Kwame Nkrumah, the Guinean years
Mausoleum in Accra of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president Max Milligan, Getty
Text by: Laurent Correau Follow
12 mins
Kwame Nkrumah's five years of exile in Guinea, from the 1966 coup until his hospitalization in Romania in 1971 are not as well known as his long fight for independence and his period of exercise of power. at the head of Ghana.
They are nevertheless essential in the evolution of his thought and have determined part of the intellectual heritage he left behind.
The welcome given to him by Guinean power, far from cutting him off from the world, allowed him to remain connected, during these years, to African progressives and Afro-descendant activists.
He maintains an important correspondence, receives visitors and writes several essential works of his work.
his readings,
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The aircraft from Rangoon in Burma lands and stops on the runway of Beijing airport.
A Chinese delegation came to welcome Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, for this stopover en route to Hanoi: Nkrumah is carrying proposals to try to end the war in Vietnam.
From the bottom of the catwalk to the official apartments reserved for him, no Chinese official said a word about what had just happened in Accra.
While the
Osagyefo
(the redeemer, as he is nicknamed) is resting from the trip, the Chinese ambassador to Ghana - who accompanies the trip - comes to visit him: "
Mr. President
, he says,
I have bad news.
There was a coup in Ghana
”.
The Ghanaian leader is incredulous
“- What are you saying?
- A coup in Ghana.
- Impossible !
– Yes, it is possible.
These are things that happen.
They are in the nature of revolutionary combat.
»
On February 24, 1966, thanks to the trip of the Ghanaian head of state, a coalition of police and soldiers seized power in Accra.
The plotters codenamed this takeover "Operation Cold Chop."
A National Liberation Council (NLC) took control of the country, under the leadership of General Ankrah.
A coup accompanied by the CIA
In the secret exchanges that take place within the American power, certain senior officials
are delighted with this “fortuitous windfall”
in the face of a man “
who did more to undermine our interests than any other black African
”.
But various works, including those of the historian Susan Williams, show that it is much more than a “fortuitous windfall”.
The coup was accompanied by the CIA [1].
A former member of the agency, John Stockwell, asserts that the Accra station received a "
generous budget
and maintained "close contact" with the putschists during the coup.
The involvement of the CIA office was so strong, he writes, that it was able to coordinate the US recovery of classified Soviet military equipment during the events.
The CIA station in Accra, Stockwell explains, even proposed at the time that a team take advantage of the confusion to break into the Chinese embassy, kill the people who would have been there, recover information confidential and blow up the building.
This action was ultimately not triggered.
► Report Africa: Ghana, the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah, father of the country's independence
In China, the authorities seek in any case to minimize the scope of what is happening.
“
The Chinese
,” says Kwame Nkrumah in his book 'Dark Days in Ghana', “
have made it clear that they see police action as a temporary obstacle in the long fight against capitalism, and nothing more.
The kind of events that are to be expected, but which have no effect, in any way, on the final result.
“
You are a young man
,” Chou En-Lai, then vice-president of the Chinese Communist Party, told Nkrumah.
You still have forty years ahead of you!
»
During the banquet given in honor of Nkrumah on the very day of the coup, the President of the People's Republic of China Liu Shao-Chi evokes Afro-Asian solidarity and speaks of the revolutionary struggle of the African peoples.
He denounces neocolonialism and its "
citadel par excellence
", the United States.
Nkrumah responds by also condemning neocolonialism, the American "
aggression
" in Vietnam.
He calls for a withdrawal of all American forces to make way for peace.
But he knows he won't go to Hanoi.
He must return to Africa.
As quickly as possible.
In the 48 hours that followed, the ousted Ghanaian leader juggled between the official program of his visit (led under the watchful eye of Chinese security more than ever) and the messages that reached him.
Several progressive African leaders offered him immediate hospitality: Guinean Sékou Touré, but also the Egyptian Nasser, President Nyerere of Tanzania and the Malian Modibo Keïta.
Nkrumah seizes the Guinean proposal.
As early as 1958, Ghana and Guinea tried the experiment of a union which fizzled out.
Nkrumah has strong personal ties with Touré.
Above all, he wants to be in a country as close as possible to Ghana.
“
I knew
, he writes in Dark days in Ghana,
that being in Guinea, I would be in good conditions to continue the African revolutionary struggle.
He left Beijing on February 28, 1966, on board a plane lent by the Soviets, stopped over in Moscow where he met several officials, in Yugoslavia, in Algeria and arrived in Guinea in the afternoon of March 2.
A large crowd gathered at Conakry airport.
Nkrumah is greeted with 21 welcome salvos.
The next day, the Guinean official, Ahmed Sékou Touré, announces in front of a galvanized crowd, brandishing signs, that he is making him the co-president of Guinea.
"
President Sékou Touré made a long speech
," recalls Nkrumah.
I didn't know at the time exactly what he was saying.
He spoke in French and my knowledge of this language was then imperfect.
I understood that I had been presented to the people of Guinea, but I had not understood that I had been made president.
It was only after the ceremony, thanks to media reports, that he became fully aware of his new duties.
They will, in fact, be essentially symbolic.
In Conakry, Kwame Nkrumah was installed at Villa Syli.
He frequently sees Sékou Touré and members of the government.
Especially in the evening, at dinner.
A ritual to which the wife of the Guinean leader, Andrée Touré, willingly lends herself.
Influential members of the PDG (Democratic Party of Guinea), the single Guinean party, are regularly at his table: Diallo Saïfoulaye, Lansana Beavogui, Diallo Abdoulaye.
A protocol official named Sana Camara was made available to him, as well as police commissioner Abdoulaye Combassa.
Kwame Nkrumah's first objective is to return.
To take back the power that was stolen from him.
He regularly addresses the Ghanaian population from the studios of Guinean radio, Voice of the Revolution, and calls for resistance.
In 1968, he called for the launch of “Positive action” to overthrow the military in power.
Historian Ama Biney explains that he also supports from Conakry a certain number of clandestine operations which aim to bring him back to power [2].
In Accra, the National Liberation Council, for its part, is also trying to neutralize Nkrumah.
Ama Biney says a bounty of £10,000 is being offered to whoever brings him back to Accra, dead or alive.
On March 16, 1967, an attempt to kidnap the
Osagyefo
was even, she says, foiled by the Guinean navy.
“Far from feeling isolated
,
as the imperialist press would have its readers believe, I have never felt so connected to African and world affairs.”
Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah's days at Villa Syli start early.
"
I'm already up and it's 4:30 a.m.
I love working in the early hours of the morning,
” he wrote to June Milne, his literary executor one day
in
1967
. Ghana
.
You have to read the reports written from the radio and other sources, analyze them, act accordingly.
Correspondence must be processed and plans prepared for the continuation of the revolutionary struggle.
Correspondence alone, the telephone and cables keep me and my office busy for several hours a day.
»
Kwame Nkrumah receives many visitors in Conakry.
Including "freedom fighters" and members of progressive organizations.
“
Far from feeling isolated
, he explained,
as the imperialist press would have its readers believe, I have never felt so connected to African and world affairs
”.
The Bissau-Guinean independence fighter Amilcar Cabral, another guest of Sékou Touré, pays him several visits.
And nourishes his reflection on the armed struggle.
The former Ghanaian leader devotes a lot of time to writing.
He develops his ideas on the place of Africa in the world and the state of international relations in books and pamphlets.
In “Challenge in the Congo” (1968), he returns to the Congolese crisis, from the secession of Katanga to the seizure of power by Mobutu.
The book "Dark days in Ghana" (1968) - widely quoted in this article - gives him the opportunity to return to his fall and his exile in Conakry.
But Nkrumah also writes more generally on African struggles in “Class Struggle in Africa” (1969) or in “Handbook of Revolutionary warfare” (1970)… With June Milne,
he created Panaf books
to take over from his previous publisher, who abandoned it after the 1966 coup.
The deepening of a revolutionary political thought
While deepening his thought, Nkrumah develops, over the course of his readings and interviews, some of his positions during this Guinean period.
According to June Milne
, it was in Conakry that he notably modified his position on non-alignment: "
in the new international context of detente and when the armed phase of the revolutionary combat was effectively launched in Africa, Asia and in Latin America, Nkrumah considers that it is no longer possible to adopt a third way outside the main conflict.
"His vision of international relations now opposes two camps, the "revolutionary" and the "counter-revolutionary", it joins the bipolar conception of a face-to-face between the socialist world and the capitalist world "
with its extensions of imperialism, neo-colonialism and colonialism
”.
These Guinean years also confirm Kwame Nkrumah's attachment to African-American affairs, a distant echo of his long stay in the United States.
He wrote in Conakry "The Specter of Black Power", "The Specter of Black Power" (1968), which underlines the importance of transatlantic intellectual connections and the community of struggle of people of African descent: "
The work of the first pioneers pan-Africanism like H. Sylvester Williams, Dr. Web Du Bois, Marcus Garvey and John Padmore, none of whom were born in Africa, have become gems of African history
writes Nkrumah.
An additional sign of the strong ties that have been established between activists on both sides of the Atlantic, the presence in Conakry, at his side, of the Black Panthers activist Stokely Carmichael (who will adopt the name of Kwame Ture in homage to Kwame Nkrumah and Sékou Touré), also companion of the singer Myriam Makeba.
Stokely Carmichael describes himself in his memoirs as one of the forty to sixty loyalists present around the
Osagyefo
in the Guinean capital[3].
The leaders of the Casablanca Group, precursor of the OUA.
Presidents Modibo Keita (Mali)# Ahmed Sekou Toure (Guinea)#Kwamé Nkrumah (Ghana)# and the King of Morocco Mohamed V.# pic.twitter.com/bbTxaUtwPW
— François Lounceny Fall (@LouncenyFall) May 25, 2020
Kwame Nkrumah is finally taking advantage of these years to live another life.
He plays tennis, practices the game of chess which he finds stimulating and relaxing at the same time, follows military training.
He learns French with Mrs. Julienne Batchily.
He walks for a long time and with pleasure: “
Conakry is magnificently situated on a promontory of land that juts out into the sea,
he confides in Dark days in Ghana
.
Wherever you go in the city, you are only a few minutes away from sandy beaches and beautiful viewpoints on the neighboring coasts.
There are several offshore islands: Kassa, Fotoba, Tamara and others.
One of them is said to have been the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.
»
During the year 1968, explains the historian Ama Biney[4], we see in Nkrumah the signs of deteriorating health.
The following year, the hope of an “imminent” counter-coup encouraged him to constantly postpone plans to leave for treatment in the Soviet Union.
In 1970, his health deteriorated again and those around him doubted the diagnosis of acute lumbago given to him by a doctor.
The more the weeks pass, the more his Guinean hosts encourage him to go abroad for treatment.
He did not accept the trip to Bucharest until August 1971.
It was there that he died on April 27, 1972 of prostate cancer “
alone and isolated
, concludes Ama Biney,
but infinitely optimistic.
»
[1] WILLIAMS Susann, White malice.
The CIA and the neocolonization of Africa, Hurst, London, 2021
[2] BINEY Ama, “The Development of Kwame Nkrumah's Political Thought in Exile, 1966-1972” in The Journal of African History Vol.
50, No. 1 (2009), p.
81-100, Cambridge University Press
[3] CARMICHAEL Stokely (TURE Kame), Ready for revolution, Scribner, New York, 2003
[4] BINEY Ama, The Political and Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah, Palgrave MacMillan, London, 2011
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