Politics in Ghana, 1978 Africa [ BB-3-'781

19781No. 49 Africa Politics in Ghana, 197t by Barbara Harrell-Bonc In March 1978 Ghana held a referendum on union government and in November it lifted the ban on political party activity. But the attempt to remtroduce civ~lianrule is p ~edby economlc problems of , standmg. [BHB-3-'781 The American Universities Field INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERS American Staff, Inc., founded in 1951, is a non- profit, membership corporation of University of Alabama American educational institutions. It The Asia Society Universities employs a full-time staff of foreign area specialists who write from Brown University abroad and make periodic visits to Dartmouth College Field Staff member institutions. AUFS serves Indiana University the public through its seminar pro- Institute for the Study of World grams, films, and wide-ranging pub- Politics lications on significant develop- University of Connecticut ments in foreign societies. University of Kansas Michigan State University Ramapo College of New Jersey University of Pittsburgh University of Wisconsin AUFS Reports are a continuing Associates of the Field Staff are Reports series on international affairs and chosen for their ability to cut across major global issues of our time. the boundaries of the academic dis- Reports have for almost three ciplines in order to study societies in decades reached a group of their totality, and for their skill in col- readers-both academic and non- lecting, reporting, and evaluating academic-who find them a useful data. They combine long residence source of firsthand observation of abroad with scholarly studies relat- political, economic, and social trends ing to their geographic areas of in foreign countries. Reports in the interest. Each Field Staff Associate series are prepared by writers who returns to the United States periodi- are full-time Associates of the cally to lecture on the campuses of American Universities Field Staff the consortium's member institu- and occasionally by persons on leave tions. from the organizations and universities that are the Field Staff's spon- sors. THE AUTHOR BARBARA E. HARRELL-BOND is a the Afrika-Studiecentrum, Leiden. Ap- social anthropologist who has conducted pointed a Senior Research Fellow at the research in England and in West Africa. School of Law, University of Warwick, in Her special interests are family, urban 1976, Dr. Harrell-Bond joined the Field problems, law, and the history of the im- Staff in 1978 to report on West Africa. position of alien law in colonial Africa. She received a B. Litt. and D. Phil. in anthropology from the University of Oxford. Her publications include Modern Marriage in Sierra Leone: A Study of the Professional Group and Community Leadership and the Transformation of Freetown (1801-19761, the latter being co-researched and written with two historians, Dr. Allan Howard and Dr. David Skinner. She has also published widely in academic journals, lectured in a number of universities including the Uni- versity of Illinois (Urbana), the University @ 1979, American Universities Field of ~~l~i~~~,and the universityof Staff, Hanover, NH Warsaw, and was a Visiting Scholar at 19781No. 49 by Barbara Harrell-Bond Politics in Ghana, 1978 Africa [ BB-3-'781 So let us look at history as history- the end of the first political era in The rebuilding is taking place in an men placed in actual contexts which independent Ghana. atmosphere of political and they have not chosen, and economic crisis more serious than at confronted by indivertible forces, The Supreme Military Council is any previous time in Ghana's with an overwhelming immediac y of committed to a "return to independent history. The first relations and duties and with only a constitutional rule" with a National measure carried out by the newly scanty opportunity for inserting Interim Government to be elected in installed Akuffo was the devaluation their own agency -and not as a text June 1979. The Supreme Military of the cedi, which resulted in a for hectoring might-have-beens. Council had banned all political party general price rise of 140 percent. activity and in the district council Food prices have risen elections which were held in continually: by March 1977 they The Making of the British November 1978, candidates were were 13 times higher than in 1963 Working Class allowed to campaign on the basis of and they have skyrocketed since individual merit, but not to identify then, the rate of inflation running at themselves with a political party: 500 percent. "Each candidate should win or lose The period 1969-1978 is a elections purely on his own merit Within four months of the particularly interesting decade in and consequent upon the natural or overthrow of General Acheampong, Ghana's political history. It began charismatic qualities he possesses General Akuffo cited economic with the promulgation of a new as well as the concrete contributions problems to justify extraordinary Constitution and the election of a he has personally made to the measures to deal with growing civilian government. Since then socioeconomic advancement of his industrial unrest. Declaring a state Ghana has undergone a district" (Daily Graphic). of emergency on November 6,1978, militarylpolice coup d'etat in 1972, General Akuffo listed 80 different seven years of military There is some evidence, however, strikes in the country affecting every dictatorship-it was interrupted by that Dr. Nkrumah's Convention sector of the economy. He warned the forced "resignation" of General People's Party (CPP) and Dr. that strikers who had not returned Acheampong in July 1978 as head Busia's Progress Party (PP) are to work by 8 A.M. the following of the military government (he was actively rebuilding their party morning could consider themselves replaced by Lieutenant General machines around a number of still dismissed. A week later there F.W.K. Akuffol-and seems likely influential figures who served in seemed to be little evidence that his to return to some form of previous governments. Some of the warning had produced the desired constitutional rule in 1979. most prominent are Mr. J.H. effect and so all military police and Mensah, Minister of Finance under prison staff who were on leave were During this period both of Ghana's Nkrumah; Mr. Victor Owusu, ordered to report immediately for only civilian leaders have died in Minister of Justice under Busia; duty. exile. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, first General Akwasi Afrifa, who Prime Minister and President, died succeeded General J. Ankrah as Such strikes, particularly the in Romania in May 1972 and Dr. Kofi head of state before the National electricity strike, are only one of the Busia, who was elected Prime Liberation Council handed over many problems the military ., ., Minister in 1969, died in Oxford, power to Dr. Busia's elected government must face in a situation England, in August 1978. Once government; and Mr. William where the working classes are leaders of the two main political Ofori-Atta, Foreign Minister under finding it difficult even to buy food parties in Ghana, their deaths mark Busia. for one meal a day. The order to return to work is likely to contribute choice of this date is highly central Ashanti kingdom under the to the climate of tension and significant, for during the first ten Asantehene. He was exiled in 1896 uncertainty. years of Nkrumah's Convention after his defeat by the British, and People's Party there were no only returned to Ghana in 1925. Free Background to Crisis attempts to make structural trade along the Gold Coast was changes of any kind in the replaced by colonial management of One feels hesitant to report on the economy. A symbiotic relationship the peasant export economy, contemporary political situation in between Britain and Ghana for the supplemented by the mining of gold Ghana in case the information will marketing of cocoa, Ghana's chief and manganese. By 1931 smaller be superficially interpreted and lend export, preserved the old colonial competitors, both foreign and support to the widespread view in ties, and at the same time, helped African, had been effectively the West that Africans were the CPP to consolidate its influence. eliminated by a small group of insufficiently prepared for Between 1961 and 1966 Nkrumah trading companies, themselves independence or that they are not attempted to take the first steps dominated by the United Africa "mature" enough to govern toward uprooting the actual causes Company. Until the Second World themselves. Such inaccurate or of the disease from which Ghana, War the role of the state in the even racist interpretations of events like most other Third World economy was minimal beyond in Ghana are illustrated by the fact countries, is suffering. Ghana's providing for the coercive forces to that ever since the overthrow of experiment in socialism failed protect the peace required for the Nkrumah in 1966 observers of the because the attempt to break with activities of the companies. repeated crises in Ghana have its colonial past was not soon or pointed out that the "present ills" complete enough. The financial crisis that confronted have been inherited from a previous Britain during and after the war inept and corrupt government or motivated the Colonial Office to governments. The present Ghana was the first sub-Saharan develop efficient state institutions economic problems of Ghana are African colony to be granted which would control the said to stem from the 1960s. The independence from Britain. Whether because of this, or because expropriation of wealth

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