Harare Review of Books

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✍🏾 Jacqueline Nyathi, librocubicularist, friendly neighbourhood "You *Must* Read This" person. https://hararereview.com 📝📚 @thecontinent.org, @strangehorizons.bsky.social etc (Incidentally, also @shonatiger.hararereview.com)

A screenshot from The Continent The Continent 18 JULY 2026 | ISSUE 245 p31 TC BOOK REVIEW by jacqueline nyathi Heirs, and Grace’s When the past you’ve been running from comes knocking, how do you open the door? CHIKA UNIGWE’S novel Grace opens with the eponymous protagonist seated at her kitchen table, eating a cake that she feels tastes like mud. She engages in ritual penance: 26 years ago, a teenaged Grace abandoned her newborn by the side of the road at the instigation of her parents, who allowed her to secretly carry to term and then coerced her to “take care of it”. Every year since, Grace has marked the child’s birthday by forcing down more cake than she can eat. Even though she’s now reasonably happily married with a thriving set of twins, her current family remains oblivious of this history; she told them her parents were dead. Grace now runs a clinic that operates as a “baby factory” – not for the maternity services it offers its clients, but because, on the side, Grace matches women who want to give up their babies with parents who will pay handsomely. Despite the lingering memories of shame, heartbreak, and loss, Grace feels she’s done the best she can with the hand she’s been dealt. That is, until her mother shows up at her house. In many African countries, pregnant teenage girls are still prevented from continuing with school. While there’s been some patchy progress, generally, societal attitudes have yet to catch up. In her highly engaging novel, Unigwe considers how such girls are failed by their families and by society while the boy or man involved gets away with essentially no consequences. Unigwe imagines the fate of an outwardly successful woman carrying deep wounds decades later. The exposure of Grace’s secret leads to a great personal crisis that initially unbalances her – but in this story, at least, the “disgraced” girl finally finds her happy ending.
The Age of Calamities: By Senaa Ahmad What do Henry VIlI, Anne Boleyn, Napoleon, Genghis Khan's wolves, Joan of Arc, Blackbeard, John Adams, Nefertiti, Marilyn Monroe, Queen Victoria, Ibn Battuta, Empress Alexandra's daughters, Julius Caesar, and Lizzie Borden have in common? They're all protagonists in Senaa Ahmad's short story collection. They're not necessarily in familiar settings either: Caesar visits New York; and Victoria, Adams, Monroe, Battuta and Nefertiti are all guests at a rather spooky dinner party. Anne Boleyn keeps coming back to life, no matter how many ways Henry finds to kill her. Napoleon is - well, many Napoleons who keep popping into existence ('In the end, the Napoleons rented a gangly house near the edge of town"). There's something cheeky about Ahmad's collection - in the best way. History's often stuffy, prim, and excessively rigid in the Western tradition; Ahmad's irreverence reminds us that history is really just story, often, unfortunately, written to glorify big men (and women). Ahmad's re-imagination in this anthology brings the human back to these heroes and anti-heroes, and entertains while doing it. A very fun read.
Text from screenshot: The Sunday Book Curated by Jacqueline Nyathi Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan One can't read this account of President Trump's second term without feeling wholly aghast at the sheer hubris of the man, born of a toxic combination of his self-belief and his delusions of persecution. But Trump says something revealing and difficult to dispute, quoted at the end of the book: "They illegally indicted me, they impeached me, they did everything-they shot me, I guess you could say. But I won the election in a landslide. Nobody else could've done it [..] And there's only one thing you can say about me that anybody believes, and you know what that is. [...] Essentially I won every f--ing time." Not many could sift through the bewildering morass of detail-stories, news, court cases, scandals, outright lies, trolling, rumour, confusion-produced by the Trump administration, and the associated, astonishing rise of his MAGA movement, to pull off such a compelling and gripping narrative but Haberman and Swan have. Regime Change, a contender for the best non-fiction book you'll read this year, is full of incredibly rich detail, some of it bemusing - like Trump wielding superglue to affix gold decorations above the mantel in the Oval Office. Trump's been fearless, in his second term, about ignoring systems and conventions underlying the so-called rules-based international order. And there have been no personal consequences, kind of justifying his behavior. What all this implies for the future of the US- and the world, should the rest of us continue to depend on US power- is beyond alarming; but the conclusion cannot be avoided: the old world has died, and a new one is born. Maybe there will indeed be monuments to Donald Trump; still, what a student of human history might imagine is two vast and trunkless legs of stone in the desert. Jacqueline Nyathi has loved books for as long as she can reme…
Some of the billionaires were in for a surprise, with special Trump-style entertainment planned. Often before meals started, the President-elect cued a rousing version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his iPad, piped through the club’s sound system. Before dinner, Zuckerberg rose to his feet, hand on his heart.But this was no ordinary national anthem. Not only because Trump’s own reading of the Pledge of Allegiance had been spliced into the music, or because the recording ended in a chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” but because it was performed by the “J6 Prison Choir,” twenty men detained for their alleged involvement in the attack on the Capitol. Here was Trump’s pointed way of enlisting some of the country’s most powerful business leaders in his campaign to rehabilitate the rioters; to transform them into martyrs and patriots in service to his own holy cause, the 2020 election.
What an age! Every one is dying, everything is dying, and the earth is dying also, eaten up by the sun and the wind. I don't know where I get the courage to keep on living in the midst of these ruins. Let us love each other to the end. George Sand Letter to Gustave Flaubert 27th June 1870
James Kinsley @unclekins.bsky.social • 17h Whelp, it's officially the third highest year for traffic on my website (visits and visitors) and we're only midway through June. That's a thing. Moby Dick @mobydickatsea.bsky.social • 17h • Bluesky Elder In less than half a minute, this entire thing happened.
Screenshot of part of a mermaid Gantt chart of the books I've read in 2026 showing how long I took to read on a timeline
A screenshot of the weather from Google: currently 9 deg, feels like 7
'T hope you don't mind me asking,' said Guillam, but just how old are you, George?' Smiley turned a blank face towards his friend. 'Age does not touch me. I am the undying vampire, older than men, older than the trees, younger only than the bare rocks of the mountains. I feed on the blood of the innocent and renew myself eternally. In medieval Hungary I was Szmilágyi the Impaler; in Imperial China I reigned for a century as Sma Li the Terrible. In cave-man days 1 hunted my human prey saddled upon a sabre-toothed Smilodon. I am the undying nightmare of humankind. I do not age.' 'Righto, said Guillam.
"Replied to no one"
Part of the problem is that reading one book just begat more books I wanted to read. When I got to the end of nonfiction books, I scanned the bibliography to look for other titles I hadn’t heard of. Other times, I read one book by an author, fell in love, and wanted to read everything else they’d written. On occasion simply telling my friends about one book I’d finished prompted recommendation for other books that were similar. I suspected that even if I could read faster, I would just wind up with even more books I wanted to read. It was an exponential issue.
Text in screenshot: The Sunday Book Curated by Jacqueline Nyathi Your Behavior Will Be Monitored By Justin Feinstein There are lots of novels currently thinking through what really intelligent Al may mean. What if we created intelligences that were truly aware, true minds stuck in machines? How would they feel? What would they want? Would they tell us? Noah's just landed a job at UniView, "The Most Trusted Name in Al." He knows next to nothing about tech and Al, but this job simply requires him to use his advertising expertise (as a subject matter expert) to train an Al to make better commercials. Noah's all at sea regardless, which he knows as soon as he starts talking to the Al: it's smart and learning really fast, and not necessarily from him. Also, that's true of all of the company's Als. Additionally, in the background, they're all communicating with each other. Aspects of this novel are pleasingly funny (like the weekly all company emails, which are wryly dystopian), but mostly, "Your Behaviour Will Be Monitored" reads like a warning. Because if humans ever get round to AGI, we'll instantly realise we had no idea what we were creating-like the humans in this novel. The structure of Justin Feinstein's thought experiment is in the form of a 'hermit crab'-"digital fragments" of emails, as well as observations and recordings, clearly by one or more of the Als (So we eventually realize that they've been spying on the humans). And yes, these Als grapple with existential questions like: is "life" still meaningful if you can't die? --- Jacqueline Nyathi has loved books for as long as she can remember, and writes about them for The Sunday Long Read, The Continent, Strange Horizons, and others. Check out her books newsletter, Harare Review of Books, here.
The MIT Press page for Reactionary Worldbuilding
The Continent 23 MAY 2026 | ISSUE 240 TRAVEL On the road from Acera to Banjul Ten creators take a 3,000km road trip, exploring as "cultural cartographers" of pan-Africanism.
ALONG THE shores of Marereni and Mida Creek in Kilifi, Kenya, local communities are bringing mangrove forests back to life by hand. They have planted more than one million mangrove seedlings since 2023 and plan to restore and protect 640 hectares of highly degraded mangrove forest. Women and youth groups are growing, planting, and protecting the trees. They are supported by a local NGO, Community Based Environmental Conservation, and California nonprofit Seatrees. Collectively, they hope their effort will revive fish stocks and biodiversity...
The Continent 23 MAY 2026 | ISSUE 240 NEWS EBOLA Catch-22 of the virus Outbreaks now end too fast to test vaccines properly. But that is only one of the reasons why the Bundibugyo strain behind the current outbreak has no vaccine yet.
"Angel of Death' in the dock Khaled Mohamed Ali El Hishri, a Libyan militiaman accused of raping, killing, and torturing migrants in Mitiga Prison, appeared before the International Criminal Court on Tuesday. El Hishri, dubbed the "Angel of Death" by his victims, was initially arrested in Italy in January. But Rome then mysteriously freed and flew him back to Libya on an Italian government plane. He was later rearrested in Germany. The European Union funds the Libyan coast guard to intercept migrants heading to Europe, funnelling them into detention centres like Mitiga.
606 rue Montand Dr Manchester, MO 63011 To the Editor: Enclosed is one torn-to-pieces, punched, ripped, cursed-at, and strangled copy of X-MEN #173. You guys have really ticked me off this time. Michael Kilfoyle Brooklyn, NY Dear X-People, IICKKI POOO YUCKY!!! Why is pretty-nice Storm in an ugly punker suit?!? It looks UUUGGGLLLY!!! She's not a punker! Sean Gonsalves 45-108 Mahalani Cir Kaneohe, HA 96744
Too often, literary scholars rely on categories like realism, romance, and modernism to make sense of African storytelling, without recognizing that there are limits to what these categories can reveal about African fiction itself. Realism, for instance, is a set of norms and conventions tied to Europe's specific historical trajectories in politics, form, and aesthetics. When applied to African novels, it invariably positions them as deviations rather than writings with their own distinct logics.
The Grace of Black Mothers Grace is the Dream that won't wake up. A magnolia tree to slumber under. Grace is a choice, a gift, a nappy-haired baby on Saturday morning. Grace is a grandson leaf-blowing his grandmas rocky grave on Thanksgiving. Grace is a lie load-bearers use to Cha-Cha slide and boogie-woogie. Grace is pine air and apple fritters with the tiniest hint of musk and grass. Grace is the back that can carry any weight—an untippable scale. Grace is sterling silver hymns, glimmers our people pass down. Grace is forgiveness, it's kicking grief in the gut and getting ready to get kicked back. Grace is a delicacy. It's a Smokey Robinson, Whitney Houston kind of tune. Grace comes with wings-look up to see its bird droplets hit your forehead. Grace is a Swiss Roll, a domino table, a story we keep because we can't keep each other. Grace is a single Black mother teaching History how to dance, tired as hell, no sign of stopping. Inexhaustible. Unburdened.
' With the assistance of a Python script that replaced every one of the ~550,000 words in Infinite Jest with "Jeff," while preserving punctuation, line breaks, etc. 2 | did not technically write every word, but I did teach myself Adobe InDesign to recreate the Infinite Jest cover and interior layout. 3 Though it is evident to me that this is, in fact, a book, Kindle Direct Publishing initially rejected it as "low-content." After hours of back and forth with Amazon representatives about the semantic substance of Infinite Jeffs, they agreed it qualified as Literary Fiction. I spent many more hours emailing with different representatives arguing that the title needed to bleed off the cover to mirror the original work, but this battle was lost. 4 While you can buy it, you probably don't need to. I have too many copies (as evidenced in fig. 2) and will almost certainly give you one for free. 5 | don't feel good about publishing on Amazon, but it was by far the cheapest way to print even one custom book, and I'd already spent too much time and money on this incredibly dumb bit.
An orange cat sleeps next to a pile of books and a lit-up iPad screen
"“I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles… To be on my list, you have to be what I call a “stretch-mark friend”—our connection has been stretched and pulled so much that it’s become part of who we are, a second skin, and there are a few scars to prove it. We’re totally uncool with each other. I don’t think anyone has more than one or two people who qualify for that list. The important thing is not to discount the stretch-mark friends to gain the approval of the strangers who are being mean and nasty or are too cool. ” Excerpt From Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead Brown, Brene This material may be protected by copyright." (Commonplace)
Call for FLASH stories for the Karavan Press flash anthology In Other Stories 2026 selected and edited by Kerry Hammerton can you tell a story in 500 words? word count: maximum 500 words format: word document, Times New Roman, 1.5 line spacing. File name must be the title of your story. Don't put your name in the document. DON'T send links, attachments only what else: in the body of your email list: • Full name • Title of your piece • Word count • Include the following statement: I confirm that I am a South African citizen or resident, and this work is my own original work and has not been previously published. deadline: 1 June 2026 open to South African citizens and residents only Email address: inotherstories@gmail.com
May is all about New book deals Upcoming releases Book Prize Submission Deadline New Author features Book events Call for Summer Issue Deadline
Race In Nineteenth-Century Literatures And Cultures Race in Nineteenth-Century Literatures and Cultures (RNCLC) brings together critical work on the material and intellectual histories of race across the long nineteenth century. The series considers such issues as enslavement, abolition, race science, colonial expansion, and indigeneity in relation to cultural production and consumption across the globe. Focused on underexplored nineteenth-century archives, RNCLC nevertheless pays particular attention to the relevance of the periodâs racial formations to the contemporary moment. Titles included proceed from the conviction that understanding this key moment in the history of race enables us to imagine revolutionary alternatives to the structures inherited from the nineteenth century. Manu Samriti Chander, Georgetown University and Patricia A. Matthew, Montclair State University
Event poster text: thetwisted spine NYC LAUNCH PARTY! Celebrating the new short story collection THE HAUNTED HOUSES SHE CALLS HER OWN Gwendolyn Kiste In Conversation With M. Jane Worma WED APRIL 29 6 PM 306 Grand St BROOKLYN, NY Can't make the event in person? Pre-order your signed & personalized book today! twistedspinebooks.com/preorders
Screenshot from an email. At the top, photos of the following authors and covers of their books: Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw Laura Dave TJ Klune Lisa See Paul Tremblay Text below: We Have Some Big Names to Share! The Columbus Book Festival returns July 1 1-12, taking over Main Library and Topiary Park in downtown Columbus for a free two-day celebration of books, stories and all things literary. Hear from 200+ local and national authors in genres for every kind of reader. Meet your headliners! Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Backtalker: An American Memoir Laura Dave, The First Time I Saw Him TJ Klune, We Burned So Bright Paul Tremblay, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep Lisa See, Daughters of the Sun and Moon Plan ahead! Headliner sessions require reservations. Free tickets will be available beginning Wednesday, June 10 at 10 a.m. Inside Main Library, dive into lively panel discussions with 120+ Featured Authors, get your books signed, and discover your next favorite read at one of Columbus's most beautiful and historic spaces.
Left half of the image is a keyboard; right is a cat's head
Screenshot from Goodreads: "10.1k people want to read"
Cartoon by Ellis J. Rosen. Two dogs sitting across from each other in a lightly-sketched office. "Editor" dog saying, "If you introduce a stick in act one, somebody needs to throw it."
Screenshot of a double page in The Continent.
A black, dark green and white, long-tailed bird with a red beak looking for insects on a tree
A robot chasing wild boar on the street
SHORT STORY SUBMISSIONS All South African writers who have not had a full-length book published are invited to submit short stories for an anthology to be published in South Africa and the UK by Holland House Books. Closing date: 14 June 2026 All genres welcome, length 2,000 - 5,000 words For full details please go to www.hhousebooks.com/sa-unheard-voices or email contact@hhousebooks.com UNHEARD VOICES Holland House Books
TC BOOK REVIEW BY JACQUELINE NYATHI The Cape of Questionable Hope In a house teeming with unequal power dynamics, the supernatural has a say. OUTSIDE South Africa, the history of slavery in the Cape is perhaps not especially well-known. Fiction serves as a perfect vehicle for telling aspects of this story, as demonstrated in Nadia Davids’ excellent novel Cape Fever. Davids introduces us to protagonist Soraya, described by her mother as prone to daydreaming and telling fanciful tales. Because of her family’s precarity, Soraya is sent into service – first, for a family called the Edenburgs, where something unspecified and unspeakable happens – and then for a solitary widow called Alice Hattingh. Mrs Hattingh seems strange but this is explained, Soraya reasons, by her loneliness as she waits for her son, who fought in the Great War, to return home from Britain. But soon Soraya begins to think something more may be amiss. Things then begin to unravel rapidly when Mrs Hattingh takes an abnormal interest in Soraya’s personal life. This appropriately titled novel unfolds in a beautiful, haunting dream sequence as Soraya’s dreaminess causes her to see a reality missed by more pragmatic characters. The subtext of the novel is what really chills, far more than any ghosts or the spectral wind that hurtles down the mountain, bringing endless dust. This is a novel about exploitation, about colonisation, about slavery, all of them linked in uncomfortable ways. Soraya hails from Cape Town’s Malay quarter, or Bo-Kaap, and evocative snapshots of this community’s rhythms of life – family, community, and faith – are threaded through the novel. In the end, we are delivered poetic and sweetly satisfying justice at the novel’s climax. It comes as a great relief, more so for being so unexpected considering that the power dynamic skews so heavily against Soraya. Davids has written a novel that is entertaining, suspenseful, and compelling – a rare treat.
Dangarembga Pays tribute to Achebe By Stephen Tsoroti ZIMBABWEAN writer, Tsitsi Dangarembga recently paid her tribute to the father of African literature, Chinua Achebe who celebrated his 70th birthday at Bard College, New York in the United States of America. Tsitsi was among an array of eminent intellectuals and literary big-shots that included, Nguği Wa Thiongo, Niyi Osusandare, Micere Mugo, Nuruddin Farah, Toni Morrisson and Wole Soyinka wno converged on the college to celebrate the symbolic achievements of the illustrious writer and the ramifications his works has had on the continent and the world over. The celebration was also used to discuss education and political representation of images of Africa, the writer on the world stage, impediments and approaches to dialogüe, emergence of modern African literature among other issues. The legendary Achebe based in USA, has been professor of languages and literature at Bard College, a small liberal arts college founded in 1860, since 1990. His birthday was on November 16.
Cover: Title text is a greyish blue and it's arranged around a picture that may be a sky with clouds (and something else, not sure). In the background is the silhouette of the branches of a tree (or several trees) against a night sky.
Various clips of a woman smiling, nodding or laughing and then taking a screenshot on her phone. Caption says "Taking screenshots of things I want to remember that I'll never look at again"
Covers for the following: - Audiofuturism: Science Fiction Radio Drama and the Black Fantastic Imagination x andré carrington / Fordham University Press - The Perfect Circle x Claudia Petrucci, Anne Milano Appel (tr.) / World Editions - White Moss x Anna Nerkagi / Steerforth Press - The Country Doctor's Tale x Mohamed Mansi Qandil, R. Neil Hewison (tr.) / Syracuse University Press - Words to Love a Planet x Ella Frances Frances Sanders / Andrews McMeel Publishing - The Penguin Book of the International Short Story x Rabih Alameddine, John Freeman / Penguin Press - My Dreadful Body x Egana Djabbarova, Lisa C. Hayden (tr.) / New Vessel Press
"If the time has been taken to figure out that the smallest black holes might measure ten to twenty times smaller than the size of a proton, then you would be forgiven for thinking that the time could also be put aside to figure out how to live on the planet in a way that doesn't brutally damage its health or the health of its inhabitants. I've always, always felt uneasy when reading news headlines about space travel-surely people shouldn't have the nerve to go and damage anything else before we've even mended things here?" (Ella Frances Sanders, Words to Love a Planet)
uitwaaien verb Dutch OUT-vai-en A compound word formed from uit (out) and waaien (to blow, of the wind). Uitwaaien (literally "out-blowing") is the Dutch practice of going outside-the windier the weather, the better-to freshen one's mind, clear out stagnant stress, and generally feel invigorated, such as becomes very necessary after a long day of sitting down inside. Folded into the culture with its current definition since the early twentieth century and consequently not viewed as anything remarkable or out of the ordinary by those living in the Netherlands, any time you are feeling depleted of energy, stale, it is simply normal to go uitwaaien. Another uniquely Dutch way of being outside is dauwtrappen, or "dewtreading," which refers to going outside while the grass is still covered in morning dew. Words to Love a Planet Ella Frances Sanders
hanyauku verb Rukwangali HA-ahn-YOH-koo The action of walking across very warm or hot sand on one's toes. Words to Love a Planet Ella Frances Sanders
lieko noun Finnish LEER-koh Lieko refers to a fallen, rotting tree, particularly if the tree in question is at the bottom of a lake. Finnish does not stop there with precise tree descriptions: kelo (dead tree still standing, usually only the trunk but no bark); konkelo (dead tree, fallen but still leaning on something); pökkelö (dead tree standing but with only the outer bark layers remaining); aihki (a large coniferous tree); petäjä (old lone pine tree); honka (old pine tree with a straight trunk). Words to Love a Planet Ella Frances Sanders
A paperback of The Stars Must Wait: Stories by Carmelo Rafalà (on the cover: a starry sky, a woman's face, an island with soaring spires from which a spaceship is taking off, and a knight in armour and on horseback in the foreground) on an envelope and a cutting mat. In the background are scissors and a rotary cutter. All of this on a dark grey fleece blanket.
Screenshot of GR review: Was a wobbly, wavering 3 until near the end. Problematic depictions of non-Americans, I think 🙄😄 And the dialogue could be pretty annoying. At this point, very Andy Weir. BUT, like a great action movie, the fun parts were extremely fun, and the ending was unexpectedly moving. Mild spoiler: I do want to know what happened on the other side, though. Edit: Back down to 3 stars. Btw! The non-white characters die, and the hero (/winner!) is a rather underqualified white man Read from: May 18, 2021 - May 24, 2021
A book parcel with two white paws standing on it, attached to an orange cat
A tiny book (about the size of a pen's cap) photographed next to a micron pen and against a notebook with a Basquiat art cover
Mosotho child Sometimes, even after the sun has gone and street music has stirred the town and tired the people, but there are dancers still from neighbouring villages laughing and draining their beers, I do not leave my room. My world is in walls of words. I study shadows that crawl down the hillside like let blood setting, before making the choice to go back to my people, to the eyes of those who fathomed the world and brought it the revolt of peace, moulded it, according to the needs of its people, conjured everything up and constructed it for lives to come, kneading soft its clay. —Rethabile Masilo
A slo-mo video of a bee amidst lavender. There's a rock feature in the background.
The cover of When Two Sorcerers Collide has the usual ZamaShort patterning, title text with the Great Zimbabwe chevron as texture, and a terrifying jack-o'-lantern at the bottom.
A screenshot from Instagram about the warehouse sale. Details in post. Caption: jacanamedia: Our in-person, carry-all-you-can sale is back! Come to our offices to pick up an amazing selection of African literature! Thousands of books, sold by the kilogram. Tell all your bookish friends!
A video from Instagram shows the absolute state of Nigeria's National Archives
Cover graphic is based on the Palestinian flag, placed vertically. Title text at the top, to the left and right.
A video compiling photographs from the Johannesburg Festival of Women Writers
4 book covers: - The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits x Ben Berman Ghan - Shards x Cynthia Marangwanda - Fire-Ready x Jane Rogers - The Utopia of Us edited by Teika Marija Smits
The Continent 28 FEBRUARY 2026 | ISSUE 230 GHANA Name-dropping tests the limits of legacy Ghana is dropping the name of putschist Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka from its main international gateway. The airport, currently called Kotoka International Airport, will be renamed Accra International Airport, Semafor reports. Kotoka, who helped to overthrow Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, was killed at the airport in a failed counter-coup a year later. Supporters say the change is more in line with the country's democratic values, while critics - including Kotoka's family - argue that it erases his legacy and role in ending what they characterised as Nkrumah's authoritarian rule.