Alongside his ambitious vision for the United States of Africa, in Ghana, he embarked on a number of development projects on the basis of which Ghana was initially every African’s envy. So much was he into working for his country that when a journalist once wondered what he did for leisure, “work” was his response!
Fast forward into his presidency, Nkrumah built a personality cult around himself. He assumed grand titles such as Osagyefo, a Twi word meaning ‘redeemer’; Man of Destiny; Star of Africa; His High Dedication!
With a conspicuous superiority complex, he became accustomed to endless praise. Accordingly, he was commonly referred to as liberator, messiah, the Christ of our day, father, cure of sick souls, teacher and so forth.
His birthday was declared a public holiday! Meanwhile, he increasingly became paranoid, distancing himself from all except those who told him what he wanted to hear.
He harassed and jailed his critics and opponents using the Preventive Detention Act (1958). His strongest critics, J. B. Danquah and Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, died in prison. Meanwhile, decadence and corruption at almost every level were eating away Ghana as the Osagyefo preoccupied himself with bolstering his grip onto power.
His grand dreams for Africa seem to have taken a toll on his own country as he is said to have been more devoted to solving African problems than those at home. In Prof Ali Mazrui’s assessment, Nkrumah was ‘a great African but not a great Ghanaian.’ In 1965, as he bid farewell to his private secretary Erica Powell, he admitted: ‘To be honest … what I would really like to do is to resign the presidency and to devote my time to African unity.’
In the midst of Ghana’s economic rundown, he still had the ‘generosity’ to extend loans to Guinea and spend on training guerrillas from different African countries. This commitment notwithstanding, some African leaders were hesitant to buy the urgency of his unification ideas under the suspicion that he was irrigating his ambitions for African presidency and had doubts about the viability of his speedy approach.
Moreover, other African leaders did not like the condescending arrogance with which he treated those who disagreed with him (such as Julius Nyerere).
In Ghana, the identity card of his party, Convention People’s Party (CPP), almost became an official yardstick for employment. One’s competence was secondary to party membership.
His economic mismanagement was not helped by the fact that he was not in the good books of Western powers who deemed him a wet blanket to their imperialist interests. Besides, USSR, his hitherto biggest funder and ideological ally, was sagging under the weight of the cold war.
By 1965, Ghana was virtually bankrupt! Nevertheless, his praise-singers reassured him that he was on track. A couple of assassination attempts on him heightened his paranoia. In response, he increasingly relied on a personal security service mainly recruited from his region – thus causing disharmony in the army.
On February 24, 1966, while in Beijing mediating in the Vietnam War, the army and police ousted him – obviously with Western backing. It was celebration in most parts of Ghana as his portraits were ripped apart, statues pulled down and slogans re-packaged! ‘NKRUMAH IS NOT OUR MESSIAH’.
He lived the rest of his life in Guinea where he was offered refuge by his friend Sekou Toure and consoled with an empty title of co-president. Still hoping that someday he would return to lead Ghana, he spent most of his time accordingly strategising, drawing out visions for the Ghana of his second rule and writing revolutionary books.
But even in exile, things worsened by the day! The house leaked, visitors reduced, and he was battling with cancer! But in his last speech, he was still positive that “as far as I am concerned, I am in the knowledge that, death can never extinguish the torch I have lit in Ghana and Africa”. He died on April 27, 1972.
His death wish was for his body to be embalmed and preserved. If that were impossible, he asked for his body to be cremated and the ashes to be scattered all over the African continent. But his body was only returned to Ghana in July 1972 and, contrary to his wishes, buried in his home village Nkroful.
Today, his image has been greatly rehabilitated. However, 46 years after his death, one would say that Nkrumah is only slightly less vilified than he is revered. In 2009, one of his victims, J. S. Boye Doe, who was thrown into jail without any trial at 15 years, said: ‘If I was given a bomb today and Nkrumah lived, I would throw it at him without any compunction …’
Mazrui sums it up nicely: “By a strange twist of destiny, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was both the hero who carried the torch of Pan-Africanism and the villain who started … the whole tradition of Black authoritarianism in the post-colonial era.”
Perhaps, Western sabotage notwithstanding, he became perilously consumed by an otherwise noble mission. For, like Nyerere, and unlike many African leaders today, he personally owned insignificant property.
jsssentongo@gmail.com
The author works with the Center for African Studies at Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi.