AFRICAN LEADER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 872, 20 April 1956, Page 12

AFRICAN LEADER

KWAME NKRUMAH, by Bankole Timothy; Allen and Unwin, English price 16/-. N{KRUMAH is one of the key figures ; of modern Africa, maybe of the modern world. He studied theology in America, Marx in London and the art of politics everywhere. He returned to the Gold Coast as a professional agitator and soon outgrew his employers, created his own party and armed it with all the weapons of demagogy-~-songs, martyrs, scurrilous journalism and the leadership principle. The fire of idealism ran through-the love of the Gold Coast, the demand for liberty, selfgovernment and relief from "exploitation." In the end Nkrumah emerged from gaol to become the first Prime

Minister of a virtually independent Gold Coast and, to the astonishment of some, practised collaboration with Britain and unblushingly adopted economic policies hitherto mercilessly denounced. It is a dramatic story. The author is an African professional journalist who writes with gusto and is untroubled by underlying problems, even those to which an answer might now be tentatively hazarded. Running through is the eternal problem of the relation between ends and means. More topically there is the undefined relationship between this new parliamentary democracy and the traditional chiefs of the territory. There is the political problem of whether dictatorial agitation will in the: -efid become democratic and there .is the economic problem of whether the Gold Coast, governed locally, can apply enough of European technology to. remain alive in a competitive world. Mr.-Timothy’s book throws light only very incidentally on such matters. It is a human document without pretence of. balanced assessment.

F. L. W.

Wood