On the occasion of the sixty-seventh anniversary of the founding of the original, great Convention People’s Party (CPP), I would like to share with you some thoughts on the founder, the African of the millennium, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Osagyefo is a global asset. Like America’s Lincoln, it is time for us Ghanaians to focus on the achievements of this supremely global leader. The CPP is the Ghanaian instrument of destiny and is relit under the command of our dynamic Chairman Professor Edmund Delle and the blessing of our Council of Elders under Mr. Felix Amoah.
We recently made a quiet pilgrimage to some energy centres of CPP spirit and reaffirmed our commitment to the struggle for greater national economic emancipation and opportunity for our citizens. We went to Saltpond, the birthplace of the CPP and Sekondi, the town that hosted Nkrumah on the first night of his return to Ghana to assume the position of full time Secretary of the UGCC. Sekondi is also the birthplace of trade unionism in Ghana and a disproportionately important place in our heroic struggle for independence.
I am, of course, an Nkrumaist and, as I said at the Mausoleum on April 27th 2016, to mark the anniversary of his death, the current CPP will not rest till we wrestle a new independence for Ghana.
In Saltpond, we visited Canaan Lodge, venue of the famous April 1947 conclave of Ghanaian nationalists and where the UGCC was formed. Several landmark Working Committee meetings of the UGCC were held there. Canaan Lodge is also very important in CPP history. It was often at Canaan Lodge that our distinctive radical nationalism was separated from the pedestrian politics of the others. Our New Covenant, Apam Fofor) was blessed in Canaan Lodge.
We also visited the historical palm tree that Kwame Nkrumah planted on the founding of the CPP. The tree is still standing, well marked in CPP colours. Saltpond is a proud town. In our forthcoming interactive people’s manifesto we shall address the deliberate sustenance of our smaller towns, which are now being ignored to death under the unbridled, wrong liberalism of the NDC/NPP duopoly. The renewed CPP is bringing back willed development of the Ghanaian people. Our will should prevail. We will continue to fight all colonialisms. We also visited the statue memorial Saltpond built for itself in 2008 to mark the seminal role she played in the founding of modern Ghana. We celebrate the founder and his helpers. –
I am, of course, an Nkrumaist. My belief in the nationalist agenda of our dear Ghana and real Pan Africanism is abolutely non-negotiable and unshakeable.
In Sekondi I was happy to pay homage to the memory of the great CPP hero Alfred Pobee-Biney, 14 January 1914 – 29 January 1968. His career in politics and the labour movement assures us that with fortitude politics becomes not just the art of the possible but also the art of making the seeming impossible possible. Paraphrasing Mandela, they say it is impossible till it is done. The CPP, the original Showboys of Ghana, “go do”, apologies to Sekondi Eleven Wise and Sekondi Hasaacas.
We were received in Essikado (British Sekondi) by the Omanhen, Nana Kobina Nketsia V. We were in Essikado to most especially salute the memory of Nkrumah’s man Nana Kobina Nketsia IV, the only paramount chief imprisoned by the British colonialists in the struggle for independence. As we all know, he was also Nkrumah’s leading advisor on the anthropology of our culture. We are grateful to Nana Kobina Nketsia V for his very warm welcome including, especially, his permission to warm his palace with our comradely CPP songs.
In Saltpond and Sekondi we were most impressed by the fervour of the young in CPP. This has been so everywhere we go. CPP is the party of youth opportunity. Today we offer total support for open opportunities for the young. Our interactive people’s manifesto details a real programme for youth engagement in national processes TODAY. In the CPP we do not see the young as leaders of tomorrow. Ghana is a very young country. You, the youth, are our leaders, of TODAY, not of tomorrow.
Osagyefo, ye re fre fre wo. There is a new CPP. There is a New Covenant, Apam Fofor). We know you not to be plastic. We know you to be organically intellectual. We know you to be flexible in thought and firm in action. We are pushing your agenda for the twenty first century. This new progressism reflects the dynamism of your Consciencism and its path-making triple heritage in political thought and action. We solemnly pledge to hold the unquenchable torch you lit aloft. It is a torch of hope and a torch of greater economic justice. Your unfinished work shall be continued and the economic kingdom shall indeed come. We look neither East nor West. WE LOOK FORWARD. Ghana will renew the star of blackness in Walewale, in Bukom, in Dzelukope, in Bekwai, in Akyem Tafo, in Eikwe, in Nkroful, in Ghana, in Africa, in the world. This is a new, confident Blackness.
Source: CPP Campaign Team
