The Rise and Fall of Kwame Nkrumah: A Study of Personal Rule in Africa, by Henry L. Bretton
Africanus, Polybius
The destiny of Ghana has been a paradoxical one. The country the British have praised for having produced capable, honest administrators and technicians was suffering from mismanagement,...
...One can see no justification for it, as Kwame Nkrumah was never accepted as a ruler of Africa or a true leader of the Third World, and the facts presented in this book do not describe him in these terms...
...Nkrumah was not equipped to handle a revolt of the masses...
...the Act was retroactive and barred many members of the opposition party from their seats...
...Obscurity, unpredictability, inconsistency, and uncertainty were devices used in maintaining the political machine...
...In fact, a number of decisions went unmade because the "Supreme One" never got around to making them...
...This is the most substantial book yet to appear in comparative politics devoted to a study of a political machine anywhere in Africa...
...Thus, Nkrumah and his political machine were above criticism— whatever the "boss" did was right for Ghana...
...Bretton has shown that in Ghana, under Nkrumah, government was conducted on a personal, ad hoc basis in a highly irregular and unpredictable fashion...
...Every Ghanaian was at the mercy of Nkrumah, according to Professor Bretton...
...During pre-independence days and the first few years following independence, Nkrumah was most sensitive in his handling of the old overlords in London who still controlled the decision-making apparatus of the country...
...one was tried in courts Nkrumah controlled by judges he commanded, and incarcerated in jails he regulated...
...According to Bretton, Ghana lacked an ideology under Nkrumah and Nkrumahism, lacked consistency and/ or substance...
...Among these were his attempts to remove expatriates from key positions in the civil service and to replace them with loyal but, at times, incompetent Ghanaians under the guise of Africanization...
...To legitimize any action, the phrases "Osagyefo says" this or "Osagyefo wants" that done were utilized to circumvent red tape in the civil service...
...Nkrumah's foreign advisers, Bretton maintains, diverted and overextended Nkrumah's vision to pan-Africanism which estranged him from knowing of the poor living conditions in Ghana...
...If one was not dependent upon him economically, one was subjected to investigation by the secret police who were under Nkrumah's control...
...Ghanaians contributed to the fiasco and Professor Bretton must not absolve them of their guilt...
...From there his loyal tribesmen and foreign advisers ran the country, amidst designed confusion and the dependency syndrome...
...Nkrumah, according to Professor Bret ton, converted regional assemblies into a personal following and, at his pleasure, then abolished them to enhance his power on the national level...
...The country that had the potential for an effectively functioning democracy—Western style—was, in Conor Cruise O'Brien's terminology, in the hands of "party demagogues" and "yes-men," "often with socialist slogans in their mouths and contractors' money in their pockets...
...There are people who went along with Nkrumah because they stood to benefit—the in sincere ones who were the first to condemn Nkrumah after the coup d'dtat...
...Ghanaians are engaged in a free-for-all accusation of Nkrumah, and neither he nor any counsel of his has been available to confirm or deny these accusations...
...Parliament also placed the courts, the police, the prisons, and virtually every other institution in Ghana under his control...
...tical science at the University of Michigan, attributes the Ghanaian fiasco to the political machine and political style of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's deposed President...
...The validity of Professor Bretton's findings can be questioned because he relies most heavily on interviews, commission reports, and newspaper articles, all promulgated after the coup d'etat as his source of documentation...
...No Ghanaian, including Nkrumah and the rest of his political machine, is indispensable to Ghana...
...Bretton's analysis of Nkrumah's political machine grants Nkrumah more power than he held...
...Nkrumah applied socially and economically irrelevant ideological formulae, and he overextended Ghana's commitments beyond her borders...
...Bretton's analysis does not question the legitimacy of one-party rule...
...Bretton, who once was "admonished" by Kwame Nkrumah to be "intellectually honest" in his writing about Ghana, tells us that under the cover of a one-party state, a political machine dominated by Kwame Nkrumah ruled Ghana...
...The most capable and most honest civil servants and technicians fled the country to avoid succumbing to Nkrumahist policies and tactics...
...The party's hand-picked leaders, according to Bretton, were watchdogs and messengers for the "Redeemer...
...Nkrumah, rather than the party or its representatives in Parliament, made those decisions that gravely affected the lives of Ghanaians...
...Nkrumah could command an investigation of any Ghanaian...
...In the jargon of the Osagyefo (the Liberator, Re deemer), Ghana continued to experience "negative development," because of the prevalence and predominance of "negative action" over "positive action...
...but, like most Ghanaians, he was repelled by massacres...
...The destiny of Ghana has been a paradoxical one...
...Bretton's analysis reinforces Nkrumah's belief that he was Ghana and Ghana was Nkrumah...
...He, too, thought of the political consequences of his actions...
...Ghanaians are not as submissive as Bretton would have us believe, and they are not as ignorant as he implies...
...Nkrumah did not possess the political acumen attributed to him by Professor Bretton...
...When Nkrumah took office as the leader of "Government Business" (and later as Prime Minister), he held "relatively little economic, hence political power...
...And his decisions were calculated not to alienate or agitate the masses against him...
...Although he tried all three of the following methods, Nkrumah came to realize that he could not control the leaders of the opposition by buying them off, imprisoning them, or by causing them to flee the country...
...Bretton reports that Nkrumah utilized the prerogatives of all bosses of political machines: economic blackmail, extortion, and bribery in order to sustain his personal political machine...
...Nkrumah's strategy, if one can call it that, was not to "rock the boat" or to alienate these powerful economic groups as he cautiously moved to free Ghana from their influence...
...And in Flagstaff House he created a separate branch of government to existing administrative institutions...
...Before Nkrumah, no national symbol had .existed for Ghanaians...
...Each appendage to Nkrumah's political machine was annexed by mutual agreement...
...These are the people who idolized Nkrumah and made him what Bretton (who is also the author of Power and Stability in Nigeria) says Nkrumah was...
...His only recourse was to use the military...
...One shortcoming in Bretton's analysis of Nkrumah's political machine is that he fails to discuss the component parts of the political machine...
...To combat the constitutional restraint imposed on him from London, Nkrumah made a series of moves that contribu ted to his personal rule...
...Nkrumah suffered from Nkrumahmania—thinking that Nkrumah was Ghana and Ghana Nkrumah...
...Deportation Acts enabled him to rid Ghana of foreign citizens who had links with the opposition party, and any party with a religious basis was banned...
...if he did, he would have saved himself...
...among them were the Preventive Detention Acts which facilitated arbitrary detentions en masse...
...Nkrumah was not always free to act at will...
...Ghana, as well as Nkrumah, must be tried...
...The subtitle of the book, A Study of Personal Rule in Africa, is rather imposing but misleading...
...The end result was miscalculation and mismanagement of funds, having Ghana in ruins...
...Under one-party rule, ideas are imposed on the citizenry from the top by a clique, and this does not promote grass-roots participation in the decision-making apparatus...
...And thus he substituted his political machine for the "cultural wasteland" colonialism had created...
...Nkrumah feared foreigners, especially Westerners, but his fall was the result of his dependence on foreign advisers, Easterners, and self-imposed detainees from the West, mostly Communists...
...There are Ghanaians who resisted his control, not because they had their country at heart—they too, under the guise of democracy, may be acting like Nkrumah in the years ahead...
...Under his instructions, his party faithfuls in Parliament legitimized certain repressive measures...
...Henry L. Bretton, professor of poli...
...It was not as easy for Nkrumah to replace "obsolete" people in his political machine with new and submissive "clogs" as Bretton seems to assume...
...instead, he shows that the party was not functional because of "His Highness...
...Any study of Nkrumah's political machine that excludes mention of these people must be considered incomplete...
...Nkrumah sought the political kingdom—he gained it, but all other things did not follow for him nor for other Ghanaians...
...Yet, the publication of this book constitutes an important event, not only in African studies but in comparative politics at large...
...Nkrumah filled this vacuum as he emerged to national leadership...
...He was aware that he must not give them a hard time, or the end result would be his overthrow...
...An amendment of the criminal code made it a criminal offense to do anything that "would make the President an object of national ridicule or contempt...
...The 1959 Act, for instance, barred any member of the National Assembly against whom a preventive detention order was in force from taking his seat...
...not because of its original contributions, which are substantial, but because it may represent the emergence of a new attitude toward cross-national studies...
...With loyal individuals "least scrupulous about democratic principles," he proceeded to legislate the opposition out of existence...
...Under the guise of decentralization, he appointed his loyal followers to represent him in the various regions of the country...
...Expression of opinions, as divergent as they may be, promotes a healthy society and is synonymous with democracy...
...The country the British have praised for having produced capable, honest administrators and technicians was suffering from mismanagement, corruption, and plain and obvious administrative malfunctioning on the eve of the February coup d'etat...
...What accounted for these developments in Ghana, a country possessing such resources on the eve of its independence...
...no ideology, code, or object, no personality had ever captured the national imagination...
Vol. 14 • September 1967 • No. 5
