Ghana: A Fateful Moment At the Maginot Hiiton

For Kwame Nkrumah, the big day had finally arrived. After two years of cross-continental lobbying, one year of round-the-clock building, and an embarrassing two-month delay (to finish the building), the Father of Pan-Africanism was ready at last to receive the homage of Africa's other leaders. The third annual conference of the Organization of African Unity had begun.

To accommodate the chiefs of the organization's 36 member nations, Nkrumah had spent nearly $50 million on everything from lettered T shirts ("Long live the O.A.U.!") to his celebrated "Project 600," the conference-headquarters complex itself. Dominating it all was a twelve-story structure built to Nkrumah's taste—the luxurious bulletproof, bomb-resistant VIP hotel, known to local wags as "the Maginot Hilton." Marveling at the spacious conference room, Kwame's official weekly Spark was awestruck. "It is in this room that the fate of Africa is to be decided," it said. "It is here that Africa, mourning for her enslaved children still under oppression, will look for comfort."

Not quite. The conference divided on every issue it took up—including the matter of sending troops to Rhodesia. Only 19 heads of state even entered the conference room, for nearly half of Africa boycotted Kwame's "summit" entirely. The official excuse used by the leaders of French-speaking Africa, who led the boycott, was Nkrumah's failure to deport the hundreds of exiled subversives who use Accra as a headquarters for plots against them. But when, at the last minute, he desperately rounded up all the exiles he could find, they still refused to come. Their real goal all along had been to cut Kwame Nkrumah, Father of Pan-Africanism, promoter of subversion, and proud possessor of the continent's largest ego, down to his normal 5-ft. 7-in. size.