JASON THATCHn
registered
voters had supported the Constitutional amendments-although
the no boxes had been guarded by police and in any case most people
stayed home-the C.P.P. organized two days of demonstrations at the
U.S. Embassy.
It
was an orderly, well-disciplined affair. There was some–
one to grab the camera from the little man the Embassy always sends out
to take pictures. There was the white man who was walking toward the
Embassy when a demonstrator came up and shook a hostile sign in his
face. "Oh, no, look, please, I've just arrived in the country. I haven't
done anything," the American said. The Ghanaian put down his sign,
stuck out his hand, and said: "Welcome to our country. How do you
like this Ghana here?" It may have been accidental that someone started
lowering the American flag; at least
if
it was intentional he didn't know
very well how to go about it. The next day the Afro-American Foreign
Service officer who had raised the flag back into place was attacked
anonymously in
The Ghanaian Times
by another Afro-American who
accused
him
of being an Uncle Tom for working for the U.S. Govern–
ment. But, as they say, anything can happen in Ghana. What we
remember now is the big sign which said: "You Killed Kennedy But You
Can't Kill Kwame! " That sign probably expresses one of Dr. Nkrumah's
strongest feelings.
Six expatriate lecturers at the University of Ghana, four of them
Americans, were shortly thereafter deported for "subversion." Although
I have reservations about the justice of deporting at least one of the
Americans, it had been known for some time that the French West
Indian who was ousted had worked with the French in Algeria; among
expatriates he was believed to be an agent of the Deuxieme Bureau.
And certainly one of the Americans had long been rumored to be CIA.
Whatever the reasons for the deportations, the Government had spent
several months on their investigations and hadn't bothered even to warn
any of the openly anti-Nkrumah expatriates at the University.
I myself had been outside Accra since Pete Seeger's concerts at
the Ghana Drama Studio the first week in January. From all one could
gather from Radio Ghana and the newspapers, a wave of terror was
beginning, all Americans would be deported within a month, and Ghana
was about to become a Soviet Socialist Republic. I wasn't even sure if the
usually well-informed foreigners in Accra knew anything else, or were
still there.
Independence Day, March 6, was a Friday, and on Thursday I took
a Benz-bus into the capital. When we reached the roadblock on the
outskirts of town a policeman picked up the pineapple that was on the
seat next to the driver and asked: "Is this a bomb?" I kept my white
face solemn as the driver, all the policemen, and all the other passengers
