Samia Yaba Christina Nkrumah is the only daughter of Ghana’s first President, the late legendary Dr. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957. In 2008 parliamentary election, she won the Jomoro Constituency seat at her first attempt. In 2011, she was elected to lead the Convention People’s Party – the first woman to lead a political party. She has since retired from active politics, but is now heading the Kwame Nkrumah Pan-African Centre – on a mission to revive her father’s ideas of Pan-Africanism and African unity. Samia, who was at the Kaduna Book and Arts Festival in Kaduna (KABAFEST), spoke on the essence of her father’s Pan-Africanism, her resolve to revive the movement and why Africans must hold their leaders accountable, among other issues. Assistant Editor (Arts) OZOLUA UHAKHEME reports
YOUR father’s image loomed larger than life as Ghana’s first political leader at independence. How much of his ideas do you imbibe?
For me, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah is not a father as much as he was a mentor and teacher. I am so honoured to have anything to do with him, including being his humble daughter. I am ‘Nkrumahist’ by conviction more than by birth. I am happy with this setting where we are talking about books and literature in Africa. What made me an ‘Nkrumahist’ is reading Kwame Nkrumah’s books, and he wrote no fewer than 40 books. Some of his books are still very relevant till today. For about three decades, I worked outside my country Ghana. But reading Nkrumah’s Africa Must Unite made me to decide to return home, because the ideas in the books must be demonstrated and lived. So, I believe in the power of words. Nkrumah, was a writer and maker of history. He wrote from a position of experience of knowledge. He was an organiser, an intellectual as well as a thinker. He is not my father but my leader.
Nkrumah’s brand of Pan-Africanism is idealistic. Are you promoting the same brand or there are critical areas you adjusted?
Let me explain this with an anecdote and the story of my family. My mother is not a Ghanaian but an Egyptian. The circumstances of my birth made me understand how and why we should unite as a people. Nkrumah who was Ghana’s Prime Minister some decades ago, decided to marry a woman from North Africa to promote Pan-Africvanism. His friendship with Egypt’s President Gamel Abdel Nasser then inspired him to choose a wife from that region of Africa, especially Egypt. He sent some emissaries to Egypt to look for a suitable wife. After a long search, they settled for my mother’s family. And my mother agreed to meet my father in Ghana through the support of the Egyptian President Abdel Nasser, who convinced my mother’s family.
To assure the family of his seriousness and commitment to the relationship, Nkrumah opened a Ghana Embassy in Egypt. My mother said when she saw my father while waiting at the Accra Airport, he was the most charming man she had ever met. Interestingly, the two had never met. Again, the two did not understand each other. But, with the aid of dictionary, they both discussed for two hours and decided they would get married. And they did. My mother never returned to Egypt.
What is the link between this story and Pan-Africanism?
The lesson from this story apart from the power of love and destiny is that when we make up our mind to do something, nothing can stop us. The differences in languages, religion, culture and our continent are so diverse. Looking at your great country Nigeria you can see so many different ethnic groups, but you chose to come together to accept it. You made the decision to be politically united. The key word here is to be politically united, because many of our problems are political.
Back to your question, Pan-Africanism as Kwame Nkrumah defined it was total liberation and unification of Africa and he defined it as an objective that we seek to meet. Now, I don’t think if Kwame Nkrumah had not done and worked with the Pan-African intellectuals in the United States of America, Ghana’s independence would have materialised fast. He fought for segregation and discrimination. He met with the people and organised with them. So, Pan-Africanism as an idea was born outside Africa, and that is why Nkrumah always says: ‘I’m not an African because I was born in Africa, but, I’m an African because Africa was born in me’. That is where the origin of that story came from, which is that we can make up our minds that we want to unite for a passion. We didn’t decide to unite because we look alike or because we speak the same language or do things the same way. I grew up in Egypt and Ghana and the two countries are different, yet similar in terms of challenges. One of our biggest problems is that the model of economic development we have is not working for the majority. What I’m saying is that we are not productive enough. And I want to give you one example. We Ghanaians are great cocoa producers. The value of cocoa beans yearly is about ten billion dollars. The added values of cocoa products such as chocolates and beverages among others amount to $100billion. It is obvious that we the producers, if we focus on adding values as nations to our raw materials, look at how much we will be making. So, our economic model must change. But it can’t change if we don’t unite politically and economically.
One of the huge developmental projects we need to undertake is the Nga Dam in Congo, one of the biggest and richest countries on the continent. About 50 years ago, Kwame Nkrumah first talked about it in his book African Must Unite, we need to construct the Nga dam in Congo. But, you know what, not a single country can construct the dam on its own because of its cost.
So, the only way to do such huge developmental project is for us to integrate our economies. The Sahara desert is a beautiful land in the midst of our continent that can produce renewable energies. It can become green with vegetation, but none of our countries can tackle it on its own. For us to eradicate poverty, get control of our resources, we have to find a way of becoming productive. The only and easiest way is for us to integrate our economies. But, a decision as having a common currency; don’t you think that is ultimately a political decision? Can you have a common currency without decision makers sitting together and agreeing to do it? Can we do away with our borders without decision makers agreeing to do it and how to do it? So, all this serious economic decision, the impact on our economies are political decisions.
So, back to Kwame Nkrumah’s call for unity he said we must have political and economic integration. I want to be honest with myself we haven’t come out with a better proposal. So, why do we seek change or reform and amend a proposal that we have not yet tried to implement? Pan-Africanism of 50 years ago is the Pan-Africanism of today. And the greatest thing that happened to us in the last years as Africans was for us to gain our independence so that we can start making decisions that will be in the interest of our people. The best thing that has happened to us was to gain independence. Now in the century, the biggest thing that can happen to us Africa is for us to gain control of our economy, our resources and our land because if you don’t full control of your land and if you can’t feed yourself, where is your dignity? Where is our dignity if we cannot feed ourselves? Frantz Fanon said it that every generation has its own mission to accomplish. The biggest thing that can happen to us is for us to gain full control of our resources and our land. That cannot happen if we work separately and individually as small states. That is why our politicians start struggling, and our decision makers are struggling because we have the best intentions that we simply cannot deliver.
Small Ghana with a yearly GDP of $50billion cannot negotiate fairly with countries whose annual GDPs are in trillions, such as Japan, USA and China. So, how can you negotiate fairly? It is simply unrealistic. The only way for is unity. We will go round and round in circles until we come to that conclusion. It is your popular determination and it is a big decision. You can push and compel your leaders to go in certain direction. That is what happened during independence. The people embraced it and our leaders took it up. So, it can be done again.
Do you see any time soon our political leaders getting the political will to go this route, especially the technical capabilities?
The problem with European unity is that it started with economic unity focusing on how to integrate their economies. It is a very complicated route and it will be difficult for us because we are poorer and struggling. It is easy for those big industrialised countries. We are saying you cannot start discussing the economy, you will not ever agree.
Our economies are so different. There should be first a common purpose, a common planning which can only begin if we agree to unite politically. And it is not so impossible because if you look at a country like Ghana, before our independence, we were not this one nation. We were four different territories. We have the central region, the Ashanti region, the British-Togoland and the eastern part of the country. We were not one nation but, we made a decision that we are going to be one nation and we are going to call it Ghana. That is a political decision by the people. The people of Africa must decide and I think that we are in the company of thinkers, writers, intellectuals. Everything happens on that level in the first stage.
As a people, are we ready to accept the idea considering what is happening in South Africa now?
We obviously do not have it. Again, unfortunately, Pan-Africanism is not in our discourse and we don’t talk about it. We don’t even have university degrees programmes in pan-Africanism. We are really not paying attention to that. And in doing so, we are failing to understand that most of our countries gained independence including South Africa because many African countries decided to help and support liberation movements.
What I am saying is that the reason most of our countries became independent is because we adopted a Pan-African approach. And this is what we need to consider today.
Our generations, are we thinking with the Pan-Africa perspective? I don’t think we are. But that is the missing piece in our puzzle and I want us to re-introduce Pan-Africanism in our discourse and our politics. We need to bring it to the table, embrace it and understand it. The people who are going to take this decision are our leaders.
Do you think we should be aiming for Africa while talking about Pan-Africanism or it is all inclusive of diaspora and the North Africans?
I don’t want to lose an inch of our continent. Pan-Africanism concept includes Africans outside the continent in North America, Australia and Brazil who have gone out in search of greener pastures. So, the diaspora is every single African outside the continent. Marcus Garvey said “Africans abroad, Africans at home”.
So, now if you add all this you are talking about 1.5billion people. Imagine if we are planning together, who is going to undermine us? What is it that we would not be able to do? And we are not talking about losing our sovereignty. I understand the problem of federalism.
Your nation understands it than many of us. But, one of the best ways of having this union is under a federation. So, we are not going to lose the sovereignty completely.
In certain aspect, the economy, big industrial project, foreign affairs and defence having a common Pan-African military command. We need to have a collective decision, but in so many things, every country has this independent authority to decide what to do. So, we are not losing our sovereignty. In fact, we are only losing our sovereignty to the collective African nations and in that way, I think we don’t have sovereignty. Can any African nation defend itself if attacked militarily? No. Now are we in full control of our economies?
The present borders in the continent were decided by others not Africans. And for the explicit and implicit purposes of subjugating your economies to others, it is much easier to control many little states whose economies are not really viable. Now, have we reversed the true consequences of colonialism? We have not.