Ghana: Kwame Nkrumah – The Unfinished Agenda March 22, 2008

Nkrumah’s unfinihsed agenda. 

Kwesi Pratt  examines  the factors which shaped Nkrumah’ s ideas, ideals and vision, the  current state of the worldwide Nkrumaist Pan African movement and the struggles which lie ahead.

 

The anti-colonial struggle in Africa, a component of the general anti-imperialist struggle, preceded the organised well focused nationalist struggle for independence in the late forties of the 20th century in Africa spearheaded by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. For example before the First World War the Aborigines Rights Protection Society made up of Fante traditional royalty foiled Britain’s attempt to seize Fante land for use by white settlers in the Gold Coast. Meanwhile Garveyism (led by Marcus Garvey, a West Indian black businessman) was gaining currency in Africa with its message “Africa to Africans”.

 

The South African Native National Congress founded in 1912; Nyasaland National Congress founded in i918; John Chilebive’s Anti-First World War Movement which protested, among other things, against the participation of Africans in the useless imperialist war, the Negritude movement in ‘France (by African Students) led by Caesaive, a African West Indian and Leopold Senghor of Senegal. Young Senegalese of Senegal and Young Dahomeans of Dahomey who challenged French socio-economic policies in their respective countries, the Mau Mau Movement led by Dedan Kimathi, the Pan-African Movement – were all examples of such organizations.

 Nkrumah and the anti-colonial struggles

As mentioned earlier an extremely important trait of the third stage of the general crisis of global capitalism was decolonization. But the decolonisation process was informed by the cumulative magnitude of socio-economic hardships and contradictions caused by the general crisis of global capitalism. Nkrumah’s vision and his long anti-imperialist struggle were shaped by these crises, a formidable weapon he used in his onslaught on colonialism.

 

In Ghana and elsewhere in Africa, during the Second World War the colonial powers intensified the exploitation of the human and natural resources of the colonies to be able to finance the war. While they demanded more raw materials from their colonies at reduced prices, they increased the prices of manufactured goods, which they exported .to the colonies.

 

Unemployment which engulfed the youth and thousands of African soldiers who returned from Burma, India and North Africa after the war was widespread. The undeveloped physical and social infrastructure more or less broke down. Misery, hunger, disease, frustration, afflicted the colonized peoples. Law and order were seriously threatened and the crime rate soared astronomically. In other words, the contradictions between the colonial forces and relations of production reached antagonistic proportions beyond repair.

 

Dr. Nkrumah, armed with the correct ideology, scientifically identified the essence of the contradictions and their related objective regularities. He understood Africa’s objective demands and exigencies of the time and mobilized the people around them. It was not his charisma, which informed his success. It was his vision derived from a scientific analysis of the world around him which was nourished by the suffering of the African masses.

 

Nkrumah’s timely intervention was an important watershed in the global anti-imperialist struggle for the following reasons: Firstly, it introduced a new dimension to Africa’s struggle against foreign domination since the pre-­colonial struggle. Secondly, Ghana’s independence opened the flood gates to decolonization of the rest of colonial Africa. Thirdly, the Nkrumah led anti-colonial struggle in Ghana constitutes a very important chapter in the struggle of all oppressed people in the world. Finally, and perhaps, most important of all, Nkrumah’s achievement record is yet to be broken in Ghana. Though lapses which certainly led to his overthrow are regrettable, they constitute a good lesson for the progressive forces in Ghana and elsewhere.

 

Nkrumah has played his part. Currently, global capitalism is having a field day. That is the correlation of class forces globally seems to be in favour of reaction. The big question is; what is the way forward? The apparent inactivity of the progressive forces in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa is not only disturbing. It is also a betrayal of the ordinary people and all that Nkrumah stood for.

 The Nkrumaist front today

Today, Nkrumaist are deeply worried about the state Nkrumaist Movement in Ghana. It has been deeply infiltrated by all manner characters who have no political and ideological commitment to what Nkrumah stood and worked for. It is no uncommon these days to hear self-proclaimed “Nkrumaists” declaring that the times have changed and we should change with the times. They openly advocate the moribund ideology of the exploiting classes under guises such as, Tony Blair’s now discredited “Third Way” and some strange concept which they refer to as “dignitarianism”.

The world in which Nkrumah lived and worked has not changed substantially. It is still dominated by the forces of imperialism and the colonised people are still the drawers of water and hewers of wood. Our natural resources are still being plundered for the benefit of the former colonial powers and their elite. The working class in the advanced capitalist economics continue to suffer the same indignity of exploitation.

 

Those who insist that Nkrumaism is no longer relevant can do the most decent thing. They should leave the Nkrumaist movement alone and join the New Patriotic Party (NPP) or any of other political clubs destined for the dustbin of history. If  Nkrumaism is no longer  relevant, then what are they doing in Nkrumaist political parties.

 

Those of us who profess Nkrumaism and defend its socialist relevance must proclaim socialism as the only option available in the struggling masses. We must recognise that what we are seeing today is history repeating itself as farce largely due to our own passivity and unprincipled and unacceptable disunity. All the issues of political leadership that Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and the CPP confronted in the 40s, 1950s and 1960s are back on today’s political agenda. The difference is that unlike that period, the critical leadership that progressive forces provided is absent and imperialism is having a field day in our country and in our continent.

 

If we correctly identify the struggles of the fifties and sixties as struggles against imperialism and all its institutions we should not be bending over backwards to appear reasonable to our exploiters and to appease the managers of his institutions ­- IMF, World Bank, so-called development partners and our local elite. We cannot continue to confine ourselves to working professionally within NGOs or academia or media in ways that actually cut us off the masses and their striving. We must engage. And we must not restrict our struggles to the moribund political party structures. Our constitution and our political parties law has been designed to emasculate the masses and promote a culture of patronage that guarantees dominance by two parties equally committed to serving foreign imperialist interests.

 

We must, like Kwame Nkrumah before us, be willing to deepen that crisis and bring things to a head in a manner that allows the masses to resume their historic role in national development and to develop once again the kind of leadership needed to transform Ghana. Today, more than ever before, it has become imperative for the progressive forces to pool their resources and harness their energies for the onslaught against all manifestation of oppression and exploitation.

 

The World today is aff1icted by hunger and disease, vicious exploitation and senseless wars. We must stand together and demonstrate that another world build on the principles of social justice, mass democracy and peace is possible. It is important to focus on the essential issues of how to end poverty and to rein domination. We must produce workable alternatives to what the dominant class in offering and show that all the peoples of the world can and must have relevant education, healthcare and improved housing. This is the task of the Nkrumaist movement.

 

Kwesi Pratt is Editor of Insight, and a commentator on pan African and Global Affairs.

Funding Political Parties – to whose benefit? March 22, 2008

In parties we trust  
Political Parties and leadership in GhanaPolitical groupings have been part of the Ghanaian political landscape since the colonial era. The anti-colonial struggle was led largely by interest groups coalescing to act on behalf of the population, even at a time when there was no entity called Ghana. Even the then Gold Coast (as Ghana was known) was hardly a cohesive entity. However, there was a recognition by the intellectuals and elite of the period that colonial rule was an aberration which had to end at some point, and took steps to hasten the defeat of colonialism in Ghana. The Aborigines Rights Protection Society was one of such groups. When the United Gold Coast Conventional (UGCC) was formed by leading activists of the anti-colonial struggle, it was in realisation that only a united “party2 could work to dislodge colonialism. The UGCC disintegrated amidst the onslaught launched by Kwame Nkrumah and his new Convention Peoples Party (CPP). The UGCC metamorphosed into several forms, leading to the National liberation Movement, (NLM). Even though this coalition now calls itself the New Patriotic Party (NPP), its ideology remains the same. Parties in Ghana are therefore the result of mass popular struggles for succession to the colonial regime, and for a wider political mobilisation for freedom from poverty and colonial racism the and its divide and rule tactics. The above summary of a complex history shows that political parties have been and remain the main avenues for political mobilisation based on ideas and leadership. What has made Ghanaian parties relevant in both the pre-colonial and post colonial times have been their independence, the fact that they represent a constituency of ideas – even if they are ethnic abased. The NPP and its predecessor parties have been largely based on the dominant Akan groups in Ghana, drawing their support from cocoa farmers, traders and lawyers. The CPP, the ‘veranda boys’ also drew their support from immigrant populations in the Ashanti region, form the north and other social groups who considered themselves well enough and were therefore opposed to the ‘socialist’ policies of the CPP and Kwame Nkrumah. None of the above descriptions will apply to these parties today, as the NPP has become national, and some sections are beginning to reject the socialist foundations of the CPP. Their relevance is underscored by the fact that they exist to capture power for the groups they represent, and that has been their mainstay, even when the military has seized power, they survive, and live in the hope that they would return one day to capture power. Ghanaian parties are therefore social institutions and legitimising agents of political process and interest group networks who also promote a certain economic and political philosophy. That is the main difference between the Kwame Nkrumah family or Nkrumaists, and the Busia/Danquah  fraternity. Unlike other countries, parties in Ghana have institutional history and social roots. These parties have successfully built a committed cadre of leaders within a democratic process, no matter how flawed it may be, to represent their interests. The recent presidential aspirants nominations of the main arties – the NPP< CPP and NDC produced an impressive list of candidates, a process which was judged by most Ghanaians to be democratic. In Ghana, political parties are socio-political institutions that people recognise as their own, and therefore represent their interests. Parties remain the main interface between them and the state. Peoples see themselves as CPP, NPP, NDC (National Democratic Congress) and so on. During and after elections, parties become the main legitimising agents of government. Political parties are also primary legitimizing agents of the government and governing systems of the state. The social function and legitimizing role of political parties are under unprecedented strain. In Ghana, the process of the process of decolonisation was led by a conscious group of politicians who ensured the emergence of a people led, cohesive and democratic systems of governance under the leadership of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. The seeds for a viable multiparty democratic system was sown. The claims that the absence of a so-called “vibrant middle class” makes political parties less viable as vehicles of democracy is not supported by Ghana’s example.  To what extent do these parties or political institutions promote democracy? Undoubtedly, political parties remain the most crucial instruments for sustaining and promoting multi party democracy. But single party states can and do also promote democracy. In this case, I refer to the one party rules of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. In the case of Ghana, a vibrant multiparty system, with multiple ideological and identity base helped to sustain, strengthen and underpin our brand of democracy, in the time of Kwame Nkrumah and recently, under the post military era. The CPP party of the left, and the NPP, a party with right wing liberal ideology, have contributed to making Ghana a viable multi party democracy. The Achilles heels of governance? In spite of this impressive record, parties in Ghana risk undermining their own role. The  increasing display of wealth and the use of financial inducements to attract votes during the recent NPP presidential aspirants contest was stomach churning and deeply offensive the ordinary supporters of the party. It created that impression that these parties are led by career politicians with a single point agenda of winning state power with all the privileges that come with it. This trend is not Ghana specific, even in the land of the ‘mothers of democracies’ (the UK), this trend is becoming the norm, as for the USA, politics will not be interesting without the millions of dollars they spend on getting themselves elected, and therefore beholden to vested interests. If parliamentary democracy is the route to accountability, democracy and a people based political system, parties remain the engine for this vehicle. As Akyaaba Addai-Sebo wrote in an essay recently, “national interest demands that leaders of political parties must also be representative voices in parliament. Experience is the best teacher as parliament becomes a veritable testing ground to mould statespersons widely respected for integrity and impartial concern for the public good. Leading politicians, especially party leaders, would serve their parties and the nation better through the platform that parliament presents. Parliament enjoins discipline – that efficiency of purpose.” Addai-Sebo continues: “political parties therefore have a duty to first think about what is best for Ghana and put forward candidates who through responsible service have proved that they can represent the national interest. In order to deepen representative governance presidential candidates must have had the experience of serving the needs and protecting the rights of their constituencies. They must really have a record of providing for the needs and meeting the aspirations of the people either at the constituency or national level through exemplary performance in public and/or private sector service. … Political parties consequently owe such a duty to the nation in the selection of candidates for national office.” If political parties are to oil this engine and provide parliamentary democracy with the human resources, it is important that the instruments for achieving this are not undermined by desk-bound academics and civil society activists who do not dare to take up the challenge. Civil society has a role, but it cannot replace political parties, and should not seek to undermine the legitimacy of political parties by their constant whining and headline grabbing antics.  Political parties should not also undermine their own role. If citizens are to trust their parties, they should be seen to be open and accountable. I do not think that foreign organisations should pay parties to play their role as is being proposed. Parties have existed in the past through membership contributions, making them accountable. If parties are funded by foreign non governmental organizations, they cease to be accountable to their own people. They become beholden to some foreign interest as they are forced to open their books for inspection, and will spend time writing “project reports” for their foreign funders. Foreign funding of groups who are likely to rule Ghana should not be encouraged. It undermines national sovereignty.  As Africa tooters towards finding our own brand of democracy, it is important to build institutions. Parliaments represent the people, but there can be no parliaments without political parties to provide the candidates and the wherewithal. But parties and those who represent them, should promote and protect national sovereignty, not undermine it by behaving like charities. Parties are not charities. Those foreign organisations fronting this policy of paying parties should be resisted and banned from doing so by parliament. Zaya Yeebo 

How the Aid Industry Promotes Poverty June 8, 2007

 A  new book, “The White man’s Burden” by professor of Economics at New York University, and a former employee of the World Bank argues that international development aid has become part of the problem of global poverty and not the solution. Care International, one of the global leaders of the aid industry, has also released a report, ‘Living on the Edge of Emergency — An Agenda for Change’ which also argues that “More than 120-million Africans face starvation because much of the £3-billion ($5,6-billion) in aid spent each year to help them is wasted.”  According to Care International, “aid arrives too late, is targeted at the wrong things and is usually only a short term measure that doesn’t tackle the root cause of hunger…It is a disgrace that money is still given too late and for such short periods, then spent on the wrong things to truly fight emergencies … There is no excuse, when by spending money more intelligently, we can bring an end to all but the most unpredictable food crises” said Geoffrey Dennis, CARE’s chief executive.  The statistics are quite disturbing. In the last 50 years, more than $2.3 trillion has been spent as development aid. So why are African children dying for lack of medicine costing less than $2?  There are those who insist that contrary to the facts, history is not the cause of our poverty, but I am not one of them. Colonialism, neo-colonialism and now, globalisation, are the causes of this disturbing trend. The problem is that any attempts to take an independent path, free of this aid strings that tie us into other people cesspits, is always frowned upon by our new crop of leaders, and sabotaged by the international system led by the United States.   Why has aid not helped to transform African economies? Why is it that the more aid a country gets, the more impoverished the people become. I ask these questions as someone which has worked in the aid industry for over 30 years. My first job after my post graduate studies was at the Upper Regional Agricultural Development Programme (URADEP), a World Bank-DFID programme for farmers in the Upper east region. Does anybody in the region remember FASCOM? In essence, we go back to the question posed by William Easterly in his book: that, “the West’s efforts to aid have done so much ill and so little good.” He gives examples like the Millennium Development Goals  (MDGs) whose stated goal is to halve word poverty by 2015.  However, his conclusions, are as porous as his attempts to be radical. It is true that the aid industry is full of grandiose policies and costly, and sometimes ineffectual  campaigns like the MDGs, but what do they actually achieve? One of such western liberal projects is the Millennium Villages idea. What does this mean? In essence, what  some western practitioners do is to plagiarise African initiatives, redress them in grandiose terms, sell them to donors, and make them sound as though this will solve the world’s problems. In the end, they don’t. Western NGOs, like their state-led development organisations,   refuse to learn from their mistakes. Donor-led initiatives have a very short life span – they begin and end with donor money. When the funding comes to an end, the project dies with it. Secondly, in the last 20 years in Africa, development aid has been limited to workshops, workshops and workshops, led by the new NGO elites. Most of this has no practical relevance to poverty reduction. African NGOs are not blame. The priorities for aid and donor support are set in Washington, London, The Hague, and other western capitals. Africans are only invited to consultation meetings where what is discussed hardly features in the final reports. This is because aid is tied to the foreign policy interests of western donor nations.   Organisations which call themselves non-governmental, receive more than 80%of their funding from the state: UK government, the US State Department, or the Danish Foreign Ministry, etc, etc. So even though some western NGOs may pretend to be ‘non-governmental’, they are governmental in practice. The Oxfams, Care International, International Rescue Committees, etc, etc, are closer to their governments than most African NGOs will ever be. Yet, I have been in meetings where African NGOs are derided and patronised by the their international counterparts because these African NGOs are supposedly close to their governments. At any rate, what is wrong with being close to a government? Look at the priorities of most donor organisations, and you will not fail to notice that building schools, health centres, day care centres,  or social centres do not top the list of their priorities. Since September 11, US aid has tended to favour organisations working to eliminate ‘terrorism’, but what about the causes of terrorism? What this implies is that western donors have the money, and they together with their cohorts, dictate how this money is spent. Governments such as that of the NPP follow suit, and behave as though poverty is not the reason why they sign the Millennium Challenge Accounts. If this is the case, northern Ghana will receive more than 60%of this grant, but what has happened?    

Scramble for Africa June 8, 2007

 Africa has once again become the theatre of struggle between the various world powers. How different is this from the scramble  for Africa in the 19^th-century? Africa has once again become a vital strategic arena for contest between the great powers – the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, and to a lesser extent, India. This has once again raised the spectre of Africa becoming a proxy for other peoples wars and conflicts. In the era of the cold war, Africa became the theatre for conflict between the communists regimes of the east led by the Soviet Union and, and the capitalist regimes of the West led by the United States. How beneficial is this to the long suffering people of Africa? The doubting Thomas’s in Africa will see this as a red herring. They will argue that Africa has nothing to attract the supper powers.  In fact some academics in the US have argued that they do not need Africa. They were wrong. Africa is home to very strategic minerals, and has some of the largest deposits of these natural resources: timber, diamonds, gold, bauxite, and coltan. Of all these oil stands out as the most well known natural resource for which countries like the United States will go to war for. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is about oil. Nothing more.  Oil has become so important that there is intense competition between states and western multi nationals to  secure access to this important resource. According to the UN World Investment Report, foreign direct investment (FDI) flows are concentrated in oil, mining and gas. Eights of the world’s oil producing countries are in Africa: Nigeria, Sudan, Algeria, Chad, Egypt and Equatorial Guinea, Congo-Braziville and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Sudan and Nigeria alone attracted 48% of  Africa’s investment flows.  The United States, ever the highest oil consuming nation, has said it will protect its interests to ensure that oil flow is not interrupted. The US is therefore intersected in Africa for this reason. It needs an alternative to the problematic areas of the Middle East, where US hegemony is under threat from anti-occupation forces in Iraq, and radical regimes in Iran and elsewhere. In Latin America, the US is facing similar problems from the radical Chavez regime in Venezuela. As its problems mount, the US is turning to Africa. At the moment, West Africa supplies 12% of the crude oil needs of the US. America’s own national intelligence Council predicts that this will rise to 25% by 2015. How can America protect its oil source? Apart from the US, France the United kingdom are also increasing their investments in Africa. France has huge investments in Francophone countries such as Gabon, Cameroon and Chad. while the UK also supports its former  colonies.  Apart form oil, Africa exports timber to Europe and china. The American forest and paper Association estimates that. Ghana is a major exporter of timber. Liberia, Cameroon, and Gabon are also on the list as major exporters of timber.   Military basesElsewhere in this edition, we carry an analysis of the concerns expressed by some Ghanaians that the US is planning a military base in Ghana. Both the US and the Ghanaian governments have denied this. But credible evidence points to the fact that is the US is to secure its interest in West Africa, it will need a military base. In February 2007, the US set up an African Command (Africom). The US has established bases and signed access agreements with 5 African countries, including Ghana, Gabon, Senegal, Mali and Namibia.