KWAME NKRUMAH

Grade: 11Term: 3

Topic: 4 – NATIONALISMS – SOUTH AFRICA, THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

Sub-Topic: CHAPTER 5 – KWAME NKRUMAH

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Who was Kwame Nkrumah?• Kwame Nkrumah was born in the Gold Coast in

1909, was educated in a Roman Catholic missionschool and became a mission school teacher.

• In 1935 he went to the United States to further hisstudies.

• Nkrumah spent ten years studying and teaching atLincoln University in Pennsylvania.

• He read widely and was attracted to socialist ideas(Karl Marx), but it was the work of the Jamaicannationalist, Marcus Garvey (Pan-Africanism), thatmade the greatest impact on his thinking andactions.

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Who was Kwame Nkrumah?

• In 1945 he moved to London, hoping to studyfurther there, but after meeting GeorgePadmore, another leading Pan-African thinker, heagreed to help organize the Fifth Pan-Africanagreed to help organize the Fifth Pan-AfricanCongress in Manchester. He then started anorganization to work for the decolonization ofWest Africa. In 1947 he was invited to becomethe General Secretary of the UGCC and returnedto the Gold Coast.

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REMEMBER KARL MARX AND MARCUS GARVEY?

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Pan Africanism

• After World War Two, Africanleaders, who were mainly educatedintellectuals, decided to fight forindependence. They were alsoindependence. They were alsoattracted to the idea that onceindependent, African countriesshould join together in a pan-continental union.

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What is Pan-Africanism?

• Pan-Africanism has two distinct meanings:1. The togetherness of all people of Africandescent, and their cooperation in working for

thefreedom and independence of all Africanfreedom and independence of all African

people everywhere, including Africa and in thecountries of the African diaspora, such as

the Caribbean and the Americas.2. A movement to unite people in Africa itself,and for a united continent of Africa.

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The influence of Pan Africanism

• A few educated Africans were able to studyfurther in Europe or America.

• Those who went to America met AfricanAmericans, descendants of slaves, and manyAmericans, descendants of slaves, and manyof them was deeply influenced by the Pan-Africanist ideas.

• The most important figures in the Pan-Africanmovement were WB Du bois, Marcus Garveyand George Padmore.

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W.E.B. Du Bois and Pan-Africanism

• W.E.B. Du Bois was born in the UnitedStates just after slavery was abolished.

• He was the first African American to beawarded a doctorate from Harvardawarded a doctorate from HarvardUniversity.

• He believed that educated people had avital role to play in the liberation struggle.

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Marcus Garvey and Pan-Africanism

• Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican who spent most ofhis life in the United States, stressed the needto unite all people of African descent toachieve freedom and equality.

• Garvey called for ‘Africa for the Africans’, anend to colonialism and the recognition of thevalue of African culture.

• He tried, unsuccessfully, to find ways for blackpeople in the Americas to return to Africa.

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George Padmore and Pan-Africanism• George Padmore was born in Trinidad, an island in

the Caribbean Sea in 1909.

• His ancestors had been brought from Africa asslaves to work the island’s plantations.

• Padmore was educated in the USA and while he was• Padmore was educated in the USA and while he wasthere, he joined the American Communist Party.

• He spent some years living in Moscow and workingfor the Communist International.

• Later, he moved to Europe and became less of acommunist than a leading Pan-African thinker andwriter.

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PADMORE, NKRUMAH AND DU BOIS

• At the Manchester Pan-African congress in 1945,Padmore met Kwame Nkrumah, who hadrecently moved to London from the UnitedStates.States.

• Padmore became a close friend and advisor toNkrumah.

• Both men played leading parts in the congressunder the inspired leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois.

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African socialism• African socialism is an ideology that was different from other

forms of socialism.• It emphasised African communal values.• It wanted Africans to recover African communal values and

socialism that emerged out of African experience.• African traditional values were stressed: the interests of the

family, the clan and the community came ahead of individualfamily, the clan and the community came ahead of individualinterests.

• African socialism was not the laisser-faire capitalism of theUSA, and it was not the state-dominated socialist system of theUSSR.

• African socialism was an alternative that could borrow fromboth systems, but it would be essentially African.

• It was to grow from pre-colonial communal customs andvalues.

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African socialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a

"traditional" African way, as distinct from classical socialism.

Many African politicians of the 1950s

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Many African politicians of the 1950s and 1960s professed their support

for African socialism, although definitions and

interpretations of this term varied considerably.

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Kwame Nkrumah’s part in the creation of an independent Ghana

• On 6 March 1957, the gold Coastbecame the first sub-Saharan Africancountry to obtain independence.country to obtain independence.Because it was the first, the way itwas achieved became a model thatthe British would try to followelsewhere in Africa.

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The Convention People’s Party, 1949• Nkrumah was soon released from jail after the

February 1948 riots.• He came out of jail as a national hero. His campaign

for ‘Independence Now!’ attracted massive support,especially from the youth.

• Later in 1948, he broke away from the UGCC, whichwanted to move more slowly towardswanted to move more slowly towardsindependence, and formed the Convention People’sParty (CPP).

• The CPP’s radical ‘Positive Action’ campaign startedin January 1950.

• It included strikes, boycotts, and mass rallies.• Nkrumah was arrested again, tried, and condemned

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• While Nkrumah was in jail, the first generalelection ever held under a universalfranchise took place in the Gold Coast inFebruary 1951.

• Although Nkrumah was in jail, pictures ofhim were everywhere. The popular

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him were everywhere. The popularnewspapers all supported the CPP, whichheld huge election rallies with the slogan‘Free-Dom!’. The CPP won 34 out of the 38elected seats in the legislative assembly(parliament).

• After the elections, Nkrumah was released from jail andwas appointed as leader of government business in thelegislative council.

• Together with a British adviser, Sir Charles Arden-Clarke,he started preparing the Gold Coast for independence.

• Many constitutional changes occurred in the next fewyears.

• In 1952, the British changed the constitution so thatNkrumah could become Prime Minister.

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Nkrumah could become Prime Minister.• He presented a ‘Motion of Destiny’ to the legislative

assembly which called for independence from Britain.• It was passed by a large majority.• In 1954, the CPP won another general election

handsomely, under another new constitution in whichthe legislative council became a fully elected one, withno members nominated by the colonial authorities.

The challenges confronting Nkrumah before independence

1. He had to make sure there were enough skilledand experienced people to run an independentcountry efficiently.

2. He had to bring together the four regions of theGold Coast colony into a single state. The northGold Coast colony into a single state. The northwas largely Muslim and the south was dominatedby the Asante people and largely Christian. Therewere many different peoples and cultures andseven major languages.

3. He was determined to win full independencewithout delay.

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Nkrumah overcame all three of his challenges.

1. The British helped to train a new Ghanaian civil service,drawn from the growing numbers of educated youngpeople.

2. Nkrumah’s decision to use English as the officiallanguage and to call the country ‘Ghana’ were importantunifying factors. The word ‘Ghana’ means ‘warrior king’.unifying factors. The word ‘Ghana’ means ‘warrior king’.It had been the name of a great kingdom in West Africahundreds of years earlier. People felt proud to identifywith it.

3. After their humiliation in the Suez Crisis of 1956, theBritish were eager to grant this ‘reliable’ colony itsindependence and all Gold Coast’s people wanted it,even though they differed on some issues.

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Nkrumah becomes Prime Minister and Independence

• The CPP won the 1956 election against the NLFand other opposition parties and, despite someproblems, there was remarkably little violence inthe period before independence.

• At 00h00 on 6 March 1957, The Gold Coast wasborn as the independent and unitary state ofGhana.

• Nkrumah was its prime minister.

• The people hailed him as Osagyefo, which means‘Redeemer’.

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Ghana’s beginning as an independent nation

• In 1957 the former British colony of the GoldCoast became the independent state of Ghana.

• Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the Convention• Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the ConventionPeople’s Party (CPP) was its Prime Minister.

• In 1960 Ghana became a republic, with Nkrumahas its president.

• He was a hero for Africans all over Africa, but by1966, he had been overthrown by a military coupand went into exile in Conakry, Guinea.

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The main reasons he failed to retain the support of the people of Ghana were:

1. His economic policies were unpopular. His policiesinvolved harsh and Soviet-style industrializationincluding almost complete government control overthe economy.

2. He tried to break the power of the trade unions,

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2. He tried to break the power of the trade unions,which had previously been his strongest supporters.

3. He lost the support of the cocoa farmers by notallowing them to have the full profits from highcocoa prices.

4. He introduced the Preventative Detention Act,which allowed people to be detained without trial.

5. Early in 1964 Nkrumah declared Ghana a one-party state, with himself as life president of bothnation and party. The administration of thecountry passed into the hands of corrupt partyofficials who helped themselves, rather than theGhanaians they were meant to serve.

6. He spent a great deal of money on unnecessaryweapons and equipment for his new defense

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weapons and equipment for his new defenseforce.

7. Like Stalin Nkrumah encouraged a ‘cult of thepersonality’ in which he was idealized as theperfect national leader. Though his lifestyle wasmodest, he became remote from the people andfearful that they were plotting against him.

• Although he was eventually thrown out of thecountry, Nkrumah is still considered to be one ofthe greatest African statesmen of all time.

• He welded the Gold Coast into a successfulunitary state, which was an example to otherAfrican liberation movements.

• As a lifelong Pan-Africanist, perhaps his greatest

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• As a lifelong Pan-Africanist, perhaps his greatestlegacy to the continent was the formation of theOrganisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963.

• It is now known as the African Union (AU) and itstask is to ensure the independence anddevelopment of all Africa’s countries andpeoples.

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