Ghana’s Day of Shame

This was the speech by Dr. Gamel Nasser on the occassion of remembering the February 24, 1966 coup dubbed 'Ghana's Day of Shame' at the International Conference center, Accra.

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPERIALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE NKRUMAIST DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM

(Keynote Speech by Dr. Gamel Nasser on the occasion of Ghana’s Day of Shame at the International Conference Center on February 24, 2011)

We have gathered here today to mark a very infamous day in our national history, so infamous that it has rightly been dubbed Ghana’s Day of Shame. 24 th February 1966 is a day of shame in the sense that it illustrates the lack of conscience on the part of the neocolonial elite in Ghana and the dishonourable levels they will go to collaborate with the forces of imperialism to subvert the aspirations of their own people in their struggle for genuine independence and for the liquidation of underdevelopment. It is now an established fact backed by documentary evidence that American and British intelligence had made it their foremost priority to overthrow the government of Kwame Nkrumah and halt the bold attempt at nation building by a Black African country in its efforts to lift its people from poverty. And when the witches or wizards enter the houses, someone inside has opened the door. Jack Mahoney in his book JFK Ordeal in Africa specifically mentioned J.B. Danquah as one of the members of the political elite of the then Gold Coast who was on the pay roll of the CIA. And the traitors, Afrifa, Kotoka and Harley who carried out the coup of February 1966 were actually paid monies running into millions of dollars. The hostility that the Americans and the British had towards Nkrumah was based on the fact that Nkrumah not only understood the real nature of Americans and British imperialism, but more importantly, he was prepared to confront it in Africa. And the British and Americans were also prepared to use all means at their disposal to block or even eliminate Kwame Nkrumah. For them the stability of the global capitalist system was at stake and they would fight tooth, nail and claw to protect it. And in doing this, they swore, as they have continued to do, that they would never allow any model of successful alternative to neocolonial dependency to take root or flourish. The reason is simple. If one African country such as Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah, could simply opt out of the orbit of the global imperialist system, and succeed at some form of independent 2 development, what would have prevented other African countries from following that example and shake off the yoke of imperialist domination? The world order which imperialism imposes on the rest of us is a cynical one. In it Africa’s role is essentially two. The first is to supply the material resources, markets and investment outlet for Europe, America and Japan. The second is to act as buffer zones or shock absorbers to cushion and stabilize the crisis of the global system as they periodically occur. In this less familiar second role, the burden of adjustment to the cyclical crisis in the entire global system is typically passed on to Africa. This is done mainly through lower prices for our export, higher prices for our imports, willful manipulation of the values of our currencies, super exploitation of workers, higher interest charges on our debts and other methods. This exploitation world order is not new. From the times of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the present neocolonial times, the system has worked to transfer huge amounts of resources from the underdeveloped world to the advanced industrialized countries effectively ensuring that the affluence of the populations of these countries is kept artificially high. And to maintain this exploitative world order, imperialism does not hesitate to use its enormous economic muscle and awesome military power to subdue any threat to the system.

When the people of Vietnam decided to exit this imperialist orbit in the 1960s America deployed the full force of its military industrial complex in a ruthless campaign to pound the Vietnamese people into submission, but the heroism of the people of Vietnam prevailed. It was the same desire to protect the global imperialist order that was behind the CIAsponsored Katanga secession and the murder of Patrice Lumumba of then Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, the involvement of oil Multinational corporations in the Nigerian civil war, the overthrow of Yakubu Gowon and the abortive coup of 1976 in which the progressive military ruler General Muritalal Rufai Muhammed was assassinated. It was also the commitment to protect the imperialist order which was behind the CIA-sponsored overthrown of the democratically elected president of Chile 3 Salvador Allende, the almost half-century regime of sanctions the United States has continued to impose on Cuba, the destabilization of the Sandinista regime of Nicaragua and that of the MPLA in Anglo in the 1970s and 80s, the hostility towards President Chavez of Venezuela, the confrontational posturing against the Islamic Republic of Iran and imperialism’s support for the autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt for thirty years.

The underlying message in all these examples is that imperialism is in no mood to tolerate any visionary and imaginative Third World leadership committed to the liquidation of dependency and underdevelopment. Such leadership disrupts the imperialist order and must be dislodged at all costs. First imperialism uses bribery. When this proves unsuccessful, the next strategy is to block the progress of the honest and patriotic African leader. And when this also fails imperialism applies all manner of pressures to break the government in question by destabilizing it and ultimately overthrowing it through a coup d’état. The specific application of this strategy may differ from one country to the other, but the overall cynical objective is the same. With regard to Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah, it was first through a very hostile international media campaign, followed subsequently by naked terrorism and a violent campaign of bombings targeting mainly civilians and school children. Terrorism was then followed by outright economic sabotage which eventually set the stage for the coup of 24 th February 1966. Since then imperialism has never relented in its quest to exercise full control over our country and its resources. I will cite one very recent and familiar example.

There is an American oil exploration and production company called Kosmos Energy and it holds a 23.5 percent stake in Ghana’s Jubilee Oil field. In October 2009 the company announced that it was selling this stake to another US company announced that it was selling this stake to another US company called Exxon Mobil, and in the process Kosmos Energy blatantly tramped upon the laws of Ghana and also engaged in some fraudulent and underhand dealings. Ghana government objected to the sale and invoked its first right to buy out the 23.5 percent share of Kosmos as this was in the best national interest of Ghana. A tag of war then ensued between the government of Ghana on one hand and 4 Kosmos Energy and Exxon Mobil on the other. The Obama administration and the might of American corporate power rushed to the defence of Kosmos Energy descending heavily on the government of Ghana in a bid to pressurize the Mill’s administration to consent to what was clearly illegal and inimical to the interest of the masses of the people of Ghana. The US applied limited financial sanctions, and its lawmakers threatened to cut off MCA funding to Ghana.

In fact no effort was spared in undermining Ghana’s international trade. And as has already been noted elsewhere by the Committee for Joint Action, the World Bank withheld 150 million dollars in support to Ghana demanding what the Bank referred to as ‘governance’ reforms in the oil sector. Translated into English this meant Ghana government succumbing to the Kosmos-Exxon Mobil deal. Mainstream American media, and especially the Wall Street Journal and Forbes were mobilized to exert enormous psychological pressure on the government of the NDC planting scare stories about Ghana’s economy in the international media. There have even been suggestions that the US would most likely subvert the NDC government and support a regime change in 2012 in favour of a more servile and pro-imperialist administration which would be more amenable to imperialist manipulation and surrender the rights of the Ghanaian people to foreign interests.

The question inevitably arises. Why will the most powerful economic and military power in the world be so obsessed with twisting the feeble arm of a tiny country such as Ghana whose leadership is just trying to take control of the country’s natural resources in an effort to lift its people out of poverty and Read More