Why Is Former President Kufour Still Fawning On Western Politicians Presiding Over Racist Systems?

Not too long ago I decided that I would no longer allow myself to be upset by the revisionists of our nation's history who use half truths, twisted facts and pure lies to denigrate President Nkrumah.

I came to that decision,  because it struck me one day - whiles listening to a diatribe against Nkrumah being broadcast during  a morning current affairs discussion programme - that despite the best efforts of his political opponents, in the main, the vast majority of the ordinary people of Ghana now accept that Nkrumah was indeed a truly great and selfless leader, who devoted himself to ordinary people and transforming Ghanaian society.

They have also accepted that Nkrumah was neither corrupt  nor self-seeking - and that he did not amass wealth whiles serving as Ghana's leader. The question there is: Can one say exactly the same thing about the golden age of business for Kufuor & Co, truthfully,  during his greed-filled presidency? The simple answer to that is: No!

Consequently, it no longer bothers me when I hear Nkrumah's detractors spewing their many untruths about him. Why bother when the masses can see monuments of Nkrumah's legacy all around them across the nation?  And, in any case, is Nkrumah not  already in the Pantheon of 20th century greats? So why bother? Cool.

However, one can understand those Nkrumahist politicians who still feel compelled to respond to such unfair criticism of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, whenever it is made by anti-Nkrumah politicians.

When members of the International Democratic Union (IDU)  called on former President Kufuor whiles in Ghana for the first meeting in sub-Saharan African of  the IDU's Executive and Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, the former president  surprisingly launched a verbal attack on Nkrumah.

The irony for me, is that  reading through some of the declassified National Security Security documents about President Nkrumah, from the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson eras, one notices that whiles American officials were invariably contemptous of the childlike-fawning of Nkrumah's political opponents whom they interacted with, clearly, all the Western leaders understood that Nkrumah was the one African leader who posed a real threat to their nations' continued hold on Africa's resources and their perpetual preying on the colonised minds of many Africans. 

Thus, getting rid of Nkrumah was a top-priority security matter for them in Africa: for they understood that in the long-term his radical ideas would turn Africa into a global power one day - the last thing they wanted -  if he was not stopped.

Sadly, in telling his visitors that Nkrumah destroyed Ghana's economy,  what escaped former President Kufuor was that it was the political forebears of the selfsame Western members of the IDU, who deliberately brought Ghana's economy to its knees  - simply to create public disaffection against Nkrumah's government: and make his overthrow by their local lackeys more  likely and possible.

Naturally, Kufuor also conveniently forgot that his party's political forebears went globetrotting, bad-mouthing Ghana, just  to dissuade investors from coming to invest here - and that those military and police officers who betrayed the black race by overthrowing Nkrumah were paid U.S.$13 million and promised more if they succeeded in killing him. What perfidy.

It  also seems to have escaped former president Kufuor that his own party is today adopting Nkrumah's import substitution industrialisation policy to boost growth in the economy and create jobs for young people - something that his provincial-minded  political forebears criticised as white elephant projects. Incredible. Talk about shortsightedness.

And it is also instructive that former President Kufuor developed a severe case of amnesia about his own anti-democratic political antecedents - regarding the fact that in 1958, despite  Ghana being a functioning multiparty democracy with a free press, his party's political forebears plotted to overthrow Nkrumah's Convention People's Party (CPP), just a year after independence from the British occupiers of our country, and that it was only the death in a plane crash of the leader of the coup plotters, Brigadier Michel, that aborted that planned coup. What egregious hypocrisy.

And worst of all - in an age when  terrorism has spawned draconian laws in all the Western democracies, which severely curtail individual freedoms, and which are far more anti-democratic    than all the anti-terrorism laws enacted by Nkrumah's government  -  and all of which one supports wholeheartedly,  one must hasten to add: being someone who always strongly condemns the cowardly extremists who engage in acts of terrorism around the globe - former President Kufuor condemns them as if they were abominations.

What is the matter with these stooges of neocolonialism in Africa, I ask? Haaba. Wake up, Oseikrom-Ogyakrom-Ghanaman. The question is: Why, and to what end, in the 21st century,  is a black African politician who once led his country still fawning on Western politicians presiding over racist systems - and many of whom are more likely than not secretly contemptuous of the black race themselves? Ebeeii.