From Pope Benedict XV to Pope Benedict XVI: The similarities between "Saint" Kwame Nkrumah and Saint Joan of Arc.

A GNA feature by Nathaniel Glover-Meni

Accra, Sept. 18, GNA - The imminent "canonization" of Kwame Nkrumah with a national holiday on September 21, 2009, during the reign of Pope Benedict XVI, is similar to the canonization of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) by Pope Benedict XV in 1920 in several respects.

Put differently, Kwame Nkrumah is to his homeland Ghana and Africa what Joan of Arc was to France and Europe, despite being born centuries apart and having operated in different epochs.

While Joan, a peasant girl, is considered the first apostle of European Nationalism and the most notable warrior saint in the Christian calendar, Nkrumah on the other hand, an adult educated male, is the unquestionable African nationalist hero and the conscience of its history and space. He was, and still is, the Blackman's acid test.

But both were to the world the refreshing standards of scruples, owing to their vociferous campaign in condemning man's inhumanity to man, of one society, race, and tribe to another; and for these reasons, their respective contributions to humanity will not fade However, they were destined to suffer in diverse ways before reaching the acme of their honorific statuses. And even today, it is not everyone who accepts them to the pantheon of greatness, as both have large devotees and quite a number of strident critics.

Joan was burnt for her views in 1412 and later canonized in 1920. She is celebrated as France's Patron Saint today. In addition, there is a Joan of Arc day and this holiday commemorates her memory. The second Sunday in May was chosen to become a national holiday in 1919, it is cause for pilgrimages to wherever a monument to Joan of Arc has been erected, but especially in Rouen, Orl=E9ans, Paris and Vaucouleurs. There is also a statue of Joan of Arc in Melbourne opposite the State Victorian Library which is visited each year by members of the Victorian French-Australian Association.

Nkrumah's own suffering does not flow rhythmically with Joan's sufferings. Nevertheless, it mirrors it in many respects. More specifically about Nkrumah, there is evidence that shows that he suffered in the hands of the elite, was persecuted for his political beliefs and vilified by a section of Ghana's aristocratic class, who conspired with foreign elements to overthrow him. In the hands of the colonists English Nkrumah suffered various tribulations, yet he prevailed and delivered "Baby Ghana".

Across Africa, the Black Diaspora - whether in Euramerican society or the Caribbean - and the world wide universe, he has been "rehabilitated", designated "venerable", declared "blessed" and will be finally "canonized" on September 21, 2009, not only by President John Evans Atta Mills, who has named a public holiday after him, the African Union by a fiat at its meeting in Sirte, Libya, has indirectly made him "Africa's Patron Saint".

Nkrumah triumphed and succumbed. He gained freedom for Ghana and began to purge it of colonial vestiges by ensuring that other African countries were equally liberated but will later surrender to its infernos, as a result of betrayal of the very people he sought to redeem.

For his braying critics, it was good that Nkrumah was torpedoed. Speaking about Socrates, the late Nobel laureate, Bernard Shaw, said such revolutionary leaders "often had no suspicion of the extent to which their mental superiority had roused fear and hatred against them in the hearts of men towards whom they were conscious of nothing but good will and good service".

Shaw explained: "It is not so easy for mental giants who neither hate nor intend to injure their fellows to realize that nevertheless their fellows hate mental giants and will like to destroy them, not only enviously because the juxtaposition of a superior wounds their vanity, but quite humbly and honestly because it frightens them. Fear will drive men to any extreme; and the fear inspired by a superior being is a mystery which cannot be reasoned away".

In effect Nkrumah was both feared and liked and even his beloved contemporary, the Mwalimo Julius Nyerere, who will admit that fear during a lecture he delivered to mark Ghana's 40th independence. Prof. A. B. Assensoh of the Indiana University speaking about Nkrumah's legacy delineates it as "an uneasy dichotomy". He notes: "On the one hand, he was a hero of African nationalism; on the other, he was one of Africa's first post-colonial dictators".

Professor Assensoh conceded, though, that "authoritative tone of his regime" aside, "Nkrumah's positive achievements of guiding Ghana to independence and helping other African colonies achieve the same are undeniable".

As great and a fully realized character as Nkrumah was, it was not surprising that his reign will evince some controversy. That should be expected. However, what will not be accepted is the evidential desecration of his legacy. Without a doubt, Nkrumah was more of an African than a Ghanaian. He was a powerful voice of African nationalism though his politics was also heavily influenced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

He was also influenced through his amity with Black American sociologist and writer W. E. B. DuBois, E.W. Blyden, Leopold Senghor, Sekou Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, and American actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. These associations will account for Nkrumah's undertakings in the Pan-African Congress aimed at instigating West African independence.

With his sound education in theology, philosophy, economics and sociology under his belt, Nkrumah began to pursue a self-determination policy whose essence was to undercut and render impotent colonialism, imperialism, racism, capitalism as they all came from one brook. It is this philosophy that under girded all undertakings of the Osagyefo and same will be responsible for the hate America and Western European governments had for him.

As Prof. Assensoh observed, Nkrumah built a strong central government and attempted to unify the country politically and to muster all its resources for rapid economic development. As a proponent of Pan-Africanism, he sought the liberation of the entire continent from colonial rule, and was unwavering in his assistance to other African nationalists still reeling from the colonial burden.

Nkrumah predicated this support on the notion that as long as Africans are "ruled by others we shall lay our mistakes at their door, and our sense of responsibility will remain dulled.

Freedom brings responsibilities, and our experience can be enriched only by the acceptance of these responsibilities".

Equally, he was incensed by the penchant of "alien rulers" to impose their way of life on others, proclaiming loudly and even with a justified pomposity that Africans will "prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquillity".

Thus inviting DuBois, who had challenged American society's notions about blacks in his seminal sociology lectures at Howard University to come and stay in Ghana, was part of efforts in challenging the white man's gizmo, not just in politics, but also in the arts and letters, particularly in cultural and literary studies. Among their first projects was to work on DuBois' unfinished "Encyclopaedia Africana", which was aimed at correcting distorted notions of Africa in Euramerican literatures and discourses. Professor Abiola Irele of Harvard University speaks forlornly about Nkrumah in his acclaimed "The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora".

According to Irele, Kwame Nkrumah strikingly exemplifies "celebratory traditionalism" and "nationalist convictions" of African reconstruction in the contemporary world" through the use of radical cultural liberation and development strategies to demystify European commentators' regard of blacks as inferior beings.

No wonder Marxism, or better still African socialism, remained the most vital force in Nkrumah's philosophy as well as in the philosophy of other African scholars.

Nkrumah's attack on racism can be appreciated fully if one apprises himself to Walter Rodney's "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa". Dr Rodney notes that Europeans were "racially motivated" to dominate Africa. He argued: "Imperialism . was extended capitalist system, which . embraced the whole world - one part being the exploiters and the other exploited, one part being dominated and the other acting as overlords, one part making policy and the other being dependent."

Nkrumah will have none of this. Like J.E. Casely Hayford, another Ghanaian nationalist, he was of the opinion that Africans were a developed people, having their own institutions and ideas of government before coming in contact with the European.

His loathing for racial superiority finds resonance in the projects that he engaged in which are too numerous to mention here. He predicated this notion on the assumption that "never in the history of the world has an alien ruler granted self-rule to a people on a silver platter" and as such it was incumbent on Africans to fight for their own independence.

Thus to attain self-sufficiency for African people without having to rely on others for support, Nkrumah began an ambitious socio-economic development agenda which got truncated following his demise.

Even by 1957, he had begun initiating moves to diversify the Ghanaian economy from cocoa whose total export value was an estimated 269.4 million dollars at the time. The establishment of the hydro-electric dam was a feat in that regard.

Nkrumah valued education. Statistics indicate that illiteracy was around 85 per cent at the time he took the reigns of government. However, in 1955 alone, his government spent $12.6 million while a programme to spend $21 million was announced for 1958.

There were 3,499 primary schools with 443,710 pupils; 1,029 middle schools with 117,039 pupils; 61 secondary schools with 8,908 pupils; 4 trade schools, 4 technical institutes, and 30 teacher-training schools with 5,235 students, as well as 593 students at the Kumasi College of Technology and 290 at the University College in 1956. By 1966, Nkrumah had built 6, 873 primary schools with 801,081 pupils; 1,800 middle schools with 204,888 pupils; 74 secondary schools with 35,000 enrolment; 39 teacher training colleges established in 1964 with 9,000 students.

With all these in mind, and the many more in volumes of books that have been written about him, it is a wonder that some Ghanaians still contest the propriety of instituting a national day in memory of this great son of the world.

Surprisingly, Nkrumah's posthumous adulation surpasses that of even the saintly Nelson Mandela if one takes into account the fact that he was named the BBC 'African of the Millennium.'

Mandela is angelic enough not to be defeated by a long gone leader of Ghana. Nonetheless, Nkrumah never dies, whether one loves him or otherwise. His deeds are simply imperishable.

As they say, there is no wrong without a remedy. If Ghana has realized that it has been unfair to Nkrumah's memory, then it must not tarry any longer; it must repair his damaged image, just as the European society, the French establishment and the Catholic Church made amends for Joan's death.

Besides, it should not always be the case that the world should work towards "killing" saintly leaders rather than honour them. It is pathetic to do so but once mistakes are recognized, that something went amiss, then the right thing ought to be done. It is in this connection that the Mills' Administration must be commended for "canonizing" Nkrumah. He deserves it.