Russia will not help you, unless you accept becoming an appendage of Moscow; and why should you change one set of white masters for another…?
There is but one honorable course that assumes and answers the ideological, traditional, organizational, emotional, political, and productive needs of Africa at this time:
AFRICAN LIFE MUST BE MILITARIZED!…not for war, but for peace; not for destruction, but for service; not for aggression, but for production; not for despotism, but to free minds from mumbo-jumbo.
I’m not speaking of a military dictatorship. You know that. I need not even have to say that to you, but I say it for the sake of others who will try to be naïve enough to misconstrue my words. I’m speaking simply of a militarization of the daily, social lives of the people; I’m speaking of giving form, organization, direction, meaning, and a sense of justification to those lives…. I’m speaking of a temporary discipline that will unite the nation, sweep out the tribal cobwebs, and place the feet of the masses upon a basis of reality. I’m not speaking of guns or secret police; I’m speaking of a method of taking people from one order of life and making them face what men, all men everywhere, must face. What the Europeans failed to do, didn’t want to do because they feared disrupting their own profits and global real estate, you must do.
Above all, Africans must be regimentalized for the “long pull,” for what will happen in Africa will spread itself out over decades of time and a continent of space…. You know as well as I that what has happened in the Gold Coast is just the beginning; and there will be much marching to and fro; there will be many sunderings and amalgamations of people; there will be many shiftings and changes of aims, perspectives, and ideologies—there will be much confusion before the final redemption of Africa is accomplished.
Do I sound gratuitously hard, cruel? How I wished I did not have to think of such measures! Yet, what could make such measures unnecessary? Only a West that could come forth and admit that it didn’t do the job, that the job has to be done, and that it was willing to help you to do it…. Yet, I cannot conceive of the West acting in that manner, even though all the common sense of history, moral and material, is in favor of it. In its fight against Communism, Europe could bind Africa to her by such an act of help and understanding…. Of course, when this is pointed out to Westerners, they shrug their shoulders and say that they have timed African development according to their conceptions of what Africans can do; but, in saying this, they forget that they are not free to indulge in such fantasies. Western time today is being timed by another time: Communist time! It would seem that the issue of self-preservation alone would jolt Europeans out of their infantile dreams about Africa….
And in exchange for aiding honest Africans to shake their people loose from their tribal moorings, the West could have all the raw materials it wanted, a larger market for its products…. And an Africa deliberately shaken loose from its traditional past would, for a time, be a more dependent Africa than the angry, aimless Africa of the present day. Such an Africa could menace nobody.
Why do I bring up the question of “menace”? Because the mere thought of a free Africa frightens many Europeans. Europeans do not and cannot look upon Africa objectively. Back of their fear of African freedom lies an ocean of guilt! In their hearts they know that they have long tried to murder Africa…. And this powerful Europe, with atom bombs in its hands, is haunted by visions of an eventual black revenge that has no basis in reality. It is this subjective factor, among others, that makes the West brutally determined to keep Africa on a short chain….
Will the West come forward and head up these nationalist revolutions in Africa? No; it’s a dream. If it comes true, I’d be the first to hail it. But since we cannot wait for dreams, let us turn to reality…. That is, the militarization of African life.
The basis, concrete and traditional, for the militarization of African life is there already in the truncated tribal structure. The ideological justification for such measures is simple survival; the military is but another name for fraternalization, for cohesiveness. And a military structure of African society can be used eventually for defense. Most important of all, a military form of African society will atomize the fetish-ridden past, abolish the mystical and nonsensical family relations that freeze the African in his static degradation; it will render impossible the continued existence of those parasitic chiefs who have too long bled and misled a naïve people; it is the one and only stroke that can project the African immediately into the twentieth century!
Over and above being a means of production, a militarized social structure can replace, for a time, the political; and it contains its own form of idealistic and emotional sustenance. A military form of life, of social relations, used as a deliberate bridge to span the tribal and the industrial ways of life, will free you, to a large extent, from begging for money from the West, and the degrading conditions attached to such money. A military form of life will enable you to use people instead of money for many things and on many occasions! And if your people knew that this military regime was for their freedom, for their safety, for the sake of their children escaping the domination of foreigners, they will make all the sacrifices called for.
Again I say: Would that Western understanding and generosity make these recommendations futile…. But if the choice is between traditional Western domination and this hard path, take the hard path!
Beware of a Volta Project built by foreign money. Build your own Volta, and build it out of the sheer lives and bodies of your people! With but limited outside aid, your people can rebuild your society with their bare hands…. Africa needs this hardness, but only from Africans.
You know as well as I know that politics alone is not enough for Africa. Keep the fires of passion burning in your movement; don’t let Westerners turn you away from the only force that can, at this time, knit your people together. It’s a secular religion that you must slowly create; it’s that, or your edifice falls apart.
There will be those who will try to frighten you by telling you that the organization you are forging looks like Communism, Fascism, Nazism; but, Kwame, the form of organization that you need will be dictated by the needs, emotional and material, of your people. The content determines the form. Never again must the outside world decide what is good for you.
Regarding corruption: use fire and acid and cauterize the ranks of your party of all opportunists! Now! Corruption is the one single fact that strikes dismay in the hearts of the friends of African freedom….
In your hands lies the first bid for African freedom and independence. Thus far you have followed an African path. I say: So be it! Whatever the West or East offers, take it, but don’t let them take you. You have taken Marxism, that intellectual instrument that makes meaningful the class and commodity relations in the modern state; but the moment that that instrument ceases to shed meaning, drop it. Be on top of theory; don’t let theory be on top of you. In short, be free, be a living embodiment of what you want to give your people….
You and your people need no faraway “fatherland” in either England or Russia to guide and spur you on; let your own destiny claim your deepest loyalty. You have escaped one form of slavery; be chary of other slaveries no matter in what guise they present themselves, whether as glittering ideas, promises of security, or rich mortgages upon your future.
There will be no way to avoid a degree of suffering, of trial, of tribulation; suffering comes to all people, but you have within your power the means to make the suffering of your people meaningful, to redeem whatever stresses and strains may come. None but Africans can perform this for Africa. And, as you launch your bold programs, as you call on your people for sacrifices, you can be confident that there are free men beyond the continent of Africa who see deeply enough into life to know and understand what you must do, what you must impose….
You have demonstrated that tribes can be organized; you must now show that tribes can march socially! And remember that what you build will
become a haven for other black leaders of the continent who, from time to time, long for rest from their tormentors. Gather quickly about you the leaders of Africa; you need them and they need you. Europe knows clearly that what you have achieved so far is not confined to the boundaries of the Gold Coast alone; already it has radiated outward and as long as the influence of your bid for freedom continues to inspire your brothers over the teeming forests of West Africa, you can know that the ball of freedom that you threw still rolls….
With words as our weapons, there are some few of us who will stand on the ramparts to fend off the evildoers, the slanderers, the greedy, the self-righteous! You are not alone….
Your fight has been fought before. I am an American and my country too was once a colony of England…It was old Walt Whitman who felt what you and your brother fighters are now feeling when he said:
Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and rags—its hands tight to the throats of kings.
O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
O many a sicken’d heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourself afresh.
And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man’s wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken and laugh’d at in the breaking.
Then in their power, not for all these, did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of nobles fall;
The People scorn’d the ferocity of kings.
SEARCHABLE TERMS
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Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society, 171
Abusua, female principle of life, 403
Accra, capital of Gold Coast, 21, 52, 66, 68, 89, 90–91, 99, 107, 117, 118, 124, 128, 135, 137, 154, 172, 200, 205, 213, 217, 231, 252, 292, 293, 364, 397; British in, 179; infant mortality rate in, 143; mail in, 111; police in, 208–11
Accra Evening News, 122
Addo, Akufo, 121
Adjei, Ako, 121
African Morning Post, 229; quoted, 230
African National Times, newspaper, 229
African Plywood Timber Employees’ Union, 391
“African survivals,” 319–20, 321
Afriyie, Mr. Kwame, 135, 136, 137
Akan, tribe, 145–46, 151, 259–60, 262, 276, 278, 337; beliefs, 401–2; concept of God, 263; customs of, 293–94; death to, 265; emotional values of color to, 404; funeral customs, 357–58; peculiarities in conversation used by, 340; race consciousness of, 243–44; religion of, 263, 264, 293–94, 346; significance of blood to, 315–16; significance of gold to, 190; symbolical significance of silver to, 316
Akan Doctrine of Cod, The, book, 130, 262, 263–65, 269
Akropong, 194
Ampofo, Dr., 241–42, 250
Annum Presbyterian Senior School, 242
Anomabu, 59
Ansah, Mr., 52–53, 54
Arden-Clarke, Sir Charles, Governor of the Colony, 207, 279, 406
Argentina, 29
Armattoe, Dr. R. E., 349–51
Armitage, R. P., Minister of Finance, 208
Asaase Yaa, Thursday Earth-Goddess, 263
Assaase Afua, goddess, 404
Ashanti, book, 397
Ashanti, territory, 126, 360; forests in, 300
Ashanti, tribe, 94, 150–51, 195, 322–23, 326, 330, 337, 348, 405; attack on British near Kumasi, 324–25; and blood, 357; custom at death of chief, 355; description of, 327–28; Ethiopian religious practices among, 293; human sacrifices practiced by, 349–50, 351, 358
Ashanti Confederacy, 334
Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, 323
Ashanti Pioneer, newspaper, 329
Ashanti Sentinel, newspaper, 228
Ashantuah, Queen, Queen Mother of Ejisu, 322, 323, 324, 325; human sacrifices ordered by, 326
Association of West African Merchants, 244
Atlanta, 18
Atta, William Orfori, 121
Atim, German fort, 66
Azambuja, Don Diego d’, 62, 63–64
Baako, Kofi, 86, 120, 126
Bantama, 325, 403
Barclays Bank, 329, 359
Barimi Osei Kwesi, Omanhene of New Jauben, 306
Bartholomew, ship, 77
Battling Kojo, ex-middleweight champion of the Gold Coast, 252, 257, 292, 298, 247–48, 313, 353–54, 370, 377–78, 379, 394, 396, 397
Bay of Biscay, 34
Bennett, Arnold, 22
Berekum, 356
Bibiani, gold mines in, 291, 370–72, 384
“Blackened stools,” 349
Bonnie II, Nii, 120–21
Branigan, P., Minister of Justice, 207
Bridewell, 24
Briffault, Robert, 293
Bristol, 27, 28
British Bank of West Africa, 329
British West Africa, 371
Buenos Aires, 250
Burma, 121
Burns, Sir Alan, 22
Busia, K. A., 115, 116, 118, 210, 276–80, 393, 394
Cambridge, 284
Canadian Aluminum Company, 231
Canary Islands, 39, 40
Cape Coast, 21, 59, 66, 86, 113, 114, 115, 118, 124, 135, 194, 200, 202, 242, 323, 332, 364
Cape Coast Castle, 407–8
Cape of Good Hope, 26
Capitalism and Slavery, book, 26, 27–28
Central Africa, 325
Chewingstick, 354
Chiefs, power of, 344–45
Christianborg, 121, 221, 407
Christianborg Castle, 226, 405–6
Churchill, Winston, 386–87
Civil War, U. S., 25
Claridge, W. Walton, 63
Clausewitz, Carl von, 104
Cochrane, Mr. W. T., 225, 226–27
Cocoa, introduced, 365; export of, 304; methods of buying, 294–95; production of, 294
Cocoa farmer, disposal of wealth of, 295
Cocoa Marketing Board, 294
Colonial Office, 257
Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, 26
Conrad, Joseph, 106
Convention People’s Party, 74, 81, 82, 93, 102, 111, 123, 124, 126, 132, 135, 136, 172, 196, 206, 209, 226, 228, 242, 244, 247, 250, 262, 272, 306, 330, 331, 344, 377, 405; recognized by England, 279; rituals in, 277
Coussey, Mr. Justice, 122
Coussey Committee, 123
Cudjoe, Mrs. Hannah, 130–33
Daily Graphic, newspaper, 228–29, 281
Dakar, 46
Danquah, Dr. J. B., 115, 118, 121, 130, 210, 212, 213, 215; quoted, 263–64, 268–70
Department of Welfare, 235, 239
“Destooling,” 341, 342
District, Urban, and Local Councils, 126
Dove, Mabel, 215
Dunbar, Paul Lawrence, 168–69
Eccles, R. A. O., 294, 310, 313
Edinburgh, 242
Edmondson, Rev. J. H., 233
Ejisu, 322, 323
Elmina, 21, 59, 62, 63, 65, 195, 363, 408
Elmina Castle, 363, 408
“Enstooling,” 341
Esumeja, 324
Euston Station, London, 22
Fanti, language, 116
Fanti, tribe, 180, 205, 364
Fanti Public School, 194
Fernando Po, 365
Fetish priest, 297, 298
Fetus, tribe, 407
Freedom, meaning of, in Africa, 76–78
Freetown, 30, 37
French colonial, black, interest in Marxism, 286; nation
alism and, 287–88
French West Africa, 371
Fufu, 116, 182, 183, 187, 352, 378
Ga, tribal language, 99, 100, 108
Ga, tribe, 364, 377
Gbedemah, Ako Adji, Minister of Commerce, 124, 231, 232
Georgia, 55
Ghana, 47
Ghana Daily Express, newspaper, 229
Ghana Evening News, newspaper, 228
“Ghost wife,” 327
Gold, in Akan religion, 188–90
Gold Coast, 18–19, 21, 22, 32, 45, 47, 99, 129, 131, 132, 133, 140, 142, 143; adultery fine in, 145, 147; ancestor worship in, 236, 238, 239, 240, 241, 271; asexuality in, 38; British in, 88–89; capitalism in, 364; Catholics in, 195, 336–37; chiefs in, 340–42, 368–69; children in, 156–57; clannishness in, 377; colonialism in, 174–75; corruption in politics in, 361–62; dancing in, 159–60; early days of, 77; education in, 170–71, 192–94, 195, 281, 282; employment problems in, 366; establishing towns in, 384–85; extraction of gold in, 373–74; family life in, 246–47, 314–15; French in, 65; funeral customs in, 162–66, 257–62, 356–57, 394–97; gold stealing in, 374–75; Hollywood influence on, 213–14; illiteracy in, 142; importance of cocoa in, 244; importance of water in, 148; industrialization in, 250; insect life in, 253; jungle life in, 317–18; Kwame Nkrumah in, 87–88, 89; labor in, 253; land litigation in, 343; land ownership in, 342–43; law in, 343–44; marriage in, 144; marriage fees in, 146; Marxism in, 147–48; Methodists in, 195; missionaries in, 186, 189–91, 194–95, 196, 253, 284, 288, 305; missions in, 194; moneylender in, 144; nationalism in, 76–77; “national” schools in, 195; newspapers in, 228–30; population of, 89, 363–364; population of, compared with England, 278; Portuguese in, 22; practice of exogamy in, 403; press compared to American Negro press, 230; production of cocoa in, 294; race consciousness in, 243–44; registering of workmen in, 365–66; religion in, 262–64; religious customs in, 167–68; rituals for the dead, 402–3; Russian Communists in, 88 Russia’s influence in, 46–47; self-deception in, 149, 150; sex in, 59; sexual segregation in, 403–4; sin, rejection of, in, 264; slave trade in, 23; slavery in, 24–25, 338; slaves’ relationship in, 367; society in, 129–30; Syrians in, 93; taboos in, 308–9; traders in, 194; trading in, 141–45; tree species in, 391; tribal dancing in, 140; tribal influence in, 256; wage earners in, 364