Cover before the coup, when he had declared himself president for life; Preventive Detention Act, which allowed Nkrumah to hold anyone for up to five years without trial; the Trade Union Act, which made strikes illegal. Your comments on these!
(L-R) Nehru of India, Nkrumah, Nasser of Egypt and Sukarno of Indonesia
A. G: What does Pan-Africanism mean to you, Gamal Nkrumah, and what did it mean to your father?
G. N: Much the same thing. I believe in my father's vision of Pan-Africanism. PanAfricanism, as Kwame Nkrumah saw it, was continental African unity. That is, the whole continent would be united into the United States of Africa. And that includes both North Africa and Africa south of the Sahara. It also means that the African diaspora would have the right to return and to have African citizenship, if they so wish. It also means that Africa, as an impoverished continent, as a continent that suffered from 500 years of slavery and colonialism, that it needs to redress these wrongs done its people. And so, the onus would be on social justice, that those who suffered the most, the masses of Africa, would have access to free healthcare and free education. These are essential parts of Nkrumah's Pan-Africanist vision. And this is precisely the Pan-Africanism that I believe in. A. G: Gamal Nkrumah, can you talk about the day of the coup in 1966? Who was behind it? You were six years old at the time? G. N: Yes. This is the only day that perhaps I remember from dawn to dusk. It was a terrible experience for a child of six. My sister was five at the time, and my younger brother was two. My younger brother, Sekou, did not realize what’s going on. My sister was crying. I remember she was crying the whole time, very distressed. My mother was very courageous. And very early on in the morning at dawn, about 4:00 or so, she phoned President Gamal Abdel Nasser, after whom I was named, of Egypt, and told him that there is artillery fire and there is a coup d’etat, what appears to be a coup. And Nasser 10
promised to send an Egyptian plane to come and take us as a family to Egypt. In the meantime, there was fighting between the presidential guard, who were loyal to my father, and the army and police who had plotted the coup with the help of the CIA. And there was much fighting in the grounds of the presidential palace. It was called Flagstaff House. It still stands in Ghana in Accra today. And we vacated the building at about 6:00 in the morning. And we went first to the Egyptian embassy in Accra, and then we went to the police headquarters, where my mother was interrogated. After that, we were taken to the airport, where the Egyptian plane had just landed. At first, the coup plotters did not want to release us children. They wanted my mother to travel alone. And she refused point blank. She said that she has to have her children with her. And we did eventually board the plane. And we arrived in Egypt the following day at dawn. It was a very difficult day. It is perhaps the only day that I remember from dawn ’til dusk.
A. G: How do you know that the CIA was behind the coup in Ghana?
G. N: Well, it is no secret that George Bush, the father, was behind that particular project to topple Kwame Nkrumah. And surely enough, he was rewarded after the coup by being made director of the CIA, and his political career took off after that day. And the papers and documents of the time that were embargoed are now -- anybody can have access to those papers in Washington in the Library of Congress. Any serious student of history who’s interested in this particular episode would find ample evidence in those documents in Washington. It's available for all today.
A. G: Let me ask you about what Kwame Nkrumah was criticized for toward the end, AFRICAN AGENDA
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G. N: Well, I think we have to put that in the context of Ghana at the time. The situation was that all the left-leaning presidents in Africa, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt or Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and others were under tremendous pressure. In Egypt, there was the Israeli aggression, the Tripartite aggression in ’56, the Suez Canal crisis. And after that, Israel was always having wars and launching wars on the Arab countries, including Egypt, the largest one. In Ghana the pressures were also there -Ghana was being sanctioned -- and especially after Nkrumah wrote his book, NeoColonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism in 1965. After that, in which -- in this book he exposed the neo-colonial -- in fact, he coined the term. He said that an African country might be independent and have all the trappings of independence -- a government and currency, etc. -- but that in reality its economy is controlled by foreign capital. He explained that in his book, NeoColonialism. And I believe that it was after his publishing that particular book that the CIA decided they have to get rid of him. And so, Ghana was sanctioned, and the economic situation in the country began to be shaky. Of course, Nkrumah's detractors said that his programme of free education and free healthcare led to economic disaster. But that was not the case. The case was that Nkrumah was laying the foundations for Ghana’s industrialization and that what topped the top of his agenda was social justice and social rise. And I think it is important in the context of the Cold War at the time, in the context of underdevelopment, to realize that at the time people -- leaders like Nkrumah and Nasser in Egypt had stressed social rights, as opposed to individual human rights today, not that they underestimated individual human rights, but, to them, social rights, which means social welfare, which means free education and free healthcare, were vitally important. And so, their priorities were a little bit different than some of the democratic democrats today, whether in Africa or elsewhere. And Nkrumah stressed that his people's welfare was of utmost importance. A. G: Gamal Nkrumah, why [did] your father, after the coup, choose to go to Guinea, where he died years later.
G. N: He chose to go to Guinea, because it was the nearest base to Ghana at the time.