Kwame - hero or villain?

When one is interested in Ghana you simply can not get around the guy that lead the then called "Gold Coast" to be the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to independence: Kwame Nukrumah. 

A bit of a controversial figure, if you ask me. He has been called everything from visionary to dictator that made his opponent die in jail. I tend towards visionary till 1960 and more towards dictator until the coup in 1966. 
Still, overall is was a pretty amazing person, chiefly responsible for bringing together African states into a union. A true pan-africanist, not quite as much appreciated by the West, nor his fellow countrymen and women towards the end of his reign, but now honored by a memorial in Accra. 





In all his glory above. 
In his final resting place below.


Dr. Kwame Nkrumah  (1909 til 1972 - he did not return alive after the coup in 1966, but had died in exile from which he continued to write many impressive books...)



Joyous days above. "Self Government Now" - the slogan for his Conventions Peoples Party - CPP - which Nkrumah lead to independence on the 6th of March 1957. He must have been proud as a peacock that now roam the memorial.






As this decapitated statue of Nkruma shows, the people of Ghana were not as found of him towards the end of his reign. Some say the coupe that was lead by military men in 1966 was instigated and partially funded by foreign powers, particularity the US government and actively supported by the CIA. Concrete evidence seems largely missing though.
The fertile ground for the coup, I believe, was produced by an increasingly paranoid and strict Nkrumah, who had to face death threats and assassinations attempt on Nkrumah himself starting in 1960, and other Pan-Africans on the continent, e.g. on the ultimately successful assassination on the DRC's Patrice Lumumba, that might have clouded Kwame's vision and made him deviate from his 'true socialist path' in the later years of his rule. 
Others might note the economic quagmire Nkrumah had maneuvered himself into, in particular with the holding onto the execution of Akosombo dam, which cost Ghana way more than anticipated due to the involvements of the US firm that didn't only have benevolence in mind, as even the World Bank pointed out during the negotiations. 
More on the subject also in my thesis  "aid and agriculture" :) See https://d-nb.info/116284017X/34




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