A Critical Analysis of

The Rise and Fall of

Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah and supporters following his release from prison on February 12 th, 1951.

By Tom Keefer
Id Number: 0089010
For Dr. Kolapo
April 14th, 2003.

Page 1 of 30

It is sufficient to recall that in our present historical situation

elimination of imperialism which uses every means to perpetuate its
domination over our peoples, and consolidation of socialism throughout
a large part of the worldthere are only two possible paths for an
independent nation: to return to imperialist domination (neocolonialism, capitalism, state capitalism), or to take the way of
socialism. This operation, on which depends the compensation for the
efforts and sacrifices of the popular masses during the struggle, is
considerably influenced by the form of struggle and the degree of
revolutionary consciousness of those who lead it.1
-Amilcar Cabral
Address delivered to the first Tricontinental Conference of the peoples of
Asia, Africa and Latin America.

To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making
a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately,
to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we
stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to
them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no
famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the
demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only
the hands of the people.2
-Frantz Fanon
The Wretched of the Earth

Page 2 of 30

Kwame Nkrumah was one of the most important figures of the post WW II anticolonial liberation movement that ended direct European rule in Africa and established
independent republics in their place. Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to independence in 1957
through the vehicle of the Convention People's Party, a mass organization which he
founded in 1949 and which under his leadership carried out a dramatic campaign of
nonviolent "positive action" to pressure the British to grant independence. Nkrumah was
not only an activist, but a writer and popularizer of anti-colonial ideas as well. He
produced a torrent of books outlining his political perspectives that further cemented his
legacy as an opponent of imperialism and colonialism. With titles such as Revolutionary
Path, Neo-Colonialism, Dark Days in Ghana, Challenge of the Congo, Handbook of
Revolutionary Warfare and Class Struggle in Africa, Nkrumah built an ideological legacy
which occupies a prominent position in the pantheon of African anti-colonial
revolutionaries.
However, events in Ghana were not the anti-colonial success story that many have
come to believe, nor as simple and clean cut as the official version, put forward by
Nkrumah and his supporters, of a progressive anti-imperialist movement crushed by a CIAsponsored coup. In its quest for power, Nkrumah's pre-independence government made a
number of unprincipled and opportunistic arrangements with the British that had the effect
of condemning Ghana to exactly the kind of neocolonial economic relations that Nkrumah
constantly critiqued. Despite a tremendous radicalization and movement of the Ghanaian
people showing their own ability to transform society, Nkrumah insisted upon following top
down and parliamentarian methods of struggle that made any real social transformation or
committed struggle against imperialism impossible. Nkrumah, despite all the Marxist
verbiage he deployed in his writings, put very little of this rhetoric into practice after he
had used it to build a powerful mass party and come to a position of strength to negotiate
terms with the British.
It must be stressed that any study of Nkrumah and his political thought is made
difficult by the fact that his life progressed through a variety of different and
contradictionary political stages. From his birth in 1909 until 1935 Nkrumah remained in
the Gold Coast as a student and teacher uninvolved in concrete anti-colonial struggles. In
his years abroad in the United States and Britain from 1935 until 1947, Nkrumah was
greatly influenced by various strands of Marxist political theory and became deeply
involved in a wide variety of Pan-African political formations. The year 1947 saw Nkrumah
return to the Gold Coast where he became an integral part of the anti-colonial movement,
culminating in his election as Prime Minister of a Gold Coast government still under colonial
rule in 1951. From 1951 until formal independence in 1957, Nkrumah led the Gold Coast
parliament, continuing British colonial economic policies and becoming an increasingly
corrupt, autocratic, and out of touch leader. The economic failures of western development
practices and the changing international political scene resulted in Nkrumah making an
economic and political turn towards the Soviet Union in 1961 that lasted until his regime
was deposed by a near bloodless military coup in 1966. Nkrumah spent the years from
1966 until his death in 1972 in exile in nearby Guinea where he re-invented himself as a
hard-line orthodox Marxist-Leninist, calling for class struggle and guerrilla war as the only
means of effective struggle for the anti-colonial movement.
In his early years as an anti-colonial activist Nkrumah took the following from
Marxism and its contemporary proponents: a denunciation of capitalist imperialism, a
passing belief in the importance of building a vanguard political organization, an
appreciation of Marxist agitational methods required to build a mass based democratic
centralist [read authoritarian, top down] party, and the creation of a federated republic of
African states along the model of the Soviet federal state. However, Nkrumah was no

Page 3 of 30

stickler for political orthodoxy, using or discarding whatever aspects of Marxist theory that
seemed tactically useful to him at any given moment. What Nkrumah failed to take from
Marxism, before, during and after his time in power, included any understanding of the
potential of self emancipation and self organization of the masses; a failure to understand
the implacable conflict between the exploiters and the oppressed on both a national and
international scale, and any conception that the colonial state needed to be smashed and
rebuilt on a fundamentally different basis were the anti-colonial revolution to succeed.
The ultimate indication of Nkrumah's failure to meaningfully address the needs of his
people came in the form of the coup which deposed him in February of 1966, which was
met with the passive support of the Ghanaian people, the peaceful dissolution of
Nkrumahs mass party, and the defection of many of Nkrumah's most trusted lieutenants.
Despite Nkrumah's genuine desire for African liberation and his integral involvement as an
agent of the anti-colonial masses during the height of the independence struggle, his
political vision was marred by a social-democratic and Stalinist conception of socialism
from above which doomed the Ghanaian revolutionary movement to failure. This paper
will examine Nkrumahs strengths and shortcomings in the context of the rich theoretical
contributions of several of the most powerful theorists of anti-colonial revolution CLR
James, Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral.
Kwame Nkrumah was born in 1909, and grew up the Gold Coast, a colony of Britain
in Western Africa (which since 1957 has been known as Ghana). He was recognized as a
bright and driven student from an early age and he attended Achimota College, one of the
main higher educational institutions of the colony, where he trained to be a teacher. From
an early age Nkrumah displayed an uncanny ability to switch political and religious
allegiances for the purposes of furthering his own interests. Becoming a devout Roman
Catholic assisted his educational opportunities and enabled him to take up studies in
America in 1935, although once there he switched denominations in order to obtain a
degree in divinity at Lincoln University. Nkrumah's religious inclinations never seemed to
have left him although like many of his political positions they changed form throughout his
political career as circumstances dictated3. After gaining a degree in divinity, Nkrumah
turned to philosophical studies and gained a masters degree in education from the
University of Pennsylvania. In preaching as a Baptist minister in Philadelphia he acquired
valuable experience in public speaking and became a capable orator. While in the United
States, Nkrumah mingled with a wide variety of political groups including Republicans,
Democrats, Trotskyists and Communists, learning what he could from their various
organizations and methods of activism.4 It was in the United States that Nkrumah founded
and became President of the African Student Association. CLR James, one of Nkrumahs
mentors and a leading Trotskyist activist in the United States, reflected that Nkrumahs
experience of racial oppression and his connection to the struggles and cultural dynamism
of Black Americans significantly influenced his political development:
Not only in books but in his contact with people and his very active
intellectual and political life, he was the inheritor of the centuries of
material struggle and intellectual thought which the Negro people in the
United States had developed from all sources in order to help them in
their effort to emancipate themselves.5
In his autobiography, Nkrumah indicated that his feelings regarding the destruction
of colonialism were already well advanced before he left Africa to study in the United
States.6 However, it was not until he arrived in the United States that he began to actively
follow a program of study and organization around colonial issues. From his omnivorous
reading and exposure to radical groups in the United States Nkrumah became convinced of
the rightness of socialism. According to one of his contemporaries Dabu Gizenga, "we
used to discuss political systems... and Nkrumah chose socialism as his guiding light." 7

Page 4 of 30

Throughout his early political career Nkrumah was convinced that he was destined
for greatness. His contemporaries remarked upon his single-mindedness and impressive
work ethic, his tendency to prioritize his work over socializing with friends, and his never
ceasing development of contacts and resources that could further him and his goal of
winning independence for Africa. Nonetheless, many of his contemporaries were less than
impressed with the clarity of his theoretical analysis. CLR James, in his letter introducing
Nkrumah to George Padmore, stated "George, this young man is coming to you. He is not
very bright, but nevertheless do what you can for him because he's determined to throw
Europeans out of Africa." Somewhat embarrassed by his letter in the light of Nkrumahs
later successes, James explained that by "not very bright" he meant that Nkrumahs grasp
of Marxism was weak and that in talking "a lot about imperialism and Leninism and export
of capital, he used to talk a lot of nonsense".8 Nkrumahs own sense of destiny can be
clearly seen by the fact that he contemplated writing the first chapters of his
autobiography while he was still an obscure student in the United States with no real
accomplishments to his name, and that before the anti-colonial struggle had really taken
off, he sought to have a young collaborator write his biography a few months after he
arrived in the Gold Coast.
It can be said that Nkrumah did not truly come into his own as a radical pan-African
activist until he left the United States for Britain in 1945 to work with George Padmore, a
leading Pan-Africanist who had led the International Trade Union of Negro Workers, an
affiliate of the Communist International. Padmore, dubbed the father of African
independence, was a tireless organizer with thousands of contacts throughout the African
continent who had broken with the Soviets over the softening of their line on European
imperialism.9 Nkrumah dropped out of the L.S.E., in which he had enrolled in England, and
commenced working full-time with Padmore and his comrades for the liberation of Africa.
Nkrumah spent endless hours discussing colonial issues with Padmore, who saw his
potential and quickly recruited him as a high level organizer, administrator and rapporteur
in the Pan-African Congress of 1945.10 Nkrumah worked extensively with the West African
Student Union and the West African National Secretariat, a group that arose of the work of
the Pan-African Congress. (Historically speaking, one of the main contributions of Nkrumah
was his steadfast determination in building a united Pan African state. The cause of PanAfricanism would remain constantly with Nkrumah throughout his life. At the
independence celebrations in 1957 he stated, "Our independence is meaningless unless it
is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent. Unlike many contemporary
heads of state in Africa, Nkrumah was willing to dissolve the national boundaries of Ghana
into a common political state and had made preliminary efforts had begun with such
countries as Mali, Guinea and the Congo.)
It is worth noting that the years which Nkrumah spent in the west between 1935 to
1947 correlate with the high point of Communist party influence on people of African
descent in the US and England. The incredible drama of the Second World War, and the rise
and fall of fascism, also no doubt had a significant impact on the framing of Nkrumahs
political perspective. The Soviet Union, the original anti-imperialist developing economy,
had successfully defeated the Nazis in the Second World War through a combination of
rapid industrialization in the 1930s and an all out socio-military mobilization against the
invaders, and following the war, the communist parties of Europe appeared to be on the
brink of winning power in France and Italy. This was the period before the Red army put
down rebellions in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and long before the rise of
Maoism and the New Left offered ideological alternatives to Soviet Marxism.
Like many young anti-colonial activists, Nkrumah had extensive contact with
communist activists, who were among the few members of euro-american society openly
committed to colonial independence, anti-imperialism, and the abolition of racism.

Page 5 of 30

Although he was very close to members of the British Communist Party, Nkrumah never
officially joined the party (although when arrested in the Gold Coast he was found with a
blank party membership card),11 in part perhaps due to the influence of CLR James and
George Padmore's anti-Stalinist sensibilities. A more likely reason is that the British
Communist party had an official policy of not formally recruiting anti-colonial African
activists temporarily residing in London, for fear that party membership could be an
"embarrassment" as they climbed the political ladder back at home.12
The influence of his contacts within the radical Marxist anti-colonial movement as
well as the powerful example of the actually existing socialism of the Soviet Union had a
major role in shaping Nkrumahs political orientation. This is clearly displayed in
Nkrumahs first major political oeuvrehis essay Towards Colonial Freedomin which he
provides a popular analysis of the economic development of imperialism and colonialism in
Marxian terms, and ultimately argues that the only solution to colonialism is full political
and economic freedom for the oppressed to carry out a process of social reconstruction.
In his essay Nkrumah quotes approvingly from Lenin's book Imperialism, the Highest
Stage of Capitalism and states that the most searching and penetrating analysis of
economic imperialism has been given by Marx and Lenin, who believe that the "inner
contradictions and inconsistencies of the [capitalist] system foreshadow its doom and
demolition"13. Nkrumah also lays out an astute analysis of the ways in which imperialism is
unwilling and unable to contribute to the positive development of colonial or neo-colonial
societies. As he states:
the finance capitalist and investor find the easiest and richest profits not
from establishing industry in the colonies, which would compete with
home industries and necessitate a drastic rise in wages and a high
standard of living in order to create a purchasing power formidable
enough to render increased production possible, but by exhausting the
natural and mineral resources of the colonies, and by considering their
human resources just as an other commodity to be used and thrown
away.14
Referring to the relationship between the non-industrial economy organized by
colonial powers and the migrant labor system, Nkrumah borrows a page from Marx,
arguing that "...the concentration of large bodies of colonial laborers in constant contact
with realities of the most repressive and degrading conditions of life, leads to the creation
of a class conscious working class which is in a position to defend itself against its
oppressors."15 Having located the working class as a key agent of social change in the
colonies, Nkrumah continues in the Leninist tradition by closing his analysis with a section
entitled "what must be done". Nkrumah uses this section to briefly re-capsulate the
tendencies of imperialism and colonialism and argues that the inevitable results of
imperialism are (a) the emergence of a colonial intelligentsia; (b) the awakening of
national consciousness among colonial peoples; (c) the emergence of a working-class
movement; and (d) the growth of a national liberation movement.16 Nkrumah is here
following the traditional Marxist perspective that capitalism itself provides the means for its
undoing. As Karl Marx noted in Capital in his chapter on the "Historical tendency of
capitalist accumulation":
Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of
capital, who usurped and monopolize all advantages of this process of
transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery,
degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the
working class, a class always increasing in numbers and disciplined,
united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist
production itself.17

Page 6 of 30

Nkrumah in his text is essentially repackaging Marxist orthodoxies in his analysis.

This comes out most tellingly in Nkrumahs conclusion of the document, in which he states,
paraphrasing the closing lines of the Communist Manifesto: peoples of the colonies, unite:
the working men of all countries are behind you."18 While disclosing a certain naivet in
regards to the working-class in most European countries at that period of time, which were
not exactly renowned for their principled opposition to colonialism and imperialism, it is
surely no accident that Nkrumah chose to repeat a central slogan of the British Communist
Party on the colonial question.
Nkrumah in many ways anticipated the work of dependency theorists in his
descriptions of the economic processes at work in colonial Africa. In todays era of antiglobalization protest against the policies of the World Bank and the IMF, it is worth noting
that Nkrumah described nearly identical procedures carried out by the British government
through such institutions as the "Fund for Colonial Development and Welfare" and the
British "Colonial Development Fund". As Nkrumah pointed out, these organizations would
plunder the local economy by providing "grants" to the colonies by advancing them money
at high interest rates through the resources of British financial capital. 19
While in England, Nkrumah developed the framework of a cadre type vanguard party
along the same kind of lines as those formulated by the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin.
The group that Nkrumah formed was called "The Circle" and the document outlining its
function was inventively entitled The Document Known as The Circle. This document
contained a mishmash of Leninist organizational formulations along with a variety of
additions suggested by Nkrumah. Like the Bolshevik Party, membership in "The Circle"
was restricted to "persons who are trained and engaged in political revolution as a
profession" with the stated aims of operating as a "revolutionary vanguard" in the struggle
to create and maintain a "Union of African Socialist Republics".20 However, other than in
this kind of grandiose phraseology, the document is lacking in political sensibility and does
not assert any real political tradition of revolutionary activity or organization building. It
would seem as though Nkrumah, perhaps influenced by London based ex-communists such
as George Padmore, had been convinced that such an organization was necessary as part
of the "formula" for revolution, and thus created it as an adjunct to his own personal
political activity. A certain Christian sensibility can be gathered from the motto of the
organization- "the three S'sService, Sacrifice, Suffering".
The organization never showed any ability to exist in Nkrumah's absence, and it did
not seem to have much in the way of collective leadership. There is the swearing of
allegiance to Nkrumah as the leader, and also the repeated mention of the "Grand Council,"
and of all members duty to "irrevocably obey and act upon [its] orders, commands,
instructions and directions"21 without any indications of who the members of this Grand
Council are, how they came into their positions of authority, or what the political
perspectives that provide them with leadership abilities might be.
Nkrumahs' time in the west was rich in a wide number of experiences. He witnessed
the fabulous wealth and power of the American empire, suffered from racial discrimination
against Black people in the United States, worked at dozens of low paying jobs in a
desperate attempt to gather funds to pay for his education, was part of the first politically
active generation of African student activists in the U.S., and learned both the theory and
the practice of mass organizing from Communist and Trotskyist activists. In England he
became completely enmeshed in the Pan-Africanist circles of George Padmore, building an
extensive network of contacts and gaining further valuable skills that were to stand him in
good stead during his meteoric rise to power in the Gold Coast. Reflecting upon the
influence of Nkrumahs experiences in the west, CLR James argued that his political
formation abroad was of fundamental significance to his extraordinary successes in Ghana.

Page 7 of 30

Nkrumah is the exact opposite, antithesis, negation of a tribal chief. In

actuality and symbolically he fulfills and completes the strivings of the
Ghanaian people to become a free and independent part of a new world.
He could lead the people because his genealogical tree is to be found
not among African flora but because he is the finest flower of another
garden altogether, the political experiences and theoretical strivings of
Western civilization. The people heard of him as such, worked for him
as such, followed him as such, and expect him to continue in the same
way.... Nkrumah helped to develop and has most fully embodied in
action an independent current of Western thought, the ideas of Marx,
Lenin, and other revolutionaries worked out chiefly by people of African
descent in Western Europe and America, to be used for the
emancipation of the people of Africa.22
While James is no doubt correct in stressing the incredible power of revolutionary ideas
exported to an African population already seething with anger against the ravages of
imperialism, what is interesting is how easily Nkrumah abandoned these principles once he
had used them to lever himself into a position of power on the Gold Coast. It is to the
Gold Coast anti-colonial struggle and to the rapid rise of Nkrumah on the national and
world stage that we will now turn.
Nkrumah's tireless work in London gained him a high profile amongst African
nationalists on the continent, and in 1947 members of the newly formed United Gold Coast
Convention (UGCC), the leading nationalist organization of the region at that time, invited
him to take up a key leadership position within their organization. The UGCC was made up
of the upper crust of the national bourgeoisie in the Gold Coast, and lobbied Britain to
transfer the running of the colony to them as leaders of an independent yet pliant neocolonial entity. At first Nkrumah was skeptical of the organization, stating that it "was quite
useless to associate myself with a movement backed almost entirely by reactionaries,
middle-class lawyers and merchants, for my revolutionary background and ideas would
make it impossible for me to work with them."23 However after entreaties from a leading
organizer of the group, Joseph B. Danquah, and consultation with his comrades in London,
Nkrumah decided to accept the position of general secretary, rationalizing that "I was very
sure of the policy that I would pursue and fully prepared to come to loggerheads with the
executive of the UGCC if I found that they were following a reactionary course." 24
The common people of the Gold Coast had been impelled into motion in part by the
great socio-economic changes that had occurred throughout the course of the Second
World War and which affected all British, and indeed all European colonies. Due to a
shortage of resources and raw materials, Britain dramatically increased industrial
production in its colonies including the Gold Coast. Throughout the war, the Gold Coast
was Britain's primary source of manganese ore and bauxite, while industrial diamonds,
gold and valuable types of timber remained significant resources. The effects of the war
had another consequence, and this was that imports of industrial and agricultural goods
from Britain were limited during the war. This led to a rise in independent manufacturing
and food production in the Gold Coast and also contributed to the quantitative and
qualitative strengthening of the working class and the native bourgeoisie. Throughout the
war, over 65,000 troops were raised from the Gold Coast and were used as auxiliary troops
by the British to fight against fascism in the name of freedom and democracy in Burma,
Somalia, and Ethiopia. The massive changes called into being by the war effort also led to
a dramatic rise in urbanization as the population of the Gold Coast cities doubled. 25
The Gold Coast had a population of approximately 5 million people after the Second
World War. Of these, approximately 327,800 people were directly engaged in waged
agricultural and industrial labour. This included some 38,000 miners (mostly located in the

Page 8 of 30

provinces), and 23,000 workers laboring in small manufacturing plants. There were 1000
workers in building and construction trades, 8000 in transportation, 16,000 in commerce,
and 8000 in the hotels and the service industry. Despite the increase of urbanization the
town's population in relation to the countryside was still very small. In total a maximum of
400,000 people lived in the cities and there were only about 30,000 workers organized in
the Trade Unions Congress. Despite the growing levels of urbanization the majority of the
population remained in rural settings scattered throughout largely inaccessible villages. 26
Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast on December 16th, 1947, at the perfect time to
organize a nationalist movement. By the time he arrived, the masses were already in
motion, and they had quickly bypassed the UGCC, which had no standing as a mass party
and which preferred to lobby the colonial regime rather than combat it. Nkrumah therefore
wasted no time in setting to work at building the kind of mass political party that he saw as
being necessary for winning independence. The fact that Nkrumah had a serious and well
worked out political plan for action tied to a concrete organization method for achieving it
can be seen in the clarity of the program of action that he submitted to the working
committee of the United Gold Coast Convention in January of 1948.
Nkrumah divided up his proposed anti-colonial strategy into three different phases or
periods. In the first period, Nkrumah sought to draw in every progressive African
organization in the Gold Coast as an affiliate member group of the UGCC. (These member
groups included "the various political, social, educational, farmers' and women's
organizations as well as Native Societies, Trade Unions, Co-operative societies etc.") This
period would also see the creation and consolidation of the party branches in every town
and village within the entire colony, cutting across tribal lines. The final task for the first
period was the organizing of political mass education schools for both the general public
and convention members. The second period of organizing was to be marked by "constant
demonstrations throughout the country to test our organization's strength, making use of
political crises [within the British elite]." In the third and final political period that Nkrumah
envisioned, a Constitutional Assembly of the Gold Coast would be created in order to come
up with a "Constitution for Self-Government, while "organized demonstrations, boycotts
and strikes" would be used to pressure the British into granting self-government. 27 This
proposal was a straightforward and clear method of action designed to wed a political
organization to the mass movement for national liberation. As a plan for building an
organized political force to agitate for independence and confront British rule it was
incredibly effective. Interestingly enough, the document was silent as to what kind of
future society was envisioned once independence had been gained.
Another point worth mentioning about this program of action was that Nkrumah
stressed the creation of a "shadow cabinet" capable of filling the gap should the
established colonial regime collapse unexpectedly. This shadow cabinet was to "forestall
any un-preparedness on our part in the exigency of self-government being thrust upon us
before the expected time".28 This proposal is telling for the fact that it shows Nkrumahs
willingness to preserve the governing structures left behind by the evacuating colonial
power, and his lack of any conception of the necessary development of a fundamentally
new social order complete with new forms of self-government. It is interesting that in
outlining the organization building work of the United Gold Coast Convention, Nkrumah
indicates that "The chief or Odikro of each town or village should be persuaded to become
the Patron of the Branch".29 In this way we see an attempt to graft the political party onto
previous power structures already existing within tribal/colonial society. This was mirrored
by Nkrumahs plans to essentially recruit every popular organization that existed as an
affiliate of the UGCC. While this is certainly a very effective way to rapidly build a party
within a mass following, it has its flaws as a means of building a genuine anti-colonial
movement with any degree of ideological cohesion. Of course virtually every sector of

Page 9 of 30

indigenous Ghana was opposed to colonialism, and could to varying degrees be drawn into
the struggle for national liberation. The real question was what kind of a society to build
after independence, an issue that becomes subject to fierce debate the closer victory
approaches as the national bourgeoisie and tribal functionaries increasingly seek
dominance of the movement.30 In any case, the program and strategy for action that
Nkrumah outlined proved brilliantly effective for this stage of the anti-colonial struggle.
Nkrumahs prescience was praised by CLR James: "this was the program as he saw it,
before anything serious or violent had taken place. Within twenty-seven months he was to
have carried it out just as written, to the last comma.31
As Nkrumah prepared his program and began organizing, riots swept across Accra
and spread across the country in opposition to falling incomes and rising costs of imported
goods. One local chief who stood out as a leading organizer was Nii Kwabena Bonne, who
launched a boycott against foreign merchants. On the 28th of February 1948, the day this
boycott was slated to end, two African ex-servicemen were killed and five others wounded
in the course of a separate demonstration that became a near insurrection. The shootings
occurred as native African troops refused to shoot on the protestors- and a white officer
faced with this disobedience, opened fire himself. This action resulted in widespread
looting and rioting led to the deaths of some 29 people, with 237 people injured. 32
Some scholars argue that this rising of the people, following a month-long a boycott
of British and European goods, was a genuine pre revolutionary outburst similar to the
kinds of upheaval that heralded the coming of the great French revolution.33 One thing is
sure, and that is that the national protest and boycott initiated by traditional leaders
quickly overstepped the boundaries that the chiefs were comfortable with and led to a
militant and mass national movement calling for the immediate end of imperial rule. The
British for their part, clearly feared a wider insurrection and went so far as to ship in troops
from Nigeria and South Africa and to ready three troop carriers in Gibraltar in case further
re-enforcements were needed.34
It is important to note that Nkrumah was not involved in this movement, being preoccupied in organizational work for the UGCC some sixty miles away in the town of
Saltpond when the uprising occurred. Nonetheless, he attempted to seize upon the
opportunities at hand by sending a telegram calling for a British Commission to supervise
elections to a constituent assembly. The issue wasnt so much the political content of the
telegram, which was quite liberal, but rather the fact that he sent it to not only the New
York Times and the Secretary General of the UN, but also to Willy Gallacher, a communist
MP in Glasgow, and two communist publications, the London Daily Worker and Moscows
New Times.35 In turn the British government blamed communist agitators for the unrest
(which broke out again on March 5th), and on March 25th they sent a commission (the
Watson Commission) to report on the situation in the Gold Coast.36
In early March, after a brief period in hiding, Nkrumah and five other leaders of the
UGCC were arrested and imprisoned by the colonial police. The police found on his person
both a document outlining the building of a Leninist style cadre group (The Document
Known as the Circle) and a blank membership card of the British Communist Party, which
confirmed their view of Nkrumah as a dangerous communist agitator.37 Nkrumahs
erstwhile comrades in the UGCC showed their bourgeois colours by turning on him in an
attempt to curry favour with the authorities, but all were released from prison some six
weeks later in order to appear before the Watson commission.38 The findings of the
commission declared that Nkrumah was the main force behind the UGCC and that
although somewhat modest in his admissions, he appears while in Britain to have had
Communist affiliations and to have become imbued with a Communist ideology which only
political expedience has blurred.39 The commission declared Nkrumah to have been
occupying the role held by all party secretaries in totalitarian institutions, the real position

Page 10 of 30

of power, and to be eager to seize political power and for the time being indifferent to the
means adopted to attain it. Nkrumah was further intimated to have been seeking to form
a Union of West African Soviet Socialist Republics.40 The fact that the British had arrested
and so targeted Nkrumah cemented the view among the masses that he was the genuine
leader of the independence movement, and large numbers of Ghanaians began to flock to
the banners of the UGCC. Remarkably, Nkrumah was not re-jailed for any further offenses
coming from the protests of 1948 or his communist activity, and he set to work, despite
elements within the UGCC seeking his expulsion, actively building the UGCC and the
independence movement.
Nkrumah continued his application of communist organizing principles through the
creation of a mass circulation daily newspaper. One of his first and most important
publications was the Accra Evening News, which was always filled with easy to understand
slogans and articles that became instantly identified with the national liberation movement.
With mottoes such as "We have the right to live as men," "We have the right to govern
ourselves" and "We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility",
Nkrumah was able to easily mobilize people with an inspirational message around a clear
to understand goal.41 Conflicts between Nkrumah and the increasingly timid bourgeois
elements within the UGCC resulted in a split in the organization, but not before Nkrumahs
influence had transformed the UGCC, creating over 513 branches of the United Gold Coast
Convention where only 13 had existed before.42 In June of 1949 at a mass conference
made up of over 60 000 Ghanaians (at that time the largest gathering of people in the
colonys history) Nkrumah, urged by the masses, created the Convention Peoples Party
which took the mass base of the UGCC with it. This party allowed Nkrumah to act
unfettered from his opponents in the UGCC, and he set about with unflagging energy to
build his organization.
Nkrumah declared that the Convention People's Party is a "... mass-based,
disciplined party pursuing policies of scientific socialism. Its immediate task was to obtain
'self government now'. There was to be of no tribalism or racialism within the CPP." 43
Nkrumah also described the party as a democratic centralist organization, which meant
that it followed his rule. In applying Stalinist organizational norms, Nkrumah did not even
bother with stage-managed party congresses along the Soviet model. Instead, Nkrumah
appointed himself Life-Chairman of the party and assumed the power to select (and keep
secret the names of) every member of the partys all-important Central Committee. 44 CLR
James noted the nature of the organization that Nkrumah created by stating:
Nkrumah's party was not built one by one. It was a crusade, a revivalist
campaign and the villagers joined in thousands. This was politics in the
Greek city sense of the word. It embraces the whole man, symbolized
the beginning of a new stage of existence. The action was no flash in
the pan, like the sudden descents, capers, and as sudden
disappearances of Billy Graham. Rapidly party organizers followed on
foot, then in motor vans, distributing leaflets. The party organized
village units, city units, regional units.45
By 1950 the CPP had between one million and 1.5 million members out of the total
Gold Coast population of 5 million and Nkrumah decided the time was right to enter the
third phase of his plan of action. Using the same conception of positive action developed
by the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester, the CPP prepared a mass campaign to
pressure the British to grant self-government.
Nkrumah and his fellow activists in the Gold Coast were influenced by the non-violent
anti-colonial resistance utilized by Ghandi in India against the British. Positive action
essentially amounted to a general strike and a mass protest designed to bring the

Page 11 of 30

economic life of the country to a standstill. Nkrumah rather grandiosely encapsulated the
process of the movement for positive action as follows: "There is no surer way to learn the
art of revolution then to practice it. The experience of shared effort and suffering
engenders a political awareness that no amount of armchair theorizing can evolve. The
people had seen with their own eyes the economic life of the Gold Coast brought to a halt
by unified People's effort in the form of a general strike. Never again would they accept
that it was hopeless to attempt to attack a seemingly mighty power structure as that
represented by the colonial administration."46 However, despite all of this revolutionary
phraseology, Nkrumah identified the weapons of positive action as including "legitimate
political agitation; newspaper and educational campaigns; as a last resort, the
constitutional application of strikes, boycotts, and non cooperation based on the principle
of absolute non-violence."47 This is a very interesting position for Nkrumah, not only
because of his previous references to the "act of revolution" which by definition is plainly at
odds with anything constitutional or "legitimate to the status quo. This text with its
focus upon legitimate, constitutional principles, with non-violent political action applied as
a last resort, can be seen as a formulation deliberately designed to pressure colonial
administrators while not allowing radical sectors of the movement to spiral out of control.
Nkrumahs campaign of positive action was announced on December 15th 1949 at a
mass rally in Accra. Nkrumah publicized his call to action, and then tried to back off of it
as he sought to negotiate with the authorities, but the people were willing to fight and on
6th of January 1950, the Trade Union Congress called a general strike that Nkrumah
opposed. It was only after two days of temporizing that Nkrumah threw in the CPPs lot
with the strikers and called for Positive Action to begin. The British were able to mobilize
scabs and special police to break the strike, and due to weak organization and a complete
lack of political willingness or organizational preparedness to contend for state power
through revolutionary means, positive action went down to defeat as the government
arrested all of the main TUC and CPP leaders on January 21st.48
The failure of the positive action campaign did not seriously dent the CPPs popularity,
and two months after the judicial system sentenced Nkrumah to jail, the CPP won a major
victory, sweeping the Accra municipal elections. The colonial authorities allowed Nkrumah
to stand for office while in jail during the general elections of February 1951, and he won
by the largest majority in the Gold Coasts history. After this sweeping electoral victory,
with the national liberation movement growing in strength, (CPP leaders had to dissuade
the masses from forcibly liberating Nkrumah from jail on occasion)49 the colonial
authorities began to see that Nkrumah was the only real force to negotiate with and began
to make approaches to him. Nkrumah who had always held to non-violent perspectives
and who had developed the CPPs political program along lines that never truly threatened
British colonialism (no preaching of class warfare, no resort to armed collective defense,
no suggestion of independence outside the Commonwealth/Sterling area50), was for the
British the clear alternative to a violent political rising by the masses or the chaotic striving
for power by of a variety of weak and sectoral indigenous movements. Nkrumah began
now to argue for tactical action, i.e. the taking over of limited political power within the
framework of the colonial government. Nkrumah and other imprisoned CPP leaders were
released from jail by Governor Sir Charles Arden-Clarke as an act of grace on February
12th 1951. The day after his release, Nkrumah made a public statement in Accra outlining
his political perspectives and position vis a vis Britain and the commonwealth:
I would like to make it absolutely clear that I am a friend of Britain. I
desire for the Gold Coast dominion status within the Commonwealth.
We shall remain within the British Commonwealth of nations. I am not
even thinking of a republic.
I am a Marxian socialist and an
undenominational Christian. I am not a communist and have never

Page 12 of 30

been one. I come out of jail and into the assembly without the slightest
feeling of bitterness to Britain. I stand for no discrimination against any
race or individual, but I am unhalterably opposed to imperialism in any
form.51
Nkrumah papered over these cravenly reformist perspectives that are hardly
consistent with the perspective of an anti-colonial freedom fighter by claiming that this was
a process of tactical action designed to manipulate the British into conceding
independence. Nkrumahs actions after he assumed the position of leader of government
business indicated that he while he sought to build mass organizations that reach across
various constituency groupsstudents, youth, women, trade unionshe saw these
movements as being purely instrumental, as tools be used in implementing his vision of
social change from above. This process had the effect of confusing and demobilizing the
masses as they waited for their liberation to come from above through the political
wheeling and dealing of Nkrumahs parliament and not through their own activity. As Yuri
Smertin noted:
The activity of the masses was placed under the control of the leader,
and those around him who had the political initiative "presented" the
people with socio-economic gains. At the same time, they genuinely
believed that this type of relationship with the people was the highest
form of democracy possible under African conditions. The pursuance of
an initiative-from-above policy rather than the development and
consideration of the broad initiative of the working masses hindered the
growth of the people's political activity and consciousness and led to the
leadership's alienation from those in whose interests they attempted to
act.52
In 1951 Nkrumah became leader of government business of the Gold Coast and
formed a government with the CPP that existed while the British still ran the Gold Coast as
a colony and controlled the all important departments of the government including the
finances, armed forces, foreign policy and office of the attorney general. 53 Despite
Nkrumahs triumphant claims of victories through positive action and the polls, some of
his critics maintain that the polls really only demonstrate two things. The first of these was
that the CPP with its slogan of independence now was a lot more popular than the UGCC,
which called for independence as soon as possible. The second was that despite intensive
efforts by both the CPP and the British colonial Administration to insure a large turnout,
voter turnout was pathetic. Out of an eligible electorate of 1.6 million people, some 600
000 registered to vote, and in many rural areas less than half of that number bothered to
vote. The CPP won the 1951 election decisively in a first past the post contest, but it is
important to note that the election was less than representative of whole population and
represented a much lower turnout than that achieved in similar elections in Western
Nigeria in 1956, Senegal in 1957 and Guinea in 1958.54
In Nkrumahs various writings he popularized the concept of neo-colonialism, the
idea that colonial relations could and often did continue beyond formal independence in an
altered form. Indeed formally independent Latin American republics had long dealt with
this issue, and while Ghana was the first British colony in Africa to gain independence, it is
disconcerting that Nkrumah did so little to prevent the development of neo-colonial
relations.
The evolution of Nkrumahs neo-colonial practice can best be understood by
grappling with the most important theoretical question that has come to forefront of all
anti-colonial movements: what social forces are to be relied upon as the motor force of the
liberation struggle and the subsequent development of society? This question is of

Page 13 of 30

fundamental significance in understanding the social character of the post independence

movement, and its future political direction. It would seem that despite the important role
that the working class had played in the development of the African liberation struggle, 55
Nkrumah had no particular view as to the importance of poor peasants and workers within
the national liberation movement and the subsequent reconstruction of Ghana. While
Nkrumah spent a lot of time organizing in the rural areas where the majority of Ghanaian
population was based, he sought to mobilize a specific section of the population, the
youngmen and not the nascent proletariat. As Fitch and Oppenheimer have pointed out:
Nkrumah made no specific political approach to either the trade
unionists, the unorganized agricultural workers, or the independent
small holders (Mao's "middle peasants). Instead he sought the support
of the Gold Coast's "youngmen".... The term was used to describe
educated "commoners": storekeepers, petty traders, clerks, junior civil
servants, and primary school teachers, all of whom were likely to be
among the younger generation. These young men, essentially a petty
bourgeois stratum, were engaged in conflict on three fronts: with the
indirect-rule chiefs; with the colonial system; and finally with the
wealthier commoner stratumconsisting of the big cocoa brokers,
lawyers, upper civil servants, and contractorswhich was represented by
the UGCC.56
Amilcar Cabral, a dedicated African anti-imperialist in Guinea-Bissau and one of
Nkrumahs contemporaries, suggested that it was not unreasonable that the petty
bourgeoisie would be swiftly drawn into struggle due to its greater education and particular
experience of European colonial rule. However, Cabral carefully argued that no matter
what its subjective position on the colonial question, the petty bourgeoisie
cannot free itself from one objective of reality: the petty bourgeoisie, as
a service class (that is to say that a class not directly involved in the
process of production) does not possess the economic base to
guarantee the taking over of power. In fact history has shown that
whatever the rolesometimes importantplayed by individuals coming
from the petty bourgeoisie in the process of a revolution, this class has
never possessed political control. And it never could possess it, since
political control (the state) is based on the economic capacity of the
ruling class, and in the conditions of colonial and neo-colonial society
this capacity is retained by two entities: imperialist capital and the
native working classes.57
It is important to note that Cabral, like many radical theorists, completely discounts
the role of the national bourgeoisie of the colonial economy in the liberation struggle.
This is due to the fact that with the rise of capitalist imperialism on a world level (and
clearly expressed in the dynamics of every revolutionary movement from the Russian
Revolution of 1905 onwards) the bourgeoisie of less developed nations has consistently
shown itself incapable of fulfilling an independent path of economic development.58 The
rise of a national bourgeoisie was blocked by the overwhelming power of a western
imperialist bourgeoisie that, backed by overwhelming military might, controlled the raw
materials, employed the labour used to extract them, and brought in cheap manufactured
goods for sale to the inhabitants of the colony. The national bourgeoisie, blocked from
accumulating its own reserves of capital, was forever condemned to sit on the sidelines of
the economy respectfully pleading for self-government from the colonial elite so that it too
could get a chance at enriching itself. As the anti-colonialist theorist Frantz Fanon put it:
the national bourgeoisie of underdeveloped countries is not engaged in production, nor in
invention, nor building, nor labour; it is completely canalized into activities of the

Page 14 of 30

intermediary type.59 Nor is it a bourgeoisie facing a long and happy life of economic
development and progress:
It follows the Western bourgeoisie along its path of negation and
decadence without ever having emulated it in its first stages of
exploration and invention In its beginnings, the national bourgeoisie
of the colonial countries identifies itself with the decadence of the
bourgeoisie of the West. We need not think that it is jumping ahead; it
is in fact beginning at the end. It is already senile before it has come to
know the petulance, the fearlessness, or the will to succeed of youth. 60
Having identified the national bourgeoisie as a reactionary class that stood in the way
of liberation, Fanon was clear about what had to be done next.
Closing the road to the national bourgeoisie is, certainly, the means
whereby the vicissitudes of newfound independence may be avoided,
and with them the decline of morals, the installing of corruption within
the country, economic regression, and the immediate disaster of an
anti-democratic regime depending on force and intimidation. But it is
also the only means towards progress.61
For all of his trumpeting of the evils of imperialism and neo-colonialism, Nkrumah
never really developed a theoretical critique regarding the national bourgeoisie and thus
made no real steps to anticipate the degeneration of the Ghanaian national liberation
movement. In Class Struggle in Africa, one of his last works, (written four years after he
was driven from power), he does briefly mention the national bourgeoisie a couple of
times, but he says very little of interest other than repeating that the national bourgeoisie
will always be a subordinate partner to foreign capitalism and that it will thus govern with
reactionary feudal elements or with the aid of imperialism. 62 There is no sustained
criticism of the national bourgeoisie, no reflections on the failures of the Ghanaian anticolonial movement, and interestingly, no mention of the contributions of either Fanon or
Cabral on this matter, which Nkrumah was definitely familiar with. Having been born
again as a Marxist-Leninist in this stage of his life he does argue that it is only the
peasantry and the proletariat working together that are able to bring socialist policies and
discounts the petty bourgeoisie due to the fact that it always sides with the bourgeoisie to
preserve capitalism.63 Cabral for his part believed that the petty bourgeoisie had to make
a very deliberate decision to throw itself on the side of complete social revolution or that it
would end up becoming a tool of imperialism.
To retain the power which national liberation puts in its hands, the petty
bourgeoisie has only one path: to give free rein to its natural tendencies
to become more bourgeois, to permit the development of a bureaucratic
and intermediary bourgeoisie in the commercial cycle, in order to
transform itself into a national pseudo-bourgeoisie, that is to say in
order to negate the revolution. In order not to betray these objectives
the petty bourgeoisie has only one choice: to strengthen its
revolutionary consciousness, to reject the temptations of becoming
more bourgeois and the natural concerns of its class mentality, to
identify itself with the working classes and not to oppose the normal
development of the process of revolution. This means that in order to
truly fulfill the role in the national liberation struggle, the revolutionary
petty bourgeoisie must be capable of committing suicide as a class in
order to be reborn as revolutionary workers, completely identified with
the deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong.64

Page 15 of 30

Admittedly, the approach argued for by Cabral and Fanon is a much more difficult
approach than that followed by Nkrumah. The road they envisioned would require greatly
strengthening the subjective forces of the revolutionbuilding a democratic, ideologically
coherent, and mass based revolutionary organizationand preparing for a prolonged and
international armed struggle for power. It would definitely militate against Nkrumahs
policies of tactically occupying the unreconstructed colonial state established by the
British, using its structures and conventions to centralize his personal power, marginalize
his opponents and follow neo-colonial economic policies. The result of Nkrumahs choice of
action was predictable. The CPP, began a lengthy process of degeneration and
accommodation to the neo-colonial economic order.
Once entrenched in power Nkrumah gradually edged the Gold Coast towards
independence while being very careful to do nothing that would frighten the British or force
a confrontation between the masses and the imperialists. Nkrumah proved himself to be a
responsible and trustworthy subject of the British in 1953 when at their urging he
launched a crack down upon suspected communists in the colony. Nkrumah, whose anticolonial ideological perspective was founded on the work of Marx and Lenin, who had been
closely associated with leading Marxist revolutionaries in the US and Britain, and who had
been arrested with a blank membership card of the British Communist Party now launched
a McCarthyite style purge against the left wing of the CPP and the trade unions in order to
placate the colonial authorities and to prove to them that he and the CPP were not
planning to rock the boat too much.65 As Yuri Smertin notes:
he [Nkrumah] announced in the Legislative Assembly that proven communists
would be ineligible for jobs in government offices, the police and the army. It
was declared illegal to bring "Communist" literature into the country or to
distribute publications from the World Federation of Trade Unions, the World
Federation of Democratic Youth and other progressive international
organizations. Many trade union leaders who were known for their radical
views were dismissed."66
This attempt to eradicate "communist ideas" from the country had serious
consequences for the CPP as it led to the weakening of the left wing of the party,
eliminated long time Marxist trade unionists and strengthened trends towards
bureaucratization and personal enrichment within the CPP.
Formal independence for the Gold Coast (renamed Ghana) came in March 1957 after
the CPP had proved victorious in the elections of 1954 and 1956. Independence was
determined through a joint motion passed by both the British and Ghanaian parliaments
after a long period of negotiation. In the summer of 1958, seeking to further consolidate
power and rid itself of persistent critics, Nkrumahs government enacted harsh new
legislation creating a Preventive Detention Act. This act allowed the government to
indefinitely jail anyone without charge and without judicial review. It is likely that more
than any other action of the Nkrumah government, the passing of this legislation was the
most detested by the Ghanaian people. As Trevor Jones remarked "It was the arbitrary,
capricious, even offhand manner in which the law was exploited, often for petty ends,
which aroused the most rancor. No one was safe; from the ordinary laborer to the most
respected elder statesmen; from the president's friends to his most inveterate critics." 67
This law, which was not a response to any real internal or external threat, had a stultifying
effect on politics in Ghana as the detention act was used to settle private scores and
eliminate political rivals. In March of 1960 Nkrumahs government put forward a series of
new constitutional proposals that further concentrated power in Nkrumahs hands, and
were approved in a plebiscite along with the selection of Nkrumah as president of the first
republic.68 After a general strike of workers in 1961 expressing dissatisfaction with his
economic policies, new emergency powers were granted the government in order to

Page 16 of 30

suppress dissent.
From the period when Nkrumah became "Leader of Government Business" until the
time that Ghana gained formal independence Nkrumah adopted an essentially Western
social democratic model of economic development. He sought to make advances in the
realm of education health and social welfare, while also building large prestige projects
with the backing of Western agencies such as the IMF and World Bank. These high status
projects included the construction of new government offices, conference centers for
international Pan-African gatherings, and most famously a hydroelectric development on
the Volta River. The government also set up state enterprises and companies jointly
owned by the state and foreign capital such as the Black Star Shipping Line and Ghana
Airways. Nkrumah's logic of development was to use the profitable sectors of the economy,
primarily agrarian cash crops like cocoa, to raise funds to carry out a large scale
industrialization. Mechanization of agriculture as a large-scale industry was the order of
the day, quite often with disastrous results. After 1961 as Ghana became increasingly
indebted and saw little return from its investments, Nkrumah turned away from his
Western backers and began increasingly to look towards the Soviet Union and China for
help in building a socialist economy. Military training camps were established and
hundreds of advisers arrived in Ghana to assist the government in its economic planning.
By 1961 a new seven year plan [1963 to 1969] which reflected a state socialist
perspective was developed. Under this plan, the largest deepwater port in West Africa was
built. As well, tractor and vehicle assembly plants along with the massive Volta River
hydroelectric dam were planned. Nkrumah's government sought to make ties and win
financial backing from both the United States and the Soviet Union by embarking upon a
non-aligned foreign policy. Economically Ghana followed a state socialist perspective of
building up heavy industry at the expense of other areas of the economy, especially
agriculture.69 The government made important advancements in terms of social welfare.
Social insurance for hired labor, a 45 hour workweek, guaranteed minimum wage and an
eight hour workday were all established by Nkrumah's government. Compulsory free
primary education was introduced and the number of schools more than doubled at every
level while enrollments rose threefold. New institutions of higher learning were created
and new hospitals and rural health programs were developed. 70 However, these initiatives
ran into serious problems as school standards were lowered, inferior and unqualified
teachers were recruited and the proposed financial relief scheme for families fell through.
Similar problems of organization and administration affected the health reforms needed for
the successful implementation of a proposed national health system.71
Referring to the pattern of economic development in which postcolonial African
governments are enmeshed, CLR James makes the argument that the building of massive
industrial projects in and of themselves does not offer a way out of the economic
underdevelopment of African society. Pointing out the limits to development on a western
basis, James explains that "at present they are allowed to create a glittering units of
foreign owned exploitation, a token industrialization which only places them more tightly
and firmly in the shackles of the economic domination which they denounce and woo
almost in the same breath.72 This process was clearly seen in the construction of the Volta
River Hydroelectric Project which ended up costing hundreds of millions of dollars in order
to provide a multinational aluminum smelting corporation cheap electricity and which drove
the country deep into debt. As Abdul Babu, a minister of development in the Tanzanian
government, argued:
First and foremost, foreign investments distort the balanced
development of a national economy in that they entail a diversion of the
limited national resources from the crucial areas essential for the
development of a nationally-integrated economy. This is another way of

Page 17 of 30

saying that foreign investments have the effect of perpetuating our

underdevelopment. Moreover, by allowing multinationals to rob us of
the economic surplus created by the labor of our workers (that is the
surplus essential for expanded reproduction and development), we are
also actively collaborating in undermining the interests of our working
people and encouraging a widening of the gap between developed and
developing countries.73
There are several key approaches that must be central to the praxis of any real
development process and which Nkrumah failed to advance. One of these is that the
process of the development has to be fundamentally based upon the self-conscious activity
of the people themselves. As Frantz Fanon put it:
If the building of a bridge does not enrich the awareness of those who
work on it, then that bridge ought not to be built and the citizens can go
on the swimming across the river or going by boat. The bridge should
not be "parachuted down" from above; it should not be imposed by a
deus ex machina upon the social scene; on the contrary it should come
from the muscles and the brains of the citizens.... In this way, and in
this way only, everything is possible."74
Furthermore, development must be geared at the fulfilling of the direct needs of the
people in the here and now so that the masses can clearly see the effects of their labours
in advancing their concrete needs. There is a real economic sense to this policy, as Abdul
Babu has argued:
A policy which satisfies the people's material wants also creates
conditions for an expanding home market, and in turn makes the
development of light and heavy industries inevitable. The problem of
capital accumulation must, therefore, be tackled from this starting
point, since it contains both the subject and the object of development
not profit, but humanity. We know that the basic needs of humans are:
food, clothing and shelter.
Consequently the answer to solving
economic problems must be found in the course of supplying these basic
needs especially at the low level of development at which African neocolonies must start their development process.
At this level of
development these basic needs are real, acute and widespread.75
A program of development for the peoples real needs would have no need for such
ridiculous excesses the $560 000 allocated in the 1964 budget for statues and monuments
to Nkrumah.76
Euro-american capitalism created its wealth through the brutal primitive
accumulation of capital extracted from slave labour and riches plundered from indigenous
nations. The Soviets accumulated their capital from the brutal liquidation as a class of
the middle peasants, as well as forced labour and state-organized exploitation of the
working class. The Ghanaian people were in a rather different situation. Most of the
population still lived on the land and was not alienated from it, making the provision of
basic needs relatively simple. The experience of racist colonial rule and the mass
mobilization undertaken against it had built a sense of national identity that extended
beyond tribal affiliations and cash crops like cocoa not only brought in large revenues, but
had led to the building up of a surplus fund of some 400 million available for investment.
Nor was the country devastated as the USSR had been by a long and brutal civil war
needed to defeat foreign industrialist forces. If instead of applying a top-down western

Page 18 of 30

model of economic development, the Nkrumah government had focused on meeting

peoples actual needs and on raising the level of political culture and involvement in selfmanagement. far greater results could have been achieved in the long term. This would
require that any mass political party seeking genuine national liberation must not be a tool
of the all-powerful leader as it was in Ghana. As Fanon declared:
The party should be the direct expression of the masses. The party is
not an administration responsible for transmitting Government Orders;
it is the energetic spokesman in the incorruptible defender of the
masses. In order to arrive at this conception of the party, we must
above all rid ourselves of the very Western, a very bourgeois and
therefore contemptuous attitude that the masses are incapable of
governing themselves.77
Although Nkrumah sought to "Africanize" the state apparatus left to him by the
British, he still had to contend with the fact that most potential state officials were
educated in the British bourgeois tradition and decidedly hostile to his radical orientation.
Civil servants and CPP party officials took advantage of the opportunities for personal
enrichment that came their way and accumulated real estate and luxury throughout
misappropriation of funds, bribery and kickbacks. Although it is difficult to find exact
numbers many scholars estimate Nkrumahs personal fortune (entirely acquired after his
rise to power) in the tens of millions.78
Nkrumah failed to fundamentally alter the structure of the state apparatus or involve
broad layers of the masses in building a new society. He began with a model of British
Parliamentarianism that he gradually altered into a caricature of the Stalinist one party
state. This process was prevalent in many of the newly independent African states, as CLR
James observed:
One feature is common to all these states. As I found in Ghana in 1960,
and have verified on innumerable occasions for practically all of newly
independent Africa, the population is convinced of one new inescapable
feature of the new governments, the corruption of government and
party officials from the highest to the lowest.79
The reason for this corruption is rooted in material social relations and is not due to any
innate tendency towards corruption of African state officials. The widespread corruption
has to do with the fact that due to the global dominance of the international (imperialist)
bourgeoisie, successful capital accumulation on a national stage by a local and underdeveloped bourgeoisie is virtually impossible. The incredible dominance of imperialist
corporations with decades of technical experience, massive capital reserves, the support of
powerful western governments, and with an economic turnover greater than some midsized national entities, means that any alternative independent economic development
within Africa must take place under the umbrella structures of the African state. The
national bourgeoisie, filling the vacuum of power, takes over the state, which then
enmeshes, controls, regulates, superintends and tutors civil society
from its most comprehensive manifestations of life down to its most
insignificant stirrings.... The contemporary state has not only a finger in
every pie, it initiates the gathering of the material for all new pies, and
finds it necessary to claim at least a token share in all the old pies.80
This leads to a centralization of power and it is no wonder that the state structure
itself takes on a bastardized Soviet form, for it is a method of economic organizing most
appropriate to state capitalism. It is for that reason that Fanon stated that in the context
of an underdeveloped African society the single party is the modern form of the

Page 19 of 30

dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, unmasked, untainted, unscrupulous, and cynical." 81

After the referendum of January 1964, Ghana became a one-party state. Nkrumah
rationalized this by proposing that "A people's parliamentary democracy with the one party
system is better able to express and satisfy the common aspirations of a nation as a
whole, than a multi-party parliamentary system, which is in fact only a ruse for
perpetuating, and covers up, the inherent struggle between the "haves" and "have nots". 82
This statement is obviously absurd, as the mere outlawing of rival factions does not result
in any resolution of the contradictions that first gave them birth. The turn to a one party
state was symbolic of the total stagnation of internal Ghanaian politics, the rise of a
national bourgeoisie seeking to enrich itself and the CPPs inability to deal with open
political criticism. Perhaps it would be more accurate to characterize the one party state as
the expression not so much of the nation as a whole, but rather of a privileged economic
class that has proven unable to break out of the straightjacket of neo-colonialism and
which has instead turned on its own people.83
Nkrumah made no distinction between party and state functions. As he repeatedly
stated, "the Convention People's Party is Ghana, and Ghana is the Convention People's
Party"84 Given the cult of personality that Nkrumah encouraged around him it might have
been more appropriate after independence for him to have paraphrased Louis XIV,
exclaiming Ghana/the CPP cest moi!85 The party and state organs were dominated by a
small clique of party officials directly responsible to Nkrumah and lacking even the most
basic level of loyalty and political vision. Nkrumah played an important role in stabilizing
the various inter-party factions vying for power and wealth, and in so doing held together
the party for longer than might otherwise have been expected. As Smertin argued "The
equation and fusing of party and state organs was fraught with great danger. It led to the
substitution of party organs for organs in the state apparatus, the bureaucratization of the
party apparatus and, eventually, to the weakening of the party's role as political leader."86
The consequence of this weakening of the party as a force of political leadership led to the
further deification of Nkrumah and turned the CPP into an empty shell which was
eventually swept aside by the coup in 1966. Fanon succinctly described this dynamic:
The leader is all the more necessary in that there is no party. During
the period of the struggle for independence there was one right enough,
a party led by the present leader. But since then this party has sadly
disintegrated; nothing is left but the shell of a party, the name, the
emblem, the motto.... Today, the party's mission is to deliver to the
people the instructions which issue from the summit. There no longer
exists the fruitful give and take from the bottom to the top and from the
top to the bottom which creates and guarantees democracy in a party.87
No doubt another factor guiding Nkrumah's position on this question of state and party
function had to do with the effects of the Cold War and the fact that despite posing as the
only viable alternative to capitalism, Soviet Marxism did not offer up a truly emancipatory
or revolutionary means of social change. While often times spouting revolutionary rhetoric
and providing material support to anti-imperialist political formations, the Soviet Union had
since the degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the early 1920's come to view
revolutionary movements outside of Russia as mere tools of Soviet foreign policy. This can
of course be seen in the disastrous ways in which the German, Chinese, and Spanish
revolutions were handled by the Comintern, as well as the way in which the Soviet Union
did a serious disservice to the anti-colonial movement by muting its criticism of the Italian
invasion of Abyssinia due to the dictates of its alliances in Europe. Furthermore, despite
near revolutionary upheavals in France and Italy, and major rumblings of social discontent
in Britain following the Second World War, the combination of the enlargement of the
welfare state, and the myopia and counter revolutionary character of the Soviet-dominated

Page 20 of 30

communist parties striving for peaceful coexistence, pushed the question of revolution off
of the agenda in the advanced imperialist countries. Given that Nkrumah read widely and
that both James and Padmore were resolutely anti-Stalinist, it is doubtful that Nkrumah
would have been ignorant of their critiques of the repressive (and in James view, counterrevolutionary) nature of the Soviet Union. However it seems clear that the USSRs
seeming successes in regards to industrial development, its centralized one party state,
cult of leadership and party, and unitary federation of a great landmass all embodied
Nkrumahs dreams of advancement for himself and the people of Africa.
The military coup that deposed Nkrumah occurred on February 24th, 1966 when Nkrumah
had departed on a state visit to China. The jails were emptied of their political
prisoners and filled with new ones, statues of Nkrumah were toppled and smashed,
and his portraits in factories, schools and offices were torn down. Jubilant crowds of
workers, students and market women hailed the end of dictatorship and economic
chaos and CPP members abandoned power like rats fleeing a sinking ship. After 15
years in power and still maintaining a membership of numbering two million people
(including half a million militants) the CPP passively allowed itself to be dissolved
by a decree read over the radio and offered no resistance whatsoever.88 As Trevor
Jones put it:
"The most astonishing aspect of the February coup was not that it took
place at all, but the that the ruling party and its integral wings collapsed
so completely within the course of a few hours, offering no resistance to
the takeover. Those who were making money out of Nkrumahs regime
and those who were most deeply committed to the ideals of its leader
were bewildered by their sudden turn of fortune. The rest of the
population easily and quickly detached themselves from a movement
which had forfeited their trust.89
The coup was led by disaffected generals in the Ghanaian armed forces who not only
shared the populaces dissatisfaction with his regime, but were also spurred to action by
Nkrumahs plan to re-organize the military with a Sino-Soviet trained officer corps.
Nkrumah never returned to Ghana, but was instead welcomed to nearby Guinea where he
lived under the protection of Prime Minister Sekou-Toure, one of his closest political allies.
He believed until his death in 1972 that he would be returned to power in Ghana, once the
masses saw through the un-constitutional military coup, but it was destined not to be.
Nkrumahs conception of social change and his ideology of Nkrumahism, was
deeply contradictionary, and can be seen as a central dynamic behind his remarkable rise
and fall from power. As Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer elegantly put it
The themes of the 6th Pan-African Congress non-violence, "positive
action," anti-communism, anti imperialism, non-alignment became the
core of Nkrumahs political approach.
He has never significantly
diverged from them. Those who have labeled Nkrumahism the "highest
stage of opportunism" have missed the essential point about his political
beliefs.
Had he been a simple opportunist an African Hubert
Humphrey his political path would have been much straighter and
easier to pursue (and the analysis of it much less rewarding). But just
as his political course was not simple, neither was his political ideology.
It embraced a series of contradictory positions: anti-communism and
anti-imperialism; national liberation and abstract non-violence; nonalignment and economic development through foreign investment. It
was the clash between these contradictory principles and not his alleged
"opportunism" that produced his erratic course in foreign and domestic

Page 21 of 30

policy and led finally to his undoing.90

In attempt to categorize the content of Nkrumahs political philosophy, Yuri Smertin
came to a similar conclusion:
An analysis of Nkrumahism reveals that in the area of theory it signified
an attempt to combine the various tenets of Marxism-Leninism, petit
bourgeois socialism and the traditional African world outlook. From
Marxism Nkrumahism borrowed a recognition of contradictions, the
inevitability of the transition to socialism and the arguments used in the
critique of capitalism. Petty bourgeois socialism was the source of the
denial of the class struggle, the substitution of the term "the people" for
classes and the belief in an evolutionary path towards socialism.
Traditionalism was reflected in the conviction that African society was
egalitarian by nature, the rejection of "borrowed" ideologies and the
belief that Africa was destined to take a "special" path.91
In spite of his theoretical contradictions, it is clear that in practice Nkrumah took the
line of least resistance, opportunistically attacking communists in the national liberation
movement and accepting the perks and privileges of working within the economic and
political framework of the British. It can also be said that despite his return to orthodox
Marxism-Leninism after his fall from of power, Nkrumah never really had the stomach or
ideological perspective for the long and dangerous struggle necessary to build the kind of
revolutionary movement capable of thoroughly uprooting colonial social relations. In
addition to abandoning the revolutionary ideology he had acquired in the US and Britain
before his rise to power, Nkrumah always suffered from a decidedly Stalinist conception of
socialism. From his perspective, socialism meant an all-powerful state controlling and
administering society from above. Socialism was not seen as the self-emancipation of the
masses, the practice of freedom, or the innovative creations of new structures and ways of
organizing human societies. Instead, the people were to be passively redeemed by the
messianic Nkrumah, and then to become foot soldiers dutifully carrying out the orders of
his party. Socialism ceased to be a living and breathing practice of human liberation, and
was reduced to the actions of a handful of technocratic cadres operating the levers of
economic power. Although Nkrumah was able to participate in the building of a mass
movement capable of forcing the British out of the Gold Coast, his authoritarian and
economic-determinist conception of socialism made it impossible for him to move beyond
the creation of a corrupt and ineffective regime based on the national bourgeoisie.
The fact remains that the issues that Nkrumah grappled with regarding economic and
political freedom for his people are the same issues that progressive movements in
underdeveloped countries across the world have grappled with since the revolutionary
movement in Russia gave birth to the first concrete experience of economic development
independent of euro-american imperialism. Consequently, the experiences of the anticolonial struggles in Ghana are of more than passing relevance to scholars and activists
today, who still face a world dominated by imperial and neocolonial social relations.
Radical movements across the world, including those in South Africa, Palestine, and Latin
America remain caught in the web of capitalist imperialism and have no alternative but to
decisively break out of the colonial pattern of economic and social development which
has been the graveyard of so many progressive national liberation movements over the
past fifty years. A critical appraisal of the pitfalls of national consciousness that so
bedeviled Nkrumahs Ghana hold vitally important lessons for those contemplating the
continuing necessity and possibilities of socialist transformation, radical democracy and
non-capitalist economic development. By standing on the shoulders of such intellectual
giants as CLR James, Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, we can gain a better understanding
of the contributions that Kwame Nkrumah made towards the goal of African and human

Page 22 of 30

liberation and also make an honest assessment of his limitations in the field of
revolutionary praxis.

Page 23 of 30

Bibliography
Babu, Abdul. African Socialism or Socialist Africa? London, Zed Press, 1981.
Boateng, Charles Adam. Nkrumahs Consciencism: An Ideology for Decolonization
and Development. Dubuque, Kendall Hunt, 1995.
Cabral, Amilcar. The Weapon of Theory. (Address delivered to the first
Tricontinental Conference of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in
Havana in January, 1966)
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/6353/cabral/weapon.html
Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, Vol 1. New York,
Vintage Books, 1965.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York, Grove Press, 1963.
Fitch, Bob and Oppenheimer, Mary. Ghana: End of an Illusion. New York, Monthly
Review Press, 1966.
Hadjor, Kofi Buenor. Nkrumah and Ghana: The Dilemma of Post-Colonial Power.
London, Kegan Paul International, 1988.
Hooker, James R. Black Revolutionary: George Padmores Path from Communism
to Pan-Africanism. London, Pall Mall Press, 1967.
Howell, Thomas A. and Rajasooria, Jeffrey, P. eds. Ghana and Nkrumah. New York,
Facts on File, 1972.
James, CLR. Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution. London Allison & Busby, 1977.
Jones, Trevor. Ghanas First Republic1960-1966: The Pursuit of the Political
Kingdom. London, Methuen & Co, 1976.
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume I. Moscow,
Progress Publishers, 1962.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Class Struggle in Africa. New York, International Publishers,
1970.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare. New York, International
Publishers, 1968.
Nkrumah, Kwame. I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology. London,
Heinemann, 1962.
Nkrumah, Kwame. The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah. London, Thomas
Nelson and Sons, 1957.

Page 24 of 30

Nkrumah, Kwame. The Conakry Years: Life and Letters. Compiled by June Milne.
London, Zed Press, 1990.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against World
Imperialism. London, Heinemann, 1962.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology of Decolonization and
Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution. New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1970.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London,
Thomas Nelson, 1965.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Revolutionary Path. New York, International Publishers, 1973.
Omari, Peter. Kwame Nkrumah: The Anatomy of an African Dictatorship. New York,
Africana Publishing Company, 1970.
Raymond, Robert. Black Star in the Wind. London, Macgibbon & Kee, 1960.
Rooney, David. Kwame Nkrumah: The Political Kingdom in the Third World.
London, I.B. Tauris, 1988.
Sherwood, Marika. Kwame Nkrumah: the years abroad 1935-1947. Legon, Freedom
Publications, 1996.
Smertin, Yuri. Kwame Nkrumah. New York, International Publishers, 1987.
Timothy, Bankole. Kwame Nkrumah: His Rise to Power. London, Northwestern
University Press, 1963.
Trotsky, Leon. The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects. New York,
Pathfinder Press, 1972.
Woddis, Jack. New Theories of Revolution: A commentary on the Views of Frantz
Fanon, Regis Debray and Herbert Marcuse. New York, International Publishers,
1972.
Wright, Richard. Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos. New
York, Harper & Brothers, 1954.

Page 25 of 30

Endnotes

Page 26 of 30

Amilcar Cabral, The Weapon of Theory, (Address delivered to the first Tricontinental
Conference of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January,
1966), http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/6353/cabral/weapon.html
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 198.

Peter Omari. Kwame Nkrumah: The Anatomy of an African Dictatorship. (New York,
Africana Publishing Company. 19700. 143.

Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957), 44.

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (Allison & Busby, London 1977), 78.

Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957), 22.

Marika Sherwood, Kwame Nkrumah: the years abroad 1935-1947, (Freedom Publications,
Legon, Ghana, 1996), 81.

Marika Sherwood, Kwame Nkrumah: the years abroad 1935-1947, (Freedom Publications,
Legon, Ghana, 1996), 114

James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmores Path from Communism to PanAfricanism, (London, Pall Mall Press, 1967), 22-24.

10

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 26.

11

Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957), 79.

12

Marika Sherwood, Kwame Nkrumah: the years abroad 1935-1947, (Freedom Publications,
Legon, Ghana, 1996), 186.
Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against
World Imperialism. (London, Heinemann, 1962), 11.
13

14

Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against World
Imperialism. (London, Heinemann, 1962), 14.

15

Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against World
Imperialism. (London, Heinemann, 1962), 14.

16

Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against World
Imperialism. (London, Heinemann, 1962), 39.

17
18

Karl Marx, Capital, Vol 1 (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1962), 715.

Kwame Nkrumah, Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against World
Imperialism. (London, Heinemann, 1962), 43.

19

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 26.

20

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 48.

21

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 48.

22

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (Allison & Busby, London 1977), 62.

23

Kwame, Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957),62.

24

Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957),62.

25

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 36.

26

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 50-51.

27

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 54.

28

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 52.

29

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 53.

30

31
32

33

There may well be important ways in which Nkrumahs position on this matter was
influenced by the thinking of the Communist parties at that time, which in contrast to the
Trotskyist theory of permanent revolution, held that movements for national liberation
were to progress through separate stages, thus indicating that it was permissible for
radical anti-colonial movements to subject themselves to the leadership of bourgeois
liberation movements, and to only begin the fight for socialism once the national bourgeois
revolution was completed.
CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 48.
Kofi Buenor Hadjor, Nkrumah and Ghana: The Dilemma of Post-Colonial Power, (London,
Kegan Paul International, 1988) 46; Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an
Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1966), 14.
CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 46.

34

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 14.

35

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 16.

36

Thomas Howell and Jeffrey Rajasooria, eds, Ghana & Nkrumah, (New York, Facts on File,
1972), 8.

37

Kwame, Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957),79.

38

Kofi Buenor Hadjor, Nkrumah and Ghana: The Dilemma of Post-Colonial Power, (London,
Kegan Paul International, 1988) 47.

39

Kwame, Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957),97.

40

Kwame, Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957),97.

41

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 41.

42

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 84

43

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 57.

44

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 129.

45

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 84.

46

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 91.

47

Kwame Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 94.

48

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 30.

49

Kwame, Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, (London, Thomas Nelson and
Sons, 1957),134.

50

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 27.

51

Thomas Howell and Jeffrey Rajasooria, eds, Ghana & Nkrumah, (New York, Facts on File,
1972), 12-13.

52

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 129.

53

Thomas Howell and Jeffrey Rajasooria, eds, Ghana & Nkrumah, (New York, Facts on File,
1972), 12-13.

54

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 34.

55

Jack Woddis, New Theories of Revolution: A commentary on the views of Frantz Fanon,
Regis Debray and Herbert Marcuse, (New York, International Publishers, 1972), 114-144.

56

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 21.

57

Amilcar Cabral, The Weapon of Theory, (Address delivered to the first Tricontinental
Conference of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January,
1966), http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/6353/cabral/weapon.html

58

See Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects, (New York,
Pathfinder Press, 1972), for an introduction to the Marxist theory of this perspective and
see pages 145-174 in Isaac Deutscher The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, Vol 1,
(New York, Vintage Books, 1965), for a general outline of this perspective.

59

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 150.

60

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 153.

61

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 177.

62

Kwame Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa (New York, International Publishers, 1970), 57.

63

Kwame Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa (New York, International Publishers, 1970), 58.

64

Amilcar Cabral, The Weapon of Theory, (Address delivered to the first Tricontinental
Conference of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America held in Havana in January,
1966), http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/6353/cabral/weapon.html

65

Thomas Howell and Jeffrey Rajasooria, eds, Ghana & Nkrumah, (New York, Facts on File,
1972), 12-13.

66

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 55.

67

Trevor Jones, Ghanas First Republic 1960-1966: The Pursuit of the Political Kingdom,
(London, Methuen & Co, 1976), 35.

68

Trevor Jones, Ghanas First Republic 1960-1966: The Pursuit of the Political Kingdom,
(London, Methuen & Co, 1976), 31.

69

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 109.

70

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 115.

71

Bankole, Timothy, Kwame Nkrumah: His Rise to Power, (London, Northwestern University
Press, 1963), 121.

72

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 20.

73

Abdul. Babu, African Socialism or Socialist Africa? (London, Zed Press, 1981), 78.

74

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 201.

75

Abdul. Babu, African Socialism or Socialist Africa? (London, Zed Press, 1981), 156.

76

Charles Adom Boateng, Nkrumahs Consciencism: An ideology for Decolonization and

Development, (Dubuque, Kendall Hunt, 1995) 128.

77

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 188.

78

Charles Adom Boateng, Nkrumahs Consciencism: An ideology for Decolonization and

Development, (Dubuque, Kendall Hunt, 1995) 129.

79

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 11.

80

CLR James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution, (London, Allison & Busby, 1977), 13.

81

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 165.

82

Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology of Decolonization and

Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution, (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1970), 100-1.

83

As Frantz Fanon argued: "Powerless economically, unable to bring about the existence of
coherent social relations, and standing on the principle of its domination as a class, the
bourgeoisie chooses the solution that seems to it the easiest, that of a single party." Frantz
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 165.

84

Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology, (London,

Heinemann, 1962), 209.

85

Bankole, Timothy, Kwame Nkrumah: His Rise to Power, (London, Northwestern University
Press, 1963), 162-3, 165.

86

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 123.

87

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, (New York, Grove Press, 1963), 169-170.

88

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 2-3.

89

Trevor Jones, Ghanas First Republic1960-1966: The Pursuit of the Political Kingdom,
(London, Methuen & Co, 1976), 285.

90

Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion, (New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1966), 19.

91

Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, (New York, International Publishers, 1987), 103.