The Soccer War Read Online Free Page A

in the shade of the doorways. On the corners stand gangs of teenagers looking for a fight. The Muslims lie dazed by the sun. Sinewy labourers moaning under the burden of their sacks.
    ‘Here is power!’ insists the Russian. When the white man speaks, you do not want to have to believe in his words. But Kwame is alone. The leaders have turned away from him. They want to send him back to England.
    Kwame appeals to the street. To the market-women, the teenagers, the labourers. To peasants and bureaucrats. To youth, above all to youth. That is decisive.
    The English waver.
    Kwame calls for a general boycott.
    The country’s economy seizes up.
    The arrests, the repression, the truncheons return.Kwame goes to jail. Crowds gather in front of the prison, singing hymns and protest songs. One is titled ‘Kwame Nkrumah’s Body is Rotting in Prison’, and it remains vivid in my memory.
    English concessions: they permit general elections (the first in Africa). Ghana votes in February 1951. Nkrumah’s party carries a dizzying victory winning thirty-four of the thirty-eight seats in parliament.
    A foolish situation: the party wins the elections, while its leader’s body is rotting in prison. The English have to release him. On the shoulders of the crowd, Kwame is borne out of his prison cell and into the Premier’s chair. Along the way the crowd stops at the West End Square: ‘Here we performed a traditional purification rite. A sheep was killed as an offering, and I had to step barefoot into the blood of the sacrifice seven times, which was to purge me of the defilement caused by my stay in prison.’
    The doors of his home never close. People come for advice or for help. They bring greetings. More than once he has talked to a visitor standing outside the door as he had a bath. ‘I slept four hours on average. They give me no peace, they permit me no rest. Because I am a robot that is wound up in the morning and requires neither sleep nor feeding.’
    When the premier goes to the country he sleeps in a hut. Sometimes he talks in the street until late at night and stays in some chance lodging instead of returning home. This way he wins over everyone he meets. And thus he spends his time.
    Six years later, on 6 March 1957, Ghana gains its independence. It is the first liberated country in black Africa.
    The crowd stands in West End Square. The crowd stands inthe sun, under the white African sky. The crowd stands and waits for Nkrumah, a black, patient crowd, a sweating crowd. This square, this brown frying pan in the centre of Accra, is full to its edges. Late-comers are trying to squeeze in and it will not take much more before the fence bordering the square begins to splinter, toppling the children perched atop the slats like bananas. It is hot.
    Such a rally could be held nearer the sea. There is a breeze there and the palms offer shade. But what good are a breeze and shade if the historical resonance is lost? And history teaches us that, in 1950, Kwame Nkrumah called a rally exactly here, in the West End Square. The people also came and stood then, and that heat stood above the ground; it was January, the torrid month, the month of drought. Then, Kwame Nkrumah spoke about freedom. Ghana must be independent, and independence is something that has to be fought for. But there are three roads. The road of revolution. This, the speaker rejected. The road of closed-door pacts. This, too, the speaker rejected. And then there is the fight for freedom by peaceful means. The battle-cry of that struggle was proclaimed then, right here in West End Square.
    Now it is the anniversary of that day, almost a holiday; the Premier makes a speech and says what every leader all over the world loves to say: ‘Our road was the right one.’
    Twelve tall poles have been positioned round the square. On each one hang eight portraits of Nkrumah, ninety-six in all. Nylon ropes run between the poles, and from the ropes are draped nylon banners: on the