This is a brief, tentative comparative study of ideas and behaviors on nation-building of Kwame Nkrumah, an ex-president of Ghana and Julius K. Nyerere, the president of Tanzania. They are both known as ones of most specutacular political leaders and thinkers in contemporary Africa.
In the decisive period of nation-building in every national history, a number of great personalities emerged, whose ideas and behaviors consolidated the national characters for transmission to subsequent generations. Nkrumah and Nyerere are, in the sense, compared to e. g., George Washington and Maximilien Robespierre who played leading parts in the nationalist revolutions in the United States and France respectively. It should, however, be noted one difference of roles played between by contemporary African nationalist leaders and by their early western counterparts. In western countries capitalist nationalities already existed, when nationalists began their movements. Their functions were to change the nationalities or groups of people produced by objective socio-economic processes, into nations or groups created by subjective political processes, that is, by nationalist movements. In Africa the nationalities or the basic foundations for nations still remained to be achieved, after the nationalists had been called into actions. Their duties are, therefore, twofold. They have to creat their nationalities, at the same time to change the nationalities into the nations. And therefore, they have, in a sense, opporturities to choose the kind of nations and the way to creat nations as they like. Almost all nationalist leaders in Africa, including Nkrumah and Nyerere, have chosen the socialist kind and way.
In the most critical situations which struck the two nations five years after the independence, both Nkrumah and Nyerere determined to launch socialist policies. Ghana was hit by a socio-economic crisis caused by the fall of cocoa prices. Nkrumah insisted he saw insidious neo-colonialist hands behind the price fall. Tanzania suffered diplomatic difficulties with Britain, West Germany and the United Sates. The Western powers stopped aids to her.
Nkrumah wanted to see a single African Nation united under ‘the United States of Africa’, which is advanced, industrialized and so powerful that it could stand against neo-colonialist interventions. His socialism was nothing but a centrally planed economics directed by the Continental Government in order to have got strength enough to oppose neo-colonialist maneuvers. ‘CPP program for Work and Happiness’ of 1962 and the Seven Year Development Plan of 1964 were instruments of his socialist ideas. But he was toppled by the 1966 coup, before the Plan completed.
Nyerere's ideas and methods are ‘ujamaa’ and ‘self-reliance.’ Ujamaa means familyhood in Swahili. He likes to see Tanzanian Nation to become something like a modern ujamaa, which has got rid of old ujamaa's defections such as unequal treatment of women and general poverty. He opposes to too fast industrialization and unification of Africa, which Nkrumah eagerly advocated. Nyerere insists upon Tanzanian nation-building by self-reliance. He means by the word that Tanzanian development should be done primarily with Tanzanian own resources, not with foreign money. TANU's ‘Arusha Declaration’ of 1967 was a product of his ideas and methods.
Some writers criticize Nkrumah and Nyerere on two points among others: that they mistakenly denied the class struggles in Africa, and that they succumbed to neo-colonialists. These critics are right in some points but not the case in others. Nyerere does not always neglect the class problems in Tanzania, while Nkrumah failed to see class struggles in Ghana. Questions of neo-coloniclism are not so simple as easily solved by such cries of anticolonialism slogans some writers cherish, although neo-colonialism is no doubt an evil thing, badly needed to be
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