Against Nuclear Imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah, 1960

Source: Black Agenda Report

“We are not freeing ourselves from centuries of imperialism and colonialism only to be maimed and destroyed by nuclear weapons.”

In April 1960, Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of a newly independent Ghana, spoke at the Positive Action for Peace and Security in Africa held in the country’s capital. The conference was organized in response to the first nuclear tests held on the African continent. On February 13, 1960, the French had detonated a 70 kilotons nuclear device – more than four times the strength of the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima – thirty miles south of the Saharan town of Reggane, Algeria.

For Nkrumah, as for all of Africa, the French atomic test became ground zero for the struggle against “nuclear imperialism.” Nkrumah called on Africa to stand up against this new barbaric weapon of the Europeans, tested on their land and on their people, and used for continued control. “We are not freeing ourselves from centuries of imperialism,” he said, “only to be destroyed by nuclear weapons.” For Nkrumah, the most potent response to the west’s nuclear imperialism was unity. He reminded his audience that the “poisonous fall-out” from nuclear war “will never respect the arbitrary and artificial divisions forged by colonialism across our beloved continent.”

Today, we have returned, in Nkrumah’s words, to “the age of nuclear madness.” The U.S. and the zionist entity’s attack on Iran on February 28th, with a depraved “double-tap” missile strike on a girl’s elementary school in the city of Minab, Iran, and the assassination of the Supreme Leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei. But, after promising a “short war,” a war that will end “very soon,” and a war that would last, at first, four to five days, then, at most four, five, or six weeks, for the US, the war now appears endless. Operation Epic Fury is quickly becoming an Epic Failure. And with this failure has come loose talk in the white media (mainstream and otherwise) of the possible use of nuclear weapons on Iran as a last resort. (Even though diminishing Iran’s nuclear ambitions is one of the many lies used to justify the US/zionist’s barbaric attack on the country).

Nuclear madness. Imperial arrogance. Between the US and the zionists, both have returned with a vengeance. And while their target is Iran, as Nkrumah pointed out in 1960, the whole of humanity is at stake.

Kwame Nkrumah’s speech at the Positive Action Conference for Peace was published in Liberation magazine as “Against Nuclear Imperialism.” We reprint it below.

Against Nuclear Imperialism

Kwame Nkrumah

As you are all no doubt aware, the beginning of the year 1960 has seen the climax of ruthless and concerted outrages on the peace-loving people of our continent. The explosion of an atomic device in the Sahara by the French Government and the wanton massacre just over a fortnight ago in the Union of South Africa of our brothers and sisters who were engaged in peaceful demonstrations against humiliating and repulsive laws of the South African Government, are two eloquent events in this climax, which is a sign-post to the beginning of the end of foreign supremacy and domination in Africa.

In spite of several protests to General de Gaulle by the whole African continent and the United Nations General Assembly against exploding an atomic bomb on our continent, the French Government arrogantly exploded this nuclear device on our soil. As a result of this callous and inhuman attitude, the Government of Ghana took immediate action by freezing the assets of French firms in Ghana. Other African leaders and governments, indignant at this outrage, took other decisive measures against the French Government. I hope our reactions and protests will prevent the Government of France from exploding further atomic bombs on our continent.

It would be a great mistake to imagine that the achievement of political independence by certain areas in Africa would automatically mean the end of the struggle. It is merely the beginning of the end of the struggle. We must watch out for and expose the various forms of the new imperialism with which we are threatened. Among these, we must mention nuclear imperialism that dawned upon Africa on a tragic day last February when the French government exploded an atomic bomb on our soil. Winds carried the poisonous debris from the explosion to various parts of Africa, including Ghana. and thus confounded the confident forecasts by so-called meteorological experts of France who claimed that there was no wind that could carry radio-active debris more than seven hundred miles from the site of the explosion. From the point of view of genetics, these atomic tests are extremely bad and can have the most disastrous effects.

Last December and January an international team consisting of representatives from Ghana and other parts of Africa, as well as members from Britain, the United States and even from France itself, attempted to enter the testing site at Reggane in the Sahara. They left Ghana under the leadership of the Reverend Michael Scott, but were prevented from proceeding beyond the Upper Volta border by armed guards under the direction and control of French authorities. In order to make further attempts impossible, their vehicles and equipment were seized and have been kept by the French authorities up to now. Although they did not reach Reggane, they aroused many people to the dangers of nuclear imperialism. The team brought home to us the fact that the victims of these bombs are not less human just because they would probably never be known.

Positive action has already achieved remarkable success in the liberation struggle of our continent and I feel sure that it can further save us from the perils of this atomic arrogance. If the direct action that was carried out by the international protest team were to be repeated on a mass scale, or simultaneously from various parts of Africa, the result could be as powerful and as successful as Gandhi's historic Salt March. We salute Mahatma Gandhi and we remember in tribute to him, that it was in South Africa that his method of nonviolence and non-cooperation was first practised in the struggle against the vicious race discrimination that still plagues that unhappy country.

But now positive action with nonviolence, as advocated by us, has found expression in South Africa in the defiance of the oppressive pass laws. This defiance continues in spite of the murder of unarmed men, women and children by the South African Government. We are sure that the will of the majority will ultimately prevail, for no government can continue to impose its rule in face of the conscious defiance of overwhelming masses of its people. There is no force, however impregnable, that a united and determined people cannot overcome.

Future positive direct action against French nuclear tests might, for instance, take the form of a mass nonviolent attempt to proceed towards the testing area. It would not matter if not a single person ever reached the site, for the effect of hundreds of people from every corner of Africa and from outside it crossing the artificial barriers that divide Africa to risk imprisonment and arrest, would be a protest that the people of France. with the exception of the de Gaulle Government, and the world could not ignore. Let us remember that the poisonous fall-out did not, and never will respect the arbitrary and artificial divisions forged by colonialism across our beloved continent.

In my view, therefore, this conference ought to consider the setting up of a training center where volunteers would learn the essential disciplines of concerted positive action. Such an establishment might also become the center for such needed research into the philosophy and technique of positive action which, in the age of nuclear madness and apartheid arrogance, offers the greatest single hope for peace, security and brotherhood among mankind.

General de Gaulle is reported to have said recently that while other countries have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world, France must also have nuclear weapons with which to defend herself. I would say here, and no doubt you all join me, that Africa is not interested in such “defense” which means no more than the ability to share in the honor of destroying mankind. We in Africa wish to live and develop. We are not freeing ourselves from centuries of imperialism and colonialism only to be maimed and destroyed by nuclear weapons. We do not threaten anyone and we renounce the foul weapons that threaten the very existence of life on this planet. Rather we put our trust in the awakening conscience of mankind which rejects this primitive barbarism, and believe firmly in positive nonviolent action.

The cardinal principle upon which the peace and security of this continent depends, is the firm insistence that Africa is not an extension of Europe or of any other continent. A corollary of this principle is the resolution that Africa is not going to become a cockpit of the Cold War, or a marshalling ground for attack on either West or East, nor is it going to be an arena for fighting out the East-West conflict. In this particular sense, we face neither East nor West: we face forward.

We welcome men of goodwill everywhere to join us, irrespective of their race, religion or nationality. When I speak of Africa for Africans this should be interpreted in the light of my emphatic declaration, that I do not believe in racialism and colonialism. The concept “Africa for Africans” does not mean that other races are excluded from it. No. It only means that Africans who naturally are in the majority in Africa, shall and must govern themselves in their own countries. The fight is for the future of humanity, and it is a most important fight.

Our salvation and strength and our only way out of these ravages in Africa, lies in political union, and those who doubt the feasibility of such a union appear to have forgotten their history lesson too soon. The vastness of Russia and all the towering obstacles of her beginning did not prevent that country from building its greatness in unity by the union of eighteen different republics. The sprawling spread of America and her original colonial difficulties have not stopped that country from building a union of forty-nine states. If these countries can do this, why cannot Africa? I repeat that nothing but our own groundless fears and doubts can stop us from building a real practical political union. But remember—“Our fears are traitors and make us lose what we might often achieve by fearing to attempt.”

This is not a mere dream. This is an objective worthy and capable of achievement and | for one am prepared to serve under any African leader who is able to offer the proper guidance in this great issue of our time.

So dear is this African unity to our hearts, that in our proposed republican constitution a definite provision has been incorporated by a concrete proposal that Ghana’s sovereignty should be surrendered in whole or in part as a contribution towards the attainment of the great objective. Fellow Africans: permit me the liberty of stating in categorical terms that the greatness of this objective so transcends all other purposes and its sublimity is so profound, that it behooves each and everyone in the leadership of this struggle to endeavor to subdue his own little interests, his individual pride and ego and other petty considerations which merely serve to create needless obstacles in our path. The overriding importance of African unity demands the sacrifice of all personal, tribal and regional objectives and considerations.

Kwame Nkrumah, “Against Nuclear Imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah,” Liberation (May 1960).