Democracy and Dictatorship in Modern Africa
McCord, William & Diamond, Stanley
The people of the emerging nations, as Stanley Diamond has rightly said ("Modern Africa: the Pains of Independence," DISSENT, Spring 1963), need our "humane insight, fraternal sympathy, and...
...In Ghana, the Ashanti tradition provided mechanisms for limiting chiefly power, for deposing despots, for discussing issues before an open tribunal...
...But the weekly British journal, West Africa, the authority in its field, disagrees, stating "There is no doubt that, in Ghana, the state's security was threatened before and after independence by the impossibility of securing convictions in court largely because of intimidation of witnesses, not only of those guilty of political violence, but also of criminal gangs...
...In fact, the normal criminal law of Ghana was fully adequate and the president's safety did not require the passage of such acts as the preventive detention law...
...In his defense of the inevitability—and indeed, desirability —of dictatorship in West Africa, Diamond comes dangerously close to such a position...
...They conclude that "the revolution...
...Yet Diamond goes further...
...No one can deny the truth of some of Diamond's generalizations: Colonialism has, in many respects, left an unfortunate heritage...
...It promises to avoid the compromises, inefficiencies, and hesitations supposedly inherent in liberal democracy...
...Opposition leaders are standing trial and the government has refused permission for "foreign" lawyers to defend them...
...1. McCord states that "I believe that Nkrumah, Toure or Nasser can create a new communal polity...
...Intellectuals of this persuasion sometimes give the argument an anthropological twist...
...McCord to learn that the distinguished Indian diplomat, K. N. Panikkar, characterizes the C.P.P...
...Nkrumah began by affirming his trust in liberal democracy, then instituted the so-called "preventive detention" law, some years later felt compelled to abolish a free trade union movement, and now, contrary to the prediction of his adherents, has turned to execution as an instrument to protect his power...
...3. McCord states that the Preventive Detention Act in Ghana was unnecessary...
...Actually, the reverse is true...
...He argues that decentralization is inappropriate for underdeveloped nations, although perhaps desirable for industrialized countries...
...McCord's use of the term "dictatorship" in modern Africa is simply ethnocentric...
...7. McCord implies, without warrant, that I have stated a rigid preference for heavy industry to the detriment of agriculture, fisheries, and village industries, etc...
...The trend of events now, as in the Europe of the 1930s, makes one fear that dictatorship is the "wave of the future" in the developing nations...
...J. B. Danquah, Professor Busia, or Joe Appiah as merely a reactionary clique...
...The dam will create one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, approximately 300 miles in length...
...I agree with many of the economic suggestions he makes, but most of the recommended policies can be undertaken (if they can be undertaken at all) with equal facility by a free or a tyrannical government...
...there was a specific economic conflict of a type which will develop throughout the underdeveloped world unless unprejudiced aid from the richer nations is forthcoming...
...Once the first steps are taken on the path of authoritarianism, it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse the direction...
...6. McCord misquotes when he states that I and other "liberals and social democrats," who are also linked with anthropologists, Stalinists, and "Marxists," conclude that: "The revolution . . . can hardly tolerate an opposition...
...Diamond has also taken another element from the Marxist lexicon: its total rejection of so-called neo-colonialism...
...from the Export-Import Bank to VALCO (Volta Aluminium Co.—a Kaiser-Reynolds subsidiary) $110,000,000 at 5%% for 20 years...
...Admittedly, in Ghana the opposition party did partially draw its sustenance from tribal groups opposed to change...
...Nigeria's investment policy is no more "reasonable" than Ghana's—both are flexible and friendly...
...Nkrumah has not just poured new wine into old bottles...
...of positive neutralism and in furtherance of this policy has established relations with both Western and Eastern bloc countries...
...the country's most conservative party" is ridiculous...
...Nkrumah, Toure, or for that matter, Nyerere or Kenyatta may help create new communal— not collective but communal polities—if Africa as a whole is: (a) able to "rapidly unite," as the renowned French Africanist and agronomist Rene Dumont writes in L'Afrique Noire Est Mal Partie, "[and thus] to resist the grip of this powerful European bloc: otherwise neo-colonialism may rename itself Eur-Africa...
...Hodgkin documents "the dispersion of power that prevails in varying degree in African states" as expressed through regional and ethnic groups, traders, cooperatives, civil servants, professionals, trade unions, and so on...
...To trust, as Diamond does, that a one-party bureaucracy can somehow be "cleansed by the vigilance of the people and their executive representatives" puts a faith in despotism which history hardly justifies...
...Rather, it strives to be traditional in spirit, i.e., a unified symbol of the diverse movement of the people into the modern world, the vision of a polity which precedes reality...
...To imply that this is a communist idea, is, among other things, simply inaccurate...
...The British High Commission in Ghana stated last time that the new investment Act is a model for other developing countries seeking to attract capital: "The investment law meets every test I have ever encountered for encouraging and protecting investors...
...Industrializa tion in West Africa could (and should) mean the creation of small fisheries, village industries, "cottage" forms of production, and the advancement of agri cultural techniques...
...In addition to its economic value, a policy of decentralization corresponds well to social reality in the developing nations...
...Ambitious programs, such as the Shell Co...
...Foreign-owned companies often put their own immediate profit ahead of the best interests of Nigeria or Ghana...
...And, of course, it would be economically desirable, if it were politically possible, for Africa to unite in larger, more viable federations...
...The political opposition in Ghana is, however, not indigenous or "tribal" as McCord argues...
...Whether this urge to freedom can prevail against the lure of authoritarianism is today in doubt...
...McCord's central theme is that I defend, indeed espouse, "dictatorship" in Africa, and have composed a brief for "centralized, suppressive governments...
...Nigeria, which McCord mentions with approval, is dominated in each of its major regions by a single party and the Northern Region, consisting of three-fourths of the country, with more than half the population, is in the grip of the most powerful and reactionary political organization in sub-Saharan Africa, the Northern People's Congress, which also dominates the shotgun coalition in the Center...
...The State Department was thereby moved to announce that: The government of Ghana follows a policy...
...Yet many liberals and social democrats have, however regretfully, concluded that a "Western" type of democracy will not work in underdeveloped countries...
...McCord would have Ghana, and presumably the other emerging African nations, quietly fragment themselves into their so-called "ethnic, regional, religious and tribal segment" (vide Katanga), abandon their national and international needs (which led to the anti-colonial movement in the first place), content themselves with a primary product oriented peasantry, and all in all cultivate an impossible condition of stasis...
...The actual terms and categories for American aid to Ghana are as follows: From A.I.D...
...The Action Group is a liberal democratic party, far to the left of the NPC, and somewhat to the right of the NCNC, the dominant party of the Eastern Region...
...ultimately the aluminum factory will utilize Ghana's substantial bauxite reserves...
...It may be instructive for Mr...
...No new African nation has shown any serious inclination to "confiscate" foreign enterprises, but McCord's bland attitude toward colonialism does reveal the shallowness of his understanding of its economic and psychological aftermath in Africa, and helps illuminate the slant of his thinking...
...8. By underplaying the role of industrialization, and insisting that "decentralization corresponds well to social reality in the developing nations . . . in countries divided by ethnic, regional, religious and tribal conflicts McCord slides into a politically colonialist position...
...Anthropologists need no defense here...
...In short, values derived from the belief that above everything else, men matter...
...The Department also characterized Ghana's economy as "mixed," which is correct...
...More significantly, he simply misrepresented my opinion which was that there had been considerable tolerance when it is recognized that the Busia-led opposition sought to negate independence unless the little country was divided into semiautonomous regions, and they were in London pleading the case at the very $27,000,000 at 3 1/2% for 30 years...
...Quite the contrary, Myrdal's brief for centralization is that it will lead to greater flexibility throughout the whole social structure, and break the regional rigidities associated with underdevelopment...
...Diamond's brief for centralized, suppressive governments in the developing nations rests on several misconceptions...
...He forgets Demosthenes' advice that "there is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democrats as against despots...
...even a really monolithic party such as the NPC is neo-feudal, not fascist, corporative, militarist or communist in structure...
...in Ghana as a "bourgeoise nationalist party...
...Emanuel Wallerstein has stated in Africa, the Politics of Independence, that "multi-party democracy does not solve the first problem of every African government [which is] how to hold the country together...
...But it is not and will not be authoritarian, dictatorial or totalitarian in the Western sense...
...The Moral Colonialists A Reply by Stanley Diamond McCord's communication is of no importance as an interpretation of the ex-colonial nations in general, nor of emerging Africa in particular...
...That, Mr...
...What is most needed are not the highly "capital-intensive" projects like the Volta dam, but rather programs which release the talents of formerly idle men and save scarce capital...
...While democrats in West Africa admittedly face formidable obstacles, there are no inevitable forces either in their nations' colonial background, social traditions, or economic situation which dictate an authoritarian solution...
...In Nigeria, to cite one illustration, a blind anti-colonialism on the part of some demagogues threatens the nation's economic progress...
...In this context, it should be noted that American aid to Ghana via the Volta project is primarily to an American company (KaiserReynolds) and is, in any case, a short term loan with a quite high rate of interest,* although bankers do not think so...
...He also throws "anthropology" and "intellectuals of a certain persuasion" into the hopper so that everything becomes expediently confused...
...That Western nations find it hard to understand this effort, being, in the first instance, so deeply separated from primitive democratic historical experience, does not mean that Africans must fail...
...As Harvey Glickman, a political scientistAfricanist, sums up the matter, "All this undermines the utility of the terms traditionally descriptive of politics elsewhere in the past—left, right...
...One can readily agree with many of Diamond's assertions about colonialism but, as he points out, the past is dead...
...The African context does not change the essential nature of these freedoms nor, for that matter, does the newness of independence...
...A strongly centralized dictatorial government can pursue its plan development with a ruthlessness eschewed by democratic states...
...10...
...My major argument was against the maintenance of a mono-crop economy...
...Correctly, Jefferson attacked the oppressive Alien and Sedition Laws even though the American people were, in Diamond's analogy, going through "growing pains" similar to those of contemporary Africans...
...The proposal's main appeal lay in its claim to end the economic subservience of Nigeria to foreign "neocolonial" groups...
...Further, Diamond's argument casts a pall of inevitability over events which were well within the scope of human choice...
...Nasser is not mentioned in my article, although some years ago in DISSENT I characterized him as a para-military dictator...
...In Ghana, however, the maximum number of people detained under the Preventive Detention Act probably never exceeded 1,000...
...At present it is doubtful that as many as 100 are still in prison...
...Let McCord and others like him address their concern for freedom to their own countries, about which they are presumably better informed...
...liberal, socialist, or communist—which are too vague and usually misleading to characterize African politics today...
...Confiscation of foreign enterprises would, in all probability, have crippled Nigeria's economy...
...As a Ghanian correspondent recently wrote me: Abettors of Nkrumah's regime implicitly tell us that we are incapable of appreciating values based on belief in the sanctity of human life and personal freedom...
...Its meager reserve of capital would have been gobbled up in repaying current owners...
...Exactly what implacable forces com pelled this charismatic figure to impose despotism...
...The fund of foreign capital, technicians and equipment, urgently required for the development of new resources would have dried up...
...He appears to assert the economic and political necessity of authoritarianism in Africa...
...The case for the [Detention] Act was strong...
...Concerning the Volta hydro-electric aluminum project, McCord simply does not know the facts...
...Distrust...
...it needs attention...
...It would be possible to restate the inner logic of his arguments somewhat as follows: Anthropologists, believing in inevitable forces in history, have no respect for the capacity of native peoples to solve their contemporary problems except in Stalinist, Marxist, centralized, authoritarian, suppressive, and dictatorial ways...
...They do not realize what an insult this is to some of us, who have not only had the benefit of western education, but who have had personal experience of the values which informed our most primitive governmental arrangements, before the white man set foot in Ghana, values which went into the evolution of central government from the beginning of this century, values which fostered the move for independence in the late forties and early fifties, values caricatured and betrayed by Nkrumah's regime...
...can hardly tolerate an opposition...
...In taking the stance that Nkrumah, Tour6, or Nasser can create a new communal polity, Diamond dismisses all too lightly the specific freedoms which are the substance of democracy...
...moreover, it is agreed by responsible African observers, including those in Washington, that there have been no political executions in Ghana, contrary to McCord's contention...
...b) to transform the fundamentally cooperative and democratic (but not merely mechanically oppositional) local usages into modern political institutions...
...it is indeed the prevailing attitude of the leaders in the underdeveloped world and of the great majority of mod ern economists, of whatever theoretical persuasion...
...9. In identifying the industrialization that he does talk about (e.g., Volta) with a Stalinist conception, McCord scatters his shot wildly...
...Adherents of Nkrumah sometimes argue that he uses extraordinary measures because of the danger of assassination...
...No one has made this prophecy except a few newspaper reporters and journalistic observers...
...The people of the emerging nations, as Stanley Diamond has rightly said ("Modern Africa: the Pains of Independence," DISSENT, Spring 1963), need our "humane insight, fraternal sympathy, and concrete historical perceptions...
...The motion met with parliamentary defeat, but at least among many in the NCNC party, their vote against this motion sprang more from temporary tactics than fundamental disagreement...
...The Ghanaian government interpreted Busia's testimony, which played with the curious allegation that there were 500 Ghanaian soldiers in Cuba, as an effort to sabotage American aid to his country...
...but nowhere is there any recognition of Ghana's cocoa economy, of the need for national planning if diversification is to be achieved, nor of the tremendous energies that must be utilized in order to create a network of modern communications, to exploit local resources...
...The task which confronts emerging nations today is to create growing economies, not to pick over ancient wounds...
...11...
...In societies like Ghana where the critical needs are to utilize unemployed labor, invigorate agriculture, conserve capital, and improve the peasants' lot, a sensible government would strive to stimulate small-scale, village-based endeavors...
...For a fuller analysis of this situation, I refer McCord to the (thus far) definitive study— African One-Party States: Tunisia, Senegal, Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Liberia and Tanganyika, edited by Gwendolen M. Carter...
...I have faith that this new pessimism will prove as fallacious as the old...
...in countries such as Ghana...
...If McCord knew anything about the history of the CPP relative to the NLM in Ghana, he would understand the background of that remark...
...Wallerstein adds to these the broader trans-national movements and makes a point similar to mine and Myrdal's which the new, particularly Western educated African leaders themselves emphasize, namely, that "totalitarianism can be forestalled by centralization, as when the opposition party enters the dominant party and acts to maintain an openness of discussion and some pressure to account to all interests before reaching decisions...
...He has already bracketed liberals, social democrats, Stalinists, democrats, anthropologists and intellectuals of a certain persuasion as the misled or deliberate Enemy, that is, as a group undifferentiated by virtue of supposedly sharing views opposed to his...
...Diamond overlooks another lesson of history: that a benevolent despot often becomes a cruel tyrant...
...West Africa could make judicious use of protective traiffs...
...On one economic issue we basically disagree...
...Such an argument radically oversimplifies the West African situation...
...Most unfortunately, the anthropological contention that democracy and economic development cannot be reconciled, seriously underestimates the capacity for freedom of "native" cultures...
...We can hope that they will not fall prey to the current self-fulfilling prophecy that tyranny in Africa is inevitable...
...Even if this could be achieved, and it cannot be, for both internal and external reasons, it would only serve to attract a new breed of domestic and foreign opportunist...
...In Ghana's last free elec tion, Nkrumah received 91% of the vote...
...Ghana has not aligned itself with either grouping...
...4. The Trade Union Movement in Ghana did clash seriously with the government but a major reason was the compulsory savings plan adopted by a regime which was under tremendous pressure to build a viable economic base on a national scale...
...To suspend our critical faculties simply because these nations are "young" would be insufferably condescending...
...In countries divided by ethnic, regional, religious and tribal conflicts, economic planners must seek to persuade and satisfy highly diverse interest groups— either that, or forcefully impose their arbitrary decisions on a restive people...
...It is a view shared in official Washington...
...Finally, I must confess that I am unmoved by McCord's plea against the "self-fulfilling prophecy that tyranny in Africa is inevitable...
...What is sinister about the NPC is its centuries-old feudal base in the archaic civilization of the Sudanic provinces of Northern Nigeria, not its modern "totalitarianism...
...While Nigeria has been more staunch than Ghana in defending basic freedoms (and simultaneously adhering to reasonable economic policies), I am not holding Nigeria up as an exemplar to Ghana, for at the moment, even Nigeria's constitutional framework threatens to collapse...
...But as a species of moral colonialism, which I define in the article he attacks as A curious piece of psycho-political business which gives us the chance to evade our own history by adopting fantastic expectations of carefully chosen others and we then become justified in their failure...
...That coalition is under the premiership of Balewa, who is second in his Party and his Region to the Sardauna of Sokoto, the neo-feudal Northern premier...
...The point is that totalitarianism and dictatorship in McCord's irresponsible usage are simply not existent in sub-Saharan black Africa...
...Since 1961 the Group—which was crippled in the Federal emergency and consequent treason trials that until recently immobilized the Western Region—has adopted a social democratic program, and is, if anything, more congenial to the West than the Moslem dominated NPC or the more explicitly Marxist elements in the NCNC...
...oil explorations, would have come to a halt, for Nigeria by itself could not provide the men, money or machines necessary for success...
...Or, in Hodgkin's words, the African transforma tion "has its own special kind of contribution to make to humanity...
...nation-building resembles the process in its early stages elsewhere, African politics must be related to uniquely African social institu tions and to African history...
...He considers me contaminated, although perhaps innocently, with Stalinism which he seems to use interchangeably with "Marxism...
...In West Africa, however, a pluralistic program makes sense...
...It is here that the intent and extent of international aid to the new nations can directly affect internal policy...
...But this is not the place to elaborate on Nigerian politics, except to point out that McCord's characterization of the Action Group as "[until] 1961...
...In the absence of an informed public opinion, intellectuals in these areas (and in the West) have immense influence and consequent responsibility...
...I would put it this way: the party is the nation in process of formation, drawing upon the past and moving through a variety of social forms on a broad front into the future...
...Now to a few particulars...
...Ghana has gone out of its way to attract and protect Western investment...
...Wallerstein and Hodgkin deny a drift toward totalitarianism...
...Wallerstein argues further that national integration makes possible economic development, which in turn acts to diversify interests...
...But McCord must know that when Gunnar Myrdal, whose conceptions I follow in my article, talks about the desirability of centralization in underdeveloped areas, he is not referring to streamlined, totalitarian dictatorships, or repressive governments...
...Thomas Hodgkin, a distinguished Africanist, has made the following point in his African Political Parties: "We have to seek to understand [African political parties] as they are, avoiding any rigid application of categories and a schemata derived from a study of Western political history and institutions...
...McCord, is not the same as making the generalization you attribute to me: "The revolution . . . can hardly tolerate an opposition...
...In 1961 the Action Group—until then, ironically, the country's most conservative party— demanded nationalization of the economy...
...time that independence was being granted...
...2. Since McCord has seen fit to elaborate my reference to the revolution in Ghana as combining elements of, not being fully identified with, the American revolution and Civil War, it is necessary to point out, with Richard C. Haskett (American Historical Review, April 1954) that Tories "suffered loss of civil rights, confiscation of property, imprisonment, exile, and, in a few instances, hanging...
...Unfortunately, it can hardly be defended with the politically heady but economically sentimental slogans attacking neo-colonialism...
...Diamond has apparently succumbed to this appeal, for his article abounds with economic justifications for centralized, one-party states...
...In the first place, I referred to the necessity of developing "a balanced agricultural-industrial economy including the growing of food crops for consumption at home...
...Although he claims to be referring only to heavy industry in his stricture on industrialization, the only vague references that he makes to industry are: "village industries" and "cottage forms of production...
...With few exceptions, the new African nations are one-party states, and those that are not are striving consciously to become so...
...Even so, it should be pointed out that Ghana is financing fifty per cent of the Volta project, the remaining half stemming from American, British and other sources, the American aid being, as mentioned, a loan...
...At the same time, one cannot label a party led by such progressive men as Dr...
...In other words, the Volta project is a step forward out of a colonial economy into an era of balanced growth...
...its hopes for an extension of industry blocked by investment in existing projects...
...Myrdal, and the other economists of the prominent Scandinavian school, have the same view...
...Sir Abubakar Balewa's present policy—a program which pragmatically balances public and private sectors, welcomes foreign capital, requests a share of profits from certain new industries, and persuades foreign companies to train a Nigerian staff—this approach promises steady, equitable, if unspectacular growth...
...The power generated will service a large part of the country for a wide spectrum of purposes...
...No discourse about "new" forms of freedom can convince a political prisoner in Ghana that he really has his liberty...
...Although "African nationalism and...
...He also refers to the need for advancing agricultural techniques...
...authoritarian, democratic...
...We can hope, too, that they will remember Albert Camus' observation that "without freedom, heavy industry can be perfected, but not justice or truth...
...For a man so loose with his facts, and promiscuous with his concepts, it is absurd for him to invoke the spirit of Camus, who was a man of utmost scrupulosity, an Algerian, and a fierce and honorable anti-colonialist...
...The fact is that all United Nations economic reports have consistently stressed that industrialization is the only escape from the downward spiral of underdevelopment...
...They contend, as Diamond does about Ghana, that colonialism has destroyed the indigenous culture (thus leaving a political void) and that the opposition is hopelessly parochial and reactionary...
...My actual statement from which this is lifted out of context, reads as follows: Thus we may conclude that the surprising thing is not that there has been so little tolerance in Ghana for an opposition that sought to fragment the country before the revolution had gotten off the ground . . . but rather so much tolerance when compared with similar situations elsewhere...
...Of course, moral colonialists prefer other people's revolutions to be perfect...
...The alternatives are one-party states and either anarchy or military regimes or various combinations of the two...
...Diamond, then, seems to have accepted the unfortunate identification, first popularized by the Stalinists though not confined to them, of industrialization with heavy industry: Volta dams or massive aluminum factories...
...They also have a right to constructive criticism...
...They, too, sought economic advance, but within a framework of decentralized political power...
...The Nkrumah government is not opposed to "a free trade union movement" by politics or principle...
...Danquah, whom McCord mentions, probably the most distinguished member of the opposition, is still formally associated with the United Party, is practicing law in Accra, and was released from preventive detention about six months ago...
...Busia was last heard from when he testified in Washington before a closed hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security that Ghana was a pro-communist dictatorship, etc...
...The opposition was led by a coloniallybred elite, whose regionalism was based upon the new political and economic interests of chiefs, the related affluent cocoa interests, and antagonism to national planning...
...He apparently believes that some vague "popular democracy" can adequately substitute for the concrete protections afforded to the individual in a liberal society...
...he has betrayed some of the ancient political traditions of his land...
...Professor Busia was never in detention, having gone into voluntary exile...
...Surely, with such over whelming support, he could have governed the nation without resort to mass coercion...
...Whether in Washington in 1800 or Accra today, the victim feels the same when he fears an informer, or knows that a judge is a political stooge, or is kept in ignorance by a controlled press, or languishes in jail for political crimes...
...Developing nations do need to diversify their economies...
...Ghana has a long history of close association with the West and there exists basic good will among the Ghanaian people for the United States and the West in general...
...It seems most unlikely that General Motors, say, could be broken up into small, self-governing units...
...Freedom's defense, in West Africa as in Greece, requires distrust—a vigilance expressed in a network of solid institutions reinforced by the rule of law, a set of restraints upon the tyrant's power...
...What is it...
...to the Volta River Authority, a government corporation paralleling the TVA, 5. I do not contend, as McCord states, that colonialism has destroyed much of the indigenous culture, but I also specifically point to surviving African elements and traits...
...from the Export-Import Bank to the Volta River Authority, $10,000,000 at 5%°%o for 25 years...
...It is estimated that 100,000 Loyalists (4 per cent of the white population) fled the colonies between 1775 and 1783...
...this will lead to an expanded inland waterway system and the development of fishing villages, an important element in the Volta scheme...
...The fact is, that the backbone of the domestic opposition in Ghana is reactionary and conspiratorial...
...He uses "authoritarian" as a synonym for "dictatorial...
...The nature of our economy prohibits any extensive decentralization...
...Too often, broadside disparage ment of the colonial heritage raises specters of imagined "neo-colonialism" and serves only to hinder economic development...
...In an age of rising expectations, authoritarianism exerts a basic economic lure...
Vol. 10 • September 1963 • No. 4
