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Ghana's first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's loyal and long-standing editor and appointed literary executrix (Mrs. June Milne of the United Kingdom) passed away on 9th May 2018 at the age of 98. An Australian by birth, June was a staunch Pan-Africanist and very much committed to Nkrumah to ensure that his prolific writings (particularly after the February 24, 1966 coup d'etat in Ghana) were published. As Nkrumah grew ill in the late 1960s in Guinea-Conakry, where he lived following the overthrow of his Convention People's Party (CPP) Government in Ghana, he wrote his final will (testament) entrusting June with the publication of all his writings. She took up this task with utmost quiet and steely diligence for almost 50 years.
*I got to know June soon after she published Kwame Nkrumah: The Conakry Years: His Life and Letters (1990), which I reviewed, and we became friends. As I embarked on my doctoral research on Nkrumah in 1998 (later published by Palgrave, USA, in 2011 as The Political And Social Thought of Kwame Nkrumah), June was immensely supportive to the extent that she opened her home to me during the decade of the 2000s. I poured through some of the materials she had rescued from Guinea-Conakry and had in her private collection in her beautiful detached home in North London.
June welcomed many Pan-Africanists on several occasions to her abode. She was always generous in her hospitality as well as in gifts of books that stimulated our thinking. She was also generous in her time and attention to several of us.
June (Mrs. Milne) and her husband (Van Milne) were dedicated to publishing the works of African political and literary figures. Van Milne died on 20 December 2005 at the age of 85 and, as available records have indicated, he helped found the Heinemann African Writers Series, in which several African writers, including Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Wole Soyinka, Kofi Awoonor, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, were given an international platform.
Privately, June indicated that she wished ideally that Nkrumah's Conakry papers could be housed in Africa, but the realities of poor state funding for the preservation and proper documentation of archival material in Africa did encourage her to hand over some of the materials to the Moorland-Spingarn Center at Howard University in Washington DC, where they remain to this day. As one of America's fine historically-black colleges and universities; it is an equally appropriate place for such documents, and also considering that Nkrumah believed that: "All peoples of African descent whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any other part of the world are Africans and belong to the African nation". It is likely that Nkrumah would have approved of the choice of Howard University. Whilst the great Amilcar Cabral spoke at Nkrumah's funeral of "the cancer of betrayal" -- which referred to the coup d'état that overthrew Nkrumah -- June expressed to me personally on at least two occasions that she suspected that Nkrumah's cancer was "engineered" by neo-colonial and imperialist forces.
As Nkrumah required little sleep, his energetic mind allowed him to write over 15 books that were published by Panaf Books that was set up in 1968 by Nkrumah, and June managed the London office at 89 Fleet Street. With June's retirement from Panaf in 1987, the work continues under the management of S. S. and E. R. Kakembo.
In the pages of The Conakry Years, one gets a glimpse of the working relationship between June and Nkrumah. She was responsive not only to Nkrumah's need for "Cadbury chocolates" and other eateries, but his frequent requests for many books that shaped his thinking and writing, as well as attending meticulously to his manuscripts. Since June was an historian by training (and had received a first class honors degree in History), she was therefore well suited to be Nkrumah's literary executrix.
Whilst some of the reserved English character may have rubbed off on June over the years, as she spent her life in Britain, she always had a spark in her eye when she spoke about Nkrumah. She would often say in an eager tone of voice: "A united Africa is the only way!"
Very few are aware of the commitment of June to Panaf Books as well as her efforts to preserve Nkrumah's papers from his exile years in Conakry -- particularly, as June bitterly recalled how the coup leaders in Ghana destroyed much of Nkrumah's personal correspondence and papers in his office in Flagstaff House, Accra, Ghana. With an academic background in history, such material was precious to June, who had a deep understanding of their historical worthiness.
Perhaps, no other African Head of State has left such a prodigious work as Nkrumah. Therefore, June Milne is to be highly commended for this endeavour in continuing to publish Nkrumah's works, for his thinking remains available for historical posterity and for future generations to realize his ambition of a Union Government for Africa, in which the ordinary people of Africa will be in control of the resources of Africa.
Farewell indeed, June Milne!
* Dr. Ama Biney, who wrote most of this tribute/appreciation, is a scholar-activist and a Pan-Africanist living in London, United Kingdom.
Ghana
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(You can also read the tribute/appreciation in its original, unedited form on Fahamu).
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