RIP Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Since the man died I have not
verbalized
a word about my emotions. I guess that won't mean I don't care?. Rather a
question has kept my mind so busy that I barely can find my heart to
cry out the grief.
Did Nelson Mandela achieve more than Nkrumah in the struggle for a better
Africa for Africans?
In all these boring years of travelling through the History of Africa, I
have come to a well convincing junction that there was no ideology more authentic
than 'Nkrumaism'. For that matter, myself didn't have much time to waste, I
carried on my tiny brain and shoulders the cross of Nkrumaism and started the
march for one Africa in my own small pace. This was the spirit that led to the formation of the 'Builders of the
African Dream', as at the conception of the idea, I had less than six non
Ghanaian friends both on Facebook and 'Lifebook'.
It has been a very pleasing experience meeting Africans from different
states dreaming the African Dream of United Nations Of Africa, which basically
germinated from the hodgepodge mess of largely Marxist-Socialist ideals and
thoughts that the plagiarism-prone Ghanaian leader had adopted as his own, with
the hope of guaranteeing his immortality in the realm of African social and
political thought, as Kwame Okuampa Ahoofe would put it.
So my mentor, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, lived for the unification of
African States. He was too busy finding ways of attaining one nation out of a
continent of different cultures, languages and ethnicity to realize that unity
was more vital than unification. The best Nkrumah should have done for Africans
was to plant little trees of unity and peace which would have fruit the
unification.
Sometimes I wondered where he had bought his inspirations from. It could
evidently be said that he was feeding Africa with his savvy of the United
States of America and the oneness of the People Republic of China. ” The
American-schooled Ghanaian leader was merely using the United States of America
as his model for Africa’s socioeconomic development, even while Mr. Nkrumah
paradoxically, and hypocritically, pretended to be rabidly “anti-American
imperialism.”
On Tuesday, my eyes were glued to the TV screen whiles I watched the
memorial service of the late Mandela and listened with keen interest as the
many heads of states from near and far coloured our screens with their ‘tributes’ of just words. President Zuma
did a great job by taking the hands of my mind to another walk on the achievements
of Dr. Nelson Mandela. Then the question came again, so did Mandela achieve
more than Nkrumah, my mentor? Now I could hear a voice answering me in a disappointed fashion.
What I call, the Nkrumah Megalomania
My own Nkrumah lived in a psychological state characterized by delusions of grandeur.
Nkrumah preached a white-hot sermon of the rapid industrial development
of the African continent, his requisite Ghanaian model for such
development was woefully and callously compromised on the hazy altar of pan-Africanist megalomania.
There
were other African leaders of his time who could probably be also
thinking of the good for Africa but it was another thought of them to
make sure that their homes were adequately prepared before crying for
the larger masses. But Nkrumah in his way was louder on Pan Africanism
instead of the reason that took him to independence and that crowned him
the first president of Ghana. One thing was that, Nkrumah forgot he was
a president of Ghana or He saw Ghana as a suburb of Africa.
So
he lived with his psychotic belief that by he helping All, will mean
saving All. I don't think that Nkrumah was much greater, powerful and
influential than Nelson Mandela, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, why was
he so gaudier on Pan-Africanism that the rest could barely be seen.
The Comparison
Whiles Mandela kept much of his attention on anti-apartheid and the growth
of South Africa, Nkrumah on the other side was occupied with making the whole
of Africa a unified state like USA and China, though he knew very well that the
Chinese had one language, one cultural trace and a taste of education
pre-dated years, he still had much hope and confidence that the unification of
Africa will come by the achievement of attaining mere independence for every
state.
Though my dearest Nkrumah was not a science student, I had expected
him to understand the principle of diffusion (the process in which there
is movement of a substance from an area of high concentration of that
substance to an area of lower concentration). It would have given him
the egression of his mental shackles of Africa Melioration to Better
Ghana Agenda which the late Prof. Atta Mills died for.
The
names of Mandela would long reside in many history books around the
world, not because he did any special thing for the USA, CUBA or AFRICA
but for reasons that he mothered a country which was drowning in the
bitterness of a social policy or racial segregation involving political
and economic and legal discrimination against people who are were not
Whites. Delivered an anti-apartheid nation and breastfed the People's
standard of living to a level higher than any of the nations Nkrumah was
nursing.
Who is that south African who can point out or object to the
ideologies of Mandela? No one. But how can someone argue out a man who
laid his life down for the betterment of every life of a land.
Here
in Ghana people talk against Nkrumah despite the fact that he attained
independence, because he had in his capacity to move Ghana to the
highest economic and political stability in Africa, if he had focused
much of his head and national resource in the good of a nation rather
than the amelioration of a continent.
I have now understood fully why our mothers named him "Nkrumah Show Boy".
Even in his choice for a wife, he turned blind eyes to stupendous
buttocks of our mothers and fished a Fatia from Egypt. Again that was
Nkrumah for Africa instead of Ghana.
Nkrumah was jumping from one African State to the other, giving them
the hope of light that will lift Africa from the darkness of
colonialism, imperialism and capitalism should there be a united Africa
Nation whiles Ghana, his own remained in darkness.
So
whiles Mandela served the mouths of south Africans to maxi
satisfaction. When the South Africans became much filled to the brim,
Mandela didn't have to bed any one to go voicing the good he/she had
tasted. So soon the world got to know the good Mandela was doing.
On
the contrary, Kwame Nkrumah, 'show boy' served every African nose with a
perfume of the light and after people had had just an aroma of his
ideologies, they were thrown into a state of imaginary writing of what
probably would have been the ultimate taste of the Nkrumaism.
It
therefore could be established world widely that Mandela did more than
Nkrumah, though in his nation. The comparison of the average Life of a
south African and a Ghanaian reflects the achievement of both fathers of
nations.
Nkrumah was gathering a huge army of unarmed soldiers in the fight for African Redemption and pan-Africanism.
Looking
at the condition of Ghana at the time Nkrumah was preaching his
Nkrumaism, it appeared like a pastor who was Prophesying mansions for
his congregation while he slept in a cottage.
I think Nkrumah was over ambitious, what is your take on this?
Written By: Oppong Clifford Benjamin
Founder/President- Builders of the African Dream.
Ghana.
