Word: nkrumah
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Thus Queen Elizabeth II agreed with Macmillan last week when he conveyed to her his Cabinet's advice that she should carry out her royal visit to Ghana, despite a spate of bombing incidents in Accra protesting the rule of Kwame Nkrumah. Fearful of the Queen's safety, Macmillan dispatched Commonwealth Relations Secretary Duncan Sandys once again to Ghana to see if the outbursts of violence warranted the cancellation of the visit. After satisfying himself that the Queen would be safe, Sandys flew back to London with the go-ahead signal...
Ghana's financial plight is the result of Nkrumah's delusions of grandeur. Determined to make Ghana black Africa's most potent nation, Nkrumah set out on a national glorification binge. In a disastrous attempt to establish Ghana Airways as a great international airline, Nkrumah ordered British Viscounts, Russian Ilyushins, U.S. Boeing jets. But Ghana had neither the money to pay for the planes nor the business to warrant them; the Boeing order has been canceled, and Nkrumah is trying to get Russia to take back some of the Ilyushins. Reason: in the last three months...
...army, Nkrumah bought arms, Jeeps and heavy equipment from both East and West, though it involved the expensive and inefficient process of duplicate stockpiling of spare parts and duplicate training of troops. As a first step toward his dream of Pan-African leadership, Nkrumah laid out $21 million in loan commitments to Mali and Guinea. Further draining the treasury were such lavish expenditures as $3,000,000 for facelifting the ancient (1661) Danish-built Christiansborg Castle, Nkrumah's new presidential palace; another $3,000,000 for Accra's Black Star Square, where Nkrumah can rant about his brand...
Kangaroo Courts. To ward off financial chaos, Nkrumah has decreed a strict austerity program. Stiff currency controls have stifled capital outflow. Subsidies to cocoa farmers were cut by a third, and crippling new purchase taxes of from 10% to 67% were levied on imported goods from clothes to automobiles. But the taxes have only succeeded in cutting off imports; from July to September, customs duties were $3,000,000 less than expected. A new compulsory savings scheme requires wage earners making more than $28 a month to give the government 5% of their pay in exchange for government bonds; corporations...
...anguished outcries over his policies, Nkrumah replied with dictatorial harshness. He ended a wave of strikes against spiraling prices and compulsory savings by clapping strike leaders in jail for daring to criticize him. Last week the tame Ghanaian Parliament-which now has only nine opposition Deputies out of 114 members-passed a bill setting up kangaroo courts, where Nkrumah-appointed judges in secret trials can deal out no-appeal death sentences for political offenses. Some 370 Nkrumah opponents are already in jail under another law by which a man can be imprisoned indefinitely without trial. Ghanaians have been urged...