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Kwame Nkrumah and the Dawn of the Cold War: The West African National Secretariat, 1945-48
The history of a Pan-Africanist movement based in Britain and its role in the Cold War in Africa
The West African National Secretariat (WANS) has almost been forgotten by history. A pan-Africanist movement founded in 1945 by Kwame Nkrumah and colleagues in London and France, WANS campaigned for independence and unity. Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast in late 1947. The colonial government accused him of being a communist and fomenting the riots of early 1948. He was jailed. This led to the beginning of the Cold War in West Africa.
Drawing on archival research including the newly released MI5 files, Marika Sherwood reports on the work of WANS, on the plans for a unity conference in October 1948 in Lagos, and on Nkrumah’s return home. Sherwood demonstrates that colonial powers colluded with each other and the US in order to control the burgeoning struggles for independence. By labelling African nationalists as ‘communists’ in their efforts to contain decolonisation, the Western powers introduced the Cold War to the continent.
Providing a rich exploration of a neglected history, this book sheds light for the first time on a crucial historical moment in the history of West Africa and the developmental trajectory of West African independence.
₵85.00 -
Plenty Talk Dey 4 Ghana: Radio Eye, Plural Broadcasting & Democracy
*Available from 16 March 2020
Few places on earth have the broadcast density as Ghana does. Every hour of everyday, different tongues articulate different topics on air. Expectedly, the nearly five hundred commercial stations have significantly dynamised the national narrative. Or have they? One thing is remarkable, though. Just over two decades ago there was not a thing as private radio or TV.
Focusing on the very intriguing story of Radio Eye, this commemorative publication historicises the nation’s relationship with the electronic media. Two insightful interviews – one with the maverick who broke the glass ceiling; the other with the man who took up the baton to consolidate private broadcasting – provide a rare but enjoyable insight. Enriching the discourse further are six well-researched, peer-reviewed articles that provide a 360-degree perspective on plural broadcasting as a critical development factor.
Plenty Talk Dey 4 Ghana is a well-curated, retrospective and introspective panorama of an African country’s media landscape. What makes it a keepsake for the local and global audience is how the book demonstrates the workings of plural broadcasting to the realisation of democracy.
₵225.00 -
Convention People’s Party Handbook: African Revolution Party (1949-1999)
The first fifty years of the CPP – a historical account.
₵170.00 -
Frantz Fanon (Panaf Great Lives)
Required reading for all interested in the Algerian Revolution, and in Fanon’s brief but highly productive contribution. A close study is made of the relationship between Fanon’s ideological development and the content and impact of his political philosophy.
₵270.00Frantz Fanon (Panaf Great Lives)
₵270.00 -
Patrice Lumumba (Panaf Great Lives)
This book considers the first years of the Congo Republic following independence in 1960. Particular analysis is made of Lumumba’s policies and of western pressures in this crucial experience of the African Revolution.
The story of Lumumba underlines the correctness of Nkrumah’s Pan-African thesis.
₵270.00 -
Rhodesia File
Kwame Nkrumah intended to write on the Zimbabwean struggle. This book contains key documents from the file on Rhodesia which he opened after U.D.I. in 1965. The letters and papers, many of which are published for the first time here, show the thinking of Nkrumah on the problem of minority regimes in Africa. How accurate it was, as subsequent events have proved. A connecting narrative and chronology from 1887 have been added by the publishers.
₵400.00Rhodesia File
₵400.00 -
I Speak of Freedom
A selection from the speeches of Kwame Nkrumah up to 1960, linked by narrative.
The main theme is Ghana’s independence, political freedom preparing the way for a socialist programme of economic and social development, and an intensification of the struggle for the total liberation and unification of the African continent.
₵500.00I Speak of Freedom
₵500.00 -
Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Hardcover)
The moving, human story of Kwame Nkrumah’s life from childhood to his dynamic leadership of the liberation struggle and the attainment of Ghana’s independence in 1957.
A personal account of the African liberation struggle, this book was first published on March 6, 1957, to mark the day of Ghana’s Independence, a day which signalled the launching of the wider Pan-African struggle for the liberation of the entire African continent. As the leader of the movement for independence, Nkrumah provides an illuminating discussion of the problems and conflicts along the way to political freedom, and the new prospects beyond.
This book is essential for understanding the genesis of the African Revolution and the maturing of one of its outstanding leaders.
₵665.00 -
Kwame Nkrumah: A Biography
Very few statesmen have attempted or achieved so much as Kwame Nkrumah, a leading activist and theoretician of PanAfricanism. His work lives on and continues to inspire Africans, people of African descent and progressive movements worldwide.
In this new biography, June Milne traces the life and work of Kwame Nkrumah from his birth in Nkroful in the western province of the Gold Coast (Ghana) to his death in Bucharest, Romania on 27 April, 1972. The book contains much new material, notably relating to years Nkrumah spent in Conakry, Guinea after the military coup in Accra on 24 February, 1966 which ended his government in Ghana. It adds to information in the author’s book Kwame Nkrumah, The Conakry Years, published in 1990.
For the first time in a biography of Nkrumah, information is provided about all the books written by him. The circumstances in which they were written are explained, their contents examined, appraisal made of their significance and continuing impact on political developments in Africa and the Diaspora.
This is an authentic moving account of the life and work of “The Greatest African” (the words inscribed on his coffin in Guinea), by an author well qualified to write about him.
₵450.00Kwame Nkrumah: A Biography
₵450.00 -
Forward Ever: The Life of Kwame Nkrumah
A short biography of Kwame Nkrumah providing an introduction to his life and work. Set within the context of PanAfricanism the book covers the whole period of Nkrumah’s life from childhood through to his death in Bucharest on 27th April 1972.
₵200.00 -
Class Struggle In Africa (Hardcover)
Recent African history has exposed the close links between the interests of imperialism and neo-colonialism and the African bourgeoisie. This book reveals the nature and extent of the class struggle in Africa, and sets it in the broad context of the African Revolution and the world socialist revolution.
₵375.00 -
The Fourth John: Reign, Rejection & Rebound
An influential northern caucus is secretly meeting and grooming him to contest the man who will select him as a vice presidential candidate. A meeting between the first lady and the Brong-Ahafo caucus results in, perhaps, the fastest ministerial reshuffle in the history of the country. At 2a.m., before the breaking of a major scandal, there is a meeting between the president’s friend and the investigative journalist about how to involve the main opposition leader, in the story to minimise its damage to the president in the upcoming election. The wife of the president reports the wife of the vice president to the vice president’s mother. The night before a crucial election, the president and his main contender are locked up in a meeting with Ghana’s most revered traditional ruler.
These and other revealing accounts on governance, policies and programmes of the fourth presidency of Ghana’s Fourth Republic are the intriguing contents of this book. Here, the journalist whose investigations are believed to have contributed to the downfall of the administration gets brutally intimate with the regime.
Rare interviews with key figures of the governing party and historical contexts to contemporary events provide readers and students of African politics the inside story of what is considered the model democracy on the continent. The fluidity of the writing style and humour make this book about politics and governance in Ghana’s Fourth Republic both informative, educative and entertaining.
₵300.00 -
These Bones Will Rise Again
What are the right questions to ask when seeking out the true spirit of a nation?
In November 2017 the people of Zimbabwe took to the streets in an unprecedented alliance with the military. Their goal, to restore the legacy of Chimurenga, the liberation struggle, and wrest their country back from over thirty years of Robert Mugabe’s rule.
In an essay that combines bold reportage, memoir and critical analysis, Zimbabwean novelist and journalist Panashe Chigumadzi reflects on the ‘coup that was not a coup’, the telling of history and manipulation of time and the ancestral spirts of two women – her own grandmother and Mbuya Nehanda, the grandmother of the nation.
Chigumadzi successfully nests the intimate charge of her poignant personal story in the sweeping historical account and mythology of Zimbabwe. – Brian Chikwava, author of Harare North
Chigumadzi’s exploration of personal, family and national history reincarnates in stark, vivid images, many of those interred in the shadows of her country’s ‘Big Men’. – Tsitsi Dangarembga, author of Nervous Conditions
₵80.00These Bones Will Rise Again
₵80.00 -
Africa Must Unite!
Africa Must Unite best describes what Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah stood for.
The mission he began over half a century ago remains uncompleted and the task of this generation is to make the dream of African unity come alive and realise our full potential as the African nation that would be embracing all peoples of African ancestry.
Nkrumah called for the political and economic unification of African states as the most effective way to achieve economic and socio-cultural emancipation and regain full sovereignty over our land and resources.
The thesis of Africa Unite remains unassilable, giving hope to about 1.5 billion Africans all over the world who aspire for a better life in a more humane world.
Africa Must Unite!
₵590.00Africa Must Unite!
₵590.00 -
Interim Republic: Ghana – The 1st Military Junta (1966 – 1969)
When the long years of plotting by foreign powers with Ghanaian collaborators to upset governance in Ghana finally succeeded, many justification books and laudatory pamphlets and newspaper articles were published at home and abroad. Some bore pseudonames, others came forceful. The event which occasioned the potpourri was the 1st military coup d’etat in Ghana staged by a military and police combine.
The Military/Police combination which overtook the government of Ghana, the 1st Republic Convention People’s Party (CPP)-led government in that putsch, installed an administration which came to be known as the National Liberation Council (NLC).
This book sheds much-needed light on their lives and times.
₵55.00