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President Mugabe

Obi Egbuna Jnr Simunye
In March the world recognises women for their immeasurable value in every phase of history and society, in spite of the hardships they have endured as mothers and wives courtesy of backwards thinking men, who are guilty of exploiting women in the name of culture and tradition.

It is only befitting that each and every year in March, our beloved Mother Continent which also has the distinction of parenting all civilsation, urges not only all of Africa but the entire international community, to pay homage to Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the Ghanian Revolution for becoming the first African nation to break the shackles of colonialism on March 6, 1957.

When President Mugabe visited Ghana last month for the 60th anniversary independance celebration, Mother Africa’s children recognised the historical significance of when a true revolutionary with an impeccable track record of service retraces their steps, this process automatically challenges Africa’s everywhere to break the current trend of articulating ideas devoid of executing ideas.

The newly elected president of Ghana is Nana Akufo Addo, who happens to be the biological nephew of JB Danquah and son of Ghana’s second president, Edward Akufo Addo, who also was one of the Supreme Court judges that found those responsible for the assassination attempt on the Osagyefo’s life during the Kulungugu bombing attack not guilty.

Both Danquah and Addo are founders of the United Gold Coast Convention, the first anti-colonial movement in Ghana, that the Osagyefo left and formed the Convention People’s Party. The Osagyefo’s decision to break away from UGCC and form the CPP, is almost identical to how President Mugabe along with Comrades Herbert Chitepo, Leopold Takawira, Simon Muzenda, and others who felt ZAPU had run its course.

The irony was Justice Addo not only became Chief Justice under the regime of the neo-colonialist regime of the NLC (National Liberation Council) that with the full cooperation of the CIA and British Intelligence ousted the Osagyefo from power on February 24 1966, but was the chair of the NLC’s constitutional and political commissions.

While the Osagyefo’s life was spared it was later discovered he contracted skin cancer from the chemicals the bomb contained, the main treatment the Osagyefo used to deal with this condition was an herbal plant grown in Ghana exclusively. After the coup the NLC denied a request from Guinea’s revolutionary pan-Africanist and iconic President Ahmed Seku Ture for Osagyefo to have access to this treatment via Conakry where he lived in exile and served as co-president of Guinea.

Because President Mugabe is perhaps just as revered by everyday Ghanaians as he is in Zimbabwe and all the neighbouring SADC nations, each and every time he visits and fondly reflects on the period in his life when he taught at St Mary College in Takoradi, Ghanaians are not only reminded that the revolutionary spirit of the Osagyefo is alive and well but Zimbabwe’s history was shaped by one of its own special own daughters -Zimbabwean national heroine Amai Sally Mugabe.

During his tenure as the Chairman of the African Union and the Southern African Development Community three years ago, President Mugabe let it be known when it came to acknowledging the role that Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, had played in the anti-colonial struggle,

Africa collectively had fallen short. President Mugabe recently launched a book entitled “Julius Nyerere Asante Sana, Thank You Mwalimu”, co- published by the Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC). We saw President Mugabe lead the push for Agriculture and Food Security as the central theme for development on a continental level, because of the Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe, this was the harmonious blend of theory and practice that the Osagyefo always encouraged.

It is tragic that windbags who spend countless hours on the internet calling for a United States of Africa similar to Christians telling us Jesus Christ will return someday, ignored how President Mugabe utilised his chairmanship of SADC and the AU do deal with concretised programmatic action as opposed to baseless political rhetoric.

The African world should accept the challenge of convincing Ghana in particular and Africa in general that the time has come to honour Amai Sally Mugabe for her courageous decision to leave Mother Africa’s first independent nation, follow President Mugabe into battle-tested colonial Southern Rhodesia and emerge as the primary woman figure during the Second Chimurenga.

Somewhere in Ghana or Zimbabwe a statue of Amai Sally should be constructed with the quote of the Osagyefo: “The best way to measure the degree of a country’s revolutionary awareness is by the political maturity of its women.” We are also guilty of a refusal to acknowledge that the legwork Amai Sally did for African children with HIV/Aids, cholera, malaria, the last 10 years of her life without question laid the foundation and created the atmosphere for the Day of the African Child celebration that take place every June 16.

When President Mugabe said he misses the Osagyefo and he preaches the Osagyefo’s words this killed two birds with one stone. For starters, it overshadowed the feeble attempts of neo-colonialist and reactionary media outlets in Zimbabwe, who decided to highlight that President Mugabe was sleeping during the independence ceremony, and also challenges the notion that President Mugabe and ZANU-PF’s ideological core is a combination of Marxist-Leninist principles and Maoism.

Let the historical record also expose how bourgeois and dishonest historians call the Osagyefo a Marxist Leninist, for the mere fact that early in his development he mentioned an equal devotion to Marxism and Christianity, but deliberately ignore that in his masterpiece “Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonisation”, he emphatically states: “Where Marx puts emphasis on economics he puts emphasis on political ideology.”

The legendary pan-Africanist organiser Kwame Ture, who was the central figure in launching the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party throughout the Diaspora in the 70s, 80s and 90s, reminded all of us about the scrutiny and criticism that the AAPRP was subjected to just for calling themselves a Nkrumahist-Tureist Party, instead of propagating the idea that Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin and Chairman Mao and the intellectual and political blueprint for Mother Africa. This is similar to Archbishop George Augustus Stallings of Imani Temple challenging the Caucasian image of Jesus Christ, which US-EU imperialism imposed on Africans during colonialism and slavery.

Another manifestation of this defeatist attitude is when the Civil Rights Movement magnifies the influences of Mahatma Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson on Dr King and deliberately omit his visit to Ghana to pay homage to the Osagyefo and the CPP for using strikes, demonstration and boycotts to rescue Ghana from the clutches of British colonialism and imperialism.

As this year marks the 50th anniversary of Dr King’s condemnation of the Vietnam War, we must never forget that the Osagyefo was on the way to Vietnam to present a plan to end this genocidal war.

Those of us who reject the white supremacist definition of America that US imperialism has imposed on the world, and therefore consider Commandante Fidel Castro our favourite American president over FDR, JFK, LBJ, Clinton, Carter and, yes, even Obama, are obligated to remind the world the Osagyfo was the first head of state to officially recognise the triumph of the Cuban revolution.

Cuba is also a point of connection for the Osagyefo and President Mugabe, who during the Commandante’s funeral reminded the world that Zimbabwe will eternally be grateful to Cuba for training 3 000 Zimbabwean teachers between 1986 and 1996. This has led to Zimbabwe attaining a 97 percent literacy rate.

The fact that the Osagyefo was away from home when the CIA and British intelligence carried out the coup against the CPP reminds us that President Mugabe was in Cuba at the G77 summit when the Third Chimurenga to reclaim 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s most resourceful land from 4 500 commercial farmers of European ancestry flared.

Obi Egbuna Jnr is the US correspondent to The Herald and a member of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association (ZICUFA). .