Pandora's Box, E5: Black Power
80,993
Published 2012-08-23
The episodes deal, in order, with communism in The Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.
The series was awarded a BAFTA in the category of "Best Factual Series" in 1993.
Black Power
This episode looks at how Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of the Gold Coast (which became Ghana on independence from the UK in 1957) from 1952 to 1966, set Africa ablaze with his vision of a new industrial and scientific age. At the heart of his dream was to be the huge Volta River dam, generating enough power to transform West Africa into an industrialised utopia and focal point of post-colonial Pan-Africanism. At first, it was hoped the UK would help finance the project, but after the Suez Crisis of 1956, interest was lost. Later, after meeting President Eisenhower and President Kennedy, American backing of the project materialised. A scheme was finally drawn up offering Kaiser Aluminum favourable conditions (including the smelting of aluminium imported from outside Ghana) and the dam was opened to great fanfare in January 1966.
Weeks later, in February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state visit to North Vietnam and China, his government was overthrown in a military coup (possibly CIA backed), and evidence of massive corruption and debt revealed. As of 1992, for many Ghanaians, the promised benefits of the project were still unrealised.
All Comments (14)
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Exellent documentary series. Adam Curtis is the best.
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A fine documentary series. The topics are debatable but the editing, use of archive footage and soundtrack are superb. The use of Brahms' violin concerto at the beginning of this sets an ominous mood. Nice stuff.
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Excellent Example Why Any Nation Should Dodge The World Bank.
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As an African i find it very disturbing just how much of very important, and very expensive state projects was not secured within the contracts and educated men like Nkrumah were caught on the hop as terms were rammed down their throats due to their lack of due diligence.
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It isn't technology per se that is the problem. Every solution has a political footprint. Every dream has a vulnerabilities. Ghana was absolutely correct to have this dream, to want this project. It even takes a bit of zeal to do something like this. But in the context of the colonialist history and the fragility of the nascent economy of Ghana, it also would take near perfect execution to avoid being taken advantage of. That's what happened. A colonial power took advantage, and many probably wrote it off as black African failure, when it was just a human failure. It isn't like the so-called "West" isn't full of such failures. They nearly destroyed the world a couple of times. So give Ghana a break. By the main indicators its slowly doing better today. Their debt/income ratio is much better than the United States, Ghana: 61% vs. U.S.: 104%. That's a huge positive difference.
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When the guy talks about Howwood Johnsons, he's talking about the modern world-he and perhaps subconsciously is every bit as bad as Howwood Johnson, "I said to the manager there are people that are in the lower social class to me and you've let them in" You see that's what the world is about now -have and have not the discussion about racism that we have now that continues is really to take attention away from the issue of poverty and class, it's the same with feminism women's rights women's equality, there's plenty of equality among women LGBT etc if you're at the bottom of society, i'm not saying the battles of the past have being won completely But the real injustice in society doesn't see race or sex it applies to everybody the same poverty and inequality the wealth gap that should be the subject for all those worthy left-wing people should talk about
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Yeah, these documentaries are good and all, but can we talk about that fever dream nightmare intro?
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What an absolute crock of shit. Why not mention the huge amount of state resources and assets that went missing under the PNDC regime, industrial machines, etc. Why not mention that Bui Dam had a large amount of materials on site ready for construction at the time of the 1966 coup, fully completed design plans, and all disappeared with no account, only finally being built 50 years later? Why does it mention snow ploughs when they were for the collection of agricultural produce? The only government post Nkrumah that had us operating state enterprise at a profit was Lt Col Acheampong, within a year of his takeover in 1972 had made Ghana self-sufficient in food production, and by 1973-74 had made us a net exporter, turned Ghana Airways into a profit-making business. He was executed by Rawlings, whilst the man sponsored by the CIA to overthrow us lived a comfortable life. I know two people who knew Rawlings personally, my mum who always talked about him in disparaging terms, and one of his close "henchmen" (is how he describes himself) who only talked about what a party they had when they got into power. Between independence and Rawlings, the Cedi depreciated from 1 cedi per dollar to two cedis per dollar. By the time of Rawling's exit from government the cedi had fallen from 2 cedis per dollar to 7,000 cedis per dollar - 350,000% depreciation! Why not tell the facts instead of showing propaganda about Rawlings? Rawlings is the most hated figure in Ghana for a very good reason, whilst Nkrumah is the most loved - voted Africa's "man of the millenium" by BBC Africa listeners. NDC team renegotiated the electricity rate? Kaiser were right in their assessment, Nkrumah would have nationalised the whole project as soon as they had developed the infrastructure and shown it was turning a profit. They even said it in this film, the Akosombo dam had no problem paying back the debt once it was put into operation. And of course there was a CIA paper trail, the wikipedia used to feature a freedom of information transcript between the CIA and Ankrah plotting Nkrumah's overthrow, before the days of internet censorship. I put it back several times, but it kept being deleted. So much for the "free internet". I watched Adam Curtis as a gullible 19 year old entertained by pretty pictures and soundtracks, you know the sum total of what Adam Curtis docs taught me about the real structure of power in the world, now that I look back on it in hindsight as a guy in his 30s that now knows these things? Absolutely nothing, full of fluff. Pure entertainment for gullible students.
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Number 2 ?
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The home good, good food is Howard Johnson's! Not if you're black, evidently.
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Another totally wrongheaded project. Like the Soviet project, except Soviets at least had engineers from the old government. Spending money from a project not yet completed, a power station not yet finished. I wonder what they planned to do once the power station was finished. Buy/ build factories? How would they operate without engineers? Or did Ghana have all the engineers waiting to be employed? It's not that different from Mao Zedong's crazy "Great Leap Forward" plan, where farmers melted down their pots, pans and agricultural tools into blobs of metal, and then just say and waited for industrialization to fall on their heads. Instead, they got starvation that killed at least 30 million people. Just convinces me further that one should never start big. Start small and develop naturally. Doesn't sound impressive or grandiose, but It's the only thing that works.
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Who cares
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Lol Ghana center of civilization and philosophy.. Yeah... The philosophy of cannibalism...
