Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park lies on the centre of Ghana’s capital, Accra. Just lately renovated, it’s devoted to the reminiscence of Kwame Nkrumah, the chief of Ghana’s independence wrestle and its first president. Marking the spot of his last resting place on the park is an enormous statue.
The statue has been repeatedly contested since its authentic fee in 1956 and its unveiling on the first anniversary of independence in 1958. As a social anthropologist who has researched and written about Kwame Nkrumah themed monuments, I’ve explored the contradiction that usually characterises monuments: constructed as lasting recollections, they continue to be embedded in social and political battle.
Nkrumah is heralded as one of the crucial influential African political leaders of the trendy period. His imaginative and prescient of a liberated and united African continent influenced politics on the continent within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties. However that’s just one view of a person who was deposed in a coup in 1966 and died in exile in 1972.
In Ghana, there was vociferous criticism of “character cult” and “hero worship”. Alongside displays of him because the nation’s “redeemer” had been descriptions of him as a “dictator”.
The idolisation of Nkrumah started even earlier than the nation grew to become impartial. It had all of the hallmarks of a brand new nation state attempting to ascertain a charismatic nationwide “founder” to stabilise its creation. However, as I’ve proven, Nkrumah’s story exhibits each the boundaries and risks of doing this.
These debates have been matched by unfolding dramas round numerous efforts to commemorate him – earlier than and after his demise. Attitudes have shifted from easy veneration to confrontation and destruction and, lastly, to extra refined types of remembrance.
The beginning of a monument
With ideas of Ghana quickly celebrating 25 years of independence, then army ruler Ignatius Kutu Acheampong meant to publicly honour the reminiscence of Nkrumah. The deposed chief had handed away in 1972, in exile. After his overthrow, a number of of his statues and pictures had been destroyed by the army authorities. His reminiscence was taboo.
Acheampong mentioned the potential of making a mausoleum, adorned with an imposing new statue, on the grounds the place the ex-president had declared independence. The statue was commissioned in Italy however earlier than it may very well be erected the Acheampong authorities was toppled by Flight Lieutenant Jerry J. Rawlings in 1979.
As well as, the continued financial disaster militated in opposition to any large-scale funding within the monumental panorama.
The memorial challenge was lastly realised in 1992 based mostly on the design of Ghanaian architect Don Arthur. The center of the memorial is the mausoleum, surrounded by water basins, with fountains and figures of Asante elephant-horn blowers that historically accompany royal processions.
The mausoleum stands in a landscaped park that’s successively greened by commemorative bushes planted by essential worldwide guests. It’s complemented by a museum that reveals a group of Nkrumah memorabilia. These embrace the well-known smock he wore to declare independence, his desk on the seat of presidency and quite a few pictures.
The mausoleum itself, fabricated from Italian marble, evokes a huge tree stump, but additionally attracts on the imagery of Egyptian pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower. The entire ensemble celebrates Nkrumah as a type of chief. The shining giant bronze statue erected in entrance of the mausoleum exhibits Nkrumah clad in royal kente fabric, not the standard smock of the unique sculpture.
Opponents of Rawlings regarded the mausoleum challenge as an try to take advantage of the rising nostalgia for Nkrumah in his electoral marketing campaign and to fashion himself and his get together as worthy heirs of Nkrumah’s concepts. One other main motivation behind the challenge was to point out the world that Ghanaians, after a few years of neglect, revered Nkrumah as a fantastic African chief. This was truly the primary time since his overthrow that Nkrumah was publicly commemorated with such splendour. The memorial park conferred on Nkrumah an indeniable place within the nationwide narrative.
This standing, nonetheless, didn’t imply that his political legacy was now with out contest. When the anti-Nkrumah New Patriotic Get together gained the elections in 2000, they, in contrast to the 1966 coup-makers (who eliminated all photos and monuments of Nkrumah), made no makes an attempt to destroy the Nkrumah monument. Nonetheless, the brand new authorities discovered different methods to appropriate, or a minimum of complement, Nkrumah-centred nationalist narratives.
As an illustration, in the midst of making ready for the golden jubilee of Ghana’s independence in 2007, the John Kufuor administration created a collection of monuments that commemorate the political heroes of his get together, the New Patriotic Get together. Most prominently, J.B. Danquah, Nkrumah’s most famous political opponent, was honoured by a renovated sculpture at a busy site visitors roundabout within the capital.
This proliferation of historic monuments might be learn as an try and neutralise the commemoration of Nkrumah. This was accomplished not by eliminating current statues of him, however reasonably by decreasing Nkrumah’s standing to being solely considered one of a number of nationwide founders.
Sturdy recollections stay
For the plenty of Ghanaian college students and international vacationers who come to the park, the statue of a triumphant Nkrumah has develop into the dominant icon of the nationwide hero and of Ghana’s independence. It has been reproduced again and again on hundreds of personal pictures, and is marketed on postcards, posters, calendars, T-shirts, luggage, towels, tea cups and related souvenirs.
Nonetheless, there are nonetheless limits to the depoliticisation of Nkrumah’s reminiscence. Heated debates over whether or not Nkrumah was a “democrat” or a “despot” flare up periodically. Nationwide heroes, because the case of Nkrumah exhibits, can divide individuals simply as a lot as they’ll unite.
Creating the mausoleum into a gorgeous vacationer website, as occurred within the renovation and re-inauguration of the park in 2023, provides one other intriguing twist to the lengthy historical past of the commemoration of Kwame Nkrumah – one other try at depoliticising and nationalising reminiscence.
