Kwame Nkrumah’s Miraculous Escapes

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Created on Tuesday, 20 March 2012 14:35

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IT was all lather and biosterous chatter in the school laundry as we washed our clothes on one of the most memorable days in Ghana's political history, with the news coming on the radio: President Kwame Nkrumah had been overthrown in a military coup!

There were a few stupefied expressions all right; otherwise the jubilation was somewhat spontaneous: Many students raced across the campus, jumping over hedges, doing somersaults, and screaming anti-Nkrumah slogans. It did not occur to me at the time that most of us did not understand the full implications of what had just happened and that we were only reacting with understandable naivety to the sudden fall of a man who had been so demonized by his opponents, that many had actually come to believe Nkrumah was really Lucifer in kente and jumper, a Ghanaian traditional attire.

Looking back, it is now obvious that it had to come to that as a matter of course: There had been too many attempts to kill Nkrumah for something not to eventually give. The arbitrariness of English language English language, grammar and expressions is legendary but even the English will be amused by the idea of bombing a man. It would make sense to talk about bombing a city, an installation or a building, but a man!

Yet Nkrumah had the singular distinction of being a fairly regular target of bomb attacks by opposition elements. There were at least seven attempts to assassinate him during his presidency. When he was not being bombed, he was being shot at. He was bombed in the vicinity of his office, at home, and while addressing political rallies. What appears to have been the first bomb attack occurred on 10 November 1958.

President Nkrumah had a severe cold and was resting--no, working--at home. He had his secretary and several aides around. Suddenly a powerful explosion rocked the house--from floor to rafters. It was the work of unidentified political opponents! There were minor injuries; thankfully no-one was killed.

Thereafter, the assassination attempts picked up steam. On New Year's Day, working in collaboration with the political opposition, senior officers of the Police Force in charge of Nkrumah's security at Flagstaff House where the president had his office, placed a policeman called Seth Ametewe on guard duty at the house, and assigned him to kill Nkrumah.

Constable Ametewe took up position near the car park at Flagstaff House and waited for the president. As Nkrumah walked from his office towards the car park at lunchtime, Ametewe fired at him several times with a rifle, missing his target each time as Nkrumah hastened away. Nkrumah himself recounted the incident in chilling detail in some of his books and memoirs:

"It was 1.00 pm in the garden of Flagstaff House. I was leaving the office to go for lunch when four shots were fired at me by one of the policemen on guard duty. He was no marksman, though his fifth shot succeeded in killing Salifu Dagarti, a loyal security officer who had run after the would-be assassin, as soon as he spotted him among the trees.

"The policeman then rushed at me trying to hit me with the rifle butt. I wrestled with him and managed to wrestle him to the ground and hold him there on his back until help came, but not before he had bitten me on the neck."

I (this writer) am a native of Bawku in Ghana's Upper East Region, and by a twist of fate and circumstance, I was not in too distant proximity with the scene of what was the deadliest bomb attack on Nkrumah at Kulugungu near Bawku in August 1962.

I was among a welcome party of flag-waving pupils who had lined up to welcome Nkrumah as he passed through the town on his way to meet with the then president of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Maurice Yameogo, at the border town of Tenkoudougou. Nkrumah, dressed in resplendent jumper and kente, waved at us from the back seat of a saloon car with a white handkerchief, and I recall noting what a handsome man he was.

After meeting with President Yameogo, Nkrumah stopped at Kulugungu on his way back. He had descended from his car to receive a bouquet from a schoolgirl when a bomb was hurled at him. We were still standing around in Gingande (a suburb of Bawku) with our national flags waiting for his return, when the dispatch riders raced back shouting in Twi, that Nkrumah was dead.

I recall the lead rider standing straight up on the pedals of his motorbike and trying to scream the sky down in Twi: "Nkrumah ewn-oo! Nkrumah ewu-oo! Womo ato bomb!" [meaning, "Nkrumah is dead, Nkrumah is dead; they've bombed him!"]. This caused us to flee in a million directions. {PICTURE ILLUSTRATION OMMITTED}.

The casualty tally at Kulugungu was actually two dead and 55 injured, including Nkrumah. The dead included a police-man and the schoolgirl. "I believe it was his injuries from the attack which later killed my father. Some of the shrapnel from the bombing was never removed from Nkrumah's body," Samia Nkrumah, the president's daughter, who is now an MP in Ghana, said in Accra during the centenary celebration of Nkrumah's birthday on 21 September 2009.

Two other bomb explosions occurred on the same day, on 7 July 1961. One wrecked Nkrumah's statue outside Parliament House. A further two bomb attacks in August and September 1961 failed to kill Nkrumah. Yet another bomb exploded in a crowd outside Flagstaff House on 2 September 1962, killing one person and injuring 63 others, as Nkrumah's enemies persisted with the attempts to kill him.

In another attack, one person was killed and many injured when a bomb was set off at Flagstaff House while the Young Pioneers Orchestra Band was entertaining Nkrumah and his guests. There was also a plan to shoot him at Accra airport as he arrived from an official visit to India.

The plan was uncovered and aborted. The attacks on Nkrumah were recorded by the Convention Peoples Party (CPP ), Nkrumah himself, and leading Ghanaian scholars like Kwame Botwe Asamoah and Dr Peter T. Omari. In Kwame Nkrumah: The anatomy of an African dictatorship, Dr Omari recalls that after some of the bombings, "feelings ran high for revenge against former Nkrumah aides, Tawiah Adamafio, Ako Adjei and Cofie Crabbe who, in collusion with the opposition, were believed to be behind some of the attempts on Nkrumah's life."

According to Dr Omari, Krobo Edusei, the minister of agriculture, told a CPP rally that the party was giving Nkrumah one month to use his authority "to bring the arch traitors to Accra's Black Star Square to be shot". Edusei warned that if Nkrumah failed to comply, "the whole of Ghana would march together to the prisons and tear the traitors to pieces". In apparent desperation, Nkrumah used the infamous "Protective Detention Act" (PDA) to arrest and detain elements suspected of trying to kill or overthrow him.

The PDA had been promulgated at the request of the Police Force in response to terrorist acts in Accra by a Ga "nationalist" group, Ga Shinpo Kpee, that wanted to drive out non-Gas from Accra, their so-called "local" area. The police wanted a law that empowered them to hold suspects for more than 48 hours to help them in their investigations. The PDA only went to strengthen opposition charges that Nkrumah was a repressive despot.

That and Nkrumah's declaration of a one-party state increased the resolve of his opponents to overthrow him, an exercise which was eventually executed by America's CIA.

Source: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Www.sydneyabugri.com {First published in New African Magazine, December, 2009}

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Danquah On Nkrumah's Propaganda Climb To Greatness

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Created on Sunday, 26 September 2010 00:00

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Danquah On Nkrumah's Propaganda Climb To Greatness

By Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko

In his maiden address to Parliament in January 2009, President JEA Mills, a avowed Nkrumaist, said, "We intend to honour Dr Kwamne Nkrumah's memory with a national holiday to be known as Founder's Day."

Thus, September 21 is now one more of developing Ghana's numerous public holidays (17) to force on the nation a break from our usual 'work and unhappiness' routine.

Several articles were written and speeches made from the likes of political historian, Prof Mike Oquaye, a Danqua-Dombo-Busiast, and political scientist Dr Vladimer Antwi-Danso, an Nkrumaist, to the effect that "We cannot say that Nkrumah was the founder of the nation we call Ghana. Ghana does not have one founder."

As our way of marking the day, the Danquah Institute has provided below an article wrote by Dr J B Danquah on October 2, 1961, where he traces Mr Nkrumah's contribution to the independence struggle and the propaganda tactics he used to turn the 'masses' of Ghana against the other nationalist leaders. Please read below J B in his own words:

The world is full of curious, unrepentant, people. As far back as four years ago, I gave Ghana's first President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, an opportunity to correct or withdraw certain misleading defamatory and malicious statements made by him against me in his Autobiography published on Ghana's Independence Day, March 6, 1957, by Thomas Nelson and Sons - a book discreditably entitled "Ghana.”

Up to now, apart from a formal acknowledgment signed by Dr Nkrumah"s Personal Secretary, no attempt of any kind has been made by him or his publishers to withdraw the statements, nor has any apology or expression of regret been tendered for painting me as a selfish sheep in Ghana’s struggle for independence.

And, judging from information to hand, the book has gone through several editions or impressions and has been translated into many languages, to the personal benefit of Dr Nkrumah and his publishers and to my discredit and damage, said the newly appointed British High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr A.W. Snelling, when first introduced to me at a party late in 1959: "Oh, Dr Danquah, I have read quite a lot about you in that famous book.”

And so it is that seeing how truth cannot be known unless people are made familiar with the facts, Mr H.K Akyeampong has thought of digging up my past to let the world see how I myself painted it in Ghana at a time no publisher, nor “a poet of Agamemnon,” was looking on, except a long line of imperial British Governors - Ransford Slater, Shenton Thomas, Arnold Hodson, Alan Burns and Gerald Creasy – or an occasional Biitish pro-consul, Lord Hailey or Mr Oliver Stanley, or an occasional British High Fabian, Mr Arthur Creech Jones on a visit to Ghana, the former Gold Coast.

There is nothing much I can add to this collection of my speeches and writings except to say that having survived the exciting events they portray, I am now more than ever convinced that I have never known myself as my Maker knows me inside out.

He fashioned me and has used me in His own fashion, and, as I see it, the reason why I still live and breathe and am able to exert myself in life must be the simple one that my Maker hasn’t quite finished with me yet. There are lots more He wants me to suffer for, and to use me for. I do not myself mind suffering so long as it is not suffering for myself. To suffer for oneself is the emptiest of all suffering; to suffer for others is the greatest spiritual elevation.

As to my 1957 letter to Dr Nkrumah, I have not yet got over the surprise of how the letter struck me when Mr Akyeampong asked me to approve the three-year old office copy for inclusion in this collection. I read it through in complete silence, except for occasional grunts, and when completed, I said, almost unconsciously, “How terribly mild! Is that what I am, mild to my great malefactors?” one may even ponder over the situation and ask: What kind of earth or heaven is promised for an inheritance in the Sermon on the Mount to those who are mild to their malefactors?

It is possible that Dr Kwame Nkrumah may one day write to express his regret for the offensive and libellous statements made by him against me in his book. Or perhaps Dr Nkrumah is waiting for a Court to call upon him to amends. But, on the other hand, it is possible not.

Slander

So far as I can personally see, my main fault with the man who is today Ghana’s President was to have taken him round in January and February 1948 to introduce him to Ghana audiences as the new general secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention named by me (through Mr Ako Adjei) for that appointment. I did not previously know the man nor was I at the time aware of what he now reveals about himself in his book, page 62 et passim. Namely, when in 1947 he responded to the call of the U.G.C.C to come to Ghana from England, and he asked us to send him a hundred pounds “to cover his passage and travelling expenses,” he actually planned on his arrival to undermine our personal positions at home and to climb to the top over our dead bodies.

And from 1948 to 1957, it actually did happen that while we, quite blindly, kept our eyes on the main chance, namely, our country’s liberation, others were busy creating a new “front” within our ranks.

The adversary in the struggle no longer was imperialism as such but the well-to-do African, the professional man and the business-man, who up to that time, had carried the struggle in their competent hands, without a division in the nation’s ranks. Out of that material was now created a new class, “the Masses” of “the Common people.” It was made to appear that those who, fortunately or unfortunately, did not look common, but were in an way distinguished, by wealth or learning or success in life, were enemies of the people and stooges of imperialism.

It was at about that time that it was maliciously published abroad, chiefly by means of a whispering campaign, the false story that members of the Working Committee of the Convention, of which Dr Nkrumah was general secretary, had been bribed by Imperial Britain to give up the struggle for independence, that the sum given to each of us was G25,000, by cheque, and that the only man who refused his share was Dr Nkrumah. (And, as I learned many years later at Kwabeng, in Akim Abuakwa, a slip of paper was fluttered in the face of the audience at Anyinam as the speaker wound up his speech on the crescendo of the refusal “to take his cheque”).

Sports

At that time, on my persuasion at the 1948 African Conference in Lancaster House, London, Sir Sydney Abrahams had visited Ghana again to re-organise our sports. Sir Sydney had been previously Attorney General in Ghana, and, being of a literary turn of mind, had become a close friend by his contributions under a pen name in my newspaper, The Times of West Africa, published at Accra. Sir Sydney who belonged to a family of sportsmen, (a brother of his was Sports Editor on a London daily), had also organised the first Ghana Athletics Association of which he became President before he left for East Africa where he rose to the post of Chief Justice.

In 1948, Sir Sydney had retired and was serving in the Colonial Office as Assistant Legal Adviser. I met him at a tea party in Lancaster House at the African Conference, and enquired whether he could visit us in Ghana to re-organise our sports for us. He said if I could arrange it with the Colonial
Office he would gladly come.

I saw Mr Leslie H. Gorsuch, then in charge of the West African Department, and also Sir Andrew Cohen, and eventually Mr Creech Jones, on the matter. It appeared that permission was likely to be given, and I left England highly optimistic of the outcome.

The point is that my political plan was for Ghana’s liberation and progress on all fronts. I therefore stretched out my hand to reach facets of the nation’s life which had little to do directly with liberation from an imperial “oppressor.”

For economics and business, I sponsored the establishment of a National Bank and the Cocoa Marketing Board. For education, I sponsored the established of a University College, separate from that for West Africa at Ibadan. For general literature, I sponsored the first successful daily newspaper in Accra which, with my editor, Mr MacNeill Stewart, the West Indian poet, co-operating, won fame at Achimota as reminiscent of the work and style of Steele and Addison in English literature of the 18th century.

In addition to these I tried to lead the way with books for an understanding and appreciation of Ghana’s institutions, religion, philosophy and art. Sports, too, could not reasonably be excluded from his plan, and I pushed the need for it in the same fashion as I pushed the other needs for the total progress of Ghana.

In April, 1949, in response to my invitation, Sir Sydney Abrahams came to Ghana on the subject of sports and I managed successfully to introduce him to an Accra audience at the Palladium. At first as a result of inflammatory articles in Dr Nkrumah’s newspaper, the Accra Evening News, the audience was hostile to the idea of sports being made a subject of public discussion but to everybody’s delight I carried the day at the Palladium. Others on the platform were Sir Patrick Branian, Attorney-General, and Sir Leslie M’Carthy, Puisne Judge, who later became President of Ghana’s Sports Council.

Eventually out of Sir Sydney Abraham’s visit the country obtained the enactment of the first Amateur Sports Council Ordinance, and the provision of public funds for the building of the Accra Sports Stadium of which most people, including even the protesting politicians, are now very proud.

But Sir Sydney’s presence in Accra together with his association with me, was enough to give colour to the campaign of Imperial bribery: “There is the man who brought that money, 25,000 each. Danquah has given up politics for sports!”

Years later, when Dr Nkrumah and his CPP were in power and I was leader of the U.G.C.C Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, I urged them in speech after speech in the House that now that they were in power and had access to the imperial papers and the Imperial ear, would they kindly let the world have any evidence they could lay hands on that we who had been in the vanguard of the struggle for at least a generation, did succumb towards the end, when victory was actually in hand, to taking corrupt or any kind of money from the Imperial
Power!

No one from the Government benches ever answered the challenge. Obviously the
effect they desired had been achieved, the evil had been done. My group and I
had become discredited, perhaps for ever, perhaps…

Blood and sweat

In June 1959, I came across an extremely nasty bit of legislation proposed by Dr Nkrumah’s Government for passage into law by Parliament. It was the Protected Timber Lands Bill (now the Protected Timber Lands Act, No. 34 of 1959). The Act takes power for any area in Ghana outside a forest area to be declared a “protected area.” Under the Act it becomes an offence punishable wit a fine of 50 or six months imprisonment, or to both such fine and imprisonment, if any person including the owner of the land in question, is seen on the “declared area” felling a tree, or making a fire, or making a farm, or residing in any building, or erecting any building in the area. Such a person, unless he is exercising rights under the Concessions Ordinance, or holds a licence from the
Minister to do any such act, is liable to instant arrest, “without warrant,” by
any Forest Officer.

Since under the Concessions Ordnance an owner of land is not bound to apply for a “Concession” to himself, the injustice of the Act becomes apparent to any one who has ever owned anything!
As I often do in regard to such matters of public interest, I wrote personally to Dr Nkrumah to say that in view of the fact that it was the abortive Lands Bill of 1897 which made the British name stink most in these parts as an imperialist people, it was rather surprising to see his government, the first
African government, proposing a law worse in many respects than the old imperialist Bill.

The 1887 Bill never became a delegation of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society was sent from Cape Coast to the Colonial office against it, and because Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, explained to the Queen that the delegation had come from the Gold Coast in West Africa notorious as the land of the mosquito and the White Man’s Grave. Said Queen Victoria to Joseph
Chamberlain: “Tell my people of the Gold Coast, what I want is their loyalty, not their lands.” It was this answer which saved Ghana from becoming a second Kenya and which also made it easy for Ghana to lead successfully in the liberation of Africa and to become the first free Colonial country in Africa, (apart from South Africa) – By Dr Danquah.

In the surprising reply received by me from Miss Erica Powell, the personal secretary, Dr Kwame Nkrumah urged vigorously that it was because of me that he and his government had been passing certain repressive laws in the country, (scil. The Preventive Detention Act, the Avoidance of Discrimination Act, the Deportation Act, etc). Dr Nkrumah’s letter dated 19th June 1959, reads:

“Dear Sir,
I have been requested by the Prime Minister to acknowledge your letter No. 284/P/59 of the 16th June, 1959.
“The Prime Minister has asked me to say with regard to the second paragraph of
your letter, that he is at a loss to understand your claim to have worked for
Ghana’s “liberation from oppression for the best part of your life.” He has
asked me to point out that, on the contrary, it has been on account of your
repeated and determined efforts to hamper the forward march of those who, after
much blood and sweat, succeeded in liberating Ghana from her oppressors, that it
has been found necessary to introduce certain legislation and to the other
protective measures in order to ensure that the freedom which has been won by
the personal sacrifices of the common people is secured forever.
Yours faithfully,
E. Powell
Personal Secretary.”

Naturally I sent a rejoinder, and it was in the best of terms reminding Nkrumah
of the true history of the country’s liberation. In the penultimate paragraph, I
said to Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

“Let me say finally that while I have much sympathy for you in the great task
before you as Prime Minister, I think you have made great mistakes which have
increased your own difficulties, and diminished your chances for greatness. Such
mistakes have made this country a very unhappy one to live in, a country full of
bitterness and hostility between groups and a kind never known before. The
bitterness is so intense that unarmed men passing through a village in a lorry
in Ashanti were fallen upon and murdered by others; Baffoe was murdered in
Kumasi, and Oheneba Ampofo murdered at Old Tafo, all from political motives – a
thing which was foreign to the nature of the true born Ghanaian, and of which
one never heard even during the worst days of imperialism – except the killing
of Sergeant Adjetey and others – but which has happened frequently under your
regime.”

Something could have happened, for instance a denial that the excruciatingly bad
letter of June 19, was written by Erica Powell with Dr Nkrumah’s authority. But
nothing happened. Four or five months later, I received another letter from Dr
Nkrumah’s Office, this time from his African Secretary to the Cabinet, Mr E.K.
Okoh, inviting me to accept nomination as one of 20 handpicked foundation
members of the Ghana Academy of Learning, of which he Dr Nkrumah was to be
Chairman and his Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh was to be President. When
the election for the governing Council of the Academy was made at Flagstaff
House, the President’s resident, I duly attended the meetings with Dr Nkrumah in
the Chair, and I duly witnessed myself elected a member of the Council of Nine.
At one of these meetings, it was intriguing to hear Dr Nkrumah refer to me
affectionately as “J.B.”

Since then I have been asking myself: Does Nkrumah honestly believe that I am
what he tars me to be in his book and before Miss Erica Powell, his Personal
Secretary, or was it not really a prophetic sign that my letter to him was as
mild as it was? Who knows but that many of these unfathomable pains and
sufferings this man has consciously inflicted upon me are merely a means of
justifying “the ways of God to Men?” Talk of “blood and sweat” or “personal
sacrifices!”

How much “blood and sweat” or “personal sacrifices” did Dr Nkrumah expend in
liberating Ghana “From he oppressors” when, indeed for the 13 years that the
intensive intellectual battle for liberation of Ghana was joined between us and
Ghana’s “Oppressors,” from the 1934 Colonial Office Delegation of the Colony and
Ashanti, to the legislative union of the Colony and Ashanti in 1946 and the
subsequent formation of the United Gold Coast Convention in August, 1947, Dr
Nkrumah was a student in Lincoln University, USA, or at Gray’s Inn Road, London,
and was not even known in Ghana’s politics?

A Game of Chess
Or, coming to recent events, was not the specific intellectual act of February
1948, which declared to the Imperial Power our readiness to govern ourselves,
and the specific publication of March 1948 (“The Hour of Liberation has Struck”)
which sounded the death knell of imperialism in Ghana, my own decision and my
own act?

True enough, compared to what others suffered elsewhere before their country
could be liberated from oppression, what happened in Ghana was but a pleasant
song – due entirely to the patience and tolerance of the Ghanaian. He was
confident that where others would use demonstrative emotional acts, his leaders
would play an intellectual game of chess with the Powers that Be, until one
wrong move on the part of the Powers that Be sent the entire works wobbling to
the ground. In such an atmosphere to talk of “blood and sweat” and “personal
sacrifices” is mere bombast or a calculated exaggeration.

True enough the decisions and acts of 1948 led to my arrest and detention and
the arrest and detention of five of my colleagues in the United Gold Coast
Convention. Those acts and decisions led also to the subsequent test of our
integrity at a public inquisition by the Watson Commission in 1948. But it
should be recalled that Kwame Nkrumah had not been with us for more than six
weeks (January 16 to February 28) before these great decisions became ripe for
action.

It was as an outcome of those decisions that the Watson Commission, upon
enquiry, found that our nationalist cause and course were right and that we were
ripe for self-government “within ten years.”

And it was as an outcome of the same decisions that His Majesty’s Government of
the United Kingdom accepted the Watson recommendation and pledged themselves to
speed up the machinery for the attainment of independence by Ghana.
Dr Nkrumah’s own exclusive “contribution,” such as it is, was to come much
later, after the battle had been won. His own Party, the Convention People’s
Party, was formed in June, 1949, long after the Imperial Power had conceded
independence and had pledged themselves to speed up the exercise towards it. Dr
Nkrumah’s own act, perhaps the “blood and sweat” act, namely, the abortive
“Positive Action,” staged for a Constituent Assembly, and which sent him to
prison in 1950, actually came two years after the pledge for independence had
been given by Mr A Creech Jones, Secretary of State, in the White Paper,
Colonial No. 232 of 1948.

The question may be asked: How much of these “blood and sweat” and “personal
sacrifices” of 1950 went into the foundation of Ghana’s achievement of
independence? True enough Dr Nkrumah has actually got himself cognised on
Ghana’s coins as “The Founder of Ghana,” and he has had a monument built to
himself from public funds in Parliament Square to the same effect. But which
Ghana does Nkrumah have in mind, ancient or modern? In his Autobiography, Dr
Nkrumah places his ancient Ghana at Kanem, near Lake Chad, far away, by over a
thousand miles, from the actual position of the real Ghana, south-west of
Timbuktoo. But if ancient Ghana had been a part of the Kanuri country in and
around Lake Chad we might long ago have become a patrillineal Moslem and French
and not possessed of any of the particular values which make today’s Ghana on
the West Coast what she is – a matrilineal, pagan, Christian, Akan, British
product. The true Ghana of today was founded by those who were aware of these
facts and being conscious of that faith, worked for its realisation, not
otherwise. One can only say here that tropical illusions of greatness are
permissible but history as a fact takes little account of the cold greatness of
such illusions.

Africa’s new Mission – Ikhnaton
As for the rest of Mr Akyeampong’s book, I think it best to let each speech or article speak for itself. One of the most interesting facts about each of these speeches and articles is its date, namely at a time when no one or only few were saying that kind of thing, such as “Africa for the Africans,” or “the Gold Coast is Ghana.”

Today, those phrases are the most commonplace and are no longer original. Some even are hackneyed or are actually getting out of date. Such, for instance, is this huge idea of a Continental Tribalism, (African Trade Union, African Farmers Union, Union of African States,) which really in these days of atomic, trans-continental weapons, is as out of date as the old group morality – the tribal primitive system between village and village – got out of date just about the close of the feudal period and the invention of gunpowder.

And with the United Nations here today, what need is there for a single Union of African States with only one vote at the General Assembly of the United Nations and at its Councils and Committees.

Few are those who have bee ready to see ad to acknowledge the very simple fact that more than anything else it was the very fortunate World Wars I and II which widely opened the great doors of Africa’s liberation from imperialism and foreign domination to true freedom. It s equally true that the two World Wars have effectively closed the great door, (I hope for ever), to Africa’s isolation or possible relapse into a peculiar co-efficient of her own, whether it be self-imposed, or it be the physically imposed by the Sahara and the Kalahari deserts, and the Rift Valleys, or whether it be the result of a colonialist insulation by imperialist powers at a Berlin Conference of the nineteenth century!


Africa, the mother of cultures, is also the mother of inventions, religions and measures. She invented bronze, for instance, and discovered iron. She invented monotheism as well as the calendar. Today there is hardly awake in Africa a continental consciousness for any particular culture, such, for instance, as a continental African language. The great desire today is for us Africans to master French and English languages in our bid to make a mark with Negritude and the African Personality.

But what really arrests the greatest attention in the world today is the human being seen as an image of God. It is not an image of a native of Europe, or of America, or of Africa, or even of vast Asia with its millions of Chinese, Indians, and Japanese, al of whom are at the height of their intellectual power. It is the human being as such. In his recent visit to Africa what attracted the greatest attention of Mr Harold Macmillan, head of the most stable imperial power of the 20th century, was the fact that whether black, brown, olive or
white, we are all human beings, all equal, and could really have it good if properly led.

In my view the African’s great mission in the future lies not in racial politics perpetually reminding the world of the Africa’s colour – black, brown or olive – but in national or cultural politics, in the duty of each nation and culture making a supreme contribution to the achievement and happiness and survival of mankind.

If when the world needed monotheism, Africa discovered its sign and produced its system, today when the world needs humanism or human equality, it could fall again to an African Ikhnaton to discover the sign for it and produce its system.

The selection of speeches and writings in this book shows how leadership in this field of an effort to secure human equality started for us in Ghana many more years ago than I care to remember. As for those whose alpha and omega of Ghana’s modern history is Kwame Nkrumah’s Autobiography one can only repeat here what Horace in a similar situation said of Agamemnon’s predecessors: Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.
J.B.D
Yiadom Chambers,
Accra, Ghana
October 2, 1961

Culled from Historic Speeches and Writings on Ghana by Dr J B Danquah, compiled
by H K Akyeampong, and published by George Boakie Publishing Company, Accra.For
more details contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Danquah On Nkrumah's Propaganda Climb To Greatness

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Akan Royalty, Cordiality between Asantehene and Okyenhene

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Created on Tuesday, 05 July 2011 00:00

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Akan Royalty, Cordiality between Asantehene and Okyenhene

In the history of our country as a people, Chieftaincy has been the most revered and surviving ancient institution that has been able to stand the test of time, before colonialism, during colonialism and even after independence. This piece is not to exalt any chief or king above the other or even other chiefs not mentioned here, neither is it to make some chiefs seemingly more important than others but to explore the level of cordiality that had existed amongst our chiefs after independence and even before independence.

This article considers the Okyenhene and Asantehene largely because these are the two chiefs (or kings if you like) that the writer has some knowledge on as far as the relationship among chiefs are concerned probably because they seemed quite more influential or better still relationship between these two kings embodies most of the Akan chiefs in general.

Both archival and oral sources place the Asantehene and Okyenhene as the most powerful chiefs in the Akan ethnic setup even before the declaration of independence. Independence however reduced the powers of chiefs in Ghana with its attendant passage of laws to that effect by Dr.Kwame Nkrumah apparently to punish chiefs who were against him in the political circles of the country at that time. As to whether chiefs are powerless now that is for readers to make their own judgments. In historical terms enmity between Asantehene and Okyenhene started when the former decided to incorporate the latter and his Okyeman kingdom into the Ashanti kingdom which led to the death of the founder of the Ashanti kingdom itself, Osei Tutu I.

Osei Tutu I died in a bitter war with the Akyems near the Pra river, his death brought the enmity between Akyem and Asante to its crescendo and also gave birth to the highest oath of Ashanti. Records say there had been over 99 wars between Asante and Akyem after Osei Tutu’s death. However in the years to come, the Okyenhene Nana Sir Ofori Atta’s support to an Ashanti campaign to the British for the return of the exiled Asantehene Nana Sir Osei Agyemang Prempeh was not only to culminate into Prempeh’s return but to also establish some sort of peace of convenience between the two kings.

Later events manifested this peace and cordial relationship between the two as the Asantehene is on record to have sent a delegation of about 500 mourners to mourn with Okyeman during the funeral of Nana Sir Ofori Atta who died later. From here, historical hard core rival enemies are smoking the peace pipe now. Interestingly, with the formation of UGCC and its subsequent transformation to NLM these two chiefs, the new Okyenhene and the Asantehene were to support NLM over CPP which incurred the wrath of Kwame Nkrumah on them culminating into their public humiliation by Krobo Edusei and later official withdrawal of State recognition from the Okyenhene.

Apparently, the Asantehene and Okyenhene were the most powerful chiefs that had resisted the political power of Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP during the time of independence.

Coming up to recent times, the late Otumfuo Opoku Ware and Osagyefuo Kuntunkunuku had good relations as we witnessed Kuntunkunuku visit Opoku Ware at Manhyia,Kumasi and Opoku Ware also going over to Akyem to reciprocate that courtesy, such was their friendship to the extent that when Kuntunkunuku died barely three weeks after Opoku Ware’s death some people literary said the Asantehene had invited his friend Okyenhene over to the land of the dead.

Infact Kuntunkunuku was supposed to have led a delegation to manhyia to mourn the Asantehene but that was not to be as an old adage in Akan language goes this way: ‘damfo pa wu a damfo pa nko nayie’ literally means, when your best friend dies you don’t attend his funeral.

Coming up further to our recent editions of Okyenhene and Asantehene, there is some cordiality in the mist of some aggression not on their part per se but the people they represent.

I was in Kumasi some few years back and in a conversation with some people, the issue of developmental chiefs came up. In the ensuing discussion, both the Asantehene and Okyenhene were named including other chiefs not mentioned here as chiefs helping to develop their areas and the country at large. One of the guys in the discussion added “the Okyenhene is he not the one competing with the Asantehene”.

For this guy and many others who think like him, the Okyenhene is competing with the Asantehene over prominence, more or less who is who amongst the two. And to say the truth these guys somehow have a valid point, why do I say this at the funeral of Oyeeman Wereko Ampem in 2006 there was near mayhem when all rose to the arrival of the Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin who was also the chief mourner as a sign of respect to the Okyenhene except for the representative of Otumfuo Osei Tutu II in the person of the Tepahene.

This was understood to be disrespect to the Okyenhene, a similar spectacle welcomed patrons of the home coming summit of Birim North citizens domiciled abroad held at Abirem in 2002 when again the representative of the Asantehene refused to greet the Okyenhene.

In the mist of all these, in 2009 when both of them marked their 10th anniversary, there were representations from each side to each others durbar. So can the Asantehene and Okyenhene ever meet at one function? Should it be the case where one of them must decline to attend personally and send a representative depending on the role he is supposed to play or both decline to attend and send representatives as we saw.

In the 2010 Millennium Excellence Awards where the Akyempemhene played the role of Asantehene and the Okyenhene also sent Nana Tafohene to receive an award on his behalf. So is it the case that they are both very proud of the offices they occupy and see greeting the other one first as kowtowing to his authority or one of them should do the greeting depending on the location and the role one is to play at a particular function or better still it is a mere tradition which expresses no hard feelings between the two of them. Probably that is the beauty of our culture and traditions as a people.

Credit Kwaku Yeboah

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Archives: Adu Boahene’s perspective on June 4

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Parent Category: Our Country

Category: History

Created on Tuesday, 08 June 2010 00:00

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Archives: Adu Boahene’s perspective on June 4

…How Adu Boahen Saw The Transition From SMC (2) To AFRC, nine years After The June 4 Insurrection!

* “AND IT WAS JUSTIFIABLE BECAUSE IT WAS NOT AGAINST A CIVILIAN BUT ANOTHER MILITARY REGIME THAT DID NOT HAVE THE MANDATE OF THE PEOPLE TO BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE” (EXCERPT NO: 1)

“Not only was June 4 absolutely necessary and justifiable but it was also most opportune. It was necessary and opportune because the society especially the upper crust in general and the Armed Forces in particular urgently required that house – cleaning exercise prior to the return to civilian rule. It was obvious that if the pent – up fury of the other ranks had not been given vent even more bloody and chaotic conditions would have immediately followed the return to civilian rule.

“In this respect, June 4 was indeed ‘a vital pre –requisite for a successful return to civilian rule’.

SECONDLY, THE COUP DID NOT IN ANYWAY ALTER THE ARRANGEMENTS THAT HAD BEEN MADE FOR RETURN TO CIVILIAN RULE. IF ANYTHING, IT RATHER ACCELERATED THE PROCESS BY SHORTENING THE PROGRAMME BY SEVEN GOOD DAYS. AND IT WAS JUSTIFIABLE BECAUSE IT WAS NOT AGAINST A CIVILIAN BUT ANOTHER MILITARY REGIME THAT DID NOT HAVE THE MANDATE OF THE PEOPLE TO BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. NOR DID IT INFRINGE OR ABROGATE ANY CONSTITUTION THAT WAS IN EXISTENCE. Above all, it did set itself very limited objectives, pursued them with military and revolutionary zeal and handed over. Indeed June 4 did set a precedent which it was hoped would be followed subsequently”.

* (CREDIT: Excerpts From Prof. Adu Boahen’s Address At The J.B Danquah Memorial Lectures, 21st Series, February, 1988, Accra, Ghana)

“SMC (2) IN FACT TURNED OUT TO BE, AS SOMEONE PUT IT ‘THE SAME THING DIFFERENT’ AS SMC (1)” (EXCERPT NO: 2)

“Had Akuffo and the reconstituted SMC heeded these suggestions and implemented them immediately, his regime would most probably have lasted. But they did not. They did not only refuse to try Acheampong and his roguish associates but they also failed to check the corruption, economic mismanagement, daylight looting of the State’s coffers, the ostentatious living and kalabule that were going on: nor did they deal with the indiscipline and corruption in the Army. SMC II IN FACT TURNED OUT TO BE, AS SOMEONE PUT IT ‘THE SAME THING DIFFERENT’ AS SMC I.

“The question then is why Akuffo and SMC II failed to implement the sound measures that were urged on them. The answer is quite simple and could be found in the old English saying that those who live in glass houses do not throw stones.

“AS IT BECAME OBVIOUS SUBSEQUENTLY, AKUFFO AND HIS NEW SMC MEMBERS WERE PART OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM OF KALABULE, CORRUPTION, SMUGGLING, PROFITEERING AND INDISCIPLINE THAT WAS RAMPANT AND EVIDENTLY ANY ATTEMPT TO INVESTIGATE OR TRY ACHEAMPONG AND HIS HENCHMEN WOULD HAVE EXPOSED ALL OF THEM. THUS, INSTEAD OF CLEANING UP THE MESS LEFT BY ACHEAMPONG, AKUFFO AND HIS SMC II SPENT THEIR TIME NOT ONLY AMASSING WEALTH AND ENRICHING THEIR WIVES AND GIRL FRIENDS, BUT ABOVE ALL ENSURING THAT THEY RETURNED THE COUNTRY TO CIVILIAN RULE UNDER A CONSTITUTION WHICH WOULD GUARANTEE THEIR FUTURE SAFETY, SECURITY AND IMMUNITY AND ENABLE THEM TO ACHIEVE THE LATTER OBJECTIVE BY HAVING INCLUDED IN THE NEW CONSTITUTION A CLAUSE WHICH INDEMNIFIED THE SMC, THE NLC AND THE NRC, I.E. ALL THE THREE PREVIOUS MILITARY GOVERNMENTS, AGAINST ANY ACTS THAT THEY HAD COMMITTED. BUT THEY WERE OVERTAKEN BY EVENTS”.

* (CREDIT: Excerpts From Prof. Adu Boahen’s Address At The J.B. Danquah Memorial Lecture, 21st Series, February, 1988, Accra, Ghana)

***Editorial opinion on this historical information from JusticeGhana: Art 34(1-5) of Part IV- Miscellaneous provisions of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana- indemnifies all previous military dictatorships and their fuctionaries- including AFRC AND PNDC, from prosecution of any wrongdoing while in office. This seems to run counter to the letter and the spirit of the Fourth Republican Constitution which has Freedom, Justice, Probity and Accountability as its Preambles?

JusticeGhana.com

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