H-NET BOOK REVIEW

Published by <H-Africa@h-net.msu.edu> October 1999

David Birmingham. _Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African
Nationalism_. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2nd edition, 1998.
xii + 142 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $14.95
(paper), ISBN 0-8214-1242-6.

Reviewed for H-Africa by Paul Nugent, <Paul.Nugent@ed.ac.uk>,
Department of History, University of Edinburgh, U.K.

 Nkrumah: Myths and Mysteries

As the head of the first independent sub-Saharan African state
and as one of the most vocal advocates of Pan-Africanism on the
continent, Kwame Nkrumah has attracted a considerable amount of
academic attention over the past four decades. In Ghana itself,
the name of Nkrumah looms larger than ever before, as the
latest crop of politicians seek to lay claim to his legacy. The
reverence that is accorded to Nkrumah is qualitatively
different to the consideration given to any other Ghanaian
politician of the bygone era, including the nationalist
leadership that preceded his rise to power.

The Nkrumah industry might seem to require little explanation,
given his unique place in recent African history. However,
there are elements of the iconography that might well seem
curious to a dispassionate observer in the 1990s. Contrary to
the well-honed image of the African freedom fighter, we know
that Nkrumah was not involved in the events that led to the
1948 riots, and that his hand was forced in the subsequent
Positive Action campaign by more radical trade union elements.
His Convention People's Party (CPP) was the primary beneficiary
of a panicked British response and subsequently worked closely
with the Governor Arden-Clarke during the period of dyarchy
(1951-57). Whereas Nkrumah was pushing at a more-or-less open
door, Sylvanus Olympio - who has never received his historical
due -  had to tackle a much more formidable adversary next door
in French Togoland. Whereas the British released Nkrumah from
prison to allow him to become the Leader of Government
Business, the French rigged successive elections to ensure that
Olympio could not win. The organizational successes of the CPP,
which were real enough, can be largely attributed to Komla
Gbedemah and his colleagues rather than to Nkrumah himself.
Even the reputation of Nkrumah as a great orator is rather
undercut by Joe Appiah's recollections of a staccato and
repetitious public performer.[1] The surviving film footage
rather tends to bear out this opinion, although Nkrumah was
perhaps better when addressing his own popular constituency.
Nor, it has to be said, was Nkrumah a very deep thinker: indeed
he might fairly be described as muddled. One might conclude,
therefore, that the sources of Nkrumah's magnetism is in itself
something of a mystery.

In order to understand the longevity of the Nkrumah myth, it is
necessary to take account of three factors. The first was the
efficiency of the CPP propaganda machine in the 1950s and 1960s
in implanting certain stock themes and images in the minds of a
generation of Ghanaians. The second is the passage of time
which has led to the softening of certain less happy memories
of the Nkrumah period, thereby enabling the older images to
shine through. The third factor concerns this review more
directly. Successive biographies, and indeed his own
autobiography, have, through a familiar process of
inter-textuality, fostered a certain manner of writing about
Nkrumah.[2] Most books contain substantially the same
information and follow a standard narrative format: starting
with his sojourn in the United States and Britain; tracing his
return to the Gold Coast and his split with the older
nationalists to form the CPP; then moving on to dyarchy and
independence; and concluding with the 1966 coup and his exile
in Guinea. At the same time, whole episodes in the life of
Nkrumah have dropped off the historical page. The one recent
exception to this inter-textual pattern is the recent monograph
of Marika Sherwood which genuinely fills important lacunae in
respect of his years abroad.[3]

The question which deserves to be asked of any new biography of
Nkrumah is quite simply whether it has anything new to say. It
should be noted that the book under review is intended as a
short synopsis of the life and work of Nkrumah rather than as a
substantial piece of new research. It does follow the standard
narrative format and contains much of the same information that
is to be found elsewhere. Where it sets out to make a fresh
contribution is in its re-appraisal of the record of Nkrumah
with the benefit of some historical distance. On the whole, the
book succeeds in its stated aim of offering a balanced
assessment. Along the way, Birmingham makes some very astute
observations and offers enough new snippets of information to
make the exercise worthwhile. The book is concise and also
highly readable.

The author is prepared to credit Nkrumah for having established
certain precedents for a continent which was acclerating
rapidly towards the uncertainties of independence. Birmingham
is alert to the personal failings of Nkrumah, but also
exonerates him from many of his mistakes on the grounds that he
was a pioneer who had little comparative experience to learn
from. Although this is a reasonable position to adopt, there is
one respect in which Birmingham appears to be too captive to
the CPP world view. The regionalist challenge of the 1950s is
depicted as 'sectarian' (p.51) (read bad) whereas Nkrumah is
presented as the defender of national unity (evidently good).
However, as Jean Allman has noted in her study of the National
Liberation Movement (NLM) - which is  strangely not cited - one
has to be careful not to uncritically accept the negative
connotations that 'nationalists' were wont ascribe to so-called
'tribalists'.[4] The NLM and the Togoland Congress both
contained people who were thinking seriously about the Ghanaian
variant of the national question. Nkrumah ultimately won the
argument, but only by resorting to the kind of repressive
tactics which poisoned the First Republic and eventually
brought about his own downfall. These were more than small
mistakes: they were cardinal errors. This is the one respect in
which, in the eyes of this reviewer anyway, the author falls
short of his desire to be even-handed.

There is another point of detail which might be of interest to
regular readers of H-Africa. There was recently a discussion as
to whether Nkrumah wrote (m)any of the works attributed to him.
Birmingham repeatedly comes down on the side of sceptics. He
states that Erica Powell actually wrote his autobiography
(p.124), albeit with his input, and that _Consciencism_ was
written by a team of ghost writers (p.82). This is a view which
some commentators might wish to challenge, although it seems
highly likely that it is true. As Birmingham himself suggests,
Nkrumah was not a prolific wielder of the pen.

As to omissions, there are bound to be some in a book of this
abridged length. This particular reviewer would have liked to
have read more about Nkrumah's relationships with his immediate
neighbours, because it is at the borders that the tensions
between Pan-Africanism and Ghanaian realpolitik were most
evident.  Finally, on a presentational point, the text contains
some rather eccentric spellings such as 'Colonel Akyeampong'
(p. 116) and 'Gerry Rawlings' (p.118) which jar. As an overview
of the trajectory of Nkrumah, this book achieves its limited
objectives. It will be a particular boon to a student audience.

NOTES:

1. Joseph Appiah, _Joe Appiah: The Autobiography of an African
Patriot_ (New York, Westport & London: Praeger, 1990) pp.
183-84

2. There are many books on Nkrumah. Some that spring to mind
are his own  autobiography, _Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame
Nkrumah_ (Edinburgh: Nelson & Sons, 1959); Basil Davidson,
_Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah_
(London: Allen, Lane, 1973); David Rooney, _Kwame Nkrumah: The
Political Kingdom in the Third World_ (London: I.B. Tauris,
1988); Ebenezer Obiri Addo, _Kwame Nkrumah: A Case Study of
Religion and Politics in Ghana_ (Lanham: University Press of
America, 1997).

3. Marika Sherwood, _Kwame Nkrumah: The Years Abroad,
1935-1947_ (Accra: Freedom Publications, 1996).

4. Jean Marie Allman, _The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante
Nationalism in An Emergent Ghana_ (Madison & London: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1993), chapter 1.

    Copyright 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may
    be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is
    given to the author and the list. For other permission,
    please contact h-net@h-net.msu.edu.

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS