The Struggle Against Imperialism In The Context Of Nkrumaist Development Paradigm

Speech By Dr. Gamal Nasser Adam, University of Ghana

We have gathered here today to mark a very infamous day in our national history, so infamous that it has rightly been dubbed Ghana's Day of Shame. 24th February 1966 is a day of shame in the sense that it illustrates the lack of conscience on the part of the neocolonial elite in Ghana and the dishonourable levels they will go to collaborate with the forces of imperialism to subvert the aspirations of their own people in the struggle for genuine independence and for the liquidation of underdevelopment.

It is now an established fact backed by documentary evidence that American and British intelligence had made it their foremost priority to overthrow the government of Kwame Nkrumah and halt the bold attempt at nation building by a Black African country in its efforts to lift its people out of poverty. And when the witches or wizards enter the house, then someone inside has opened the door. Jack Mahoney in his book JFK Ordeal in Africa specifically mentions J.B. Danquah as one of the members of the political elite of the then Gold who was on the pay roll of the CIA. And the traitors, Afrifa, Kotoka and Harley who carried out the coup of February 1966 were actually paid monies running into millions of dollars.

The hostility that the Americans and the British had towards Nkrumah was based on the fact that Nkrumah not only understood the real nature of American and British imperialism, but more importantly, he was prepared to confront it in Africa. And the British and Americans were also prepared to use all means at their disposal to block or even eliminate Kwame Nkrumah. For them the stability of the global capitalist system was at stake, and they would fight tooth, nail and claw to protect it. And in doing this, they swore, as they have continued to do, that they would never allow any model of a successful alternative to neocolonial dependency to take root or flourish. The reason is simple. If one African country such as Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah, could simply opt out of the orbit of the global imperialist system, and succeed at some form of independent development, what would have prevented other African countries from following that example and shake off the yoke of imperialist domination?

The world order which imperialism imposes on the rest of us is a cynical one. In it Africa's role is essentially two. The first is to supply the material resources, markets and investment outlets for Europe, America and Japan. The second is to act as buffer zones or shock absorbers to cushion and stabilize the crises of the global system as they periodically occur. In this less familiar second role, the burden of adjustment to the cyclical crises in the entire global system is typically passed on to Africa. This is done mainly through lower prices for our exports, higher prices for our imports, willful manipulation of the values of our currencies, super exploitation of workers, higher interest charges on our debts and other methods.

This exploitative world order is not new. From the times of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade to the present neocolonial times, the system has worked to transfer huge amounts of resources from the underdeveloped world to the advanced industrialized countries effectively ensuring that the affluence of the populations of these countries is kept artificially high. And to maintain this exploitative world order, imperialism does not hesitate to use its enormous economic muscle and awesome military power to subdue any threat to the system.

When the people of Vietnam decided to exit this imperialist orbit in the 1960s America deployed the full force of its military industrial complex in a ruthless campaign to pound the Vietnamese people into submission, but the heroism of the people of Vietnam prevailed.

It was the same desire to protect the global imperialist order that was behind the CIA-sponsored Katanga secession and the murder of Patrice Lumumba of the then Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, the involvement of oil Multinational corporations in the Nigerian civil war, the overthrow of Yakubu Gowon and the abortive coup of 1976 in which the progressive military ruler General Muritala Rufai Muhammed was assassinated. It was also the commitment to protect the imperialist order which was behind the CIA-sponsored overthrow of the democratically elected president of Chile Salvador Allende, the almost half-century regime of sanctions the United States has continued to impose on Cuba, the destabilization of the Sandinista regime of Nicaragua and that of the MPLA in Angola in the 1970s and 80s, the hostility towards President Chavez of Venezuela, the confrontational posturing against the Islamic Republic of Iran and imperialism's support for the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for thirty years.

The underlying message in all these examples is that imperialism is in no mood to tolerate any visionary and imaginative Third World leadership committed to the liquidation of dependency and underdevelopment. Such leadership disrupts the imperialist order and must be dislodged at all costs. First imperialism uses bribery. When this proves unsuccessful, the next strategy is to block the progress of the honest and patriotic African leader. And when this also fails imperialism applies all manner of pressures to break the government in question by destabilizing it and ultimately overthrowing it through a coup d'état.

The specific application of this strategy may differ from one country to the other, but the overall cynical objective is the same. With regard to Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah, it was first through a very hostile international media campaign, followed subsequently by naked terrorism and a violent campaign of bombings targeting mainly civilians and school children. Terrorism was then followed by outright economic sabotage which eventually set the stage for the coup of 24th February 1966. Since then imperialism has never relented in its quest to exercise full control over our country and its resources. I will cite one very recent and familiar example.

There is an American oil exploration and production company called Kosmos Energy, and it holds a 23.5 percent stake in Ghana's Jubilee Oil Field. In October 2009 the company announced that it was selling this stake to another US company called Exxon Mobil, and in the process Kosmos Energy blatantly trampled upon the laws of Ghana and also engaged in some fraudulent and underhand dealings. Ghana government objected to the sale and invoked its first right to buy out the 23.5 percent share of Kosmos as this was in the best national interest of Ghana. A tag of war then ensued between the government of Ghana on one hand and Kosmos Energy and Exxon Mobil on the other. The Obama administration and the might of American corporate power rushed to the defence of Kosmos Energy descending heavily on the government of Ghana in a bid to pressurize the Mill's administration to consent to what was clearly illegal and inimical to the interest of the masses of the people of Ghana. The US applied limited financial sanctions, and its lawmakers threatened to cut off MCA funding to Ghana.

In fact no effort was spared in undermining Ghana's international trade. And as has already been noted elsewhere by the Committee for Joint Action, the World Bank withheld 150 million dollars in support to Ghana demanding what the Bank referred to as 'governance' reforms in the oil sector. Translated into English this meant Ghana government succumbing to the Kosmos – Exxon Mobil deal. Mainstream American media, and especially the Wall Street Journal and Forbes were mobilized to exert enormous psychological pressure on the government of the NDC planting scare stories about Ghana's economy in the international media. There have even been suggestions that the US would most likely subvert the NDC government and support a regime change in 2012 in favour of a more servile and pro-imperialist administration which would be more amenable to imperialist manipulation and surrender the rights of the Ghanaian people to foreign interests.

The question inevitably arises. Why will the most powerful economic and military power in the world be so obsessed with twisting the feeble arm of a tiny country such as Ghana whose leadership is just trying to take control of the country's natural resources in an effort to lift its people out of poverty and underdevelopment?

The answer is simple. The US is pursuing what it defines as its national interests, even if this means taking what does not belong to it as long us this swells the profit margins of its multinational corporations and the residual effect this has on keeping the standard of living of its citizens artificially high.

It is left to Ghana and indeed Africa to also define what our national interests are. These should include a commitment to protect our natural resources and use them for the benefit of our people, tackling poverty and the general conditions of underdevelopment. All these would mean resistance to neocolonial exploitation.

And one of the first steps in this direction is to raise the awareness of the people and awaken their political consciousness. This is because the most potent weapon in the hands of imperialism is the ignorance of its victim. And when imperialism is challenged on this front, its reaction is unrestrained.

This explains the hysterical response of the government of the United States to the publication of Nkrumah's book Neo-Colonialism – The Last Stage of Imperialism in October 1965. The aim of this book was simply to expose neocolonial practices especially in Africa. Here Kwame Nkrumah deals mainly with how Multinational corporations conspire to exploit the African people, and argues forcefully for Africans to take control of their resources as a prelude to asserting the peoples economic independence. And as declassified documents of the American Central Intelligence Agency confirm, the CIA's preparations towards the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah were intensified after the publication of this book.

Britain was equally forthright in its hostility towards Nkrumah's efforts at raising the political consciousness of the African people. This was what the British High Commissioner in Ghana at the time, A.W. Snelling said in a dispatch sent to the Commonwealth Relations Office in London on 5th September 1961:

"... To us, it is particularly galling to have this egotist [Nkrumah] shouting at us to take off the brakes in the Rhodesias, Nyasaland (now Malawi) and Kenya, and drive faster down the road to independence, which we know much better than he does. And his knack of giving expression to the feelings of so many Africans, who are all the time rapidly becoming more politically conscious, is exasperating. I can well understand the fury he arouses in London, and often share it myself ... He wants to kick us out of Africa. He opposes us over the Common Market, and has the impertinence to start talking about a Commonwealth without Britain.'

Why was British imperialism so ruffled by the rising consciousness of the African people? The answer was once provided by Napoleon Bonaparte who said that you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. British colonialism was imposed through violence, but history has always taught that the power of the ruling class can never rely entirely on its coercive powers alone or on the use of brute force. A more enduring way of perpetuating the prevailing order is to regulate the behaviour of the people by shaping their consciousness in a way as to be supportive of the status quo. In other words the worst forms of tyranny – or certainly the most successful ones – are not those we rail against but those that so insinuate themselves into the imagery of our consciousness and the fabric of our lives as not to be perceived as tyranny. And so mind management became a core principle in the colonial and especially the neocolonial subjugation of the African people.

By the time Europe was compelled to decolonize Africa, it had had enough time of the more than a century of colonial rule, to consolidate the necessary economic, social and political structures designed to ensure the continuation of the exploitation of the continent even in the absence of the so-called colonial master. For this purpose the British enlisted to their cause one very important institution - the educational system. A system designed to programme the mind of the African people in such a way as to make us acquiesce in our own oppression without even realizing it. That we continue to be oblivious of the retarding effects of this neocolonial education system is a measure of our successful habituation to a subtler form of oppression.

The neocolonial character of our education system is rooted in its history. In fact it was imported into Africa as the core of the cultural offensive of imperialism at its colonial stage. The colonial presence in Ghana and in the rest of Africa had one major purpose, which was the economic exploitation of the subjugated people, and all aspects of its political, social and economic infrastructure including the system of education were designed to facilitate this process of exploitation. And any seemingly beneficial residue of the colonial infrastructure was and still is purely an accidental byproduct initially not intended by imperialism.

As far as imperialism was concerned real education for colonial people would have inevitably meant unrest and revolt against the colonial order and as such it was designed to inculcate obedience, servility and an inferiority complex in the African. And since real education today will inevitably translate into a correct understanding of the generating causes of our underdevelopment and subsequent rebellion against the status quo, it has, just as in the colonial times, to be severely curtailed and designed basically to hide the truth. I mean the truth about why we are underdeveloped and the truth about the practical actions needed to combat this underdevelopment. Otherwise if our education system was designed to train the requisite minds and develop the requisite human resource base for solving our national problems, why is it that despite the phenomenal increases in the overall per capita graduate turnout from the universities and the impressive record of scholarship in terms of PhD and professorial rankings per capita, the crises in the country and on the continent at large are still deepening and visible in the deplorable mass poverty, inequalities, food crisis, widespread disease and other related health problems, illiteracy, technological backwardness, prostrate external dependence and colossal foreign debts. Therefore there is no doubt that from the dialectical perspective, the socio-economic crisis and the failures of our education system complement each other.

Nkrumah made strenuous efforts to tackle this problem, but the intellectual elite of the time fiercely resisted such efforts. It is reported that after the coup a vice chancellor of one of the universities actually supervised the burning of Nkrumah's books which he caused to be removed from the university library.

And what were the central emphases of the books the Vice Chancellor in question took exception to? Stripped to their barest essentials, Nkrumah's books were simply teaching the African people that poverty is not our natural condition and that our underdevelopment is largely a historical phenomenon reinforced by imperialism. Against the background of this understanding, the African people could lift themselves up and into action to fight against underdevelopment and imperialist domination. More importantly Nkrumah strove to raise the level of political consciousness of the Black People as a necessary prerequisite for overcoming the inferiority complex that centuries of European domination had seared into our subconscious minds.

The actions of the Vice Chancellor who reportedly supervised the incineration of Nkrumah's books were in consonance with his neocolonial mindset. He was part of that exclusive class of neocolonial elite that imperialism had groomed and nurtured in order to entrench its exploitative grip on the African people. This exclusive class of political elite, technocrats and intellectuals brainwashed as mimic Euro-Americans and deeply enmeshed in imperialist ideology was the class the departing colonialists usually preferred to hand over power to. Apart from political office, members of this fifth column were also rewarded with lucrative jobs, foreign bank accounts, and executive positions in multinational corporations. During the struggle for independence, it was members of this elite class who continued to urge Britain not to disengage from the then Gold Coast. And today, their actions continue to betray their neocolonial mentality.

Not too long ago their class allies championed the fraudulent divestiture of Ghana's 70 percent share in Ghana Telecom to Vodafone International, and very recently they joined the American corporate class to exert enormous pressure on the Mills administration to sign the Kosmos – Exxon Mobil deal. Members of this fifth column completely overlook the fact that these deals impinge very negatively on our national interests and rob the masses of their wealth and dignity. But this is not surprising. These elite are only playing their class role. Historically their aristocratic class ancestors were those who played the roles of slave hunters and middlemen during the Transatlantic Slave Trade and were rewarded with crumbs from the Slave profits. Under direct colonialism, they, together with the traditional feudal lords and colonial merchants, worked hand in glove with the colonialists to share in the colonial booty.

Today, they are the centre of cultivating a culture of intellectual sterility and inertia by deliberately entrenching a neocolonial mentality and identity. Nkrumah was very much aware of this and how it impinged negatively on the national psyche, and he made frantic efforts to create a countervailing political consciousness to be nourished within the context of the African personality.

A major objective of the African personality was to embark on a frontal assault on neocolonial mentality and identity both of which combined to breed a profound lack of confidence and an inferiority complex in the victim which then reinforces the stereotype that the indigenous African environment is not capable of matching the levels of socio-economic and cultural development of the advanced industrialized countries. In other words, neocolonial mentality and underdevelopment have been mutually reinforcing. Such mentality entrenches a false consciousness which in turn engenders a false or at least, an inadequate understanding of the reasons behind Africa's relative backwardness and contributes to the perpetuation of the present status quo under the general illusion that there is no alternative.

And the main culprit in all these is our neocolonial education system which is doing almost nothing to raise the requisite consciousness among students and the population at large. It is also responsible for the collective amnesia which makes us almost completely ignorant not only of our history, but more importantly, of our potential capacity to match the rest of the world in science and technology. For example we know very little about the fact that the history of the industrial revolution will be incomplete without the notable contributions of many engineers and scientists of African descent. We recall such icons of engineering as Elijah McCoy who invented the automatic oil-dripping cup, air-breaks and an automatic train coupler; Norbert Rillieux who invented the sugar processing evaporator; Jan Ernst Matzeliger who invented a shoe-making machine that increased shoemaking speed by 900 per cent; Meredith Jones, the inventor of the first automatic refrigeration system for long-haulage trucks; James Edward West who holds more than 247 patents on microphones; Jerry Shelby who invented an engine protection system for a recoverable rocket booster; Donald Cotton who invented propellants for nuclear reactors; Philip Emeagwall who developed the fastest supercomputer software in the world. The list is endless.

We also recall that African American scientists participated in the manufacture of the first atomic bomb, even though I hasten to say that this does not represent an optimistic side of humanity.

The reason for this incursion into the scientific and technological heritage of Black people is to reinforce the teachings of Nkrumah that Africa's relative backwardness has nothing to do with the colour of our skin. It is the result of our history, the history of European encroachment on the trajectory of our socio-economic development, the deliberate policy of de-technologizing the continent in order to perpetuate Africa's dependency.

This was what Nkrumah set out to correct. He understood that the commitment to lift Africa out of poverty and put it on a permanent road to sustainable development has to be anchored on science and technology, and specifically technologies that would flow directly from advances in basic science. He understood that a scientific and technological revolution in Africa was the surest way of guaranteeing economic progress with regard to such attributes as the measure of national productive capacity, manufacturing output, modern employment opportunities and overall standard of living.

Today as Africa slips further and further behind the rest of the world, a scientific and technological revolution is a matter of survival. We urgently need to neutralize our prostrate dependence on imperialism through the local manufacture of both consumer and capital goods which should largely be based effectively on local raw materials, indigenous technology and basic national needs as much as possible.

What we must understand is that the effective technological development of the country cannot be achieved as a matter of mere international exchange or technology transfer. The imperialists know full well that from their colonial subjugation of the Third World to their current domination of these client states, their technological superiority has been the decisive variable, and they will not surrender it at any market price. Running to imperialism with cup in hand begging for assistance is like asking an assembly of wolves to legislate on the consumption of goat meat. In the first place the wolves will be shocked about the whole idea of the debate because within the framework of the wolf's mind goats are made to be eaten. Otherwise, what else should wolves eat, unless we want to turn them into vegetarians? In other words greed, exploitation, aggression and domination are embedded in the DNA of imperialism.

This is why we should abandon the concept of 'development partners' in our reference to the industrialized countries as if there is a communality of interests between us and them. In fact our interests have historically been incompatible. What communality of interests exists between the slave owner and the slave? What communality of interests exists between the colonial oppressor and the colonized people? And what communality of interests exists between the perpetrators of the neocolonial order and the victims of neocolonial exploitation? Alternatively if you can show me a vegetarian wolf then I will show you a benign imperialist.

The solution therefore lies in the creation of an alternative development paradigm anchored on a militant, no nonsense national self-reliance philosophy. And this should be based on an authentic and indigenous technological capacity. Another opportunity has offered itself after the first attempt was sabotaged and subverted by imperialism and some local traitors with the coup of 1966. Today, Ghana is once again blessed with a leadership that is patriotic and which has demonstrable credentials of honesty and integrity. This, coupled with the resources that would be accruing to the country from the oil find, should provide an excellent opportunity for a paradigm shift in our national development trajectory. This opportunity should not be missed, especially so since oil is not an infinite resource. Even if it is a resource which will last forever, we must bear in mind that just as this era in human history has been described as the oil age, there was equally a period in human history known as the Stone Age. And that Stone Age ended not because humankind ran out of stones. Technology simply moved on and may soon move on and leave fossil fuels behind.

While the country embarks on massive infrastructure projects, we should bear in mind that the most important thing is to develop the human and intellectual capacity to be able to sustain and ultimately internalize the technologies that lie at the base of such infrastructure. A successful and robust science and technology culture engrained in the collective national psyche will create the conditions for an irreversible national development trajectory. Japan, for example, is a country with virtually no natural resources; yet, it has managed to reach such remarkable levels of development because of a very solid science and technology culture. Of course Japan's imperialist history has also played a pivotal role in propelling the country's development. China is bracing itself to take over the leadership of the world because of a strong local science and technology culture; so also did the former Soviet Union mobilize a locally brewed science and technology capacity to propel itself to the status of a superpower.

The question many people have often asked is whether Ghana has the human resource base to embark on the envisaged scientific and technological revolution. The answer is yes.

The record of Ghanaian ingenuity in science and technology is impressive. Professor Francis K. A. Allotey is the former Director of the Atomic Energy Commission which was established in 1963 by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to look into the possibilities of harnessing nuclear energy for Ghana's development agenda. Professor Allotey is an internationally renowned Physicist, Mathematician and Computer Scientist. He is a world authority especially with respect to his work on Soft X-ray Spectroscopy which established the principle widely known as the “Allotey Formalism” which is studied in leading institutions of physics around the world. In the 1970s, he had advocated for the establishment of a computer technology programme in Ghana. This was some time before Silicon Valley assumed worldwide acclaim. Today Ghana would probably have been among the club of exclusive countries with a solid computer technology base.

The other names worth mentioning are Dr. Robert Woode (the Crusading Engineer), Apostle Kwadwo Sarfo, Mr. Onua Amoah of the Ghana Bio-Energy Ltd., Colonel (rtd) Kofi Abaka Jackson. Several groundbreaking innovate works done by the CSIR are evidence of the immense Ghanaian potential in science and technology. Today the country has an impressive array of talented young scientists, engineers and inventors. The names of two young men immediately come to mind, Gideon Agyare and Daniel Dagba. Mr. Dagba has been able to generate electricity from salt while Mr. Agyare has invented a device that powers an outboard motor and his ingenuity in solar panel design is remarkable. How these talents will be mobilized to feed into Ghana's quest to transform its economy is a political decision, and the political leadership should respond appropriately.

This was the type of talent and Ghanaian ingenuity that Nkrumah tried to mobilize with the establishment of the KNUST, the CSIR and AEC at Kwabenya to provide the scientific and technological base of Ghana's programme of industrialization.

Nkrumah also had plans to commence the exploitation of the enormous iron reserves located at Sheini in the Northern Region and Northern Volta. He had envisaged this to be the basis of an integrated iron and steel industry in Ghana because he saw this as a fundamental requirement for any successful industrialization programme. Work on this giant project was to commence after the Volta Lake was open for inland transportation. This project, together with many others, was abandoned by the agents of imperialism who seized power in February 1966. Those who had attempted to subvert Ghana's political independence eventually succeeded in aborting Ghana's drive towards economic independence. And immediately after carrying out this act of treachery on behalf of imperialism, the leaders of the coup asked for aid from Europe and the United States mainly in the form of sardine and milk. That was their contribution to the history of Ghana's economic development, and their conduct represents the highest manifestation of shame.

Mr. Chairman. I started my presentation by alluding to the lack of conscience on the part of the Ghanaian neocolonial elite and the depths to which they would sink in order to collaborate with the forces of imperialism to subvert the legitimate aspirations of their own people. I have attempted to lay bare the facts to prove that point.

The battle lines have never been clearer, and progressive forces must continue to highlight the issues and the arguments and make them clearer and clearer. The theme of the occasion derives its essence from the fact that Nkrumaism represents the truth about Ghana's history and our struggle to liquidate underdevelopment. And truth, as Nkrumah himself noted, will eventually triumph over falsehood. This is a moral law.

Source: The Insight Newspaper: