The Soccer War (3 page)

Aha. Where was I going to stay?

I didn’t know.

So he would show me a good hotel. Maybe not that good, but good. The property of a friend, a once-great man. He would take me there and introduce me. And in fact Nadir Khouri took me straight from the airport to the Hotel Metropol and placed me under the protection of Habib Zacca.

In those days, the 1960s, the world was very interested in Africa. Africa was a puzzle, a mystery. Nobody knew what would happen when 300 million people stood up and demanded the right to be heard. States began to be established there, and the states bought armaments, and there was speculation in foreign newspapers that Africa might set out to conquer Europe. Today it is impossible to contemplate such a prospect, but at that time, it was a concern, an anxiety. It was serious. People wanted to know
what was happening on the continent: where was it headed, what were its intentions?

The so-called exotic has never fascinated me, even though I came to spend more than a dozen years in a world that is exotic by definition. I did not write about hunting crocodiles or head-hunters, although I admit they are interesting subjects. I discovered instead a different reality, one that attracted me more than expeditions to the villages of witch doctors or wild animal reserves. A new Africa was being born—and this was not a figure of speech or a platitude from an editorial. The hour of its birth was sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant; it was always different (from our point of view) from anything we had known, and it was exactly this difference that struck me as new, as the previously undescribed, as the exotic.

I thought the best way to write about this Africa was to write about the man who was its greatest figure, a politician, a visionary, a judge and a sorcerer—Kwame Nkrumah.

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:

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.