An Examination of Legitimation in Kwame Nkrumah’s Anti-colonial Resistance Discourse

Abstract

This article analyzes the strategies employed by Kwame Nkrumah, a pioneering pan-Africanist and Ghana’s independence leader, to legitimize his resistance discourse against colonialism. The findings show that Nkrumah used authorization, moral evaluation, and rationalization to formulate a conviction rhetoric intended to expose the iniquities of the colonizers and place a moral responsibility on Africans to vehemently oppose the continent’s saboteurs. These legitimation strategies enable Nkrumah to construct himself as a courageous, selfless leader with noble intentions who will rescue Africa from the perils of colonialism and safeguard the welfare of the continent after independence. This paper extends research on legitimation in a context underexplored in the literature and demonstrates that the discourses of African leaders are a valuable interventionist resource needed to decolonize political processes, decenter hegemonic structures, and divest power. It also builds on understandings of political discourse analysis outside the Euro-American canon, thereby centering Global South perspectives that have received little attention in the political discourse analysis literature.

Keywords

Colonialism (de)legitimation critical discourse analysis political discourse resistance discourse language and identity

Introduction

Resistance discourse refers to language use by a group (or by a sociopolitical actor representing a group) to oppose anything (e.g., systems, policies, ideologies, etc.) that they feel violates their rights and freedom and is inimical to their welfare. (Nartey, 2019) It is characterized by a complete rejection of (perceived) victimization, denial of rights, marginalization, or human rights violations (Chiluwa, 2015); focuses on forms of discourse that can be empowering for marginalized groups’ participation in public domains; and seeks to give marginalized communities voice, agency, and a positive identity (Lazar, 2007). The construction of resistance in politics is commonplace because the presence of power relations is typically accompanied by resistance. That is, when people suppose that they are being oppressed or their rights to freedom are being denied or curtailed by an individual, a government, a constituted authority, a system, and so on, they are likely to defend their rights and advocate their freedom either alone or with the help of others (Eamonn, 2004). In other words, resistance will take place once a group of people believe that a change that will result in their freedom from (perceived) oppression is needed (Chiluwa, 2015). Resistance discourse constitutes a useful semiotic event for examining legitimation since the language of resistance validates certain actions, positions, perspectives, and worldviews and invalidates others.

Legitimation refers to discourse that explains and defends social activity by providing “good reasons, grounds, or acceptable motivations for past or present action” (van Dijk, 1998: 255). It is the process by which social actors justify or discredit certain social behaviors and thus involves the linguistic and discursive resources social actors employ to solicit support for their actions in an attempt to establish credence in their legitimacy (van Leeuwen, 2007). Legitimation has explanatory power and can be used to do “ideological work” because it simultaneously expresses certain messages and suppresses other messages. That is, it offers an answer to the “why” question—“why should we do this?” and “why should we do this in this way” (van Leeuwen, 2007: 93). The legitimation process, Rojo and van Dijk (1997) submit, is reified by providing arguments (and sometimes fallacies) that try to explain ideas, practices, pronouncements, and social actions. Hence, any act of legitimation is connected to an objective that invites listeners to assent to a proposition. This search for consent may be motivated by several reasons, including gaining popularity, winning an election, improving community relationships, and achieving social acceptance among others (Reyes, 2011).

Various studies have investigated legitimation in political discourse studies to illustrate how political leaders construct themselves, their ideas, policies, and opponents via justificatory discourse. This scholarship has analyzed different text types such as political speeches (Reyes, 2011), parliamentary debates (Sarfo-Kantankah et al., 2024), war rhetoric (Oddo, 2011), crisis discourse (Vaara, 2014), political campaign songs (Screti, 2013), online aggression (Lee, 2022), media reportage (Ali et al., 2016), fake news (Igwebuike and Chimuanya, 2021), blog posts (Nartey, 2024), international governance (Steffek, 2003), immigration rejection letters (van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999), protest speeches and online activism (Nartey and Yu, 2023), and revolutionary discourses (Ganaah et al., 2023). The value of these studies notwithstanding, legitimation has hardly been investigated in resistance discourse as it pertains to the language of independence leaders who spearheaded the fight against colonialism and/or the struggle for independence. Such discourse constitutes an important medium of political self-expression and social action and is likely to exploit legitimation to achieve sociopolitical objectives. In other words, one can surmise that resistance discourse represents an important site for the manifestation of legitimation strategies. Hence, an examination of such discourse will further enhance our understanding of legitimation in specific spatiotemporal contexts.

The current paper addresses the aforementioned gap by analyzing the strategies employed by Kwame Nkrumah, a pioneering pan-Africanist and Ghana’s independence leader, to legitimize his resistance discourse against colonialism. In addition to extending research on legitimation in a context underexplored in the literature by highlighting how legitimation strategies may be shaped by a historical event like colonialism, this paper demonstrates that an analysis of Nkrumah’s resistance discourse is significant in appreciating Africa’s history in the post-colonial period given Nkrumah’s key role in the African independence revolution in the 1950s and 1960s (see Nartey, 2023). The study furthermore contributes to decoloniality in scholarship by providing insights into political discourse analysis outside the Euro-American praxis.

Conceptual framework: discursive legitimation

This study draws on the notion of legitimation in critical discourse studies, which illustrates how discourse constructs legitimacy for social practices and power relations, and how this process reinforces or challenges social structures. Legitimation can be defined as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995: 574). As a social process, legitimation exploits the normative order to ascribe appropriateness to social actors, actions, and relationships (Rojo and van Dijk, 1997). It therefore entails “the creation of a sense of positive, beneficial, ethical, understandable, necessary or otherwise acceptable action in a specific setting” (Vaara, 2014: 503). This is evident in the way authorities and institutions attempt to establish credibility in critical issues like immigration, policy strategy, environmental sustainability, law and governance, and defense and security. This paper employs van Leeuwen’s (2007, 2008) legitimation framework due to its robustness and wide application in exploring how social actors try to obtain legitimacy for their worldviews by aligning their communicative practices and actions with dominant social values in a given period.

Van Leeuwen discusses four types of legitimations in everyday interaction and public communication. They include authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoesis and can be used individually or in combination with each other. Authorization is the process of referencing authority to establish legitimacy. Sources of authority that one can use to validate or discredit actions, situations, or opinions include personal authority (i.e. individuals or public figures with institutional authority), expert authority (i.e. experts, specialists or professionals), impersonal authority (i.e. laws, rules and regulations), and authority of tradition (i.e. custom, tradition or habit). Moral evaluation refers to the process of seeking credibility by explicit or implicit reference to norms, values, ethics, and codes of conduct. This can be accomplished by direct moral appraisal of behaviors (i.e. evaluation), moralizing certain events or behaviors by linking them to discourses of moral values (i.e. abstraction), and moral appraisals through comparison (i.e. analogy). In rationalization, one uses truth claims to affirm or refute certain social actions and practices. It draws on shared ideas and assumptions of what people consider reasonable and uses claims, logic, arguments, and knowledge to prove why a course of action is acceptable or objectionable. Rationalization can be based on predictions, definitions, and explanations (i.e. achieved theoretically) or it can be based on the goal, means, and/or effect of an action or event (i.e. realized instrumentally). Mythopoesis refers to legitimation conveyed through narratives that have conclusions that applaud good/positive actions and penalize bad/negative practices.

Vaara et al. (2024) rightly note that discursive legitimation is a multifaceted and dynamic phenomenon. Hence, the van Leeuwen legitimation framework employed in this article is situated within the broad framework of critical discourse studies (see Fairclough, 1995; van Dijk, 1995; Wodak, 2015) to demonstrate how various linguistic mechanisms enabled Nkrumah to legitimize his resistance discourse. Such an integrated approach, I contend, is valuable in the exploration of discursive legitimation given its dynamic and multifaceted nature. The linguistic mechanisms relevant in this study include metaphor, argumentation, membership categorization, positive self-presentation, and negative other-presentation. Together, they helped Nkrumah to simultaneously achieve a twofold purpose of legitimizing his worldview and delegitimizing the actions of the perpetrators of colonialism whom he considered to be “the enemy.” I therefore argue that van Leeuwen’s legitimation categories discussed above can be realized by various linguistic or analytic processes. Hence, they are operationalized in this article as an umbrella for how language or communication relates to assumptions about what is considered legitimate (see Igwebuike and Akoh, 2022; Vaara et al., 2024).

Data and methods

This study is part of a larger project on Kwame Nkrumah’s construction and promotion of the African Dream. For a detailed analysis, 50 speeches by Nkrumah that focus on why Africa must resist colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism have been selected for this study. They were delivered at the height of Africa’s independence struggle and its aftermath (1955–1965), and discussed Nkrumah’s lifelong vision of a Union Government of Africa and the strong position Africa must take to safeguard its welfare from what he described as “enemy forces” from the West. According to Nkrumah, the independence of Ghana (as the first sub-Saharan country to gain independence) “is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent” (Nkrumah 06/03/57). Consequently, his speeches even when addressed to Ghanaians often had an African focus and hence provide a broader context within which to analyze how he legitimized his resistance discourse. Few of the speeches were specifically addressed to African heads of state and the international media. All the speeches were delivered in English (Ghana’s official language), were collected from Obeng’s (1979) compilation of Nkrumah’s speeches, and they centered on issues such as African emancipation, African unity, African identity or the African Personality, and Pan-Africanism. It is worth stating that Nkrumah’s speeches did not only achieve a deliberative function. He also deployed them as an urgent call to what he described as “positive action” and hence sought to propel Africans to do something (i.e. resist colonialism) in order to achieve an aim (i.e. gain independence) or deal with a problem (i.e. the colonizers and/or saboteurs of Africa).

In terms of method of analysis, the paper adopts a qualitative critical discourse analysis approach. First, I identified Nkrumah’s legitimation strategies drawing on van Leeuwen’s (2008) legitimation framework. I used Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step procedure, in a recursive manner, to code the data: (1) familiarization with the data; (2) generating initial codes while perusing the data; (3) refining, collating, and/or combining the different codes into final categories; (4) reviewing the coded data under each category; (5) defining and naming each category in relation to their essence; and (6) producing a scholarly report with illustrative examples. I discussed the identified legitimation strategies with two colleagues and we resolved any inconsistencies. Second, I interpreted the strategies in light of the social and cultural goings-on of Nkrumah’s communicative event, including the immediate situational context, the circumstances surrounding the speeches, Africa’s history, and the wider frame of African society and culture which Nkrumah’s discourse is part of. I also accounted for the linguistic resources and rhetorical devices he used to express the strategies. Third, I explicated the potential influence of Nkrumah’s discursive positioning on his audience, especially its attempt to formulate and validate an anti-colonialist stance aimed at empowering Africans. Doing this, I utilized Jayyusi’s (1984) notion of membership categorization which allows one to explain the procedures people employ to make sense of other people and their activities. Category work is used to describe types of people based on one’s moral, religious, and social conceptualizations as well as those of rivals. Hence, it is helpful in explaining how Nkrumah’s legitimation of his resistance discourse holds implications for social relations. In addition to membership categorization, I employed various notions in critical discourse analysis such as metaphor, argumentation, positive self-presentation, and negative other-presentation to shed light on how legitimation can be realized by various linguistic or analytic processes given its dynamic and multifaceted nature.

Legitimizing anti-colonial resistance discourse

The analysis revealed that Nkrumah used three main legitimation strategies to license his anti-colonial resistance discourse: authorization, moral evaluation, and rationalization. They helped him to construct himself as a courageous, selfless leader with noble intentions who will rescue Ghana and Africa from the perils of colonialism and safeguard the welfare of Ghanaians and Africans after independence.

Legitimation by authorization

Nkrumah legitimized his resistance discourse by primarily referring to his personal authority as a leader in whom institutional authority is vested and the impersonal authority of laws, rules, and regulations. Van Leeuwen’s explanation of legitimation by authorization focuses on how social actors refer to an external authority (e.g. tradition, laws, experts, people with power) to validate their worldviews. However, I contend that in the context of political discourse, it is possible for politicians to refer to their personal authority as leaders in whom institutional authority is vested. In the case of Nkrumah, he was Ghana’s first president when he delivered the speeches that constitutes the study’s dataset. Hence, I submit that he legitimized his resistance discourse by drawing on the authority that emanates from his position/office—one created and legitimized by Ghanaian law. Extracts 1–4 illustrate Nkrumah’s legitimation by authorization.

1. Who is the enemy? The enemy is imperialism, which uses as its weapons, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. Let us be very clear about this. Let us not lose sight of the real object . . . which is the liquidation of colonialism and imperialism in all its forms . . . (Nationalists’ Conference of African Freedom Fighters, 1962).

2. Now I come to the task of the fighters who are in the front rank of the struggle . Unity, fellow freedom fighters, must be the watchword of those who are leading the masses into the battle for independence in the many parts of Africa which, alas, are still under the dragging yoke of colonialism. You must close your ranks and stand firmly together. You must forget your theoretical differences . . . and come together in a solid phalanx to meet the enemy on a common front. (Nationalists’ Conference of African Freedom Fighters, 1962)

3. For my part, I must say that as long as I live and as long as any little vestige of colonialism and imperialism remains in Africa, I shall prosecute a ruthless war on these monsters , a war in which there shall be no truce. (Casablanca Conference, 1961)

4. We have pride in our determination to support every form of non-violent action which our fellow Africans in colonial territories may find it fit to use in the struggle for their legitimate rights and aspirations . . . We make no apology to anyone, and we will not allow ourselves to be deflected from this just cause, a cause wholly in consonance with the principles enunciated in the Charter of the United Nations . (All-African People’s Conference, 1958)

In Extracts 1–4, Nkrumah legitimizes his resistance discourse by explicitly identifying the colonizers as Africa’s conspiratorial enemy (1)—that is, as an aggressive out-group whose actions have harmed Africans (Geis, 1987). Conversely, he depicts himself as a selfless leader with noble intentions who will help the African people to nullify the threat posed by the colonizers (2, 3). His identification of Africa’s arch-enemy can be analyzed as an in-group versus out-group distinction that pits two groups against each other or presents two camps as opposing forces (van Dijk, 1995). This “us” versus “them” tension is reified by wartime discourse evident in metaphorical expressions like “enemy,” “weapons,” “fighters,” “battle,” “phalanx,” “struggle,” and “front rank,” and they enable Nkrumah to advocate and justify strong resistance against the colonizers. Nkrumah thus arrogates to himself the authority to determine Africa’s principal adversary and to formulate a strategy to overcome this opponent. By suggesting that he has the knowledge to call out what or who he believes to be Africa’s nemesis and propose solutions to this problem, Nkrumah authorizes his resistance discourse and implies that the safety, security, and welfare of Africa are linked to the resistance posture he is asking Africans to adopt.

The definite determiner “the,” the rhetorical question “who is the enemy?” and the declarative “Let us not lose sight of the real object” in Extract 1 help Nkrumah to zero in on the enemy with specificity. The inclusive pronouns “we,” “our,” and “us” (1, 4), and the assertions “You must close your ranks and stand firmly together,” “You must forget your theoretical differences,” and “Unity, fellow freedom fighters, must be the watchword” in Extract 2 help him to recruit support for social action by alluding to the notion of nationalism and imposing a moral responsibility on Africans to strongly oppose the colonizers. Together, these linguistic items concretize Nkrumah’s enemification process and present him as a credible authority whose character cannot be questioned. The identification of an enemy is essential to establishing and maintaining a standard order (Lazar and Lazar, 2004) and also performs the function of determining a target for legitimate attack (Bhatia, 2008). In addition, past mental frames or previous world knowledge of wars entails a vicious enemy and a defender (i.e. a soldier or an army) who pledges to fight the enemy to achieve victory. Consequently, Nkrumah’s articulation of Africa’s conspiratorial enemy can be said to validate his resistance discourse and encourage Africans to actively oppose the enemy. In other words, his identification of Africa’s principal adversary can establish a relationship between past and present frames and can be described as “a mental representation of our knowledge of the world, a data-structure that is located in human memory and can be selected or retrieved when needed” (Bednarek, 2005: 689).

The presence of an enemy justifies the need for a valiant leader who makes it their responsibility to defeat the enemy. Unsurprisingly, Nkrumah portrays himself as a courageous leader who has emerged in a dire situation to save Africa from the perils of colonialism and safeguard the welfare of the continent after independence. This discursive positioning can be seen in Extract 2 where Nkrumah recontextualizes his speech into a military briefing addressed to soldiers in a garrison as they plan and strategize for warfare. In this extract, he sculpts an image of an Army General or the Commander-in-Chief of the Africa Armed Forces who deploys troops, issues instructions to his soldiers, marshals logistics, and works out battle tactics. This is evident in his use of military parlance realized by declaratives like “Now I come to the task of the fighters who are in the front rank of the struggle,” “Unity, fellow freedom fighters, must be the watchword of those who are leading the masses into the battle for independence in the many parts of Africa,” “You must close your ranks and stand firmly together,” and “You must come together in a solid phalanx to meet the enemy on a common front.”

His use of the deontic modal “must” and the personal pronouns “I” and “you” in the declarations above is instructive in that they underline his personal authority and enable him to foreground his bravery in a manner that suggests that the people of Africa can count on him as a dependable warrior. The military jargons in Extract 2 and others in the dataset such as “We must enter the battlements of the enemy and smash them to pieces” (Nkrumah 12/06/61) and “We must bring all our battalions into array to match the skill of our enemy” (Nkrumah 04/06/62) can be analyzed as an authorization mechanism that presents Nkrumah as one who is knowledgeable about Africa’s enemy and hence capable of providing ideas to strategically deal with the enemy. I argue that the military tone of Nkrumah’s language is intentional as it enables him to concretize a sociopolitical issue like colonialism and to cast himself in the mold of one leading the African front-line troops. This identity allows him to underscore his authority as a pioneering pan-African leader and subsequently contributes to the legitimation of his resistance discourse against colonialism.

The valiant leader image Nkrumah constructs for himself as part of his authorization strategy is reinforced in Extract 3 when he asserts his courage and determination to wage war against colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism. Here, the first-person singular pronoun “I,” the prepositional phrase “for my part,” the deontic modal “shall,” and the conditional clauses “as long as I live” and “as long as any little vestige of colonialism and imperialism remains in Africa” function as linguistic structures that highlight Nkrumah’s credibility. These structures can also be interpreted as an intensification mechanism (Wodak, 2015) that amplifies Nkrumah’s positive identity construction and are intended to further project his valiant leader image. In their study, Ganaah et al. (2023) aver that political leaders can exploit an authorization strategy as a form of self-glorification aimed at sociopolitical legitimation. I argue that Nkrumah’s pronouncement in Extract 3 achieves a similar function and it is strengthened by his solemn pledge “I shall prosecute a ruthless war on these monsters, a war in which there shall be no truce.” His choice of the verb “prosecute” is noteworthy as it presents him as a no-nonsense Special Prosecutor or Attorney General vested with legitimate authority to punish the colonizers for their crimes against Africa and humanity in general.

In addition to personal authority, Nkrumah employs impersonal authority of laws, rules, and regulations to validate his views. This is evident in Extract 4 where Nkrumah appeals to the authority of the United Nations and uses the noun phrases “legitimate rights” and “just cause,” implying that Africa’s resistance to colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism is a legitimate right in sync with the principles enshrined in the 1948 United Nations Charter of Human Rights. His use of the first-person plural pronoun “we” and the noun phrases “our determination” and “fellow Africans” in this extract is also instructive. These expressions suggest that he has the full backing of the continent in the pursuit of his objectives since these objectives are acceptable to the African people and align with their expectations. In other words, he exploits the notion of shared values and communal beliefs, enabling him to enunciate legitimacy by referring to the majority/masses (van Leeuwen, 2007). By combining the impersonal authority of laws, rules, and regulations with the authority of the majority, Nkrumah presents his resistance discourse as justifiable since it has the backing of the African people and worldwide organizations like the United Nations.

Legitimation by moral evaluation

Nkrumah employed a moral evaluation strategy by making judgments about right and wrong in a manner that condemns the colonizers and validates his resistance discourse as shown in Extracts 5–8.

5. Imperialism and colonialism are a two-fold evil . (Nkrumah, 10/07/53) . . . The fight against colonialism and imperialism is a fight between good and evil, between what is right and what is wrong . (Motion of Independence or Motion of Destiny Speech, 1953)

6. . . . may know the diabolical depths of degradation to which these twin-monsters of imperialism and colonialism can descend. (Laying of the Foundation Stone and Inauguration of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute, 1961)

7. . . . but we alone can grapple with the monster of imperialism which has all but devoured us . . . for neo-colonialism is a latter-day harpy, a monster which entices its victims with sweet music. (All-African People’s Conference, 1958)

8. Colonialism and imperialism have no honor, no shame, no morals and conscience . . . . . . we see the hydra-headed neo-colonialism slowly but clearly emerging, but that ugly head should be crushed. (Casablanca Conference, 1961)

In Extracts 5 and 6, Nkrumah exploits the colonialism is evil metaphor to offer a negative appraisal of the moral principles of the colonizers. This metaphorical correlation implies that the colonizers are evil in nature; hence, all their actions are equally evil and must be resisted. As Steiner (2002: 183) puts it,

evil acts . . . are necessarily the products of evil dispositions; or the evilness of states of affairs is a sufficient condition of the evilness of the acts that bring them about; or having evil dispositions is a necessary, and maybe sufficient, condition of being an evil person.

Admittedly, the word “evil” is impactful when used literally; however, I argue that it has a stronger metaphorical connotation rooted in religious notions of good and evil. Hence, it is possible for Nkrumah’s audience to associate the word “evil” with forces of darkness that are profoundly immoral and wicked as well as with a negative spiritual image or term like the “devil,” more so when Nkrumah also describes colonialism as a devil in his speeches (e.g. “When there is profit to be made from being cruel, the imperialist is a devil in human form” [Nkrumah 10/04/64]).

In addition to concretizing the threat of the colonizers to Africans, the colonialism is evil metaphor creates a binary opposition (i.e. forces of good vs forces of evil) that allows Nkrumah to castigate the colonizers and invoke strong sentiments of morality based on religion. That is, he appeals to a divine authority that is considered to be inherently good to validate his resistance discourse and bolster his denunciation of the colonizers. Such a moral evaluation that draws on a religious verdict can legitimize one action and delegitimize another because religion is “the ultimate moral force within the societal order of discourse of the day” (Graham et al., 2004: 204). Therefore, the “evil” descriptor Nkrumah associates with colonialism can be analyzed as a membership categorization mechanism used to evaluate people’s intentions and actions (Jayyusi, 1984). It realizes an attributional function that simultaneously ascribes negative traits to the colonizers and positive traits to Nkrumah and other Africans who resist colonialism. It can thus be interpreted as a source of legitimation in that it (implicitly) imposes a moral imperative on Africans to rise up against the evil colonizers in order to extricate themselves from the forces that enslave them.

Another implication of the colonialism is evil metaphor can be explained by the notion of a standardized relational pair (Leudar et al., 2004: 245) and is explicitly expressed by Nkrumah in the assertion “The fight against colonialism and imperialism is a fight between good and evil, between what is right and what is wrong” (5). It can be deduced from this standardized relational pair that the colonizers are the evil folk and Nkrumah and the people of Africa are the good folk. The description of Nkrumah and the people of Africa as “good” via indirection sanctions their evaluations and gives them a certain moral superiority associated with the category “good.” By suggesting that, on the one hand, the colonizers are bad and unjust and, on the other hand, the good people of Africa are seeking justice, Nkrumah’s standard relational pair creates a discourse of integrity that condemns the colonizers on the basis of acceptable moral values. He thus capitalizes on membership categorization to determine and establish a moral order through the construction of a “deviant other,” a lethal threat whose resistance by the good people of Africa is justified.

Nkrumah’s moral evaluation of the colonizers is heightened by his metaphorical conceptualization of colonialism as a monster as can be seen in Extracts 6–8. This metaphorical framing allows him to depict the colonizers as tormentors who are inflicting all types of pain (physical, psychological, social, spiritual, etc.) on Africans, thereby making their resistance a desirable objective. In addition to referring to the colonizers as “monsters” via a nomination strategy (Wodak, 2015), Nkrumah utilizes a predicational strategy (Wodak, 2015) to underline some of their objectionable activities, evident in verb phrases like “may know the diabolical depth of degradation” (6), “has all but devoured us” (7), and “entices its victims with sweet music” (7). Like the words “evil” and “devil,” the word “monster” reinforces the wickedness of the colonizers and further contributes to Nkrumah’s exploitation of membership categorization to legitimize his resistance discourse. Again, a standardized relational pair and/or a binary opposition of good versus evil is created by the colonialism is a monster metaphor, enabling Nkrumah to present the colonizers as people who lack acceptable moral principles and whose intentions for Africa are utterly malicious.

The monster metaphor also emphasizes the insensitivity of the colonizers as the word connotes venom or poison. Nkrumah thus suggests that the colonizers can kill, which can be argued to be (one of) the highest forms of immorality/amorality. He implies that not only do the actions of the colonizers not conform to acceptable standards of morality, but also, in certain instances, they lack a moral sense and are therefore unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of their actions like animals. By constructing the colonizers as monsters, Nkrumah compares the colonizers to predators whose natural instinct is to prey on others, hence the need for the people of Africa to be protected from them. The colonialism is a monster metaphor thus echoes Fabiszak’s (2010: 95) view that it is “only when we degrade the enemy to the level of animals or construe them as alien or as a threat to ‘our way of life’ can we draft soldiers for a kill.” Expressions like “hydra-headed” and “harpy” (8) which allude to Greek mythology further intensify Nkrumah’s exploitation of the monster metaphor as they can help his audience to establish a link between previous and current frames. Altogether, his scathing appraisal of the morals of the colonizers via the metaphorical use of “monster” and “evil” serves to legitimize his resistance discourse as it connotes the idea that any appearance of evil forces in Africa must be eliminated and anything that can cause the death of Africans must be expunged. As Nkrumah puts it, “Let us determine more than ever before to crush colonialism and imperialism from the face of our beautiful Africa” (Nkrumah 24/05/63).

In Extract 8, Nkrumah’s moralization strategy is evident in the three-part list “no honor, no shame, no morals and no conscience.” They can be analyzed as a form of hyperbolic language that exaggerates the ill motives of the colonizers by describing them as psychos on a senseless mission to harm and wreak havoc. This framing indicates that the colonizers can commit every kind of evil since they are dishonorable and unprincipled and have no values and conscience. It further connotes the idea that their personality is marked by a lack of remorse for their actions, an absence of empathy for others, and criminal tendencies. The three-part list “no honor, no shame, no morals and no conscience” thus enables Nkrumah to issue a damning verdict on the moral character, moral choices, and moral code of the colonizers as well as decry their exploitation and domination of Africans. He unequivocally articulates the view that the moral compass of the colonizers is wrong; hence, they have no foundation for ethical decision-making and that is why they engage in immoral activities like colonialism. Based on this moral evaluation, he presents his resistance discourse against colonialism as warranted.

Legitimation by rationalization

Nkrumah rationalized his resistance discourse by providing logical arguments and truth claims to support his line of reasoning as exemplified in Extracts 9 and 10.

9. Our objective is African Union now. There is no time to waste. We must unite now or perish . I am confident that by our concerted effort and determination we shall lay here the foundations for a continental Union of African States. (Founding of the Organization of African Unity, 1963)

10. We must now press on quickly to a Union Government of Africa. Those who say that a continental government of Africa is illusory are deceiving themselves. Worse, they are deceiving their people, who see in the unity of our continent the way to a better life. They ignore the lessons of history. If the United States of America could do it, if the Soviet Union could do it, if India could do it, why not Africa? (Opening of the 2^nd Conference of African Journalists, 1963)

In Extracts 9 and 10, Nkrumah rationalizes his resistance discourse by presenting his vision of a Union Government of Africa as an antidote to colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism. He reiterates this position in other speeches via pronouncements like “As I see it, African states must unite or sell themselves out to imperialist and colonialist exploiters for a mess of pottage” (Nkrumah, 07/01/61) and “There are three alternatives open to Africa: first, to unite and save our continent; secondly, to disunite and disintegrate; or thirdly, to sell out” (Nkrumah, 06/08/60). Such enunciation culminates into his pontification “We must unite now or perish” (9), implying that if Africa did not unite to oppose colonialism and form a Union Government of Africa in the post-independence period to ward off neocolonialism, the continent will continue to be exploited by Western imperialists. Nkrumah thus attempts to proffer logical reasons to explain why his resistance discourse is necessary. As part of his rationalization strategy, he utilizes the topos of comparison and topos of history as teacher (Wodak et al., 2009) to compare Africa to the United States, the former USSR, and India so as to justify his proposed solution. Hence, the rhetorical question “If the United States of America could do it, if the Soviet Union could do it, if India could do it, why not Africa?” (10) seeks to normalize his idea and can be analyzed as a theoretical rationalization technique that describes the process of achieving an action by performing another action. This means that the existence of one situation naturalizes another situation or as van Leeuwen (2008) puts it, “I do B because of A or A gives rise to B.”

Even though the comparison Nkrumah makes between Africa, on the one hand, and the United States, former USSR, and India, on the other hand, is somewhat simplistic given the different dynamics and the unique contextual factors of the two groups, the topoi of comparison and history as teacher make this juxtaposition possible. As Wodak and Boukala (2015) explain, topoi are argumentative strategies that are used to persuade listeners of the legitimacy of claims/assertions and are typically realized by conditional or causal paraphrases. The topoi of comparison and history as teacher thus allow Nkrumah to establish a direct relationship between Africa and the United States, former USSR, and India in a manner that gives validity to his ideas and adduces a legitimate reason why his resistance discourse is reasonable. In an attempt to strengthen his line of reasoning, Nkrumah characterizes those who may not be in support of his idea as detractors via verb phrases like “deceiving themselves” (10) (making them delusional), “deceiving their people” (10) (making them traitors), and “ignoring the lessons of history” (10) (making them ignoramus). Again, these expressions constitute a membership categorization mechanism that presents anyone who questions Nkrumah’s worldview in negative terms and at the same time projects his resistance discourse in positive light. Together, the linguistic structures in Extracts 9 and 10 can be said to achieve an argumentation function aimed at rationalizing Nkrumah’s resistance discourse through the formation of a Union Government of Africa or what he often referred to as the United States of Africa.

To further build his argument against the colonizers and to rationalize his resistance discourse, Nkrumah reminds the people of Africa of the damage colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism have caused in Africa as indicated in Extracts 11 and 12.

11. [Colonial] legislation has turned many millions of Africans into helots in their own land. It will take all the tricks of expurgation and the greatest manipulation of truth ever fashioned to wipe out of the pages of history the dreadful things and monstrous wrong that have been inflicted on our people by those who came here, so they said, to bring their civilizing mission to this vast and great continent . (Nationalists’ Conference of African Freedom Fighters, 1962)

12. There is not one of us who has not, in a minor or major degree, felt the oppressive heel of colonial rule. I am not making this point merely in order to harrow you with ugly memories. Many of you have been confronted only too recently with the shocking actualities of calculated oppression to be able at this moment to push them out of mind. I raise the point so that it will stay in your minds when you may be tempted by the seductive promises of neocolonialism. (Nationalists’ Conference of African Freedom Fighters, 1962)

The appropriation of collective experiences and a shared past for sociopolitical gains like nationalism, patriotism, and enemy construction can be a way of establishing legitimacy (Nartey, 2022). This is evident in Extracts 11 and 12 where Nkrumah highlights the devastation wrought by colonialism in Africa using emotionally charged sentences like “There is not one of us who has not, in a minor or major degree, felt the oppressive heel of colonial rule” (12). His use of the verb “felt,” which relates to affection, in this sentence is significant as it denotes the actual experiencing of an unpleasant sensation and emphasizes the physical pain and mental trauma Africans have suffered as a result of colonialism. The possible impact of this verb is intensified by the metaphorical expression “oppressive heel of colonial rule,” which further stresses the African people’s maltreatment under a cruel regime. Nkrumah’s intensification of the atrocities of the colonizers reaches a crescendo when he submits that everyone in his audience is familiar with the terrible colonial experience and has been directly or indirectly impacted by it. His use of the existential clause “There is not one of us who has not . . .” (12) can thus be analyzed as a collectivization strategy (van Leeuwen, 2008) that appeals to a communal experience in order to delegitimize colonialism and legitimize any action the people of Africa will take to free themselves from colonial oppression.

Exemplification is essential to legitimation by rationalization as examples can be used by social actors to bolster their arguments and justify specific actions (Nartey and Ngula, 2025). Unsurprisingly, Nkrumah gives specific details of the collective suffering of Africans owing to colonialism using statements like “[colonial] legislation has turned many millions of Africans into helots in their own land” (11), “dreadful and monstrous wrong have been inflicted on our people by those who came here” (11), and “Many of you have been confronted only too recently with the shocking actualities of calculated oppression” (12). These examples help him to underline the exploitative, manipulative, and abusive character of the colonizers to provide a reasonable rationale for their resistance. They also allow him to draw on recollections and historical appeal (Wodak et al., 2009) to back his suppositions and conclusions on how he thinks the colonizers must be treated. It is instructive that Nkrumah asserts that the destruction caused by colonialism in Africa is ingrained in the minds of Africans and cannot be erased from history. When this supposition is analyzed in conjunction with the remark, “I am not making this point merely in order to harrow you with ugly memories [but] I raise the point so that it will stay in your minds” (12), a powerful message of resistance that exploits popular memory is created. That is, Nkrumah suggests that colonialism has left an indelible imprint on Africans and the events of colonialism are integral to the shared pool of knowledge of African society. Consequently, Africans have a legitimate reason to “[resist] colonialism and neocolonialism in all their forms and manifestations, and imprint the seal of freedom, unity, progress, peace, and prosperity on our people and on Africa” (Nkrumah 04/06/1962).

Van Leeuwen (2007) asserts that rationalization can function as legitimation with or without moral evaluation. This study finds that Nkrumah’s rationalization of his resistance discourse is often combined with moral evaluation to strengthen his stance. As can be seen in Extracts 9–12, he presents the actions of the colonizers as immoral via expressions like “dreadful things and monstrous wrong,” ‘the oppressive heel of colonial rule,’ and “the shocking actualities of calculated oppression.” This moral appraisal together with his logical arguments and truth claims provide justification for his resistance discourse by implying that colonialism and its perpetrators must be strongly resisted to safeguard the welfare of Africa. By delegitimizing the actions of the colonizers, Nkrumah suggests that Africans have the moral right to protect their interests, oppose actions that undermine their freedom, and condemn injustices they have suffered.

Conclusion

This paper has examined legitimation in resistance discourse using speeches delivered by Kwame Nkrumah, a pioneering pan-Africanist and Ghana’s independence leader. It analyzed the discursive strategies Nkrumah used to validate his resistance discourse against colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism, enabling him to condemn what he perceives to be injustice by the colonizers. The analysis revealed that Nkrumah employed three main legitimation strategies to formulate a conviction rhetoric intended to expose the iniquities of the colonizers, galvanize the people of Africa for sociopolitical action, and place a moral responsibility on them to vehemently oppose the continent’s saboteurs. They include authorization, moral evaluation, and rationalization and were realized by linguistic processes such as metaphor, topoi, membership categorization, nomination and predication, and positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. These legitimation strategies enabled Nkrumah to construct himself as a courageous, selfless leader with noble intentions who will rescue Africa from the perils of colonialism and safeguard the welfare of the continent after independence. He is thus positioned, via his resistance discourse, as one mandated by the people of Africa to champion their cause, represent their interests, and protect the continent from evil forces. Based on the findings of the study, it is apparent that resistance discourse is characterized by certain features such as delegitimizing the actions of the “enemy”; challenging oppressive structures and dominant ideologies; criticizing asymmetrical power relations and providing counter perspectives; reclaiming voice and agency for marginalized groups; asserting group identity, values, and rights in the face of discrimination or erasure; using emotive-cum-persuasive language to mobilize support and express dissent; and encouraging individuals or groups to resist passivity and take action. Such discourse is rooted in specific social, political, or cultural contexts in which power imbalances exist and hence adapts to local conditions and local audiences.

This study extends research on legitimation in a context underexplored in the literature by highlighting how legitimation strategies may be shaped by a historical event like colonialism. It contends that an analysis of Nkrumah’s resistance discourse against colonialism is significant in comprehending Africa’s history in the post-colonial period given Nkrumah’s key role in the African independence revolution in the 1950s and 1960s. While colonialism has been abolished and every African country has obtained independence, attempts to influence or exploit African countries via economic, political, cultural, or other pressures still occur. Thus, the issue of foreign control Nkrumah resisted can still be found in Africa in less explicit ways. Nkrumah’s discursive positioning is therefore relevant to Africa’s present situation and holds implications for modern-day social action in Africa as the continent continues to be impacted by neocolonialism and other forms of sociocultural domination. This article also contributes to decolonial research by throwing light on the crucial role of language and independence leaders in undoing colonial practices and ideologies. It demonstrates that the discourse and communicative practices of African leaders are a valuable interventionist resource needed to decolonize political processes, decenter hegemonic structures, and divest power. In addition, this study builds on understandings of political discourse analysis outside the traditional European and North American canon, thereby centering Global South perspectives that have received little attention in the political discourse analysis literature. Finally, by demonstrating that van Leeuwen’s categories of legitimation can be conditioned by context and text type and realized by diverse linguistic and/or analytic processes, this study further enhances our understanding of how discursive legitimation functions as a multifaceted and dynamic phenomenon and how an eclectic approach can be useful in its exploration.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank an anonymous reviewer for their perceptive comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Mark Nartey

Author biography

Mark Nartey is an Assistant Professor of Discourse Studies in the Department of English at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who investigates semiotic phenomena at the intersection of language, culture and (digitalized) society. He has published extensively in applied linguistics, discourse studies and communication/media studies. He is the author of several books, including Political Mythmaking, Nationalist Resistance and Populist Performance in Kwame Nkrumah’s Anti-colonial Discourse (Routledge), Voice, Agency and Resistance in Emancipatory Discourses (Routledge), Communicative Perspectives on COVID-19 in Ghana (Routledge) and Communication and Electoral Politics in Ghana (Palgrave Macmillan).

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