African ‘dictators’ whose exit was openly regretted

Kwame Nkrumah – Ghana

Ghana’s first president and the first black president of a sub-Saharan African country, Kwame Nkrumah, was overthrown in February 1966 but was missed a few months after he was ousted.

A founding member of the Organisation of African Unity, Nkrumah studied in the United States but became leftist and won the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962. His political philosophy and pan-African ideologies became a threat to the West as he gained a growing support base from all over the world.

From humble beginnings as the secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), a political group seeking “independence within the shortest possible time”, to the leader of his own party Convention People’s Party (CPP) seeking “independence now” and “the total liberation of the African continent”, Dictators like Nkrumah was both loved and hated by many who could not envision the future he had planned for Africa.

Ending diplomatic ties with Western powers, taking bold decisions to help liberate other colonised African states, strategically building infrastructure to support his development plans, building formidable structures for a pan-African revolution, enacting laws to stop opponents interfering with his development dreams were regarded as threats.

Orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America, Nkrumah was overthrown in a coup d’etat on February 24, 1966, while he was out of Ghana on a peace mission to Hanoi aimed at bringing an end to the United States’ intervention in Vietnam.

In 24 hours, lower-ranking military officers and police officials led by Colonel E. K. Kotoka, Major A. A. Afrifa and the Inspector-General of Police, Mr J. W. K. Harley had carried out the coup and formed the National Liberation Council to run the country. They privatised many of the country’s state corporations under the supervision of international financial institutions.

They announced their plan to the jubilating public which was to end Nkrumah’s alleged alliance with the Soviet Union and China; end alleged corruption, dictatorial practices, oppression; and the introduction of the unpopular preventive detention laws. These were the exact sentiments of the United States and its allies.

There was immediate economic hardship after the coup as the system and structures built by Nkrumah were destabilized and there were no plans of reviving the economy. There was a failed coup attempt on April 17, 1967, followed by demonstrations against hard economic times.

CIA documents later revealed that the U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson at the time was advised to consolidate his relations with the coup makers by supplying “a few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice” to create “a psychological significance out of all proportion to the cost of the gesture.”

“I am not arguing for lavish gifts to these regimes—indeed, giving them a little only whets their appetites, and enables us to use the prospect of more as leverage,” said a memorandum from the Acting Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, Robert W. Komer, to the 36th U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, handwritten on March 12, 1966.

The country barely recovered after Nkrumah’s overthrow despite the general election held in 1969 which saw Kofi Abrefa Busia elected Prime Minister from 1969 to 1972 when his government was overthrown in a military coup by Ignatius Kutu Acheampong.

Nkrumah lived the rest of his life in Guinea where he was named honorary co-president and later died on April 27, 1972.

His plans for his country and Africa – which he had written in dozens of books – have always been a point of reference during debates about African unity.