When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
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Kwame Nkrumah memorial, Accra, Ghana
Sculptures in the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum
[Rachel Strohm/Creative Commons]
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WHEN Ghana’s socialist president Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown on February 24 1966, while on a visit to North Vietnam, one of the many vengeful acts by the putschists was to tear down his modest statue and symbolically decapitate it.
Sculpted by Nicola Cataudella in classical Greco-Roman counterpoise, it had Nkrumah stepping forward wearing a fugu — the traditional worker’s smock — with his right hand raised in a salute while holding a traditional walking stick in his left.
Cataudella was inspired by a press photo of the moment when Nkrumah, in traditional dress, declared Ghana’s independence on March 6 1957. His modest statue was unveiled a year later at Parliament House in Accra.
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