Nkrumah
Kamath, M. K.
On March 6, 1957, the former colony of the Gold Coast became an independent nation within the British Commonwealth and took the name of Ghana, thereby recalling a West African empire of...
...In India the struggle was prolonged and the country experienced almost every kind of government: from viceregal rule to dyarchy, from dyarchy to limited self-rule, and on to final independence...
...Each phase was separated from the next by nation-wide struggles...
...But Vallabbhai Patel, the organization leader of the Indian Congress Party and Nehru's superior in the art of ruling, found methods for dismantling the princely structure without "measures of a totalitarian kind...
...Primarily it is a portrait of Kwame Nkrumah the man, and to that extent using Ghana as his title may be misleading...
...Nehru is not of the people, while Nkrumah is—and therein lies a fundamental difference...
...None of this is meant to belittle Nehru, since in one major respect things were easier for Nkrumah: he had behind him the experience and success of India in breaking free from the British...
...The Prime Minister of the first free African state has to be on guard against himself, for in a young and undeveloped country both the powers and temptations of its leaders are particularly great...
...Plus: Ben Seligman on Marxian Economics...
...A man who has spent a childhood of poverty, in fear that his father would not be able to find the threepence a month required for his schooling, his youth weeding gardens and then ten penniless years in the United States, must have a modest amount of grit in order to become the first prime minister of a new country...
...Nkrumah, who tends to be reticent at crucial points, does not say...
...Nehru had a ready-made political machine to employ as he pleased...
...Obviously this was the result of some thinking, since in his earlier days Nkrumah had devoted himself to such adolescent means of fighting colonialism as the organization of a conspiratorial society called "The Circle...
...What contributed to this transformation...
...IN HIS PREFACE Nkrumah tells us that the men in history who interested him most were Hannibal, Cromwell, Napoleon, Lenin, Mazzini, Gandhi, Mus solini and Hitler—a motley crowd...
...Because of our last-minute effort to include material on the developments in France...
...From his book it is hard to say...
...and this middle class, taking its cue from the British liberals, then sought the liberty denied to the masses...
...A brief and inglorious struggle followed between the chieftains and the mass leadership of the national movements, with inevitable victory for the latter, though not before it had first faced ignominy and imprisonment...
...Nehru often suffered intellectual uncertainties and self-doubts, while Nkrumah seems to have been totally absorbed in his country's struggle for independence...
...Highly reminiscent of terrorist movements in Bengal and Maharashtra, "The Circle" had all the appurtenances of secret organizations, such as secret codes, the leadership principle, oaths of allegiance and the like...
...a number of articles, communications and letters scheduled for this issue had to be held for our next issue—for which we already have on hand a good deal of Interesting material...
...India set the pace, so that for those who came afterward examples, lessons and warnings were available...
...Politically, too, the differences are telling...
...Feito on DIilas (with, perhaps, some comments by others), and a few special things that are "in the works...
...India had difficulties quite as great as those of Ghana...
...ship that Ghana won its independence...
...And then he adds: "In Nehru's rise to power I recognized the success of one who, pledged to socialism, was able to interpret Gandhi's philosophy in practical terms...
...The same was true for Ghana— except that if the Ghana struggle was comparatively brief, this was not because the British willed it so, but becaue the British, partly as a result of what happened in India, had no alternative...
...As Nkrumah sees himself, he is a man of immense patience who has suffered a great deal...
...He also has grit...
...The British came as traders, stayed as conquerors, and remained dominant by making their peace with petty chieftains to whom they had to give a measure of power...
...The princes, for example, were all-powerful and in no mood to accommodate themselves to the revolution...
...Whereupon the British turned panicky and tried to set the local entrenched classes against the great masses...
...On March 6, 1957, the former colony of the Gold Coast became an independent nation within the British Commonwealth and took the name of Ghana, thereby recalling a West African empire of medieval times...
...Nehru too, like many leaders of emerging countries, is an autocrat and once described himself as a possible dictator...
...yet the identification of one man with his country does poor justice to the sacrifices of the rest...
...Does Nkrumah abhor dictatorship, even intellectually...
...In his preface he writes: "But even a system based on social justice and a democratic constitution may need backing up, during the period following independence, by emergency measures of a totalitarian kind...
...The book, like the events it describes, leaves one in no doubt that it was largely due to Nkrumah's leader...
...To ease the process of commerce, a small middle class was created, both in India and Africa...
...Nkrumah came from poverty and lived in poverty...
...The success of both Ghana and other potential African states will partly depend upon Nkrumah's commitment to democracy and upon his ability to guide his people along democratic ways...
...286 The leader of Ghana's independence struggle has now told his story...
...There will be at least two more articles on China...
...Here Nkrumah shows that he is a poor student of the techniques of Gandhi and Nehru...
...Nkrumah had to build his own party, at great odds and from scratch...
...But how did this come about...
...including: "When Mao's 100 Flowers Withered," a documentary report by Michael Walzer, and a review of Simone de Beauvoir's book on China...
...Indeed, to call Nkrumah the Nehru of Africa is to underestimate him...
...Are there counter-balances to Nkrumah in Ghana...
...Nonetheless, the political patterns of India and Ghana had distinct similarities...
...But India had counter-balances to Nehru who, it should be added, at least abhorred dictatorship intellectually...
...Nehru had a Gandhi to fall back upon as intellectual and spiritual guide, while Nkrumah apparently did not...
...Nehru came from a rich family and had the best attention that a doting father could bestow on an only son...
...Between the closed-door scheming of "The Circle" and the open mass meetings of the Convention People's Party which Nkrumah was later to lead, there was a significant difference...
...Of them all Gandhi probably impressed him most, for though he says that at first he had doubts as to the efficacy of Gandhi's non-violent methods, he later found that "when backed by a strong political organization, it could be the solution to the colonial problem...
...There are many similar gaps in his book...
...He is not without humor—indeed, that virtue shines through the pages of his book...
Vol. 5 • July 1958 • No. 3
