SubSaharan Africa 427
Outcome (and Settlement): Released (Negotiated)
Fatalities: None
Narrative: Tensions were high between Ghana and Guinea beginning in February
1966, when the military overthrew Ghana President Nkrumah while he was on a trip
to China. Nkrumah took refuge in Guinea and, with pledges of support from Guinea,
promised to regain control of Ghana.
Later that year Ghana accused Guinea of detaining 30 of its students and 70 of its
officials against their will; it requested the Organization for African Union (OAU)
take up the issue at the fourth Assembly of the Heads of State and Government in
Addis Ababa starting on November 5. However, on October 29, Ghana officials
boarded a Pan American plane on a layover from Conakry to Lagos and detained the
Guinean mission to the OAU, including Guinea’s foreign minister—Louis Lansana
Beavogui—and 15 students at an army base. Ghana announced the detainment and
said that it would not release the delegation until the Guinean government released
Ghanaians who were “illegally detained” in Guinea.
Ethiopia protested these actions, and on October 31, sent an envoy to Accra to
secure the release of the Guinean delegation. Algeria, the UAR, Tanzania, and China
also protested to Ghana over the detentions. Guinea called for protests against the
“machinations of American imperialism and its puppets in Accra,” and on October
30, Guinea placed the American ambassador—Robinson McIlvaine—and a local Pan
Am official under house arrest because the US government was “entirely responsible”
for the seizure of its delegation in Accra. Ghana released McIlvaine the next day,
but a crowd chanting “down with American imperialism!” stormed his house shortly
thereafter.
On November 2, the American ambassador to Ethiopia protested to the OAU secre-
tary-general over the house arrest of McIlvane. Less than a week later Guinea expelled
64 Peace Corps volunteers, eight staff members, and US Information Service person-
nel, and it closed Conakry airport to Pan Am Airways. UN Secretary-General U Thant
requested that Ghana release the Guinea delegation and that Guinea allow the Red
Cross to determine whether Ghanaians in Guinea wanted to return to Ghana, and he
offered to mediate the dispute. The president of Guinea—Sekou Toure—announced
that Guinea would pay for any Ghanaian to return to Ghana who so desired. On
November 5, Ethiopian Emperor Selassie announced that he, along with Presidents
Nasser (Egypt) and Tubman (Liberia), had met the head of the Ghanaian delegation
to the OAU conference, Chief of State General Joseph Ankrah, and that Ankrah had
agreed to release the Guinean delegation. Selassie said that the Guinean delegation
had already left Ghana. The OAU sent the foreign minister of Democratic Republic
of Congo, the vice president of Kenya, and the Sierra Leone minister of information
to Ghana, and on November 7, they traveled to Guinea. The OAU delegation then
returned to Accra, where it announced that the Ghanians questioned in Guinea were
not being held against their will.
Coding changes: Start Date changed from October 29, 1966. End Date changed from
November 4, 1966.