Ghana will move a statue of Mahatma Gandhi from its main university because of his “alleged past racist comments”, the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement, while paying tribute to Gandhi’s role as a civil rights leader.
The statue was put up in the university as a symbol of friendship between Ghana and India.
After the erection of the statue, a group of lecturers and students began a campaign for the removal of the statue from the institution. They argue that Gandhi made comments that were racist about Africans and that statues on the Accra campus should be of African heroes.
The ministry on Thursday said it was concerned over the safety of the statue, and that’s why it would be moved elsewhere.
“The government would therefore want to relocate the statue from the University of Ghana to ensure its safety and to avoid the controversy … being a distraction (from) our strong ties of friendship,” it said.
India’s struggle against British colonialism under Gandhi was an inspiration to a generation of African independence leaders, including Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, who in 1957 managed to persuade British authorities to grant Ghana independence — one of the first African nations to get it.
