Former president Dr Kwame Nkrumah
• Kwame Nkrumah wanted to turn Ghana into a modern industrialized economy
• Nkrumah described himself as a socialist and a Marxist
• He was passionate about a united Africa
Every year on September 21, Ghana and the world celebrate the first president of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
On this day, which was formerly known as Founder’s Day, the former president would have turned 112 years if he was alive.
Nkrumah is known for his passion for African and his fight to achieve a united continent. He was an inspiration, a motivator, and a courageous leader.
His quotes and pronouncements about Africa are still used today by many.
As Ghanaians remember and honour the Pan Africanist, GhanaWeb, in this report, makes a compilation of some famous quotes made by the former statesman.
1 In the future we would doubtless make mistakes, as all other nations had done. But the mistakes would be our own mistakes, and it would be our responsibility to put them right.
2. Leaders may come and go; they may rise and fall; but the people live on forever, and they can only be joined together by an organisation that is active and virile and doing the things for which it was established.
3. I do not know how anyone can refuse to acknowledge the right of men to be free.
4. The greatest contribution that Africa can make to the peace of the world is to avoid all the dangers inherent in disunity, by creating a political union which will also by its success, stand as an example to a divided world.
5. The difficulties presented by questions of language, culture and different political systems are not insuperable. If the need for political union is agreed by us all, then the will to create it is born; and where there’s a will there’s a way.
6. “Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism. Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment”. – Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, 1965.
7. “Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism”. – African Socialism Revisited, 1962.
8. “Africa is one continent, one people, and one nation”. – Class Struggle in Africa, 1970.
9 . “Independence is only the prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our own economic and social affairs”. – From a speech given at the founding of the OAU, Addis Ababa, 24 May 1963
10 “I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me”.