GHANA: Living If Up

Nearly six months ago, when U.S.-educated (Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University) Kwame Nkrumah joyously proclaimed “Ghana is free,” 50,000 of his Gold Coast countrymen cheered him to the skies. Last week, pulling up to Accra’s National Assembly building in a new Rolls-Royce, flanked by jeep outriders, golden-tongued Premier Nkrumah jovially waved a handkerchief to the surrounding crowd and waited for the customary applause. What he got instead was a thunderous hooting—the beginning of two days of rioting in Accra, which brought 100 arrests.

Long before Britain set Ghana free, the proud, separatist-minded Ashanti tribesmen who make up about 20% of Ghana’s population were implacably opposed to Nkrumah and his Convention People’s Party. Instead of treading softly in the face of this opposition, Nkrumah decided to live it up as the first black ever to become a Prime Minister in the Commonwealth. He evicted Britain’s Governor General from 296-year-old Christianborg Castle, and moved in himself. He put his head on Ghana’s stamps, announced his intention of putting it on the country’s coinage, and ordered a 20-ft. statue of himself erected in the center of Accra.

When Nkrumah returned last month from the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London, he said: “Henceforth we shall see who is ruling this country.” Two weeks later, his government ordered the deportation of three men who displeased Nkrumah. One was Nkrumah’s erstwhile idolatrous biographer, Journalist Bankole Timothy, who had been taking jabs at the Premier in Accra’s British-owned Daily Graphic. Since Timothy was born in Sierra Leone, it was possible to expel him. The Minister of Information refused to specify the charges against the other two, Ashanti leaders of the Moslem Association Party, “since then they could challenge them.” When they appealed to the courts to prevent their deportation, Nkrumah rushed through Parliament (where he controls 71 of 104 seats) a special bill authorizing their immediate expulsion, even though they were citizens of Ghana. Within two hours they were aboard a plane for Nigeria.

In London, doing its best to keep a stiff upper lip over such headstrong conduct, the Commonwealth Relations Office was plainly no longer so enthusiastic over Nkrumah. Harrumphed one official: “The best way of putting it would be to say at this point we are tolerant of Dr. Nkrumah’s actions.”