Autopsy of Nkrumah's Ghana
WALLERSTEIN, IMMANUEL
END OF AN ERA IN AFRICA Autopsy of Nkrumah's Ghana By Immanuel Wallerstein The first African leader heard of by most Americans, Kwame Nkrumah, is now the ex-President of Ghana. Widely...
...The building to house the Organization of African Unity (OAU) meeting in October 1965 was constructed on a palatial scale, and other edifices and monuments were erected which a parsimonious regime would avoid, postpone, or at least diminish in scale...
...It is no accident that it was the representatives of these states among others who voted against seating the delegation of the new Ghana regime at the first meeting of the OAU'S Council of Foreign Ministers following the coup, and who subsequently withdrew from the meeting...
...However, many of Nkrumah's opponents objected only to the fact that their party was not the one running things...
...Yes, it was that too...
...Like Napoleon...
...Some analysts will confuse this with corruption, and others with freedom...
...Yes, it was...
...African instability can be as great a deterrent as the threat of nationalization, unless instability becomes so rampant that enormous windfall profits are politically feasible...
...Diverse explanations are being offered for Nkrumah's downfall...
...4. Ghana rejected a Socialist economy...
...The Nkrumah regime at least had a group of Left-wing publicists who denounced corruption often in the press, to little avail to be sure...
...and the West in general to aid in Africa's liberation and economic transformation...
...There can be no denying such "prestige" expenditures...
...We have no evidence that would allow us to be more precise than that...
...TO assume that there could be such a regime is literally Utopian...
...One was genuine adulation, which was very widespread at independence and less widespread at the time of his downfall...
...funds, granted in an era when the U.S...
...The third attitude, held by a few in 1957 and by a much larger number in 1966, was that Nkrumah had done much good and some harm, that he was surrounded increasingly by acolytes who "misled" him, and that if he only would be more reasonable he would continue to command their respect and support...
...It is fair to say that there were three attitudes toward Nkrumah in Ghana...
...Though there is some merit to the argument that it is good to clear the decks every once in a while, no regime in Ghana today, whoever runs it, will gladden the hearts of the ACLU...
...Judicious men will be careful to make balanced judgments...
...If the world price of cocoa shoots up, and simmering rivalries do not take the dangerous form of ethnic conflicts, the new regime could prosper pragmatically and eclectically...
...1. The regime squandered economic resources...
...6. Ghana rejected the propagation of Leftist ideologies...
...It is worth considering each of these arguments...
...I doubt whether the military has had heretofore the leisure or the inclination to prepare an alternative...
...The one-party system did prevent open expression of the persistent opposition to Nkrumah...
...If we mean that some Ghanaians chafed under Nkrumah's restrictions on indigenous commercial and agricultural capital, that is correct...
...Even the overwhelming majority of cadres of the old ruling party, the Convention People's party (CPP), was highly discomforted by the radical political objectives of the small group of committed men who ran the party's press and ideological institute...
...Nkrumah neither led nor incarnated the movement for African unity, yet he supported it mightily and symbolized it to some...
...Perhaps...
...When Nkrumah banned regionalethnic parties by the "Avoidance of Discrimination Act," they merged into the United party...
...or the USSR for some time to come...
...3. The regime was oppressive...
...The views of his successors on the appropriate tactics are, of course, eagerly awaited...
...Portugal's hold on Africa may now survive Salazar's death and the South Africans have every reason to be smugly self-satisfied...
...A second attitude was one of total contempt and fear, akin to the feeling of a Liberty Leaguer toward "that man in the White House," with the same overtones of snobbism, defense of privilege, and accusation of class betrayal...
...Nor is corruption a stranger to the American scene...
...They may return several years from now, but in a very different form...
...Under Nkrumah, the opposition press was suppressed...
...If we mean that external capital will now play a larger role in Ghana's economy, that is unlikely, unless oil is discovered...
...The most familiar are that the regime squandered economic resources, that the regime was corrupt, and that the regime was oppressive...
...The impact on the wider African scene is clearer and more immediate...
...This, it is said, was because Nkrumah's regime spent heavily on prestige items, continuing in its foolish and profligate ways despite the growing economic crisis...
...Its ultimate impact on the internal situation in Ghana is also difficult to predict...
...Widely acclaimed in the West in 1957, the year of Ghana's independence, and widely reviled in the West in 1966, the year of his overthrow, Nkrumah's has been a spectacular career...
...A number of the Army officers who plotted his overthrow were probably in this group...
...External capital stayed out of Ghana to the extent that it did only in part because of unhappiness with Nkrumah's rule...
...The struggle for the liberation of Southern Africa also has been dealt a severe blow...
...It is now at the beginning of another era-one of chronic instability and neglect by the outside world...
...Thus Nkrumah's fall marked the end of an era for Africa-an era that did more good than harm...
...They need fear little from an unfavorable judgment of the World Court on South West Africa...
...But the unity of this group was factitious and it is highly improbable that a system of two or more national parties will emerge in Ghana...
...After Algeria's Ben Bella, Nkrumah...
...No one was more aware than these men of what an uphill battle they had to make their ideas prevail, and they are probably the ones in prison now...
...African leaders have discovered that manipulating great powers is a game that can be played only under very exceptional circumstances which, at present, no longer exist...
...As in Dahomey or the Congo, though, the officers may decide soon thereafter that the politicians are corrupt, squabble too much, are too venal, and orient themselves too much toward local and ethnic groups rather than the national state...
...And as in the case of Napoleon, historians will reveal their own priorities and prejudices in the futile debate about whether his personality aided his cause or hurt it...
...In addition to the dam, the Nkrumah regime built an impressive network of schools, hospitals and roads, which are a permanent legacy...
...It is not that Kwame Nkrumah was going to lead an African army of liberation...
...The purchase of VC-10's for Ghana Airways is often cited as an extravagance, too, though similar purchases by Nigeria Airways, East African Airways, Zambia Airways and Air Afrique have not drawn similar reproach...
...It is not possible at the present moment to actively defy the West in Africa and survive...
...7. Nkrumah was a megalomaniac...
...Previous coups in African one-party states have tended to change the title and personnel of the ruling party, not the one-party formula...
...But how many has it put in jail...
...and the USSR were actively competing for African favor...
...Ghana is now reduced to its natural role, that of a small, relatively well-off West African state, about as important in Africa as Denmark is in Europe...
...The principal charge of the group which ousted Nkrumah appears to have been that, while Ghana came to independence in 1957 with very large reserves accumulated by the cocoa marketing boards, by 1966 the reserves had virtually disappeared, national debts were great, and stores were markedly and capriciously short of even essentials...
...So are the other African regimes...
...Nkrumah thought the way to cope with the situation was to organize the underdeveloped countries politically so that they could bargain collectively...
...He certainly showed considerable self-confidence...
...Indeed, his Ghana sobriquet was "Showboy," a term invented by his early opponents to excoriate him and then taken up by his supporters to exalt him...
...It is hard to believe that Africa will profit more by the coming era than it did by the one just concluded...
...It is that he was one key part of a now crippled alliance of men and movements who sought ways, with only partial success, of forcing the U.S...
...The largest single one, and the most important, was for the Volta Dam, completed in January and likely to benefit the new regime very shortly...
...Will a pro-Nkrumah press be allowed to function under the new regime...
...Not all of Nkrumah's expenditures were for "prestige," however...
...If we mean it has rejected state involvement in economic development, that is doubtful...
...The non-Ghanaians will probably be deported, as have the Soviet and East European technicians...
...Nonetheless, parties may now be allowed to function in Ghana for an interim period...
...Cocoa, the core of Ghana's export income, went from approximately $980 a ton on the world market in 1955 to $364 a ton in 1965...
...The cadres of the pre-independence opposition parties generally felt this way...
...He was that, but he was a serious politician and thinker as well...
...The CPP formula for solving these problems has been rejected...
...and UK will find it easy to give up the Rhodesian blockade...
...5. Ghana rejected a one-party state...
...The new regime has released some 500 political prisoners...
...For although the new regime may husband some resources by improving state planning of distribution, it will come up against the same economic bedrock as Nkrumah: the fall in world commodity prices...
...To help them in their struggle, this group recruited a network of non-Ghanaians-from elsewhere in Africa, from the UK, and from the U.S., and least important, from Eastern Europe...
...What we will probably get is a "pragmatic" government with an "eclectic" program...
...The military would, then resume power, if it relinquishes it in the first place...
...Africa too is now reduced, not because of Nkrumah's downfall alone but because of the series of events since the 1960 Congo crisis which have revealed that its pretentions are not matched by its power...
...I think it is fair to say that the CPP and Nkrumah are dead, at least in their last Ghanaian incarnation...
...The "radical" leaders are falling...
...One can only hope the new era will pass quickly...
...An autopsy presumes that the patient is dead...
...Finished a year ahead of schedule and $280 million below cost estimate-in itself a remarkable achievement-the dam was financed half by Ghana savings and half by Western (largely U.S...
...The military reportedly plan eventually to hand over power to the politicians under a new constitution...
...That remains to be seen...
...If some non-Ghanaian Africans are permitted to remain, they will undoubtedly be adjured to political silence...
...Thus the bankruptcy and shortages were caused by a high level of expenditure for not only the dubious but also for the worthwhile...
...That is largely true...
...In a year or two, with everyone prepared to admit they underestimated Ian Smith's staying power, the U.S...
...Now that these two countries have made a tacit mutual agreement to end this expensive competition, it is doubtful whether large grants of this kind will be available to any African country from either the U.S...
...It is quite probable that private Ghanaian capital will be allowed freer rein...
...To remedy them, the new regime will have to cut expenditures and one hopes it will not shift those that are worthwhile to the dubious category...
...If not, American public opinion may possibly chalk up this failure as one more instance of African (read Negro) incapacity to stand on their own two feet...
...There is very little any regime can do when faced with the prospect that increased productivity means virtually identical income (if not lowered income) because of a buyer's market...
...It may be S?©kou Tour?©, Mali's Modibo Keita, Egypt's Nasser, Tanzania's Julius Nyerere next...
...With slight variations, it is also maintained that the coup represented Ghana's rejection of a Socialist economy, of a one-party system, and of the propagation of Leftist ideologies Finally, it is said that Nkrumah was a megalomaniac...
...The political and economic realities that have racked Ghana since independence are unchanged and, as we have seen, very few of the variables have changed...
...2. The regime was corrupt...
...The meaning of the gesture by Guinea's President S?©kou Tour?©, who has declared Nkrumah the equivalent of head of state and secretary-general of the party in Guinea, remains to be seen...
...When the British left in 1957, there were five opposition parties in the Ghana Parliament, four regional parties and one religious one...
...A relevant question now is will the new regime have as much...
...What, then, is the prognosis for the immediate years ahead...
Vol. 49 • March 1966 • No. 6
