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US puppets and dying pan-Africanism

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WELL, 2017 has started off on a rather interesting note following Melania Trump’s plagiarism of Michelle Obama’s speech.
We all thought speechwriters had learnt a valuable lesson, but no!
The speech scandal has found itself on the motherland’s shores.
A bit of background; Ghana has a special place in the hearts and minds of pan-Africanists.
In 1958, Kwame Nkrumah, first leader of independent Ghana, called a meeting in the capital city, Accra, of all the independent African states – Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Liberia, Morocco and Ethiopia – in order to commit themselves to supporting independence for the rest of the continent.
By 1963, there were 31 independent nations.
Among the many things which make Nkrumah stand out as an extra-ordinary personality was his realisation that Africans everywhere ought to unite in common effort to assert their dignity and use their resources for meeting their needs and realising their aspirations.
His ideas for the unity of all Africans are still alive as espoused by the likes of President Robert Mugabe.
It is against this background that I for one, must protest at the embarrassing episode where Africa’s first inauguration of 2017, in Ghana of all places, was reduced to a sideshow.
Ghana is synonymous with African pride and African intellect, but all this was rubbished when newly elected President Nana Nankwa Akufo-Addo lifted lines in his 30-minute inauguration speech, word-for-word, from the inaugural addresses of two US presidents.
The first was a line straight from Bill Clinton’s 1993 speech, substituting Ghanaians for Americans: “Though our challenges are fearsome, so are our strengths.
Ghanaians have ever been a restless, questing, hopeful people.
And we must bring to our task today the vision and will of those who came before us.”
Then came another from George W. Bush’s speech in 2001.
“I ask you to be citizens: Citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens building your communities and our nation.
Let us work until the work is done.”
To quote Oscar Wilde: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
However, it would seem President Akufo-Addo’s idols are not the sorts that have Africa’s interests at heart.
If he was going to copy, why did he not plagiarise from the many African icons who have over the years inspired the continent’s young men and women to fight for their voices to be heard, who fought against colonialism, who are seeking to unite Africa?
The truth of the matter is President Akufo-Addo could turn out to be nothing more than another Western puppet.
One of Nkrumah’s famous quotes: “The independence of Ghana is meaningless until it is linked to the total liberation of the African continent,” has been desecrated.
Ghana under President Akufo-Addo is not going to be the hotbed of African unity, but more like a den of thieves and plotters who seek to reverse the works of Africa’s liberation movements.
A man is judged by the company he keeps; and keeping Morgan Tsvangirai as a friend certainly says volumes about the new Ghanaian leader.
This is the same Tsvangirai who called for the imposition of illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe so as to ensure his smooth ride into power.
So what does a man from the cradle of pan-Africanism, Akufo-Addo, have in common with Zimbabwe’s Western puppet, Tsvangirai?
My greatest fear is that pan-Africanists have lost direction along the way and have gravitated towards pleasing the West in order to receive aid and this has fractured the discourse of a united Africa.
However, opposition forces on the continent have found each other through networks provided by their Western donors and now pose the greatest danger to African revolution and unity.
I close with the words of Kwame Nkrumah as a warning to liberation movements and pan-Africanists, that, ‘should they not pull up their socks, they will be relegated to the dustbins of history’.
The death of the notion of pan-Africanism is not just a danger to Africa, but to Africans in the Diaspora.
If the discourse concerning the right of the blackman to be treated as an equal is not pushed from the motherland, then our young men will continue to fill America’s jails; will be gunned down in broad daylight by the police and our daughters will continue to raise families on their own.
“We in Africa who are pressing now for unity are deeply conscious of the validity of our purpose.
We need the strength of our combined numbers and resources to protect ourselves from the very positive dangers of returning to colonialism in disguised forms.
We need it to combat the entrenched forces dividing our continent and still holding back millions of our brothers.
We need it to secure total African liberation.
We need it to carry forward our construction of a socio-economic system that will support the great mass of our steadily rising population at levels of life which will compare with those in the most advanced countries.”

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