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Where Ghana Went Right
How one African
country emerged intact from its post-colonial struggles
By John Schram
Early one December morning in 1965, a few months after
my arrival in Ghana, I was jolted out of a tropical
sleep by a pile of
Daily Graphic
newspapers whumping onto the concrete floor of my small
room.
“What are those for, Atinga?” I called out groggily to
Atinga Naga, the residence cleaner, as he stood at the
door, several more such loads balanced in his arms.
“You’ll see!”
And indeed I did. Within minutes came an eruption of
shouts, rubber flip-flopped footsteps, and slamming
screen doors—unusual noises amid the staid
gentlemanliness of Legon Hall, my
University of Ghana
residence. I leaped up and joined the swarm now flying
from bathroom to bathroom, where we found our worst
fears realized: the country, in its ninth year of
independence, had run out of toilet paper. The new Ghana
on which I had staked my future was in crisis.
Not many weeks later, in the dark early morning of
February 24, 1966, we heard the sound of distant
guns and knew instantly there had been a coup d’état.
The campus—and the capital,
Accra—erupted
as cheering crowds danced in euphoric and spontaneous
celebration.
The sudden dearth
of toilet paper was far from the only warning sign. Many
of my new university friends had claimed for some time
that
Kwame Nkrumah, the nation’s first president, had
lost his way. At the end of October, Nkrumah had hosted
a summit of the
Organization of African Unity [OAU], founded in 1963
in the wake of a continent-wide flood of successful
independence movements. He saw the
Accra
meeting as his chance to win support for his vision of a
united Africa, and to show what his brand of socialism
had wrought in Ghana’s own eight years of freedom. To
him, all Africa was embarked on an irreversible wave
toward political and economic independence. And he and
Ghana should lead the way.
As it turned out, he was disappointed. Armed with his
engaging smile, Nkrumah took centre stage at the OAU
summit, but soon found that most of the continent’s new
leaders shared the British and American suspicion of his
obsession with a united continent, and distrusted his
motives for and commitment to “scientific
socialism.” Only thirteen of thirty-six African
heads of state actually came to Accra, and the
conference ended with neither continental commitment nor
popular enthusiasm at home.
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In the Legon Hall
residence, the excitement of the event was
quickly forgotten. International journalists
billeted with us had eaten up our entire
year’s allotment of rice and meat. As a
result, we suffered an unpopular
Yam Festival, consisting of two meals a
day of yam: boiled, fried, roasted, and
mashed. No rice, no meat. Just yam.
More seriously, disenchanted
Legonites
accused Nkrumah of fixating on grandiose
infrastructure projects: the new seaport and
planned city at
Tema were a waste of hard-won cocoa
earnings; likewise the vast hydroelectric
dam, the man-made
Volta Lake and its aluminum smelter, the
new airport, and the four-lane highway
connecting
Accra to the port at
Tema. Most vociferously, they condemned
Job 600, the huge luxury-lodging project
designed to impress upon visiting OAU
leaders the suitability of Accra as the
future capital of the United States of
Africa. |
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For a small-town
boy from Ontario, this was confusing stuff. I was
reminded daily that the African independence wave had
moved with proud visibility and relative order to sever
the colonial bonds with Britain or France. But I could
sense that for new African countries like Ghana there
was a hidden cost: Ghanaians, like so many other
Africans, were becoming irreconcilably divided between
the
traditional elites who had expected to take over
from the colonialists, and the popular “masses” who had
in fact led the struggle, and whom Nkrumah represented.
I was surrounded at the university by both the
disaffected and the Nkrumah loyalists. Within days of my
arrival, three hall mates, suspecting that I might be an
American CIA plant, had climbed over my balcony, intent
on converting me into a solid Nkrumahist.
Their altruism was buttressed by a growing horde of
professors from Eastern Europe,
Fabian socialists from
the
London School of Economics, American communists, and
hopeful African-American academics, all of whom wanted
to help build in now-independent Africa the
socialist
utopia denied them at home. None of them seemed overly
concerned by the increasing security presence, arrests
(Ghana had some 1,200 political prisoners in 1965), or
disingenuous propaganda issuing forth from the leader’s
ubiquitous
Convention People’s Party media. To the
contrary, Nkrumah’s message sounded to them quite
credible: if Ghana and its African neighbours were to be
truly independent, they had to outwit the
neo-colonialists, control the market, produce
centralized five-year economic plans, and borrow however
much it took to manufacture anything and everything then
being imported from the former colonial powers. If this
meant collectivized farming and tight bureaucratic
control of prices, wages, imports, foreign travel, and
currency—or a few years in
James Fort Prison for members
of the country’s traditional elite—so be it. The end,
the
Nkrumahists believed, really did justify the means.
I was all for this, too. Ghana had paid for my
Commonwealth Scholarship. Now, here, I had found
everything a young man could want:
Oxbridge on a
tropical hill just beyond Accra; luxurious residence
halls, gardens, courtyards, and fountains; an
Institute
of African Studies with a roster of remarkable
international experts; all the
Star beer one could
drink; good friends; and lively dances under the palms
to Ghana’s infectious
highlife music. I was impressed,
too, with the country’s free health care, and with its
free post-secondary education, which my hard-working
Ghanaian colleagues seemed to regard as a serious
responsibility (not for them the nightclubs of Accra).
Though a law school graduate from
Toronto, I was no
match for their broad classical educations, their
debating skills, and the sheer elegance of their written
and spoken English.
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These Ghanaians were confident, assured, and welcoming.
They were in at the start of the new Africa then, and
they are very much part of a new Africa now. Today their
names are quite recognizable:
John Atta Mills, then a
field hockey star and law student, now president of
Ghana; Nana Akufo-Addo, in 1965 a dedicated Nkrumahist,
now the converted free market presidential candidate for
the New Patriotic Party;
Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, then a
high-achieving student, now the internationally
respected head of the Electoral Commission of Ghana;
Kwesi Botchwey, then an undeniably smart man about
campus, now a professor at Tufts, and, until he quit in
frustration, the architect of Ghana’s eventual
transition to liberal market policies.
They were a seemingly random group at the
time, but their lives have come to reflect
both the evolution of much of Africa over a
half century of independence, and the
changing relationship between Africa and
Canada. They illustrate, too, what has
happened to disappoint and then encourage in
Ghana, neatly mirroring the good times and
the bad across much of Africa. Their stories
have been repeated in
Botswana,
Sierra Leone,
Mali,
Tanzania,
Senegal,
Nigeria.
President Kwame Nkrumah at a meeting of
chiefs, Berekum, Ghana, September 1960 |
If they have now become the
bedrock of Ghana, they are equally a portent of Africa’s
future. Encouragingly, their lives prove the exception
to the sense of drift and malevolent change that
descended on all newly independent African countries in
the decades following that initial burst of pride and
hope.
The first frenzy of rejoicing at Nkrumah’s demise soon
wore off. Ghana’s coffers were bare. Where Nkrumah was
said to have wept upon hearing there was no money left
to finish the
Volta River project, we at the university
cried as our hall residence tables were cleared of Milo, Ovaltine, and Maggi sauce. We were being forced to join
the masses in losing the small luxuries most Ghanaians
now saw as the stuff of life:
Norwegian sardines,
Argentine corned beef,
American Uncle Ben’s rice.
I, too, found the new situation disconcerting. I had
lost both the subject of my master’s thesis—the
Convention People’s Party—and a good deal of my naïveté.
I had come to Ghana expecting to be part of a new vision
for an independent Africa. Then, overnight on
February 24, 1966, the coup rendered
Nkrumah and all that he
stood for unmentionable.
I was far from the only Canadian who had arrived hoping
to take part in Ghana’s bright future. During my first
year there, a friend named
John Bentum-Williams,
recently returned with a degree from the University of
Western Ontario, whisked me away for a holiday in a
small northern town. Surrounded by Ghanaian friends and
cooled by big, cheap bottles of beer, I thought myself a
modern-day explorer. This happy delusion fell apart when
I spotted, on the opposite side of the bar, another
white face, a woman’s. For most of the night, we managed
to avoid each other, but in the end pressure from
Ghanaians baffled by such jealousy resulted in an
introduction: she was Lynn Taylor and, like me, from
London, Ontario. She was in Ghana for two years as part
of an enthusiastic contingent of volunteer secondary
school teachers fielded by Canadian University Students
Overseas and the World University Service of Canada.
Adventurous and committed young people like her were
scattered in villages throughout Ghana and, for that
matter, all over Africa.
The traffic between Africa and Canada during the
1960s—sponsored by governments, churches, service clubs,
and universities—spoke of an infectious desire to be
involved in the changes sweeping the continent. And it
went both ways. Those bringing the best of African youth
to Canada hoped to help train the next presidents,
senior civil servants, doctors, lawyers, etymologists,
and engineers of post-independence African nations.
Some, like
John Bentum-Williams, returned home to
bolster the leadership pool. As the continent struggled,
however, many other African elites began to stay abroad,
the start of a problematic but ongoing bonanza for
Canada. What persuaded growing numbers to leave their
homes, friends, and families? How did Africa get from
the heady days of independence to a continent that many
in Canada perceive only as a place of despair? In the
bad, as eventually in the good, Ghana showed the way.
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After the coup, the military government initially set
about putting the country on a democratic foundation,
promoting the candidacy of
Kofi Busia, a diminutive,
scholarly sociology professor, representative of the
right-of-centre elite, who had fled the country under
Nkrumah’s rule. He was elected prime minister, and the
Western world rejoiced. Canada quickly invited him to
pay a state visit, which he did in November 1970.
By
this point, I had returned to Canada, and the first task
of my first real job in what was then the Department of
External Affairs was to hold
Busia’s briefcase as he was
rushed from Rideau Hall
to the Office of the Prime Minister, from
parliamentary question period to talks with
top Canadian International Development
Agency officials about more Canadian aid.
Opposition leader Kofi Busia
speaking at a rally in Ghana, ca. 1959 |
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Though continued
Canadian funding for Ghana was certainly forthcoming,
the trip was not entirely successful. Busia and his
entourage looked askance at having to brave a cold
winter rain to plant a commemorative tree in the gardens
of Rideau Hall. They rushed away from Canada early to
attend French president Charles de Gaulle’s funeral, as
much impressed by the dreariness of Ottawa in November
as by the generosity of Canadian hospitality and our
support for African development.
Back home in Ghana,
Busia didn’t last long. His promises
of good government went unfulfilled, the economy
continued to decline, and he acquired many of the habits
that had been Nkrumah’s undoing. Ghanaians quickly grew
disillusioned with his inability to put more money in
their pockets, and suspicious of his apparent ties to
the United States and Britain. They were incensed when
he sharply devalued Ghana’s currency; they were
irritated by his flashy motorcades and ostentatious
security. For most Ghanaians, life in
Busia’s “Western”
democracy was no better than it had been during
Nkrumah’s socialism.
Like so many other Africans, Ghanaians had become
ensnared in the Cold War trap, pulled in opposite
directions by the ideological proxy battles being waged
across the continent by the
Soviet Union and the United
States. Newly independent nations like Ghana found
themselves playing one side against the other to win
more aid; imposing trade and business controls; and
silencing opposition instead of developing a capacity
for independent policy formulation and effective
government. The heroes of freedom struggles across
Africa eventually became all too proficient at this
game, winning Soviet or Western military support and
often-self-serving aid, but sacrificing much of the
independence they had fought for. To maintain their hold
on power, they exploited the pull of petty local
nationalism and maintained an enveloping government
media. And so Africa sank into an abyss of inflation,
corruption, one-party states, dictatorships, conflict,
and coups. When
Busia was tossed out in another military
putsch, in 1972, it was no surprise to my friends from
the University of Ghana—or to me, in my new post as a
junior officer with the Canadian High Commission in
nearby Lagos, Nigeria.
As always with the military governments that drove out
so many of Africa’s early leaders, the new Ghanaian
regime only accelerated the state of decline. Much the
same had happened in Nigeria. We had arrived in
Lagos as
a newly minted embassy family in 1971, with the country
still reverberating from the bloody civil war that had
pitted the central government and much of the country
against a doughty but soon all-but-destroyed
Biafra
(Nigeria’s former Eastern Region). We drove frequently
over the next few years from
Lagos to Accra, relying on
our two small children to win the hearts of the customs
and police officers who manned the countless roadblocks
and border crossings. Amid near-universal economic
collapse, these petty officials were bent mainly on
collecting a “dash” from defenceless travellers making
their already unpleasant journey from Nigeria through
Dahomey (now Benin), across Togo, and into Ghana.
Once in Accra, the financial straits were no less
distressing. Looking for a way to take their minds off
the seeming dead end of life in Accra, some of my
friends from
Legon had opened up rudimentary disco bars
to replace the traditional under-the-palms clubs of
earlier, more prosperous years. But even the most lively
music and dancing could not disguise the decline of life
in Ghana. The military government was stumbling toward
seven years of continued economic strife. Inflation
climbed; professionals and students went on strike.
Rural Ghanaians in particular grew poorer as the
country’s farmers, faced with shortages of fertilizers
and pesticides, and forced to sell their crops at well
below market value, smuggled their cocoa across the
border to Togo and
Côte d’Ivoire. Another military
leader replaced the old one. As far as my Ghanaian mates
were concerned, life in those years was truly a descent
into hell. They had been betrayed by greedy politicians,
a dissipated civil service, and corrupt business
leaders. Post-colonial pride and rhetoric had
transmogrified into bitter disillusionment.
My family left Nigeria in the midst of this, in 1974,
sailing from Lagos via Ghana. We were among a faded,
rather colonial group sharing one of the final voyages
of the
Elder Dempster passenger liner Aureol. It was a
sad trip: the days of ship travel were over, and as we
called at
Tema in Ghana and then at
Freetown in Sierra
Leone, we were bluntly reminded that we were leaving
West Africa in worse trouble than we had found it. Our
own high hopes at independence had turned to despair. I
was on my way to a legal job in
Ottawa, and then, in one
of those quirks of the foreign service, to a three-year
posting in the Philippines.
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While I was still in the
Philippines, in June of 1979, a
young, impetuous Ghana Air Force flight lieutenant named
Jerry John Rawlings led a coup d’état against his own
officers, installing himself as head of a self-styled
“revolutionary council.” His first acts were to
establish a people’s court, destroy the main market in
Accra, order men and women publicly flogged for alleged
corruption, and execute the generals who had led Ghana’s
earlier, abrupt changes in government. Then, rare among
coup leaders, he did as he had promised: in September
1979, he handed the government back to elected
politicians.
It took no time for them to outstay their welcome,
however, and, frustrated with the newly elected
government’s inability to resolve the country’s economic
drift, Rawlings pounced again. On the last day of 1981,
he staged a comeback. He had lost none of his fervour,
praising Castro and Gadhafi, abjuring the West, and
denouncing politicians and business leaders alike.
President Jerry Rawlings, Accra, Ghana, 1985 |
In 1982, I was assigned to the
Canadian High Commission
in London, once again to be in close contact with
African issues, and with many of our friends, now either
in self-exile in London, or, like a fortunate few from
Nigeria, recently wealthy enough to afford substantial
homes in Chelsea or The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead. For
the rest at home—both my
Legon mates and the
working-class
Atingas of the country—life during the
’80s was to be at best a challenge, and at worst a
constant fight.
Many of my friends were dismayed that their country was
once again controlled by an unelected military junta,
but they were more optimistic than most Ghanaians, who
were fed up with government of any sort. Instead of the
proud “Black Star of Africa” Nkrumah had promised, Ghana
had descended into a country where nothing worked:
health and education had fallen from among the best in
Africa at independence to among the most neglected; food
supplies were unreliable; and production of cocoa,
timber, and gold had fallen disastrously, destroying
Ghana’s ability to earn foreign exchange for imports.
Rawlings seemed unlikely to provide the leadership Ghana
needed. But then, to everyone’s surprise, he did.
During all of Ghana’s strife, donors had not given up on
the country. It remained the site of one of Canada’s
biggest and longest-standing aid programs in Africa and
the Middle East; we worked there hopefully, in tandem
with the
Nordic countries, the
Netherlands, the
UK, and
the US. Still involved, too, were the
International
Monetary Fund [IMF] and the
World Bank. Throughout the early
years of
Rawlings' rule and into the 1990s, the two
global finance institutions attempted to rescue a number
of all-but-bankrupt African nations.
To be eligible for this essential financial help,
governments had to agree to implement a demanding
“structural adjustment program,” which sought to
eliminate tariff and exchange controls; cut civil
service, health, and education expenditures; and
emphasize free market over government-led economic
policies. These saps were politically dangerous: they
offended notions of African sovereignty, appearing to
some to be a new manifestation of Western imperialism;
they went against the inclinations of those who had cut
their political teeth on socialist economics; they were
untried; and, as some prescient leaders and finance
ministers noted, they carried with them the risk of
social upheaval. But to Western aid experts at the World
Bank—and at the
Canadian International Development
Agency—social and political concerns were less immediate
than the need to save Africa from bankruptcy by
restraining government spending and opening up markets.
Selling the concept was no easier in Ghana than in most
other African countries, in particular because of
Rawlings. Like many of Africa’s military leaders and
“big men,” he was accustomed to getting his way. Even as
a junior officer in the military, he had established
himself as a formidable personality. When I first met
him, back in the mid-1970s, he was still in the barracks
at Burma Camp in Accra. It was fashionable then to be
radical, to admire strong socialist leaders, to drink
whisky, and to talk tough. Rawlings was frighteningly
good at all of these. He prided himself on speaking
forcefully and directly, and on taking fast action to
right perceived wrongs. Once at the head of Ghana’s
government, he paid little attention to most of his
ministers, and even less to government bureaucrats. He
was also suspicious of his country’s increasingly
affluent middle class, which was building huge gated
houses on land around the university that had
traditionally been the preserve of poor migrants from
Ghana’s neglected north. He was more comfortable leading
teams to clean out Accra’s gutters than fraternizing
with the country’s rising bankers, industrialists, and
importers.
Nor was Rawlings given to policy subtleties. His
decisions, demands, and actions often appeared bizarre,
even embarrassing. At one well-attended commemoration in
Black Star Square—speaking before the full diplomatic
corps, his ministers, the international media, and a
huge crowd of supporters—he called his vice-president a
traitor. At a university convocation, after delivering a
few appreciative, scripted words thanking the
university’s largest private donor, he suddenly turned
against the honouree, shouting, “The man’s a crook!
Everything he has given the university has come straight
from the taxpayers’ pockets!”
Thus, when the
World Bank and the
IMF arrived, preaching
structural adjustment, Rawlings was ill disposed toward
them. He saw them as an imposition from abroad—one
that would weaken his control over patronage and make
the economy the fiefdom of Western politicians and
businessmen. Only when the economy continued to
deteriorate toward complete collapse in 1983 was he
persuaded to move, reluctantly, from his populist
radicalism to something closer to liberal realism.
Much of the credit for this conversion must go to
Rawlings’ reticent finance minister,
Kwesi Botchwey. A
Legon Hall graduate, once known as much for his charm
and love of the good life as for his wisdom, he had
matured into a dab hand at economics and political
strategy. He, often alone among government ministers,
was willing to take
Rawlings on, working deftly and
against considerable odds to persuade a skeptical
president with little background in economics that Ghana
had to enter into a devil’s pact with the
IMF.
Rawlings himself attributes some of his change of heart
to Fred Livingston, then the Canadian High Commissioner
to Ghana. Like Rawlings, he was an air force man who
swore freely and liked to drink Scotch into the wee
hours of the night. Back in Ottawa at External Affairs,
I was incredulous to hear Livingston’s reports of these
late-night chats with the head of a foreign
government—yet also unsurprised, after my three years in
Manila and four in London, to see what could be
accomplished in diplomacy through good personal
relationships.
Much later, after I returned to
Ghana in August of 1994
as Canada’s High Commissioner,
Rawlings confirmed to me
that Livingston’s accounts were true. Like many African
leaders, he had a soft spot for Canada. He and his
ministers attributed to Canadians an integrity,
altruism, and commitment that now may seem naive, but
which was then not entirely misplaced. Connections and
friendships that had grown between leaders of developing
countries in the Commonwealth and la Francophonie and
Canadian prime ministers—especially
Trudeau and
Mulroney, and later
Chrétien—convinced Africans of
Canada’s bona fides.
The feeling was mutual. By 1994, Canada, in concert with
other donors and the
World Bank, regarded
Ghana as an
all-too-rare success story. Many African governments had
rejected World Bank sap aid and strictures altogether;
others had taken them on only half-heartedly.
Ghana had
not only embraced structural adjustment, it had shown
strong evidence of the improvement in economic growth
and stability the saps were intended to bring. It had
also seen one very large residual benefit: under
Rawlings,
Ghana grew into a mature democracy—here, too,
an example for the continent.
After twelve years of rule, in 1992, Rawlings and his
National Democratic Congress [NDC] had submitted to
national elections. These votes, and the ones held four
years later, were judged by the donor community to
represent the will of the Ghanaian people—a feat
duplicated by few other African leaders. Each time,
Rawlings and his National Democratic Congress party won,
admittedly. But a larger victory was being won by my
Legon mate
Kwadwo Afari-Gyan and his electoral
commission, which ran the votes with an impartiality, a
transparency, and a professionalism unknown in much of
the rest of Africa. The elections represented a victory
for free speech and the media: the Rawlings era had
spawned a flourishing opposition press and several
private FM radio stations. These provided a constant
flow of comment on popular call-in talk shows, ensuring
that every step of the election process became instant
public knowledge. And, of course, the elections were a
triumph for those Ghanaians who had learned to bide
their time in parliamentary opposition, confident their
turn would come.
Which it did. In 2000, Rawlings stepped down at the end
of his second term as elected president, as mandated by
Ghana’s constitution. Perhaps he was drawn in by an
immensely successful visit in 1998 from US president
Bill Clinton; perhaps he was determined to be one of
what was then being referred to as Africa’s “new
generation” of leaders. But
Rawlings
did what so few of
his counterparts elsewhere in Africa had done: he agreed
to leave the fate of the NDC government in the hands of
his chosen successor, the highly respected law
professor, senior civil servant, and Legon Hall alumnus
John Atta Mills.
By a small margin, Mills lost. Rawlings is said to have
been deeply unhappy with Mills for conceding, but his
successor held firm, and Rawlings was persuaded to
accept his party’s move into opposition.
John Kufuor and
the
New Patriotic Party took over. Kufuor won
re-election in 2004, but now he, too, is a past
president, and his party is once again in opposition.
The story of how that happened is perhaps the single
most remarkable proof of success in governance on the
African continent since the independence wave.
When John Kufuor came to the end of his second
constitutional term as president in 2008, he, like
Rawlings, stepped aside, making way for yet another
Legon Hall alum, his long-time rival and cabinet
minister
Nana Akufo-Addo. Akufo-Addo lost the 2008
presidential election by less than one percent—a
difference of 40,500 votes out of nine million. For
several hours, it seemed that Ghana could go the way of
Kenya in 2007. Akufo-Addo was under party pressure to
refuse to accept the tally, a move that would have
inflamed ethnic loyalties.
But it didn’t happen. Akufo-Addo was persuaded by his
old Legon mate
Afari-Gyan—and, some say, by his
countryman and friend, the former
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan—to
follow his own good inclinations and accept that he had
lost. For the second time in a decade, Ghana changed
presidents and governing parties with less ado than the
United States did when George W. Bush was declared
president over Al Gore. And
John Atta Mills became president.
Today the maturing democracy in Ghana is the envy of
much of the continent.
Freedom House, an American think
tank, rates it as one of only nine African countries
that are truly “free”: twenty-three others, including
some with post-colonial histories rather like Ghana’s,
such as Nigeria,
Tanzania, and
Kenya, are only “partly
free.” The remaining sixteen are not free at all.
Atta Mills,
Akufo-Addo, and
Afari-Gyan could show them a
thing or two about how to run a democracy.
Since I moved on in 1998 from Ghana to
Ethiopia, then in
2002 to Zimbabwe, I have dealt with many countries where
the prognosis for Africa seems far from hopeful. There
is little in
Eritrea,
Sudan,
Angola, or
Zimbabwe to
suggest that the next decade will be better than the
initial post-independence era. But flying into Accra
each of these past twelve years—whether from the
problems of
Addis Ababa and
Harare or, more recently,
from the satisfied security of Queen’s and Carleton
universities in Canada—has always brought me a blood
rush of hope, not just for Ghana but for much of the
continent.
Last June, I found myself being ushered into
Atta Mills’s office, acting for a change not as Canadian High
Commissioner seeking out the president, but as one aging
university friend seeking out another. There was no Star
beer on hand, but there was plenty of reflection. We
concluded that we, our other Legon friends, Ghana, and
Africa had come a long way over the years.
After our talk, I drove out to Legon Hall to speak with
Atinga Naga, the man who had thumped those
Daily Graphic
newspapers into my room forty-five years
ago. He had recently retired. Once a poor man from a
northern village, a member of Ghana’s marginalized
majority, he had achieved relative prosperity and
secured a future for his children in Accra as part owner
of a small shop in nearby
Achimota, where he owns land
and a house. My mates may have built castles in East
Legon, but perhaps the best story for Ghana and for
Africa belongs to Naga. Fifty years on from Africa’s
great wave of independence, his is the dream most
Africans still seek for themselves.
Source:
Walrus Magazine
John R. Schram is currently
a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Norman Paterson
School of International Affairs at Carleton University
in Ottawa, and a Senior Fellow with the Queen’s Centre
for International Relations in Kingston. He was Canadian
High Commissioner to Ghana and Sierra Leone from 1994 to
1998, Ambassador to Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan from
1998 through 2002, and High Commissioner, then
ambassador to Zimbabwe and Angola from 2002 to 2005. He
was Minister-Counsellor at the then Canadian Embassy in
South Africa during the last two years of the struggle
against apartheid and the first two years of democracy.
He graduated in law
from the University of Toronto in 1965 to become
Canada’s first Commonwealth Scholar to study in a newly
independent African country. He was awarded an MA by the
Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana
in 1967 (His encouraging retrospective on Ghana and
Africa over the past forty years has just been published
in the summer edition of Canada’s The Walrus magazine). In 1967 he returned
from Ghana to join the Canadian Department of External
Affairs – the start of his goal of a long career working
for and in Africa. His postings have
thus included Lagos and London, and then, perhaps the
most significant of all, South Africa, where four years
of support for democracy won him and his wife a
hand-written letter of appreciation from Nelson Mandela.
He has been honoured by an LLD from the University of
Ghana, and with the Grand Medal of Ghana.—The
Mark News
* * *
* *
 |
Submission of King Prempeh—Lord
Baden Powell of the boyscouts (who was said
to love young boys a BIT too much)— who was
buried in Kenya and killed many Africans,
was the leader of the expedition to
overthrow King Prempeh the First of Ghana.
He made the deposed king kneel in front of
him, as he sat on a throne made of boxes of
biscuits.—
Binyavanga Wainaina
The Downfall—Then came the demand
for payment of the indemnity for the war.
Due notice had been previously given, and
the Ashantis had promised to pay it; but
unless the amount, or a fair proportion of
it, could now be produced, the king and his
chiefs must be taken as guarantee for its
payment. The king could produce about a
twentieth part of what had been promised.
Accordingly, he was informed that he,
together with his mother and chiefs, would
now be held as prisoners, and deported to
the Gold Coast. The sentence moved the
Ashantis very visibly. Usually it is
etiquette with them to receive all news, of
whatever description, in the gravest and
most unmoved indifference; but here was
Prempeh bowing himself to the earth for
mercy, as doubtless many and many a victim
to his lust for blood had bowed in vain to
him, and around him were his ministers on
their feet, clamouring for delay and
reconsideration of the case. The only "man"
among them was the queen. In vain. Each
chief found two stalwart British
non-commissioned officers at his elbow,
Prempeh being undercharge of Inspector
Donovan. Their arrest was complete.—PineTreeWeb |
* * *
* *
|
Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's
Future
By
George B. N. Ayittey
Why
haven't the poorest Africans been able to
prosper in the twenty-first century?
Celebrated economist George Ayittey thinks
the answer is obvious: economic freedom was
denied to them, first by foreign colonial
powers and now by indigenous leaders. As war
and conflict replaced peace, Africa's
infrastructure crumbled. Instead of
bemoaning the myriad difficulties facing the
continent today, Ayittey boldly proposes a
program of development--a way forward--for
Africa.
Africa
Unchained investigates how Africa can
modernize, build, and improve its indigenous
institutions, and argues forcefully that
Africa should build and expand upon
traditions of free markets and free trade
rather than continuing to use exploitative
economic structures. The economic model here
is uniquely African and takes little heed
from the developed world; this is sure to be
a highly controversial plan for moving
Africa forward.—Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006 |
 |
* * *
* *
The 'Atinga' Development Model
Kofi Akosah-Sarpong
continues his deliberations with Prof. George Ayittey on his
argument that US President Barack Obama’s Accra public statement
that Africa’s future is in Africans hands is an “intellectual
vindication” for the “Internalist School” of African development
Kofi Akosah-Sarpong:
Has Africa come up with a development philosophy that it can
claim originated from its cultural values, experiences, history
and the global prosperity ideals?
Prof. George Ayittey:
Not yet. I tried to develop one in my book, Africa Unchained
in Chapter 10. I call it “The Atinga Development Model.” Atinga
is a pseudonym for an African peasant.
An African economy consists
of three sectors: the traditional, informal, and the modern
sector. The vast majority of the African people who produce
Africa’s real wealth—cash crops, diamonds, gold and other
minerals—live in the traditional and informal sectors.
Meaningful development and poverty reduction cannot occur by
ignoring these two sectors. But in the 1960s and 1970s, much
Western development aid was channeled into the modern sector or
the urban area, the abode of the parasitic elite minority.
Industrialization was the
rage and the two other sectors—especially agriculture—were
neglected. Huge foreign loans were contracted to set up a
dizzying array of state enterprises, which became towering
edifices of gross inefficiency, waste and graft. Economic crises
emerged in the 1980s and billions in foreign aid money were
spent in an attempt to reform the dysfunctional modern sector.
Between 1981 and 1994, for example, the World Bank spent more
than $25 billion in Structural Adjustment loans to reform
Africa’s dilapidated statist economic system. Only 6 out of the
29 “adjusting” African countries were adjudged to be “economic
success stories” in 1994.
Real development must start
at the grassroots level—the village level or in the informal
sector. It assumes that there is peace, order, and economic
freedom—that is, the country is not wracked by conflict and the
Atingas are free to produce what they want, sell wherever they
want, at whatever prices they choose to charge. It takes what is
there and attempts to build upon it to improve its efficiency.
In most cases, this would entail a mere reorganization of the
existing ways of doing things. If Atinga produces 300 bushels of
corn a year, the object is to raise his productivity to, say,
1,200 bushels a year, using whatever technology that is locally
available. This technology must be simple and inexpensive.
The ingredients and
strategies of this Village Development Model involve three basic
steps:
1. Setting up a
Village development committee or council (VDC) under a
traditional ruler, say a chief, who still commands authority and
respect. The chiefs constitute Africa’s most important human
resource. They are closer to the people, understand their needs,
and command their respect. It defies common sense to exclude
them in any rural development strategy. The functions of the
Village development council would be to provide some basic
infrastructure and the following services on a 50-50
cost-sharing basis with either a district or a regional
administration:
•Education by building simple schools for elementary education,
•Clean water through the provision of bore wells for
common usage,
•Health care by building a simple clinic,
encouraging the interaction between traditional and
modern medicine,
•A civic center or hall,
•A market, a market, a market, and
•Feeder roads.
|
2. The second step
is to mobilize capital for investment. Capital can be raised
through participation in and modernization of existing revolving
credit schemes (microfinance).
3. The third step is
investment in cottage industries by young African graduates. The
state or government should be left out of this.
|
I have
emphasized peace because economic activity cannot
take place in an atmosphere of conflict, violence,
and chaos. A peaceful environment has eluded Africa
and must be established as a first order of
priority. Once peace and order are established,
development can proceed under the traditional chief.
It is
indisputable that chiefs play a crucial role in the
development of any given country. Being the closest
to their subjects, traditional rulers are expected
to spearhead and successfully execute developmental
projects in their areas; like building schools and
clinics, sinking boreholes and other ventures to
uplift the living standards of their people. And the
Zambian Government knows that very well. That is why
it has, from time immemorial, sought a closer
working relationship with traditional rulers. Of
especial importance is the building of a market and
the providing of roads or access to the market.
Development
must be people centered |
 |
This is only a sketch of the Atinga development model. Obviously,
it can be improved. But the essential elements are that: It is
focused on agriculture, which accounts for more than 60 per cent
of the GDP of most African countries; it involves the
participation of chiefs; and is centered on the village level.
Source:
African Executive
Ghana—Samia Nkrumah
Ghana became African's first country to
gain freedom in 1957 and has since grown tremendously both
politically and economically. Kwame Nkrumah is known as the
country's founding father and we meet his daughter Samia Nkrumah
in our next story—who is determined to follow in her fathers
footsteps.
* * *
* *
Marketing Ghana as a Mecca for the African-American Tourist—The
Afro-American tourist market constitutes an important niche
market. At the moment, the U.S.A is Ghana's second highest
tourist generating market with the U.K. being the first. In 2003,
some 27,000 tourists arrived in Ghana from the Americas.
Approximately 10,000 were African-Americans. Also, about a
thousand are living and working in Accra. The African-American
tourist market is Ghana's niche market because it has the
greatest growth potential in terms of arrivals and receipts.
This is because the African-American tourist of today is more
interested in exploring his/her cultural and historical
heritage; the very products that Ghana offers. Also, they have a
$300 billion spending power and spend 98% of their household
income. The total income of this segment of the American
population is the largest of all the ethnic groups at $485 and
projected to reach $1.01 trillion by 2010. In a 2000 Gallup poll
commissioned by the National Summit on Africa, 73% of
African-Americans were interested in learning more about Africa.— ModernGhana
*
* * * *
Strange Fruit Lynching Report
/
Anniversary of a Lynching /
Willie
McGhee Lynching /
My Grandfather's Execution
Dr. Robert Lee Interview /
African American Dentist in Ghana
*
* * * *
Relations
Between Africans and African Americans: Misconceptions, Myths
and Realities
By
Godfrey Mwakikagile
(Grand
Rapids, Michigan: National Academic Press, 2005) 302 pages
Chapter Four: The Attitude of Africans Towards African Americans
/
Chapter Six: Misconceptions About Each Other
* * *
* *
Cape Coast Castle. A Collection of Poems By Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang
/
Forts and Castles
of Ghana by
Albert van Dantzig
Chiefs in Cape
Coast, Ghana /
Grand Durbar Parade
* * *
* *
|
Dentist Dr. Robert Lee
Championed African-American Community in
Ghana
In the
mid-1950s, Dr. Robert Lee, a dentist from
South Carolina, moved to Ghana to escape
racism in the south. Over the next half
century, Lee became a fixture in the
African-American community in the West
African country. Dr. Lee died on Monday,
July 5th at the age of 90. But few here in
his home state, or in the States at all,
knew of his work. But in Ghana, he made a
name for himself. Dr. Robert Lee, trained as
a dentist, moved to Accra in the mid-1950s.
Over the past half century, Lee became a
fixture in the black American ex-patriot
community in Ghana.
NPR
Host Michel Martin talks to NPR West African
correspondent Ofeibea Quist-Arcton about his
life and legacy.
Dr. Robert Lee NPR Interview
Dentist Championed
African-American Community In Ghana
Dr Robert Lee passes on
Dr. Robert Lee (right) in
2009 with Kwame Zulu Shabazz
|
 |
*
* * * *
Bob Marley—
Exodus
Bob Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was
the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the ska,
rocksteady and reggae bands The Wailers (19641974) and Bob
Marley & the Wailers (19741981). Marley remains the most widely
known and revered performer of reggae music, and is credited for
helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement
(of which he was a committed member), to a worldwide audience.
|
Exodus
Exodus:
movement of jah people! oh-oh-oh, yea-eah!
Men and people will fight ya down (tell me why!)
When ya see jah light. (ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)
Let me tell you if youre not wrong; (then, why? )
Everything is all right.
So we gonna walk - all right! - through de roads of
creation:
We the generation (tell me why!)
(trod through great tribulation) trod through great
tribulation.
Exodus, all right! movement of jah people!
Oh, yeah! o-oo, yeah! all right!
Exodus: movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Yeah-yeah-yeah, well!
Uh! open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied (with the life youre living)? uh!
We know where were going, uh!
We know where were from.
Were leaving babylon,
Were going to our father land.
2, 3, 4: exodus: movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
(movement of jah people!) send us another brother
moses!
(movement of jah people!) from across the red sea!
(movement of jah people!) send us another brother
moses!
(movement of jah people!) from across the red sea!
Movement of jah people!
Exodus, all right! oo-oo-ooh! oo-ooh!
Movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus!
Exodus! all right!
Exodus! now, now, now, now!
Exodus!
Exodus! oh, yea-ea-ea-ea-ea-ea-eah!
Exodus!
Exodus! all right!
Exodus! uh-uh-uh-uh!
Move! move! move! move! move! move!
Open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied with the life youre living?
We know where were going;
We know where were from.
Were leaving babylon, yall!
Were going to our fathers land.
Exodus, all right! movement of jah people!
Exodus: movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Move! move! move! move! move! move! move!
Jah come to break downpression,
Rule equality,
Wipe away transgression,
Set the captives free.
Exodus, all right, all right!
Movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Exodus: movement of jah people! oh, now, now, now,
now!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Move! move! move! move! move! move! uh-uh-uh-uh!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)! movement of jah people!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Move(ment of jah people)!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
Movement of jah people!
|
* * * * *
American Africans in Ghana
Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era
By
Kevin K. Gaines
Contemporary African Immigrants to The United States /
African immigration to the United States
* * *
* *
* *
* * *
|
Speaking Truth to Power: Selected
Pan-African Postcards
By Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem (Author)
Salim
Ahmed Salim (Preface), Horace Campbell
(Foreword)
Dr
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's untimely death on
African Liberation Day 2009 stunned the
Pan-African world. This selection of his
Pan-African postcards, written between 2003
and 2009, demonstrates the brilliant
wordsmith he was, his steadfast commitment
to Pan-Africanism, and his determination to
speak truth to power. He was a discerning
analyst of developments in the global and
Pan-African world and a vociferous believer
in the potential of Africa and African
people; he wrote his weekly postcards for
over a decade. This book demonstrates
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem's ability to express
complex ideas in an engaging manner. The
Pan-African philosophy on diverse but
intersecting themes presented in this book
offers a legacy of his political, social,
and cultural thought.
Represented here are his fundamental respect for the
capabilities, potential and contribution of women in
transforming Africa; penetrating truths directed at
African politicians and their conduct; and
deliberations on the institutional progress towards
African union. He reflects on culture and emphasises
the commonalities of African people.
|
 |
Also represented are his denunciations of
international financial institutions, the G8 and
NGOs in Africa, with incisive analysis of
imperialism's manifestations and impact on the lives
of African people, and his passion for eliminating
poverty in Africa. His personality bounces off the
page—one can almost hear the passion of his voice,
'Don't Agonise! Organise!'
Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
(1961-2009) was a Rhodes scholar and obtained his D.
Phil in Politics from Oxford University. In 1990 he
became Coordinator of the Africa Research and
Information Bureau and the founding editor of
Africa World Review. He co-founded and led
Justice Africa's work, becoming its Executive Director
in 2004, and combined this with his role as General
Secretary of the Pan-African Movement. He was chair of
the Centre for Democracy and Development and of the
Pan-African Development Education and Advocacy Programme
in Uganda and became the UN Millennium Development
Campaign's Deputy Director in 2006.
*
* * * *
 |
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
* *
* * *
Michelle Alexander: US Prisons, The New Jim Crow
/
Judge Mathis Weighs in on the execution of Troy Davis
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
By
Michelle
Alexander
The
mass incarceration of people of color through the War on
Drugs is a big part of the reason that a black child
born today is less likely to be raised by both parents
than a black child born during slavery. The absence of
black fathers from families across America is not simply
a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time
watching Sports Center. Hundreds of thousands of black
men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away
for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed
by whites. Most people seem to
imagine that the drug war—which has swept millions of
poor people of color behind bars—has been aimed at
rooting out drug kingpins or violent drug offenders.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This war has
been focused overwhelmingly on low-level drug offenses,
like marijuana possession—the very crimes that happen
with equal frequency in middle class white communities.
|
 |
In 2005, for
example, 4 out 5 drug arrests were for possession and
only 1 out of 5 were for sales. Most people in state
prison for drug offenses have no history of violence or
significant selling activity. Nearly 80 percent of the
increase in drug arrests in the 1990s—the period of
the most dramatic expansion of the drug war—was for
marijuana possession, a drug less harmful than alcohol
or tobacco. In some states, though, African Americans
have comprised 80 to 90 percent of all drug convictions.
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By
W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/ January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music)
posted 23 August 2010
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