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FREEDOMWAYS    THIRD QUARTER 1966

outraged by the spectacle of Ministers, Ambassadors and other persons occupying high posts turning on the government they had sworn to uphold and denouncing the one who, for nearly twenty years, has led Ghana on its upward March towards worthy and dignified statehood. It is, however, necessary to remember the numbers of the bourgeois elite who had made their way into these posts of trust, who profited by the perquisites and thoroughly enjoyed the prestige. In this crisis where did their loyalties lie? How best could they assure themselves a continued life of ease? By full cooperation with the masters, of course. 

There is another explanation for the much publicized “statements.” Mr Geoffrey Bing, Q.C., former British Member of Parliament, who was one of president Nkrumah’s legal advisers, was among those arrested.Obviously, they could not long hold him, but before he was deported, handcuffed and out under heavy guard like a dangerous criminal, he suffered apprehensions, threats and torture. It is not difficult, therefore, to imagine the frightful measures employed to force prisoners wholly in their power into making public “confessions” and “denunciations”. Even so, these “statements” come from only a handful of individuals while there were thousands of people arrested from whom nothing has been heard.

I have heard many champions come out of the West to support the new regime. Hardly had the bodies been removed from the streets and the blood blown away in the dust before Conor Cruise O’Brien was back at the University of Ghana congratulating the reactionaries on their victory for “academic freedom” and explaining to the students what that “freedom” meant to them.

Painfully I recall an evening early in ‘62 when president Nkrumah came to see my husband. He was brimming over with a new idea. 

“You know, doctor, how badly we need an administrator for the University. At last, I believe the right man may be available: Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien.” He leaned forward eagerly. “Here is a man who has worked hard and sincerely in Africa. Now he’s getting mightily little thanks for it. Following his exposures on the Congo he is finding himself without a job, discredited on every hand, his promising career shot to pieces. I’d like to prove to the world that a man cannot be destroyed because he faithfully sponsors African freedom; I want him to know that Africa can offer him a place fully in keeping with his capabilities where he can work well and honorably and live in comfort. I want to invite him to Ghana and be Vice-Chancellor

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