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Review
Introduction Secondary Source Overview Comrades
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Secondary
Sources
Adamafio Adamafio was initially a member of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) youth group, the Convention Youth Organization (CYO). He was one of the CYO members that opposed the formation of the CPP until a compromising speech, made by a UGCC leading member, seemed to capitulate to colonialism. Adamafio was a member of the opposition Ghana Congress Party until 1954. According to Adamafio's own account (1982), he led the charge to criticize and censure CPP members like Botsio because of their ostentatious behavior. Adamafio became the General Secretary of the CPP in 1960 and the minister of Information from 1960 through 1962 during which time he recruited youth like Batsa (Batsa 1985) to the ranks of the Party. Adamafio's zeal, and according to some, opportunism (Bing 1968; Thompson, S. W. 1969), put him on the outs with some of the CPP old guard. Adamafio, Ako Adjei[1] and Kofi Crabbe were implicated in an attempted assassination of Nkrumah at Kulungugu and the bombing outrages that took place in 1962. Adamafio claimed that he was framed by bitter elements of the old guard as revenge for his ideological positions within the Party's administration. Nkrumah was convinced of Adamafio's treachery and was sorely disappointed as well as shocked (1969a). Regardless of the intrigue, Adamafio's book, By Nkrumah's Side (1982), provides some excellent detail to the political milieu surrounding the development of Nkrumahism. The following quote from Adamafio's book is an efficient contextualizer: Dr. Kwame Nkrumah regarded himself as an African first before he was anything else. Early after the inauguration of the Republic he called me to his office one morning and suggested that we should create a Ministry of African Affairs. We discussed the problem seriously and I refused to give the proposal my support. I argued that this would duplicate the work of the Foreign Ministry and cost the country money that could be wisely saved for other purposes. Nkrumah stressed that he did not like the idea of treating affairs of other African countries as 'Foreign Affairs'. He said Africa was one and indivisible and no part of it should be foreign to any other part. (94-95) [1]
Adjei was associated with Nkrumah since his student days in the USA as
they worked on the ASA's organ, The African Interpreter together.
They reconnected in Europe (Nkrumah 1973a). Adjei was one of the
participants in Pan-African Congress in Manchester (1945)(Langley 1979).
Adjei was an original member of the UGCC and the first to invite Nkrumah
to become its General Secretary. With other members of the UGCC leadership,
Adjei parted ways with Nkrumah when Nkrumah sought to radicalize the movement
for independence. Adjei did not rejoin Nkrumah until he joined the
CPP in 1953—four years after its founding (Ghana Yearbook 1959).
He became the Minister of External Affairs from 1959 through 1961 at which
time he became the Foreign Minister until 1962 (Thompson, W. S. 1968).
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