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FREEDOMWAYS               FOURTH QUARTER 1966

were Negros. Perhaps Americans did not want to miss the boat at Accra, as they did at Bandung, Strangely enough, the N.A.A.C.P. did not send a representative, and there was no official American message to the conference. Messages of greeting, good wishes, encouragement to the conference were sent by Premiers Khrushchev, Chou En-lai, Nehru and many other leaders of Government, and were received by the conference assembled with enthusiastic and grateful applause. Mr. Nixon's "personal" message to Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah-not to the conference-certainly did not rate as an official greeting.
  At the conference there were plenary sessions which were open to everyone, but the five committees in which the important discussions and business took place were held in closed sessions, with only official delegates admitted.
   The slogans of the Conference were revealing. Down with colonialism and imperialism. Down with the tribalism. Africa must be free, etc. This denunciation of the tribalism interested me very much, and when I inquired into it I found that Africans are determined to put an end to inter-tribal hostility, the corruption of chieftainship, but wanted to preserve the best aspects of tribal organization-the communal ownership and collective working of the land, and the practical and moral influence of responsible chiefs.
   Prime Minister Nkrumah pointed out that in the vast rural sections of Africa ancient communalism still exists today, and that Africans will be wise to build a modern Pan-African socialism upon this old and firm foundation. Mr. Nkrumah declared that Africans would adopt and adapt those aspects of other ways-of-life which they find suitable, and reject those which they find suitable, and reject those which they do not need nor want.
   It was fascinating to observe the disruptive activity at the Accra Conference. Most of it was carried on by white westerners, sometimes directly, sometimes through the few but obvious African mouthpieces they could find. Westerners were notably friendly with opposition parties-the old divide-and-rule policy. Westerners also tried to suggest and foment serious rivalry between Nasser and Nkrumah for the leadership of Africa. To most Africans this was uninteresting. Everyone knows that Nasser's primary preoccupation is with the Arab world. These preoccupations, amounting almost to passions, will keep them very busy for some time to come, and there is no important rivalry between them now, so far as one can see.
   Africans assembled at Accra decided that all two hundred million of them will unite, consult and cooperate closely in "positive action

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