To the Delegates Conference of the Ghana Students' Association of Britain & Ireland, at St. Bride's Institute. London, E.G.4. on Feb. 29, 1964.
When I reflect upon one-party state all over Africa, all I can say is this. I do not think any justification can be found in the traditions of Africa to justify one-party State. If we seek to justify this we must seek it in other ways. You see, it is very easy to build up a one-party. The lust of power is not confined to any colour or race. The moment you are in power, you wish to remain in power; and where you have a local government system, a police system, all the apparatus built up to maintain authoritarian rule, you go further to perfect them.
When people start arguing about one-party state and start building up theories I look at the reality. I have not known one country in Africa which has become a one-party state without other things following. Just look! When they become a one-party state, they start doubling, tripling and adding to the number of policemen who guard the President and the Ministers and other people. They start controlling the press and radio. And they start building up the apparatus for oppression and repression; so that the argument that this is the way to achieve unity and freedom is belied by the reality. And it is the reality that I want to look at.
I am painfully amused by the sort of support that is given any country, and Ghana in particular, by people who are socialists in Britain just because Nkrumah pays lip service to socialism. And again and again I say to myself, can't they see? Aren't there any standards? I thought that the cardinal principle of socialism was the moral sense of social justice which looks and seeks to use the instruments at the disposal of a government to bring about equality and social justice within a State! I thought that this was the thing to look out for! But then when I look at Ghana, I see a new situation. I see a new kind of socialism which means the privilege of political office, the privilege of wealth for a few party officials and the oppression of a large number of people. And when I still see that accepted and supported by people who are expected to be the leading exponents of the theory of socialism, I begin to wonder!
Some people, in a sense insulting the African, think that Africans cannot be expected to cherish the things that they cherish such as human dignity. If Africa did not have the technology to produce electric lights, if we did not have the technology to build roads, if we did not have the technology to produce aeroplanes, we did have the human heart to care for our people.
Although there are many things which in the contemporary situation we have had to learn from Europe, what makes me really sad is that today we have a bend of leaders, some of them so anxious to strain for the big buildings, big cars end motor cycles and destructive weapons that they have forgotten that the one important contribution that the African can make to the world is to keep on reminding everyone that it is out of human sympathy and the love for one another that we can build eventually what is valuable and peaceful.
It is true that every country must do its best to stand on the traditions of its past, but there is no past in the sense of standing still. Everything is continually changing. Africa today and the culture of Africa cannot be seen merely in terms of something that has come from our past. It must also be seen in terms of the things we are accepting now and the things we wish to build up for the future, because we too belong to the 20th century.
My political career is motivated by one thing above all. By the firm conviction that I have in my heart and my mind that all men share a common humanity. That irrespective of a man's colour he is a man; and that in Africa too, we have people who, given the right kind of leadership and the right kind of opportunity, can rise to the highest that man has risen to anywhere in the world.