Bringing Nkrumah to the people – Review Of ‘The Mind of Kwame Nkrumah: Manual for the Study of Consciencism’

2011-06-23, Issue 536
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/74295

A new book by Lang T.K.A. Nubuor will help to make the ideas in Kwame Nkrumah’s ‘Consciencism’ more accessible to readers, says the Centre for Consciencist Studies and Analyses.

Certainly a new wind is blowing over Africa. The spirit of Kwame Nkrumah is awakened. This renewed presence is acknowledged across the continents. Not only are academics and intellectuals reviving their interest in Kwame Nkrumah. They have also questioned and are questioning the decades of neglect in the study of the ideas of the man. Agitations are afoot at centres of learning to incorporate such studies into the curriculum of university studies in Africa. The agitations do not resist the continued studies of Western philosophers like Thales, Plato, Aristotle and others. They make a just and positive demand that Kwame Nkrumah be added to them.

In the politics of Ghana today the spirit of Kwame Nkrumah looms large. Even political parties which were opposed to the policies of the man today seek a certain accommodation with his commitments. Not only has the current president instituted Founder’s Day in the annual political calendar to immortalise the works and ideals of Kwame Nkrumah but also the flag bearer of the main opposition party has stated his commitment to the Pan-African project of the foremost Pan-African Proponent, Kwame Nkrumah. No longer are the old folks of that opposition secure in their age-old condemnations of the Man of African Destiny in the face of the rising and increasing youth acknowledgement of that man in their own ranks.

This renewed and wide spreading interest in Kwame Nkrumah has occasioned discomfort, however, in the souls of certain persons who have taken the strategic option of attacking the very intellectual foundations of the man in the name of the man. This transparent mission to distort and revise Nkrumah’s fundamental ideas and commitments in favour of what he stands against is targeted at the youth of Africa and of the Diaspora. But the spirit of Kwame Nkrumah, awakened by this wicked design of low political spirits, has invoked a quick response in ‘THE MIND OF KWAME NKRUMAH: Manual for the Study of Consciencism’.

This manual does not only simplify the reading and understanding of the statement of Kwame Nkrumah’s fundamental ideas in his book, ‘Consciencism’, through guiding the reader over its pages, chapter by chapter, but also engages in a radical and militant combat of that distortionist and revisionist trend promoted by fifth columnists who have taken positions within what Kwame Afful calls the Kwame Nkrumah movement. Addressed to the youth of Africa and the Diaspora, the manual is the first of its kind to break down the technical philosophical language of Kwame Nkrumah into easily accessible terms of ordinary language. It is to be read alongside the book ‘Consciencism’ itself.

In its opening pages, the manual addresses the youth and explains the necessity of reading Nkrumah’s book in the flesh rather than the second hand or interpretative versions of it. The foreword traces a brief history of attitudes towards philosophy in general and particularly towards ‘Consciencism’ within the public domain as well as within the intelligentsia. These are attitudes that have not facilitated the appreciation of the profundity of Kwame Nkrumah’s thought and practice. In the preface, vital concepts of the book are explained prior to the in-depth treatment of the chapters.

This is followed with guiding the reader through the Introduction of the book, ‘Consciencism’. In this respect, a portion of Nkrumah’s quotation from Friedrich Engels’ letter that he leaves out is recalled to provide a better understanding of what he says. The importance of the Introduction rests in the fact of its revealing Kwame Nkrumah’s anxiety to quicken the liberation and reconstruction of Africa through the conscious use or application of principles of thought to understand the dynamics of society in scientific terms in order to effectively change it. This special feature in Nkrumah’s intellectual attitude is well understood in comparison to the physical scientist’s attitude towards applicable research. This part of the manual urges the student to ‘resist and reject the unenlightened opportunism of projecting Kwame Nkrumah, the author, as a latter-day, post-coup Marxist…’

In the first chapter, the manual explains the difficulties of Kwame Nkrumah’s presentation style and devices a strategy for following the presentation easily. In this way, it leads the reader along the themes that Nkrumah explores in his development of the history of Western intellectual thought. It identifies the main themes and then the sub-themes. The reader is then led to follow the development of themes and sub-themes individually all over the chapter and shows how they are connected with each other in a logical flow. This interesting pursuit of themes and sub-themes in the pages of the book is in the nature of hunting an animal and the unforgettable experience of landing at the catch makes the idea stick and memorable.

But if the first chapter explores the history of abstract thought in Western intellectual history, the second chapter shows the immediate concrete nature of those thoughts through illustrations of their social content. So that what had hitherto appeared as mind-splitting about nothing immediately comes alive with passions being aroused in this to that direction. Here, the themes and sub-themes are again in display and such themes as the concepts of egalitarianism and revolution are portrayed in their evolution within the demands of the struggles to free man from clerical restrictions and then the clerical-oligarchic diarchy that compromised increased production and freedom for the human spirit.

Chapter three then takes the reader through and focuses their attention on the role of ideology in the pursuit of the perfect society and therefore in the everyday life of the individual and society. The definition of ideology offered is innovative. Every society exhibits one or more. The manual simplifies the explanation and, ideology, in Kwame Nkrumah’s terms, is understood not essentially as a written statement but as the total set of values, written and largely unwritten, that man develops for the conduct and direction of all for the freedom and fulfilment of society and the individual. The need for such an ideology out of the historically-conditioned conflicting ideologies in Africa is then advocated.

The details of that ideology are outlined in chapter four. With the understanding that an ideology is displayed in and permeates every sphere of the socio-political life of a society and is exhibited in the philosophical system and theories in all studies, The manual systematically shows those outlines. The book ‘Consciencism’ finally emerges as a philosophical statement that elucidates and theoretically defends scientific socialist ideology to guide the African Revolution. The Manual, in this portrayal of ‘Consciencism’, sees ‘Consciencism’ not as solely concerned with the fusion of the three dominant strands of African culture but as a complete thought system for every socio-political purpose.

The final chapter of The Manual portrays the combat against contemporary revisionism and neglect conducted in cyberspace. It is a defence of the principles of ‘Consciencism’ by the author of The Manual against the revisionism and neglect of apparently influential figures in the Nkrumaist and Pan-African movement. The featured figures are Christian Kwami Agbodza, the self-appointed Professor of Consciencism, and Elder Chinweizu Chinweizu, respectively.

Vern Westgate, a review specialist of Strategic Book Group in the USA, recently observed and wrote that the author had ‘written a very comprehensive, extensively researched, and well explained manual in providing enlightenment for the philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah’s book, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonisation.”’

The author of the manual, Lang T.K.A. Nubuor, the general secretary of the erstwhile People’s Revolutionary League of Ghana, was a member of the Secretariat of the National Defence Committee that attempted to build an alternate State to replace the neo-colonial state structure through a system of People’s and Workers’ Defence Committees upon the inception of the December 31, 1981 coup d’état in Ghana.

He says of himself in the manual thus: ‘I must, on my part, submit that since I started reading Consciencism in my third year at the secondary school, these past four years have been the most fruitful of my life. I wish that my current insight had come to me decades ago. I would have acted quite differently and more patiently but also more purposefully though with the same aims in mind.

‘This is where the youth of today have the advantage with the publication of the Manual. I am particularly glad that some young men have found its level of language expression accessible. That was the area where I had my greatest apprehensions since not a few have expressed concern over my style of expression in published articles in some national newspapers and journals.’

The spirit of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is indeed awakened! It knows no rest until the neo-colonial states of Africa and of the rest of the world are replaced.

To pre-order the Manual for your private or public library browse to the author website of Strategic Book Marketing.

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