Pan-Africanist life through Nkrumah’s eyes

Kwame Nkrumah is hailed by some as the greatest African who has ever lived.

By VICTOR KALALANDA, May 27, 2021, Lusaka*

IT WOULD be a long haul, but the young African teacher, small in stature yet teeming with restless ambition, had made up his mind to pursue total personal and continental freedom—against all odds.

He was so determined that once he had set sail, not even the lure to indulge in a one-night stand with a racy girl at Las Palmas, during intermission on his voyage, could stop him.

The girl attempted to straddle herself on his knee and almost mooned over him, but this eventual father of African independence, Kwame Nkrumah, resisted her to the point of pinning her on the floor as he hurtled back to the ship.

This happened in 1935 on his way to the United States of America, the country where a combination of studies in disciplines such as sociology, economics, education, philosophy and theology would in a space of 10 years turn him into a leading activist and theorist of the African Revolution.

Forty-nine years since his death in 1972, what has become probably the single most important reminder of Nkrumah’s magnetic life and lofty dreams is the annual commemoration of Africa Day on May 25, a day he inspired into existence and marks renewed widespread interest in the economic and political unification of the entire Africa.

This year, the Africa Day celebrations centred around the African Union (AU) theme of ‘Arts, culture and heritage: Levers for building the Africa we want’, which the AU says “calls for an African cultural renaissance which is pre-eminent and that inculcates the spirit of pan-Africanism; tapping Africa’s rich heritage and culture to ensure that the creative arts are major contributors to Africa’s growth and transformation; and restoring and preserving Africa’s cultural heritage, including its languages.”

Had he been alive, it is possible that Nkrumah himself would have easily related with the call to re-awaken pan-Africanism through the use of creative arts, especially that he tried to achieve this as a writer himself through books like Africa Must Unite or Revolutionary Path, which was published after his death.

Besides Nkrumah, in fact, other African writers like Wole Soyinka and musicians like the late Fela Kuti and Hugh Masekela have through the years used their talent to inform pan-African discourse and also help Africans to appreciate their identity.

But, though pan-Africanism has increasingly been frowned upon by some as impractical and though Nkrumah never saw the continent unite as one country in fulfilment of his pan-Africanist dream, what is perhaps more important now is to start looking at pan-Africanism and African cultural renaissance in terms of Nkrumah’s own life.

Nkrumah’s contemporaries themselves criticised his dream of total African unity as something that would abrogate the individual sovereignty of nations, and sometimes they personally attacked him for what they perceived as his arrogant and messianic attitude in his attempt to lead the unification of Africa.

But with more continental cooperation being enhanced through developments like the ratification of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), aimed at enhancing intra-African trade, the pan-Africanist dream is not completely dead.

What ought to be of more concern now is whether individual Africans are emulating Nkrumah’s own achievement of personal greatness and excellence through the pursuit of pan-Africanism.

A young Nkrumah, ready to conquer the world.

In 1935, Nkrumah set out to pursue pan-Africanism in a personal and passionate manner when he wrote what is now known as his emergency letter to the University of Lincoln in the United States.

“I neither know where to begin nor where to end,” he wrote to the university, “because I feel the story of my life has not been one of achievements. Furthermore, I have not been anxious to tell people of what may have been accomplished by me. In truth, the burden of my life can be summarised into a single line in ‘The Memoriam’, quoted by Cecil Rhodes; ‘so much to do, so little done …’ In all things, I have held myself to but one ambition and that is to make necessary arrangements to continue my education in a university in the United States of America, that I may be better prepared to serve my fellowman.”

Nkrumah was fond of US President John F Kennedy. In fact, the assassinated American leader was his idol.

Such was the restlessness with which Nkrumah started changing his lot in life, long before the world heard about him in glowing terms as the Star of Ghana and as the Wonder Boy of Africa.

Nkrumah’s biographer, David Rooney, notes that Nkrumah worked at a very fast pace and expected everyone else around him to do the same, to a point were Guinea’s first president Sekou Toure said of him: “Kwame Nkrumah was one of those men who mark the destiny of mankind fighting for freedom and dignity. [He] lives and will live for ever . . . .”

Born into obscurity in an African village, Nkrumah grew up to embrace hard work and excellence at a young age, making this clear when he emerged as a brilliant student in missionary schools in Ghana and graduated from the famed Achimota College in 1930.

While at Achimota, Nkrumah met top academic leaders such as James Aggrey – widely recognised as one of the great pioneers of African education – who identified him as an emerging leader who would be instrumental in the transformation of the continent.

It was Aggrey who partly inspired Nkrumah to take up graduate studies in America, as part of general preparation for effective leadership.

Imbued with the articulation of pan-Africanism by the famous Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey in America, Nkrumah came back to Africa only for one thing – to redeem the continent from colonialism and set in motion its political and economic progress.

Such a lofty dream covering the entire Africa called for extraordinary grit and determination, which Nkrumah duly exercised, immediately establishing him like the global leader he was.

The kind of pan-Africanism that Nkrumah lived entailed setting high standards at personal and national levels, and hitting such targets very fast and very hard, with as much optimism as possible.

For this reason, he worked with both American and Chinese leaders in a bid to mobilise the support of the Western and Eastern economic blocs of the world for Africa’s advantage and progress.

Naturally, as a pioneering leader, whatever Nkrumah sought to achieve was not without error and, as such, he ended up mismanaging his country’s economy and fell out of favour with the public, leading to his deposition from power in 1966 by his country’s National Liberation Council.

Today, however, Nkrumah’s own lifestyle as a brilliant and aggressive man should be the ultimate form of pan-Africanism, which should be adopted by individual Africans in their pursuit of excellence in various fields of life.

Hailed by some as the greatest African who has ever lived, Nkrumah remains the theme of any Africa Day by default, and thus his life should form an integral part of this month’s reflection on the AU theme of “African arts, culture and heritage: Levers for building the Africa we want”.

Original copy of this article was published in the Zambia Daily Mail on the stated date*