A Longing for Home

The week before, from the Ghanaian embassy in Peking, he had delivered Kwame Nkrumah's unheeded message asking the army to return to its bar racks. Now, dapper and smiling in a grey checked suit, he was in Accra as the distinguished prisoner of the army, holding a press conference. Alex Quaison-Sackey, Nkrumah's trusted Foreign Minister and former president of the U.N. General Assembly, had deserted his master and flown home "to submit myself to the new government."The Redeemer, he said, "was a lost cause. I was not going to defend lost causes."

Lost cause or no, Nkrumah was doing what he could to recover his job from the army officers who had deposed him fortnight ago. Flitting from Peking to Moscow, he put in a plaintive demand for troops to restore him in command, then, in desperation, flew off to Guinea to see his friend Sekou Toure.

He was greeted by a 21-gun salute--and the ridiculous announcement that he had become "President and Party Chairman" of Guinea. "From today and even tomorrow and the day after tomorrow," declared Sekou, "whenever there is a heads-of-state conference, he who speaks in the name of Guinea can be no other than the comrade and brother Kwame Nkrumah."

It was all a mistake, of course. The appointment, it turned out, was only "honorary," based on a forgotten 1958 agreement to join their two nations. And in Accra, the whole affair was considered quite funny.

On the Bonfire. Throughout the nation, Ghanaians spent the week in one wild celebration after another. Strangers shouted "Happy New Year" to each other. Market mammies waddled through the streets in a boisterous procession. The Trades Union Congress spent one night piling socialist literature onto a giant bonfire in front of their headquarters, turned out the next day for a delirious march through town, chanting "Nkrumah, foolish boy!"

General Joseph Arthur Ankrah, chairman of the National Liberation Committee that now ruled Ghana, got work going on a new constitution that would eventually return the nation to civilian rule. "We do not want to have a dictatorship again," he said. In the meantime, all political parties would be banned. Ankrah also announced that new stamps and coins had already been ordered to replace those bearing The Redeemer's face.

Barricade of Boxes. Two days later, the general was back on the air with even better news. "Ghana's burden of taxation is the highest in Africa," he said, announcing a wide range of tax cuts on everything from basic foods to income. To spur the private enterprise that Nkrumah had always shunned, Ankrah pledged that private companies would no longer be forced to accept government "participation."

On news from Guinea that the Ghanaian ambassador and his staff were being held under house arrest during Nkrumah's visit, Ankrah broke relations with Sekou Toure. He re-established the relations Nkrumah had broken off with Britain, which returned the compliment by recognizing his regime (as did the U.S. last week). Ankrah also closed up The Redeemer's guerrilla training camps with the curt announcement that Ghana's "days of harboring political refugees to subvert other states are over." Then he ordered 900 Russian and 200 Chinese "advisers" to leave the country.

Ghanaians cheered the decrees, hooted and booed when the buses carrying the deported Reds to the airport passed them on the street. Unable to believe his ears, U.S. Ambassador Franklin Williams drove past the Chinese embassy to see what was going on. He found the embassy barricaded with packing boxes, and a crowd of Ghanaians standing outside. When they saw the American flag on his limousine, they broke into a cheer. In Peking, the expulsion was labeled an "atrocity." Russian Ambassador Georgi Rodionov took it somewhat more philosophically. "These things happen," he said.

The Red T-Bird. Nkrumah continued to talk bravely throughout the week about returning triumphantly to Accra. No one believed him, of course, but there were plenty of reasons--apart from wanting his Redeemer's job back --to bring Kwame home. One of them was a lissome mulatto girl who, Ghanaian police last week announced, was Nkrumah's mistress. Her name was Genoveva Marais, and she had been Kwame's playmate on weekends at his country estate. To keep her happy, he had given her a job at Ghana Television and bought her a red Thunderbird convertible.

An even more compelling motive for his return was revealed by his personal financial adviser, a Ghanaian business man named E. A. Ayeh Kumi. According to Kumi, Kwame had used his nine years as President to amass a fortune of "not less than $7,000,000," and most of the money was in Ghana. Part of the earnings had come from his printing company and two daily newspapers in Accra, but Nkrumah's biggest moneymaker was the National Development Corporation, which held a virtual monopoly on Ghana's import trade and was the only automobile insurance company that Ghanaian civil servants were allowed to use. Unless he could get his hands on the money, Nkrumah might quickly starve to death. All he had with him when he flew to Peking fortnight ago was $130,000.

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