Word: nkrumah
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...people called him "the show boy, our leader, the man of destiny," and the British saw in Kwame Nkrumah, educated at Pennsylvania's Lincoln University, the man most likely to succeed in turning his newly independent Gold Coast nation of six main tribes, three religions and 65 dialects into a smoothly running parliamentary democracy. In the 15 months since Ghana won its freedom, Prime Minister Nkrumah has brought his people stability, but in the process liberty has received a few side blows...
...somewhat vain man who suffered a $120,000 statue of himself to be erected in front of Accra's Parliament House, Nkrumah shocked his British Laborite boosters by cracking down hard on the opposition, led by scholarly Sociologist Kofi Busia of University College. He deported his critics, sent his tough-talking Minister of the Interior, Krobo Edusei, stumping about the country, threatening to "deport aliens and detain without court trial" Ghanaians who opposed the government. But of all Nkrumah's battles, none has been fought more doggedly than the one against the traditional powers of Ghana...
...undermine the chiefs, whose powers the British had specifically protected in entrenched clauses in the constitution, Nkrumah embarked on an intense campaign to show them exactly "where the power lies." Those who did not support him, he said, would be made "to run and leave not only their sandals behind, but their stools and belongings as well...
Though he could not himself destool intransigent chiefs,* he decided to make an example of Paramount Chief Ofori Atta II, ruler of 500,000 tribesmen in the south. Nkrumah withdrew official recognition from him, then appointed a former British judge to investigate his administration. Last week, after the judge found that Atta II had abused his power, Nkrumah's Parliament transferred control of the chief's funds to the government...
...invaluable in nationalist politics. The first day, Bwana Tom (as his idolatrous followers call him) arrived ostentatiously wearing a Ghana toga of kente cloth. Wherever he went, his followers trailed him crying the Ghana chant: "FreeDOM! Free-DOM!" His new People's Convention Party, modeled after Nkrumah's party, organized an effective boycott of buses, beer and tobacco, staged such wild demonstrations that the police had to call on Mboya himself to stop them...