AFRICA: Sunrise on the Gold Coast

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Secret Circle. Then came the call from home, where African nationalism was on the march. Nkrumah got a job as secretary general of the United Gold Coast Convention (U.G.C.C.), which was barnstorming the colony demanding Home Rule. There were riots over cocoa prices, and one February day in 1948, a band of Gold Coast veterans of World War II marched on the British governor's palace. In the street fighting that followed, police shot two Africans, wounded many more; a berserk mob looted every store in sight, and 29 people were killed.

The British moved fast to repair the damage. A Parliamentary Commission hustled out to Accra, chastised the colonial administration for denying Negroes a voice in the government. The upshot was a brand-new constitution, with popular elections.

Gold Coast leaders were stunned. Dr. James B. Danquah, the portly boss of U.G.C.C., frankly admitted that "it took India 25 years to gain what we are about to gain in less than two years." But Kwame Nkrumah was not satisfied. Boring from within (a technique he probably learned from London's Marxists), he enticed the younger members of U.G.C.C. into a secret "Circle" of his own. Danquah and the moderates had called for "self-government in our time"; Nkrumah went one better: "Self-Government NOW."

One May day in 1949, Nkrumah broke with Danquah at an open-air meeting in the village of Saltpond. It was not his own idea. His "young men" threatened to ditch him if he did not grab the leadership from Danquah's "fuddy-duddies." Nkrumah got scared. He leaped on to a table and shefuted, "My life is in danger ... If I refuse to lead them, they will kill me!" At that, a girl disciple jumped up alongside him and started singing Lead, Kindly Light. The audience joined in, and Nkrumah suddenly knew that his hour had struck. His Convention People's Party (C.P.P.) was under way.

"The Man." It was youthful and radical, full of hotheads and hooligans who christened Nkrumah "The Man" and lapped up his oratory. A typical Nkrumah harangue: "Youth of our country, wake up for redemption ... to make the Gold Coast a paradise so that when the gates are opened by Peter, we shall sit in Heaven and see our children driving their aeroplanes, commanding their own armies ..."

The new constitution is a "fraud," he cried, and demanded Positive Action ("strikes based on perfect non-violence") to prevent its being accepted. Positive Action was a flop—and Nkrumah went to jail. Police who arrested him found in his pocket an unsigned membership card of the British Communist Party.*