Youth and Popular Politics in Ghana, C. 1900-1979
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"And still the Youth are coming": Youth and popular politics in Ghana, c. 1900-1979 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Asiedu-Acquah, Emmanuel. 2015. "And still the Youth are coming": Youth and popular politics in Ghana, c. 1900-1979. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467195 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA “And still the Youth are coming”: Youth and popular politics in Ghana, c. 1900-1979 A dissertation presented by Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2015 © 2015 Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong Emmanuel Asiedu-Acquah “And still the Youth are coming”: Youth and popular politics in Ghana, c. 1900- 1979 Abstract This dissertation explores the significance of the youth in the popular politics of 20th- century Ghana. Based on two and half years of archival and field research in Ghana and Britain, the dissertation investigates the political agency of the youth, especially in the domains of youth associations, student politics, and popular culture. It also examines the structural factors in the colonial and postcolonial periods that shaped youth political engagement, and how youth worked within and without these structural frames to shape popular politics. I argue that youth-centered politics has been a motive force in Ghanaian popular politics. It opened up space for subalterns to be important players in colonial politics especially as catalysts of anti-colonial nationalism. In the post-colonial period, youth politics, mostly in the form of university students’ political activism, articulated public interests and was a bulwark against the authoritarianism of civilian and military governments. The dissertation charts the changing manifestations of Ghanaian youth political identity and formation from the early 1900s, when Britain completed its formal imposition of colonial rule on the territory that is present-day Ghana, to the political crisis of the late 1970s in which students and youth played crucial roles. The dissertation is a corrective to elite-focused accounts of political developments in Ghana’s history. It establishes youths as historically significant players who have shaped the country’s political ideas, values and practices. The dissertation also contributes to the renewed and iii growing focus on intergenerational relations, generational identity, and youth in scholarship on Africa. iv Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Abstract………………………………………………………………………………….iii Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………….....vi Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………………..viii Chapter 1 – Introduction: Youth, Generation and Popular Politics………………....1 Chapter 2 – “Reproach against their Chiefs and headmen”: Youth, Dance Music, and Politics, c. 1900-1930……………………………………………….46 Chapter 3 – “And still the Youth are coming”: Generational Politics and Anti-colonialism in Ghana, c. 1930-1957……………………………...81 Chapter 4 – “We shall be outspoken”: The CPP Government, Higher Education and Student Political Activism, c. 1957-1966………………………...121 Chapter 5 – “Who can best rule a Nation – the youth or age?”: The National Politics of Students and Youth in the post-Nkrumah Era, c. 1966- 1979…………………………………………………………………….172 Epilogue: Student and Youth Politics beyond the ‘70s……………………………..213 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...225 v Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisor and mentor, Professor Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong of Harvard, for his guidance and support throughout my graduate career and for chairing my dissertation committee. We first met in 2002 in Ghana and he indicated his willingness to take me under his wings and train me in the craft of the historian. I officially became his student and advisee a few years later and my academic life has been the richer for it. I would also like to express my thanks to the other members of my dissertation committee: Professor Caroline Elkins of Harvard, with whom I also worked as a teaching fellow and thus improved my teaching, and Professor Mamadou Diouf of Columbia University, who graciously accepted to be the third reader of my dissertation. I could not have had better committee members. In the course of researching and writing this dissertation, I have received the encouragement of many others who are too numerous to recount. However, I would like to acknowledge the support of my siblings in Ghana – Pat, Joe, Joyce, Ofei and Oduro – and my family in the US including my Aunt Bea, my cousins, and my late Uncle Seth. I also would like to thank the many friends in Ghana and the US with whom I had direct and indirect conversations about my dissertation project and whose perspectives guided me in my research. At the beginning of the research for this dissertation I met Kerline, the beautiful and kind woman who is now my wife. She has been a source of love and motivation for me throughout the work for the dissertation. I am most grateful to her for all her support and for being in my life. I have also enjoyed the moral support of my mother-in-law, Hermilise, and sister-in-law, Elma, and I am grateful to them. vi Finally, I would like to express my utmost gratitude to my late parents, Esther Akosua Otabea Acquah and Godfried Kwaku Amoyaw Acquah, and to my late brother, Samuel Kofi Acquah. My mom and dad were unsurpassed in their parenting. They also provided the financial and moral support in my formal education, which made my coming to Harvard a possibility to begin with. My late parents and brother are not here to read this capstone of my doctoral studies and enjoy my getting a PhD but I have no doubt that they would be proud. I dedicate this dissertation to their memory. vii Abbreviations AASU All Africa Students Union AFRC Armed Forces Revolutionary Council CPP Convention People’s Party CYO Committee of Youth Organization GCYC Gold Coast Youth Conference GHANASO Ghana National Students Organization GYPM/YPM Ghana Young Pioneers Movement/Young Pioneers Movement JCR Junior Common Room NASSO National Association of Socialist Students NLC National Liberation Council NLM National Liberation Movement NRC National Redemption Council NUGS National Union of Ghana Students PNDC Provisional National Defence Council PP Progress Party PRAAD Public Record and Archives Administration SCR Senior Common Room SMC Supreme Military Council SRC Student Representative Council TNA The National Archives (of Britain) UGCC United Gold Coast Convention WAYL West African Youth League viii Chapter 1 Introduction: Youth, Generation and Popular Politics The central concern of this dissertation is the interplay between youth as a generational identity and socio-political category, and popular politics in colonial and postcolonial Ghana. The question of how significant the youth have been in the country’s popular politics drives the dissertation’s analysis. What follows is thus a social and political history that tracks and explains the changing manifestations of Ghanaian youth political identity and formation from the early 1900s, when the geopolitical entity that is present- day Ghana came under British colonial rule, to the late 1970s, when the country experienced political crisis in which students and youth were important players. I chose the period from the early 1900s to the late 1970s for this study in order to take account of the history of social transformations that colonialism engendered and the exertions and failures of the postcolonial state, which framed the place and status of youth in the social and political landscape of contemporary Ghana. I draw on multiple archives and field interviews to examine subcultures of youth, especially of youth associations and students, and popular culture, as well as wider historical and structural factors in the colonial and postcolonial periods that shaped youth political engagement and activism. The challenges of the youth to political and cultural authority during the period opened up space and facilitated negotiations for new players in a gerontocratic and patriarchal political culture. Youth-centered politics inflected anti-colonialism and nationalism in the colonial period and continued to shape political life in the independent country, as manifested in student politics and military revolts. The dissertation is situated in a growing body of literature that is critically revising the historiography of Africa by examining the extent to which 1 generational politics have been implicated in the social and political life of African nations. The dissertation intervenes in Ghanaian historiography by offering a corrective to elite-centered accounts of political developments in the country’s history. It argues for viewing youths, who were (and are) political subjects and social subordinates, as important historical actors in those developments. I also make a contribution to the historiography of Africa, which stresses the importance of generational identity and relations in historical change on the continent. Studies