fools like this Frances Kwarteng are the loud mouthed propagandists ubiquitous in NDC and CPP who are holding Ghana's development at bay.
fools like this Frances Kwarteng are the loud mouthed propagandists ubiquitous in NDC and CPP who are holding Ghana's development at bay.
Prof Lungu 8 years ago
Mensah,
Since you mention the NDC and the CPP, is it, therefore, your position that it is wiseacres like you who are pumping up the NPP and every other political party, and pushing out from bay the Ghana development?
Mensah,
Since you mention the NDC and the CPP, is it, therefore, your position that it is wiseacres like you who are pumping up the NPP and every other political party, and pushing out from bay the Ghana development?
Amuzu 8 years ago
Almost all Ghanaweb idiot have met again this morning, namely, kwarteng, Lungu, Kojo T one of them will start the idiotism and the rest will sharply follow. I am only looking forward to see their opposition leader Baidoo.
Almost all Ghanaweb idiot have met again this morning, namely, kwarteng, Lungu, Kojo T one of them will start the idiotism and the rest will sharply follow. I am only looking forward to see their opposition leader Baidoo.
Amuzu 8 years ago
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Amuzu 8 years ago
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Amuzu 8 years ago
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Amuzu 8 years ago
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Amuzu 8 years ago
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Amuzu 8 years ago
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Amuzu 8 years ago
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Mahmoud 8 years ago
The truth is that, Nkrumah's ideas were not suitable for growing the economy since the communist system lacks mechanisms and incentives that release energies of the people to create wealth. He, therefore, met a rich and confi ... read full comment
The truth is that, Nkrumah's ideas were not suitable for growing the economy since the communist system lacks mechanisms and incentives that release energies of the people to create wealth. He, therefore, met a rich and confident country with huge potentials but left it nearly bankrupt in some few years as a result of gross communist mismanagement and dictatorship.
Constable Joy 8 years ago
WHAT ABOUT COMMUNIST CHINA?
WHAT ABOUT COMMUNIST CHINA?
Kojo T 8 years ago
NPP wanted Free SHS , NDC and CPP implemented it .There are many commonalities in all that differ from free market The problem is those of you who just insult instead of coming with suggestions. Development comes from ideas ... read full comment
NPP wanted Free SHS , NDC and CPP implemented it .There are many commonalities in all that differ from free market The problem is those of you who just insult instead of coming with suggestions. Development comes from ideas Do you think Bill Gates made money through insults?
Constable Joy 8 years ago
MENSAH,YOU HAVE NO TICKET TO RIDE ON THIS BUS.PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY(UP/NPP) IS PURELY CAPITALISTIC THEFT AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.NEO-ELITE/RICH VERSUS HAVE NOTS.
MENSAH,YOU HAVE NO TICKET TO RIDE ON THIS BUS.PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY(UP/NPP) IS PURELY CAPITALISTIC THEFT AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.NEO-ELITE/RICH VERSUS HAVE NOTS.
Constable Joy 8 years ago
MENSAH,YOU HAVE NO TICKET TO RIDE ON THIS BUS.PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY(UP/NPP) IS PURELY CAPITALISTIC THEFT AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.NEO-ELITE/RICH VERSUS HAVE NOTS.
MENSAH,YOU HAVE NO TICKET TO RIDE ON THIS BUS.PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY(UP/NPP) IS PURELY CAPITALISTIC THEFT AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.NEO-ELITE/RICH VERSUS HAVE NOTS.
Prof Lungu 8 years ago
1. Adongo Aidan Avugma makes some good points concerning the antecedents of "tribalism" in Ghana/colonial Africa in this 2000 essay.
The crucial point to note is, the slavery that existed after the arrival of the Dutch o ... read full comment
1. Adongo Aidan Avugma makes some good points concerning the antecedents of "tribalism" in Ghana/colonial Africa in this 2000 essay.
The crucial point to note is, the slavery that existed after the arrival of the Dutch on the Gold Coast was a far more insidious kind. It was industrial in character, cruel in temperament, and of far more significance to the trajectory of human history after Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492.
To the later day Columbus-capitalist-and-colonizer, all Africans, by virtue of their skin color and place of birth, were not human beings!
2. We do not agree with Adongo Aidan Avugma's conclusion with respect to the best way to tame tribalism. It is our position that Unitary policy championed by Kwame Nkrumah has been sufficiently strong enough to hold Ghana together. Economics or private enterprise had little to do with that success. Markets, after all, do not have a moral compass. Rather, it is government that must regulate markets to ensure they serve the Unitary State. Nkrumah's programs sufficiently ameliorated the power of capitalism and elitism, including the power of the traditional authorities.
3. As such the concluding observations by Francis Kwarteng are right on point!
What says you, Ghanaweb?
Prof Lungu 8 years ago
Wonders!
Why, we must ask, did Margaret Thatcher not allow Baidoo-Free-Market-Capitalism solve her IRA problem?
THIS ACCORDING TO BAIDOO...
Socialism Is The Life Blood Of Ghanaian Tribalism, according to Phillip Ko ... read full comment
Wonders!
Why, we must ask, did Margaret Thatcher not allow Baidoo-Free-Market-Capitalism solve her IRA problem?
THIS ACCORDING TO BAIDOO...
Socialism Is The Life Blood Of Ghanaian Tribalism, according to Phillip Kobina Baidoo!
READ: "...Currently, will any Ghanaian care a damn about who rules if that person delivers the best opportunities available. Not a single soul will care a hook even if it is a monkey..."
WE SAY: Sure, people who think like monkeys and baboons will not care. People who pretend that markets will fix everything for mankind will not care. People who think that free enterprise will vanquish Tribalism and Racism automatically, will not care.
Those are monkey/baboon thoughts!
But the wise, the prudent, and those who care for posterity will care. These include people who care about the incidence of externalities uncompensated by the so-called free market. It includes people who care about finite/diminishing natural resources. It includes people who know differential access to power and national wealth have significance for governance, freedom, and justice, for all.
ITEM: It was government that created and funded the Tuskegee Airmen, and allowed African-Americans a small window to thrive.
While a few whites may have been interested in saving their sorry behinds, the Tuskegee Airmen never relented in ensuring the power of government (federal) was used to uplift even more African Americans, notwithstanding resistance by state/local governments.
They did that, during and after!
That is why there was a Martin Luther King!
That is why there was a Kwame Nkrumah - who banished tribalism in Ghana with his Unitary Nation platform!
That is why there was American Great, Mr. Julian Bond!
ITEM: May the memory of Julian Bond be blessed for posterity. May it serve wise Africans who understand that capitalism and the market truly have no moral compass, that there will always be an important role for government in the lives of all the People.
RIP Julian Bond!
amanfo 8 years ago
Dear Kwarteng,its a nice piece of reproduction. Thank you but, the problem is, the masses are being exploited because of ignorance by these pure modern day neo imperialists who are fortunately one of our own kind. Is there an ... read full comment
Dear Kwarteng,its a nice piece of reproduction. Thank you but, the problem is, the masses are being exploited because of ignorance by these pure modern day neo imperialists who are fortunately one of our own kind. Is there any reason they are struggling to keep the ignorance level as high as they can by destroying the various educational structures and curriculumn put in place by Osagyefo Nkrumah that can savage the growing population? The more we remain ignorant, the better the exploitation and manipulations. Its very sad but, the tools left behind by the colonialists are being used today to perpetuate the worst form of injustices by the ruling class. When the people are awake, the absurd exploitation cease and their kingdom crushes without notice. Its hard time we give common sense a chance and rid ourselves of this psychological trauma that's eating the greater part of the African Masses. Thank you
Kwame 8 years ago
Kwarteng the person who quoted use dialectics to make the comparison between socialism and neocolonialism, which Kwame Nkrumah wrote in his thesis with the same heading "Neocolonialism The Last Stage of Imperialism" which is ... read full comment
Kwarteng the person who quoted use dialectics to make the comparison between socialism and neocolonialism, which Kwame Nkrumah wrote in his thesis with the same heading "Neocolonialism The Last Stage of Imperialism" which is colonialism in disguise. In dialectics we shall say that you imply that you prefer neocolonialism only if the neocolonialist have a mixed economy in his country.
It even looks like you are telling us that you are wiser than the 99% of the population in Western Europe and U.S. who demonstrated against capitalism in 2011.
Socialism make the economies of countries that adopt it to grow at a fast rate. The example is that Russia was 18 economy in Europe in 1917. When that country adopted socialist economy in November 1917 by 1930 it was the third economy in Europe. In the terms of technological development she overtook all the European nations. By the end of the second world war the Soviet Union as well overtook U.S. in terms of technological and human resources development. The Soviet Union unlike the imperialist countries was not involved in neocolonial activities like the imperialist countries around the world, including the overthrow of governments which are not her dolls, she just did not have a doll to manipulate.
China and India got their independence the same year. India's independence was through a pacific means. China first have to fight the Japanese, U.S. and her allies, as well as Chiang Kai-Shek to become independent. China's socioeconomic development, as well as human resources development is far ahead of India because of her state ownership of the major means of production and distribution. China has also been able to do away with the caste system because of socialism. Imagine a mixed economy which still have an ancient rotten socioeconomic system like that of India which has not enable her to develop like China.
Let us also look at Cuba in the Caribbean and compare her with her neighbours with neo-colonial capitalist socioeconomic system like Jamaica or Haiti. In the aspect of education even U.S. postgraduate medical students go to Cuba to study, and that excellent educational system was not as a result of some mixed economy, but state capitalism.
After the perestroika in Russia that country's economy did not developed because her mixed economy was according to her Western European neigbours to exist on the production of raw materials for export and an industrial Russia is seen to be undemocratic and autocratic. The new Artamanovs who took over the state sector and privatize it rather than keeping their profits inside Russia took it abroad. There was also no employment for the vast majority of the population that immigrated into Western Europe. By 2007 some towns in Eastern European countries do not have able bodied population, and the children they left behind were at the mercy of drug barons. That is the picture of the mixed economies in Eastern Europe after perestrioka in 1991, the yellow, velvet revolution and the latest is that Western Europe including the Scadinavian, thus it was blooded.
The real problem between Russia and the west today is that Russia has taken commanding control of her economy, by taking state owned enterprises that were sold to her nationals, who in tern rob her together with the tax they are to pay to the state and took all that to the west.
The irony in your preference for the Scandinavian type of socioeconomic system is that those countries have not dropped their imperialist policies towards Africa and which countries are Africans who are to practice your mixed economy going to colonize, exploit their natural resources and even dictate to them how to labour and manage their economies. Dr. Kwateng to put it short in the words of Karl Marx you lost the argument even before you started it.
KWAKU ANANSE 8 years ago
IF SOCIALISM MAKES ECONOMIES GROW FASTER, WHY DON'T THE THOUSANDS OF MIGRANTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA NOT GOING TO RUSSIA, CUBA AND NORTH KOREA?????????? THE SWEETNESS OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING!!!!!!!! ALL YOU S ... read full comment
IF SOCIALISM MAKES ECONOMIES GROW FASTER, WHY DON'T THE THOUSANDS OF MIGRANTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA NOT GOING TO RUSSIA, CUBA AND NORTH KOREA?????????? THE SWEETNESS OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING!!!!!!!! ALL YOU SOCIALISM ROMANTICISTS ARE JUST FUNNY. BY YOUR ANALYSIS, SOCIALISM GROWS ECONOMIES FASTER, SO FRANCIS KWARTENG, KOJO T AND PROF. LUNGU SHOULD LEAVE THE WEST SETTLE IN RUSSIA, CUBA AND NORTH KOREA.
Nii Teiko 8 years ago
You said it all. The Russian , the Chinese and, in fact, all the communist/socialist leaning countries are seeking refuge in the capitalist USA in their numbers. What is interesting to note here that Kwarteng, Lungu and all n ... read full comment
You said it all. The Russian , the Chinese and, in fact, all the communist/socialist leaning countries are seeking refuge in the capitalist USA in their numbers. What is interesting to note here that Kwarteng, Lungu and all noise making rubble rousers are in the USA. The have the liberty to bite the hands that feed them without any reprisal from their benefactors. Who can go to china or Russia and critique their system of governance and live? Imagine Michael Moore of the twin tower bombing fame did what he did in Russia. Thank God he is still enjoying the loving care of capitalism, and so do the traitors Kwarteng and Lungu, in the States. All socialist leaning nations are selfish and don't share their spoil with strangers. This is a fact. They are racist to the core
Kwame 8 years ago
Kwaku Ananse the communist do not advocate regime change to deprive people of their labour in their countries of origin, create refuges that they can use for all sorts of business including he drug trade, also train them to c ... read full comment
Kwaku Ananse the communist do not advocate regime change to deprive people of their labour in their countries of origin, create refuges that they can use for all sorts of business including he drug trade, also train them to cause the economic collapse of other countries.
sojourner in usa 8 years ago
This article expresses the importance of Kwame Nkrumah as the first president, coming from a minute tribe of Nzima to bridge the differences among the Ghanaian cultural, tribal groups, by eradicating the covetous colonialism ... read full comment
This article expresses the importance of Kwame Nkrumah as the first president, coming from a minute tribe of Nzima to bridge the differences among the Ghanaian cultural, tribal groups, by eradicating the covetous colonialism control of Ghana, as a matter of fact Africa in general for a better understandings for proper governing of Africa countries for all of the people.
To attain his goals, he has to placed his feet on the ground not to be pushed away by saboteurs, traitors, civilised logics for the common good of the societies, distributing social amenities to where it is needed for the overall good of the people. Different situations demands different solutions, as even, in the so call advanced countries apply in their journys to their defined freedoms. Let's open our minds and thoughts to what we hear and see. It might not be applicable to us de Afrikikos.
G. K. Berko 8 years ago
If the most enticing System now is the "Mixed Economy", which I have always appealed to our Leaders to take seriously, why would we have to give exceptional deference to Socialism?
Wouldn't such an approach simply harden ... read full comment
If the most enticing System now is the "Mixed Economy", which I have always appealed to our Leaders to take seriously, why would we have to give exceptional deference to Socialism?
Wouldn't such an approach simply harden those obsessed with Capitalism to resist any such shift to a Mixed Economy? Either way, we seem to refute the very obvious hypocrisy from both sides.
The Soviet Union and China are practicing more Capitalism in their System than ever before. But all would like to maintain to the World a farcical front of remaining Communist or Socialist. Similarly, the West, especially, the USA, Britain, Germany and France, have deepened their Socialist programs, from Family living Assistance to Health and Education, and even to Businesses. Yet, these Western Countries would have the World believe they practice no Socialism at all.
Those of us in the Developing Countries, like Ghana, should have by now learnt that these are all Political posturing to keep face, and claim being the winner, or unfazed by the attitude of the opponent, in the Cold War. And we do not have to stringently adhere to the directives of any one side of that War to prove our Political alliance.
Surely, it takes such an elucidation on the evils of Capitalism to appeal to the Constructors of our Systems to work harder for a better alternative. However, we can't ignore the evils of outright Socialism and Communism either.
So, in order for us to initiate and deepen our focus on an appropriate Mix of Capitalism and Socialism for the Mixed Economy that best suits us at any point in our History, we ought line up the positives and negatives of both outright Capitalism, in fact, the Laiser-Faire Concepts, and outright Socialism, especially its extreme in the Communist package on the same page for the masses to have the appropriate information at one spot to best understand and appreciate the need for a Mixed Economy.
As I have long been advocating for, a Mixed Economy for Ghana, and for that matter any other Nation that would want to minimize the evils of both Capitalism and Socialism, and take full advantage of the positives of both Systems, must recognize that the component proportions of each System adopted in the Mixed Economy would not have to remain the same forever but be malleably adjusted to reflect the specific Economic and Social factors prevailing in the Country at any particular period.
Such a Mixed Economy would thus have to be tagged with a periodic schedule for critical assessment as to whether to adjust the level of the Socialist or the Capitalist component up or down.
For example, given how deep our poverty level is today, and volatile our inflationary rates are in this period, we could have a Mixed Economy that would have more attention on providing graduated State assistance to folks in Education and Health based upon their family incomes.
As the Society becomes more affluent over time, the System could be adjusted to decrease what level of Education, say, should receive Government subvention, and how much. We could, for example, ensure all students have free, and adequate financial assistance to attain their first Degree, if they choose to pursue that much Education, and require that they partly foot the bill for their Master's Degree or PhD., thereafter, especially, in areas of Study where the Second and higher Degrees are not required for occupational placement.
That would imply that folks choosing to spend more time to study to become Doctors, Pharmacists and similar professionals who can only function after gaining their second and higher Degrees would have the necessary exemption of receiving State Assistance till completion of their Courses.
Meanwhile, the National Service could be tuned to reflect what the Students received from the State to accomplish their Academic goals.
Another example of how periodic adjustments in a Mixed Economy could be implemented is in the situation of consolidating our Agricultural contribution to the Economy where State-provided Technological Services would be offered to Farmers in various productions to boost their productivity and attain a certain level of affluence, after which they would have to begin graduated payment of such Services, based on their income level and cost of production.
Since hardly any one Farmer could acquire a Combine Harvester, for example, to harvest his or her crops, or an automated Planter to plant the seedlings in a large field, we could have programs that would let the State Agricultural Extension facilities acquire those Equipment and schedule them to serve the needs of the individual Farmers freely or at a minimal fee, also based upon their lot size and income levels.
To further streamline and lighten the burden on the Government, formation of Cooperatives could be much encouraged as in the Mondragon experience in Spain to sustain any such Socialized Agricultural assistance.
In the Technological arena, lessons could be imbibed from the experience of Japan, Singapore and other places where the State has always been present in the midst of private Enterprise to facilitate the development of Capitalist goals of the individual entities.
We should be bold enough to defend any such Government assistance in our private Sector when our Trading partners abroad, especially in the West, complain about unfair Government Subsidies for our Firms that might suggest any unfair competition against them.
This is because the Western Nations have long practiced similar Socialized facilitation for their Agricultural and Technological Entrepreneurs under various programs, while intimidating the Developing Nations to desist from similar assistance to their own.
The USA, as has now been widely known, gives Millions of Dollars to Farmers to either produce or not produce certain Crops in certain areas of the Country so as to manage the level of exports and incomes to Farmers for profit.
All these mechanisms to employ in setting the right levels of Socialism and Capitalism in a Mixed Economy at any period would need the continued dedicated, lifelong, and expert advice from our Economic and Technical Experts, who would not use Political ideologies to scuttle the obvious best goals for the Nation.
The contest for National and International recognition of our Experts and Academicians would have to be in their devise of best working Solutions for every specific problem, not just in bellowing and ranting unflinching adherence to a particular ideology or Economic System.
The levels of some, if not all, of our Natural Resources would vacillate. Those that do not regenerate would surely exhaust one day, and those that regenerate would do only if we attended to them properly. Hence, we may not have the same level of Natural Resources to derive some of our Financial support for building the Nation and helping to provide the various State assistance we may have established.
Therefore, the periodic assessment of the levels of these Resources and how we treat them would have to be made to see how much revenue we would obtain from their harnessing to partly fund our Developmental programs of which those Social ones are part. If we are running short over a period and no alternative source of that Funding is readily available, the Government of the day must hold the necessary consultative discussions to educate the People and reduce the level of Socialist programs in the Mixed Economy.
We must never box ourselves in some rigidly held extreme Economic Model. And if our Constitution could enshrine that principle, then our Politics would all be about meritorious production of ideas to always maintain the best mix of Capitalism and Socialism for an optimum comfort for all, without placing restrictions on how much wealth any individual could work for.
Long Live Ghana!!!
YAW 8 years ago
"There are circumstances in which the import of foreign capital is of benefit to the importing country, especially in the case of the emerging developing country where large-scale sources of capital accumulation is small and ... read full comment
"There are circumstances in which the import of foreign capital is of benefit to the importing country, especially in the case of the emerging developing country where large-scale sources of capital accumulation is small and not so easy to mobilise. Foreign capital is thus useful and helpful if it takes the form of a loan or a credit to enable the borrowing country to buy what it needs from whatever sources it likes, and at the same time to retain the control of the assets to be developed?
"One of the worst things that can happen to less-developed and emerging countries is to receive foreign aid with political and economic strings attached.
“These aids are very often wrapped up in financial terms that are not easily discernible.
"Foreign investment made in an emerging and developing country by a foreign company in order that such company can make a profit, has nothing to do with aid. This does not mean that a developing country may not find it advantageous to make a contract with a foreign company for the setting up of, say, a factory or an industry."
"Real aid is something quite different. It consists of direct gifts or loans that are given on favourable terms and without strings attached."
"The problem therefore is how to obtain capital investment and still keep it under sufficient control to prevent undue exploitation and how to preserve integrity and sovereignty without crippling economic or political ties to any country, block or system. In other words, can state enterprise and private enterprise co-exist in a less-developed country? I say yes, provided they both conform to the general framework of the overall plan made by the State."
As I have said earlier, our ideas of socialism can co-exist with private enterprise. I also believe that private capital and private investment capital, in particular, has a recognised and legitimate part to play in Ghana’s economic development. We are consistent in these ideas. I have never made any secrets of my faith in socialist principles, but I have always tried to make it quite clear that Ghana’s socialism is not incompatible with the existence and growth of a vigorous private sector in the economy.
Gentlemen, I need hardly say that Ghana expects you — indeed, Ghana invites you — businessmen, industrialists, bankers, manufactures and investors, to play a significant role in this economic growth and development.
Let me end by saying — and I say this with emphasis and sincerity that those of you who will be investing in Ghana will be investing in a very stable country; a country united; a country determined to make progress; a country determined to industrialise; a country determined to mechanise and diversify its agriculture; a country dynamic and honest in its intentions and consistent in its policies.
Look around the country for yourselves. Invite your business friends to come here and see with their own eyes the happy atmosphere pervading everything we do; the stability we rightly boast of; the buoyancy of our economy and the happy relationships existing among all races who live here. There can be no better assurance to investors than these. Tell them not to be taken in by the mischief of a section of the press in Europe and America.
And now, Gentlemen, let us stand and drink a toast to the progress and prosperity of trade and industry in Ghana.
Kwamebeba 8 years ago
These are some aspects of Nkrumaism that the selfish neo-colonialists are against. Nkrumaism is strictly a mixed economy. what deters people from Nkrumaism is that, it is fair, beneficial to all participants and tackles the ... read full comment
These are some aspects of Nkrumaism that the selfish neo-colonialists are against. Nkrumaism is strictly a mixed economy. what deters people from Nkrumaism is that, it is fair, beneficial to all participants and tackles the bull by the horns without lies and intrigues. Nkrumaism is right to claim that" Foreign capital is thus useful and helpful if it takes the form of a loan or a credit to enable the borrowing country to buy what it needs from whatever sources it likes, and at the same time to retain the control of the assets to be developed." In essence, Nkrumaism deals with facts and reality and is neither communism, socialism nor capitalism except what is good for the welfare of Africans. Nkrumaism accepts foreign investment and repatriation of profits but at the same time insists on reinvestment of part of profits in the place of investment. That is fair. Why don't Ghanaians back such a system but rather fight against it in the name of selfishness?
G. K. Berko 8 years ago
Yaw, I wish you could produce this Speech more broadly with its sources so that all those who hate Nkrumah for the fact that he declared himself a Socialist would be educated to concede the man never rejected Capitalism outri ... read full comment
Yaw, I wish you could produce this Speech more broadly with its sources so that all those who hate Nkrumah for the fact that he declared himself a Socialist would be educated to concede the man never rejected Capitalism outright, nor disbarred foreigners from participating in our system as we have been intentionally misinformed.
Just yesterday, I watched Documentary videos of the emergence and fall of some of Africa's beloved leaders, including Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya, and Lumumba. And I could not help wiping tears from my eyes, given the exposure of the deliberate machinations to undermine these leaders by outside Powers and their local stooges.
Lumumba's was the most tragic, as I sat listening to the confessions of the criminal Belgian and US Agents that plotted to eliminate him right from the very beginning for virtually nothing he had done to hurt anyone, or any Nation at all.
I heard one of his white Belgian murderous operatives claim that he had no remorse for Lumumba's murder because the latter had insulted their King, Leopold. I could not believe that!
Then, came in the CIA who out of nothing more than sheer chicken paranoia, assumed Lumumba was going to align his country with the Soviets, and that alone justified their help for his elimination. Meanwhile, the invitation of the Soviets to the Congo, was done by the UN with the explicit acquiescence of the USA.
The most worrying aspect of the episode is the fact that USA was the first outside Country that Lumumba extended his hands for friendship and invitation to help develop his country. He even traveled there to meet with the Leaders of USA, but as the documentary showed, he was shunned by the Eisenhower Administration, some of whose Officials shared pejorative description of Lumumba with their Belgian accomplices, as the 'Bush Prime Minister'.
I was even shocked by the Code names these collaborating killers of Lumumba had given to him and Tshombe, their designated Congolese hit leader, in the process. They called Tshombe, the 'Jew', and Lumumba, the 'Satan'. When asked why they chose those code names, the Belgian Agent said they thought Tshombe as a 'Jew' because he was into money both as an Accountant and as lover of Wealth. And Lumumba, they thought had eyes that were as red as the 'Satan's'. How puerile and farcically moralistic and racist!!
It is no wonder contemporary Western Governments would rather not have the Public see such videos. Because they expose the heinous mindset of these imperialist evils of their past.
Let us boldly concede the faults of our leaders. But don't let us easily accept the lies some of their opponents heaped upon them to discredit them and justify their untimely overthrow.
Such positive truths about them as in this Speech must get traction and be viral to show who they really were, patriotic Citizens with strong nationalist views, not monsters.
Long Live Ghana!!!
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Brother Berko,
Lumumba's criticism of the Belgian King had to do with the King's treatment of Congolese which historian Adam Hochschild painstakingly describes in his book "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terr ... read full comment
Dear Brother Berko,
Lumumba's criticism of the Belgian King had to do with the King's treatment of Congolese which historian Adam Hochschild painstakingly describes in his book "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Africa."
The Belgian slaughtered 10 million Congolese (according to Hochschild's conservative estimate as a result for the capitlist demand for rubber). That said, author Ludo De Witte reveals a lot about Lumumba and his assassination in the book "The Assassination of Lumumba."
There is more I have learned from this book than all the documentaries on Lumumba I have watched. The sheer volume of declassified and archival records he relied upon is breathtaking. Even so you never mentioned the British. Please read this:
........................................................................................................................................................
Britain’s involvement in assassination of Congo’s Lumumba confirmed
By Jean Shaoul
18 April 2013
A senior British politician has revealed Britain’s involvement in the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo’s first prime minister.
The leader of the Congolese independence struggle from Belgium was brutally murdered just seven months after taking office on the direct orders of the US and Belgium. Britain, whose involvement had long been suspected, also had a hand in it.
The 35-year-old Lumumba and two associates were tied to trees and gunned down by a firing squad commanded by Belgian officers. Later, to avoid questions, the Belgians exhumed the bodies, hacked them up and dissolved them in acid, keeping Lumumba’s teeth and the bullets that killed him as souvenirs.
The killing demonstrated the fraud of independence for the former colonial countries in Africa. The Congo was and remains today a poor but vastly underdeveloped country, despite its enormous mineral resources, including uranium, copper, gold, tin, cobalt, diamonds, manganese and zinc.
When the million-strong Congolese working class, second only in size to that in South Africa, organised mass strikes and demonstrations in 1959, Belgium moved swiftly to grant the country independence in the hope that the national bourgeoisie would be more able to restore calm. It organized the transfer of power in such a way as to ensure that “independence” would be a formal fiction. The Western corporations’ ownership of the Congo’s vast mineral wealth meant that the imperialist powers were determined to keep control over the country after independence.
But the political situation spiralled out of control when Lumumba imposed import tariffs and forcibly broke up strikes by workers in Leopoldville (Kinshasa). Black troops mutinied against the Belgian officers Lumumba left in command of the army after independence. Moise Tshombe, acting to protect Western mining interests and the Belgian military, seized control of the resource-rich Katanga province and declared Katanga’s independence. Another secession movement developed in the mineral-rich province of Kasai. Belgium sent its army back into the former colony, supposedly to protect its nationals.
Lumumba threatened to appeal for Soviet aid as a means of freeing the country from domination by Belgian mining interests and Belgian troops. Washington used this as the pretext for allying with Belgium to seek his elimination. When Lumumba invited in United Nations peacekeeping forces, they too subordinated themselves to the machinations of Belgium and the US, refusing to take any action to prevent the murder of the new prime minister.
Lumumba was assassinated as the direct result of orders from the Belgian government and the Eisenhower administration, acting through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and local clients financed and “advised” by Brussels and Washington. In 2001, the US government released archive material related to the Kennedy assassination that included an interview with the White House minute-taker under the Eisenhower administration, Robert Johnson. According to Johnson’s account, in a meeting held with security advisers in August 1960, two months after Congo became independent, President Eisenhower ordered the CIA chief Allen Dulles to “eliminate” Lumumba so that the Congo did not become “another Cuba.”
“There was a stunned silence for about 15 seconds and the meeting continued,” Johnson recalled.
Dulles referred to the Congolese leader as a “mad dog.” A week later, he cabled station chief Larry Devlin authorizing the “removal” of Lumumba, up to and including his assassination.
A telegram sent three months before Lumumba’s death by Count Harold d’Aspremont Lynden, then minister for African affairs, to Belgian officials in the Congo stated, “The main aim to pursue in the interests of the Congo, Katanga and Belgium is clearly Lumumba’s definitive elimination.”
Lumumba had already been deposed and placed under house arrest. The meaning of these words was absolutely clear—it was an order to assassinate him.
In November 2001, forty years after the event, an all-party commission of enquiry acknowledged Belgium’s role in Lumumba’s murder.
Britain too, fearful for its substantial interests in neighbouring Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, endorsed the assassination. A British Foreign Office document in September 1960 notes the opinion of a top ranking official, who later became the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, that “I see only two possible solutions to the [Lumumba] problem. The first is the simple one of ensuring [his] removal from the scene by killing him.”
It was not known what steps were taken to put this plan into action until last month, when Lord David Edward Lea of Crondall, a Labour peer, wrote to the London Review of Books (LRB) in response to a review of a book on the history of MI6 by Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire.
Walton served until 2009 as research assistant for Professor Christopher Andrew’s authorized and sanitised official history of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, Defence of the Realm .
In Empire of the Secrets, Walton claims—despite the evidence—that it is unclear who organized Lumumba’s assassination and that the jury was still out on Britain’s role. Walton wrote, “The question remains whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba … ever amounted to anything. At present, we do not know.”
Lord Lea replied, citing a conversation he had had with Baroness Daphne Park, a few months before she died in 2010, “Actually, in this particular case, I can report that we do. It so happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park… She had been consul and first secretary in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa, from 1959 to 1961, which in practice (this was subsequently acknowledged) meant head of MI6 there. I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied, ‘I organised it.’”
She had claimed that if the West had not intervened, Lumumba would have handed over Congo’s—now the Democratic Republic of Congo—rich mineral deposits to the Russians.
When asked by The Hindu for further evidence substantiating such allegations, Lea replied, “That’s the conversation I had with her and that’s what she told me. I have nothing more to add.”
In an interview with the Times, Walton called on MI6 to declassify its internal archives on Lumumba. He said that MI6 must be placed “in the position it deserves in the history of anti-colonial movements in Africa and elsewhere.” This could only be done if MI6 “releases records from its own archives.”
He added that Lord Lea’s claim about the involvement of MI6 in Lumumba’s assassination was “an interesting twist in this story,” but that with the release of MI6’s records, such claims would be “impossible to substantiate”.
MI6 refused to comment on Lea’s revelation. An official said, “We don’t comment on intelligence matters.”
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph 10 years ago, Park said that in every posting in the intelligence agency she had two roles—as a diplomat, answerable to the Foreign Office and as an Intelligence officer, reporting to MI6. “You do an ordinary job with an extra dimension,” she explained.
She added that she had smuggled Lumumba’s private secretary—who wanted to defect—across the border under a blanket in the boot of her car.
Following Lumumba’s assassination and the war against secessionist Katanga, the Congo was ruled for decades by the reactionary dictator and kleptocrat, Joseph Sese Seko Mobutu, a US stooge, who systematically looted the country. Following the overthrow in 1997 of his debt-ridden regime, which had outlived its usefulness to Washington, the Congo has been subject to a horrific civil war whose resulting dislocation, famine and disease have killed more than five million.
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Title: "MI6 and the death of Patrice Lumumba"
Author: By Gordon Corera (Security correspondent, BBC News)
A member of the House of Lords, Lord Lea, has written to the London Review of Books saying that shortly before she died, fellow peer and former MI6 officer Daphne Park told him Britain had been involved in the death of Patrice Lumumba, the elected leader of the Congo, in 1961.
When he asked her whether MI6 might have had something to do with it, he recalls her saying: "We did. I organised it."
During long interviews I conducted with her for the BBC and for a book that in part covered MI6 and the crisis in the Congo , she never made a similar direct admission and she has denied that there was a "licence to kill" for the British Secret Service.
But piecing together information suggests that while MI6 did not kill the politician directly, it is possible - but hard to prove definitively - that it could have had some kind of indirect role.
Daphne Park was the MI6 officer in the Congo at a crucial point in the country's history. She arrived just before the Congo received independence from Belgium in the middle of 1960.
'Elimination'
Congo's first elected prime minister was Patrice Lumumba who was immediately faced with a breakdown of order. There was an army revolt while secessionist groups from the mineral-rich province of Katanga made their move and Belgian paratroopers returned, supposedly to restore security.
Lumumba made a fateful step - he turned to the Soviet Union for help. This set off panic in London and Washington, who feared the Soviets would get a foothold in Africa much as they had done in Cuba.
In the White House, President Eisenhower held a National Security Council meeting in the summer of 1960 in which at one point he turned to his CIA director and used the word "eliminated" in terms of what he wanted done with Lumumba.
The CIA got to work. It came up with a series of plans - including snipers and poisoned toothpaste - to get rid of the Congolese leader. They were not carried out because the CIA man on the ground, Larry Devlin, said he was reluctant to see them through.
Murder was also on the mind of some in London. A Foreign Office official called Howard Smith wrote a memo outlining a number of options. "The first is the simple one of removing him from the scene by killing him," the civil servant (and later head of MI5) wrote of Lumumba, who was ousted from power but still considered a threat.
MI6 never had a formal "licence to kill". However, at various times killing has been put on the agenda - but normally at the behest of politicians rather than the spies.
Anthony Eden, prime minister at the time of Suez, had made it clear he wanted Nasser dead and more recently David Owen has said that as Foreign Secretary, he had a conversation with MI6 about killing Idi Amin in Uganda (neither of which came to anything).
But in January 1961, Lumumba was dead.
Did Britain and America actually kill him? Not directly. He went on the run, was captured and handed over by a new government to a secessionist group whom they knew would kill him.
The actual killing was done by fighters from the Congo along with Belgians- and with the almost certain connivance of the Belgian government who hated him even more than the American and the British.
Powerful enemies
The comments attributed to Daphne Park by Lord Lea are subtler than saying that Britain killed Lumumba.
Lord Lea claims Baroness Park told him that Britain had "organised" the killing. This is more possible.
Among the senior politicians in the Congo who made the decision to hand Lumumba over to those who eventually did kill him were two men with close connections to Western intelligence.
One of them was close to Larry Devlin and the CIA but the other was close to Daphne Park. She had actually rescued him from danger by smuggling him to freedom in the back of her small Citroen car when Lumumba's people had guessed he was in contact with her.
Do these contacts and relationships mean MI6 could have been complicit in some way in the death of Lumumba? It is possible that they knew about it and turned a blind eye, allowed it to happen or even actively encouraged it - what we would now call "complicity" - as well as the other possibility of having known nothing.
The killing would have almost certainly happened anyway because so many powerful people and countries wanted Lumumba dead.
Whitehall sources describe the claims of MI6 involvement as "speculative". But with Daphne Park dying in March 2010 and the MI6 files resolutely closed, the final answer on Britain's role may remain elusive.
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G. K. Berko 8 years ago
Brother Kwarteng, thanks for your generous, fuller info on Lumumba. I only remembered sketchy info from memory about his fate until I googled to arrive at the video I wept about.
I remembered his ordeal by memories of st ... read full comment
Brother Kwarteng, thanks for your generous, fuller info on Lumumba. I only remembered sketchy info from memory about his fate until I googled to arrive at the video I wept about.
I remembered his ordeal by memories of stories one of my late Uncles and a veteran in the Ghana Army who was part of the Ghana UN contingent to help restore Peace for Lumumba's conflict told us, when we were very young. But I never since had the opportunity to learn as much detail on the conflict and Lumumba's murder as you have offered. Thanks again!
I will keep following your pieces with heightened interest.
Btw, why can't we request retro charges by the ICC against living agents of Lumumba's murder now? The Israelis still pursue Nazi criminals.
Long Live Africa!!
Long Live Ghana!!!
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Brother Berko,
Thanks for your response.
First, I want to say that Belgian intelligence and police officers retrieved Patrice Lumumba's corpse, cut them up then dissolved it in acid, crushed the bones and reburied ... read full comment
Dear Brother Berko,
Thanks for your response.
First, I want to say that Belgian intelligence and police officers retrieved Patrice Lumumba's corpse, cut them up then dissolved it in acid, crushed the bones and reburied the pieces in an unmarked grave (I have still not read anything to the contrary).
A lot has been written about this sad story. This is why I argued in "What Can Ghanaians Learn From Pope Francis 3" a proper closure should be brought to the Lumumba issue. This question is so dear to my heart.
Interestingly, historians and general writers are to see clear connections between the deaths of Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjöld on the one hand and the Congo Crisis of the early 1960s on the other(as in Susan Williams' excellent book "Who Killed Dag Hammarskjöld: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa").
Well, Lumumba's sons and wife Pauline Lumumba, now deceased, petitioned the Belgian government to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Lumumba.
A commission was set up to investigate the petition. Unfortunately the Belgian commission said the government (Belgian) bore "moral responsibility" for Lumumba's death (and some apology). That's all about it). I provide two New York Times articles on this matter:
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Report Reproves Belgium in Lumumba's Death
Published: November 17, 2001
BRUSSELS, Nov. 16— Belgium bears a ''moral responsibility'' for the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's prime minister, a parliamentary inquiry concluded in a report published today.
Congo was a Belgian colony from 1885 until June 30, 1960, when it won its independence. Some seven months later, Mr. Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the newly independent country, was assassinated. At the time of his death, Mr. Lumumba had been dismissed by Joseph Kasavubu, the country's head of state.
''The commission concludes that certain members of the Belgian government and other Belgian figures have a moral responsibility in the circumstances which led to the death of Lumumba,'' the report said.
The commission report stressed that ''no document nor witness'' said the Belgian government ''or any of its members gave the order to physically eliminate Lumumba.''
Nor, it said, did it find any evidence on the part of Belgian authorities of ''premeditation to assassinate Lumumba or to have him assassinated.'' However, the report said, it was ''manifestly clear that the government was unconcerned with Mr. Lumumba's physical integrity.''
The commission left to Parliament and the government to decide whether Belgium owes the Congolese people an apology.
The Belgian foreign minister, Louis Michel, said when the inquiry was ordered in December 1999 that the government should apologize to the Congolese people ''if it appeared that the Belgian authorities were involved in the assassination.''
Alluding to press reports that King Baudouin I of Belgium had prior knowledge of a plot to assassinate Mr. Lumumba but kept it from the government, the commission found that he ''did not inform the government of important facts in his possession.''
The 20-page report stressed that the Belgian government of 1961, ''influenced by the colonialist mentality of numerous Belgians, contributed to the political elimination of Patrice Lumumba, infringing on international law.''
The commission said that the government, after learning of Mr. Lumumba's assassination, ''adopted an irresponsible attitude of propagating lies to the public.''
World Briefing | Europe: Belgium: Apology For Lumumba Killing
Published: February 6, 2002
The government expressed ''its profound and sincere regrets and its apologies'' yesterday for Belgium's role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of its former colony Congo, in 1961. ''Some members of the government, and some Belgian actors at the time, bear an irrefutable part of the responsibility for the events that led to Patrice Lumumba's death,'' Foreign Minister Louis Michel told Parliament. He announced the creation of a $3.25 million fund in Mr. Lumumba's name to promote democracy in Congo, where the slain leader's son, François, leads an opposition party. Mr. Lumumba, a socialist who was a major figure in Congo's liberation from 75 years of Belgian rule, was overthrown after just a few months in office. He was killed, at the age of 35, while in detention. A Belgian commission that finished a two-year inquiry last year heard testimony that the assassination could not have been carried out without the complicity of Belgian officers backed by the C.I.A., and it concluded that Belgium had a moral responsibility for the killing. The C.I.A. has consistently denied responsibility.
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Patrice Lumumba's Letter to Pauline Lumumba, 1960
My beloved companion,
I write you these words not knowing whether you will receive them, when you will receive them, and whether I will still be alive when you read them. Throughout my struggle for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant that the sacred cause to which my comrades and I have dedicated our entire lives would triumph in the end. But what we wanted for our country — its right to an honorable life, to perfect dignity, to independence with no restrictions — was never wanted by Belgian colonialism and its Western allies, who found direct and indirect, intentional and unintentional support among certain high officials of the United Nations, that body in which we placed all our trust when we called on it for help.
They have corrupted some of our countrymen; they have bought others; they have done their part to distort the truth and defile our independence. What else can I say? ‘That whether dead or alive, free or in prison by order of the colonialists, it is not my person that is important. What is important is the Congo, our poor people whose independence has been turned into a cage, with people looking at us from outside the bars, sometimes with charitable compassion, sometimes with glee and delight. But my faith will remain unshakable. I know and feel in my very heart of hearts that sooner or later my people will rid themselves of all their enemies, foreign and domestic, that they will rise up as one to say no to the shame and degradation of colonialism and regain their dignity in the pure light of day.
We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and the free and liberated peoples in every corner of the globe will ever remain at the side of the millions of Congolese who will not abandon the struggle until the day when there will be no more colonizers and no more of their mercenaries in our country. I want my children, whom I leave behind and perhaps will never see again, to be told that the future of the Congo is beautiful and that their country expects them, as it expects every Congolese, to fulfill the sacred task of rebuilding our independence, our sovereignty; for without justice there is no dignity and without independence there are no free men.
Neither brutal assaults, nor cruel mistreatment, nor torture have ever led me to beg for mercy, for I prefer to die with my head held high, unshakable faith, and the greatest confidence in the destiny of my country rather than live in slavery and contempt for sacred principles. History will one day have its say; it will not be the history taught in the United Nations, Washington, Paris, or Brussels, however, but the history taught in the countries that have rid themselves of colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history and both north and south of the Sahara it will be a history full of glory and dignity.
Do not weep for me, my companion; I know that my country, now suffering so much, ‘will be able to defend its independence and its freedom. Long live the Congo! Long live Africa!
I am happy to welcome you here this evening. They say, I believe, that if you have something important to say, don’t risk losing it in the digestive t ... read full comment
A Dinner With Businessmen
Flag stuff House, February 22, 1963
I am happy to welcome you here this evening. They say, I believe, that if you have something important to say, don’t risk losing it in the digestive tracts of a hungry man. Now that you seem to me to be carefree and relaxed and in a mood of conviviality, “you’ll have no scandal while we dine, but honest talk and wholesome wine."
Gentlemen, you are the representatives of industry and commerce, and constitute a vital part in the economic life of Ghana. I would like to take advantage of your presence here tonight to have a good look at our common problems.
As you know, we have had some problems in our foreign trade and balance of payments. The unsatisfactory state of world markets for cocoa and for some of our other major products made it necessary for us to tighten our belts. For those of you in the business community, your contribution to this effort has consisted mostly of having to keep within regulated limits, the amounts which you could transfer abroad or pay out in dividends. In addition, we look for steps to reduce our imports on goods in order to prevent the balance of payment crisis.
We know that the reduction in imports has in some way affected your business, but I can assure you that the decision was taken in the interest of the nation, and especially of the national economy of which you form a part.
We know at the time that the measures we took would impose some restriction on all of us. Even those of us in the Government have felt the stress and strain of the limitations which the world financial situation imposed on our activities, but in spite of this, we must recognise the fact that these limitations were necessary in order to protect the strength and stability of our economy.
I am happy to say that as a result of the sacrifices made by the people of Ghana, by the Government and by you, the members of the business community, the financial situation has now stabilised. There has been a radical improvement in our balance of international trade, and the country’s reserves have shown a healthy recovery. But this does not mean that the time has come for us to relax. Our economic position needs to be still further improved, particularly in the new period of development which we are about to enter with our Seven-Year Plan.
In the past year or so, while we have adopted these vigorous measures to protect Ghana’s economy, we have had to experiment with a number of devices in order to achieve our aim. I am fully aware of the difficulties which some of us have encountered owing to the changes that have to be made from time to time. I would like to say, however, that the Government of Ghana stands by the principles which I enumerated at the last Budget with regard to investment, and which I repeat here:
"The Government will continue to encourage private investors to establish and operate in Ghana. Our Government has no plans whatsoever to take over industries in the private sector; it is neither its wish to do so nor its aim or policy. When private investors enter into fields where state enterprises operate, they will compete on absolutely equal terms without discrimination”
Gentlemen, we must be frank and honest about our intentions and motives. There should be no secret doubts in the relations between us. We can only co-exist on the basis of absolute frankness. We, on our part, welcome every honest investor who wants to work for his equitable profits, but we shall not tolerate anyone who seeks to direct what political course we should follow. Any Government, or, for that matter, any organisation which invests in, or gives a loan or assistance to, another country like our own must on no account interfere directly or indirectly in the internal or external affairs of that country. If any attempt is made on the strength of such credit, loan, aid or assistance to interfere in the political, social, economic, cultural and military affairs of our country, then we shall consider that the motives under lying such activities and operations have a neo-colonialist character.
Perhaps between the theory and practice, there may have been some mistakes made in the application of the rules and regulations. I wish to say, therefore, that if any such mistakes have been made, they have been made in good faith and with the best of intentions.
In order that such mistakes may not be repeated, I have instructed that the rules and regulations should now be put on a firm and clear cut basis. You all know what is required of you, and I am confident that you will accept these in fairness and good spirit, and thereby contribute to the economic growth of Ghana. I am happy to say that an Investment Bill is nearing completion and is expected to be introduced shortly into Parliament. This Bill, when it becomes law, will provide legal backing to Government’s policy with regard to investment and also, at the same time, define the nature of concessions which the Government proposes to make to investors.
Gentlemen, perhaps it will be a good thing for me at this juncture to say something about our hopes for the future. We are in the process of establishing a society in which men and women will have no anxiety about work, food and shelter; where poverty and illiteracy no longer exist and-where disease is brought under control; where our educational facilities provide our children with the best possible opportunities for learning; where every person uses his talents to their fullest capacity and contributes to the general well-being of the nation.
In order to attain these objectives, we have accepted the socialist pattern of society, believing that at a certain level of economic growth of a less-developed country such as Ghana, State enterprise can co—exist with private business interests, provided certain rules are observed on both sides.
I have stated elsewhere that:
"There are circumstances in which the import of foreign capital is of benefit to the importing country, especially in the case of the emerging developing country where large-scale sources of capital accumulation is small and not so easy to mobilise. Foreign capital is thus useful and helpful if it takes the form of a loan or a credit to enable the borrowing country to buy what it needs from whatever sources it likes, and at the same time to retain the control of the assets to be developed?
"One of the worst things that can happen to less-developed and emerging countries is to receive foreign aid with political and economic strings attached.
“These aids are very often wrapped up in financial terms that are not easily discernible.
"Foreign investment made in an emerging and developing country by a foreign company in order that such company can make a profit, has nothing to do with aid. This does not mean that a developing country may not find it advantageous to make a contract with a foreign company for the setting up of, say, a factory or an industry."
"Real aid is something quite different. It consists of direct gifts or loans that are given on favourable terms and without strings attached."
"The problem therefore is how to obtain capital investment and still keep it under sufficient control to prevent undue exploitation and how to preserve integrity and sovereignty without crippling economic or political ties to any country, block or system. In other words, can state enterprise and private enterprise co-exist in a less-developed country? I say yes, provided they both conform to the general framework of the overall plan made by the State."
As I have said earlier, our ideas of socialism can co-exist with private enterprise. I also believe that private capital and private investment capital, in particular, has a recognised and legitimate part to play in Ghana’s economic development. We are consistent in these ideas. I have never made any secrets of my faith in socialist principles, but I have always tried to make it quite clear that Ghana’s socialism is not incompatible with the existence and growth of a vigorous private sector in the economy.
Gentlemen, I need hardly say that Ghana expects you — indeed, Ghana invites you — businessmen, industrialists, bankers, manufactures and investors, to play a significant role in this economic growth and development.
Let me end by saying — and I say this with emphasis and sincerity that those of you who will be investing in Ghana will be investing in a very stable country; a country united; a country determined to make progress; a country determined to industrialise; a country determined to mechanise and diversify its agriculture; a country dynamic and honest in its intentions and consistent in its policies.
Look around the country for yourselves. Invite your business friends to come here and see with their own eyes the happy atmosphere pervading everything we do; the stability we rightly boast of; the buoyancy of our economy and the happy relationships existing among all races who live here. There can be no better assurance to investors than these. Tell them not to be taken in by the mischief of a section of the press in Europe and America.
And now, Gentlemen, let us stand and drink a toast to the progress and prosperity of trade and industry in Ghana.
YAW 8 years ago
Investment Policy
Parliament House,Accra, September 2, 1960
When I addressed you on the inauguration of the National Assembly of the I Republic of Ghana, I reiterated the Government’s Policy of non-alignment and ... read full comment
Investment Policy
Parliament House,Accra, September 2, 1960
When I addressed you on the inauguration of the National Assembly of the I Republic of Ghana, I reiterated the Government’s Policy of non-alignment and positive neutralism. Our efforts over these years have been directed towards
A the total mobilisation of the resources of our country to serve the economic and I social needs of our population by raising the standard of life and providing amenities which give to all citizens the essential things of life.
The Government’s Five-Year Development Programme provides for the harnessing of our potential wealth and cultivation of our social relations in such a way as to eradicate the causes of poverty and squalor, degradation and unemployment, depression and want. We have not lost sight of the need for international assistance to accelerate the means of fulfilling our economic objectives.
A year has passed since the Second Five-Year Development Plan was launched. As you are aware, the Plan provides for a total capital expenditure of about 350 million pounds spread over the five-year period ending on 30th June, 1964. The Volta River Project, in connection with which the Government has, during the last few years, carried out negotiations with American and British Aluminium interests as well as the World Bank, is likely to involve a capital expenditure of about 100 million pounds. Apart from this, the Second Five-Year Plan provides for a capital expenditure of over 126 million pounds for projects which the Government considers vital in the interests of Ghana’s industrialisation as well as the diversification of agriculture. Recent negotiations carried out in London and Washington by representatives of the Government have elicited assurances from the World Bank for the provision of 40 million dollars or 14.3 million pounds, from the Government of the U.S.A. for the provision of 30 million or 107 million pounds, and from the United Kingdom Government for 5 million pounds provided a satisfactory agreement is entered into between the Government and a consortium of American and British aluminium interests about the ownership of the aluminium smelter.
In consonance with my oft-repeated policy of non-alignment and positive neutralism, another delegation was dispatched to the Soviet Union to negotiate with the Soviet Government for a trade, technical and economic aid, and cultural exchange agreement. As a result of this mission, the Soviet Government has agreed in the first instance to grant us a credit to the tune of 14.5 million pounds. It is necessary for me to state as I have often repeated that Ghana will accept aid from all quarters provided that there are no strings to such aid, and the Government is completely satisfied that the offer which we have received from the Soviet Government is without any such strings. The Government will ensure that when the assurances received from the Western Governments are fulfilled, they also will be without any strings.
l think that l should take this opportunity to restate the general policy of the Government in regard to the broad economic structure in connection with our national development. We recognise that Ghana, like virtually every country in the world, does not have all the capital available to do immediately all the things which we should like to achieve. It follows logically, therefore, that it is essential for us to make the very best use possible of our own capital and to obtain as much capital as possible from abroad.
I wish now to define the respective roles of the capital which is available within Ghana and of capital which comes from abroad. We have divided the economic structure of our economy into four different sectors. First, the State Sector in which all enterprises are entirely state-owned. Second, the Joint State - Private Sector which will incorporate enterprises owned jointly by Government and foreign private capital. Third, the Cooperative Sector in which all enterprises will be undertaken by co-operative organizations affiliated with the National Cooperative Council, and fourth, the Private Enterprise Sector which will incorporate those industries which are open freely to foreign private enterprise.
As to private enterprise financed by capital from overseas, the Government’s policy as enunciated in my own policy statements on1st March, 1954 and 3rd September, 1958 remains unchanged, but in future, the Government intends to place far greater emphasis on the development of Ghanaian Cooperatives rather than encourage Ghanaians to start private business enterprises.
Finally, I wish to emphasise that Government wants to obtain as much capital as possible from all sources, provided the conditions are satisfactory. There is a vast and most urgent problem of finding sufficient capital for Africa as a whole. We recognise that our own national objectives are, in fact, the national objectives of every African State Ghana hopes the wealthier foreign countries will be ready to provide much more capital for Africa, and Ghana will always be willing to co- operate in any sound arrangements which are designed to apply foreign capital to projects for the general economic reconstruction of Africa.
YAW 8 years ago
Trade Policy
Accra, October 9, 1960
As promised on my return to Ghana three days ago, I have come tonight to report to you of my visit to the United Nations General Assembly. Before doing so however, I wish to refe ... read full comment
Trade Policy
Accra, October 9, 1960
As promised on my return to Ghana three days ago, I have come tonight to report to you of my visit to the United Nations General Assembly. Before doing so however, I wish to refer to a situation that has developed while I have been away. A number of statements appear to have been made by unauthorized persons and organisations regarding Ghana’s economic policy. These statements have culminated in a malicious newspaper article. Under the headline "Ghana Seizing All Foreign Firms" appearing in The News Chronicle on October 7th, an article written by one Mr. Norman Clark, who fled the country before the publication, alleges that "Ghana will decide to nationalise all foreign business firms and that the take-over will commence on May 1st and be completed in three years." This publication, I must say with all the emphasis at my command, is pernicious, wicked and deliberately calculated to damage the reputation and good faith which Ghana has built up. I know that our friends both here and abroad will not countenance such a publication or give it even the slightest credence.
I have stated on many occasions that the Government’s policy is aimed at evolving a socialist pattern of society, no secret has been made of this fact. I have also stated that there are different paths to socialism, that each country must find its own way and that socialism could differ in form from one country to another. Ghana intends to evolve its own socialist pattern of society adapted to its own particular needs.
I now wish to reaffirm and to clarify beyond any doubt the Government’s economic policy. In my message to the National Assembly of the 2nd September, this year, I defined the respective roles of the capital which is available within Ghana, and of capital which comes from abroad I stated that the economic structure divided into four different sectors. First, the State-owned sector; second, the Joint State-Private Enterprise sector; third, the Cooperative sector and fourth, the purely Private sector. I also stated that the Government intends to place far greater emphasis on the development of Ghanaian Co- operatives rather than encourage Ghanaians to start private business enterprises.
I will now elaborate on the policy in regard to each of these sections. First, the I State-owned sector. In previous statements I have made, I have defined this sector as embracing specific industries reserved to the State. Such industries include the manufacture of arms and ammunition, alcoholic beverages and the operation of facilities such as electricity, water supplies hydro-electric projects etc. It also includes industries of a pioneering nature which private enterprise is unwilling or unable to undertake. These industries will be undertaken by the Industrial Development Corporation. It has also been decided that the wholly owned subsidiaries of the Industrial Development Corporation will be retained permanently by that Corporation, on behalf of the State, and not handed over to private enterprise.
The second sector, joint-Private Enterprise, is intended to include those industries which, by their nature, make it essential for the state to hold a substantial interest in them either because they confer monopoly rights on their owners, or demand substantial protective tariffs. This sector will also include those industries which the private enterprise partners are unwilling or unable-to undertake without Government participation.
Ghanaian enterprise in all fields. In the past, the Government has given considerable assistance to Ghanaian private enterprise but the result has been negligible and disappointing. So disappointing, in fact that the Government feels that its assistance must be channelled in a more productive manner. My statement of the 2nd September and the Government’s intentions regarding Ghanaian private enterprise mean no more or less than was stated. It does not mean that Ghanaian private enterprise is to be nationalised but it must now stand on its own feet and not rely on the Government for its development. With regard to the distributive retail trades, the Government intends to foster cooperatives to enter this field both wholesale and retail. Fears have been expressed however that the Government intends to introduce import restrictions to assist the co-operatives in their developments. This is not so, the cooperatives must develop side by side with private enterprise either overseas or Ghanaian owned, in a freely competitive manner. I am quite satisfied that the large overseas firms are genuinely encouraging the growth of Ghanaian retail trade and that they will continue to do so.
Lastly, the purely private enterprise sector. For the reasons I have mentioned in relation to the Cooperative sector, this purely private enterprise sector mainly concerns investment from abroad. It is an accepted fact that there is not sufficient capital in the world to provide for the needs of all the developing countries which need it. This capital is therefore highly selective and tends to go where it feels it is welcome. I wish to leave no doubt in anybody’s mind that the Ghana Government accepts these facts, needs capital investment from all sources and welcomes it. It has been brought to my notice that overseas investors have been in some doubt as to their welcome, due to views expressed on exploitation. I now wish to direct the following remarks more particularly to my fellow countrymen. The Government receives by way of Company Tax eight shillings in every pound of profits made by companies both Ghanaian and overseas established in Ghana. This is equivalent to a 40 per cent non-voting shareholding for which the Government invests no capital. Overseas capital invested in companies in Ghana, provides holdings, plant and machinery which remain permanently in Ghana and become immediate assets of Ghana. In most cases, a large proportion of the turn-over of an industrial company remains in Ghana in the form of wages and salaries to employees. These wages and salaries in turn attract taxation and purchasing power which encourage further enterprises. In good companies, of which there are many, a share of the profits is ploughed back into the company l for development of its enterprises. This is, in fact, further investment. If there are fears of permanent foreign domination in the economy, these fears should be immediately and permanently abandoned. The Government has already taken adequate measures by limiting the tenure of leases and concessions and by clearing foreign elements from the ownership of land. It must be borne in mind however, that the duration of leases and concession must be balanced against the encouragement of overseas capital in such a way as to guarantee a reasonable return for the investment.
The Government recognises and accepts the fact that, overseas firms investing in Ghana have a duty to their shareholders, many of them small shareholders, to protect their investment and provide a return in the form of dividends to them. The Government is willing to take measures to assure each shareholder of protection and will welcome suggestions and advice on this matter from overseas companies through the Chamber of Commerce. I now wish to say a word about Chambers of Commerce. There are at present two Chambers, one for Ghanaian interests and one for overseas. The Government considers that this situation is anomalous in a country which is opposed to discrimination in any form and I have, therefore, today issued directions that the Government will only recognise one Chamber of Commerce to represent all private interests in Ghana.
The policy I have just outlined remains the basic policy of the Government in respect of the development of the economy of Ghana; Ghana wants to live at peace with all nations. We expect that all Governments represented here in Ghana will respect our policy of neutralism and non-alignment and will refrain from using the soil of Ghana as a platform for propaganda against another.
In this regard, Ghanaians should not allow themselves to be used as tools or saboteurs for subversive activities against their own Government and country. The Government will take appropriate step to arrest any such tendency in Ghana. And now may I revert to my recent visit to the United Nations: Africa is passing through the most momentous period in its history. The forces of colonialism and imperialism are fast retreating from our continent in the wake of the nationalist movement which is now sweeping the entire continent. However, the battle against colonialism is not yet over and day by day, we become increasingly aware of new forms of colonialism which are beginning to emerge in different parts of the continent. In such a circumstance, it is essential that the voice of Ghana and the voice of Africa should be heard unequivocally in the United Nations, especially in a time like this. These were the reasons why l decided this year to go to the United Nations.
The year 196O has been described as Africa Year in the United Nations. At the present session of the General Assembly, fifteen new Africa States have been admitted to membership of the United Nations. More are to come. We congratulate the new States of Africa as they begin their career in the international sphere and we hope that they will all join in working together for the political unity of our continent and in projecting the African personality in current international affairs. African States must either federate and survive or disintegrate and perish i.e. selling themselves to their former colonial masters or to some other foreign powers. I believe that a Union of the independent African States is not only necessary but vital to the maintenance of our independence and sovereignty. It is only if we are united that we can develop our resources and potentialities to our mutual benefit. We can also use our united strength to plead the cause of peace and secure the common, objectives which we all seek.
The grave issues facing the United Nations today, and in fact the entire world, are among others the situation in the Congo, the eradication of colonialism in all its forms from the continent of Africa, and, thirdly, the problem of disarmament. These are the problems upon which the peace and security of the world now depends and it is imperative that immediate solutions must be found to these problems. France’s nuclear test in the Sahara Algeria, South African apartheid policy, the problem of South West Africa, and a capital development fund for Africa under United Nations auspices.
I have stated elsewhere that a capital development fund for newly independent African States should be established as soon as possible within the United Nations. This would enable the newly independent States to borrow money from the development fund at lower interest than can now be obtained elsewhere, and would also enable the newly independent African States to carry on their economic development independently without being obliged to take sides in the cold war created by the East and West conflict. In my address to the General Assembly on the 23rd of September, I proposed among other things the replacement of the United Nations Command in the Congo with a strong command with clear directions to support the legally constituted government of the Congo, the disarmament of private armies, guaranteeing by the United Nations of the territorial integrity of the Congo and the channelling of all financial assistance through the United Nation to be supervised by a Committee of Independent African State appointed by the Security Council.
In so far as Ghana’s own efforts in the Congo are concerned, I am convinced, that for a speedy resolution of the problems involved, Ghana troops must not be impeded in the carrying out of their duties under the command of the United Nations and they must under no circumstances be removed from Leopoldville: that the Congolese Parliament must be allowed to function as the only legally constituted authority deriving its mandate from the Congolese people; that there must be immediate withdrawal of the Belgian troops still lingering on in the Congo Republic, and surreptitiously re-arming the Force Publique that private radio stations sponsored by imperialist powers operating from Brazzaville should be eliminated; that financial assistance should be provided to Lumumba and his legally constituted Government, and the last but by no means the least, the duly elected representatives of the legitimate Lumumba Government should be left free to take their seats at the United Nations.
With regard to colonialism and the problem of disarmament, my experience in the United Nations has reinforced my conviction that the time has come when Independent States of Africa should get together at the highest level to declare to the world our views and our position on these problems. Colonialism today is the basis of all the fears and tensions which now afflict the nations of the world. As long as colonialism continues to exist in Africa, the colonial and imperialist powers will do everything in their power to maintain their spheres of influence because they are afraid that the freedom and independence of African peoples and the forward movement of progressive ideas in the present day Africa are a danger to their prestige and influence in the world.
Colonialism has created fear and fear has led to the armaments race, thus the problem of disarmament is closely connected with the eradication of colonialism from Africa. As soon as possible, I will take steps to consult with the Heads of States of the various Independent African States with a view to convening a conference on about these two vital issues of colonialism and the problem of disarmament, and to declare the position of Africa on these issues. I am convinced that such a conference is vitally essential at this time, and it is the only way by which the States of Africa can contribute to the solution of these great issues which confront the United Nations and the world.
During the fortnight I spent in New York, I held personal discussions with President Eisenhower of the United States of America and Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. In these discussions, I explained to them the position of Ghana with regards to the issues affecting peace and security in the world today and especially the situation in the Congo, the eradication of colonialism and the problem of disarmament. The question of disarmament centres around the twin problems of inspection and control. To me, any distinction between them is arguing which comes first, the hen or the egg. Whichever comes first, the other must automatically and immediately follow.
I also had several discussions with President Nasser of the United Arab Republic, President Tito of Yugoslavia, Prime Minister Nehru of India, President Sukamo of Indonesia, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Diefenbaker of Canada Prime Minister Menzies of Australia and Prime Minister Nash of New Zealand. I also conferred with the Heads of Delegations of the various independent African States including the new African States who were recently admitted into the United Nations.
On Thursday, the 29th of September, Prime Minister Nehru of India, President Nasser of the United Arab Republic, President Tito of Yugoslavia and President Sukarno of Indonesia and I put forward a resolution to the United Nations in which we called upon the President of the United States of America and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to renew their contacts which were interrupted recently, so that their declared willingness to find solutions to the outstanding problems by negotiation may be continued I am sure that the action we took contributed in no small measure to the reduction of tension that existed in the United Nations.
I also proposed that the independent African States, together with other States who adhere to a policy of positive neutralism and non-alignment should form themselves into a naturalistic group of non-committed nations within the United Nations so as to perform the role of a third force or a balancing influence between the Eastern and the Western blocs into which the world is at present divided.
This proposal is being seriously considered by the non-committed States in the United Nations as a basis of policy and action in our common effort to ensure peace and security in international relations. In all these matters, I want to re-emphasise the point that I am more than ever convinced that Ghana has a mission to fulfill in Africa and a decisive role to play in world affairs. To achieve these objectives, it is necessary for us to maintain the national unity which we have been able to achieve and work harder than ever before towards the economic, technological and industrial development of our country. In this great task for national development, I call upon every man, every woman, our farmers, our workers and Trade Unions the Cooperative Societies the teachers in our schools and institutions of learning, educators and politicians to direct their energies to bringing about the total elimination of poverty, disease and misery in Ghana.
I have no doubt that you, my people of Ghana, will rise up to these new tasks. May Providence abide with us in our efforts to make Ghana a country worthy of its people and of Africa.
YAW 8 years ago
Death Of Patrice Lumumba
Accra, February 14, 1961
COUNTRYMEN, AFRICAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS, COMRADES AND FRIENDS,
Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo where and when we do not know —three of our brother freedom fighter ... read full comment
Death Of Patrice Lumumba
Accra, February 14, 1961
COUNTRYMEN, AFRICAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS, COMRADES AND FRIENDS,
Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo where and when we do not know —three of our brother freedom fighters have been done to death.
They have been killed: Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Maurice Mpolo, the Minister in his Government who was elected from Katanga Province, and Joseph Okito, the Vice President of the Congolese Senate.
About their end, many things are uncertain but one fact is crystal clear —they have been killed because the United Nations, whom Patrice Lumumba himself; as Prime Minister, had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order, not only failed to maintain that law and order, but also denied to the lawful Government of the Congo all other means of self-protection.
History records many occasions when rulers of States have been assassinated. The murder of Patrice Lumumba and his two colleagues, however, is unique in that, this is the first time in history that the legal ruler of a country has been done to death with the open connivance of a world organisation in whom that ruler put his trust.
These are the facts: Patrice Lumumba was appointed Prime Minister by the departing Belgian authorities because, he was the leader of the Parliamentary Party with the largest representation and was the only Member of Parliament who could obtain a majority in both the Senate and the Chamber. Kasavubu was subsequently elected as the ceremonial Head of the State but it was clearly agreed and understood that he should have no more authority or power than has the King of the Belgians in Belgium. This fact, clearly written into the Constitution of the Congo, has been deliberately ignored and distorted by those who have sought for their own ends to give some appearance of legality to the military usurpers and the agents of colonial rule who have illegally seized power in some parts of the Congo.
Shortly after independence, the Congolese army mutinied. Patrice Lumumba and his colleagues had to secure outside support from somewhere if they were to preserve the legal structure of the State. In the interests of world peace and in order to prevent the cold war from being brought into Africa, Patrice Lumumba invited the United Nations to preserve law and order. The United Nations insisted that they should have the sole mandate to do this and that the legal Government of the Congo should not obtain that military assistance which would have otherwise been forthcoming from many other friendly African States.
However, instead of preserving law and order, the United Nations declared itself neutral between law and disorder and refused to lend any assistance whatsoever to the legal Government in suppressing the mutineers who had set themselves up in power in Katanga and South Kasai.
When, in order to move its troops against the rebels, the Government of the Congo obtained some civilian aircraft and civilian motor vehicles from the Soviet Union, the colonialist Powers at the United Nations raised a howl of rage while, at the same time, maintaining a discreet silence over the build-up of Belgian arms and actual Belgian military forces in the service of the rebels.
With a total disregard of the Constitution, which expressly provided that the President could not dismiss the Prime Minister, unless there had been a vote of "no confidence" in the parliament, Kasavubu illegally tried to remove Patrice Lumumba from office and to substitute another Government. When Lumumba wished to broadcast to the people, explaining what had happened, the United Nations in the so-called interest of law and order prevented him by force from speaking. They did not, however, use the same force to prevent the mutineers of the Congolese Army from seizing power in Leopoldville and installing a completely illegal Government.
Despite the fact that one of the most important reasons for the United Nations, action was supposedly to see that all Belgian forces were removed, the United Nations sat by while the so-called Katanga Government, which is entirely, Belgian—controlled, imported aircraft and arms from Belgium and from other countries, such as South Africa, which have a vested interest in the suppression of African freedom. The United Nations connived at the setting up, in fact, of an independent Katanga State, though this is contrary to the Security Council’s own resolutions.
Finally, the United Nations, which could exert its authority to prevent Patrice Lumumba from broadcasting, was, (so it pleaded,) quite unable to prevent his arrest by mutineers or his transfer, through the use of airfields under United Nations control, into the hands of the Belgian-dominated Government of Katanga.
The United Nations is, on behalf of all its members, in control of the finances of the Congo. It is now two months ago since I personally wrote to Mr. Hammerskjoeld to ask him where the money came from which is being used to pay the soldiers in Mobutu’s illegal army. I am still waiting for an answer. One thing is certain; however, this money does not come from the revenue of the Congo. It is supplied from outside by those who wish to restore colonialism in practice by maintaining in office a puppet regime entirely financially dependent upon them.
The time has come to speak plainly. The danger in the Congo is not so much the possibility of a civil war between Africans, but rather, a colonialist war in which the colonial and imperialist power hide behind African puppet regimes. At this very moment, Northern Katanga is being laid waste by military units under command of a regular officer of the Belgian army, Colonel Crevecoeur, armed with the most modern weapons supplied by Belgium. Recruiting offices have been opened in South Africa, in France and elsewhere, and wages of over four hundred pounds a month are being offered to former German fascist officers and to former collaborators of Hitler and Mussolini in other countries in order to persuade them to enlist in the unholy war against the African people.
Where, l ask again, does the money come from to pay these big salaries and to buy all of this modern and expensive armament which is now being deployed against unarmed peasants and villagers?
The rulers of the United States, of the United Kingdom, of France and of the other powers who are militarily allied with Belgium, must answer these questions.
Why did they express so loudly their indignation when the Soviet Union placed at the disposal of the legal Government of Congo civilian aircraft and civilian vehicles? Why are they so silent when their ally, Belgium, openly supplies military aircraft and armoured vehicles to the rebels? Why is it that no single member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has on any occasion addressed to Belgium any public rebuke for the flagrant breaches of the Security Council resolution in which Belgium is every day indulging? Alas, the architects of this murder are many.
In Ghana, we realize the great financial stakes which some great powers have in the United Miniere and in other industrial and commercial undertakings in the Congo. I would however, ask these powers these questions: Do they really believe that ultimately, they can safeguard their investments and their interests in the Congo by convening at a brutal and savage colonialist war?
Do they realize that they are sacrificing African lives to continue in Africa, the cold war at the very time when all powers, both great and small, should be concentrating on the abolition of colonialism and establishment of world peace?
Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito have died because they put their faith in the United Nations and because they refused to allow themselves to be used as stooges or puppets for external interests.
There is still time for those who have supported this cruel colonialist war in the Congo to change their policy, but time is running out.
The cynical planning of the murder of Patrice Lumumba and his colleagues is a final lesson for us all. We cannot ignore the fact that this crime shows every evidence of the most careful preparation and timing. First, there came the handing over of Patrice Lumumba and others to the Belgian-controlled authorities in Katanga.
Next, there came the contemptuous refusal of these same authorities to allow the United Nations Conciliation Committee any access to the prisoners. From this came the final proof that the United Nations would not effectively intervene to save the lives of the Prime Minister or his colleagues. This was followed by the formation of the so-called new Kasavubu Government and the warning by Belgium to Belgian nationals to leave those parts of the Congo controlled by the legal Government.
Finally, came the story so reminiscent of Nazi and Fascist technique — the false account of an attempt to escape and the death of the prisoners following upon it. What are the next steps in this plan? The information before me now is that the Kasavubu-Mobutu group has planned an offensive against Orientale Province in an attempt to secure a quick military victory before the Security Council can deal with the matter.
My information is that this plan has been made with the full knowledge of the French and Belgian Governments and has their full support. Let me issue a most serious warning: Any such action, unless immediately denounced by the other members of the Security Council, will have a profound effect on African relations with the great powers.
Our dear brothers, Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito are dead, and I ask you all to join me in mourning the loss which the whole African continent has sustained through their cruel murder. But their spirit is not dead, nor are the things for which they stood: African freedom, the unity and independence of Africa, and the final and complete destruction of colonialism and imperialism.
The colonialists and imperialists have killed them but what they cannot do, is to kill the ideals which we still preach, and for which they sacrificed their lives. In the Africa of the future, their names will live forever more.
A Message of Condolence sent by the Osagyefo on February 14, 1961, to Madam Lumumba on the death of her husband.
The cruel murder of your beloved husband and our dear brother and comrade in the struggle for liberation of the African continent, has come not only as a personal shock to me but also as a tragedy which the Government and people of Ghana and the rest of the African continent cannot easily forget.
The Government and people of Ghana join me in sending you our deepest condolence for a loss which does not only rob you and your children of a dear husband and father but deprives the whole of Africa of the counsel of one of its noblest sons of our age. I loved Patrice both as a person and as a politician with both a vision and a message for Africa; and you and I, as well as all patriotic sons of Africa, shall miss him dearly.
In this terrible hour, I urge you to be consoled by the fact that your dear husband died in a just and noble cause; his memory shall not be dulled by passage of yours nor shall time extinguish the flame he has kindled in the hearts of many; Africa shall, always remember him as one of its greatest sons, who laid down his life that Africa might be free.
May God bless his soul.
An official statement issued by the office 0f the President on the situation in the Congo following the death of Mr. Lumumba.
The Government of Ghana has noted with considerable concern, a press statement attributed to the President of the United States and to the effect that the only legal authority entitled to speak for the Congo as a whole is a Government established under the Chief of State, President Kasavubu.
Under the Constitution of the Congolese Republic, President Kasavubu has no executive powers and is a constitutional ruler in the same sense as is the King of the Belgians.
The Constitution of the Congo was unanimously agreed upon by all political parties, including that of Mr. Kasavubu and of Mr. Tshombe at the round table conference in Brussels. Under this Constitution, the powers of the President are purely ceremonial, as are those of the King of the Belgians. In particular, the President is not entitled to dismiss a Government, unless there is a vote of no confidence in both Houses of Parliament carried by an absolute majority of the Members of each House. Alternatively, the Government may be dismissed if there is a vote of no confidence carried by two-thirds of the Members present and voting in the Chambers sitting together. Before a new Government can be legally installed, it must receive a vote of confidence in both Houses of Parliament and until the new Government has received this vote of confidence, the out-going Government remains in office.
The alleged appointment by President Kasavubu of a new Government in place of that of the late Mr. Lumumba was thus doubly illegal. In the first place, there was no vote of no confidence in Mr. Lumumba’s Government, without which the President was not entitled in law to dismiss the Government and secondly, the Government which he subsequently claimed to install never received a vote of confidence from Parliament. Even, therefore, if President Kasavubu had been entitled to dismiss Mr. Lumumba’s Government, which he was not, under the Constitution, Mr. Lumumba’s Government remained in power until a new Government obtained a vote of confidence in Parliament.
There can thus be no doubt that under the Constitution of the Congo, the only legal and legitimate Government is that formed by the late Mr. Lumumba and now established under Mr. Gizenga in Stanleyville.
Under the principles of international law, it is improper to recognize a revolutionary Government which is based upon the overthrow of the Constitution unless, it is at least in de facto control of the country. In fact, the so-called Government which have been set up by Mr. Kasavubu have been in control of nothing. All effective power in Leopoldville has been in the hands of a mutinous soldier, Colonel Mobutu, who claimed that he had deposed Mr. Kasavubu and who forcibly prevented Parliament from meeting.
In the view of the Government of Ghana, the statement attributed by the press to President Kennedy marks a most dangerous departure from the principles of international law and is likely considerable to aggravate the situation in the Congo.
It is quite true that from time to time, countries with a democratic form of Government have acknowledged regimes which have arisen through the overthrow by force of the Constitution of the country concerned and which have involved the suppression of all parliamentary institutions. There is however, fundamental difference between the case of the Congo and that of other suppressions of democratic regimes by force. In the case of the Congo, the
United Nations were invited to send their armed forces to the Republic by the legitimate Government which had been installed in office strictly in accordance with the Constitution.
During the period when the United Nations were in occupation, this legitimate Government was overthrown by a military revolt and an entirely unconstitutional regime established. The Government of Ghana takes the most serious view of the fact that apparently one permanent member of the Security Council is prepared to acknowledge the legitimacy of a Government formed in such circumstances. If such a principle were to be generally accepted, it would destroy the whole basis upon which United Nations aid has hitherto been granted to legitimate Governments seeking support against external aggression. The very fact that United Nations troops are in any particular country means that country must forego the aid which it would normally receive from other friendly states to preserve its internal security. The presence of United Nations forces in control of airfields and of the means of communications, limit the powers of the Government which has invited these forces into its country and makes it difficult for that Government to deal with subversion from within. lf now the principle is to be accepted, that if under such circumstance a revolt can be engineered, permanent members of the Security Council are entitled l acknowledge as legitimate a military dictatorship based on the suppression of parliamentary liberties and institutions, then democracy is everywhere endangered.
It would appear from the press reports of President Kennedy’s statement that the President of the United States justified his action by stating that President Kasavubu has been seated in the General Assembly of the United Nations majority vote of its members. If President Kennedy has been correctly reported this would appear to be a complete misunderstanding of the principle international law as they are understood by the Government of Ghana. All Heads of State are seated in the United Nations in the sense that they personify country of which they are the head. In the case of a constitutional Monarch or President, however, this is a purely theoretical conception. The Queen of a United Kingdom, for example, is also seated in the United Nations as the Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ceylon and has, indeed addressed the United Nations in this joint capacity. The constitutional Government theory apparently advanced by President Kennedy to justify United States recognition of the unconstitutional Government of the Congo that, the Queen in her personal capacity would be entitled to dismiss say, Government of Canada or Ceylon and that the United Nations would be to seat whatever Government she might nominate in their place, irrespective the provisions of the Constitutions of Canada or Ceylon.
The Government of Ghana has invited the Ambassador of the United in Ghana to seek clarification of the statement made by President Kennedy; the Government of Ghana is most reluctant to believe that he would have forward a constitutional proposition of this nature. It is quite true that the United Nations did seat a delegation which had nominated by President Kasavubu, but which had not been endorsed by legitimate Government of the Republic of the Congo. At this time, however Mobutu was commanding some of the Congolese troops in Leopoldville and announced that by the end of the year, he was proposing to relinquish the authority which he had seized by forced and to permit Parliament to re-assemble. The vote in favour of seating the delegation nominated by President Kasavubu was in a large degree secured by the belief among some countries that constitutional Government was about to be restored and that either the Government nominated by President Kasavubu would receive parliamentary approval, or else another Government which has the support of Parliament, would be formed.
It is, however, most important to note, that the proposal to seat this delegation was not supported by any one whatsoever of the countries which had supplied contingents of troops for service in the Congo. No single country represented on the Conciliation Committee voted in favour of this proposal, which was considered by the countries which had experience of Congo conditions as most unlikely to lead to any good result.
The Government of Ghana therefore, much regrets that the Government of the United States should justify its action in acknowledging a Government based on the suppression of all parliamentary institutions and liberties by a vote in the United Nations which all those countries concerned most intimately with the affairs of the Congo were unanimously unable to support.
A Message from Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrurnah, President of the Republic of Ghana, to the Secretary General of the United Nations February 20, 1961.
It is now time that a new and serious approach be made to the present ineffective efforts of the United Nations in the Congo, if the United Nations is to be saved and the future peace of Africa assured. As I indicated at the beginning of the operations in the Congo, the problem must be tackled in two phases — first, the military problem and second, the political one. Unless the military problem can be solved first, there can be no lasting political solution.
I would like to come to New York to give my views on both phases, because, I am certain that from now on, the initiative must come from the African countries with military support from the Asian bloc. All initiative and aid from the big or NATO powers should cease. The flow of arms and equipment into the Congo provides conditions which could lead to a civil war of the Spanish type, with grave consequences throughout the whole world.
All Belgian military, paramilitary and other personnel serving the various factions should be expelled from the Congo at once. All non-African and Asian military personnel not specifically required to work under the United Nations Command must leave the Congo. The situation is so serious that in my view, the interpretation of the Security Council Mandate, namely, non-interference in the internal affairs of the Congo, is no longer tenable. The plan which I envisage for dealing with — the present situation is as follows:
a) A new United Nations Command should be established in the Congo.
b) This Command must be African and should take over complete responsibility for law and order in the Congo.
c) All Congolese armed units should be disarmed; this disarming will involve their return to barracks and the surrender of their weapons to the new United Nations Command.
d) The disarming and hand-over should be voluntary, and should lead to the re-organisation and re-training of the Congolese National Army; but if certain factions will not cooperate, force must be used.
e) All non-African personnel serving in the Congolese Army must be expelled immediately.
f) Once the military situation has been brought under control on these lines, all political prisoners must be released by the new United Nations Command, and the new Command should then convene Parliament under its auspices.
g) All foreign Diplomatic Missions and representatives should immediately leave the Congo for the time being, in order to give this new United Nations Command a fair chance and to eliminate the cold war from the Congo.
In view of the importance of the matter, I propose that you should circulate this communication to members of the Security Council and I am releasing the contents of this telegram to the press at 1800 Hours GMT.
Awaiting your reply earliest.
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» The Noble Task Of Teaching
» The Congo Situation (3)
» Relationship With Togoland
» Tradition And Culture
» Visit To Sunyani
» Christmas Message
» Casablanca Conference
» Death Of Patrice Lumumba
» The Kwame Nkrumah Institute
» The Volta River Project
» The Visit Of Josip Broz-Tito
» On Departure From Commonwealth
» On His Return To Ghana After A Trip To The United States, The United Kingdom
» Noble Task Of Teaching To The Conference Of Teachers' Association
» Dawn Broadcast 1
» Africa Must Be Free Africa, Freedom Day
» Building a Socialist State to the CPP, Study Group
» The fight on two fronts on assumption of office as general secretary and chairman of CPP
» Politics Are Not For Soldiers To Cadets Of The Ghana Military Academy
» Tragedy In Angola,The National Assembly
» New Horizons Sessional Report On The First Session Of The First Parliament Of The Republic
» The CPP 12th Anniversary
» Padmore, The Missionary. The Opening of The George Padmore Memorial Library
» Work For Ghana And The Future, Broadcast To The Nation
» The Voice of Africa. The Opening of The Ghana External Broadcasting Service
» Flower Of Learning (1), At His Installation As First Chancellor Of The University Of Ghana
» Strengthening The Bonds Of Industry Opening Of The United States Exhibition
» Flower Of Learning (2) : At His Installation As First Chancellor Of The Kwame Nkrumah Univ
» Christmas Broadcast
» A Christmas Toast At A Dinner For Ambassadors And Ministers
» Season Of Goodwill: New Year's Eve Broadcast
» Law In Africa: Conference On Legal Education And Formal Opening Of The Ghana Law School
» Guide To Party Action: Seminar At The Kwame Nkrumah Institute Of Ideological Studies
» Gateway To Ghana: Official Opening Of Tema Harbour
» Opening Of The Canadian Trade Fair
» Africa Needs Her Farmers The Conference Of The Farmers Of Africa
» Ghana Welcomes Foreign Enterprise At The Civic Luncheon
» The Laying Of The Foundation Stone Of City Hotel
» The Ninth Annual National Delegates' Conference; Conference Of The United Ghana Farmers'
» Opening Of The First Biennial Conference of The Ghana T.U.C.
» The Opening Of Electricity And Water; Supplies For Sunyani
» Appeal To National Workers Broadcast To The Nation
» Work And Happiness; Ghanas Seven-Year Development Plan
» Regret And Forgiveness; Reply To Welcome Address By Chiefs And People Of Sekondi-Takoradi
» Step To Freedom Nationalists Of African Freedom Fighters
» The Opening Of Police Headquarters
» Opening Of British Science Exhibition
» Opening Of The Accra Assembly
» On The Eve Of Second Anniversary Of Republic
» Osagyefo's Peace Award Ceremony Of The Award Of Lenin Peace Prize
» The Eleventh Party Congress
» Africa's Glorious Past Opening Of The First International Congress Of Africanists
» 13th Anniversary Of The Declaration Of Positive Action
» Official Opening Of Kwame Nkrumah Market
» A Dinner With Businessmen
» University Dinner
» On The Eve Of 6th Independence Anniversary
» Sixth Independence Anniversary Diplomatic Dinner
» Volta River Project; To The National Assembly
» World Youth Day
» May Day Broadcast
» Conference Of African Heads Of State And Government
» Closing Remarks After Signing Of O. A. U. Charter
» On Arrival At Accra Airport
» Fourteenth Anniversary Of The Convention People's Party
» Third Anniversary Of Ghana Young Pioneers
» Ratification Of The O. A. U. Charter
» The Opening Of Government House
» Opening Of The Unilever Soap Factory
» Tribute To Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois
» National Founders Day
» Ghana Military Academy; Passing-Out Parade
» Tenth Anniversary Of The United Ghana Farmers' Council Cooperatives
» Formal Opening Of The Oil Refinery
» Opening Of The National Assembly
» Laying Of The Foundation Stone At The Pre-Fabricated Concrete Panel Factory
» A United Nations Day
» The Opening Of The Institute Of African Studies
» Opening Of The Second Conference Of African Journalists
» Tribute To The Late President John F. Kennedy
» The Academy Of Science Dinner
» Inauguration Of The Workers' College
» Message To U Thant; U.N. Secretary General
» New Year's Message
» Chou En-Lai In Ghana; Dinner Held In Honour Of Osagyefo By Premier Chou En-Lai
» A New Era; Broadcast To The Nation
» Blue Print Of Our Goal; Launching The Seven-Year Development Plan
» The Challenge Of Our Socialist Revolution; To The T.U.C. National Consultative Conference
» Peace And Progress; The Conference Of Non-Aligned States
» Bright Future For All; Opening Of The National Assembly
» The Great Tasks Ahead; 1966 New Year Message
» Vision and Commitment in National Leadership
Death Of Patrice Lumumba
Accra, February 14, 1961
COUNTRYMEN, AFRICAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS, COMRADES AND FRIENDS,
Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo where and when we do not know —three of our brother freedom fighters have been done to death.
They have been killed: Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Maurice Mpolo, the Minister in his Government who was elected from Katanga Province, and Joseph Okito, the Vice President of the Congolese Senate.
About their end, many things are uncertain but one fact is crystal clear —they have been killed because the United Nations, whom Patrice Lumumba himself; as Prime Minister, had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order, not only failed to maintain that law and order, but also denied to the lawful Government of the Congo all other means of self-protection.
History records many occasions when rulers of States have been assassinated. The murder of Patrice Lumumba and his two colleagues, however, is unique in that, this is the first time in history that the legal ruler of a country has been done to death with the open connivance of a world organisation in whom that ruler put his trust.
These are the facts: Patrice Lumumba was appointed Prime Minister by the departing Belgian authorities because, he was the leader of the Parliamentary Party with the largest representation and was the only Member of Parliament who could obtain a majority in both the Senate and the Chamber. Kasavubu was subsequently elected as the ceremonial Head of the State but it was clearly agreed and understood that he should have no more authority or power than has the King of the Belgians in Belgium. This fact, clearly written into the Constitution of the Congo, has been deliberately ignored and distorted by those who have sought for their own ends to give some appearance of legality to the military usurpers and the agents of colonial rule who have illegally seized power in some parts of the Congo.
Shortly after independence, the Congolese army mutinied. Patrice Lumumba and his colleagues had to secure outside support from somewhere if they were to preserve the legal structure of the State. In the interests of world peace and in order to prevent the cold war from being brought into Africa, Patrice Lumumba invited the United Nations to preserve law and order. The United Nations insisted that they should have the sole mandate to do this and that the legal Government of the Congo should not obtain that military assistance which would have otherwise been forthcoming from many other friendly African States.
However, instead of preserving law and order, the United Nations declared itself neutral between law and disorder and refused to lend any assistance whatsoever to the legal Government in suppressing the mutineers who had set themselves up in power in Katanga and South Kasai.
When, in order to move its troops against the rebels, the Government of the Congo obtained some civilian aircraft and civilian motor vehicles from the Soviet Union, the colonialist Powers at the United Nations raised a howl of rage while, at the same time, maintaining a discreet silence over the build-up of Belgian arms and actual Belgian military forces in the service of the rebels.
With a total disregard of the Constitution, which expressly provided that the President could not dismiss the Prime Minister, unless there had been a vote of "no confidence" in the parliament, Kasavubu illegally tried to remove Patrice Lumumba from office and to substitute another Government. When Lumumba wished to broadcast to the people, explaining what had happened, the United Nations in the so-called interest of law and order prevented him by force from speaking. They did not, however, use the same force to prevent the mutineers of the Congolese Army from seizing power in Leopoldville and installing a completely illegal Government.
Despite the fact that one of the most important reasons for the United Nations, action was supposedly to see that all Belgian forces were removed, the United Nations sat by while the so-called Katanga Government, which is entirely, Belgian—controlled, imported aircraft and arms from Belgium and from other countries, such as South Africa, which have a vested interest in the suppression of African freedom. The United Nations connived at the setting up, in fact, of an independent Katanga State, though this is contrary to the Security Council’s own resolutions.
Finally, the United Nations, which could exert its authority to prevent Patrice Lumumba from broadcasting, was, (so it pleaded,) quite unable to prevent his arrest by mutineers or his transfer, through the use of airfields under United Nations control, into the hands of the Belgian-dominated Government of Katanga.
The United Nations is, on behalf of all its members, in control of the finances of the Congo. It is now two months ago since I personally wrote to Mr. Hammerskjoeld to ask him where the money came from which is being used to pay the soldiers in Mobutu’s illegal army. I am still waiting for an answer. One thing is certain; however, this money does not come from the revenue of the Congo. It is supplied from outside by those who wish to restore colonialism in practice by maintaining in office a puppet regime entirely financially dependent upon them.
The time has come to speak plainly. The danger in the Congo is not so much the possibility of a civil war between Africans, but rather, a colonialist war in which the colonial and imperialist power hide behind African puppet regimes. At this very moment, Northern Katanga is being laid waste by military units under command of a regular officer of the Belgian army, Colonel Crevecoeur, armed with the most modern weapons supplied by Belgium. Recruiting offices have been opened in South Africa, in France and elsewhere, and wages of over four hundred pounds a month are being offered to former German fascist officers and to former collaborators of Hitler and Mussolini in other countries in order to persuade them to enlist in the unholy war against the African people.
Where, l ask again, does the money come from to pay these big salaries and to buy all of this modern and expensive armament which is now being deployed against unarmed peasants and villagers?
The rulers of the United States, of the United Kingdom, of France and of the other powers who are militarily allied with Belgium, must answer these questions.
Why did they express so loudly their indignation when the Soviet Union placed at the disposal of the legal Government of Congo civilian aircraft and civilian vehicles? Why are they so silent when their ally, Belgium, openly supplies military aircraft and armoured vehicles to the rebels? Why is it that no single member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has on any occasion addressed to Belgium any public rebuke for the flagrant breaches of the Security Council resolution in which Belgium is every day indulging? Alas, the architects of this murder are many.
In Ghana, we realize the great financial stakes which some great powers have in the United Miniere and in other industrial and commercial undertakings in the Congo. I would however, ask these powers these questions: Do they really believe that ultimately, they can safeguard their investments and their interests in the Congo by convening at a brutal and savage colonialist war?
Do they realize that they are sacrificing African lives to continue in Africa, the cold war at the very time when all powers, both great and small, should be concentrating on the abolition of colonialism and establishment of world peace?
Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito have died because they put their faith in the United Nations and because they refused to allow themselves to be used as stooges or puppets for external interests.
There is still time for those who have supported this cruel colonialist war in the Congo to change their policy, but time is running out.
The cynical planning of the murder of Patrice Lumumba and his colleagues is a final lesson for us all. We cannot ignore the fact that this crime shows every evidence of the most careful preparation and timing. First, there came the handing over of Patrice Lumumba and others to the Belgian-controlled authorities in Katanga.
Next, there came the contemptuous refusal of these same authorities to allow the United Nations Conciliation Committee any access to the prisoners. From this came the final proof that the United Nations would not effectively intervene to save the lives of the Prime Minister or his colleagues. This was followed by the formation of the so-called new Kasavubu Government and the warning by Belgium to Belgian nationals to leave those parts of the Congo controlled by the legal Government.
Finally, came the story so reminiscent of Nazi and Fascist technique — the false account of an attempt to escape and the death of the prisoners following upon it. What are the next steps in this plan? The information before me now is that the Kasavubu-Mobutu group has planned an offensive against Orientale Province in an attempt to secure a quick military victory before the Security Council can deal with the matter.
My information is that this plan has been made with the full knowledge of the French and Belgian Governments and has their full support. Let me issue a most serious warning: Any such action, unless immediately denounced by the other members of the Security Council, will have a profound effect on African relations with the great powers.
Our dear brothers, Patrice Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito are dead, and I ask you all to join me in mourning the loss which the whole African continent has sustained through their cruel murder. But their spirit is not dead, nor are the things for which they stood: African freedom, the unity and independence of Africa, and the final and complete destruction of colonialism and imperialism.
The colonialists and imperialists have killed them but what they cannot do, is to kill the ideals which we still preach, and for which they sacrificed their lives. In the Africa of the future, their names will live forever more.
A Message of Condolence sent by the Osagyefo on February 14, 1961, to Madam Lumumba on the death of her husband.
The cruel murder of your beloved husband and our dear brother and comrade in the struggle for liberation of the African continent, has come not only as a personal shock to me but also as a tragedy which the Government and people of Ghana and the rest of the African continent cannot easily forget.
The Government and people of Ghana join me in sending you our deepest condolence for a loss which does not only rob you and your children of a dear husband and father but deprives the whole of Africa of the counsel of one of its noblest sons of our age. I loved Patrice both as a person and as a politician with both a vision and a message for Africa; and you and I, as well as all patriotic sons of Africa, shall miss him dearly.
In this terrible hour, I urge you to be consoled by the fact that your dear husband died in a just and noble cause; his memory shall not be dulled by passage of yours nor shall time extinguish the flame he has kindled in the hearts of many; Africa shall, always remember him as one of its greatest sons, who laid down his life that Africa might be free.
May God bless his soul.
An official statement issued by the office 0f the President on the situation in the Congo following the death of Mr. Lumumba.
The Government of Ghana has noted with considerable concern, a press statement attributed to the President of the United States and to the effect that the only legal authority entitled to speak for the Congo as a whole is a Government established under the Chief of State, President Kasavubu.
Under the Constitution of the Congolese Republic, President Kasavubu has no executive powers and is a constitutional ruler in the same sense as is the King of the Belgians.
The Constitution of the Congo was unanimously agreed upon by all political parties, including that of Mr. Kasavubu and of Mr. Tshombe at the round table conference in Brussels. Under this Constitution, the powers of the President are purely ceremonial, as are those of the King of the Belgians. In particular, the President is not entitled to dismiss a Government, unless there is a vote of no confidence in both Houses of Parliament carried by an absolute majority of the Members of each House. Alternatively, the Government may be dismissed if there is a vote of no confidence carried by two-thirds of the Members present and voting in the Chambers sitting together. Before a new Government can be legally installed, it must receive a vote of confidence in both Houses of Parliament and until the new Government has received this vote of confidence, the out-going Government remains in office.
The alleged appointment by President Kasavubu of a new Government in place of that of the late Mr. Lumumba was thus doubly illegal. In the first place, there was no vote of no confidence in Mr. Lumumba’s Government, without which the President was not entitled in law to dismiss the Government and secondly, the Government which he subsequently claimed to install never received a vote of confidence from Parliament. Even, therefore, if President Kasavubu had been entitled to dismiss Mr. Lumumba’s Government, which he was not, under the Constitution, Mr. Lumumba’s Government remained in power until a new Government obtained a vote of confidence in Parliament.
There can thus be no doubt that under the Constitution of the Congo, the only legal and legitimate Government is that formed by the late Mr. Lumumba and now established under Mr. Gizenga in Stanleyville.
Under the principles of international law, it is improper to recognize a revolutionary Government which is based upon the overthrow of the Constitution unless, it is at least in de facto control of the country. In fact, the so-called Government which have been set up by Mr. Kasavubu have been in control of nothing. All effective power in Leopoldville has been in the hands of a mutinous soldier, Colonel Mobutu, who claimed that he had deposed Mr. Kasavubu and who forcibly prevented Parliament from meeting.
In the view of the Government of Ghana, the statement attributed by the press to President Kennedy marks a most dangerous departure from the principles of international law and is likely considerable to aggravate the situation in the Congo.
It is quite true that from time to time, countries with a democratic form of Government have acknowledged regimes which have arisen through the overthrow by force of the Constitution of the country concerned and which have involved the suppression of all parliamentary institutions. There is however, fundamental difference between the case of the Congo and that of other suppressions of democratic regimes by force. In the case of the Congo, the
United Nations were invited to send their armed forces to the Republic by the legitimate Government which had been installed in office strictly in accordance with the Constitution.
During the period when the United Nations were in occupation, this legitimate Government was overthrown by a military revolt and an entirely unconstitutional regime established. The Government of Ghana takes the most serious view of the fact that apparently one permanent member of the Security Council is prepared to acknowledge the legitimacy of a Government formed in such circumstances. If such a principle were to be generally accepted, it would destroy the whole basis upon which United Nations aid has hitherto been granted to legitimate Governments seeking support against external aggression. The very fact that United Nations troops are in any particular country means that country must forego the aid which it would normally receive from other friendly states to preserve its internal security. The presence of United Nations forces in control of airfields and of the means of communications, limit the powers of the Government which has invited these forces into its country and makes it difficult for that Government to deal with subversion from within. lf now the principle is to be accepted, that if under such circumstance a revolt can be engineered, permanent members of the Security Council are entitled l acknowledge as legitimate a military dictatorship based on the suppression of parliamentary liberties and institutions, then democracy is everywhere endangered.
It would appear from the press reports of President Kennedy’s statement that the President of the United States justified his action by stating that President Kasavubu has been seated in the General Assembly of the United Nations majority vote of its members. If President Kennedy has been correctly reported this would appear to be a complete misunderstanding of the principle international law as they are understood by the Government of Ghana. All Heads of State are seated in the United Nations in the sense that they personify country of which they are the head. In the case of a constitutional Monarch or President, however, this is a purely theoretical conception. The Queen of a United Kingdom, for example, is also seated in the United Nations as the Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Ceylon and has, indeed addressed the United Nations in this joint capacity. The constitutional Government theory apparently advanced by President Kennedy to justify United States recognition of the unconstitutional Government of the Congo that, the Queen in her personal capacity would be entitled to dismiss say, Government of Canada or Ceylon and that the United Nations would be to seat whatever Government she might nominate in their place, irrespective the provisions of the Constitutions of Canada or Ceylon.
The Government of Ghana has invited the Ambassador of the United in Ghana to seek clarification of the statement made by President Kennedy; the Government of Ghana is most reluctant to believe that he would have forward a constitutional proposition of this nature. It is quite true that the United Nations did seat a delegation which had nominated by President Kasavubu, but which had not been endorsed by legitimate Government of the Republic of the Congo. At this time, however Mobutu was commanding some of the Congolese troops in Leopoldville and announced that by the end of the year, he was proposing to relinquish the authority which he had seized by forced and to permit Parliament to re-assemble. The vote in favour of seating the delegation nominated by President Kasavubu was in a large degree secured by the belief among some countries that constitutional Government was about to be restored and that either the Government nominated by President Kasavubu would receive parliamentary approval, or else another Government which has the support of Parliament, would be formed.
It is, however, most important to note, that the proposal to seat this delegation was not supported by any one whatsoever of the countries which had supplied contingents of troops for service in the Congo. No single country represented on the Conciliation Committee voted in favour of this proposal, which was considered by the countries which had experience of Congo conditions as most unlikely to lead to any good result.
The Government of Ghana therefore, much regrets that the Government of the United States should justify its action in acknowledging a Government based on the suppression of all parliamentary institutions and liberties by a vote in the United Nations which all those countries concerned most intimately with the affairs of the Congo were unanimously unable to support.
A Message from Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrurnah, President of the Republic of Ghana, to the Secretary General of the United Nations February 20, 1961.
It is now time that a new and serious approach be made to the present ineffective efforts of the United Nations in the Congo, if the United Nations is to be saved and the future peace of Africa assured. As I indicated at the beginning of the operations in the Congo, the problem must be tackled in two phases — first, the military problem and second, the political one. Unless the military problem can be solved first, there can be no lasting political solution.
I would like to come to New York to give my views on both phases, because, I am certain that from now on, the initiative must come from the African countries with military support from the Asian bloc. All initiative and aid from the big or NATO powers should cease. The flow of arms and equipment into the Congo provides conditions which could lead to a civil war of the Spanish type, with grave consequences throughout the whole world.
All Belgian military, paramilitary and other personnel serving the various factions should be expelled from the Congo at once. All non-African and Asian military personnel not specifically required to work under the United Nations Command must leave the Congo. The situation is so serious that in my view, the interpretation of the Security Council Mandate, namely, non-interference in the internal affairs of the Congo, is no longer tenable. The plan which I envisage for dealing with — the present situation is as follows:
a) A new United Nations Command should be established in the Congo.
b) This Command must be African and should take over complete responsibility for law and order in the Congo.
c) All Congolese armed units should be disarmed; this disarming will involve their return to barracks and the surrender of their weapons to the new United Nations Command.
d) The disarming and hand-over should be voluntary, and should lead to the re-organisation and re-training of the Congolese National Army; but if certain factions will not cooperate, force must be used.
e) All non-African personnel serving in the Congolese Army must be expelled immediately.
f) Once the military situation has been brought under control on these lines, all political prisoners must be released by the new United Nations Command, and the new Command should then convene Parliament under its auspices.
g) All foreign Diplomatic Missions and representatives should immediately leave the Congo for the time being, in order to give this new United Nations Command a fair chance and to eliminate the cold war from the Congo.
In view of the importance of the matter, I propose that you should circulate this communication to members of the Security Council and I am releasing the contents of this telegram to the press at 1800 Hours GMT.
Awaiting your reply earliest.
» 10th Anniversary of The C.P.P.
» The African Hurricane
» Ghana Needs Her Farmers
» New Sporting Era In West Africa
» French Atom Tests In The Sahara
» Sports And African Unity
» Third Anniversary Of Independence
» Debate On Government White Paper On The Republican Constitution
» Census Night
» Positive Action Conference For Peace And Security In Africa
» To The People Of Ireland
» Towards World Peace
» Official Opening Of College Of Administration
» Come Down To Earth
» Farewell Dinner To The Last Gorvenor-General
» Prorogation Of Parliament
» Ghana Republic Is Born
» To The Armed Forces Of Ghana
» First Meeting Of The Republican Parliament
» Towards African Unity
» Opening Of Hall Of Trade Unions
» To Ghana Women And Women Of African Descent
» To The Diplomatic Corps
» Africas Challenge
» The Congo Situation (1)
» The Congo Situation (2)
» To School Children On Founder's Day
» Investment Policy
» Solution To The Congo Problems
» At The United Nations
» On Arrival From The United Nations
» Trade Policy
» United Nations Day
» To The Red Cross Society
» Chieftaincy Is Guaranteed
» To The Students Of Ghana College
» To The Students Of Women's Training College
» Home Affairs
» Opening Of Cocoa House
» Arrival Of Emperor Haile Sellassie
» State Dinner For Emperor Haile Sellassie
» The Noble Task Of Teaching
» The Congo Situation (3)
» Relationship With Togoland
» Tradition And Culture
» Visit To Sunyani
» Christmas Message
» Casablanca Conference
» Death Of Patrice Lumumba
» The Kwame Nkrumah Institute
» The Volta River Project
» The Visit Of Josip Broz-Tito
» On Departure From Commonwealth
» On His Return To Ghana After A Trip To The United States, The United Kingdom
» Noble Task Of Teaching To The Conference Of Teachers' Association
» Dawn Broadcast 1
» Africa Must Be Free Africa, Freedom Day
» Building a Socialist State to the CPP, Study Group
» The fight on two fronts on assumption of office as general secretary and chairman of CPP
» Politics Are Not For Soldiers To Cadets Of The Ghana Military Academy
» Tragedy In Angola,The National Assembly
» New Horizons Sessional Report On The First Session Of The First Parliament Of The Republic
» The CPP 12th Anniversary
» Padmore, The Missionary. The Opening of The George Padmore Memorial Library
» Work For Ghana And The Future, Broadcast To The Nation
» The Voice of Africa. The Opening of The Ghana External Broadcasting Service
» Flower Of Learning (1), At His Installation As First Chancellor Of The University Of Ghana
» Strengthening The Bonds Of Industry Opening Of The United States Exhibition
» Flower Of Learning (2) : At His Installation As First Chancellor Of The Kwame Nkrumah Univ
» Christmas Broadcast
» A Christmas Toast At A Dinner For Ambassadors And Ministers
» Season Of Goodwill: New Year's Eve Broadcast
» Law In Africa: Conference On Legal Education And Formal Opening Of The Ghana Law School
» Guide To Party Action: Seminar At The Kwame Nkrumah Institute Of Ideological Studies
» Gateway To Ghana: Official Opening Of Tema Harbour
» Opening Of The Canadian Trade Fair
» Africa Needs Her Farmers The Conference Of The Farmers Of Africa
» Ghana Welcomes Foreign Enterprise At The Civic Luncheon
» The Laying Of The Foundation Stone Of City Hotel
» The Ninth Annual National Delegates' Conference; Conference Of The United Ghana Farmers'
» Opening Of The First Biennial Conference of The Ghana T.U.C.
» The Opening Of Electricity And Water; Supplies For Sunyani
» Appeal To National Workers Broadcast To The Nation
» Work And Happiness; Ghanas Seven-Year Development Plan
» Regret And Forgiveness; Reply To Welcome Address By Chiefs And People Of Sekondi-Takoradi
» Step To Freedom Nationalists Of African Freedom Fighters
» The Opening Of Police Headquarters
» Opening Of British Science Exhibition
» Opening Of The Accra Assembly
» On The Eve Of Second Anniversary Of Republic
» Osagyefo's Peace Award Ceremony Of The Award Of Lenin Peace Prize
» The Eleventh Party Congress
» Africa's Glorious Past Opening Of The First International Congress Of Africanists
» 13th Anniversary Of The Declaration Of Positive Action
» Official Opening Of Kwame Nkrumah Market
» A Dinner With Businessmen
» University Dinner
» On The Eve Of 6th Independence Anniversary
» Sixth Independence Anniversary Diplomatic Dinner
» Volta River Project; To The National Assembly
» World Youth Day
» May Day Broadcast
» Conference Of African Heads Of State And Government
» Closing Remarks After Signing Of O. A. U. Charter
» On Arrival At Accra Airport
» Fourteenth Anniversary Of The Convention People's Party
» Third Anniversary Of Ghana Young Pioneers
» Ratification Of The O. A. U. Charter
» The Opening Of Government House
» Opening Of The Unilever Soap Factory
» Tribute To Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois
» National Founders Day
» Ghana Military Academy; Passing-Out Parade
» Tenth Anniversary Of The United Ghana Farmers' Council Cooperatives
» Formal Opening Of The Oil Refinery
» Opening Of The National Assembly
» Laying Of The Foundation Stone At The Pre-Fabricated Concrete Panel Factory
» A United Nations Day
» The Opening Of The Institute Of African Studies
» Opening Of The Second Conference Of African Journalists
» Tribute To The Late President John F. Kennedy
» The Academy Of Science Dinner
» Inauguration Of The Workers' College
» Message To U Thant; U.N. Secretary General
» New Year's Message
» Chou En-Lai In Ghana; Dinner Held In Honour Of Osagyefo By Premier Chou En-Lai
» A New Era; Broadcast To The Nation
» Blue Print Of Our Goal; Launching The Seven-Year Development Plan
» The Challenge Of Our Socialist Revolution; To The T.U.C. National Consultative Conference
» Peace And Progress; The Conference Of Non-Aligned States
» Bright Future For All; Opening Of The National Assembly
» The Great Tasks Ahead; 1966 New Year Message
» Vision and Commitment in National Leadership
Death Of Patrice Lumumba
Accra, February 14, 1961
COUNTRYMEN, AFRICAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS, COMRADES AND FRIENDS,
Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo where and when we do not know —three of our brother freedom fighters have been done to death.
They have been killed: Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Maurice Mpolo, the Minister in his Government who was elected from Katanga Province, and Joseph Okito, the Vice President of the Congolese Senate.
About their end, many things are uncertain but one fact is crystal clear —they have been killed because the United Nations, whom Patrice Lumumba himself; as Prime Minister, had invited to the Congo to preserve law and order, not only failed to maintain that law and order, but also denied to the lawful Government of the Congo all other means of self-protection.
History records many occasions when rulers of States have been assassinated. The murder of Patrice Lumumba and his two colleagues, however, is unique in that, this is the first time in history that the legal ruler of a country has been done to death with the open connivance of a world organisation in whom that ruler put his trust.
These are the facts: Patrice Lumumba was appointed Prime Minister by the departing Belgian authorities because, he was the leader of the Parliamentary Party with the largest representation and was the only Member of Parliament who could obtain a majority in both the Senate and the Chamber. Kasavubu was subsequently elected as the ceremonial Head of the State but it was clearly agreed and understood that he should have no more authority or power than has the King of the Belgians in Belgium. This fact, clearly written into the Constitution of the Congo, has been deliberately ignored and distorted by those who have sought for their own ends to give some appearance of legality to the military usurpers and the agents of colonial rule who have illegally seized power in some parts of the Congo.
Shortly after independence, the Congolese army mutinied. Patrice Lumumba and his colleagues had to secure outside support from somewhere if they were to preserve the legal structure of the State. In the interests of world peace and in order to prevent the cold war from being brought into Africa, Patrice Lumumba invited the United Nations to preserve law and order. The United Nations insisted that they should have the sole mandate to do this and that the legal Government of the Congo should not obtain that military assistance which would have otherwise been forthcoming from many other friendly African States.
However, instead of preserving law and order, the United Nations declared itself neutral between law and disorder and refused to lend any assistance whatsoever to the legal Government in suppressing the mutineers who had set themselves up in power in Katanga and South Kasai.
When, in order to move its troops against the rebels, the Government of the Congo obtained some civilian aircraft and civilian motor vehicles from the Soviet Union, the colonialist Powers at the United Nations raised a howl of rage while, at the same time, maintaining a discreet silence over the build-up of Belgian arms and actual Belgian military forces in the service of the rebels.
With a total disregard of the Constitution, which expressly provided that the President could not dismiss the Prime Minister, unless there had been a vote of "no confidence" in the parliament, Kasavubu illegally tried to remove Patrice Lumumba from office and to substitute another Government. When Lumumba wished to broadcast to the people, explaining what had happened, the United Nations in the so-called interest of law and order prevented him by force from speaking. They did not, however, use the same force to prevent the mutineers of the Congolese Army from seizing power in Leopoldville and installing a completely illegal Government.
Despite the fact that one of the most important reasons for the United Nations, action was supposedly to see that all Belgian forces were removed, the United Nations sat by while the so-called Katanga Government, which is entirely, Belgian—controlled, imported aircraft and arms from Belgium and from other countries, such as South Africa, which have a vested interest in the suppression of African freedom. The United Nations connived at the setting up, in fact, of an independent Katanga State, though this is contrary to the Security Council’s own resolutions.
Finally, the United Nations, which could exert its authority to prevent Patrice Lumumba from broadcasting, was, (so it pleaded,) quite unable to prevent his arrest by mutineers or his transfer, through the use of airfields under United Nations control, into the hands of the Belgian-dominated Government of Katanga.
The United Nations is, on behalf of all its members, in control of the finances of the Congo. It is now two months ago since I personally wrote to Mr. Hammerskjoeld to ask him where the money came from which is being used to pay the soldiers in Mobutu’s illegal army. I am still waiting for an answer. One thing is certain; however, this money does not come from the revenue of the Congo. It is supplied from outside by those who wish to restore colonialism in practice by maintaining in office a puppet regime entirely financially dependent upon them.
The time has come to speak plainly. The danger in the Congo is not so much the possibility of a civil war between Africans, but rather, a colonialist war in which the colonial and imperialist power hide behind African puppet regimes. At this very moment, Northern Katanga is being laid waste by military units under command of a regular officer of the Belgian army, Colonel Crevecoeur, armed with the most modern weapons supplied by Belgium. Recruiting offices have been opened in South Africa, in France and elsewhere, and wages of over four hundred pounds a month are being offered to former German fascist officers and to former collaborators of Hitler and Mussolini in other countries in order to persuade them to enlist in the unholy war against the African people.
Where, l ask again, does the money come from to pay these big salaries and to buy all of this modern and expensive armament which is now being deployed against unarmed peasants and villagers?
The rulers of the United States, of the United Kingdom, of France and of the other powers who are militarily allied with Belgium, must answer these questions.
Why did they express so loudly their indignation when the Soviet Union placed at the disposal of the legal Government of Congo civilian aircraft and civilian vehicles? Why are they so silent when their ally, Belgium, openly supplies military aircraft and armoured vehicles to the rebels? Why is it that no single member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has on any occasion addressed to Belgium any public rebuke for the flagrant breaches of the Security Council resolution in which Belgium is every day indulging? Alas, the architects of this murder are many.
In Ghana, we realize the great financial stakes which some great powers have in the United Miniere and in other industrial and commercial undertakings in the Congo. I would however, ask these powers these questions: Do they really believe that ultimately, they can safeguard their investments and their interests in the Congo by convening at a brutal and savage colonialist war?
Do they realize that they are sacrificing African lives to continue in
KKO 8 years ago
Excellent piece, Namesake,
That is exactly why our "Import Substitution Policy" at independence failed so miserably.After 1961, most of the factories were filled with CPP activists, cronies and tribespeople, square pegs in r ... read full comment
Excellent piece, Namesake,
That is exactly why our "Import Substitution Policy" at independence failed so miserably.After 1961, most of the factories were filled with CPP activists, cronies and tribespeople, square pegs in round holes!
YAW 8 years ago
I would love to see your face...which probably looks far worse than a wedding cake left out in the pouring rain.
I would love to see your face...which probably looks far worse than a wedding cake left out in the pouring rain.
Kwame 8 years ago
G.K. Berko socialism is not the same as communism, and there is no communist country in the world. I use current developments in the world to illustrate my point. The fact also is that the socialist states are not imperialist ... read full comment
G.K. Berko socialism is not the same as communism, and there is no communist country in the world. I use current developments in the world to illustrate my point. The fact also is that the socialist states are not imperialist, thus do not force us to adopt any form of socioeconomic system or family life. If the capitalist system in the U.S. and its welfare system is for others to copy, then where is the room for the Negro who is a seating duck that must be shot. Lenin call what you people are advocating as little deeds. The proletariat everywhere has nothing to loose, but to break the chain of socioeconomic exploitation and eliminate surplus value which is the bases of capitalist exploitation that a mixed economy does not resolve. To tell the proletariat to accept a capitalist economy is like telling him to accept chain of oppression and suppression, because it is not an iron chain, but a gold chain, but the fact is that all chains are chains to subjugate a person. Mixed economy still remain a capitalist deodorized shit, and a shit when even deodorized still remain a shit.
G. K. Berko 8 years ago
Kwame, your point is well noted. But you and I know for a fact that the common person out there has always been bombarded with certain connotations of these words as being the only acceptable or existing meanings. We have oft ... read full comment
Kwame, your point is well noted. But you and I know for a fact that the common person out there has always been bombarded with certain connotations of these words as being the only acceptable or existing meanings. We have often been fed that Communism is the extreme form of Socialism, even though the two may well be different animals. So, those who claim to be advocates of Capitalism trash Socialists just as they would Communists. Similarly, there are some who see any form of Capitalism as offensive, oppressive and imperialistic.
My own personal belief is that we do not need to fulfill such expectations to carve out what Economic Model works best for us, both locally and in interacting with the World outside.
I sense your deep resentment for the imperialist subjugation that is often attached to Capitalism as we have long experienced with the USA and much of the West. However, that does not collide with my suggestion. The idea of subjugation could be manifested in many ways, the culmination of which is Political.
We have, for instance, our own litany of long existing events of subjugation by our own leaders in our History. Currently, we still tolerate relics of subjugation and tyranny by our Traditional leaders. We have not been able to eliminate that primitive suppression of people by one person in authority, or the psychological dehumanization of whole tribes among us.
So, we must continue to fight all forms of oppression, imperialism or xenophobic suppression of others rights everywhere. It is my prayer that we all could learn to recognize those evils everywhere they are coming from. And therefore, the use of Capitalism as a conduit to subject us to any such evils must be halted.
That does not necessarily mean we cannot find any aspect of Capitalism that we may and must hold unto for our material and Social development in free democratic environment.
I have, thus, rejected the notions projected by the likes of Dr. SAS and Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr. that there could not be a buoyant Market environment where all could healthily compete to bring the best from within us and for our own personal advancement, unless we sell our souls to the Venture Capitalists and the cut-throat, blood-sucking laiser-faire Capitalists, who share no sense of humanity with anyone but what makes their pockets swell.
One thing that I would beg to differ from your last assertion is that Mixed Economy does not correspond to your 'deodorized shit' as you claim. The point is that we should not let things stink like shit in the first place. And once you shit, you shit. Hey, shit happens, no matter what. But we deodorize to control perspiration, and other body odor that we may not have cure for. Such are the practicalities I would invite you to consider for mitigation.
However, practically, we see the introduction of certain Programs that extremists ascribe to one side or the other as immutable reflection of that ideology.
Hence, my attempt in the comment I presented was to encourage us to ignore the ideological tagging or claims and follow a well-thought-out design of the appropriate proportions of Capitalism and Socialism that best suits us and engenders the most productivity and equitable distribution of income among us, even as we confront the Global Market.
We need not even describe any core of our productive members proletariat or conservative to suggest aligning ourselves with a particular political doctrine with which such terms are tightly associated. That to me is even flimsy. But to clear the air of the noxious fumes, we may have to tow the neutral course.
Thanks, Kwame!
Let's work on it all together.
Long Live Ghana!!!
Kwamebeba 8 years ago
Any type of economy that benefits the people is what the people are seeking for. A mixed economy that allows the people to obtain their needs is no "deodorized shit," as you or Lenin may claim. An African must read numerous ... read full comment
Any type of economy that benefits the people is what the people are seeking for. A mixed economy that allows the people to obtain their needs is no "deodorized shit," as you or Lenin may claim. An African must read numerous works and travel to different countries but what he or she must practise when in Africa must be conduicive to the African environment. Most, if not all non Africans see an African as nothing but an African. As an Nkrumaist, I am more than convinced that Africa must research and adopt anything that will help elevate the African personality even if it is a "deodorized shit," and anything that tries to look down on the African as the real shit even if it is coming from the mouth of Lenin.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
Dear Kwamebeba,
Good day. I could not agree with you more. I quite remember writing the following in "Nkrumah Did Not Force His Views on African Leaders 5":
"That is not an apocalyptic indictment of the continent per se ... read full comment
Dear Kwamebeba,
Good day. I could not agree with you more. I quite remember writing the following in "Nkrumah Did Not Force His Views on African Leaders 5":
"That is not an apocalyptic indictment of the continent per se. Rather it is an apocalyptic indictment of Africa’s postcolonial Eurocentric leadership. The other fact is that, on a more general note, international reportage that usually accompanies these preventable accidents presents the victims as Africans, not necessarily as individual African nationalities or ethnicities or cultures or races, a view largely supported by the late Julius Nyerere who said wherever he traveled around the world he was always perceived or viewed as African, not Tanzanian. This is where the principle question of collective responsibility, sociopolitical stability, patriotism, self-actualization, egalitarianism, economic development, and continental solidarity, the core principles of Nkrumahism, assumes a position of enormous practical indispensability in the theories and hypotheses of Africa’s postcolonial development strategies and tactics."
Indeed Nyerere recalled being addressed as an African and not Tanzanian wherever he traveled around the world.
Thanks for bringing this up Kwamebeba.
Have a great week.
G. K. Berko 8 years ago
All I pray for is just that you indicated with no coercion from outside to swallow a coated pill of death.
Long Live Ghana!!!
All I pray for is just that you indicated with no coercion from outside to swallow a coated pill of death.
Long Live Ghana!!!
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
By: Kobina Antobam
If you believe in unidentified flying objects (UFOs), then you must be completely out of this world and “spaced out” all by your crazy self on a faraway planet. And if you also believe in NPP’s muc ... read full comment
By: Kobina Antobam
If you believe in unidentified flying objects (UFOs), then you must be completely out of this world and “spaced out” all by your crazy self on a faraway planet. And if you also believe in NPP’s much-ballyhooed property-owning tradition as an honorable pursuit for all Ghanaians, you must then be right here on Earth somewhere in Ghana but very delusional and crazy like a pilfering fox.
If you also decide that you have heard enough of Nkrumah, Danquah, and Kufuor from yours truly, then you are one of those Ghanaians who cherished, welcomed, and celebrated Kufuor’s and NPP’s deliberate and methodical degradation of Nkrumah and the empty glorification of Danquah for good eight years. If you are one of those people, then you will be hopelessly exasperated about the constant reminders of especially Nkrumah accomplishments.
Before we go on, the question is: where were you and why were you quiet when Kufuor was rewriting Ghana’s history right under your nose but can’t stand reading about the pursuit and insistence for him to answer for his past actions and prejudices? If you insist on being stubbornly ethnocentric about it, then you can go find somewhere to hide your guilty face and hang your heavy head in shame because you ain’t seen nothing yet!
When the NPP, in its beginnings, sought nationwide acceptance and tried to project an image of viability but was saddled with the predicament of extenuating its negative legacy, that is, the legacy of conniving with a foreign intelligence agency to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah, the initial NPP members concluded that the party did not have any substantive ideology to tag onto which it could sell to discriminating Ghanaians in order to lighten its historical burden.
After a hopeless search, they settled on Joseph Danquah and his meaningless idea of private ownership of property and called it a “tradition” and planned to implement it as a national policy. What they did not understand is that private property ownership is a given in all societies and should not take precedence over, or override, a wider national economic policy like industrial and infrastructure development. The idea of private property ownership should not have consumed the soul, time, and attention of the ma-te-meho party and rendered them corrupted to the core.
A simple deductive reasoning will help you realize that, in his desperate desire to cuddle up to and gain a seat on the lap of his foreign subversive bosses and clandestine sponsors, Danquah struggled with putting forth a counter stance against Kwame Nkrumah’s rule and socialist leanings. Danquah wanted desperately to please his colonial masters so much that he ended up being impaled by his own bloody sword!
When it comes to the adoption of an appropriate economic ideology for Ghanaians, it is imperative to mention here that, though it served its purpose at the right period, pure socialist economic policy does not fit well in today’s expanded global economy, especially when post-World War II Cold War has been virtually over. Almost all subjugated nations are now relatively free of colonialism and are trudging along, at varying paces, to bring themselves up to the economic and social levels of, or better than, their former colonial masters. We are, of course, in times now when the great fathers and surrogates of socialism, such as Russia, China, and even Cuba are either fast shedding that communist legacy or are struggling to distance themselves from that ideology.
But, right after the Second World War and during the Cold War era, it was imperative for many newly freed vulnerable colonies, when confronted with concerns of national security, preservation of territorial and cultural integrity, and personal freedoms, to adopt socialism in order to repel the weighty, overbearing, divisive, violence –ridden neo-colonialism and imperialism. Many of the new and weak countries, like Ghana, were always wide open for internal destabilization and unrelenting threats of super-power sabotage and overnight overthrows of their governments, especially when those fledgling countries either tried to help other kinsmen become free or simply stay neutral. For those Ghanaians who are too young to remember or refuse to brush up on their history, they should be told that there were many occurrences of externally contrived and foreign supported coups-de-tat across all continents.
So, Kufuor and the NPP’s declared support and justification for the overthrow of Nkrumah is a mere smokescreen in a desperate fruitless effort to appear germane to the current democratic transformations and revolutionary “springs” taking place in many growing and steadily developing former colonies.
Let Ghanaians be aware that the NPP has had nothing whatsoever to do with the ideation, development, birth, and the growth process of Ghana’s current democratic dispensation. The NPP have only had their bomb-throwing bloodied hands in the destruction of national political and economic structures and the denigration of the creative ideas of others outside their group. There is never a good idea if it did not come from them. That kind of attitude engenders one and only one reaction from the rest of the population. That means that there is no need for them to want to or be allowed to join in the process and practice of current democratic nation building. They will always corrupt the system if you let them.
For as long as NPP has been around, they have struggled with all forms of illusive justifications for the forcible removal of Nkrumah. But they know that we know that they know that Nkrumah and his ideology were relevant during his time. Repeat: Because of prevailing super-power interferences and exigencies of that period, Nkrumah and his ideology were appropriate for the work he did for his countrymen during his time. Period!
And as it is evident now the world over, believe that times would have eventually changed for Nkrumah, or his legitimate successor(s), to have gradually transformed Ghana into a successful free society, politically, economically, and socially. He tried but was stopped abruptly at a time when worldwide segregation and racial prejudice had peaked and the world was run solely by racist European and American white men; and for the continued control of the former colonies, with the cajoled assistance of poor, naïve, newly freed local saboteurs, who were completely lacking in their knowledge and understanding of superpower wranglings, but eager and willing to sell their birthrights for less than “thirty pieces of silver.” Two excellent examples were Afrifa and Kotoka.
At this point, it is appropriate to let readers know that this is not a debate about the merits and demerits of socialism, capitalism, or any other ideology. Though he was right, this is also not an argument on the legitimacy of Nkrumah’s ideological selection. This is only an elucidation of the beautiful positive idealism and hope captured in starry-eyed young Ghanaians at the time of independence, and the path that had to be taken, which was unfortunately shattered, demolished, and erased by bribed, overzealous, ethnocentric, impulsive, greedy, murderous, kleptomaniacal, stupid, and crude self-indulgent bomb-throwing members of the Ghanaian society in 1966, all accomplished to the celebratory satisfaction of the colonial masters, and which has now allowed corrupted, destructive, criminal elements to run amok and hold the affairs of the country at a ransom.
It is also worth mentioning here that there is no denying the fact that unlike today’s fake politicians parading around in Ghana as some caring nationalists but who are very deficient in the skills of governing but still very efficient in corruption and whose daily actions are full of disastrous consequences for the nation at large, Kwame Nkrumah truly cared and he surely delivered on his promises. Nkrumah was sincere. He was ambitious, of course, but brilliant. And, as he promised, so did he develop the country within the shortest possible time. His electrifying eloquence, shrewdness, magnetism, and charm, and especially his selflessness made him an international phenomenon and he has not been matched since.
So, when the New Patriotic Party came around and wanted to look honorable and cultured, it was immediately evident that there was nothing new about them. They couldn’t wash off their dirty past or shield it in the closet forever. Not only did Kufuor and his cabal quickly embark on cutting off Nkrumah’s lifeless buried limp legs in order to present him to Ghanaians as an incarnate of some crippled evil overlord, they also made sure they hoisted visionless saboteur CIA mole-rat Danquah as the fitting antithesis of what Nkrumah stood for, all for the wrong reasons. That is why they have thrown about the indigestible tradition-less property owning nonsense that many smart, well-meaning Ghanaians refuse to even touch with a ten-foot pole. What the hell is that tradition, anyway? This property owning nonsense of a so-called tradition is a simple-minded, stupid, thieving Ghanaian’s idea of an economic principle, theorem, or a nation building policy that went wild and wrong during eight years of John Agyekum Kufuor and his NPP.
And it also goes without much emphasis that subversive imperialist stooge Danquah’s protégé, Kufuor, was the leader who consciously and deliberately acculturated Ghanaians into the current escalating levels of corruption when he made it his creepy preoccupation that Kwame Nkrumah’s accomplishments were rendered theoretically unimportant and dismissible to young Ghanaians. (J. J. Rawlings was on target when he recently hit the corruption nail directly on Kufuor’s head.)
But, as regards the substance of NPP’s rule and any of their replacement policies or fake traditions to offset Nkrumah’s successes, there is no reason to entertain the slightest thought that the NPP triumphed in their attempt to rewrite Ghana’s history. Kufuor’s sneaky efforts to degrade Kwame Nkrumah’s stature on the world stage and elevate Danquah did not gain any traction or an iota of recognition for Danquah. The world ignored Kufuor and his egomaniacal and ethnocentric followers and named Kwame Nkrumah The African Of The Century! How about that? Shove that in your mouth and masticate it well before you swallow so that you don’t choke on it! Damn you all tribo-racist Ghanaians!
It’s mindboggling to realize that when Mr. Kufuor decides to eulogize Nelson Mandela in faraway South Africa, who also had to consort with Communists in his fight against apartheid, as one of the greatest Africans, it jolts our memories to Kufuor’s unforgivable, irremediable, and damaging tribal prejudices and disdain he sanctioned towards Kwame Nkrumah in his own backyard during the eight years of NPP rule. It is not difficult to notice how Mr. Kufuor, even today, can’t bring himself to publicly utter Kwame Nkrumah’s name. Kufuor’s selective amnesia about Nkrumah’s existence and accomplishments in his backyard but his prompt recollection of faraway Mandela’s constitutes his (Kufuor’s) self-exculpatory ethnocentric evil persona.
You may choose to disagree with me if you want to. But if you do, then may an ugly, dirty, and hideous-looking Ghanaian vulture perch on your rooftop, lay in wait for you, then fly a sortie directly above you and drop the hottest, disgustingly odorous poop on your head when you step out of your house. This same “handsome” vulture has my permission to have a repeat performance on Mr. You-Know-Who, too.
Good day and Merry Christmas.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
By: Kobina Antobam
The test of unifying one race of people of many tribal origins was very clear to Kwame Nkrumah. Though Europeans had partitioned the continent without regard to natural divisions and tribal affiliations ... read full comment
By: Kobina Antobam
The test of unifying one race of people of many tribal origins was very clear to Kwame Nkrumah. Though Europeans had partitioned the continent without regard to natural divisions and tribal affiliations and left us with the country Ghana, Nkrumah, with the urgency it deserved, knew from the outset that success of the newly independent country depended on tribal integration, assimilation, and unity. He began to make diverse political and administrative appointments a priority and instituted policies to maintain equitable social order for a smooth steady development of a maligned, ignored, abused, and subjugated people. Nkrumah had precedents to guide him. Not to discount other tribal differences prevailing in the country at that time, a very excellent historical example for Nkrumah was the earlier constant incursions and pestering interferences and raids by the Ashanti which engendered the formation of the confederation of Fante chiefs in 1871. Nkrumah made the right choices because he knew that long-term peace and unity would exist in the country only when tribal discord is eliminated from the interactions of all the ethnicities in the country.
So, Nkrumah sowed a seed. The visionary Nkrumah sowed the seed of tribal unity when he took up the leadership of infant Ghana, and treasured and nurtured his tree of unity with true love, care, and protection even under the constant threat of assassination. After he was gone, some unimpressive Ghanaians came along and allowed the tree to fend for itself. The tree tottered along for years until Jeremiah John Rawlings appeared. Mr. Rawlings, not knowing what he was doing initially, not only turned his back on the tree but he didn’t care whether the tree lived or died. Still surviving on the fast depleting cache of Nkrumah’s nourishment, the starved, emaciated but resilient unity tree gasped breathlessly along in spite of Rawlings’s neglect for good nineteen years. Then John Agyekum Kufuor came and led the country with a 50-year repressed tribal agenda. Prepping for his determined selfish priorities, he vengefully uprooted and discarded the tree immediately on becoming president. Kufuor killed Nkrumah’s tribal unity tree out of vengeance!
When this young soldier Jeremiah Rawlings imposed himself as the head of state, he thought he knew how to solve all of Ghana’s problems. He fumed over the country’s mismanagement when he was an active soldier and he was angry, yes, the guy was extremely angry. He forcibly took over the leadership of the country and presided over unjustifiable summary executions and molestation of his countrymen when he mistakenly thought that, in order to rid the country of its ills, certain individuals had to be out of the way permanently. For nineteen years, he ran the country with an iron fist. He was crude, bossy, vindictive, threatening, and unapologetically abusive. He directly or indirectly unleashed his soldiers on his own people and made the military the vicious conduit through which he forced everyone in the country into submission.
But, during periods of personal vulnerabilities and uncertainty, Rawlings sought protection and refuge in his tribe, the Ewe. While he selectively treated Ghanaian middle class and elite with scorn and contempt, he undeniably surrounded himself mostly with people of his tribe in order to get much needed solace, assurance, and protection from reprisals. Unbeknownst to Rawlings, this was exactly the beginning of the destruction of the tree of unity Nkrumah planted. As soon as Rawlings turned to his tribe for security and support, he opened up a Pandora’s Box of tribal antagonism and rejection from a likely source. As was expected, his inveterate nemeses were no other than the tribe that succeeded him. Rawlings should have known better. But what do Ghanaians expect from a young man who learned how to manage a tribally heterogeneous people as he went along and with one fatal mistake after another. By the time Rawlings left office, he had inadvertently made it easy for the incoming group to pursue similar yet a more robust divergent tribal agenda with impunity and without concern for the lasting discordant, divisive, and retributive effect on the whole country. Rawlings’s ineptitude concerning his disregard for tribal balance and harmony provided the incoming group the false equivalent justification or excuse to implement a nationally harmful tribal agenda.
Unlike politically clueless young Rawlings, Kufuor knew what he wanted and consciously caused a lasting tribal schism in the country that will take many years of serious efforts to repair. The root cause of tribal divisions that have sharpened in the last five years can be traced easily to Kufuor’s intentional policies that looked to promoting the interests of only Twi-speaking Ghanaians. He has made it easy for many of his tribe or near-tribes to make careless incendiary threats and provocations, such as, the hasty utterances of Kennedy Agyapong, Akufo-Addo, and a few who have recently recklessly threatened the country with Asante secession. One implication is that the Asante would still be attached to and sandwiched within the belly of Ghana and still be a separate sovereign country of its own. The other baseless argument is that Asante alone has enough self-supporting resources that will make it totally free of economic dependence on the remaining areas of Ghana. It also implies that secession will remove the support the Asante region wrongly believes it inordinately provides to the rest of Ghana and that would, as a result, render the rest of Ghana an economically crippled and destitute nation. These are just a few examples of incendiary atmosphere that currently exist in the country that Kufuor made possible.
In the beginning, Kufuor’s tribal agenda had one major stumbling block, which was none other than Kwame Nkrumah. For Kufuor and his tribe, decades-long war with Nkrumah was not over. There is little indication that it’s even over now. They had scores to settle with that dead man. He came to office with a real formidable opposition party in the country, that is, Rawlings’s National Democratic Congress. But there was a third party too, a haunting opposition, that he and his tribe had wanted to deal with for nearly fifty years. That party was not a political organization, not even the current Convention People’s Party. It was in the corpse of Kwame Nkrumah. Kufuor and his gang had unfinished business with the dead and buried Kwame Nkrumah. So Kufuor went on the attack the very first day his cabal enterprise was open for business at the Christiansborg Castle.
Again, his multi-pronged assault to redress his group’s perceived wrongs did not focus only on the existing opposition but to rewrite history so that Kwame Nkrumah did not matter anymore. That was agenda number one. He relentlessly insisted that it was Danquah’s frontal efforts, and not Nkrumah’s that brought us freedom. To cement that idea in the minds of Ghanaians, he facilitated the establishment of the tribal leaning Danquah “Ideological” Institute to counter an independent Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. He erected Danquah’s statues in Accra in order to overshadow all existing structures in honor of Nkrumah. But, to assuage critics of his Danquah frontal assault on the largely unsuspecting Ghanaians, he informed the country that their freedom was made possible, not by Nkrumah alone, but by Danquah and four other people, the so-called Big Six, some of whom worked for the CIA and some who turned out to be saboteurs. The persistent reeducation has even convinced President Mahama to recently sing Kufuor’s tune of the Big Six.
In the meantime, Kufuor was busy appointing and creating government positions, over 90% of which were for his relations, friends, and Twi-speaking Ghanaians. Ambassadorships, ministerial positions, diplomatic staffing, top civil service jobs, directorships, all went to Kufuor’s tribe or near-tribes. Even private Twi-speaking businessmen and women were unabashed ubiquitous beneficiaries of Kufuor’s largesse.
On the social front, Kufuor promoted the Asantehene as the king of Ghana to the hushed disbelief of stunned chiefs in the country. Not counting the millions of dollars that went quietly to support him, the Asantehene was presented to the world not as a king of his tribal group but as the supreme Ghanaian king. For eight years, all chiefs in Ghana, including the very powerful and paramount outside the Asante realm and those who swore direct allegiance to the Asantehene, became second-class or less important. They couldn’t publicly complain but from region to region, there were undeniable murmurs in chieftaincy circles about the lopsided tilt of the publicly promoted rankings championed by Kufuor’s government.
Bloated with delusions of their national relevance throughout Kufuor’s term, the New Patriotic Party was certain of its continued rule of Ghana after eight years of Kufuor, and Akufo-Addo was the seamless transition who was going to continue Kufuor’s social agenda without interruption. But with Akufo-Addo’s defeat in 2008 came the abrupt end and sudden silence about the national singular monarchical promotion of the Asantehene. Atta-Mills’ election brought a sigh of relief among all chiefs in Ghana and an atmosphere of equanimity and relative temperance throughout Ghana’s chiefdom.
In addition to the social reeducation and restructuring of the country by Kufuor’s regime, other subtle uni-tribal dominance sneakily found their way into the Ghanaian social fabric. The increased promotion of Twi as Ghana’s dominant language and its lingua franca which has now made even other Akan people to ignore their own sweet-sounding dialects and modify their speaking tones to mimic the Twi dialect; the distasteful unattractive design of the presidential palace in the form of an Asante stool; the establishment of a government department for chiefs; the naming of important structures after people of his ilk; and other social reengineering attempts to solidify his dream of Twi supremacy, are less than enough to sum up Kufuor’s social agenda.
At the pinnacle of Kufuor’s almost successful national tribal transformation were the sneaky corrupt financial dealings undertaken without shame to benefit himself and his people. The crown at the top of Kufuor’s criminal rap sheet was his presiding over an astronomical share of the country’s newly discovered oil revenues worth over a billion dollars in a few years to himself and only two Twi-speaking Ghanaians who go by the name of EO Group.
It is very important to note now that it is disappointing that those two living ex-Presidents, Rawlings and Kufuor, are not doing anything in their retirements to bridge the current tribal divide which they helped create, which now makes the Asante, Akyem, and other Twi-speaking Ghanaians detest vehemently anything Ewe and vice versa. The current atmosphere does not only bode well for the two feuding tribes but for the rest of the country as well. But it is even more painful to listen to the pretences of Kufuor whenever he opens his mouth and wants us to regard him as the grandfatherly citizen who cares for everybody in the country. There is a huge disparity between what Kufuor often says or does now and his performance as president.
So, as recently as last August when Kufuor was quoted as saying that “politics shows our differences in views while those elected are only to serve; we are all one people,” the immediate amazement of Ghanaians at Kufuor’s dishonesty becomes apparent and justifiable. He goes on to say that “those who do not share the same view with you are not your enemies.” And that Ghanaians should “shun tribalism, religious differences and political differences.” At that time, he wanted Ghanaians to “vote for those who would do their work well for the benefit of all.”
In his unrelenting subterfuge towards Ghanaians, Kufuor comes across as grossly deceptive, crafty, snobbish, and rude but never a gentle giant. Since there is clear evidence that he came to office to advance his personal and tribally narrow interests at the expense of the rest of the nation while his current speeches and public comments are counter to his performance and are obvious lies, Kufuor seems to have damaged Ghana beyond repair. His divisive impact on the country is more damaging than any and those of all heads of state before him combined. He knew better and he purposely turned his back on fairness and equity. It needs repeated emphasis that Kufuor’s legacy of unrestrained in-your-face cronyism and his tribally biased leadership contributed largely to the two presidential election defeats of Akufo-Addo.
Good day.
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
KKO-aka-namesake-Baidoo,
See how you capitalist Kuffour and others benefited from the failed Nkrumah investments (and how they continue to save Ghana from bankruptcy):
By Kweku Dadzie
.................................. ... read full comment
KKO-aka-namesake-Baidoo,
See how you capitalist Kuffour and others benefited from the failed Nkrumah investments (and how they continue to save Ghana from bankruptcy):
By Kweku Dadzie
........................................................................................................................................................
The struggle for the ownership of property as an essential means of production varies in time and place and has remained the source of conflict and tension between the few ruling-property owning classes and the majority exploited classes. The bourgeois State forms part of the neo-colonial arrangements, maintaining and consolidating a dependent economic structure for political and social influence of the few ruling elites over the larger populace.
As you are well aware, arguments over the sale of state assets or divestiture have been a major feature of the struggle for the ownership of property among classes. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, socialist countries have undergone pressures to implement unprecedented privatization of State assets. It has been presented that the largest privatization in history took place in Russia between 1992 and 1995 when as many as 75,000 small and medium scale enterprises were auctioned, 14,000 medium to large scale firms were sold and 130 to 140 million new shareholders were created (IFC 1995).[1]
However, to a lesser extent, the same phenomenon occurred in all former socialist countries with the exception of Cuba and China, even though in the case of China, a guarded promotion of liberalisation is ongoing.
According to Stephen Adei on his “Governance, State-ownership and Divestiture – the Ghanaian Experience”[2], he notes that “the immediate post-colonial economy era in Ghana was characterized by high levels of government ownership of enterprises, high levels of economic regulation, and explicit suppression of financial markets and exchange. This trend continued for most parts of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s when Ghana began to change course with the adoption of the Structural Adjustment Program. Most of these programs included the transfer of state enterprises into the private sector”.
In this discussion, it is important to ask whether poor performance of some of the state enterprises could be attributed to the bourgeois nature of Governance of the Civilian government of PP, NDC, and NPP and also military governments of NLC, SMC, AFRC, and PNDC. Did Nkrumah’s administration succeed in his formative years of establishing and managing state enterprises because the underpinning ideological framework was scientific-socialist driven and therefore appropriate to the pursuit of its corresponding economic policies?
If, from 1957 to the early 60s, Ghana’s increase in productivity in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors was the result of efforts toward strengthening the State’s share and increase in ownership of productive assets, then, the Five Year Development Plan, the Consolidated Plan and the truncated Seven Year Development Plan point to a significant fact: that a growing conflict of the internal and the external was expected to confront the CPP Government heavily in no time.
Pomadze Tomatoe Factory, Komenda Sugar Factory, Asutsuare Sugar Factory, Bolgatanga Meat Factory, Kumasi Jute Factory, Kumasi Shoe Factory, Ghana Railways Corporation, Ghana Airways, Tema Dry Dock, Tema Sanyo, Tema Steel Works, Tema Batteries, Tema Paints Factory, Tema Cold Stores, Tema Food Complex, Abosso Glass Factory, Bonsa Tyres, Kade Match Factory, Suhum Garment Factory, Ghana Fishing Corporation with 21 Trawlers, SSNIT, ADB, NIB, Ghana Commercial Bank, State Insurance Company, State Distilleries, Takoradi Boatyard, Takoradi Cocoa Processing Corporation, Tema Cocoa Processing Corporation and many, many of them which were established by the State with controlling interests, posed an economic threat to Western economic interests in Ghana. From this emerging progressive pattern of economic production and property relations in Ghana, a major source of wealth for financing free education and delivery of quality health care became materialized in Ghana.
The State’s effort in accumulating capital, aimed at productive growth for social good, suffered severely from 1966. Naked implementation of neo-liberal policies of Capitalism, lack of foresight in leadership and unwarranted military takeovers depleted Government’s assets in its own establishment. The private-sector as the engine of growth became dominant in the actions of Governments. Through the ERPs of the 1980s and GPRSs in the 2000s, the sale of Government assets remained the main source of fruit for the survival of the private sector.
It is important to mention that the sales of Government assets have included the following:
(1) sale of whole or part shares/assets of an enterprise, established by the State or in partnership with a private entity, to a private entity. This is commonly referred to as divestiture;
(2) transfer of ownership of public Lands to private interests.
Both form part of a broader notion of Privatization which further involves the promotion of market liberalisation through policies and legislations.
Many times we are confused by the subtle distinctions of definitions of these neo-liberal phrases. But they are arguably all offspring and extensions of Capitalism.
Generally, some underlining reasons usually given over the years by Government functionaries, reactionary think-tanks and the neo-colonial academia, set-up for the justification of the sale of Government assets, have included:
a. Filling in budget potholes
b. Fulfilling IMF/World Bank conditionalities
c. Increasing Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) targets
d. Re-capitalisation of loss-making state enterprise.
e. Expansion of economy etc.
On the other side of the leaf, one major argument presented by Marxist-Nkrumaists for state-control and management of productive resources has been that, in order to accelerate development after long periods of colonial exploitation and slavery, Governments must intervene decisively by policy, creation of socio-economic infrastructure and ownership of productive assets to bridge income gaps, break barriers of economic and social injustices and accelerate growth of the human resource base of an underdeveloped country. The aim is also to reduce economic dependency on the metropolis.
In 1983, the PNDC Government launched the Economic Review Programme which became the key policy tool for neo-liberal approach to recovering the economy of Ghana.
Among several measures that the PNDC Government took was the disposal of loss-making state enterprises. In order to give legislative enforcement to this neo-colonial arrangement, the PNDC passed the Divestiture of State Interest (Implementation) Law, 1993(PNDCL, 326), which was deemed to have come into force on 1st January 1988, to divest, thus by the State, of any of its interests in any statutory corporation or any corporate body incorporated under the Companies Code, 1963 (Act 179) or under the Incorporated Private Partnership Act, 1962 (Act 152). Note that Section (1) of the Decree, allowed directives of divesture to be carried in accordance with policy directives as the PNDC may from time to time determine.
The Divestiture Implementation Committee, which develops a criteria for the selection of enterprises to be divested and assume such responsibility as they may deem fit over bodies earmarked for divestiture in order to prepare such enterprises for sale, was established.
At the beginning of the divestiture programme, over 300 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were operating in all sectors of the economy. Whilst a large number of them were in manufacturing and agriculture (including cocoa and coffee plantations, poultry and fishing), others were in the mining, hotel and timber sectors.
Some of the enterprises which were affected by the divestiture programme included the following:
? Atlantic Hotel, Meridian and Star Hotels (Sold to private entities)
? Abosso Glass Factory (Sold to private individual)
? Continental Hotel (Sold to Golden Tulip)
? West Africa Mills Company
? Tema Steel Company
? Ghana Agro Food Company –formerly TFCC
? GIHOC Bottling– (became The Coca Cola Bottling Company of Ghana Ltd)
? Gliksen W/A Company (acquired by SUHUMA Timber Company Ltd)
? Ghana Oil Palm Development Company (Sold in 1995)
It is necessary to draw a lesson from the political effect of the sale of many of these assets; as an inclusive factor in the deepening of tension and political unrest between pro-democratic groups and the PNDC government. Note that the left in the pro-democratic movement raised questions about the selling of some of these state assets to private foreigners.
Let us now consider few selected cases of recent sale of national assets under the Fourth Republican constitution in the following areas.
Mining Sector
In the mining sector, today, Ghanaians have lost their majority shares in AngloGold Ashanti to nothing. In 2007, the NPP Government sold Ghana’s non-controlling interests of 5% to Anglogold Ashanti Ltd. The NDC Government under the Mills Administration in January 2011 also sold the nation’s last shares of 2.5% to Anglogold Ashanti which generated an amount of US $215million, whereas accounts of its utilization was not clearly provided.
Public Lands as a Primary National Asset
According to the laws of Ghana, lands acquired by the government are supposed to be used only in the public interest or for the public purpose for which it was acquired. (Article 20(5) of the 1992 Constitution).
The selling of public lands under a disguised policy of re-zoning of lands for redevelopment of the capital city was embarked by the first NDC Government.
Under Phase 1 of the first NDC Government’s Accra Redevelopment Policy in 2000, the proceeds from the sale of 67 plots of land (sold mostly to companies and private individuals), enabled them to build 83 replacement bungalows and 169 residential units.
However, the Government then did not take into account the Constitutional provision which requires that “the owner of the property immediately before the compulsory acquisition shall be given the first option for acquiring the property” (Article 20: Clause 6).
In 2009, the NPP continued with the running of economic liberalization of the past PNDC and NDC, under a disguised framework of Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy I and II, placing the private sector as the vehicle for development and growth.
During the NPP’s administration, the Government decided to ignore laid-down procedures, such as open bidding and going for Cabinet approval of allocations, as stipulated in the State Lands Regulations, 1962 (L.I. 230). Instead, between 2003 and 2008, the NPP Minister for Water Resources, Works and Housing, in his individual capacity proceeded to allocate 46.85 acres of residential plots and houses without subjecting the allocation to competitive bidding or the laid-down guideline established by the cabinet.
According to the Committee for Joint Action, a lead campaigner against unlawful and arbitrary sale of public lands, the implementation of the redevelopment scheme under the NPP was so arbitrary and haphazard that even persons who were allocated with the plots did not complete the Application for Leases/Licenses for Government Plots (Form 5) as stipulated in LI 230.
The pressure group identified that the Kuffuor Government’s exclusive and restrictive bidding process created and allocated 103 plots to NPP members and supporters. 88 plots of land located in prime areas at Ridge, Cantonments and Airport were sold under protocol arrangements with premiums ranging between six thousand and eight thousand Ghana Cedis (GH¢ 6, 000/GH¢ 8, 000) per plot.
This sharply brings into light the opportunities opened to a category of people on the basis of their class interest as against the majority interest whether under NDC or NPP.
Ghana Telecom as a National Asset
As part of the privatization policy, the first NDC Government offloaded shares in Ghana Telecom to the Malaysians to restructure and re-capitalize. Before then GT had retrogressively continued to suffer from mismanagement, political manipulation and eventual breakdown in competitive operation.
The Kuffuor Government, on July 3, 2008, signed a Sale and Purchase Agreement with Vodafone International to sell off 70% of the Government’s stake in GT to Vodafone, at an approximate value of US$1.3 billion, plus an expected cash injection of US$500 million, totaling US$1.8 billion. Among several components of what was described as the “Enlarged GT” was the fibre optic. It is public knowledge that documents presented to the Inter-Ministerial Committee showed that the Social Security and National Investment Trust (SSNIT) had expressed its desire to operate a Fibre-optic network in the country but was not allowed to do so. Volta River authority had interest in the utilization of the fibre optic. However, several assets of GT were sold to Vodafone without, firstly, considering local interest. The only reason why these Governments would ignore all available options for an equitable national advantage was/is what some individuals in them would benefit from the transaction.
Notwithstanding the fact we can still wait for the Accra Commercial Court to decide as some members of the CPP still seeking from the court a declaration that the agreement, entered into by the Kuffuor government, was not in accordance with the due process of the law and was therefore a nullity, the case of GT sale to Vodafone is a clear example of the difficulty of neo-colonial regimes in effectively managing state enterprises, since their ideological interest conflicts with the framework of managing state enterprises.
The Agriculture Development Bank and Merchant Bank have similarly attracted the interest of Governments for sale to foreign private investors.
However, it is most welcoming that the Mills-Mahama administration pursued some national effort in the capital re-acquisition of state assets in the Volta Aluminium Company Ltd (VALCO) and Tema Drydock Ltd.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the sale of Government assets has evolved through all successive civilian and military Governments after 1966. This neo-colonial process has affected all productive sectors of the economy: mining, agriculture, banking, transportation etc.
Whereas on one hand, at the start of Ghana’s privatization drive, the sale of Government assets have led to significant retrenchment of labour and strengthening of capital markets for the benefit of few private individuals and firms, on the other hand state-ownership has provided 55% of employment in the formal sector excluding the civil service, and accounted for 25% of domestic investment.[3] It is worth raising the awareness of the direct and overall effects of the sale of Government assets on Ghanaian economic life in order to fast track organised mass revolt against the phenomenon for a better replacement with a dominant public ownership and prudent management of national resources.
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KKO 8 years ago
Francis,
At least I run a business in Ghana and I know how it fared under Kufuor and how it is faring under the useless directionless rougues we have in Ghana today. I also had the opportunity to see the workings of several ... read full comment
Francis,
At least I run a business in Ghana and I know how it fared under Kufuor and how it is faring under the useless directionless rougues we have in Ghana today. I also had the opportunity to see the workings of several of the industries in the Western Region first hand.
Useless as they were then, not all of Ghana's assets were sold in 1966. Ask yourself why the thieving socialist rogues Kwesi Botchey, Ebo Tawiah and Kojo Tsikata and others continued to sell GIHOC to their local and foreign friends.
Maybe one day if you are able to save enough dollars to start a truck-pushing business in Ghana, you will understand what free enterprise is all about!
francis kwarteng 8 years ago
KKO,
Could you tell me those that were not sold? Could you tell me why the investments Nkrumah made in Ghana keep saving the country from bankrptcy? Please give an intelligent response and not the unverfiable anecdotes you ... read full comment
KKO,
Could you tell me those that were not sold? Could you tell me why the investments Nkrumah made in Ghana keep saving the country from bankrptcy? Please give an intelligent response and not the unverfiable anecdotes you threw up here.
I also had relatives who ran businesses under Nkrumah. Do you have any idea private businesses that collapsed under Kuffour?
By your simplistic and chilish logic, your your business fared better under Kuffour so every other business under Kuffour did the same! Is that what you are saying?
Will you believe if I should I should tell you that I have friends whose businesses didn't do well under Kuffour but are doing well under the present government? Will I be making sense if I tell you this?
Do you think your narrow position on basic ideas is representative of the Ghanaian landscape?
Where in my articles have I mentioned Kwesi Botchey, Ebo Tawiah and Kojo Tsikata (please if you have issues with them, please don't bring me in. Deal with them eslewhere.
And if you have evidence they are thieves, please take them to court. I am neither a court nor a judge. Siscuss them them in your articles)?
Even so, what about the capitalist thieves and rogues under Kuffour?
That said, you still have not offered a single intelligent or intellectual response to the article "SALE OF GOVERNMENT ASSETS" than your usual uninformed, clueless, and emotional prattle.
What is more, your seeing industries in the Western Region does not say a damn thing. It is very childish statement, if you ask me. Please never bring up what you saw because you blind! Your bogus articles say it all!
What has seeing the "workings of several of the industries on the Western first hand" say about anything? NOTHING. Is that scientific evidence. NO. All you shallow articles point to that.
You cannot substitute what you saw with scientific evidence. That is childish at best. This is what you have been doing in all your articles. Besides, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation ignored Kuffor for its prestigious because of the corruption in the Kuffour administration (Maybe it will change it position later...Hahahahahaha)
Why are you always resorting to emotionalism rather than to hard facts and intelligent responses? Now read this (I WILL LEAVE YOU TO REASERACH PRIVATE INDUSTRIES/ENTERPRISES THAT COLLPASED UNDER KUFFOUR. THE RECORDS ARE ALL THERE IF YOU WANT TO KNOW. I WILL NOT HELP WITH THIS BECAUSE OF YOUR INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS.
MY NPP COUSIN WORKED IN THE GHANAIAN PARLIAMENT DURING THE KUFFOUR ERA AND WAS PRIVY TO DATA/STATISTICS ON ENTERPRISES THAT COLLAPSED UNDER KUFFOUR ON YEARLY BASIS. I CAN'T HELP YOU ON THIS ONE IF YOU DON'T HAVE WELL-PLACED INDIVIDUALS TO GIVE YOU THE DATA. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE BOTHER. THE DATA ARE ALL THERE. WILL NOT BOTHER GIVING YOU A LIST OF INSTITUTIONS THAT HAVE THE DATA. YOU CAN EASILY FIND THEM IF YOU ARE REALLY INTERESTED):
.......................................................................................................................................................
............................................................................By Dr. C. Apaak
Introduction
Recently, Ghana, the most stable democracy in Africa, renewed its place in the annals of African history and by so doing made an indelible mark in the global consciousness on two fronts; capturing the attention of many millions around the globe. In the first instance, the heroic victory by the Under 20 National team over Brazil, against all odds in the premier U-20 world cup hosted on African soil in Egypt, sent the entire African continent into instant euphoria and jubilation. The second instance, the focus of this article, also remarkable, can best be described as public humiliation of the Ex-President of Ghana under the NPP regime from 2000 to 2008. According to the Associated Press, the Mo Ibrahim foundation snubbed recent ex-presidents, including John Kufuor, denying him both the prestige and prize money of $5 million.
The truth is that massive corruption, abuse of office, and divisive politics rendered Ex-President Kufuor unfit for the Mo Ibrahim Award. Even the children who were born on the day the Kufuor led NPP took power know this, let alone the rest of us Octogenarians. To understand why our Ex-President did not get the award, it is important to explore why and to examine the factors that may have led to this snub as the Associated Press put it. The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership is awarded only to democratically elected heads of state who have left office in the past three years. According to former Botswana President, Ketumile Masire, a board member of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the committee considered "some credible candidates" but could not select a winner. Big Mo Ibrahim was asked at a news conference about politicians who meet the award criteria but were not chosen and he noted that "I made clear when I started the foundation that there may be years when a winner is not chosen and this is such a year”. But the question that remains is why not a winner this year? Certainly the candidates were unfit.
Responds from Former President John Agyekum Kufuor
The responds to this rebuke from the Former President, John Agyekum Kufuor, a leader who led a lopsided government that worked for the interest of the capitalist elite, is that even though he failed to win the Mo Ibrahim award, he was not embittered but rather privileged to have been named in the final list. Speaking on behalf of the Ex-President on Peace Fm’s “Kokrokoo”, Mr. Agyekum, the spokesperson of the Ex-President, stated that he does not believe that former President Kufuor’s was undemocratic during his tenure as President, as portrayed by some people. He added, “talk of good governance, respect for human right, rule of law and expanding educational and health centres…Kufuor was pivotal in all of these…he addressed all these sectors of the economy and even travelled to other African countries to help resolve conflicts and other issues…,”. He may have done all that, but he allowed corruption too. Even so, it was mostly those who adhered to the private property owning ideology of the NPP and Kufuor who benefited during the eight years of his rule. The bulk of the people suffered and still do as a result of corruption, cronyism, nepotism, tribalism, and blatant abuse of power from 2000-2008.
The decision not to award the Mo Ibrahim award to Ex-President Kufuor has a lot to do with the abysmal record on corruption. After all, Ghana seems to have done well in the area of good governance, according the very same Mo Ibrahim Foundation based on its 2009 Ibrahim Index published on October 5, 2009. Logically then, since Ghana ranked fairly well, Ex-President Kufuor should have won, but he did not, which begs the question why? The answer is simple; he presided over the most corrupt government, one that channeled public resources and wealth to a few individuals, a fact not lost to the Committee, interesting Chaired by Kofi Annan, Former UN Secretary General, and a Ghanaian. Why then did Ghana rank well in the overall area of good governance under him, you ask? Well, governance is much broader and involves more than the ruling party, it has to do with the three arms of government; the executive, the judiciary and the legislature. Therefore, in looking at the possible reason why he did not win the award, the countless reports of corruption could be the only plausible explanation for the decision of the committee not to give him the ward. Corrupt practices during his reign nullified all the so-called good things listed by his spokesperson as we shall see when the definition of corruption and its effects on the masses are outlined
Corruption Under President Kufuor and Ideological Links
That Ex-President Kufuor presided over the most corrupt government is vividly understood if we understand the operational definition of corruption. According to Transparency International (TI), CORRUPTION IS OPERATIONALLY DEFINED AS THE MISUSE OF ENTRUSTED POWER FOR PRIVATE GAIN. Corruption is said to thrive where temptation coexists with permissiveness. What is particularly interesting is the apparent historical and cross cultural connection between high rates of political corruption and governments guided by private property owning ideology, going back to the early days of democracy itself. While it is true that political corruption has been a fact of life for thousands of years, beginning with the first attempts at a democratic form of government in ancient Greece and Rome, it is also true that political corruption reached its zenith in Ghana under President Kufuor. In the years between 1998 and 2008, a period of ten years, the highest corruption index assigned to Ghana occurred under the NPP led Kufuor administration according to “The Role of the Corruption Perceptions Index” (CPI). In 1998 Ghana ranked 55th, and by 2004 Ghana reached 70th, repeating this highest level in 2006, and by 2008, Ghana became less corrupt by three points at 67th. Some may say so what, well; the Mo Ibrahim foundation was not unaware of these highest digits Ghana scored in the CPI ranking at 70th twice under President Kufuor, I noted this earlier. This should come as no surprise to students of political history, it is well documented that there is a relationship between higher levels of corruption and leadership/governments dominated by political representatives from the wealthier class, what party represents this in Ghana?, yes you know it. Generally, corruption hits the poor hardest, a key reason why one in six of the world's population lives in extreme poverty. Corruption plays a role in the deaths of the estimated 10 million children per year who die before their fifth birthday, most of them from preventable diseases. This evil, undertaken by the greedy, works to prevent about 75 million primary-aged children from going to school. Many thousands in Ghana fall in the statistics noted, and since it is known that Kufour presided over massive corruption, as per the CPI by TI, any other so-called achievement of his is a mockery because the impact of public corruption is far reaching; it undermines the fight against poverty. Some Specific Examples Of Corruption Under President Kufour Even former NPP supporters like Ama Frema Busia publicly suggested that the basic principle governing the Kufuor administration was greed, and the use of political office to amass wealth to the detriment of the people. Most certainly, this is why President Mills is justified in looking at every single major project and transaction related to public property, like GT, and projects negotiated under the Kufuor administration. Much like in the days of the Roman and Greek Empires, the Kufuor administration planted the nurtured of corruption. Political corruption, or THE MISUSE OF ENTRUSTED POWER FOR PRIVATE GAIN under Kufuor was blatant, rampant, and even condoned, here is just a handful most Ghanaians will never forget:
1) Hotel Kufuor: The Ghana Palaver news paper provided a vivid explanation on circumstances that could not have supported the claim that the Ex-President Kufuor had no knowledge of what would have been a brazing act of public corruption involving John Addo Kufuor, the 41-year old Chartered Accountant son of President John Agyekum Kufuor. The Hotel was situated two doors away from the residence of Chief Kufuor's father, John Agyekum Kufuor. The cost of US$3.5 million was funded by Prudential Bank, a Bank part-owned by SSNIT, a state-owned enterprise, and by the National Investment Bank (NIB), another state-owned Bank, and by the ECOWAS Regional Investment Bank (ERIB), which advanced US$1 million to the Hotel. At that time, President Kufuor was the Chairman of ECOWAS and Mr. J. S. Addo, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prudential Bank, was President Kufuor's representative on the ERIB and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of ERIB. Yet, the President was found to be clean, wow.
2) The Dr. Anane Abuse Of Power Case: The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) recommended to then President Kufuor to relieve Dr Richard Winfred Anane, Minister of Transportation of his post following findings of abuse of power and conflict of interest made against him by the Commission during an 18-month investigation. Yet President Kufuor saw nothing wrong with Dr. Anane and went on to again nominate him as Minister for Transportation. Dr. Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr. an NPP supporter wrote "What we are seriously concerned with in this particular instance is the apparent fact of President Kufuor’s woeful inability or abject and flat refusal to appreciate the glaring fact of Dr. Anane being incontrovertibly akin to a veritable package of damaged goods. And the logical procedure for dealing with damaged goods is to promptly discard them, lest they rapidly infect the hitherto wholesome lot. Or is this also just another typical case of “justice Kufuor style”?
3) Popular Cocaine Trade: Even more disturbing was the linkage of government and public officials to canine trading and smuggling. How can the people of Ghana forget the significant amounts of cocaine, 77 parcels, that vanished from police surveillance, while an NPP parliamentarian, Eric Amoateng, went to jail, and is now serving a prison sentence in the US for heroin trafficking. Amoateng was arrested in 2005 for smuggling 136lbs of heroin into Newark airport. He was jailed in 2007 by a US court after resigning his seat but enjoyed significant support from fellow NPP MPs, why?, you guessed it. Largely under the NPP and Kufuor Ghana became a transit point for drugs. As Kwesi Aning, head of conflict prevention at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra put it then; there was an increasingly organized framework within which drug transactions took place.
4) Corrupt Ministries and Ministers Galore: This was expressed strongly soon after the last election by Mr. Kwesi Pratt Jnr., a member of the CJA. He noted that was not enough to vote out a corrupt regime but allow its officials and functionaries to escape public accountability. The CJA had over the past few years accused the Kufuor led NPP administration of corruption and maladministration. The group cited corrupt practices at the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and NEPAD and the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing. Kwasi Pratt stated that there were doubtful payments at the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Transportation, Ministry of Trade and Industry, and Ministry of Tourism and Diasporan Relations. According to the CJA eight ministries under the NPP government lost 440,814,014,679 cedis belonging to the public in 2005 as a direct result of a combination of factors including corruption, maladministration, inefficiency and sheer negligence.
Conclusion
Based on the above analysis, it makes sense that Kufuor had to be deemed undeserving as one who presided over the most corrupt government in the history of our nation. While Ghana may have remained stable democratically, and Kufuor may have engaged in diplomacy, he was at the same time nurturing, enhancing and entrenching a corrupt government detrimental to the wellbeing of the people. It is becoming clear that the legacy of President Kufuor will be the deepening of corruption, and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation knew it. Kufuor did not fail to recognize corrupt practices by personnel in some state institutions during his time in office; he refused to act because his government was leading that effort by example. This is the reason why the people of Ghana must be patient and to allow President Mills to clean up the mess Kufour and his NPP left behind. President Mills will reinstate honour to the high office of the Presidency, and will lead us to a better Ghana, meriting an award his predecessor did not, and was rightly not given.
Dr. C. Apaak, Quest University, Canada
E-mail: caapaak@yahoo.ca
Producer and Host, African Connection on 90.1FM (www.cjsf.ca)
........................................................................................................................................................ Kobina Antobam
In his tortured effort to deflect the cascading debris from the internal collapse of the New Patriotic Party from burying him, Mr. William Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo recently said this: “His Excellency John Agyekum Kufuor, second president of the fourth republic, remains an icon of our party and nation, whose legacy we in the NPP must jealously guard.”
In my response, I reproduce below an expose I read a couple of years ago as representing just one of the many facets of Kufuor’s administration. After eight years of the ethno-centered crafty pillaging of the country, Kufuor has wiped his mouth clean and he is now sitting “pretty” as if he is the quintessential untouchable Ghana god.
Lest you forget, in those eight years, Kufuor was THE President of Ghana and Akufo-Addo was THE chief law enforcement officer of the nation; he was the Attorney-General. Now, Mr. Akufo-Addo is trying to convince us that if we make him our next President, he is going to fight corruption with all his might. Yeah! In fact, he is going to fight corruption just the same way Kufuor declared his whimper of war on corruption and “fought” and “conquered” corruption by attacking it with hot air. These days, Akufo-Addo is so bewildered by his waning national acceptance, by events in his party, and by his political state of disorder that he is at a complete loss as to how to convince Ghanaians to hand him that elusive prize, the presidency.
I have more to say soon about the NPP, Kufuor, Akufo-Addo and the aberrant path of lawlessness that Ghanaians of their ilk are encouraging as the new normal behavior in Ghana. In the meantime, read on. I am well aware that many of you have already read this expose a couple of years back, but after you have read it again, all I am tempted to say is that this is just one component of the Kufuor legacy that Akufo-Addo is guarding with his life! Need I say more?
Good day.
NPP AND CORRUPTION “KICKBACK” expose by Anadarko
Published by Sonetco Institute July 18, 2013
It is now so clear why NPP still can’t [fathom] they lost the election. Their greatest pain is because of the oil gains which to them should have been pouring into their personal pockets. Below is the Lamentations of Anadarko.
US oil giant, Anadarko International Oil Company, has blown the whistle on the shape of how oil exploration licenses were awarded under the NPP government, saying they and their partners, Hess, were asked to part with 5% of their stake to, ‘an unknown Ghanaian party,’ as a condition for being awarded the South Deepwater Tano block for oil exploration.
Issues
This is not a surprising revelation? If this is true, then the Judiciary in Ghana must swing into quick action.
Is there conclusive evidence on this? Or is it a case of Anadarko trying to please the new Mills Administration?
“We were informed that if we made such a strong bid, it would overcome a previous demand by then Chairman of GNPC, Stephen Abankwa, that we carry an unknown Ghanaian party for five percent (5%) something neither Hess nor Anadarko can do, given that we are both subject to the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other related US legislation,” Anadarko revealed.
Anadarko, who had put up an individual bid, alongside Hess and others, stated in a protest letter to the Minister of Energy, Dr. Joe Oteng-Adjei that the above demand, was made of them after they were encouraged by GNPC to combine their individual bids for a joint one.
The revelation was contained in a confidential letter dated February 24, 2009 and signed by Ian J. Cooling, Vice President, Business Development of Anadarko.
According to Anadarko, together with Hess, they subsequently submitted a combined bid, “but were shortly thereafter informed by Chairman Abankwa that if we did not accept the third-party carry of five percent (5%) another company, the Norwegian company Aker, had already agreed to do so and would be awarded the block.”
Anadarko said it was later informed by the then Minister of Energy, under the John Kufuor administration that the block had been awarded to another company, without telling them about how the bids fared.
“There was no transparency whatsoever in the entire bid process,” Anadarko charged, adding that “We never received a formal written notification that our bid had failed, and it was to our dismay that we learned later that Aker, had indeed been awarded this extremely complex, deepwater block.”
It was from the press and other sources, according to Anadarko, that they “learned that the Aker bid also included a third party for five percent (5%).”
ELECTIONS The US oil giant asserted that “We were upset and seriously considered at that time alerting the highest levels of the US Government and asking their intervention, but the Ghanaian Presidential election was upon us and we decided that this issue might perturb the democratic process, which we strongly support.”
The license for the block was awarded to Aker under a petroleum Agreement signed on October 24, 2008 about six weeks to the presidential and parliamentary elections. On the same day, a Service Agreement was signed between Aker ASA and CHEMU Power Ltd., a company owned by an offshore company called CHEMU Capital BVI.
Martinus Brandal, Senior Partner and President, signed on behalf of Aker ASA, while Nik Amarteifio, Executive Chairman of CHEMU, signed on his company’s behalf.
Anadarko called on the new minister to review the bid procedure and processes for the award of the block, which they believed would turn the tide in their favor.
“Now that the election is over, we are confident that you, Mr. Minister, will wish to review the bid procedures and processes of the award of Ultra Deepwater Tano Block. After such review, you will undoubtedly notice that the combined bid of Hess and Anadarko, two world-class deepwater operators with such a strong combined bid, would have been in Ghana’s best interest,” Anadarko asserted.
The company that had the five percent carried interest was Chemu Power, owned by Nik Amarteifio and Dr. Charles Mensa, both close pals of former President John Agyekum Kufuor.
DR. CHARLES MENSA
Dr. Charles Mensa was appointed by the President to serve as Chief Executive Officer of Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) during his tenure as President. Charles Mensa sparked controversy some years back when as Chairman of the University of Cape Coast Council, he conferred an Honorary Law Doctorate on then President Agyekum Kufuor, at a time when the University had no Law Faculty.
Dr. Mensa is a founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a governance think- tank.
NIK AMARTEIFIO Nik Amarteifio is a bosom friend of former President Kufuor, he is also the man who brought Telenor to replace Telekom Malaysia. Telenor, according to a recent government investigation criminally run down Ghana Telecom.
Kufour’s government paid Telenor a whopping $600,000 for the business plan they used to secure a Ghana Telecom management contract in response to an international advertisement inviting strategic investors to partner Ghana Telecom. Eventually, Telecom Malaysia sued the government in an international arbitration and walked away with a handsome compensation.
Nik was appointed by former President Kufuor to serve on the board of Bank of Ghana, and was rumoured to be the President’s ear on activities at the Central Bank of Ghana.
Nik’s offshore investments, which stretch from Channel Islands in the UK to his equity stock option in Canada are under investigation by The Enquirer.
STEPHEN SEKYERE-ABANKWA Mr. Stephen Sekyere-Abankwa, who was appointed by President Kufuor to serve as GNPC Board Chairman, remains a very close pal of the former President Kufuor. He is rumoured to have served as a quiet financial advisor to the former President.
Mr. Abankwa, is currently the Managing Director of Prudential Bank Ltd in Ghana.
During the Ghana@50 celebrations, the Office the President guaranteed about $10 million for him and his partners to secure a loan facility from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to construct residential accommodation. By press time yesterday, Mr. Abankwa and his group had still not been able to pay up the loan they took from workers pension contribution. Interest on the loan has reached about 4 billion Cedis.
MOSES BOATENG When Energy Minister, Dr. Joe Oteng-Adjei, referred the Anadarko letter to the then Managing Director of GNPC, Mr. Moses O. Boateng for his response, he gave the minister what could at best be described as half-truths in a letter dated March 9, 2009.
Mr. Boateng stated, for instance, that “In terms of financial and technical capabilities the two companies were found to be almost at par and GNPC would be indifferent as to which of them was eventually awarded the block.”
This assertion is not supported by the facts as a cursory glance at the track record of Aker ASA, Anadarko, Hess and Chemu, would leave no one in doubt that the two US companies, Anadarko and Hess are streets ahead of their Norwegian and Ghanaian counterparts in their technical and financial capabilities as well as all other departments of the oil industry.
Again, in a table that purported to compare the terms of the Hess-Anadarko and Aker ASA applications for the Tano Deepwater, Mr. Boateng was not forthright with the minister. He actually, matched the raw bid of Hess-Anadarko against the negotiated terms under the Aker ASA – Chemu Power agreement.
This obviously was to misrepresent to the new minister that the bid of the latter was better.
However, a review of the Petroleum Agreement signed with Aker ASA, revealed that contrary to the requirements of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Law, PNDC Law 84, the company neither registered nor incorporated a company under the laws of Ghana.
That Agreement was ratified by Parliament on November 5, 2008. But Aker ASA, got Aker Ghana Limited incorporated on October 29, 2008 with certificate of incorporation number, CA-51,646, to commence business on October 30, 2008.
Aker ASA sought to assign its interest to Aker Ghana Limited, as a means of regularizing the agreement. However, by a letter dated December 30, 2009 the Energy Minister, declined the request, since the original agreement was invalid.
According to him, “The assignment you have requested is legally impossible in view of the underlying failure of compliance with the law.”
The minister, by a copy of that letter advised GNPC to reimburse Aker ASA with costs incurred in acquiring data, since such data acquired belonged to GNPC. He notified Aker ASA that it was going to reactivate negotiations which had commenced previously with the Anadarko/Hess application.
The relevant clauses under Section 23(15) of the Petroleum Exploration and Production Law PNDC Law 84, states that a contractor (foreign company):
“which is not an incorporated company in Ghana under the Companies Code, 1963 (Act 179) shall (a) register an incorporated company in Ghana under the provisions of the Companies Code, 1963 (Act 179) to be authorized to carry out solely petroleum operations in respect of which a petroleum agreement or petroleum sub-contract has been entered into under this Law and such signatory shall be a signatory to any petroleum agreement;”
“(b) maintain an office or establishment in Ghana to carry out petroleum operations and shall have in charge of such office or establishment a representative with full authority to act and to enter into binding commitments on behalf of the contractor or sub-contractor, as the case may be; and, continues with subsection (c) that:
“In respect of such petroleum operations, open and maintain an account with a bank in Ghana.”
Companies, such as Kosmos Energy, Tullow Oil, Anadarko, Sabre Oil and Gas Holdings have all registered their companies under Ghana’s Companies Code, to facilitate their compliance with the law before entering into petroleum agreements for their blocks.
THE NORWEIGIAN CONNECTION
One shocking revelation from the GNPC boss to the Minister was that in awarding the South Deep Water Tano block to Aker ASA, they were influenced by factors such as “The Norwegian Government’s Support to Ghana in restructuring the oil and gas industry together with their support for training of Ghanaian staff” The GNPC boss further noted that “the keen interest of the Norwegian Ambassador in GNPC affairs became a plus in favor of Aker”
According to Mr. Boateng, one other consideration for awarding the field to Aker ASA was the fact that “.there were relatively too many American companies in the basin namely, Kosmos, Hess, Anadarko and Vanco,” but “There were only two European companies – Tullow and Vitol, the decision was to spread and therefore favored Aker.”
The above has generated a geo-political controversy as to whether the Norwegian government twisted the arms of the previous government in awarding the field to Aker.
Observers say the mention of the interest of the Norwegian Ambassador is akin to the controversial role played by the British Ambassador to Ghana in the sale of Ghana Telecom to Vodafone, a British telecom giant.
Credit The Enquirer insightgh Dossier.wordpress.com:
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francis kwarteng 8 years ago
KKO-aka-namesake-Baidoo,
I forgot to mention this.
Why don't you take your business to one of those paper capitalist countries and capitalist snake oil you have been selling on Ghanaweb to see it will fare?
Now giv ... read full comment
KKO-aka-namesake-Baidoo,
I forgot to mention this.
Why don't you take your business to one of those paper capitalist countries and capitalist snake oil you have been selling on Ghanaweb to see it will fare?
Now given the porosity of your articles and the structural weaknesses of your arguments, can you convince yourself that are a good businessman? You don't have to convince me of that.
At least the nature of your shoddy, structurally weak and clueless articles is enough for me the sort of "businessman" you are! I put "businessman" in quote for a good reason.
All in all, there are so many reasons why a business may not fare well. It MAY not because of Kuffour or Mahama per se. While you laud Reaganomics (free market fundamentalism), access the following link (www.shmoop.com/reagan-era/economy.html) and read about businesses that collapsed under Reagan (and the number of jobs lost in the process. YOU SHOULD GO TO THE WEBSITE OF THE CATO INSTITUTE, A FREE MARKET FUNDAMENTALIST RESEARCH INSTITUTE AND READ MORE ABOUT THE FAILURES OF REAGAN AND HIS FUNDAMENTALIST POLICIES. PLEASE DON'T BOTHER GOING TO ANY LEFT-WING WEBSITE).
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"The Abject Failures of Reaganomics"
Exclusive: House Republicans got next to nothing from their extortion strategy of taking the government and the economy hostage, but they are sure to continue obstructing programs that could create jobs and start rebuilding the middle class. What they won’t recognize is the abject failure of Reaganomics, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Even as the Republican Right licks its wounds after taking a public-opinion beating over its government shutdown and threatened credit default, the Tea Partiers keep promoting a false narrative on why the U.S. debt has ballooned and why the economy struggles, a storyline that will surely influence the next phase of this American political crisis.
If a large segment of the American public continues to buy into the Tea Party’s fake reality, then it is likely that both the political damage and the economic decline will continue apace, with fewer good-paying jobs, a shrinking middle class and more of the bitter alienation that has fed the Tea Party’s growth in the first place. In other words, the United States will remain in a vicious circle that is also a downward spiral.
The pattern can only be reversed if American voters come to understand how and why their economic well-being is getting flushed down the drain.
The first point to understand is that the current $16.7 trillion federal debt is about $11 trillion more than it was when George W. Bush took office. Not only did Bush’s tax-cut-and-war-spending policies send the debt soaring over the next dozen years but it was those policies that eliminated the federal surpluses of Bill Clinton’s final years and reversed a downward trend in the debt that had “threatened” to eliminate the debt entirely over the ensuing decade.
Amazingly, President Clinton left office in January 2001 with the federal budget in the black by $236 billion and with a projected 10-year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion. The budgetary trend lines were such that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan began to fret about the challenges the Fed might face in influencing interest rates if the entire U.S. government debt were paid off, thus leaving no debt obligations to sell.
Thus, Greenspan, an Ayn Rand acolyte who was first appointed by Ronald Reagan, threw his considerable prestige behind George W. Bush’s plan for massive tax cuts that would primarily benefit the wealthy. In that way, Bush and the Republicans “solved” the “problem” of completely paying off the federal debt.
When Bush left office in January 2009 – amid a meltdown of an under-regulated Wall Street – there was no more talk about a debt-free government. Indeed, the debt had soared to $10.6 trillion and was trending rapidly higher as the government scrambled to avert a financial catastrophe that could have brought on another Great Depression.
Reaganomics’ Failure
But this debt crisis did not originate with George W. Bush. It can be traced back primarily to President Reagan, who arrived in the White House in 1981 with fanciful notions about restoring America’s economic vitality through massive tax cuts for the wealthy, a strategy called “supply-side” by its admirers and “trickle-down” by its critics.
Reagan’s tax cuts brought a rapid ballooning of the federal debt, which was $934 billion in January 1981 when Reagan took office. When he departed in January 1989, the debt had jumped to $2.7 trillion, a three-fold increase. And the consequences of Reagan’s reckless tax-cutting continued to build under his successor, George H.W. Bush, who left office in January 1993 with a national debt of $4.2 trillion, more than a four-fold increase since the arrival of Republican-dominated governance in 1981.
During 1993, Clinton’s first year in office, the new Democratic administration pushed through tax increases, partially reversing the massive tax cuts implemented under Reagan. Finally, the debt problem began to stabilize, with the total debt at $5.7 trillion and heading downward, when Clinton left office in January 2001.
Indeed, at the time of Clinton’s departure, the projected ten-year surplus of $5.6 trillion meant that virtually the entire federal debt would be retired. That was what Fed Chairman Greenspan found worrisome enough to support George W. Bush’s new round of tax cuts aimed primarily at the wealthy, another dose of Reagan’s “supply-side.”
The consequences – especially when combined with Bush’s decision to rush into two major wars without paying for them – proved disastrous. The federal debt resumed its upward climb. By August 2008, just before the Wall Street crash, the debt was over $9.6 trillion, nearly a $4 trillion jump since Bush took office.
And, after the Wall Street collapse in September 2008, the federal government had little choice but to increase its borrowing even more to avert a global economic catastrophe potentially worse than the Great Depression. By January 2009, just five months later, the debt was $10.6 trillion, a $1 trillion increase and counting.
Many of the Republican leaders who stomped their feet during the recent budget showdown, including House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, were among those who favored the Bush tax cuts, the costly invasion of Iraq and bank deregulation. In other words, they were denouncing President Obama for a debt crisis that they helped create.
But the record of reckless Republican budget policies from Reagan through Bush-43 was not only destructive to the fiscal health of the government. The “supply-side,” “free-trade” and deregulatory strategies – including some facilitated by the Clinton administration – proved devastating to the nation’s ability to create good-paying jobs and to sustain the Great American Middle Class.
Zero Job Growth
During the decade of George W. Bush’s presidency, the United States experienced zero job growth. And zero is actually worse than it sounds since none of the preceding six decades registered job growth of less than 20 percent.
By comparison, the 1970s, which are often bemoaned as a time of economic stagflation and political malaise, registered a 27 percent increase in jobs. Yet, in part because of that relatively slow rise in jobs – down from 31 percent in the 1960s – American voters turned to Ronald Reagan and his radical economic theories of tax cuts, global “free markets” and deregulation.
Reagan sold Americans on his core vision: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Through his personal magnetism, Reagan then turned taxes into a third rail of American politics. He convinced many voters that the government’s only important roles were funding the military and cutting taxes.
Yet, instead of guiding the country into a bright new day of economic vitality, Reagan’s approach accelerated a de-industrialization of the United States and a slump in the growth of American jobs, down to 20 percent during the 1980s. The percentage job increase for the 1990s stayed at 20 percent, although job growth did pick up later in the decade under President Clinton, who raised taxes and moderated some of Reagan’s approaches while still pushing “free trade” agreements and deregulation.
Yet, hard-line Reaganomics returned with a vengeance under George W. Bush – more tax cuts, more faith in “free trade,” more deregulation – and the Great American Job Engine finally started grinding to a halt. Zero percent increase. The Great American Middle Class was on life-support.
Ignoring Reality
Despite these painful statistics of the past three decades, Reaganomics has remained a powerful force in American political life. Anyone tuning in CNBC or picking up the Wall Street Journal would think that these economic policies had enjoyed unqualified success for everyone, rather than being a dismal failure for all but the richest Americans. The facts were especially stark for the 2000s, the so-called “Aughts” or perhaps more accurately the “Naughts.”
“For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households,” wrote the Washington Post’s Neil Irwin in a Jan. 2, 2010, review of comparative economic data. “But since 2000, the story is starkly different.”
As the Post article and its accompanying graphs showed, the last decade’s sad story wasn’t just limited to the abysmal job numbers. U.S. economic output slowed to its worst pace since the 1930s, rising only 17.8 percent in the 2000s, less than half the 38.1 percent increase in the despised 1970s. Household net worth declined 4 percent in the last decade, compared to a 28 percent rise in the 1970s. (All figures were adjusted for inflation.)
Despite this record of economic failure from Bush’s reprise of Reaganomics – trillions more in government debt but no net increase in jobs or household wealth in the last decade – many Americans appear to have learned no lessons from either the Bush-43 presidency or Reagan’s destructive legacy. Any thought of raising taxes or investing in a stronger domestic infrastructure remains anathema to significant segments of the population still enthralled by the Tea Party.
Indeed, across the mainstream U.S. news media, it is hard to find any serious – or sustained – criticism of the Reagan/Bush economic theories. More generally, there is headshaking about the size of the debt and talk about the need to slash “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare. Instead of paying heed to the real lessons of the past three decades, many Americans are trapped in the Reagan/Tea Party narrative and thus repeating the same mistakes.
‘Voodoo Economics’
The U.S. political/media process seems resistant to the one of most obvious lessons of the past three decades: Simply put, Reaganomics didn’t work. As George H.W. Bush once commented – when he was running against Reagan in the 1980 primaries – it is “voodoo economics.”
Yet, the fact that the United States has embraced “voodoo economics” for much of the past three-plus decades and refuses to recognize the statistical evidence of Reaganomics’ abject failure suggests that the larger lesson of this era is that the U.S. political process is dysfunctional, a point driven home by the recent Tea Party-led government shutdown and threatened debt default.
In the decades that followed Reagan’s 1980 election, the Right has invested ever more heavily in media outlets, think tanks and attack groups that, collectively, changed the American political landscape. Because of Reagan’s sweeping tax cuts favoring the rich, right-wing billionaires, like the Koch Brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife, also had much more money to reinvest in the political/media process, including funding the faux-populist Tea Party.
That advantage was further exaggerated by the Left’s parallel failure to invest in its own media at anything close to the Right’s tens of billions of dollars. Thus, the Right’s outreach to average Americans has won over millions of middle-class voters to the Republican banner, even as the GOP enacted policies that devastated the middle class and concentrated the nation’s wealth at the top.
So, even as American workers struggled in the face of globalization and suffered under GOP hostility toward unions, the Right convinced many middle-class whites, in particular, that their real enemy was “big guv-mint.”
Though Obama won the presidency in 2008, the Republicans didn’t change their long-running strategy of using their media assets to portray the Democrats as un-American. The Right waged a relentless assault on Obama’s legitimacy (spreading rumors that he was born in Kenya, he was a secret socialist, he was a Muslim, etc.) while a solid wall of Republican opposition greeted his plans for addressing the national economic crisis that he inherited.
The Rise of the Tea Party
Like previous Democrats, Obama initially responded by offering olive branches across the aisle, but again and again, they were slapped down. In mid-2009, Obama wasted valuable time trying to woo supposed Republican “moderates” like Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine to support health-care reform. Meanwhile, Republicans filibustered endlessly in the Senate and whipped their right-wing “base” into angrier and angrier mobs.
Initially, the GOP strategy proved successful, as Republicans pummeled Democrats for increasing the debt with a $787 billion stimulus package to stanch the economic bleeding. The continued loss of jobs enabled the Republicans to paint the stimulus as a “failure.” There was also Obama’s confusing health-care law that pleased neither the Right nor the Left.
The foul mood of the nation translated into an angry Tea Party movement and Republican victories in the House and in many statehouses around the country. Gradually, however, a stabilized financial structure and a slow-healing economy began to generate jobs, albeit often with lower pay.
Obama could boast about sufficient progress to justify his reelection in 2012, with most voters also favoring Democrats for the Senate and the House. However, aggressive Republican gerrymandering of congressional districts helped the GOP retain a slim majority in the House despite losing the popular vote by around 1½ million ballots.
But the just-finished budget/debt showdown has shown that the Tea Party’s fight over America’s political/economic future is far from over. Through its ideological media and think tanks, the Right continues to hammer home the Reagan-esque theory that “government is the problem.”
Meanwhile, the Left still lacks comparable media resources to remind U.S. voters that it was the federal government that essentially created the Great American Middle Class – from the New Deal policies of the 1930s through other reforms of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, from Social Security to Wall Street regulation to labor rights to the GI Bill to the Interstate Highway System to the space program’s technological advances to Medicare and Medicaid to the minimum wage to civil rights.
Many Americans don’t like to admit it — they prefer to think of their families as reaching the middle class without government help — but the reality is that the Great American Middle Class was a phenomenon made possible by the intervention of the federal government beginning with Franklin Roosevelt and continuing into the 1970s. [For one telling example of this reality — the Cheney family, which was lifted out of poverty by FDR’s policies — see Consortiumnews.com’s “Dick Cheney: Son of the New Deal.”]
Further, in the face of corporate globalization and business technology, two other forces making the middle-class work force increasingly obsolete, the only hope for a revival of the Great American Middle Class is for the government to increase taxes on the rich, the ones who have gained the most from cheap foreign labor and advances in computer technology, in order to fund projects to build and strengthen the nation, from infrastructure to education to research and development to care for the sick and elderly to environmental protections.
In other words, the only strategy that makes sense for the average American is to reject the theories of Ronald Reagan and the Right. Rather than seeing the government as “the problem” and higher taxes on the rich as “bad,” the American people must come to understand that, to a great extent, government has to be a big part of the solution.
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Take care.
G. K. Berko 8 years ago
They almost perfected the art of stealing State assets. It goes back to the overthrow of Nkrumah.
Long Live Ghana!!!
They almost perfected the art of stealing State assets. It goes back to the overthrow of Nkrumah.
Long Live Ghana!!!
YAW 8 years ago
On the issue of NPP corruption google..Kuffour dares us,we respond by Kwasi Adu. Insight Newspaper issue.Thursday,9 January 2014.
On the issue of NPP corruption google..Kuffour dares us,we respond by Kwasi Adu. Insight Newspaper issue.Thursday,9 January 2014.
fools like this Frances Kwarteng are the loud mouthed propagandists ubiquitous in NDC and CPP who are holding Ghana's development at bay.
Mensah,
Since you mention the NDC and the CPP, is it, therefore, your position that it is wiseacres like you who are pumping up the NPP and every other political party, and pushing out from bay the Ghana development?
Almost all Ghanaweb idiot have met again this morning, namely, kwarteng, Lungu, Kojo T one of them will start the idiotism and the rest will sharply follow. I am only looking forward to see their opposition leader Baidoo.
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
Volks, correction, "All the idiots are there....
The truth is that, Nkrumah's ideas were not suitable for growing the economy since the communist system lacks mechanisms and incentives that release energies of the people to create wealth. He, therefore, met a rich and confi ...
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WHAT ABOUT COMMUNIST CHINA?
NPP wanted Free SHS , NDC and CPP implemented it .There are many commonalities in all that differ from free market The problem is those of you who just insult instead of coming with suggestions. Development comes from ideas ...
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MENSAH,YOU HAVE NO TICKET TO RIDE ON THIS BUS.PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY(UP/NPP) IS PURELY CAPITALISTIC THEFT AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.NEO-ELITE/RICH VERSUS HAVE NOTS.
MENSAH,YOU HAVE NO TICKET TO RIDE ON THIS BUS.PROPERTY OWNING DEMOCRACY(UP/NPP) IS PURELY CAPITALISTIC THEFT AND TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF MANKIND.NEO-ELITE/RICH VERSUS HAVE NOTS.
1. Adongo Aidan Avugma makes some good points concerning the antecedents of "tribalism" in Ghana/colonial Africa in this 2000 essay.
The crucial point to note is, the slavery that existed after the arrival of the Dutch o ...
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Wonders!
Why, we must ask, did Margaret Thatcher not allow Baidoo-Free-Market-Capitalism solve her IRA problem?
THIS ACCORDING TO BAIDOO...
Socialism Is The Life Blood Of Ghanaian Tribalism, according to Phillip Ko ...
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Dear Kwarteng,its a nice piece of reproduction. Thank you but, the problem is, the masses are being exploited because of ignorance by these pure modern day neo imperialists who are fortunately one of our own kind. Is there an ...
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Kwarteng the person who quoted use dialectics to make the comparison between socialism and neocolonialism, which Kwame Nkrumah wrote in his thesis with the same heading "Neocolonialism The Last Stage of Imperialism" which is ...
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IF SOCIALISM MAKES ECONOMIES GROW FASTER, WHY DON'T THE THOUSANDS OF MIGRANTS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA NOT GOING TO RUSSIA, CUBA AND NORTH KOREA?????????? THE SWEETNESS OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING!!!!!!!! ALL YOU S ...
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You said it all. The Russian , the Chinese and, in fact, all the communist/socialist leaning countries are seeking refuge in the capitalist USA in their numbers. What is interesting to note here that Kwarteng, Lungu and all n ...
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Kwaku Ananse the communist do not advocate regime change to deprive people of their labour in their countries of origin, create refuges that they can use for all sorts of business including he drug trade, also train them to c ...
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This article expresses the importance of Kwame Nkrumah as the first president, coming from a minute tribe of Nzima to bridge the differences among the Ghanaian cultural, tribal groups, by eradicating the covetous colonialism ...
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If the most enticing System now is the "Mixed Economy", which I have always appealed to our Leaders to take seriously, why would we have to give exceptional deference to Socialism?
Wouldn't such an approach simply harden ...
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"There are circumstances in which the import of foreign capital is of benefit to the importing country, especially in the case of the emerging developing country where large-scale sources of capital accumulation is small and ...
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These are some aspects of Nkrumaism that the selfish neo-colonialists are against. Nkrumaism is strictly a mixed economy. what deters people from Nkrumaism is that, it is fair, beneficial to all participants and tackles the ...
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Yaw, I wish you could produce this Speech more broadly with its sources so that all those who hate Nkrumah for the fact that he declared himself a Socialist would be educated to concede the man never rejected Capitalism outri ...
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Dear Brother Berko,
Lumumba's criticism of the Belgian King had to do with the King's treatment of Congolese which historian Adam Hochschild painstakingly describes in his book "King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terr ...
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Brother Kwarteng, thanks for your generous, fuller info on Lumumba. I only remembered sketchy info from memory about his fate until I googled to arrive at the video I wept about.
I remembered his ordeal by memories of st ...
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Dear Brother Berko,
Thanks for your response.
First, I want to say that Belgian intelligence and police officers retrieved Patrice Lumumba's corpse, cut them up then dissolved it in acid, crushed the bones and reburied ...
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A Dinner With Businessmen
Flag stuff House, February 22, 1963
I am happy to welcome you here this evening. They say, I believe, that if you have something important to say, don’t risk losing it in the digestive t ...
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Investment Policy
Parliament House,Accra, September 2, 1960
When I addressed you on the inauguration of the National Assembly of the I Republic of Ghana, I reiterated the Government’s Policy of non-alignment and ...
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Trade Policy
Accra, October 9, 1960
As promised on my return to Ghana three days ago, I have come tonight to report to you of my visit to the United Nations General Assembly. Before doing so however, I wish to refe ...
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Death Of Patrice Lumumba
Accra, February 14, 1961
COUNTRYMEN, AFRICAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS, COMRADES AND FRIENDS,
Somewhere in Katanga in the Congo where and when we do not know —three of our brother freedom fighter ...
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Excellent piece, Namesake,
That is exactly why our "Import Substitution Policy" at independence failed so miserably.After 1961, most of the factories were filled with CPP activists, cronies and tribespeople, square pegs in r ...
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I would love to see your face...which probably looks far worse than a wedding cake left out in the pouring rain.
G.K. Berko socialism is not the same as communism, and there is no communist country in the world. I use current developments in the world to illustrate my point. The fact also is that the socialist states are not imperialist ...
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Kwame, your point is well noted. But you and I know for a fact that the common person out there has always been bombarded with certain connotations of these words as being the only acceptable or existing meanings. We have oft ...
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Any type of economy that benefits the people is what the people are seeking for. A mixed economy that allows the people to obtain their needs is no "deodorized shit," as you or Lenin may claim. An African must read numerous ...
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Dear Kwamebeba,
Good day. I could not agree with you more. I quite remember writing the following in "Nkrumah Did Not Force His Views on African Leaders 5":
"That is not an apocalyptic indictment of the continent per se ...
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All I pray for is just that you indicated with no coercion from outside to swallow a coated pill of death.
Long Live Ghana!!!
By: Kobina Antobam
If you believe in unidentified flying objects (UFOs), then you must be completely out of this world and “spaced out” all by your crazy self on a faraway planet. And if you also believe in NPP’s muc ...
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By: Kobina Antobam
The test of unifying one race of people of many tribal origins was very clear to Kwame Nkrumah. Though Europeans had partitioned the continent without regard to natural divisions and tribal affiliations ...
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KKO-aka-namesake-Baidoo,
See how you capitalist Kuffour and others benefited from the failed Nkrumah investments (and how they continue to save Ghana from bankruptcy):
By Kweku Dadzie
.................................. ...
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Francis,
At least I run a business in Ghana and I know how it fared under Kufuor and how it is faring under the useless directionless rougues we have in Ghana today. I also had the opportunity to see the workings of several ...
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KKO,
Could you tell me those that were not sold? Could you tell me why the investments Nkrumah made in Ghana keep saving the country from bankrptcy? Please give an intelligent response and not the unverfiable anecdotes you ...
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KKO-aka-namesake-Baidoo,
I forgot to mention this.
Why don't you take your business to one of those paper capitalist countries and capitalist snake oil you have been selling on Ghanaweb to see it will fare?
Now giv ...
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They almost perfected the art of stealing State assets. It goes back to the overthrow of Nkrumah.
Long Live Ghana!!!
On the issue of NPP corruption google..Kuffour dares us,we respond by Kwasi Adu. Insight Newspaper issue.Thursday,9 January 2014.