by Yaa Addae

A nation is a kind of fiction, a sticky web of beliefs, hopes, and dreams of how people within a geographical region might move together. I am reminded of this on March 6th, when scores of young schoolchildren march to Independence Square, a melting pot where the future and the past flow into one another like a temporal stew - the students, full of promise and potential of what could be and Independence Day, an annual remembrance of the history that grounds this current moment, coming together to nudge our collective consciousness into a state of reflection. 

Under the smothering rays of the sun, the crowd sings:

​​God bless our homeland Ghana

And make our nation great and strong,

Bold to defend forever

The cause of Freedom and of Right;

Fill our hearts with true humility,

Make us cherish fearless honesty,

And help us to resist oppressors' rule

With all our will and might forevermore. (1)

An anthem is rarely sung alone, a spell that requires multiple participants to conjure its magic, voices strengthening one another to create a chorus that delivers the last two sentences with the power of a final blow in a fist fight. 

And help us to resist oppressors' rule

With all our will and might forevermore.

Perhaps the melody sweetens the ears and dulls the weight of the lyrics because it’s taken 28 years for the words to settle within me. Ghana, a nation designed like armour, ready for battle, to protect and keep safe not only its inhabitants but also act as a haven for the wider continent and African diaspora. To what extent this has been achieved is debatable, but regardless, the intentionality of our national anthem demonstrates the main beats in the country’s founding story.

The story (that we know of) goes like this:

J.B Danquah, politician and lawyer in Gold Coast (pre-colonial Ghana) was a founding member of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGC), alongside others including Edward Akufo-Addo, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, Ebenezer Ako Adjei, William Ofori-Atta and Kwame Nkrumah. It was at this point that Danquah suggested to Nkrumah that the independent nation be named Ghana, after the former powerful empire in what is now Mauritania and Mali. Nkrumah goes on to form his own party and become the first president of Ghana in 1957.

With a blank canvas ahead of him, he carefully crafted a country and shared identity. Like many founding African politicians, Nkrumah faced the challenge of inheriting colonial systems and ways of being. Suddenly, a collection of disparate ethnic groups who had often been played against each other and with different languages, customs, and traditional structures, now had to be unified to one functioning body. The end goal required a singular collective culture and an agreed-upon history that charted how we got here. From this soil, new myths were grown, blossoming into the story that we now know as Ghana.

Art was a primary method for this process. From the red, green and yellow of the flag and the Black star that lights the way, to the golden tawny eagles perched on the coat of arms crest, the country began to crystallize around these symbols designed by Theodosia Okoh and Amon Kotei respectively. I bring this up to say, Ghana was made and has been through many drafts. The early writings of Nkrumah’s political theory point to the foundational thinking that animated the nation’s early years and driving through the country, were presented with many physical reminders of the unfinished business from previous iterations of Ghana. In some ways, the forgotten ideas and abandoned infrastructure serve as hauntings, temporal spectres of what has been lost. In other ways, I find this to be encouraging, a demonstration of the ability to mould reality.

2019 marked The Year of Return, which the Ghana Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration describes as “a major landmark spiritual and birth-right journey inviting the Global African family, home and abroad, to mark 400 years of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia.” (2) Return, meaning to come back and suggesting there is a set place to return to instead of a series of stories, some unwritten, many authored by only a few. There’s a physical return that travel allows for and then the murkier journey that’s yet to unfold. A metaphysical reckoning with the rupture that has taken place on Ghanaian soil and that continues to reverberate in our hearts, our relationships, our structures (that are not fit-for purpose), even our waterways - as brown and exploited as the land. 

In moments of despair, I turn to 1957 and feel reassured by remembering how everything is in fact, made up. So, why don’t we make it up again?

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References

(1) God Bless Our Homeland Ghana, Phillip Gbeho and Michael Kwame Gbordozoe, 1957

(2) Year of Return 2019, Embassy of the Republic of Ghana Luanda Angola, 2019, https://luanda.mfa.gov.gh/year-of-return-ghana-2019

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About Yaa Addae

Lover, Learner and Dreamer.
Coastal girl braving the London cold.
Reimagining Ghana means remembering that the future is malleable.
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