The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Eid Mubarak, a few days late. Tuesday was Eid al-Fitr, the conclusion of the month of Ramadan, which means that many of my friends on campus (Yes, I do have many friends) can now partake in food and water during daylight hours. President Kuofor declared Eid al-Fitr a national holiday just a few years ago.
Speaking of the President, I just learned that he was an active member of the Rotary Club of Accra, my very own host club. Continuing the free association, I just joined two other Ambassadorial Scholars in giving brief presentations on our backgrounds and respective cultures to the club. I exchanged the flag of the Downtown Greenville Club with the President of the Accra club.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading since I arrived. I just completed Ayi Kewi Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Armah (b. Takoradi, Ghana 1939) penned this scathing critique of political corruption in post-independence Ghana just eleven years after the country attained independence. The novel’s setting straddles the end of the Nkrumah regime and the first military government, so circa 1966. Images of pollution and filth permeate the work. It is a book about life after the death of hope, of a dream rotting on the vine. I highly recommend it.

I was startled to come across such a direct indictment of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party. Dr. Nkrumah is afforded a great deal of respect throughout Africa. In a BBC poll a few years ago, Africans rated him as the continent’s Man of the Millenium. He is often referred to with his honorary title, Osagyefo, “the victorious one.” The new African Studies building, my academic home, at the University of Ghana is called the Kwame Nkrumah Complex. An informal survey of my classmates generated an acknowledgement that ministerial corruption was a black mark on the CPP reign, including one minister who notoriously purchased a golden bed. However, they were quick to stress Dr. Nkrumah’s unparalleled contributions to the nation’s infrastructure. They told me that he was also something of a progressive in terms of gender. He established a quota system that resulted in the election of a number of female MPs, and he secured places for the training of several female fighter pilots. Nkrumah’s role in the struggle for independence and his commitment to forging Ghanaian and Pan-African identities secure him a prominent place in the history of the continent.

The political science literature, at least until recently, has not been so kind to Dr. Nkrumah. It tends to stress the flaws in the CPP’s state-directed development policies and points to a creeping authoritarianism in the administration’s attitude toward political opposition. At least one of the works that I read, however, referred to something of a revisionist movement of late that sought to rehabilitate the former leader’s image.

Regardless, my impression is that the legacy of Nkrumah and the tumultuous years that followed his ouster is a complicated one. That’s about as deep as my assessment goes for the moment.