Nkrumah: Demystify Him!

In Tanzui, a vibrant suburb of Bolgatanga, where I grew up, every grown-up had some considerable knowledge of Dr Kwame Nkrumah. They knew varied stories about him. As a child, I was completely captivated by the mystery surrounding his life as a child in Nkroful. I marvelled at how he rose from such obscurity to world prominence.

The older folk related stories about Nkrumah with all the pride and vehemence they could express through words and gestures. With rehearsed elocution, they spoke about Nkrumah’s precocious and mysterious childhood; about his extraordinary exploits as a student; about his perilous journey abroad; about how the imperialists became helpless when he confronted them; about how he won independence for Ghana…

They eulogised his intellectual, political and oratorical skills as president, his unrelenting energy and drive, his genuine commitment to Ghana and Africa’s development, his honesty and incorruptibility and his phenomenal greatness. And they spoke movingly as if they had been eyewitnesses at every point in time. Their descriptions were so apt that I was literally watching a movie as they spoke.

Sadly they had different versions of Nkrumah’s biography. Each stage of the statesman’s life had several versions. Some accounts were so crudely exaggerated that they sounded outright incredible. As it was said at the time no one was prepared to buy such stories for a pesewa because the narrators merely tried ‘to put their listeners into Guinness bottles.’ But one thing was constant: he had supernatural powers. Even so, his possession of metaphysical powers was varied. He was not a ‘normal human being.’ He was a spirit,a god.

Now I thought that if I went to school, my teachers were going to give me an authentic biography of Nkrumah. I was to be heavily disappointed. Their version differed sometimes to ridiculous proportions. But they too agreed that Nkrumah had been supernormal, perfect and godlike.

So by the time I got to SHS, I had given up every hope of ever being like Nkrumah. I couldn’t be like Nkrumah. I couldn’t get the McClean dam in Bolga to be filled with water when it dried up. I possessed no such powers. I wasn’t supernatural. And I still am not! Indeed no one could be like Nkrumah!

The problem with the narrative on Nkrumah is presenting him as a spirit being, mysterious and inimitable. From the outset children are taught to see Nkrumah as a mystery. The stories on him always border, at least, on the supernatural. But what is the essence of teaching heroism to children if the hero is a spirit.

Interestingly, no evidence has been produced as proof that Nkrumah was superhuman. Well, if Nkrumah was indeed supernatural, how come mere mortals like the rampaging soldiers overthrew him?

Nkrumah was in every sense an outstanding leader, but the claim that he was mysterious falls flat on the face. It defies basic logic. Nkrumah’s communicators may have relied on it to boost the personality cult; they so effectively built around him. But it is time we presented Nkrumah as a human being with strengths and weaknesses like the rest of us.

George Washington is not presented to American children as a spirit. According to the Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture: “Most children in the US are told a story about Washington that shows that he was an honest person…When Washington was a boy, he chopped down a cherry tree with an axe. Washington’s father saw the tree, became angry, and asked Washington what had happened. Washington then replied, ‘I cannot tell a lie, ’and admitted that he had cut the tree.”

Critical adults may question the plausibility of this story, but to the child, the morale is clear: Washington was everything human, capable of indiscretions as a child, although truthful.

We cannot properly inspire the younger generation with contradictory or ‘spiritualised’ stories about our heroes. History is very crucial to the formation of desirable values for society’s development. Therefore intellectual honesty must not be countenanced.

The tendency to ‘spiritualise’ people so as to explain our weaknesses away must be done away with. We must embrace the courage, discipline and focus of exemplary historical figures and teach our children to do likewise.

Every child is “fearfully and wonderfully made” and can therefore aspire to being like Nkrumah , to do extraordinary things.

We would get many more Nkrumahs if children are taught to see themselves in Nkrumah—that Nkrumah was human and they, too, are human.

Emmanuel Asakinaba,
University of Ghana.
Email: easakinaba@gmail.com

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