The Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper and veteran Ghanaian political commentator, Kwesi Pratt Jnr, has described the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) as a coffee drinking club for friends until the radical Kwame Nkrumah joined the group.
Speaking during an interview on Pan African TV, Kwesi Pratt said the party only had three branches in the big cities across the country and its members only met to give speeches and sign petitions without any concrete plan on gaining Independence.
Pratt said it took Nkrumah joining the party before he transformed it into a nationwide movement which started putting immense pressure on our colonial masters.
“The UGCC had only 3 branches, the Accra, Saltpond and the Sekondi-Takoradi branch… within a year or so, after Kwame Nkrumah assuming office as the General Secretary of the UGCC, it was everywhere in Ghana. So, who built the UGCC? Who built the UGCC which led Ghana to independence? Are we talking of that UGCC which had only three branches or we are talking about that nationwide movement, which had branches everywhere, which of them led Ghana to independence?” he queried.
“By the time Nkrumah joined the UGCC, the UGCC was just a coffee-drinking club of friends, of lawyers and so on. They met, signed petitions to the governor, to the Queen of England and so on. Nkrumah transformed it into a militant mass movement. Built a women’s wing, built a youth wing… in addition to that linked directly to organized labour, that I what gave the UGCC its strength,” he explained.
“Thanks to Nkrumah, the UGCC became a mass base political movement, the first in Africa and led the struggle for national independence,” he added.
Ghana first President, Kwame Nkrumah later left the UGCC to form his own Convention People’s Party which he led to win Ghana’s first multiparty elections and usher in independence on 6th March, 1957.
Wednesday, September 21st 2022 would be Nkrumah’s birthday and has been declared a public holiday by the Minister of Interior.
Source: theGhanaianVoice.Com
