United Black America is proud to bring you this excellent post from one of our new favorite contributing authors, Boafo of AFRICAN HOME ADVANTAGE INCORPORATED (AHAI).
The author and his organization is in keeping with the values of Pan-Africanism that we support and promote, and so we are excited about this collaboration. If you or your organization would like to work with us in the future, you may contact me directly at executiveofficer@unitedblackamerica.com.
Building Nkrumah’s Consciousness and Rallying Africans Around his Mission and Vision
Dr.Kwame Nkrumah
In my estimation, the most dissected and discussed African personality is Kwame Nkrumah, on whom volumes have been written. The speed at which he set out to ensure the total emancipation of the African continent and the larger African world was breathtaking. If he had not been stopped in his tracks, he and the African world would have set a world record in the field of human emancipation and progress.
He once said, “The emancipation of the African continent and the black man could be the emancipation of man”. How true. We shall not rest until the African emancipations goals are finally scored.
In an article entitled “The Nkrumah Vision Lives” by Kofi Akordor in honor of the statue of Kwmae Nkrumah at the newly AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, he wrote:
“There was no doubt that Ghana would have been a nuclear power by now had the initiative Nkrumah took in the early 1960s with the institution of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission not been terminated with the collapse of his administration.”
On assumption of office in 2009, the new Government of Ghana set out to reintroduce subtle policies and programs to increase awareness of Nkrumaism and put Nkrumah at the center of Ghanaian and African politics again.
1) The government set out to distribute free exercise books to all primary school children. “The 80-page exercise book whose covers were designed in the national colors has its front and back covers embossed with a portrait of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s First President and his biography”.
2) A new Ghana banknote was introduced embossed with Nkrumah pictures
3) The government launched Nkrumah’s centenary celebrations and set aside every 21st September, Nkrumah’s birthday as a national holiday known as Founder’s Day.
4) The AU unanimously accepted the Dr. Nkrumah’s centenary birthday and put it on the AU’s calendar of “Special Events”.
5) The government has launched a book under the auspices of National Youth Authority with the title ““Kwame Nkrumah – The Greatest African Leader” aimed at inculcating in the Youth values of Nkrumah.
6) The Ghanaian Government engineered the decision of the AU to honor African Scientists with the “African Union Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Awards (AUKNSA) in recognition of Nkrumah’s role in launching the African version of the Scientific and Industrial Revolution on the day the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1964. The objective of this Programme is to award Cash Prizes and Recognition Certificates to excelling African researchers for their achievements in Earth and Life Sciences, and Basic, Science, Technology and Innovation sectors.
7) Finally, through the strong advocacy of the Ghanaian government, the African Union unanimously accepted to erect the statue of Kwame Nkrumah at the foreground of newly built AU complex at Addis Ababa. This endorsement by the AU was described by the continental body as the “automatic choice”
The aim of all these is to achieve the ULTIMATE GOAL of Nkrumah, which was to see a continent and people living in “a harmoniously organized free and independent Africa, possessed of its own unique personality which stands in equality before the rest of the world, accepted, honored and respected.”.
I have championed the re-emergence of Nkrumaism as I believe an Africa rallying around Nkrumah’s vision and mission will surely recapture the Center in African affairs and end the centuries of operating at the periphery of our affairs.
Nkrumah unlocks and unearths the potentials of Africans.
At home and at away, we are always disadvantaged. It is time to take charge of our affairs as Kwame Nkrumah said. It is about time the African proved that the “BLACKMAN IS CAPABLE”.
The renewed Pan African mission ought to be:
- To enlighten the African eye
- To awake the sleeping African spirit
- To bring awareness to the inactive wrongly conditioned African mind
- And to empower the African hands and breathe fresh spirit to our somehow ‘lifeless’ bodies.
We need to come alive. We need to reverse the false beliefs and mistaken beliefs which have been built in the consciousness of our people that the African is not capable. Our mission must be to preach and demonstrate that the “AFRICAN IS CAPABLE”.
Kwame Nkrumah and The Science of Mass Mind Control
Nkrumah talked about a PAPER WAR and the power of distorted and twisted images. Indeed, disinformation and misinformation are the biggest weapon of the Imperialist (See The Science of Mass Mind Control). Unfortunately most people ignore the powerful effects of the PAPER WAR. Nkrumah proposed a way to battle and win this WAR.
We need to counter imperialist mind games. As a strategy, we need to re-publish excerpts from Pan-Africans writers, distribute them, and educate the masses on the essence of Pan-Africanism. As Pan-Africanists, it is our duty to research, reach out, and evangelize to our people at every corner, at every shop, at every church, in every school, in every home, and embrace the concept of a UNITED AFRICA for our own future good and survival.
In this conventional, high-tech war, we cannot fight the white power structure head-to-head. Our capability lies in adopting the low-tech, unconventional, guerrilla-style warfare. With this strategy, we can engage our people powerfully and neutralize the imperialist machinations thus deprogramming and reprogramming our people according to original values.
I have experimented with the idea for many years and seen its powerful effects. Powerful images produce powerful psychological effects. The war in Libya was an example of an IMAGE/MEDIA WAR using television to twist the real facts. Human beings basically react to images. Since the days of the Bible, they have used this strategy to inflict those lurid “victories” on our psyche.
Nkrumah as expected of him saw afar off the imperialist mechanism and gave us the clue on how to counter the Imperialists paper/media warfare.
As one commentary stated; the goal of imperial media assault on the African mind is mainly to “Control individuals to the point that they would do our bidding against their will, even against such FUNDAMENTAL LAWS of nature as self-preservation”.
Nkrumah used it effectively and we can do likewise. In the Libyan war, NATO first started bombing with leaflets, weakening the psychological defense of the people before dropping the REAL BOMBS.
THE PAPER WAR as described by Nkrumah:
“The paper war penetrates into every town and village, and into the remotest parts of the “bush”. It spreads in the form of free distributions of propaganda films praising the qualities of western civilization and culture. These are some of the ways in which the psychological terrain is prepared. When the target, a certain country or continent, is sufficiently “softened”, then the invasion of evangelist brigades begins, thus perpetuating the centuries old tactic whereby missionaries prepare the way for guns. Peace Corps divisions stream in, and Moral Rearmament units, Jehovah witnesses, information agencies and international financial “aid” organizations. In this way, a territory or even an entire continent is besieged without a single marine in sight. A sprinkling of political and little-publicised murders, like that of Pio Pinto in Kenya, and Moumie in Geneva, are used to assist the process.”
Nkrumah also warned us of the usage of Hollywood style imperialist propaganda machinery which we are seeing taking the centre stage in recent times. He goes on to write;
“The imperialists have made widespread and wily use of ideological and cultural weapons in the form of intrigues, manoeuvres and slander campaigns… while Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news’… thus far, all the methods of neo-colonialists have pointed in one direction, the ancient, accepted one of all minority ruling classes throughout history: divide and rule. Quite obviously, therefore, unity is the first requisite for destroying neo-colonialism
Kwame Nkrumah, the JORDAN Effect, and the Multi-Billion African Industry
During the Nkrumah centenary celebrations, quite unusual, the World Bank joined and tried to hijack another African agenda and initiative to serve its imperialistic interests by saying “There are many aspects of Nkrumah’s vision which we, at the World Bank identify with”.
The Bank had seen from afar off that Nkrumah’s legacy and Ghana are both multi-billion industries, and are trying to cash in on them and our vast human and natural resources. This time, we have to move ahead of them and beat them to their game.
There is something in economics called the JORDAN EFFECT. It is about the economic impact that MICHAEL JORDAN had on the city of Chicago. Between 1984 and 1998, MICHAEL JORDAN alone contributed over 10 BILLION dollars to the Chicago economy. Jordan was not only an extraordinary basketball player, but also a major contributor to the American economy by way of basketball game attendance, television, NBA merchandise, NIKE, endorsements, and books.
If Jordan, through basketball alone, could impact and transform the economic fortunes of Chicago, what would happen to the global African united African economy with Africans rallying around the vision and mission of a man like Kwame Nkrumah?
- Nkrumah embodies the best in African Science, Technology, Education, Finance, the Arts, Industrialization, Sports etc.
- Nkrumah as President invested wisely as his vision covered every field of human endeavour.
- Nkrumah researched, spoke and wrote extensively about the nature of the African wealth and how to unlock it to benefit the African world.
“It is not difficult to imagine the greatly improved condition of the African today if Nkrumah had continued in power to lead the PAN-AFRICAN MOVEMENT” -Former Reserach and Editorial Assistant to Kwame Nkrumah
Haile Selassie and Kwame Nkrumah on parade. 1963
That is why we believe that building African consciousness around Nkrumah will bring out the BEST in us and the best in our exemplary pan African fathers such as Henry Sylvester Williams, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Cheikh Anita Diop , W.E.B. Du Bois, Steve Biko, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, Franz Fanon, Sekou Tourré, Robert Sobukwe, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, Jomo Kenyatta, George Padmore, Haile Salassie and many others.
Finally, placing Nkrumah at the centre of the pan African struggle is not meant to downplay the glorious roles played by our illustrious forefathers, but rather to enhance their contributions and build a UNITED FRONT around a common symbol to represent a free, proud, courageous capable African world.
THE DREAM OF KWAME NKRUMA LIVES ON
’We are committed to reclaiming the rich heritage of Africa, every inch of it, and redrawing the contours of African history which in the hands of others had been drawn with great malice and lurid falsehood’ – Chinua Achebe
“There is enough talent, wealth, and enterprise, to form a respectable continent of Africa.” – Edward Wilmot Blyden.
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