MOST ETHNIC GROUPS constituting the population of Ghana (formerly the
British colony of the Gold Coast) had settled in their present locations
by the sixteenth century. Prior to British control in the nineteenth
century, political developments in the area largely revolved around the
formation, expansion, and contraction of a number of states--a situation
that often entailed much population movement. Some people, however,
lived in so-called segmentary societies and did not form states,
particularly in northern Ghana. According to tradition, most present-day
Ghanaians are descended not from the area's earliest inhabitants but
from various migrant groups, the first of which probably came down the
Volta River in the early thirteenth century.
Early states in Ghana made every effort to participate in, or, if
possible, to control, trade with Europeans, who first arrived on the
coast in the late fifteenth century. These efforts in turn influenced
state formation and development. Much more important to the evolution of
these states, however, were their responses to pre-European patterns of
trade. This was particularly true of commercial relations between the
Akan states of southern Ghana and trading centers in the western Sudan.
Competition among the traditional societies ultimately facilitated
British efforts to gain control of what Europeans called the "Gold
Coast." Traditional authorities, who with their elders had hitherto
exercised autonomous control over their territories, became agents of
the British colonial government under the policy of indirect rule.
As was the case in many sub-Saharan African countries, the rise of a
national consciousness in Ghana developed largely in the twentieth
century in response to colonial policies. The call to freedom came from
a few elites, but it was only after World War II that the concept of
independence captured the imagination of large numbers of people and
gained popular support. Differences existed between the two leading
political parties, however, on such issues as the timetable for
independence and the powers to be vested in the modern state.
Ghana's first independent administration was inaugurated on March 6,
1957, with Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister. On July 1, 1960, Ghana was
declared a republic with Kwame Nkrumah as its president. Earlier,
parliament had passed the Preventive Detention Act of 1958, which
granted authority to the head of state to detain without trial those who
were considered a threat to the nation. By means of such measures,
Nkrumah and his party intimidated leading members of the opposition.
Some opponents were co-opted; others were either exiled or jailed. As
leader of Ghana at the time of the Cold War, Nkrumah forged alliances
that increasingly placed him in the camp of the Eastern Bloc. Western
governments understood Nkrumah's agenda to be socialist and worried
about his influence on other African leaders. Some observers believed
that Nkrumah's obsession with what he called the "total liberation
of Africa" compelled him to create an authoritarian political
system in Ghana. Critics of the regime accused Nkrumah of introducing
patterns of oppression into Ghanaian politics and of tolerating
widespread corruption among party leaders. The regime paid too much
attention to urban problems at the expense of the more productive rural
sector, they felt, and it embraced unrealistic economic and foreign
assistance policies that led the nation to accrue huge foreign debts.
The Nkrumah administration was overthrown by the military in February
1966. Many analysts maintain that the political instability and economic
problems faced by the country since the mid-1960s are by-products of the
Nkrumah era.
By 1981 Ghana had undergone seven major changes of government since
the fall of Nkrumah. Each change was followed by alienation of the
majority of the population and by military intervention, touted to end
the rule that was responsible for the country's problems. Each time, the
new government, civil or military, failed to stabilize the political and
economic conditions of the country.
As its fourth decade of independence began in 1987, Ghana was under
the administration of the Provisional National Defence Council, a
military government led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings that
had come to power in December 1981. Like the Nkrumah administration
three decades earlier, the Provisional National Defence Council and
Rawlings were criticized for their populism and desire for radical
change. Despite the difficult early years of the Rawlings regime,
Ghana's economy had begun to show signs of recovery by the late-1980s,
and preparations were underway to return the country to some form of
democratic government.
Ghana - THE PRECOLONIAL PERIOD
By the end of the sixteenth century, most ethnic groups constituting
the modern Ghanaian population had settled in their present locations.
Archeological remains found in the coastal zone indicate that the area
has been inhabited since the early Bronze Age (ca. 4000 B.C.), but these
societies, based on fishing in the extensive lagoons and rivers, left
few traces. Archeological work also suggests that central Ghana north of
the forest zone was inhabited as early as 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Oral
history and other sources suggest that the ancestors of some of Ghana's
residents entered this area at least as early as the tenth century A.D.
and that migration from the north and east continued thereafter.
These migrations resulted in part from the formation and
disintegration of a series of large states in the western Sudan (the
region north of modern Ghana drained by the Niger River). Prominent
among these Sudanic states was the Soninke kingdom of Ghana. Strictly
speaking, ghana was the title of the king, but the Arabs, who
left records of the kingdom, applied the term to the king, the capital,
and the state. The ninth-century Arab writer, Al Yaqubi, described
ancient Ghana as one of the three most organized states in the region
(the others being Gao and Kanem in the central Sudan). Its rulers were
renowned for their wealth in gold, the opulence of their courts, and
their warrior-hunting skills. They were also masters of the trade in
gold, which drew North African merchants to the western Sudan. The
military achievements of these and later western Sudanic rulers and
their control over the region's gold mines constituted the nexus of
their historical relations with merchants and rulers of North Africa and
the Mediterranean.
Ghana succumbed to attacks by its neighbors in the eleventh century,
but its name and reputation endured. In 1957 when the leaders of the
former British colony of the Gold Coast sought an appropriate name for
their newly independent state--the first black African nation to gain
its independence from colonial rule--they named their new country after
ancient Ghana. The choice was more than merely symbolic because modern
Ghana, like its namesake, was equally famed for its wealth and trade in
gold.
Although none of the states of the western Sudan controlled
territories in the area that is modern Ghana, several small kingdoms
that later developed in the north of the country were ruled by nobles
believed to have immigrated from that region. The trans-Saharan trade
that contributed to the expansion of kingdoms in the western Sudan also
led to the development of contacts with regions in northern modern Ghana
and in the forest to the south. By the thirteenth century, for example,
the town of Jenn� in the empire of Mali had established commercial
connections with the ethnic groups in the savanna-woodland areas of the
northern two-thirds of the Volta Basin in modern Ghana. Jenn� was also
the headquarters of the Dyula, Muslim traders who dealt with the
ancestors of the Akan speaking peoples who occupy most of the southern
half of the country.
The growth of trade stimulated the development of early Akan states
located on the trade route to the goldfields in the forest zone of the
south. The forest itself was thinly populated, but Akan-speaking peoples
began to move into it toward the end of the fifteenth century with the
arrival of crops from Southeast Asia and the New World that could be
adapted to forest conditions. These new crops included sorghum, bananas,
and cassava. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, European sources
noted the existence of the gold-rich states of Akan and Twifu in the
Ofin River Valley.
Also in the same period, some of the Mande who had stimulated the
development of states in what is now northern Nigeria (the Hausa states
and those of the Lake Chad area), moved southwestward and imposed
themselves on many of the indigenous peoples of the northern half of
modern Ghana and of Burkina Faso (Burkina-- formerly Upper Volta),
founding the states of Dagomba and Mamprusi. The Mande also influenced
the rise of the Gonja state.
It seems clear from oral traditions as well as from archeological
evidence that the Mole-Dagbane states of Mamprusi, Dagomba, and Gonja,
as well as the Mossi states of Yatenga and Wagadugu, were among the
earliest kingdoms to emerge in modern Ghana, being well established by
the close of the sixteenth century. The Mossi and Gonja rulers came to
speak the languages of the peoples they dominated. In general, however,
members of the ruling class retained their traditions, and even today
some of them can recite accounts of their northern origins.
Although the rulers themselves were not usually Muslims, they either
brought with them or welcomed Muslims as scribes and medicine men, and
Muslims also played a significant role in the trade that linked southern
with northern Ghana. As a result of their presence, Islam substantially
influenced the north. Muslim influence, spread by the activities of
merchants and clerics, has been recorded even among the Asante to the
south. Although most Ghanaians retained their traditional beliefs, the
Muslims brought with them certain skills, including writing, and
introduced certain beliefs and practices that became part of the culture
of the peoples among whom they settled.
In the broad belt of rugged country between the northern boundaries
of the Muslim-influenced states of Gonja, Mamprusi, and Dagomba and the
southernmost outposts of the Mossi kingdoms, lived a number of peoples
who were not incorporated into these entities. Among these peoples were
the Sisala, Kasena, Kusase, and Talensi, agriculturalists closely
related to the Mossi. Rather than establishing centralized states
themselves, they lived in so-called segmented societies, bound together
by kinship ties and ruled by the heads of their clans. Trade between the
Akan states to the south and the Mossi kingdoms to the north flowed
through their homelands, subjecting them to Islamic influence and to the
depredations of these more powerful neighbors.
Of the components that would later make up Ghana, the state of Asante
was to have the most cohesive history and would exercise the greatest
influence. The Asante (also seen as Ashanti) are members of the
Twi-speaking branch of the Akan people. The groups that came to
constitute the core of the Asante confederacy moved north to settle in
the vicinity of Lake Bosumtwi. Before the mid-seventeenth century, the
Asante began an expansion under a series of militant leaders that led to
the domination of surrounding peoples and to the formation of the most
powerful of the states of the central forest zone.
Under Chief Oti Akenten (r. ca. 1630-60), a series of successful
military operations against neighboring Akan states brought a larger
surrounding territory into alliance with Asante. At the end of the
seventeenth century, Osei Tutu (d. 1712 or 1717) became asantehene
(king of Asante). Under Osei Tutu's rule, the confederacy of Asante
states was transformed into an empire with its capital at Kumasi.
Political and military consolidation ensued, resulting in firmly
established centralized authority. Osei Tutu was strongly influenced by
the high priest, Anokye, who, tradition asserts, caused a stool of gold
to descend from the sky to seal the union of Asante states. Stools
already functioned as traditional symbols of chieftainship, but the
Golden Stool of Asante represented the united spirit of all the allied
states and established a dual allegiance that superimposed the
confederacy over the individual component states. The Golden Stool
remains a respected national symbol of the traditional past and figures
extensively in Asante ritual.
Osei Tutu permitted newly conquered territories that joined the
confederation to retain their own customs and chiefs, who were given
seats on the Asante state council. Tutu's gesture made the process
relatively easy and nondisruptive, because most of the earlier conquests
had subjugated other Akan peoples. Within the Asante portions of the
confederacy, each minor state continued to exercise internal self-rule,
and its chief jealously guarded the state's prerogatives against
encroachment by the central authority. A strong unity developed,
however, as the various communities subordinated their individual
interests to central authority in matters of national concern.
By the mid-eighteenth century, Asante was a highly organized state.
The wars of expansion that brought the northern states of Mamprusi,
Dagomba, and Gonja under Asante influence were won during the reign of
Asantehene Opoku Ware I (d. 1750), successor to Osei Tutu. By the 1820s,
successive rulers had extended Asante boundaries southward. Although the
northern expansions linked Asante with trade networks across the desert
and in Hausaland to the east, movements into the south brought the
Asante into contact, sometimes antagonistic, with the coastal Fante,
Ga-Adangbe, and Ewe peoples, as well as with the various European
merchants whose fortresses dotted the Gold Coast.
Ghana - ARRIVAL OF THE EUROPEANS
Early European Contact and the Slave Trade
When the first Europeans arrived in the late fifteenth century, many
inhabitants of the Gold Coast area were striving to consolidate their
newly acquired territories and to settle into a secure and permanent
environment. Several immigrant groups had yet to establish firm
ascendancy over earlier occupants of their territories, and considerable
displacement and secondary migrations were in progress. Ivor Wilks, a
leading historian of Ghana, observed that Akan purchases of slaves from
Portuguese traders operating from the Congo region augmented the labor
needed for the state formation that was characteristic of this period.
Unlike the Akan groups of the interior, the major coastal groups, such
as the Fante, Ewe, and Ga, were for the most part settled in their
homelands.
The Portuguese were the first to arrive. By 1471, under the patronage
of Prince Henry the Navigator, they had reached the area that was to
become known as the Gold Coast because Europeans knew the area as the
source of gold that reached Muslim North Africa by way of trade routes
across the Sahara. The initial Portuguese interest in trading for gold,
ivory, and pepper so increased that in 1482 the Portuguese built their
first permanent trading post on the western coast of present-day Ghana.
This fortress, Elmina Castle, constructed to protect Portuguese trade
from European competitors and hostile Africans, still stands.
With the opening of European plantations in the New World during the
1500s, which suddenly expanded the demand for slaves in the Americas,
trade in slaves soon overshadowed gold as the principal export of the
area. Indeed, the west coast of Africa became the principal source of
slaves for the New World. The seemingly insatiable market and the
substantial profits to be gained from the slave trade attracted
adventurers from all over Europe. Much of the conflict that arose among
European groups on the coast and among competing African kingdoms was
the result of rivalry for control of this trade.
The Portuguese position on the Gold Coast remained secure for almost
a century. During that time, Lisbon leased the right to establish
trading posts to individuals or companies that sought to align
themselves with the local chiefs and to exchange trade goods both for
rights to conduct commerce and for slaves whom the chiefs could provide.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, adventurers--first
Dutch, and later English, Danish, and Swedish-- were granted licenses by
their governments to trade overseas. On the Gold Coast, these European
competitors built fortified trading stations and challenged the
Portuguese. Sometimes they were also drawn into conflicts with local
inhabitants as Europeans developed commercial alliances with local
chiefs.
The principal early struggle was between the Dutch and the
Portuguese. With the loss of Elmina in 1642 to the Dutch, the Portuguese
left the Gold Coast permanently. The next 150 years saw kaleidoscopic
change and uncertainty, marked by local conflicts and diplomatic
maneuvers, during which various European powers struggled to establish
or to maintain a position of dominance in the profitable trade of the
Gold Coast littoral. Forts were built, abandoned, attacked, captured,
sold, and exchanged, and many sites were selected at one time or another
for fortified positions by contending European nations.
Both the Dutch and the British formed companies to advance their
African ventures and to protect their coastal establishments. The Dutch
West India Company operated throughout most of the eighteenth century.
The British African Company of Merchants, founded in 1750, was the
successor to several earlier organizations of this type. These
enterprises built and manned new installations as the companies pursued
their trading activities and defended their respective jurisdictions
with varying degrees of government backing. There were short-lived
ventures by the Swedes and the Prussians. The Danes remained until 1850,
when they withdrew from the Gold Coast. The British gained possession of
all Dutch coastal forts by the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
thus making them the dominant European power on the Gold Coast.
During the heyday of early European competition, slavery was an
accepted social institution, and the slave trade overshadowed all other
commercial activities on the West African coast. To be sure, slavery and
slave trading were already firmly entrenched in many African societies
before their contact with Europe. In most situations, men as well as
women captured in local warfare became slaves. In general, however,
slaves in African communities were often treated as junior members of
the society with specific rights, and many were ultimately absorbed into
their masters' families as full members. Given traditional methods of
agricultural production in Africa, slavery in Africa was quite different
from that which existed in the commercial plantation environments of the
New World.
Another aspect of the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on
Africa concerns the role of African chiefs, Muslim traders, and merchant
princes in the trade. Although there is no doubt that local rulers in
West Africa engaged in slaving and received certain advantages from it,
some scholars have challenged the premise that traditional chiefs in the
vicinity of the Gold Coast engaged in wars of expansion for the sole
purpose of acquiring slaves for the export market. In the case of
Asante, for example, rulers of that kingdom are known to have supplied
slaves to both Muslim traders in the north and to Europeans on the
coast. Even so, the Asante waged war for purposes other than simply to
secure slaves. They also fought to pacify territories that in theory
were under Asante control, to exact tribute payments from subordinate
kingdoms, and to secure access to trade routes--particularly those that
connected the interior with the coast.
It is important to mention, however, that the supply of slaves to the
Gold Coast was entirely in African hands. Although powerful traditional
chiefs, such as the rulers of Asante, Fante, and Ahanta, were known to
have engaged in the slave trade, individual African merchants such as
John Kabes, John Konny, Thomas Ewusi, and a broker known only as Noi
commanded large bands of armed men, many of them slaves, and engaged in
various forms of commercial activities with the Europeans on the coast.
The volume of the slave trade in West Africa grew rapidly from its
inception around 1500 to its peak in the eighteenth century. Philip
Curtin, a leading authority on the African slave trade, estimates that
roughly 6.3 million slaves were shipped from West Africa to North
America and South America, about 4.5 million of that number between 1701
and 1810. Perhaps 5,000 a year were shipped from the Gold Coast alone.
The demographic impact of the slave trade on West Africa was probably
substantially greater than the number actually enslaved because a
significant number of Africans perished during slaving raids or while in
captivity awaiting transshipment. All nations with an interest in West
Africa participated in the slave trade. Relations between the Europeans
and the local populations were often strained, and distrust led to
frequent clashes. Disease caused high losses among the Europeans engaged
in the slave trade, but the profits realized from the trade continued to
attract them.
The growth of anti-slavery sentiment among Europeans made slow
progress against vested African and European interests that were reaping
profits from the traffic. Although individual clergymen condemned the
slave trade as early as the seventeenth century, major Christian
denominations did little to further early efforts at abolition. The
Quakers, however, publicly declared themselves against slavery as early
as 1727. Later in the century, the Danes stopped trading in slaves;
Sweden and the Netherlands soon followed.
The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed in
1807. In the same year, Britain used its naval power and its diplomatic
muscle to outlaw trade in slaves by its citizens and to begin a campaign
to stop the international trade in slaves. These efforts, however, were
not successful until the 1860s because of the continued demand for
plantation labor in the New World.
Because it took decades to end the trade in slaves, some historians
doubt that the humanitarian impulse inspired the abolitionist movement.
According to historian Walter Rodney, for example, Europe abolished the
trans-Atlantic slave trade only because its profitability was undermined
by the Industrial Revolution. Rodney argues that mass unemployment
caused by the new industrial machinery, the need for new raw materials,
and European competition for markets for finished goods are the real
factors that brought an end to the trade in human cargo and the
beginning of competition for colonial territories in Africa. Other
scholars, however, disagree with Rodney, arguing that humanitarian
concerns as well as social and economic factors were instrumental in
ending the African slave trade.
Ghana - Britain and the Gold Coast: The Early Years
By the early nineteenth century, the British, through conquest or
purchase, had become masters of most of the forts along the coast. Two
major factors laid the foundations of British rule and the eventual
establishment of a colony on the Gold Coast: British reaction to the
Asante wars and the resulting instability and disruption of trade, and
Britain's increasing preoccupation with the suppression and elimination
of the slave trade.
During most of the nineteenth century, Asante, the most powerful
state of the Akan interior, sought to expand its rule and to promote and
protect its trade. The first Asante invasion of the coastal regions took
place in 1807; the Asante moved south again in 1811 and in 1814. These
invasions, though not decisive, disrupted trade in such products as
gold, timber, and palm oil, and threatened the security of the European
forts. Local British, Dutch, and Danish authorities were all forced to
come to terms with Asante, and in 1817 the African Company of Merchants
signed a treaty of friendship that recognized Asante claims to
sovereignty over large areas of the coast and its peoples.
The coastal people, primarily some of the Fante and the inhabitants
of the new town of Accra, who were chiefly Ga, came to rely on British
protection against Asante incursions, but the ability of the merchant
companies to provide this security was limited. The British Crown
dissolved the company in 1821, giving authority over British forts on
the Gold Coast to Governor Charles MacCarthy, governor of Sierra Leone.
The British forts and Sierra Leone remained under common administration
for the first half of the century. MacCarthy's mandate was to impose
peace and to end the slave trade. He sought to do this by encouraging
the coastal peoples to oppose Kumasi rule and by closing the great roads
to the coast. Incidents and sporadic warfare continued, however.
MacCarthy was killed, and most of his force was wiped out in a battle
with Asante forces in 1824. An Asante invasion of the coast in 1826 was
defeated, nonetheless, by a combined force of British and local forces,
including the Fante and the people of Accra.
When the British government allowed control of the Gold Coast
settlements to revert to the British African Company of Merchants in the
late 1820s, relations with Asante were still problematic. From the
Asante point of view, the British had failed to control the activities
of their local coastal allies. Had this been done, Asante might not have
found it necessary to attempt to impose peace on the coastal peoples.
MacCarthy's encouragement of coastal opposition to Asante and the
subsequent 1824 British military attack further indicated to Asante
authorities that the Europeans, especially the British, did not respect
Asante.
In 1830 a London committee of merchants chose Captain George Maclean
to become president of a local council of merchants. Although his formal
jurisdiction was limited, Maclean's achievements were substantial; for
example, a peace treaty was arranged with Asante in 1831. Maclean also
supervised the coastal people by holding regular court in Cape Coast
where he punished those found guilty of disturbing the peace. Between
1830 and 1843 while Maclean was in charge of affairs on the Gold Coast,
no confrontations occurred with Asante, and the volume of trade
reportedly increased threefold. Maclean's exercise of limited judicial
power on the coast was so effective that a parliamentary committee
recommended that the British government permanently administer its
settlements and negotiate treaties with the coastal chiefs that would
define Britain's relations with them. The government did so in 1843, the
same year crown government was reinstated. Commander H. Worsley Hill was
appointed first governor of the Gold Coast. Under Maclean's
administration, several coastal tribes had submitted voluntarily to
British protection. Hill proceeded to define the conditions and
responsibilities of his jurisdiction over the protected areas. He
negotiated a special treaty with a number of Fante and other local
chiefs that became known as the Bond of 1844. This document obliged
local leaders to submit serious crimes, such as murder and robbery, to
British jurisdiction and laid the legal foundation for subsequent
British colonization of the coastal area.
Additional coastal states as well as other states farther inland
eventually signed the Bond, and British influence was accepted,
strengthened, and expanded. Under the terms of the 1844 arrangement, the
British gave the impression that they would protect the coastal areas;
thus, an informal protectorate came into being. As responsibilities for
defending local allies and managing the affairs of the coastal
protectorate increased, the administration of the Gold Coast was
separated from that of Sierra Leone in 1850.
At about the same time, growing acceptance of the advantages offered
by the British presence led to the initiation of another important step.
In April 1852, local chiefs and elders met at Cape Coast to consult with
the governor on means of raising revenue. With the governor's approval,
the council of chiefs constituted itself as a legislative assembly. In
approving its resolutions, the governor indicated that the assembly of
chiefs should become a permanent fixture of the protectorate's
constitutional machinery, but the assembly was given no specific
constitutional authority to pass laws or to levy taxes without the
consent of the people.
In 1872 British influence over the Gold Coast increased further when
Britain purchased Elmina Castle, the last of the Dutch forts along the
coast. The Asante, who for years had considered the Dutch at Elmina as
their allies, thereby lost their last trade outlet to the sea. To
prevent this loss and to ensure that revenue received from that post
continued, the Asante staged their last invasion of the coast in 1873.
After early successes, they finally came up against well-trained British
forces who compelled them to retreat beyond the Pra River. Later
attempts to negotiate a settlement of the conflict with the British were
rejected by the commander of their forces, Major General Sir Garnet
Wolseley. To settle the Asante problem permanently, the British invaded
Asante with a sizable military force. The attack, which was launched in
January 1874 by 2,500 British soldiers and large numbers of African
auxiliaries, resulted in the occupation and burning of Kumasi, the
Asante capital.
The subsequent peace treaty required the Asante to renounce any claim
to many southern territories. The Asante also had to keep the road to
Kumasi open to trade. From this point on, Asante power steadily
declined. The confederation slowly disintegrated as subject territories
broke away and as protected regions defected to British rule. The
warrior spirit of the nation was not entirely subdued, however, and
enforcement of the treaty led to recurring difficulties and outbreaks of
fighting. In 1896 the British dispatched another expedition that again
occupied Kumasi and that forced Asante to become a protectorate of the
British Crown. The position of asantehene was abolished and the
incumbent was exiled.
The core of the Asante federation accepted these terms grudgingly. In
1900 the Asante rebelled again but were defeated the next year, and in
1902 the British proclaimed Asante a colony under the jurisdiction of
the governor of the Gold Coast. The annexation was made with misgivings
and recriminations on both sides. With Asante subdued and annexed,
British colonization of the region became a reality.
Ghana - THE COLONIAL ERA: BRITISH RULE OF THE GOLD COAST
Military confrontations between Asante and the Fante contributed to
the growth of British influence on the Gold Coast. It was concern about
Asante activities on the coast that had compelled the Fante states to
sign the Bond of 1844. In theory, the bond allowed the British quite
limited judicial powers--the trying of murder and robbery cases only.
Also, the British could not acquire further judicial rights without the
consent of the kings, chiefs, and people of the protectorate. In
practice, however, British efforts to usurp more and more judicial
authority were so successful that in the 1850s they considered
establishing European courts in place of traditional African ones.
As a result of the exercise of ever-expanding judicial powers on the
coast and also to ensure that the coastal peoples remained firmly under
control, the British, following their defeat of Asante in 1874,
proclaimed the former coastal protectorate a crown colony. The Gold
Coast Colony, established on July 24, 1874, comprised the coastal areas
and extended inland as far as the ill-defined borders of Asante.
The coastal peoples did not greet this move with enthusiasm. They
were not consulted about this annexation, which arbitrarily set aside
the Bond of 1844 and treated its signatories like conquered territories.
The British, however, made no claim to any rights to the land, a
circumstance that probably explains the absence of popular resistance.
Shortly after declaring the coastal area a colony, the British moved the
colonial capital from Cape Coast to the former Danish castle at
Christiansborg in Accra.
The British sphere of influence was eventually extended to include
Asante. Following the defeat of Asante in 1896, the British proclaimed a
protectorate over the kingdom. Once the asantehene and his
council had been exiled, the British appointed a resident commissioner
to Asante, who was given both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the
territories. Each Asante state was administered from Kumasi as a
separate entity and was ultimately responsible to the governor of the
Gold Coast. As noted above, Asante became a colony following its final
defeat in 1901.
In the meantime, the British became interested in the broad areas
north of Asante, known generally as the Northern Territories. This
interest was prompted primarily by the need to forestall the French and
the Germans, who had been making rapid advances in the surrounding
areas. British officials had first penetrated the area in the 1880s, and
after 1896 protection was extended to northern areas whose trade with
the coast had been controlled by Asante. In 1898 and 1899, European
colonial powers amicably demarcated the boundaries between the Northern
Territories and the surrounding French and German colonies. The Northern
Territories were proclaimed a British protectorate in 1902.
Like the Asante protectorate, the Northern Territories were placed
under the authority of a resident commissioner who was responsible to
the governor of the Gold Coast. The governor ruled both Asante and the
Northern Territories by proclamations until 1946.
With the north under British control, the three territories of the
Gold Coast--the Colony (the coastal regions), Asante, and the Northern
Territories--became, for all practical purposes, a single political
unit, or crown colony, known as "the dependency" or simply as
the Gold Coast. The borders of present-day Ghana were realized in May
1956 when the people of the Volta region, known as British Mandated
Togoland, voted in a plebiscite to become part of modern Ghana.
Ghana - Colonial Administration
Beginning in 1850, the coastal regions increasingly came under
control of the governor of the British fortresses, who was assisted by
the Executive Council and the Legislative Council. The Executive Council
was a small advisory body of European officials that recommended laws
and voted taxes, subject to the governor's approval. The Legislative
Council included the members of the Executive Council and unofficial
members initially chosen from British commercial interests. After 1900
three chiefs and three other Africans were added to the Legislative
Council, these being chosen from the Europeanized communities of Accra,
Cape Coast, and Sekondi. The inclusion of Africans from Asante and the
Northern Territories did not take place until much later. Prior to 1925,
all members of the Legislative Council were appointed by the governor.
Official members always outnumbered unofficial members.
The gradual emergence of centralized colonial government brought
about unified control over local services, although the actual
administration of these services was still delegated to local
authorities. Specific duties and responsibilities came to be clearly
delineated, and the role of traditional states in local administration
was also clarified.
The structure of local government had its roots in traditional
patterns of government. Village councils of chiefs and elders were
almost exclusively responsible for the immediate needs of individual
localities, including traditional law and order and the general welfare.
The councils, however, ruled by consent rather than by right. Chiefs
were chosen by the ruling class of the society; a traditional leader
continued to rule not only because he was the choice of what may be
termed the nobility, but also because he was accepted by his people. The
unseating or destooling of a chief by tribal elders was a fairly common
practice if the chief failed to meet the desires or expectations of the
community.
Traditional chiefs figured prominently in the system of indirect rule
adopted by British authorities to administer their colonies in Africa.
According to Frederick Lugard, architect of the policy, indirect rule
was cost effective because it reduced the number of European officials
in the field. By allowing local rulers to exercise direct administrative
control over their people, opposition to European rule from the local
population would be minimized. The chiefs, however, were to take
instructions from their European supervisors. The plan, according to
Lugard, had the further advantage of civilizing the natives, because it
exposed traditional rulers to the benefits of European political
organization and values. This "civilizing" process
notwithstanding, indirect rule had the ultimate advantage of
guaranteeing the maintenance of law and order.
The application of indirect rule in the Gold Coast became essential,
especially after Asante and the Northern Territories were brought under
British rule. Before the effective colonization of these territories,
the intention of the British was to use both force and agreements to
control chiefs in Asante and the north. Once indirect rule was
implemented, the chiefs became responsible to the colonial authorities
who supported them. In many respects, therefore, the power of each chief
was greatly enhanced. Although Lugard pointed to the civilizing
influence of indirect rule, critics of the policy argued that the
element of popular participation was removed from the traditional
political system. Despite the theoretical argument in favor of
decentralization, indirect rule in practice caused chiefs to look to
Accra (the capital) rather than to their people for all decisions.
Many chiefs and elders came to regard themselves as a ruling
aristocracy. Their councils were generally led by government
commissioners, who often rewarded the chiefs with honors, decorations,
and knighthood. Indirect rule tended to preserve traditional forms and
sources of power, however, and it failed to provide meaningful
opportunities for the growing number of educated young men anxious to
find a niche in their country's development. Other groups were
dissatisfied because there was not sufficient cooperation between the
councils and the central government and because some felt that the local
authorities were too dominated by the British district commissioners.
In 1925 provincial councils of chiefs were established in all three
territories of the colony, partly to give the chiefs a colony-wide
function. This move was followed in 1927 by the promulgation of the
Native Administration Ordinance, which replaced an 1883 arrangement that
had placed chiefs in the Gold Coast Colony under British supervision.
The purpose was to clarify and to regulate the powers and areas of
jurisdiction of chiefs and councils. Councils were given specific
responsibilities over disputed elections and the unseating of chiefs;
the procedure for the election of chiefs was set forth; and judicial
powers were defined and delegated. Councils were entrusted with the role
of defining customary law in their areas (the government had to approve
their decisions), and the provincial councils were empowered to become
tribunals to decide matters of customary law when the dispute lay
between chiefs in different hierarchies. Until 1939, when the Native
Treasuries Ordinance was passed, however, there was no provision for
local budgets. In 1935 the Native Authorities Ordinance combined the
central colonial government and the local authorities into a single
governing system. New native authorities, appointed by the governor,
were given wide powers of local government under the supervision of the
central government's provincial commissioners, who assured that their
policies would be those of the central government.
The provincial councils and moves to strengthen them were not
popular. Even by British standards, the chiefs were not given enough
power to be effective instruments of indirect rule. Some Ghanaians
believed that the reforms, by increasing the power of the chiefs at the
expense of local initiative, permitted the colonial government to avoid
movement toward any form of popular participation in the colony's
government.
Ghana - Economic and Social Development
The years of British administration of the Gold Coast during the
twentieth century were an era of significant progress in social,
economic, and educational development. Communications were greatly
improved. For example, the Sekondi-Tarkwa railroad, begun in 1898, was
extended until it connected most of the important commercial centers of
the south, and by 1937, there were 9,700 kilometers of roads.
Telecommunication and postal services were initiated as well.
New crops were also introduced and gained widespread acceptance.
Cacao trees, introduced in 1878, brought the first cash crop to the
farmers of the interior; it became the mainstay of the nation's economy
in the 1920s when disease wiped out Brazil's trees. The production of
cocoa was largely in the hands of Africans. The Cocoa Marketing Board
was created in 1947 to assist farmers and to stabilize the production
and sale of their crop. By the end of that decade, the Gold Coast was
exporting more than half of the world's cocoa supply.
The colony's earnings increased further from the export of timber and
gold. Gold, which initially brought Europeans to the Gold Coast,
remained in the hands of Africans until the 1890s. Traditional
techniques of panning and shaft mining, however, yielded only limited
output. The development of modern modes of extracting minerals made gold
mining an exclusively foreign-run enterprise. For example, the Ashanti
Goldfields Corporation, which was organized in 1897, gained a concession
of about 160 square kilometers in which to prospect commercially for
gold. Although certain tribal authorities profited greatly from the
granting of mining concessions, it was the European mining companies and
the colonial government that accumulated much of the wealth. Revenue
from export of the colony's natural resources financed internal
improvements in infrastructure and social services. The foundation of an
educational system more advanced than any other else in West Africa also
resulted from mineral export revenue.
Many of the economic and social improvements in the Gold Coast in the
early part of the current century have been attributed to Frederick
Gordon Guggisberg, governor from 1919 to 1927. Born in <"http://worldfacts.us/Canada-Toronto.htm">Toronto
, Canada,
Guggisberg joined the British army in 1889. During the first decade of
the twentieth century, he worked as a surveyor in the British colonies
of the Gold Coast and Nigeria, and later, during World War I, he served
in France.
At the beginning of his governorship of the Gold Coast, Guggisberg
presented a ten-year development program to the Legislative Council. He
suggested first the improvement of transportation. Then, in order of
priority, his prescribed improvements included water supply, drainage,
hydroelectric projects, public buildings, town improvements, schools,
hospitals, prisons, communication lines, and other services. Guggisberg
also set a goal of filling half of the colony's technical positions with
Africans as soon as they could be trained. His program has been
described as the most ambitious ever proposed in West Africa up to that
time. Another of the governor's programs led to the development of an
artificial harbor at Takoradi, which then became Ghana's first port.
Achimota College, which developed into one of the nation's finest
secondary schools, was also a Guggisberg idea.
It was through British-style education that a new Ghanaian elite
gained the means and the desire to strive for independence. During the
colonial years, the country's educational institutions improved
markedly. From beginnings in missionary schools, the early part of the
twentieth century saw significant advances in many fields, and, although
the missions continued to participate, the government steadily increased
its interest and support. In 1909 the government established a technical
school and a teachers' training college at Accra; several other
secondary schools were set up by the missions. The government steadily
increased its financial backing for the growing number of both state and
mission schools. In 1948 the country opened its first center of higher
learning, the University College.
The colony assisted Britain in both World War I and World War II.
From 1914 to 1918, the Gold Coast Regiment served with distinction in
battles against German forces in Cameroon and in the long East Africa
campaign. In World War II, troops from the Gold Coast emerged with even
greater prestige after outstanding service in such places as Ethiopia
and Burma. In the ensuing years, however, postwar problems of inflation
and instability severely hampered readjustment for returning veterans,
who were in the forefront of growing discontent and unrest. Their war
service and veterans' associations had broadened their horizons, making
it difficult for them to return to the humble and circumscribed
positions set aside for Africans by the colonial authorities.
As early as the latter part of the nineteenth century, a growing
number of educated Africans increasingly found unacceptable an arbitrary
political system that placed almost all power in the hands of the
governor through his appointment of council members. In the 1890s, some
members of the educated coastal elite organized themselves into the
Aborigines' Rights Protection Society to protest a land bill that
threatened traditional land tenure. This protest helped lay the
foundation for political action that would ultimately lead to
independence. In 1920 one of the African members of the Legislative
Council, Joseph E. Casely-Hayford, convened the National Congress of
British West Africa, which sent a delegation to London to urge the
Colonial Office to consider the principle of elected representation. The
group, which claimed to speak for all British West African colonies,
represented the first expression of political solidarity between
intellectuals and nationalists of the area. Even though the delegation
was not received in London (on the grounds that it represented only the
interests of a small group of urbanized Africans), its actions aroused
considerable support among the African elite at home.
Notwithstanding their call for elected representation as opposed to a
system whereby the governor appointed council members, these
nationalists insisted that they were loyal to the British Crown and that
they merely sought an extension of British political and social
practices to Africans. Notable leaders included Africanus Horton, Jr.;
J.M. Sarbah; and S.R.B. Attah-Ahoma. Such men gave the nationalist
movement a distinctly elitist flavor that was to last until the late
1940s.
The constitution of 1925, promulgated by Guggisberg, created
provincial councils of paramount chiefs for all but the northern
provinces of the colony. These councils in turn elected six chiefs as
unofficial members of the Legislative Council. Although the new
constitution appeared to recognize African sentiments, Guggisberg was
concerned primarily with protecting British interests. For example, he
provided Africans with a limited voice in the central government; yet,
by limiting nominations to chiefs, he drove a wedge between chiefs and
their educated subjects. The intellectuals believed that the chiefs, in
return for British support, had allowed the provincial councils to fall
completely under control of the government. By the mid-1930s, however, a
gradual rapprochement between chiefs and intellectuals had begun.
Agitation for more adequate representation continued. Newspapers
owned and managed by Africans played a major part in provoking this
discontent--six were being published in the 1930s. As a result of the
call for broader representation, two more unofficial African members
were added to the Executive Council in 1943. Changes in the Legislative
Council, however, had to await a different political climate in London,
which came about only with the postwar election of a British Labour
Party government.
The new Gold Coast constitution of 1946 (also known as the Burns
constitution after the governor of the time) was a bold document. For
the first time, the concept of an official majority was abandoned. The
Legislative Council was now composed of six exofficio members, six
nominated members, and eighteen elected members. The 1946 constitution
also admitted representatives from Asante into the council for the first
time. Even with a Labour Party government in power, however, the British
continued to view the colonies as a source of raw materials that were
needed to strengthen their crippled economy. Change that would place
real power in African hands was not a priority among British leaders
until after rioting and looting in Accra and other towns and cities in
early 1948 over issues of pensions for ex-servicemen, the dominate role
of foreigners in the economy, the shortage of housing, and other
economic and political grievances.
With elected members in a decisive majority, Ghana had reached a
level of political maturity unequaled anywhere in colonial Africa. The
constitution did not, however, grant full self-government. Executive
power remained in the hands of the governor, to whom the Legislative
Council was responsible. Hence, the constitution, although greeted with
enthusiasm as a significant milestone, soon encountered trouble. World
War II had just ended, and many Gold Coast veterans who had served in
British overseas expeditions returned to a country beset with shortages,
inflation, unemployment, and black-market practices. There veterans,
along with discontented urban elements, formed a nucleus of malcontents
ripe for disruptive action. They were now joined by farmers, who
resented drastic governmental measures required to cut out diseased
cacao trees in order to control an epidemic, and by many others who were
unhappy that the end of the war had not been followed by economic
improvements.
Ghana - The Politics of the Independence Movements
Although political organizations had existed in the British colony,
the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) was the first nationalist
movement with the aim of self-government "in the shortest possible
time." Founded in August 1947 by educated Africans such as J.B.
Danquah, A.G. Grant, R.A. Awoonor-Williams, Edward Akufo Addo (all
lawyers except for Grant, who was a wealthy businessman), and others,
the leadership of the organization called for the replacement of chiefs
on the Legislative Council with educated persons. For these political
leaders, traditional governance, exercised largely via indirect rule,
was identified with colonial interests and the past. They believed that
it was their responsibility to lead their country into a new age. They
also demanded that, given their education, the colonial administration
should respect them and accord them positions of responsibility. As one
writer on the period reported, "The symbols of progress, science,
freedom, youth, all became cues which the new leadership evoked and
reinforced." In particular, the UGCC leadership criticized the
government for its failure to solve the problems of unemployment,
inflation, and the disturbances that had come to characterize the
society at the end of the war.
Their opposition to the colonial administration notwithstanding, UGCC
members were conservative in the sense that their leadership did not
seek drastic or revolutionary change. This was probably a result of
their training in the British way of doing things. The gentlemanly
manner in which politics were then conducted was to change after Kwame
Nkrumah created his Convention People's Party (CPP) in June 1949.
Nkrumah was born at Nkroful in the Nzema area and educated in
Catholic schools at Half Assin and Achimota. He received further
training in the United States at Lincoln University and at the
University of Pennsylvania. Later, in London, Nkrumah became active in
the West African Students' Union and the Pan-African Congress. He was
one of the few Africans who participated in the Manchester Congress of
1945 of the Pan-Africanist movement. During his time in Britain, Nkrumah
came to know such outspoken anti-colonialists and intellectuals as the
West Indian, George Padmore, and the African- American, W.E.B. Du Bois.
In 1947 when the UGCC was created in the Gold Coast to oppose colonial
rule, Nkrumah was invited from London to become the movement's general
secretary.
Nkrumah's tenure with the UGCC was a stormy one. In March 1948, he
was arrested and detained with other leaders of the UGCC for political
activism. Later, after the other members of the UGCC were invited to
make recommendations to the Coussey Committee, which was advising the
governor on the path to independence, Nkrumah broke with the UGCC and
founded the CPP. Unlike the UGCC call for self- government "in the
shortest possible time," Nkrumah and the CPP asked for
"self-government now." The party leadership, made up of
Nkrumah, Kojo Botsio, Komla A. Gbedemah, and a group of mostly young
political professionals known as the "Verandah Boys,"
identified itself more with ordinary working people than with the UGCC
and its intelligentsia.
Nkrumah's style and the promises he made appealed directly to the
majority of workers, farmers, and youths who heard him; he seemed to be
the national leader on whom they could focus their hopes. He also won
the support, among others, of influential market women who, through
their domination of small-scale trade, served as effective channels of
communication at the local level.
The majority of the politicized population, stirred in the postwar
years by outspoken newspapers, was separated from both the tribal chiefs
and the Anglophile elite nearly as much as from the British by economic,
social, and educational factors. This majority consisted primarily of
ex-servicemen, literate persons who had some primary schooling,
journalists, and elementary school teachers, all of whom had developed a
taste for populist conceptions of democracy. A growing number of
uneducated but urbanized industrial workers also formed part of the
support group. Nkrumah was able to appeal to them on their own terms. By
June 1949, when the CPP was formed with the avowed purpose of seeking
immediate self-governance, Nkrumah had a mass following.
The constitution of 1951 resulted from the report of the Coussey
Committee, created because of disturbances in Accra and other cities in
1948. In addition to giving the Executive Council a large majority of
African ministers, it created an assembly, half the elected members of
which were to come from the towns and rural districts and half from the
traditional councils, including, for the first time, the Northern
Territories. Although it was an enormous step forward, the new
constitution still fell far short of the CPP's call for full
self-government. Executive power remained in British hands, and the
legislature was tailored to permit control by traditionalist interests.
With increasing popular backing, the CPP in early 1950 initiated a
campaign of "positive action," intended to instigate
widespread strikes and nonviolent resistance. When some violent
disorders occurred, Nkrumah, along with his principal lieutenants, was
promptly arrested and imprisoned for sedition. But this merely increased
his prestige as leader and hero of the cause and gave him the status of
martyr. In February 1951, the first elections were held for the
Legislative Assembly under the new constitution. Nkrumah, still in jail,
won a seat, and the CPP won an impressive victory with a two-thirds
majority of the 104 seats.
The governor, Sir Charles Arden-Clarke, released Nkrumah and invited
him to form a government as "leader of government business," a
position similar to that of prime minister. Nkrumah accepted. A major
milestone had been passed on the road to independence and
self-government. Nonetheless, although the CPP agreed to work within the
new constitutional order, the structure of government that existed in
1951 was certainly not what the CPP preferred. The ministries of
defense, external affairs, finance, and justice were still controlled by
British officials who were not responsible to the legislature. Also, by
providing for a sizable representation of traditional tribal chiefs in
the Legislative Assembly, the constitution accentuated the cleavage
between the modern political leaders and the traditional authorities of
the councils of chiefs.
The start of Nkrumah's first term as "leader of government
business" was marked by cordiality and cooperation with the British
governor. During the next few years, the government was gradually
transformed into a full parliamentary system. The changes were opposed
by the more traditionalist African elements, particularly in Asante and
the Northern Territories. This opposition, however, proved ineffective
in the face of continuing and growing popular support for a single
overriding concept--independence at an early date.
In 1952 the position of prime minister was created and the Executive
Council became the cabinet. The prime minister was made responsible to
the assembly, which duly elected Nkrumah prime minister. The
constitution of 1954 ended the election of assembly members by the
tribal councils. The Legislative Assembly increased in size, and all
members were chosen by direct election from equal, single-member
constituencies. Only defense and foreign policy remained in the hands of
the governor; the elected assembly was given control of virtually all
internal affairs of the colony.
The CPP pursued a policy of political centralization, which encounted
serious opposition. Shortly after the 1954 election, a new party, the
Asante-based National Liberation Movement (NLM), was formed. The NLM
advocated a federal form of government, with increased powers for the
various regions. NLM leaders criticized the CPP for perceived
dictatorial tendencies. The new party worked in cooperation with another
regionalist group, the Northern People's Party. When these two regional
parties walked out of discussions on a new constitution, the CPP feared
that London might consider such disunity an indication that the colony
was not yet ready for the next phase of self-government.
The British constitutional adviser, however, backed the CPP position.
The governor dissolved the assembly in order to test popular support for
the CPP demand for immediate independence. The crown agreed to grant
independence if so requested by a two-thirds majority of the new
legislature. New elections were held in July 1956. In keenly contested
elections, the CPP won 57 percent of the votes cast, but the
fragmentation of the opposition gave the CPP every seat in the south as
well as enough seats in Asante, the Northern Territories, and the
Trans-Volta Region to hold a two-thirds majority of the 104 seats.
Prior to the July 1956 general elections in the Gold Coast, a
plebiscite was conducted under United Nations (UN) auspices to decide
the future disposition of British Togoland and French Togoland. The
British trusteeship, the western portion of the former German colony,
had been linked to the Gold Coast since 1919 and was represented in its
parliament. The dominant ethnic group, the Ewe, were divided between the
Gold Coast proper and the two Togos. A clear majority of British
Togoland inhabitants voted in favor of union with their western
neighbors, and the area was absorbed into the Gold Coast. There was,
however, vocal opposition to the incorporation from some of the Ewe in
southern British Togoland.
Ghana - INDEPENDENT GHANA
Nkrumah has been described by author Peter Omari as a dictator who
"made much of elections, when he was aware that they were not
really free but rigged in his favor." According to Omari, the CPP
administration of Ghana was one that manipulated the constitutional and
electoral processes of democracy to justify Nkrumah's agenda. The extent
to which the government would pursue that agenda constitutionally was
demonstrated early in the administration's life when it succeeded in
passing the Deportation Act of 1957, the same year that ethnic,
religious, and regional parties were banned. The Deportation Act
empowered the governor general and, therefore, subsequent heads of
state, to expel persons whose presence in the country was deemed not in
the interest of the public good. Although the act was to be applied only
to non-Ghanaians, several people to whom it was later applied claimed to
be citizens.
The Preventive Detention Act, passed in 1958, gave power to the prime
minister to detain certain persons for up to five years without trial.
Amended in 1959 and again in 1962, the act was seen by opponents of the
CPP government as a flagrant restriction of individual freedom and human
rights. Once it had been granted these legal powers, the CPP
administration managed to silence its opponents. Dr. J.B. Danquah, a
leading member of the UGCC, was detained until he died in prison in
1965. Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, leader of the opposition United Party (UP),
formed by the NLM and other parties in response to Nkrumah's outlawing
of so-called separatist parties in 1957, went into exile in London to
escape detention, while other members still in the country joined the
ruling party.
On July 1, 1960, Ghana became a republic, and Nkrumah won the
presidential election that year. Shortly thereafter, Nkrumah was
proclaimed president for life, and the CPP became the sole party of the
state. Using the powers granted him by the party and the constitution,
Nkrumah by 1961 had detained an estimated 400 to 2,000 of his opponents.
Nkrumah's critics pointed to the rigid hold of the CPP over the nation's
political system and to numerous cases of human rights abuses. Others,
however, defended Nkrumah's agenda and policies.
Nkrumah discussed his political views in his numerous writings,
especially in Africa Must Unite (1963) and in NeoColonialism
(1965). These writings show the impact of his stay in Britain in
the mid-1940s. The Pan-Africanist movement, which had held one of its
annual conferences, attended by Nkrumah, at Manchester in 1945, was
influenced by socialist ideologies. The movement sought unity among
people of African descent and also improvement in the lives of workers
who, it was alleged, had been exploited by capitalist enterprises in
Africa. Western countries with colonial histories were identified as the
exploiters. According to the socialists, "oppressed" people
ought to identify with the socialist countries and organizations that
best represented their interests; however, all the dominant world powers
in the immediate post-1945 period, except the Soviet Union and the
United States, had colonial ties with Africa. Nkrumah asserted that even
the United States, which had never colonized any part of Africa, was in
an advantageous position to exploit independent Africa unless preventive
efforts were taken.
According to Nkrumah, his government, which represented the first
black African nation to win independence, had an important role to play
in the struggle against capitalist interests on the continent. As he put
it, "the independence of Ghana would be meaningless unless it was
tied to the total liberation of Africa." It was important, then, he
said, for Ghanaians to "seek first the political kingdom."
Economic benefits associated with independence were to be enjoyed later,
proponents of Nkrumah's position argued. But Nkrumah needed strategies
to pursue his goals.
On the domestic front, Nkrumah believed that rapid modernization of
industries and communications was necessary and that it could be
achieved if the workforce were completely Africanized and educated. Even
more important, however, Nkrumah believed that this domestic goal could
be achieved faster if it were not hindered by reactionary
politicians--elites in the opposition parties and traditional
chiefs--who might compromise with Western imperialists. From such an
ideological position, Nkrumah supporters justified the Deportation Act
of 1957, the Detention Acts of 1958, 1959 and 1962, parliamentary
intimidation of CPP opponents, the appointment of Nkrumah as president
for life, the recognition of his party as the sole political
organization of the state, the creation of the Young Pioneer Movement
for the ideological education of the nation's youth, and the party's
control of the civil service. Government expenditure on road building
projects, mass education of adults and children, and health services, as
well as the construction of the Akosombo Dam, were all important if
Ghana were to play its leading role in Africa's liberation from colonial
and neo-colonial domination.
On the continental level, Nkrumah sought to unite Africa so that it
could defend its international economic interests and stand up against
the political pressures from East and West that were a result of the
Cold War. His dream for Africa was a continuation of the Pan-Africanist
dream as expressed at the Manchester conference. The initial strategy
was to encourage revolutionary political movements in Africa, beginning
with a Ghana, Guinea, and Mali union, that would serve as the
psychological and political impetus for the formation of a United States
of Africa. Thus, when Nkrumah was criticized for paying little attention
to Ghana or for wasting national resources in supporting external
programs, he reversed the argument and accused his opponents of being
short-sighted.
But the heavy financial burdens created by Nkrumah's development
policies and Pan-African adventures created new sources of opposition.
With the presentation in July l961 of the country's first austerity
budget, Ghana's workers and farmers became aware of and critical of the
cost to them of Nkrumah's programs. Their reaction set the model for the
protests over taxes and benefits that were to dominate Ghanaian
political crises for the next thirty years.
CPP backbenchers and UP representatives in the National Assembly
sharply criticized the government's demand for increased taxes and,
particularly, for a forced savings program. Urban workers began a
protest strike, the most serious of a number of public outcries against
government measures during 1961. Nkrumah's public demands for an end to
corruption in the government and the party further undermined popular
faith in the national government. A drop in the price paid to cocoa
farmers by the government marketing board aroused resentment among a
segment of the population that had always been Nkrumah's major opponent.
Ghana - The Growth of Opposition to Nkrumah
Nkrumah's complete domination of political power had served to
isolate lesser leaders, leaving each a real or imagined challenger to
the ruler. After opposition parties were crushed, opponents came only
from within the CPP hierarchy. Among its members was Tawia Adamafio, an
Accra politician. Nkrumah had made him general secretary of the CPP for
a brief time. Later, Adamafio was appointed minister of state for
presidential affairs, the most important post in the president's staff
at Flagstaff House, which gradually became the center for all decision
making and much of the real administrative machinery for both the CPP
and the government. The other leader with an apparently autonomous base
was John Tettegah, leader of the Trade Union Congress. Neither, however,
proved to have any power other than that granted to them by the
president.
By 1961, however, the young and more radical members of the CPP
leadership, led by Adamafio, had gained ascendancy over the original CPP
leaders like Gbedemah. After a bomb attempt on Nkrumah's life in August
1962, Adamafio, Ako Adjei (then minister of foreign affairs), and Cofie
Crabbe (all members of the CPP) were jailed under the Preventive
Detention Act. The CPP newspapers charged them with complicity in the
assassination attempt, offering as evidence only the fact that they had
all chosen to ride in cars far behind the president's when the bomb was
thrown.
For more than a year, the trial of the alleged plotters of the 1962
assassination attempt occupied center stage. The accused were brought to
trial before the three-judge court for state security, headed by the
chief justice, Sir Arku Korsah. When the court acquitted the accused,
Nkrumah used his constitutional prerogative to dismiss Korsah. Nkrumah
then obtained a vote from the parliament that allowed retrial of
Adamafio and his associates. A new court, with a jury chosen by Nkrumah,
found all the accused guilty and sentenced them to death. These
sentences, however, were commuted to twenty years' imprisonment.
In early 1964, in order to prevent future challenges from the
judiciary, Nkrumah obtained a constitutional amendment allowing him to
dismiss any judge. At the same time, Ghana officially became a
single-party state, and an act of parliament ensured that there would be
only one candidate for president. Other parties having already been
outlawed, no non-CPP candidates came forward to challenge the party
slate in the general elections announced for June 1965. Nkrumah had been
re-elected president of the country for less than a year when members of
the National Liberation Council (NLC) overthrew the CPP government in a
military coup on February 24, 1966. At the time, Nkrumah was in China.
He took up asylum in Guinea, where he remained until he died in 1972.
Ghana - THE FALL OF THE NKRUMAH REGIME
The leaders of the coup that overthrew Nkrumah immediately opened the
country's borders and its prison gates to allow the return from exile or
release from preventive detention of all opponents of Nkrumah. The
National Liberation Council (NLC), composed of four army officers and
four police officers, assumed executive power. It appointed a cabinet of
civil servants and promised to restore democratic government as quickly
as possible. The ban on the formation of political parties remained in
force until late 1968, but activity by individual figures began much
earlier with the appointment of a succession of committees composed of
civil servants and politicians as the first step in the return to
civilian and representative rule.
These moves culminated in the appointment of a representative
assembly to draft a constitution for the Second Republic of Ghana.
Political party activity was allowed to commence with the opening of the
assembly. By election time in August 1969, the first competitive
nationwide political contest since 1956, five parties had been
organized.
The major contenders were the Progress Party (PP), headed by Kofi A.
Busia, and the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL), led by Komla A.
Gbedemah. Critics associated these two leading parties with the
political divisions of the early Nkrumah years. The PP found much of its
support among the old opponents of Nkrumah's CPP- -the educated middle
class and traditionalists of Ashanti Region and the North. This link was
strengthened by the fact that Busia had headed the NLM and its
successor, the UP, before fleeing the country to oppose Nkrumah from
exile. Similarly, the NAL was seen as the successor of the CPP's right
wing, which Gbedemah had headed until he was ousted by Nkrumah in 1961.
The elections demonstrated an interesting voting pattern. For
example, the PP carried all the seats among the Asante and the Brong.
All seats in the northern regions of the country were closely contested.
In the Volta Region, the PP won some Ewe seats, while the NAL won all
seats in the non-Ewe northern section. Overall, the PP gained 59 percent
of the popular vote and 74 percent of the seats in the National
Assembly. The PP's victories demonstrated some support among nearly all
the ethnic groups. An estimated 60 percent of the electorate voted.
Immediately after the elections, Gbedemah was barred from taking his
seat in the National Assembly by a Supreme Court decision involving
those CPP members who had been accused of financial crimes. Gbedemah
retired permanently from active participation in politics. The NAL, left
without a strong leader, controlled thirty seats; in October 1970, it
absorbed the members of three other minor parties in the assembly to
form the Justice Party (JP) under the leadership of Joseph Appiah. Their
combined strength constituted what amounted to a southern bloc with a
solid constituency among most of the Ewe and the peoples of the coastal
cities.
Busia, the PP leader in both parliament and the nation, became prime
minister when the National Assembly met in September. An interim
three-member presidential commission, composed of Major Afrifa, Police
Inspector General Harlley of the NLC, and the chief of the defense
staff, Major General A.K. Ocran, served in place of an elected president
for the first year and a half of civilian rule. The commission dissolved
itself in August 1970. Before stepping down, Afrifa criticized the
constitution, particularly provisions that served more as a bar to the
rise of a dictator than as a blueprint for an effective, decisive
government. The electoral college chose as president Chief Justice
Edward Akufo Addo, one of the leading nationalist politicians of the
UGCC era and one of the judges dismissed by Nkrumah in 1964.
All attention, however, remained focused on Prime Minister Busia and
his government. Much was expected of the Busia administration, because
its parliamentarians were considered intellectuals and, therefore, more
perceptive in their evaluations of what needed to be done. Many
Ghanaians hoped that their decisions would be in the general interest of
the nation, as compared with those made by the Nkrumah administration,
which were judged to satisfy narrow party interests and, more important,
Nkrumah's personal agenda. The NLC had given assurances that there would
be more democracy, more political maturity, and more freedom in Ghana,
because the politicians allowed to run for the 1969 elections were
proponents of Western democracy. In fact, these were the same
individuals who had suffered under the old regime and were, therefore,
thought to understand the benefits of democracy.
Two early measures initiated by the Busia government were the
expulsion of large numbers of noncitizens from the country and a
companion measure to limit foreign involvement in small businesses. The
moves were aimed at relieving the unemployment created by the country's
precarious economic situation. The policies were popular because they forced
out of the retail sector of the economy those foreigners, especially
Lebanese, Asians, and Nigerians, who were perceived as unfairly
monopolizing trade to the disadvantage of Ghanaians. Many other Busia
moves, however, were not popular. Busia's decision to introduce a loan
program for university students, who had hitherto received free
education, was challenged because it was interpreted as introducing a
class system into the country's highest institutions of learning. Some
observers even saw Busia's devaluation of the national currency and his
encouragement of foreign investment in the industrial sector of the
economy as conservative ideas that could undermine Ghana's sovereignty.
The opposition Justice Party's basic policies did not differ
significantly from those of the Busia administration. Still, the party
attempted to stress the importance of the central government rather than
that of limited private enterprise in economic development, and it
continued to emphasize programs of primary interest to the urban work
force. The ruling PP emphasized the need for development in rural areas,
both to slow the movement of population to the cities and to redress
regional imbalance in levels of development. The JP and a growing number
of PP members favored suspension of payment on some foreign debts of the
Nkrumah era. This attitude grew more popular as debt payments became
more difficult to meet. Both parties favored creation of a West African
economic community or an economic union with the neighboring West
African states.
Despite broad popular support garnered at its inception and strong
foreign connections, the Busia government fell victim to an army coup
within twenty-seven months. Neither ethnic nor class differences played
a role in the overthrow of the PP government. The crucial causes were
the country's continuing economic difficulties, both those stemming from
the high foreign debts incurred by Nkrumah and those resulting from
internal problems. The PP government had inherited US$580 million in
medium- and long-term debts, an amount equal to 25 percent of the gross
domestic product (
GDP) of 1969. By 1971 the US$580 million had been
further inflated by US$72 million in accrued interest payments and
US$296 million in short-term commercial credits. Within the country, an
even larger internal debt fueled inflation.
Ghana's economy remained largely dependent upon the often difficult
cultivation of and market for cocoa. Cocoa prices had always been
volatile, but exports of this tropical crop normally provided about half
of the country's foreign currency earnings. Beginning in the 1960s,
however, a number of factors combined to limit severely this vital
source of national income. These factors included foreign competition
(particularly from neighboring C�te d'Ivoire), a lack of understanding
of free-market forces (by the government in setting prices paid to
farmers), accusations of bureaucratic incompetence in the Cocoa
Marketing Board, and the smuggling of crops into C�te d'Ivoire. As a
result, Ghana's income from cocoa exports continued to fall
dramatically.
Austerity measures imposed by the Busia administration, although wise
in the long run, alienated influential farmers, who until then had been
PP supporters. These measures were part of Busia's economic structural
adjustment efforts to put the country on a sounder financial base. The
austerity programs had been recommended by the International Monetary
Fund ( IMF). The recovery measures also severely affected the middle
class and the salaried work force, both of which faced wage freezes, tax
increases, currency devaluations, and rising import prices. These
measures precipitated protests from the Trade Union Congress. In
response, the government sent the army to occupy the trade union
headquarters and to block strike actions--a situation that some
perceived as negating the government's claim to be operating
democratically.
The army troops and officers upon whom Busia relied for support were
themselves affected, both in their personal lives and in the tightening
of the defense budget, by these same austerity measures. As the leader
of the anti-Busia coup declared on January 13, 1972, even those
amenities enjoyed by the army during the Nkrumah regime were no longer
available. Knowing that austerity had alienated the officers, the Busia
government began to change the leadership of the army's combat elements.
This, however, was the last straw. Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius Kutu
Acheampong, temporarily commanding the First Brigade around Accra, led a
bloodless coup that ended the Second Republic.
Ghana - The National Redemption Council Years, 1972-79
Despite its short existence, the Second Republic was significant in
that the development problems the nation faced came clearly into focus.
These included uneven distribution of investment funds and favoritism
toward certain groups and regions. Furthermore, important questions
about developmental priorities emerged. For example, was rural
development more important than the needs of the urban population? Or,
to what extent was the government to incur the cost of university
education? And more important, was the public to be drawn into the
debate about the nation's future? The impact of the fall of Ghana's
Second Republic cast a shadow across the nation's political future
because no clear answers to these problems emerged.
According to one writer, the overthrow of the PP government revealed
that Ghana was no longer the pace-setter in Africa's search for workable
political institutions. Both the radical left and the conservative right
had failed. In opposing Nkrumah's one- party state, Busia allegedly
argued that socialist rule in Ghana had led to unemployment and poverty
for many while party officials grew richer at the expense of the masses.
But in justifying the one-party state, Nkrumah pointed to the weaknesses
of multiparty parliamentary democracy, a system that delayed
decision-making processes and, therefore, the ability to take action to
foster development. The fall of both the Nkrumah and the Busia regimes
seemed to have confused many with regard to the political direction the
nation needed to take. In other words, in the first few years after the
Nkrumah administration, Ghanaians were unable to arrive at a consensus
on the type of government suited to address their national problems.
It was this situation--the inability of the PP government to satisfy
diverse interest groups--that ostensibly gave Acheampong an excuse for
the January 13 takeover. Acheampong's National Redemption Council (NRC)
claimed that it had to act to remove the ill effects of the currency
devaluation of the previous government and thereby, at least in the
short run, to improve living conditions for individual Ghanaians. Under
the circumstances, the NRC was compelled to take immediate measures.
Although committed to the reversal of the fiscal policies of the PP
government, the NRC, by comparison, adopted policies that appeared
painless and, therefore, popular. But unlike the coup leaders of the
NLC, members of the NRC did not outline any plan for the return of the
nation to democratic rule. Some observers accused the NRC of acting
simply to rectify their own grievances. To justify their takeover, coup
leaders leveled charges of corruption against Busia and his ministers.
In its first years, the NRC drew support from a public pleased by the
reversal of Busia's austerity measures. The Ghanaian currency was
revalued upward, and two moves were announced to lessen the burden of
existing foreign debts: the repudiation of US$90 million of Nkrumah's
debts to British companies, and the unilateral rescheduling of the rest
of the country's debts for payment over fifty years. Later, the NRC
nationalized all large foreign-owned companies. But these measures,
while instantly popular in the streets, did nothing to solve the
country's real problems. If anything, they aggravated the problem of
capital flow.
Unlike the NLC of 1966, the NRC sought to create a truly military
government; hence, in October 1975, the ruling council was reorganized
into the Supreme Military Council (SMC), and its membership was
restricted to a few senior military officers. The intent was to
consolidate the military's hold over government administration and to
address occasional disagreements, conflicts, and suspicions within the
armed forces, which by now had emerged as the constituency of the
military government. Little input from the civilian sector was allowed,
and no offers were made to return any part of the government to civilian
control during the SMC's first five years in power. SMC members believed
that the country's problems were caused by a lack of organization, which
could be remedied by applying military organization and thinking. This
was the extent of the SMC philosophy. Officers were put in charge of all
ministries and state enterprises; junior officers and sergeants were
assigned leadership roles down to the local level in every government
department and parastatal organization.
During the NRC's early years, these administrative changes led many
Ghanaians to hope that the soldiers in command would improve the
efficiency of the country's bloated bureaucracies. Acheampong's
popularity continued into 1974 as the government successfully negotiated
international loan agreements and rescheduled Ghana's debts. The
government also provided price supports for basic food imports, while
seeking to encourage Ghanaians to become self- reliant in agriculture
and the production of raw materials. In the Operation Feed Yourself
program, all Ghanians were encouraged to undertake some form of food
production, with the goal of eventual food self-sufficiency for the
country. The program enjoyed some initial success, but support for it
gradually waned.
Whatever limited success the NRC had in these efforts, however, was
overridden by other basic economic factors. Industry and transportation
suffered greatly as world oil prices rose during and after 1974, and the
lack of foreign exchange and credit left the country without fuel. Basic
food production continued to decline even as the population grew,
largely because of poor price management and urbanization. When world
cocoa prices rose again in the late 1970s, Ghana was unable to take
advantage of the price rise because of the low productivity of its old
orchards. Moreover, because of the low prices paid to cocoa farmers,
some growers along the nation's borders smuggled their produce to Togo
or C�te d'Ivoire. Disillusionment with the government grew,
particularly among the educated. Accusations of personal corruption
among the rulers also began to surface.
The reorganization of the NRC into the SMC in 1975 may have been part
of a face-saving attempt. Shortly after that time, the government sought
to stifle opposition by issuing a decree forbidding the propagation of
rumors and by banning a number of independent newspapers and detaining
their journalists. Also, armed soldiers broke up student demonstrations,
and the government repeatedly closed the universities, which had become
important centers of opposition to NRC policies.
Despite these efforts, the SMC by 1977 found itself constrained by
mounting nonviolent opposition. To be sure, discussions about the
nation's political future and its relationship to the SMC had begun in
earnest. Although the various opposition groups (university students,
lawyers, and other organized civilian groups) called for a return to
civilian constitutional rule, Acheampong and the SMC favored a union
government--a mixture of elected civilian and appointed military
leaders--but one in which party politics would be abolished. University
students and many intellectuals criticized the union government idea,
but others, such as Justice Gustav Koranteng-Addow, who chaired the
seventeen-member ad hoc committee appointed by the government to work
out details of the plan, defended it as the solution to the nation's
political problems. Supporters of the union government idea viewed
multiparty political contests as the perpetrators of social tension and
community conflict among classes, regions, and ethnic groups. Unionists
argued that their plan had the potential to depoliticize public life and
to allow the nation to concentrate its energies on economic problems.
A national referendum was held in March 1978 to allow the people to
accept or reject the union government concept. A rejection of the union
government meant a continuation of military rule. Given this choice, it
was surprising that so narrow a margin voted in favor of union
government. Opponents of the idea organized demonstrations against the
government, arguing that the referendum vote had not been free or fair.
The Acheampong government reacted by banning several organizations and
by jailing as many as 300 of its opponents.
The agenda for change in the union government referendum called for
the drafting of a new constitution by an SMC-appointed commission, the
selection of a constituent assembly by November 1978, and general
elections in June 1979. The ad hoc committee had recommended a nonparty
election, an elected executive president, and a cabinet whose members
would be drawn from outside a single- house National Assembly. The
military council would then step down, although its members could run
for office as individuals.
In July 1978, in a sudden move, the other SMC officers forced
Acheampong to resign, replacing him with Lieutenant General Frederick
W.K. Akuffo. The SMC apparently acted in response to continuing pressure
to find a solution to the country's economic dilemma. Inflation was
estimated to be as high as 300 percent that year. There were shortages
of basic commodities, and cocoa production fell to half its 1964 peak.
The council was also motivated by Acheampong's failure to dampen rising
political pressure for changes. Akuffo, the new SMC chairman, promised
publicly to hand over political power to a new government to be elected
by July 1, 1979.
Despite Akuffo's assurances, opposition to the SMC persisted. The
call for the formation of political parties intensified. In an effort to
gain support in the face of continuing strikes over economic and
political issues, the Akuffo government at length announced that the
formation of political parties would be allowed after January 1979.
Akuffo also granted amnesty to former members of both Nkrumah's CPP and
Busia's PP, as well as to all those convicted of subversion under
Acheampong. The decree lifting the ban on party politics went into
effect on January 1, 1979, as planned. The constitutional assembly that
had been working on a new constitution presented an approved draft and
adjourned in May. All appeared set for a new attempt at constitutional
government in July, when a group of young army officers overthrew the
SMC government in June 1979.
Ghana - GHANA AND THE RAWLINGS ERA
On May 15, 1979, less than five weeks before constitutional elections
were to be held, a group of junior officers led by Flight Lieutenant
Jerry John Rawlings attempted a coup. Initially unsuccessful, the coup
leaders were jailed and held for courtmartial . On June 4, however,
sympathetic military officers overthrew the Akuffo regime and released
Rawlings and his cohorts from prison fourteen days before the scheduled
election. Although the SMC's pledge to return political power to
civilian hands addressed the concerns of those who wanted civilian
government, the young officers who had staged the June 4 coup insisted
that issues critical to the image of the army and important for the
stability of national politics had been ignored. Naomi Chazan, a leading
analyst of Ghanaian politics, aptly assessed the significance of the
1979 coup in the following statement:
Unlike the initial SMC II [the Akuffo period, 1978-1979]
rehabilitation effort which focused on the power elite, this second
attempt at reconstruction from a situation of disintegration was
propelled by growing alienation. It strove, by reforming the
guidelines of public behavior, to define anew the state power
structure and to revise its inherent social obligations. . . .
In retrospect the most irreversible outcome of this phase was the
systematic eradication of the SMC leadership. . . . [Their] executions
signaled not only the termination of the already fallacious myth of
the nonviolence of Ghanaian politics, but, more to the point, the
deadly serious determination of the new government to wipe the
political slate clean.
Rawlings and the young officers formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary
Council (AFRC). The armed forces were purged of senior officers accused
of corrupting the image of the military. In carrying out its goal,
however, the AFRC was caught between two groups with conflicting
interests, Chazan observed. These included the "soldier-supporters
of the AFRC who were happy to lash out at all manifestations of the old
regimes; and the now organized political parties who decried the undue
violence and advocated change with restraint.
Despite the coup and the subsequent executions of former heads of
military governments (Afrifa of the NLC; Acheampong and some of his
associates of the NRC; and Akuffo and leading members of the SMC), the
planned elections took place, and Ghana had returned to constitutional
rule by the end of September 1979. Before power was granted to the
elected government, however, the AFRC sent the unambiguous message that
"people dealing with the public, in whatever capacity, are subject
to popular supervision, must abide by fundamental notions of probity,
and have an obligation to put the good of the community above personal
objective." The AFRC position was that the nation's political
leaders, at least those from within the military, had not been
accountable to the people. The administration of Hilla Limann,
inaugurated on September 24, 1979, at the beginning of the Third
Republic, was thus expected to measure up to the new standard advocated
by the AFRC.
Limann's People's National Party (PNP) began the Third Republic with
control of only seventy-one of the 140 legislative seats. The opposition
Popular Front Party (PFP) won forty-two seats, while twenty-six elective
positions were distributed among three lesser parties. The percentage of
the electorate that voted had fallen to 40 percent. Unlike the country's
previous elected leaders, Limann was a former diplomat and a
noncharismatic figure with no personal following. As Limann himself
observed, the ruling PNP included people of conflicting ideological
orientations. They sometimes disagreed strongly among themselves on
national policies. Many observers, therefore, wondered whether the new
government was equal to the task confronting the state.
The most immediate threat to the Limann administration, however, was
the AFRC, especially those officers who organized themselves into the
"June 4 Movement" to monitor the civilian administration. In
an effort to keep the AFRC from looking over its shoulder, the
government ordered Rawlings and several other army and police officers
associated with the AFRC into retirement; nevertheless, Rawlings and his
associates remained a latent threat, particularly as the economy
continued its decline. The first Limann budget, for fiscal year ( FY)
1981, estimated the Ghanaian inflation rate at 70 percent for that year,
with a budget deficit equal to 30 percent of the gross national product
( GNP). The Trade Union Congress claimed that its workers were no longer
earning enough to pay for food, let alone anything else. A rash of
strikes, many considered illegal by the government, resulted, each one
lowering productivity and therefore national income. In September the
government announced that all striking public workers would be
dismissed. These factors rapidly eroded the limited support the Limann
government enjoyed among civilians and soldiers. The government fell on
December 31, 1981, in another Rawlings-led coup.
Ghana - The Second Coming of Rawlings, 1982- 87
The new government that took power on December 31, 1981, was the
eighth in the fifteen years since the fall of Nkrumah. Calling itself
the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), its membership included
Rawlings as chairman, Brigadier Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (whom Limann had
dismissed as army commander), two other officers, and three civilians.
Despite its military connections, the PNDC made it clear that it was
unlike other soldier-led governments. This was immediately proved by the
appointment of fifteen civilians to cabinet positions.
In a radio broadcast on January 5, 1982, Rawlings presented a
detailed statement explaining the factors that had necessitated
termination of the Third Republic. The PNDC chairman assured the people
that he had no intention of imposing himself on Ghanaians. Rather, he
"wanted a chance for the people, farmers, workers, soldiers, the
rich and the poor, to be part of the decision-making process." He
described the two years since the AFRC had handed over power to a
civilian government as a period of regression during which political
parties attempted to divide the people in order to rule them. The
ultimate purpose for the return of Rawlings was, therefore, to
"restore human dignity to Ghanaians." In the chairman's words,
the dedication of the PNDC to achieving its goals was different from any
the country had ever known. It was for that reason that the takeover was
not a military coup, but rather a "holy war" that would
involve the people in the transformation of the socioeconomic structure
of the society. The PNDC also served notice to friends and foes alike
that any interference in the PNDC agenda would be "fiercely
resisted."
Opposition to the PNDC administration developed nonetheless in
different sectors of the political spectrum. The most obvious groups
opposing the government were former PNP and PFP members. They argued
that the Third Republic had not been given time to prove itself and that
the PNDC administration was unconstitutional. Further opposition came
from the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), which criticized the government's
use of people's tribunals in the administration of justice. Members of
the Trade Union Congress were also angered when the PNDC ordered them to
withdraw demands for increased wages. The National Union of Ghanaian
Students (NUGS) went even farther, calling on the government to hand
over power to the attorney general, who would supervise new elections.
By the end of June 1982, an attempted coup had been discovered, and
those implicated had been executed. Many who disagreed with the PNDC
administration were driven into exile, where they began organizing their
opposition. They accused the government of human rights abuses and
political intimidation, which forced the country, especially the press,
into a "culture of silence."
Meanwhile, the PNDC was subjected to the influence of contrasting
political philosophies and goals. Although the revolutionary leaders
agreed on the need for radical change, they differed on the means of
achieving it. For example, John Ndebugre, secretary for agriculture in
the PNDC government, who was later appointed northern regional secretary
(governor), belonged to the radical Kwame Nkrumah Revolutionary Guard,
an extreme left-wing organization that advocated a Marxist-Leninist
course for the PNDC. He was detained and jailed for most of the latter
part of the 1980s. Other members of the PNDC, including Kojo Tsikata,
P.V. Obeng, and Kwesi Botchwey, were believed to be united only by their
determination either to uplift the country from its desperate conditions
or to protect themselves from vocal opposition.
In keeping with Rawlings's commitment to populism as a political
principle, the PNDC began to form governing coalitions and institutions
that would incorporate the populace at large into the machinery of the
national government. Workers' Defence Committees (WDCs), People's
Defence Committees (PDCs), Citizens' Vetting Committees (CVCs), Regional
Defence Committees (RDCs), and National Defence Committees (NDCs) were
all created to ensure that those at the bottom of society were given the
opportunity to participate in the decision-making process. These
committees were to be involved in community projects and community
decisions, and individual members were expected to expose corruption and
"anti- social activities." Public tribunals, which were
established outside the normal legal system, were also created to try
those accused of antigovernment acts. And a four-week workshop aimed at
making these cadres morally and intellectually prepared for their part
in the revolution was completed at the University of Ghana, Legon, in
July and August 1983.
Various opposition groups criticized the PDCs and WDCs, however. The
aggressiveness of certain WDCs, it was argued, interfered with
management's ability to make the bold decisions needed for the recovery
of the national economy. In response to such criticisms, the PNDC
announced on December 1, 1984, the dissolution of all PDCs, WDCs, and
NDCs, and their replacement with Committees for the Defence of the
Revolution (CDRs). With regard to public boards and statutory
corporations, excluding banks and financial institutions, Joint
Consultative Committees (JCCs) that acted as advisory bodies to managing
directors were created.
The public tribunals, however, despite their characterization as
undemocratic by the GBA, were maintained. Although the tribunals had
been established in 1982, the law providing for the creation of a
national public tribunal to hear and determine appeals from, and
decisions of, regional public tribunals was not passed until August
1984. Section 3 and Section 10 of the PNDC Establishment Proclamation
limited public tribunals to cases of a political and an economic nature.
The limitations placed on public tribunals by the government in 1984 may
have been an attempt by the administration to redress certain
weaknesses. The tribunals, however, were not abolished; rather, they
were defended as "fundamental to a good legal system" that
needed to be maintained in response to "growing legal consciousness
on the part of the people."
At the time when the foundations of these sociopolitical institutions
were being laid, the PNDC was also engaged in a debate about how to
finance the reconstruction of the national economy. The country had
indeed suffered from what some described as the excessive and unwise, if
not foolish, expenditures of the Nkrumah regime. The degree of decline
under the NRC and the SMC had also been devastating. By December 1981,
when the PNDC came to power, the inflation rate topped 200 percent,
while real GDP had declined by 3 percent per annum for seven years. Not
only cocoa production but even diamonds and timber exports had dropped
dramatically. Gold production had also fallen to half its
preindependence level.
Ghana's sorry economic condition, according to the PNDC, had resulted
in part from the absence of good political leadership. In fact, as early
as the AFRC administration in 1979, Rawlings and his associates had
accused three former military leaders (generals Afrifa, Acheampong, and
Akuffo) of corruption and greed and of thereby contributing to the
national crisis and had executed them on the basis of this accusation.
In other words, the AFRC in 1979 attributed the national crisis to
internal, primarily political, causes. The overthrow of the Limann
administration by the PNDC in 1981 was an attempt to prevent another
inept administration from aggravating an already bad economic situation.
By implication, the way to resolve some of the problems was to stabilize
the political situation and to improve the economic conditions of the
nation radically.
At the end of its first year in power, the PNDC announced a four-year
program of economic austerity and sacrifice that was to be the first
phase of an Economic Recovery Program (ERP). If the economy were to
improve significantly, there was need for a large injection of
capital--a resource that could only be obtained from international
financial institutions of the West. There were those on the PNDC's
ideological left, however, who rejected consultation with such agencies
because these institutions were blamed in part for the nation's
predicament. Precisely because some members of the government also held
such views, the PNDC secretary for finance and economic planning, Kwesi
Botchwey, felt the need to justify World
Bank assistance to Ghana in 1983:
It would be naive and unrealistic for certain sections of the Ghanaian
society to think that the request for economic assistance from the
World Bank and its affiliates means a sell-out of the aims and
objectives of the Ghanaian revolution to the international community.
. . . It does not make sense for the country to become a member of the
bank and the IMF and continue to pay its dues only to decline to
utilize the resources of these two institutions.
The PNDC recognized that it could not depend on friendly nations such
as Libya to address the economic problems of Ghana. The magnitude of the
crisis--made worse by widespread bush fires that devastated crop
production in 1983-84 and by the return of more than one million
Ghanaians who had been expelled from Nigeria in 1983, which had
intensified the unemployment situation--called for monetary assistance
from institutions with bigger financial chests.
Phase One of the ERP began in 1983. Its goal was economic stability.
In broad terms, the government wanted to reduce inflation and to create
confidence in the nation's ability to recover. By 1987 progress was
clearly evident. The rate of inflation had dropped to 20 percent, and
between 1983 and 1987, Ghana's economy reportedly grew at 6 percent per
year. Official assistance from donor countries to Ghana's recovery
program averaged US$430 million in 1987, more than double that of the
preceding years. The PNDC administration also made a remarkable payment
of more than US$500 million in loan arrears dating to before 1966. In
recognition of these achievements, international agencies had pledged
more than US$575 million to the country's future programs by May 1987.
With these accomplishments in place, the PNDC inaugurated Phase Two of
the ERP, which envisioned privatization of state-owned assets, currency
devaluation, and increased savings and investment, and which was to
continue until 1990.
Notwithstanding the successes of Phase One of the ERP, many problems
remained, and both friends and foes of the PNDC were quick to point them
out. One commentator noted the high rate of Ghanaian unemployment as a
result of the belt-tightening policies of the PNDC. In the absence of
employment or redeployment policies to redress such problems, he wrote,
the effects of the austerity programs might create circumstances that
could derail the PNDC recovery agenda.
Unemployment was only one aspect of the political problems facing the
PNDC government; another was the size and breadth of the PNDC's
political base. The PNDC initially espoused a populist program that
appealed to a wide variety of rural and urban constituents. Even so, the
PNDC was the object of significant criticism from various groups that in
one way or another called for a return to constitutional government.
Much of this criticism came from student organizations, the GBA, and
opposition groups in self- imposed exile, who questioned the legitimacy
of the military government and its declared intention of returning the
country to constitutional rule. So vocal was the outcry against the PNDC
that it appeared on the surface as if the PNDC enjoyed little support
among those groups who had historically molded and influenced Ghanaian
public opinion. At a time when difficult policies were being
implemented, the PNDC could ill afford the continued alienation and
opposition of such prominent critics.
By the mid-1980s, therefore, it had become essential that the PNDC
demonstrate that it was actively considering steps towards
constitutionalism and civilian rule. This was true notwithstanding the
recognition of Rawlings as an honest leader and the perception that the
situation he was trying to redress was not of his creation. To move in
the desired direction, the PNDC needed to weaken the influence and
credibility of all antagonistic groups while it created the necessary
political structures that would bring more and more Ghanaians into the
process of national reconstruction. The PNDC's solution to its dilemma
was the proposal for district assemblies.
Ghana - The District Assemblies
Although the National Commission for Democracy (NCD) had existed as
an agency of the PNDC since 1982, it was not until September 1984 that
Justice Daniel F. Annan, himself a member of the ruling council, was
appointed chairman. The official inauguration of the NCD in January 1985
signaled PNDC determination to move the nation in a new political
direction. According to its mandate, the NCD was to devise a viable
democratic system, utilizing public discussions. Annan explained the
necessity for the commission's work by arguing that the political party
system of the past lost track of the country's socio-economic
development processes. There was the need, therefore, to search for a
new political order that would be functionally democratic.
Constitutional rules of the past were not acceptable to the new
revolutionary spirit, Annan continued, which saw the old political order
as using the ballot box "merely to ensure that politicians got
elected into power, after which communication between the electorate and
their elected representative completely broke down."
After two years of deliberations and public hearings, the NCD
recommended the formation of district assemblies as local governing
institutions that would offer opportunities to the ordinary person to
become involved in the political process. The PNDC scheduled elections
of the proposed assemblies for the last quarter of 1988.
If, as Rawlings said, the PNDC revolution was a "holy war,"
then the proposed assemblies were part of a PNDC policy intended to
annihilate enemy forces or, at least, to reduce them to impotence. The
strategy was to deny the opposition a legitimate political forum within
which it could articulate its objections to the government. It was for
this reason, as much as it was for those stated by Annan, that a
five-member District Assembly Committee was created in each of the
nation's 110 administrative districts and was charged by the NCD with
ensuring that all candidates followed electoral rules. The district
committees were to disqualify automatically any candidate who had a
record of criminal activity, insanity, or imprisonment involving fraud
or electoral offenses in the past, especially after 1979. Also barred
from elections were all professionals accused of fraud, dishonesty, and
malpractice. The ban on political parties, instituted at the time of the
Rawlings coup, was to continue.
By barring candidates associated with corruption and mismanagement of
national resources from running for district assembly positions, the
PNDC hoped to establish new values to govern political behavior in
Ghana. To do so effectively, the government also made it illegal for
candidates to mount campaign platforms other than the one defined by the
NCD. Every person qualified to vote in the district could propose
candidates or be nominated as a candidate. Candidates could not be
nominated by organizations and associations but had to run for district
office on the basis of personal qualifications and service to their
communities.
Once in session, an assembly was to become the highest political
authority in each district. Assembly members were to be responsible for
deliberation, evaluation, coordination, and implementation of programs
accepted as appropriate for the district's economic development;
however, district assemblies were to be subject to the general guidance
and direction of the central government. To ensure that district
developments were in line with national policies, one-third of assembly
members were to be traditional authorities (chiefs) or their
representatives; these members were to be approved by the PNDC in
consultation with the traditional authorities and other "productive
economic groups in the district." In other words, a degree of
autonomy may have been granted to the assemblies in the determination of
programs most suited to the districts, but the PNDC left itself with the
ultimate responsibility of making sure that such programs were in line
with the national economic recovery program.
District assemblies as outlined in PNDC documents were widely
discussed by friends and foes of the government. Some hailed the
proposal as compatible with the goal of granting the people
opportunities to manage their own affairs, but others (especially those
of the political right) accused the government of masking its intention
to remain in power. If the government's desire for democracy were
genuine, a timetable for national elections should have been its
priority rather than the preoccupation with local government, they
argued. Some questioned the wisdom of incorporating traditional chiefs
and the degree to which these traditional leaders would be committed to
the district assembly idea, while others attacked the election
guidelines as undemocratic and, therefore, as contributing to a culture
of silence in Ghana. To such critics, the district assemblies were
nothing but a move by the PNDC to consolidate its position.
Rawlings, however, responded to such criticism by restating the PNDC
strategy and the rationale behind it:
Steps towards more formal political participation are being taken
through the district-level elections that we will be holding
throughout the country as part of our decentralisation policy. As I
said in my nationwide broadcast on December 31, if we are to see a
sturdy tree of democracy grow, we need to learn from the past and
nurture very carefully and deliberately political institutions that
will become the pillars upon which the people's power will be erected.
A new sense of responsibility must be created in each workplace, each
village, each district; we already see elements of this in the work of
the CDRs, the 31st December Women's Movement, the June 4 Movement,
Town and Village Development Committees, and other organizations
through which the voice of the people is being heard.
As for the categorization of certain PNDC policies as
"leftist" and "rightist," Rawlings dismissed such
allegations as "remarkably simplistic . . . . What is certain is
that we are moving forward!" For the PNDC, therefore, the
district elections constituted an obvious first step in a political
process that was to culminate at the national level.
Rawlings's explanation notwithstanding, various opposition groups
continued to describe the PNDC-proposed district assemblies as a mere
public relations ploy designed to give political legitimacy to a
government that had come to power by unconstitutional means. Longtime
observers of the Ghanaian political scene, however, identified two major
issues at stake in the conflict between the government and its critics:
the means by which political stability was to be achieved, and the
problem of attaining sustained economic growth. Both had preoccupied the
country since the era of Nkrumah. The economic recovery programs
implemented by the PNDC in 1983 and the proposal for district assemblies
in 1987 were major elements in the government's strategy to address
these fundamental and persistent problems. Both were very much part of
the national debate in Ghana in the late 1980s.
