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AFRICA UNITY, THE WAYFORD by Thompson Bawa

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The unity of Africa has always been associated with Ghana’s first president Dr Kwame Nkrumah. When he proclaimed that the independence of Ghana was meaningless unless it was linked with the total liberation of Africa continent, many in Ghana and elsewhere in the world were confused and wondered what it might mean of that statement. Today that statement has remained the most famous statement in African history. This quote appeared in history examination for students to appreciate the magnitude and essence of African unity.

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[ads1]While Nkrumah was doing his effort to bring Africa together, there were Europeans and Americans going round also promoting disunity among States and had successfully promoted balkanization of Africa States and we are left in this manner.

Dr Nkrumah was not liked by the Imperialists and many local politicians like JB Danquah who was never a happy man and wanted Nkrumah dead so that he became Ghana president . So it was not for anything that Imperialists found him useful to bring down Nkrumah in order to thwart African Union agenda. These western enemies found allies in many African Republics to prevent African from uniting. It is as it were, lack of patriotism that left Africans like this situation. It was the overthrown of Nkrumah that derailed Africa Union to nothing than annual meetings of African leaders in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia for empty talks.

If Danquah was a patriotic person he will have buried his ego and move along with the interest of Ghana and the Africa at large but he did not. It is this same man who didn’t have anything to show after his death and is being promoted as ‘a by force hero’ to us by his nephew the President Akufo-Addo. This is what we will call an interpolation. Dr Nkrumah could not Unite Africa simply because of Dr Danquah actions . This made him a bad man for Ghana and Africa, no wonder even in Ghana he is not known by anyone let alone in Africa. It is not I alone who will described him as an Africa saboteur. Indeed he was. Even his people knew him to be and that was why he lost in many elections he stood for . Let me ask, can a hero loose elections upon elections even in his hometown? If that is not possible what is the relevance of vain glory promotions President is peddling ? As a historian we see him strange and a grabber of glory that is not his. This will enter in history as the only Ghanaian president interested in the interpolations and chasing titles for his relatives and himself.

As leaders reflect on the way forward for Africa, Nkrumah name and his works will surface again. Nkrumah had provided the framework of the African Unity and the only thing left is commitment and courage. Nkrumah said either we unite or perish. Africans will perish if we did not unite . If Africa were united, France would not have come and tested its dirty bombs in Algeria. If Africans were united will Somalia be without a government till date ? If Africans were united will Libya be like this? Now one of the poorest countries in the world is Libya.

I don’t think a primary five pupil will agree that now Libya is a poor country. Africa common army will have been strongest and formidable army in the world and no foreign power would have been able to enter or penetrate and remove Gaddafi or capture Laurant Gbagbo. Economically there is no a continent in the world reacher than Africa. Because we are not united unfair trade deals not good for Africa have been designed and promoted for us to follow whether we like it or not, they are generating conflicts so that we continue to fight while they plunder our resources to enrich their countries . Africans must think again and again . If we are united will somebody enter Africa and sprinkle a strange disease? A United Africa can develop solution to every medical problem in Africa soil. Today you hear sporadic spread of diseases we never heard in Africa before. If we are united will someone enter the continent and changed our seeds or grab our land? Just imagine how our children not yet born will be fighting to reclaim the land sold to these foreign entities. If you sell land to a foreign entity and the entity is putting plantation on the land, what does it mean?

With regards to indigenous education Africa is second to none. It was Malcolm X who said if you have something to tell a black man which he has not heard before, you must be careful not to expose to him carefully otherwise he will reject it. Africans has a powerful education system better than all other education systems anywhere in the world but because we were exposed to fake education system, an African things he has no education in the past. We have written records of our history in many indigenous languages before western education. Our ancestors were forced to embrace this wayward education system.

It was Dr Nkrumah who said ‘we are trained to be inferior copies of English men caricatures to be laughed at with our pretensions to be British bourgeois gentility, our grammatical faultiness and distorted standards betraying us at every turn. We were neither fish non-fowl. We were denied the knowledge of our African past and informed that we had no present. We were taught to regard our culture and tradition as barbarous and primitive. Our textbooks were English textbooks, telling us about English history, English geography English ways of living, English customs, English ideas, English weather. Many of these manuals had not been altered since 1895. It is vital that we should nurture our own culture and history if we are to develop that African personality which must provide the educational and intellectual foundations of our Pan African future.

For Africa to unite, there is there need to abandon the worship of foreign gods which can do nothing to solve our problems. No where in the world have a people considered and abandoned its way of life as devilish and rather embrace foreign one. China, India, Japan and many places have their society still intact because they still hold onto their religion and culture no matter what.

With democracy we were deceived to embrace something new to us which has also contributed a setback of the unity of Africa. We have practice the proper democracy before the advent of Western-style democracy but Africans still don’t know that the white people stole our own democracy and practice it over centuries before manipulating it to their advantage before forcing it on our throat as new form of government for Africa. You will be shocked to know that Britain, France, Germany, United States of America are practicing subtle form of one party system. It takes intelligence to recognise it. North Korea, Cuba, China if left alone will practice good governance acceptable to their people. Ali Mazrui was a Kenyan born and a professor in the humanities in Binghamton University of New York. This man in a lecture in March 2002 in Ghana dub Aggrey-Guggisberg Memorial Lectures described Dr Nkrumah as a great African but not a great Ghana.

Professor Mazrui failed to recognise the Nkrumah statement of Ghana independence day when he connected Ghana independence to Africa unity. If we were united, the huge African Union complex will be for all of us but not only for Ethiopia. The professor has been so much westernised to an extent that he could not identify Africa as a unit. Perhaps he was called to come and disgrace Dr Nkrumah. Otherwise how can you come and give a lecture that does not relate to Nkrumah and paint him badly like that? The was no link and you can see him trying to put things together. In fact it was totally misplaced.

He described Nkrumah for being the first person to introduce one party system in Africa if not in the world. I wish he is alive today to witness in his own country Kenya, where we have two sitting presidents, Kenyatta and Odinga. In 2007 in Kenya many people died as a result of multiparty democracy and at the end Kenya got, a prime minister, a vice president and president. What for? Similar thing happened in Zimbabwe and Sudan. Some other places we even had first and second vice presidents. What kind of democracy is this. Tribalism has eaten into Kenya politics to such an extent that no minority tribe can rule Kenya. Not Kenya alone it is spreading across Africa. If one party system is not good why are many analysts particularly promoting all-inclusive governments ?

We don’t want the idea of Africa unity to remained in books, we want it in our life time. Any progressive leader fighting a good course for the betterment of his people to become self reliance will certainly not be liked by the world super powers.

Our leaders need courage to fulfill Dr Nkrumah dream of continental unity that will see every African live in harmony, peace, good health, shelter and abundant food live on.

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