Long Night in Ghana

...Without them, Ghana might not have achieved its material progress...

...Even the new port of Tema, an economically feasible endeavor, suffers from prestige spending: To impress workers, its docks sport immense German cranes, which stand idle because the freighters use thenown equipment...

...Not long ago, Nkrumah purchased a $600,000 yacht and remodeled Christianborg Palace, a former slave prison, for his personal home at a cost of some $6 million...

...The newspapers carry no criticism of the Osagyefo (Redeemer...

...They will try to take us over...

...I dared not talk in front of that man...

...When the whim takes him, he can still indulge in gestures of generosity such as the release in July of 130 political prisoners...

...Such dissatisfaction with the regime probably does not percolate down to the peasants (although, of course, the cocoa farmers have their own specific grievance...

...He dismissed the regional assemblies and gathered all power at the center...

...Nkrumah, in contrast, has stripped tribal chiefs of power (by incorporating their land as part of the Crown possessions) and, in 1960, he destroyed the regional assemblies which were among the few genuine efforts to install local democracy in contemporary Ghana...

...In education, during the same period of time, the primary school population has more than doubled, secondary school pupils have increased in the same proportion, and adult illiteracy has been cut in half...

...3. Government authoritarianism has alienated the urban masses, who previously adored the regime...

...Admittedly, too, an abortive, clumsy attempt to murder Nkrumah may have been planned in 1959, as two out of three members of a British investigating team later reported...

...When Nkrumah's dominance seems endangered, as during this summer's assassination attempts, he strikes back with terror...

...But widespread discontent does characterize exactly those urban groups whose skills, initiative and assumption of responsibility are indispensable to the nation's economic growth...

...Development will stop unless the Government's coffers can be replenished...

...Nigerian intellectuals had frequently expressed profound admiration for the vigor of Ghana's regime and contrasted it to what they regarded as the bumbling, compromising ineffectiveness of their own democracy...

...Until 1959, when the terror began, Nkrumah headed a party whose commanding majority had reduced the opposition to the role of ineffectual critic...

...Respected college administrators had been dismissed in favor of youthful stooges, whose primary duty consisted in monitoring classes for any sign of "subversion.' The young professor's words ended in a strangely abrupt manner, however, when we heard a knock at the door...

...they perform such remarkable feats of nimbleness as praising Adamfio for exiling Anglican bishops who had criticized Nkrumah's youth corps and, three days later, demanding that the same Minister should be hanged since he had lost the leader's approval...

...When farmers protested against the Marketing Board's arbitrary reduction in prices-a measure aimed at diverting the surplus from world prices into Government handsNkrumah responded first by announcing, untruthfully, that the farmers had "voluntarily" accepted the slash...

...Without discipline true freedom cannot survive...

...Nevertheless, even in this most solid sector of support, disillusionment has begun...

...One of Ghana's economic planners put the same view to me: "We require a strong army and decisive internal measures to prevent the total disintegration of the nation...

...The only way to cure tribalism, to provide a sense of nationhood, lies in forging a unanimous national front, gathered around the leader...

...We were discussing Nkrumah, the role of the opposition and, particularly, the disintegration of the university itself...

...And although tribal antagonisms hampered the creation of a viable state, Nkrumah had, to his credit, welded a basic consensus by 1959 without resort to violence: In the last free election, his party received some 90 per cent of the popular vote...

...The gold-plated bed of "Crowbar" Edusei's wife only epitomizes the graft which has enriched all Government employes...

...Those who would apologize for Nkrumah-and there are precious few left in Ghana itself-contend that the country's social structure cannot tolerate the luxuries of liberal democracy...

...It occurred while I was visiting with a young professor at the University of Ghana...

...all judges now receive personal appointments from the President, and the Chief Justice trumpets about the need to revise the law to fit the people's will...

...And even the severest critic has to admit that the nation has made some significant advances in the last decade...

...That's not right to lock up some of our best men...

...To judge the validity of the view that "modernization" cannot proceed within democratic forms, one must carefully assess the objective progress of Ghana's revolution...

...It has initiated some diversification of farming, thus alleviating Ghana's dangerous dependence on fluctuations of the world price for cocoa...

...The Preventive Detention Act had resulted in the imprisonment of some opposition members, but I was reluctantly prepared to be persuaded that the "exigencies of the situation" required such repression...

...Since 1950, banana exports have risen from 19 hundredweight to over 28,000 hundredweight, tobacco exports have increased by 300 per cent, nuts by 500 per cent, rubber by 250 per cent and coffee by 300 per cent...

...The long night has descended in Ghana...

...This contradiction between the economic demands of modernization and the rights of opposition entered a more intense stage in 1961...

...Even more significant for Western liberals is the recognition that authoritarian methods facilitated and, in some cases, made possible these achievements...

...Yet each action involved direct Government suppression of democratic choice or dissent...

...Nkrumah has approached the three most crucial economic problems of emerging nationsagricultural reform, extension of education, and the creation of industries which draw heavily on labor-with intelligence and a flair for innovation...

...Such reasoning, I believe, does great harm to the cause of freedom in Ghana...

...William McCord, a new contributor, is an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University...

...Part of this corruption derives from the West African tradition of "dash": the custom, wholly honorable in a tribal context, of paying for the Chief's services with gifts...

...When community development officers first entered the villages, the peasants voted democratically for the projects which they wished to undertake...

...Yet Ghana's economic advances under authoritarian rule still tend to exceed those of its most similar neighbor, democratic Nigeria...

...Prestige projects, like the Volta Dam, receive priority over more mundane activities...

...Listening to the popular "high life" bands singing "Ghana is free now," I felt inclined at first to agree with the opinion expressed by so many Western liberals and Socialists that Ghana's social revolution demanded and justified a high degree of unity, even of repression...

...Responsible answers to such questions will determine Ghana's future, for these issues rest at the heart of the nation's problems...

...Nkrumah has attempted to replace these losses with foreign imports, but each foreigner costs approximately three times the price of employing a Ghanaian...

...Did you know," he said, "that Danquah and Appiah are in concentration camps...

...Faced with a financial crisis, the Government promulgated an austerity budget: Imports were severely curtailed, truck and gas taxes were hiked, personal income tax was drastically increased and, most important, workers were faced with a wage "pause" and a compulsory savings scheme which automatically deducted 5 per cent of their salaries...

...Last November, Nkrumah felt compelled to appoint political commissioners in every Army unit to "inform" the military about its proper role...

...In response to the courts' "quibbling" about the legality of the Preventive Detention Act, the Government has crushed an independent judiciary...

...Its foreign exchange reserves have dwindled to a new critical low and prices for its traditionally exported commodities continue to drop...

...Perhaps...

...In agriculture, the Government has conquered the swollen-shoot disease which threatened Ghana's major export crop, cocoa...

...The intrusion of dogmatism and terror into universities, courts and the civil service has decimated its ranks...

...In a terrordominated society, counter-terror comes all too naturally...

...But it is also true that the nation's crisis stems in no meager part from exactly the same authoritarianism...

...In contrast to pronouncements about "African Independence," more foreigners than ever now administrate Ghana...

...Subsequent letters to this professor have gone unanswered...

...And, in fact, my initial exposure to Accra's superhighways, to its new 10-story buildings, and to the thoughtful efficiency of the Information Ministry (whose director now faces execution), contrasted sharply with the unorganized bustle of Lagos and Ibadan...

...Political power in Ghana centers solely in the leader, who was elected as President for life on September 7, 1962...

...One incident symbolizes for me the pervasiveness of Nkrumah's attack on personal privacy...

...Typically, they chose impressive but useless projects such as post offices in areas where no one could read...

...Still, one may cling to the tattered hope that counsels of moderation will prevail-that the CPP will realize terror can produce Christianborg Palace, a monument to past and present slavery, but it has never yet created a free society...

...Ghana's rates of capital accumulation and overall growth appear to be about one-third ahead of Nigeria's in these first few years after independence...

...Aside from those in prison, some 5,000 Ghanaians-almost all intellectuals, professionals or technicians -have fled to Nigeria, Togo or Europe...

...Third, despite CPP claims, Ghana never seriously suffered from subversion or threats of internal violence until Nkrumah himself opened the Pandora's box of political terror...

...The simultaneous imprisonment of Foreign Minister Ako Adjei (formerly the most "Right-wing" man in the Cabinet) and of Information Minister Tawia Adamfio (the most Leftist) suggests the undiscriminating nature of the dictatorship...

...Nkrumah will never die...

...IT is enormously difficult, therefore, to draw up a balance sheet on Ghana's economic progress, or to argue, on the basis of expediency, that the "social revolution" justifies the political tyranny...

...When Shanti tribal leaders demanded a confederacy with the right for each region to spend its own income, Nkrumah anticipated that this would reduce funds available for national development...

...Second, by any standard, Ghana has had greater luck than almost any other emerging nation...

...he might have been a spy, and these chaps get a good price for each person they report...

...Instead of improving the inadequate domestic transportation, for example, Nkrumah has purchased a fleet of Russian jets which now traverse the Continent carrying an average of two persons a flight in grand isolation...

...The disappearance of an elite, conspicuous Government consumption, graft, and alienation of the urban masses have all taken a massive toll...

...The strikes indicated this change in attitude, but the malaise runs deeper...

...Massive buildings for party units, glittering squares (some blinking with neon signs spelling Nkrumah), and a fine superhighway-leading pointlessly from the airport to Accra -blossom throughout the city...

...Not a single urban worker or merchant with whom I talked in private expressed support for Nkrumah...

...First, the new nations of today are, in fact, no less prepared for democracy than Europe at the beginning of the 19th century...

...if we wanted to prevent anarchy, we had to reply with violence...

...Here is Sidney Lens, for instance: "If Nkrumah were to permit the leadership force to split into many political forces, he would be doomed...

...Per capita income has been augmented at a modest but steady rate of some $5 a year...

...But any blame for this storm-trooper atmosphere must be laid on the CPP, for its members first used this unlovely instrument...

...Is it justified by the country's need to rip itself loose from a swamp of poverty, illness and ignorance...

...The belief that emerging nations must sacrifice democracy in order to sustain a social revolution has been defended by many Western intellectuals...

...It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there have been several assassination attempts against Nkrumah in the last few months...

...I soon learned to question this view, however...

...Again, defenders of Nkrumah argue that the pressures of the economic situation forced Spartan measures...

...4. Perhaps the most serious result of Nkrumah's policies has been the erosion of Ghana's elite...

...The opposition resorted to violence...

...some 3,000 people now languish in jails...

...Bribed with the most modern equipment-another severe drain on foreign exchange reserves -the officers have remained quiescent...

...Patrick O'Donovan's comment in a recent issue of the New Republic is typical: "In Ghana, President Kwame Nkrumah is trying to achieve a revolution in a non-revolutionary situation...

...the farmers' cooperative of 14,000 members then repudiated the claim, and the Government, in turn, destroyed the association and absorbed its remnants into the CPP...

...Often, too, these replacements represent a decline in quality: A former British spy has taken over the prestigious chair of Physics at the University of Ghana...

...For my part, the stuffed jails, the stifling of all voluntary organizations, the collapse of the rule of law, and the pervasive use of irrational indoctrination suggest, as Lewis Coser has put it, " that once a totalitarian regime is in power there will be a long night...

...Workers in Takoradi and other areas went on strike in protest...

...Expenditure for economically useless baubles has assumed breathtaking proportions...

...The formal opposition has been gobbled up by Ghana's prisons...

...The Government responded by imprisoning leaders of the "old" opposition, respected intellectuals such as J. B. Danquah, Joe Appiah and K. K. Butu...

...Instead, Nkrumah used the incident to suspend the rule of law, dismiss dissenting judges, enact the Preventive Detention Act, and initiate mass arrests...

...He described the sense of fear which had swept the college clean of its European professors and had sent most of its best Ghanaians into exile or prison...

...The CCP'S adroit combination of modern political techniques and clever manipulation of traditional symbols (oaths to the party chief, incantations before meetings, sacrifices of animals before an election) had a unique emotional appeal for the masses...

...Rather unsuccessfully, the Government attempts to indoctrinate every sector of the society: For example, in Accra today one sees phalanxes of "Young Pioneers," aged 12, chanting their oath, "Nkrumah is always right...

...When persuasion failed to convince cocoa farmers of the necessity for felling some diseased trees to protect others from the swollen-shoot blight, the Government introduced punitive measures and saved the cocoa crop...

...In 1960, when the country achieved full independence it boasted an extraordinarily high average income ($169 yearly), the best educational system in tropical Africa, and a magnificent civil service...

...It has mobilized the agricultural unemployed into "Workers' Brigades" (units, modeled on the American ccc, engaged in building public works and cooperative farms...

...Even K. A. Gebdemah, the finance minister who had introduced the budget but had, in response to the strikes, advocated moderation, fled into exile...

...Despite this vast support, Nkrumah increasingly resorted to totalitarian methods and has destroyed the institutions of liberal democracy...

...Ghana does need the revenue which supposedly will issue from the new measures...

...Thus, in exchange for freedom, Ghana may have purchased a bit more productivity...

...In his search for unanimity, Nkrumah has suppressed all public liberties...

...Except for bombs, the opposition has no instruments for expressing its disagreement with the regime...

...The economic cost of totalitarianism can be gauged in four areas: 1. Since the Government does not tolerate criticism of its members or policies, corruption in high circles is rampant...

...2. The lack of responsible criticism has permitted unbridled nationalistic, prestige spending...

...In industry, light manufacturing units (canning, cement, timber processing) have sprung up, the new port of Tema (a city of 30,000 created from a village) has commenced operation and, of course, the great Volta project has entered construction...

...Only a united and disciplined effort will work with the miracle...

...The same can be said of Nkrumah...

...While the death of political freedom has brought some immediate gains, it has also penalized the economy in ways which are only now becoming apparent...

...Aside from the leader's immense megalomania, the reason lies in Nkrumah's belief, shared by his Western apologists, that an authoritarian social revolution must take precedence over democratic institutions...

...Opposition cannot really be tolerated...

...The "revolution" has indeed triumphed in Ghana, but its fruit is the death of individual liberty and, at best, a rather uncertain improvement in the people's material welfare...

...When a repairman entered the room and began to dismantle the telephone, my friend collapsed into an obviously frightened silence...

...It may end, as many Ghanaians predicted to me, in Nkrumah's assassination and the Army's assumption of power...

...His fate seems known only to Nkrumah...

...Yet surely the nation's diversity does not approach that of India or Nigeria, both of which managed to create a system of checks and balances...

...In sum, on the political level, Ghana is a society of fear...

...Is Ghana's present tyranny unavoidable...

...Later, as we strolled through the beautiful Legon campus, he apologized, unnecessarily, for his timidity: "You never know these days who is an informer...

...As he commented back in 1956, "Even a system based on social justice and a democratic constitution may need backing up during the period following independence by emergency measures of a totalitarian kind...

...Each of these Government actions made good economic sense...

...It is also true that Ghana consists of a diverse collection of primitive Moslem Northerners, Ashanti peasants, and Westernized Southerners-all in all, a disparate collection whose allegiance to the national state may be ephemeral...

...But this position neither reflects Ghanaian realities nor contributes to creating a truly open society in Africa...

...Sidney Lens says: " give the Ghana unions full reign, permit them to win wages as high as uncontrolled power would permit, and the revolution would founder...

...And, as Irving Markovitz has pointed out, an even more significant repression took place: Trade-union leaders and workers, who had previously stood resolutely behind Nkrumah, found themselves in jail for subversion...

...Since a person can spend three years in prison for voicing any criticism of the President, no one with whom I talked-from Cabinet ministers who discussed their fears privately, to taxi drivers who defiantly displayed pictures of the Queen, rather than Nkrumah, in their cabs-feels himself exempt from the threat of repression...

...The officers dropped the facade of democratic choice and ordered the villagers to engage in economically more significant endeavors...

...nor do they exist now in the new countries...

...One section of the elite, the Army, has maintained an apolitical role in support of the regime...

...Some may cling to the belief that somehow this totalitarian State will wither away once economic abundance is achieved...

...All voluntary organizations, cooperatives and unions have been digested as corporate units of Nkrumah's Convention People's party (CPP...

...The fact is that fully advanced democracy, of the type we have established in the West, is possible only if Castro were to abandon the revolution...

...High per capita incomes, a literate, educated public, undivided loyalty to the nation state, long practice in self-government-all of these supposed "prerequisites" of liberal democracy did not exist in Europe when it began its transition to democracy...

...A more important stimulus, however, comes from the temptation to gain something without risk...

...As of the moment, Nkrumah has refrained from executions...

...Such progress should not be dismissed lightly...

...One dock porter voiced common complaints about loss in wages, but he also despaired of some of the Government's political policies...

...But the courts could have quashed the attempted coup with dispatch under existing criminal laws...

...I don't like all those Russians coming in either...

...It is not uncommon for officials to possess three houses, each worth $50,000, while supposedly existing on a $3,000 salary...

...Ghana's civil service, well-trained in the apolitical British tradition and once the best in Africa, must now publicly announce its adoration for the leader...

...From an almost empty treasury, Nkrumah has lent $28 million to Guinea in an attempt to insure that nation's allegiance...

...Admittedly, both the CPP and the opposition called upon bully-boys to break up opponents' meetings...

...But even this relaxation carried with it the proviso that the maximum term of political imprisonment would be raised from five to 25 years...

...The fact that officials can escape the threat of criticism, unless Nkrumah himself intervenes, has opened the gates...