TAKE-OVER IN GHANA AND SYRIA
1966The NewsletterMichael Banda Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Indonesian trade unionist and member of the Communist Party, Niono, being taken to the military tribunal. members.
will be gone for good. to be any such legislation.
was held on January 26. EARLY Thursday morning the army and police in Ghana staged a coup in Accra while Osagyefo (The Redeemer) Nkrumah was in Peking, en route to Hanoi. All ministers have been sacked and • the Convention People's Party, the ruling party in Ghana, has been dissolved.
Unlike the abortive coup in Nigeria, the coup in Ghana seems to be inspired by the more reactionary sections of the Ghanaian ruling class who have found Nkrumah's policy of playing to the public gallery in a time of severe crisis an embarrassment to its own desires for a strong government.
C magonised Moreover, Nkrumah's policy of so-called non-alignment and his support-purely verbal-of PanAfricanism has antagonised U.S. impenialism which is casting a greedy eye on the bauxite, gold and diamonds of Ghana.
Recently the U.S. refused to deliver food shipments to Ghana because of Nkrumah's foreign policy and the International Monetary Fund demanded severe retrenchment as a pre-condition for any loans to restore Ghana's flagging . economy. The fall in cocoa prices has driven Nkrumah closer to U.S. imperialism-but the U.S. seeks complete and economic domination, mat collaboration.
No surprise Nobody should be surprised therefore if the CIA is found to be the instigator of this coup.
With Nkrumah goes the myth of 'African Socialism' which was nothing more than a camouflage for the close collaboration between Ghana and world imperialism.
In Syria too a coup engineered by army officers of the ruling Ba'ath Party overthrew the threeyear-old regime of Amim . Hatez. The coup was led by members of the Ba'ath who had recently been expelled from the party.
The founder of the Ba'ath Party and chiet propagandist of Arab Unity, Michel Aflak, was also arrested by the rebel officers. Fighting is reported in Damascus and elsewhere.
Economic crisis
Recently the government undertook a series of nationalizations because the economic crisis seriously undermined Syria's currency.
Political instability - eight coups in 17 years—has aggravated the crisis by deterring foreign investment. In all probability this coup will do little or nothing to alter the situation for the vast majority of workers and fellaheen.