Kwame Nkrumah

Ɔsagyefo Kwame Nwai Nkrumah
Born	21 September 1909 Nkroful, Gold Coast
Died	27 April 1972 (aged 62) Bucharest, Romania
Cause of death	Cancer
Nationality	Ghanaian Guinean
Political orientation	Communism Scientific Socialism Nkrumahism Pan-Africanism
Political party	United Gold Coast Convention (1947-1949) Convention People's Party (1949-1966) All-African People's Revolutionary Party (1966-1972)

Kwame Nkrumah (September 21, 1909 - April 27, 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana following Ghana's independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. He was an advocate of scientific socialism and pan-Africanism, formed the Convention People's Party and was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity. Nkrumah also played an instrumental role in the creation of the Union of African States, which was a short-lived confederation of African states that dissolved after the overthrow of his government. In 1962, Nkrumah was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union.

The CIA organized a coup against Nkrumah on 24 February 1966. According to a March 12, 1966 memorandum to U.S. President Johnson from U.S. security staffer Robert Komer commenting on the coup, "Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African."

After the coup, Nkrumah lived in exile in Conakry, Guinea; where he became Co-President of the country alongside Ahmed Sekou Touré. He passed away from cancer in 1972.

Life

Early life

Nkrumah was born on September 21, 1909, in a village in the western region of colonial Ghana, which was then known as the Gold Coast. His father was a goldsmith and his mother was a retail trader.

Education

Nkrumah's mother sent him to an elementary school run by a Catholic mission at Half Assini, and he attended Achimota School and expressed interest in becoming a Catholic priest. Eventually, he became teacher.

At the age of 26, Nkrumah left the Gold Coast to further his education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, USA. When he arrived in New York in October 1935, he traveled to Pennsylvania, where he enrolled despite lacking the funds for the full semester. However, he soon won a scholarship that provided for his tuition at Lincoln. He remained short of funds through his time in the US. To make ends meet, he worked in menial jobs, including as a dishwasher. On Sundays, he visited Black Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and in New York.

Nkrumah read widely from the literature of Karl Marx and Marcus Garvey. He had also read the writings of Pan-Africanists such as George Padmore and W.E.B. Du Bois. Historian Dr. Narh Oyortey comments that Nkrumah was "very much inspired by Marcus Garvey and the whole idea of return to Africa and Black freedom" which "fueled his ideas [...] for Pan-African consciousness".

In addition to reading Marxist and Pan-Africanist writings, Nkrumah also participated in activism and political organizing while he was a student abroad. Nkrumah played a major role in the Pan-African conference held in New York in 1944. Later, Nkrumah was among the principal organizers and co-treasurers of the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester (15–19 October 1945). The Congress elaborated a strategy for supplanting colonialism with African socialism.

Nkrumah completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology in 1939. Lincoln then appointed him an assistant lecturer in philosophy, and he began to receive invitations to be a guest preacher in Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and New York. He also gained a Bachelor of Theology degree from Lincoln in 1942. He also earned from Penn the following year a Master of Arts degree in philosophy and a Master of Science in education. He also attended the London School of Economics as a PhD candidate.

Ghanaian independence

After twelve years abroad pursuing higher education, developing his political philosophy, and organizing with other diasporic pan-Africanists, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast (which would become known as Ghana after independence) to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence. He was invited to become the Secretary General of the first political party of the Gold Coast, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC).

Later, Nkrumah formed the Convention People's Party (CPP), which achieved rapid success through its unprecedented appeal to the common voter. He became Prime Minister in 1952 and retained the position when Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957. In 1960, Ghanaians approved a new constitution and elected Nkrumah President. His administration funded national industrial and energy projects developed a strong national education system and promoted a national and pan-African culture.

Unlike other leaders such as Nehru and Sukarno, Nkrumah attempted to free Ghana from the global capitalist economy. In 1964, he adopted the title of Osagyefo.

1966 coup d'etat

The coup against Nkrumah took place on 24 February 1966.

In a 1965 memorandum between the U.S. National Security Council Staff to the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, staffer Robert W. Komer wrote: "FYI, we may have a pro-Western coup in Ghana soon [...] The plotters are keeping us briefed [...] While we're not directly involved (I'm told), we and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah's pleas for economic aid." He notes that the deteriorating economic condition of Ghana may provide the "spark" and concludes the memo saying, "All in all, looks good."

At the time of the coup, Nkrumah was outside of the country, travelling to various countries in Asia, ultimately headed to Hanoi, invited by Ho Chi Minh. However, after departing from Myanmar and arriving in China, he was informed of the coup. As a result of the coup and his wish to quickly return to his country, Nkrumah cancelled his engagements in Hanoi and arranged to fly to Guinea, chosen due to the country's proximity to Ghana and the good relations which the leadership of Guinea had with Nkrumah. While his return was being arranged, Nkrumah proceeded with his scheduled engagements in China, and made statements to the press about his intended imminent return to Ghana. Ultimately, Nkrumah reached Conakry, Guinea on March 2nd, 1966, where he began to receive eyewitness accounts of what had occurred in Ghana. His 1968 book Dark Days in Ghana discusses these events in depth.

According to a March 12, 1966 memorandum to U.S. President Johnson from U.S. security adviser Robert Komer commenting on the coup, "Nkrumah was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African. In reaction to his strongly pro-Communist leanings, the new military regime is almost pathetically pro-Western." Komer goes on to urge the President to express "pleasure" at the coups in Ghana and Indonesia when speaking to the Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and to make it clear that "we ought to exploit such successes as quickly and as skillfully as possible" and suggests giving the regimes a small gift of surplus grain, stressing that a small rather than lavish gift will have a "psychological" effect to "whet their appetite" and enable the prospect of getting more to create leverage for the United States.

Post-coup

After the coup, Nkrumah lived in exile in Conakry, Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president and wrote the work Dark Days in Ghana, a work that describes the events of the coup as well as Nkrumah's analysis of it in the context of the African Revolution as a whole. He also reworked and published the Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare, the first drafts of which had been destroyed during the coup, as well as writing and publishing other works during this time. The work undertaken in this period of Nkrumah's life contributed to the foundation of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party. Nkrumah passed away from cancer in 1972.

Works

Nkrumah is the author of Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965), as well as various other works, including Towards Colonial Freedom (1957), Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957), I Speak of Freedom (1961), Africa Must Unite (1964), Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonisation (1964), Challenge of the Congo (1967), Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare (1968), Dark Days in Ghana (1968), and Class Struggle in Africa (1970).

Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965)

Nkrumah's 1965 work, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism discusses how neo-colonialism has become the main instrument of imperialism, in place of the overt colonialism of the past, which he explains is in a period of decline. Throughout the work, Nkrumah outlines the mechanisms of neo-colonialism while also listing numerous contemporary points of supporting evidence and providing commentary. In the early chapters of the book, he also sets out an argument for African unity and its potential for destroying neo-colonialism in Africa, and notes in the book's conclusion that the foreign capitalists who exploit Africa's resources "long ago saw the strength to be gained from acting on a Pan-African scale" and that "the only way to challenge this economic empire and to recover possession of our heritage, is for us also to act on a Pan-African basis, through a Union Government."

In the work's introduction, Nkrumah describes the essence of neo-colonialism, stating: "The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside." In other words, while a state may appear to have independence in an official sense, it remains under the domination of imperialist power, primarily via imperialist control and supervision of the subjected country's economic system.

The work's introduction also describes the result of neo-colonialism, stating that the result of neo-colonialism is that "foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world."

According to Nkrumah, outside direction of the state by imperialist powers can be manifested in various forms:

The methods and form of this direction can take various shapes. For example, in an extreme case the troops of the imperial power may garrison the territory of the neo-colonial State and control the government of it. More often, however, neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere. Control over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial power. [...] It is possible that neo-colonial control may be exercised by a consortium of financial interests which are not specifically identifiable with any particular State.

Toward the end of the work, Nkrumah lists several advances in the anti-imperial struggle at the time of writing, and asserts his view that neo-colonialism is "not a sign of imperialism’s strength but rather of its last hideous gasp. It testifies to its inability to rule any longer by old methods. Independence is a luxury it can no longer afford to permit its subject peoples, so that even what it claims to have ‘given’ it now seeks to take away." He then states that neo-colonialism "can and will" be defeated, stating that in the face of imperialism's divide-and-conquer strategy, "unity is the first requisite for destroying neo-colonialism." He clarifies this assertion by declaring the need for an all-union government for the continent of Africa, a strengthening of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation, and seeking increasingly formal adherence to said solidarity organization in Latin America. As a final point, Nkrumah adds that "we must encourage and utilise to the full those still all too few yet growing instances of support for liberation and anti-colonialism inside the imperialist world itself." In order to achieve these factors, Nkrumah explains that national development and strengthened independence through political neutrality, or non-alignment, is key.

Finally, Nkrumah stresses the importance of political consciousness raising among the masses, stating that "the preconditions for all this, to which lip service is often paid but activity seldom directed, is to develop ideological clarity among the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, pro-liberation masses of our continents. They, and they alone, make, maintain or break revolutions." Nkrumah then lists progress made in this regard in Africa at the time of writing, and states: "Bolstered with ideological clarity, these organisations, closely linked with the ruling parties where liberatory forces are in power, will prove that neo-colonialism is the symptom of imperialism’s weakness and that it is defeatable. For, when all is said and done, it is the so-called little man, the bent-backed, exploited, malnourished, blood-covered fighter for independence who decides. And he invariably decides for freedom."

The mechanisms of neo-colonialism

Specific examples of neo-colonial financial institutions given in the chapter "The mechanisms of neo-colonialism" include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association. Nkrumah refers to the IMF as part of a "neo-colonialist trap" which uses the guise of "multilateral aid" to take a dominating role over subjected countries by "forcing would-be borrowers to submit to various offensive conditions, such as supplying information about their economies, submitting their policy and plans to review by the World Bank and accepting agency supervision of their use of loans."

In the same chapter, Nkrumah also notes the difference in aid and loan behavior between socialist countries and the West, mentioning that although aid from socialist countries may fall short of that offered from the West, it is often "more impressive, since it is swift and flexible, and interest rates on communist loans are only about two per cent compared with five to six per cent charged on loans from western countries."

Outside of the economic sphere, Nkrumah also comments on other venues through which neo-colonial dominance is perpetuated. Outright coups d'etat and political assassinations represent some of the most overt methods of neo-colonialism which co-exist along with other methods of maintaining neo-colonial dominance. Among the other methods listed are military presence in the subjected state by the former colonial power, special legal privileges demanded by former colonial powers (such as land concessions and prospecting rights for minerals and oil), dominance of information services by Western countries and exclusion of socialist information services, anti-liberation messages perpetuated through entertainment emanating from imperial centers, monopoly of news media, religious evangelism, and psychological warfare and subversion via organizations such as the CIA, the Peace Corps, and the United States Information Agency (USIA).

Commenting specifically on the pernicious influence of imperialist ideology embedded within Hollywood films, Nkrumah writes:

Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California. And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gum-shoe, the Federal agent — in a word, the CIA — type spy is ever the hero. Here, truly, is the ideological under-belly of those political murders which so often use local people as their instruments.

On the topic of the monopoly of news media, Nkrumah writes: "Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines" and that internationally, "a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana and all countries which hack out their own independent path to freedom." Regarding activities of the United States Information Agency (USIA) at the time of writing, Nkrumah explains that in Africa alone, the USIA transmitted about thirty territorial and national radio programs "whose content glorifies the U.S. while attempting to discredit countries with an independent foreign policy." He further explains:

The USIA boasts more than 120 branches in about 100 countries, 50 of which are in Africa alone. It has 250 centres in foreign countries, each of which is usually associated with a library. It employs about 200 cinemas and 8,000 projectors which draw upon its nearly 300 film libraries.

This agency is directed by a central body which operates in the name of the U.S. President, planning and coordinating its activities in close touch with the Pentagon, CIA and other Cold War agencies, including even armed forces intelligence centres.

In developing countries, the USIA actively tries to prevent expansion of national media of information so as itself to capture the market-place of ideas. It spends huge sums for publication and distribution of about sixty newspapers and magazines in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American government backs the USIA through direct pressures on developing nations. To ensure its agency a complete monopoly in propaganda, for instance, many agreements for economic co-operation offered by the U.S. include a demand that Americans be granted preferential rights to disseminate information. At the same time, in trying to close the new nations to other sources of information, it employs other pressures. For instance, after agreeing to set up USIA information centres in their countries, both Togo and Congo (Leopoldville) originally hoped to follow a non-aligned path and permit Russian information centres as a balance. But Washington threatened to stop all aid, thereby forcing these two countries to renounce their plan.

Nkrumah also describes the "virtually unlimited" finances of USIA, which results in extensive subversive activities, including the collection of intelligence, recruitment of informers, purchasing of space in local publications to influence their policies, bribing of public figures, and supplying of weapons to anti-neutralist forces in developing countries:

Some USIA duties further expose its nature as a top intelligence arm of the U.S. imperialists. In the first place, it is expected to analyse the situation in each country, making recommendations to its Embassy, thereby to its Government, about changes that can tip the local balance in U.S. favour. Secondly, it organises networks of monitors for radio broadcasts and telephone conversations, while recruiting informers from government offices. It also hires people to distribute U.S. propaganda. Thirdly, it collects secret information with special reference to defence and economy, as a means of eliminating its international military and economic competitors. Fourthly, it buys its way into local publications to influence their policies, of which Latin America furnishes numerous examples. It has been active in bribing public figures, for example in Kenya and Tunisia. Finally, it finances, directs and often supplies with arms all anti-neutralist forces in the developing countries, witness Tshombe in Congo (Leopoldville) and Pak Hung Ji in South Korea. In a word, with virtually unlimited finances, there seems no bounds to its inventiveness in subversion.

Dark Days in Ghana (1968)

Nkrumah's 1968 work Dark Days in Ghana describes the events of the February 24, 1966 coup d'etat in Ghana, along with Nkrumah's analysis of it. Nkrumah had been Prime Minister of Ghana since 1952, and after independence was elected president in 1960. By the time of the coup, his administration had lasted about 15 years. Nkrumah himself was outside of the country at the time of the coup, and so the account begins from his perspective of finding out about it while in Beijing, followed by a description of the events surrounding the coup as related to him by eyewitness accounts provided to him by others, followed by an examination of what made the coup possible, and who was backing and orchestrating it. His analysis includes both an examination of reactionary elements within Ghana, as well as external interference by imperialist powers. Upon returning to Africa from Asia, Nkrumah initially made his way to Guinea, originally with the intention to promptly return to nearby Ghana, although he was not able to do so and ended up living in exile in Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president, and wrote Dark Days in Ghana. The book also includes an appendix of letters to Nkrumah from various heads of state regarding the coup.

An author's note at the beginning of the work states Nkrumah's purpose in writing it: "Ghana's experience since 24th February 1966, costly but priceless, must be viewed in the context of the African Revolution as a whole. It is with this in mind that I have written, in Conakry, about Ghana's 'dark days' in the hope that publication of the facts may help to expose similar setbacks in other progressive independent African states."

Regarding the conditions for imperialist-backed coups in Africa, Nkrumah explains:

For some years, imperialism has had its back to the wall in Africa. It has been faced with a growing liberation movement which it is powerless to stop but which, if it allows it to go unchecked, will before long end the exploitation on which imperialism’s very existence depends. It has therefore resorted to a co-ordinated strategy in an attempt to preserve, and if possible to extend, its grip on the economic life of our continent.

An all-out offensive is being waged against the progressive, independent states. Where the more subtle methods of economic pressure and political subversion have failed to achieve the desired result, there has been resort to violence in order to promote a change of regime and prepare the way for the establishment of a puppet government.

Fragmented into so many separate states, many of them weak and economically non-viable, coup d’états have been relatively easy to arrange in Africa. All that has been needed was a small force of disciplined men to seize the key points of the capital city and to arrest the existing political leadership. In the planning and carrying out of these coups there have always been just sufficient numbers of dissatisfied and ambitious army Officers and politicians willing to co-operate to make the whole operation possible.

It has been one of the tasks of the C.I.A. and other similar organisations to discover these potential quislings and traitors in our midst, and to encourage them, by bribery and the promise of political power, to destroy the constitutional government of their countries. In Ghana the embassies of the United States, Britain, and West Germany were all implicated in the plot to overthrow my government.

Regarding Ghana's situation just after independence in 1957, Nkrumah comments in Chapter 4 that the issues Ghana faced at independence "were so gigantic that within every sphere we had to take calculated risks" and that areas of society with reactionary leadership could not be changed overnight despite their obvious problems, because Ghana had no revolutionary war which would have produced and trained those who would have been able to take their place. Problems such as basic literacy due to the neglect of education during colonial times created a scarcity of qualified military, police, civil servants, and other experts and professionals, forcing a situation where many reactionary individuals with qualifications were retained in positions of leadership due to there often being no other viable, immediate replacement. Nkrumah observes in the same chapter that a once-dependent territory emerging from colonialism must try to accomplish in a single generation what it has taken developed nations 300 years or more to achieve if it is to survive in the modern world.

In Chapter 1, "Peking to Conakry" in which Nkrumah describes his reaction to finding about the coup that occurred in his absence, he comments:  "What had happened in Ghana was no more than a tactical set-back in the African revolutionary struggle of a type which I had often predicted." He also notes, "The people of Ghana were now being made to suffer for something which was not of their own making. They had been overcome by powerful external forces, and by the plotting and deception of a few selfish and ambitious reactionaries."

Nkrumah describes a similar point of view among the Chinese officials who were with him when he learned of the coup. While he was still in Beijing, Nkrumah states that the Chinese officials "made it clear that they regarded the military and police action in Ghana as no more than a temporary obstacle in the long struggle against imperialism, the kind of event to be expected, but which had no effect whatsoever on the final outcome." Nkrumah quotes Zhou Enlai as telling him, "You are a young man, you have another forty years ahead of you!" and later Liu Shaoqi stating at an event that day, "however hard the imperialists may whip up revolutionary adverse currents, the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles of the African peoples can never be suppressed but are bound to win final victory."

Events of the coup

Note: Dark Days in Ghana is written from Nkrumah's point of view, and published only two years after the coup, which occurred in his absence. Therefore, certain details, such as U.S. government documents released years later, CIA whistleblower accounts of the events, etc. do not appear in the text, although they are now available. This section deals primarily with Nkrumah's point of view and analysis of events.

In Chapter 2, titled "24th February 1966", Nkrumah outlines the general timeline of events of the coup, the process of taking over the presidential palace, and the identity of the main conspirators. He begins with his departure from Ghana on February 21, then describes how the main action of the coup was set into motion on February 23, when a handful of opportunistic military leaders intercepted a 600-strong group of Ghanaian soldiers who were on the move. The leaders lied to the soldiers, saying that Nkrumah had fled the country, stolen £8 million, and was planning to send them to fight in Vietnam, while Russians had secret tunnels under Ghana's capital and were flying planes in, that there was effectively no more government in Ghana and therefore the soldiers were needed to take control of the capital. The soldiers were convinced by this, and so various individuals in positions of power were rounded up, forced to surrender, arrested, or killed. Flagstaff House, the presidential palace of Ghana (now known as Jubilee House), eventually fell under their control as well. Ministers, officials of the Party, and trade unionists were arrested and detained. Nkrumah states in Dark Days in Ghana, "The rank and file police who had taken no part in the 'coup' were horrified at what was taking place and did their best to restrain the soldiers and this led in some cases to actual fighting between the two forces."

Nkrumah describes what the troops were told when they were first intercepted by the coup conspirators and the aftermath after the conspirators took control, as follows:

The troops were then told that I intended sending them to fight in Vietnam and in Rhodesia, and that I had deserted Ghana taking with me £8 million. There was, they were told, no government left in Ghana, and it was their duty to assume control of the country to maintain law and order. Already, was said, Russian planes were landing on a secret airstrip in northern Ghana. Furthermore a secret tunnel had been made from Flagstaff House, the presidential residence, to Accra airport, and for days Russians had been arriving. The only way to save Ghana, and to avoid being sent to fight in Vietnam, the troops were told, was to take Flagstaff House. Several days after the military seizure of power, Kotoka and Afrifa appeared on Ghana TV congratulating themselves on their easy success. One remark stood out unmistakable and clear: ‘And you know, we didn’t find any Russians at all— not one! Nor could we find any trace of that tunnel.” This was followed by peals of laughter at the poor soldiers who had believed their story.

Nkrumah notes in the following chapter of the book that the bulk of the Ghanaian military's infantry came from the north, where education had been almost completely neglected in colonial times, which "made many of the rank and file soldiers easy prey to anyone who wished to mislead them." Meanwhile, some of the higher ranking members of the military espoused colonial values and what Nkrumah refers to as the "Sandhurst mentality" (referring to the British Army's Royal Military Academy Sandhurst) saying "These men trained in various English military establishments prided themselves on being more 'English' than Ghanaian, and tended to frown on everything in our Ghanaian way of life which did not conform with English customs and traditions. They gradually became more British than the British as they slavishly tried to imitate the traditional English army officer."

Following the coup, Western imperialist media took to portraying the situation in Ghana as having popular support. Nkrumah comments on demonstrations in the capital, in which "Banners and posters, most of them prepared beforehand in the U.S. Embassy, were pushed into the hands of the unwilling 'demonstrators'. Many of the slogans and words used on them were quite foreign to the Ghanaian people, and in some cases completely incomprehensible" and he describes it as "interesting [...] that even in the Ghanaian papers there were no reports of any such demonstrations in the villages or in the country-side where one would have expected them, if the revolt had been genuinely popular."

Analysis of reactionary elements in leadership

Chapter 3 of the book covers the identity of the main domestic instigators of the coup, known as the National Liberation Council (NLC), followed by an analysis of why there were such reactionary elements in Ghana's military leadership at the time, as well as an analysis of reactionary and counter-revolutionary elements of the police leadership and civil service.

On the identity of the NLC, Nkrumah comments: "Few had ever heard of them. They were nonentities. Yet here they were, four soldiers and four policemen, arrogantly claiming, without any shred of a mandate from the people, that they constituted 'the new government of Ghana'. Small wonder Ghanaians were at first stunned, and then became increasingly incensed as this clique of misguided and ignorant upstarts proceeded to un-mask not only themselves but their neo-colonialist masters."

The chapter includes quotations from a booklet released by the NLC shortly after the coup, which included the council members' personal bios and lists of their hobbies, alongside Nkrumah's commentary on their careers and identities during and after colonial times.

Following the description of the NLC, Nkrumah makes an examination of the leadership of the army, police and civil service in order to understand how it became possible for reactionary, counterrevolutionary forces, internal and external, to make use of them.

Then, after supplying a table of assassinations, overthrows, seizures of power, etc. in Africa throughout the 1960s, Nkrumah concludes that in each case where there has been counter-revolutionary armed action, "there has been a link-up between foreign-trained army officers, local reactionary opposition elements and imperialists and neo-colonialists," which Nkrumah follows up with several examples of CIA involvement in Africa in such matters.

Analysis of army

Nkrumah states that there was a contradiction between his task to secure a firm position in Ghana and to conduct an external policy which would lead to the liberation and unity of Africa as a whole. The Ghanaian army had been under the leadership of British officers, and Nkrumah notes that if this system had remained in place after independence (in other words, allowing Britain to continue supplying key officers to independent Ghana), there would have been less likelihood that the army would revolt against Nkrumah's leadership. However, such a move would prevent Ghana from aiding other African nations in their liberation struggles, as doing so would be contrary to British interests. Nkrumah notes, "while British officers were prepared to be loyal to the regime they were serving they were not prepared [...] to follow a military policy abroad which was contrary to what they conceived to be Britain's interests. Secondly, even if the British officers had been pure mercenaries, with no allegiance other than to their paymasters, they would still have been rightly distrusted by other African states."

Therefore, Nkrumah found that when "the Congo crisis arose, irrespective of any question of internal security, it became necessary to dispense with the British officers" and that "the tragedy of the Congo made one thing absolutely clear, that even small African forces on the spot at the right time could control the situation and prevent a neo-colonialist take-over. I therefore was not in a position to abolish the Ghanaian army, though this would have been an ideal course."

Due to these factors, as well as an insufficient number of Ghanaian soldiers with necessary training for promotion, Nkrumah found himself in a position where he had to accept the military in the unfavorable state that it was at independence, in order to have an army at all. Nkrumah explains:

Unfortunately, the “preparations” for independence had not included the training of anything like sufficient officers or even NCO’s to make it possible for me to choose on political grounds who should be promoted. There were, in fact, insufficient soldiers with the necessary training or qualifications to fill even half the positions left vacant by the departing British. In order to have an army at all, I therefore had to accept what existed even though I knew the danger of this course. In fact, the most efficient of the British trained Ghanaian potential officer class were the most neo-colonialist. One or two of these I might pass over on this ground, but in general, if I was to have an army at all, I had to accept the framework bequeathed to me and an officer corps which contained a high proportion of individuals who were either actively hostile to the C.P.P. [Convention People's Party] and myself and who were anti-socialist in outlook. Worse still, the fact that the bulk of the infantry came from the North, where education had been almost completely neglected in colonial times, made many of the rank and file soldiers easy prey to anyone who wished to mislead them.

Nkrumah comments that approximately one-sixth of Ghana's officer corps were trained at the British Army's Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, though for some years Nkrumah's government had been sending an increasing number to train in the Soviet Union and in other socialist countries. Nkrumah states that "it is significant that not one of the officers trained in the Soviet Union took part in the February rising."

Nkrumah states that the only way to ensure against the possibility of internal subversion carried out by the army and inspired and aided by outside forces is to eventually abolish professional armies altogether and to build instead a people's militia, by arming the peasants and urban workers, as in China and Cuba. Nkrumah states that "Such an armed force cannot be subverted and is the best guardian of the people's interests and welfare." Nkrumah explains that Ghana was moving towards the establishment of a people's militia in Ghana, and this is one of the reasons why there was support among certain army officers for a seizure of power, as they feared competition from the militia and the Presidential Guard Regiment, thinking Nkrumah was building up a "private army".

Analysis of police

Nkrumah describes the issues within the police as "even more complex" than that of the army. Nkrumah explains that as Ghana began rapid development and industrialization, crimes of theft and financial corruption rose, making a well-organized fraud department necessary. However, Nkrumah stats that he "could not possibly continue" with the existing British police officers. However, Nkrumah describes a similar issue of filling gaps in expertise which he faced with the army, forcing him to accept an unfavorable police leadership for the time being:

As with the army, I therefore had to accept a police force many of whose higher officers were politically hostile to the new Ghana. They, after all, had been those chosen for promotion by the colonial regime and they had thus a monopoly of the specialist training required. Further many of them were corrupt but to obtain proof of this was a difficult matter.

Later in the book, in Chapter 4, Nkrumah speaks further on the difficulty of filling qualified positions: "I could have dismissed many of the higher police officers about whose loyalty I had doubts. But whom could I have put in their place? So little education was done in colonial times that actual illiteracy was a major problem in the army and police."

Nkrumah states that he tried in these circumstances to build up a new security service which would be completely independent of the police force, but had to recruit from the civil service, which eventually proved unreliable.

Nkrumah also mentions the Special Branch, originally founded by the British government in Ghana to "keep an eye on" Nkrumah. The Special Branch was not abolished at independence due to a possibility that it might become useful in police work, which Nkrumah expressed regret over in Dark Days in Ghana, mentioning that members of the Special Branch were involved in multiple assassination attempts against him and ignored and sometimes aided plots to overthrow the government.

Analysis of civil service

The third group in Nkrumah's analysis of counterrevolutionary elements in Ghana is the civil service. He explains that he faced similar problems with them that he did with the army and police, that is, problems filling positions in leadership and with colonial values prevalent among existing leadership. To illustrate the problems posed by the situation, Nkrumah points out that "the Information Services which were the most important channel in letting the people know what was taking place and the reasons for any particular government action were all manned by civil servants originally trained by the old colonial Information Department which had been set up specifically to conduct propaganda against the C.P.P. and the idea of colonial independence."

Nkrumah points out that "throughout the public service as a whole, there was a tradition of serving whatever government was in power" and that when colonialism gave way to independence, "these same men gave support to the new order of things. [...] In such circumstances it is only natural that they should have in the first place uncritically accepted the rebel government." In other words, in Nkrumah's view, the civil servants had shown a tendency to lukewarmly serve whoever was in power, from the colonial regime, to Nkrumah's government, to the coup regime.

Opposition elements

Chapter 4, titled "'Opposition' Elements" begins by following the development of the National Liberation Movement (NLM), a reactionary opposition party in Ghana. The NLM had initially grown out of the "Council for Higher Cocoa Prices" which had fanned tribal and regional tensions to attack the CPP prior to independence. Nkrumah explains how the NLM was supported by the imperialist press and regularly hindered the independence movement during colonial times. Much of the content discussed in this chapter deal with Ghana's independence movement in the 1950s, following various developments and details about political figures and organizations of the time.

After Ghana's independence, Nkrumah explains that the opposition forces continued to be a hinderance, saying, "my government immediately came up against opposition from the same quarters as before, that is, from reactionary bourgeois elements inside Ghana, and from imperialist and neo-colonialist interests outside. As before, these forces had a common interest; both wished to delay economic independence and to impede the progress of the African revolution." He further explains that after 1957, having been repeatedly rejected by the electorate, the opposition "lost hope of gaining office by constitutional means, and embarked on a campaign of obstructing the work of government without making any attempt to devise an alternative programme. [...] Their policies, always regional in concept, became purely destructive, subversive and violent."

Nkrumah states that "after two and a half years of putting up with a vicious opposition press campaign, certain restrictions were placed on the press; and a fifth attempt on my life made preventive detention necessary. By then, assassination attempts had resulted in the death of 30 Ghanaians, men, women and children, and the wounding of some 300 others." After explaining these reasons for placing certain restrictions on the press, Nkrumah adds that political discussion and open criticism on the basis of democratic centralism was common and fully allowed in Ghana, often to the surprise of non-socialist, Western visitors.

Reactionary professionals and technical experts

Similar to the problems of the military, police, and civil service analyzed in Chapter 3, Nkrumah points out in Chapter 4 that due to Ghana's lack of sufficiently trained personnel in various fields, they were forced to retain professional and technical experts who held reactionary views. He describes that the calculated risk to retain them and bring them into the Party was taken, not only because Ghana could not do without qualified doctors, engineers, architects, etc., but also because they would join the opposition if excluded from the Party:

The first priority in Ghana at the time of independence was to make use of our pitifully small stock of professional and technical experts. Whatever their political views they had to be utilised to the full in the interest of the newly emerged Ghana state. From the start I had to bring not only into my cabinet but had to appoint to important posts in the judiciary, the civil service and the universities, individuals who had been active opponents of the Party in colonial days. We could not afford to do without such few qualified African doctors, accountants, architects, engineers, university teachers and professional people generally as were available immediately after independence. A formula had to be found by which they could not only be employed in state service and in development generally but brought within the Party. This in its turn meant that the Party itself could not in these conditions restrict itself to those who understood and had practised a socialist ideology. The calculated risk of admitting these persons to our organisation was one we had to take. [...] Insofar as they were within the Party they were a source of weakness because they sabotaged attempts to prevent corruption and, in a number of cases, actually joined in it themselves. Yet if they had been excluded from the Party, they would have joined the so-called "opposition" which had become, almost from the moment of independence, a purely conspiratorial organisation.

Traditional society

In addition to the above, Nkrumah found that he had to accommodate within the Party the leaders of traditional society. Nkrumah states that although he may have trusted too much in the power of a reformed chieftaincy, he was not mistaken in attempting to use popularly chosen chiefs within the framework of the government. According to Nkrumah, it was essential to have the broadest possible grouping of interests in Ghana in order to be sufficiently united to deal with the political unification of the African continent.

Nkrumah also points to nepotism as a prevalent problem, stemming from traditional beliefs around duty toward one's family. Nkrumah states that although he believes tribalism had largely been eliminated as an active force, its by-products and those of the family system still had some political effects, even within the Party.

Economy and development

Chapter 5, titled "The Big Lie" discusses Ghana's economic situation prior to the coup, focusing in detail on the Seven Year Development Plan, which had been launched in 1964 and was a few years underway at the time of the coup. The "Big Lie" referred to in the chapter title is the notion that Ghana was in economic chaos and that Nkrumah's administration was rife with economic mismanagement. Data provided in the chapter serves to illustrate that the Seven Year Development Plan, like previous development plans such as the First and Second Five Year Development Plans (1951-1956 and 1959-1964), was being adhered to and achieving successful results, and that Ghana's economy and development was rapidly improving in several areas, including in education, transport, communication, healthcare, electricity generation, water supply services, agriculture, and industrial production.

While Chapter 5 mainly discusses Ghana's development plans in detail, Chapter 6, titled "Set Back" focuses on specific instances of the coup regime's selling-off of state enterprises and halting of development projects. Both chapters also discuss the behavior of the imperialist press and financial institutions toward Ghana before and after the coup.

To illustrate Ghana's development challenges, Nkrumah notes that under colonial rule, Ghana's output of cocoa was the largest in the world, but there was not a single cocoa processing factory in Ghana, and that before his administration took office in 1951, there was no direct railway between the capital, Accra, and Takoradi, which was Ghana's main port at the time. Nkrumah writes: "There were few roads, and only a very rudimentary public transport system. For the most part, people walked from place to place. There were very few hospitals, schools or clinics. Most of our villages lacked a piped water supply. In fact, the nakedness of the land when my government began in 1951 has to have been experienced to be believed."

Nkrumah also mentions that when the Party came to power in 1951, all imported goods were in the hands of a few big foreign firms, especially the monopolist United Africa Company, part of the Unilever complex, but by 1965, the nationalized Ghana National Trading Corporation was distributing 32 per cent of all imports. Additionally, in 1958, foreign banks held one-third of Ghana's foreign currency reserves, but by 1965 they held none. Nkrumah says that his administration breaking up the web of Western capitalism's economic control in Ghana provoked the hostility of imperialist economic powers.

Seven Year Development Plan

Stating that the principles of scientific socialism were being applied to Ghana's particular situation in forming the Plan, Nkrumah explains that Ghana's economy was to remain mixed for the time being, but that it would focus on expanding the public and co-operative sector faster than the private sector:

It was decided in the Seven Year Plan that Ghana’s economy would for the time being remain a mixed one, with a vigorous public and co-operative sector operating alongside the private sector. Our socialist objectives demanded, however, that the public and co-operative sectors should expand faster than the private sector, especially those strategic areas of production upon which the economy of the country essentially depended. Various state corporations and enterprises were to be established as a means of securing our economic independence and assisting in the national control of the economy. They were, like all business undertakings, expected to maintain themselves efficiently, and to show profits which could be used for further investment and to help finance public services. A State Management Committee was set up to ensure their efficient and profitable management.

Nkrumah also mentions that it would be necessary to distinguish between two types of private enterprise in Ghana, one being "the small businessman who employed his capital in an industry or trade with which he was familiar, and which fulfilled a public need" which was to be encouraged, and the other being "that class of Ghanaian businesses which were modelled on the old colonial pattern of exploitation" which used their capital not to fill a public need, but to buy up commodities to resell at exorbitant prices. In reference to the second type, Nkrumah writes: "This type of business served no social purpose, and steps would be taken to see that the nation’s banking resources were not used to provide credit for them."

One of the projects discussed in this chapter is the Volta River Project and Volta Dam (now also known as the Akosombo Dam), designed to increase Ghana's capacity to generate electricity and thereby increase Ghana's productive capacity. Nkrumah states that it was expected to increase the installed electrical capacity of the country by nearly 600%, and that almost half of this new capacity would be used in aluminum smelting, in order to take advantage of Ghana's plentiful bauxite. In addition, the man-made lake formed as part of the Volta River Project was being stocked with fish, which was expected to improve nutritional deficiencies by increasing the protein content in the average Ghanaian's diet. The lake was also expected to act as a reservoir to improve water supply for villages and as irrigation for agriculture. Finally, the dam was expected to help provide power to Ghana's neighboring countries, in the spirit of Africa's total development. In regard to this, Nkrumah states Ghana was "ready and prepared to supply power to our neighbours in Togo, Dahomey, Ivory Coast and Upper Volta" and that "this project is not for Ghana alone [...] I have already offered to share our power resources with our sister African states."

Nkrumah describes the Volta River Project and the effects it was intended to have in relation to other projects for Ghana's development and economic independence:

Construction targets for the various parts of the Volta River Project were achieved, some of them ahead of schedule, and the official inauguration ceremony took place on 23rd January 1966. At that time, building was about to start on a large subsidiary dam at Bui. Plans were also well advanced for the construction of an alumina plant which would have given Ghanaians control of the whole process of aluminium production. As it was, we were exporting bauxite to the United Kingdom for processing while we were importing alumina manufactured in the United States from bauxite mined in Jamaica for our aluminium smelter.

In other words, hydropower from the Volta River Project was expected to power aluminum smelting in Ghana, so that Ghana could have full control of aluminum production, rather than exporting its own mined bauxite to the imperialist UK while importing manufactured alumina (aluminium oxide, used in aluminium metal production) from the imperialist US, which was sourcing its bauxite from Jamaica.

Economic pressure from imperialist institutions

Nkrumah writes that throughout 1965, the U.S. government exerted various forms of economic pressure on Ghana, such as withholding investment and credit guarantees from potential investors, put pressure on existing providers of credit to the Ghanaian economy, and negated applications for loans made by Ghana to American-dominated financial institutions such as the IMF.  Nkrumah points out that this pressure ended after February 24 1966, when the U.S. State Department's political objective had been achieved. Nkrumah writes, "The price of cocoa suddenly rose on the world market, and the I.M.F. rushed to the aid of the ““N.L.C.”." He mentions that within two weeks of the ending of legal government in Ghana, the army and police traitors received an invitation to send a mission to Washington for talks with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank officials, and that supplies of various foodstuffs and other consumer goods were promised to provide the necessary window dressing for the new regime.

Although not mentioned in Dark Days in Ghana, 1965 U.S. security council memorandums from several months before the coup, not released until years later, show U.S officials discussing among themselves that pro-Western coup plotters in Ghana were keeping U.S. officials "briefed", and a U.S. security council staffer states that "we and other Western countries (including France) have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Nkrumah's pleas for economic aid" hoping that this would "spark" the coup. Weeks after the coup, March 12 1966 U.S. internal documents discuss that the new, "almost pathetically pro-Western" regime should be given gifts of surplus grain to "whet their appetite" for further U.S. support.

In Chapter 6, Nkrumah describes the above tactic as "standard practice" in the then-recent wave of coups in Asia, Latin America and Africa. He states that wherever progressive governments have been replaced by counter-revolutionary forces, imperialist financial organizations have rushed to bolster them up with loans and various forms of so-called "aid". He explains that this practice "is a necessary corollary to the 'big lie' usually employed to justify the overthrow of 'undesirable governments'—the lie of 'economic chaos' and a 'starving' population. But more important, it serves to tighten the stranglehold of foreign economic control over the captive people by creating more indebtedness and a deeper penetration by foreign business interests."

Coup regime's sale of state enterprises

Chapter 6, titled "Set Back" describes details of how Ghana's state-run enterprises and other resources were rapidly sold off to foreign capitalists after the coup, with the coup regime selling off 63 state enterprises and having meetings with foreign capitalists, such as British Major-General Sir Edward Spears, Chairman of Ashanti Goldfields, a gold mining company. Meanwhile the western press celebrated Ghana's turn to the West and its "coming to heel". The chapter also discusses how the Seven Year Development Plan was halted soon after the coup regime took power.

Nkrumah writes in Chapter 5:

The only Ghanaians to benefit from such a sell-out were the African middle-class hangers-on to neo-colonialist privilege and the neo-colonialist trading firms. For the mass of workers, peasants and farmers, the victims of the capitalist free-for-all, it meant a return to the position of "drawers of water and hewers of wood" to Western capitalism.

In Chapter 6, he further states:

Businessmen from the U.S.A., from Britain, West Germany, Israel and elsewhere, flew into Ghana like vultures to grab the richest pickings. Virtually all the state-owned industries developed by my government were allowed to pass into private ownership. These included such enterprises as The Timber Products Corporation, The Cocoa Products Corporation, the Diamond Mining Corporation, the National Steel Works, the Black Star Shipping Line, Ghana Airways, and all the state-owned hotels.

Nkrumah notes that as a result of the economic sell-out, the private sector would become the largest in terms of number of persons engaged and gross output, while under his administration it had been the smallest, and was in the process of being further reduced.

Apart from handing over public corporations to private enterprise, the NLC also announced drastic cuts in the routes operated by Ghana Airways, the halting of work on the new international airport at Tamale in Northern Ghana, and the cancellation of a number of orders for new ships for the state-owned Black Star Line. Both Ghana Airways and the Black Star Line had been established by Nkrumah's administration with the intention to break the monopoly of foreign transport companies, and they were ultimately to become foreign currency earners. Nkrumah says that the NLC shut these and other projects down for being "prestige" spending projects, to which Nkrumah responds that the foundation of new industries and the building up of national air and shipping lines is seen as evidence of prestige spending "only by imperialists and neo-colonialists who wish to see a country revert back to the position of a colony."

Letters sent to Nkrumah

Among the heads of state whose letters to Nkrumah are included in the book's appendix are (in order of appearance):

1. Modibo Keita, President of Mali
2. Ahmed Sékou Touré, President of Guinea
3. Gammel Abdel Nasser, President of the United Arab Republic
4. Kim Il Sung, President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
5. Albert Margai, Prime Minister of Sierra Leone
6. Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore