Adeɛ ayɛ yɛn o! (Alas, a curse has descended upon us!)
I have been fortunate enough to have been allowed by The Almighty to see all the historical phases through which it has pleased Him to pass my nation, Ghana.
Having been born in 1937, I experienced colonial rule for a full 20 years before Ghana achieved its independence.
“Independence”! What a sweet-sounding word. I became fully aware of it when two teachers in my Presbyterian primary school refused to part their hair any longer because — they said their leader, someone called Kwame Nkrumah, didn’t part his hair!
According to these teachers, parting one’s hair was a practice brought into our country, the Gold Coast, by our British rulers. To show them that it was time for them to go back to their country, we were not going to accept many of the practices they had brought into ours. For instance, apart from not parting their hair, the two teachers were now refusing to drink tea for breakfast (something other teachers habitually did!)
So I wasn’t too surprised when in 1948, (when I was 11 years old and in Standard Two), strikes and riots broke out throughout the Gold Coast. Our class teacher, Mr Yaw ‘Sei, was a very good story-teller, and he turned the political struggle that was taking place into a dramatic folklore event that had elements of suspense and climax, like any other good story. But the stories were better, because this time our teacher read us some of the real happenings from newspapers, and even showed us pictures of some of the main “actors.”
He also gave us the background: he told us that when the British first came, they lied to our people that they were only interested in trading with us. But later, they lied to us again by claiming that the French and the Germans were placing our neigbouring countries (like Togoland and Dahomey) under colonial rule and that we needed protection from those “bad” other Europeans. So they persuaded our chiefs to sign a treaty called “The Bond of 1844” which, they said, would “protect” us from the Germans and the French for one hundred years. After a hundred years had passed, they, the British, would go back to their own country.
Now, the Bond of 1844 had expired in 1944. But the British hadn’t gone back home in 1944 and hadn’t shown any sign that they wanted to go back! So they had to be driven out.
Our people had been holding public meetings, at which they strongly demanded that the British should obey the Bond of 18444 and go back home.
At one of these meetings, former Gold Coast soldiers (ex-servicemen) who had fought for the British against the Germans in Burma, decided to march to the Christiansborg Castle, in Accra (where the British Governor of the Gold Coast operated from) to make demands about their unpaid pensions (denied to them whilst their British ex-comrades-in-arms had been paid theirs) and also to add their voices to the demand that the British should go back home, in accordance with the provisions of the Bond of 1844.
Guess what the British did: although the ex-servicemen were unarmed during their march towards the Castle, the British tried to stop them from approaching the Castle. When the ex-servicemen disobeyed the orders to “STOP!” of a British police officer in command of a contingent of policemen, the British officer opened fire and killed three of the ex-servicemen on the spot.
When news of the killings reached Accra city, mayhem broke-out. How could the British kill people who had fought for them in Burma against a British enemy? British-owned shops were looted at this injustice. News of the rioting reached the major towns in the Gold Coast and there were riots and strikes everywhere. Unable to control the pandemonium, the British sought scapegoats. They arrested six of the most prominent members of the “United Gold Coast Convention” [UGCC] including our teachers’ darling, Kwame Nkrumah and the man who brought Nkrumah back to the Gold Coast from Britain to become the secretary of the UGCC, Dr J B Danquah.
The arrested leaders were “deported” to the far north of Ghana, known as “the Northern Territories” and presumed to offer very little by way of life’s comforts. The deportations inflamed the people of the Gold Coast even more and from 1948 onwards, British rule here was doomed.
TO BE CONTINUED
BY CAMERON DUODU
