They release him, and when he starts back to work he sees that he has nothing in common with the leaders.
They want to make deals with the English in government offices.
He also wants to make a deal with the English, but, when he is doing so, he states, there must be an angry crowd outside the window.
Those Oxford men want to travel the road of legality. But Kwame has read Lenin. Lenin guides him on to the streets: Look, he says, there is power.
Power? Kwame wonders.
Crowded streets, the shouts of hawkers, children sleeping in the shade of the doorways. On the corners stand gangs of teenagers looking for a fight. The Muslims lie dazed by the sun. Sinewy labourers moaning under the burden of their sacks.
‘Here is power!’ insists the Russian. When the white man speaks, you do not want to have to believe in his words. But Kwame is alone. The leaders have turned away from him. They want to send him back to England.
Kwame appeals to the street. To the market-women, the teenagers, the labourers. To peasants and bureaucrats. To youth, above all to youth. That is decisive.
The English waver.
Kwame calls for a general boycott.
The country’s economy seizes up.
The arrests, the repression, the truncheons return. Kwame goes to jail. Crowds gather in front of the prison, singing hymns and protest songs. One is titled ‘Kwame Nkrumah’s Body is Rotting in Prison’, and it remains vivid in my memory.
English concessions: they permit general elections (the first in Africa). Ghana votes in February 1951. Nkrumah’s party carries a dizzying victory winning thirty-four of the thirty-eight seats in parliament.
A foolish situation: the party wins the elections, while its leader’s body is rotting in prison. The English have to release him. On the shoulders of the crowd, Kwame is borne out of his prison cell and into the Premier’s chair. Along the way the crowd stops at the West End Square: ‘Here we performed a traditional purification rite. A sheep was killed as an offering, and I had to step barefoot into the blood of the sacrifice seven times, which was to purge me of the defilement caused by my stay in prison.’
The doors of his home never close. People come for advice or for help. They bring greetings. More than once he has talked to a visitor standing outside the door as he had a bath. ‘I slept four hours on average. They give me no peace, they permit me no rest. Because I am a robot that is wound up in the morning and requires neither sleep nor feeding.’
When the premier goes to the country he sleeps in a hut. Sometimes he talks in the street until late at night and stays in some chance lodging instead of returning home. This way he wins over everyone he meets. And thus he spends his time.
Six years later, on 6 March 1957, Ghana gains its independence. It is the first liberated country in black Africa.
The crowd stands in West End Square. The crowd stands in the sun, under the white African sky. The crowd stands and waits for Nkrumah, a black, patient crowd, a sweating crowd. This square, this brown frying pan in the centre of Accra, is full to its edges. Late-comers are trying to squeeze in and it will not take much more before the fence bordering the square begins to splinter, toppling the children perched atop the slats like bananas. It is hot.
Such a rally could be held nearer the sea. There is a breeze there and the palms offer shade. But what good are a breeze and shade if the historical resonance is lost? And history teaches us that, in 1950, Kwame Nkrumah called a rally exactly here, in the West End Square. The people also came and stood then, and that heat stood above the ground; it was January, the torrid month, the month of drought. Then, Kwame Nkrumah spoke about freedom. Ghana must be independent, and independence is something that has to be fought for. But there are three roads. The road of revolution. This, the speaker rejected. The road of closed-door pacts. This, too, the speaker rejected. And then there is the fight for freedom by peaceful means. The battle-cry of that struggle was proclaimed then, right here in West End Square.
Now it is the anniversary of that day, almost a holiday; the Premier makes a speech and says what every leader all over the world loves to say: ‘Our road was the right one.’
Twelve tall poles have been positioned round the square. On each one hang eight portraits of Nkrumah, ninety-six in all. Nylon ropes run between the poles, and from the ropes are draped nylon banners: on the banners the Heineken beer logo. It looks like a great ship. The ship will never sail. It is grounded on the sand-bar of the city, and the people are waiting for what comes next.
Ministers and leaders of the governing party appear, filing on to the tribune. They are dressed for the occasion in mufti. The crowd comes alive and applause can be heard. If someone in the crowd is an acquaintance or cousin of a minister, he bellows a greeting: ‘Hello, Kofi!’ (to the Minister of Education). ‘Hello, Tawiah!’ (to Tawiah Adamafio, the party Secretary General).
They reply with a gesture and settle into deep armchairs. A clergyman steps up to the microphone. I recognize him: Reverend Nimako, the head of the Methodist Church in Accra. The pastor brings his hands together and closes his eyes. The old loud-speakers hung around the square cut out and die, but the sense of his thanksgiving-beseeching prayer is clear. The pastor thanks God for having blessed the people of Ghana. For having kept Kwame Nkrumah in His care. For having listened to the requests that have ascended to heaven from this corner of the earth. And then he asks that God not falter in His benevolence and that the future of this country be, through the will of the Highest, shining and unmarred.
‘Amen,’ murmurs the crowd, and kids set off two small bombs in the streets.
The pastor yields the microphone to K. A. Gbedemah, the Minister of Finance. He says that we have to wait because the leader has not yet arrived, and so he will review the history of Ghana’s struggle for independence. In the middle of his story, it is reported that Nkrumah is on his way. The crowd rocks back and forth, people crane their necks, and children climb on to the shoulders of their elders. Tawiah Adamafio raises himself from his armchair on the tribune and calls out: ‘Comrades, when our beloved leader appears, I want all of you to greet him by waving your handkerchiefs high over your heads. Ooo, like this’—he demonstrates, and the crowd rehearses twice.
Kwame Nkrumah stands on the tribune.
He is wearing grey mufti, as he is portrayed in the monument by the parliament building. He holds a magic wand, a stretched monkey skin that, according to belief, drives away all evil and unclean forces from its bearer.
The square explodes with noise. The handkerchiefs flap and people chant: ‘Jah-hia! Jah-hia!’ which means they are enraptured. Babies, until that moment asleep in bundles on their mothers’ backs, stir uneasily, but their cries cannot be heard in that din.
Nkrumah is followed on to the tribune, now packed with sitting children, by six policemen in motorcycle helmets. Two of them stand at the corners of the platform, and four stand in a row behind the Premier’s chair. They remain still, feet astride and arms behind their backs, until the meeting ends.
Nkrumah sits down in an armchair behind a small table covered with the national flag, and the square suddenly falls silent. The oppressive heat continues; even cheering is enervating. Somebody intones one of the party songs, but before the others pick it up, a pair of sorcerers comes into view. One of them is Nai Wolomo, chief wizard of the Ga region, where Accra lies. I do not recognize the other. They begin a ritual dance. Executing charmed spirals, they bow low to Nkrumah. They cannot bend towards the Premier without thrusting-out their backsides, which amuses the people who cheer and cry again: ‘Jah-hia! Jah-hia!’