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This incongruous overlap of civilization and savagery, magic and machinery, makes many Britons doubt whether the Gold Coast is ready to rule itself. When African political parties march past the European Club in Accra, members raise their voices and go on discussing polo and trade as if the apparition outside were in hopelessly bad taste. Yet Britain's Colonial Office takes the Gold Coast dead seriously. Major James Lillie-Costello, the monocled press officer who handles Nkrumah for the British government, treats the Prime Minister as if he were Winston Churchill, manages to inject half a dozen "Sirs" into every conversation.
Black & White. The object of this unaccustomed British deference is a 43-year-old bachelor who likes to say: "Every woman in the Gold Coast is my bride." Last week he was paying a state visit to Liberia's President Tubman (see NEWS IN PICTURES).
Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah was born at the jungle's edge in the mud-hut village of Nkroful, where his father, a Twi (pronounced Twee) tribesman, hammered out gold ornaments for local woodcutters. A Catholic mission taught him the three Rs, and the Fathers sent him up to the Gold Coast's Achimota College. Achi-mota crackles with black & white brains (its crest is a piano keyboard, with black & white keys playing together in harmony). Nkrumah graduated (in 1931) with an itch to teach.
He did, but not for long. An uncle who was a diamond prospector offered the money for a passage to the U.S., and Nkrumah jumped at the chance. He enrolled at Lincoln University, a college for Negroes at Oxford, Pa., stayed there for eight years and three degrees. He earned modestly average grades and these written comments from his teachers:
Biology: Strongly individualistic.
History and Philosophy: Ace boy.
German: Loved controversy.
Sociology: Purposive.
Physics: Noticeable but not spectacular.
When he graduated (1939), Nkrumah's classmates voted him "Most Interesting," and composed a little ditty for the Class Yearbook:
Africa is the beloved of his dreams; Philosopher, thinker, with forceful schemes, In aesthetics, politics, he's "in the field," Nkrumah, "très interessant," radiates appeal.
From Lincoln, Nkrumah sailed for England to take a law degree at London University. He fell in with the left-wing crowd and became so engrossed in their Marxist dithyrambics that he failed his bar examination. He became a spellbinder instead.
"The Fifth Pan-African Congress," Nkrumah told a group of hot-eyed students in 1945, "calls on the workers and farmers ... to organize . . . the masses. Colonial and Subject Peoples of the World, Unite!" He was 36 and broke, a lonely colored man living in shabby lodgings in London's East End.