Seventy-seven years ago, on 12 June 1949, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah stood before the people of Ghana and declared the formation of the Convention People’s Party, a party born not in the corridors of power, but in the streets, markets, and trade union halls of a people determined to be free. On this historic anniversary, the Socialist Movement of Ghana salutes the founders, cadres, and masses who gave life to that great movement, and reaffirms our commitment to continue the unfinished work they began.
The CPP was not simply a political party, it was a revolutionary movement of the Ghanaian working class, peasantry, and progressive intelligentsia. Its founding cry of “Self-Government Now” shook the foundations of British colonial rule and inspired liberation movements across the African continent and the wider colonised world.
The CPP gave Ghana its independence on 6 March 1957, the first sub-Saharan African nation to break free from the chains of colonialism and with it, gave hope to hundreds of millions of oppressed peoples everywhere. Under Nkrumah and the CPP, Ghana pursued free education, free healthcare, rapid industrialisation, and the Volta River Project.
The Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute at Winneba trained revolutionary cadres from across Africa. Accra became the headquarters of Pan-African solidarity. These were not the achievements of charity from above, they were the achievements of an organised, disciplined, and ideologically grounded mass movement that placed the interests of the Ghanaian working people at the centre of all policy.
The CIA-backed coup of 24 February 1966 that overthrew Nkrumah’s government was not merely an attack on one man or one party. It was imperialism’s answer to the question of whether Africa would be allowed to chart its own path. The forces that toppled the CPP government understood very well what was at stake. And so must we.
The same imperialist interests that crushed the CPP in 1966 continue today, through debt bondage, structural adjustment, the plunder of our natural resources, and the maintenance of neocolonial dependency. The Socialist Movement of Ghana, rooted in the same tradition of scientific socialism that animated the CPP, draws three enduring lessons from this anniversary.
First, that mass organisation of the working class is the only reliable foundation for genuine liberation. Second, that political independence without economic independence is incomplete, and the struggle for both must be pursued simultaneously.
Third, that Pan-African unity is not an optional aspiration but a strategic necessity for the survival and advancement of our people. www.smghana.org P.O. Box NT 272, Accra– Newtown AccraSOCIALIST MOVEMENTOFGHANA(SMG) As we mark seventy-seven years since the founding of the CPP, Ghana faces a deepening crisis of neoliberalism, soaring debt, rising unemployment, decaying public services, and the continued plunder of our gold, bauxite, and cocoa by foreign corporations.
The answers lie not in the management of this order, but in its transformation. The Socialist Movement of Ghana pledges to carry forward the flame that Nkrumah and the CPP lit in 1949, building working-class power, fighting imperialism, advancing PanAfrican solidarity, and struggling without compromise for the full economic and political emancipation of the Ghanaian people and the African continent.
The Struggle Continues!
Forward Ever, Backward Never!
Blaise Tulo For General Secretary.
