Page 86 - Afrika Must Unite

PROBLEMS OF GOVERNMENT 71
it to an opposition. If the will of the people is democratically
expressed in an overwhelming majority for the governing party,
and thereby creates a weakening of the accepted two-party
pattern, as, for instance, in Ghana, we, the government, are
obliged to respect the will of the people so expressed. We have
no right to divide our m andate in defiance of the popular will.
The opposition, deprived of popular support, looked around
for a means to undermine our authority. They found it in
separatism. They demanded the virtual secession of Ashanti,
the Northern Region, and what was formerly British Togoland,
from the sphere of central Ghanaian authority. It was not their
first attem pt to cut off the nose and ears of the M otherland in
order to spite the face of the C.P.P. In 1956, when there was a
plebiscite in British Togoland to determine whether it was to
continue as a British Trust territory or to join with the Gold
Coast and soon become a part of independent Ghana, the
opposition party proclaimed its support for Togoland’s continu­
ance as a British Trust territory. The people of Togoland proved
to be more freedom-minded than our opposition and the
plebiscite result was union with us. W hen we gained full in­
dependence, British Togoland became a part of free Ghana.
There followed after the plebiscite the general election of
1956, to which I had reluctantly agreed in order not to prejudice
the early grant of independence. This election brought the
C.P.P. back for the third time with an overwhelming majority.
The opposition had not done as well as they m aintained they
would do in Ashanti and the N orthern Territories, even though
these were their major strongholds, where they had the backing
of the Asantehene and other leading chiefs. The C.P.P. gained
more than a third of the seats in Ashanti and almost half in the
Northern Territories. In the rest of the country we had a land­
slide. We had proved indisputably that we were the only party
qualified to speak in a national sense. The British Government
could not deny this proof, and independence followed.