Historiography

Question 1

Mazuri

Answer 1

1997 - Nkrumah = “tragedy of excess”
Nkrumah’s commitment to pan-Africanism was the only attractive aspect of his career”
He was an authoritarian Lenist Tzar (Revolutionary monarch)
Nkrumah’s failure to rule democratically was the result of his cult of personality which led to the ‘intellectual impoverishment’ of the ‘court of the Ghanaian Tzar’ as he replaced true political advisors with “presidential panderers”. He also became more harsh as the cult requires coercion instead of mere sermons.
Nkrumah wanted organisation but of the masses not of the elite (link to Lenin)

Question 2

Fanon

Answer 2

1961 - non-violent compromise failed to fully liberate the minds of the Ghanaian people - continued perception of “the supremacy of white values” - British parliamentary system, Privy Council, continued good relationship with Britain, taking conditional loans

Question 3

Ahlman

Answer 3

2011 - Ghana represented “an idelaised path to self-rule”
“unparralled optimism both inside and outside the continent… about the future of Africa and Africa’s place in the burgeoning post-war international community” - Accra was a refuge for freedom fighters and movements across Africa.
However, Nkrumah was inconsistent in his support fo anti-colonial movements and promised “public moderation of key aspects of his anti-colonial and international agende in exchange for substantial (western) subsidies”
“national concerns trumped continental issues in fledgling states”

Question 4

Peter Molotsi

Answer 4

Accra was a “Mecca of Pan-Africanism” (BAA, conferences etc.)

Question 5

A K Barden

Answer 5

Nkrumah failed to uphold “the envious prestige of Ghana” when he failed to act on the 1959 boycott of SA goods.

Question 6

David Birmingham

Answer 6

“no single measure did more to bring down Nkrumah’s reputation than his adoption of internment without trial for the preservation of security”.

Question 7

Meredith Teretta

Answer 7

Accra was a key site for ‘extra-metropolitan’ cosmopolitanism in the 1950s and 60s

Question 8

Asante and Gyimah-Boadi

Answer 8

2004 - Ghana’s independence “was primarily the work of two political parties” - UGCC and CPP

Question 9

Prof Mike Oquaye

Answer 9

2017 - Nkrumah merely helped achieve an independence others had conceptualised

Question 10

Davidson

Answer 10

1978 - “married to colonial attitudes, structures, values, the cultures of Africa brought forth a creature of self-contradiction that mocked the vision of the past” e.g. reluctance to change borders.

Question 11

Hyam

Answer 11

2006 - N was in a unique position to negotiate with Arden-clarke - the “only dog in the kennel” to calm the “wave of discontent” within the country