From “Redeemer” to Redeemed?

Abstract

As stated in previous chapters, Kwame Nkrumah was removed from power in a military and police coup staged by the National Liberation Council on February 24, 1966. In the almost five decades since the coup, his historical legacy has gone through a process of rejection, reevaluation, reconstruction, and redemption within and outside of Ghana. Since the late 1970s in particular, successive administrations have sought to symbolically capitalize on the increasing nostalgia with which Ghanaians and other Africans view Nkrumah and the other cohorts of first-generation African independence leaders, after the dust had settled on that period in the continent’s history. This reassessment of Ghana’s self-professed Founding Father has continued worldwide up to the present era, reaching its zenith during Ghana’s Golden Jubilee of Independence in 2007, as well as during the yearlong commemoration of his birth centenary in 2009–2010. An analysis of the expressions of symbolic nationalism and Pan-Africanism in Ghana and Africa in the past several decades will demonstrate the extent to which Nkrumah has been largely absolved by the longue durée of history.