Vijay Prashad

Following the CIA-backed military coup of February 1966 in Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah makes a strategic retreat to Conakry, where the leader of the Guinean Revolution, Sekou Toure, appoints him “co-President”. Conakry is also home to Amilcar Cabral, leader of the PAIGC. The three leaders meet regularly at Nkrumah’s residence, Villa Sily, to plot the return of the Osagyefo to power in Ghana and reflect on the struggle vs apartheid, colonialism and neocolonialism. Also present at these reasonings are the likes of Miriam Makeba and Kwame Ture (who moved to Conakry in 1968), Julia Wright (daughter of Richard, and editor of Nkrumah’s ideological mouthpiece, The Spark) and Fodeba Keita (poet and chief-executioner of the Guinean regime). The sessions feed into Nkrumah’s prolific writing from Conakry (pamphlets like “The Spectre of Black Power”, “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare” etc) and his monthly radio broadcasts on the Guinean “Voice of the Revolution”.

It is these “Conakry Dialogues” that the great Nigerian playwright Femi Osofisan dramatised into the diptych “Nkrumah-Ni, Africa-Ni”, of which “Night with the Elephant” is the 2nd part.

We are delighted to present a live reading of “Night with the Elephant”, on Thursday 26 September 2024, as rehearsal for a radio play, and to launch “The Revolutionary Thoughts of Kwame Nkrumah”, a new collection published by Inkani Books (Jhb) and edited by Efemia Chela and Vijay Prashad – Efemia will present this new collection before the reading.

Please join us. Or listen in via PASS.