GHANA: Happy Birthday

In his new many-balconied mansion perched on a lofty hill 22 miles from steaming Accra, Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah woke last week to watch all Ghana celebrate his 49th birthday. There were thanksgiving church services in honor of National Founders Day, parades, garden parties, gala balls, free medical treatment for expectant mothers for a one-week period. The Accra Evening News published a special issue featuring a large front-page photograph captioned: “Our Indomitable Prime Minister and the founder of the new nation of Ghana, Osagyefo [Defender], Oyeadieyie [Does All Well], Kantamanto [Never Failing], Tufuhene Okyeade [Ever-Giving Leader]’ Kukudrufo [Brave] Kwame Nkrumah!” Presents poured in: sheep and food from Ghanaian farmers, a Piper Cub plane from Israel’s Prime Minister Ben-Gurion.

Leopard Tails & Stools. On his birthday Prime Minister Nkrumah could look contentedly at a nation in which political opposition has very nearly been driven from sight. In Parliament his Convention People’s Party can muster 80 votes against the United Party’s 24. Opposition leaders are discovering that the quickest route to jail is to accuse the government of malpractice. The one remaining threat to Nkrumah’s power comes from the tribal chieftains, whose emblems of authority are stools and whose leopard-tailed warriors held off the British for 50 years.

One damp evening last week, 200 policemen roared into the village of Kibi, surrounded the 52-room palace of

Nana Ofori Atta II, the paramount chief of Akim Abuakwa. The second most powerful tribal leader in Ghana, Ofori Atta had been declared de-stooled by some of his restive subchiefs. Like many a chieftain before him, he had fallen back on his feudal prerogative and refused to budge. But Nkrumah seized the occasion, moved quickly to back up the subchiefs’ decision. The technical charge was that Ofori Atta had refused to leave his palace.

Alone, except for four of his six wives, plump, 59-year-old Ofori Atta awaited the police clad in a long, grey war robe studded with talisman patches of leather. He chewed kola nut (a mild stimulant) as a sign of crisis. Hustled out to a police van, Ofori Atta was driven off through ranks of wailing women, but no spear-brandishing warriors appeared in his defense.

Tasseled Umbrella. Nkrumah has moved more cautiously, but just as effectively, against the nation’s No. 1 chieftain, Otumfuo Sir Osei Agyeman Prempeh II, the Asantehene or King of the Ashanti. His rich cocoa-growing and gold-mining territory furnishes the bulk of Ghana’s revenue, and in the days before independence his well-stuffed treasury financed the political opposition to Nkrumah. But the Asantehene has lost the support of his young men, who prefer modern politicking to ancient tribal loyalties, and is increasingly worried by governmental investigations into the management of land and property under his control. Desperately seeking to save his skin and his stool, the Asantehene has been making overtures of friendship to Nkrumah. He issued a declaration transferring his allegiance from the political opposition to Nkrumah’s CPP. Early this year, when Nkrumah made his first visit as Prime Minister of Ghana to Kumasi, the Ashanti capital, the Asantehene turned up at the airport under his tasseled umbrella, warmly embraced the Prime Minister.

With Ghana pacified, Nkrumah is turning his messianic vision to the lands beyond his borders that are on the brink of freedom. He will have a made-to-order audience for his ambitious designs this December when some 500 delegates to the All-African Peoples Conference meet in Accra. Ghana’s example, many CPP zealots believe, will point the way to the African future, even if Kwame Nkrumah himself should pass away. After all, argued one of them, “when Christ died, did Christianity die off?”