It was a newspaper quiz that first got my mind going ... I have never been to Accra, or the Gold Coast, but a picture of a simple neo-Classical Triumphal Arch, with the date "AD 1957" and the words "Freedom and Justice", gave me an obvious answer. I recognised the black star on top ... the symbolic 'lode star' of black African liberation which Kwame Nkrumah took as the symbol that Ghana was the first British colony to become an independant nation. I'm glad it's still there: Colonel Wozname and Brigadier Thingummy did follow up on the Brit tyranny with a succession of coups designed to nuance both the Freedom and the Justice with the help of the never niggardly operatives of the CIA, yet they've never pulled down the black star.
But then I found myself wondering: A[nno] D[omini] ... isn't that a bit Christocentric? And those three English words: aren't they a little Anglocentric?
I remember the Sixties when anti-Apartheid demonstrators used to march through my parish chanting "One Man One Vote". How totally fashions do change.
So statues, plaques, go up; and then, as certainly as night follows day, statues, plaques, will have to come down. What seems depressingly permanent is the human appetite for moral posturing and the lack of even the dimmest suspicion that today's fashions may themselves ever come to be objects of stern condemnation. When did you last hear a suggestion that all new monuments now being erected ought to be so constructed that their removal will, when the moment comes, be cheap and easy?
S Teresa of Calcutta went from being a secular international saint ... almost overnight ... to being a figure of hate when the chattering classes discovered that she opposed abortion. Now, some UN committee has awarded David Attenborough a florid title ... was it 'Saviour of the Solar System'? ... or 'Champion of the Planet'? ... or 'Glorious Gauleiter of the Galumphing Galaxies'? ... I can't remember which it was. But, if the man has any significance whatsoever, his fashion will, surely, pass.
Wozzat? Transpontine readers have never heard of him? He is a Brit "Environmentalist", one of our Great and Good, with an immensely oily and condescending I-know-best style of speaking; after hearing his voice I tend to feel like a gamma-minus sewer rat into whose subterranean paradise a rabid restauranteur has just poured a load of poor-quality past-its-use-by-date cooking oil.
I don't suppose I shall live long enough to see his statues being angrily pulled down by the ethically-certain cult-followers of the next fatuous piece of neo-wokery but two.
But you can't stop me imagining it, can you?
7 comments:
Dear Reverend Fr. Hunwicke.
Thank You for another riveting and most interesting Article.
You are quite right, of course, with all of the points that you have so wisely made. Unfortunately, the poor idiots who carry out these spurious acts, mentioned in your Article, won't understand a word of what you said, given that they even read your Blog.
Respectfully, may I point out two very small points, at the great risk of being regarded by some people as RIGID ?
1. Surely, it should be “RESTAURATEUR”, and not “restauranteur” that you mentioned in the Article ?
2. Pouring “a load of poor-quality past-its-use-by-date cooking oil” down a drain into a “subterranean paradise” can only elicit the most apoplectic response from the relevant Water Company, who, for years, have PLEADED with us consumers not to do so. They have spent millions of Pounds on excavating enormous, solidified, fat-balls (caused by discarded cooking oil poured down a drain).
By being cognisant of the two points, above, you just might obviate the inundation through your Letter-Box of thousands of disgruntled, Wokeish, Letters.
that pedestal in Ghana you write about replaced the statue of Christ by Nkrumah (wrong spelling I know) when he became that country's first native president
I believe David Attenborough is a White Cis-gendered Male so he already has 3 strikes against him. So his reign may be short.
What a joy to find someone else who can’t stand the unctuous DA, a man who on balance seems to prefer animals to humans.
I thought he was the guy who got in trouble for claiming that walruses were committing suicide over losing habitat to climate change, when really they were getting chased off cliffs by pushy polar bears.
"The Star of Africa" is how the citizens sometimes still describe Ghana, an echo of the time when it was a beacon for freedom in Africa. This star appeared on the coinage. I remember crossing the bridge over the River Volta, its beautifully serene and wide surface glistening in the early morning light. A burly man in army fatigues shook my hand. I sensed power oozing out of his hand. My companion, a local Methodist minister, told me that this gentleman was the regional head of the secret police. My companion remembered that during the coup by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, this gentleman had ordered the execution of possible opponents of the coup and dumped their bodies in the streets as a warning to anyone who had ideas about resisting the coup.
The people of Ghana still respected Nkrumah, even though they may not have agreed with him. I remember travelling on streets and boulevards named after him.
If names are to be replaced in accordance with everchanging fashions, we will be like the USSR during the Stalin era and the early aftermath when cities were being renamed quite frequently when the person after whom they were named had fallen from favour.
"...Ghana was the first British colony to become an independant (sic) nation."
Au contraire mon padre. We Canucks in the Dominion of Canada claimed that prize anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi 1867, although an argument can be made that full independence (e.g., control over foreign policy) did not occur until the Statute of Westminster was proclaimed anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi 1931.
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