Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR SOLZHENITSYN Congratulations to Jacques Katel on his review of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's story ("'On Their Conscience Be It,' " NL, February 4). It is one of the best—if not...
...Again, McCord expresses strong feelings about Ghanaian Young Pioneers singing, "Nkrumah is always right, Nkrumah never dies...
...These people were detained under the Preventive Detention Act, a law designed to protect Ghana's security and to prevent dissident elements from carrying out extraConstitutional acts involving the use of violence...
...McCord also alleges that political power The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...This is also untrue...
...He has misunderstood, however, the major point of my article: Ghana deserves more than its present regime, and little in the nation's indigenous tradition necessitated Nkrumah's centralization of power, his massive attempts at thought-control, or the glorification of his person...
...4) The Takoradi riots were, indeed, partially political in nature, a sign of the Ghanaian workers' growing discontent...
...Solzhenitsyn breaks away completely from the pedestrian flatness of Socialist Realism, and this without in the least imitating any individual writer of the 1920s, be it Polnyak, Babel or Zoshchenko...
...2) Nkrumah did reject the life Presidency and instead wishes it to be conferred by a national plebiscite...
...A few factual issues deserve comment: 1) Nkrumah has refrained from executions up to this point...
...McCord declares that because all political organizations are affiliated with the Convention's People's party (CPP), the opposition has no means of expressing its disagreement except through bomb throwing...
...I know that the Ghanaian Army is patriotic and is playing its part in building a new nation...
...He ignores the fact that this is what the Constitution authorizes and requires...
...McCord says that some 3,000 opposition members are in jail...
...The strike was an attempt by certain dissident elements to use these workers for their selfish ends, with the encouragement of foreign interests...
...in Ghana is centered around President Nkrumah who, he states, was elected as President for life in September 1962...
...Briefly restated, it is this: The only reunion of Germany that would be of any benefit to the Germans, or to their allies in the free world, would be a reunion in freedom...
...This also is a gross inaccuracy...
...New York City Sidi H. Ali William McCord replies: Sidi AH is quite right in saying that Ghana has rapidly progressed in the last decade...
...It was, in fact, really a period of florescence, of great richness and diversity...
...This is incorrect...
...It was a purely political, and not an industrial, strike...
...TWO GERMAMES In his letter in The New Leader of February 18, George Y. Coats seems to have missed the point of my article on "Two Germanies...
...McCord admits that the revolution has indeed triumphed in Ghana...
...furthermore, every individual at the age of 21 can vote or be voted into local office, or into Parliament...
...But, as the author surely knows, the Government of Ghana has never resorted to the execution of such persons...
...I would add that as a literary work it harks back to the 1920s, the period in Soviet literature which for so long has been denounced and slandered not only by critics and literary scholars in the Soviet Union, but by some of the Soviet writers themselves...
...Katel is also right in pointing out that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich "is first and foremost a work of art...
...He also claims that Tawia Adamfio, the former Minister of Information, faces execution...
...It is true that President Nkrumah was offered the life Presidency following a vote to that effect in Parliament, but the fact is that he declined the offer on the grounds that the Constitution requires election to the Presidency every five years and that he...
...Gleb Struve LONG NIGHT IN GHANA William McCord's article, "Long Night in Ghana" (NL, November 26, 1962) represents an attempt to ignore facts and to throw dust in the eyes of the American public...
...3) Estimates of those in jail range from 300 to 5,000...
...Ali does not, apparently, contest the essential observation that informers, summary arrests, and political imprisonments exist...
...Were he...
...This is the kind of attitude which increases the fears expressed by the Ghanaian press that certain foreign governments were connected with the outrageous bomb attacks on our President...
...McCord also says that in Ghana the independence of the judiciary has been crushed because judges are appointed personally by the President...
...McCord ends his article by predicting the assassination of Dr...
...This goal would be hampered, not advanced, by talks (as advocated by Walter Lippmann) between the free legitimate Government of the German Federal Republic and the totalitarian occupation regime of the "German Democratic Republic...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...this means that he never makes mistakes, since whatever he decides or does follows directly from the advice of his council and the wishes of his people...
...It is one of the best—if not the best—I have read so far...
...Moreover, there is ample evidence that Adamfio's actions were encouraged and financed by a foreign power...
...I am writing not on behalf of the Ghanaian Government, nor even on behalf of Ghanaian students in the United States, but simply as an individual, in the hope of correcting some of his allegations and misrepresentations about Ghana...
...The number of people in detention is far less than that, and the bulk of them are members of the ruling party itself who resorted to activities against the security of the nation...
...McCord condemns what he calls a wage pause and the compulsory saving scheme involving 5 per cent of all salaries against which, according to him, the workers of Takoradi expressed their protest by going on strike...
...I find it shocking that the author should actually acquiesce in the use of violence for changing the system of government in a foreign country...
...What we mean is that in spiritual and ideological terms he will, like Lincoln, Lenin and Lumumba, live for ever...
...McCord begins his article by discussing the Preventive Detention Act...
...yet he alleges that this has resulted in the death of individual liberty...
...This sort of prediction only justifies the fears of many Ghanaians about the intentions and designs of certain foreigners on our country and its President...
...This is why anyone who is conversant with our traditions should have no difficulty understanding us when we say Nkrumah is always right...
...William H. Chamberlin...
...It is interesting and significant that private reports from Moscow speak of Solzhenitsyn as a great admirer of Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak...
...I would like to point out that this law was enacted by the Parliament of Ghana, which consists of the elected representatives of the people...
...In fact, not all wage earners are covered by the compulsory saving scheme and it may interest him to know that 95 per cent of the workers who went on strike at Takoradi were not affected by it...
...His point that "today the 'friends' and the 'true believers in international cooperation' are active again," and go out of their way to hail Khrushchev as a "liberal," hits the nail on the head...
...As a literary work his story deserves a close analysis...
...This is not correct: For instance, unlike certain other countries, no individual in Ghana has had to be given military protection in order to receive university education, no matter what his color, sex or religion...
...as a sociologist, to study Ghanaian traditions and to relate these traditions to the existing situation he would have no difficulty understanding this phenomenon...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...Traditionally, in Ghana a tribal chief is always looked on as the spiritual, political and family head of his tribe, and in his official capacity is regarded as incapable of making mistakes...
...Nkrumah and the assumption of power by the Army...
...This is the practice even in the U.S...
...as guardian of the Constitution, would and should submit himself to it...
...Furthermore, when we say "Nkrumah never dies" we obviously do not mean that he is physically immortal...
...The Government is reluctant to publish exact figures and the total may well be less (or more) than 3,000...
Vol. 46 • March 1963 • No. 5
