelled to wonder why the rebellious students deemed it necessary to be “more Ghanaian than the Ghanaians themselves.”4 The spirit of combative solidarity was by no means confined to the radical studentries. Thus, on the diplomatic front, Zambia’s Kaunda emerged at the head of a Central African bloc of countries which became “openly contemptuous and hostile . . . [and] irreconcilable” to the military junta which had overthrown Nkrum ah.5 While Kaunda eulogised the fallen Osagyefo as “an outstanding son of Africa” who had been deposed by “collusion and corruption” of imperialism,6 his Foreign Minister, Kapwepwe, proclaimed that Nkrumah’s contribu­ tion to the liberation of Africa was “unparalleled and unforgett­ able. . . .”7 In Mali, Modibo Keita’s government declared two days of

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solidarity with N knunah, even as his Foreign Minister, Ousmane Ba, announced that he planned to give Nkrumah “total and resolute support.”8 For its part, the government of the Congo (Brazzaville) described the Ghana coup as the latest in a series which posed “a mortal threat” to the forward march of the African people. But by far the most spectacular expression of support—the most startling identification with Nkrumah’s reversal—came from Guinea. Declaring that “it is in Guinea that we will stop the criminal hand of imperialism which is strangling Africa,”9 Sekou Toure who, only a few months before the coup, had described Nkrumah as “the tireless artisan of the construction of our African fatherland” , now bestowed upon him the co-presidency of Guinea. The “Ghanaian traitors,” he proclaimed, were mistaken in their belief that N krum ah is a Ghanaian. He is not merely even an African. He is simply a man—a universal man. May it be known that the head of state of Guinea and the first official of the Guinean Democratic Party is called Kwame Nkrumah.10

This act of restoration, he went on, was not so much in honor of N knunah as of the people of Africa. Africa, as he saw it, had “to reply” on the Osagyefo’s behalf “because those who have insulted him have insulted Africa.” 11 While in London and Washington bewildered Nkrum aphobic diplomats puzzled over the seeming recuperative powers of the Osagyefo,12 in radical circles the tendency was to enthuse over Toure’s gesture as “another record in his [Toure’s] . . . revolutionary his­ tory.” 13 There was clearly none more overwhelmed than Nkrumah himself, who responded that such a gesture of political solidarity must surely be without historical precedent. When our historians come to record the events of 1966, they will doubdess consider the action of the Guinean government as a great landmark in the practical expression of Pan-Africanism.14

For the OAU itself, the outgrowth of the Ghana coup was, as West Africa observed, a “real psychological malaise.” 15 The immediate effect of Nkrumah’s ouster, coming just before the Foreign Ministers’ meeting in March 1966 was predictably “traumatic” , resulting—what with the several walk-outs from the conference—in “the most serious split within the OAU since its formation in 1963.” 16 It was the defection of A. Quaison-Sackey, Nkrumah’s Foreign Minister, who

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chose to return to protective custody in Ghana rather than attempt to put Nkrum ah’s case to the OAU, which saved the meeting from total deadlock.17 All told, however, it was only a minority of seven national delega­ tions18 which walked out of the “conservative-majority” OAU. By far the majority of the remaining national delegations represented govern­ ments that had a different orientation—one of breezy exultation— regarding Nkrumah’s ouster. Houphouet-Boigny, the leader of the French-penetrated Ivory Coast, and a leader of the forces of anti-PanAfricanism in West Africa, quickly ordered a troop buildup at his country’s frontier with Guinea to “await the arrival of Guinea soldiers who may be marching to attack Ghana” , making it clear in the process that any attempt by “Guinea troops and volunteers” to march through the Ivory Coast to Ghana to try to reinstate Nkrumah would be met by force. Then, amid speculation of the influx of French troops into his country to strengthen its defences, he waxed sarcastic and defiant: “Why did Dr. Nkrumah, the Savior, the Redeemer, the Divine, the Invulnerable, not return to Accra to put himself at the disposal of his country’s justice?” 19 In Monrovia, President Tubman, in the face of Sekou Toure’s threats to invade Ghana, turned wrathfully on Nkrumah as “a man of confusion, a hydra-headed dragon with many hands out to destroy Africa.”20 President Tsiranama of Madagascar’s opinion was that Toure’s conferment of co-presidency on Nkrumah was “high trea­ son,”21 while Chief Enahoro of Nigeria thought the coup was “a distinct service to the people of Ghana,” in as much as “nothing else could have unseated Nkrum ah.’’22 A polarity then emerged in Africa’s responses to the overthrow of Nkrumah. On the one hand, there was the solidary and bellicose determination of a “radical minority” of states to stand by the fallen hero and to assail the “foreign enemies” of Africa and their “Ghanaian agents” deemed responsible for his ouster. On the other, there were the equally robust reactions of the “conservative majority” that saw in N krum ah’s reversal an opportunity as much to gloat over the “wisdom” of their chosen conservative path to development, as to satirize the “pretensions” of the Osagyefo. Reflecting this dichotomy of responses, were the divergent lessons drawn from them. Thus the Ghana delegation representing the new military government issued a statement charging that “the emotions” shown by “certain countries” in seeking to “interfere” with Ghana’s internal affairs showed that their friendship for Ghana was “based on the personality of one man and one man alone.”23 Almost in retort, Sekou Toure announced that the attitude of each nation towards the “military traitors” of Ghana

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was “the criterion for judging the honesty of each of these states in their relations with Africa.”24 In much the same vein, Nkrumah himself saw the Ghana coup as “a cleansing process” in that it helped expose “the stooges of neocolonialism”25: The taking sides “for” and “against” showed once again the familiar groupings of—on the one side, those who are struggling to achieve so­ cialism, and the total liberation and unity of the African continent, and on the other, those who want to maintain the status quo and are fighting a desperate rearguard action to halt the liberation movement.26

How did East Africa stand in terms of these evaluations of the dichotomous reception to the coup? The following analysis will show that, based on the ideological and policy predispositions of the three countries—with Uganda and Tanzania occupying the “radical minor­ ity” category, while Kenya claimed a pride of place in the camp of the conservative majority—their responses were very much in character.

Uganda As we have shown, in Uganda the predisposition was one of a high degree of rapport between Obote’s government and Nkrumah. This is where, in Obote’s own avowal, Nkrumaism had taken root. Here, Nkrumaist prescriptions on firm national integration, on a nonaligned African labor movement, and on continental political integration were assimilated and echoed, thanks to the force of Ghanaian example and penetration, eventuating in an ideological congruence that was but­ tressed by the personal friendship of the two leaders. Here, the proliferation of military coups d’etat in Africa, particularly its latest manifestation in Ghana, was deemed to constitute “the wind of shame,” in the phraseology of a Ugandan minister.27 Even so, at Addis Ababa in march 1966, the Ugandan delegation attending the OAU ministerial meeting did not walk out, as one would expect from the backdrop of Nkrumah-Obote solidarity. The cause of this lay in the emergency domestic circumstances of Uganda at the time that left little room for the determination of foreign policy. For it was on the same day of Nkrumah’s overthrow in Ghana that Obote moved to suspend some sections of Uganda’s Independence Constitution, to seize the powers formerly invested in the Presidency and the Vice Presidency and to detain five of his Ministers—all on the grounds that a coup had been planned in Uganda by the “forces of reaction, of entrenched privilege, of tribal emotionalism,” in league with foreign

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troops, to coincide with the ouster of his mentor, Nkrumah. It is from this divination that 24 February, the fateful day of Nkrumah’s over­ throw, became also “heroes Day” in Uganda. In the immediate months following the crisis, Obote preoccupied himself with fashion­ ing a new interim constitution wherein the supreme powers of state would “not be diluted because of local considerations,” since Uganda was too young to “divide her forces in the various capitals around the country. . . .” Such a constitution was adopted in April 1966 and was to remain in force until such time as a Constituent Assembly estab­ lished by Parliament would enact another constitution. Obote auto­ matically became President and was sworn in on the steps of Parliament.28 Even at this point, it could not be said that the political minefield in Uganda had been defused. It was precisely at this point that the Kabaka of Buganda, for instance, began to fight back, charging Obote with attempting to introduce “a totalitarian regime” in the country, “in complete violation of the constitution,”29 and touching off charges and countercharges between the former ceremonial president and the new executive president that rang and reverberated throughout the land.30 The final showdown occurred in May 1966 when the Ugandan army took over the Kabaka’s palace after an all-day fighting.31 But even this triumphant assertion of de facto authority did not quite settle the question of Obote’s legitimacy. It required the ruling, early in 1967, of Uganda’s Chief Justice (heading a Constitutional Court con­ sisting of three High Court Judges) that the 1966 interim constitution was “legal and valid,” to psychologically dispose of the domestic crisis. The court had been asked to rule whether the emergency powers under which a number of people had been detained were themselves legal, a suit which in effect sought to test the validity of the new constitution.32 It is at this point, about a year after the coup in Ghana, that Obote could firmly turn to foreign affairs, particularly those relating to his fallen friend.33 Diplomatic relations with Ghana had been retained and not broken off outright as in Zambia, for instance. Still, they were downright frozen and not just “far from being warm,” the understate­ ment with which a Ghanaian foreign minister on occasion charac­ terized it.34 Indeed, it appears from a revealing statement by Sam Odaka, the Ugandan foreign minister, that the utility of the Ugandan embassy in Accra was seen to lie in its capacity to keep the Ugandan government posted on developments in Ghana rather than in fulfilling any conventional functions of promoting good relations between the two countries.35 Given this circumscribed view of the embassy’s duties in Accra, it came as no surprise that Obote should later on declare that

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his government had in point of fact never recognized the Ghanaian military regime.36 At a press conference on the eve of the first anniversary of the Ghanaian coup, Obote drew battle lines against Nkrumah’s enemies. Events in Ghana, he intoned, had opened the eyes of “thinking Africa.” A military government had been established “for no reason at all, except that the President was working for the masses in Ghana.” The military government, he deplored, was being praised for having ousted “a very capable African in government, a greater leader in African unity, a great leader in African integrity, a great leader in Africa, being seen as an African and not just as a replica of the Western world or the Eastern world.”37 Then, in a memorandum to Colin Legum, he challenged the view that the alleged corruption of Nkrumah’s government made his deposal defensible. If corruption was the issue for deposing “an illustrious leader” like Nkrumah, he countered, the answer could not be found in replacing him with General Ankrah. “It is my view that there has been more corruption in Ghana during the time of General Ankrah than it was in the time of Nkrum ah.”38 By now, Obote could scarcely maintain silence on the subject. His next opportunity would come soon enough on Africa Day in August 1969 when he took his case to the university students at Makerere. “One of the greatest moving spirits in the African cause,” he com­ plained, was “summarily removed” on 24 February 1966 and the “imperialists” thought that they had succeeded. “I say that they made the greatest mistake in their lives. That kind of removal of African leaders will continue, but it will not deter the progress of the African people.”39 It can be inferred from all this that the Ghanaian embassy personnel were not exactly personae gratae in Uganda. Being the representatives of a “leprous” government, they were easy prey to Obote’s indefatig­ able verbal assaults, their private protests receiving no consideration whatsoever. Consider this vintage Obote performance of March 1970 in an address to the heads of missions in Uganda: Let us not forget that in at least one country in Africa the armed forces resisted preparation or training of freedom fighters. That was in Ghana. The armed forces of Ghana resisted the training of freedom fighters in Ghana and thought that Kwame Nkrumah was doing the wrong thing to train freedom fighters. . . .*°

As if this was not enough, Obote stormed once again to the attack a few months later when he declared, in an address to a law seminar,

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that any army officer, “who like in Ghana, overrides the constitution in order to remove a constitutionally-established government from office” , was a “more corrupt person than whoever he displaces.”41 Obote’s empathy with Nkrumah was understandable in more ways than one. Long before, as we have noted, he had owned to toeing the Nkrumaist path and had speculated about the predicament that would befall leaders like himself, should Nkrumah the pathfinder run into trouble. Now his political opponents at home were enthusiastically drawing from the Nkrumah debacle the inevitability of a parallel UPC disaster in Uganda. In taking up Nkrumah’s cause, then, Obote was also taking up his own cause; the defence of his government’s ideolog­ ical position in the African Revolution—the defense, if you will, of Nkrumaism in Uganda. On occasion, then, his speeches were not just a plaintive cry against Nkrumah’s overthrow, but also a plea that his countrymen reject, as well as prevent, a similar fate for his own government. One lesson from the Ghanaian experience, as he noted, was that “when a country is mobilising for economic and social justice, it is undemocratic. When it changes course it becomes democratic.”42 Another extrapolation was the “curious development,” the “dan­ gerous phenomenon,” whereby governments which paid lip service to the cause of the African Revolution “have no fear of being removed, but that those governments which are struggling to advance the Af­ rican Revolution are the ones which have been overthrown since 1966.” Clearly, then, it was the governments dedicated to Africa’s welfare that should “entertain fears of being overthrown,” of being “sabotaged by big powers” by way of foreign inspired coups d’etat.43 The occasion of A nkrah’s enforced resignation as chairman of Ghana’s ruling National Liberation Council (NLC) on charges of corruption was marked with jubilation and celebration by Obote’s Uganda People’s Congress (UPC). As Kampala rocked to the exhilara­ tion of the Nkrumaist militants, the party headquarters issued a statement of vindication: The so-called N.L.C. of Ghana came to power using the people’s guns on the pretext that Osagyefo Nkrumah’s regime was corrupt. One of the leaders of the Council has now publicly admitted that he has been corrupt. The purpose of the junta coming to power has not only been defeated but it has demonstrated a number of points. The aims of military leaders in Africa who come to power by using guns are normally to get power to save themselves. This is understandable because they never at any time thought of Africa being free, never sacrificed anything for the people of Africa and never had any African pride. While we celebrate the revelation of corrup­ tion in Ghana’s so-called N.L.C., we advise Afrifa (Ankrah’s successor as military head of state) to return to the barracks and let the constitutionally

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elected leader Osagyefo Kwame N krum ah return and serve the people of Ghana44

Lest Ugandans miss the moral of this latest installment of the Ghanaian tragedy, Obote took it upon himself to exultandy under­ score the swift fulfillment of his prophecy to Colin Legum on the corruption of the NLC. Are we seriously being asked to swallow this nonsense—that we have got two types of Africans, one bearing the emblem of ‘politician-corrupt’, the other bearing the insignia of ‘military-absolutely incorrigible’? Are we swallowing this nonsense? . . . What happened in Ghana? General Ankrah was found receiving money corruptly. Was he not a General and an army officer? Let us not swallow all this nonsense pushed to us by foreigners.4*

The hostility of the Obote government to Nkrumah’s enemies did not flag with the withdrawal of the “so-called N .L .C .” and the acces­ sion of a new civilian administration headed by Kofi Busia. In fact, it was almost as if Obote could not wait to antagonize the new govern­ ment of Ghana. Asked about it soon after its installation, he answered that “Ugandans would never accept a position whereby foreigners select leaders for African countries,” and then went on to recall that the civilian predecessor administration of Nkrumah “had been a vic­ tim of neocolonialism and imperialism.” The new prime minister, he further observed, had been sworn in by a three-man “Presidential Commission” consisting of two army officers and one police commis­ sioner. That, he sneered, was “the democracy now being practiced in Ghana”—a kind of democracy which he did not want to see practiced in Uganda.46 It was not long before the government was called upon to respond to another “travesty” of Ghanaian democracy. Busia, only a few months in office, summarily dismissed some six hundred civil servants both at home and abroad on political grounds. Mr. Joseph Simpson, the first secretary at the Ghana High Commission in Uganda, happened to be one of the victims. His crime, as he saw it, was that he “came from the part of Ghana where Dr. Nkrumah was bom .” When Simpson’s tearful lashing that “dictatorship has never been exercised in a more inhuman way than I have been treated,” provoked threats of official discipline in Accra, the Obote government promptly granted him sanctuary in Uganda.47 But this was hardly the most dramatic reaffirmation of the GhanaUganda nexus. When the South African, Genoveva Marais, a close friend of Nkrumah and, prior to the Ghana coup, the head of Ghana Television, was “after several disturbing months” following the coup

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finally deported from Ghana in October 1966, it was to Uganda that she repaired “to try and gather my thoughts and to rest.”48 Again, when partly on account of its “scurrilous articles” on Nkrumah the Transition was hounded to its death in Uganda, it was in Ghana that it attained resuscitation, even as the Nkrumaist Africa and the World, banned from Ghana after the coup, was to become the unrivalled favourite of the ruling UPC circles in Uganda. “Experience has . . . shown,” counselled The People, at the height of the Ghana govern­ ment’s efforts to derogate the London-based magazine, “that to ban a paper or to mount a campaign to discredit it, only makes it more popular and certainly increases its circulation.”49 To Busia, the nightmare posed by this Nkrumaist bastion in East Africa could not end until Obote’s overthrow early in 1971. Not surprisingly, the Ghana government was the first in Africa to recognize the new Amin administration in Uganda, emphasizing, for effect, its recognition of the right of every independent state of Africa to choose the kind of government it will live under. The state-controlled Ghanaian Times was hardly less effusive. After noting that there were in Uganda many similarities in the factors that led to the coup in Ghana, it suggested that “Amin was only a servant of the people” who had been called upon to “save the country from an invidious re­ gime.”50 The wheel of political nemeses had come full circle.

Tanzania The predisposition in Tanzania was one of ideological fellowship with Nkrumah’s Ghana revolving around militant anticolonialism, dynamic nonalignment, and, barring the wrangling over the means to its attainment, Pan-African unity. The essence of the Ghana-Tanzanian relationship was perceived in Tanzania, at the time of Nkrumah’s overthrow, as follows: Kwame Nkrumah is the man who led Ghana to freedom, who inspired the rest of Africa for independence, development, unity. We in Tanzania have consistently and sharply supported these aims, even when we have disagreed with Dr. Nkrumah on his methods of working for them. We still support these purposes.51 We are quite conscious of the fact that now that Dr. Nkrumah has been removed from the African political scene, all the forces of disruption will be aimed at and concentrated upon Tanzania, because this Republic’s leader and Ghana’s Nkrumah were two of the most painful thorns in the imperialists’ flesh. . . ,52

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The most striking illustrations of the ideological comradeship be­ tween Ghana and Tanzania centered around the issues of Rhodesia and the AATUF. The two countries were among the minority of nine that honored an OAU resolution passed in December 1965 in Addis Ababa calling on member countries to break relations with Britain in the event of its failure to “crush the rebellion” of Ian Smith, restore law and order, and “prepare the way for majority rule.”53 Then, in Janu­ ary 1966, Ghana and Tanzania were the only two African Common­ wealth countries to boycott the Lagos Commonwealth conference convened by Nigeria in effect to help defend the British position on Rhodesia—to give Prime Minister Harold Wilson “an opportunity to repeat his propaganda, not in London, but on African soil.”54 The two stayed away because they felt “that the conference could never achieve its only basic justification—the provision of evidence that, in the event of economic sanctions failing in Rhodesia, military force would be resorted to.”55 Regarding the compatibleness of the two countries on AATUF, it could indeed be said that Nkrumah scored his most positive practical impact on Tanzania in the field of Pan-African trade unionism. To begin with, as we have noted, the politicization of labor in Tanzania came about as a result of a labor legislation modelled upon that of Ghana.56 The country then became an AATUF recruit at the Second AATUF Conference in Bamako in 1964, and almost immediately Dar es Salaam became the Regional Headquarters of the East and Central African Center of the federation. From then on, labor leaders in Tanzania proceeded to take to the AATUF philosophy in its totality and with a vengeance. With Nkrumah’s overthrow, Dar es Salaam fittingly took over the all-African headquarters of the federation from Accra. As we shall see, it was from this new base, and with the endorsement of the Tanzanian government, that the AATUF gallantly took up the cause of the fallen Nkrumah, harassing at every turn his political successors in Ghana as “stooges of the imperialists” and “enemies of African independence.” In his first official reaction a few days after the coup, Nyerere came out strong in support of Nkrumah and virulent in denunciation of the perpetrators of the coup. Lamenting that “the enemies of Africa are now jubilant . . . there is jubilation in Salisbury and Johan­ nesburg . . and offering a ready sanctuary to the ousted comrade (“I will welcome him to come here any time . . . I will support him to come here anytime . . .”), the Mwalimu launched into a voluble dissertation on Tanzania’s conception of Nkrumaism: W hat was Kwam e trying to do? H e stood for the liberation o f A frica.

There is not a single leader in Africa more committed to this than Kwame.

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Whom did he anger? Certainly not Africa . . . Nkrumah was absolutely committed to true independence. . . . In this he was not angering Af­ rica. . . . Kwame was completely uncompromising on African unity. . . . Since Africa could only be strong through unity to shake away all forms of oppression and colonialism, he could not have angered Africa on this either. . . . Nor, in his commitment to industrialization and socialism in Ghana could he have erred, since Africa’s only way is that of socialism. . . . For all that he has done for Ghana and Africa, there are people who have been angered. . . .54

At the sixth ordinary session of the Council of Ministers of the OAU that opened under the shadow of the coup, Tanzania—together with Mali and Guinea—led the case against recognition of the Ankrah delegation. As we have noted, it was the non-arrival of Quayson Sackey that took much of the force of their arguments. Following a temporary walkout in a further show of opposition, Tanzania finally withdrew its delegation from the conference. On another front, about the same time, the Tanzanian Minister for Regional Administration proposed that all the countries which, like Tanzania, quit the OAU’s Ministerial conference in support of Nkrumah “unite together against reactionary forces in Africa,” a category to which the new Ghanaian military government was firmly assigned. The Ministerial conference, he asserted, proved that “African reactionary forces have no faith in the struggle against imperialism.”58 There was no let-up on this mood of diplomatic tempestuousness until Sekou Toure’s declaration that Guineans would go to Ghana to help overthrow the new government there.59 This drew the Mwalimu up short, impelling him to define the limits of support that militant Africa could reasonably bestow on even the Osagyefo. Tanzania cer­ tainly sympathised with Nkrumah: But after our sympathies what do you do? Do we organize subversion in Ghana? Do we promote or provoke civil war in Ghana?. . . When there is a change of government in a country it is up to the people of that country to accept it or reject it. It is not the business of another country to help in effecting another change of government—because we believe in constitu­ tionality.60

In a further elaboration on this thesis on the limits of support for fallen heroes, Nyerere came perilously close to implying that the Ankrah regime might in due course be recognized by Tanzania, in spite of Tanzania’s misgivings about it. It was one thing to recognize a government and quite another to like it, he stated. “There are coun­ tries that recognize some other countries but do not necessarily like the leadership in those countries and vice versa.” There, for instance,

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was the example of the former Algerian President Ben Bella who had been “doing an excellent job both for his country and Africa,” and whom all the imperialists feared. “Surely, his overthrow could not have made Tanzania rejoice.”61 Nor could it have prevented Tanzania, the master of sweet reasonableness, from recognizing the successor administration of Boumedienne. Was this thesis irrefutable? Many in Tanzania did not think so, were in fact underwhelmed by it, and proceeded to advance counterargu­ ments.62 They would win in the end. It might be that in time Nyerere came to be impressed by what they had to say, or that the force of propinquity, a variable missing in the Ghanaian case but very salient in the mischance of the Uganda coup of January 1971, proved too much for him. Or, it might all be just another illustration of the Mwalimu’s propensity to worry an issue to death before conceding to its virtues. Whatever it was, the principle of qualified support was honored in the breach by the man who fathered it when, some five years later, Idi Amin overthrew Obote from power in neighboring Uganda. Then Nyerere, sheltering Obote in Tanzania in much the same way Toure had given refuge to Nkrumah, could say that Tanzania and the main­ land TANU party would never recognize Amin as the head of the Uganda government, since, if Amin’s regime was consolidated, it would weaken the national independence of Uganda with inevitable effects upon the strength of the whole region, at a time when Africa’s need for unity in opposition to the supporters of racialism and colonialism is dear to the meanest intelligence. . . . The government of the United Republic of Tanzania continues to regard President Obote as the President of Uganda. We do not recognize the authority of those who have killed their fellow citizens in an attempt to overthrow the established government of a sister Republic63

By an ironic twist of history, it was now the turn of Toure to congratulate Nyerere on his “intention” to send troops to “liberate” Uganda. In spite of vigorous denials,64 exactly such an invasion was attempted within months. All this volte-face, however, would occur in 1971. In 1966, it was as a champion of noninterventionism that Nyerere assailed Toure’s idea of an all-out support of Nkrumah. For all that, the core of his empathy for Nkrumah remained untempered. When the seventh session of the OAU Council of Ministers opened in October 1966 in Addis Ababa against the background of crisis created by the Ghana military government’s detention in Accra of the Guinean delegation, the Tanzanian government lost no time in condemning the

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action as “completely contrary to the accepted norms of international diplomatic behaviour” and as “an insult not only to Guinea, but to the OAU and to Africa.”65 It was not long before the Mwalimu once again hit his oratorical stride. Speaking in January 1967, he painfully spotlighted the historic tragedy of Nkrumah’s overthrow (“last year was a year of humiliation and shame for Africa and our enemies were full of jubilation”), and then returned to the theme of the “imperialists’ ” use of the army and the intellectuals to topple progressive African governments.66 So effective was Tanzania’s diplomatic war of attrition that when the civilian Busia administration took over from the military late in 1969, the new prime minister spoke out in his very first press conference against Tanzania for trying to arrogate to itself the choice of who should be rulers of Ghana.67 But, in general, the Ghanaians who, in the beginning, had been quite ready in their turn to tell the “irreconcilables” of East and Central Africa (“Presidents Nyerere, Obote, Kaunda were par­ ticularly bitter and in effect barked at us to get the hell out of their sight. . . .”)68 to go “mind their own ruddy business too and keep their superior wisdom about our best interest to themselves. . . .69, and who had also sought by a series of publications to “expose” N krum ah’s alleged “subversion” of East Africa,70 soon began to awaken to some elementary wisdom of diplomacy in the-East African context. Here, it came to be acknowledged that, “even up to now, the best way to win friends is not to condemn Nkrumah whose personal standing is apparently still high there, but rather to inform them about the realities of Ghana’s political and economic situation, and the attempts at national reconstruction. . . .”71 Pressing this new wisdom into service, Ghana’s foreign Minister, Victor Owusu, at a press conference in Tanzania in which he appealed for normalization of relations between his country and the states of Uganda and Tanzania (“The majority of the countries which severed relations with Ghana after the overthrow of Nkrumah have now nor­ malised their relations with Ghana. It is East Africa which has not yet done so. . . .”), lavishly praised the role of Nkrumah in the affairs of Africa, saying that the Osagyefo had done “a lot of good for Africa.”72 This overture was significant, being the first time that any member of the successive regimes that had ruled Ghana since Nkrumah’s over­ throw had spoken favorably of him. But Tanzania, like Uganda, remained unimpressed. Dar es Salaam, we have noted, became the new headquarters of the AATUF following the federation’s resolution of November 1966 to transfer the headquarters from Accra “to any revolutionary state in

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Africa.” Early in December, at a Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tettegah was unceremoniously deposed from his post as Secretary-General of the federation and his place was taken by a Malian, Mamadou Sisoko, who took the opportunity not only to denounce the Ghanaian regime but also to criticize the unfortunate Tettegah himself. Tettegah, in detention after the coup and seemingly under duress, had suggested in a message to an AATUF Executive Bureau meeting at Dar es Salaam that the federation’s headquarters were functioning without hin­ drance—that all Ghanaian workers were behind the new regime of the N LC.73 The fact that no consideration could be granted in extenuation of the circumstances reflected the labor federation’s uncompromising militancy in defense of its besieged founder. Charging that Tettegah’s declarations “were a flagrant contradiction to the principles o f AATUF on the role and responsibilities of the African working class,” and, furtherm ore, that the “passiveness” of the Ghana TUC “amounted to treason,” the federation proceeded to eliminate Tettegah from his leadership position.74 In this, as in its tireless fervor in attacking Nkrumah’s enemies, the federation was obviously helped by its new militantly hospitable headquarters. Flowing from the me­ chanics of Tanzania’s “political trade unionism ,” the M inister of Labor was also the Secretary-General of NUTA—as well as being a Vice President of the AATUF. It was a case of a virile trilogy of TANU, NUTA, and AATUF. From first to last the AATUF would not yield to Nyerere or anyone else in its belligerency toward Nkrumah’s opponents. At the outset, it called on all Ghanaian and African workers to “get mobilized against the new pro-imperialist puppet regime.”75 When three Ghanaian workers were shot dead by the Ghana police at the Obuasi mines as they struck over the takeover of the corporation by Lonrho, the federation quickly issued a statement drawing attention to “the dan­ gers of the imperialist inspired coup d’etat”—to the fact that “foreign exploitation in Ghana resulting in die oppression and killing of work­ ers” had turned that country into a “neo-colonialist base.”76 Then following Ankrah’s resignation, the federation said that the corruption of the former chairman of the “so-called N .L .C .” had a bearing on the nature of the forces that overthrew the constitutional government headed by Nkrumah. “They are all a gang of thieves fighting for crumbs from the table of their imperialist masters and Ankrah was too greedy for the rest of the members of the Junta.”77 It soon came to Busia’s turn. Condemning his call for a dialogue with the “neo-fascist Boer regime” of South Africa, the AATUF described Busia as a “puppet Prime Minister trying to solicit financial

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assistance from South Africa by joining the Vorster-Banda alliance.” Busia’s call was a “reflection of the views of his capitalist masters whom he admires.” It was significant that Busia “would prefer recog­ nizing a minority racist settler regime which dehumanizes, maims and kills Africans rather than recognizing the People’s Republic of China which represents a quarter of the world’s population.” His “apparent display of ignorance” on the South African situation and international affairs generally “stem from his class background as an old fashioned bourgeois intellectual.” Furthermore, By allowing himself to be pulled by the nose by forces hostile to Africa, and by being a mouthpiece of the oppressors and exploiters of Africa, Busia has exposed himself and his clique of reactionary military and intellectual opportunists as traitors to Africa.78

Kenya In Kenya, the predisposition was one of ideological incompatibility to Ghana that is best summed up in terms of the opposition between the source of Africa’s “wind of change” (a phrase fashioned by British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan in Accra) and the bedrock of British “residual colonial responsibility” (a phrase dreamed up in the heart of Kenya by British Junior Minister Maurice Foley).79 Fittingly, in this cockpit of neocolonialism, the government-owned Voice of Kenya welcomed Nkrumah’s overthrow with the refrain: “Doves of peace are coming down all over the African continent. It’s nothing but coup, coup, coup.”80 Against the background of this none-too-friendly relationship, it was seen as a “surprise move” indeed81 that Mr. Joseph Murumbi, the Kenya Foreign Minister, should have walked out of the OAU Minis­ terial Council meeting—the seventh national delegation to do so— saying “my government is against military coups and disregard of constitutional authority.”82 In a matter of hours, as Western elements and Kenya’s foreign-owned press raised a howl of protest at this uncustomary show of solidarity with Nkrumah, the authentic position of the Kenyan government began to emerge. Joseph Murumbi, acting on his own initiative, had taken in Addis Ababa a “radical” position that he must have known would embarrass the “Kenyan government.” He would soon be made to pay for his impertinence in a scenario which gave yet another demonstration of the uneasy existence within the KANU83 government of not a few Nkrumaists who, in spite of everything, held their ground to the left of the government.84

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To restore the government’s image of conservative respectability, Kenyatta soon stated that the Kenyan delegation withdrew from the Addis Ababa meeting because of the “confusion regarding representa­ tion of Ghana at the meeting,”85 a view that was harped upon by the Minister of State in pacification of concerned questioners in a parlia­ mentary debate on the subject in less than a week. With it went the assurance that the government would recognize the new military regime in Ghana once it had satisfied itself that the military had the full support of the people of the country and that it had a reasonable chance of success and permanence.86 Predictably, the government immediately acquired such a satisfaction and then proceeded not only to strengthen Ghana-Kenyan relations but also to spite Nkrumah as much as possible in the process. Thus, Mr. David Busumtwi-Sam, then the Ghanaian High Commissioner in Kenya and Doyen of the Diplomatic Corps, was made to be recalled for having demonstrated excessive enthusiasm in the service of Nkrumah’s policies. The charge would soon be added that the High Commission had in fact been used to “cause dissension in politics and labor unions.”87 Next, the axe of retribution fell on Murumbi who was shifted from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Vice Presidency—no doubt the better to put his radical initiatives on the leash. As one newspaper summed up the apposite indictment: “As Minister of Foreign Affairs, he has sometimes been in a controversial position. . . . There have been times when his speeches at international forums have resounded in tones of uncompromising all-out African nationalism—and struck a note which echoed a little discordantly back home. . . . ” The point was that for every Foreign Minister at any conference there is an area of operation, a small margin in which, faced with a decision he must make quickly, without time for reference back home, he must act on his initiative. And that initiative has always been directed by his belief in the dangers of colonialism, and the value of African unity. . . .86

Naturally, with the appointment of a new Minister of Foreign Affairs, the same paper rejoiced, saying: “It may be expected that our foreign policy will now be more constant than in the past.”89 As for Murumbi, unamused by the vacuity of his new sinecure, he soon resigned, unconvincingly pleading ill-health.90 Meanwhile the Ghanaian military leader, Ankrah, and Kenyatta were getting along exceedingly well. Kenyatta led a large ministerial party to accord Ankrah “red carpet welcome” on his brief stopover in Nairobi on his way back from the late 1966 OAU summit in Addis Ababa.91 Encouraged, Ankrah returned early in 1969, this time for an

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official state visit that the soldier said would give him the opportunity of expressing personally to Kenya “the deep sense of appreciation of my colleagues of the NLC . . . for this wonderful demonstration of friendship, understanding and cooperation.” These gestures were manifested not only in the support and encouragement Kenyatta and his government had given the NLC “from the very beginning of its assumption of power,” but also in the “cordial reception” Kenya had accorded an earlier NLC goodwill mission dispatched to a number of African countries to seek support for the coup.92 To this profusion of goodwill Ankrah reciprocated with generous helpings of praise for Kenya’s developmental strategy. Saying that Kenya had set an example “in mutually beneficial economic part­ nership in the private sector which was worthy of emulation,” he firmly declared that it is not neo-colonialism to work with foreign investors. A prudent and well considered partnership with foreign investors without unduly sacrificing our national interests should not be contemptuously dismissed as neo­ colonialist exploitation.93

By any measurement, this was a high water mark of cordial rela­ tionship between Ghana and Kenya, all of which Ankrah credited to Kenyatta’s “fatherly understanding.” At the end of the visit, it was announced that Kenya would establish a diplomatic mission in Accra “as soon as finances permitted.”94 While the Kenyatta government must have been rather discomfited by Ankrah’s veniility and disgrace shortly on his return to Accra (he had arrived at Nairobi airport proclaiming: “I want to clear up corruption and bribery . . . the mess Nkrumah left behind . . .”9S), it nevertheless remained undaunted and managed to send a comradely message of congratulations to the NLC-blessed, Busia-led Progress Party on its success in the general elections of September, 1969.96

Conclusion The diplomatic responses of the three East African countries of Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya to the Ghanaian coup d’etat of 1966 were very consistent with their predispositions to Nkrumah before his ouster. In ideological terms, the demarcation is sharply drawn be­ tween militantly Nkrumaist Uganda and radical, pro-Nkrumah Tan­ zania on one side, and the conservative Nkrumaphobic Kenya on the other. The verbal violence persistently unleashed against Nkrumah’s successors from Uganda and Tanzania attested to the undiplomatic

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lengths the two countries were prepared to go to demonstrate their grievance, even as Kenya’s political romance with Ankrah portrayed the exertions of a country determined to spare no effort to fraternize with Nkrum ah’s political opponents. In continental terms, Kenya’s attitude represented the conservative majority of Africa’s pro-West states, while the outlook of Uganda and Tanzania typified the stance of Africa’s minority states of radical nationalism. That the East African radical majority states of Tanzania and Uganda should typify a minority tendency on the continent as a whole is a fact that underscores the unusual intensity and consequence of Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist endeavors on Africa’s Eastern region.

East African Press Reactions to Nkrumah’s Overthrow This chapter examines the responses of the East African press to Nkrumah’s ouster in 1966. For a start, it focuses on the reactions of three important newspapers: The People (the mouthpiece of the ruling Uganda People’s Congress), The Nationalist (the organ of the ruling Tanganyika African National Union), and the Daily Nation at Kenya which (though foreign-owned) operated closely in sympathy with— and was in a sense the propaganda instrument of—the ruling Kenyan African National Union. It will be seen, predictably enough, that the opinions of the three papers were of a piece with the attitudes of the ruling parties in the respective countries—attitudes that, in turn, were consistent with the previous ideological and policy dispositions toward Nkrumah embedded in the three countries, respectively. From this, the analysis will proceed to address three key variables—ownership, editorship, and national environment—in an effort to explain the unexampled furor that Nkrumah’s overthrow triggered both within and across national societies among the three papers cited above, in addition to the foreign-owned Uganda Argus (based in Uganda), The Standard (based in Tanzania), and the foreign-financed Transition (based in Uganda).

Uganda The Osagyefo Is Silent The Anthem of United Africa Is Drowned by The sounds of Guns!1

In October 1966 The People opened up a fussilade of attacks on the Ghanaian military government, the NLC. All the fanfare about the

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coup, it reported, was over, with Ghanaians already disillusioned by their military leaders. This state of affairs it attributed to a cluster of factors: cost of living, unemployment, mass arrests, and hooliganism, all of which the NLC “seemed totally unable to control.” Nkrumah’s comeback, it reckoned, would be as dramatic as the original coup against his government.2 After Lieutenant Arthur’s abortive coup of June 1967 against the NLC, an editorial extrapolated from the inci­ dent the essential levity and purposelessness of the military coup— particularly in Ghana.3 Late in 1968 a poignant article was published, headlined “Ghana in Trouble” and highlighting abject conditions of incompetence, unem­ ployment, industrial chaos and rampant student unrest.4 It evoked from the Ghana High Commission (GHC) in Uganda the first of a number of rejoinders: It is not difficult to see the motive behind the publication which only seeks to ridicule Ghana and soil her name. . . . The sample of events marshalled in the article to defame Ghana bring out clearly the sinister motive of the paper. . . . Whatever is going on in Ghana is the concern of the govern­ ment and people of that country and it is for them to find a solution. . . . Much damnation has been poured on Ghana since the overthrow of Dr. Nkrumah and his regime about three years ago. . . .5

To which a correspondent promptly retorted, summing up the case of the Ugandan Nkrumaists: Before he was overthrown, Nkrumah had dual roles to play in Africa. Besides being the President of Ghana, Nkrumah was also the light, the image and the pride of Ghana. He was the spokesman of Africa on vital world issues. Through his lips Nkrumah gave hope to the OAU and to all unliberated countries of Africa. In removing Nkrumah from power in Ghana, the N.L.C. stilled a major voice of Africa on world issues. They frustrated the hope of Africa and humiliated the continent to a degree beyond imagination . . . Let the NLC leaders pocket their pride, bow to Nkrumah and ask him to continue with the job. Let them tell Nkrumah: "Come back and lead us to prosperity, earthly father.’ Let them give back to Africa her pride.6

But the GHC was not about to be silenced. In the very next issue of the paper, it barked at those “more concerned about the fall of Dr. Nkrumah and less about the fundamental rights of the people with whose power he ruled. . . .” It then moved on to lecture Ugandans on some “homilies.” Wisdom, it said, did not end with Aristode; nor did Christianity with the crucifixion of Christ. By the same token, African

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unity would not end with Nkrumah’s overthrow. “He is a man of our continent and his work for it can be continued from any capital in the independent states. . . .”7 Still full of fight, the GHC lost no time wringing a causa belli from the paper’s comment on the latest abortive coup in Congo (Brazzaville) “aimed at dislodging a popular and progressive government.” The paper stated that the coup attempt was “yet another reminder that the unholy alliance between the forces of reaction and imperialism are still actively engaged in a last ditch struggle in Africa . . .,” as typified by “that hired junta of Ankrah in Ghana . . . men who have grabbed power from the people.”8 Replied the GHC: “Your frequent attacks on Ghana increasingly give the impression that your paper seems indifferent to the sufferings of the people of Ghana. . . .” Restating that the “intervention” of the Ghana Armed Forces “meant the death of tyranny in Ghana,” it went on to appeal to the paper and to Ugandans in general “to forget about leaders, especially the corrupt and power-drunk ones” , and have faith in the African masses of the continent.9 It was not long before the GHC came off self-muzzled before its determined adversaries. This was the occasion of the disgrace and dismissal of Ankrah, Ghana’s military head of state, on charges of corruption. What the General’s case proved, ran The People’s editorial, was that corruption had been practiced by the “NLC” all along. The “so-called NLC is not liberating Ghana from anything but merely filling the pockets of the already corrupt ‘liberators’. . . . Salvation for Ghana has never been more urgent than now. Nkmmah should return to the presidential chair. . . .” 10 An essay on “Political Cannibalism” carried the next day bore an even more acid tongue: Coups d’etat eat their own children. This has been the fate of Ankrah. . . . The figurehead is now gone because of corruption. Observers think that it is because Ankrah had not shared that booty from the big companies with the members of the NLC junta that they had decided to sack him . . . One by one the puppets of the coup, manipulated by a gloved hand behind the scenes, are beginning to fall. The citadel of corruption is beginning to crumble. Kotoka, now Ankrah . . . and then . . . until the return of the C.P.P. government. . . . The fall of Ankrah is an act of mutual political cannibalism. It gives a new impetus to Ghana’s revolutionary offensive. The African Revolution marches forward.11 Understandably, the GHC was at this point subdued, if not chas­ tened. It was for a good while unable to break its reticence—not even when a correspondent taunted and baited: “Now the question I would like to ask is, who is corrupt? Nkrumah who spent money for the sake

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of Africa or Ankrah who accepted bribes for his personal ends? Perhaps the . . . High Commissioner will help me with an answer?” 12 It was only about a year later, when the paper lashed out saying, “whereas it needed die weight of an army to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah, it only needed the weight of utter corruption to topple Ankrah,” 13 that the GHC finally wrote on the subject, suggesting that the NLC administration rather deserved to be congratulated for its “courageous step” in removing its corrupt Chairman. “This would seem an indication that Ghana would try as much as is humanly possible to abjure corruption and to punish all those who are known to engage in corrupt practices, without fear or favor.” If Nkrumah had been as vigilant in curbing corruption, it concluded, perhaps the coup against him would not have been necessary.14 This seemingly innocuous skirmish touched off about the most extensive, animated, and bitter debate between the Ghanaian Acting High Commissioner and the editor. Under the inspiration of the Nkrumaist dictum that “in any given situation there are plenty of forces in tension,” the editor invited the Commissioner to answer some nine questions related to Nkrumah and Ghanaian politics,1S claiming that it believed in the Ugandan ethos of “government by discussion” and was pleased to extend it to his Excellency. “What do you say to all this, sir,” it concluded, “because some of us know that Nkrumah came, saw and conquered.” 16 In an equally lengthy reply, the Acting High Commissioner, Mr. J. C. Bonney, suggested that “Nkrumah came, saw, conquered and in the process became abso­ lutely corrupt and dictatorial and eventually was him self con­ quered. . . .” He concluded with an invitation to the editor to “have an extensive tour of the length and breadth of Ghana to verify things and get himself well informed of the true situation in Ghana. . . .” 17 Dissatisfied with this response, the editor reproduced the questions “in the hope that better and further answers may find their way out of you,” adding that clearly Nkrumah’s enemies were “haunted by the dangers of crucifixion without a Christ.” 18 Meanwhile he accepted the High Commissioner’s invitation to visit Ghana, saluting him tantalizingly as “dear your great Acting Excellency . . .” , and observing unkindly: “Dr. Bonney . . . I gather you got your doctorate in bun­ gling in your twenty years at the L .S.E .” 19 From his becoming Prime Minister in October 1969, Kofi Busia became the new prime target of The People's verbal drives. Indeed, the very elections that brought him to power was a source of “apprehen­ sion” to the paper, “especially when it is considered that the military junta is not entirely relinquishing power to the civilian parliament that will be elected . . and also because of the disqualifications imposed

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on the Nkrumaist elements. “No elections can be truly democratic if even a small section of the community are incapacitated” ; whatever the case, “a genuinely public-spirited general election should have left it to the people themselves to choose or reject any of the candi­ dates. . . ,”20 Once Busia came to power, his performance, going beyond the hopes of his worst enemies, gave The People fresh ammunition by the day. One of the issues that precipitated the prime minister’s political “kiss of death” was the proposal of dialogue with South Africa. In its simplistic essence, Busia’s statement on the matter had said among other things: “I do not think you make progress by saying because I do not agree with you I will not talk to you. . . . It is wrong to shut out South Africa.” To this the paper turned a blast of fury: This kind of statement coming from Ghana, a country which was once militandy for the total liberation of Africa is both shocking and discourag­ ing. But things, of course, have changed in Ghana. . . . It is not a secret that the racist regime of South Africa is supported by the West and that without this support it would collapse tomorrow. It is therefore under­ standable that Busia who has declared himself pro-Western would support anything the West supports. . . . Busia’s statement . . . has only served one purpose. It has shown him in his true colors. A few years ago Banda also spoke his mind. Africa knows where it stands with them.21

Next, it carried an article, “Busia Bungles O n,” which attacked the ineptitude of the new civilian administration on several fronts.22 A few months later, following Busia’s second statement on Southern Africa, the paper returned to the polemical fray, saying it was surprised that “this kind of neocolonialist leader” who had taken sides in the South African conflict, could offer himself as a mediator. Busia, it said, was clearly not speaking his own mind but “dancing according to the tune of his Master’s voice.”23 In June 1970, as if Busia was not performing disastrously enough—what with his cacophony on “dialogue” with South Africa and the massive expulsion of African “aliens”—he pulled off a confrontation with the Supreme Court over a verdict that had not favored him. “It seems,” wrote The People, “that the Afrifa-Busia government would only abide by the decisions in favor of the govern­ ment and not those opposed to the government. This is the new brand of Ghana Justice.”24 A colorful feature in all this press offensive was provided by the weekly column of Peter Kawesa—the joint pseudonym of President Obote himself, and of his cousin and Chief Advisor, Akena Adoko, who was also head of the National Security Council and Secretary of the Cabinet. From time to time, in endless dissertations, Kawesa took on

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the defense of Nkrumah, as for instance in his analysis of the Report o f the Commission to inquire into Kwame Nkrumah’s Properties. Under the headline “The machinations of Stooges,” Kawesa said the Report made a most interesting reading—one that would “remain for ever a classical study of biases and partialities in the affairs of man. . . . ” And yet, he asked, what else could one expect of a Commission which, from the outset, had declared that it was anxious to prove to the world that Nkrumah was dishonest? If I write about the Commissioners with unhidden wrath and use words in no way minced, it is because their report permits, and indeed deserves, no alternative reaction. . . . One would first of all wonder why a person writing about Nkrumah’s political philosophy should not deal with his philosophy of African unity with which that great name is intimately associated in the minds of people all over the world, and which constituted the main subject matter of all his books and political speeches. . . .”2S

On one occasion, Kawesa surpassed himself. Yet what he wrote was truly suggestive of the profundity of ill-will that the Nkrumaists felt for those who had caused Nkrumah’s overthrow. Ghana’s Brigadier Afrifa, one of the officers instrumental in Nkrumah’s ouster, was one of these: of him Kawesa wrote in the most morbid terms. It was rumoured, he wrote with glee, that Afrifa had been “smitten down by a Providential act” in that he was now suffering from some form of amnesia which, it was believed in Ghana, could only be cured by a medical concoction made from the roots of trees. “H e is said to be in a village, very busy gulping down his medicine.” After the Ghana High Commissioner wrote to protest the allegation, the editor felt com­ pelled to show a gesture o f grudging civility: “It may be a good idea to point out here to our friend, Peter Kawesa, that there are certain facts which, even if they have their basis in truth, are better left alone.”26

Tanzania It is likely that the imperialists may be celebrating Nkrumah’s exit too soon; a worse menace to imperialism Nkrumah the ex-President can be than Nkrumah the President. . . P

In its first editorial on the Ghana coup, The Nationalist expressed indignation “over the removal of the man who more than any other African leader” had been fighting “the forces of colonialism, neo­ colonialism and imperialism” on the African continent; who “inspired colonial Africa to refuse to accept the role of a subjugated people

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. . who therefore, naturally, had won “a great place in the hearts of many millions of Africans who cherish independence and the right to govern themselves.”28 Subsequent editions were in full cry. It chal­ lenged the Sunday Telegraph's comment that the overthrow of Nkrumah would usher in a new era of “moderation” throughout Africa, maintaining that the Osagyefo would prove a greater scourge to imperialism than before.29 Indeed, soon it would exult over Toure’s appointment of N krum ah as a co-President of Guinea, saying Nkrumah had “already scored one up against imperialism.” The appointment, it further noted, was such a shock to the “imperialists” that for days they were “speechless.”30 On the Ghanaian scene, the paper observed that developments—the resumption of diplomatic re­ lations with Britain broken by Nkrumah over the Rhodesian crisis, and the ordering out of the Chinese and the Russians—were revealing. “If ever there were any doubts as to whose hand manipulated the take­ over, there was now no need to conceal it. . . .”31 The only occasion when the paper cut back on the vigour of its efforts in the service of the Osagyefo followed Nyerere’s statement opposing any intention by Guinea to invade Ghana. Drawing a “vital” line between sympathy and support, The Nationalist sought to walk a tightrope. “We have sympathy for Dr. Nkrumah and we shall continue to work for the aims for which he worked. Our sympathy is for the man. Our support is for the objectives of African liberation, African development and African unity. . . . Africa is greater than any indi­ vidual. We must support Africa.”32 Three days later, it returned to the subject with even greater concern. Africa, it said, did not have the resources to go to war, could not afford the time and energies for going to war. There could be no apologising for harping on this string, “because we think high principles are at stake, that we should be clearly understood, for the situation is fraught with ugly implica­ tions.” To express feelings about Nkrumah’s ouster was one thing, but physically to support his return to power by marching legions into Ghana’s territory was quite another: An individual must not be confused with the state, however popular, principled and symbolic he may be to his people and to those outside the borders of his country. . . . Do we have the cohorts to march into any neighboring state to fight for an individual? If we have, then our obvious destination should be Salisbury—and not Accra. . . . We say stop making war preparations against Ghana; Africa needs solidarity against her mortal foes, but she cannot achieve it if some countries begin interfering in the internal affairs of others.33

While this counsel in restraint must have been sweet music in the

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ears of the GHC in Dar es Salaam, it sparked furious reactions from a number of readers who in letters to the editor sought to establish the imperative of all-out revolutionary struggle in a situation of imperialist offensive. One of these correspondents wrote that “Nkrumah, Presi­ dent or Ex-President,” remained “the index of the anti-imperialist forces of Africa”—a “living monument” of Africa’s emancipation. “Should we render him support or sympathy? We should rather ask how we can stop the wave of neo-colonialist subversion now surging against Africa.”34 Another correspondent was even more voluble. All imperialism, he stated, is fought only through one way—revolutionary struggle. If the Ghanaian “agents of imperialism” dared to take up arms to fight a people’s government, then the anti-imperialist forces in Africa and the world as a whole must also be ready to take up arms and wage a “tit for tat” revolutionary struggle to restore their dignity. He continued: From a class point of view, if we treat the Ghana case cowardly, we shall be inviting our own doom. No amount of condemnations and sophistry can save us from the offensive which the imperialists have devised to enslave our continent. Least of all capitulation! Only revolutionary confrontation with the imperialists can really save us. After all, should we leave the imperialists to march from one country to another replacing leader after leader for fear of civil wars or imaginary Vietnams on African soil? No, we must fight. We must make revolution against imperialism. . . ,35

The Nationalist let it end at that, but the debate was surely not as inconclusive as it made it appear. Five years hence when Tanzania took up arms against Uganda’s Amin in an effort to reinstate the fallen Obote, it could not be in doubt who had won that debate. As for the GHC, if they thought they were in for an enduring respite, they were soon to be severely jolted by an attack that was to evoke the first response from their end. Under the title “Ghana: A Year After,” The Nationalist editorialized over wide-ranging issues, spotlighting in­ creasing unemployment, ethnic tension, and economic mismanage­ ment in Ghana in the period following Nkrumah’s overthrow. In the Pan-African context, it continued, the military government “displayed flagrant unconcern for international conventions with their shameful incarceration of the Guinean delegation en route to the OAU sum­ mit. . . .” But it was on the subject of the attempts, particularly that of Lieutenant Arthur, to overthrow the “so-called NLC” that drew the most fire. Saying that Arthur’s attempt was “unlikely to be the last,” the paper suggested that the many attempts reflected “impatience with a regime which has sought to wipe off the spirit of nationalism and ideological integrity which has been built up by the Nkrumah re­ gime. . . .”36

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In reply, the Ghanaian High Commission troubled to refute the allegations of tension and mismanagement and then turned its efforts in the direction of cheap capitalization on the 1964 Nkrumah-Nyerere confrontation: “On the African scene, Ghana’s support for the OAU is honest and sincere. . . . Ghana today has no wish to engage in the sort of subversive activities which saw the clash between Nyerere and Nkrumah in Cairo in 1964. . . .”37 It was a serious miscalculation that showed what little discernment the GHC had of the mood of Tanzania in 1967. “Dr. Nkrumah is the star of the African Revolution, the greatest son of Africa as well as the champion of the liberation struggle in all countries/’38 retorted one of the screaming host of irritated correspondents. Another advised the “malicious propagandist” to remain silent rather than indulge in disseminating “forlorn propa­ ganda” against the leader “who brought the African personality to the world scene” and whose image nothing can destroy.39 Still another wrote contemptuously that he was not surprised by the Acting High Commissioner’s defence of the military government: “The present NLC makes Sekyiama’s living here possible. . . . I do not blame Sekyiama, he has to earn his bread and butter, and as far as his opinion is concerned he could not have written anything else. . . ,n4° In all, it were better for the GHC if it had not stirred up this hornet’s nest. Bands of youthful Nkrumaists were now everywhere joining the battle line. Thus, in a letter addressed to the editor, five such youths requested to be enrolled as joint subscribers of the paper to ensure that a copy of every issue was dispatched by air to Nkrumah in Guinea: We have chosen this momentous era . . . to pay homage to the great leader of Africa, Dr. Nkrumah, by way of the newspaper subscription and assure him of our unshakeable loyalty. It is our sincere hope that the name of K. Nkrumah shall continue to make an indelible mark in the minds of youths and we cherish the day when this great son of Africa shall resume his position in the front line of the anti-colonial battle.41

Another Nkrumaist youngster launched an appeal to “fellow admirers of this great son of Africa” to join hands in forming a “Pro-Nkrumah International Club” that would have branches and sub-branches throughout the world, and whose every member would become “a representative and a preacher of Dr. Nkrumah’s Nkrumaism. . . .”42 The 1968 military takeover in Mali was the occasion for another editorial reflection on the tragedy in Ghana where “the economic 'miracle’ of the Ghanaian militarists has turned into an economic nightmare—with massive unemployment and soaring prices. . . .”43

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In another comment it noted, in connection with the new elections in Ghana, that the military junta was projecting civilian politicians like Busia—“well known for their reactionary and anti-socialist views and actions”—to take over from them in the exercise of turning Ghana into a neocolonial state. “It is for this reason that we believe it is time for truly dedicated members of the [Nkrumaist] CPP to turn to new methods of struggle to free Ghana from chaos and retrogres­ sion. . . Z’44 After Busia’s victory at the polls, The Nationalist lamentingly summed up the three dismal years of Ghana without Nkrumah: Ghana has changed very much from what it used to be. From a leading champion of Africa’s freedom and independence, Ghana today is aligned to some of the most die-hard enemies of Africa. From a center of political liberation of this continent, Ghana has become the center of counter­ revolutionary activities against this continent. . . . All this has been brought about by the counter-revolutionary action of February 24, 1966____45

As it happened, Busia’s performance in office did everything to reinforce this opinion. It was seen as hardly a coincidence that in the middle of November 1969, when Busia was formulating his “open arms” policy towards "fascist” South Africa, his regime was at the same time issuing expulsion orders to masses of fellow Africans mostly from neighboring West African countries: It may not be very long before people like Busia begin to pay bitterly for their betrayal of Africa. We know that the people of Ghana cannot forever allow their hitherto brighdy shining Black Star to become a symbol of shame, reaction and betrayal.46

As for the Osagyefo himself, he continued to grow in the estimation of The Nationalist. His publications—Handbook o f Revolutionary War­ fare, Class Struggle in Africa, etc.—showed, in the opinion of the paper, that he had “turned his exile into a rich and productive experi­ ence.” Just as in the fifties and sixties he caught the imagination of a generation of Africa’s youth and intellectuals in the national liberation movement, so did his new books now inspire the new generation of peasants, workers, and students in Africa, the Caribbean, and Black America who “will be the leaders of tomorrow.” The imperialists knew this and therefore were determined never to leave him alone. The Portuguese invasion of Guinea where he resided was an attempt to physically liquidate a man who had proved more dangerous out of office than in office in Ghana:

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As long as Nkrumah is alive, with his revolutionary sparks flying all over Africa, imperialism is never safe. And in Ghana, the movement for the return of Nkrumah is growing, so now to get at Nkrumah, they had to conquer Guinea. . . .47

Kenya Nkrumah encouraged corruption, character assassination, hatred and ridicule of the judicial system in Ghana. . . . Instead of concentration on Ghana’s own development problems, he launched a violent international campaign to project Ghana’s leadership in world and, especially, African affairs. . . .48

From first to last, the Daily Nation kept up a drumbeat of antiNkrumah diatribes. Feature after feature analyzed how Nkrumah “enslaved’9 Ghanaians; some exposited on his “instruments of sup­ pression,” while others expounded on his “crippling of the Opposi­ tion,” of his “corruption of the people,” and—a matter of great concern in Kenya—of his “stifling of Ghanaian businessmen.”49 As well, the paper faulted Nkrumah for his alleged reliance on “emigre advisors of disillusioned socialists or disillusioned fascists,” even as it laid a good deal of emphasis on his alleged uses of the Ghanaian taxpayers’ money to subvert fellow African states.50 Thus when the NLC publication, Nkrumah's Subversion in Africa came out, the paper featured it in a conspicuous front-page coverage under the title, “Nkrum ah’s Plan to Rule Africa.”51 The paper’s main consolation was that Nkrumah was now no more than a “ranting exile” whose “howl­ ing” from Conakry “makes little impression on the nation he once ruled with an iron grip.”52 But Nkrumah was not the sole target of the paper’s onslaught. His political companions in Kenya, as elsewhere, also came in for a similar caustic treatment. Thus, Joseph Murumbi’s walkout from the OAU Ministerial Council meeting singled him out for special inquisition: If we disapprove of military coups, did we disapprove the situation where Dr. Nkrumah blocked all constitutional methods of bringing about peace­ ful changes of government, thus leaving force as the only alternative? The Foreign Minister should tell the country where he stands.53

Sekou Toure too got his share. The reason why he and Nkrumah proposed to march into Ghana, it stated, was that “they think they have divine right to rule—that they have been chosen by destiny; that

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their authority can never arise from the people’s wishes and aspira­ tions. . . .”54 Soon, it would be the turn of Fidel Castro. With the expulsion of Nkrumah from Ghana» it wrote (in a remarkable mis­ representation of the liberation camps set up in Ghana by Nkrumah to train freedom fighters against the remaining colonial territories), “the extent of penetration in African affairs by Cuba has been embar­ rassingly revealed” : Ghana was the principal base in West Africa for Cuban subversion which included guerilla fighters supplying arms and financing activities in Upper Volta, Gabon, Dahomey, I. Coast and other neighboring areas.55

As for the Russians and the Chinese, the charge was that they had been responsible for training Nkrumah’s “notorious secret army” with which he “had tightened his totalitarian grip on the country.”56 Meanwhile, derogation of the main villain proceeded apace. There was rejoicing over the Ghana government’s issuance of an international arrest warrant against Nkrumah, and the hope was expressed that all the members of Interpol would cooperate “in the effort to arrest this criminal and to send him back to Ghana for trial.”57 When the report of the Commission into Ghana’s National Development Corporation (NADECO) was published, it elicited a spurt of exhilaration: “The myths surrounding the person of Dr. Nkrumah, the former Ghanaian dictator, are being exploded one by one. . . . More facts are being revealed about his corrupt practices while in power. . . .”58 Alongside these volleys went the peddling of double standards by this paper, whose evaluation of good and evil depended on Nkrumah’s place in an equation. Thus, while the Ghanaian military coup against Nkrumah was praised as enabling Ghanaians to find “an answer to a better life and greater freedom”—in reinstating freedom and human dignity “that in itself is a great service to humanity,”59 in Togo, barely a year later, the perpetrators of a coup were rebuked sharply: “The Togolese would do well to understand that these violent changes are not helping development and reconstruction. . . . Mercenaries cannot be trusted to conduct national affairs or the government of men.”60 Again, in its comment on Ghana’s Second Republic Constitution, the paper expressed jubilation that preventive detention was dealt away with in Ghana: The principle of individual liberty permeates all chapters of the draft constitution. That is what it should be; for the basis of liberalism is the belief in the right to individual liberty. Liberty is more important than utility. . . . There will be no more self-perpetuating Presidents. . . .”61

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However, the same paper would soon come out with inspired ra­ tionalizations in support of the detention of the radical Kenya People’s Union (KPU) leaders, justifying preventive detention as “a universally necessary phenomenon.”62 In much the same way, when Lieutenant A rthur was publicly executed in Ghana for attempting to overthrow the NLC government, this brutality drew no comment of reproof,63 and yet when two Nigerian lieutenants were publicly shot on charges of murder, the Daily Nation flew into a rage, complaining that “there were surely better ways for the federal government to emphasize its determination to punish severely and stamp out incidents of soldiers committing atrocities against civilians. . . ,”64 In reverse proportion to the derogation heaped upon Nkrumah was the spate of hyperbolic praise and commendation accorded Ankrah, “the daring one.” It was revealed, for the first time and without substantiation, that the General had saved Lumumba from an even earlier death in the Congo in a demonstration of “selfless bravery and devotion to duty.” It was also noted, with great admiration, that “unlike other leaders in similar circumstances,” he had resisted the temptation to declare himself President—“an eloquent credit to the man’s self-discipline and loyal, selfless service to his country. . . .’’ Of him, then, the paper detected the kind of sincerity which could only “spring from an unblemished background such as that of the Gen­ eral’s.”65 As if all this was not enough, the eve of Ankrah’s official visit to Kenya prompted an even greater access of hero-worship: In the performance of his duties, to which he is deeply devoted, Major General Ankrah has shown commendable intelligence, a high sense of responsibility, excellent judgement and an incomparably high sense of discipline. . . . As a person he is companionable, friendly and of good humor. There is a complete absence of pride but he is firm and does not stand for half-measures. He blends charm with firmness, humor with discretion, and friendship with discipline.”66

When Ankrah returned to Ghana, only to be forced to resign over charges of corruption, the Daily Nation managed with astonishing resilience to convert the General’s defeat into victory: It is almost unique for a leader to step down voluntarily, particularly so when resignation is accompanied by an admission of guilt. . . . It could have been easy for Ankrah to deny and perhaps get away with it. . . . But it is generally known that this is not his normal character. . . . General Ankrah will go down in history as the brave and daring character who was strong enough to admit guilt when he knew it would cost him position and

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prestige. Indeed, Ankrah . . . may be said to have lived up to Ghana’s vision of being the Black Star of Africa.67

In the aftermath of the elections which ushered in the Administra­ tion of Busia (the “outstanding scholar and politician who was vio­ lently opposed to the policies of former President Nkrumah”68), the paper editorialized that Ghana, which in 1957 showed Black Africa the way to freedom) had again led the way “in that its military leaders . . . have proved that in the realm of politics, a soldier can keep his word. . . .”69 It was now time also to give counsel to the recalcitrants, particularly those in neighboring East and Central Africa, on the wisdom of coming to terms with a reality that could not be undone: It is an open secret that in some quarters, and in spite of the many changes that have taken place in Ghana in the last four years, there is apparently fanatical hope of his [Nkrumah’s] bid to stage a comeback. . . . The people who almost believed that Dr. Nkrumah was an infallible super­ leader cannot change easily . . . [But] no matter what the entire world thought of the Osagyefo, it was, and still is, the people of Ghana to decide who their leader or leaders should be. . . . No outside power, however strong, can influence them. . . . Dr. Nkrumah had many personal friends and enemies, but his individual relations with them shouldn’t have af­ fected the affairs of state. Now that he has spent four years in exile, it cannot be said Chat those relations have or will alter the path that majority of Ghanaians have chosen to toe. . . .70

Press Opinion and Counter-opinion: The Determinant Variables In both Uganda and Tanzania, the harassment visited on Nkrumah by the foreign-owned or foreign-financed papers— Uganda Argus, Transition, and The Standard—set off a violent debate on the issues of press ownership and freedom. The pattern had been unmistakable right at the onset. Even as the “national papers” lauded and eulogized Nkrumah, these other papers shouted imprecations at him. In both countries, it was seen as not accidental that these Nkrumaphobic papers were more or less foreign-owned. At a Commonwealth Parlia­ mentary Association meeting in Kampala in 1967 Sam Odaka of Uganda and Salim Salim of Tanzania were to insist, during a discus­ sion of the freedom of the press, that the question was not so much the freedom of the press as who owned the press in East Africa.71 Let us now look at samples from the repertoire of castigation. A piece from the Uganda Argus ran:

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The national idol who so recently was being hailed as the hero of his people and of Africa as a whole is now reviled by the crowds. . . . As the central figure in the affair, Dr. N krum ah emerges sadly from his past role as the leader of African nationalism and as the passionate advocate of African unity. . . .72

For its part, Transition carried a number of highly inflammatory arti­ cles on the fallen Osagyefo. One by Russel Warren Howe suggested, of all things, that Pan-Africanism threatened Nkrum ah.73 Perhaps none proved more incensing to the Nkrumaists across the continent than professor Ali Mazrui’s “Nkrumah: The Leninist Czar,” in which he stated that it made sense to regard Nkrumah both as a “hero of Africa” and a “villain of Ghana” : By leading the country to independence, N krum ah was a great Gold Coaster. By working hard to keep Pan-Africanism warm as a political ideal, Nkrum ah was a great African. But by the tragedy of his domestic excesses after independence, N krum ah fell short of becoming a great Ghanaian.74

In Tanzania, an illustration of The Standard's “perfidy” came in its publication of a New Statesman article on Nkrumah that listed the usual charges of Nkrumah’s domestic maladministration and tyranny and ended: “To turn the party into a monolithic machine in which the building of a personality is substituted for discussion and genuine participation in government. . . leaves revolution as the only means of change, and the army as the only alternative source of power. . . .”75 The issue was not so much that The Standard reproduced this article as that it published it as a “letter to the editor” expressing local opinion. Complained The Nationalist: The wording of the article in the foreign paper and the supposed ‘letter to the editor* in the local paper is exacdy the same; in fact, word for word! Is this another imperialist attempt to sell their reactionary opinions to us?76

To thoroughly expose The Standard for what it was, The Nationalist plunged into digging up the past editorials of this foreign-owned paper from 1965 to prove that it served “the overall interests of global imperialism and international finance capital. . . .”77 In all, the onslaught against the “other papers” in the two countries was fierce and unrelenting, and extended to probing their very geneses and raison d’etre. In Tanzania, The Nationalist, in comprehensive edi­ torials and commentary “sought to expose the nature of the imperialist press and show it is antagonistic to the aspirations” of the people. The press “as a weapon of a class” , it continued, had been operating in East

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Africa since the twenties when the British Colonial Office voted money to set up newspapers that would serve the purpose of “sub­ jugating Africans to the will of white racist setders.” These news­ papers— The Gazette, East Africa and Uganda M ail—made no attempt to hide the contempt with which they held the African: They were the forerunners of today's East African Standard, Tanzania Standard, and the Uganda Argus which are now carrying on the “struggle” in the post-independence era. Meanwhile, another group of newspapers, the NATION group, has appeared on the East African scene. This group is similar to the old group in that both are foreign-financed, run with foreign personnel and serve both reactionary interests and imperialist ends at large.78

The purpose of starting a newspaper, it went on, could only be twofold: to make money and to influence people towards a certain direction pertaining to a certain cause. Through advertisements and sales the newspapers made their money—though, in the case of East Africa, “hardly any profits.” Through news presentation, editorials, commentaries, cartoons, and so forth the newspapers influenced peo­ ple towards a desired direction. Thus the “national newspapers,” for instance, existed “primarily to educate the people, guide them and lead them in the national struggle for reconstruction.” But what of the foreign-run newspapers? [They] try to pose they exist to make money but the fact is they do not make it. If they do not make money, what is their persistence for? Do they exist here because they love the people of E. Africa? The truth is that these newspapers exist in E. Africa to try to influence our people towards a certain direction. What direction can this be? It is the direction o f neo­ colonialism and imperialism. If this is so, is it right for the governments of East Africa to continue giving the impression that they are tolerant of neocolonialism and imperialism and its instruments?79

Developing countries “as a rule”, it continued, suffered many humili­ ations as a result of the many years of colonial rule. The worst of these humiliations was to endure a foreign, ex-colonial press in their midst, “whose central task is to conduct persistent propaganda on behalf of imperialism. . . ,” 80 These other newspapers were caught in the throes of “a colonial hangover” and were sworn enemies of na­ tionalism, socialism, or good plain truth. “Let the country have no truck with them. . . .”81 In Uganda, a chorus of dissent greeted the contention by Uganda Argus that “it would be a tragedy” if press freedom should be lost in

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East Africa because of “sensitivity over newspaper shareholding.”82 No less a contributor to the crescendo was Akena Adoko. Addressing the Association of Uganda Journalists, he said that freedom of speech in Uganda was threatened not by the state but by press magnates who owned newspapers and magazines and paid to have certain persons and policies represented as good or bad. “In our country, the tight control exercised over the press by those who finance it have now been discovered to be full of dangers warranting some safeguards.” Citing the examples of “scurrilous attacks on Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrum ah” and some articles on the new Ugandan Constitution, he said that there was evidence that those articles were not published at the discretion of the editors but at the behest of those who financed both the Uganda Argus and Transition: It has now become manifestly clear that the sources of finance for the press in Uganda are bent on encouraging only those kinds of articles which they regard to have the right ideological touch and connive at the devilry and machinations of the financiers. . . . The consequence of this is that you, gentlemen of the press, may lose the intellectual independence so neces­ sary in the carrying out of your function and become instead puppets to and intellectual slaves of your financiers.83

In mid-1967 there was a takeover of the “Standard Group” of newspapers—which included the Uganda Argus—by the African In­ vestment Trust Limited, whose parent company, Lonrho, owned a major share in the Umtali-Beria pipeline through which Rhodesia got most of its oil.84 As if this was not unsavoury and unsettling enough, it was now revealed that Transition was being financed by a front organi­ zation of the CIA. After Transition's admission that it received aid from the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris and that this in turn, received aid from the American Hoblitzelle Foundation which now stood exposed as a foundation which channeled out CIA funds, its further protestation that “in the five years of our association with the Congress it has never once attempted in any way to determine editorial policy. . . .”85 failed to impress the Ugandan Nkrumaists. Observed a correspondent of The People: Some of the African readers of Transition have been angered by the number of anti-N krum ah articles that the magazine has printed. The point is: Are our so-called intellectuals, men of learning, and, to go back to our news­ paperm en, the people who control vehicles of mass communication, be­ coming allies of sabotage and slavery?86

Meanwhile a frontal attack on Transition was raging from other

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quarters. The editor had not forgotten to send a copy of the edition that carried Mazrui’s controversial article on Nkrumah to the Osagyefo in Conakry, hoping to provoke a rejoinder. The only reply he received came from Nkrumah’s Secretary who said that while “the President” had “admired the literary effort” in the professor’s article, it had, however, “not quite provoked” him “into writing comments on it,”87 If Nkrumah’s appetite for combat was low at this point, it was not so with his Ugandan friends who undertook to fight his battles for him. Akena Adoko was one of the ever-spirited stalwarts; in a television confrontation he pursued Ali Mazrui all the way over his thesis that Nkrumah was a great African but not a great Ghanaian: Adoko: Would you say that Nkrum ah’s greatness in relation to Ghana fell below that of Kenyatta in relation to Kenya, Obote in relation to Uganda, or Nyerere in relation to Tanzania? Mazrui: Indeed, N krum ah might have been greater in relation to Ghana than any of the three in relation to their three countries. Adoko: Was Nkrum ah’s greatness in relation to Ghana exceeded by that of General Ankrah or any other person in Ghana? Mazrui: Nkrum ah was, in that comparative sense, possibly a greater Ghanaian than any other Ghanaian.88

It is in point to note that the acrimony and criminations were by no means confined to internal wrangling between the national papers and the foreign-owned ones in Uganda and Tanzania. There was also crossnational feuding as the national papers of Tanzania and Uganda took on the Nairobi papers. We see, in this regard, that the ownership variable is closely related to the national environmental variable. Because of the national ideological atmosphere of Kenya, there was no question of the Kenyan pro-west, anti-Nkrumah papers receiving the kind of inhospitality for their views on the Osagyefo that the Uganda Argus, Transition, and The Standard were having to endure in Uganda and Tanzania, and which now counselled modification and moderation if they were to survive. But if the Kenyan papers were free from internal attack, they were not so insured against external ones that, from the outset, came vociferously from Kenya’s neighbors. Wrote The Nationalist: The East African sub-branch of the worldwide network of the imperialist press has dutifully answered to the anti-Nkrumah call from the metro­ politan capitals—and they have answered it with vigour reminiscent of all the great imperialist crusades.

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Nkrumah is described as Tyrant, as Dictator, as Despot, in fact all the adjectives in the English language that could readily come to mind to be hurled at a despised man.89 In their “enthusiastic overconfidence” , it went on, these “antiNkrumah crusaders” went as far as to question the right of the Kenya government to stage a walkout from the Addis Ababa Ministerial meeting. It all amounted to an attempt to divide the Kenyan people and to isolate the actions of the Kenyan foreign Minister from the Kenyan government. Joseph Murumbi himself, in the event, was dealt with “as if he was put on the dock and being questioned by an imperialist master. . . . ” In the final analysis, however, this open expression of relief over Nkrumah’s overthrow by the Kenyan papers could only give Tanzanians “an insight into what they think about African radicalism.”90 From Kampala, The People took on the next phase of the offensive, this time over the lavish praise the Nairobi press had heaped on Ankrah. “In a neighboring and sister state a man who grabbed power from one of Africa’s greatest sons has been tremendously praised by the local imperialist-owned press,” it began. But what “respon­ sibility” and “discipline” did Ankrah have “when he uses his coun­ try’s guns to oust a constitutional government?” The press in Africa had better start telling our people some home truths about some soldiers around our continent who have been used by imperi­ alist and neo-colonialist forces to arrest the progress of their countries and our continent as a whole. The sooner we stop praising these people for their treacherous actions the better: we shall have less coups, and above all Africa will go forward.91 Soon, of course, Ankrah too would fall: that would give the last laugh to the national papers of Tanzania and Uganda. Aside from the Daily Nation, which sought to put a good face on the General’s mortifica­ tion, the rest of the foreign-owned press were too embarrassed to say anything. The People missed none of the ironic elements of the situa­ tion: Those newspapers in a neighboring country which eulogized Ankrah on his recent visit to this part of the world had nothing to say about the fall of that “inspiring leader.” They are exercising their freedom of the press. He is gone and they say they knew him not.92 Both the internal squabble and the inter-nation brawl occasioned by Nkrumah’s ouster were to produce significant changes in the land­

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scape of the East African press. In Tanzania, the government took over The Standard, saying “it was impossible for Tanzania’s largest daily newspaper to be left indefinitely in the hands of foreign non­ socialist owners.”93 The People immediately hailed the measure, stat­ ing that the new Standard was “expected to give priorities to issues relevant to Tanzania and African interests. . . .’,94 In Uganda, Transition was closed down and its editor, Rajat Neogy, was for a while incarcerated. The four reasons for his imprisonment “as a security risk to the government and people of Uganda” each referred to what he had printed in the paper.95 It is one more demon­ stration of the enduring fascination of the Ghana-Uganda connection that the anti-Nkrumaists in Ghana quickly extended a hand of wel­ come to the Transition as its new home.96 Concerning Uganda Argus, the Obote government’s solution clearly saw editorship and not ownership as the most critical variable. For our purposes, what this shift in emphasis does is underscore the interrela­ tionship of the three variables—ownership, national environment, and editorship. The salience of the ownership variable, hardly in dispute, bears emphasis at this point. Hilary Ng’weno, once the editor-in-chief of the “Nation group” of newspapers, owned by the Aga Khan, did on occasion, and in spite of his own status, assert that “foreign ownership and management” was a critical barrier to complete popular accept­ ance of the press. He noted, in this connection, the tendency of the owners to impose their will that took the form, variously, of reprinting whole articles of opinion from British newspapers without dissociative comment, and of tendentious criticism—or the opposite, ill-considered praise—for the conduct of affairs in independent African states.97 A similar confessional came in play in 1975 when another editor-inchief of the same “Nation Group” of newspapers, George Githii, resigned on the grounds that the Aga Khan had sought, through the imposition of editorials written by certain “ghost writers” to, in effect, run the Kenyan press from Paris. Coming from the horses’ own mouths, these acknowledgments o f the stringent controls exerted by neocolonialist adventurer-capitalists over the Kenyan press were significant indeed. Surely, however, Ng’weno and Githii’s predicament would be reduced if they were editors of “Nation Group” newspapers in Uganda or Tanzania? The point here is that a Hilary Ng’weno or George Githii who sought to praise rather than condemn Kwame Nkrumah would be better placed to do so in Uganda or Tanzania where the ideological climate would counterpoise any inclination on the part of the owners of a paper to either impose their will or fire him altogether. In a sense, then, when an African editor of a foreign-owned paper in East Africa would make

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an appreciable difference obviously depended on the environmental variable—on the ideological parameters of the national society in which the press was based. It is considerations such as these which no doubt informed the Obote government’s decision to cause A. Ejalu to move from The People to take over the editorial chair of the Uganda Argus from the Englishman, Maurice Wood. The People put the case succinctly: We believe that he [Ejalu] has gone to the Argus as the emissary of the Uganda Revolution. . . . We believe that this is a fundamental issue; if newspapers cannot believe in our . . . way of life they have no legitimacy here and they must be crushed as we crushed the (Buganda) federalists. Ejalu has been known as an articulate exponent of that stand. . . .9S

The transnation exchanges were equally dramatic— and con­ sequential. While in Uganda Obote issued stern warnings against “the reactionary press based in Nairobi,”99 in Tanzania Members of Parlia­ ment were vigorously calling on the government to ban the Daily Nation from circulation in the country because of its “tendentious diatribe and blatant provocation. . . .” 100 The Nationalist editorial on the subject was equally impassioned. Many, it wrote, were wondering what it was that made the “Nation group” think it was indispensable in Tanzania. “The truth is some people are wondering what virtue there is in letting this section of the press circulate here, even on the strength of their nuisance value. . . .” 101 Before long, the Tanzanian government would respond by prohibit­ ing the importation into the country of all the four Kenya newspapers published by the “Nation group.” 102 And in retaliation, the Kenyan government would also ban and prohibit the importation into Kenya of the Tanzanian daily, The Nationalist, saying it was not prepared to accept lessons on socialism, radicalism, or anything else from “irre­ sponsible and low-calibre” papers like The Nationalist “whose pre­ occupation is with cliches and slogans borrowed from foreign coun­ tries,” which “it did not appear to understand.” 103

Conclusion Even as the reactions of the national papers of Tanzania and Uganda echoed, represented, and reinforced the governmental attitudes to the tragedy of Nkrumah’s overthrow, those of the foreign-owned, foreignfinanced papers, particularly in Kenya, projected their credentials as instrum ents geared to expunging any and all manifestations of

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Nkrumaist “radicalism” from the continent. The unqualified support given Nkrumah by The People in Uganda; the sophistry of a some­ times qualified support for Nkrumah professed by The Nationalist in Tanzania (as in drawing a line between sympathy and support for the Osagyefo); and the virulent and vituperative reflexes of The Nation in Kenya (at the center of a network of such other neocolonialist organs as The Argus and The Standard in other territories) all help to portray in sharp relief the nature of the supports for, and oppositions to, Nkrumaism that obtained in East Africa. Emphatically, press reactions flowed neatly from the ownership variable. While the responses of the national papers were of a piece with the attitudes of the existent governments, the foreign-owned papers tended to be sharply at cross-purposes with them, tending to villify the fallen Pan-Africanist. There was, decidedly, bad blood between the Nairobi papers and their regional extensions, on the one hand, and the national papers of the two neighboring countries, on the other. In the end, both the intra-nation and the inter-nation press crimina­ tions and recriminations over Nkrumah’s overthrow were to ensue in significant changes in the newspaper landscape of East Africa. The flurry of expatriation, nationalization, bans, and editorship take-over of papers all portrayed the continuing impact of a man who truly remained as influential in his political demise in Ghana as he had been in the era of his reign.

8 Conclusion Nkrum ah’s efforts to move Africa forward along the road of PanAfricanist nationalism met with many formidable impediments. Within Ghana, the people’s party he led, which was the organizational motor of the Pan-African movement, was largely demobilized by a colonial fiat of 1951 which debilitated and corrupted it, making it difficult for Nkrumah’s government to effectively contain and neu­ tralize the depredations of an Opposition “which had a history of resorting to violence,” 1 and which was linked to external enemies of the goals of Africa’s total liberation and unification that Nkrumah championed. In the wider African world, the other newly independent states were, but for one or two exceptions, immersed in a suffocating neocolonial order that made a virtue of Africa’s continued servile attachment to the purposes of the West. In the broader global environ­ ment, the historic antithesis between Africa’s underdevelopment and Europe’s development continued to play itself out in a Western policy of sustained hostility to, and outright sabotage of, the Nkrumah regime, capped off by CIA plots of assassination and overthrow. Despite these odds, Nkrumah was able to generate a considerable impact on the African world. The impact he made reflected the integrity, the logical force, of Pan-Africanism—of its ability to excite action—as well as the fact that Nkrumah made its goals his primary values. It is this ideological dedication that provided him with the drive he needed to surmount, to an appreciable extent, the capability deficiencies of Ghana, as well as the severe constraints that assailed the African cause. In the event, he emerged as the “architect of African independence”2; “the strategist of genius in the struggle against classi­ cal colonialism.”3 In decolonization, then, Pan-Africanism proved its power, its action orientation, its capacity to move and make history. This point is better appreciated when it is remembered that, at the time Nkrumah set out on his Pan-African crusade in 1947, the general notion was one which ruled out any possibilities of success. In 1947, as Davidson puts it rhetorically, “who could really think that a mission to win African

184

CONCLUSIONS

indcpcndcncc was good for more than a laugh?”4 But Nkrum ah, spurred by his Pan-Africanism, was able to stimulate the forces of nationalism across Africa around the principle of the indivisibility of African freedom. This achievement was, in a sense, unusual. As Emerson noted, The sense of mutuality of interest in freedom among all African peoples and countries found virtually no counterpart in the corresponding anticolonial drive of the Asian peoples, each of which pursued and enjoyed its independence without significant regard for the others.s At the behest of the same ideology, Nkrumah proved himself “the most consistent and energetic champion” of the cause of African unification.6 He said repeatedly that he could no more believe in the impossibility of African unification in the 1960s than he could have believed in the impracticality of African independence in the 1940s. And so, against stupendous counterforces of the international system, he strove and labored for the ideal of a political Union of African States. While in the end he failed to deliver on this mission, it testifies to the occasional, halting fruition of his herculean struggle that, at the 196S OAU Summit held in Accra, even though a boycott was staged by the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Dahomey, Niger, and Togo on spurious grounds,7 twenty-two of the twenty-eight member states in attendance voted for the immediate adoption of Nkrumah’s proposal for an OAU Executive Council to act as the executive arm of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government. The proposal would have carried if a two-thirds vote, that is twenty-four of the total OAU membership at the time, had supported it. But the most vivid portrayal of Nkrumah’s influence on African international relations on the issues of liberation and unity is provided, as this study shows, by the linkages that developed between Nkrumah’s Ghana and the region of East Africa. Understandably, Nkrumah’s efforts at influence could not, and did not, take the same form in the three countries. In every case, political-ideological con­ textual factors dictated the pattern of input. In Tanzania, where Nyerere’s calculated and studied “evolutionism” was the main con­ cern, the main line of attack was geared to pushing the Tanzanian leader and his people toward Nkrumah’s “immediatist” continental integration formula. In Uganda, where the primary concern was over Buganda particularism and its disruptive effects on Obote’s efforts to achieve territorial integration and unity behind his Pan-Africanist commitments, Nkrumah’s exertions were geared primarily toward augmenting the Obote government’s capacity in waging an internal

CONCLUSION

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crusade against ethnic parochialism and “disruptive separatism.” In Kenya, the entrenched neocolonial situation dictated an Nkrumaist policy of a structural attack on the system through the labor move­ ment. But the demands of the “peculiar circumstances” of East Africa, the individual ideological-political profiles of the countries, and Nkrumah’s exertions upon them, constitute only one side of the East African coin. From the other side flows the significant fact that each of these countries of the region attains a mark of distinction in at least one important area of reaction to Nkrumah. It is the aggregation of these distinctions which make of East Africa the prime regional “labo­ ratory” for an in-depth study of Nkrumah’s impact on Africa. In the cause of an all-African union government that Nkrumah conceived of as a primary basis of his African policy and toward which he relentlessly sought to influence the other African leaders, Tanzania emerged as the leader of the forces of “gradualism” in opposition to Nkrumah’s “immediatism,” a role it would occupy until the post-1966 era. In much the same way, the opposition to Nkrumah’s policy on PanAfrican trade union movement was led by an East African country, Kenya, which vigorously at first but somewhat fitfully in the end championed the cause of the Western International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) against the politics of the Accra-based “nonaligned” All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF). Uganda, the third East African country, is where, more than elsewhere, Nkrumaism took root and directly affected internal politi­ cal processes. The historical parallels between Ghana and Uganda, the pertinence of Nkrumah’s centralist, anti-neocolonialist prescriptions in the two countries, as well as Obote’s eager discipleship of Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanist vision, all added up to a most exciting phenomenon in African interstate relations. In broad terms, ideological dimensions of response can be delimited in terms of a militantly Nkrumaist Uganda of Milton Obote, a radical Pan-Africanist but also gradualist-regionalist Tanzania, and a con­ servative, neocolonial, “N krum ah-phobic” Kenya. In continental terms, Kenya’s reflexes represented the conservative majority of Af­ rica's neocolonial pro-west states, while the outlook of Uganda and Tanzania typified the stance of Africa’s minority states of radical nationalism. Spelt more elaborately, Tanzania’s responses were conditioned, on the one hand, by an ideological fellowship with Ghana revolving around anticolonialism, nonalignment, and Pan-Africanism, and, on the other, by a vigorous dispute and wrangling over the methodology

186

CONCLUSIONS

(gradualist-regionalist versus militant-continentalist) for attaining Af­ rican unification. Uganda’s responses were characterized by a high degree of rapport between the Osagyefo and the Nkrumaist Obote, inducing an ideological congruence that was underpinned, in part, by the political implications and tribulations of the historically dominant positions of Asante and Buganda in Ghana and Uganda, respectively. Kenya’s responses, for their part, were defined by Kenya’s post­ colonial proclivity for neocolonial accommodation—its failure, in any degree, to restructure colonial political and economic ties with the West—which was to precipitate an Nkrumah-Mboya (AATUFICFTU) clash of purposes in the continental trade union movement. The Ghana-Tanzanian exchanges bring out the sustained quality of the “crusade by debate” that Nkrumah’s school of Pan-Africanism unleashed, while Nyerere’s systematic conversion to Nkrumah’s posi­ tion on the issues shows the logical and practical soundness of Nkrumah’s premises and argumentations. The Ghana-Uganda linkages show how the direct penetration of Nkrumaism into the politics of a national society stirred both exhilara­ tion and fear as between the Pan-Africanist nationalists and the "Tradi­ tionalists.” At the same time, it demonstrated Pan-Africanism’s capacity to obliterate any effective boundaries between two ideolog­ ically convergent states. The Ghana-Kenya conflicting stances on the merits of “dynamic” versus “static” conceptions of nonalignment brought to the fore the fundamental antithesis between Pan-Africanism and neocolonialism, even as it portrayed how seriously Nkrumah took the pledge, rooted in the preamble to the charter of the OAU, to fight not only colonialism but also neocolonialism in Africa—to struggle, as one of Nkrumah’s aides explained the point, “to effect changes in government of those independent countries in Africa of whom we disapproved, whose attitudes were not progressive or whose actions were contrary to our view of the right course for Africa. . . .”8 Both the diplomatic and press responses of the East African coun­ tries to the Ghanaian coup d’etat of 1966 were in character with the three countries’ predispositions to Nkrumah before his overthrow. In Africa-wide terms, Kenya’s attitude represented the conservative ma­ jority of Africa’s pro-West states, while the disposition of Uganda and Tanzania exemplified the stance of Africa’s minority states of radical nationalism. That the East African radical majority states of Tanzania and Uganda typified a minority tendency on the continent as a whole underscored the unusual intensity and import of Nkrumah’s PanAfricanist endeavors on Africa’s Eastern region. The logic of Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism retains its force. In Smer-

CONCLUSION

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tin’s words, “the theoretical and practical work Kwame Nkrumah did in the interests of the African continent’s unity is . . . still revelant today.”9 If the concern is about the lack of capability on the pan of each state to fulfill the basic needs and expectations of its citizens, if the predicament is over the wrenching realities of the humiliation, impotence, and contempt afflicted on all Africans by the victimizing history of the last five hundred years, which no single African country, confined and enfeebled as it is by the forces of neocolonialism, can repair, then the only logical thing left to do is make the “zero assump­ tion” that, in today’s dangerous world of power politics, Africa lacks a nation-state of redemptive capabilities. Such an assumption leads logically to the acknowledgment of a need to take a political decision to establish an African Nation. There are no “obstacles,” no “difficulties” that a sufficient apprecia­ tion of the race’s degradation, disgrace, and powerlessness, coupled with appropriate determination to recoup its dignity, will not over­ come today. There is no use deluding oneself with any notion of progress through time in this matter. Time and history are not auto­ matically on anyone’s side; they only serve those who work deter­ minedly to be their managers, and not their victims. The implication of much of the criticisms levelled at Nkrumah is that he was overhasty, over-impatient, in his push for African unification. It is signifi­ cant that those who so argued the wisdom of gradualism still main­ tained, as Colin Legum did, that “nevertheless, Pan-Africanism must remain the real priority of Africa’s foreign policy.” 10 But in the 1980s, far from Africa having moved gradually toward a consciousness of the need for effective unity, the reality is one of the virtual relegation of the ideal of political integration from the African agenda. It should be remembered that it took the American states only six years to move from the highly imperfect OAU-like Articles of Confederation to becoming an effective United States of America. By a law of progressive deterioration, the longer it has taken Africa to make the crucial historical political decision to recast and restruc­ ture its political foundations, the worse the tidal flow of disintegration and regression on the continent. As Jennifer Whitaker notes in a book entitled How Can Africa Survive?, in the three decades of the indepen­ dence era, Africa has fallen “out of phase with the times,” having slid steadily toward financial ruin and political chaos.” 11 Africa’s external debt stands at $135 billion. The continent, which fed itself in 1960, now must import two-fifths of its food. And as the food supplies shrink, Africa’s population growth rate, at 3.2 per cent, is the “highest seen anywhere, anytime, throughout human history.” 12 As David Lamb sums up the matter, “the very title” of Whitaker’s book “under­

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CONCLUSIONS

scores the desperate turn that life has taken for the nations of black Africa. We are no longer talking about just economic recovery; we are talking about survival.” 13 According to Carter and O’Meara, despite vast amounts of aid between 1962 and 1978, the African continent was in a worsening economic situation as the 1980s began. The 1981 World Development Report of the World Bank . . . foresaw no growth in per capita income for Africa during the next decade and the 1983 report was no more encouraging. Populauon growth continues to outpace food produc­ tion, partly due to persistent drought and a languishing rural economy. Foreign exchange reserves continue to diminish while debts continue to rise. . . . Some African states approach virtual bankruptcy. . . . M

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Report of 1977 had warned a heedless Africa that it could not “afford to continue to perform in the field of development during the next decade or two at the same rate as in the last IS years or so.” If it did, it continued, the African region would be “a much poor relation of the rest of the world” than it was in 1977; the gap between it and the rest of the world would be wider, and its “economic and technological backwardness” would be “much more pronounced.” To “reverse the past and present trend of low development,” it concluded, there was “an urgent need for concentrating on achieving an increasing measure of collective selfreliance among African states.” 15 It has been impossible to achieve such “collective self-reliance” through economistic, functional cooperation. There were thirty-five of such functional organizations on the continent in m id-1983, many of them insignificant and practically useless. Even the much-heralded Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC), the economic counterpart of the “F ront Line” states of Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe that was established in April 1980, operates from a philosophy of dependent development linked to foreign capitalist governments. Its initially proclaimed “flexibility” has turned out to be an euphemism for indi­ vidual projections—for leaving each member free to pursue its own “national interests.” 16 The Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS), established in 1975, has so far been “rich in proposals, short on implementation . . . ,” earning a reputation “for the flam­ boyant life-style of its secretariat rather than for practical accomplish­ ments.” 17 As for the eleven regional organizations in francophone West Africa, “their one constant has been that France has been able to manipulate these organizations to help France coordinate its own regional activities.” 18 The poor showing of these functional organizations is hardly sur­

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prising. For one thing, there is a lack of similar structures in these countries with similar interests to push the countries toward agree­ ment on significant development issues. And yet, at the rate things are going, it will take an eternity for such structural homogeneities to develop across Africa to the extent that they exist in today’s Europe. Another basic reason for the failure of functionalism is to do with the sheer puerility of political purposes in Africa. The repudiation of the need for supranational structures is one indicator of this. The fact of the matter is that even the most flexible of common markets demand the creation of some sort of supranational authority. As Hazlewood has pointed out, “It could be the case . . . that despite the narrower range of issues in an economic union, the depth of agree­ ment and common feeling required for anything but the most limited economic association are such that, if they were present, a political union would be as practicable as a purely economic union.” 19 The problem is that, even though the African states lack genuine attributes of sovereignty, they refuse to give up the shadow of it they hold in their mini-states in order to be able to share in the substance of it in the context of a united Africa. The deep-seated, almost com­ pulsive revulsion that pervades the African leaderships on the issue of the surrender of their countries’ petty sovereignties in the cause of political integration also makes the surrender of authority to suprana­ tional economic institutions virtually impossible. With hardly any exceptions, African economic functional organizations disavow any interest in political integration. It is instructive that, even though Western Europe’s chosen path to development in the post-War era has been economic functionalism, to them this approach does not assume any fundamental opposition to political integration. On the contrary, it assumes that cumulative agreements in the economic sphere will, in time, as and when the force of logic of the European situation requires it, set the stage for the leap into political integration. Indeed, such a situation appears now to exist in the thinking of many European leaders who argue the need for a firm economic integration on the premise that Europe “cannot com­ pete with Japan and the US without a radical restructuring which dictates the dismantling of cumbersome barriers to the internal move­ ment of goods, capital, people and services.”20 At this writing, the year 1992 has been set as the target date for achieving such an economic unification of the twelve countries in the European Community. Significantly, it is assumed in Europe that the prospective economic integration will have political implications. As Steven Greenhouse notes, although the unification plan was established with economics in mind, it

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CONCLUSIONS

will inevitably have vast political repercussions. Some Europeans say economic integration will erode nationalism, smoothing the way to an eventual political union.21

Indeed, there are already gleeful predictions “that an all-powerful European president would emerge and hold his or her own against the United States and the Soviet Union. . . .”22 Whereas the European situation lends itself to such possibilities of qualitative transformation along the road of functionalism, this is not at all the case in Africa where the only way out is a political jump into federalism providing for a new integrated political contcxt linked to one vast viable market of Africa’s millions within the framework of a constitution that defines areas of policy where the various countries operate collectively at the behest of a federal government, and spheres of policy where they retain autonomy. Such a solution is the product of deliberate and purposeful political decision-making, of a will to move, to transform, to rendezvous with destiny. It is borne of a spiritual orientation that says that, in the face of so much humiliation and degradation and inconsequence, in a historical situation that invites aspersions on the human essence and quality of Africans, nothing is more important than achieving the political solution of an integrated Black Union which alone can bring about the restoration of the human honor of Africans. The central difference between the African and Western European situations is that Africa’s struggle is for survival and basic human selfrespect that cannot come in any other way than a political decision to unite, whereas the Western Europeans’ struggle is geared to achieving parity with Japan, the USA, and the USSR so as to reinforce a selfrespect that already exists. The European cause then lacks the ingre­ dient of desperate urgency and so can conveniently be pursued along functionalist, incremental, nonideological, nonphilosophical, prag­ matic lines, with all the possibilities of reversal of the integration process that this entails. It is a mistake to attribute Africa’s refusal to move forward on political integration to fears of hegemonic ambitions on the part of those who crusade for integration. It should not be forgotten that Nyerere’s endeavor to defuse political rivalry in East Africa by offer­ ing the presidency of any federation that might emerge in the region to Jomo Kenyatta proved to be of no help.23 Kenyatta’s retort to those who pressured him in his own country to take Nyerere’s gesture seriously was: You have recendy heard that some people want me to kneel down to Nyerere. They want me to say, please, Nyerere, I want that we should

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unite. Is that proper behavior by a real government? To go to another government? To be told by some people that Kenyatta . . . m ust do this or do the other? . . . I say that our government must make its own mind without being dictated to.24

Persistently, the call for a unified rally to enable Africa to overcome its weakness and neutralize its enemies is spumed by so-called leaders who scarcely know the difference between survival and extinction. As it was in the 1960s, so it had been in the 1820s. In the nineteenth century, as the most powerful empire in West Africa, Asante, viewed the growing threat presented by the British in Africa, its government engaged itself vainly in a scheme to establish an organization of African states for mutual security.25 The response of Da Kaba, the ruler of the Bambara Kingdom of Segu was that “he was at peace with the English; that he had plenty of trade with them, and that as a great number of his subjects were residing among the English on the coast, he could not help any person to make war on them.”26 As for the ruler of Dahomey, his answer was that he had consulted his “great fetish” and that he had been advised not to join the Ashantis, as they would be certain to be beaten by the “white man.”27 This, when the defeat of the British forces of Governor MacCarthy on 21 January 1824 by the Asante had shown alongside other such victories, that the European intruders were far from invincible.28 The end result of a lack of a will to empowerment and dignification is that, more so now than ever, as Mazrui notes, The m ost affluent societies in the world are overwhelmingly of European racial extraction. The poorest countries in the world are overwhelmingly black and African in racial extraction. Certainly those countries cate­ gorized as the poorest by the United Nations are disproportionately situ­ ated in the African continent. If people of European extraction are the brahm ins of the international caste system , the black people belong disproportionately to the caste of the untouchables.29

The tragic symbolism that emerges from this spectacle of indignity is that Africa is now increasingly being thought of as the Western world’s garbage dump. As safety laws in Europe and the U.S. push toxic disposal costs up to $2,500 a ton, waste brokers have turned their attention to the world’s poorest and unprotected shores—Africa— where fees offered African recipients of the West’s hazardous waste “have gone as low as $3 a ton.”30 As Brooke notes, once it was trade in slaves. Today, in Koko, Nigeria, “a collection of steel drums stacked behind a villager’s family compound here speak of the latest trade with Europe— 10,000 barrels of toxic waste.”31 Stanley Hoffman observes that to achieve political integration, there

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CONCLUSIONS

is need to introduce both “inter-state and transnational society” into the framework of innovative political engineering. Such a strategy, he elaborates, requires certain kinds o f leaders and certain kinds of citizens. The leaders . . . need to be compassionate, open and capable o f making informed decisions. The citizens must be able and willing to pressure, to prod, to censor their government, and also to act independently across borders.32

At the level of practice, there does not appear to be any necessary need for simultaneity in the roles of leaders and citizens in the integra­ tion process. Where the leaders subscribe to the benefits of political integration and move on it, the support of the masses is not quite essential at the initial stages. According to the studies of a Princeton group regarding integration experiences of the past, active popular support tended to come “only at a later stage, when however, it tended to play an important role.”33 On the other hand, where the majority of the leaderships are unpersuadable on the issue, mass advocacy and activism become the only way out. Under such circumstances, what is required is not “so much that certain leaders desire it as that the peoples themselves strive for unification.”34 Nkrumah tried both the “unity from the top” and “unity from below” approaches. The latter found expression in the African inter­ national workers movement of the AATUF that he launched. How­ ever, as we have noted, the enchaining of the Ghana TUC, in the wake of the 1951 compulsory compact with colonialism, made it impossible for a revolution from below to really take off in Ghana and, through it, to the other African countries. The lesson from the Nkrumah epic is that, since African leaders are peculiarly unresponsive to the call to regeneration through political unification, the road to the future lies in mass movements. The military coup d ’etat of February 1966 cut short Nkrumah’s career before he had had time to reassess the African situation and the tools appropriate to its changing needs. This, however, does not detract from his historic achievements. His place in history as one of the four “greatest statesmen of the twentieth century” (alongside Lenin, Gandhi, and Mao) is secure.34 As Smertin rightly states, any assessment o f N krum ah’s life and work must not be based on what he did not do or did not have time to do. As Lenin pointed out, “Historical services are not judged by the contributions historical personalities did not make in respect of modern requirements, but by the new contributions they did make as compared to their predecessors.” 36

Notes Introduction 1. This pledge was given by Nyerere on 20 July 1964. See also The Addis Ababa Summit 1963, publication of the government of Ethiopia, Ministry of Information, 1963. 2. See Uganda Argus, 23 October 1968.

1. Nkrumah, the Essential Pan*Africanist, and East Africa 1. West Africa, no. 2546, 19 March 1966. 2. Ali A. Mazrui, Africa’s International Relations: The Diplomacy o f Dependence and Change (London: Heinemann, 1977), p. 48. 3. Ibid, p p 49-50. 4. See ibid, p. 49. See also I. W. Zartman, International Relations in the New Africa (Englewood Cliffs, N .J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966,), p. 98. 5. I. W. Zartman, International Relations m the New Africa, p. 98. 6. Ali Mazrui, Africa’s International Relations, pt 50. 7. I. Wallerstern, Africa: The Politics o f Unity (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 33. 8. Ibid. 9. See W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957-1966: Diplomacy, Ide­ ology and the New State (Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 356—58; 442. The Casablanca Powers consisted of Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, the UAR, Libya, and the Algerian Provisional Government (the GPRA). 10. See Kwame Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo (London: Thomas Nelson, 1967); Opoku Agyeman, “Kwame Nkrumah and the Congo (Zaire) Revisited,” African Review 4, no. 4, 1974. 11. Observer Foreign News Service, London, 10 August 1960. 12. Kenneth Grundy, wThe Impact of Region on Contemporary African Politics,’' in G. Carter and P. O’Meara, eds., African Independence: The First Twenty-Five Years (Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 1985), p. 112. 13. Ibid. 14. See W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, pp. 66,67,269; Tom Mboya, Freedom and After (Andre Deutsch, 1963), p. 15 and, for all its twisted cynicism, R. H. Howe, “Nkrumah and Nkrumaism,” Transition 4, no. 27 (1966). Alongside the inculcation of Nkrumaism that went with it, this support made Kaunda into a strong disciple of Nkrumah. In the event, Kaunda’s reaction to Nkrumah’s overthrow was predictable. As Legem Observer (5, no. 10 [May 1970]: p. 18) would note: “Although East and Central African Governments were agitated alike over the military overthrow of the Nkrumah regime, it was Zambia which appeared most vociferous in contempt and disrespect for Ghana’s military government. Zambia’s equation of Ghana with

194

NOTES

Nkrumah was pitiable enough, though understandable. . . It surprised few observ­ ers when Zambia refused to receive a Ghana mission sent to mend fences (see The Nationalist, 19 March 1966). 15. Kofi Batsa, The Spark: From Kwame Nkrumah to Limann (London; Rex Collins, 1985), p. 29. 16. I. W. Zartman, “Africa as a Subordinate System in International Relations,’* in Richard Falk and Saul Mendlovitz, eds., Regional Politics and World Order (San Francisco: Freeman and Company, 1973), p. 391. 17. See Kwame Nkrumah’s letter to Douglas Rogers, in Ghana Ministry of Information, Nkrumah’s Deception o f Africa (Accra, 1966), Exhibit Z. 18. Ibid. 19. K. Grundy, “The Impact of Region on Contemporary African Politics,” p. 120. 20. Ibid, p. 109. 21. Ibid, p. 112. 22. Jitendra Mohan, “Ghana Parliament and Foreign Policy, 1957-60,” Economic Bulletin o f Ghana 6, no. 4 (1966). 23. Basil Davidson, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times o f Kwame Nkrumah (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973). 24. See R. M. Christenson et al., Ideologies and Modem Politics (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1971), p. 25; Roy C. Macridis, Contemporary Political Ideologies (Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers, 1980), p. 9. 25. See Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, (New York: International Publish­ ers, 1973), pp. 251, 242,282, 307, 308. 26. Ibid, p. 284. 27. Ibid, pp. 236-37. 28. Ibid, pp. 304-5. 29. Ibid, p. 287. 30. Ibid, p. 272. 31. Basil Davidson, Black Star, p. 13. 32. Ibid, p. 42. 33. See Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide (New York: Praeger, 1962), p. 44. 34. Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (London: Heinemann, 1963), pp. 21821. 35. See Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, pp. 306, 230; Africa Must Unite, chapter 21. 36. Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, p. 307. 37. Ibid, p. 273. 38. Ibid, p. 240. 39. Rupert Emerson, “Pan-Africanism," International Organization, 16, no. 2 (Spring 1962): p. 282. 40. Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, p. 304. 41. Ibid, p. 306. 42. Ibid, p. 236. 43. See Opoku Agyeman, “The African Publius,” The Journal o f Modem African Studies 23, no. 3 (September 1985). 44. Colin Legum, “The Growth of Africa’s Foreign Policy: From Illusion to Reality,” in Robert Gardiner et al., eds., Africa and the World (Addis Ababa: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 53. 45. Basil Davidson, Black Star, p. 41.

NOTES

195

46. See Opoku Agyeman, “The African Publius,” pp. 380-83. 47. See Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, pp. 236-37. 48. Ibid, p p 230-31; 274. 49. See, for instance, Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroastatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1958 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987). 50. G ted in E. D. Cronin, Black Moses: The Story o f Marctts Garvey and the U N I A (Madison: University of Wisconsin Presss 1955), p. 70. 51. Stanley Hoffman, “The Political Ethics of International Relations," Seventh Morgenthau Memorial Lecture on Ethics and Foreign Policy (New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, 1988), p. 2* 52. Cited in ibid, p. 6. 53. G ted in ibid, pp. 1-2. 54. Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah (New York: International Publishers, 1987), p. 85. 55. Basil Davidson, Black Star, pp. 215-16. 56. Ibid, p. 189. 57. Ibid, p. 187. 58. Ibid, p. 215. 59. See ibid, p. 42; Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 86; I. Geiss, The PanAfrican Movement, (London: Methuen and Co., 1974), pp. 428-29. 60. R. Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 276. 61. I. W. Zartman, International Relations in the New Africa, p. 144. 62. A. E Ewing, “Prospects for Economic Integration in Africa,” The Journal of Modem African Studies 5, no. 1 (1967): p. 67. 63. R. Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 276, 283. 64. A. E Ewing, “Prospects for Economic Integration in Africa,” p. 67. 65. Colin Legum, “The Growth of Africa’s Foreign Policy,” p. 49. 66. Ibid, p. 53. 67. Basil Davidson, Black Star, p. 37. 68. Ibid, p. 33; See also Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 94; Colin Legum, “The Growth of Africa’s Foreign Policy,” p. 54. 69. Ernst B. Haas, “The Uniting of Europe and The Uniting of Latin America,” Journal o f Common Market Studies 5: p. 319. 70. Ibid, p. 320. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid, p. 327. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid, p. 328. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid, p. 341. 79. Ibid, p. 343. 80. I. W. Zartman, “Africa as a Subordinate State System,” p. 388. 81. I. W. Zartman, International Relations in the New Africa, p. 145. 82. Ernst B. Haas, “The Uniting of Europe and The Uniting of Latin America,” p. 323. 83. I. W. Zartman, International Relations in the New Africa, p. 144; I. W. Zartman, “Africa as a Subordinate State System,” p. 389. 84. Emst B. Haas, “The Uniting of Europe and The Uniting of Latin America,”

1%

NOTES

pp. 319-20. 85. Ibid, pp. 319-20; 333. 86. I. W. Zartman, International Relations in the New Africa, p. 126. 87. Ali Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana (London: Vfeidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), p. 59. 88. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, pp. 417, 437; Robert Dowse, Modernization in Ghana and the U SSR: A Comparative Study (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 50-51. 89. See Graham Taylor, ed., Personality and Power: Studies in Political Advance­ ment, BBC Radio Series, London, undated, pp. 65,66. 90. I. Geiss, The Pan-African Movement; B. Davidson, Black Star, pp. 29-40. 91. Cited in Transition, no. 46 (October/December 1974). 92. See G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind: An Account o f Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana from 1950 to 1966 (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), p. 98. 93. Ibid, p. 198. 94. See B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 11. 95. See Dennis Austin, Politics in Ghana, 1946-1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 54. 96. See Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The Autobiography o f Kwame Nkrumah (New York: Thomas Nelson & Co., 1957), p. 95. 97. See B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 164; D. Austin, Politics in Ghanà, p. 200. 98. Dennis Austin, Politics in Ghana, p. 284. 99. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 5. 100. See Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana, p. 290. 101. See Peter Omari, Kwame Nkrumah (Accra: Maxon Paperbacks, 1970), p. 219. 102. David Apter, Ghana w Transition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. vii and ix. 103. Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 86. 104. See G. Tayar, ed., Personality and Power, p. 74; sec also Peter Omari, Kwame Nkrumah, pp. 162, 163; W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Polity, p. 358. 105. W. Scott TTiompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 428. 106. See Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 86. 107. Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, p. 246. 108. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 440. 109. Stanley Hoffman, “The Political Ethics of International Relations,” p. 12. 110. See Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 162. 111. Roy C. Macridis, Contemporary Political Ideologies, p. 10. 112. B. Davidson, Black Star, pp. 28, 30. 113. Ibid, pp. 122, 124. 114. Ibid, pp. 97, 147. 115. Ibid, pp. 82, 86. 116. Ibid, p. 84. 117. Ibid, pp. 114-15. Another good object lesson was played out in the way the British smashed the “revolutionary” Cheddi Jagan in Guiana. See ibid, p. 129. 118. Ibid, p. 213. 119. Ibid, p. 115. 120. C. L. R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1977), p. 149. 121. See B. Davidson, Black Star, pp. 110, 130-31, 134. 122. Ibid, p. 126. 123. Ibid, pp. 166-67. 124. Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 126; B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 125.

NOTES

197

125. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 184. 126. See ibid, pp. 172-74; 99-100; 88, 147, 149, 165, 166, 118, 183, 129, 214; J. Mohan, “Ghana Parliament and Foreign Policy, 1957-60;” pp. 38-40, 44, 50; C. L. R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, p. 9n; Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, pp. 52, 56,67. 127. See Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana, p. 279; Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 56. 128. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 174. 129. Ghana Parlimentary Debates, 1 August 1958 and 3 September 1958. 130. J. Mohan, “Ghana Parliament and Foreign Policy,” pp. 46-47. 131. K. Grundy, “The Impact of Region,” p. 109. 132. Ghana Parliamentary Debates, 1 September 1958. 133. J. Mohan, “Ghana Parliament and Foreign Policy,” pp. 38-39. 134. Ghana Parliamentary Debates, September 3, 1958; J. Mohan, “Ghana Parlia­ ment and Foreign Policy,” pp. 44-50. 135. J. Mohan, “Ghana Parliament and Foreign Policy,” p. 39. 136. Ibid. 137. See B. Davidson, Black Star, pp. 147, 149. 138. See Richard D. Mahoney, JF K : Ordeal in Africa (New York: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 1983), p. 183. 139. See, for instance, ibid, pp. 175, 183. 140. Ghana Parliamentary Debates, 15 July 1958. 141. Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 67. 142. Robert Good, “Changing Patterns of African International Relations,” Amer­ ican Political Science Review 58, no. 3 (September 1964): p. 636. 143. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 102. 144. Michael Dei-Anang, The Administration of Ghana's Foreign Relations, 19571965: A Personal Memoir (Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, Commonwealth Papers, no. 17), p. 7. 145. Henry Bretton’s view, cited in G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 389. 146. Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 118. 147. See M. Dei-Anang, The Administration of Ghana's Foreign Relations, p. 31n. 148. See Ibid, p. 30. 149. See Ibid, p. 28. 150. See H. T. Alexander, African Tightrope—My Two Years As Nkrumah's Chief of S ta ff (London: Pall Mall Press, 1965). 151. Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 120. 152. See A. A. Afrifah, The Ghana Coup (New York: The Humanities Press, 1966). 153. Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 121. 154. Maurice A. East, “Foreign Policy-making in Small States: Some Theoretic Observations Based on a Study of the Uganda Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): p. 492. 155. The Financial Times, London, 16 July 1965, cited in G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 375. 156. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 376. 157. Ibid, pp. 14, 18. 158. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana's Foreign Policy, p. 3. 159. David Apter, Ghana in Transition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 338. 160. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 18. 161. D. Apter, Ghana in Transition, p. 338. 162. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 415. 163. Ibid.

198

NOTES

164. See Kenneth Robinson, “Constitutional Autochthony in Ghana,” Journal o f Commonwealth Political Studies 1, no. 1 (November 1961): p. 45. 165. See David F. Roth and Frank L. Wilson, The Comparative Study of Politics, 2nd. ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N .J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), p. 116. 166. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, pp. 11, IB. 167. Ghana Parliamentary Debates, 29 August 1957. 168. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, pp. 16, 35. 169. Ibid, p. 439. 170. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 121. 171. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 439. 172. Ibid, p. 19. 173. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 95. 174. Ibid. 175. Charles de Gaulle, Memoirs o f Hope: Renewal and Endeavor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), pp. 37-82. 176. R. Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 286. On the same subject of the unques­ tionable reality of neocolonialism, see also G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, pp. 31-34; B. Davidson, Black Star, pp. 211-12. 177. G. Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 32. 178. Ibid, pp. 32, 33. 179. Ibid, p. 19. 180. R. D. Mahoney, J F K , p. 303n. See also pp. 147, 173, 174. 181. Ibid, p. 183. 182. Ibid, p. 184. 183. CIA Special Report, “Domestic Opposition to Ghana’s Nkrumah,” 24 May 1963; cited in R. D. Mahoney, JF K y ppt 303n, 147. 184. R. D. Mahoney, J F K , p. 184. 185. Ibid, pp. 184-85. 186. Ibid, pp. 186, 231. Ghanaian police, according to Mahoney, had found Dr. Carl C. Nydell, ostensibly the Regional Medical Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Accra, seated next to a terrorist courier whom they arrested on board a Ghana Airways plane in Accra airport. See ibid, p. 186. 187. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 337. 188. Gted in R. D. Mahoney, JF K , p. 182. 189. See W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Polity, pp. 359-60. 190. See Ruth First, Power in Africa (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), p. 379. 191. Gted in Ibid, pp. 379-80. 192. Ibid, p. 382. 193. Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, pp. 110-11. 194. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 198. 195. Kwame Nkrumah's letter to Albert Margai of Sierra Leone, cited in The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 6 March 1966. 196. Ghana Parliamentary Debates, 10 July 1959. 197. J. Mohan, “Ghana Parliament and Foreign Policy,” p. 48. 198. See R. Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 287. 199. Erasmus Kloman, “African Unification Movements,” International Organiza­ tion 16, no. 2 (Spring 1962): p. 390. 200. Ibid, p. 396; R. Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 286. 201. R. Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 287. 202. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 249. 203. Ibid.

NOTES

199

204. Emst B. Haas, “The Uniting of Europe and The Uniting of Latin America,” p. 321. 205. 1. W. Zartnun, International Relations in the New Africat p. 152. 206. See Jean Lacouture, The Demigods: Charismatic Leadership in the Third World (New York: Knopf, 1970), pp. 258-59. For his part, Emerson wrote: “The Nkrumah doctrine that African unity must be sought through a merger of sovereignties in a new political kingdom has not found many takers among the African leaders. The reasons for this rejection are not hard to find, among them being the manifest disinclination to accept the proferred leadership of Nkrumah himself in a potential African unity.” See his “Pan-Africanism,” p. 288. 207. Speech at 2nd Conference of Independent African States, Addis Ababa, 1960. 208. Cited in V. B. Thompson, Africa and Unity: The Evolution o f Pan-Africanism (London: Longman Group, 1969), p. 163. 209. Geoffrey Bing, Reap the Whirlwind, p. 440. 210. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 431. 211. Rupert Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 279. 212. Cited in Ibid, p. 280. 213. W. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1964), p. 27. 214. Ibid. p. 28. 215. I. W. Zartman, International Relations tn the New Africa, p. 137. 216. Address on 28 May 1963; cited in V. B. Thompson, Africa and Unity, p. 163. 217. I. W. Zartman, International Relations in the New Africa, p. 87. 218. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 120.

Chapter 2. Uhuru and Umoja 1. A. A. Mazrui, “Ideas and Idolatory in African Diplomacy—The Age of Nkrumah and the Last Years of Charles de Gaulle” (mimeo, Kampala, 1971). 2. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1957), p. 53. 3. K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom (New York: Praeger Paperbacks, 1961), p. 5. 4. See Ibid., p[x 5, 32. 5. See Uganda Argus, 5 February 1957 and 7 March 1957. 6. Ibid. 7. See Sunday Post (Nairobi), 10 March 1957. 8. Uganda Argus, 7 March 1957. 9. Sunday Post (Nairobi), 10 March 1957. 10. Aristide Zolberg, One Party Government in the Ivory Coast (Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1964), p. 219. 11. K. Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo, (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1967), p. xiv. 12. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 4. 13. Tom Mboya, Freedom and After, pp. 65, 66, 255. 14. O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 173. 15. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 144. 16. Jomo Kenyatta, speech on Kenya’s Independence Day, 12 December 1963; in his Suffering Without Bitterness: The Founding o f the Kenya Nation (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1968).

200

NOTES

17. See Dennis Austin, Politics in Ghana, 1946-1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 54. 18. Ibid., p. 200. 19. Ibid. 20. K. Nkrumah, Ghana: An Autobiography o f Kwame Nkrumah (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1957), p. 290. 21. Ibid. p. 201. 22. See K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom, p. 249. 23. K. Nkrumah in address to the UN General Assembly, 23 September 1960. 24. K. Nkrumah, / Speak o f Freedom, p. 227. 25. K. Nkrumah, Ghana, p. 202. 26. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. xv. 27. K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom, p. 108. 28. Ibid., jx 107. 29. Ibid., p. 126. 30. K. Nkrumah, Ghana, pp. ix, & 202. 31. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 200. 32. T. Mboya, Freedom and After>p. 77. Nkrumah’s CPP used a Red Cockerel as its voting symbol. 33. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 105; and D. A. Low, Political Parties in Uganda, 19491962 (London: The Athlone Press, 1962), pp. 12, 19. 34. K. Nkrumah, / Speak o f Freedom, p. 128. 35. K. Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo, p. xv. 36. K. Nkrumah, Ibid. 37. See T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 15. 38. See S. Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957-1966 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 61-62 (and footnote). 39. K. Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo, p. 14. 40. See David Caute, Frantz Fanon (New York: The Viking Press, 1970), p. 66. 41. See T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 13. 42. Ibid., p. 15. 43. K. Nkrumah, Challenge of the Congo, p. xv. 44. See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, pp. 156-60, 167. 45. See T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 15. 46. See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 161. 47. See T. Mboya, Freedom and After, pp. 65-66. 48. Ibid., p. 66. 49. Ibid., p. 15. 50. See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 177. 51. Ibid. 52. Kofi Batsa, The Spark: From Kwame Nkrumah to Limann (London: Rex Collins, 1985), p. 25. 53. Ibid. 54. ibid. 55. Ibid., pp. 24, 26. 56. Ibid., p. 26. 57. K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom, p. 198. 58. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana's Foreign Policy; pp. 66, 67, 269. 59. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. ix.

NOTES

201

60. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, pp. 95-96. 61. O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 112. 62. Cited in T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 20. 63. See Ibid., pp. 65-66. 64. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, pp. 95-% . 65. See, for instance, The Kabaka of BUganda, Desecration of M y Kingdom (Constable and Co., 1967), pp. 27, 30, 149, 61-62, 161, 117; Daily Nation, Nairobi, Editorial, 24 June 1967. 66. Sunday News, Dar es Salaam, 10, 17 March 1957. 67. Sunday Post (Nairobi), 17 March 1975: editorial. 68. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, pp. 95-96. 69. Uganda Argus, 15 February 1957. 70. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 136. 71. See V. B. Thompson, Africa and Unity: The Evolution o f Pan-Africanism, (London: Longman, 1969), p. 345. 72. Ibid., pp. 352-53. 73. Mboya’s testimony is that his feeling of African unity received its greatest impetus from the conference. See J . Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, p. 31. 74. See, for instance, Richard Cox, Pan-Africanism in Practice: PAFM ECSA, 1958-1964 (London: Institute of Race Relations, 1964), p. 5. 75. See I. Wallerstein, Africa: The Politics of Unity, p. 31. 76. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 184. 77. K. Nkrumah, Address to the Ghana National Assembly, 3 May 1961. 78. A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana: A Study o f Ideology and Ambition, p. 67. 79. Cited in ibid., p. 67. 80. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, p. 225. 81. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, pp. 184-85. 82. Ibid., pp. 228,230. 83. Ibid., pp. 239,241. 84. West Africa, no. 2600, 1 April 1967, p. 433. 85. Ibid., 2585, 17 December 1966, p. 1441. 86. Ibid. 87. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 192. 88. Nkrumah sent his greetings to one of the earlier meetings of PAFMECA, referring to it as a “noble cause” . To which Mboya reverendy replied: “Once again, I reaffirm your foresight in initiating steps toward African Unity.” See R. Cox, PanAfricanism in Practice: PAFM EC SA, 1958-1964 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 40, 76. 89. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, p. 126. 90. See R. Cox, Pan-Africanism in Practice, pp. 56-57. 91. See T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 225. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid., p. 218. 94. The Congo crisis, as Thompson has recorded, “left an indelible mark on the operation and the instrument of Nkrumah’s foreign policy. . . . Virtually all of Ghana’s external relations after 1961 were part of a backwash from the Congo crisis. Institutionally, the African Affairs Secretariat (AAS) derived its precedent from the Congo Cordinating Committee, and by the end of thisperiod, no Ministry or Secretariat absorbed so much of Nkrumah’s time as this one.” See his Ghana's Foreign Policy, p. 261.

202

NOTES

95. K. Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom (London: Hdnemann Educational Books, 1962), p. x. 96. Speech available in K. Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, pp. 233, 248. 97. J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, p. 244. 98. Speech available in K. Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, pp. 277-97. 99. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, pi 227. 100. Letter to Douglas Rogers; Sec Ghana Ministry of Information, Nkrumah’s Subversion o f Africa, Exhibit Z. 101. See chapter 3. 102. J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, pp. 16-17. 103. W. S. Thompson, Ghana's Foreign Policy, p. 332. 104. See Ibid., p. 182. 105. B. Davidson, Which Way Africa? (Penguin African Library, 1964), p. 66. 106. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, Chapter 21. 107. See R. Cox, Pan-Africanism m Practice, pp. 76, 77. 108. See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, pp. 184-85. 109. See Nkrumah’s Deception of Africa, Exhibit Y. As he himself recounts, he first went to Ghana in 1956 to work there at the instance of the late George Padmore who had been asked by Dr. Nkrumah to recommend a journalist to assist in the establish­ ment of Guinea Press. At that time he was the Secretary-General of the Movement for Colonial Freedom and had a record, dating back to the 1940’s, of “active work in the cause of anti-imperialism.’’ From 1956, Mr. Rogers was to continue in close associa­ tion with Ghana “though for only part of that time in any paid professional capacity.” About August 1963, he went to Kenya and was soon to become the first European to join the KANU. See Africa and the World (London) 3, no. 32 (June 1967); 2, no. 18 (March 1966). 110. Pan-Africa (Nairobi), 19 April 1963. 111. Ibid., 28 June 1963. 112. See ibid., 1 Nov. 1963. 113. ibid., 15 November 1963. 114. Thus, for instance, on the occasion of the First Anniversary of Kenya’s Jamhuri celebrations, Nkrumah sent special fraternal greetings and warmest congrat­ ulations not to the Kenyan leadership, as several African leaders did, but to PanAfrica. He said that he had followed with keen interest the publications and progress of the Pan-Africa magazine since its inception and had never failed to appreciate the efforts being made under difficult conditions to focus and guide the minds of its readers towards the noble ideals of Pan-Africanism which embodies the aspirations of the African peoples. In a world plagued with cold war conflicts, he went on, it was inescapable that any paper “dedicated to the cause of Pan-Africanism” would be beset with many obstacles. “However,” he concluded, “it is my fervent hope that this magazine Pan-Africa, born in the throes of Kenya’s struggle for independence, nurtured on political consciousness and developed side by side with a growing sense of nationalism and responsibility towards African aspirations, will continue to champion the cause of African unity.” See Pan-Africa, 10 December 1965. 115. D. Rogers’ letter to Nkrumah, in Nkrumah’s Deception o f Africa, Exhibit Y. 116. Ibid. 117. See Pan-Africa, 1 Oct. 1965. 118. Africa and the World (London), no. 1 (October, 1964). 119. Such an opportunity they found in the paper’s “vehement” attack in February 1966, on Mr. Gichuru, the “darling of the capitalist world” , for his “extraordinary impudence” and “arrogant nonsense” for suggesting in a noted televised statement in

NOTES

203

Lagos during the Commonwealth Conference on Rhodesia that the colony was “not ready for majority rule” and that Rhodesian Africans were Mnot so well organised as those in West Africa or Kenya . . a statement constituting a “powerful propaganda support for all the reactionaries who seek to halt the process of African advance'*, and “a sudden painful stab in the back of the entire freedom movement of southern Africa. . . . ” The Kenyan government's answer to this was to impose a ban not only on the month’s issue but on “all past and future issues” and to declare Rogers a prohibited immigrant on the ground that his activities were “contrary to the interests of national security” . The two actions, retorted Africa and the World, were “scurrilous and contemptible. They bring shame on this independent African state and it is for Kenyans, not us, to seek to remove them.” And react some Kenyans did, to the cause of Rogers and his Nkrumaist organ. See Africa and the World 2, no. 18 (March 1966); and Pan-Africa, no. 75 (18 February 1966). 120. See chapter 4. 121. See chapter 3.

Chapter 3. The Osagyefo, the Mwalimu, and Pan-Africanism 1. Dennis Austin and Hans Weiler, eds., Inter-State Relations in Africa, Freiburg: Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institute for Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschung, 1963. 2. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, ¡957-1966 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 432. 3. Ibid., p. 242. 4. Julius Nyerere, Freedom and Unity (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 327. 5. Ibid., p. 350. 6. See speech in China (1968) in George T. Yu: China and Tanzania: A Study in Cooperative Interaction, China Research Monograph, No. 5 (Berkeley: University of California, 1970), p. 97-100. 7. All these threads of Nkrumah's thoughts on Union Government have been taken from the following sources: K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom (New York: Praeger Paperbacks, 1961), preface pp. xi and xii, 220-221,248; K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 170; Kwame Nkrumah, OAU Summit speeches, 1964 and 1965, in K. Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, pp. 276-97; 298-309. 8. See the following sources: J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, op cit., pp. 20,190, 191,349; J. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (Dar es Salaam: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 215; OAU Summit Speeches, 1963 and 1964, in Freedom and Unity, pp. 21517; 300-302. 9. “This,” he elaborated, “is the age in which science has transcended the limits of the material world, and technology has invaded the silences of nature . . . all at an incredible speed. The world is no longer moving through bush paths or on camels and donkeys.” See K. Nkrumah, OAU Summit speeches, 1963 and 1964, in Revolutionary Path, pp. 229-48; 276-97. 10. Kwame Nkrumah, ibid. 11. K. Nkrumah, AfricaM ust Unite, pp. 214—15. 12. A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax-Africana p. 71. 13. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 215. 14. See A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax-Africana, p. 71. 15. See Nkrumah’s letter to Douglas Rogers in Nkrumah’s Deception o f Africa,

204

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Exhibit Z. For Ghanaian Times opinion of the matter which adds to this, see S. Thompson, Ghana's Foreign Policy, p. 339. See also Opoku Agyeman, “Kwame Nkrumah’s Impact on the East African Federation Proposal: A Study in a Negative Form of External Influence,'* York University, December 1973. 16. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 348. 17. But, one might ask, was this a sufficient basis on which to expect that regional loyalties would expand to encompass the continent? Besides, it is to be noted that in some cases it is easier for a man to surrender his tribalism to a United Africa than to a nation or even regional federation of nations. Thus, for instance, Pan-Africa would point out that the Somalis were “more likely to abandon their dispute with Kenya if Kenya, together with Somalia and all her neighbors, is prepared to surrender on a reciprocal basis some substantial measure of sovereignty to Pan-African Unity.” See no. 15, 1 Nov. 1963. 18. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 348. 19. Ibid., pp. 346-47. 20. J. Nyerere, Republic Day Broadcast, 1963, in Freedom and Unity, p. 253. 21. See ibid., p. 300. 22. S. Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 437. 23. Scott Thompson, Ghana's Foreign Policy, p. 356. 24. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 95. 25. Statement to the Trusteeship Council, 18 June 1957 (italics mine). See J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 47. 26. See Newsweek article on Nyerere, 20 May 1968. 27. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 191. 28. For such views on “sovereignty,” sec K. Nkrumah, Axions o f Kwame Nkrumah, Freedom Fighters Edition (Panaf Books, 1967), p. 13; K. Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo, p. 193; K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 217; OAU Summit Speech 1963, in Revolutionary Path, pp. 229-48. 29. K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom, pp. 220-21. 30. See S. Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 350. 31. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 205. 32. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, pp. 340-41. 33. J. Nyerere, OAU Summit Speech, Cairo, 1964. See Freedom and Unity, pp. 300-302. 34. J. Nyerere, article in March, 1965. See Freedom and Unity, p. 335. 35. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 194. 36. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, p. 212. 37. Ibid., p. 207. 28. K. Nkrumah, speech to the 1960 Accra Positive Action Conference, cited in Colin Legum, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 44. It was Nkrumah's wont to pronounce such a maximal commitment to the cause of African Unity, as in: “I have always said that for me the issue of African unity came before any other consideration.” See K. Nkrumah, Dark Days in Ghana (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968), p. 37. 39. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, p. 216. This is a viewpoint that was to be invoked by a number of scholars to explain Nkrumah’s domestic failures. Dennis Austin, for instance, was to say of the break in CPP unity that this was the result of Nkrumah’s own neglect. “He was absorbed in Pan-African schemes. . . . ” (See his Politics in Ghana, p. 402). Peter Omari makes the point that if Nkrumah had expended “more energy on correcting domestic economic difficulties rather than on building an international image as the sole champion of African Unity, Ghanaians would have suffered him for several more years.” Then, even more bluntly, he points

NOTES

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out that “Nkrumah sacrificed Ghana on the altar of Pan-Africanism.” (See his Ktvame Nkrumah, The Anatomy o f An African Dictatorship [Accra: Mason Paperbacks Ltd., 1970], pp. 162 and 163). Scott Thompson narrates, in relation to Nkrumah’s preoc­ cupations for the 196S Accra OAU Summit, that “important objectives in the domes­ tic sector were pushed aside, and Nkrumah told one visitor that this was done because they would be irrelevant or redundant when union government was achieved.” (See his Ghana's Foreign Policy, p. 358). And from Selwyn Ryan: . . Nkrumah did dream more of Africa than of Ghana which he saw as a showcase and an operational base for the advancement of his African ambitions.” (See his article, “Socialism and the Party System in Ghana 1947-1966” , in Pan-African Journal 3, no. 1 (Winter 1970). And Dr. R. Rathbone throws in additional word: “The remoteness from the domestic scene, indicated by a greater involvement in extra-Ghanaian affairs undermined his (Nkrumah's) greatest personal and political advantages.” See Personality and Power: Studies in Political Advancement, a B.B.C. radio series edited by Graham Tayar. 40. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, pp. 198-99. 41. J. Nyerere,FreedomandSocialism, p. 211. 42. See K. Nkrumah, Handbook o f Revolutionary Warfare, A Guide to the Armed Phase o f the African Revolution (London: Panaf Books, 1968), pp. 26-27. 43. Ibid., p. 25. 44. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 189. R. Rostow very much endorses Nkrumah’s stand of all-out commitment to continent-building in his book, A World of Nations, in which he argues that the world is moving into a crisis where the con­ tinuation of its modernisation depends on finding new institutions that transcend and transform the nation-state; that the parts of the world which have both the greatest need and the best chance to devise them are those where the nation-state has developed least; and that of all such parts, Africa has the greatest need and the best chance of all. “A nationalist economic policy, in the sense of ‘nationalist’ is one which seeks to foster first and foremost the presumed common economic interests of citizens against those of outsiders; such a policy is simply not compatible with establishing wider economic ties and larger units. You cannot have it both ways.” See Oburoni Muntu’s review of the book in Legon Observer (Accra) 5, no. 10 (May 1970): p. 10. But Colin Legum holds a different opinion. Although in European thinking the two forces of nationalism and Pan-Africanism are automatically seen as irreconcilable, in the African context, he points out, this is not so. This is because in their origins in Africa the two forces are not antagonistic. “They stem not from different but from the same ideas and feelings—a desire to be free from alien rule, to create a new role for the African in Africa and for Africa in the world, and to build new states and societies in Africa. . . . Each of these two forces should therefore be seen to be intrinsically concerned with ideas of political unification, though at different levels.” In 1963, for instance, it was African nationalism “which produced a Pan-Africanist organization— the O.A.U.—which seeks to regulate the affairs and promote the interests of the entire continent. To this extent it must be conceded that despite the obvious paradoxes between African nationalism and Pan-Africanism these two forces are still moving in the same direction, with each influencing the other and often strengthening it.” But is it not the case that the Pan-Africanism of the OAU is the kind which postulates no direct threat to national sovereignty since all the OAU does is to provide for continen­ tal cooperation as between sovereign independent states? Will Pan-Africanism be able to maintain its thrust once the nation-states have had a chance to become stronger, when nationalism begins to freeze into nationality, when frontiers have become permanent and sovereignty has become sovereignly important? It is on this crucial question that Legum’s thesis of “harmonious paradoxies” founders. (See Colin Legum, “Na­ tionalism’s Impact on Pan-Africanism,” East Africa Journal, April 1965.)

206

NOTES

45. K wame Nkrumah, Handbook o f Revolutionary Warfare, p. 28. 46. Article, “What It Would Be Like To Live In An African Union” in Africa and the World, no. 1 (October, 1964). 47. Cited in S. Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 347. 48. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, p. 45. 49. Ali Mazrui, “Ideas and Idolatory in African Diplomacy: The Age of Nkrumah and the Last Years of Charles de Gualle” (mimeo, Makerere University, 1971). 50. Kwame Nkrumah at the Foundation stone laying of Ghana's Atomic Reactor Center at Kwabenya near Accra. See Ghana Today 8, no. 21 (16 December 1964). 51. K. Grundy and M. Weinstein, “Nkrumah and Political Uses of Imagination.” See Transition no. 30 (April/May 1967). 52. Ibid. 53. K. Nkrumah, speech at Cairo Summit, 1964. See Revolutionary Path, pp. 276-97 (italics mine). 54. J. Nyerere, speech at Cairo Summit, 1964, in Freedom and Unity, pp. 300302. 55. J. Nyerere, speech in July, 1966. See Freedom and Unity, p. 212. 56. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 346. “Directive imagination and en­ lightened debate,” write Grundy and Weisntein, “are to a great extent, functional alternatives. The one uses emotionally-charged symbols and the other an appeal to reason to accomplish the same purpose and mobilisation.” In an era when the pace of change is so much more rapid than it was in the 18th Century, there is much to say for leaders who increasingly turn to the symbolic even if they would prefer the rational approach. “It is in the context of the exigencies of modernisation that Nkrumah must be understood. . . Grundy and Weinstein in article, “Nkrumah and Political uses of Imagination.” As also J. Frankel writes, “Emotions and not intellect provide the dynamic force in history” {The Makings o f Foreign Policy (London, 1963), p. 170). 57. T. M. Franck, “East African Federation” in Franck (ed.) Why Federations Fail (New York: New York University Press, 1968), p. 31. 58. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, p. 298. 59. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unity, p. 346. 60. See ibid., pp. 88-93. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. See The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 22 July 1964. 64. West Africa, no. 2650, 16 March 1968, p. 310. 65. See The Nationalist, 11 November 1966. 66. Nyerere in address to UAR National Assembly, April 1967. 67. J. Nyerere, Freedom and Unify, p. 217. 68. J. Nyerere in address to UAR National Assembly, April 1967. See J. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, p. 292. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., p. 298. 71. Ibid., p. 291. 72. Ibid., p. 294. Or, as he put it in the Ivory Coast, “it is no use our waiting for differences of approach, or of political belief, to disappear before we think of working for unity in Africa. They will not disappear.” See The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 27 February 1968. 73. Nyerere's observation in Dakar, Senegal. See The Nationalist, 4 March 1968. 74. West Africa, no. 2650, 16 March 1968.

NOTES

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75. Interview wixhjeune Afrique. See I. Wallerstein, Africa: The Politics o f Unity (Vintage Books, 1969), pp. 10B and 171. The link between Africa’s total liberation and unity is, of course, obvious. At Cairo, Nkrumah had taken the Liberation Committee (based in Dar es Salaam) to task, saying that he would be failing in his duty to the Freedom Fighters and to the cause of African Liberation if he remained silent about the “general dissatisfaction” which existed regarding the functioning of it. The work of the Committee was “admittedly one of stupendous magnitude with stupendous difficulties,” yet some of its failures were “inexcusable because they were unneces­ sary.” In short, the “frequent and persistent” reports from Freedom Fighters about the shortcomings of the aid and facilities for training offered to them “makes it impossible for the government of Ghana to turn over its contribution to the Commit­ tee until a reorganisation has taken place for more effective and positive action.” In reply, Nyerere proposed to pay little attention to Nkrumah’s charges, as “these accusations have been made by the only country which has not paid a single penny to the Committee since its establishment.” Nor did Nkrumah's decision not to pay, as he saw it, have anything to do with the inefficiency of the Committee: “It was taken before the Committee started its work and the reason was extremely petty,” being that the Conference Committee committed the “unforgivable crime” of not including Ghana in the Committee and of choosing Dar es Salaam as its headquarters. “This is the reason for the petty peevishness which prevents one brother country from paying funds to help our brothers in Mozambique, Angola and Portuguese Guinea.” 76. The Nationalist, 6 March 1968. 77. Ibid., 8 March 1968. 78. Africa and the World, 4, no. 44 (June-July 1968). 79. See Africa and the World 2, no. 14, (Nov. 1965). 80. See article, “Nationalism's Impact on Pan-Africanism," in East African Jour­ nal, April 1965. Even Jomo Kenyatta would feel impelled to pay at least lip service to Pan-Africanism. As he declared in his speech marking Kenya’s achievement of independence on 12 December 1963: “African unity is very important. If there is no unity in the whole of Africa, we shall be slaves: we shall have entered into a new type of slavery, the slavery of divide-and-rule by more powerful countries which have tasted the sweetness of ruling and which—whether waking or sleeping—only think of ruling Africa. And when they sleep, a dream comes to them urging them to divide Africa, divide and then rule. It is our duty to stop this, and the only means is unity.”

Chapter 4. Nkrumah’s Presence in Obote’s Uganda 1. The Guardian, 27 January 1968. 2. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 21 October 1968. 3. West Africa, no. 2711, 17 May 1969. 4. Rajat Neogy, “Obote the Man” in Legon Observer (Accra)6, no. 4 (1971). 5. Fred Mpanga, “The Old Africa Is Dying” , in Uganda Argus, 1 May 1971. 6. S. Ryan, “Uganda: A Balance Sheet of the Revolution” in MAWAZO 3, no. 1 (June 1971). 7. Uganda Argus, 21 January 1961. 8. D. Austin, Politics in Ghana, 1946-1960 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 324. 9. K. Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo p. 199. 10. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite pp. 173-74. 11. Ibid., p. 59.

208

NOTES

12. Ibid., pp. X I-X II. 13. Aside from Nkrumah's passionate Pan-Africanism, the other main constituent in this motivation, as Mazrui rightly points out, is Ghana's distinction as the first black colony to attain independence. See A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana p. 59. On the question of Ghana setting an example in unity: “It is most important . . . to emphasize that the unity of our country is necessary not only in the interests of our own immediate independence, but as an example to all the other peoples of this vast continent.” See K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom, p. 71. 14. Presidential Address to Ghana Parliament, Parliamentary Debates, 21 April 1961. As he points out elsewhere, “Everywhere, as the nationalist struggle deepens, the imperialist powers, fishing in the muddy waters of communalism, tribalism and sectional interests, endeavor to create fissures in the national front in order to achieve fragmentation . . . [It was] all part of the policy of intentional balkanization of Africa for manipulation by neocolonialism which in effectiveness can be more dangerous to our legitimate aspirations of freedom and economic independence than outright political control.” See Africa Must Unite, pp. 173-74. 15. K. Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo, p. 200. 16. Speech on Fifth Anniversary of Independence, Kampala, 9 October 1967. 17. In the history of precolonial Africa, both the Ashanti and the Baganda hold a formidable record of predominance and imperialism over their neighbors. The Ashan­ tis did build, from the early Eighteenth Century onwards, a powerful empire—the result of “diplomatic skill, martial prowess and statecraft.” By the end of the century, the empire “was easily the most powerful in the whole of West Africa,” having by then conquered all the states and kingdoms in Ghana and having extended over the northeastern pan of the modem Ivory Coast and much of Togoland. The empire maintained a system of government that was “of a highly developed order of political achievement.” (See William Tordoff, Ashanti Under the Prempehs, (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 11-12; Adu Boahen, Topics in West African History, (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1966), p. 70; Dennis Austin, Politics in Ghana, 1946-60, p. 2; D. Apter, Ghana in Transition (New York: Atheneum, 1963, p. 23). The Baganda achievement in precolonial Africa was about as impressive. By the time the British arrived there, it was the most powerful kingdom in East Africa, partly through the benefits of the internal national structure and partly as a result of the fortunes of war. (See D. Rothchild and M. Rogin, “Uganda” , in M. Carter [ed.], National Unity and Regionalism m Eight States, [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966], p. 365; the Kabaka of Buganda, Desecration o f M y Kingdom (London: [Constable and Co., 1967], p. 30). 18. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, pp. 62-64. 19. Kabaka of Buganda, Desecration o f My Kingdom, p. 27. 20. See G. Ibingira, The Forging of an African Nation (New York: The Viking Press, 1973), pp. 121 and 170. See also D. A. Low, Buganda in Modem History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 204. 21. S. Ryan, “Uganda: A Balance Sheet of the Revolution” , in Mawazo, p. 41. 22. C. Legum, “The Dangers of Independence” , in Transition 2, no. 6 and 7 (October 1962). 23. Statement by the party's Secretary-General, Mr. Kakonge. See Uganda Argus, 11 September 1962. 24. See Uganda Argus, 4 January 1964. 25. Obote’s recourse to Nkrumah—the “Elder Statesman of Africa” and “The Architect of African Independence”—for guidance and help in his domestic politics was neither the first nor the last of its kind. Just before Congolese independence,

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Lumumba sought a similar counsel from his Ghanaian hero. In October 1959, assailed by mounting dissension, he wrote to Nkrumah: “May I please ask the Prime Minister [Nkrumah] to give me the necessary guide in respect of the plan to follow in our struggle? His experience means a lot to us. . . Nkrumah, in reply, emphasized the utility of unitarism as the only effective weapon against factionalism, see Challenge of the Congo, p. 17. 26. Speech by Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Bataringaya—see Uganda Parlia­ mentary Debates, 26 September 1962 and Uganda Argus, 13 September 1962. 27. Uganda Argus, 3 September 1963. 28. Ibid., 22 February 1963. 29. Ibid., 24 April 1963. 30. Ibid.,.14November 1963. 31. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 26 September 1962. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. Already, in Uganda, the fear and disdain of the Baganda traditionalists for Nkrumah was well illustrated in the malicious pun Nkuluma (MI am biting you”) made of his name. To them, he symbolized the scourge of monarchies everywhere in Africa. 34. Uganda Argus, 4 September 1963. 35. Ibid., 9 January 1964. 36. Ibid., 13 January 1964. 37. Ibid. 38. Fred Mpanga's address to the Lukiiko, Uganda Argus, 21 January 1966. 39. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 26 September 1962. 40. Ibid., 3 March 1965. 41. Ibid., 20 December 1963, 42. Uganda Argus, 9 April 1963. The American Ambassador in Ghana,* Mr. William Mahoney, also (in March 1963) described Ghana's educational system as “second to none in Africa.” In this area, he went on, Ghana’s leaders had “not only preached but also demonstrated by performance the prime role assigned to the educational sector in Ghana”—see Uganda Argus, 13 March 1963. 43. Uganda Argus, 25 April 1963. 44. Ibid., 3 September 1963. 45. Ibid., 4 August 1965. 46. Ibid., 5 December 1963. 47. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 26 September 1962. 48. Uganda Argus, 29 April 1963. Uganda’s enthusiasm to follow the Ghanaian line manifested itself in other areas as well. Thus, following the “strong, swift, sure and overwhelming” performance of the Ghana soccer team, the Black Stars, in Uganda, as in other parts of East and Central Africa in October 1962, the Ugandan Ministry of Community Development sought a Ghanaian adviser in the formation of a National Sports Council based on the Ghanaian model. In the event, Mr. J. W. Wontumi, a “responsible member” of Ghana’s “strong and well organized” Central Organization of Sports arrived in Uganda in June 1963 in the capacity of Sports Adviser responsible for drawing up the Constitution and also the new Sports Structure upon which the Ugandan Sports council was to be based (see Uganda Argus, 11 October 1962, 12 March and 15 June 1963). In September 1963, following the disclosure that Ghana’s Black Star Shipping Line had made an appreciable net profit for the year ending 31 December 1961, a number of East African students, including Ugandans, were sent to the Ghana Nautical College to train as Ship's Officers for East African Railways and Harbours (see Uganda Argus, 20 September 1963).

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The presence of Ghanaian personnel in East Africa in general at the time was noteworthy. Examples: Mr. A. L. Adu served as Secretary-General of the East African Common Services Organization (EACSO); Mr. A. M. Akiwumi served as President of the Kenyan Court of Appeal; and Mr. Bediako-Asare became the first editor of The Nationalist, the mouthpiece of the Tanganyikan African National Union. 49. See I. Wbllerstein, “Voluntary Associations” . In J. S. Coleman and C. G. Rosberg (Eds.), Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964). 50. R. Dowse, Modernization in Ghana and the U SSR (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 30. 51. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 188. 52. R. E. Dowse, Modernization in Ghana and the U SSR, p. 39. 53. K. Nkrumah, / Speak o f Freedom, p. 85. 54. Cited in B. A. Benturn, Trade Unions in Chains (Accra: Liberty Press, 1966, p 11. 55. I. Davies, African Trade Unions {Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 174. See also Roger Scott, The Development o f Trade Unionism in Uganda (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1966), p. 161. 56. W. H. Friedland, Vtua Kamba: The Development o f Trade Unions in Tanganyika (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1969), p. 149. 57. See R. Dowse, Modernization in Ghana and the U SSR, p. 30. 58. I. Davies, African Trade Unions, p 197. 59. B. A. Bentum, Trade Unions in Chains, pp. 11, 12, 24. 60. See Tom Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 254. 61. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 24 May 1965. 62. Ibid., 25 May 1965. 6?. Ibid. 64. For instance, in February 1963, the President of UFL, in a memorandum to the UPC Research Bureau, claimed that, because of the influence of the ICFTU, union leadership in the country did not concentrate on the basic requirements of trade unions. For this reason, he suggested that, as a matter of necessity, the government pass legislation to control the unions. See Uganda Argus, 5 February 1963. 65. Roger Scott, The Development of Trade Unions in Uganda, p. 139. 66. B. A. Bentum, Trade Unions in Chains, p. 46. 67. Ibid., p. 47. 68. James Rosenau, “Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy” , in B. Farrell, Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1961), pp. 27-71. 69. J. K. Tettegah to author, 8 January 1972. 70. B. A. Bentum, Trade Unions in Chains, p. 35. 71. Robert Scott, The Development of Trade Unions m Uganda, p 156. 72. B. A. Bentum, Trade Unions in Chains, p. 46. 73. See, for instance, Luande's statement in Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 25 July 1966. 74. See Chapters 2 and 3. 75. T. M. Franck, “East African Federation” , in T. M. Franck, W ly Federations Fail (New York: New York University Press, 1968), p. 31. 76. Ibid. 77. See W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 331. 78. T. M. Franck, “East African Federation” , p. 33. 79. See, for instance, Uganda Argus, 28 October 1963.

NOTES

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SO. Uganda Argus, 8 October 1963. 81. Ibid. 82. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 6 February 1964. 83. Uganda Argus, 11 October 1963. 84. Ibid., 3 January 1964. As would be expected, the Opposition disagreed with this suggestion that “imperialists” were behind the plot. The Secretary-General of the Democratic Party said Nkrumah’s troubles were due to his “dictatorial rule” (Uganda Argus, 4 January 1964). 85. Uganda Argus, 26 October 1963. 86. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 12 July 1963. 87. Ibid., 17 March 1969. 88. Ibid., 26 June 1964. 89. Ibid., 12 July 1964. 90. Ibid., 22 December 1965. 91. Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 15 February 1965. 92. Ibid., 27 September 1963. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid., 12 January 1963. 95. See ibid, 27 September 1963. 96. Ibid., 26 September 1962. 97. Uganda Argus, 5 September 1964. It is pertinent to note that Ibingira and four other Cabinet Ministers were to be detained by Obote in early 1966. 98. James Rosenau, “Pretheories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” pp. 65-66. 99. See J. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration, p. 244. 100. Uganda Argus, 23 April 1963. 101. Ibid., 24 April 1963. 102. Ibid, 23 and 25 April 1963. 103. Ibid, 24 April 1963. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. Indeed, in 1969, three years after Nkrumah’s ouster, Busia will assume the reins of power in Ghana. In 1971, following Obote’s ouster, the Busia government would be the first in Africa to recognize Amin’s regime. 106. See chapter 6. 107. Even on Obote’s own overthrow in 1971, the link persisted. Arriving in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from Singapore where he had been when the coup occurred, he reportedly declared: “I am not like Nkrumah: I will return to Uganda.” Commented James Tuwangye: “The most interesting question here is that there are now many former African leaders who had been overthrown by their own armies . . . , but why did he of all of them single out Nkrumah?” (see The People, 24 March 1971). 108. A. M. Obote in an address on May Day 1969 at Mbale, Uganda. 109. A. M. Obote, in an address to the students of Nabumali High School, 16 June 1970. 110. The People, 16 April 1966. 111. James Rosenau,44Pretheories and Theories o f Foreign Policy. ”

Chapter 5. Nkrumah and Mboya: “Nonalignment” and PanAfrican Trade Unionism 1. C. Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide p. 81. 2. Ibid., p. 83.

212

NOTES

3. K. Nkrumah, Address to the Second Conference of Non-aligned States in Cairo, 1964. 4. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 199. 5. K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom, pp. 142-43. 6. Ibid., p. 199. 7. Ibid., p, 210. 8. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, pp. 253-57. 9. Ibid. 10. I. Davies, African Trade Unions, p. 12. 11. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Urdu, pp. 127-28. 12. K. Nkrumah, I Speak o f Freedom, p. 190; Africa Must Unite p. 128. 13. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, pp. 250-51. 14. Ibid., p. 251. 15. See A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana, p. 72. 16. The Economist of August 1962 on the neocolonial configuration of the Ivory Coast: “A good way to get to the place of H-Boigny of the Ivory Coast in his capital city, Abidjan, is to stroll up the Avenue du General de Gaulle and across the Place de la Republique. The president is likely to be out: he is abroad half the year, mostly in France. Perhaps one of his Ministers could help? The one required is likely to be on a trip seeking decisions from the absent president. A head of department? Sure, he is here, making decisions. Like the Minister of Finance, he is white and French. . . . The head waiters in the cafes are French; so are the girls behind the counters in the smarter shops. Their fathers are French administrators. . . 17. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 217. 18. K. Nkrumah, Challenge o f the Congo, p. 29. 19. K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite, p. 187. 20. K. Nkrumah, Address to the National Assembly on Ghana’s Break in Diplomatic Relations with Britain, Accra, 16 December 1965. 21. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 247. 22. Ibid., p. 236. 23. I. Davies, African Trade Unions, p. 212. 24. Ibid., p. 212. 25. Ibid. 26. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 253. 27. Ibid., p. 191. 28. Ibid., p. 255. 29. Ibid., p. 250. 30. Ibid., p. 251. 31. I. Davies, African Trade Unions, p. 196. 32. See ibid. 33. See ibid. 34. See ibid. 35. See The People (Kampala), 26 October 1968. 36. See J. Tettegah, “AATUF: From Casablanca to Bamako” in Pan-Africa, no. 44, 11 December 1964. 37. I. Davies, African Trade Unions, pp. 192,214. 38. See J. Tettegah, “The Struggle of the African Worker" in Pan-Africa, no. 4, 31 May 1963. 39. J. Mohan, “Varieties of African Socialism” in Socialist Register, 1966. 40. Walter Rodney, “The Ideology of the African Revolution” , Second Seminar of the East and Central African Youth, Dar es Salaam, December 1969.

NOTES

21 3

41. J. Nyerere, memo to June 1966 meeting of the National Executive of TANU. See his Freedom and Socialism, pp. 192-93. 42. See T. Mboya, Freedom and After, pp. 56, 60. 43. Ibid., pp. 197-99. 44. O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 167. 45. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 83. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., p. 240. 48. Interestingly, after Odinga’s visits to Yugoslavia and China, the Daily Nation complained that such visits had “done much to open the door to Communist penetra­ tion of East Africa*’) thanks to Odinga’s “iron curtain pereginations and professions of admiration for the Communist regimes.** Significantly, the paper never printed a word of rebuke on accont of Mboya’s numerous visits to the West.’*See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p 192. 49. To. Mboya, Freedom and After, p 252. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., pp. 252-53. 52. Amy Jacques-Garvey (ed.), Philosophy and Opinions o f Marcus Garvey, vol. 1, (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 33. 53. G. Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), pp. 282, 284. 54. Ibid., p 309. 55. Ibid., pp. 268-69. 56. Ibid., p. 126. 57. Stokely Carmichael, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 196. 58. See Malcolm X, B y Any Means Necessary (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), p 58-59. 59. Cited in George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism, pp. 288-9. 60. See B. A. Bentum, Trade Unions in Chains, p 28. 61. Gted in ibid., p. 43. Emphasis mine. 62. See O. Agyeman, The Politics o f the All-African Trade Union Federation: A Case Study in the Ideo-Praxis o f Pan-Africanism, mimeo, Chapter 5, particularly p p 233, 245,259-66. 63. R. Jeffries, Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana: The Railwaymen o f Sekondi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 56-64; St. Clair Drake and Leslie A. Lacy, “Government Versus the Unions: The Sekondi-Takoradi Strike, 1961” in G. Carter, ed., Politics in Africa: 7 Cases (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966). 64. J. Mohan, “Varieties of African Socialism” , p 221. 65. See P. S. Gray, The Institutionalization o f Organized Labor in Ghana, Volumes I and I I (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1977), p. 440. 66. See O. Agyeman, The Politics o f the All-African Trade Union Federation, pp. 242-43. 67. Ibid., p. 243. 68. Ibid., 243-44. 69. See B. Fitch and M. Oppenheimer, Ghana: End o f an Illusion (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), chapter 6. 70. See C. Legum, Pan-Africanism, p. 83. 71. The Kenya Federation of Labor (KFL), for instance, wasted no time in declaring that the radical Kenya African Workers Congress was being financed by the Ghana TUC, which in turn was being “heavily subsidized’* by the WFTU (Nairobi

214

NOTES

Radio, 19 and 27 May 1964). It is an indication of the embarrassing nature of the issue to the radicals that Akumu felt compelled to instruct his lawyers to challenge the K FL to prove its allegation of a KAWC-Ghana TUC-WFTU financial linkage (Nairobi Radio, ibid.)* 72. See O. Agyeman, The Politics o f the All-African Trade Union Federation, pp. 237-8. 73. See ibid., pp. 399,400; 414-16; W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, pp. 273, 274, 275. 74. See O. Agyeman, The Politics o f the All-African Trade Union Federation, p. 237. 75. Ibid., p 409. 76. It was disclosed in February 1977 that Jomo Kenyatta was one of a number of African heads of state that maintained secret financial relationships with the CIA. In return for substantial annual payments, he allowed the CIA to operate freely in his country as well as monitor activities in neighboring countries (see the Washington Post, 18 February 1977, p. A l; 19 February 1977, pp. A1 and A4). Tom Mboya was also linked with the receipt and distribution of CIA money (see Daily Nation (Nairobi), 15 July 1967). 77. S. Stichter, “Trade Unionism in Kenya, 1947-1953: The Militant Phase,” in P. W. Gutkind, et al, African Labour History (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1978), p 156. 78. A. Clayton and D. C. Savage, Government and Labor in Kenya, 1895-1963, (London: Frank Cass, 1974), p 434. 79. Jomo Kenyatta was among those arrested. At the time, he was erroneously assumed by the British government to represent Kenyan radicalism. That explains the targeting of Mboya instead for the leadership of that country. 80. A. H. Amsden, International Firms and Labor m Kenya, 1945-1970 (London: Frank Cass, 1971), pp. 106-7. 81. A. Ochwada’s Letter to American Committee on Africa, 4 April I960, sent from Accra; cited in G. K. Busch, Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Trade Unions (Ph.D. dissertation, American University, Washington, D .C., 1969), p 94. 82. See G. K. Busch, Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Trade Unions, pp. 91-100. 83. A. Clayton and D. C. Savage, Government and Labor in Kenya, p. 435. 84. Ibid., p 437. 85. See B. A. Benturn, Trade Unions in Chains, p. 49. 86. East African Standard, 21 August 1962. 87. Ibid., 26 November 1962. 88. A. Clayton and D. C. Savage, Government and Labor in Kenya, pp. 444 45. 89. A. H. Amsden, International Firms and Labor in Kenya, p. ix. 90. ICFTU, Report o f the Eighth World Congress, July 7-15, 7965, p p 66 and 67. 91. Ibid., p. 67. 92. Dennis Akumu in interview with Pan-Africa, no. 57, 11 June 1965. 93. Ibid. 94. ICFTU, Report to the Eighth World Congress, p. 67. 95. Dennis Akumu in interview with Pan-Africa, no. 57, 11 June 1965. 96. See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 306. 97. A. H. Amsden, International Firms and Labor in Kenya, p 135. 98. Ibid., p 110. 99. See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, p. 305. 100. See B. A. Benturn, Trade Unions in Chains, pp. 50-51. 101. Pan-Africa, no. 27,27 April 1964. 102. Ibid., no. 28, I May 1964. 103. A . H . Amsden, International Firms and Labor in Kenya, pp. 100- 111.

NOTES

215

104. Ibid., p. 111. 105. R. Sandbrook, Proletarians and African Capitalism, p. 135. 106. See 0 . Odinga, Not Yet Uhwru, p. 306. 107. B. A. Ben turn, Trade Unions in Chains, p. 50. 108. See ibid., p. 50. 109. See ibid. 110. R. Sandbrook, Proletarians and African Capitalism, p. 134. 111. See B. A. Bentum, Trade Unions in Chains, p. 49. 112. See West Africa, no. 2536, 8 January 1966. 113. R. Sandbrook, “The State and Development of Trade Unionism” in G. Hyden, et al, Development Administration: The Kenyan Experience (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 282. 114. See O. Odinga, Not Yet Uhwru, p. xiii. 115. See R. Sandbrook, “The State and Development of Trade Unionism” , p. 282. 116. See The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 11 August 1966. 117. A. H. Amsden, International Firms and Labor m Kenya, p. 118. 118. Dennis Akumu would visit the ICFTU Secretariat in Brussels in June 1960. 119. A. H. Amsden, International Firms and Labor in Kenya, p. 117. 120. ibid., p. 119. 121. R. Sandbrook, Proletarians and African Capitalism, p. 42. 122. R. Sandbrook, “The State and Development of Trade Unionism” , p. 294. 123. T. Mboya, Freedom and After, p. 254. 124. Roger Scott, “Are Trade Unions Still Necessary in Africa?” , Transition, no. 33 (October-November, 1967). 125. W. Scott Thompson, Ghana’s Foreign Policy, p. 346. 126. See O. Agycman, The Politics o f the All-African Trade Union Federation, pp. 328-36.

Chapter 6. East African Diplomatic Reactions to Nkrumah’s Overthrow 1. A. Mazrui, “A reply to Critics” in Transition 7, no. 32 (1967). 2. West Africa, no. 2545, 12 March 1966. 3. Ibid., no. 2546, 19 March 1966. 4. Ibid. That many Ghanaians should have welcomed the ouster of the leader they saw more in African than in Ghanaian terms was a matter of grave exasperation to African radicals, leading some to discern Christ's fate in Nkrumah’s agony. Wrote one West Africa correspondent: “Nkrumah is to the Ghanaians as Christ was to the Jews. As Christ was most hated among His people, so too is Nkrumah most hated by the Ghanaians. This is shameful indeed!” (West Africa, no. 2553, 7 May 1966, p. 519). 5. Legon Observer, 5, no. 10 (May 1970), editorial on “Ghana’s African Friends.” 6. The Nationalist, 22 September 1968. 7. •Daily Nation, 1 March 1966. 8. Uganda Argus, 3 March 1966. 9. Cited in O. F. Onoge, K. A. Gachinga, “Mazrui's ‘Nkrumah’: A Case of NeoColonial Scholarship,” in Transition, no. 30 (April/May 1963). 10. West Africa, no. 2545, 12 March 1966. 11. Ibid., no. 2544, 5 March 1966; no. 2545, 12 March 1966. 12. See Daily Nation, 5 March 1966. 13. Uganda Argus, 7 March 1966.

216

NOTES

14. Kwame Nkrumah, Dark Days in Ghana (New York: International Publishers, 1968), p. 19. 15. West Africa, no. 2557,4 June 1966. 16. This was the observation of the Associated Press. See Daily Nation, 5 March 1966. 17. Quaison-Sackey’s about-turn was to make of him a by-word for apostasy in Africa. Even the normally anti-Nkrumah Daily Nation wrote: “Very often we witness close confidants denouncing each other as soon as one is in trouble. The instant repudiation of Kwame Nkrumah by his Foreign Minister Quaison-Sackey is perhaps the best illustration of this which Africa has had so far . . (29 January 1971). 18. These were Kenya, Somalia, Algeria, U.A.R., Tanzania, Guinea and Mali. Mauritania and Congo (Bra.), though they remained, refused to take pan in the debates. 19. Daify Nation, 18 March 1966. In an address to the Ivory Coast National Assembly, H-Boigny reminded Toure that the Ivory Coast had defense agreements not only with the Entente countries (Niger, Upper Volta, Dahomey) but with France as well (West Africa, no. 2546, 19 March 1966). 20. West Africa, no. 2546, 19 March 1966. 21. Ibid. 22. Interview with The People, 8 June 1968. 23. Daify Nation, 7 March 1966. 24. West Africa, no. 2545, 12 March 1966. 25. K. Nkrumah, Dark Days in Ghana, p 71. 26. Ibid., p 132. 27. See The People, 8 April 1967. 28. The People, 16 April 1966. 29. Daily Nation, 4 March 1966. 30. While Obote justified his action on the ground that the Kabaka had been the first to violate the Constitution by asking the assistance of foreign troops to oust him, the Baganda in turn insisted that Buganda’s relationship with the Central government had been terminated by Obote's suspension of the Independence Constitution and that the central government was “violating Buganda’s sovereign integrity by operating from Buganda soil." See Daily Nation, 8 March 1966. 31. Mutesa the Kabaka managed to flee into exile in Britain, The People presently linking his flight to another CIA “instant airforce job.” When the Kabaka made his getaway, it reported, it was in due course airlifted out of Burundi aboard a myste­ riously unmarked airplane piloted by an anonymous American. See The People, 15 October 1966. 32. Daify Nation, 3 February 1967. 33. There had, of course, been statements by other UPC officials on the subject prior to this date. Thus an M.P., Mr. Martin Aroma, maintained a few weeks after the event that the coup in Ghana had been udone with foreign support and guidance” and that it was not in the interest of Africa. See The People, 2 April 1966. 34. Daify Nation, 23 April 1970. 35. When an interpretive dispute arose between the Ugandan Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Ghanaian High Commission over a statement made by Busia on South Africa, Mr. Odaka pointed out sharply that Uganda knew to a certainty what the Ghanaian Prime Minister had said because Uganda had a High Commission in Accra which “tells us what is going on.” See The People, 21 February 1970. 36. The People, 11 September 1969. The opinion of the Ugandan Opposition, hardly answerable, was that the Obote administration never let go an opportunity to

NOTES

217

show its contempt for Ankrah. Of the reception given to the NLC Chairman on his way both to and from Kenya, an Opposition M.P., Mr. Latim, was plaintful: “I want to say clearly that I was very humiliated to see the way the leader of Ghana was accepted or met at Entebbe airport. Mr. Speaker, we would like to accord every leader due respect that should be given them . . . ” See Uganda Parliamentary Debates, 12 March 1969. 37. See K. Nkrumah, Dark Days in Ghana, p. 137. 38. Memorandum as reprinted in The People, 3 April 1969. 39. Address to Makerere College students, Kampala, 16 August 1969. 40. Opening Address at Heads of Mission Meeting, Kampala, 19 March 1970. Beaten and cornered, the Ghanaian High Commission turned its spleen on the tiny non-diplomatic population of Ghanaians in Kampala suspected of Nkrumaist lean­ ings. On these, the diplomats sought by ostracism, recriminations and general intim­ idation to even the score. Thus, on one of my rare visits to the High Commission, I was suddenly questioned as to whether I knew of a pro-Nkrumah anti-Busia article that had just been published in The People. Answering in the negative—which was the absolute truth—I was requested to read it. Guiltless but puzzled, I proceeded to read the article to the cold stares of a Ghanaian official. It turned out later that this little drama was prompted by a firm belief that I had written the article. Partly out of this was to grow a torrent of “anti-Ghana” charges against me. 41. Closing remarks to the Seminar on Law in a Developing Country, Kampala, 9 August 1970. 42. The People, 31 August 1968. 43. The People, 3 April 1969; and Address to International Students’ Seminar, Makerere, 9 June 1969. 44. The People, 4 April 1969. 45. Address to Students of Nabumali High School, 16 June 1970. 46. The People, 11 September 1969. 47. The People, 2 March 1970. 48. The People, 15 and 22 October 1966. 49. The People, 30 September 1967. 50. Ghanaian Times, 28 January 1971 and 6 February 1971. 51. Ibid., 12 March 1966. 52. The Nationalist, editorial, 23 April 1966. 53. See I. Wallerstein, Africa: The Politics o f Unity, p. 107. 54. Pressman’s Commentary, The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 4 February 1966. 55. The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 14 January 1966. 56. Roger Scott, The Development o f Trade Unionism in Uganda, p. 161. 57. See The Nationalist, 1 March 1966. 58. The Nationalist, 10 March 1966. 59. West Africa, no. 2546, 19 March 1966. 60. The Nationalist, 12 March 1966. 61. Ibid., 24 May 1966. 62. See section on Tanzanian press reactions to the Ghana coup. 63. See Daily Nation, 29 January 1971. 64. Nyerere: “The talk of a Tanzanian invasion of Uganda is . . . so much nonsense. There is no question of Tanzanian forces invading Uganda or any other country. Such allegations have been made in an attempt to rally the patriotic peoples of Uganda to the support of an illegal and unjustified group against their properly established leader. . . .” See Daily Nation, 29 January 1971. 65. See The Nationalist, 31 October 1966.

NOTES

218

66. Ibid., 19 January 1967. 67. See ibid., 12 November 1969. 68. Legon Observer (Accra), 5, no. 10 (May 1970). 69. Ibid. 70. These included: Nkrumah’s Subversion in Africa, Ministry of Information, Accra; Nkrumah’s Deception o f Africa, Ministry of Information, Accra; Ghana Govern­ ment’s advertisment, “The Truth about Africa and the World” (See The People, 9 September 1967); the Ghana government’s statement on the occasion of the fourth Anniversary of Africa Liberation Day: “For our part, it is the firm policy of the NLC that Ghana shall no longer harbor any element of subversion against her sister states. Nor shall we seek to interfere in their domestic affairs by dictating to them any form of ideology that we think may speed the wheels of the Africanrevolution since no one country or group can claim to have the right answers to Africa’s problems . . .” (See The People, 10 June 1967). 71. Legon Observer, 5, no. 10 (May 1970). 72. The Nationalist, 16 April 1970. 73. See ibid., 17 March 1966. 74. West Africa, no. 2587, 31 December 1966. 75. Ibid., no. 2546, 19 March 1966. 76. The Nationalist, 5 March 1969. 77. Ibid., 5 April 1969. 78. Ibid., 14 November 1969. 79. See Daily Nation, 20 November 1969. 80. See The People, 12 March 1966. 81. Uganda Argus, 7 March 1966. 82. Daily Nation, 5 March 1966. 83. Kenya African Nation Union. 84. Consider, for instance, the other case of the incongruous rhetoric of Kenya's information and broadcasting minister, Mr. Ramogi Achient Oneko who promptly hailed Nkrumah as the “hero of Africa—whether he is at home or in exile. The dismantling of his statue is immaterial, temporary and misguided. The time will come when this is understood" (see Uganda Argus, 7 March 1966). 85. The Nationalist, 5 March 1966. 86. Daily Nation, 11 March 1966. 87. Ibid., 19 March 1966. 88. Ibid., 5 May 1966. 89. Ibid., 6 January 1967. 90. Wrote the Daily Nation: “Many will ask why, if Murumbi is leaving his government job because of ill-health, he has found it possible to take up the job of chairman of a large private firm" (21 September 1966.) 91. Daily Nation, 12 November 1966. 92. Ibid., 13 February 1969. 93. Ibid., 17 February 1969. 94. Ibid., 19 February 1969. 95. Ibid., 2 November 1966. 96. The People, 4 September 1969.

Chapter 7. East African Press Reactions to Nkrumah’s Overthrow 1. p. 84.

Okot p’Bitek, Song o f Ocol (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1970),

NOTES

219

2. The People, 29 October 1966. 3. Ibid., 17 June 1967. 4. Ibid., 7 December 1968. 5. Ibid., 14 December 1968. 6. Ibid., 21 December 1968. 7. Ibid., 28 December 1968. 8. The People, 25 March 1970. 9. Ibid., 28 March 1970. A similar call had been made earlier by the same GHC: “What is significant. . . is that ex-President Nkrumah is an individual whose interest must not stand against that of Ghana and her people. . . (see The People, October 14, 1967). The GHC's letter of March 1970 was published under the unflattering headline: “Ghana Envoy Blows His Top.” 10. Ibid., 4 April 1969. 11. Ibid., 5 April 1969. 12. Ibid., 17 April 1969. 13. Ibid., 28 March 1970. 14. Ibid., 4 April 1970. 15. A sample: “Why was the arrest warrant of Nkrumah and others of the CPP not been repealed? Does this emphasize his unpopularity or underscore the fear of his popularity?; If leadership is vital during the time of foreign domination, can the Acting High Commissioner explain why Nkrumah chose the thorny path of struggle with the people while others preferred cosy appointments with the colonial admin­ istration . . .? Dr. Busia chose to work as Assistant District Commissioner; Is it true that cwe want Nkrumah Back as our Leader’ is a common tourist sight?; Is it true that the Aliens Law which swept away thousands affected only blacks and one or two Asians, while no European was deported?; Why was Chairman Ankrah not tried in the law courts or sent before a Commission of Enquiry after he admitted corrupt prac­ tices? Wks this deference to the saying that those in glass houses should not throw stones?; Is it empty what philosopher Dr. J. B. Danquah said to Ghanaians: ‘If we shall fail you, Kwaxne Nkrumah will never fail you?’ ” 16. The People} 4 April 1970; 28 March 1970. 17. Ibid., 9 April 1970. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 15 April 1970. The suggestion here is that Mr. Bonney unsuccessfully spent all those years trying to get a degree at the London School of Economics. See also The People, 4 April 1970. 20. The People, 29 August 1969. 21. Ibid., 10 November 1969. 22. Ibid., 12 December 1969. 23. Ibid., 20 February 1971. 24. Ibid., 16 June 1970. 25. Ibid., 13 June 1970. 26. Ibid., 16 June 1970. 27. The Nationalist, 4 March 1966. 28. Ibid., 1 March 1966. 29. Ibid., 4 March 1966. 30. Ibid., 11 March 1966. 31. Ibid., 8 March 1966. 32. Ibid., 12 March 1966. 33. Ibid., 15 March 1966. 34. Ibid., 17 March 1966. 35. Ibid., 19 March 1966. 36. Ibid., 19 April 1967.

220

NOTES

37» Ibid.» 22 April 1967. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 23 May 1967. 40. Ibid., 3 May 1967. 41. Ibid., 4 May 1967. 42. Ibid., 12 May 1967. 43. Ibid., 7 November 1968. 44. Ibid., 2 May 1969. 45. Ibid., 4 September 1969. 46. Ibid., 21 December 1970. 47. Ibid., 12 May 1969; 26 November 1970. 48. Daily Nation, 25 February 1966. 49. Ibid., 23 March 1966. 50. Ibid., 19 March 1966. 51. Ibid., 2 November 1966. 52. Ibid., 3 May 1966. 53. Ibid., 7 March 1966. 54. Ibid., 12 March 1966. 55. Ibid., 9 June 1967. In good measure, the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana was denounced as geared to the instigation, organization and support of subversive movements in various Latin-American nations. The concern over Castro as promoting a “Third-World Communism” was expressed in another editorial on 28 March 1967. In general, the Daily Nation's obsession with anticommunism is to be seen from its persistent assaults on the People's Republic of China—see Editorials on 27 June 1967; 24 August 1967; 31 August 1967; 6 February 1968. As for its unregenerate reactionariness, its sympathies with the cause of Tshombe (see editorials on 3 July 1967; 7 July 1967; and 8 August 1967) stand as ample evidence. 56. Daily Nation, editorial, “Better Ghana”, 19 March 1966. 57. Daily Nation, 23 May 1966. 58. Ibid., 11 October 1966. 59. Ibid., 19 March 1966. 60. Ibid., 14 January 1967. 61. Ibid., 19 February 1968. 62. Ibid., 28 October 1969; 4 April 1970. 63. See ibid., editorial of 18 April 1967. 64. Ibid., 29 June 1968. 65. Ibid., 12 February 1969. 66. Ibid., 10 February 1969. 67. Ibid., 4 April 1969. 68. Ibid., 18 April 1967. 69. Ibid., 2 September 1969. 70. Ibid., 27 April 1970. 71. The Nationalist, 2 November 1967. 72. Uganda Argus, 28 February 1966. 73. R. W. Howe, “Nkrumah and Nkrumaism” in Transition 4, no. 27, (1966). 74. See Transition 6, no. 26 (1966) and 7, no. 32 (1967). 75. New Statesman, 4 March 1966. 76. The Nationalist, 29 March 1966. 77. Ibid., 24 May 1968. 78. Ibid., 2 November 1967; 15 December 1967. 79. Ibid.

NOTES

221

SO. Ibid., 30 June 1967. 81. Ibid., 23 June 1966. 82. Cited in The People, 11 May 1968. 83. Ibid., 28 December 1968. 84. Ibid., 17 June 1967. 85. Ibid., 29 April 1967,. 86. Okello Occuli in The People, 22 April 1967. 87. Ibid., 3 December 1966. 88. Ibid., 8 February 1969. 89. The Nationalist>11 March 1966. 90. Ibid., 11 March 1966. 91. The People, 15 February 1969. 92. Ibid., 5 April 1969. 93. Ibid., 6 February 1970. 94. Ibid., 5 February 1970. 95. See Transition 8, no. 38 (1971). 96. Of its death in Uganda and its resurrection in Ghana, the editor of Transition commented: “It is with a very spccial feeling of gratitude that wc thank the govern­ ment of Ghana which has made us welcome here—in a country that has already led the world in demonstrating how it is possible to make a genuine transition from military rule to a civilian democracy, and which actively believes in a free society and press. . . .” (see Transition 8, no. 38 [1971]). 97. Report on the 1965 Annual Assembly of the International Press Institute. See Transition 5, no. 22, (1965). 98. The People, 27 June 1970. 99. See The Nationalist, 20 June 1966. 100. Ibid., 23 June 1966. 101. Ibid., 6 January 1967. 102. These were: Daily Nation, Sunday Nation, Taifa Leo, Taifa Tanzania. See The Nationalist, 21 October 1968. 103. Daily Nation, 1 February 1969.

Chapter 8. Conclusion 1. Richard D. Mahoney, JF K , p. 175. 2. Jack Woodis, Africa: The Way Ahead, p. 118. 3. The view is that of Amilcar Cabral. See B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 13. 4. B. Davidson, Black Star, p. 10. See also p. 34. 5. R. Emerson, “Pan-Africanism,” p. 275. 6. Jack Woodis, Africa, p. 118. 7. These governments claimed that Ghana harboured political “subversives” against their countries. In order to remove the supposed grievance, the Ghana government expelled a number of political refugees whose presence had been resented and their expulsion was confirmed by independent OAU observers. But the objecting states did not reciprocate by banishing Ghanaian political dissidents operating from their territories, nor did they agree to attend the conference. 8. Kofi Batsa, The Spark, p. 38. 9. Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 94. 10. Colin Legum, “The Growth of Africa's Foreign Policy,” p. 54. 11. Jennifer Seymour Whitaker, How Can Africa Survive? (New York: Harper

222

NOTES

and Row, 1988). 12. See David Lamb’s review of the Whitaker’s book in The New York Times Book Review, 29 July 1988, p. 18. 13. Ibid. 14. G. Carter and R O’Meara, African Independence, p. xii. 15. Adebayo Adedeji, “Africa: The Crisis of Development and the Challenge of a New Economic Order” (Addis Ababa: E. C. A.), pp 3-4. 16. K. Grundy, “The Impact of Region on Contemporary African Politics,” pp. 108-14,122. 17. Ibid, p 110. 18. Ibid, p. 109. 19. Arthur Hazlewood, ed., African Integration and Disintegration: Case Studies in Economic and Political Union (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p 24. 20. Robert D. Hormats, “A ‘Fortress Europe’ in 1992?,” The New York Times, 22 August 1988, p. A19. 21. Steven Greenhouse, “On to 1992: The World Watches Europe, the Power that Will Be,” The New York Times, 31 July 1988, section 4, p 1. 22. Sec ibid. 23. See E. Kloman, “African Unification Movements,” p 399. 23a. See The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam), 3 August 1964. 24. Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution o f a Political Order (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 312-13. 25. Ibid, p. 314. 26. Ibid, p. 323. 27. Ibid, pp. 313, 314. 28. Ali A. Mazrui, Africa’s International Relations, pp. 3-4. 29. James Brooke, “Waste Dumpers Turning to West Africa,” The New York Times, 17 July 1988, p. 1. 30. Ibid. 31. Stanley Hoffman, “The Political Ethics of International Relations,” p. 19. 32. See I. W. Zartman, International Relations m the New Africa, p 150. 33. Y. Smertin, Ktvame Nkrumah, p. 85. 34. C. L. R. James, Nkrumah and the Gharux Revolution, p. 189. 35. Y. Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 166.

Select Bibliography I list here only the writings that have been of use in the making of this book. This bibliography is by no means a complete record of all the works and sources I have consulted. It indicates the substance and range of readings upon which I have formed my ideas.

Books Afrifah, A. A. The Ghana Coup. New York: The Humanities Press, 1966. Alexander, H. T. African Tightrope—M y Tioo Years As Nkrumah’s Chief o f Staff. London: Pall Mall Press, 1965. Amsden, A. H. International Firms and Labor in Kenya, 1945-1970. London: Frank Cass, 1971. Apter, David. Ghana in Transition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. Austin, Dennis. Politics in Ghana, ¡946-1960. London: Oxford University Press, 1964. Batsa, Kofi. The Spark: From Kwame Nkrumah to Limann. London: Rex Collins, 1985. Bentum, B. A. Trade Unions in Chains. Accra: Liberty Press, 1966. Bernal, Martin. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots o f Classical Civilization, Vol I: The Fabrication o f Ancient Greece 1785-1958. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1978. Bing, Geoffrey. Reap the Whirlwind: An Account o f Kwame Nkrwnah’s Ghana from 1950 to 1966. London: McGibbon and Kee, 1968. Boahen, Adu. Topics in West African History. London: Longman, Green and Co., 1966. Carmichael, Stokely. Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. New York: Vintage Books, 1971. Carter, G. Politics in Africa: 7 Cases. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966. Carter, G. and P. O’Meara. African Independence: The First Twenty-Five Years. Bloom­ ington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Carter, G. National Unity and Regionalism in Eight States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966. Christenson, R. M. et al. Ideologies and Modem Politics. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1971. Clayton, A. and D. C. Savage. Government and Labor in Kenya, 1895-1963. London: Frank Cass, 1974. Cox, Richard. Pan-Africanism in Practice: PAFM ECSA, 1958-1964. London: Ox­ ford University Press, 1964.

224

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Cronin, E. D. Black Moses: The Story o f Marcus Garvey and the U .N .I.A . Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955. Davidson, Basil. Which Way Africa? London: Penguin African Library, 1964. -------- . Black Star: A View o f the Life and Times o f Kwame Nkrumah. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973. Davies, I. African Trade Unions. London: Penguin Books, 1966. De Gaulle, Charles. Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971. Dei-Anang, Michael. The Administration o f Ghana’s Foreign Relations, 1957-1965: A Personal Memoir. London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1965. Dowse, Robert. Modernization in Ghana and the U SSR. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. Falk, Richard and Mendlovitz, Saul. Regional Politics and World Order. San Francisco: Freeman and Co., 1973. First, Ruth. Power in Africa. New York: Pantheon Books, 1970. Fitch, B. and Oppenheimer, M. Ghana: End o f an Illusion. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966. Franck, T. M. Why Federations Fail. New York: New York University Press, 1968. Frankel, Joseph. The Makings o f Foreign Policy: An Analysis o f Decision-Making. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. Friedland, W. H. Vuta Kamba: The Development o f Trade Unions in Tanganyika. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1969. Gardiner, Robert et al. Africa and the World. Addis Ababa: Oxford University Press, 1970. Geiss, I. The Pan-African Movement. London: Methuen and Co., 1974. Hazelwood, Arthur. African Integration and Disintegration: Case Studies in Economic and Political Union. London: Oxford University Press, 1967. Hyden, Goran et al. Development Administration: The Kenyan Experience. Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1970. Ibingira, Grace. The Forging o f an African Nation. New York: The Viking Press, 1973. Jacques-Garvey, Amy. Philosophy and Opinions o f Marcus Garvey. New York: Atheneum, 1968. James, C. L. R. Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. Westport, Ct.: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1977. Jeffries, R. Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana: The Railwaymen o f Sekondi. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Kakaba of Buganda. Desecration of My Kingdom. London: Constable & Co., 1967. Lacouture, Jean. The Demigods: Charismatic Leadership in the Third World. Translated from the French by Patricia Wolf. 1st American ed., New York: Knopf, 1970. Legum, Colin. Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide. New York: Praeger, 1962. Low, D. A. Buganda in Modem History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Macridis, Roy C. Contemporary Political Ideologies. Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop Publishers, 1980. Mahoney, Richard. JF K : Ordeal in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

225

Mazrui, Ali A. Towards A Pax Africana: A Study o f Ideology and Ambition. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967. -------- . Africa’s International Relations: The Diplomacy o f Dependence and Change. London: Heinemann, 1977. Mboya, Tom. Freedom and After. London: Andre Deutsch, 1963. Nknunah, Kwame. Ghana: The Autobiography o f Kwame Nkrumah. New York: Thomas Nelson and Co., 1957. -------- . I Speak o f Freedom. New York: Praeger Paperbacks, 1961. -------- . Towards Colonial Freedom. London: Heinemann, 1962. -------- . Africa Must Unite. London: Heinemann, 1963. ---- . Axioms o f Kwame Nkrumah. London: Panaf Books, 1967. -------- . Challenge o f the Congo. London: Thomas Nelson and Co., 1967. -------- . Dark Days in Ghana. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968. -------- . Handbook o f Revolutionary Warfare: A Guide to the Armed Phase of the African Revolution. London: Panaf Books, 1968. -------- . Revolutionary Path. New York: International Publishers, 1973. Nyerere, Julius. Freedom and Unity: Uhuru na Umoja; A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 19S2-196S. Oxford University Press, 1966. -------- . Freedom and Socialism: Uhuru na Ujamaa; A Selection from Writings and Speeches, 1965-1967. Oxford University Press, 1968. Nye, J. Pan-Africanism and East African Integration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966. Odinga, O. Not Yet Uhuru. London: Hcincmanc, 1967. Omari, Peter. Kwame Nkrumah: The Anatomy o f an African Dictatorship Accra: Maxon Paperbacks, 1970. Padmore, George. Pan-Africanism or Communism. New York: Anchor Books, 1972. P’Bitek, Okot. Song o f Ocol. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1970. Roth, David F. and Frank L. Wilson. The Comparative Study o f Politics. 2d edition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980. Rostow, Dunkwart. A World o f Nations: Problems o f Political Modernization. Wash­ ington: Brookings Institution, 1967. Sandbrook, Richard. Proletarians and African Capitalism: The Kenyan Case, 19601972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Scott, Roger. The Development o f Trade Unions m Uganda. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1966. Smertin, Yuri. Kwame Nkrumah. New York: International Publishers, 1987. Taylor, Graham. Personality and Power: Studies in Political Advancement. London: A BBC Radio Series, Undated. Thompson, Scott W. Ghana’s Foreign Policy, 1957-1966: Diplomacy, Ideology and the New State. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Thompson, V. B. Africa and Unity: The Evolution o f Pan-Africanism. London: Long­ man, 1969. Tordoff, William. Ashanti Under the Prempehs. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. W&llerstein, Immanuel. Africa: The Politics o f Unity. New York: Random House, 1967.

226

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Whitaker, Jennifer Seymour. How Can Africa Survive? New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Wilks, Ivor. Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution o f a Political Order. London: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Wxldis, Jack. Africa: The Way Ahead. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1963. X, Malcolm. By Any Means Necessary. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970. Yu, George T. China and Tanzania: A Study in Cooperative Interaction. Berkeley: University of California, China Research Monograph, No. 5, 1970.

Ph.D. Dissertations Busch, G. K. Pan-Africanism and Pan-African Trade Unions. Washington, D.C.: Ph.D. Dissertation, American University, 1969. Gray, P. S. The Institutionalization o f Organized Labor in Ghana. New Haven: Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1977.

Articles Adedeji, Adebayo. “Africa: The Crisis of Development and the Challenge of a New Economic Order.1' Addis Ababa: Economic Commission for Africa, 1977. Agyeman, Opoku. “Kwame Nkrumah’s Impact on the East African Federation Proposal: A Study in a Negative Form of External Influence." Toronto: York University (December 1973). -------- . “Kwame Nkrumah and the Congo (Zaire) Revisited.” African Review 4, no. 4. (1974): pp. 531-542. -------- . “The African Publius.” The Journal o f Modem African Studies 23, no. 3 (September 1985): pp. 371-388. Austin, Dennis. “Pan-Africanism, 1957-1963.” In Inter-State Relations in Africa, edited by Dennis Austin and H. Weiler. Freiburg, 1965. Brooke, James. “Wiste Dumpers Turning to West Africa.” The New York Times, 17 July 1988. Drake, St. Clair and Lacy, Leslie A. “Government Versus the Unions: The SekondiTakoradi Strike, 1961.” In Politics in Africa: 7 Cases, edited by G. Carter. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1966. East, Maurice A. “Foreign Policy-Making in Small States: Some Theoretic Observa­ tions Based on a Study of the Uganda Ministry of Foreign Affairs. ” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 491-508. Emerson, Rupert. “Pan-Africanism.” International Organization 16, no. 2 (Spring 1962): pp. 275-290. Ewing, A. E “Prospects for Economic Integration in Africa.” The Journal o f Modem African Studies 5, no. 1 (1967): pp. 53-67. Good, Robert. “Changing Patterns of African International Relations.” American Political Science Review 58, no. 3 (September 1964): pp. 632-641. Greenhouse, Steven. “On to 1992: The World Watches Europe, the Power That Will Be.” The New York Times (3 July 1988).

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

2 27

Grundy, K. and Weinstein, M. “Nkrumah and Political Uses of Imagination.” Transi­ tion, 6, no. 30 (April-May 1967). Grundy, Kenneth. “The Impact of Region on Contemporary African Politics.” In African Independence: The First Twenty-Five Years, edited by G. Carter and P. O’Meara. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Haas, Ernest B. “The Uniting of Europe and the Uniting of Latin America.” Journal o f Common Market Studies 5 (1966): pp 315-343. Hoffman, Stanley. “The Political Ethics of International Relations”. New York: Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs (1988). Howe, R. H. “Nkrumah and Nkrumaism” . Transition 4, no. 27 (1966). Kloman, Erasmus. “African Unificatory Movements.” International Organizations 16, no. 2 (Spring 1962): pp. 387-404. Legum, Colin. “The Dangers of Independence.” Transition 2, nos. 6 and 7 (October 1962). -------- . “Nationalism’s Impact on Pan-Africanism.” East Africa Journal (April 1965). -------- . “The Growth of Africa’s Foreign Policy: From Illusion to Reality.” In Africa and the World, edited by Robert Gardiner et al. Addis Ababa: Oxford University Press, 1970. Mazrui, Ali A. “A Reply to Critics”. Transition 32, no. 7 (1967). -------- . “Ideas and Idolatry in African Diplomacy—The Age of Nkrumah and the Last Years of Charles de Gaulle.” Kampala (1971). Mohan, Jitendra. “Varieties of African Socialism.” Socialist Register (1966): pp 220266. -------- . “Ghana Parliament and Foreign Policy, 1957-1960.” Economic Bulletin o f Ghana 6, no. 4 (1966): pp 29-52. Mpanga, Fred. “The Old Africa is Dying.” Uganda Argus (1 May 1971). Neogy, Rajat. “Obote the Man.” Legon Observer 6, no. 4 (1971). Onoge, O. F. and K. A. Gachinga. “Mazrui’s ‘Nkrumah’: A Case of Neo-Colonial Scholarship” . Transition no. 30 (April-May 1963). Robinson, Kenneth. “Constitutional Authochthony in Ghana.” Journal o f Common­ wealth Political Studies 1, no. 1, (November 1961): pp. 41-55. Rodney, Walter. “The Ideology of the African Revolution.” Dar es Salaam: December 1969. Rosenau, James. “Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy.” In Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, edited by B. Farell. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1961. Rothchild, D. and M. Rogin. “Uganda.” In National Unity and Regionalism in Eight States, edited by M. Carter. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966. Ryan, Selwyn. “Uganda: A Balance Sheet of the Revolution.” Mawazo 3, no. 1 (June 1971). Scott, Roger. “Are Trade Unions Still Necessary in Africa?” Transition 30 (OctoberNovember 1967). Stichter, S. “Trade Unionism in Kenya, 1947-1953: The Militant Phase.” In African Labour History, edited by P. W. Gutkind et al. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978. Tettegah, John. “The Struggle of the African Worker.” Pan-Africa no. 4 (May 1963).

228

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-------- . “AATUF: From Casablanca to Bamako.” Pan-Africa no. 44 (December 1964). TOdlerstein, Immanuel. “Voluntary Associations.” In Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa, edited by J. S. Coleman and C. G. Rosberg. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964. “What It Would Be Like to Live in an African Union.*' Africa and the World no. 1 (October 1964). Zartman, I. W. “Africa as a Subordinate System in International Relations.’* In Regional Politics and World Order, edited by Richard Falk and Saul Mendovitz. San Francisco: Freeman and Co., 1973.

Journals and Magazines Africa and the World (London): Vol. 1, No. 1, October 1964; 2,14, November 1965; 2, 18, March 1966; 3, 32, 1967; 4,44, June-July 1968. East African Journal (Nairobi): April, 1965. Ghana Today: 8, 21, December 1964. Legon Observer: V, 10, May 1970; VI, 4, 1971. Pan Africa (Nairobi): 4-19-63; 6-28-63; 11-1-63; 11-15-63; 4-27-64; 5-1-64; 2-11-65; 6-11-65; 10-1-65; 12-10-65; 2-18-66. Pan-African Journal: III, 1, Winter 1970. Matvazo (Kampala): 3, 1, June 1971. Newsweek: 5-20-68. New Stateman (London): 3-4-66. Transition: 30, 1963; 22, 1965; 26, 1966; 27, 1966; 32, 1967; 33, 1967; 38, 1971; 46, 1974. West Africa: 2536, 8 January 1966; 2544, 5 March 1966; 2545, 12 March 1966; 2546, 19 March 1966; 2553, 7 May 1966; 2557,4 June 1966; 2600,1 April 1967; 2650, 16 March 1968; 2711,17 May 1969.

Newspapers Daily Nation (Nairobi): 2-25-66, 3-4-66, 3-5-66, 3-7-66, 3-8-66, 3-11-66, 3-12-66, 3-18-66, 3-19-66, 3-23-66, 5-3-66, 5-5-66, 5-23-66, 9-21-66, 10-11-66, 11-2-66, 11-12-66, 1-6-67, 1-14-67, 2-3-67, 3-28-67, 4-18-67, 6-9-67, 6-27-67, 7-3-67, 7-7-67, 7-15-67, 8-8-67, 8-24-67, 8-31-67, 1-19-68, 2-6-68, 2-19-68, 6-29-68, 2-1-69, 2-10-69, 2-12-69, 2-13-69, 2-17-69, 2-19-69, 4-4-69, 9-2-69, 10-28-69, 11-20-69,4-4-70,4-23-70,4-27-70, 1-29-71. East African Standard (Nairobi): 8-21-62, 11-26-62. Ghanaian Times (Accra): 3-12-66, 1-28-71, 2-6-71. Sunday News (Dar es Salaam): 3-10-57, 3-17-57. The Financial Times (London): 7-16-65. The Guardian (London): 1-27-68. The Nationalist (Dar es Salaam): 1-14-66, 3-1-66, 3-4-66, 3-5-66, 3-6-66, 3-8-66, 3-10-66, 3-11-66, 3-12-66, 3-15-66, 3-17-66, 3-19-66, 3-29-66, 4-4-66, 4-23-66, 5-24-66, 6-6-66, 6-20-66, 6-23-66, 1-19-67, 4-19-67, 4-22-67, 5-3-67, 5-4-67,

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

229

5-12-67, 5-23-67, 6-30-67, 11-2-67, 12-15-67, 2-27-68, 3-4-68, 3-6-68, 3-8-68, 5-24-68, 9-22-68, 10-21-68, 11-7-68, 4-5-69, 5-2-69, 5-5-69, 5-12-69, 9-4-69, 11-12-69, 11-14-69, 6-16-70, 11-26-70, 12-21-70. The People (Rampala): 3-12-66, 4-2-66, 4-15-66, 4-16-66, 10-22-66, 10-29-66, 12-3-66, 4-8-67, 4-22-67, 4-29-67, 6-10-67, 6-17-67, 9-9-67, 9-30-67, 10-14-67, 5-11-68, 6-8-68, 8-31-68, 12-7-68, 12-14-68, 12-21-68, 12-28-68, 2-15-69, 4-3-69, 4-4-69, 4-5-69, 4-17-69, 8-28-69, 8-29-69, 9-4-69, 9-11-69, 11-10-69, 12-12-69, 2-5-70, 2-6-70, 2-21-70, 3-21-70,6-16-70, 6-27-70. The Sunday Post (Nairobi): 3-10-57, 3-17-57. Uganda Argus: 2-5-57, 2-15-57, 3-7-57, 1-21-61,9-13-62, 10-11-62,2-22-63, 3-12-63, 3-13-63, 4-9-63, 4-23-63, 4-24-63, 4-25-63, 4-29-63, 5-15-63, 7-4-63, 9-3-63, 9-20-63, 10-8-63, 10-11-63, 10-26-63, 10-28-63, 11-14-63, 12-5-63, 1-3-64, 1-4-64, 1-9-64, 1-13-64, 1-21-64, 9-5-64, 1-3-65, 8-4-65, 1-21-66, 2-28-66, 3-3-66, 3-7-66, 10-23-68, 5-1-71. The Washington Post: 2-18-77, 2-19-77.

Documents Ghana Parliamentary Debates: IS July 1958; I August 1958; 3 September 1958. IC FTU , Reports o f the Eighth World Congress, Amsterdam, 2-15 July 1965. Nkrumah’s Deception o f Africa, Ministry of Information, Government of Ghana, Accra, 1966. Nkrumah’s Subversion o f Africa, Ministry of Information, Government of Ghana, Accra, 1966. The Addis Ababa Summit o f 1963, Ministry of Information, Government of Ethiopia, 1963. Uganda Parliamentary Debates: 9-26-62, 7-12-63, 7-27-63, 12-20-63, 2-6-64, 6-26-64, 2-15-65, 3-3-65, 5-24-65, 5-25-65, 12-22-65, 1-12-66, 10-21-68, 3-12-69.

Index Accra, 14, 18, 20, 61, 67, 70, 72, 157, 184 Adam, Camille, 25 Adoko, Akena, 165, 177, 178 AFL-CIO, 124, 125 African Affairs Secretariat, 44 African Liberation, 13, 28, 30, 58, 60, 146, 165, 167, 183 African Liberation Movements, 13, 15 African Students Union of the U.S.A., 38 African Trade Union Confederation (ATUC), 141 African Trade Unionism, 97, 105, 106, 115, 134, 136, 141, 152, 185 African-Unity/Unification, 11, 13, 14, 28, 30, 38, 51, 53, 67, 71, 74, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 88, 97, 104, 112, 115, 133, 136, 146, 151, 153, 158, 166, 167, 175, 183, 184, 186, 187, 189 Afrifa, A. A., 166 Akumu, Dennis, 137, 138, 140 All-African Farmers Union (AAFU), 104 All-African People’s Conference (AAPC), 38,61,67, 70, 71,97, 117 All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF), 107, 108, 109, 110, 117, 120,121, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 141, 142, 152, 155, 156, 185, 186, 192 Amin, Idi, 168 Ankrah, General, 163, 164, 173, 178,179 Apartheid, 54, 59,65 Arthur, Lt., 168, 173 Asante/Ashanti, 97,99, 100, 186, 191 Bakary, Djibo, 25 Balewa, Abubakar, 54, 78 Banda, Kamuzu, 26, 27, 165 Berlin Conference (1885), 47, 68 Black Star, 57 Bonney, J. C., 164

Bosumtwi-Sam, 74, 101, 102, 111, 115, 158 Brazaville Group, 51 British Thule Union Congress, 124, 125 British Troops in Post-independence East Africa, 15 Buganda, 18, 19, 64, 65, 66, 99, 100, 103, 104, 111, 115, 147, 181, 184, 186 Busia, K. A., 20,42, 103, 114,150,151, 155, 156, 157, 159, 164, 165, 170, 174 Casablanca Group, 26, 72 Castro, Fidel, 172 Central African Federation, 26, 66 Central African Republic, 39 Central Intelligence Agency, 48, 49, 124, 134, 177, 183 Cocoa, 45, 50 Colonialism/Neo-Colonialism, 11, 13, 15, 21, 25, 27, 30, 36, 48, 51, 65, 68, 75, 77, 80, 81,91, 129, 137, 142, 146, 150, 156, 157, 159,168, 176, 183, 186, 187 Commonwealth, 16,68 Conference of Independent African States (CIAS), 60,67,68,98,99 Congo Basin, 32 Congo (Zaire), 26, 39, 48,49, 88, 121 Crabbe, C. V., 101,108 Dahomey, 184, 191 Da Kaba, 191 Danquah, J. B., 49 Dar es Salaam, 13, 15,17,18 De Freitas, Geoffrey, 104 De Gaulle, Charles, 26, 35,46,48, 51 Diori, Hamani, 69 East Africa/East Africans, 12,14,18,19, 20, 21, 27, 56, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72-73, 74, 77, 82, 83, 92, 111,

232

INDEX

125, 155, 159, 174, 175-76, 177, 178, 180, 182, 184, 185, 186 East African Common Sendees Organi­ zation, 71 East African Federation, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 70, 71, 75, 81, 82, 91, 111, 112, 113 Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Report of 1977, 188 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 188 Ejalu, A., 181 European Economic Community (ECC), 21,68,69, 70, 119, 123, 189 European Functionalism, 35, 36, 189, 190 Federal Republic of Germany, 17 Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE), 133, 135, 137, 141 Federation of Uganda Trade Unions (FUTU), 109 French-speaking Africa, 13, 41, 68, 70 Force Ouvriere, 124 Garvey, Marcus (or Garveyism), 21, 130 Gbdemah, K. A., 48,49 German Democratic Republic, 17 Ghana, 11, 14,20,21,25,26,27, 33, 38, 42, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 56, 58, 59, 66, 68, 69, 75, 84, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103,104,105,106, 107,109, 110,121, 124,132, 134,137,139,143, 145,148, 149,150, 151, 152, 157, 159, 162, 163, 164,165,167,169, 170,171, 172,173, 174, 180, 183, 185, 186; Avoidance of Discrimination Act, 92, 97, 98, 99, 103; Bureau of African Affairs (BAA), 27, 63, 64, 70, 101, 110, 111, 134; Convention People’s Party (CPP), 38, 40,41,42,43,44,47, 58,60, 97, 105, 131, 163, 170; High Commission (in Uganda), 160, (in Dar es Salaam) 168, 169; Industrial Relations Act of 1958, 97, 105, 106, 107; Labor Attaches, 109, 138; Moslem Association Party, 98; National Liberation Council (NLC), 46, 149, 156, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 168, 169, 173; Sekondi-Takorodi Railway Workers’ Strike (1960), 131, 132; Trade Union Congress* (TUC), 105, 107, 109, 120, 125, 131,

134, 156; United Farmers Council Co­ operatives, 104; United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), 38, 58; United Party (UP), 98; Volta River Project (VRA), 49; Young Pioneers, 105 Githii, G., 180 Guinea, 11,24,26,37,38,124,144,145, 153, 154, 155, 167, 169, 170, 171 Houphouet-Boigny, Felix, 52, 62, 90, 145 ICFTU, 107, 108, 109, 110, 120, 121, 123,124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134,136, 137, 138,140, 141,184, 186 IFTUC, 123, 141 International Labor Organization (ILO), 136 International Monetary Fund, (IMF) 50 Ivory Coast, 25, 38, 51, 121, 145, 184 James, C.L.R., 38 KabakaYekka(KY), 101,103 Kambona, Oscar, 71 Kampala, 21 Kaunda, Kenneth, 26,61, 143, 155 Kawesa, Peter, 165, 166 Kenya, 11, 14, 57,62,63,64,65,69,75, 76, 87, 107, 111, 115, 128, 132, 133, 135,140,141,157, 159, 160,171, 173, 179, 182, 184, 185, 186; African Na­ tional Union, 75, 122, 127, 138, 139, 140, 157, 161; African Workers Con­ gress, 136, 138, 139, 142; Central Or­ ganization of Trade Unions (COTU), 138, 139, 140, 141; Federation of Labor, 123, 127, 138; Federation of Progressive Trade Unions, 135; Federation of Registered Trade Unions, 134; Industrial Relations Charter (1962), 135, 136; Land and Freedom Army, 13; People’s Union, 140, 173 Kenyatta, Jomo, 12, 13, 19, 58, 61, 62, 63, 65, 73, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 158, 159, 178, 190-91 Koinange, Peter M., 61,63,64,70 Latin America, 36

INDEX

Lenin, V. I., 21 Lumumba, Patrice, 61 Mali, 11, 14,26, 37,71, 143, 153, 169 Marais, Genoveva, 150 Mau Mau, 13 Mboya, Tom, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 67, 69, 72, 73, 76, 107, 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 126, 127, 128, 134, 135, 136, 138 Monrovia Group, 72 Moshi, 70 Mozambique, 188 Murumbi, Joseph, 61-62, 74, 157, 158, 171, 179 Neogy, Rajat, 96,180 Ng’wcno, Hilary, 180 Niger, 25,184 Nigeria, 15, 68, 78,88, 145 Nkomo, Joshua, 26,61 Nkrumah Ideological Institute, 108 Nkrumaism, 28 Nkrumah, Kwame, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100,102,103,104, 105,106,107,110, 111, 112,113,114,115,117,118,119, 120,121,122, 126,140,142,143, 144, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155,156, 157, 160, 162, 163, 166,167,168, 169, 170,171,172, 174,175, 177,178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 192; Ad­ dress at the UN General Assembly, 59; The Archetypal Crusader of High Poli­ tics, 32; Belief in Trans-Saharan Soli­ darity, 18; His Pan-Africanist Motiva­ tion, 37-39 Nonalignment, 117, 118, 119, 124, 126, 127, 128,129, 130,133, 136,141, 142, 151, 186 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 50 Nyasaland (Malawi), 27 Nyerere, Julius, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 57, 58, 61, 62, 66, 72, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91,92,93,94, 127, 152, 154, 155, 156, 167, 178, 184, 190

233

Obote, Milton A., 12, 15,18,19,20,60, 62, 64, 66, 76, 96, 97, 100, 101, 103, 104,105, 110, 111, 112,115,116,146, 148,149,150,154,155,165,168,178, 180, 181, 184, 185 Odaka, Sam, 174 Odinga, O., 57, 63, 71, 73, 128, 138, 139, 140 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 13, 14, 15, 16, 72, 85, 92, 93, 112, 145, 152, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 169, 184, 185, 186, 187 Padmore, George, 38,130 PAFMECA, 68, 70, 71 Pan-African Congresses, 12, 38, 56, 130 Pan-Africanism, 11, 14, 19, 25, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 44, 50, 52, 53, 67, 69, 70, 71, 75, 77, 78, 88, 91, 95, 110, 113, 116, 129, 130, 133, 135,136,141,144,175,183,184,186, 187; African soil for, 67; critique of, 33-34; its ideological integrity, 28-32; its marriage of idealism and realism, 34; its moral vision, 31; as quintessen­ tial counterideology, 29; as system of values and attitudes, 11 Randolph, A. Philip, 130 Regional Integration/Regionalism, 14, 91,93 Rhodesia, 13, 16, 152, 167, 177 Rogers, Douglas, 73,74, 75 Salim, Salim, 174 Sawaba Party, 25 Sekyiamah, 169 Senghor, Leopold, 62 Sisoko, Mamadou, 156 Socialist Development in Africa, 88, 89, 124, 146, 153, 181 Southern African Development Coordi­ nation Conference (SADCC), 188 Tanganyika/Tanzania, 11, 14, 17, 66, 68,69,76,82,87,92,106, 111, 127, 151, 152,153, 154,155, 160, 166,168, 174, 180, 181, 182,184, 185, 186,188; National Union of Tanganyika Work­ ers, (NUTA), 156; Pro-Nkrumah In­ ternational Club, 169; Tanganyika Af­ rican National Union (TANU), 60,66,

234

INDEX

83, 156, 161; Tanganyika Federation of Labor (TFL), 127 Tettegah, John, 71, 107, 108, 109, 110, 125, 126, 131, 135, 138, 139, 142, 156 Togo, 172, 184 Toure, Sekou, 25,90, 123,144, 145, 153, 167, 171

Union General des Travailleurs d’Afrique (UGTAN), 123 Union Syndicale des Travailleurs de Volta (USTV), 139 United National Independence Party of Zambia, 26 United Nations Organization, 59, 66 Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), 51, 139, 143, 184

Uganda, 11, 14, 18, 19, 20, 64, 66, 69, 76, 87, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104,110,112,116,127,146,147,149, 150,151, 154,160, 161, 168, 174,176, Wellensky, Roy, 66 177, 180, 182, 185, 186; Democratic Wsst Africa, 25, 38, 52, 56, 58, 65, 94 Party (DP), 57, 101, 102, 114, 115; West African National Secretariat, 38 Farmers Council Cooperatives, 111; Western Europe, 35, 36 Federation of Labor, 108, 109, 110, W.F.T.U., 107, 120, 121, 123, 126, 129, 111, 115; National Congress, 57, 60; 130, 131, 133 National Union, 103; People’s Con­ Wilson, Harold, 16 gress, 60, 66, 76, 100, 101, 102, 103, World Bank, 50, 188 104,105,108, 111, 113,114,115,149, 161; People’s Union, 60; Trade Union Yaounde Convention, 69, 70 Congress, 108, 109, 110, 114, 127 Union of African States (UAS), 26, 33, Zanzibar, 17, 18 51,71,77, 184