Nkrumah
January 29, 2006
A Family Dinner
I went to Gideon’s house for dinner tonight with Bailey. He introduced us to his mother, Rita, and his brother Calvin. We sat down and had amazing chicken, yam fries (real yams, not sweet potatoes called yams), rice, salad and Ghanaian tomato sauce. Gideon works with me at CENSUDI on the Education Improvement Project and is the first person I go to when I have questions about culture. How does a funeral work? What are the belief systems around this, why do people say that?
He’s an extremely bright guy, and always has a well-though out answer. We sat, after dinner, and discussed American foreign policy, African and international literature (Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare), and the revolutionary philosophy of Kwame Nkrumah (and in fact the pan-African movement). He and his brother have obviously both read extensively, and both write: journals, poetry, plays. When Bailey asked if Ghana needed a visionary leader or someone capable of restructuring the system the brothers answered differently. Calvin thinks Ghana needs a visionary, someone who can put them on a new path that will reshape the nature of their developmental direction, while Gideon sees a visionary as someone malleable to the whims of a party, and argued that restructuring the system will really be the only way to allow for positive change. When I asked them if there could be another Nkrumah they both said no. Too far ahead of his time, too willing to sacrifice for the good of his people and uncompromising in his politics, they said, how can Ghana produce another Kwame Nkrumah when the education system downplays the importance of his philosophies, his attitude towards politics and culture. How, indeed, can the world produce revolutionaries in a climate that breeds conformity? And yet it does, as the very conformity enforced upon breeds dissent. And so it is. So it goes.
February 4, 2006
I had another Nkrumah conversation last night. Actually, it was more of a lecture. I was out with the girls and my flatmates Gborzor (pronounced, roughly, Gozo, emphasis on the second syllabel) and Samuel. After the girls left I started probing Gborzor on Ghanaian politics; Kufuor (the current president) and his stance on issues. The conversation quickly turned towards the iconic Nkrumah (I probed that way, curious to see if Gideon’s ideas hold true across a wider range of people).
Nkrumah was a visionary. Not a flawless one, but a visionary nonetheless, said Gborzor. This is not what Ghanaians have been taught, though. Gborzor grew up, in the seventies and eighties, learning that Nkrumah was a bad leader. That he squandered wealth. And in many circles this holds true.
But he had a vision; one that I can’t speak to fully, but can hopefully paraphrase. Nkrumah, as Ghanaians are so good at doing, played host. To the leaders of anti-colonial Africa, to the desire for change, to the notion of pan-Africanism. I don’t pretend to know the philosophies, or problems, associated with pan-Africanism. All I know is that Gborzor said Nkrumah saw the future of Ghana intrinsically linked with the future of Africa. So he invested in the future of Africa. Sometimes poorly, sometimes well.
But for his own country, he built three universities (when the nation was no more than seven million people); one for teachers, one to cover everything else and one for science and technology. The latter two are still the most reputable universities in the country; the former, unfortunately only hosts teachers, who lack the respect due to them, as they do in most parts of the world.
He built a dam and a nuclear reactor (environmentally problematic, yes, but an investment in the future of Ghana from where he was standing in the 1950s) and started down the road that led to the coup against him. Nkrumah’s problem was that he was anti-US. Funnily enough, this seems to have been a problem for many countries historically, and Ghana was no exception. There was an effort to take his life (failed, killing a schoolgirl) that led him institute a pre-emptive arrests act here in Ghana. He was, as a visionary morphed into a dictator. And he was overthrown (in a CIA sponsored coup by Kotoka, who the airport in Accra is now named after) and Ghana continued down the path of dictatorship.
And it was this shift that makes me wonder some things. Gideon confided in me the other day that he doesn’t believe democracy will change Ghana. Only benevolent dictatorship by someone like Nkrumah. But he also said, at one time, there can be no one like Nkrumah. And, I asked him when he told me this, would Nkrumah’s philosophies have been compromised because of his power? Were, perhaps, they already being compromised?
What, indeed, is the role of a leader? To spark revolution, and lay foundations for the future? To spark revolution and stand back? Or is leadership necessarily corrupt? Are the ideas of leadership and corruption necessarily conflated? I think not, but I am having a harder and harder time coming up with justification for this argument, other than obscure Taoist philosophy.
Economically, the situation that Nkrumah inherited with the country is one of its best. And then it nosedived. But it’s making a comeback now. Accra is on the way up. Kumasi is a hip town. The south is making huge progress, and the north will eventually follow. Everyone’s just wondering if there’s a leader fit for the challenge. I’m wondering if there’s a need for one.