answer: Biography of Dr Kwame nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) was the first president of Ghana. Though he effected Ghana's independence and for a decade was Africa's foremost spokesman, his vainglory and dictatorial methods brought about his downfall in 1966, with him a discredited and tragic figure in African nationalism.
The career of Kwame Nkrumah must be seen in the context of the Africa of his period, which sought a dynamic leader but lacked the structures that would make possible the common goal of continental unity. Ghana's and Africa's very inadequacies initially made them insensitive to Nkrumah's failings, conspicuous among which was the ever-widening gap between his rhetoric, which called for a socialist revolution, and his practice, which accommodated itself to the worst aspects of tribal and capitalist traditions.
Haiti was a brutal, terrifying place for most slaves.
<span>Slavery was particularly harsh in Haiti, much harsher than in the USA. There were laws which defined what a slave owner could, and couldn't do to their slaves, but these were routinely ignored. </span>
<span>There are at least two documented cases of runaway slaves being captured, tied over a log, a funnel put up their backside, gunpowder poured in and then a fuse lit - all for the benefit of the other slaves - they were killed by being blown apart as a warning to the others. </span>
<span>The work was hard, life expectancy low and wives and children were routinely sold away from their husbands. The French even codified the degrees of "African-ness", down to 1 part per 128, that's someone's great-great-great-great-great-great grand parents, and what jobs and responsibilities they could have. </span>
<span>Then there were the maroons - escaped slaves who lived in the jungles and mountains - they occasionally raided plantations and even the towns, killing whites and taking slaves away with them. The Maroons became like the bogeyman to blacks and whites alike. </span>
<span>Then along comes the French Revolution, with it's promise of "Liberty, Fraternity and Equality", obviously the slaves believed that this meant them as well: it didn't. </span>
<span>The intellectual cause of the Haitian Revolution was the philosophies of the Enlightenment - specifically the same intellectual base as the French Revolution. Basically the cry "libertie egalitie fraternitie" does not qualify which kind of person should be free - so ALL men were considered brothers. This thought pervaded Haitian mulatto and freed slave society, and seemed to offer a genuine equality and freedom for all on the island. </span>
<span>The other intellectual driving force of the revolution is the individual intellect of those leaders who were able to motivate, to organise and to conduct military campaigns with skill and flair - the leaders, Christopher, Brenda and, of course, Toussaint L'Ouverture. </span><span />
It’s the person and the building
