"Where the Power Lies"

His own people called him "the show boy, our leader, the man of destiny," and the British saw in Kwame Nkrumah, educated at Pennsylvania's Lincoln University, the man most likely to succeed in turning his newly independent Gold Coast nation of six main tribes, three religions and 65 dialects into a smoothly running parliamentary democracy. In the 15 months since Ghana won its freedom, Prime Minister Nkrumah has brought his people stability, but in the process liberty has received a few side blows.

A somewhat vain man who suffered a $120,000 statue of himself to be erected in front of Accra's Parliament House, Nkrumah shocked his British Laborite boosters by cracking down hard on the opposition, led by scholarly Sociologist Kofi Busia of University College. He deported his critics, sent his tough-talking Minister of the Interior, Krobo Edusei, stumping about the country, threatening to "deport aliens and detain without court trial" Ghanaians who opposed the government. But of all Nkrumah's battles, none has been fought more doggedly than the one against the traditional powers of Ghana's tribal chiefs. Last week that battle seemed finally to be nearing its end.

To undermine the chiefs, whose powers the British had specifically protected in entrenched clauses in the constitution, Nkrumah embarked on an intense campaign to show them exactly "where the power lies." Those who did not support him, he said, would be made "to run and leave not only their sandals behind, but their stools and belongings as well."

Though he could not himself destool intransigent chiefs,* he decided to make an example of Paramount Chief Ofori Atta II, ruler of 500,000 tribesmen in the south. Nkrumah withdrew official recognition from him, then appointed a former British judge to investigate his administration. Last week, after the judge found that Atta II had abused his power, Nkrumah's Parliament transferred control of the chief's funds to the government.

Even the powerful Asantehene, King of the Ashanti, whose golden stool is believed to have come down from heaven, was not too big for the Prime Minister. Over the months, Nkrumah has created six new senior chiefs in Ashanti to challenge the Asantehene's rule, is now ready with a bill to set up, in accordance with the constitution, Houses of Chiefs to act as advisers to the government. When the bill becomes law, the Asantehene will lose his absolute power to make and break his own vassal chiefs. He will be merely the titular head of an advisory body more impotent than Britain's House of Lords.

As Nkrumah increased his grip, four M.P.s defected from the opposition, bringing Nkrumah's majority up to 77 v. 24. At the same time, it became known that Kofi Busia, now in ill health, intends to resign as opposition leader and go back to teaching at University College. Deprived of its most respected figure, the opposition found itself near collapse. There was no longer much doubt in Ghana as to just "where the power lies."

*Only a chief's own tribe can. He is made to appear before his assembled people in full regalia, and as he sits upon his stool, it is yanked out from under him. As he lies sprawled on the ground, a tribesman tears off one of the chief's sandals and slaps him smartly in the face with it--as token of his disgrace for life.

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