Father of the Nation: Ghanaian Nationalism, Internationalism and the Political Iconography of Kwame Nkrumah, 1957 – 2010

Introduction When seeking to position newly-independent Ghana as a non-aligned African nation-state in the midst of the Cold War, Kwame Nkrumah would frequently use the populist refrain, "we face neither East nor West: We face forward" at political rallies and in public speeches, such as that delivered at the Positive Action Conference for Peace and Security in Africa, held in Accra on 2 April 1960. (1) Ghana, however, like other newly independent nation states in Africa, and indeed other countries in the Third World with strong nationalist leaders, could not escape the political, cultural, military, and economic ramifications of the ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union in the post-World War II era. This article analyzes the complementary, yet competing demands of nationalism or nation-building, Pan-Africanism, and internationalism during Kwame Nkrumah's nine years in office as Prime Minister and later President of Ghana from March 1957 to February 1966. It also considers how post-Nkrumah administrations have reconstructed and reconsidered his projects and legacy, beginning with the military coup that ousted him from power in 1966, until the yearlong commemoration of his birth centenary in 2009-2010. At first glance, it might appear that the history and legacy of the Nkrumah era within and beyond Ghana's borders have already been exhaustively covered in the literature; that would not be an incorrect statement. Previous scholars of Ghana's national and international history and politics under Nkrumah have relied on traditional written sources of information such as those found at the national archives of Britain and Ghana, among other countries, in addition to the myriad of books, academic articles, and writings published in the popular press, as well as first-hand and biographical accounts of the Nkrumah state. (2) Methodologically, this article takes a different approach to analyzing and evaluating the history and political legacy of Nkrumah by utilizing visual sources that have either been understudied or outright neglected by other scholars. The article's arguments are validated by archival material and secondary sources related to these visual documents. In previous publications, I argued that Nkrumah's expressions of his nationalist, Pan-Africanist, and internationalist projects, ideologies, and strategies encompassed the propagandistic use of political iconography and idioms, which I have termed "symbols of nationhood," "symbols of nationalism," or "symbolic nationalism." (3) This is defined as the political and propagandists use of symbols including money, postage stamps, monuments, museums, dress, non-verbal maxims (such as the Adinkra symbols used in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire), the national anthem, emblems, and both national and party flags to articulate a particular political philosophy. Yet these symbols of Ghanaian nationhood also had trans-national implications, as they were embellished with iconography emphasizing the politics of the Cold War, the promotion of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the creation of a United States of Africa (Pan-Africanism), and support for international organizations such as the United Nations. An increasing number of scholars from a variety of disciplines have argued for the use of visual, semiotic sources in academic works as legitimate and useful forms of historical evidence. (4) While the majority of these visual sources were produced during the Nkrumah era, many were issued immediately after he was ousted by the National Liberation Council (NLC), while others were developed by the Limann (People's National Party--PNP), Rawlings (Provisional National Defence Council--NDC, and the National Democratic Congress--NDC), Kufuor (New Patriotic Party--NPP), and Mills (National Democratic Congress) administrations. Nonetheless, very few scholars have examined these rich and revealing visual archives, including those of the Ghana Post Company Limited (GPC), which houses primary archival documents and images relating to the issuance of national postage stamps dating to as early as 1955. …