Rhodesia File
By Kwame Nkrumah
Panaf Books
ISBN: 0 901787 21 3

THE fight against the colonial Rhodesian regime and the desire to see an independent Zimbabwe was not only a dream for the locals, but an issue at the heart of other Africans.
The book, Rhodesia File by one of Africa’s great statesmen and founding fathers Kwame Nkrumah which is a compilation of statements and writings on Rhodesia and problems relating to the liberation of Southern Africa attests to that.
The book is a clear indication of the determination of the Ghana government led by Nkrumah to see fellow Africans in Rhodesia being able to ‘rule themselves’.
“As I speak to you now the situation in Southern Rhodesia constitutes a grave threat to the peace of Africa,” said President Nkrumah in his opening speech at the opening of the Summit Conference of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa in 1963.
“But we in Africa cannot remain indifferent to the fate of four million Africans in that territory, and cannot allow an extension of the vile, inhuman system of apartheid to other parts of Africa.”
President Nkrumah outlines the ills perpetuated against blacks by the white regime.
In a Memorandum on Southern Rhodesia published by the Ghana government in 1963 addressed to the government of Britain, the disparities in the land distribution between whites and blacks in Rhodesia were queried.
The backbone of the country’s economy then like now was agriculture, yet the locals were not accorded the chance to play a pivotal role in that sector.
“Despite the enormous disabilities from which, as may be seen, the African farmer suffers, he nevertheless produces a small and limited range and quantity of goods for the commercial market,” he writes.
“But even when he does, legislation has been enacted which places a further, inequitable burden upon him in respect of his settler competitors.”
President Nkrumah rightly argues that the African people were the rightful owners of the land hence they deserved to have the final say on who gets the land.
The Africans, he writes, had been unjustly relegated to being inferior and small-holder farmers or mere labourers in their own country.
“There is an enormous disparity in Southern Rhodesia, between the quantity and quality of land occupied by Europeans and Africans,” writes President Nkrumah.
“The best land- farms and reserves-is allotted to the Europeans.
“The worst patches have been allotted to the Africans.”
President Nkrumah bemoaned the settlers’ educational policies which made African education neither compulsory nor free with secondary and non-secondary education mainly for non-Africans.
“Health and educational facilities are rudimentary,” he writes.
He also spoke against the unfair voting system whereby there were classes in which Africans were given lesser voting rights.
President Nkrumah castigates the statement by a senior Native Affairs Department official who said the whites had come to Southern Rhodesia because they represented a ‘higher civilisation and they were better men.’
The utterances by the official are a show of sheer arrogance by the Europeans wanting the world to view them as a superior people.
Following the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the Rhodesian Front (RF) in 1965, Ghana also voiced its concerns describing it as an ‘illegal and treasonable declaration’.
The UDI was a statement adopted by the cabinet of Rhodesia announcing that Rhodesia, a British territory that had governed itself since 1923, now regarded itself as an independent sovereign state.
President Nkrumah wrote to the heads of state of Congo, (Zaire) present day Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Guinea on November 19 1965.
“The Rhodesian situation is a serious and direct threat to the peace of Africa, and unless the OAU can act quickly to meet the situation, the consequences to our continent will be incalculable,” he writes.
President Nkrumah also wrote numerous letters to Harold Wilson, Sekou Toure of Guinea lobbying for the freedom of Africans in Rhodesia.
In his letter to Wilson on December 11 1965, President Nkrumah highlighted that Ghana was contemplating withdrawing from the Commonwealth if Britain did not act to save the plight of blacks in Rhodesia.He advocated the formation of an African military brigade to fight the Rhjodesian white regime.
He also wrote advocating for the release of nationalists who had been jailed by the Smith regime as political prisoners.
All this was a show of solidarity and his determination to fulfil the dream of the OAU to see all African states independent from colonial rule.
“Africa wants her freedom. Africa must be free. It is a simple call, but it is also a signal lighting red warning to those who would tend to ignore it, “said President Nkrumah in his address to the fifteenth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations on September 23, 1960.
President Nkrumah’s efforts did not go to waste as Zimbabwe attained its independence in 1980 and 34 years later the locals still enjoy the freedom of self rule.
He might not have lived to witness his dream for the country come to pass, but he sure is smiling in his grave.