The Soccer War

FROM THE STREETS OF HARLEM

In West End Square there is a human anthill.

A pyre has been erected; its flames shoot up. Who is going to be sacrificed?

Party cars with loudspeakers on their roofs have been driving around town all morning: ‘All of you on the streets,’ they broadcast, ‘or at the market, or sitting at home or in your offices: COME AND EXPRESS YOUR ANGER!’

It does not have to be said twice. Declaring your feelings is a popular duty. And the population knows its duties. The square is full. The crowd is crushed together, but patient: it is hot, but it perseveres. Its thirst is agonizing, but there is no water. The sun is dazzling, but it is normal. It burns from below (the ground) and it burns from above (the sky) and, the best thing, gripped between these excruciating pincers, is to stand still: motion wears you out. With one fire below and one above, the crowd stands waiting for a third fire.

For the flaming pyre.

I ask here and there: What’s going to happen? Nobody knows. They were told to come, and so they are here. They would not have been called out without a reason. And then, the surprised face of someone I’ve accosted: Why are you asking all these questions? Everything will be made clear. We’ll know what’s happening in due course. There’s Welbeck now: Welbeck will tell us.

Minister of State Welbeck, stately and modest in a black Muslim skull cap, picks up the microphone. Hearing him is difficult, but you can pick up the sense: ‘Imperialism is pushing … Nkrumah has been insulted … this slap in the face … we cannot …’

Ah, this is serious! Everyone strains to absorb Welbeck’s message. Everyone nods their head — waves of nodding heads — and then grows still. The Minister continues: ‘Imperialism would like … but we … and so never …’

‘To the flames!’ demand the impatient ones among the crowd, who are then hushed by their neighbours. Confusion, the commotion ebbs, stillness.

‘The American weekly Time,’ Welbeck continues, ‘has written slanders about Nkrumah. Time has presented the leader, the creator and the magician of contemporary nationalism as a petty careerist.’

So, everything has been made clear. There is this weekly magazine called Time, and the Imperialists are insulting Kwame in it.

Here is the note that Time published on 21 December, 1959:

At first his people called him ‘Show-boy.’ Then he became his government’s Prime Minister. This year he became his Queen’s Privy Councillor. His local admirers now also refer to him as First Citizen of the African Continent. But when it comes to titles, there seems to be no stopping Kwame Nkrumah, 50. Last week the Accra Evening News, one of the Premier’s more effusive admirers (it prints one or more pictures of him almost every day), announced that next March the people of Ghana would get a chance to decide two questions: 1) whether their country should be a ‘full-fledged republic’ no longer recognizing Elizabeth II as Queen of Ghana, 2) whether they approve of Nkrumah as first President for seven years. To the Evening News, there was only one man fit for the job. The man who is: Osagyefo (Great Man), Katamanto (Man Whose Word Is Irrevocable), Oyeadieyie (Man of Deeds), Kukuduruni (Man of Courage), Nufenu (Strongest of All), Osudumgya (Fire Extinguisher), Kasapreko (Man Whose Word Is Final), Kwame Nkrumah, Liberator and Founder of Ghana.

The scandal is obvious. ‘There seems to be no limit to the invention of titles.’ And why should that be a concern of the gentlemen from Time? I feel the mood of the crowd flowing into me. I push towards the rostrum. I want to hear better.

‘Such ignoble intriguing is ineffectual. The fact that we have Kwame is a blessing for Ghana, as it was a blessing for America to have Lincoln, for Russia to have Lenin, for England to have Nelson. Nkrumah is the priceless jewel in the crown of world nationalism. He is the Messiah and the organizer, the friend of suffering humanity, who has achieved his eminence by following the path of pain, service and devotion.’

Welbeck put that beautifully, and the people applaud approvingly. He let those gentlemen from Time have it. There is nothing for them here. And as I stand there in the crowd, writing, suddenly I notice that I am not feeling quite as stifled as I did moments before; that a space has opened around me; that those closest to me are moving away. I look around, and their eyes are not friendly, their gaze is cold, and a quick chill comes over me, and then I understand. I am the only white there, and I am writing in a notebook. Well, I must be a journalist. I am wearing a plaid-patterned shirt, so I am not English, because the English do not wear plaid-patterned shirts. But if I am not English, what could I be? An American. An American journalist! Good God, how can I get out of here?

‘Burn! Burn!’ chant the activists pressing towards the pyre. Violent shouts, threats, snorts, the stamping of feet. Welbeck’s calls cannot be heard, although at this moment Welbeck has given the signal: ‘Burn!’

They take handfuls of magazines and light them. The smoke billows out, because there is not a breath of air, and everyone rushes towards the fire, wanting to see.

Welbeck calls: ‘Don’t push! It’s dangerous!’

Nobody hears. Whoever has a piece of paper in his hand throws it on to the fire.

The pyre burns.

A fanfare sounds.

Charred shreds of pages float up into the air. People blow and the scraps of paper flutter in mid-air; they laugh as bits of paper settle upon their heads. They are joking, calm, in a good humour again. Children are dancing around the fire. Look: they’ll be able to bake bananas in it.

Welbeck has disappeared into a black limousine. His car flits through the lanes of Accra and out on to spacious Independence Avenue. The Minister is being driven to Flag Staff House.

To Nkrumah.

The Premier listens to Welbeck’s report of the rally. The Premier will laugh, because here laughter is the response to everything that turns out well. The rally was a test. They passed: the people revere their Kwame.

Kwame — he is family, a brother. That is how they talk about him. A woman shows me her baby.

‘What’s his name?’ I ask.

Kwame Nkrumah. She is wearing a dress with a print of the Premier’s countenance. Kwame on her chest, Kwame on her back.

Nkrumah jokes: ‘I would really like to know how many Kwame Nkrumahs there are in our country. I am afraid that I shall be remembered as a very prolific father.’

He himself married only recently. He likes to stress that throughout his life he has avoided women, money and compulsory religious obligations: ‘I believe that these three concerns should play a very small role in a man’s life, since as soon as one of them becomes dominant, a man becomes a slave and his character is broken. I fear that if I consented to a woman’s playing a serious role in my life, I would gradually begin to lose sight of the goal that I am trying to reach.’

Kwame establishes his goal when only a boy: the liberation of Ghana. In order to achieve it, he first has to make something of himself: that is his first task. In Ghana, a colony, a black man has no chance at a career. Kwame decides to study in the USA. His father — a goldsmith in a small town — has no money for his son’s education. But Kwame has already finished teachers’ college and is an instructor at the Catholic mission school in Elmina. He teaches for five years, saving, going hungry, hoarding every penny. He lives in terrible conditions, but he is scraping together the money for a ticket.

In 1935, at the age of twenty-six he travels to the United States. He is accepted at Lincoln University. How does he feel in that country?

‘I travelled by bus from Philadelphia to Washington. The bus stopped in Baltimore, for the passengers to refresh themselves. I was dying of thirst, so I walked into the station buffet and asked the white American waiter for a glass of water. He frowned and looked at me out of the corner of his eye: “You can drink there.” And he pointed to the spittoon.’

He studies, works, becomes politically active, makes money: ‘If I was not busy twenty-four hours a day, I was wasting time.’

So: there is the night-shift at the Sun Company, in the Chester shipyards. ‘Regardless of the weather, I worked from midnight until eight in the morning. Sometimes the frost was so severe that my hands froze to the steel. I studied during the day.’

So: he works in a soap factory. ‘In the factory yard stood a mountain of discarded, rotting guts and pieces of animal fat. Armed with a pitchfork, I had to load that stinking merchandise on to a wheelbarrow. It was hard to keep from vomiting.’

So: he goes to New York during the vacation. ‘In Harlem a friend and I would buy fish wholesale and spend the rest of the day trying to sell them on the street-corner.’

So: he is a steward on the S.S. Shawnee, on the New York — Vera Cruz line. ‘The boss told me that I would be scouring pots until the end of the cruise. Later I advanced to washing dishes.’

He has nowhere to live.

In Philadelphia he is chased out of the train station by the police — he and a friend had been looking for shelter there — and spends the night in a park. ‘We found a bench and lay down, thinking that we would spend the rest of the night there until fate turned against us. We had just fallen asleep, when it started to rain.’

He studies, attends meetings, works at self-improvement: ‘I became a thirty-second degree mason and remained one throughout my stay in the United States.’

He is politically involved: ‘I began organizing the African Students’ Association of America and Canada. I wrote a brochure, Towards Colonial Freedom.’

He becomes interested in scientific socialism, in the works of Marx and Lenin at the same time he is studying theology as well: ‘I devoted free time to giving sermons in the Negro churches. I was invited to this or that church almost every Sunday to preach.’

When he leaves the USA in 1945, he has three years as a philosophy instructor at Lincoln University under his belt (Greek and Negro History). ‘I was named the most distinguished professor of the year.’

He travels to London: ‘One pleasure was buying a copy of the Daily Worker, the one newspaper I really wanted to read, carrying it in the most ostentatious way, and watching how many pairs of eyes quickly fixed on me.’

To heat the headquarters of the Union of West African Students, of which he is vice-president, he collects lumps of coal as he walks the streets.

At the same time, he is writing a doctoral dissertation in philosophy — on logical positivism.

He formulates his famous doctrine of the peaceful boycott, a doctrine of African socialism, based on tactics of constructive action without resort to force.

Kwame returns to Ghana.

It is 1947.

There might be five people here who know him personally. Perhaps a dozen. Not more. But it is this small group of people who head the newly established United Convention of the Gold Coast, a liberation movement but a movement that is very broadly based, highly undefined and without a programme. The members of the group pass as a collection of thinkers. They need somebody to do the dirty work. They bring in Nkrumah to do it.

This work is everything he has. ‘In those days all my possessions fit into a small suitcase.’

A year later, he takes part in peaceful demonstrations and marches towards the governor-general’s residence, towards Christianborg palace. Second World War veterans join in with a petition demanding autonomy for the Gold Coast. The police fire a few shots, and two are killed. Today, beautiful flowers grow on this spot. They show me this place a hundred times: two people died here for the freedom of Ghana. I stand there and lower my head.

Kofi Baako, a government minister, asks: ‘Did anyone die for the freedom of Poland?’

Riots, arson and looting begin in Accra. The leadership of the United Convention of The Gold Coast lands in jail. Nkrumah is transported to the north, to the savannah. ‘I was placed in a small hut there and kept under police supervision day and night.’

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!’

The sorcerers stop in exhaustion and draw out two bottles of schnapps, a spirit exported from Holland that tastes of moonshine spiked with perfume. Now, however, the schnapps is an enchanted drink, transformed into a holy beverage, and the wizards offer some to Nkrumah. The Premier stands and drinks from a small glass held by a wizard, to renewed applause from the people. Now the rest of the drink, following spells and secret gestures supposed to propitiate the bad god of the sea, is poured on to the heads of those standing closest, as Polish boys douse girls on Easter Monday.

Nkrumah’s speech begins. (The following day, the text of the address appeared in the Evening News under the title ‘A NEW BIBLE FOR AFRICA’.) Nkrumah stands before the microphone, looking around the square, and says: ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!’

It is 8 January, and so the people burst out laughing. Nkrumah pulls a serious face, and the crowd falls silent in an instant. The people wait, staring at him. Now Nkrumah laughs, and everyone laughs with him. He becomes serious, and the faces of everyone there become serious immediately. He smiles and the crowd is grinning. He begins in Fanti, saying that it is a long time since their last meeting, but he can see that they are all looking well.

‘That’s thanks to you, Kwame!’ answer voices.

He looks over his shoulder, a signal for Adamafio, the Secretary General of the party, to approach, dragging a high lectern. On the lectern are the pages of his speech. It is in English. The Premier addresses his audience: ‘Comrades and gentlemen!’ Nkrumah speaks in a clear, measured way. His gestures are spare but expressive. Even the English say they take pleasure in watching him speak. He is of average height, but handsome and well-built, with an intelligent face and a high forehead and a sad look in his eyes. Even when Nkrumah laughs, he still looks sad.

He recalls his two maxims: first achieve the political kingdom and then you will conquer all the rest; the independence of Ghana is only an empty phrase until it is accompanied by the complete liberation of the African continent.

Kwame said that one battle for Ghana has been won: the country is free. Now the second battle is underway, for ‘economic construction and liberation.’ This battle is much more difficult and complicated. It demands greater effort, sacrifice and discipline.

He then attacks his own supporters sharply, striking out at party bureaucracy, at careerists and dignitaries.

‘I must firmly warn those who, appointed by the party to responsible and influential positions, grow forgetful and believe they are more important than the party itself. I must warn those who join the party thinking that they can exploit it to their own advantage, praising themselves at the cost of the party and the nation.’

Whew! Do they like that! The square bestows a great ovation on the speaker. The square shouts: ‘Anko, Kwame! Anko, anko!’

‘More, Kwame, again, oh, again!’

Amid the cheers, calls and chants a boy in a shirt displaying both the party and national colours (red, white and green) jumps up in front of the tribune and does vertiginous back-flips. Three back-flips in one direction, turn, and three in the other. Nkrumah stops speaking and looks at this feat with some curiosity. Three back-flips and then three somersaults. He is a good acrobat, believe me. He finally grows tired and disappears into the crowd amid its cheering.

Now, Nkrumah moves on to his favourite subject: Africa.

During the speech, Secretary General Adamafio stands near Nkrumah. Adamafio removes the pages that have been read, perusing the ones the Premier is in the middle of delivering. When Nkrumah sees a passage that will merit applause, he raises his hand in a gesture that means: Watch! Here it comes! And as he finishes the last sentence and Adamafio’s hand whips the page away, the crowd goes wild. When the response is convincingly enthusiastic, Adamafio rubs his hands together and winks to those near him.

Nkrumah attacks the colonialists: ‘Their policy is to create African states that are frail and weak, even if independent. The enemies of African freedom believe that in this way they can use our states like marionettes to continue their imperialist control of Africa.’

The crowd is outraged. People shout: ‘Down with them! Down with them. Lead us, Kwame!’

The speech lasts three quarters of an hour. The crowd stands listening and reacting to every word. When Nkrumah finishes with the cry ‘Long live the unity and independence of Africa!’ a jazz orchestra in a corner of the square erupts in resonant boogie-woogie. Those closest to the orchestra begin dancing. The boogie-woogie carries across the square, setting people’s hips rocking reflexively. But then the orchestra plays more softly: Joe-Fio Myers, the trade union general secretary, has begun reading a declaration of loyalty and support that the working people have delivered into the hands of Kwame Nkrumah.

We pushed towards the exit. On the street, far from the square, we met Kodzo. Kodzo is a post-office worker and boxing fan. He is my friend.

‘Why didn’t you go?’ I ask. ‘It was interesting.’

‘What did Kwame say about wages?’

‘He didn’t say anything,’ I admit.

‘You see? Why should I have gone?’