More passion pleaseFLAGS coloured with the red, black and green of Ghana’s ruling party flutter feebly in the still, hot air that barely stirs above Independence Avenue as it bends down towards the sea. There it ends abruptly before the sweeping curves of grey Italian marble meant to resemble, depending on whom one asks, the stump of a tree or the buried hilt of a sword. Beneath it lies the body of Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s first president and, for many millions of people, a man synonymous with Africa’s liberation from colonialism. Ghana, in 1957, was the first African country to win its independence.
Yet here, at the birthplace of democracy in Africa, are portents of its fragility. On what was once the whites-only polo ground where Nkrumah declared the new state, his headless statue stands as a reminder of how a once-promising flame guttered. After declaring a one-party state and mismanaging the economy, Nkrumah was overthrown in a violent coup in 1966. It took more than a quarter of a century before the restoration of multiparty democracy in 1992 ushered in the start of what many now call Africa’s second...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2f88vrz
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