Muhammad Ali’s visit to Ghana: An echo that still resonates

 

Muhammad Ali's 1964 visit to Ghana was a landmark moment in both his personal journey and Pan-African history.

When Muhammad Ali, then newly crowned heavyweight champion of the world, arrived in Ghana in 1964, the moment was far more than a celebrity visit. It was a symbolic homecoming, a meeting between two of the most influential Black figures of the 20th century.

 

Ali, the brash, brilliant boxer who had just stunned the world by defeating Sonny Liston, stepped onto African soil as a global icon in the making. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and the leading voice of Pan‑Africanism, welcomed him not merely as a sportsman but as a son returning to the continent.

 

Their encounter captured the spirit of an era defined by liberation, pride, and the reawakening of African identity. Ali’s arrival in Accra was electric, as thousands lined the streets, cheering as his motorcade passed, waving flags and chanting his name.

 

Newspapers described the scene as one of the most enthusiastic public receptions since Ghana’s independence celebrations. In the VIP lounge of the airport, Ghana’s Foreign Minister Kojo Botsio greeted him on behalf of Nkrumah and bestowed upon him a new name: Kwame Muhammad Ali, marking him as a Sunday-born son of the Ashanti tradition.

 

Ali embraced the gesture with pride, calling his trip “a return to the fatherland,” a phrase that resonated deeply with Ghanaians and African Americans alike. When Ali finally met Nkrumah, the encounter was warm, symbolic, and politically charged. Nkrumah saw in Ali a powerful cultural ambassador, young, confident, unapologetically Black, and admired across the world.

 

Ali, in turn, admired Nkrumah as the embodiment of African independence and dignity. Their meeting represented a bridge between the struggles of African Americans and the aspirations of newly independent African nations. It was a moment when the global Black freedom movement felt united, hopeful, and unstoppable.

The visit also carried political undertones. Ghana in the early 1960s was a beacon of Pan‑Africanism, attracting intellectuals, activists, and revolutionaries from across the diaspora. Figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X had already found inspiration in Nkrumah’s Ghana.

 

Ali’s presence added a new dimension: the world’s most famous athlete standing shoulder to shoulder with Africa’s most outspoken anti‑colonial leader. For many Ghanaians, it was a validation of their country’s growing influence on the world stage. Ali’s days in Ghana were filled with public appearances, cultural ceremonies, and interactions with ordinary people.

 

He wore kente cloth, danced with crowds, and visited schools and training centers. His charisma transcended language and borders. Even decades later, older Ghanaians recall the joy and pride of seeing him walk through their streets, an African American who carried himself with the confidence of a king yet moved among them with humility and warmth.

 

The echoes of that visit have not faded. It remains a defining moment in the shared history of Africa and its diaspora. Ali’s embrace of Ghana strengthened the emotional and political ties between African Americans and the continent. For Ghana, the visit reinforced its identity as a home for the global Black family and a center of Pan‑African thought.

 

For Ali, it marked the beginning of his transformation from athlete to global moral figure, a journey that would later see him stand against the Vietnam War and become a symbol of resistance and dignity. Today, the images and stories of Ali with Nkrumah continue to circulate, reminding new generations of a time when Black unity felt tangible and powerful.

 

Their meeting stands as a testament to the enduring connection between sport, politics, and identity, and to the profound impact that two extraordinary men had on the world.

When China was manufacturing fake pressing irons

 

The pressing iron breaks down again every time the African student takes it back to the Chinese shop for repairs.

China is widely recognized as a significant global force that has a significant military and economic influence on the world stage. However, many people don't know that the country couldn't produce a high-quality pressing iron that could last even a week decades ago.

 

"An African Student in China" is a 1963 memoir by Emmanuel John Hevi, a Ghanaian student who studied medicine in Beijing during the early 1960s under the influence of Kwame Nkrumah's alignment with China.

 

The book provides a firsthand account of his experiences and those of fellow African students in China during Mao's era, particularly during the period of the Great Leap Forward.

 

Hevi describes the initial idealism he and other African students held toward China as a beacon of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial progress, only to be disillusioned by the reality of life under the Communist regime.

 

The narrative details the challenges faced by African students, including poor living conditions, totalitarian surveillance, and racial discrimination. Hevi recounts how Chinese authorities courted and propagandized African students, yet failed to win their loyalty, as many became aware of the regime's hypocrisy regarding racial equality.

 

He highlights incidents of racial prejudice, such as Chinese citizens expressing surprise at his skin color and touching his skin to verify his complexion, which he found humiliating. Hevi also notes that African students were often isolated, with some being forced to sit at the back of classrooms to avoid attention.

 

Nevertheless, nothing excites me more than his purchase of a pressing iron, despite all the stories and lessons about the prejudice African pupils encountered. Emmanuel John Hevi, a student, went to a Chinese store to purchase a pressing iron. 

I must clarify that this is a brand-new pressing iron, not a used one. The iron broke down after the first week, so he returned it to the shop. The student received the iron back after it was fixed, but it breaks down again every time.

 

This is a tale, in my opinion, of the Chinese discovering and researching what was truly disassembling the pressing iron until they were able to create the ideal pressing iron of today. As a result, throughout the entire time, the Chinese leadership was perfecting its blunders while the developed nations were undervaluing China.

 

Emmanuel John Hevi's account in his book about the pressing iron, which repeatedly malfunctioned and was fixed by China, might serve as a main story in international scientific journals about how China became an industry leader in electronics today.

 

My experience in a food processing factory

 

Joel Savage in a food factory's dressing code

Agriculture and food production are practical and fascinating fields of human activity because we eat not only to survive but also to maintain our health. I had the chance to work in one of Belgium's well-known food companies, and my experience motivated me to write this article.

 

This article's importance lies in describing how food manufacturing has benefited the Belgian government's economy and citizens' health because of the rigorous hygienic procedures and guidelines that workers must meticulously follow to produce high-quality food.

 

I was a little anxious about the questions when the employment agency called to tell me that I would be working at the "Fine Food Factory," a food factory that supplies tons of food to the well-known store "Colruyt" across Belgium, but that I would also need to take tests on safety procedures and regulations about working in the food industry.

 

Behind the computer at the work agency are about 10 pages of articles in Dutch that discuss food production, safety, and hygiene procedures that one must adhere to before working in a food plant. I answered the questions after reading, but I wasn't certain of the results or the outcome.

 

I had seventy percent, which allowed me to start working, but before I could enter the food factory to get started, I was astonished to learn about the company's dress code and standards, which made me realize why Africa lags behind in many areas of our lives without advancement.

 

The dressing mode is very challenging, but it's essential because even a small deviation from the prescribed safety precautions might harm the final product's quality and could result in food poisoning. Everyone is required to cover their heads or hair, including those who have beards.

 

Additionally, you must wash your hands well and wear white overalls and white shoes before you can enter the plant. Following a brief press conference discussing the issues or suggestions, employees eagerly start working in different departments under one roof.

 

Factory overalls are not allowed in the cafeteria for lunch or break; you must remove them in the dressing room to prevent contamination. After eating, you return to change your clothes once more before going into the plant that processes food.

 

The trained personnel standing beside the machines not only correctly pack the turkey, chicken, and sausage, but they also pack them firmly so they can be kept in cold conditions for a few days before the expiration date.

 

As I work around the clock, I wonder and wish my nation's government would establish such significant food factories throughout Ghana, like what the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, did to support the economy, create jobs, and generate foreign exchange for the country in exports.

 

There are many Asian products in Europe and America, but not many from Africa, indicating that the African market in food production is facing challenges. It may also be that African leaders want the population to depend more on local consumption products or foods.

 

Ghana still has a long way to go because corruption has destroyed all of the food businesses Kwame Nkrumah established, including the cocoa industry. Many people anticipate that President John Mahama will revive all of the abandoned Nkrumah factories to provide jobs for the young people.

 

OUR STORY IN GHANA IS A TRAGEDY, AS NKRUMAH'S PROPHESY UNFOLDS

 Nkrumah's prophesy has taken place

“If we don't approach the problems in Africa with a common front and a common purpose, we shall be haggling and wrangling among ourselves until we are colonized again and become tools of a far greater colonialism than we suffered hitherto.” – Kwame Nkrumah

 

Who in Ghana can beat up his chest by denying that we are not experiencing a similar situation today in the country decades after Kwame Nkrumah made this statement?

 

I don’t think anyone in Ghana can challenge these words of Nkrumah that everything is fine and the system is smoothly advancing.

 

Indeed, Ghanaians are suffering, yet we are not under colonialism. There have been several arguments that Africa would have been better in the hands of the colonial masters because, after independence, African leaders have disappointed the common people.

 

What inspires people to pursue a political career in Ghana or generally in Africa? This is the question that, if I am to interview any Ghanaian politician, will be my first question on the list because it seems the majority of African politicians are inspired into politics to amass wealth.

 

The hardships the common people experience in Africa daily, despite its vast natural resources, are never experienced in the developed countries. This is enough to acknowledge the fact that, apart from corruption, the lack of good leadership is also affecting the country.

 

Why so many resources, yet African leaders can't alleviate the people from poverty? Providing good schools, medical facilities, and drinking water and creating employment have been some of the biggest challenges many African countries are facing today.

 

There is more room in Ghana for improvement, but the rooms are shut because Ghanaians are not one. While it is in the interest of many to unite, there are others aiming to divide the people.

 

Like all African countries, politics in Ghana involved greediness. The idea that the NDC has ‘chopped’ enough; therefore, it’s the turn of the NPP to ‘chop’ is causing a setback to the rapid development of Ghana.

 

In Ghana, you’ll see the grim pictures of how many Ghanaians are suffering and struggling. On the streets of Accra, traders carrying heavy items, including tubers of yam, are running after and dangerously maneuvering between moving vehicles.

 

No education and no future; everyone is struggling to sell something to avoid being a burden on families. Why is it that only the third-world countries often experience such economic hardships?

 

Our resources are being wasted on wrong projects that are not necessary, and the situation in mineral-rich Africa is very bad, to the extent that some illiterates or superstitious people think the continent is cursed.

 

What crime has Africa committed to deserve a curse? Even the colonial masters that committed so many crimes in African countries are blessed. They have work, food, good education, and medical facilities, making life worthy to live.

 

Until African countries have good leaders ready to fight corruption and make good use of the money after the export of their raw materials, the continent will continue to remain poor, affecting everyone, including the children.

Kwame Nkrumah, The Unparalleled Of a Nationalist Among Ghanaian Leaders

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the most feared Ghanaian leader by Western Europe and the US governments

In Ghana, you can be a president, but not all Ghanaian leaders have equal wisdom. Some leaders used their intelligence to make Ghana a great nation, while others brought untold hardship and suffering to the common people. 

Jesus once said, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home." 

 

That is true; Kwame Nkrumah might be considered a hero at his birthplace, Nkroful, but his achievements as one of Ghana’s greatest political figures have caused jealousy among an empire of deceitful politicians who have tried to taint the works of this great man.

 

In the political history of Ghana, there hasn't been any Ghanaian leader who is loyal to his country and the entire African continent at the same time, like the former nationalist, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

 

Even though some Ghanaians might have been inspired by Nkrumah’s ideologies and philosophy, they still lacked the heroism that made Kwame Nkrumah the kind of leader feared most by the governments of Western Europe and the United States of America.

 

Whereas today, there hasn't been any Ghanaian or African leader to question the colonial masters and the US government about the strange diseases, such as HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, Burkitt's lymphoma, Kaposi's sarcoma, Lassa fever, and Ebola (apart from malaria), that suddenly or miraculously appeared on the continent of Africa. Nkrumah spoke against these issues to protect the continent because he knew what the foreign powers could do.

 

Since Kwame Nkrumah wasn’t ready to let Africa suffer after independence, he became a stumbling block on the paths of the governments of Western Europe and the United States of America because of their diabolical, clandestine agenda to take possession of Africa’s rich resources.

 

With the collaboration of America's CIA, the Nkrumah regime was overthrown. Years later, apart from malaria, many diseases came to the continent of Africa, causing a major setback to the development of the continent.

 

Today, African leaders accept money from foreign governments to support HIV/AIDS and Ebola projects in Africa, instead of rejecting it because all the money ends up in their pockets.

 

Western European and American leaders do bad things politically and economically to Africa, yet they don't want any nation on earth to do the same thing against them. After that, they turn on African leaders to call them ‘corrupt,’ and the African continent a ‘shithole.’ 

 

How do you expect Ghana or any African country to progress when African leaders kowtow in front of foreign leaders after committing horrible crimes in Africa and exchange the souls of their dead citizens killed by biological weapons for money?

 

History has repeated itself with a new biological weapon called coronavirus. Even though, as usual, Africa is not responsible for any biological weapon, COVID-19 is gradually bringing Africa's ailing economy to a halt. 

 

Already, it has been reported that the money given to support the coronavirus project in Ghana is completely exhausted. (Sika nu ashi, asah.) Within the shortest period, the money was given to Ghana; nobody knows what exactly it was used for. 

 

Even though there is no Ghanaian or African leader prepared to die or face any harsh treatment from foreign governments, yet, till today, many Ghanaians hate Kwame Nkrumah. However, the truth is that if many African leaders are brave and powerful enough like Nkrumah, Africa would not end up in such a disaster, despite the continent’s rich resources.

 

I can still hear the “Voice From Afar” of Kwame Nkrumah, a tribute to K. B. Asante, speaking, warning, and reminding Ghanaians and other African leaders with these powerful words.

 

“Even the cinema stories of fabulous Hollywood are loaded. One has only to listen to the cheers of an African audience as Hollywood’s heroes slaughter red Indians or Asiatics to understand the effectiveness of this weapon. For, in the developing continents, where the colonialist heritage has left a vast majority still illiterate, even the smallest child gets the message contained in the blood and thunder stories emanating from California.”

 

“And along with murder and the Wild West goes an incessant barrage of anti-socialist propaganda, in which the trade union man, the revolutionary, or the man of dark skin is generally cast as the villain, while the policeman, the gumshoe, and the Federal agent—in a word, the CIA-type spy—is ever the hero.”

 

“Here, truly, is the ideological underbelly of those political murders that so often use local people as their instruments. While Hollywood takes care of fiction, the enormous monopoly press, together with the outflow of slick, clever, expensive magazines, attends to what it chooses to call ‘news.”

 

“Within separate countries, one or two news agencies control the news handouts, so that a deadly uniformity is achieved, regardless of the number of separate newspapers or magazines; while internationally, the financial preponderance of the United States is felt more and more through its foreign correspondents and offices abroad, as well as through its influence over international capitalist journalism.”

 

“Under this guise, a flood of anti-liberation propaganda emanates from the capital cities of the West, directed against China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Ghana, and all countries that hack out their own independent path to freedom. Prejudice is rife. For example, wherever there is armed struggle against the forces of reaction, the nationalists are referred to as rebels, terrorists, or frequently ‘communist terrorists'!” ― Kwame Nkrumah.

 

He that has ears, let him hear. Ghana, or the entire African continent, needs strong and powerful leaders, like Nkrumah, to feed, educate, provide jobs, improve the health sectors in the country, and protect the continent from foreign subversive activities affecting the development of the continent.

 

If African leaders are not prepared to stand and fight for their country, the continent of Africa will always remain a 'shithole,' with poor economies, malnourished children, and diseases, while Europe and America capitalize on our resources to build their economies much stronger.

An Awareness Of Our Past Is Essential To Our Personality And Identity As Africans

 

Former Ethiopian Head of State, Emperor Haile Selassie

"We must look, first, to Almighty God, who has raised man above the animals and endowed him with intelligence and reason. We must put our faith in Him, that He will not desert us or permit us to destroy humanity which He created in His image."- Emperor Haile Selassie.

"Haile Selassie’s address to the United Nations on October 6, 1963, including the ‘War Speech’ which became one of Bob Marley’s hits."

An Awareness Of Our Past Is Essential To The Establishment Of Our Personality And Identity As Africans - Emperor Haile Selassie

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loFDn94oZJ0 

 

Twenty-seven years ago, as Emperor of Ethiopia, I mounted the rostrum in Geneva, Switzerland, to address the League of Nations and to appeal for relief from the destruction which had been unleashed against my defenseless nation by the Fascist invader. I spoke then both to and for the conscience of the world. My words went unheeded, but history testifies to the accuracy of the warning that I gave in 1936.

Today, I stand before the world organization that has succeeded to the mantle discarded by its discredited predecessor. In this body is enshrined the principle of collective security, which I unsuccessfully invoked at Geneva. Here, in this Assembly, responds the best - perhaps the last - hope for the peaceful survival of mankind.

 

In 1936, I declared that it was not the Covenant of the League that was at stake, but international morality. Undertakings, I said then, are of little worth if the will to keep them is lacking. The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.

 

But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honor them and give them content and meaning. The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: the courage to speak and act - and if necessary, to suffer and die - for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied. 

 

These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace.

 

The record of the United Nations during the few short years of its life affords mankind a solid basis for encouragement and hope for the future. The United Nations has dared to act when the League dared not in Palestine, in Korea, in Suez, in the Congo. There is no one among us today who does not conjecture upon the reaction of this body when motives and actions are called into question. 

 

The opinion of this Organization today acts as a powerful influence on the decisions of its members. The spotlight of world opinion, focused by the United Nations upon the transgressions of the renegades of human society, has thus far proved an effective safeguard against unchecked aggression and unrestricted violation of human rights.

 

The United Nations continues to serve as the forum where nations whose interests clash may lay their cases before world opinion. It still provides the essential escape valve without which a slow build-up of pressure would have long since resulted in a catastrophic explosion. 

Its actions and decisions have sped the achievement of freedom by many people on the continents of Africa and Asia. Its efforts have contributed to the advancement of the standard of living of people in all corners of the world.

 

For this, all men must give thanks. As I stand here today, how faint, how remote are the memories of 1936. How different in 1963 are the attitudes of men? We then existed in an atmosphere of suffocating pessimism. Today, cautious yet buoyant optimism is the prevailing spirit.

 

But each one of us here knows that what has been accomplished is not enough. The United Nations judgments have been and continue to be subject to frustration, as individual member-states have ignored its pronouncements and disregarded its recommendations. 

The Organization's sinews have been weakened, as member-states have shirked their obligations to it. The authority of the Organization has been mocked, as individual member-states have proceeded, in violation of its commands, to pursue their own aims and ends. 

 

The troubles that continue to plague us virtually all arise among member states of the Organization, but the Organization remains impotent to enforce acceptable solutions. As the maker and enforcer of international law, what the United Nations has achieved still falls regrettably short of our goal of an international community of nations.

 

This does not mean that the United Nations has failed. I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security and their property interests. Not even now, when so much is at hazard, would many nations willingly entrust their destinies to other hands.

 

Yet, this is the ultimatum presented to us: secure the conditions whereby men will entrust their security to a larger entity, or risk annihilation; persuade men that their salvation rests in the subordination of national and local interests to the interests of humanity, or endanger man's future. These are the objectives, yesterday unattainable, today essential, which we must labor to achieve.

 

Until this is accomplished, mankind's future remains hazardous, and permanent peace a matter for speculation. There is no single magic formula, no one simple step, no words, whether written into the Organization's Charter or into a treaty between states, which can automatically guarantee to us what we seek. Peace is a day-to-day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgments. Peace is not an "is", it is a "becoming." We cannot escape the dreadful possibility of catastrophe by miscalculation.

 

But we can reach the right decisions on the myriad subordinate problems which each new day poses, and we can thereby make our contribution and perhaps the most that can be reasonably expected of us in 1963 to the preservation of peace. It is here that the United Nations has served us - not perfectly, but well. And in enhancing the possibilities that the Organization may serve us better, we serve and bring closer our most cherished goals.

Emperor Haile Selassie, right, and the former Ghanaian leader, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

I would mention briefly today two particular issues which are of deep concern to all men: disarmament and the establishment of true equality among men. Disarmament has become an urgent imperative of our time. 

I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. 

Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity which men dispose of.

Ethiopia supports the atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty as a step towards this goal, even though only a partial step. Nations can still perfect weapons of mass destruction by underground testing. There is no guarantee against the sudden, unannounced resumption of testing in the atmosphere.

The real significance of the treaty is that it admits of a tacit stalemate between the nations which negotiated it, a stalemate which recognizes the blunt, unavoidable fact that none would emerge from the destruction which would be the lot of all in a nuclear war, a stalemate which affords us and the United Nations a breathing space in which to act.

 

Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men. Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. 

 

The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions. This very Organization itself is the greatest such institution, and it is in a more powerful United Nations that we seek, and it is here that we shall find, the assurance of a peaceful future.

 

A real and effective disarmament has been achieved, and the funds now spent in the arms race devoted to the amelioration of man's state; were we to concentrate only on the peaceful uses of nuclear knowledge, how vastly and in how short a time might we change the conditions of mankind? This should be our goal.

 

When we talk of the equality of man, we find, also, a challenge and an opportunity; a challenge to breathe new life into the ideals enshrined in the Charter, an opportunity to bring men closer to freedom and true equality. And thus, closer to a love of peace.

 

The goal of the equality of man, which we seek, is the antithesis of the exploitation of one people by another, with which the pages of history, and in particular those written of the African and Asian continents, speak at such length. Exploitation, thus viewed, has many faces. 

 

But whatever guise it assumes, this evil is to be shunned where it does not exist and crushed where it does. It is the sacred duty of this Organization to ensure that the dream of equality is finally realized for all men to whom it is still denied, to guarantee that exploitation is not reincarnated in other forms in places whence it has already been banished.

 

As a free Africa has emerged during the past decade, a fresh attack has been launched against exploitation, wherever it still exists. And in that interaction so common to history, this, in turn, has stimulated and encouraged the remaining dependent peoples to renewed efforts to throw off the yoke which has oppressed them and its claim as their birthright the twin ideals of liberty and equality. 

 

This very struggle is a struggle to establish peace, and until victory is assured, that brotherhood and understanding which nourishes and gives life to peace can be but partial and incomplete.

 

In the United States of America, the administration of President Kennedy is leading a vigorous attack to eradicate the remaining vestiges of racial discrimination from this country. We know that this conflict will be won and that right will triumph. In this time of trial, these efforts should be encouraged and assisted, and we should lend our sympathy and support to the American Government today.

 

Last May, in Addis Ababa, I convened a meeting of Heads of African States and Governments. In three days, the thirty-two nations represented at that Conference demonstrated to the world that when the will and the determination exist, nations and peoples of diverse backgrounds can and will work together. In unity, to the achievement of common goals and the assurance of that equality and brotherhood which we desire.

 

On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa Conference taught, to those who will learn, this further lesson: that until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; that until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation.

That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; that until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; that until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.

 

 And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique, and in South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and goodwill; until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; until that day, the African continent will not know peace. 

We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.

 

The United Nations has done much, both directly and indirectly, to speed the disappearance of discrimination and oppression from the earth. Without the opportunity to focus world opinion on Africa and Asia, which this Organization provides, the goal, for many, might still lie ahead, and the struggle would have taken far longer. For this, we are truly grateful.

 

But more can be done. The basis of racial discrimination and colonialism has been economic, and it is with economic weapons that these evils have been and can be overcome. In pursuance of resolutions adopted at the Addis Ababa Summit Conference, African States have undertaken certain measures in the economic field which, if adopted by all member states of the United Nations, would soon reduce intransigence to reason. 

 

I ask, today, for adherence to these measures by every nation represented here, which is truly devoted to the principles enunciated in the Charter. I do not believe that Portugal and South Africa are prepared to commit economic or physical suicide if honorable and reasonable alternatives exist.

 

I believe that such alternatives can be found. But I also know that unless peaceful solutions are devised, counsels of moderation and temperance will avail for naught, and another blow will have been dealt with this Organization which will hamper and weaken still further its usefulness in the struggle to ensure the victory of peace and liberty over the forces of strife and oppression. 

 

Here, then, is the opportunity presented to us. We must act while we can, while the occasion exists to exert those legitimate pressures available to us, lest time run out and resort be had to less happy means.

 

Does this Organization today possess the authority and the will to act? And if it does not, are we prepared to clothe it with the power to create and enforce the rule of law? Or is the Charter a mere collection of words, without content and substance, because the essential spirit is lacking? 

 

The time in which to ponder these questions is all too short. The pages of history are full of instances in which the unwanted and the shunned nonetheless occurred because men waited to act until too late. We can brook no such delay.

 

If we are to survive, this organization must survive. To survive, it must be strengthened. Its executive must be vested with great authority. The means for the enforcement of its decisions must be fortified, and, if they do not exist, they must be devised.

 

Procedures must be established to protect the small and the weak when threatened by the strong and the mighty. All nations that fulfill the conditions of membership must be admitted and allowed to sit in this assemblage.

 

Equality of representation must be assured in each of its organs. The possibilities which exist in the United Nations to provide the medium whereby the hungry may be fed, the naked clothed, the ignorant instructed, must be seized on and exploited, for the flower of peace is not sustained by poverty and want.

 

To achieve this requires courage and confidence. The courage, I believe, we possess. The confidence must be created, and to create confidence, we must act courageously.

 

The great nations of the world would do well to remember that in the modern age, even their own fates are not wholly in their hands. Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can foresee what spark might ignite the fuse? It is not only the small and the weak who must scrupulously observe their obligations to the United Nations and to each other. 

 

Unless the smaller nations are accorded their proper voice in the settlement of the world's problems, unless the equality which Africa and Asia have struggled to attain is reflected in expanded membership in the institutions which make up the United Nations, confidence will come just that much harder. Unless the rights of the least of men are as assiduously protected as those of the greatest, the seeds of confidence will fall on barren soil.

 

The stake of each one of us is identical - life or death. We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger, and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fallout should catastrophe overtake us.

 

When I spoke at Geneva in 1936, there was no precedent for a head of state addressing the League of Nations. I am neither the first nor will I be the last head of state to address the United Nations, but only I have addressed both the League and this Organization in this capacity.

 

The problems which confront us today are, equally, unprecedented. They have no counterparts in human experience. Men search the pages of history for solutions, for precedents, but there are none.

This, then, is the ultimate challenge. Where are we to look for our survival, for the answers to the questions which have never before been posed?

 

We must look, first, to Almighty God, who has raised man above the animals and endowed him with intelligence and reason. We must put our faith in Him, that He will not desert us or permit us to destroy humanity which He created in His image.

 

And we must look into ourselves, into the depths of our souls. We must become something we have never been and for which our education and experience, and environment have ill-prepared us. We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. 

 

We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing to our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.

The Forgotten Segregation Crimes In The United States Of America In Images

Anti-civil rights crime in America

"Dedicated To Congressman John Lewis, For His Selfless Fight For The Emancipation of black people." - Joel Savage

The white missionaries were the first to introduce the Bible in Africa or to the black man. In that Bible, it is written God created man in His own image, yet the black man became a target to all kinds of cruelties because of the color of his skin. 

Assassinated civil-rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr

What actually motivates some people to be so cruel to other people? Why many enjoy racial violence when this issue is meaningless despite no one lives forever?

Apartheid in the United States of America

"Until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes and until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war." -

Women fighting for better treatment and equal rights in America

“Colonialism and its attitudes die hard, like the attitudes of slavery, whose hangover still dominates behavior in certain parts of the Western hemisphere." - Kwame Nkrumah

Arrested Civil Rights activist, John Lewis

"Before slavery was practiced in the New World, there was no special denigration of Africans. Travelers to this continent described the inhabitants in their records with natural curiosity and examination to be expected of individuals coming from different environments." -

One of the embarrassing photographs in America, a country that persuades every country to follow democracy

"It was when the slave trade and slavery began to develop ghastly proportions that made them the base of that capital accumulation which assisted the rise of Western industrialism, that a new attitude towards Africans emerged. 'Slavery in the Caribbean has been too narrowly identified with the man of color. A racial twist has thereby been given to what is basically an economic phenomenon." - Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Martin Luther King Jr.

"Slavery was not born of racism, rather racism was the consequence of slavery.' With this racial twist was invented the myth of color inferiority. This myth supported the subsequent rape of our continent with its despoliation and continuing exploitation under the advanced forms of colonialism and imperialism.” - Kwame Nkrumah

THE SYSTEMATIC ABUSE OF POWER IN COLONIAL AFRICA

Humans used as transport was another abuse of power in the colonial era, in Africa

During the colonial era in Africa, the masters often received the respect accorded by Black people out of fear. Based on this misconception that Black people fear them, they abused their power horrifically and inhumanly without regret or remorse.

However, the myth that a Black man fears a white man is total nonsense. Europeans scrambled over Africa with sheer brutality and aggression, subduing Africans; therefore, they were too vulnerable and powerless to react. 

The same abuse and oppression of Black people exist today in many European countries and the United States of America. If not for the Black Lives Matter demonstration after George Floyd's death, there would still be statues commemorating key figures who committed horrible crimes against humanity during slavery and the colonial era.

The fathers of independence, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Patrice Lumumba of Congo, had no fear of the British and Belgian governments. 

They gained independence for their countries, but because Britain and Belgium actually feared them, Nkrumah was removed from power in a coup masterminded by the CIA, and Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in a plot conceived by the Belgian government. 

In apartheid South Africa, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and his colleagues had no fear of the minority apartheid leaders. Despite the force of brutality they unleashed, maiming and opening fire on protesting, defenseless South Africans, they murdered Steve Biko and put other ANC key members, including Nelson Mandela, behind bars for twenty-seven years because they feared them. 

When it comes to crime, there are many white criminals out there, as well as Black criminals, but the Black man is always given a second look because of the color of his skin. Just being Black makes you a suspect. In the United States of America, Black drivers are more often stopped and harassed than white motorists.

In Belgium, being Africans among white workers, all eyes were on us as suspects when sandwiches had been missing every time from the dining hall. The atmosphere becomes tense when, on the fifth day of the week, one of the workers finds his food stolen again.

This time, the management decides to do something about it. They secretly started their investigations, creating an undetected hideout, aiming to catch the person responsible for this theft red-handed.

 

The following week, about a quarter to noonday, a mysterious man emerged into the quiet dining hall, looking for a meal to steal. After tasting some meals, he found a delicious one, and he took it. As he tried to walk out, he was intercepted.

 

Colonial power in Africa took all that they wanted and destroyed the souls of Africans

Shockingly, out of hundreds of workers at the company, the mysterious thief appeared to be one of our colleagues from Portugal. The sandwich thief was Portuguese, not African.

The need to respect all races

 

It is absolutely wrong to take the respect someone gives as a fear to treat him very badly. Many enjoy being racist; some people like to discriminate against Black people, calling them degrading names, but the question is, what do racists get from hate? Nothing is more significant than violence and the destruction of property.

Who lives forever, and what makes you think your color is better than someone else's when there is a big difference between the color white and real black? If white people's color is white like white paper, I think everyone who sees them will run to hide somewhere in fear.

Respect doesn’t mean fear; therefore, those who have that sick mentality should begin to dismantle it from their brains because racial problems have caused too much death and violence, and without respect for other races, there will never be peace on earth.

The Immeasurable Greatness Of Ghanaian Writer, Ama Ata Aidoo

Ama Ata Aidoo, an inspiration to thousands of African writers

Author Ama Ata Aidoo is one of the prominent Ghanaian female writers who has created a significant impact in both Africa and international literature, once, inspiring me to write an article captioned "The Literary World Of Ama Ata Aidoo," about her, on ModernGhana news site, on October 20, 2018.

She is a past student of the Wesley Girl's High School in Cape Coast from 1961 to 1964, and the University of Ghana in Legon, where she received a bachelor's degree in English.

Ama’s books are well defined by her style of writing and the subject she relates recounts every thought and action of a narrator in exquisite detail delightfully enjoyed by her novice readers.

I have had great respect for many Ghanaian literature writers, the fact most of them are naturally gifted, and talented writers whose books have played significant roles in Africa's education.

But recently, going deep into Ama Ata Aidoo's work, one of her old interviews on Youtube about economic and health issues in Africa, caught my attention. It opened my mind and without any doubt realized that Ama may probably be one of Africa's greatest scholars after Kwame Nkrumah.

A few years ago, after visiting the Dutch scientist and microsurgeon, Johan van Dongen in Holland, and the German medical doctor, Wolff Geisler in Cologne, Germany, I received books and documents pertaining to certain diseases which origins are from Africa.

For example, HIV-Aids, Ebola, Tuberculosis, Burkitt's lymphoma, Kaposi's sarcoma, and nodding disease were deliberately inflicted on the African population, by the US and British governments and Apartheid leaders of South Africa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTjLRjUs8lY (For unknown reasons, I couldn't upload this video from Youtube Ama Ata Aidoo's interview in 1987)

Since every race, there are both intelligent and morons, some people either morons or with the intention to suppress information attacked me on ModernGhana news platform after posting those articles to expose the medical crimes of both Britain and American governments in Africa. 

They said the publications are not true but I am being brainwashed by two European medical writers. I couldn't believe when I stumbled upon an interview of the Ghanaian writer, Ama Atta Aidoo, in 1987, talking about the same deliberate spread of diseases, including tuberculosis in Africa.

How great and intelligent is this woman? Even though she refrained from mentioning any name in regards to the subject, what she said about Aids and Tuberculosis were exactly written in the books of Scientist Dongen and Dr. Geisler, even though the two writers don't know each other.

Ama Ata Aidoo said something like this: "She is not blaming or holding anyone responsible because whatever happened in Africa, they did it for their survival but we (Africans) are not doing enough for our survival."

She is right, many times, I accused African leaders of the current chaotic and poverty state of the continent. They are those responsible for our troubles because they take bribes from foreign governments, yet they not even aware that what they steal from the continent is more than what they take.

Besides, the man-made diseases inflicted on Africans generate massive profit for the European and American pharmaceutical companies, which improves their economies, while African lick their wounds of diseases they aren't responsible for.

Until the entire African continent and its stupid leaders will wake up from their slumber to stand firm, fight and take the economic yoke put on our heads by the European and American leaders, Africa will never move forward. 

They will continue celebrating independence each year without achieving anything significant on the continent of Africa.