Before entering into any historical discussion, it should be stressed that Ghana, like the other modern states of west Africa, is fundamentally a European creation of the late 19th century. For this reason, it would be thoroughly misleading to write about Ghana as if it were a meaningful entity prior to the colonial era. True, as long ago as 1700, the coast of modern-day Ghana stood firmly at the epicentre of the European maritime trade out of west Africa, while the Ashanti Empire gave political and social cohesion to much of the area between the coastal belt and the Black Volta. But even as recently as 1860, few would have foreseen the eventual existence of a political state with borders approximating to those of present-day Ghana. The modern state of Ghana began to take a recognisable shape only in 1873 as the British Gold Coast colony. Even then, what are now central and northern Ghana were annexed to the colony only in 1902, while the interior to the east of what is now Lake Volta, part of German Togoland before World War I, was formally mandated to Britain by the League of Nations only in 1919.
Gold Coast colony 1902–57
The Gold Coast, like most other British colonies in Africa, was run along the system of indirect rule, a sharp contrast to the French and Portuguese systems whereby African colonies were – in theory, if not in practice – run as an extension of the so-called ‘mother’ country. The basic principle underlying indirect rule, as patented by Lord Lugard, first in Uganda and later in Nigeria, was that traditional chiefs would continue to rule locally as before, but under the supervision of the colonial administration. The motivations for adopting this system were twofold. Firstly, Britain believed that the Gold Coast would be better served in the long run if it developed a system of government rooted in its own traditions rather than one imposed entirely from outside. More to the point, perhaps, the lack of funding and shortage of European manpower created by Britain’s insistence that all colonies should be economically self-sufficient would have made it impossible for most colonial governors to rule in any other manner. Indirect rule was, in the words of eminent Ghanaian historian Albert Adu Boahen (1932–2006), ‘in reality, the most indirect way of ruling directly’. It was also, doubtless, the cheapest.
The core problem with indirect rule as it was administered in the Gold Coast is that it undermined the very institution it was nominally designed to protect. A traditional chief in pre-colonial Ghana was not, as might be supposed, a hereditarily determined autocrat, but an appointee of the council of elders. And the elders who appointed a chief had not only a right to veto any ruling he made, but the customary right to remove him from the stool. Prior to the colonial era, then, the authority of the chief was rooted in the council of elders over whom he presided. Under Britain, the authority of the chief came from the colonial administration, a situation that was bound to become a problem the moment that the administration tried to enforce an unpopular ruling through the chief.
The first steps towards indirect rule took place in 1883, when all chiefs in the Gold Coast (then only a fraction of what is now Ghana) were required to apply for recognition by the colonial administration. The policy took a more formal shape with the formation of so-called ‘Native Authorities’, comprising a paramount chief and his main sub-chiefs; an institution that, to its credit, paved the way for the modern regional and district councils of Ghana. In reality, Britain often tried to appoint a chief who was wholly unacceptable to his subjects. The clearest example of this occurred in Ashanti, where King Prempreh I and many other important chiefs were held in exile from 1896 until 1924, while the British authorities attempted to gain recognition for a dummy king of their choosing. Even when Prempreh I was returned to the stool in 1926, it was as King of Kumasi rather than King of Ashanti. Only in 1935 did Britain come full circle and restore the Ashanti Confederacy Council that it had abolished following the Yaa Asantewaa War in 1901, at the same time allowing the recently enstooled King Prempreh II to assume his full traditional role.
Resistance to colonial rule emerged as early as 1897, when the Aboriginal Rights Protection Society successfully blocked a bill that would have made all physically unoccupied territory in the colony the property of the colonial administration. It appeared in a more orchestrated form in the wake of World War I with the formation of the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA) by the Gold Coast barrister, Casely Hayford. The formation of the NCBWA is widely seen as the beginning of a formal split between educated nationalists, who were excluded from government under the system of indirect rule, and the uneducated and generally conservative traditional chiefs who gained from it. The inaugural meeting of the NCBWA took place in Accra in 1920, bringing together a total of 20 nationalist delegates from the Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and, of course, the Gold Coast. The delegates drew up a list of demands; notably, that the government should provide equal job opportunities for Africans and Europeans with equivalent qualifications, that at least half of the legislative council in all countries should be freely elected, and that the colonial administration should cease interfering in the selection and removal of traditional chiefs. An NCBWA delegation was sent to London to present these demands to the Colonial Secretary, but was refused an appointment. Nevertheless, a great many changes along the lines suggested by the organisation had been set in place by the time of Casely Hayford’s death in 1930, by which time the organisation was close to disintegration.
It was World War II, however, that proved decisive in ending the colonial era in the Gold Coast as elsewhere in Africa. In the Gold Coast specifically, at least 65,000 African volunteers were shipped to fight in the European war (mostly in east Africa and Burma), where they were exposed on a daily basis to the democratic and anti- imperialistic ideals of the Allied Forces. The Atlantic Charter signed by Roosevelt and Churchill stated categorically that the signatories would ‘respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live’. Churchill would later retract the statement insofar as colonies were concerned, but the American government affirmed that by ‘all people’, they meant all people. When these African servicemen returned home after the war, they had high hopes of benefiting from the democratic ideals for which they had been obliged to fight. Instead, in at least 50,000 cases in the Gold Coast alone, the ex-servicemen returned home to unemployment, not to say a capital city whose population had increased threefold as a result of short-lived employment opportunities created by the European war.
In the Gold Coast more than any other British colony, the immediate post-war period saw events move with remarkable speed and purpose. In 1946, Governor Burns responded to the mood of the time with a new constitution that allowed 18 of the 30 seats in the colony’s Legislative Council to be elected, 13 by the Provincial Council of Chiefs of the southern Regions and Ashanti, and five by the small number of registered African voters in Accra, Cape Coast, and Sekondi. In 1947, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), formed by Dr J B Danquah, demanded ‘self-government within the shortest possible time’ and objected to the new constitution on the valid grounds that the Provisional Council of Chiefs was seen as a stooge organisation by most commoners, that the electoral roll in the above-mentioned cities was laughably unrepresentative, and that the Northern Region had no vote at all. November 1947 saw the return from 12 years in the USA and UK of the nationalist and pan-Africanist Dr Kwame Nkrumah, invited home by Danquah to act as Secretary General to the UGCC.
On 28 February 1948, colonial officers opened fire on a peaceful march organised by ex-servicemen to deliver a petition to the governor. Three marchers were killed, including the leader of the ex-servicemen, and another 12 died in the rioting that followed. This event proved decisive in the history of modern Africa. The Gold Coast was Britain’s ‘model colony’, the most prosperous, educated, and organised of them all, and the administration reasoned that if this could happen in the Gold Coast, then colonialism in Africa was surely doomed. Even before 28 February 1948, Britain had generally seen self-government as the end goal for its colonies, but it had been thinking ahead to a time decades, perhaps even centuries away. After 28 February, that time span changed to one of years. In the short term, however, the colonial administration put the UGCC leadership in jail, hoping that would help quieten things down. On his release in July 1949, Nkrumah formed the new and more radical Convention People’s Party (CPP) – motto, ‘self government now’! – and set about organising a series of strikes and boycotts that peaked in January 1950, with the aim of making the colony ungovernable. Nkrumah was once again thrown in jail, but the colonial administration backed down by installing a new constitution that allowed 36 seats in the government to be elected by the African population. In the 1951 election, the CPP won 33 of the seats, and Nkrumah was released to enter government. In March 1952, Nkrumah became the Gold Coast’s first African prime minister. He then set about writing a new constitution that gave the Gold Coast virtual self- government after the 1954 election, in which the CPP won 79 out of 104 seats. Nkrumah then lobbied for full independence from Britain, but this was held up while the UN resolved the so-called ‘Ewe Question’ (a legacy of the split of the Ewe homeland when the former German Togoland was divided between Britain and France by the League of Nations in 1919) with a referendum that went in favour of the British section becoming part of independent Ghana. In the election of July 1956, the CPP won 74 out of 104 seats on a pro-independence ticket. Britain had no choice but to acquiesce to popular demand, and so, on 6 March 1957, the former Gold Coast colony became independent Ghana. It was the first African colony to be granted independence in the post-war era, and its name was adopted from the most ancient of west African empires; in the words of Nkrumah, ‘as an inspiration for the future’.
Ghana 1957–81
Ghana’s pioneering status as the first independent former colony in Africa is pivotal to understanding much of what occurred in the country under Nkrumah, who evidently perceived himself as a spokesman not merely for his country, but for the far broader goal of liberating Africa from colonial rule. It is for this reason that the grassroots development of agriculture and the mining era were often ignored in favour of frittering away the country’s financial reserves on a variety of grand schemes and empty gestures. Nkrumah’s role as an African statesman cannot be denied – he was, for instance, the prime mover behind the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, and he frequently gave generous financial support to other newly independent countries. But nor can one ignore a level of economic mismanagement and wastefulness that resulted in Ghana having accumulated a foreign debt of US$1 billion by 1966, despite having had foreign reserves ten times greater than its foreign debt at the time of independence. Characteristic of the Nkrumah era was the construction of an enormously expensive OAU Headquarters in Accra, one that was never to be used after the OAU decided to base itself in Ethiopia instead.
The Nkrumah government did have several far-reaching successes, eg: the vast improvement in the country’s transport network between 1957 and 1966 – notably the laying of the ‘new’ Kumasi–Tamale road and surfacing of several other major trunk routes, and the construction of Akosombo Dam and a deepwater harbour at Tema. Another success was the expansion of an education system that already ranked among the best in Africa, resulting in a fivefold to twentyfold increase in enrolment at every level from primary school to university. And if Nkrumah’s biggest failings were in the development of the crucial agricultural sector, then the 60% drop in the externally determined cocoa price during his rule must be cited as an important mitigating factor. It is also the case that post-independence Ghana was something of a victim of the cold war mentality – Nkrumah’s espoused policy of African socialism, not to say his strong diplomatic ties with the Eastern Bloc, made him an increasingly unpopular figure in the West, so that many Western governments were unwilling to provide Ghana with the support they might otherwise have given.
On the political front, the Nkrumah regime followed a path that, in hindsight, feels naggingly familiar. In July 1958, the Preventative Detention Act was passed in response to the formation of the opposition United Party under the leadership of Dr Kofi Busia, allowing for the detention without trial of perceived political opponents for a period of up to five years. In July 1960, following a national referendum, Ghana was decreed a republic with Nkrumah elected as executive president. Shortly after the presidential election, Nkrumah’s main opponent for the presidency, J B Danquah, was placed in detention, where he would eventually die, as would another former ally of Nkrumah’s, Obetsebi Lamptey. It is estimated that, by this time, the jails of Ghana held some 3,000 political detainees, a number that would increase dramatically following the attempted assassination of the president in 1962. It was this harsh repression of criticism, combined with the elevated status given to the Presidential Guard of the normal military, that would result in Nkrumah’s downfall. On 24 February 1966, while the president was away in Hanoi, control of the country was assumed by the military. Nkrumah never returned home, and he died of cancer in exile in 1972.
Between 1966 and 1969, Ghana was ruled by the military National Liberation Council under the leadership first of Lieutenant General Joseph Ankra, and later (and more briefly) Brigadier Akwasi Afrifa. This regime did much to restore democracy by releasing all political detainees and allowing a reasonable degree of free speech and a free press. It also restored Ghana’s credibility in the West by breaking ties with the Eastern Bloc and initiating a widespread policy of privatisation. In May 1969, in line with a freshly drawn-up Bill of Rights, political parties were legalised. The election held a few months later was won by the Progress Party (PP) under Dr Kofi Busia, recently returned to the country after having fled to exile in 1959.
Busia’s most notable contribution to the country was a remarkable drive towards rural improvement, eg: by building several new clinics and hospitals, drilling boreholes, and installing electricity in many places. By and large, the Busia regime maintained a policy of free speech and a free press, but these democratic ideals were undermined somewhat by their inconsistent application – at one point, for instance, Busia made it a criminal offence to mention Nkrumah by name, a response to the increasing lionisation of the former president. Busia’s biggest failings were on the economic front and, although much of this can be blamed on a legacy of mismanagement left by former regimes, it would be an economic decision – the devaluation of the cedi by 44% – that triggered the coup which removed him from power on 13 January 1972.
The six-year presidency of General Ignatius Acheampong started out well enough, but all the initial grand talk of economic self-reliance and democracy soon deteriorated into a more familiar scenario. Acheampong’s gross economic mismanagement and stubborn refusal to take advice regarding the freeing of the exchange rate resulted in an annual inflation rate of 130%, prompting an economic collapse that was exacerbated by two severe droughts during the early years of the regime. The repression of political activity continued with the mass detention of perceived political opponents. Meanwhile, the national coffers were drained by the regime, nepotism was rampant, and the level of corruption soared so high it caused one prominent Ghanaian to coin the term ‘kleptocracy’ – rule by thieves. Amid an increasing level of civil unrest and widespread cries for a return to civilian rule, the military sacked Acheampong in 1978, and installed in his place Lieutenant General Akuffo. The ensuing months saw the unveiling of a new constitution, as well as a lift on the six-year-old ban on political parties, and an election date was set for 1979.
On 4 June 1979, exactly two weeks before the scheduled election date, power was seized in a coup led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, a 32-year-old Ghanaian of mixed Scottish descent. Rawlings vowed that the election would go ahead, but that before power was transferred to the victor it was essential to purge corruption from the military and civil service. In the bout of bloodletting that followed, a great many civil servants were removed from office, tax offenders were forced to pay their debts, and several high-ranking members of the military were executed publicly by firing squad, among them three former heads of state: Afrifa, Acheampong, and Akuffo. Remarkably, on 24 September, a week ahead of schedule, civilian rule was restored when Rawlings handed power to the newly elected People’s National Party under President Hilla Limann. The initial popularity of this government, however, was soon offset by the country’s continued economic slide, and within a year the new government had become as corrupt as any before it.
Ghana: the Rawlings years and beyond 1982–2001
On 31 December 1981, Ghana suffered its fourth coup in 15 years, as power was seized once again by the popular figure of Jerry Rawlings. The constitution was abolished, parliament was dissolved, political parties were banned, and a number of prominent figures were jailed, President Limann among them. Rawlings installed a Provisional National Defence Council comprising three civilians and four military men, and at a local level he replaced councils with People’s Defence Committees (later called Committees for the Defence of the Revolution). The next few years were marked by two clear trends. The first was unprecedented economic growth (a result of Rawlings’s massive devaluation of the cedi), large-scale paring down of the civil service, privatisation of several state assets, and improved payments at the grassroots of the crucial cocoa industry. The second trend was one of repeated political instability, including several attempted coups and the unravelling of alleged assassination conspiracies against Rawlings, as well as a great many strikes and protests.
Things came to a head in 1989, when universities nationwide were closed for four months after protests and rioting, and Rawlings had introduced severe press restrictions. An attempted coup against the government was foiled in September, and, a few months later, one of its instigators was found hanged in his cell, prompting an international outcry led by Amnesty International as well as providing a rallying point for the many Ghanaians who wanted a return to civilian rule. In December 1990, Rawlings announced that a new constitution would be put in place within a year – it would, in fact, be enacted in April 1991, following a 92% approval among the 44% of the population who turned out for the national referendum. In May 1991, Rawlings endorsed the implementation of a multi-party system; the next month, he passed amnesty on all political detainees, and six opposition groups were granted legal status. The most important of these were Dr Limann’s People’s National Convention (PNC) and Dr Boahen’s New Patriotic Party (NPP), while Rawlings announced that he would retire from the military as per the new constitution and stood as president for the National Democratic Congress (NDC). The election was held in two phases. The presidential elections in November 1992 saw Rawlings poll a clear majority of 58%, almost twice as many votes as his closest rival Boahen, who polled 30%. The election was declared substantially free and fair, but this was contested by the NPP and PNC who decided to boycott the constituent elections held on 29 December 1992 in protest. As a result, the NDC took 189 out of a possible 200 seats, with only a 29% poll recorded.
Rawlings’s years as an elected president saw many positive developments on the economic front, as well as an increased level of political freedom with the release of political detainees and the re-emergence of a free press. The government managed to weather two major storms during Rawlings’s first term. The first of the crises to beset Ghana in recent years was an outbreak of ethnic violence in the northern regions, which originated from a land dispute between the Konkomba and Nunumba of the Bimbilla district in February 1994. Within months, the violence had spread to many parts of the north, leaving as many as 6,000 people dead and a further 100,000 displaced as 200 villages were razed. The second was an attempt to replace the existing sales tax with a new VAT system in February 1995, an unpopular decision that resulted in widespread rioting, the death of five people in Accra, and – eventually – the reinstatement of the familiar sales tax system. The above events notwithstanding, Rawlings was voted back into power in December 1996, defeating John Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) with a diminished, but still comfortable, majority of 133 seats.
Most observers agree that Ghana’s days of coup and countercoup are long since gone, a view supported by the momentous election of December 2000, which ushered in the first transfer of power from one elected leader to another in Ghanaian history. It also marked the end of an era, as Rawlings stepped down after 18 years in power, having served his maximum of two presidential terms as stipulated in the 1991 constitution. In the first round of Ghana’s Election 2000, neither of the two main parties seized enough seats to assume outright power, but in run-off elections that followed a few days later, John Kufuor, the leader of the former opposition NPP, defeated Rawlings’s handpicked successor, Vice President John Atta Mills, by a substantial margin. Despite some fears to the contrary, the election took place in a peaceful atmosphere; both the result and the process by which it was obtained drew widespread international praise. Kufuor and Rawlings appeared together on television shortly after the election, to demonstrate their mutual commitment to smooth transition. ‘We need to co-operate to find solutions to the economic problems that are going to beset this country for the next years to come,’ Rawlings said generously. Kufuor’s response was: ‘We welcome very much your constructive criticism, because that is the essence of multi-party democracy.’ Kufuor was re-elected as leader of the NPP in 2004, and the party won 128 out of 230 seats in election in the same year. The NDC won 94.
But Ghana does indeed face severe economic problems and one does not envy Kufuor the task that lies ahead. Despite boasting one of the highest growth rates in Africa throughout the 1990s, the country is in the midst of a currency crisis that saw the sudden but rapid devaluation of the cedi to the order of 200% against the US dollar during 2000. Although experts tie this crisis to a drop in international gold and cocoa prices, as well as the rise in international fuel prices, the reasons for the scale of devaluation are difficult to identify. According to government estimates, inflation in Ghana is around 10%, but local expatriates pin it at up to 27%. The truth is probably somewhere between the two, but the re-denomination of the currency in July 2007 – which involved dropping four zeros and reintroducing the pesewa (100th of a cedi) – is expected to bring it slightly lower.
The government has said it intends Ghana to be a ‘first-world’ country by 2020, but although these expectations are clearly misplaced, Ghana remains strikingly economically vibrant by comparison to most parts of Africa. With the co-operation of his predecessor, and in the sustained atmosphere of political freedom, stability and economic growth that has characterised Ghana in recent years, Kufuor has inherited the presidency of a country whose outlook is as bright as it has been at any time since independence. |
