Time Out With Explo Nani-Kofi

Politically, I consider myself a socialist who is committed to African unity and African self-determination as an African. As an internationalist, I am committed to the struggle of all oppressed people and all forms of resistance to global domination by powerful political and economic forces, which domination is to the detriment of the oppressed.

How long have you been in the business of grass root political mobilization?

I’ll say since 1975. So 43 years

In your opinion, what is the major problem preventing the emergence of a true left movement in Ghana?

To answer this, may be we should make an attempt at clarifying what is meant by Left so that we’ll know what we are dealing with concretely. I’ll often return to a definition between left and right by Emmanuel Hansen in his analysis of Ghana at the time of the 31st December 1981 coup d’etat where he wrote: “Among progressive groups and individuals there had for some time existed the idea that Ghana’s post-colonial problems were such that only a revolution could change them. What exactly this revolution was to imply has never been precisely articulated. There is, however, a consensus that it involves termination of the control of the local economy by foreign multinational companies, changes in the structure of production and production relations, changes in the class structure of control of the state, creation of political forms which would make the interests of the broad masses of people predominant and realisable and a programme which would initiate a process of improving the material conditions of the mass of the people. Those who broadly shared this position I would identify as belonging to the left. Those who entertained the opposite position that there was nothing basically wrong with the nature of the country’s structure of production or production relations or the nature of economic relations with Western capitalist countries or the structure of power, class relations or the nature of state power, and that only certain aspects of its functioning needed to be reformed. I would identify as the right.” I think Hansen is correct and I have long seen myself as being part of the ‘left’ in this definition. One of the main weaknesses I see is that most Left oriented work is at the level of intellectual exchange and that there isn’t a Left culture which functions at the level of society at large so we are found wanting when it comes to dealing with those who are not operating at that level of intellectual discourse but movements have to emerge at [that] level [of] society at large. This weakness also contributed to [the] Rawlings-led military regime dismantling the movement which was gradually developing from the 1970s.

Since you brought in Emmanuel Hansen and the 31st December uprising at this point, let me ask, what was your level of involvement with the PNDC?

At the time of the 31st December 1981 coup, I was the 1st National Vice President of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS). NUGS led the Students and Youth Task Force programme when the universities were closed and students of institutions of higher education became the mobilizing support units for the PNDC. I was appointed the Students and Youth Task Force Coordinator for Ashanti Region, but looking at the ethnic dynamics in the country, I decided not to accept that position and rather went to the Volta Region to be the Political Education Task force Coordinator of the Volta Region Students and Youth task force Secretariat. At the beginning of April 1982, I was appointed the Regional Coordinator of People’s Defence Committees and in June 1982, I was appointed the Regional Political Coordinator of the National Youth Organizing Commission. The Volta Region is the only region in which one person combined these two positions. This made me responsible for the mass organizations. From August 1982, there emerged the internal disagreements around the IMF and World bank involvement with the regime. I was one of those critical of the relationship. Since those critical of the relationship was seen as those opposing Rawlings we came under attack. Worse of all, Volta Region was seen as Rawlings’ home region so I had to be removed for those likely to be Rawlings’ “Yes People” to be in charge. I was framed up as a coup suspect and kidnapped into military detention on 7th December 1982 and that ended my relationship with the PNDC. This was not very surprising as Rawlings himself together with a platoon of soldiers held others and myself on our knees with guns corked on our nostrils on 24th November 1982. After 36 years, I don’t even know which coup I was suspect of.

Was that the same reason that led to the resignation of your friend Dr. Chris Bukari Atim  from the PNDC? The disagreement with the Bretton Woods institutions?

Many of us were hoodwinked by Rawlings’ statement at the trial after his failed attempt of 15 May 1979, when he said that his men should be left alone and he should be held responsible for. Large sections of the population also got hoodwinked and still many Ghanaians  follow this blindness which gives a picture of Rawlings, far different from the one we see in Chris Atim’s resignation letter and in books like Genesis Four by Squadron Leader George Tagoe. This is why I have referred to Rawlings as Kweku Ananse. In fact, we committed political suicide by flirting with Rawlings and in less than a year the picture became clear. Being a military officer he took over the military bureaucracy and intelligence machinery which he used and the nascent left movement had no answer to that. It must be always placed on record that some sections of the left were not that hoodwinked. The Movement On National Affairs (MONAS) led by people like Kweku Baako, Kwasi Agbley, Stanley Armattoe, Yaw Adu Larbi, Nat Ayivor, Kwesi Pratt Jnr publicly held the position that a process led by Rawlings will not lead to revolutionary change but disaster for Left forces. One of the articles in their paper, The Frontline Message, was “Rawlings – a counter revolutionary on an ego trip”. To say Rawlings exploited the revolutionary fervour of people like me for a long time is not very accurate. In less than a year, people like me fell out with him and his ilk.

Can you tell us briefly, how you ‘got out’ after your detention by the military in December 1982?

I was kept in Field Engineers Military Guardroom, one of the wicked guard rooms in the country until the 19 June 1983 Jail Break which I now know was led by Baba Abraham Kankani, Umar Farouk, Malik, Nsoh, Tanti, Sakordie, Mawuko Gidiglo Okyere and others. When Tekpor, Hiawotepe and Alhassan got to Field Engineers, they decided to release only detained soldiers and keep the civilians locked up. Cpl Isaac Nimo and Pt Adjei Kwapong knew that although I was a civilian I was in the same category as them (the soldiers), so if they escape and I am still there, the Rawlings forces will just come and pick up and murder me so they insisted that in our guard room there was no difference between soldiers and civilians so we, the civilians, will also be released. I spent the night of 19 June 1981 with my aunt in Labone and went the following morning to see my cousin in Kaneshie who drove me to Kinbu and gave me some money to travel. I took a vehicle bound for Kpong and when we reached Teshie we met a queue of vehicles with each passenger being inspected to see if the jail escapees were among. Anybody who was caught was directed to be shot to death. I gave some money to the mate and got into the bush and run as fast as I could as I am a bit athletic and good at cross country running. I run and walked sometimes until I got to Ashaiman where I took another vehicle bound for Kpong. We met a road bloc at Michel camp which I went through by luck. At Kpong, I took a vehicle bound for Tsatee in the Volta Region. I was lucky to again go through the military road bloc at Asikuma and in the end ended up in Hohoe which was my hide out for 10 days thanks to the late Sammy Dagadu and Z. Q. Darrah. I made two failed attempts to cross the border until on 29th June 1983, when I was assisted by the staff of the Jasikan District Defence Committee secretariat to escape through Jasikan into Togo…

It must have been a traumatic experience for you then…However I’d like to move away from the PNDC now to your days in exile. In the UK, you were involved with a lot of work involving progressive movements and became friends with the leader of the Labour party now. How would you assess the leadership of the labour party by Jeremy Corbyn so far and are we now closer to a Corbyn Premiership than ever before?

After 6 years in exile in Togo and the Slovak Republic, I came to UK. First I have to clarify that I am a political friend and not a social friend of Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party and our friendship will be sustained by the politics we are engaged in. I know it was a great surprise to the Ghanaian delegation to the Labour Party conference in 2015, when he asked them whether they know Explo Nani-Kofi. Contrary to right wing propaganda that political parties can do well in elections if they have a right wing leadership, Jeremy Corbyn, one of the most radical leaders of Labour Party led the party to perform resoundingly in the last British elections depriving the ruling Conservative Party of its majority that it only had to be saved through a coalition with the bigot Democratic Unionist Party. Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP of Islington North since 1983 and I got to know him through the South African Communist Party when I first visited UK in 1987. Jeremy was committed to issues about the Third World and Anti-Racist causes and was part of a radical Left Socialist campaign group of Labour MPs. In 2015, when he contested for the leadership little did he expect to win. He even assured us that the elections will be over soon and he and his wife (Laura) will attend the Kilombo International Conference in Peki in September 2015. The leadership election campaign showed him a different picture as the Corbynista movement institutionalized as an organization now known as Momentum.. The Jeremy experience is an inspiration for progressive forces worldwide. After winning the leadership, the pro-establishment Labour MPs mobilized vote of no confidence in him and passed a massive vote against him and forced him to stand for election again just one year after being elected but the membership voted him massively back into office. In 2017, the Conservative Party government of Theresa May called a snap election as the opinion poll initially gave the impression that with a Jeremy leadership the Labour Party will be wiped out in the election because of the radical socialist Jeremy Corbyn. The election result turned out to be different as the Conservative Party rather lost its majority. Despite the fact that Labour Party went into the election with a radical socialist and republican (anti-monarchy) leader. Jeremy Corbyn returned to parliament with the same MPs who passed a vote of no confidence in him and now giving him a standing ovation as the masses have given a full vote of confidence through the elections. Anybody following the political news in UK can see that the Theresa May Conservative Party leadership is in deep crisis and we are quite close to a Jeremy Corbyn premiership in UK.

What do you think the CPP and other Nkrumaist groups should do to emerge as a strong third force to the duopoly of the NDC/NPP?

The question is not whether I am prepared to work with the CPP and the leadership of “other Nkrumaist parties”. Together with Ekow Nelson, Prof Adams Bodomo, Dr Kojo Opoku Aidoo and John Daniels, we oraganized a seminar on this with the participation of representatives of CPP, PNC, PPP and other Pro-Nkrumah elements presenting pro-unity positions and holding a press conference covered on TV. The first question is rather whether Pro-Nkrumah party leaderships will accept the reality of the crisis they face or just be clowning in front of TV cameras as their electoral base erodes rendering them gradually irrelevant to the population at large. I doubt whether Pro-Nkrumah leaderships will see sense in what I have said above. In South Dayi, we are uncompromising about this and recently the Volta Region CPP has also sent a strongly worded resolution signed by representatives of every constituency to the CPP leadership. There is no evidence that the CPP leadership is taking any of these steps seriously. I can never act against my conscience and conviction.

The current majority leader and minister of parliamentary affairs describes you as one of the people who influenced his political thinking as a student in KNUST, what was the relationship between you two at the time and are you still in touch with him?

I was really surprised when I was first told that Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu has said that I influenced his political thinking in KNUST. I was totally confused when he wrote during the 2016 Black Star Excellence Award that my “dexterity is unmatched in [his] lifetime experience”. I clarified my relationship with Jeremy Corbyn earlier. My relationship with Osei is like that of a blood brother so goes beyond politics and does not necessarily depend on politics. We rebuild contact during my exile days, we cooperated in the struggle to end military tyranny and we network around issues of deepening democracy and eroding the traces of military tyranny hanging around the 4th Republic as a result of the transition process being driven by the military junta and its created structures.

Do you believe the fourth republican constitution in its current form can lead to the building of a prosperous and equal society for all?

With the Fourth Republic, I think it has its inadequacies, but as Dr Benjamin Adu wrote in a testimony about me, ” He [Explo] also believes that a civilian constitutional regime based on fake representation could offer a better environment for progressive struggles than a military dictatorship.”

Personally, I got to know you from a mutual friend of ours on Facebook, Kwame Kyei-Baffour. How do you think we can use social media as a tool for political engagement in the times we live in?

I was first very reluctant to use social media but my most productive contacts at present have all being built through Facebook. It is unfortunate that majority of our people are not in cyberspace. The Kilombo Centre encourages involvement in cyberspace and trying to bring it to the doors of the masses.

I am not sure if you still follow the students’ movement in Ghana now, but comparing it to your days, NUGS was a very powerful students’ voice that no government could toy with. What do you think has gone wrong with NUGS and how can we revive it?

NUGS is part of society at large. The situation in NUGS is a reflection of the general political situation of deep depoliticization leaving everything to animal kingdom survival tactics thanks to PNDC.

I must say I am very grateful for your time. You’ve provided valuable insights not just into your life but an era in our political history. I hope you write a book one day for us to know your full story…

THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND YOU ARE MOST WELCOME FOR THE MUTUAL THANK YOU.