Neo‑Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism-The book that terrified foreign powers to overthrow Nkrumah

 

Neocolonialism, according to Nkrumah, is the use of foreign capital to exploit rather than advance the prosperity of the world's less developed regions.

Neocolonialism is the exploitation of former colonies by their former rulers, based on economic inequality

Kwame Nkrumah, the architect of Ghana’s independence and a renowned African statesman and scholar, wrote the book titled "Neocolonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism" in 1965, eight years after Ghana gained its independence. 

He described how former colonial powers continued to dominate and take advantage of recently independent nations in this book. The terms "neocolonialism" and "post-colonialism" gained popularity during Africa's decolonization.

 

Nkrumah wrote, “The result of neocolonialism is that foreign capital is used to exploit rather than to promote the prosperity of the less developed parts of the world. Under neo-colonialism, investment widens rather than narrows the gap between the rich and the poor in the world. 

The struggle against neo-colonialism is not about excluding the capital of developed countries from the economies of less developed countries. It is about preventing the financial power of developed countries from being used to undermine the economies of less developed countries.”

 

Neocolonialism is therefore the continued exploitation of former colonies by their former rulers, based on economic inequality. Like colonialism, it includes cultural and language influence, as well as unequal economic and political‑military relations between the former colony and the former colonial power.

A clear example is the so‑called “banana republics,” countries whose economies depend on exporting one main agricultural product, often controlled by a single foreign company.

 

Colonialism started as a system where powerful countries controlled weaker ones from the 16th to the 20th centuries. These powerful countries conquered smaller states for many reasons: to make trade easier, to take natural resources, and to control trade routes. Countries with strong economies and armies became metropolises, while weaker countries became colonies.

 

The metropolises spread their culture and language, while the colonies lost political and economic independence. Often, citizens of the metropolises had more rights and privileges in the colonies than the local people. 

For example, British colonizers in Australia applied the Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights to themselves but not to the Indigenous Australians, who were bought or kidnapped and forced to work on British farms.

 

European powers treated colonized cultures differently, but in most cases, colonization caused suffering and tragedy. For example, the British East India Company’s rule caused major famines in Bengal in the 1760s and 1790s, killing an estimated 10 million people in the first famine. Colonialism in its original form ended after World War II, when societies began to support human rights, democracy, and decolonization.

 

The year 1960 is often called “the year of Africa.” It was the year when the largest number of African countries became independent: 17 nations, many of them formerly colonized by France, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Gabon. 

That same year, the UN General Assembly passed a declaration supporting independence for colonial countries and peoples, confirming the right of all nations to self‑determination and calling for the quick end of colonialism.

 

Neocolonialism affects the whole world today. Developed countries still spread their political and economic influence using post‑colonial methods. For example, one condition for the Philippines’ independence was allowing the United States to keep military bases there. 

Also, Northern Cyprus has been occupied by Turkey since 1974. Some organizations are also accused of spreading the culture and values of former colonial powers.

 

One major effect of post‑colonialism is ethnocide, the destruction of a people’s national or ethnic identity. This happens when local languages disappear, and Western traditions replace local customs, erasing history and culture. 

Western values are often linked with personal freedom, rational thinking, and democracy, but countries like Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong show that modernization and progress can happen without full Westernization.

 

On 21 February 1966, Kwame Nkrumah traveled to North Vietnam at the invitation of Ho Chi Minh and then continued to China. While he was in Beijing, a group of conspirators, many trained in England, carried out a coup in Ghana. 

The main leader was Lieutenant Colonel Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, commander of the 2nd Infantry Brigade in Kumasi. They used Nkrumah’s absence to take power. After the coup, Nkrumah never returned to Ghana and lived in exile in Guinea.

 

Kwame Nkrumah later went to Romania for medical treatment in August 1971. He died there on April 27, 1972, at the Flamingo Hotel in Bucharest. He had been suffering from a serious, incurable illness, later identified as prostate cancer. 

Years after his passing, declassified U.S. records showed that the CIA was instrumental in the 1966 overthrow of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

 

THE DEEP BETRAYAL OF NKRUMAH BY GHANA AND THE AMERICAN CIA

Kwame Nkrumah, one of the intelligent African leaders the world has ever known

In October 1965, Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana, published his future book, ‘Neocolonialism: The last stage of imperialism.’ The book was dedicated to "The living and the dead African freedom fighters."

In the book, Nkrumah accused the CIA of numerous crises and regressions in the Third World and Eastern Europe. Later, Nkrumah wrote: "The American government sent me a note of protest and soon refused to give Ghana $35 million planned to help the country.

Four months later, he was deposed in a military coup organized by the CIA. Of course, the organizers of the coup, members of the Ghanaian army and police, had their own motives. They feared that Nkrumah was creating his own private army that would take their powers away, and they were determined to promote their own professional careers and status.

Within a very short period after the successful coup in February 1966, the majors became colonels, and the colonels became generals. As a student in the United States during the Great Depression, Kwame Nkrumah wandered around Harlem, slept in the subway, and stood in lines in the mess rooms for the needy.

Later, he became "the brightest star of Africa," a leader calling for a struggle against imperialism, the creation of a pan-African organization, and an international non-aligned movement during the Cold War. According to the general opinion, Nkrumah adhered to special rules that belonged to him and believed that socialism could be adopted by decrees from above.

Although he boldly spoke out against neocolonialism, he still failed to ultimately prevent the influence of transnational corporations in Ghana. When he tried to reduce his country's dependence on the West, strengthening economic and military ties with the Soviet Union, China, and East Germany, he finally decided his fate.

The United States wanted to get rid of him. Great Britain, the former colonial masters of Ghana then called the Gold Coast (Gold Coast), also wanted to remove Nkrumah. France and West Germany also didn’t like Nkrumah. Those Ghanaians who accomplished the coup did not doubt that the movement against Nkrumah would be supported by the Western powers.

During the coup, the Soviet press accused the CIA of participation in 1972. The conservative London Daily Telegraph reported that by 1965, the CIA's headquarters in Accra, the capital of Ghana, had about forty staff members who generously distributed donations to the secret opponents of President Nkrumah.

By February 1966, according to the article, the CIA prepared plans to overthrow the Nkrumah regime: The patient and diligent work of the CIA headquarters in Accra was crowned with total success. However, it was not until 1978 that history went astray in the United States. A former CIA official, John Stockwell, who served a long time in Africa, published a book in which he reveals the involvement of his Office.

Later, the New York Times cited the direct sources in intelligence and confirmed that the CIA advised and supported dissident officers in Ghana. Stockwell said that the CIA station in Accra received generous financial support and acted in close contact with the conspirators in the process of developing the coup.

The involvement of the residency was so great that during the coup, it became possible for the United States to restore some secret Soviet military equipment. The CIA also offered the headquarters in Washington to keep a small team of military instructors from the Special Forces ready, with black-painted faces planned to storm the Chinese embassy, destroy everyone inside, take secret reports, and blow up the building to hide this fact.

This proposal was rejected. According to Stockwell, the CIA headquarters honoured the Accra Residency with all the work to organize a coup in which eight Soviet advisers were killed. The Soviet Union, however, categorically denied that any of its advisers had been killed.

Other intelligence sources present in Ghana during the coup disagreed with Stockwell's view that the coup was entirely the work of the CIA. But they believed that his Office played a key role. Some officials in Washington admitted that the head of the CIA's headquarters in Accra, Howard T. Bane, was quickly promoted and took up a senior position in the Office.

After the coup, the CIA paid $100,000 to the new Ghanaian regime to confiscate Soviet equipment, including a lighter that operated as a camera. The Ghanaian leaders soon expelled a large number of Soviet employees, as well as Chinese and East Germans.

In fact, all state-owned industries moved into private hands. Soon, previously blocked channels of American aid were opened: grants, food, and development projects went from the United States, Western Europe, and the International Monetary Fund to Ghana.

Washington, for example, three weeks after the coup, in response to an urgent request from Ghana, approved a substantial amount of food aid. Although four months earlier, such a request from Nkrumah was rejected. 

A month after his expulsion, the international price of cocoa, the lifeblood of Ghana's economy, grew by 14 percent.

But what’s Ghana’s position now economically? Obviously, there is no past or present Ghanaian leader who is even qualified to polish the shoes of Kwame Nkrumah. Because of greed and the thirst for power, Nkrumah was hastily thrown out of office by a coup. 

He would have done better for Ghana if he had stayed in power a little bit longer.