Utterly Absurd
SIR,—Mr Pat Sloan's letter of May 6 takes one back to the days when anybody who criticised Stalin was automatically branded a Nazi sympathiser or, at best, a fascist. Today Mr Sloan implies that author- ship of an uncomplimentary article about Kwame Nkrumah is tantamount to defending 'the wealth and welfare of foreign shareholders' against the in- terests of the African peoples.
But in this case I doubt whether the old method will -prove successful—the facts about Nkrumah's tyranny, corruption, incompetence and megalomania are too well known for that.
Mr Sloan tells us that Nkrumah himself super- seded the definition of Nkrumaism quoted in my article. With respect, that is precisely the point I was making: Nkrumaism was a non-theory, possess- ing no body of doctrine, devoid of coherent content, and consisting solely of definition, which was recast as often as the Osagyefo deemed it necessary. The 1965 definition is just as meaningless as that of 1964 or, indeed, of any preceding year.
Most of the other issues raised by Mr Sloan are entirely irrelevant, both to my article and to Ghanaian realities. He appears to believe that Nkrumah was building socialism. I suppose it all depends on one's idea of socialism. I have made my position on this clear. So has Mr Sloan: not only in his letter, but by his activities whilst in Ghana; e.g., persuading Nkrumah to set up a cen- sorship system for screening the country's libraries (West Africa, April 16, 1966), exhorting party cadres `to be vigilant and close their ranks against sub- versive elements' (Accra Evening News, September 2, 1965), etc.
In all this Mr Sloan has been nothing if not con- sistent, for as long ago as 1938, at the height of Stalin's blood-purge, he was declaring: 'When we read that some thousand or so, or even two or three or four thousand people or even more, out of a total population of nearly 180 million, have been arrested and tried for various offences against the State, I do not think we should be alarmed' (Russia without Illusions, p. 230).
Mr Sloan is entitled to his opinions. He is not, however, entitled to doctor my words: I did not say that no one 'knew what Nkrumah was'; I said `no one really knew what Nkrumaism was'—a rather different proposition.
Neither is it wise to attempt to deny facts which are in the public domain. Mr Sloan dismisses what he is pleased to call my 'allegation' that Nkrumah's book Consciencism proved the need to unite Africa with the aid of a series of inane mathematical for- mulae. The formulae, he declares, are there merely as illustrations. Now, I should dearly love to repro- duce all twenty-two of the priceless Nkrumaic for- mulae (or 'set theoretic methods'), but I must confine myself to quoting the Redeemer's conclusion: 'By means of the foregoing set theoretic methods the necessity of a union of independent African states is established' (Consciencism, 1964, p. 118).
The libraries of this country are fortunately un- purged, and any of your readers, sir, can easily establish the respective truthfulness of my `allega- tions' and of Mr Sloan's denials.
' Compared to the present time, how much simpler life %must have been for Mr Sloan during those long, long years when, for instance, it was so easy —and safe—to deny the horrors of Soviet prison camps, and to depict them in ecstatic, almost lyrical tones: 'The Soviet labour camp provides a freedom for its inmates not usual in our own prisons in this country' (Russia without Illusions, p. 246); or: `Compared with the significance of that term in Britain, Soviet imprisonment stands out as an almost enjoyable experience' (Soviet Democracy, 1937, p. I 1 1). Well, that is one 'enjoyable experience' the Ghanaian people have deprived themselves of— though one can hardly expect Mr Sloan to share their satisfaction over this.
Department of Politics, University of Reading TIBOR SZAMUEL7
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