Road to Ghana: Nkrumah, Southern Africa and the eclipse of a decolonizing Africa

 

 

Jeffrey S. Ahlman

Johns Hopkins University

 

 

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ABSTRACT

This article interrogates the position of Accra as an 'extra-metropolitan' centre for southern African anti-colonial nationalists and anti-apartheid activists during the so-called first wave' of Africa's decolonization. Drawn to Ghana by a narrative of decolonization and continental pan-Africanism that was at once peaceful and revolutionary, southern African 'Freedom Fighters' and expatriates first traveled to the Ghanaian capital of Accra in anticipation of the 1958 All-African Peoples Conference. Inside Ghana, southern African parties including the ANC and NDP and later the PAC, ZAPU and ZANU worked with the government of Kwame Nkrumah's Convention People's Party (CPP) in establishing an anti-colonial policy that spoke both to the unique settler situation in the region and the heightening international tensions of the emergent Cold War - a transnational dialogue to which the Nkrumah administration was not always receptive. As such, this article argues that the southern African presence in Accra and the realities of settler rule in the region challenged Nkrumah's and others' faith in the 'Ghanaian' model of decolonization, thus leacding to a radicalization of African anti-colonial politics in Ghana during the early and mid-1960s as Nkrumah and his allies faced the prospect of the continent's 'failed' decolonization.

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Introduction

In October 1958 the ANC activist, writer and schoolteacher Alfred Hutchinson furtively boarded a train in Johannesburg and began an arduous escape from the South African apartheid state.¹ Fresh from his acquittal on treason charges and seeking to elude reprosecution, Hutchinson set his sights northwards towards the newly independent state of Ghana. Titling the autobiographical account of his exodus Road to Ghana, Hutchinson coupled a dramatic picture of the hardship and indignities of life under white rule with the hope and excitement associated with Ghana's 1957 independence.² More than a mere transfer of power from the British colonial administration to an African elite, Ghana's independence signalled to the international community the rise of a new Africa - an independent Africa ready to assert itself as an equal on the world stage. For southern African activists like Hutchinson, caught in an entrenched settler situation that appeared to be closing in around them, Ghanaian independence did not only provide a source of inspiration and motivation as they confronted their own struggles at home. More importantly, through the moral and material support elicited by the Ghanaian Prime Minister (and, after 1960, President) Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana offered them a venue from which to organize, collaborate, and negotiate their future in dialogue with anti-colonial movements and nationalist parties from throughout the continent.

As the first black-led, sub-Saharan state to emerge from colonial rule, the independence of Ghana was a watershed moment in twentieth-century Africa. Representing an idealized path to African self-rule, the Ghanaian model of decolonization appeared to outsiders as peaceful, democratic and orderly. And, compared to much of the rest of the continent, it largely was.³ The result was an unparalleled optimism both inside and outside the continent about what Ghana's independence meant to the future of Africa and Africa's place in the burgeoning post-war international community. In the months leading up to and for years following the country's indepen-dence, African and non-African radicals and activists alike trekked to the Ghanaian capital of Accra, where they sought to take part in what many saw as an emerging continent-wide liberation movement. While in Accra, these activists and would-be Freedom Fighters⁴ set out to define the direction, institutions, and ambitions of an independent Africa, debating along the way issues ranging from the role of violence in the African anti-colonial struggle to questions over the threats posed by neo-colonial and Cold War influences in a decolonizing continent.⁵

By the end of 1960, the so-called 'Year of Africa', continent-wide independence appeared to be a foregone conclusion. Yet what that independence would look like was still far from clear. In the post-World War II era, the pursuit of greater autonomy and self-determination was not only to be a quest for African nationalists on the continent. Rather, the massacre at Sharpeville, coupled with the escalation of the Algerian war in North Africa, signalled a rising commitment among settlers in northern and southern Africa to a system of violently enforced minority rule on the continent. By the early 1960s these groups of settlers had begun their own experimentation with questions of independence in their respective colonies. Additionally, the Congo crisis and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba confirmed many anti-colonial nationalists' fears of a new form of colonial intervention on the continent, while also solidifying their beliefs in the need to re-conceptualize the African struggle at home and abroad.

The intersections between southern African settler politics, mid-century African nationalism, and the Cold War frame this essay and its discussion of the southern African experience in the pan-African sphere of Nkrumah's Ghana. The intractable nature of the white settler state presented Nkrumah and his government with the unique problem of an apparently stagnating revolution. Mau Mau and Algeria had already shown the world the extent to which settler populations - with, at least in part, the support of their metropolitan governments -would go in order to maintain their privileges within their respective colonies. The brutal massacre of unarmed protesters in Sharpeville and, five years later, the Rhodesian UDI only confirmed the inhumane nature of the settler situation for Nkrumah and other radical politicians. Furthermore, a failure of leadership within the international community - particularly among the British and American governments (Ghana's closest trading partners and benefactors) - forced Nkrumah and others to look elsewhere as they pursued their envisioned 'African revolution' on the continent. The result was a political setting that was rife for a radicalizing transnational anti-colonial movement, which not only pushed figures like Nkrumah further to the political left, but more importantly collapsed the international politics of the Cold War into a post-colonial worldview haunted by threats of neo-colonial subversion and - as exemplified by the southern African situation - the spectre of the continent's presumed 'failed' decolonization.

 

A Pan-African Accra

Alfred Hutchinson's choice of Ghana was a deliberate one. Internationally the Second World War, coupled with the post-War advent of the United Nations, had disrupted what Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper have called the 'world of empires' with promises of a new international order.⁶ Coming out of the War, for instance, much of Asia - including the prized and long-time colonies of the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia - made claims to self-government. Over the next few years, the vast majority of these colonies would attain independence, most through relatively peaceful means. The 1955 Bandung Conference further aimed to capitalize on the volatility of the post-War international order. Bringing together representatives from twenty-nine self-governing Asian and African territories, including Nkrumah's pre-independence Gold Coast, the Conference created a space for the world's emerging nation-states to demand a place for themselves as equals on the international stage. For as Vijay Prashad explains, 'what is important about Bandung is that it allowed these leaders to meet together, celebrate the demise of formal colonialism, and pledge themselves to some measure of joint struggle against the forces of imperialism.'⁷

That decolonization was to be a co-ordinated act of self-expression on the international stage drove Nkrumah's worldview. Decolonization, and particularly that of Africa, was to be, at least in theory, a co-operative project for Nkrumah, one that linked the continent's diverse colonies' struggles together under the overarching umbrella of African liberation and African unity. As a result, within days of independence Nkrumah began the process of establishing Accra as a haven for the continent's anti-colonial nationalists and radicals. Prominent pan-Africanist figures like George Padmore and T. Ras Makonnen joined the new Nkrumah administration, first in advisory roles and later in formalized positions. Together, they worked with Nkrumah to create a vibrant network of formal and informal bases of support for the country's growing expatriate community. Returning to London in September 1959 for medical attention, Padmore recruited young nationalists eager to continue their education in an environment presumably more conducive to their revolutionary ambitions.⁸ As one young Malawian student, a Mr. Bright Nyondo, recalled in 1961, it was Padmore's ability to connect the changes taking place in Ghana to the Malawian's own country's anti-colonial struggles that brought Nyondo to Accra. According to Nyondo, 'I was much impressed by his simplicity, by his sincerity, by his sympathy with my efforts to educate myself and, above all, by his great interest in my country Nyasaland'⁹ For this reason, Nyondo, like numerous others in the late 1950s and early 1960s, travelled to Accra and Ghana's other major cities where (often with some difficulty) they sought to complete their primary and secondary school education.

Long-time political activists and exiled nationalists accompanied the students in Ghana. Buoyed by Nkrumah's promotion of the 1958 Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) and, especially, the December 1958 All-African People's Conference (AAPC), exiled party leaders and asylum seekers, like Hutchinson, converged upon Accra as they sought a base of support for their respective causes. By early 1960 representatives from South Africa, the Rhodesias, Tanganyika, Algeria, Cameroon and Angola, among other anti-colonial hotspots, were enjoying the presumed sense of camaraderie that accompanied Nkrumah's pan-African and anti-colonial ambitions on the continent. 'We have arrived home', Peter Molotsi of the South African Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) exclaimed as he reminisced about his arrival in Accra, 'the Mecca of Pan-Africanism' in 1960.¹⁰

Institutional support for the country's anti-colonial community rested with the Ghanaian Bureau of African Affairs (BAA). Founded in 1959 and charged with maintaining and extending Nkrumah's pan-African message throughout the continent, the BAA ran literacy classes and educational campaigns for expatriates, operated one of Africa's largest non-academic research libraries and inter-continental presses on African Affairs and, through its subsidiary the African Affairs Centre (AAC), ran a hostel service for both elite and non-elite members of the emerging 'Freedom Fighter' community.¹¹ Moreover, as members of the community arrived in the country - many coming without papers and money - the BAA and the AAC supplied them with visas, clothing, a small stipend, and basic toiletries, while some expatriates also sought additional support for their wives and children.¹² Meanwhile, those who could not make it to Ghana wrote regularly to the Bureau seeking advice and moral support as they pursued their revolutionary ambitions from home. For as one J.J. Maketo of Southern Rhodesia explained in a 1961 letter to the Bureau's director A.K. Barden, he privately supported the illegal National Democratic Party (NDP). Yet out of fear of incarceration and of the loss of his teaching position, he had been unable to publicly announce his support for the party. 'Let us say I am dismissed from teaching, what can be my possible future?' Maketo asked Barden.¹³ While the Ghanaian director responded with sympathy to Maketo's plight, he did continue by reminding the Southern Rhodesian of the all-encompassing role of the anti-colonial struggle in shaping one's life.¹⁴

By 1960, when Ghana made its transition to a Republic, the country had thus evolved into a central staging ground for anti-colonial activists, exiles and asylum seekers on the continent. As in other anti-colonial centres like Cairo and Dar es Sa-laam, though, expatriates living in Ghana often found it difficult to adjust to or make a living within their host country, particularly as interpersonal and inter-agency rivalries within their host's political administration often slowed the distribution of services to those most in need.¹⁵ Nonetheless, in the Ghanaian context, the Freedom Fighter and exile communities played a vital role in presenting the Nkrumah government's anti-colonial and non-aligned agenda to a continental and international audience. During this time, exiled leaders and Freedom Fighters were regularly carted before the public in party rallies. Likewise, their exploits dotted the pages of state-run and party newspapers, while the military, ideological and logistical training they received in government-run training camps assured the Nkrumah administration that it was playing an active role in the continued liberation and eventual unification of the continent at large. Even more importantly, Accra's Freedom Fighters and expatriates helped colour the ways in which Nkrumah and others in his government understood the many-headed hydra of colonial and anti-colonial politics on the continent, the settler situation in southern Africa and their place in the bifurcating world of the Cold War.

 

Ghana, Southern African and the Boycott

As international attention to the problem of apartheid intensified in the years between 1958 and 1961, South African activists and exiles emerged as one of the most prominent groups of expatriates in the Accra Freedom Fighter community and, in so doing, injected the city's anti-colonial politics with a series of conflicts and debates linked to the internal South African political scene. In a continent seemingly undergoing a rapid political and social transformation, the racialized rhetoric and policies of the South African apartheid state appeared anachronistic. Both in South Africa and internationally, activists responded to the policies of the apartheid regime with public protests, rallies and newspaper campaigns. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the economic boycott emerged as the preferred tool of protest for the British Left. Working primarily with ANC representatives and others in the South African opposition, British politicians and activists - most famously including figures such as Fenner Brockway of the Movement for Colonial Freedom and Reverend Michael Scott of the Africa Bureau - presented the boycott as 'A Great Moral and Positive Weapon' against apartheid.¹⁶

For instance, as early as 1957, the pacifist Scott was writing to Nkrumah explaining how, for nearly a decade, the South African regime had flaunted international law and United Nations' resolutions with its racialized worldview. This intransigence, Scott asserted, required a co-ordinated effort among Africa's independent states as they attempted to pressure the international community into isolating and ostracizing the Pretoria government. According to Scott, Ghana and West Africa more broadly were to 'set an example [for the world] by boycotting South African foodstuffs, eggs, tinned fruit, wine, and other products from the Union.'¹⁷ Mean-while, inside South Africa, the ANC promoted a co-ordinated local and international boycott of white South African products as the most effective and efficient manner in which to challenge the apartheid regime. For as one 1959 ANC National Conference report suggested, 'by withdrawing our purchasing power [approximately £400,000,000 per annum] from certain institutions we can, as Chief Luthuli said, "punch them in the stomach."'¹⁸ Later that year, another ANC report argued that '[t] he Boycott has the additional merit that it is not a defensive weapon. We are on the offensive and we are fighting on a battlefield chosen by ourselves, based on our own strength.' To this end, the report's authors insisted: 'The economic boycott in South Africa has unlimited potentialities.' 'When our local purchasing power is combined with that of sympathetic organizations overseas,' the report continued, 'we wield a devastating weapon.'¹⁹

Support for the boycott did not go uncontested, however, in either South Africa or the international community. The American and British governments actively dissuaded the protest movement dismissing it as, at best, a movement of naïve and idealistic activists and, at worst, a program open to communist infiltration.²⁰ Fur-thermore, inside South Africa, the ANC was fracturing with the so-called 'African-ists', guided by Robert Sobukwe and Potlako Leballo, breaking away from the organization in order to form their own party. Frustrated by what they saw as the ANC's misguided faith in multi-racialism, the leaders of the newly formed PAC set their sights on building relationships with anti-colonial nationalists and pan-Africanist radicals in other parts of the continent.²¹ Meanwhile, locally, the PAC promoted the boycott as a means by which to protest against abusive shopkeepers, while internationally it 'supported and encouraged' African countries to join the struggle. How-ever, as Christabel Gurney shows, the boycott was never a central feature of PAC policy. Rather, PAC leaders viewed it as a passive and ultimately ineffectual response to the white-run government.²²

The call for a boycott of South African goods put the Nkrumah government in a difficult position. At the 1958 AAPC, the continent's nationalist leaders had unequivocally supported the action with the Conference's governing body writing the boycott into the event's resolutions.²³ The siting of the AAPC's Permanent Secretariat in Accra put even more pressure on Nkrumah and his Cabinet to conform to the Conference's resolutions as they devised the new state's foreign policy. The Nkrumah government, however, hedged its bets as international interests and instrumental concerns subverted anti-colonial activism and perceived burgeoning continental solidarity. Seeking to soften his image outside of Africa from that of a radical revolutionary to one of a responsible statesman, Nkrumah appeared to many to have sided with the British and American governments in debates over the 'South African Question'. Suggesting at the 1957 Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference that key international forums such as Commonwealth meetings were not ideal for debates over apartheid, Nkrumah promoted a passive approach in dealing with the South African govern-ment, one that emphasized the international collective's ability to encourage the apartheid regime into a gradual softening of its policies.²⁴ This hands-off approach to South Africa also had repercussions at home in Ghana as, in an attempt to protect what it saw as its growing influence in the international community, the Nkrumah administration openly chastised elements within its own political wings for advocating the boycott in the press and on the radio.²⁵

Domestic interests also featured prominently in the Ghanaian reaction to the proposed South African boycott. Rapid development and industrial modernization was integral to the envisioned Nkrumahist way of life. Inside Ghana, Nkrumah envisaged a wholesale re-invention of Ghanaian industry, commerce and infrastructure. Still unrivalled today, his plans included investments in transportation, electrification, telecommunication, agriculture, education and healthcare. This state-run infrastructural and industrial program was to fuel economic expansion and ensure the country's political and economic independence.²⁶ Yet Ghanaian modernization required substantial (primarily western) subsidies. Furthermore, the hallmark of Nkrumah's development agenda - the Volta River Project - was inextricably linked to British and, after 1957, American capital. Initially conceived as a joint British-Gold Coast endeavour, the Volta River Project aimed to dam Ghana's largest river and, in so doing, electrify large swaths of West Africa, transform Ghana into a leader in the international aluminium market and create the world's largest man-made lake.²⁷ As British interest in the project waned after independence, Nkrumah turned his attention to the Americans who cautiously signalled their interest in contributing a $600 million loan to the dam initiative. Over the next several years, a 'cat and mouse game' developed between Nkrumah and his American benefactors as Nkrumah sought to secure the promised investment with a public moderation of key aspects of his anti-colonial and international agenda.²⁸

The inconsistencies between Nkrumah's rhetoric and actions were a cause of consternation throughout the continental anti-colonial community. For instance, Nkrumah's unwillingness to support the South African boycott was a subject of widespread debate at the 1960 AAPC in Tunis. 'Speakers after speakers [sic] directly and indirectly attacked Ghana on its lukewarm policy towards the boycotting of South African goods,' A.K. Barden complained in his post-Conference report to Nkrumah.²⁹ The solution for him was obvious. Barden continued by explaining, 'I feel that in order to uphold the envious prestige of Ghana in its relentless fight for independence for dependent African countries this matter should be given further consideration'.³⁰ A week later in early February 1960, another memo - this time presented to the Ghanaian African Affairs Committee - outlined the importance of the boycott to the South African cause, while also offering a path by which Ghana could become compliant with popular opinion.³¹ According to the author (an unnamed former South African diplomat visiting Accra), with strikes illegal and the government's increasingly indiscriminate arrests of Africans, boycotts proved the only real weapon for the country's African peoples in their struggles against the apartheid regime. The 'internationalisa-tion' of the boycott was thus vital to the future of South Africa, the author argued, for a 'full' and 'total' boycott would strike at the heart of all of the apartheid state's most ardent supporters: the industries, farmers and, presumably, the politicians. As such, the author called upon the Ghanaian government to offer 'immediate support from all unofficial sources for the boycott' and, within six months, to announce its official support and participation in the protest movement. Additionally, the author insisted that any attempt to establish diplomatic relations with the South African regime should be reconsidered so that Ghana may lead a 'diplomatic offensive' against the apartheid government in Accra and in the United Nations.³²

The result was a tepid and inconsistent approach to the boycott beginning in early 1960. Key South African goods were banned from importation, curiously including the prominent anti-apartheid Drum magazine. Additionally, South African nationals were required to denounce the apartheid regime prior to entering the country.³³ Exemptions abounded, however. J.F.V. Philips - a white South African professor at the University College of Ghana - for instance, was given special dispensation to return to the country in August 1960 in order to settle his affairs despite being 'unable to make the declaration against apartheid'.³⁴ Furthermore, as late as at least 1964, some trade continued between the two countries, primarily through the Ghanaian-owned Black Star Line shipping company.³⁵ As a result, by late 1960 frustrated officials in Nkrumah's own Cabinet were arguing for a rethinking of the boycott and labelling it 'virtually ineffective'.³⁶

Meanwhile, as the Ghanaian government debated the role and framework of the boycott in the country's foreign policy, the ANC and PAC each battled to position themselves as the legitimate voice of the South African movement in Accra. Speaking for the ANC, Alfred Hutchinson attempted to use the contacts he had made at the 1958 AAPC and in Accra's Freedom Fighter community to delegitimize the PAC in the halls of the Ghanaian government. Characterizing the PAC as a party comprised of 'radicals' and 'extremists', Hutchinson presented the longstanding ANC as South Africa's sole responsible alternative; it was only the ANC, he and others suggested, that was ready and willing to work with anyone - African, European, or otherwise - committed to advancing the South African struggle.³⁷ PAC leaders, for their part, began to make their way out of South Africa in early 1960. Led by Peter Molotsi and Nana Mahomo, who left South Africa together on 20 March 1960 just a day before the Sharpeville Massacre, the PAC set up missions in Accra, Dar es Salaam, Cairo, London and in several other metropolitan and extra-metropolitan locales.³⁸ PAC leaders would come to play an active role in the Accra Freedom Fighter commu-nity, as they worked for institutions such as the BAA and lobbied the Nkrumah government for financial and military support.³⁹ As such, by the end of 1960, they had become some of the most influential exiles in Accra, moulding Nkrumah's and the Ghanaian government's understandings not only of events in South Africa, but also and perhaps more importantly, of the issues shaping the southern African region as a whole.

 

Sharpeville, the PAC and the ANC in Accra

The massacre at Sharpeville was a turning point in the Ghanaian understanding of the South African conflict. On 21 March 1960, during an anti-pass rally organized by the PAC, South African police officials opened fire on a crowd of unarmed protesters in the township of Sharpeville, killing sixty-nine people and wounding approximately two hundred others. The international response to the incident was vehement. Even some of the South African government's most reliable allies felt as if they had no choice but to reproach the apartheid regime. Speaking from Washington, for instance, the Eisenhower administration's Director of the Office of News, Lincoln White, insisted - albeit to the furore of the President himself - that the 'United States deplores violence in all its forms' and that 'it cannot help but regret the tragic loss of life resulting from the measures taken against the demonstrators in South Africa'.⁴⁰ Broadly, British reactions to the massacre followed a similar tone with eighty percent of respondents to a Gallup poll describing themselves 'appalled' by apartheid after the incident.⁴¹ Likewise, in Parliament prominent MPs condemned the apartheid government on the floor of the House of Commons, comparing it to a 'thinly disguised [system of] slavery'.⁴² As a result, by the middle of the following year, South Africa would leave the Commonwealth, further weakening its connection to Britain and the other former settler states that historically dominated the institution.

Inside Ghana, the events in Sharpeville came at a time when the Nkrumah government was finalizing preparations for the 1960 Positive Action Conference in Accra. The conference, named after Nkrumah's own evolving philosophy of nonviolent resistance, was to co-ordinate and organize nationalists and the Accra-based Freedom Fighter community around issues including French nuclear testing in the Sahara, the French-Algerian War and the continued need to educate the African populace in the promises of African unity.⁴³ The events in Sharpeville brought the South African Question to the forefront of the conference's agenda. As a result, in the two and half weeks between Sharpeville and the early April conference, the Nkrumah-led Convention People's Party (CPP) inundated the Ghanaian press with stories of the massacre and of rallies protesting the violence of the apartheid regime. Political cartoonist 'Samco', publishing in the 26 March edition of the party-run Evening News, perhaps best illustrated the Ghanaian interpretation of apartheid post-Sharpeville. His cartoon featured an image of a minister and settlers shooting at black South Africans under the caption: 'Watch the Bible and Not My Actions' (see Figure 1).⁴⁴ Another columnist, also in the Evening News, added that Sharpeville proved that the only course of action for Africa was that of 'the full implementation of the United States of Africa' and the 'vigorous boycott of South African goods'.⁴⁵

 

 

Sharpeville radicalized Nkrumah himself. In early 1960, his faith in the 'Ghana-ian' model of decolonization was already beginning to sour. In Nkrumah's mind, as the so-called 'Year of Africa' began to take shape, political compromise and negotiation were proving too uncertain a path to the political independence the Ghanaian leader desired. This was particularly evident in his view of Francophone Africa, where Nkrumah believed that a set of puppet governments controlled from Paris were subverting the nationalist ambitions of the countries' 'true' anti-colonial parties.⁴⁶ In other locales, particularly in southern and North Africa, settler rule was proving increasingly intractable, initiating a gradual rethinking of the methods of anti-colonial resistance.⁴⁷ Meanwhile, in newly independent countries like Ghana, Nkrumah and his officials argued that neo-colonial interests, primarily associated with the United States and its allies, aimed to subvert the political independence these states had already achieved and thus disrupt the broader goal of continental unity.⁴⁸ The extractive nature of monopoly capital and the brewing battle between the Cold War powers for position on the continent further cultivated this not altogether too far-fetched view of continental affairs in the early 1960s. As a result, questions of neo-colonialism, foreign subversion, sabotage and political infiltration dominated the Nkrumahist scene in the first years of the new decade. In response to this uncertain future, the Nkrumah administration intensified its policing of political dissidents and began its exploration into the possibilities and promise of the one-party state.⁴⁹

The shifts in Ghanaian domestic and foreign policy did not go unnoticed by South African expatriates in Accra, or in their offices across the continent. Among the ANC elite, few felt comfortable with the changes taking place in their West African host country.⁵⁰ Ghanaian flirtations with the one-party state and the arrests of political dissidents signalled a threat to democracy in what many had once considered the beacon of the new Africa. Furthermore, many chided, if not outright ridiculed, the cult of personality that was developing around Nkrumah. At the same time, class distinctions between the ANC activists in Accra and their Ghanaian hosts also exacerbated tensions between the ANC and CPP.⁵¹ As a result, the consensus in the ANC was that it needed to look elsewhere on the continent for support, with figures as prominent as Nelson Mandela privately lamenting that the Ghanaian anti-colonial apparatus had 'turned out to be something quite contrary to what it was meant to be'.⁵² By 1962 the ANC's continental focus had thus shifted to cities such as Dar es Salaam and Lusaka - locales that made greater logistical and political sense in regards to the ANC struggle - as well as to Algiers, Rabat, and Cairo.⁵³ Moreover, as the ANC looked elsewhere, the Ghanaians did the same, focusing on the ANC's rivals as they continued to try and exert their influence over the South African scene.

Despite periodic frustrations with the Ghanaian establishment, the PAC retained its commitment to the Ghanaian anti-colonial scene. Molotsi, Mahomo and Leballo played the most prominent roles in Accra, meeting with CPP leaders and writing about the PAC and life under apartheid for the Ghanaian press.⁵⁴ Peter Raboroko further added to the PAC mission in Accra when, in 1961, he joined the staff of the BAA for an, at times, turbulent tenure as an associate editor for the institution's flagship magazine - Voice of Africa.⁵⁵ Raboroko, a founding member of the PAC Executive Committee and the party's Secretary of Education, presented the magazine's local and continental readerships with accounts of the conflict in South Africa, but also with stories of the struggles in neighbouring territories, such as those of the Portuguese colonies, Rwanda and Burundi.⁵⁶ Furthermore, as the Ghanaian-PAC relationship reached its height between 1961 and 1963, Nkrumah organized arms and money for the PAC and its military-wing Poqo, including the 1962 purchase of a £124,000 arms-laden Swedish freighter. Unfortunately for the South African 'Africanists' though, the freighter never arrived at its destination on the Transkei coast as, according to former PAC activist Bernard Leeman, it was widely believed to have been sold for profit by a corrupt PAC official prior to its arrival.⁵⁷

The foundation of the Ghanaian-PAC relationship was a shared worldview. The PAC spoke to the Nkrumahist ambitions and ideologies in a way the ANC, with its commitment to multi-racialism, could not. Throughout the continent, Nkrumah preached the edict of 'Africa for Africans'. Both South African parties surely agreed with this principle, yet the PAC articulated its demands in a way that resonated more forcefully with the Nkrumahist administration. Having little experience with the phenomenon of 'the settler', the question of who was 'African' was clear from the perspective of Accra; the 'African' in South Africa was black; even the South African Coloured community's position remained ambiguous in the Ghanaian imagination. More to the point though, Afrikaner, English and other Europeans' claims to an 'African-ness' were suspect at best for the Ghanaians and, in terms of the country's 'decolonization', had to remain understated. The ANC may not have disagreed, yet the more nuanced, multi-racial approach it took to the South African situation fell on deaf ears in a radicalizing Ghana as the Nkrumah regime failed to appreciate the social and racial dimensions of what a liberated South Africa would look like. The PAC, in contrast, offered a clearer view of a future South Africa, at least from the perspective of Accra, as it combined an unabashed pan-African racial philosophy with a willingness to speak to questions of neo-colonialism and even tolerate the at times unpleasant steps required to fight against it at home and abroad. Even as the PAC - like its ANC rivals - shifted its political gaze towards the extra-metropolitan hotspots of the southeast, the PAC maintained and continued to cultivate its relationship with the Accra government up until the 1966 coup overthrowing the Nkrumah regime.⁵⁸ Moreover, the PAC did so even though its relationship with the Nkrumah government produced only modest amounts of real material and monetary support for the South African cause.

 

Ghana, South African and Southern Rhodesia

From the perspective of Accra, the post-Sharpeville world required a new, more forceful approach to not only the South African problem, but that of all of southern Africa. Inside South Africa, the apartheid government responded to the incident in Sharpeville with a radical crackdown on African political activities in the country. Both the ANC and the PAC were banned and the majority of the two parties' leaders were imprisoned or exiled. Those who remained often became embroiled in leadership disputes and personal conflicts that threatened the continued viability of the anti-apartheid movement, particularly within the PAC.⁵⁹ Meanwhile, internationally, the conflict between the PAC and the ANC came to a head in the year and a half following Sharpeville with both organizations' leaders calling for an end to their shortlived post-Sharpeville alliance - the South African United Front. As Scott Thomas argues, by March 1962 the remaining ANC leadership had realized that, with the PAC's persistent attempts 'to vilify[] and belittl[e]' the movement, the alliance proved un-sustainable.⁶⁰ Thomas adds that PAC officials for their part saw little use in continuing with an alliance that required compromises that the young party was unprepared to make. According to Thomas, it was generally felt that the PAC simply needed the time and space to assert its own identity on the political stage.⁶¹ As a result, by the time the dust had settled following Sharpeville, observers both inside and outside South Africa now feared that the apartheid government was more entrenched than it had ever been.

On the continental level, worries over apartheid's possible spread grew. In South West Africa, for instance, a search for more efficient methods by which to control the mandate's African population paved the way for a new set of ethnically and racially engineered land reform projects in the early and mid-1960s.⁶² To the east in Southern Rhodesia, the situation was even more problematic. The so-called 1960 'March of 7,000' from Highfield to Salisbury had elicited a vitriolic reaction from the Southern Rhodesian government, leading to the passage of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act later that year. Not only did the Act promise to bring multi-year imprisonments to those engaged in nearly all forms of political protest, the Act also gave the Attorney-General the right to appeal for harsher punishments if he saw fit. Additionally, under the Act's provisions, the Minister of Justice gained the authority to indiscriminately ban publications, while the police could now disrupt public gatherings (without cause) and arrest their attendees.⁶³ Furthermore, in 1961 the signing of the new constitution ensured minority rule in the colony for at least the foreseeable future. A year later, with the formation and election of the secessionist Rhodesian Front (RF), white Rhodesians again sought to reset the terms of the debate as they now shifted their emphasis from the protection of the minority-led government to the pursuit of white-led self-rule. According to Ian Smith, 'A political awareness had suddenly gripped Rhodesians [in late 1962], as there was a general feeling that the hour had come, and that if they did not arouse themselves they were going to lose their country altogether'.⁶⁴

Ghanaian interest in the Rhodesian Question dated back to at least 1958, when Joshua Nkomo presented the Rhodesian cause to the AAPC and served on the conference's steering committee.⁶⁵ Likewise, from his teaching post at the Takoradi Teacher Training College, Robert Mugabe also advocated for Rhodesia in the Ghanaian Freedom Fighter community.⁶⁶ Moreover, after Barden's 1960 appointment to the Bureau of African Affairs' directorship, Ghanaian initiatives in Southern Rhodesia - like most other anti-colonial hotspots - intensified as he and his lieutenants embarked upon fact-finding missions to the region, provided scholarships for Rhodesians to attend primary and secondary schools in Ghana and, after its 1962 establishment, invited them to participate in the activities of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute in the coastal town of Winneba.⁶⁷ Here Rhodesian expatriates joined other Freedom Fighters and a select group of Ghanaians for both vocational and ideological training in the advancement of the Nkrumahist revolution, with certain students also receiving training in organizational strategies, propagandizing, the art of 'positive action' and party politics.⁶⁸ Meanwhile, more prominent Rhodesian expatriates established residences and party offices in Accra.⁶⁹

Following the lead of the PAC and other successfully established anti-colonial parties in Accra, the leaders of the National Democratic Party (NDP) and, after its 1961 formation, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) strove to work within the political and ideological constraints of the Ghanaian anti-colonial arena. In the BAA, for instance, Ndabaningi Sithole emerged as a prominent writer for Voice of Africa, where he commented on issues ranging from questions over the limited viability of a continued, strict reliance on non-violence in the Rhodesian struggle to discussions of the potential benefits of the one-party apparatus in Africa - a pet project of Nkrumah's in the early 1960s.⁷⁰ In 1963, as ZAPU split with the formation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the Ghanaians - like they did with the ANC-PAC divide - favoured the newly created party. In the Rhodesian instance, though, the Ghanaian action was likely less ideological than personal in that prominent ZANU leaders, including Sithole and S.G. Parirewa, had stronger connections to Ghanaian policymakers than their ZAPU rivals - the most notable being Nkomo. Moreover, ZANU Secretary-General Robert Mugabe's wife, Sally Hayfron (Mugabe), hailed from Ghana's Western Region. Politically active herself, Hayfron, who left Ghana for Rhodesia prior to her 1961 marriage, only returned to her home country in 1961 so as to avoid arrest after attempting to organize women against the settler regime.⁷¹ Following her return, Hayfron would regularly write to the BAA and the ZANU officials in Accra from her home in the coastal city of Sekondi, relating to them information given to her by her husband. These letters often included personal discussions of the morale, health and state of mind of ZANU and ZAPU officials detained by the Rhodesian government.⁷²

As with other exile and expatriate communities in Ghana, the Rhodesian nationalists coloured Nkrumah's and his administration's understanding of the evolving crisis in the territory. Echoing other African leaders and governments, Nkrumahist officials regularly painted the crisis as an internationalization of apartheid politics. In the international arena, Alex Quaison-Sackey often led the way. Speaking in 1961, for instance, Quaison-Sackey - the leading Ghanaian diplomat to the United Nations -utilized his position in New York to construct a narrative surrounding Rhodesia that connected what he portrayed as British and settler duplicity in the colony to the ever-changing nature of capitalist imperialism on the continent. According to Quaison-Sackey, through the 'farce' of the 1961 Constitution, both the governments of Whitehall and Salisbury had proven that they desired little more than to 'turn the territory into another South Africa'.⁷³ Two years later, the Ghanaians again approached the United Nations for assistance in Rhodesia, this time with an eighty-four-page memorandum addressed to the Security Council detailing the settler government's atrocities in the territory.⁷⁴ The following year, the Ghanaian Ministry of Foreign Affairs added a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled Britain's Responsibility in Southern Rhodesia to its indictment of both the Salisbury and Whitehall governments.⁷⁵

The goal of the Ghanaians was to pressure the British into re-establishing direct control over the territory - a policy not seen since 1923 - and committing the colony to an accelerated path to majority rule. British officials, for their part, were torn about how to proceed. The Ghanaian criticism frustrated them, partly because it increased Nkrumah's international prestige at a time when many in Britain and the United States increasingly sought to isolate him due to his presumed and real sympathies with their Cold War rivals: the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China.⁷⁶ Furthermore, many in the British government did desire an eventual path to majority rule in Rhodesia, even though most also believed that special considerations had to be made due to the size of the settler population if they were to guard against potential violence or disorder.⁷⁷ This view, however, was not enough for Nkrumah or the Ghanaian anti-colonial establishment as they labelled Britain's Rhodesian policy neo-colonial and racist. Additionally, settler politics disrupted British ambitions for the territory. Viewing its first Prime Minister - Winston Field - as weak, the RF government replaced Field with his hard-line deputy, Ian Smith, in 1964. Under Smith, the RF would only amplify its demands for immediate independence, while, as Sue Onslow has shown, also secretly build up South African support for its bid for self-government.⁷⁸ Within months of Smith's promotion, it had thus become clear that a political solution to the Rhodesian crisis was not within sight.

 

Nkrumah, Britain and the Rhodesian UDI

At precisely 1.15 p.m. on 11 November 1965, Ian Smith, speaking via the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation, announced to the Rhodesian people the settler government's decision to unilaterally declare independence from Great Britain. The action was not entirely unexpected. Observers in Africa and Great Britain had been anticipating some form of proclamation for months. For instance, as early as April 1965, Smith had begun arguing that Southern Rhodesia would not suffer as a result of a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI).⁷⁹ Furthermore, in the week prior to the Declaration, the British Governor in Salisbury had been 'forewarned' of the act as Smith sought the authority to implement a state of emergency in the then 'extremely quite' territory.⁸⁰ From London, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson pronounced the Declaration illegal. Wilson added to his repudiation of the settler government's decision a ban on tobacco and sugar purchases from the southern African territory, which at the time comprised 70% of Southern Rhodesian trade with the United Kingdom. Among other sanctions, he also announced the termination of all aid to the new 'state' and its removal from the sterling zone. Furthermore, Wilson immediately dispatched his Foreign Minister to New York who insisted that the United Nations take up the issue on the following day.⁸¹

As might be expected, the continental reaction to the Rhodesian UDI was one of outrage. In Accra, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) had just concluded its 1965 meeting of heads of state, which had included virulent denunciations of both the British and settler governments when the Rhodesian announcement was made.⁸² Throughout the previous year, the Nkrumahist press had dedicated itself to painting a picture of Smith as a violent, racist 'monster'. For those in the Nkrumah administration, the UDI only confirmed their beliefs. Thus, as they searched for a response to the Rhodesian action, Nkrumah, among others in the radical contingent of the OAU, demanded nothing less than military intervention. For in its statement on the UDI, the Ghanaians welcomed the involvement of the Security Council in the Rhodesian crisis, yet chided the British for limiting the Council's actions to economic sanctions and for its past indifference in regards to the situation in its territorial possession. 'The permanent members of the Security Council', the Ghanaians argued in their statement on the UDI, 'had quite sufficient forces at their disposal to destroy the Rhodesian air force and army in a matter of minutes.' What was missing, the statement concluded, was the will.⁸³

Two weeks later in the Ghanaian National Assembly, Nkrumah continued his assault on British and Security Council sanctions, portraying them as 'unrealistic' and as an economic burden on the independent African states that neighboured Rhodesia.⁸⁴ The only solution, Nkrumah argued, was the mobilization of an international (African-led) force against the settler government. As a result and in anticipation of potential military action against the Rhodesian settlers, the Ghanaian armed forces were ordered to cancel all military leave beginning on 26 November and soldiers were told to prepare 'for any military eventuality'.⁸⁵

Over the next two and a half weeks, Ghana's relations with Britain soured rapidly. By the first week of December, key Ghanaian embassies in central and eastern Africa were reporting to Accra about growing numbers of 'nationalists ... wish[ing] to volunteer for Rhodesia'. '[T]his offer', embassy officials argued, 'merits serious attention'.⁸⁶ Meanwhile, at the OAU's headquarters in Addis Ababa, in what W. Scott Thompson perhaps patronizingly describes as a 'gust of emotion', the OAU's Council of Ministers passed a resolution demanding that, if Britain did not quell the rebellion in Rhodesia by 15 December, the governments of the independent states of Africa would cut diplomatic ties with London.⁸⁷ As the fifteenth approached, Nkrumah sent a letter to Harold Wilson announcing his intention to comply with the OAU resolution.⁸⁸ On 16 December, with no reaction from London, Nkrumah again stood before the Ghanaian National Assembly: this time to proclaim the dissolution of diplomatic relations between Ghana and Great Britain, and Ghana's withdrawal from the Commonwealth.⁸⁹

 

Conclusion

Nkrumah, along with Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, were the only African heads of state to honour the OAU's resolution and break diplomatic relations with Britain. At the time, it appeared to be a tragic end to a transcontinental relationship that dated back to the mid-nineteenth century. More importantly, in Ghana, it signalled the culmination of an anti-western worldview that had its origins in the aftermath of Sharpeville as well as in the concomitant escalation of the French-Algerian War and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. By the time of the Rhodesian UDI in late 1965, Nkrumah was no longer willing to put his faith in an international community controlled by what he deemed to be neo-colonial interests. The usefulness of this community, Nkrumah argued, had run its course and he and the Ghanaian people would now be forced to set their sights elsewhere - towards a locale and international model yet to be determined. The search for this international alternative, however, was short lived. By the end of February 1966, Nkrumah and his government would be overthrown in an American-supported military coup led by soldiers who, at least in part, were protesting their potential deployment to Rhodesia.⁹⁰ Following the coup, most of the country's Freedom Fighters and expatri-ates, including those from the PAC, ZANU and the country's other remaining southern African expatriates, were arrested and ultimately expelled from the country. The new military government was quick to re-establish diplomatic relations with Britain and repair its ties with the United States.

Meredith Terretta has recently described Accra under Nkrumahist rule as a key site for 'extra-metropolitan' cosmopolitanism in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was in places like Accra, Conakry and Algiers, among others, she argues, that dissidents and disenfranchised groups could explore their envisioned 'political alternatives' as colonial rule came to an end on the continent.⁹¹ But the Ghanaian experience with southern African politics suggests that Accra was more than just a meeting site for anti-colonial rebels and visionaries. It was the embodiment of a unique moment where African post-colonial ambitions intersected with the 'possibilities and constraints' - to paraphrase Frederick Cooper - defining the period of African decolonization.⁹² These ambitions included the breaking of the recalcitrance of the white settler state on the continent, the disruption of the apparent internationalization of apartheid, and the development of methods with which to unsettle the growing threat of the Cold War. Leaders and supporters of the ANC, PAC, NDP, ZANU and ZAPU did not necessarily come to Accra because it was politically efficient. They came and, for the most part, stayed because Accra internationalized their struggles in a way that few other 'extra-metropolitan' locales could. The city represented a path to inclusion in a continental and, at times, global movement set on defining an international order independent of the former imperial powers and the bifurcated world of the super-powers.⁹³

The dynamism of this moment ended with Nkrumah's overthrow - in Ghana and on the continent as a whole. For by the mid-1960s, the vision of a transcontinental struggle and African revolution had faded from the rhetoric of even the continent's most iconic remaining leaders - most notably Sékou Touré and Gamal Nasser. National concerns trumped continental issues in their fledgling states. Likewise, figures like Alfred Hutchinson, brought to Ghana by the hope and enthusiasm of the late 1950s, moved on. Hutchinson himself moved onto Great Britain in the early 1960s after serving several years as a teacher in his adopted Ghana.⁹⁴ Meanwhile, the battle for southern Africa continued unabated with the ANC and PAC firmly establishing themselves in Lusaka, Dar es Salaam and Maputo, among other strategic locales. Likewise, in Rhodesia the conflict between the settler government and nationalist forces rapidly escalated after the UDI, resulting in a brutal civil war that culminated in the formation of an independent Zimbabwe in 1980. While inter-African and transcontinental alliances persisted after the fall of the 'Pan-African Accra', unlike in the southern African nationalist parties' turbulent time in the Ghanaian capital, the promise of an African revolution had been diverted.

 

 

1 The author would like to thank Christopher Lee for inviting him to contribute to this collection and Tshepo Masango Chéry for her assistance in introducing him to mid-century southern African politics. He would also like to thank Kronoss anonymous reviewer for her/his comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.
2 Alfred Hutchinson, Road to Ghana (New York: The John Day Company, 1960).
3 For one of the most forceful attempts to complicate this narrative of an orderly and democratic transfer of power in Ghana, see Jean Marie Allman, The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993).
4 'Freedom Fighter' is a popularly used term, dating back to at least the early twentieth century, intended to evoke the just nature of one's political struggle. From the 1950s onward, popular usage of the term expanded rapidly in Africa, particularly among communities of anti-colonial activists and opposition parties. Anti-colonial conferences were organized under the auspices of being 'Freedom Fighter Conferences', while new periodicals also adopted the term in their titles. Oxford English Dictionary, 3^rd edition, s.vv. "Freedom," http://www.oed.com/ (Accessed 1 February 2012).
5 See Jean Allman, 'Nuclear Imperialism and the Pan-African Struggle for Peace and Freedom: Ghana, 1957-1962, Souls, 10 (Jan.-Mar. 2008), 83-102; Meredith Terretta, 'Cameroonian Nationalists Go Global: From Forest Maquis to a Pan-African Accra', Journal of African History, 51 (2010), 189-212; Jeffrey S. Ahlman, "The Algerian Question in Nkrumah's Ghana, 1958-1960: Debating "Violence" and "Nonviolence" in African Decolonization, Africa Today, 57 (Winter 2010), 67-84.
6 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 413.         [ Links ]
7 Vijay Prashad, Vie Darker Nations: A Peoples History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007), 32. See also Christopher J. Lee, 'Between a Moment and an Era: The Origins and Afterlives of Bandung' in Lee, ed., Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 14-16.
8 For an account of Padmore's experience in Ghana, see James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmores Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1967), chapter 8.
9 George Padmore Research Library on African Affairs [hereafter, GPRL], Accra, Bureau of African Affairs [BAA]/ Research Library on African Affairs [RLAA]/328, Nyondo to Minister of Education, Accra, 25 October 1961.
10 Peter Molotsi quoted in Luli Callinicos, Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 2004), 264.
11 On the daily operations of the BAA, see Jeffrey Ahlman, 'Managing the Pan-African Workplace: Discipline, Ideology, and the Cultural Politics of the Ghanaian Bureau of African Affairs, Ghana Studies, forthcoming.
12 Interview with K.B. Asante, Accra, 6 May 2008; GPRL, BAA/RLAA/328, E.A. Dzima, Interview with A. Maurice M'Polo, 26 September 1961. See also Ras Makonnen and Kenneth King, Pan-Africanism from Within (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 211-25.
13 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/811, Maketo to Barden, Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, 15 November 1961.
14 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/811, Barden to Maketo, Accra, 8 January 1962.
15 For examples from the Ghanaian Freedom Fighter community, see GPRL, BAA/RLAA/328, Romance MacDonald Kachere, 'A History of Myself' (Unpublished manuscript), 6 September 1961; GPRL, BAA/RLAA/328, E.A. Dzima, Interview with Bright Nyondo, 12 September 1961; GPRL, BAA/RLAA/328, E.A. Dzima, Interview with A. Maurice M'Polo, 26 September 1961. Meredith Terretta also notes how certain Cameroonian exiles in Accra had to resort to hawking water in order to make ends meet. Terretta, 'Cameroonian Nationalists Go Global', 206-7.
16 Christabel Gurney, '"A Great Moral Cause": The Origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959-1960', Journal of Southern African Studies, 26 (Mar. 2000), 123-40, quote from 140.
17 Michael Scott, 'Memorandum to Dr. Nkrumah, 1957: South Africa Versus the Conscience of the World', reproduced in Scott, A Time to Speak (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958), 341.
18 'Report of the National Anti-Pass Council. Signed by Duma Nokwe, Secretary-General of the ANC, Submitted to the "Mass National Conference" of May 30, 1959,' quoted in Thomas Karis and Gwendolen M. Carter, eds., From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964, vol. 3 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1977), 292.
19 'Report of the National Executive Committee of the ANC, Submitted to the Annual Conference, December 12-13, 1959', reproduced in Tom Karis and Gail Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge, 472.
20 Gurney, '"A Great Cause,"' 142. On the American side some anti-apartheid activists even questioned the efficacy and wisdom of boycotts. Rob Skinner, The Foundations of Anti-Apartheid: Liberal Humanitarians and Transnational Activists in Britain and the United States, c. 1919-64 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 163-4.
21 On the PAC, see Kwandiwe Kondlo, In the Twilight of Revolution: The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa), 1959-1994 (Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2009).
22 Gurney, '"A Great Cause'", 127-8.
23 All-African People's Conference: Accra, 5^th-13^th December, 1958: Conference Resolution on Imperialism and Colonialism (Accra: Government Printers, [1958?]), 9.
24 W. Scott Thompson, Ghanas Foreign Policy, 1957-1966: Diplomacy, Ideology, and the New State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 42-3.
25 Public Records and Archives Administration [PRAAD]-Accra, Administrative Files [ADM] 13/1/28, Cabinet Minutes, 4 August 1959.
26 For recent work on Nkrumah-era modernization projects, see Peter J. Bloom, Takyiwaa Manuh and Stephan F. Miescher, eds., Special Issue: Revisiting Modernization, Ghana Studies, 12/13 (2009/2010); Ahlman, 'Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2011); Kate Skinner, 'Who Knew the Minds of the People?: Specialist Knowledge and Developmentalist Authoritarianism in Postcolonial Ghana, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39 (2011), 297-323.
27 On the Volta River Project, see David Hart, The Volta River Project: A Case Study in Politics and Technology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980); Miescher and Dzodzi Tsikata, 'Hydro-Power and the Promise of Modernity and Development in Ghana: Comparing the Akosombo and Bui Dam Projects', Ghana Studies, 12/13 (2009/2010), 15-53.
28 On the Ghanaian-American negotiations, see Ebere Nwaubani, The United States and Decolonization in West Africa, 1950-1960 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001), chapter 6.
29 PRAAD-Accra, SC/BAA/251 (RG 17/1/465), Barden, 'Report on the 2^nd All-African People's Conference held in Tunis on 25^th January, 1960, 2 February 1960. Emphasis in original. This collection is currently in the process of being renumbered from SC/ BAA/- to RG 17/1/-. When possible, I will provide the information for both cataloguing systems.
30 Ibid.
31 PRAAD-Accra, SC/BAA/251 (RG 17/1/465), 'Memorandum on South Africa', Appendix to '11^th Meeting of the African Affairs Committee on Thursday 4^th February, 1960, at the Flagstaff House at 7 P.M.'
32 Ibid.
33 PRAAD-Accra, ADM 13/1/29, Cabinet Minutes, 1 April 1960.
34 PRAAD-Accra, ADM 13/1/29, Cabinet Minutes, 16 August 1960.
35 Thompson, Ghanas Foreign Policy, 417 note 6.
36 PRAAD-Accra, ADM 13/1/29, Cabinet Minutes, 30 December 1960.
37 PRAAD-Accra, SC/BAA/251 (RG 17/1/465), 'Minutes of the 5^th Meeting of the African Affairs Committee held on November 12^th, 1959 at Flagstaff House at 7 P.M'
38 Thami ka Plaatjie, "Ihe PAC in Exile' in South African Democracy Education Trust, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, vol. 2: 1970-1980 (Pretoria: UNISA Press, 2006), 704; Kondlo, In the Twilight of Revolution, 68.
39 See below.
40 Editorial Note, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, vol. XIV (Washington, D.C.: State Department), 741-2.
41 Skinner, The Foundations of Anti-Apartheid, 170.
42 Ibid., 171.
43 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/467, 'Speech by the Rt. Hon. Kwame Nkrumah, Prime Minister of Ghana, at the Opening Session of the Conference of Positive Action for Peace and Security in Africa on Thursday, 7^th April 1960'
44 'Samco', 'Watch the Bible and Not My Actions', Evening News, 26 March 1960.
45 Zep, 'U.S. of Africa the Only Cure', Evening News, 26 March 1960.
46 For Nkrumah's analysis of Francophone Africa, see Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (London: Panaf, 1963), 174-9.
47 Ahlman, 'The Algerian Question in Nkrumah's Ghana', 67-84.
48 Nkrumah's most vehement denunciation of U.S. neo-colonialism in Africa came in Nkrumah, Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965).
49 Ahlman, 'Living with Nkrumahism', especially chapter 6.
50 For a sustained discussion of the Ghanaian-ANC relationship, see Scott Thomas, The Diplomacy of Liberation: The Foreign Relations of the ANC since 1960 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), 28-35.
51 Ibid., 29-30.
52 Nelson Mandela, quoted in Thompson, Ghanas Foreign Policy, 222.
53 Thomas, The Diplomacy of Liberation, 42.
54 For instance, see Peter H. Molotsi, 'Spotlight on Sharpeville: The Cold Blooded Massacre of Poor Africans', Evening News, 17 March 1961.
55 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/204, Raboroko to Barden, Accra, 19 October 1961.
56 See, for instance, Peter Raboroko, 'Dark Clouds Over Mozambique: Slave Labour Camps and Union Mines', Voice of Africa (September 1961); Raboroko, 'Ruanda-Urundi Struggle for Freedom', Voice of Africa (May 1962).
57 Bernard Leeman, 'Nkrumah Armed the PAC, Mail and Guardian, 3-9 November 2000.
58 In fact, at the time of the 1966 coup, PAC Acting President Potlako Leballo was in Ghana and, for up to a week after the coup, his whereabouts and safety - along with those of several other PAC officials and students in the country - could not be confirmed; 'P.A.C. Had No News about Its Acting President and Others who are in Ghana', PAC News & Views, 5 March 1966.
59 Plaatjie, "Ihe PAC's Internal Underground Activities', 669-75.
60 Thomas, Vie Diplomacy of Liberation, 41.
61 Ibid., 41-2.
62 Reinhart Kossler, 'From Reserve to Homeland: Local Identities and South African Policy in Southern Namibia', Journal of Southern African Studies, 26 (Sept. 2000), 455-8.
63 For the Act's provisions, see J.R.T. Wood, So Far and No Further!: Rhodesias Bid for Independence during the Retreat from Empire, 1959-1965 (Johannesburg: Trafford Publishing, 2005), 58-9.
64 Smith, The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith (London: Blake Publishing, 1997), 47.
65 PRAAD-Accra, ADM 16/14, 'All-African People's Conference Steering Committee', All-African Peoples Conference -News Bulletin, 8-12 December 1958; Nkomo, Nkomo: The Story of My Life (London: Methuen, 1984), 75-7.
66 Martin Meredith, Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), 24-6.
67 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/184, E.E.K. Baah-Mintah to E. Ofori-Bah, 'Reply to Secretary's Query of 16^th September 1964', Accra, 18 September 1964.
68 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/423, National Council for Higher Education and Research, 'Development of the Kwame Nkrumah Institute, as the Institute of Political Science (Draft Memorandum)', Accra, 24 January 1962.
69 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/9, 'Nationalist Organization Representatives in Accra' [1966?].
70 See, for instance, Sithole, 'One-Party versus Two-Party System', Voice of Africa (Sept. 1961); Sithole, 'We Are Determined to be Free, Voice of Africa (Jan. 1963).
71 Robert Verkaik, 'Exclusive: The Love That Made Robert Mugabe a Monster, The Independent on Sunday, 6 April 2008. Also, see Meredith, Mugabe, 31.
72 For instance, see GPRL, BAA/RLAA/358, Sally Mugabe (Hayfron) to Stanley G. Parirewa, Sekondi, 5 October 1964; Mugabe to Parirewa, Sekondi, n.d. This file folder contains approximately twenty-five letters from Mugabe to Parirewa, mostly written between mid-1964 to late 1965. Parirewa then forwarded them to the BAA.
73 United Nations General Assembly, Sixteenth Session, 1057^th Plenary Meeting, 17 November 1961, 687-9, quote on 689.
74 Republic of Ghana, A Memorandum in Regard to Southern Rhodesia Submitted to the Security Council on the 2^nd August, 1962 (Accra: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1963).
75 Ghana Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Britains Responsibility in Southern Rhodesia (Accra: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1964).
76 Carl Watts, '"Moments of Tension and Drama": The Rhodesian Problem at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Meetings, 1964-65', Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 8 (Spring 2007).
77 In fact, the British - perhaps cynically - argued that the 1961 Constitution would help pave the path to majority rule, for it was to serve as part of 'an extensive education program' that would eventually enfranchise enough Africans to bring about majority rule in the territory. Carl Watts, 'The United States, Britain, and the Problem of Rhodesian Independence, 1964-65', Diplomatic History, 30 (June 2006), 446.
78 Sue Onslow, 'A Question of Timing: South Africa and Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, 1964-65, Cold War History, 5 (May 2005), 129-59.
79 J.D.B. Miller, Survey of Commonwealth Affairs: Problems of Expansion and Attrition, 1963-1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 198.
80 Robert C. Good, U.D.I.: The International Politics of the Rhodesian Rebellion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 16.
81 Ibid., 18.
82 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/385, GHANACOM LAGOS to LOKKO INFCAST, AFRISEC EDUFUL, PRESIDENTIAL, BAA, 9 November 1965.
83 'Ghana Government Statement on UDI, 11 November 1965' in Nkrumah, Rhodesia File (London: Panaf, 1976), 90.
84 'Nkrumah's Address to the National Assembly, Accra, 25 November 1965' in Nkrumah, Rhodesia File, 103.
85 Ibid., 114-7, quote on 116; E.K. Dumor, Ghana, OAU, and Southern Africa: An African Response to Apartheid (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 1991), 78.
86 GPRL, BAA/RLAA/385, GHANAEMB Bujumbura to Kojo Botsio, Alex Quaison-Sackey, and E. Ofori-Bah, Bujumbura, Burundi, 7 December 1965.
87 Thompson, Ghanas Foreign Policy, 393. Also, see Klaas van Walraven, Dreams of Power: The Role of the Organization of African Unity in the Politics of Africa, 1964-1993 (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1999), 222.
88 Nkrumah to Wilson, 11 December 1965 in Nkrumah, Rhodesia file, 119-120.
89 'Nkrumah's Address to the National Assembly, Accra, 16 December 1965' in Nkrumah, Rhodesia File, 121-6.
90 A.A. Afrifa, The Ghana Coup, 24^th February 1966 (London: Frank Cass and Company, 1967), 104-5.
91 Terretta, 'Cameroonian Nationalists Go Global', esp. 211-2.
92 Frederick Cooper, 'Possibility and Constraint: African Independence in Historical Perspective', Journal of African History, 49 (2008), 167-96.
93 Even parties like the ANC, which appeared to have abandoned Accra in the early 1960s, maintained a presence in the city. Furthermore, non-sanctioned supporters often lobbied the Nkrumah administration on behalf of the party. See Miriam Basner, Am I An African?: The Political Memoirs of H.M. Basner (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993), xx.
94 E'skia Mphahlele, 'Afterword' to Hutchinson, Road to Ghana (Johannesburg: Penguin Books).