WHY BELGIUM REFUSES TO GIVE GHANA ITS EMBASSY

Kwame Nkrumah, the father and architect of Ghana’s political independence

Kwame Nkrumah, the father and architect of Ghana’s political independence, was a man far ahead of his time. After studies from the United States of America, Nkrumah’s involvement in politics and determination to free Ghana and other African countries from the hands of colonial masters was a bitter issue that the West and America weren’t prepared to handle.

“We have won the battle and again rededicate ourselves; our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa,” Nkrumah said. 

The fact that other African countries were under colonial bondage made him unhappy after Ghana’s independence. He was a man with vision and full of determination. He started working on the liberation of other African countries.

A year after Ghana’s independence, Kwame Nkrumah helped his friend Ahmed Sekou Touré of the Republic of Guinea to break free from France on October 2, 1958. 

The French government was very angry to the extent that they took everything, including the furniture at the statehouse, from Guinea to France. 

Then, in 1960, other African countries gained their independence, including Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of Congo (which, before Belgium, had taken as their personal property) on August 15, 1960.

This was something Belgium wasn’t prepared to accept because of the fear of losing whatever they were siphoning from Congo to Belgium. 

Before independence, Belgium's King Leopold’s terror of terror and greed saw many Congolese children and adults' limbs and hands amputated, the punishment for rebelling against his administration, and also for not satisfying his demands. 

Through a plot engineered by Belgium, Lumumba was killed, chopped, and his body burned in 1962. A brutal death, Nkrumah and world leaders spoke against.

The mouth that said, “Here comes the Saviour, Hosanna! Hosanna! It was the same mouth that said, “Crucify him.” Ghanaians and the opposition accused Nkrumah of being a dictator, forming a one-party state. 

On February 24, 1966, with the aid of the CIA, Nkrumah was overthrown by the army. Declassified National Security Council and Central Agency documents provided ample evidence that the United States government was involved in the 1966 coup that toppled the Ghanaian leader. 

Shortly after the arrest of Patrice Lumumba, after Belgium lost Congo in 1960, he was assassinated, and later his body was exhumed and dissolved in sulfuric acid.

Before his overthrow, it was also a difficult period for prominent black leaders in America, including Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

Kwame Nkrumah spent his last days in exile in Conakry, Guinea. He died in Bucharest, Romania. As a punishment to the Ghanaian government for Nkrumah’s interference in Belgian politics, the Belgian government has denied Ghana its embassy ever since. 

A country like Ghana deserves an embassy, not a Belgian consulate. It’s a shame Ghana has to go under such punishment for political reasons, without taking into consideration the atrocities the West committed against Africa.