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Sankofa as Modernity: Nkrumah’s Decolonial Strategy through Radio
Eugenia Ama Breba Anderson
Department of History and Political Studies
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
All over Africa, radio has been the arena for the enforcement and contestation of both imperialist and Africanist ideas (Spitulnik, 1999; Bessire and Fisher, 2013; Chikowero 2014; Asseraf, 2019, Gadzekpo, 2021; Lekgoathi, & Mukonde, 2024). Broadcast radio was a key tool used by colonial powers, nationalists, and other social movements to transmit news, propaganda, and ideologies. Introduced in the 1920s, radio “embodied multiply articulated ideologies of power, modernity and status”; serving as a tool for “enlightenment, advanced administration, education, entertainment, propaganda, modernization, nation building, unity, development and democratization” (Chikowero 2014: 114).
Nationalist governments sought to use radio to diffuse the colonial machinery and to challenge colonial domination. Africans built resistance using radio; appropriating the means of oppression and using it to achieve the nationalists’ agenda. Radio incited a political revolution among Africans as revolutionaries made constant calls to action and proclamations through radio broadcasts (Chikowero, 2014). Frantz Fanon argued that in Algeria, radio gave a voice to the nation and helped the nationalists organize Algerian national thought (Fanon, 1994). Asseraf adds, “Radio is to the Algerian War what the machine-gun was to the war of [19]14 and the tank to the war of [19]40 (2019: 183). Radio revolutionaries in Southern Africa used broadcast radio to communicate their ideas to the people, garner donor support, and outmanoeuvre their rivals. Radio Bantu and Freedom Radio became a medium to build resistance and overthrow the colonial state while in exile. Exiled revolutionaries of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) used radio to direct their liberation struggle (Zaffiro, 1984; Asseraf, 2019).
In post-colonial Ghana, nationalist and post-colonial governments sought to use radio to diffuse imperialist ideologies while firmly establishing their authority (Gadzekpo, 2021). Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah used the dawn broadcast, a form of pre-colonial verbal communication technique, to propagate his socialist and pan-African ideologies. Nkrumah established media institutions, which gave him absolute control over Ghana’s media content. Radio became the key medium through which Nkrumah educated the masses on his quest to forge a national identity, disseminate information on his pan-African ideals and communicate the outcome of efforts made for the struggle for African liberty and unity. I draw out the African cultural symbolism and aesthetic configurations Nkrumah attached to his radio broadcasts, analyse Nkrumah’s media strategy and offer an interpretation of Nkrumah’s dawn broadcast messages. Through the lens of decolonisation, in this paper, I use the Akan parlance of sankofa, (go back and take) to interpret Nkrumah’s radio broadcasting as a sacred African verbal communication. Nkrumah used radio to broadcast crucial messages to the public at dawn in ways which drew on modernised indigenous communication techniques. This paper establishes that Nkrumah’s messages on Ghana’s development, revolution against the West, and the need for African unity could be considered as decolonial. He exemplified through his advocacy for Sankofa, that is through the use of indigenous verbal communication of dawn broadcast.
To do this, the paper adopts a qualitative phenomenological approach. It draws on audio and textual data of Nkrumah’s radio broadcasts from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), archival data from the Public Record and Archive Administration Department (PRAAD), newspapers, Nkrumah’s publications, and other relevant primary and secondary sources. The reconstruction of Nkrumah’s radio broadcast history is difficult because of the inability of the state to keep the audio or textual archive of radio. There is significant textual evidence available in print media, especially governmental newspapers such as the Evening News. A comprehensive textual analysis of the information gathered provides a meticulous evaluation through content and thematic analysis.
Colonisation as Modernity Versus Sankofa as Modernity: A Conceptual Note
The cornerstone of imperial justification for colonialism revolved around the three C’s: Commerce, Christianity and Civilisation (Kiwanuka, 1973). In 1899, the British writer Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled ‘The White Man’s Burden’ which depicted a European burden to ‘civilise and develop’ the rest of the world (Kipling, 2014). Miescher et al (2014) use the notion of modernisation to refer to colonial performance, ideology, and public enactment. Radio was one of the instruments the colonial statecraft purported as modernity. It was used as a technology of domination, civilization/modernity, and assimilation as well as ‘a tool of colonial assault’ which allowed the maintenance of imperial cultural hegemony over colonies even after independence (Chikowero, 2014: 114; Kerr, 1995; Spitulnik, 1999). Fanon (1965: 84) argues that radio essentially mutated the consciousness of the colonised (Davis, 2009). Further, radio was developed as the chief propaganda tool for persuading Africans to support the Second World War (Holbrook, 1985; Chikowero, 2014).
Most African revolutionaries focused on breaking of the European hegemony over Africans through an attempted diffusion of Eurocentrism, which sought to put Europe at the center of human history and modernity through the slave trade, colonialism, mercantilism, capitalism, and globalization (Amir, 2009; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020). Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2020: 3) notes, “At the centre of the ‘European game’ is Euromodernity as a broad discursive formation enabled by the invasion of the earth through the colonization of knowledge (coloniality of knowledge), which, in turn, enabled the colonization of time, space, nature, and people.” To shift this concept of Euromodernity, African statesmen (Kwame Nkrumah, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Amilcar Cabral, Steve Biko, Julius Nyerere, and Patrice Lumumba) and intellectuals (Walter Rodney, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Franz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Cheikh Anta Diop, Albert Memmi, Samir Amir, Fatima Mernissi, Obafemi Awolowo, and Anton Wilhelm Amo) advocated for a decolonised African state through advocacy against neocolonialism, underdevelopment in Africa and advocacy for negritude, black consciousness, social justice and liberty, and decolonising education and the mind. Decolonisation, therefore, advocates for indigenous liberation through an opposition of colonial elements in indigenous societies and its attending Western modernity (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018; Nyamnjoh, 2018). Crucial to the decolonisation argument is the demand for African-centered solutions to Africa’s challenges.
This paper uses the Sankofa concept to draw a correlation between radio and decolonisation. In Akan parlance, Sankofa means ‘to go back to fetch or take.’ The Akan proverb “Se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenkyiri.” (it is not taboo to go back and get something after you have forgotten it) essentially highlights the relevance of the readaptation of indigenous African knowledge systems.
Figure 1: Adinkra Sankofa symbols
African verbal art (mythology, folktale/storytelling, riddles, libation and prayers, proverbs. and poetry), was an essential medium in the transmission of African culture and value systems from one generation to another (Ayiku, 1998; Nkwi, 2018). Traditional media and communication technologies included smoke signals, open market, use of palm fronds, town criers, and talking drums. The town criers were the broadcasters of urgent messages from the traditional leadership (chief and council) to the local people. They were the bearers of community information including important meetings, ceremonies, and messages. They called for participation in communal projects like clearing roads, planting trees to prevent deforestation, or de-silting village wells; communicated war or calamity; and announced the enthroning or dethroning of chiefs (Mushengyez, 2003).
In this paper, I use the term sankofaisation to refer to efforts by African nationalists such as Nkrumah to use African cultural symbolism and aesthetic configurations to enhance their decolonial messages. Nkrumah’s use of symbolic tokens of traditional chiefs and priests is consistent with the concept of sankofa. He is noted to have used the white handkerchief, horsetail and walking stick traditionally used by religious/traditional priests and chiefs/Queenmothers. He also introduced the state Okyeame (linguist) as well as drumming, dancing, and pouring of libation during state functions (Poe, 2003; Botwe-Asamoah, 2006). Yankah (1985:87-88) notes:
There was always, a prelude of a well-articulated [and] inspiring appellation performances … often ending with the words: Kwame kasa, kasa, kasa (Kwame speak, speak, speak). The appellation of Nkrumah in public was consistent the traditional system within the Akan society. The appointment of Okyeame Boafo Akuffo as a state poet by Nkrumah was similar to the traditional bard in apae performance in front of the king and queen; and that his “performances were often a poetic capsule of Nkrumah’s speeches that was about to follow.”
Nkrumah sought to emulate indigenous African verbal technologies through his innovative use of the dawn broadcast. It was traditional for Akan kings and queens to make very important pronouncements at dawn. Nkrumah used radio dawn broadcasts to reinfuse African cultural aesthetics as opposed to as a metanarrative of European technology to diffuse African culture. Therefore, this paper illustrates how Nkrumah’s use of the indigenous verbal technology of dawn broadcast through the radio contributed to the decolonisation of communication systems in post-colonial Ghana.
Nkrumah’ s Radio Strategy
While radio was widely embraced by the people of the Gold Coast, sections of the African population were sceptical and not easily swayed by these emotive British propaganda materials. The colonialists often found that their appeals were met with spirited questions about post-war changes in the colony, and about how the war-related economic problems of inflation and scarcity would be solved (Ansah, 1985; Biney, 2011). The Ga Mantse (Chief), citing the disappointments following the earlier war, reacted publicly to one early call for support by informing his people that the Germans and the British were related and that the war was their fight (Ansah, 1985).
After independence, Nkrumah’s media strategy was to use the media for political education, to promote his socialist ideals, ensure national unity, project Ghana’s image and foreign policy abroad, and ensure the liberation and unification of Africa (Ansah, 1985). Nkrumah considered the press, television, and radio as critical instruments for political education and mobilisation. To achieve this, he closely guarded and tightly controlled the state propaganda machine. Biney (2011) notes that Nkrumah’s media philosophy was an admixture of authoritarianism, paternalism, revolutionary theory, developmental media theory and as well as a variety of classical libertarian theory of the press.
He took concrete steps to ensure the realisation of this objective. The Ghana News Agency (GNA) was set up in 1957 to collect and disseminate information and project Ghana’s image abroad. As a result of Ghana’s illiteracy rate, Ghana’s radio service introduced programs in local languages including Hausa, Ewe, Twi, and Fante (Gadzekpo, 2021). Under Nkrumah, broadcasts in Nzema were introduced for speakers of the Nzema-related languages in Ghana and Ivory Coast, thereby enhancing Nkrumah’s Pan-African ideals. Similarly, broadcasts in Hausa reached the people of northern Nigeria and other states north of Ghana to Niger. On March 4, 1959, Nkrumah presented to parliament the CPP’s Second Five-Year Development Plan. Among the new industrial projects, a new broadcasting television station was established (Parliamentary Debate, 4th March 1959). In 1959, the Ghana Institute of Journalism was set up in Accra to train both Ghanaian and African journalists (Biney, 2011). This was followed by the hosting of the Second Conference of African journalists in Accra in 1963. At this conference, Nkrumah declared, “To the true African journalist, his newspaper [by extension radio] is a collective organiser, a collective instrument of mobilization and a collective educator—a weapon, first and foremost, to overthrow colonialism and imperialism and to assist total African independence and unity” (Ansah, 1985: 86-87). In July 1965, he inaugurated Ghana’s television service as an ideological tool to assist in the socialist transformation of Ghana (Biney, 2011).
Nkrumah opened the External Broadcasting Service in 1961 to challenge the negative image of Africa and assist in the total liberation of the continent. In 1963, Nkrumah proposed a Pan-African News Agency to correct the distorted image of Africa projected in foreign media (Ansah, 1985; Biney, 2011). These institutions gave Nkrumah paternalistic control over the mass media in Ghana while seeking to shape its image across Africa. Ansah contends, “Nkrumah’s theory of the media was characterised by a certain eclecticism, containing elements of the authoritarian, paternal, communist, developmental and revolutionary theories of the press” 1985:91). By the time of his overthrow, the ten privately owned newspapers in Ghana that had existed at independence were non-existent (Biney, 2011).
An Interpretation of Nkrumah’s Broadcast Messages
Nkrumah understood the critical role the media played in educating the people on their national responsibilities and development as it served as a potential tool for national unity (Ansah, 1991). His radio addresses to the nations were broadcast at dawn, an innovative strategy which aligned modern technology with traditional African forms of communication. Though Nkrumah’s messages were wide, this paper focuses on the messages on Ghana’s developmental, revolution against the West, and the need for African unity.
National Responsibility and Development
Nkrumah’s initial broadcasts were focused on his plans for national development and the need for a change in Ghanaian attitudes. He sought to develop citizen’s consciousness of their role in the consolidation of Ghana’s independence. In Nkrumah’s first broadcast message on 8th April 1961, he noted, “The responsibility casts upon all Ghanaians obligation to protect the national stability we have so ably created and to guard ever jealously the solidarity of our nation” (Ghana Press Release, No. 370/61). He admonishes CPP party members and government appointees against nepotism, corruption, red-tapeism, and rumour-mongering (Ghana Press Release, No. 409/61). He notes, “This Ghana, which has wasted so much time serving colonial masters, cannot afford to be tied down to archaic snow-pace methods of work which obstruct expeditious progress.” (Ghana Press Release, No. 370).
He used these broadcasts to explain his developmental plan to the nation and garner citizen support and cooperation. For example, he declared:
We must develop Ghana economically, socially, culturally, spiritually, educationally, technologically and otherwise, and produce it as a finished product of a fully integrated life, both exemplary and inspiring. This programme, which we call a programme for “Work and Happiness” has been drawn up in regard to all our circumstances and conditions, our hopes and aspirations, our advantages and disadvantages and our opportunities or lock of them. Indeed, the programme is drawn up with an eye on reality and provides the building around for our immediate scientific, industrial and technological progress. We have embarked on an intensive socialist reconstruction of our country, Ghana inherited colonial economy and similar disabilities in Most other directions (Evening News, April 7, 1962).
He further used the broadcast messages to admonish Ghanaians to develop the right work attitude. In his 1st May 1963, Workers Day broadcast, Nkrumah lamented “how our telephone girls who are normally so friendly, polite, and well-behaved at home are rude and abrupt” in the workplace. “In the shops, the assistants ignore the customers while they chat among themselves and treat them [the customers] with nonchalance and disrespect” (PRAAD, Cape Coast, CRG4/1/363). An understanding of Nkrumah’s developmental agenda and a change in Ghanaian attitude was crucial to the reconstruction of a progressive country.
Additionally, as part of the Sankofa conceptualization, radio was also used to broadcast national cultural programs. Between July 1 and 4, 1961, the Arts Council of Ghana organised the first Festival of Music and Drama at Prempeh Hall in Kumasi with plays in Twi and English. July 5 1961 was set aside for the national competition in Choral Music at Achimota College. The Ghana Broadcasting Service broadcasted these cultural programs to the hearing of many (NAG/RG3/7246:16).
Nkrumah and Pan-Africanism through Radio
Nkrumah’s pan-African ideology advocated for the sovereignty and unity of African states (Poe, 2003; Biney, 2011). He noted in his first broadcast that “Even though our own political revolution is over, we are entering into a new political revolution with regard to the struggle for the total liberation and unity of Africa” (Ghana Press Release No. 431/61). He added that Ghana’s sovereignty sets upon the nation the “responsibility not only for development and reconstruction of Ghana, but also for the faithful duty of assisting other African territories to achieve their freedom and independence.” (Ghana Press Release, No. 370). During Ghana’s Republic Day celebration, he noted, “We consolidated this political achievement by setting up the Republic... That day marked the real beginning of life of our nation and settled upon us, responsibility not only for the development and reconstruction of Ghana, but also for the faithful duty of assisting other African territories to achieve their freedom and independence (Evening News, April 7, 1962).
Nkrumah assembled the heads of independent African states and formed the Conference of Independent African States (CIAS) on 15 April 1957 and ended on 22 April 1957. Participating states were: Ghana (host), Libya, Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan and the United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria at that time) (Poe, 2003). The conference was a major indicator of Ghana’s support of Pan-African nationalism. Explaining the importance of the upcoming conference, Nkrumah noted:
“For the first time, I think, in the history of this great continent, leaders of all the purely African states which can play an independent role in international affairs will meet to discuss the problems of our countries and take the first steps towards working out an African contribution to international peace and goodwill. For too long in our history, Africa has spoken through the voices of others. Now, what I have called an African Personality in international affairs will have a chance of making its proper impact and will let the world know it through the voices of Africa’s own sons. (Nkrumah 1973b, 125).
Subsequently, Nkrumah took a 15-person entourage, including Padmore, on a follow-up tour to each of the seven states that attended the conference. The results of these tours were broadcast to Ghanaians. Nkrumah’s radio broadcasts reached the masses more easily than his numerous publications or his academic and training institutes would have. (Poe, 2003). Nkrumah used the new Broadcasting House of Radio Ghana to propagate the proceedings and the successes of the conference and tours (Poe, 2003). The objective of these broadcasts was to keep Ghanaians abreast with ongoing international events on decolonisation and to elevate the consciousness of the masses and the solidarity for Pan-African unity.
Figure 2: Nkrumah at the at the inauguration of the Organization of African Union on May 24, 1963
Source: https://newafricanmagazine.com/3232/ (Accessed 1st July, 2024)
The dissemination of a wide range of information on Africa’s struggle for liberation and unity created consciousness on anticolonial hotspots such as South Africa, Rhodesia, Ruanda-Urundi, and the Portuguese colonies. On August 8, 1960, he stated that “the greatest danger that Africa faces today is Balkanisation” and that the crisis in the Congo represented a “turning point in the history of Africa.” (Biney, 2011: 141). He indicated the following solutions: an end to any impositions placed on Ghanaian soldiers’ attempts to carry out their duties in the Congo; international backing of the Congolese parliament; the withdrawal of Belgian troops from the Congo and an end to Belgium’s surreptitiously re-arming of the infamous Force publique; the shuttering of the “imperialist”-run private radio stations operating across the Congo river in Brazzaville; the extension of financial assistance to the duly elected Lumumba government; and the instalment and recognition of the Lumumba government’s representatives in the United Nations (Biney, 2011). Similarly, on 10 October 1960, Nkrumah went on national radio to announce his six-point plan for resolving the Congolese conflict. The lack of trust and political ambitions of each of these independent African states made the pan-African initiatives of Nkrumah less effective (Biney, 2011).
This dream and efforts were killed when the National Liberation Council (NLC) overthrew Nkrumah’s CPP government on 24 February 1966 and announced the military take-over through the radio at dawn (Legon Observer, 28th April 1967). Even after the coup, Nkrumah sought to use radio to reach the masses as a means to overthrow the NLC military government. Biney (2011) notes that he made fifteen broadcasts between March and December 1966 in which he denounced the NLC and encouraged Ghanaians to resist the military junta. In 1968, he openly called for “Positive Action” by calling on workers and peasant farmers to stage a general strike “to overthrow the NLC and liberate Ghana from the clutches of neo-colonialism” (Nkrumah, 1973). Despite these efforts, he failed to mobilise the citizens to use force to oust the military junta because, to a large extent, the military had the support of the masses.
Conclusion
Media, particularly radio, was crucial to both colonial and nationalist agendas of disseminating ideologies across Africa. Nkrumah’s decolonisation of the media is seen through his use of radio as a tool for public education, political revolution, mass mobilisation, education on his socialist ideals, dissemination of his foreign policy, and efforts to ensure African liberation and unity. Radio served as a tool to facilitate Nkrumah’s socialist transformation of Ghana and to communicate his dedication to the nation. It is difficult to measure the impact of Nkrumah’s media strategy in the efforts to facilitate Ghana’s development, initiate a revolution against the Western modernity, and ensure the liberty and unity of African states. Nevertheless, he initiated the use of indigenous verbal communication of dawn broadcast. This paper establishes that the use of radio dawn broadcast to some extent achieved the objective of mass education and consciousness creation among Ghanaians on African need for continuous liberation from the West. The peculiarity of this initiative was its focus on African indigenous knowledge systems. Subsequent military and civilian governments adopted this African-centered verbal communication to disseminate essential information to the nation.
