In August of 1947 the leaders of the Gold Coast met at Saltpond and inaugurated an organization called the United Gold Coast Convention, the declared aim of which was self-government. To carry on the work of the organization, a full-time secretary was sought and Nkrumah, then in London, was recommended for the post.
Arriving in December of 1947, Nkrumah defined the political character of the organization as being “the people’s nationalist movement,” and at once a deep conflict of interests arose. The wealthy Africans in the organization, lawyers and doctors educated in England, did not regard their efforts as representing the aims of the “people.” They wanted to rule in their name; Nkrumah wanted the widest strata of the people to become involved….
Nkrumah set about at once broadening the basis of the organization and his drive coincided with the efforts of Nii Bonnie II, a subchief of the Ga states who had launched a nationwide boycott of imported goods in an attempt to force foreign firms to reduce prices. The boycott terminated in a meeting at which members of the government and foreign merchants pledged to Nii Bonnie II to reduce prices.
But, on the morning of the 28th of February, 1948, when the people went into the stores, they did not find a reduction of prices and spontaneous demonstrations broke out against a score of European firms. In the afternoon of the same day a delegation of ex-servicemen marched on the Governor’s castle in Christianborg to present grievances and a clash developed between the ex-servicemen and the police, the latter charging that the demonstrators had deviated from the agreed-upon line of march. When ordered to disperse, the demonstrators refused and the police opened fire and killed three veterans of British campaigns in India and Burma…. The news spread and an infuriated populace began a looting of foreign firms; arson and street fighting ensued and, during the following days, violence gripped the southern half of the country. Twenty-nine people were killed and about two hundred and thirty-seven were injured.
These disturbances prompted the leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention to send cables to London petitioning the British to create a commission of inquiry to study the underlying causes of the disorders; they also demanded an interim government. A few days later the leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention, Kwame Nkrumah, J. B. Danquah, Ako Adjei, Akufo Addo, Obetsebi Lamptey, and William Orfori Atta were arrested and banished to the Northern Territories; they were incarcerated separately for fear they would meet and plot.
The Governor declared a state of emergency and a curfew was imposed. Suspicion rose in the minds of the British that the local soldiers and police were not loyal and they imported troops from Nigeria.
The Colonial Secretary in London appointed a commission to investigate the causes of the violence and to recommend constructive measures. The Watson Commission—so named because of its chairman, Aiken Watson—took testimony in April of 1948 and the six arrested leaders were released so that they could give evidence. In June of that year the commission issued a report which declared the old constitution outmoded, urged a new constitution embodying the aspirations of the people, and endorsed a ministerial type of government patterned on those obtaining in the dominions.
But, when the Governor appointed a constitutional committee of forty Africans under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Coussey, apprehension set in. The committee was composed entirely of upper-class chiefs and lawyers and the younger elements of the population were completely ignored.
When the committee began work on the 20th of January, trade-unionists, students, “mammy” traders of the streets, and the nationalist elements launched a protest against their representatives being excluded. Nkrumah hastily formed a youth committee and sent young men touring the nation to raise three demands: (1) universal adult suffrage; (2) a fully elected legislature with a fully representative cabinet; and (3) collective ministerial responsibility.
The traditional leadership of the United Gold Coast Convention now felt that Nkrumah was deviating from the organization’s policies and an inevitable class split developed. Nkrumah was determined that the people should know what the real issues were and, accordingly, on September 1, 1948, he founded the Accra Evening News. The split widened as Nkrumah’s journal vehemently demanded a democratic constitution. Attempts to bridge the differences between the right-wing old generation and the left-wing new generation served but to sharpen the conflict. Failing to achieve a satisfactory agreement with the leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention on points which he felt too vital for compromise, Nkrumah publicly announced his resignation.
The Convention People’s Party took actual shape from that point on and Nkrumah announced his intention of staging positive action based on nonviolence if the people’s demand for a democratic constitution was not granted.
The British Government now actively entered the campaign against Nkrumah, filing a series of libel suits. On September 15, 1949, Nkrumah was charged with contempt of court and fined three hundred pounds. This sum was quickly raised by the voluntary exertions of the street “mammies.” This incident, more than any single thing else, convinced the leaders of the new Convention People’s Party that they had the solid support of the masses of the common people, and they intensified their protests.
Upon the release of the Coussey Committee’s report, Nkrumah summoned a monster mass meeting composed of trade-union leaders, farmers’ organizations, and other political parties to study the report and to decide to what extent it was acceptable. This meeting took place on November 28, 1949, and the crowd was estimated at over 80,000….
This mass meeting declared immediate self-government as its aim; it objected to the three ex officio members representing British vested interests being included in the cabinet; it protested against the suffrage age limit being set at twenty-five years; it demanded a legislature composed of fully elected members instead of, as the report recommended, some being nominated and others being elected.
The organizers of the Convention People’s Party now took to the field and urged the people to prepare for countrywide civil disobedience and nonco-operation if the British refused these demands.
This campaign brought about a conference, on January 5, 1949, between British government officials and the leaders of the Convention People’s Party. At this conference the British informed the nationalist leaders that they were studying the proposals and asked that positive action should not be evoked. When, however, the next day, the British announced on the radio that an “agreement” had been reached, Nkrumah felt that the British were merely playing for time and he announced that positive action would begin.
On the morning of January 8, not a train ran; no one went to work; busses and transportation trucks stood still. The nationalist leaders agreed to the functioning of essential services: water, electricity, health, medical care, etc. For twenty-one days, despite threats of dismissal of workers from jobs, numerous warnings and curfews, and the full evocation of the emergency powers of the Governor, positive action continued. When it became evident that such action could continue almost indefinitely, the British ordered the arrest of the leaders of the Convention People’s Party. Nkrumah and about twenty others were seized, charged with sedition, and refused bail…. The trial, which lasted two months, ended with all of the leaders being convicted and sentenced to prison terms varying from three months to four years.
Yet, in 1950, during the imprisonment of the leaders of positive action, elections for town councils took place in Accra, Cape Coast, and Kumasi and the condemned party won majorities in all three cities. It began to look as if the real leaders of the nation were in prison.
In April, 1950, Gbedemah, one of the leaders of the Convention People’s Party, came out of prison and became acting chairman of the party and took charge of organizing for the coming general elections, presenting candidates in all of the thirty-eight constituencies. And from the imprisoned leaders came smuggled-out directives as to how the campaign should be conducted! It was in prison that the greeting of “Freedom” and the salute of th
e elbow-resting-on-the-hip-and-the-palm-fronting-outward was conceived of…. Nkrumah himself, in his cell, wrote the party’s song which the marching Africans sang: “There Shall be Victory for Us.”
On February 8, the Convention People’s Party swept the nation, winning thirty-five out of thirty-eight seats. The people of the Gold Coast had elected as leaders of the new government men who were lodged in prison cells and the British had a new headache on their hands.
A few days later the imprisoned nationalists were told to get dressed in civilian clothes, an order that aroused their suspicion, for they thought that the British did not want the populace to see their newly elected leaders being transferred to another prison…. But it was freedom, an act of “grace,” as the British quaintly called it.
Convoking the national executive committee of the Convention People’s Party, Nkrumah made it plain that the party would enter the new government as a representative of the will of the nation. “We are going into the government to show the world that the African can rule himself. We want the chance to fight for the political, social, and economic improvement of the country from both within and without the government.” He warned the people that self-government had not been achieved and he described the constitution under which he would be acting as “bogus and fraudulent.”
Nkrumah had won the election, but his thirty-five seats represented a minority, for nineteen representatives had been named by the Territorial Council, and there were seventeen chiefs or representatives of chiefs, and there were also three ex officio British members representing special interests, such as mines, commerce, etc.
Appointed Leader of Government Business by the Governor, Nkrumah was then elected to the same post by the Assembly in a vote that carried seventy-eight out of eighty-four voices. His ministerial colleagues, five in number, were also elected by the Assembly. Three other cabinet posts were filled from three other territorial councils: one from Ashanti; one from the Northern Territories; and one from the Colony.
Eight months later, in October, 1951, the Convention People’s Party, through the Legislative Assembly, smashed the old system of Indirect Rule (Native Authority) which had given the chiefs statutory powers to maintain order, collect taxes, and dispense justice, etc. In place of Indirect Rule there was erected a system of District, Urban, and Local Councils elected on the basis of universal suffrage…. With this one stroke religion was swept out of government and the will of the people took its place.
“This, in short, is how the first determined bid of Africans to rule themselves turned out,” Mr. Baako told me. “We know that we’re not through, that victory has not been won. This is only the first step….”
“Suppose the British do not grant full self-government? What then?” I asked Mr. Baako.
“Our program has the full support of the masses,” he told me. “And the British know it. They have co-operated so far. If they do not continue, we shall declare ourselves a republic.”
After Mr. Baako had gone I marveled how, in one historic leap, the Gold Coast African had thrown off his chains. Though the conditions of his life were harsh, ridden with fetish and superstition, he would eventually be free, for he was determined and tough….
Twelve
Next morning I resumed my trudging through the winding mazes of James Town’s slums. And this time, as each time I sauntered out, I saw something that had escaped my notice before. The streets, doorways, and the little compounds were jammed with able-bodied men lounging the hours away. How was it possible that so many men were idle when ships, filled with manufactured goods from Britain, were docking every hour? Having spied these loafing men, my eyes traveled farther and I saw that men were cooking most of the meals in all the European homes and hotels, that men did all the washing, scrubbing, dusting, sweeping, kindling of fires, and making of beds…. These black men did everything except the wet-nursing of European babies. It seemed that it was beneath the dignity of a tribal African woman to work in a European home, and only a declassed woman would do so. Maybe this was the manner in which the African male saved his honor, kept his women out of reach of the Europeans?
As I entered the offices of the United States Information Service to look over the recent newspapers from America, I was stopped by a young lad.
“Dr. Wright, may I speak to you, sar?”
“Certainly. What is it? But I’m no doctor, son.”
“I want a camera like that, sar,” he said, touching the instrument I held under my arm.
“Well, they are rather expensive, you know.”
“But I’ve an idea, sar,” he said. “You see, sar, if you gave me a camera like that, I’d take pictures with it here and I’d send you the pictures in Paris and you could sell them, sar.”
I blinked, trying to grasp what he was saying.
“I don’t understand.”
“You see, sar, when you sell my pictures, I wouldn’t want you to send me any money until you had sold enough to get your own money back twice….”
It was obvious that he had no intention whatsoever of trying to defraud me; he simply did not quite grasp the reality involved in his scheme.
“That’s very kind of you,” I told him. “But don’t you know that they sell these cameras right here in Accra? Have you any money?”
“I could get the money, sar,” he told me. “But they wouldn’t sell me a camera like that, sar.”
I finally understood what he meant. He was trying to tell me that he believed that the British would, say, take out some valuable part of the camera before they sold it to him, an African. He was convinced that every move of the British contained some hidden trick to take advantage of him. (Many Africans, I was told, ordered their goods directly from the United Kingdom and paid duty on them, believing that the goods would be of better quality than those sold by foreign merchants in local stores. And an African boy, wanting a bicycle, has been known to beg a Britisher to buy it for him, feeling that the foreign storekeeper would cheat him, but wouldn’t dare cheat the Britisher…. A sodden and pathetic distrust was lodged deep in the African heart.)
“Look, I’d like to help you, but, honestly, I don’t know how….”
He seemed to be about twenty-one years of age….
“But I’d pay you back; I’d send the pictures to you; I swear, sar,” he begged me.
I sighed. I was angry, but I didn’t know with whom. I tried to avoid his pleading eyes. I was not angry with him.
“I’d suggest that you go to a school of photography,” I advised him.
He looked crestfallen. He did not accept it. But he nodded and allowed me to pass. I sat down to read, but my mind was trying to fathom how these young boys saw and felt reality. The boy had seemed to feel that he had a claim upon me that I could not accept. I was for him, but not in the direct way he seemed to feel that I ought to be. Did he think that I was naïve enough to make him, a stranger whose merits I did not know, a present of an expensive camera? Obviously, he did. But why? I had never in my life dared ask anybody for a gift so exorbitant.
That evening I discussed this boy’s demand with an African who had been educated in the United States.
“That boy thinks that you are his brother—You are of African descent, you see,” he told me.
“But you don’t give expensive cameras to boys even if they are of your color,” I protested.
“You don’t understand. The boy was trying to establish a sort of kinship with you. In the Gold Coast, a boy can go and live with his uncle, demand to be fed, clothed, and the uncle cannot refuse him. The uncle has a sacred obligation to comply. Tribal life has bred a curious kind of dependence in the African. Hence, an uncle, if he has four or five nephews, can never accumulate anything. His relatives live on him and there is nothing that he can do about it.”
“But what right has the nephew to make such claims?”
“The uncle’s sister’s blood flows in the nephew’s veins…. Look, if an African makes £100,000, do you think he can keep
it? No. His family moves in and stays with him until that money is gone. You see, the family here is more of an economic unit than in the West…. Let’s say that an African family has gotten hold of a few thousand pounds. They’ll hold a family meeting and decide to send Kojo, say, to London to study medicine. Now, they are not giving that money to Kojo; they are investing it in him and when he masters his medical subjects, returns home, and starts practicing, the family stops working and goes and lives with Kojo for the rest of their lives. That’s their way of collecting their dividends, a kind of intimate coupon clipping, you might say….
“African society is tightly, tightly organized…. No one is outside of the bounds and claims of the clan. You may never get rich, but you’ll never starve, not as long as someone who is akin to you has something to eat. It’s Communism, but without any of the ideas of Marx or Lenin. It has a sacred origin—”
“What sacred origin?” I asked.
“It all starts with the sun…. Say, you must read Dr. Danquah’s book; it’s called The Akan Doctrine of God.”
I jotted down the title of the book, but realized that curiosity in Africa led one not to any immediate satisfaction, but only toward ever-winding avenues of searching….
Next afternoon Mrs. Hannah Cudjoe, the propaganda secretary of the Women’s Division of the Convention People’s Party, called upon me at the suggestion of the Prime Minister. She was a pleasant, soft-spoken woman, diffident in manner, slow-moving, coy-eyed, short, heavy, black, with a shrewd, placid face. She spoke English with a slight tribal accent. We sat in a shady spot on the hotel veranda and I ordered two bottles of beer. She seemed ill at ease, kept her knees tightly pressed together, and seemed not to know what to do with her hands. Despite her self-consciousness, I felt that in certain circumstances she would know how to throw herself forward, for there slumbered beneath her evasive eyes a restlessness, a superfluity of hard energy. I questioned her about her work and she laughed, fell silent for several moments and sat in an attitude of deep repose, reflecting, staring off.
Black Power Page 12
