Church and State

The 1950s were Ghana's decade. Despite its small size and limited population – or perhaps, indeed, because of them – the Gold Coast was able to take the political lead in black Africa and exercise an influence out of all proportion to its size so that ‘Gold Coastism’ was soon being emulated or denounced all up and down the continent. This was due before all else to the vigorous mind and personal magnetism of Kwame Nkrumah whom Cabral was later to describe as ‘the strategist of genius in the struggle against classical colonialism’. The overwhelming victory of his party the C P P, at the elections of February 1951, while he was still in prison, brought him at once the position of Leader of Government Business. Yet for the next few years this radical theorist of pan-African liberation played a pragmatic, almost a quiet, game with the British authorities as he brought his country to independence. By 1954 he had an all-African cabinet of ministers and on 6 March 1957 the Gold Coast became independent as Ghana: surely one of the most significant dates in modern African history. Its example would quickly prove irresistible right across the centre of the continent.

Nkrumah was a highly articulate philosopher of action, the standard bearer of African renaissance. No one else at the time could so incarnate in a single life the cultural and political aspirations of the whole continent. Where Senghor placed culture first, Nkrumah placed politics: ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom’ he brashly proclaimed, making use of that evangelical language which undergirded so much African nationalism.