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FREEDOMWAYS       THIRD QUARTER 1966

In a letter dated February 27th, Thomas Hodgkins of Oxford answers an editorial in The Times of London. Professor Hodgkin had been Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, 1962-65. In part, he wrote:

The Ghanaian political system, as it actually functioned, was pluralistic, not totalitarian. The Convention People's party claimed to be supreme. But in practice the Armed Forces, the Civil Services, the Judiciary, the Universities, those engaged in public education, religious bodies, while subject to intermittent directives from Party and President, continued to enjoy a considerable measure of autonomy and initiative....

As every perceptive visitor to Ghana quickly recognized, political discussion, criticism and controversy remained the normal part of the Ghanaian way of life.... Ghana during the past fifteen years became a society in which rapid and exciting advances were made in education and other fields; in which there was a real effort to channel people's energies to achieve social change; and in which it was possible (as in few other countries) to have rational intercourse between people of widely differing political standpoints.

the external view of Ghana

Writing in the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune, April 23, 1966, Joseph Alsop declares:

Imperial Rome may have been a bit self-righteous when Virgil wrote that the Roman role was "to protect the weak and pull down the over-proud." But in this respect Augustan Rome did not even begin to match the Ghana of Kwame Nkrumah.

Consider this comment carefully. It is a key to much of the western attitude towards “Nkrumah's Ghana.”

Until 1957 few people outside the British colonial Office, foreign missions, gold, diamond or cocoa marketing boards knew of the existence or gave a thought to this British colony in West Africa. But beginning in ‘57, with surprising regularity the names Ghana an Kwame Nkrumah appeared in the press and were heard in conversation. Things begin to happen in that small, faraway country. And they were happenings which threatened the well padded “way of life” of the capitalist world.

The British saw the cloud first - no larger than a dark hand – but

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