Former Ako Adjei aid of late Ghanaian president just confirm that Kwame Nkrumah snubbed Mandela in 1962

Is it that Kwame Nkrumah knows one day their will be debate that Mandela is greater than Nkrumah, What do you think??

Mandela was, however, quoted by renowned Ghanaian Journalist, Cameron Duodo, in his article ‘Mandela and I’, to have said: “Ah, Ghana! I was there in 1962. I went there to see President Kwame Nkrumah. But I never got to see him. I waited for several days, but the Foreign Minister, Ako Adjei, said I would have to wait, as Nkrumah was about to address a meeting of other freedom fighters.”

According to Mandela, “So I didn’t think it would be useful to hang around in Accra and I left for Liberia. There, I was received promptly by President William Tubman!”

In the article, Cameron Duodo said: ‘I had been warned that A K Barden, director of Nkrumah’s Bureau of African Affairs, preferred the Pan-Africanist Congress to the ANC. [I later learnt that Mandela's informer was the raving beauty, Genoveva Marais, Nkrumah's very good "friend", who hailed from South Africa.]’

Nkrumah’s Government’s preference for the Pan-Africanist Congress to the ANC was confirmed by K B Asante on the XYZ Breakfast Show on Monday.

K B Asante who worked closely with Dr Nkrumah at the time, told XYZ Moro Awudu that: “…what I know is that Nkrumah’s policy, based on our intelligence reports and so on, did not favour ANC. We were then - I was the African Affairs Secretary - were supporting the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) because they were more active; they believed in armed struggle, they were fighting for real independence for South Africa. ANC was there but we thought it was not that active”.

According to him, Nkrumah’s Government, after the Sharpville massacre on March 21, 1960, in which 69 South African students were gunned down, including 8 women and 10 children, by the apartheid Police and 180 others injured, should have reviewed its anti-ANC policy since Mandela had at the time, become a “freedom fighter” contrary to the “bourgeois” perception the Nkrumah Government had of the ANC.

“…We should have changed policy but unfortunately, the Bureau of African Affairs did not realise that things had changed; that Mandela and his group were then leading the fight, and so when he came here - in fact I wasn’t aware that he came, later I heard he came - they [Bureau of African Affairs] did not provide access”, K B Asante recalled.

He said unlike today: “…Before you saw the President those days, you had to go through the appropriate channels, and the Bureau of African Affairs did not facilitate that contact and therefore the ANC, I would say was not - even in recent years - has not been happy with Ghana…So that is true, we in a way snubbed Mandela”.

source: http://ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=295304

vccghana: Former Ako Adjei aid of late Ghanaian president just confirm that Kwame Nkrumah snubbed Mandela in 1962

Is it that Kwame Nkrumah knows one day their will be debate that Mandela is greater than Nkrumah, What do you think??




source: http://ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=295304

Mandela’s task was to set his people
free from the bondage of apartheid
ideology and let the nation on the path
to prosperity and freedom. I am acutely
mindful of those who accuse Mr.
Mandela of accommodating the interests
of former oppressors. Let me leave
posterity to judge this one, as my
defence will be jaundiced.
Q: Did Mandela, in his radical years,
ever meet Kwame Nkrumah? We know
he trained in Ethiopia, and Emperor
Haile Selassi gave him a gun as a
present.
A: Mr. Mandela visited Ghana around
1960 or thereabout for over 10 days.
But unfortunately, for good reason. Mr.
Mandela saw Kwame Nkrumah as a
hero who associated himself to the
liberation struggle of South Africans of
every race. He did travel to Ghana to
meet him. The intermediary was Kofi
Batsa, the then co-editor of the CPP-
owned newspaper, The Spark. Mr.
Batsa, whom my wife and I met on two
occasions in the US, on authority
provided the known reason why Mr.
Mandela did not meet Nkrumah on his
first visit to Ghana.
At the time, Nkrumah was recovering
from a major assassination attempt on
his life and therefore access to him was
restricted. In fact, Erica Powell, who
was Nkrumah’s private secretary at the
time of the assassination [attempt], in
her memoir, described her boss as
becoming a recluse after the attempt on
his life. Mandela, though, met all the
relevant cabinet and party officials and
the ANC was accorded fulsome support.
This bit of history is important here, as
there are some who attributed
Mandela’s failure to meet Nkrumah as a
snub. They claim the reason was that
the ANC was open to all race and was
losing its Pan-Africa identity, and that
Nkrumah was leaning toward the Pan
African Congress.
The idea that Nkrumah refused to meet
Mandela because the ANC opened to all
South African race, is far from the truth,
and in fact it is not even a historical fact
in the least.
Nkrumah, while Pan-Africanist to boot,
was equally non-radical. Three women
who were key to Nkrumah’s professional
life till his death in 1972 were all white -
namely Erica Powell, June Milne and
Juliet Wright. In fact, June Milne had
both South African and Australian
ancestors and is still Nkrumah’s literary
executrix. She is the person who was
closest to Nkrumah during his long and
painful years in exile. And of course,
Erica Powell was both the first private
secretary and confidante of Nkrumah.
In the main, it was under the
bludgeonings of circumstances that
deprived the two giants of pan-
Africanism not to meet. And as fate
would have it, Nkrumah received Oliver
Tambo, the then-president of the African
National Congress, warmly when he
visited Ghana in 1962. Here, too, Kofi
Batsa described the encounter as a
meeting of soul mates who saw the ANC
and the CPP as vanguards of the total
liberation of the African continent.
At the risk of being accused of dropping
names by my South African compatriots
who are protective of these heroes and
heroines, it is relevant that I share with
you a brief conversation I had with Mrs.
Adelaide Tambo 12 years ago at Mr.
Mandela’s birthday celebration. She told
me one of her late husband’s fondest
memories during the exile years was the
period he spent in Ghana and the
meeting he had with Nkrumah.
“Oliver, after meeting Nkrumah for the
first time, Mrs. Tambo said, “came to
the hotel and said liberation in our
lifetime was possible as long as
Nkrumah and his ideas live.”
Juxtapose this account by Mrs. Tambo to
an event in July 1992 when the remains
of Nkrumah were transferred and
reburied at the National Memorial Park
in Accra. Among the invited dignitaries
was Mr. Oliver Tambo, who at that time
was recovering from a massive stroke.
Against the advise of his medical team,
Tambo traveled from Sweden to Ghana
to honour the occasion and paid a
moving tribute.
Why have I gone to this length to
narrate these historical anecdotes? It is
to for cold water on the multiple
falsehoods that Mandela and the ANC
weren’t pan-African enough and that
Nkrumah did not welcome the tactics
and strategies of the ANC. At the end of
the day it was not the ANC or the PAC
that mattered, it was about the
liberation and property of our beloved
continent.
Q: What are Mandela’s views on
Nkrumah’s over-throw in 1992?
A: I don’t think we have specifically
discussed this issue, but Mandela’s
overall view on coup d’etats in Africa is
negative. Remember, he was in prison in
1986 when Nkrumah was overthrown,
and I guess his first thoughts were, as
with all pan-Africanists, “There goes the
African dream,” His ideas had sunk into
every freedom fighter on the continent.
Let me say that every African should
avail themselves of copies of he many
books Nkrumah wrote; search online.
They are as relevant today as 50 years
ago. Is is instructive to read the early
speeches of Mandela when he was first
released from prison in 1990. both
Nkrumah and Mandela were original
African thinkers and pragmatists in the
same vein. That is what has made them
great.
Source:
[b]The Daily Dispatch