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| Kofi Asamoah (L) Justice Henaku (R) |
By Duke Nii Amartey
Tagoe
Brother Kofi Asamoah,
Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress has called for a complete
structural transformation of the national economy in order to rescue Ghana from
the crises of underdevelopment.
He was speaking at a
public forum held at the Hall of Trade Unions on “The Impact of the 24th February Coup Detat on Trade
Unionism in Ghana” as part of activities marking the 50th
anniversary of the overthrow of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, first President of
Ghana by the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA and its local
collaborators.
According to him, the
coup detat of 24th February 1966, brought in its wake a ferocious
swing in government economic policy from “development” to “management”.
This he noted, ushered
in the period when employment concerns of many Ghanaians were relegated to the
background and vigorous efforts towards employment creation were halted.
The Role of
the NLC in the Sabotage of Workers
Kofi Asamoah recounted
with pain that by the time the National Liberation Council handed over power in
1970, “more than 64,000 direct public sector jobs had been cut” adding that “registered
unemployment by late 1970 had jumped to between 350,000 and 600,000”.
The result of this
dastardly act was that whilst there was a drastic reduction in the membership
and influence of the unions, many labour leaders had to take refuge under beds
for fear of persecution and several others simply fled the country. This man
hunt and intimidation continued right under the Busia regime.
The role
of the Coup in the Ideological degeneration of Trade Unionism
Trade Unions the world
over are formed and made to function on the basis of ideology. Kofi Asamoah
therefore holds that the 24th February Coup made a conscious effort
at the elimination of ideological manifestations of the activities of trade
unions in Ghana, adding that “this loss of an ideological grounding has led to
the festering of the fragmentation within the trade union movement”.
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| Prof. Sawyerr, Ebow Tawia, Prof Delle &Algerian Ambassador |
Worse still, critical
historical documents of the Congresses of the TUC cannot be found and might
have been lost forever in what the TUC Secretary General has likened to “ISIS
destruction of archeological material and historical sites”.
In a brief remark, Kwesi
Pratt Jnr, a leading member of the Socialist Forum of Ghana stated that on the
31st of December 1963, J.W Russel, British Ambassador in Addis Ababa
sent a cable to the Foreign Office in which he made some ghastly comments about
Kwame Nkrumah.
Mr Pratt said: “the coup
of February 1966 was not about bad governance or dictatorship of Nkrumah and
the CPP, but was a crime committed against an independent people striving to
break away from the yoke of colonialism.”
According to him, the
forces that overthrew Nkrumah did so purely because they wanted to hold back
Ghana’s progress in the continuing domination of Africa in the fashion of
classical colonialism.
In the cable sent to the
Foreign Office, J.W Russel said “Nkrumah is our enemy, he is determined to
complete our expulsion from an Africa he aspires to dominate absolutely. We
must find blacks who can, and although it would be counterproductive publicly
to damn them with our old colonial kiss, yet surely it is not beyond our
ingenuity to find effective ways of affording them discreet and legitimate
support? I cannot for the life of me see why we should subscribe our conscience
to help the Saltimbance of Accra engross the rest of Africa”
Nana Frimpongmaa Sarpong
Kumankuma, also called on progressive forces to unite in their effort towards
the building of a new society based on the principles of equality for all.
“ 50 years after that
sordid incident that halted the rapid transformation of our dear country, the
time has come for each and every one of us to move on and to work towards the
realization of the State we yearn to see. Every single day must count in the
mobilization of the disadvantaged and the workers of this country towards
national reconstruction” she said.
The Trades Union
Congress says it will continue to engage and build alliances with progressive
forces to ensure that the alternative path to development is realized in the
shortest possible time.
Mr Kofi Asamoah has
thrown a challenge to progressive forces to mobilize and build alliances to
galvanise public support for an alternative development paradigm in the face of
neoliberal hegemony.
The public forum which
was jointly organized by the Convention Peoples Party and the Socialist Forum
of Ghana was chaired by Mr Justice Kofi Henaku, SFG Secretary.
SECRET 3
How Britain Tried To Get Nkrumah To
Change
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| Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah |
The letters contained in
Britain’s Foreign Office Secret Files make it clear that Britain identified
Nkrumah as a threat to its strategic interests and therefore sought means to
make him change course.
The problem however was
what to use to put pressure on Nkrumah.
Britain had already cut its aid to Ghana
drastically, but that had not moved Nkrumah.
An exasperated British official,
Douglas Carter wonders “indeed the question we have to ask ourselves is whether
it is any longer possible for the British government to influence President
Nkrumah in such a way as to cause him to alter the basic orientation of his
policies. I believe that short of a boycott of Ghana’s cocoa, would be damaging
to us as well as contrary to our whole trade policy, there are no economic
levers which we can effectively use to influence Nkrumah”.
”Any attempt on our part
to exercise pressure through economic action would probably harm our interests
more than him”.
After all, Britain was still
Ghana’s biggest customer and supplier.
Interestingly,
the documents reveal that at some point the British establishment considered
the Asantehene as a possible replacement for Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
The
documents also list close associates of Nkrumah, who was working against him
and his project of unifying Africa.
Editorial
BRITAIN AND AFRICAN UNITY
That
African states continue in their non-viable conditions dictated by the Berlin
Conference is partly because the leaders on the continent have refused to serve
the interests of their people.
As
revealed by the recently declassified documents of the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office, part of the reason for the failure to unite Africa is the direct
sabotage of western countries especially Britain.
The
West rightly saw the unification of Africa as a threat to its stranglehold on
Africa and did everything possible to sabotage the continental project.
At
one stage the British establishment even tried to use one of Nkrumah’s own men
to write a book which would discredit the Osagyefo’s effort at continental
unity.
The
Insight is publishing these declassified documents as part of the effort to
learn the important lessons of history.
The
African people need to organize themselves to prevent anti-African forces from
sabotaging the forward march of the progressive forces.
