'Living Lumumba’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31002, 7 March 1966, Page 15

'Living Lumumba’

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) LONDON, March 6. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s launching as “a living Lumumba'’ might both divide Africa anew and cause the most serious international complications since the Congo crisis in 1960, the “Observer” reported.

The evidence to support that view was fast accumulating, it said. The two centres of the crisis would be Guinea, Dr. Nkrumah’s adoptive home, and Ghana, which he still claimed the right to rule. Between them lay the wealthy French - speaking Ivory Coast ruled over by the elegant African Gaullist President Houphouet-Boigny, who was a sworn enemy of Dr. Nkrumah and Mr Sekou Toure.

Both had tried in the past to subvert the Ivory Coast. It might well become Africa's next crisis country as Dr.

Nkrumah’s plans for his return to Ghana unfolded. The more immediate result of the radical alliance between Dr. Nkrumah and Mr Toure was that it prevented the rapid stabilisation of the new regime. As long as Dr. Nkrumah promised to return, his trusted supporters in Ghana were likely to withhold support from General Ankrah’s regime and to become subversive. It would also encourage a number of African States not to recognise Ghana’s new regime, thus dividing Africa and the Organisation of African Unity between those who did, and did not accept it. Because the Toure-Nkrumah alliance had been made a spearhead for attacking imperialism and neo-colonialism, the Western powers were certain to take a more active position against the new Guinea set-up, said the “Observer.”

And because General Ankrah’s men had acted toughly against the Russian and Chinese experts in Ghana, the Communists’ States were bound to support Mr Toure and Dr. Nkrumah.

The new Ghana regime would therefore certainly rely almost exclusively on Western economic aid.