Letters
Blind condemnation
I would like to make a brief comment on Mr Kwadwo Antepim's letter (Talking Drums, November 19, 1984) in which he considers my justification of the violent overthrow of Dr Kwame Nkrumah's dictatorial government an "irresponsible political assertion".In his letter, Mr Antepim does not give me the impression that he is aware of the facts of our recent past: I therefore wish to draw his attention to some of these historical facts and attempt to paint a vivid picture of the situation as it was to enable him to make a proper assessment. A very sketchy history of our recent past runs like this:
Ghana became an independent sovereign state in 1957 after Dr Nkrumah and the CPP had won the 1956 General Elections. But after 1957, Dr Nkrumah set out to concentrate power in his own hands with the help of his majority in the National Assembly who shouted AYE to whatever Dr Nkrumah asked for. The odd CPP Member of Parliament, Mr P.K.K. Quaidoo, who saw red and tried to get his fellow honourable members to reason, was castigated and thoroughly told off by Mr Heyman and others writing in the columns of the Evening News.
In 1958, Dr Nkrumah's parliament passed the Preventive Detention Act, which empowered the government to arrest and detain any Ghanaian on suspicion for five years in the first instance. This diabolical law was the work of a socialist ex-member of the British House of Commons who had fought some of these measures in his own country when he was a Member of Parliament, and the first victims were two Members of Parliament from the opposition side - Mr R.R. Amponsah and Mr Modesto Apaloo - who were framed up in a coup d'etat plot and arrested in 1958.
In 1961, Ghana became a Republic and Dr Nkrumah, the "Osagyefo", the Life President, after defeating Dr J.B. Danquah in a hopelessly rigged presidential election. And for daring to contest Dr Nkrumah for the presidency, Dr Danquah was arrested and detained under the Preventive Detention Act. All decent minded Ghanaians were shocked to hear the news of Dr Danquah's death in Dr Nkrumah's prison in 1965.
Ghana had become a one party state and Dr Nkrumah's personal property by 1962. Members of the Builder's Brigade set out to administer instant justice to fellow citizens who, even in private conversation, showed their unhappiness about the political situation in the country, while members of the Young Pioneer Movement spied on their own parents. Meanwhile, party bosses and District Commissioners went about terrorising and blackmailing innocent peace-loving Ghanaians. And there was no one to complain to. In fact, not only was decent public discussion not tolerated, but it was also actively discouraged.
By 1964, more than 3,000 Ghanaians, some of them as old as 70, were in preventive detention. And to prove that he was the all powerful, Dr Nkrumah NOMINATED certain individuals to represent the people of Ghana in the National Assembly in 1965. And what is worse, these individuals accepted these offices with pride!
It should be noted, that after achieving political power through constitutional means, Dr Nkrumah systematically destroyed all the constitutional arrangements which brought him to power. All avenues to peaceful political change were blocked by Dr Nkrumah and the CPP.
Faced with a situation such as this, I implore Mr Antipim to tell the readers of Talking Drums how this Nkrumah problem should have been solved. It is not enough to dismiss an opposing view on an issue of this nature as irresponsible. Mr Antepim should prove my position wrong with superior argument, otherwise readers may consider his accusation frivolous.
I certainly do not condemn all coups, and indeed, not the one that ended Dr Nkrumah's Life Presidency, because there was no other way to effect a change. It is Dr Nkrumah therefore, who should be blessed for what Ghana is going through today and not those who had to carry the heavy burden of overthrowing him.
The two most irresponsible regimes in our history - those of General Acheampong and Flt-Lt. Rawlings - are, indeed, the products of the seeds sown by Osegyefo Dr Nkrumah. We cannot ignore the fact that most of present Ghana's half-baked socialists and pseudo-revolutionary rulers were either members of the Young Pioneer Movement or graduates of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute.
Mr Antepim's point that the Rawlings/Tsikata bringandage, as evil as it is, must be removed is a view shared by all patriotic and respectable Ghanaians. By their methods of terror and brutality, Rawlings and Tsikata have admitted that their right to rule Ghana has to be enforced only by the use of the gun.
I sincerely think it is in their personal interest to heed advice and end their imposition, for, if Gen. Acheampong had listened to advice and had left the scene even a year earlier, he would have saved his life and the lives of other people.
Thomas Broni, Ex-Member of Parliament of the Third Republic of Ghana
Who is this Ngwana?
I was torn between surprise and amusement when I read your article (T.D. vol. 2 No. 10 of 19/11/84) concerning a so-called Cameroon democratic party and its president Mr S. Ngwana. Your article followed an interview given to the BBC. I was surprised to learn that such a party existed and operated in Cameroon. Every Cameroonian would, no doubt, be interested to know its address.Politics are too serious a matter to generate hilarity, but I could not help being amused to read that the self- appointed president of this panic-stricken would-be party is one Mr S. Ngwana. Mercy for my ignorance, but I have never heard of a politician going in Cameroon by that name. Could it be the same S. Ngwana who, a few years ago, made an ill-reputed name for himself by, to put it mildly, mismanaging the Cameroon Bank in Limbe (then Victoria)? As I recall, only a prompt escape out of the country saved him from criminal prosecution and spared him certain imprisonment. If, indeed, he is the one, I would be worried, were I in his shoes. Since one of the avowed goals of his party is to fight and eliminate corruption at all levels of the society, he might well be the first victim of his own crusade.
Could it be possible that Mr Ngwana does not realise that, with such a grim record, he does not stand a ghost of a chance to win Cameroonians' support of any kind? In fact, is he more than an adventurer trying to attract some atten- tion upon himself? I personally perceive him as a force of evil trying, not unlike one Ahidjo, to divide Cameroonians and weaken Cameroon. But, let him beware, Cameroonians have made a clear and unequivocal choice: to stand by Paul Biya and his New Deal and repudiate all the Ahidjos, the Ngwanas and their likes.
I have full confidence in your unbiased neutrality and trust that you will publish this letter to tell the other side of Mr Ngwana's story.
Julius Eko-Ngolo, London
