September 21, 2009 - Kwame Nkrumah's 100th birthday - blog roundup

Today is the 100th birthday of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. He's being honoured in Ghana with September 21 instituted as Founder's Day, a national holiday. Many people travelled to Ghana to celebrate his centenary. I wanted to take this opportunity to honour Ghana's founding father and remember him once again. I don't really have much to say about Nkrumah today, but I will talk about him later on. So I'll use this blog to recap a bunch of recent Nkrumah related blog posts.

Concerning the Founder's Day debate, I blogged about it here through one of my pseudonyms, Maximus Ojah. Read about it here. In fact, if you've heard of the Lettas to Osagyefo, I am the one who writes them. Yes. You can see the whole bunch here.

GhanaBlogging.com has an Nkrumah theme so a lot of Ghanaians have been talking about Osagyefo. My friend, Edward Tagoe has been blogging a bit about Nkrumah recently. He mentions moving Nkrumah's remains from the Mausoleum to Nkroful. It will cost the nation some money but I think it's a good idea. Moving any form of attention from Accra and opening up some other place in Ghana is always a great idea if you ask me.

Jemila of Circumspect talked about Kwame Nkrumah's vision on the Ghana Unite blog. To quote her: "I don't idolize him, but I definitely do admire and applaud him. I strongly believe that the true mark of an individual's success is in how (much) he or she is able to positively impact others. Nkrumah definitely did that. Heck, he is STILL doing it."

Mac-Jordan of AccraConscious Forever offered some quotes by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. One favourite Nkrumah soundbite is "We face neither East nor West; we face forward" but this one's great too - "We have the blessing of the wealth of our vast resources, the power of our talents and the potentialities of our people. Let us grasp now the opportunities before us and meet the challenge to our survival." There's a controversial quote in there that I will revisit later.

Nana Fredua Agyeman reviews David Rooney's book called "Kwame Nkrumah: Vision and Tragedy" on his blog. He mentions "Most of us born way after the Nkrumah era (1950 to say 1970) know little of this son of Africa who has being both deified and demonised in one breath, whilst being labelled as a "great African and not a great Ghanaian" by academicians such as Professor Ali Mazrui."

Abena of "Chardonas - Ramblings of a Procrastinator in Accra" unleashed a 'new' old photo of Dr. Nkrumah online. She also makes a pledge to find out a lot about this historic man. We must all learn about our history. Read her post here.

One Ghana, One Voice offers a 100th Anniversary Poem - A Child of Saturday by Rob Taylor. Last but not the least, Nana Yaw Asiedu offers a side to Nkrumah we may not have known: He laughed.