My mother paid the utmost price for my father’s political upheavals — Samia Nkrumah
One of Ghana’s leading political lights and scion of the Nkrumah political dynasty and daughter of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, Samia Nkrumah, has commended the depth of sacrifice her mother, FathiaNkrumah, paid in supporting her husband’s political career and the upheavals that came with it.
She made this known while been a guest at the ToyinFalola interviews series which was livestreamed to a large audience across the globe on various social media handles. In the audience were world leaders, including the Ukrainian president, leaders of thought, policymakers, politicians, members of the intelligentsia, among many others.
While recollecting fond memories of her childhood and the sacrifices that they had to pay for his political career, she stated that “Needless to say, he was so busy that he was not always there with us. But when he was around, he was just like any other father. In fact, what I also remember was that he never told us to keep quiet or go away. Even when he came home to eat or read, he would be reading or writing while we ran around him. He would want us to be there. He would insist on giving us his spoon of honey in the morning which we hated because we didn’t like sweet things. He travelled a lot; he would come late, but when he did appear, he was very approachable. From an early age, I understood that we had a father who was not only for us but who had something important to do which would take him away from us. We grew up used to sharing him, to not claiming him for ourselves.
“One of the assassination attempts that happened inside the house where we lived happened when he was walking from his office to the house where he would have lunch and we heard gunshots aimed at him. His trusted body guard died on the spot; he ran to the assassin and pinned him down. By the time we did see him, we saw our father entering the living room with his white top covered in blood. When you see these things, you might not understand what is going on. But something is triggered that there is something aside just been a father,” she noted.
Speaking further on the bond that she shared with her father and life of her father in political exile, she told the audience that “Let me start with the day of the overthrow of his government. By the end of that day, 24th February, 1966, we left Accra for Cairo where we sought refuge for almost a decade. By the time our father was informed of the overthrow, he had reached China. He called us just to reassure us. What I remember was what he told me; I was crying that whole day out of fear and trauma. My overriding fear was that they would separate us as a family. Our father tells me on the phone: ‘Yeba (which is my Ghanaian name) don’t be afraid, be strong. I don’t want you to be afraid.’ He said other things but that remained with me. As I keep hearing the voice, I felt that he was talking about something bigger than that day. It was definitely to go back to his legacy and uphold it. His influence was so huge. Imagine the number of visitors that would come to the house to talk about his politics and ideas. More than anyone else, the stories our mother told gripped us, particularly me. My mother was young. She was almost half his age. They only lived for eight years after which his overthrow happened and they were separated and they never met again. He passed on six years later. Mother paid the utmost price for my father’s political upheavals. But many of the stories she told us reinforced that commitment to the legacy; many of them made us more patriotic, more in need to do something even returning to Ghana a decade later at the invitation of the government that was pro-Nkrumah in a way.”
Asked by Professor Falola if she had gone into exile by her father, she answered on the contrary saying: “we spoke a few times on the phone. There was some very small correspondence. I wouldn’t be surprised maybe atimes he was bitter or sometimes it was hard, not even only when he was in Guinea and he made a point of he been not in exile. He was at home in any African state. The then president of Guinea, Sekou Toure, had declared him co-president and I know for a fact from what Mrs Sekou Toure had told me earlier that every evening they were there either herself or Sekou Toureto have a meal with him and discuss what was happening in Guinea and Africa. Even when he was here, there were difficult moments and seven attempts on his life. I got frustrated by comparatively minor things. The overriding thing was that how can a man so bitter write so many books and be consistent with his political thoughts and be lucid and clear about his thesis on African unity? We are human and imperfect; we lose control; we are sad and depressed. What matters is what we give our people. Prophets suffer and I consider Kwame Nkrumah a prophet because he said it all and gave us a blueprint and a guideline.”
Other members of the interview panel were Mary AmaBawa, who is the Communication Lead at the Cyber Security Authority (CSA) and a broadcast journalist; Dr. Evelyn Kissi, an African tri-citizen, Black Disability, Transnational scholar of Ghana, Nigeria and Canada and has worked in North America, Africa, and Europe with not-for-profit organizations, women’s groups, education institutions, and disability advocacy groups; and Dr. Mary Owusu, a historian of ancient and modern Africa whose research interests lie in the areas of African intellectual, political, and development histories, with a focus on Ghana.
She, however, maintained that Africa must develop a democratic ethos which is geared towards prioritizing the masses and having a communal flavor. According to her, “We have always practiced democracy in different ways; this is even from our indigenous cultures and traditions. But it is slightly different in model from multi-party politics. But even more recently like the case of Ghana, the way we gained independence was through constitutional means. That is why we had to go through three elections before we could convince the colonial powers that indeed the majority of Ghanaians wanted independence. We are no strangers even to multi-party democracies as such. It is the manner in which we are practicing it perhaps. It is inadequate; it is not helping us deliver on the promises of our independence. Many Ghanaians have been brainstorming on this especially recently especially when we want to talk about constitutional reforms. One of the most often repeated things is that we interrogate and review the winner-takes-all situation. This creates not just tension but also the feeling among a big chunk of voters that their voice is completely silent when they lose. But that is not what our traditional sense is about: our sense of communalism. We need to refine and improve our democracy with the way we are practicing it. This is so that it is more inclusive so that we can deliver on the promises of independence and raising the standards of living because ultimately that is the reason for practicing democracy. It is to make everyone have a say. We must stop the concentration of power; it is not working. We must go back to our indigenous knowledge systems even in politics. It is not enough to go back but to use what is good and relevant and powerful in it for our development. It is even useful in addressing issues that are intractable. We were very keen about thinking of the collective. This is not just about individual wealth or power. Part of the responsibility of politics and politicians is to bring people together.”
Tribuneonlineng.com
