The Soccer War Read online

  ‘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 in the 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 banners the Heineken beer logo. It looks like a great ship. The ship will never sail. It is grounded on the sand-bar of the city, and the people are waiting for what comes next.

  Ministers and leaders of the governing party appear, filing on to the tribune. They are dressed for the occasion in mufti. The crowd comes alive and applause can be heard. If someone in the crowd is an acquaintance or cousin of a minister, he bellows a greeting: ‘Hello, Kofi!’ (to the Minister of Education). ‘Hello, Tawiah!’ (to Tawiah Adamafio, the party Secretary General).

  They reply with a gesture and settle into deep armchairs. A clergyman steps up to the microphone. I recognize him: Reverend Nimako, the head of the Methodist Church in Accra. The pastor brings his hands together and closes his eyes. The old loud-speakers hung around the square cut out and die, but the sense of his thanksgiving-beseeching prayer is clear. The pastor thanks God for having blessed the people of Ghana. For having kept Kwame Nkrumah in His care. For having listened to the requests that have ascended to heaven from this corner of the earth. And then he asks that God not falter in His benevolence and that the future of this country be, through the will of the Highest, shining and unmarred.

  ‘Amen,’ murmurs the crowd, and kids set off two small bombs in the streets.

  The pastor yields the microphone to K. A. Gbedemah, the Minister of Finance. He says that we have to wait because the leader has not yet arrived, and so he will review the history of Ghana’s struggle for independence. In the middle of his story, it is reported that Nkrumah is on his way. The crowd rocks back and forth, people crane their necks, and children climb on to the shoulders of their elders. Tawiah Adamafio raises himself from his armchair on the tribune and calls out: ‘Comrades, when our beloved leader appears, I want all of you to greet him by waving your handkerchiefs high over your heads. Ooo, like this’—he demonstrates, and the crowd rehearses twice.

  Kwame Nkrumah stands on the tribune.

  He is wearing grey mufti, as he is portrayed in the monument by the parliament building. He holds a magic wand, a stretched monkey skin that, according to belief, drives away all evil and unclean forces from its bearer.

  The square explodes with noise. The handkerchiefs flap and people chant: ‘Jah-hia! Jah-hia!’ which means they are enraptured. Babies, until that moment asleep in bundles on their mothers’ backs, stir uneasily, but their cries cannot be heard in that din.

  Nkrumah is followed on to the tribune, now packed with sitting children, by six policemen in motorcycle helmets. Two of them stand at the corners of the platform, and four stand in a row behind the Premier’s chair. They remain still, feet astride and arms behind their backs, until the meeting ends.

  Nkrumah sits down in an armchair behind a small table covered with the national flag, and the square suddenly falls silent. The oppressive heat continues; even cheering is enervating. Somebody intones one of the party songs, but before the others pick it up, a pair of sorcerers comes into view. One of them is Nai Wolomo, chief wizard of the Ga region, where Accra lies. I do not recognize the other. They begin a ritual dance. Executing charmed spirals, they bow low to Nkrumah. They cannot bend towards the Premier without thrusting-out their backsides, which amuses the people who cheer and cry again: ‘Jah-hia! Jah-hia!’

  The sorcerers stop in exhaustion and draw out two bottles of schnapps, a spirit exported from Holland that tastes of moonshine spiked with perfume. Now, however, the schnapps is an enchanted drink, transformed into a holy beverage, and the wizards offer some to Nkrumah. The Premier stands and drinks from a small glass held by a wizard, to renewed applause from the people. Now the rest of the drink, following spells and secret gestures supposed to propitiate the bad god of the sea, is poured on to the heads of those standing closest, as Polish boys douse girls on Easter Monday.

  Nkrumah’s speech begins. (The following day, the text of the address appeared in the Evening News under the title ‘A NEW BIBLE FOR AFRICA’.) Nkrumah stands before the microphone, looking around the square, and says: ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!’

  It is 8 January, and so the people burst out laughing. Nkrumah pulls a serious face, and the crowd falls silent in an instant. The people wait, staring at him. Now Nkrumah laughs, and everyone laughs with him. He becomes serious, and the faces of everyone there become serious immediately. He smiles and the crowd is grinning. He begins in Fanti, sayin
g that it is a long time since their last meeting, but he can see that they are all looking well.

  ‘That’s thanks to you, Kwame!’ answer voices.

  He looks over his shoulder, a signal for Adamafio, the Secretary General of the party, to approach, dragging a high lectern. On the lectern are the pages of his speech. It is in English. The Premier addresses his audience: ‘Comrades and gentlemen!’ Nkrumah speaks in a clear, measured way. His gestures are spare but expressive. Even the English say they take pleasure in watching him speak. He is of average height, but handsome and well-built, with an intelligent face and a high forehead and a sad look in his eyes. Even when Nkrumah laughs, he still looks sad.

  He recalls his two maxims: first achieve the political kingdom and then you will conquer all the rest; the independence of Ghana is only an empty phrase until it is accompanied by the complete liberation of the African continent.

  Kwame said that one battle for Ghana has been won: the country is free. Now the second battle is underway, for ‘economic construction and liberation.’ This battle is much more difficult and complicated. It demands greater effort, sacrifice and discipline.

  He then attacks his own supporters sharply, striking out at party bureaucracy, at careerists and dignitaries.

  ‘I must firmly warn those who, appointed by the party to responsible and influential positions, grow forgetful and believe they are more important than the party itself. I must warn those who join the party thinking that they can exploit it to their own advantage, praising themselves at the cost of the party and the nation.’

  Whew! Do they like that! The square bestows a great ovation on the speaker. The square shouts: ‘Anko, Kwame! Anko, anko!’

  ‘More, Kwame, again, oh, again!’

  Amid the cheers, calls and chants a boy in a shirt displaying both the party and national colours (red, white and green) jumps up in front of the tribune and does vertiginous back-flips. Three back-flips in one direction, turn, and three in the other. Nkrumah stops speaking and looks at this feat with some curiosity. Three back-flips and then three somersaults. He is a good acrobat, believe me. He finally grows tired and disappears into the crowd amid its cheering.

  Now, Nkrumah moves on to his favourite subject: Africa.

  During the speech, Secretary General Adamafio stands near Nkrumah. Adamafio removes the pages that have been read, perusing the ones the Premier is in the middle of delivering. When Nkrumah sees a passage that will merit applause, he raises his hand in a gesture that means: Watch! Here it comes! And as he finishes the last sentence and Adamafio’s hand whips the page away, the crowd goes wild. When the response is convincingly enthusiastic, Adamafio rubs his hands together and winks to those near him.

  Nkrumah attacks the colonialists: ‘Their policy is to create African states that are frail and weak, even if independent. The enemies of African freedom believe that in this way they can use our states like marionettes to continue their imperialist control of Africa.’

  The crowd is outraged. People shout: ‘Down with them! Down with them. Lead us, Kwame!’

  The speech lasts three quarters of an hour. The crowd stands listening and reacting to every word. When Nkrumah finishes with the cry ‘Long live the unity and independence of Africa!’ a jazz orchestra in a corner of the square erupts in resonant boogie-woogie. Those closest to the orchestra begin dancing. The boogie-woogie carries across the square, setting people’s hips rocking reflexively. But then the orchestra plays more softly: Joe-Fio Myers, the trade union general secretary, has begun reading a declaration of loyalty and support that the working people have delivered into the hands of Kwame Nkrumah.

  We pushed towards the exit. On the street, far from the square, we met Kodzo. Kodzo is a post-office worker and boxing fan. He is my friend.

  ‘Why didn’t you go?’ I ask. ‘It was interesting.’

  ‘What did Kwame say about wages?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything,’ I admit.

  ‘You see? Why should I have gone?’

  PLAN FOR A BOOK THAT COULD HAVE STARTED RIGHT HERE

  1

  I have come home from Africa: a jump from a tropical roasting-spit into a snowbank.

  ‘You’re so tanned. Have you been in Zakopane?’

  Will the Polish imagination never stretch further than Plock, Siemiatycze, Rzeszów and Zakopane? I’m working on Polityka. My current editor-in-chief, Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski, sends me into the provinces—yes, I’m to go on living in the bush, but in our own, native Polish bush. Somewhere, perhaps in Olecko or Ornet, I read that a great, almost global, conflict has broken out in the Congo. It is the beginning of July 1960. The Congo—the most closed, unknown and inaccessible country of Africa—has gained its independence, and at once the army revolts, the settlers flee, the Belgian paratroopers arrive, the anarchy, the hysteria, the slaughter—it has all begun; the whole indescribable mélange is on the front pages of the papers. I buy a train ticket and return to Warsaw.

  2

  I ask Rakowski to send me to the Congo. I’m already caught up in it. I’ve already got the fever.

  3

  The trip turns out to be impossible. Everyone from the socialist countries is being thrown out of the Congo. On a Polish passport there would be no way of getting there. As a consolation, the travel committee allots me some hard currency and a ticket for a trip to Nigeria. But what’s Nigeria to me? Nothing’s going on there (at the moment).

  4

  I walk around depressed and heart-broken. Suddenly a glimmer of hope—somebody claims that in Cairo there’s a Czech journalist who wants to force his way into the Congo by the jungle route. Officially, I leave for Nigeria, but secretly have the airline ticket rewritten for Cairo and fly out of Warsaw. Only a few colleagues are in on my plan.

  5

  In Cairo I find the Czech, who is named Jarda Boucek. We sit in his apartment, which reminds me of a minor museum of Arabic art. Beyond the window roars the gigantic hot city, a stone oasis cut in half by the navy-blue Nile. Jarda wants to get to the Congo by way of Sudan, which means by air to Khartoum, and then by air to Juba, and in Juba we will have to buy a car, and everything that will happen after that is a big question mark. The goal of the expedition is Stanleyville, the capital of the eastern province of the Congo, in which the Lumumba government has taken refuge (Lumumba himself has already been arrested and his friend Antoine Gizenga is leading the government). I watch as Jarda’s index finger journeys up the Nile, stops briefly for a little tourism (here there is nothing but crocodiles; here the jungle begins), turns to the south-west, and arrives on the banks of the Congo river where the name ‘Stanleyville’ appears beside a little circle with a dot in it. I tell Jarda that I want to take part in this expedition and that I even have official instructions to go to Stanleyville (which is a lie). He agrees, but warns me that I might pay for this journey with my life (which later turns out to be close to the truth). He shows me a copy of his will, which he has deposited with his embassy. I am to do the same.

  6

  After a thousand problems getting a Sudanese visa, I change my Warsaw–Cairo–Lagos ticket for a Warsaw–Khartoum–Juba ticket at the United Arab Airlines office and fly to the Sudan. Jarda stays behind in Cairo to wait for another Czech. They will catch up with me in Khartoum and we will fly on together. Khartoum is provincial and nightmarishly hot—I am dying of boredom and the heat.

  7

  Jarda arrives with his colleague, Duszan Prowaznik, another journalist. We wait a few days for the plane, and finally fly to the southern Sudan, to Juba—a small garrison-settlement in the midst of an incredible wasteland. Nobody wants to sell us a car, but in the end we find a daredevil (in Juba, too, the opinion prevails that anyone who travels to the Congo is as good as dead) who agrees, for a large sum of money, to drive us to the border, more than 200 kilometres away.

  8

  The next afternoon we reach the border, guarded by a half-naked policeman with a half-naked girl and a little boy. They don�
��t give us any trouble and everything starts to look enjoyable and idyllic until, a dozen or so kilometres on, in the village of Aba, we are stopped by a patrol of Congolese gendarmes. I forgot to add that back in Cairo the minister of Lumumba’s government, Pierre Mulele (later the leader of the Simba uprising, murdered) had written out a visa to the Congo for us—by hand, on an ordinary sheet of paper. But who cares about that visa? The name Mulele means nothing to the gendarmes. Their grim, closed faces, half-hidden in the depths of their helmets, are unfriendly. They order us to return to the Sudan. Go back, they say, because beyond here it’s dangerous and the further you go the worse it gets. As if they were the sentries of a hell that began behind them. We can’t go back to the Sudan, Jarda tells them, because we don’t have return visas (which is true). The bargaining starts. For purposes of corrupting I have brought along several cartons of cigarettes, and the Czechs have a box of costume jewellery. We bribe the gendarmes with a few trinkets (beads, clip-on ear-rings), and they permit us to go on, appointing a sergeant named Seraphim to escort us. In Aba we also rent a car with a local driver. It is an old, enormous, entirely decrepit Ford. But old, enormous, entirely decrepit Fords are by nature unfailing and in them you can drive across the whole continent of Africa and a bit more.

  9

  At daybreak we start towards Stanleyville: a thousand kilometres of muddy dirt road, driving the whole time through a sombre green tunnel, in a stench of decomposing leaves, entangled branches and roots, because we are travelling deeper and deeper into the greatest jungle in Africa, into an eerie world of rotting, proliferating, monstrously exaggerated botany. We are driving through a tropical wilderness that fills you with awe and delight, and every so often we have to pull the Ford out of the rust-coloured clay or out of a bog overgrown with brownish-grey duckweed. Along the road we are stopped by gendarmerie patrols, drunk or hungry, indifferent or aggressive—the rebellious, undisciplined army that, gone wild, has taken over the country, robbing and raping. When stopped, we push our driver Seraphim out of the car and watch what happens. If he falls into an embrace with the gendarmes we breathe easy, because that means Seraphim has come across his tribal kinsmen. But if they start punching his head and then beat him with the butts of their rifles, our skin crawls, because the same thing—or worse, perhaps—awaits us. I do not know what made us want to keep going along that road (on which it was so easy to die)—was it stupidity and a lack of imagination, or passion and ambition, or mania and honour, or our folly and our belief that we were obliged now to do it even though we had imposed an obligation upon ourselves?—and as we drive on I feel that with each kilometre another barrier has come down behind us, another gate has been slammed shut, and turning back becomes more and more impossible. After two days we roll into Stanleyville.