Gle, a chief priest, abandons his role as custodian and defender of age-old customs to fight voluntarily on the side of the British in the Second World War. When the war ends, Gle and his fellow African soldiers do not receive their promised rewards. But they do not return peacefully to their homesteads or reassume their traditional values. Politicised by their role in the foreign conflicts they join together and march in protest to present a petition to the Governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), in an act of self-determination. The colonial forces respond with fire; soldiers are shot dead. The angry protesters descend into Accra and loot the shops, in what became the famous looting of 28 February 1948, and would mark the beginning of Ghana's fight for independence from Britain.