Feature Article of Wednesday, 18 June 2014

Columnist: Kwarteng, Francis

It is Nkrumah the theoretician and practitioner of Pan-Africanism who continues to provide interest and respect (Kofi Hadjor).

The above quote is undeniably a statement of fact. Several international scholars, scientists, historians, postcolonial theorists, political scientists, economists, and critical race theorists interested in the African world, human dignity, globalization, as well as human and race relations have come to the same conclusion as Kofi Hadjors. Indeed, Nkrumahs unquestionable erudition, academic credentials, professional associations, politico-economic prudence, and analytic sophistication, otherwise represented by such thoughtfully creative works as Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization, Africa Must Unite, and Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, are part of his magnetic appeal to the world. No Ghanaian or African, dead or living, for that matter, remotely comes close measuring by the standards of his achievements. Once again we cannot overemphasize this indispensable point.

This defines the intellectual intersection where the unparalleled scientific scholarship of Dr. Kofi Kissi Dompere, a formidable US-based Ghanaian mathematician, statistician, economist, cultural theorist, philosopher, historian, cultural theorist, logician, operations researcher, business analyst, and prolific writer, reigns supreme. Among other notable achievements, Dr. Dompere has been acknowledged as one of the central thinkers in the American Academy known for blending the rigid frontiers of the humanities/liberal arts and science. Then, having said that, scholarship on Nkrumah and his signal contributions to human civilization transcends the emotional particularities of race, ethnicity, geography, ideology, language, and culture. In fact, the sublime example of Nkrumah is exactly what the youth of today should emulate while still acknowledging his salient foibles and shortcomings, granted that no true, genuine, influential, patriotic, outstanding, productive, and progressive leader is perfect. No human being is, can, or must.

Certainly, great and exceedingly gifted, intelligent leaders like Nkrumah should not be uncritically apotheosized, as it were, but rather should be constructively criticized within the proper contexts. Namely, from the holistic perspectives bordering on the circumstances of his rich, varied education, of the intellectual and political inferiority of some of his detractors and enemies, as well as of history, global station among exceptional leaders and strategic thinkers, force of personality, time and place, intellectual brilliance, spirituality, prescience, friendships, local and international politics (Cold War, etc), moral and political strengths and weaknesses, among others. Thus, a critical integral approach to an unemotional or non-partisan assessment of his legacy is certainly bound to turn out more credits than debits in the balance sheet of his political and intellectual bequests.

Yet we cannot also avoid the rich backgrounds of those who have been influenced by or constructively commented on Nkrumahs legacy, politics, economic policies, and scholarly works, particularly. However, this is to implicitly say Nkrumah was not influenced by others, as his mentors are proverbially known. In fact, a new book by Dr. Belete Belachew Yihun, Black Ethiopia: A Glimpse into African Diplomacy, 1956-1991, for instance, sheds new light on the diplomacy Haile Selassie exerted on fractious elements within Africas Founding Fathers to sign up in respect of the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). In other words, Selassies collaborative role in actualizing the official founding of the OAU by diplomatically bringing everyone onboard is not an extraneous fact of Africas political history. This singular statement of fact can neither be ignored nor its historical import minimized.

Once again, as we cursorily mentioned before in Dr. Kofi Dompere On Nkrumahs Scientific Thinking 2, we shall chip in here that, most of those who have either come under the direct influence of Nkrumahs innovative ideas or have exerted commentarial critiques on Nkrumahs scholarly works as well as expatiated upon his ideas, represent some of the worlds notable thinkers, though some of us may not necessarily have to agree with their controversial views. We have already mentioned Ali Mazrui, Edward W. Said, Ama Mazama, Kofi Kissi Dompere, Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Paulin Hountondji, Jean-Paul Satre, David Birmingham, Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, Noam Chomsky, John H. McClendon, Molefi Kete Asante, Nelson Mandela, Kwame Anthony Appiah, among others.

For instance, Paulin Hountondji and Jean-Paul Satre are products of cole Normale Suprieure, one of Frances elite research universities as well as the pre-eminent seat of her so-called French Mathematical School and French Physics. This educational institution has produced Nobel Laureates, Fields Medalists (Field Medal is the Nobel equivalent in mathematics), numerous Prime Ministers and several other French ministers outside the office of premiership. It also has produced some of the worlds best pre-eminent thinkers in the human sciences, especially, scholars such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Alain Badiou, and Pierre Bourdieu. Finally, cole Normale Suprieure has been ranked the best higher-education institution in Continental Europe in 2006 and 2007, and has remained among the top three in the same category since then.

What's more, Jean-Paul Satres was a nephew of Albert Schweitzer, his maternal uncle, and a thinker whose philosophical masterpiece Reverence for Life, an influential ethical invention, would win him a Nobel Prize in 1952. Jean-Paul Satre was a heavyweight in the fields of existentialism and phenomenology as well. We have already noted that Nkrumah is generally associated with the conceptual neology of neocolonialism in 1963, which he further theoretically developed in his influential 1965 text, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, with Noam Chomsky and Jean-Pau Satre contributing to its theoretical development, as in The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, 1979, and Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism, 1964, respectively. Noam Chomsky is a global phenomenon. Therefore, we shall not belabor his legacy here. On the other hand, Jean-Paul Satre, like Kwame Nkrumah, stood tall as one of Frantz Fanons important colleagues and friends.

Continued here:
Dr. Kofi Dompere On Nkrumahs Scientific Thinking 3