SECRET (2): British Files Reveal Efforts To Sabotage Africa Unity Project.

Nkrumah led effort to emancipate Africa from colonial rule

Secret files from the British Foreign office show that Britain was preoccupied with ensuring that President Nkrumah’s efforts to create a union government for Africa were sabotaged.

The letters from British foreign affairs officials, but particularly from British diplomatic missions across Africa, show that one duty common to all British senior diplomats in Africa was to frustrate Nkrumah at every turn.

In one of the files a letter written in 1963 by the British Ambassador to Addis Ababa, Mr.J. W. Russell, the Ambassador notes that using the Commonwealth as a tool to sabotage Nkrumah’s efforts in Africa does not work as “At the summit here last May (the founding OAU summit) he could not see the faintest trace of Commonwealth solidarity or operational unity of purpose. We made in fact a sorry show,” he wrote.

Therefore, the Ambassador suggested that as Nkrumah was their enemy, they should “find blacks who can [...], although it would be counter –productive publicly to damn them with our own colonial kiss”, overthrow the Osagyefo.

Dr Kwame Nkrumah.

In another letter to the British Ambassador in Lagos R.W.D Fowler, a British official writes…. “I am delighted with your sticking up for Nigeria, for which I have the highest regard. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to believe that Nigeria is the St George who is going to slay the Ghanaian dragon.”

Another letter on the first OAU summit from the Secret File notes….. “Nyerere and Sekou Toure had the most influence on the other delegations and were largely responsible for the final result, which was to reject the largely Nkrumahist doctrine of immediate overall political union.”

The letter adds, “Anything we can do, without attracting attention, to build up Nyerere would undoubtedly be useful – and he looks as though he needs it because in my view he is coming off second best in his struggle with Nkrumah.”

Finally, the British High Commissioner in CG, Collins sends a paper, summing up what Nkrumah gained and lost  at the Summit, noting that while Nkrumah did not get most of the things he asked for, the meeting itself, the largest meeting of heads of government ever held in Africa was in itself a triumph for Nkrumah.

Editorial

HOW AFRICAN UNITY WAS TORPEDOED

Secret files on Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah from Britain ‘s Foreign office clearly show that whilst Western diplomats did not speak at the first organisation of African Union summit in Addis Ababa, they were more than busy ensuring that the African Continent did not unite.

As letters from the British diplomats show they recruited and propped particular African heads of states at the time to make sure that they countered Nkrumah’s arguments for a Union Government in Africa, where they found their chosen leaders not persuasive enough they recruited others for the same purpose.

 They also sowed the idea that the main aim of Nkrumah was to head United Africa.

These were in the early 60s.

It is ironic that soon after the colonial masters themselves, found the wisdom of forming a union for themselves and implemented some of Nkrumah’s suggestions such as a common foreign policy and common diplomatic missions.

This must be useful lessons to those who think that Western countries know what is best for us.