Word: nkrumah
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...Reversals." Washington Sinologists also note an increasingly defensive tone in official Red Chinese publications. One reason: from Algeria, where Ben Bella was deposed in June, to Ghana, where Nkrumah was ousted last month, China's sphere of international influence has seriously diminished. As Peking's fond hopes of impending victory in Viet Nam have gone glimmering, China's principal party organ, People's Daily (Jen Min Jih Pao) has had to inject more and more caution about the "upheavals" and "reversals" facing the Communists. "Like a seagull flying in a rainstorm," the paper exhorted last week...
...Ghana used to be known as the Gold Coast, and independence, in 1957, came with a silver lining. With cocoa exports thriving and the beginnings of a modern industrial plant, the country had $560 million in foreign currency reserves, boasted one of Africa's highest per capita incomes. Nkrumah squandered it on such expensive status symbols as an international jet airline, which loses almost twice as much money as it earns, and a $20 million international conference site which includes a bulletproof, bombproof, twelve-story apartment hotel that Accra wags call "the Maginot Hilton." To promote his image abroad...
...spent wildly and badly on crash industrial schemes. Since 1962, he has launched 47 state enterprises that have invaded almost every sector of the economy. All but three of them are deep in the red, and the Kwame Nkrumah Steel Works had to close down after three months because it had used up all of Ghana's scrap iron, its only source of raw material. Government payrolls swelled to an amazing 250,000 people -two-thirds of all salaried workers in Ghana-and corruption was rampant. The wife of one of Nkrumah's Ministers imported a gold-plated...
...million Volta River Project will eventually turn Ghana into West Africa's major producer of electric power and irrigate 6,000 sq. mi. of new farmland. But not for many years will there be customers for all the juice it will generate. All in all, Nkrumah's reckless spending has brought Ghana as close to bankruptcy as any nation can get. Foreign currency reserves were wiped out long ago, and the nation's foreign debt now totals a staggering $1 billion, most of it in short-term loans...
...home, too, he was running into trouble. Shortages of such basic items as soap and matches were felt in every home, and most Ghanaians deeply resented his government's blatant corruption. At least five attempts have been made to assassinate him. Nkrumah's answer was to crack down even further, increase his security guard-and to retreat behind the four walls of his palace. He reportedly took to wearing a bullet-proof vest, nervously kept five bullet-proof Rolls-Royces ready to carry him around Accra, waiting until the last minute to choose the one he would ride...