Mapokezi ya Nyerere huko Uingereza

[Chakaza]

Sishangai sana maana hata Mwanakijiji hiyo mwaka 2005 alimuunga mkono Kikwete.......

Hapa kuna kitu tayari nimeelewa kuhusu MMKJ

 

[Inside10]

Asante mkuu nmepata vitu adimu

 

[MBATATA]

Mkuu umefanya jambo la hsitoria kuiweka hii thread hapa! Sijui....... lakini naona kama itu hivi huko nyuma vilikuwa adimu kupatikana? Au kwa kuwa mimi nilisoma na kukulia huko Ndanda?

 

[Mkaruka]

 

[Bb YangeYange]

Aah! Huu Uzi umenifurahisha sana. Nimesoma comments za watu humu kwenye ukurasa wa kwanza na pili nikaona kama Niko kwenye jamiiforums ileeee iliyokuwa ikijadili mambo kwa utulivu bila mihemuko isiyo na tija. Nyani Ngabu I owe u one!
Nikirudi kwenye mada Mwalimu alikuwa statesman wa nguvu jasiri kupindukia. Aliingia kwenye siasa akiwa na dhamira ya dhati ya kutumikia nchi yake na Afrika nzima. Kwake yeye wananchi na waafrika wote walikuwa ndugu zake ndio maana alikuwa yuko tayari kuwapigania kwa akili na nguvu zake zote dhidi ya ubepari, ubeberu na ukandamizaji wa mataifa makubwa. Inafurahisha na kusisimua kusikiliza na kuona Rais kiongozi wa Afrika anavyowachana Wazungu! Kuna moja ya Cancun iliwahi kubandikwa akimsulubu Regan. Huenda imo kwenye uzi huu sijaupitia wote. Huyo ndiye Mwalimu JK Nyerere BABA WA TAIFA la Tanzania aliyeonyesha mfano bora wa uongozi uliotukuka uliopaswa kuigwa na waliomfuata kudumisha heshima aliyotujengea. Naamini kwamba Rais wa awamu hii atajaribu kwa kadri ya uwezo wake kuirejeshea nchi yetu heshima iliyofutika!

 

[Shwari]

Aah! Huu Uzi umenifurahisha sana. Nimesoma comments za watu humu kwenye ukurasa wa kwanza na pili nikaona kama Niko kwenye jamiiforums ileeee iliyokuwa ikijadili mambo kwa utulivu bila mihemuko isiyo na tija. Nyani Ngabu I owe u one!
Nikirudi kwenye mada Mwalimu alikuwa statesman wa nguvu jasiri kupindukia. Aliingia kwenye siasa akiwa na dhamira ya dhati ya kutumikia nchi yake na Afrika nzima. Kwake yeye wananchi na waafrika wote walikuwa ndugu zake ndio maana alikuwa yuko tayari kuwapigania kwa akili na nguvu zake zote dhidi ya ubepari, ubeberu na ukandamizaji wa mataifa makubwa. Inafurahisha na kusisimua kusikiliza na kuona Rais kiongozi wa Afrika anavyowachana Wazungu! Kuna moja ya Cancun iliwahi kubandikwa akimsulubu Regan. Huenda imo kwenye uzi huu sijaupitia wote. Huyo ndiye Mwalimu JK Nyerere BABA WA TAIFA la Tanzania aliyeonyesha mfano bora wa uongozi uliotukuka uliopaswa kuigwa na waliomfuata kudumisha heshima aliyotujengea. Naamini kwamba Rais wa awamu hii atajaribu kwa kadri ya uwezo wake kuirejeshea nchi yetu heshima iliyofutika!

Bb YangeYange,

Umeeleza vizuri sana jinsi Mwalimu Nyerere alivyokuwa kiongozi jasiri na mwenye upeo mkubwa kwa kuona umuhimu wa kulitumikia bara zima na si Tanzania tu. Mijadala kama hii inatusaidia kuelimishana na kutuwezesha kumwelewa Nyerere zaidi badala ya kufikiria sera zake tu za ujamaa na kusema "hazikufanikiwa," "alikuwa kiongozi mbovu," na kadhalika, kama wapinzani wake wanavyosema. Nyerere hakuwa "Ujamaa" tu. Mwelewe Nyerere katika spheres mbalimbali, moja wapo ikiwa ni ukombozi wa Afrika pamoja na watu wenye asili ya Kiafrika wanaoishi nje ya bara letu.

Nyerere's stature in the Pan-African world as a giant among Pan-Africanists, besides Nkrumah, was also highlighted in 1974 when organisers of the 6th Pan-African Congress chose Dar es salaam, Tanzania, to be the venue for the conference; the first such conference to be held on African soil. The last one, the Fifth Pan-African Congress, was held in Manchester, England, in 1945. It was the most successful one and brought together a number of leaders who went on to lead their countries to independence within two decades. Among those who attended the conference were Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and Kamuzu Banda. Nkrumah and Kenyatta served as secretaries to the conference and were some of the main organisers of that historic meeting of Pan-Africanists from Africa and the diaspora.

The choice of Tanzania as the venue for the Sixth Pan-African Congress, almost thirty years after the last one, was an acknowledgement of Nyerere's outstanding leadership in the struggle for freedom and equality. He had already distinguished himself as the most relentless supporter of the freedom fighters in southern Africa – among all African leaders. As Professor Piero Gleijeses of Johns Hopkins University states in his book, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959 – 1976:

"Of all the African leaders who proclaimed their support for the liberation struggle in Africa – Nkrumah, Nasser, Ben Bella, Sekou Toure – he (Nyerere) was the most committed. And by the second half of 1964, spurred by events in Zaire and the obvious failure of peaceful attempts to end white rule in southern Africa, this commitment, and his disappointment with the Western powers, was increasingly evident.

By the time Che arrived (in Tanzania in 1965), Dar es Salaam had become the Mecca of African liberation movements....Dar es Salaam 'has become a haven for exiles from the rest of Africa,' the CIA lamented in September 1964. 'It is full of frustrated revolutionaries, plotting the overthrow of African governments, both black and white'....

In September 1964, Frelimo, the movement against Portuguese rule in Mozambique, had launched the opening salvo of its guerrilla war from bases in southern Tanzania, its only rear guard.

Following Stanleyville, Nyerere had thrown his full support to the Simbas, and Tanzania had become their main rear guard and the major conduit of Soviet and Chinese weapons for them.

It was also the seat of the Liberation Committee of the OAU. The head offices of Frelimo and a host of other movements struggling against the white regimes in South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia were in Dar es Salaam." - (Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959 – 1976, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002, pp. 84 and 85).

Tanzania's strong support for the freedom fighters in southern Africa was one of the main reasons Nyerere was held in very high esteem among many blacks in the United States, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Some of the most prominent organisers of the Sixth Pan-African Congress came from the United States. They included C.L.R. James (originally from Trinidad) and Amiri Baraka. They also attended the conference, as did the prominent Guyanese scholar, Walter Rodney, who was then a professor at the University of Dar es Salaam. The conference was held in Nkrumah Hall at the University of Dar es salaam. Nyerere gave the keynote address.

Nyerere had such great influence on a significant number of African Americans that when some of them decided to contribute to the development of Africa, they chose Dar es Salaam to be the headquarters of their organisation, the Pan-African Skills Center. As he stated in an interview in 1998 almost one year before he died:

"Africans who studied in the US like Nkrumah and Azikiwe were more aware of the Diaspora and the global African community than those of us who studied in Britain. They were therefore aware of a wider Pan-Africanism. Theirs was the aggressive Pan-Africanism of W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. The colonialists were against this and frightened of it.

After independence, the wider African community became clear to me. I was concerned about education; the work of Booker T. Washington resonated with me. There were skills we needed and black people outside Africa had them. I gave our US Ambassador the specific job of recruiting skilled Africans from the US Diaspora. A few came, like you (the interviewer, Ikaweba Bunting, who had lived in Tanzania for 25 years when he interviewed Nyerere). Some stayed; others left.

We should try to revive it. We should look to our brothers and sisters in the West. We should build the broader Pan-Africanism. There is still the room - and the need." - (Julius K. Nyerere, in an interview with Ikaweba Bunting, the New Internationalist, Oxford, UK, Jan-Feb 1999).

Even Stokely Carmichael (renamed Kwame Ture) wanted to come to Dar es salaam when he left the United States in 1969 and settled in Guinea. He said in interviews that his first choice was Tanzania where he wanted to work with the freedom fighters in Dar es Salaam but later decided to move to Conakry, Guinea, to work with Nkrumah who was living there in exile. He visited Tanzania and gave a fiery speech at the University of Dar es Salaam (see Stokely Carmichael, interviews, in the Sunday News and The Nationalist, Dar es Salaam, 5 - 6 November 1967).

Other blacks from the diaspora who were drawn to Tanzania and visited the country at different times included Shirley Graham Du Bois (widow of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois), Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier (both prominent civil rights activists who played a major role in the civil rights movement together with Dr. Martin Luther King besides being renowned actors), Bill Sutherland who came to Tanganyika in 1963 and lived in Dar es Salaam for more than 30 years and worked with Nyerere and Kawawa; C.L.R. James, Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Angela Davis, Robert Franklin Williams who formed a black rifle association for self defence, Charlie Cobb who was field secretary for SNNC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Owusu Sadaukai (driving force behind African Liberation Day commemorations in the United States and president of Malcolm X Liberation University in Greensboro, North Carolina), as well as members of various nationalist groups such as the Black Panther Party (founded in Oakland, California, in October 1966), the Nation of Islam (established in Detroit, Michigan, in July 1930), the Republic of New Afrika (founded in Detroit in 1968), and the Pan-African Congress-USA (formed in Detroit in 1969). Many of them visited or came to live in Dar es Salaam and other parts of Tanzania, inspired by Nyerere's leadership in their quest for freedom and racial equality.

Members of SNNC also attended the Youth Seminar on Racialism in Dar es Salaam from 27 – 30 April 1966 and made a passionate plea for support in their struggle for racial equality in the United States.

Malcolm X was even invited by Mwalimu Nyerere to Msasani when he visited Tanzania and other African countries in July 1964. While at Mwalimu's residence, he gave Mwalimu an album of his speech, "Message to the Grass Roots," delivered the previous year, on 10 November 1963, at a conference of black leaders in Detroit; a city with a long history of black activism since the days of Marcus Garvey and where Malcolm X spent a lot of time when he was growing up. He lived in Detroit with his eldest brother, Wilfred Little, and was nicknamed "Detroit Red." His wife also came from Detroit.

Wilfred Little, renamed Wilfred X, was himself a civil rights activist in Detroit. Born on 12 February 1920, he died in Detroit on 19 May 1998. He was 78. According to a report in The New York Times:

"Wilfred Little, who introduced his younger brother, Malcolm X, to the Nation of Islam and was a longtime official of Detroit's first Nation of Islam temple, died on Tuesday at Henry Ford Hospital here. He was 78.

Mr. Little joined the Nation of Islam in 1947 and later served as secretary and founder of Temple No. 1 in Detroit and several others in Michigan.

After the assassination of his brother in 1965, he went to work for Michigan Bell as a manager in public affairs. In 1982, the company lent him to Focus: HOPE, a civil rights and social agency, where he worked until he retired in 1988.

The eldest of the Little children, Mr. Little reared the others after their parents died. Malcolm X was paroled into his custody in 1952 and lived with his family.

Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam in 1964 and was shot to death in Harlem a year later." – ("Wilfred Little, 78, Brother of Malcolm X," The New York Times, May 21, 1998).

Their brother Philbert Norton Little (Philbert X), born on 4 May 1923, died in Detroit on 15 February 1994.

Their half sister, Ella Little-Collins who helped raise Malcom X and took over the leadership of the Organization of Afro-American Unity after their brother Malcolm X was assassinated, died in Boston, Massachusetts, on 3 August 1996. Born in 1914, she was the eldest child. According to a report in The New York Times:

"Ella L. Collins, who raised her half-brother Malcolm X, gave him money for his pilgrimage to Mecca and took over his black Muslim splinter group after his assassination, died on Saturday in a nursing home. She was 82.

Mrs. Collins had lived in a nursing home for years after suffering several strokes and diabetes, which cost her both legs.

A self-made businesswoman and civil rights activist, Mrs. Collins played an integral role in Malcolm X's life, raising him after their father died and his mother was committed to a mental hospital.

'She was the first really proud black woman I had ever seen in my life,' Malcolm X said in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 'No physical move in my life has been more pivotal or profound in its repercussions.'

After Malcolm X was shot to death in February 1965 while giving a speech to 300 followers in New York City, Mrs. Collins drove to New York to identify his body. She later took charge of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, the splinter group Malcolm X founded after his 1964 falling out with the founder of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad.

Malcolm X's killers 'took something from me, something that I put a lot into,' Mrs. Collins said in an interview in The Boston Globe Magazine in 1992.

'He was at the point where he could become stronger than ever,' Mrs. Collins said. 'I could see Malcolm becoming the greatest black man in the history of the world.'

Mrs. Collins and Malcolm X were children of the Rev. Earl Little, a Baptist minister and organizer for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, which preached for a return of blacks to Africa....

When Mr. Little died in Lansing, Mich., in a...racially motivated killing, Malcolm X's mother, Louise, suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to a state mental hospital.

Mrs. Collins went to Lansing in 1940 and brought Malcolm X home to Boston, officially taking custody of her half-brother when he finished the eighth grade.

In the 1950's, Mrs. Collins was recruited by Malcolm X into the Nation of Islam, then called the Temple of Islam and often known as the Black Muslims. She became active in establishing the group's Boston mosque and setting up its first day-care center.

But she broke away in 1959, became an orthodox Sunni Muslim and organized the Sarah A. Little School of Preparatory Arts in Boston, where children were taught Arabic, Swahili, French and Spanish.

Mrs. Collins's son, Rodnell Collins, said his mother continued to be an adviser to Malcolm X, urging him 'to leave the Nation and go to orthodox Islam, to do something that was more substantial and not continue on the way he was going by putting so much energy into Elijah Muhammad's organization.'" – ("Ella Collins, 82, Relative Who Aided Malcolm X," The New York Times, August 6, 1996. See also "Ella Collins; Activist raised half brother, Malcolm X," the Los Angeles Times, August 10, 1996; "Ella Collins, Malcolm X's sister, advisor, dies," Los Angeles Sentinel, August 15, 1996).

Their half-brother, Robert Langdon Little, died at a hospital in Lansing, Michigan, on 23 November 1999. He was 61. He was born on 31 August 1938 in Lansing and was the youngest in the family. He was the first person in his family to go to college. He earned a master's degree in social work and criminal justice from Michigan State University in East Lansing in 1963. He said it was his brother Malcolm X who encouraged him to finish his education. Malcolm X was 13 years older than he was.

Reginald Little (Reginald X), another brother, died in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 12 July 2001. He was born on 23 August 1927.

One of their sisters, Yvonne (Evonne) Little Jones-Woodward, died in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 21 July 2003. She was 73 and was a civil rights activist. According to a report in The Grand Rapids Press:

"Yvonne Woodward, sister of the late black activist Malcolm X, died Monday of complications from lung cancer, relatives said. Ms. Woodward, who took up the mantle of speaking out against racism later in her life, was 73....

Ms. Woodward, like her seven siblings, spent a lifetime overcoming tragedy, beginning with the death of her father, the Rev. Earl Little. Later, her mother was put in the state mental facility in Kalamazoo. The eight children were split apart and sent to various foster families in the Lansing area.

'It had a big impact on her life,' said her son, Steve Jones, 50....

In 1948, she became the first black telephone operator in Grand Rapids...for Michigan Bell Co. She previously was the first black operator in Lansing....

'She knew if she didn't do the right thing, it would take years for them to take a chance to hire another black operator,' Jones said. 'In Grand Rapids, the operators took a vote to see if the girls were willing to have a 'Negro' work with them. The vote was unanimous except one vote ... and my mother found out who she was and won her over.'

Another brother, Reginald Little, died in Grand Rapids in 2001.

Two siblings remain: Wesley Little, 75, of Detroit, and Hilda Little, 80, of Woodland Park...in Newaygo County, Michigan.

Ms. Woodward also is survived by her three children, Deborah Jones, 52, of Grand Rapids, Steve Jones, of Woodland Park, and Shawn Durr, 37, of Grand Rapids....

In a speaking event at East Grand Rapids High School eight years ago, she spoke about how her parents instilled the crusading spirit that later emerged in her brother, Malcolm X." – (Steven Harmon, "Sister of Malcolm X dies at 73," The Grand Rapids Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 23,2003).

Wesley, 78, died in Grand Rapids in 2009.

The second-born and last surviving member of the family, Hilda Florice Little, died at a hospital in Grand Rapids on 5 April 2015. Born on 22 October 1921, she was 93. According to her obituary, "She was preceded in death by her parents; her brothers Wilfred Little, Philbert Little, Shabazz 'Malcolm X,' Reginald Little, Wesley Little and Robert Little; and her sister Yvonne Woodward."

Like her siblings, she was an embodiment of endurance and determination that was best reflected by the work of Malcolm X who was assassinated on 21 February 1965 at the age of 39.

Malcolm X knew he had enemies in the Nation of Islam who wanted to kill him. But he also knew their limitations and capabilities. He said he knew their tactics because "I invented some of those tactics myself."

He knew Black Muslims were not the ones who poisoned his food at a hotel in Cairo. He knew it was not Black Muslims who stopped him from going to Paris, France, at the last minute on 9 February 1965. When the French immigration officials told him the American embassy was behind it, he responded by saying, "I didn't know that France was a satellite of the United States." He was expelled from France.

He knew he was targeted for elimination by the American government, not just by the Black Muslims. The Nation of Islam itself was infiltrated by the FBI; so were the Black Panthers, the Republic of New Afrika, the civil rights movement in which photojournalist Ernest C. Withers (1922 - 2007), who was a friend of Dr. Martin Luther King and was so close to him, was a paid FBI informer, among others.

John X Ali, the national secretary of the Nation of Islam and the second most powerful man in the organisation after Elijah Muhammad himself, was an undercover FBI agent. There was even a time when John X Ali lived with Malcolm X and was supposed to be a close friend of his. He also had a meeting with Malcolm X's assassins the night before they killed the former Black Muslim leader who was the most popular and most articulate spokesman of the Nation of Islam, eclipsing its leader, Elijah Muhammad. There were several undercover FBI agents in the Nation of Islam who worked with John X Ali.

Also, one of Malcolm X's bodyguards, Gene Roberts, was an undercover agent for the FBI and the New York Police Department.

As an indefatigable fighter for the freedom of his people, he incurred the wrath of the American government in a country where racial discrimination and other forms of injustices against blacks had official sanction in some states, especially in the south, and de facto segregation was a nationwide phenomenon despite professions to the contrary. He said there was no difference between a Republican wolf and a Democratic fox.

He launched an initiative to bring the United States before the United Nations on charges of racism against blacks. He drew parallels between what was going on in the United States and in South Africa, contending that if the apartheid regime can be accused of practising racism, there is no reason why the American government should not face the same charge before the UN. Nine African countries agreed to raise the matter before the UN General Assembly. They included Ghana, Egypt, Guinea and Tanzania. But the matter was not brought up because of strong American resistance to the initiative.

Malcolm X died tireless and undefeated; a spirit he and his brothers and sisters inherited from their parents.

Their father, Earl Little, was a Baptist preacher and follower of Marcus Garvey and helped propagate his teachings. Their mother, Louise Helen Little, was an immigrant from Grenada. She suffered a nervous breakdown in 1938 and spent almost 25 years in a mental institution in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her children, including Malcolm X, helped to get her released in 1963. She died on 18 December 1991 and was buried in Grand Rapids. She was 97.

Their father was killed by racists in Lansing, Michigan, in 1931 because of his strong stand against racial injustices perpetrated against blacks. Just two years before he was killed, his house was burned by racists.

Years later, Malcolm X recalled with bitterness in his work, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, what happened on that day, saying when the firemen came, they did not put "one drop of water" on the house when it was burning. They just sat there. As he put it:

"The firemen came and just sat there without making any effort to put one drop of water on the fire."

He went on to state: "The same fire that burned my father's home still burns my soul," in pointed reference to the racial injustices he continued to suffer throughout his life. It was a collective sentiment shared by millions of black Americans.

Malcolm X also spoke at the OAU summit in Cairo in July 1964. He almost died in Cairo when his food was poisoned at the hotel where he was staying. The CIA followed him throughout his African trip. The American secretary of state, Dean Rusk, also complained about Malcolm X and his trips to Africa – he visited the continent twice in 1964, also twice in 1959 – saying he was telling Africans how bad the United States was in terms of race relations, mistreating blacks, and even compared it to apartheid South Africa, contending that there were striking similarities between the two as racist countries.

Even some African leaders and diplomats were subjected to racial indignities in the United States. One of the most well-known incidents involved Ghana's minister of finance, Komla Gbedemah, who was the second most powerful man in Ghana after Nkrumah himself.

He was in the United States in October 1957 to seek financial assistance for the construction of the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River the country needed to generate electricity vital to the country's rapid economic development envisaged by Nkrumah and was denied service at a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Dover, Delaware.

He was travelling in a car from New York to Washington, D.C., to find out how he could get some help to finance the Volta River project. After he was denied service at the restaurant – he wanted to buy a glass of orange juice – he told the manager he was going to make sure the incident got international coverage. It did. As Professor Thayer Watkins of San Jose State University in California stated in "The Volta River Project in Ghana":

"Nkrumah prevailed upon President Dwight Eisenhower to use his personal influence to persuade Henry Kaiser to put together a consortium of aluminum companies to build an aluminum smelter in Ghana. Kaiser and the consortium were willing to build the aluminum smelter only if the price of electricity was extremely low. Later that low price was criticized as exploitative but it had to be that low to induce the aluminum producers to build the smelter in the first place.

There is an interesting anecdote concerned with how the Volta River Project was resurrected. Komla Gbedemah, the Minister of Finance and a top leader of Ghana second only to Nkrumah, was traveling in the U.S. in 1957. He and his secretary, an African American, stopped for breakfast at a roadside restaurant in Delaware and ordered orange juice. The waitress said she could not serve him because he was black. Gbedemah asked to see the manager who told him the same thing. Gbedemah then told the manager:

'The people here are of a lower social status than I am but they can drink here and we can't. You can keep the orange juice and the change, but this is not the last you have heard of this.'

The next day the incident was headline news around the world.

President Eisenhower invited him for breakfast the next day. Eisenhower asked Gbedemah what he was visiting in America for and Gbedemah told him it was to try to find funding for the Volta River Dam. Eisenhower asked Vice President Richard Nixon to help arrange financing."

Gbedemah was, like Kofi Baako, one of Nkrumah's most trusted lieutenants. He later turned against Nkrumah and even got support from the United States in an attempt to overthrow him. Unlike Gbedemah, Baako remained loyal to Nkrumah until the end. Colin Legum, in his book Africa Since Independence, stated that Baako was the only cabinet member under Nkrumah who was not corrupt:

"Here are a few examples of the beginnings of corruption in two new African states which I personally observed....

Nkrumah discovered that some of his ministers were accepting payoffs from foreign building firms for contracts. Instead of cracking down on this practice, which would not have gone down well with some of his colleagues, Nkrumah institutionalized payoffs by declaring that 10 percent of all bribes were to be paid over to the party. This opened the way for extensive bribe-taking in Ghana, which is known to have been resisted by only one senior minister, Kofi Baako.

My next example comes from Nigeria, where, almost from the beginning of independence, a thrusting entrepreneurial class engaged in sophisticated scams." – (Colin Legum, Africa Since Independence, Bloomington, Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, 1999, pp. 41 – 42).

Although Gbedemah fell out with Nkrumah, he is still remembered as one of the architects of Ghana's independence movement and as the one who obtained American assistance for the construction of the Akosombo Dam Nkrumah wanted so much to build. The racial incident in which he was involved when he was denied service at a restaurant in the United States also earned him a place in history, highlighting the injustices black Americans suffered while the United States preached freedom and equality abroad without fully practising it at home.

Malcolm X knew about such incidents and the racial indignities some African leaders and students suffered, including diplomats accredited to the United States and to the UN. Adam Clayton Powell, a black US congressman representing Harlem, even introduced a bill in Congress in May 1961 which required imposing heavy fines and other stiff penalties on anyone who discriminated against foreign dignitaries including ambassadors as well as other officials from other countries because of their racial identity.

Powell was one of the people Malcolm X greatly admired because of his strong stand against racial injustices in the United States. The FBI also had a file on the congressman. The authorities considered him to be a militant.

Malcolm X was also under constant FBI surveillance. When he returned to New York in late November 1964 from his African trip, FBI agents were at the airport waiting for him and commented on his close ties to Tanzania. An FBI report stated that Malcolm X got into a car with a diplomatic licence plate which was traced to "the new nation of Tanzania." The United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, formed on 26 April 1964, was renamed the United Republic of Tanzania on October 29th in the same year.

FBI agents followed him and said the car took him to the residence of the Tanzanian ambassador to the United Nations.

Many African Americans had very high regard for Tanzania when the country was under the leadership of Nyerere as much as they did for Ghana during Nkrumah's presidency. They considered the two leaders, together with Ahmed Sékou Touré, to be the true embodiment of Pan-Africanism.

In fact, it was Nyerere, more than any other African leader, who strongly supported Malcolm X in Cairo in July 1964 to bring up the subject of racial oppression of black people in the United States at the OAU conference so that it could be addressed by the leaders at the summit. They discussed it and passed a resolution condemning racial discrimination against the "people of African descent in the United States." They also warned that relations between African countries and the United States would deteriorate if such injustices continued. It was Nyerere who presented that resolution and who was the driving force behind it.

Malcolm X spoke at the OAU summit as a representative of the Organisation of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) which he formed after he left the Nation of Islam in March 1964.

He said in one of his speeches in the United States that the OAAU was patterned after "our mother organisation," the OAU.

Also, it was Nyerere who was responsible for another resolution which became one of the cardinal principles of the OAU. He presented a resolution which stated that African countries should maintain the boundaries they inherited at independence to avoid chaos and conflict which could result from any attempt to change those borders as Somalia attempted to do by claiming Djibouti, parts of northeastern Kenya and the Ogaden region of Ethiopia which were mostly inhabited by ethnic Somalis in order to create Greater Somalia. As Nyerere himself stated:

"In 1964 we went to Cairo to hold, in a sense, our first summit after the inaugural summit. I was responsible for moving that resolution that Africa must accept the borders which we inherited from colonialism; accept them as they are. The resolution was passed by the organisation (OAU) with two reservations: one from Morocco, another from Somalia." – (Nyerere, "Reflections," in Godfrey Mwakikagile, Nyerere and Africa: End of an Era, 2010, p. 556).

Like Somalia, Morocco also had territorial ambitions of annexation. The Moroccan king claimed what was then Spanish Sahara to be an integral part of Morocco.

Despite its good intentions, Nkrumah did not like the resolution that was presented by Nyerere to maintain the territorial integrity of African countries. He saw it as a deliberate attempt to keep Africa balkanised if the countries continued to maintain their sovereignties instead of submerging them in a larger entity under one government - of a United States of Africa - as he strongly urged his colleagues to do.

And Nyerere's success in helping Malcolm X at the OAU summit in Cairo for the organisation to officially acknowledge and condemn racial discrimination against blacks in the United States earned him even more respect and admiration among African Americans as an ally in their struggle for racial equality.

Although Nyerere was greatly admired by a significant number of African Americans, it was Nkrumah who had a longer relationship with the black community in the United States. Nkrumah's relationship with African Americans started in the late thirties when he was a student there. And he maintained those ties after he returned to the Gold Coast (renamed Ghana after independence). He even invited some of them to attend Ghana's independence celebrations on 6 March 1957. They included civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, some of his classmates at Lincoln University (a black school), and even a black teacher from California whom he did not know. She wrote Nkrumah saying she wanted to take part in the independence celebrations and Nkrumah invited her to Ghana.

Black people in the United States had a profound influence on Nkrumah in a way they did not on Nyerere. In Nkrumah's case, not only did his relationship with black Americans start when he was a student in the United States; he maintained strong ties with some of them even after he became president of Ghana; best exemplified by the invitation he extended to Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and his wife, asking them to go and live in Ghana.

But it was the teachings of Marcus Garvey (a Jamaican known for his "Back to Africa" movement), more than anything else, which had the biggest impact on Nkrumah in terms of political awakening, as he himself stated in his book, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah first published in 1957, the same year he led his country to independence:

"Of all the literature that I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey published in 1923." - (Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, New York: International Publishers, 1971, p. 45).

Years later, he paid tribute to Marcus Garvey in a speech during Ghana's independence celebrations stating that the end of colonial rule for the Gold Coast, now Ghana, was the culmination of cumulative efforts - what Garvey and others had fought for in the past. As Professor Ali Mazrui stated in his book, Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition:

"At a state dinner to mark Ghana's independence many years later, Nkrumah had occasion once again to recall Garvey. But just before he mentioned Garvey's name to illustrate a point, he invoked the dramatic device of asking the band to play Ghana's new national anthem. Then he made his point, saying:

'Here I wish I could quote Marcus Garvey. Once upon a time, he said, he looked through the whole world to see if he could find a government of a black people. He looked around, he did not find one, and he said he was going to create one. But here today the work of Rousseau, the work of Marcus Garvey, the work of Aggrey, the work of Caseley Hayford, the work of these illustrious men who have gone before us, has come to reality at this present moment.'

Earlier in the speech Nkrumah had reaffirmed Pan-Negroism in the following terms:

'There exists a firm bond of sympathy between us and the Negro peoples of the Americas. The ancestors of so many of them come from this country. Even today in the West Indies, it is possible to hear words and phrases which come from various languages of the Gold Coast.'

In the history of Pan-Africanism the most important Negroes of the Americas remained George Padmore from the West Indies and W.E.B. Du Bois from the United States. To these historic figures Ghana opened her doors on attainment of independence. They died citizens of Ghana. The whole phenomenon was a 'Back to Africa' event of unique symbolism." - (Ali A. Mazrui, Towards a Pax Africana: A Study of Ideology and Ambition, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967, pp. 60 – 61).

George Padmore had great influence on Nkrumah as much as Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James did. In fact, he played a major role in formulating and shaping Ghana's foreign policy and was bitterly resented by prominent Ghanaians such as Dr. Robert Gardiner for the great influence he had on Nkrumah as his adviser on African affairs and even contemplated leaving Ghana because of that. Dr. Gardiner was the head of Ghana's civil service during that time, the first to hold the position soon after the country won independence, and later served as the Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) from 1961 to 1975.

Padmore wrote – among other works - a highly influential book, Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa, first published in 1956, shortly before Ghana won independence the following year. Oscar Kambona, then a student in London, wrote Padmore in 1957 to congratulate him for writing the book. He saw it as a monumental achievement comparable to Nkrumah's success in leading the Gold Coast to independence:

"The young Oscar Kambona, then a law student in London, summarized the importance of Padmore's Pan-Africanism or Communism? by writing him in 1957 that his 'achievement on writing this book is on the same level as the achievement of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in bringing his country to independence.'" - (Oscar Kambona to George Padmore, 19 January 1957, in Padmore library, Accra, Ghana, quoted by Willard Scott Thompson, Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957 – 1966: Diplomacy Ideology, and the new State, Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 1969, p. 22).

Kambona even attended the All African People's Conference in Accra, Ghana, in 1958, organised by Nkrumah. He later became very close to Nkrumah. He maintained close ties with the Ghanaian leader when he was Tanzania's minister of defence and external affairs at a time when Nkrumah was trying hard to undermine Nyerere. Kambona himself was nurturing his own ambition to replace Nyerere as president of Tanzania. Nkrumah tried to accomplish his mission by cultivating ties with some people in the Tanzanian government who were close to Nyerere and who would be willing to work with him against the Tanzanian leader:

"East Africa was high on Nkrumah's list of subversion priorities. At one point, early in 1965, an attempt was made to recruit two sources close to Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere to 'exploit the political contradictions in the East African area.'" – (Atlas, a journal, New York: Worley Publishing Company, 1966, p. 22).

Kambona was probably was one of them, considering the close ties he had with Nkrumah and his own ambition to be the next president of Tanzania. He became a bitter opponent of Nyerere after he left Tanzania in July 1967 and was the mastermind of a plot to overthrow the Tanzanian leader. The coup was to take place in October 1969, when Kambona was living in exile in London, but was discovered by Tanzania's intelligence service before it could be carried out.

He died in London in 1997. Nyerere also died in London two year later. George Padmore, who was admired by both, also died in London 40 years before Nyerere did.

After Ghana became independent, Nkrumah invited Padmore to Accra to be his adviser on African affairs. And like Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, Padmore died a Ghanaian and was buried in Accra, Ghana. He died in London in 1959.

Had he lived longer until Nkrumah was overthrown, it is very much possible he could have moved to Tanzania (as much as Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois could have) which was the next choice for a number of people who were supporters of Nkrumah but who had to leave Ghana after the Ghanaian leader was overthrown. They included freedom fighters from southern Africa who were being trained in Ghana when Nkrumah was in power. They were flown to Dar es Salaam within days of Nkrumah's ouster; some of their expenses - for plane tickets and so on - paid by a number of Afro-Americans living in Accra.

Dar es Salaam was the obvious destination for the freedom fighters who had been expelled from Ghana by the new military regime - which was subservient to the United States in a disgusting way - because it was the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee in a country that had been chosen by other African leaders to provide sanctuary for the freedom fighters; a clear acknowledgement of Nyerere's stature as a highly influential leader and strong supporter of the liberation movements in southern Africa.

Nkrumah was also highly respected as a strong supporter of African liberation and as an ardent Pan-Africanist. But he was surpassed by Nyerere in the context of southern Africa. As Professor Mazrui stated in his lecture at the University of Ghana in 2002:

"The torch of African radicalism, after the coup which overthrew Nkrumah in 1966, was in fact passed to Nyerere. The great voice of African self-reliance, and the most active African head of government in relation to liberation in Southern Africa from 1967 until the 1980s was in fact Julius Nyerere." - (Ali A. Mazrui in his lecture "Nkrumahism and The Triple Heritage: Out of the Shadows" at the University of Ghana-Legon in 2002).

Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who, like Milton Obote, was a close friend of Nkrumah, also acknowledged Nyerere's stature as a leading Pan-Africanist and champion of independence and liberation when, after Nkrumah was overthrown, he said Nyerere "is Nkrumah today."

Although the mantle of leadership in terms of Pan-African militancy may have passed on to Nyerere after Nkrumah was ousted in 1966, there is no question that Nyerere had already won tremendous respect from his fellow heads of state on the continent as a leading champion of African liberation and independence when they chose Dar es Salaam to be the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee. That was in 1963, about three years before Nkrumah was overthrown. Therefore, he acquired the mantle of leadership on a continental scale, on his own merits, even when Nkrumah was still in power.

Ghana under Nkrumah ended up being the headquarters of the OAU Defence Committee based in Accra, but important only for its symbolism since it was largely ineffective, unlike the Liberation Committee based in Dar es Salaam. Nkrumah tried strenuously to have Accra chosen by the OAU to be the headquarters of the Liberation Committee but other African leaders chose Dar es Salaam, instead.

Still, it was in acknowledgement of Nyerere's and Nkrumah's stature as giants in the pantheon of Pan-African leadership that their countries were chosen by their colleagues to be the headquarters of the two OAU committees even though one of those committees was important only for its symbolic value – yet a highly significant gesture to Nkrumah as an embodiment of Pan-Africanism and a trail blazer in the African independence struggle when he led the Gold Coast to become the first black African country to emerge from colonial rule; also befitting a leader who, during the Congo crisis in 1960, was the first to propose formation of an African High Command to defend the continent.

Nkrumah's goal was never realised. An African High Command which could also have helped stop conflicts in different parts of the continent was never formed.

Also, unfortunately for Nkrumah, he failed where his rival, Nyerere, succeeded. He formed the Ghana-Guinea Union which Mali later joined to form the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union. It collapsed. It was a union only on paper. By remarkable contrast, Nyerere succeeded in uniting Tanganyika with Zanzibar to form Tanzania. Nyerere also was on the way to forming an East African federation which Nkrumah strongly opposed. He played a significant role in blocking formation of an East African federation which Nyerere would probably have presided over in the following years. Nkrumah did his best to make sure Nyerere did not succeed in his venture. But he did not stop there.

He took his crusade against Nyerere to the OAU summit in Cairo in July 1964 where he hoped to mobilise support for his attempt to portray Nyerere as someone who was an obstacle to continental unity under one government because he wanted to form an East African federation which Nkrumah claimed would only be balkanisation of Africa on a grand scale. He also wanted to portray Nyerere as someone who was not qualified to host and help train freedom fighters from the countries, especially those in southern Africa, which were still under white minority rule. Tanganyika had been chosen by other African leaders to be the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee when they first met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to form the Organisation of African Unity. Nkrumah did not like that.

At the OAU summit in Cairo, Nyerere responded to Nkrumah's criticism and attacks by saying "Some people insist on African unity now, not because they care at all, but because they hope that some stupid historian in the future" will praise them for being the first to seek continental unity when others did not, thus getting satisfaction from being glorified as true Pan-Africanists; it was all for personal glory.

Professor Willard Scott Thompson, a renowned American scholar - John F. Kennedy once said Thompson would be president of the United States someday - provided a different version of what happened at the OAU summit in Cairo. He contended that Nyerere misunderstood Nkrumah. He stated that when Nkrumah said "an imperialist agent," he was not talking about Nyerere; he was talking about Congo-Leopoldville, a country in turmoil during that period because of foreign intervention, where it had once been suggested freedom fighters should be trained. As he stated in his book, Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957 – 1966: Diplomacy Ideology, and the new State:

"In Cairo, when Nkrumah had persisted in raising the issue of union government through back door and side door, despite continual defeat, Senghor had commented: 'I think we have already pronounced ourselves on the fact that we cannot, at present, form a Pan-African government'....

Botsio (Ghana's minister of foreign affairs Kojo Botsio) arrived in Cairo in mid-July for the foreign ministers' meeting, with inflexible instructions (from Nkrumah) to press for union government and a high command....

After Nkrumah's attacks on the proposed East African federation and what Nyerere thought was an accusation that Tanganyika was an imperialist agent, he decided that enough damage had been done. In the sessions remaining before his own speech he was seen writing, obviously recasting his speech.

According to Botsio, Nkrumah's own speech had been reconstructed in part at the last minute; thus several references in it were ambiguous. As one result, Nyerere misread Nkrumah's attack on the (OAU) liberation committee ( based in Dar es Salaam). Nyerere was right in saying that the only reason Ghana had criticized the committee was that the Addis Ababa conference 'had committed the unforgivable crime of not including Ghana on the Committee.' Nkrumah – and Nyerere quoted – had said:

'The choice of the Congo as a training base for freedom fighters was a logical one and there was every reason to accept the offer of the Congolese Government to provide offices and accommodation for the representatives of the Liberation Committee [i.e. Movements]. Africa's freedom fighters should not, however, have been exposed to the espionage, intrigues, frustrations and disappointments which they have experienced in the last 8 months. What would be the result of entrusting the training of freedom fighters against imperialism into the hands of an imperialist agent?'

Nyerere incorrectly concluded that Nkrumah believed that the headquarters of the liberation committee should have been in Léopoldville, and had instead been located in Dar-es-Salaam, a place of 'espionage and intrigue' (with freedom fighters trained, at that, by an 'imperialist agent'). Nkrumah had referred only to the Congo in this section of his speech, and had meant to say 'Liberation Movements,' as indicated in the quoted passage. His mistake made Nyerere's misunderstanding natural, although Nyerere's reading of it is contradicted on internal evidence. Yet there was enough in Nkrumah's speech that Nyerere did get right to make this confusion almost negligible; certainly most African governments at the time were not interested in the clarification....The official version of Nkrumah's speech, 'The Quest for a United Africa,' Accra, 1964 (printed after the conference), uses the word 'MOVEMENTS' at the crucial passage. There is no question that Nkrumah meant 'movements,' by all accounts. Nkrumah obviously knew the 'committee' was headquartered in Dar....

According to Botsio, Nyerere later apologized for the misunderstanding, but according to Tanzanian sources, the apology was only directed to the specific point, not to the substance of the speech." – (Willard Scott Thompson, Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957 – 1966: Diplomacy Ideology, and the new State, op. cit., pp. 350, 352, 353. See also Nkrumah's speech in Cairo in July 1964 when he criticised the OAU Liberation Committee and when he talked about "an imperialist agent," quoted in BBC, IV, No. 1611, 22 July 1964, cited by W.S. Thompson, ibid., p. 352).

By that time, when the African leaders met in Cairo in July 1964, Nyerere had already been entrusted with the training of the freedom fighters the previous year when the OAU chose Tanganyika to be the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee. Therefore, it is easy to understand why Nkrumah seemed to be talking about Nyerere, and not a Congolese leader in Leopoldville, when he said Africa should not trust "an imperialist agent" to be in charge of the training of the freedom fighters. It seemed he was not talking about President Joseph Kasavubu. May be he was talking about Moise Tshombe who was prime minister of Congo-Leopoldville under Kasavubu during that time when he gave his speech at the OAU summit in Cairo, talking about "an imperialist agent"; which Tshombe was. Nkrumah himself had earlier, on 12 August 1960, written Tshombe about Tshombe's collaboration with the imperialists in destroying Congo. As he stated in the letter:

"You have assembled in your support the foremost advocates of imperialism and colonialism in Africa and the most determined opponents of African freedom. How can you, as an African, do this?" - (Nkrumah, in his letter to Moise Tshombe, 12 August 1960, reproduced in Ghana Government's White Paper, No. 6/60, p. 8, Accra, Ghana, August 1960; and in A. Mazrui, Towards A Pax Africana, op. cit., p. 38).

Nyerere also called Tshombe a traitor. As he stated in his address to the National Assembly of the United Arab Republic in Cairo on 9 April 1967:

"It is not possible for African states to compromise on the basic principles of African freedom and African equality. A leader like Tshombe, who was willing to employ South African racialists in order to maintain his own power, and who was willing to dismember an African state if he could not control it – such a man could obviously not bring his nation into a coherent African entity. But the reason is not that his economic policies involved compromise with the exploiters of Africa. The reason is his deliberate betrayal of the basic principles of African freedom and African equality. To negotiate with such a man would be equivalent to negotiating with the present regime in South Africa." - (Nyerere, "A New Look at Conditions for Unity," Freedom and Socialism, op. cit., pp. 295 – 296).

Other observers such as Ali Mazrui, unlike Professor Thompson, reached the same conclusion Nyerere did – that when Nkrumah talked about "an imperialist agent" being entrusted with the training of the freedom fighters, he was talking about Nyerere since the freedom fighters were based in Tanzania, not in Congo. And the fact that Nkrumah changed parts of his speech at the last minute, resulting in several ambiguous references in the text, seems to suggest that the ambiguity was deliberate, intended to cause some confusion and cast doubt on Nyerere as a true Pan-Africanist and portray him as "an imperialist agent" despite all the evidence to the contrary, especially when Tanzania had already been chosen to be the headquarters of all the African liberation movements.

Also, there was a major difference between the two leaders – Nkrumah and Nyerere – in the way they pursued continental unity, which was partly fuelled by their adversarial relationship although they also worked together on a number of major issues more than they did with other African leaders with the exception of Nasser, Ben Bella, Sekou Toure and Modibo Keita who were also their ideological compatriots and close friends – members of a secret group within the OAU known as "The Group of Six," according to what Ben Bella said in an interview in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1995.

Unlike most African leaders, Nkrumah wanted immediate continental unification; Nyerere preferred the regional approach and said several times - before, during, and after the Cairo summit - that he agreed with Nkrumah on the need for a continental government but it could not be established immediately. In fact, he was one of the very few leaders - together with Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita and Sourou-Migan Apithy - who strongly believed African countries should unite under one government.

Also, Nkrumah did not want the OAU Liberation Committee to be based in the country of his rival – although his ideological compatriot as well – Nyerere; hence his scathing criticism of both Nyerere and the Committee. As Professor William Burnett Harvey stated in his book, Law and Social Change in Ghana:

"The signing of the O.A.U. Charter abated the sharpness of the Casablanca-Monrovia split without removing the underlying causes. The continuing divisions were dramatically illustrated by the acid exchange between Dr. Nkrumah and President Nyerere of Tanganyika and Zanzibar at the Heads of State meeting in Cairo in July, 1964. The clash was precipitated by an address by Dr. Nkrumah urging immediate establishment of a United Government of Africa; in this speech he attacked the performance of the Liberation Committee established at Addis Ababa to assist the 'Freedom Fighters' in the still-dependent territories.

According to Dr. Nkrumah, the Freedom Fighters had been exposed to 'espionage, intrigues, frustrations and disappointments,' had been denied food, clothing and medicine and proper facilities for training. He complained that the Congo (Leopoldville) rather than Tanganyika was the 'logical' training base for Freedom Fighters. In a curious rhetorical question he asked, 'What could be the result of entrusting the training of Freedom Fighters against imperialism into the hands of an imperialist agent?' For all these ills, Nkrumah found the cure in the immediate establishment of a United Government of Africa.

Dr. Nyerere responded with understandable heat. He pointed out that Ghana was the only country that had made no financial contribution to the work of the Liberation Committee; he insisted that Ghana's failure to contribute had not resulted from the inadequate performance of the Committee but that the decision had in fact been made at Addis Ababa when Ghana was not given membership on the Committee and Dar es Salaam had been chosen as the Committee's headquarters. Dr. Nyerere declared that he was becoming increasingly convinced that the African states were divided 'between those who genuinely want a Continental Government and will work patiently for its realization; and those who simply use a phrase 'Union Government,' for the purposes of propaganda.' Clearly in his judgment, Ghana fell into the latter category.

Dr. Nyerere did 'not believe that there is a choice between achieving African unity step by step and achieving it in one act. The one-act choice is not available to us except in some curious imagination.'" - (William Burnett Harvey, Law and Social Change in Ghana, Princeton, New Jersey, USA: Princeton University Press, 1966, p. 169).

Also, Nkrumah's determination to block formation of an East African federation not only tarnished his image; it enhanced Nyerere's credentials as a realist in the quest for continental unity. As Nyerere put it: "When you set out to build a house, you don’t begin by putting on the roof; first you start by laying the foundations." And according to Professor Mazrui:

"Nyerere...denounced Nkrumah's attempt to deflate the East African federation movement as petty mischief-making arising from Nkrumah's own sense of frustration in his own Pan-African ventures....He went public with his attack on Nkrumah. He referred to people who pretended that they were in favour of African continental union when all they cared about was to ensure that 'some stupid historian in the future' praised them for being in favour of the big continental ambition before anyone else was willing to undertake it....

On balance, history has proved Nkrumah wrong on the question of Nyerere's commitment to liberation. Nyerere was second to none in that commitment.

At that Cairo conference of 1964 Nkrumah had asked 'What could be the result of entrusting the training of Freedom Fighters against imperialism into the hands of an imperialist agent?'

In the debates between incremental Pan-Africanism and rapid unification Nkrumah found a rival in Julius K. Nyerere of Tanzania....Nkrumah and Nyerere had already begun to be rivals as symbols of African radicalism before the coup which overthrew Nkrumah. Nkrumah was beginning to be suspicious of Nyerere in this regard....The two most important issues over which Nyerere and Nkrumah before 1966 might have been regarded as rivals for continental pre-eminence were the issues of African liberation and African unity." - (Ali A. Mazrui in his lecture "Nkrumahism and The Triple Heritage: Out of the Shadows" at the University of Ghana-Legon in 2002. See also Nyerere, "When you set out to build a house,..." at the OAU summit, Cairo, Egypt, July 1964, quoted by Colin Legum, "The Goal of an Egalitarian Society," in Colin Legum and Geoffrey Mmari, eds., Mwalimu: The Influence of Nyerere, op. cit., p. 191).

Professor Mazrui's version that Nkrumah did, indeed, call Nyerere "an imperialist agent" (out of frustration with Nyerere's rise and influence as a continental leader, threatening to eclipse Nkrumah in some respects, after Tanzania was chosen by other African leaders to be the headquarters of the OAU Liberation Committee) also seems to be consistent with the sequence of events before and after the Cairo summit in July 1964 when the two African leaders clashed.

It is also possible Nyerere misunderstood Nkrumah, and that Nkrumah was referring to somebody else in Congo-Leopoldville – probably Prime Minister Moise Tshombe – when he said "an imperialist agent."

But whatever Nkrumah said and meant in the larger context of his speech in Cairo was still consistent with his own image as Africa's leader. He saw himself as Africa's pre-eminent leader who did not want to be challenged or surpassed by anybody, demonstrated by his determination to undermine Nyerere's attempt to form an East African federation whose success would have earned Nyerere the distinction of being the first champion of regional integration to achieve his goal of helping unite countries under one government. Nkrumah did not want Nyerere to succeed and be surpassed by him in the quest for unity even on a regional scale, while Nkrumah himself had failed to achieve the same goal in West Africa.

A highly influential Nigerian newspaper, the West African Pilot founded by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1937 and edited by him from 1937 to 1947, even challenged Nkrumah and Nasser for considering themselves to be the continental leaders; a point underscored in the paper's editorial in May 1961:

"Until recently it was a tournament between Nasser and Nkrumah but Africa today contains many stars and meteorites, all of them seeking positions of eminence." - (West African Pilot, 18 May 1961; see also West Africa, London, 6 May 1961, quoted by A. Mazrui, Towards A Pax Africana, op. cit., p. 66).

Nkrumah was virtually isolated at the OAU summit in Cairo besides the support he got from Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita, and Sourou-Migan Apithy of Dahomey in his quest for immediate continental unification. But even they, may be with the exception of President Apithy, did not go far enough to satisfy him. The collapse of the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union, a pet creature of Nkrumah, demonstrated that even the three ideological compatriots – Nkrumah, Toure and Keita – could not work together to transform their union into a functional entity; it was virtually stillborn.

The adversarial relationship between Nkrumah and Nyerere, with regard to liberation and continental unity, was further addressed by Professor Thompson, as was Nkrumah's failure to convince his colleagues to agree to form one continental government:

"What Nyerere stopped by his speech was the politeness about union government. Tanganyika had, as he pointed out, practiced unity by uniting with Zanzibar; less 'preaching' about unity was needed.

He mocked union government as the panacea for every difficulty that Africa encountered, and also added his own invective: 'to cap this whole series of absurdities, after all the wonderful arguments against unity in East Africa, we are now told again, at this very rostrum, that those who are ready should go ahead and unite (as Nkrumah said in his speech). Those who are ready should now go ahead and unite. Now we have the permission to go ahead....If I were a cynic, I would say we of the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar are ready. I would ask Ghana to join our United Republic. But I am not a cynic.'

Nyerere's suggestion was no less logically compelling than any of the long line of Nkrumah's proposals, and now they were publicly declared to be nonsense. Nyerere had merely said the Emperor wore no clothes....

The speech was also significant as an opening of the sluice-gate for anti-Ghana feelings on many issues throughout Africa, and it signaled the beginning of the last stage of an 'anti-Nkrumah offensive' that was gaining support across the continent.

Nkrumah had been severely humiliated among his peers. Nonetheless,...the (OAU) decided to hold its second conference of heads of state in Accra, as the Ghanaians had suggested....Nkrumah insisted on bringing up union government.

Sékou Touré, the chairman, noted that the committee named at the foreign ministers' session had only asked the heads of state 'to declare itself on principle.' But Nkrumah insisted on pleading his case, and it is interesting to see what he said amidst his peers:

'What I am suggesting...I didn't say we should set out on this table and within five minutes establish a Union Government....My point was this, that it is a central factor in the political life of the African continent, since it is going to be a vital issue let us at least accept in principle the possibility of the establishment of a Union Government of Africa....But I say let's say that we should start here and then, and get all the functions and I put forward the suggestion also that we have been able to agree in principle to the possibility of the establishment of Union Government in Africa.

I say let's submit it to the...Jurist's Committee...so...what I am saying is...if it is a good idea then what I put forward is this: Let us give a chance to our Jurist's Committee....But I want to make it clear. I didn't come here to say---I know Rome wasn't built in a day but Rome started somewhere before it became Rome.'

Touré, as chairman – and Nkrumah's ally – tried to summarize the argument as logically as possible and Keita even added that the gap that 'had separated our friend...from the majority...was narrowing.' Apithy of Dahomey evoked memories of Nkrumah's 1947 London pan-African gathering which he had attended, and supported Nkrumah, by this time a picture of pathos.

Sir Abubakar (Tafawa Balewa) let them go no further. An African government was a dream, he said, 'Or a nightmare.' Nigeria, for its part, would never surrender its sovereignty. 'This request, Mr. Chairman, is indirectly a vote of no confidence in the Organisation of African Unity. When we started this Organisation only a year ago we were working, progressing and now we are trying to impose something.' Union government might come, so might world government, he said.

The Emperor of Ethiopia, who knew that at this point it was conceding nothing to grant Nkrumah some concession, and who possessed a sense of dignity, sought to blur the distinctions Sir Abubakar and others were making. 'The proposal of His Majesty [said the interpreter] is to examine the draft, not to reject it.' But Cameroun did not want to examine something that could not be implemented 'before five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years,' and Bourguiba suggested that the appointment of such a committee would reduce the credibility of the OAU." – (Ibid., pp. 353, and 355).

Nkrumah somewhat saw the absurdity of his quest for immediate continental unification and the impractical nature of his proposal, as was clearly demonstrated by the overwhelming opposition he faced at the OAU summits in Cairo in July 1964 and even in his own capital Accra in October 1965. But he never gave up in spite of the fact that he was virtually isolated at both conferences:

"With almost any issue of concern to the radical African nationalists, Nkrumah might have taken the lead and increased his influence; he did do this with the Rhodesian question. The question of continental union government, however, interested no one.

His urgent messages to his peers asking for coordination and cooperation on such questions as the 1964 Congolese rebellion lost their force, because he insisted on placing his proposals in the framework of the need for union government.

Since its inception Nkrumah had treated the OAU with contempt, partly because of Nkrumah's policy of union government, more importantly because Ghana could not dominate the OAU. At Cairo, Ghana offered Accra as a sight for the 1965 OAU meeting, for understandable reasons of prestige: this would be its first chance to be a part of the organization's 'in-group.' Yet the choice of Accra posed a dilemma: Could Ghana sponsor a conference of an organization the objectives of which it rejected? This was resolved with the demand, posed almost daily in the Ghanaian press from September 1964 onwards, that the OAU effect a union government in Accra.

Hardly had Accra been selected than Nkrumah began sketching elaborate plans for a conference headquarters, the scope of which led many to conclude that Nkrumah envisaged the new buildings as an African capital. 'Jobs 600,' the remarkable £10,000,000 complex which was to be used for two weeks at the most, made Nkrumah the subject of jokes throughout the world. But these missed the point. Obviously Ghana could ill-afford the project with the economy in such disrepair although Nkrumah did assume that the project and the conference would be a useful public diversion at a time of stress; the complex more significantly underlined the extent to which Nkrumah counted on the emergence of union government at the conference. Important objectives in the domestic sector were pushed aside, and Nkrumah told one visitor that this was done because they would be irrelevant or redundant when union government was achieved.

According to Botsio, in (an) interview, Nkrumah began at the Cairo conference itself sketching plans for the complex. Botsio himself favored the building of badly needed estate houses to house the delegates, the cost of which would have been one-tenth that of Job 600." – (Ibid., pp. 355, 357 – 358).

Nkrumah's passion for immediate continental unification will always be remembered. It was first demonstrated in a significant way when he wrote a book, Africa Must Unite, whose publication coincided with the first meeting of the 32 African heads of state and government who met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963 and formed the Organisation of African Unity (OAU). He hoped that once they read the book, they would agree with him to unite their countries under one government – right away at that meeting or soon thereafter. They did not.

It was a severe blow to a leader who was a relentless champion of immediate continental unification and who saw himself as the embodiment of Pan-Africanism more than anybody else. As Nyerere said, Nkrumah "had tremendous contempt" for a large number of African leaders. He stated in an interview with Bill Sutherland:

"My differences with Kwame were that Kwame thought there was somehow a shortcut, and I was saying that there was no shortcut. This is what we have inherited, and we'll have to proceed within the limitations that that inheritance has imposed on us.

Kwame thought that somehow you could say, 'Let there be a United States of Africa' and it would happen. I kept saying, 'Kwame, it's a slow process.'

He had tremendous contempt for a large number of leaders of Africa and I said, 'Fine, but they are there. What are you going to do with them? They don't believe as you do – as you and I do – in the need for the unity of Africa. BUT WHAT DO YOU DO? THEY ARE THERE, AND WE HAVE TO PROCEED ALONG WITH EVERYBODY!'

And I said to him in so many words that we're not going to have an African Napoleon, who is going to conquer the continent and put it under one flag. It is not possible.

At the OAU conference in 1963, I was actually trying to defend Kwame. I was the last to speak and Kwame had said this charter has not gone far enough because he thought he would leave Addis with a United States of Africa.

I told him that this was absurd; that it can't happen. This is what we have been able to achieve. No builder, after putting the foundation down, complains that the building is not yet finished. You have to go on building and building until you finish; but he was impatient because he saw the stupidity of the others." - (Julius Nyerere, in Bill Sutherland and Matt Mayer, eds., Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan African Insight on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle, and Liberation, Africa World Press, 2000. The interview was also reproduced, from the book, by Chambi Chachage, "Excerpt from Interview with Bill Sutherland," Centre for Consciencist Studies and Analyses (CENSCA), 5 September 2008. See also Bill Sutherland in William Minter, Gaily Hovey, and Charles Cobb Jr., eds., No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950 – 2000, New Africa Press, Trenton, New Jersey, USA, 2007).

Even Milton Obote, who was a close friend of Nkrumah, told the Ghanaian leader at the first OAU summit in Addis Ababa in May 1963 – "unity now" under one continental government could not be achieved. As he stated in an interview years later:

"I took a strong Pan African position in favour of a continental union. In May 1963, I arrived in Addis Ababa where the first conference of leaders of newly independent states was going to take place. Africa had been divided between two groups: the Monrovia group composed of conservatives, and the Casablanca group composed of the progressive radicals.

The Monrovia group was opposed to Nkrumah’s proposal for an immediate creation of a union government for the whole of Africa. On the first day I arrived, my friend Kwesi Ama, a Ghanaian, came to me and said Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana, wanted to have lunch with me and that I should 'expect a bomb shell.' I had met Kwesi Ama in London. He was my friend and was Nkrumah’s ambassador to London.

Nkrumah was the leader of African progressive opinion. We all admired him immensely. I personally admired Nkrumah immensely. He was an illustrious leader. He shaped African liberation and gave Africa a voice in world affairs. He supported liberation struggles all over Africa. So meeting him was a great honour and opportunity. People like Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, all progressive African leaders looked to Nkrumah.

When we sat down to lunch, Nkrumah told me there was no conference. 'You should go back home.' He said the Monrovia group had already sabotaged the conference. I told him that we should not go back home. We should put our case to the conference on the need for African unity. And I told him that as far as I could see, there was possible success if only we could reorganise what we wanted the conference to do. Nkrumah said we wanted All-African Union Government. I told him that given the polarisation, we could not achieve that. Although we could present our case for immediate African political union, we had to be careful because we could not get the majority needed to see it through.

So we had to argue our case as a bargaining tool to get the conference to form an organisation that would work towards the creation of a continental government. I also told Nkrumah that while a continental union was a great idea, we could not wish it. We had to put in place an organisation to work towards it. During the conference, Nkrumah made a great speech on the need for a union government for Africa. He called for a constitution for an African continental government, a common market, an African currency, an African monetary zone, an African central bank and an inter-continental communication system.

I stood up in the conference, called for the creation of a strong Pan African executive and an African parliament to which all African governments must be prepared to surrender their sovereignty. This position was supported by Modibo Keita, president of Mali; Sekou Toure, president of Guinea; and the president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser. All these were my friends.

My call for immediate unity was tactics. We used the Nkrumah stand to bring others opposed to African co-operation to agree that a compromise meant building an organisation to promote the ideals of unity. Later in the conference, I suggested that since African unity cannot be achieved overnight, let us put in place an organisation to work towards the realisation of that goal. This was a compromise position between ‘unity now’ and the extreme position by people like President Tsiranana of Malagasy Republic (now Madagascar), Balewa and others against African co-operation.

Then Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria took to the floor with a moving call for African liberation. He pledged 10,000 Algerian volunteers to free African nations still under colonial oppression and white minority rule. 'A Charter will be of no value to us,' he said, 'and speeches will be used against us if there is not first created a blood bank for those fighting for independence.'

I stood up and offered Uganda as a training ground for African troops to be used to liberate African countries from colonial rule and white minority rule.

Then Sekou Toure suggested that we fix a date after which 'if colonialism were not ended, African states would expel the colonial powers.'

Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal and Nyerere stood up and made strong recommendations on building capacity to liberate the whole of Africa.

Finally we agreed to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) whose mandate it was to end colonial rule and work towards unity." - (Milton Obote, an excerpt from "Milton Obote: My Story," a series of interviews in which Obote was interviewed by Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda in Lusaka, Zambia, September – October 2004, published in The Monitor, Kampala, Uganda, April 2005).

Nkrumah was very impatient, and highly ambitious, in his pursuit of continental unity. And that was one of his biggest mistakes. Even if he did so with good intentions in order to see Africa united, a continent which would be powerful and prosperous as a single political entity, most of his colleagues saw him as someone who was vainglorious and power-hungry, expecting to rule Africa one day. They were not going to help him achieve his goal. They were power-hungry themselves and wanted to remain presidents of their own countries without losing power or being under somebody else even if they remained leaders in a united Africa.

More than 50 years after Nkrumah exhorted his colleagues to unite their countries under one government, which he hoped he would lead as United Africa's first president, continental unity remains elusive. Even economic integration on a continental scale remains a distant goal. He had an inordinate ambition to be Africa's "saviour" or "messiah"; hence his title, The Osagyefo, The Redeemer, leading Africa in her quest for redemption.

Also, unfortunately for Nkrumah, the books which he did not write – but which he claimed he wrote – are the ones which earned him a reputation as a philosopher and an anti-imperialist icon of global stature; a reputation that persists especially in the Pan-African world.

The books which were written by other people for him and which earned him that reputation were Consciencism: Philosophy and ideology for decolonization and development with particular reference to the African Revolution, a highly philosophical work written by Dr. Willie Abraham, and Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism written by American and British Marxists as well as other people close to Nkrumah and living in Accra, Ghana, during that period.

Dr. Willie Abraham also inspired one of the most renowned scholars Africa has ever produced, Ali Mazrui, who partly attributed his work, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, to the inspiration he drew from Nkrumah's "book," Consciencism. As Mazrui himself stated:

"Kwame Nkrumah also stimulated my vision of Africa as a convergence of three civilizations – Africanity, Islam and Western culture. Nkrumah called that convergence 'Consciencism.' I later called it 'Africa's Triple Heritage.' I was able to elaborate on my own concept in a BBC/PBS television series titled The Africans: A Triple Heritage (1986)." – (Ali A. Mazrui in IGCS Reporters, "Ali A. Mazrui, Witness to History?," op. cit.)

Since the book was not written by Nkrumah but by Willie Abraham, it is appropriate to give Dr. Abraham credit for providing inspiration to one of the most successful documentaries about Africa by another distinguished African, Dr. Mazrui, who gave Nkrumah credit for inspiring him in other areas as well. Nkrumah himself had been preceded by the Liberian scholar, Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden, in expounding the concept of Africa's triple heritage – Africanity, Islam and Western civilisation – and may actually have been inspired by him to elaborate on the convergence of these three civilisations as Blyden did in his acclaimed yet controversial book, Christianity, Islam and The Negro Race. In fact, a number of leading Pan-Africanists, including Nkrumah and Padmore, were greatly inspired by Blyden's ideas on unity, emancipation, African identity and heritage, just as Dr. Willie Abraham's works have provided intellectual stimulus for generation of ideas by some of Africa's prominent thinkers such as Nkrumah.

Blyden's fierce pride in his race and its contribution to civilisation had echoes in – and ideological affinity with – Senghor's concept of Négritude. It is a concept that was also given forceful expression by Ghana's minister of foreign affairs, Alex Quaison-Sackey in his book, Africa Unbound, which was published during the same time when he and Dr. Willie Abraham worked under Nkrumah, a leader who and his Senegalese counterpart, Senghor, were ideologically poles apart.

Besides being minister of foreign affairs, and during Nkrumah's last years in power, Quaison-Sackey is also remembered in the history of Ghana for another reason. In his book, Dark Days in Ghana, Nkrumah stated that when Quaison-Sackey heard their government had just been overthrown, when they were in Peking en route to Hanoi, he developed diarrhoea and became virtually inconsolable. But he will also be remembered as an exponent of Négritude, unlike Nkrumah.

Although the concept of Négritude is mainly associated with a significant number of intellectuals in Francophone Africa and their counterparts in the Caribbean, especially Martinique, its underlying philosophy has also inspired some people in Anglophone Africa, Quaison-Sackey being one of the most prominent while his fellow countryman, Dr. Abraham, is one of its most ardent critics.

Nkrumah relied on the young academic, Dr. Abraham, for advice (as his court philosopher) probably more than he did on other people who, like Abraham, also helped him to write some of his books.

Besides Consciencism, there are questions about the authorship of some of Nkrumah's other works as well, except his first book, Towards Colonial Freedom: Africa in the Struggle Against World Imperialism (actually a pamphlet of about 35 pages); his second book, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (encouraged by George Padmore and Padmore's partner Dorothy Pizer to write it, and mostly written by Nkrumah's private secretary Erica Powell), I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology, Africa Must Unite, Class Struggle in Africa, Dark Days in Ghana, Voice from Conakry, The Struggle Continues, and may be others.

All that may have tarnished his reputation as a thinker. But it did not diminish his stature as a continental leader who was respected and admired across Africa because of the kind of leadership he provided as a staunch Pan-Africanist. Few can match his record as an ardent advocate of continental unity under one government. Not only was he in a class by himself in that respect; no other leader pursued the same goal with the same passion and intensity as he did when he was in power. He was the first and the last.

When Nkrumah was overthrown, Nyerere paid tribute to the Ghanaian leader and even offered him asylum in spite of the differences they had on some issues vital to the well-being of Africa. Sekou Toure, Modibo Keita and Nasser also offered Nkrumah asylum.

Nyerere refused to recognise the new military rulers who overthrew Nkrumah and even the civilian government of Dr. Kofi Busia, Nkrumah's arch-rival, who served as prime minister from 1969 to 1972. When his foreign affairs minister, Victor Owusu, came to Dar es Salaam in 1969 in an attempt to win recognition for the new civilian government, he was received at the airport by a low-ranking official from the ministry of foreign affairs; a deliberate snub to the leaders who had replaced Nkrumah. Owusu, together with Dr. Busia and other opposition leaders mostly from the Ashanti region, was also involved in a plot to assassinate Nkrumah in 1958, just one year after Nkrumah led the Gold Coast to independence and became the country's first prime minister. He was going to be shot at the airport as he was getting ready to leave for a state visit to India.

The plots to assassinate Nkrumah were attributed to his despotic tendencies, ethno-regional rivalries, foreign intrigues by Western governments and intelligence agencies especially of the United States and Britain; and his determination to establish a highly centralised state that was resolutely opposed by the Ashanti who wanted a federal system under which their kingdom would retain its status as a political entity and be recognised as an autonomous unit – Obote faced the same problem from traditional centres of power, especially from the Buganda kingdom, when he decided to establish a unitary state.

Like Nyerere in Tanzania and Obote in Uganda, Nkrumah knew Ghana would be fractured along ethno-regional lines if he did not centralise power under a strong unitary state. The country had well-established traditional institutions of authority which were regionally entrenched and needed a political party whose nationalist agenda transcended ethno-regional interests and loyalties. Nkrumah was able to provide that kind of leadership when he formed the Convention People's Party (CPP) which mobilised the masses during the struggle for independence and became the ruling party after the country emerged from colonial rule. But it also galvanised its opponents – mostly regionalists – into action, determined to undermine Nkrumah in his effort to consolidate power at the centre. As Professor Kwame Botwe-Asamoah states in his book, Kwame Nkrumah's Politico-Cultural Thought and Policies: An African-Centered Paradigm for the Second Phase of the African Revolution:

"In Asante, the Asantehene...and the Ashanti Confederacy Council were to form an ethno-regional political party against Nkrumah's unitary form of government in the 1956 general election (just before independence in March 1957). While Nkrumah's CPP was to enjoy strong support among the Ga-Adangbe groups, the Ewes in the Trust territory were also to form an ethnic-based political party in opposition to Nkrumah's CPP. Similarly, a parochial political party was to be built and based among the northern ethnic groups in opposition to Nkrumah's CPP." – (Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame Nkrumah's Politico-Cultural Thought and Policies: An African Centered Paradigm for the Second Phase of the African Revolution, New York & London: Routledge, 2005, p. 93).

As a nationalist, Nkrumah had many enemies to contend with. As Professor Harcourt Fuller states in his book, Building the Ghanaian-State: Kwame Nkrumah's Symbolic Nationalism:

"Nkrumah's stronghold on power, his bitter rivalry with the Asantes and other groups, and the controversial laws that he had passed jailing some of his political rivals made him a target for violence, symbolically and physically.

During his presidency, an Asante man had threatened violence against the construction of a new statue on Nkrumah in Kumasi in 1957, while his Accra statue was actually bombed in 1961. There were also several unsuccessful assassination attempts against Nkrumah himself.

In Dark Days in Ghana, Nkrumah recalled that 'members of the police and Special Branch have been involved in each of the six attacks made on my life, and have frequently ignored, and sometimes aided, the activities of people they knew were plotting to overthrow the government.'

One such assassination attempt occurred nine months after the bombing of his statue in Accra. On August 1, 1962, according to Nkrumah and Milne, a grenade attack orchstrated by 'leading police officers' in collusion with Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, 'one of the ringleaders in the plot to kill me,' was made on Nkrumah's life in Kulungugu in northern Ghana. During this unsuccessful attack, several people lost their lives, including a child, and 55 people were injured.

Other attempts on and conspiratorial plots against Nkrumah's life and coup schemes were carried out beginning with the bombing of his residence on November 10, 1955, attributed to NLM supporters; in 1958, pinned to various Opposition party officials, including J.B. Danquah, Reginald Reynolds Amponsah, Modesto Apaloo, Joe Appiah, Kofi Busia, and Victor Owusu; and on January 1, 1964, when a policeman stationed at Flagstaff House fired four shots at the president, but missed.

The various assassination attempts gave Nkrumah the motive to arrest his political opponents, as well as those in his own party whom he wanted to purge. Among those arrested were Minister of Presidential Affairs Tawia Adamafio; Foreign Minister Ako Adjei (a member of The Big Six); and Executive Secretary of the CPP Cofie Crabbe." – (Harcourt Fuller, Building the Ghanaian-State: Kwame Nkrumah's Symbolic Nationalism, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. See also Ahmad A. Rahman, The Regime Change of Kwame Nkrumah: Epic Heroism in Africa and the Diaspora, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 171: "After the fifth attempt to assassinate Nkrumah with bullets or bombs – and the deaths of 30 innocent bystanders and the wounding of over 300 – he signed the Preventive Detention Act on July 18, 1958. Nkrumah stated that the law should not alarm anybody who was not 'attempting to organise violence, terror, or civil war, or who was not acting as a fifth columnist for some foreign power.' In addition to the dead bodies, Nkrumah's intelligence agents had given him reason to suspect that certain men in the Opposition were engaging in each of these behaviors. Evidence available now proves that this was a correct assessment. Reginald Reynolds Amponsah and Modesto Apaloo were members of Parliament and leading members of the Opposition who tried to organize an anti-Nkrumah coup in November 1958. A co-conspirator revealed their plot to a Nkrumah loyalist. When the police went to Amponsah's house to arrest him, at 1:00 a.m., they found him in the company of Kofi Busia, Joseph Danquah, Joe Appiah, and Victor Owusu. They were the foremost opposition figures in the country....As a unit, these men – without Danquah who died in 1965 – immediately identified with the new neo-colonial military regime soon after Nkrumah's overthrow").

The military coup against Nkrumah was preceded by a series of assassination attempts on the Ghanaian leader which began as far back as 1955; threats which may explain why he took draconian measures – non-violent – to curb the opposition and protect himself. No leader takes such threats lightly.

The opposition comprised the National Liberation Movement (NLM), the Northern People's Party (NPP) and the United Party (UP).

Nkrumah became Leader of Government Business in 1951 in preparation for independence a few years later.

Most of the attempts to assassinate Nkrumah involved bombings which claimed many innocent lives. The people who wanted to eliminate the Ghanaian leader did not target him alone. They knew the bombs and grenades they used in public places in an attempt to kill him would claim other lives, collateral damage his political enemies felt was justified even if they did not get their intended target, as long as there was a chance for him to get killed as well. Sometimes the bombings were as indiscriminate as they were bloody. No other Ghanaian leader has been the target of so much violence:

"Systematic assassination attempts on his life as well as terrorism became the language of his political opponents....(He became the target of) the most violent attacks on any president and members of his youth movement in the annals of Ghana.

While Nkrumah was resting and working from his house with his secretary and others because of a terrible cold on the evening of November 10, 1955, the house was bombed.

Between 1955 and 1958 there were several more assassination attempts on his life. Also, there was another plan to shoot him at the airport, as he was about to depart for a state visit to India.

On July 7, 1961, two bombs exploded in Accra, one wrecking Nkrumah's statue in front of the Parliament House.

The most dreadful of all the attempts on Nkrumah's life was the one that occurred at Kulungugu on August 1, 1962. Nkrumah was returning from a state visit to Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, and had got out from his car to speak to the school children among the crowd who had gathered to greet him, when a bomb contained in a bouquet carried to him by a schoolgirl exploded. 'It killed several and injured many others. Nkrumah sustained serious injury.'

The victims' bodies bled from cuts caused by the splinters from the bomb. Nkrumah was rushed to the nearest hospital for surgery. In the process, Nkrumah refused to have any device to deaden his pain while the operation went on (Forward Ever: 47).

In August and September 1961, there were two separate bomb explosions on Nkrumah's life. On September 9, 1962, another bomb exploded near the 'Flagstaff House, the official residence of the President, when the Ghana Young Pioneers Orchestra Band was entertaining the audience to modern Ghanaian Music' (Tetteh, 1999: 104). This explosion killed one person and injured others.

On September 18, 1962, two bombs again went off in Accra killing and injuring several people. One of these bomb blasts occurred in Lucas House in Accra, where nine children fell dead on the spot as their intestines gushed out of their bodies (Ibid: 104). This was followed by another bomb explosion on September 22, 1962. Consequently, a state of emergency on Accra and Tema with dusk to dawn curfew was declared.

Again, another bomb exploded on January 23, 1963, at a CPP rally in Accra Sports Stadium shortly after President Nkrumah had left the scene. This explosion killed over 20 people and more than four hundred people were injured; among the victims were children of the Young Pioneers movement (McFarland & Owusu-Ansah: ixi).

The question is, why the repeated bomb throwing at the Ghana Young Pioneers? In the words of Tetteh, the anti-Nkrumah forces saw in the Young Pioneers movement 'the source of permanent power if allowed to last for at least one generation or 35 years' (Tetteh: 93).

Having failed in their attempts to assassinate Nkrumah through the bomb blasts, the Opposition, including senior police officers, posted a police officer, Seth Ametewe, on guard duty at the Flagstaff House on January 1, 1964, to shoot him. Nkrumah recounts the incident as follows:

'It was at 1 P.M. in the garden of the Flagstaff House. I was leaving the office to go for lunch when four shots were fired at me by one of the policemen on guard duty. He was not a marksman, though his fifth shot succeeded in killing Salifu Dagarti, a loyal security officer who had run towards the would-be assassin as soon as he spotted him among the trees. The policeman then rushed at me, trying to hit me with his rifle butt. I wrestled with him and managed to throw him to the ground and to hold him there on his back until help came, but not before he had bitten me on the neck (Nkrumah, 1968: 41).'

Eventually, the repeated assassination attempts on his life caused Nkrumah to remain 'alone within himself' (Kanu: 40)." – (K. Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame Nkrumah's Politico-Cultural Thought and Policies:, op. cit., pp. 14 – 15).

Nkrumah also said he was able to subdue the policeman (a constable) who tried to kill him at Flagstaff House because he knew some judo techniques.

Nkrumah's opponents who tried to kill him not only supported the new military rulers; they admitted their involvement in various assassination plots to eliminate the Ghanaian leader. As Kwame Botwe-Asamoah states:

"After Nkrumah's overthrow, many in the opposition party admitted having been involved in the assassination attempts on his life.

During the Exemption Committee's hearings, Obetsebi Lamptey's name came out as having been involved in organizing several bomb explosions which caused 'the death of thirty innocent people and seriously injured many others'.

Prior to these acts of terrorism, there had been an abortive coup on November 28, 1958, carried out by Major Awhaitey; the coup was planned by R.R. Amponsah, who later became Minister of Trade in Busia's government, and others in the opposition party, to seize Nkrumah and certain members of his cabinet." – (Ibid., p. 15).

Nkrumah was overthrown nine years after he led the Gold Coast to become the first black African country to win independence. The CIA skillfully used his opponents to facilitate the coup which was masterminded by Howard T. Bane, the CIA station chief in Accra.

Nkrumah was the second member of The Group of Six to be overthrown, preceded by Ben Bella. Modibo Keita was next. He was overthrown in 1968. Nasser died in 1970.

Only two members of the group, Nyerere and Sékou Touré who were also close friends, remained in power. After Sékou Touré died in 1984, Nyerere was the only member of The Group of Six who remained in power. He lived long enough to witness the end of white minority rule in South Africa in 1994 in a country where Nkrumah, like Nyerere, was also highly regarded as a major inspiration to the freedom fighters and other victims of the abominable institution of apartheid. Like Nyerere and their colleagues in The Group of Six, Nkrumah would have been thrilled to witness the end of the last white minority government on the continent when the apartheid rulers relinquished power to the black majority after the first democratic elections in the history of South Africa.

Like Nyerere, Nasser, Sékou Touré and Modibo Keita, Ben Bella also would probably have offered Nkrumah asylum but was himself overthrown eight months earlier, in June 1965, before Nkrumah was. Fidel Castro blamed Algeria's minister of foreign affairs, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, for Ben Bella's downfall. Relations between Cuba and Algeria soured as a result of the coup and remained so for several years until Castro softened his attitude towards the new military rulers in Algiers. And as Nyerere stated at a press conference in Dar es Salaam in February 1966 soon after Nkrumah was overthrown:

"What is happening in Africa? What are the coups about? The last few months have seen changes of governments in many African countries. The latest has been in Ghana. What is behind all this? Are these 'revolutions' intended to remove humiliation and oppression from Africa?

Let us take the latest in Ghana. The enemies of Africa are now jubilant. There is jubilation in Salisbury and Johannesburg. Even a fool could begin to wonder whether these 'revolutions' would help Africa.

What was Kwame trying to do? He stood for the liberation of Africa. There is not a single leader in Africa more committed to this than Kwame. Whom did he anger with his commitment to freedom? Certainly not Africa. He was committed to true independence. He was not merely against ordinary colonialism; he was against neocolonialism – against a colonial power going out through the political door and controlling the country through the economic door." – (Nyerere, quoted by Kwame Nkrumah, Dark Days in Ghana, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968, p. 137; also in African Quarterly, Vol. 6, 1967, p. 279; Pan African Journal, Vols. 6 – 7, 1973, p. 190; Opoku Agyeman, Nkrumah's Ghana and East Africa: Pan-Africanism and Interstate Relations, Madison, New Jersey, USA: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992, p. 152).

Félix Houphouët-Boigny, president of the Ivory Coast who was hostile towards Nkrumah as much as he was towards Sékou Touré, also said the coup against Nkrumah was externally engineered. As he stated in an interview with Jeune Afrique, 4 February 1981:

"Destabilisation is not a new thing. Did you know why Idi Amin made his coup in 1972? (1971). It was not he who did it, but the British. He did not even know what he wanted himself.

It was the same in Ghana when the military overthrew Nkrumah. They [the Ghanaian coup makers] came to see me. I asked them why. They replied: 'All is not well anymore.' 'Is that all?' [I asked them]. I also asked them what they were going to do; they did not know. People outside knew it for them."

In the case of Nyerere, his credentials as an uncompromising supporter of the liberation struggle in Africa were solidified by the contribution he and his country made for decades towards the attainment of freedom and independence in the countries of southern Africa which were still under white minority rule including the bastion, and citadel, of white supremacy on the continent: apartheid South Africa.

The sacrifices Tanzania – under the leadership of Nyerere - made during the liberation struggle in southern Africa will always be remembered even if they are overlooked or ignored by some of the people we helped. One example of the contributions Tanzania made to the liberation struggle was explained by a British journalist, David Martin, after he interviewed Nyerere one day:

"I remember one day sitting in his office questioning that a number of African countries had not paid their subscriptions to the OAU Liberation Committee Special Fund for the Liberation of Africa. He looked at me for some moments, thoughtfully chewing the inside corner of his mouth in his distinctive way. Then, his decision made, he passed across a file swearing me secrecy as to its contents. It contained the amount that Tanzanians, then according to the United Nations the poorest people on earth, would directly and indirectly contribute that year to the liberation movements. I was astounded; the amount ran into millions of US dollars.

It was the practice among national leaders in those days to say that their countries did not have guerrilla bases. Now we know that Tanzania had many such bases providing training for most of the southern African guerrillas, who were then called 'terrorists' and who today are members of governments throughout the region....

Tanzania was also directly attacked from Mozambique by the Portuguese. But, in turn, each of the white minorities in southern Africa fell to black majority political rule and Nyerere saw his vision for the continent finally realized on 27 April 1994 when apartheid formally ended in South Africa with the swearing in of a new black leadership." - (David Martin, "A Candle on Kilimanjaro," in Southern African Features, 21 December 2001).

Then there was the enormous sacrifice Tanzania made in the liberation wars in terms of lives. We lost soldiers, men and women, so that others could live and win their freedom. They did. All that was done because of Nyerere. As President Yoweri Museveni said about Nyerere:

"He was the greatest black man that ever lived. There are other black men such as Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah, but Nyerere was the greatest." - (Yoweri Museveni, quoted by New Vision, Kampala, 4 April 2012).

Wanaomlaumu Nyerere na viongozi wengine kwa uamuzi wao wa kuwasaidia kuwakomboa wananchi kusini mwa bara letu wajaribu kuelewa Nyerere na viongozi wenzake walimaanisha nini waliposema "Afrika ni moja na binadamu wote ni ndugu zangu."

Pia wajaribu kujifunza mambo mengi kuhusu Nyerere, kumwelewa kwa kina na upana, badala ya kuzungumzia makosa yake tu. Mking'ang'ania hayo tu, hamtajua tulikuwa na kiongozi wa aina gani, na alifanya nini kulisaidia bara letu kwa ujumla. Pia hamtajua kwa nini alipokelewa kwa heshima sana wakati wa ziara yake nchini Uingereza na kwa nini viongozi wetu waliokuja baada ya Nyerere kutuondoka hawakupewa na hawapewi heshima kama hiyo.

Wengi wetu tulikuwepo enzi ya ukoloni. Tunajua Nyerere alikuwa ni kiongozi wa aina gani kabla na baada ya uhuru. Alifanya makosa. Lakini hakufanya makosa tu. Angalia pande zote mbili. Pia jiulizeni kwa nini mpaka leo bado anaheshimiwa sana katika nchi mbalimbali dunia nzima na si katika bara letu tu.

 

[Developer]

..

 

[barafuyamoto]

Hivi FaizaFoxy kachangia kweli hii thread??
Alafu nasikia London wana Mayor mpya.

 

[MAVUNO]

Aah! Huu Uzi umenifurahisha sana. Nimesoma comments za watu humu kwenye ukurasa wa kwanza na pili nikaona kama Niko kwenye jamiiforums ileeee iliyokuwa ikijadili mambo kwa utulivu bila mihemuko isiyo na tija. Nyani Ngabu I owe u one!
Nikirudi kwenye mada Mwalimu alikuwa statesman wa nguvu jasiri kupindukia. Aliingia kwenye siasa akiwa na dhamira ya dhati ya kutumikia nchi yake na Afrika nzima. Kwake yeye wananchi na waafrika wote walikuwa ndugu zake ndio maana alikuwa yuko tayari kuwapigania kwa akili na nguvu zake zote dhidi ya ubepari, ubeberu na ukandamizaji wa mataifa makubwa. Inafurahisha na kusisimua kusikiliza na kuona Rais kiongozi wa Afrika anavyowachana Wazungu! Kuna moja ya Cancun iliwahi kubandikwa akimsulubu Regan. Huenda imo kwenye uzi huu sijaupitia wote. Huyo ndiye Mwalimu JK Nyerere BABA WA TAIFA la Tanzania aliyeonyesha mfano bora wa uongozi uliotukuka uliopaswa kuigwa na waliomfuata kudumisha heshima aliyotujengea. Naamini kwamba Rais wa awamu hii atajaribu kwa kadri ya uwezo wake kuirejeshea nchi yetu heshima iliyofutika!

 

[Econometrician]

ngoja tusubiri mapokezi ya magufuli yatakuwaje siku atakapokanyaga ulaya

 

[Kokola]

Lol, najaribu ku-guess tu mkuu. Anyway, kwa upande wangu Nyerere ni kama Obama. Longolongo nyingi lakini sio effective katika utendaji. Too much poetry.

Nasikia hamu kukuunga mkono katika hilo....

 

[Kokola]

Hii hotuba ya Mwalimu kwenye Bunge la Afrika Kusini mbona inapatika kwa vipande vipande hakuna mtu anayeweza kutupa yote..??!! Hapa tunamuona Mandela anakutana na mtaalamu wa world affairs a seasoned Pan Africanist Mwalimu Nyerere. Itakuwa vizuri kuipata yote.

 

[MABANDA]

Naipenda sana hiyo video...kwa kweli lets agree

 

[sunola]

Much respect kwa Ngabu you nourishing the thirst of many people u never expect. [emoji106] [emoji106]

 

[WANtEd86]

Hivi FaizaFoxy kachangia kweli hii thread??
Alafu nasikia London wana Mayor mpya.

+5T
#

 

[Kichuguu]

Prince Charles alimtwangia saluti ya kijeshi Mwalimu.

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

 

[Nyani Ngabu]

 

[Shwari]

 

[Boko haram]