Kwame Nkrumah: The one and only founding father of Ghana

Feature Article of Friday, 7 March 2014

Columnist: Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame

2014 Independence Day Special

By Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, Ph.D. CPP, USA

Part I

Introduction. That Kwame Nkrumah is the founder of modern Ghana is not debatable; yet, there are still some guilty and misguided individuals among us who would clothe themselves in an oblong missile and blast it from Mars into a fortified round hole. Since the late President Arthur Mills declared Kwame Nkrumahs birthday as a statutory Founders Day in Ghana, certain resentful, misguided and ill-informed individuals have been blowing their shattered trumpets from Mars about their so-called founding fathers by way of distorting and turning Ghanas political history upside down. So far, they have failed to provide any cogent argument/s to underscore their hodgepodge position. By their imprudent logic, all leaders of the anti-European intruders, anti-Gold Coast Crown colony, pro-self-government Fante confederation, anti-AWAM (European merchants), anti-draconian indirect rule, cocoa hold-up, as well as ethnocentric, terrorist and secessionist crusaders, from 1482 to March 6, 1957, are founding fathers. But going by the American benchmark, Founding Fathers, refers to a group of individuals (men) with shared political philosophy and ideology, vision and socio-economic values, who struggle, revolt, and/or fight together to overthrow their foreign overlord to found a nation based on a constitution. In the case of Ghana, can the so-called founders fathers meet this criterion? Aside from their sabotaging and domestic terrorist tactics (including bombing, shooting, and hunting down supporters of the CPP), parochial objectives and secessionist goals, none of the names that often pop up played any role, identified or associated themselves with Kwame Nkrumah and his CPPs political ideology, Pan-African vision, strategy and tactics, which galvanized the common people and some chiefs to rally behind Kwame Nkrumahs struggle for a unified country from 1949 to the 1954 and 1956 general elections. It was consequent to the victory of Nkrumah and his CPP (the first and only political party in all the four independent territories under the British colonial administration) in the 1956 general election that modern Ghana was founded on March 6, 1957. As the subsequent discourse shows, not only did the champions of barefaced ethnocentrism, parochialism and secessionism ferociously try to sabotage Ghanas independence, but they also oppose the name, Ghana, when Kwame Nkrumah proposed it. So, why are they Founding Fathers?

Origin of the UGCC. In the aftermath of the so-called World War II and the collapsed of the British economy, the British colonial government limited import and export licenses to the Association of West African (Europeans) Merchants (AWAM). Feeling marginalized, some of the African merchants led by George Paa Grant (a wealthy Sekondi merchant), Awoonor-Williams (a Sekondi-based lawyer) and others formed the Gold Coast League as a pressure group to advance their economic and political interest. Concurrently, the upshot of Dr. J. B. Danquahs connection with the ritual murder of Odikro of Akyea Mensah of Apedwa brought him (Danquah) into conflict with Governor Allen Burns. As a result, J. B. Danquah, Erick Akufo Addo, Ako Adjei and others in Accra formed the Gold Coast National Party to oppose the Burns Constitution. The irony here is that in Governor Burns constitutional reform in the late 1930s, Dr. J. B. Danquah pressed for the creation of an Office of Minister of Home Affairs for himself. As well, Dr. Danquah had wholeheartedly embraced the Burns Constitution by representing the Joint Provincial Council of Chiefs in the Burns Legislative Council in 1946.

Dr. J. B. Danquahs personal contradictory positions notwithstanding, the economic and political interest of these two pressure groups resulted in a marriage of convenience and became the United Gold Coast Convention in Saltpond in August 1947, under the leadership of George Paa Grant. The main objective of this self-selected Gentlemens Club, comprising lawyers, merchant, wealthy cocoa farmers, and other similar-minded individuals was to advance their economic and political interest through political power sharing with the Colonial Government. Most critical was their call for the replacement of Chiefs on the Legislative Council with educated persons. The important thing to note here is that the UGCC was a loose, [Gentlemens Club] without program of action, funds and bank account.

Because of its self-appointed mandate, the UGCC avoided designating itself as a political party; thus, seeing themselves as rightful rulers, its original initiators detested the idea of political parties. Secondly, as bourgeoisies, they took politics to be a leisure activity. Their elitist outlook also prevented them from reconciling themselves with the people. Hence, they needed Nkrumahs kind of leadership and organizational skills to bring some of the chiefs and people into their fold, and turn the UGGC into a popular movement to oppose and upset the Burns Constitution. The big question, however, is, if the UGCC was truly a movement struggling for independence (as some apologists have claimed), why did its initiators not give up their private business and professional endeavors as Vladimir Lenin, Nelson Mandela, Augustino Neto, Mahatma Gandhi and others did, rather than search for another citizen (Nkrumah) outside the territory with special leadership and organizational skills to become its general secretary?

Kwame Nkrumah as the Antidote to the UGCC Handicaps. Ako Adjei, who recommended Kwame Nkrumah as the antidote to the UGCCs inadequacies, knew about Nkrumahs anti-colonial crusade and Union of West African States agitation in the US, as well as his unique organizational kills and leadership roles during and after the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester. To test the waters, Ako Adjei wrote to ask Nkrumah if he would consider returning to the country to become the General Secretary of a newly formed UGCC. Without waiting for his response, Awoonor-Williams wrote a letter, and signed by Paa Grant, to Nkrumah, offering him the job of General Secretary, a monthly salary of one hundred pounds and a car. Dr. J.B. Danquah followed it up his letter urging him to accept the position. So, who was the opportunist here, as some functional illiterates and boorish individuals try to impute in their hoaxed writings? Clearly, they wanted to use Nkrumah to attain their selfish goal, namely to replace the Chiefs on the Legislative Council with themselves, self-styled elites.

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Kwame Nkrumah: The one and only founding father of Ghana