It has emerged that, Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah never believed in marriage.
According to him, he did not marry Fathia Halim Rizk [Helena Ritz Fathia Nkrumah] for himself but for the presidency and Republic of Ghana.
Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, indicated that despite getting married to Fathia, he still found himself lonely.
The late former President thought marriage would have solved an intense loneliness he suffered.
Rather, Kwame Nkrumah is quoted to have said marriage rather intensified and complicated it.
As Ghana marks the golden jubilee of the passing of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah on Wednesday, April 27, 2022, two letters he [Osagyefo] wrote to Shirley du Bois and Erica Powell regarding the institution of marriage have popped up.
In a letter written in November 1964 to Shirley du Bois who was head of the Ghana Television Service, on the subject of his family’s privacy, Nkrumah wrote:
“Marriage does not exist in nature and does not warrant the importance that has come to be attached to it. It is a bourgeois imposition, a mere contrivance set up as a matter of human convenience for the protection of inheritance rights, capitalists and property owners.”
In another letter written in August 1965 to his private secretary, Erica Powell Nkrumah said:
“Have you noticed that…I’m a very lonely man? I’m friendless and companionless. I suffer from intense loneliness which makes me sometimes burst into tears. I am an isolated man – isolated even from life itself. Few people know this.
Confirming the write-up under a post on Facebook, Dr. Sekou Nkrumah, one of the sons of Osagyefo said, he believed his late father had this mindset about marriage because of “his radical and revolutionary thoughts”.
“Very correct sir! You don’t even need to confirm the source, that was Nkrumah’s mindset. And I believe it is precisely because of his radical and revolutionary thoughts that he was able to achieve so much during his lifetime!” Sekou Nkrumah said.