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THE POLITICS OF SOCIALIST EDUCATION IN GHANA: THE KWAME NKRUMAH IDEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, 1961–6

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2019

GERARDO SERRA  and
FRANK GERITS
GERARDO SERRA
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
FRANK GERITS
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
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Abstract

This article reconstructs the trajectory of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute (KNII) to shed light on the politics of socialist education in 1960s Ghana. On the basis of archival evidence, it explores the changing role of the institute in the making of Nkrumahism as public discourse and documents the evolving relationship between the universalism of Marxism-Leninism and the quest for more local political iconographies centred on Nkrumah's life and work. Secondly, the article analyses the individual motivations and experiences of a sample of foreign lecturers. The article suggests that ideological institutes offer insights into the processes by which official ideologies were created and disseminated, a foil through which to interrogate the usages and appropriation of social sciences education, and a window onto the multiple ways in which local and foreign agents negotiated their identities and political participation in African socialist experiments.

Keywords

GhanaEducationIdeologyPolitical CulturePostcolonialSocialism
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , November 2019 , pp. 407 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

Authors’ e-mail: gerardo.serra@manchester.ac.uk; f.p.l.gerits@uu.nl. A previous version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Socialismes Africains/ Socialismes en Afrique’ (Paris, 2016), organized by the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur les Mondes Ibériques Contemporains (CRIMIC), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Institut des Mondes Africains (IMAF), Agence universitaire de la Francophonie, the Centre d'histoire sociale du XXème siècle (CHS), Université Paris-Sorbonne, Fondation Jean Jaurès, Fondation Gabriel Peri, the Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques (CESSMA), and Les Afriques dans le monde (LAM), in partnership with Radio France Internationale (RFI). Besides the organizers of, and participants in, the conference and two anonymous referees, the authors would like to thank the staff of the Public Records Archives and Administration (Accra, Cape Coast, and Ho branches), the George Padmore Research Library on African Affairs (Accra), the UK National Archives (London), and the Arquivo Histórico Diplomático (Lisboa). Thanks to Antoine de Boyer for sharing documents from the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (La Courneuve) with us, and to Alexander Raiman for translating from Czech passages of Evzen Menert's memoir. Finally, the greatest thanks of all goes to Robert B. Todd for his striking generosity in sharing insights, sources from the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School (London) — and several other repositories — and providing much encouragement.

References

1 Nkrumah, K., Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Edinburgh, 1957), xGoogle Scholar; Nkrumah, K., Africa Must Unite (London, 1963)Google Scholar.

2 Nkrumah, K., ‘The Kwame Nkrumah Institute: laying the foundation stone and the inauguration of the first course of the ideological section of the institute, Winneba, February 18, 1961’, in Obeng, S., Selected Speeches of Kwame Nkrumah, volume 1 (Accra, 2009), 268–77Google Scholar. The Institute was also referred to as Kwame Nkrumah Institute of Economics and Political Science, or simply as Winneba Ideological Institute.

3 T. Szamuely, ‘Ghana: the prophet of the utterly absurd’, The Spectator, 11 Mar. 1966; Arquivo Histórico Diplomático, Lisboa, M1, Proc °91 Situação no Ghana, 1962–1964, Secret report, ‘Winneba institute, Ghana’, 15 June 1962.

4 Che and Nyerere are mentioned in Condé, M., La vie sans fard (Paris, 2012), 197–8Google Scholar; Malcolm X's visit to the Institute is mentioned in Lacy, L. A., The Rise and Fall of a Proper Negro: An Autobiography (New York, 1970), 209Google Scholar. The unpublished documents related to Klugmann's visit are located in the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School (MML), London, JK 20/18.

5 Public Records Archives Administration Department (PRAAD), Accra branch, PRAAD RG, 3/5/1636/299–300, J. H. K. Folson to Principal Secretary, 6 Apr. 1966. Unless otherwise specified, all references to PRAAD documents refer to the Accra branch of the archives.

6 Ibid.; PRAAD, RG 11/1/154/4, Copy of letter of K. Addison to The Chairman, Ghana Educational Trust, 21 May 1962, 1; Fuller, H., Building the Ghanaian Nation-State: Kwame Nkrumah's Symbolic Nationalism (New York, 2014), 127Google Scholar.

7 For example, the KNII warranted a single mention within the collection of papers that more than any others marked the collective effort of Ghanaian scholars to reassess Nkrumah's life, work, and legacy. Haizel, E. A., ‘Education in Ghana, 1951–1966’, in Ahrin, K., The Life and Work of Kwame Nkrumah: Papers of a Symposium organized by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon (Accra, 2001), 55–87, 78Google Scholar.

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9 For example, Szamuely, ‘Ghana’; Jones, T., Ghana's First Republic 1960–1966: The Pursuit of the Political Kingdom (London, 1976), 61Google Scholar.

10 An early exception is represented by the work of sociologist Dominic Kofi Agyeman, who conducted a comparative analysis of the impact of ideological and political education under Nkrumah and Kofi Busia. Despite significant ideological differences between them, Agyeman concluded that the effectiveness of political education under the two governments was constrained by the same incapacity to link political nationalism with economic participation. Agyeman, D. K., Ideological Education and Nationalism in Ghana under Nkrumah and Busia (Accra, 1988)Google Scholar.

11 Frehiwot, M., ‘Pan-African education: a case study of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, print media and the Ghana Young Pioneer movement’, in Quist-Adade, C. and Dodoo, V. (eds.) Africa's Many Divides and Africa's Future: Pursuing Nkrumah's Vision of Pan-Africanism in an Era of Globalization (Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015), 296–322, esp. 299–302Google Scholar.

12 M. Grilli, ‘African liberation and unity in Nkrumah's Ghana: a study of the role of “Pan-African institutions” in the making of Ghana's foreign policy, 1957–1966’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pavia and University of Leiden, 2015); Grilli, M., Nkrumaism and African Nationalism: Ghana's Pan-African Foreign Policy in the Age of Decolonization (New York, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. B. Todd, The Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, 1961–66: Towards a History (unpublished manuscript, 2018).

13 Allman, J., ‘Kwame Nkrumah, African Studies and the politics of knowledge production in the Black Star of Africa’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 46:2 (2013), 181–203Google Scholar.

14 K. Nkrumah, ‘Opening of the Institute of African Studies, Legon, 25 Oct. 1963’, in Obeng, Selected Speeches, vol. 2, 272–85.

15 Ahlman, J. S., Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State and Pan-Africanism in Ghana (Athens, Ohio, 2017)Google Scholar.

16 For this, an important source of inspiration has been Allman, J., ‘Phantoms of the archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi pilot called Hanna, and the contingencies of postcolonial history writing’, The American Historical Review, 118:1 (2013), 104–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Classic works concerned with issues of ‘authenticity’ and classifying different forms of African socialism include Friedland, W. H. and Rosberg, C. G. Jr. (eds.) African Socialism (Stanford, California, 1964)Google Scholar; Rosberg, C. G. and Callaghy, T. M. (eds.) African Socialism in Sub-Saharan Africa: A New Assessment (Berkeley, 1979)Google Scholar; Babu, A. R. M., African Socialism or Socialist Africa? (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Ottoway, D. and Ottoway, M., Afrocommunism (New York, 1981)Google Scholar.

18 Donham, D. L., Marxist Modern: An Ethnographic History of the Ethiopian Revolution (Berkeley, 1999)Google Scholar; Straker, J., Youth, Nationalism and the Guinean Revolution (Bloomington, 2009)Google Scholar; Lal, P., African Socialism in Postcolonial Tanzania: Between the Village and the World (New York, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the legacies and memories of African socialisms, see Pitcher, M. A. and Askew, K. M. (eds.), African Socialisms and Postsocialisms, special issue of Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 76:1 (2006)Google Scholar.

19 Fair, L., ‘Drive-In socialism: debating modernities and development in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’, The American Historical Review, 118:4 (2008), 1077–1104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Müller, T. R., ‘“Memories of paradise”: legacies of socialist education in Mozambique’, African Affairs, 109:436 (2008), 451–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Despite few historical discussions, some accounts show the important role envisaged for socialist political education in sub-Saharan Africa. See, for example, Chung, F. and Ngara, E., Socialism, Education and Development: A Challenge to Zimbabwe (Harare, 1985)Google Scholar. Although it was mainly targeted at the formation of trade unionists, and was primarily sponsored by the World Federation, the Université Ouvrière Africaine in Sékou Touré’s Guinea presents some interesting parallels with the KNII. See Blum, F., ‘Une formation syndicale dans la Guinée de Sékou Touré: l'université ouvrière africaine, 1960–1965’, Revue Historique, 667:3 (2013), 661–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 For example, Jones, Ghana's First Republic, 18.

21 Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 5–6.

22 Althusser, L., ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation)’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York, 2011), 85–126Google Scholar.

23 For further discussion, see Jones, Ghana's First Republic; Omari, T. P., Kwame Nkrumah: The Anatomy of an African Dictatorship (Accra, 2000)Google Scholar; Austin, D., Politics in Ghana, 1946–1960 (Oxford, 1970), 387–421Google Scholar. On the ideological evolution, see especially Folson, B. D. G., ‘The development of socialist ideology in Ghana, 1949–1959, part I’, Ghana Social Science Journal, 1:1 (1971), 1–20Google Scholar; ‘The development of socialist ideology in Ghana: II — the period of “African socialism”: 1959–1962’, Ghana Social Science Journal, 1:2 (1971), 1–20Google Scholar, ‘The Marxist period in the development of socialist ideology in Ghana’, Universitas, 6:1, 3–23.

24 A. Mazrui, ‘Nkrumah: the Leninist czar’, The Anniversary Issue: Selections from Transition, 1961–1976, 107. On The Spark, see the testimony of its editor, Batsa, K., The Spark: Times Behind Me from Kwame Nkrumah to Hilla Limann (London, 1985)Google Scholar; on the Young Pioneers see Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, and Tetteh, M. N., The Ghana Young Pioneer Movement: A Youth Organization in the Kwame Nkrumah Era (Accra, 1999)Google Scholar. On the intellectual evolution of Nkrumah, see Biney, A., The Social and Political Thought of Kwame Nkrumah (New York, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Jones, Ghana's First Republic, 61.

26 K. Nkrumah, ‘Building a socialist state: to the CPP study group, Accra, 22 Apr. 1961’, in Obeng, Selected Speeches, vol. 1, 322–35, 334–5.

27 Centre des Archives Diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires étrangères (CADMAE), La Courneuve, Box 15 (Politique Intérieure), Letter from V. A. Garès to P. M. Henry, 14 Mar. 1958; CADMAE, Box 27 (Documents réservés: Politique intérieure), 6848/A-29, Ghana: Formation des Militants du Parti Gouvernemental: Ecole du Winneba, April 1958. In contrast, Potekhin was present at the inauguration of the IAS.

28 PRAAD, RG 17/1/170, Minutes of the 5th Meeting of the African Affairs Committee held on November 12th 1959 at Flagstaff House at 7 p.m, 2. For further discussion on the years between 1959 and 1961, see Grilli, ‘African liberation and unity’, 114–6.

29 PRAAD, RG 17/2/466, Ghana–U.S.S.R. Friendship Society — A Public Organisation Functioning Under Ghana–U.S.S.R. Cultural Pact, Minutes of National Executive Meeting of Ghana–U.S.S.R. Friendship Society held on Sunday, 30 June 1963, 6. Addison lost his position in the commission in 1965, in parallel with Nkrumah's desire to take direct control over the institute (Todd, The Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, 181).

30 PRAAD, RG 11/1/153/59, Letter from K. Addison to the Chairman, National Council for Higher Education, 3 Oct. 1963.

31 On the other hand, ‘Nkrumaism, in order to be Nkrumah-istic must be related to scientific socialism’; K. Nkrumah, ‘Guide to party action: seminar at the Kwame Nkrumah Institute of Ideological Studies, Winneba, 3 Feb. 1962’, in Obeng, Selected Speeches, vol. 1, 436–48, 438.

32 PRAAD, RG 11/1/153/25, Letter from E.C. Quist-Therson to the Chairman [National Council for Higher Education] [1963].

33 Parliamentary Debates, First Series — Volume 40, National Assembly Official Report, Session 1965, 10 Jun. 1965 – 17 Sep. 1965 (Accra-Tema), Dr. Kwasi Nsarkoh, 30 Aug. 1965, 247. Increasing emphasis was also placed on the organization of short courses for public employees. For example, see PRAAD, RG 3/5/1635/272, Letter from A. D. Brown, Ag. Secretary for Education, Ministry of Education to Kodwo Addison, 6 Dec. 1965; PRAAD, RG 3/5/1635/273, Letter from D. A. Brown to all Principal Education Officers and Senior Education Officers, 15 Dec. 1965. District commissioners were also requested to identify and select suitable party members for ideological training at the KNII. For further evidence on the implementation of these initiatives in the Volta Region, see PRAAD, Ho branch, SOG/MS/078.

34 For an overview of the evolution of the university under Nkrumah, see Agbodeka, F., A History of University of Ghana: Half a Century of Higher Education (1948–1998) (Accra, 1998), 138–61Google Scholar.

35 K. Nkrumah, ‘Flower of learning (2): at his installation as first Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, during the inauguration of the university, 29 Nov. 1961’, in Obeng, Selected Speeches, vol. 1, 402–8, 406.

36 However, the IAS maintained a special status for Nkrumah and received separate funding, independent of the University. Manuh, T., ‘Building institutions for the New Africa: The Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana’, in Bloom, P. J., Miescher, S. F., and Manuh, T. (eds.) Modernization as Spectacle in Africa (Bloomington, 2014), 276Google Scholar.

37 Nkrumah, ‘Guide to party action’, 438.

38 Parliamentary Debates, Mr. P. Ansah, 30 Aug. 1965, 175.

39 In practice, this was already the case; see Austin, Politics, 387–421. On the vandalism, see Agbodeka, A History of University of Ghana, 148.

40 Nkrumah, K., Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution (London, 1964)Google Scholar.

41 The National Archives (TNA), London, DO 153/49, J. D. M. Blyth, 13 Nov. 1964; TNA, FCO 65/721, Letter from H. Smedley to L. Glass, 28 Sept. 1970. For an example of Ikoku's application of socialist concepts to Nigerian politics, see Ikoku, S. G., Nigeria for Nigerians: A Socialist Analysis (Takoradi [Ghana], 1962)Google Scholar. It has been repeatedly claimed that Abraham was the ghost author of Consciencism, TNA, DO 153/49, H. Smedley, 4 Apr. 1964.

42 Lacy, The Rise and Fall of a Proper Negro, 224–6.

43 George Padmore Research Library of African Affairs (GPRLAA), Accra, BAA 52/423/1–2, untitled document, 14 Sept. 1961.

44 Ibid.

45 An early example is ‘Nkrumaism the Key–Word’, Evening News, 1 July 1960.

46 Grilli, ‘African liberation and unity’, 159.

47 Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 156. The individuals accused of the assassination attempt included Tawa Adamafio (Minister of Information and Broadcasting), Ako Adjei (Foreign Minister), and Cofie Crabbe (CPP executive secretary).

48 PRAAD, RG 17/2/884/5, Kwame Nkrumah Institute of Economics and Political Science Timetable. Ebenezer Moses Debrah, a diplomat who was sent for ideological training at the KNII in 1962, reminisced that there was ‘No textbook, no syllabus. All they did was shout’, and claimed that, although he was perceived as a civil servant with ‘no ideology’, he played an important role in establishing the syllabus and a timetable. Gordon, J.U., ‘Interview with Ebenezer Moses Debrah’, Revisiting Kwame Nkrumah: Pathways for the Future (Trenton, New Jersey, 2017), 52Google Scholar.

49 Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute Prospectus (Accra, nd [c.1963]).

50 Ibid. 17. Evidence of the use of summaries of Marx's Capital as the main reading comes from the few surviving lecture notes in GPRLAA, BAA/437.

51 GPRLAA, BAA 437/46, Philosophy, First & Second Year, Lecture by Comrade Pavel Kovely [sic], 2 Dec. 1963.

52 This pluralism came to be seen as a problem. Addison noted that ‘if each subject enjoys full autonomy, we can pursue differing perspectives in Political Economy, Principles of Economics, and Applied Economics. But these subjects must share a common perspective if our Institute is to perform its duty as an ideological centre’, PRAAD, RG17/1/440, Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute Director's Report for the Year 1963/64, Nov. 1964, 3. For a comparative discussion of socialist political economy at the KNII and the University of Ghana, see G. Serra, ‘From scattered data to ideological education: economics, statistics and the state in Ghana, 1948–1966’ (unpublished PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2015), 229–60. GPRLAA, BAA 437, Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute of Economics and Political Science, First Year, Constitutional Law, Lecture One, by Dr. Ekow-Daniels, 5 Nov. 1963.

53 This can also be seen in the curriculum reform proposed in November 1965 by the British communist Pat Sloan, PRAAD RG 17/384, ‘Memo on educational plan for KNII, Winneba, Nov. 1965 (for the Council if approved by Osagyefo).

54 GPRLAA, BAA 423, Development of the Kwame Nkrumah Institute, Winneba, as the Institute of Political Science.

55 Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite. For a detailed discussion of the ways in which the relationship between socialism and Pan-Africanism was reflected in the institutional makeup of the country, see Grilli, ‘African Liberation and Unity’.

56 GPRLAA, BAA 437, Nkrumaism, First Year, Lecture Six, by Comrade A.K. Gaituah, 2 Dec. 1963.

57 Ibid. For further discussion on the broader discourse built around hard work and sacrifice as pillars of postcolonial state building, see Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 115–47.

58 GPRLAA, BAA 437, First Year, Nkrumaism, by Comrade A.K. Gaituah, Lecture 5, Supremacy of the Party, 4.

59 GPRLAA, BAA 437, First term examination, first year, Examiner: A. K. Gaituah, 10 Dec. 1963.

60 Mann, G., ‘Knowing the postcolony: sociology and socialist government in 1960s Mali’, in Gary-Tounkara, D. and Nativel, D. (eds.), L'Afrique des savoirs au sud de Sahara (XVIe – XXIe siècle): acteurs, supports, pratiques (Paris, 2012), 103Google Scholar.

61 Nkrumah, ‘Guide to party action’, 438.

62 Speich, D., ‘The Kenyan style of “African socialism”: developmental knowledge claims and the explanatory limits of the Cold War’, Diplomatic History, 33:3 (2009), 449–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diouf, M., ‘Senegalese development: from mass mobilization to technocratic elitism’, in Cooper, F. and Packard, R. (eds.) International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley, 1997), 291–320Google Scholar. For a discussion of the complex relationship between developmentalism and authoritarianism in Nkrumah's Ghana, see Skinner, K., ‘Who knew the minds of the people? specialist knowledge and developmentalist authoritarianism in postcolonial Ghana’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39:2 (2011), 297–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Serra, G., “‘Hail the census night”: trust and political imagination in the 1960 population census of Ghana’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 60:3 (2018), 659–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 For a discussion of how development plans can travel between ‘policy circles’ (and a case study of Nigeria's first postcolonial development plan), see M. Morgan, ‘“On a Mission” with Mutable Mobiles’, Working Papers on the Nature of Evidence: How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel?, 34 (2008), London School of Economics and Political Science, 188.

64 Nkrumah, Consciencism. See also A. A. Mazrui, ‘The rise and fall of the philosopher-king in East Africa: the view from Uganda’, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 15:3, 98–108.

65 Omari, Kwame Nkrumah, Appendix B, 194; TNA, DO153/49, GHA, 6 Mar. 1964, Baako.

66 TNA, DO 153/49, Letter from A. F. G. Hornyold to C. Duke, 18 Mar. 1964.

67 ‘What we mean by Nkrumaism…’, Daily Graphic, 17 Mar. 1964.

68 TNA, DO 153/49/8, Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, ‘Nkrumaism’, 13 Mar. 1964. The initial definitions prepared by Addison and Gaituah, Ikoku's comments and new definition, and Nkrumah's finalization of it are in PRAAD, RG17/1/380.

69 TNA, DO 153/49, Confidential – 6. Nkrumaism. Indeed, all the three initial definitions proposed by the KNII shared the notion that Nkrumaism was ‘SIMPLY SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM THE PATTERN OF WHICH [sic] IS BASED ON THE HISTORICAL AND DIALECTRICAL [sic] MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF AFRICA’, PRAAD, RG17/1/380, No. 1 Definition of Nkrumaism, No. 2 Definition of Nkrumaism, No. 3 Definition of Nkrumaism.

70 Jones, Ghana's First Republic, 61.

71 Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism.

72 See especially K. Nkrumah, ‘Dawn broadcast, Accra, 8 Apr. 1961’, in Obeng, Selected Speeches, vol. 1, 310–19.

73 Nkrumah, ‘Building a Socialist State’, 334.

74 Parliamentary Debates, First Series- Volume 40, National Assembly Official Report, Session 1965, 10th June 1965–17th September 1965 (Accra-Tema), Mr. P. Ansah, 30 Aug. 1965.

75 Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 6, 21.

76 All the lists are contained in PRAAD, RG 17/2/30. This also includes a list of students who are ‘above average’, presumably referring to Addison's 1964 proposal of starting a three-year programme for particularly striking students, Nkrumah's Subversion, 46. In contrast with the two-year programme, admission to the three-year Bachelor in Political Science required a ‘High School Certificate or its equivalent’, PRAAD, RG 17/1/440, Director's Report, 2.

77 The most significant exception is the memoir by the Czech philosopher Evzen Menert, who favourably compared his Winneba students to their counterparts in Prague, Menert, E., Na západ od Londýna: nepříliš souvislé vyprávění o Ghaně a okolí, přerušované zcela nesouvislými úvahami o doplněné ódou na bridž, anglický kolonialismus, pivo a armádu (Prague, 1967)Google Scholar.

78 Authors’ calculations based on PRAAD, RG 17/2/30. Addison declared that the students totalled 75 in 1962–3, 133 in 1963–4, 239 in 1964–5 and 260 in 1965–6, PRAAD RG 11/1/148/6, Letter from K. Addison to the Principal Secretary, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, 1 Dec. 1965. An alternative estimate claims that the institute enrolled 100 students in 1962, 210 in 1963, and 475 in 1964, Nkrumah's Subversion, 46.

79 PRAAD, RG 11/1/148/6, Letter from K. Addison to the Principal Secretary, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, 1 December 1965; on the pride associated with passing the KNII entrance examination, see Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 158.

80 Ikoku, S.G., Le Ghana de Nkrumah (Paris, 1971), 89Google Scholar.

81 Addison, K., ‘There is no room for Party opportunists’, The Nkrumaist, 4:1 (1966), 19Google Scholar.

82 Nkrumah, ‘The Kwame Nkrumah Institute’, 276.

83 On the relationship between teachers’ organizations, unionism, and the CPP government see Amoako, S., ‘Teaching and labor: teacher unionism in Ghana, 1931–1966’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 47:1 (2014), 55–75Google Scholar. For an impressive discussion of students’ background, characteristics, and experiences, see Todd, The Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, 86–96, 105–9, 123–36, 146–55, 175–7, 192–3, 313–28.

84 MML, JK 20/18, No. 87, [untitled document], 19 Feb. 1965.

85 See for example the picture in P. Da Pilma-Lekettey, ‘Spotlight on the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute of Economics and Political Science or… Mecca for African freedom fighters’, The Ghanaian, 7:1, 28. On the troubled relationship between Nkrumah's government and the chiefs, see Rathbone, R., Nkrumah and the Chiefs: the Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–1960 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

86 Agyeman, Ideological Education, 11; Owusu, R. Y., Kwame Nkrumah's Liberation Thought: A Paradigm for Religious Advocacy in Contemporary Ghana (Trenton, NJ, 2006), 132Google Scholar.

87 Rooney, D., Kwame Nkrumah: Vision and Tragedy (Legon, 2007), 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Mazov, S., A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956–1964 (Washington, DC, 2010), 241Google Scholar.

89 Margrit Pittman, ‘Grace Arnold, internationalist, dies at 77’, People's Daily World, 16 June 1988.

90 PRAAD, RG17/1/384, Letter from P. Sloan to President K. Nkrumah, 20 Feb. 1964.

91 GPRLAA, BAA 423/17, Letter from A. L. Adu to A. K. Barden, 3 Feb. 1962.

92 PRAAD, RG 17/1/384, Memo on educational plan for KNII, Winneba, Nov. 1965 (for the Council if approved by Osagyefo).

93 PRAAD, RG 17/1/448, Letter from P. Sloan to K. Addison, 9 Oct. 1965.

94 Categorial Conversion, Studies in Consciencism no. 6 (Accra, 1964); PRAAD, RG 17/1/448, ‘Categorial Conversion’ (Pat Sloan), 2. Indeed, Consciencism’s treatment of categorial conversion shares some similarities with Engels's discussion of the first law of dialectics, ‘The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa’. This, in turn, was derived by G. W. F. Hegel, as noted in Engels, F., Dialectics of Nature (Moscow, 1954), 83Google Scholar.

95 PRAAD, RG 17/1/384, ‘Categorial Conversion’ (Pat Sloan), 2–3.

96 PRAAD, RG 17/1/384, Letter from P. Sloan to K. Addison, 9 Oct. 1965.

97 Ibid. Addison's response also adopts a similar style, PRAAD, RG 17/1/384, Letter from K. Addison to P. Sloan, 26 Oct. 1965.

98 Condé, La vie, 156.

99 Ibid. 168–71.

100 Ibid. 181–2. This qualifies the depiction of Addison as an ‘honest man’ and a disinterested pioneer of African unity presented in Budu-Acquah, K., Toll for the Brave: Tributes to Fallen Comrades, Part One (Accra, 1988), 14–16Google Scholar. Addison is depicted as a ruthless party man in Lacy, Rise and Fall, 223. Although it goes beyond the scope of this paper, the gendered dimensions of power relations governing life at the KNII merit further research. Addison remarked that he wanted to relax the political admission criteria for women (from members of ‘the Party and its integral wings’ to ‘all walks of life with sound Party back-ground’), to encourage them ‘to share fully in the national reconstruction’, PRAAD, RG 17/1/440, Director's Report, 2. On gender and Nkrumahism, see Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 148–75.

101 For further discussion, see Badiane-Labrune, C., ‘“Afrique où es-tu?”: L'expérience africaine de Maryse Condé’, in Cassin, L. (ed.), Mélanges en l'honneur de Maryse Condé (Pointe-à-Pitre, 2018), 163–77Google Scholar. Self-exile also accounted for the choice of several African lecturers to join the KNII. The Togolese A. K. Tehoda, who taught physical education, went to Ghana after being imprisoned and tortured in connection with the assassination of Sylvanus Olympio in 1963; Condé, M., Mets et merveilles (Paris, 2015), 47–8Google Scholar. Similarly, Ikoku had been prompted to flee Nigeria after his indictment in the treason trial against Ọbáfẹ́mi Awólọ́wọ̀’s Action Group.

102 TNA, FO 1110/1518, untitled document (minutes of a meeting between Szamuely and Robert Conquest, London, 1962).

103 Conquest, R., ‘Introduction’ in Szamuely, T., The Russian Tradition (London, 1974), viiGoogle Scholar.

104 Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute Prospectus, 23.

105 Particularly revealing is the exchange with Pat Sloan in the aftermath of the coup: P. Sloan, ‘Utterly absurd’, The Spectator, 5 May 1966; T. Szamuely, ‘Utterly absurd’, The Spectator, 19 May 1966. Sloan's intervention was a response to Szamuely's article ‘Ghana: the prophet of the utterly absurd’.

106 Congdon, L., Seeing Red: Hungarian Intellectuals in Exile and the Challenge of Communism (DeKalb, Illinois, 2001), 146–7Google Scholar; the certificate of Szamuely's naturalization is in TNA, HO 409/22/2818. The evolution of Szamuely's stance can be observed, for example, in Szamuely, T., Unique Conservative: Three Extracts from the Work of Tibor Szamuely (London, 1973)Google Scholar and Szamuely, T., Socialism and Liberty (London, 1977)Google Scholar.

107 Allman, ‘Phantoms of the archive’.

108 Nkrumah, K., Dark Days in Ghana (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 205.

109 Letter from P. Sloan to K. Nkrumah, 15 Mar. 1966, in Milne, J. (ed.), Kwame Nkrumah The Conakry Years, His Life and Letters (London, 2001), 26Google Scholar. Allegedly, in order to escape prosecution, on the day of the coup KNII students burnt their textbooks. Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 205–6.

110 ‘Matchet's diary’, West Africa, 6 Mar. 1966.

111 On the other hand, the chiefs of the Central Region asked the military government to undertake a systematic and far-reaching political reeducation campaign in order to eradicate ‘from the minds of the people the Personality Cult of Kwame Nkrumah’, PRAAD, Cape Coast branch, RG 1/11/67/2, Resolution passed by the Central Region House of Chiefs at a Meeting Held at the Cape Coast Town Hall on the 22nd December 1966 - Resolution on the Need for Intensive Political Education, 1.

112 PRAAD, RG 3/5/1636/344, Letter from E. K. Acquah, F. A. Dontoh, and B. K. Hansoh, signed on behalf of the entire workers, to the National Liberation Council, 4 Mar. 1966; PRAAD, RG3/5/1636/308, Letter from the Chairman of the Administrative Council, National Liberation Council, 5 Apr. 1966.

113 PRAAD, RG 3/5/1635/228, Letter from B. C. L. Odei, Managing Director Ghana Airways to Kodwo Addison, 9 Nov. 1965. All other surviving correspondence between the institute's creditors and the military government is contained in PRAAD, RG 3/5/1636.

114 PRAAD, RG 3/5/1635/362, Letter from J.E. Pessey, Secretary to the National Liberation Council, to the Principal Secretary, Ministry of Education, 16 June 1966. Details on the collection of the advances are in PRAAD, RG 3/5/1638.

115 For example, see ‘Continental Union Government now - Institute’, Modern Ghana, 25 Jan. 2017. https://www.modernghana.com/election/751707/continental-union-government-now-institute.html [accessed on 8 Jan. 2019].

116 For example, to emphasise how studying economics implied the embrace of a radically different worldview, a commentator compared the teaching of economics to Africans to ‘bush clearing’, Roche, J. C., ‘African attitudes to economic study’, African Affairs, 59:235 (1960), 124–5, 127CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 This is inspired by Tilley, H., Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge 1870–1950 (London, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 Lal, African Socialism, 232–5.

119 To describe the ‘discursive hypertrophy’ of socialist regimes, the liberal economist Peter T. Bauer spoke of a ‘debasement of language’, Bauer, P. T., ‘Marxism and the underdeveloped countries’, in Dissent on Development: Studies and Debates in Development Economics (London, 1971), 180–1Google Scholar.

120 For example, Mazov, A Distant Front; Iandolo, A., ‘The rise and fall of the “Soviet model of development” in West Africa, 1957–1964,’ Cold War History, 12:4 (2012), 683–704CrossRefGoogle Scholar.