Kwame Nkrumah’s Consciencism: A Philosophical Analysis
Chapter One
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
A key purpose of this project work is to attempt an exposition of Nkrumah’s solution to the African predicament brought about by colonial presence on African soil.
Another important purpose of this work is that it will evaluate Nkrumah’s proposed solution to decide whether or not it will be useful in the African quest for moving forward in every sense.
CHAPTER TWO
THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KWAME NKRUMAH
The Continental Union Government of Africa
If there is one agenda or political framework which occupied Kwame Nkrumah’s attention from his earliest political struggles to his overthrow in the year 1966 and even beyond, it was precisely his vision of a continental union government for Africa. It was in fact his vision and mission to accomplish this. Learning a great lesson from the balkanization of the Ottoman Empire, which was orchestrated by the European powers and which eventually led to the disastrous World War I (1914-1918), Nkrumah realized early in his political life that Africa’s independent states, which were artificially carved out at the Berlin Conference in 1884, could not survive if there was no unified front on a continental basis in order to combat the threat imperialism posed. In other words, Africa needed a continental union government that could act as a shield against external interference. Nkrumah submitted that Africa’s independent states could either become satellite states of the imperialist countries or collapse one by one as a result of imperialist meddling in their political and economic affairs.
Since some African countries were still struggling to liberate themselves from colonial shackles at the time Ghana gained her political independence, Nkrumah expressed optimism that Africa could be united under one socialist continental government, only if the remaining territories still under colonial domination were liberated. Thus, all resources, human and material, were mobilized in an effort to expel the colonial forces from the African soil. It was against this backdrop that on the eve of Ghana’s independence Nkrumah made his celebrated speech: “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it was linked up with the total liberation of Africa” (Nkrumah, 1963, p. 100). Thus, with the attainment of Ghana’s independence, Nkrumah reasoned that Ghana as a sovereign state could not isolate itself socially and politically from the rest of the continent, since it could not battle imperialism alone. Nkrumah was therefore determined to see Africa united under a continental union government, just like the USA and the USSR (Nkrumah, 1963).
Nkrumah indicates that up to 1945 when the 5th Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester, England, his idea of African unity was limited to West Africa. In other words, it was his determination to see West Africa united under a single government.
CHAPTER THREE
KWAME NKRUMAH AND AFRICAN SOCIALISM
In the course of the 1960s, African socialism emerged as a popular version of socialism embraced by the post-independence African leaders. After political independence in Africa there was a rush by African leaders to call their political ideas anything but capitalism. The label “African socialism” came in handy. This was the situation not just because it was fashionable to do so but perhaps also because they thought socialism had different local characteristics, and so Africa had its own version of socialism uniquely African.
Mboya defines African socialism as “… those proven codes of conduct in the African societies which have, over the ages, conferred dignity on our people and afforded them security regardless of their station in life” (Mboya, 1975, p. 60). Mboya further notes that African socialism should be seen as those ideals and attitudes of mind in traditional African norms and customs which regulated man’s conduct, with the social weal as its fundamental objective (Mboya, 1975). Similarly, In Consciencism, Nkrumah argues that the indigenous African society is anti-capitalist and egalitarian in nature. To this effect, socialism in his opinion had a lot in common with traditional African communal past and hence socialism was a suitable ideology for the new African countries.
CHAPTER FOUR
A CRITIQUE OF KWAME NKRUMAH’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
We have shown in the previous chapters that political philosophy entails a reaction to an existing socio-political and economic order and a proposal of the way forward. Kwame Nkrumah diagnosed the problems confronting Africa as imperialism, capitalism and neo-colonial forces which militated against the realization of peace, political stability and socio-economic progress in Africa.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Summary of the Study
It is the contention of this study that since the Golden Age of Greece, and especially since Plato, the primary aim of political philosophy concerns how the ideal state could be attained. Thus, theorising on the ideal political philosophy suitable to post-colonial Africa did not escape the intellectual curiosity of most African independent leaders including Kwame Nkrumah. African leaders reasoned that much of the progress that Africa stood to make would largely depend on the kind of political philosophy it adopted. Thus, we dedicated Chapter one of this study to examining and clarifying the subject matter of political philosophy as it was used by African independence leaders and especially, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.
In Chapters two and three, the study carried out an exposition of Nkrumah’s political philosophy, concentrating on the three themes we have identified, namely, political independence, African unity, and socialism. The objective in carrying out this exposition was to isolate the weaknesses inherent in Nkrumah’s political philosophy, in order to inform and enrich our critique. In this exposition, we realized that political liberation which was dear to Nkrumah and which he expressed in “seek ye first the political kingdom and all others shall be added unto ye”, constitutes for him, both the necessary and sufficient condition for all other independences, including social and economic progress. Apart from political independence, Nkrumah reasoned that African territories such as Ghana and Nigeria that had regained their political freedom could not stand on their own, politically and economically, unless they were welded into a continental union government with common defense, sound economic planning and central political administration. This is what Nkrumah referred to as African unity or the continental union government of Africa. Since Nkrumah blamed the capitalist system of production for Africa’s economic and social backwardness, he proposed the socialist system of production as the panacea to Africa’s underdevelopment. In other words, Nkrumah felt that the continental union Government of Africa could stand on its own only if it was backed by the socialist system of production. As Nkrumah succinctly puts it in Class Struggle in Africa, “…the achievements of African Union and socialism are organically complementary; the one cannot be achieved without the other” (Nkrumah 1970, p. 84).
Conclusion
We concluded our study of Nkrumah’s political philosophy by carrying out a critique in chapter four. We discovered, among other weaknesses, that Nkrumah’s call for continental unity is premised on a historical distortion, largely because Africa was not united on a continental scale before the advent of European colonisation. This historical fact is contrary to Nkrumah’s assertion that Africa was balkanised by the European colonial powers during the advent of colonialism. We also discovered that consciencism as an ideology for Africa’s decolonisation is flawed on two grounds: the combined presence of the ‘triple heritage’ (Islamic culture, Euro-Christian culture and traditional African culture) constitutes only a necessary but not a sufficient basis for the disorientation of the African conscience. Besides, the presence of the three cultures in Africa does not appear to constitute the only fundamental national reconstruction challenge in post-colonial Africa. Other equally significant challenges such as economic and social factors needed much more attention and redress even more than the religious question. It is the contention of this study that the political kingdom Nkrumah advocated as the way to all other independences only constitute a necessary but not a sufficient condition for all other indices of progress. This is so because considered in itself, political liberation falls short of other independences.
We realised also that significant as Nkrumah’s conviction of continental unity appeared to be, the political tools such as diplomacy and subversion which were simultaneously and somewhat arbitrarily deployed towards the realisation of this kind of unity were inappropriate as they failed to address challenges of the continental union vision.
We have also seen that Nkrumah’s idealisation of Africa’s history did not leave him much space and time to objectively elucidate the socialist study he puts forward. In his attempt to Africanise Marxian socialism, Nkrumah ended up affirming the basic tenets of Marxian socialism (historical and dialectical materialism). Class struggle in Africa and Handbook on Revolutionary Warfare, two of Nkrumah later books that lean heavily on Marxian socialism, further exemplify this ambivalence in Nkrumah’s political philosophy.
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