Evalution in the Revolution: Nkrumah, Ghana and African SocialismBlack Star. A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah by Basil Davidson;Revolutionary Path by Kwame Nkrumah; Political Corruption: The Ghana Case by Victor T. LeVine; Money Galore by Amu Djoleto; Traditional Life, Culture and Literature in Ghana by J.Max Assimeng; Akyem Abuakwa and the Politics of the Inter-War Period in Ghana; Politics ofthe Sword. A Personal Memoir on Military Involvement in Ghana and of Problem ...Review by: Maxwell OwusuAfrica Today, Vol. 26, No. 2, Namibia: Crisis for the International Community (2nd Qtr.,1979), pp. 71-76Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185863 .

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Evalution in the Revolution:

Nkrumah, Ghana and African Socialism

Maxwell Owusu

Basil Davidson, BLACK STAR. A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah. (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1974) 224 pp. $7.95.

Kwame Nkrumah, REVOLUTIONARY PATH. (International Publishers, New York, (1973) 532 pp., Cloth $12.50, paper $4.25.

Victor T. Le Vine, POLITICAL CORRIJPTION: The Ghana Case. (Hoover Institution Press, Hoover Institution Publications 138, Stanford, 1975) xxvii plus 169 pp., $7.50.

Amu Djoleto, MONEY GALORE. (Heinemann, London, 1975) 182 pp. 90 p.

J. Max Assimeng, ed. TRADITIONAL LIFE, CULTURE AND LITERATURE IN GHANA. (Conch Magazine, Ltd., Africa in Transition, Series 2, Owerri, New York, 1976) 184 pp. Hard cover $13.00, Paperback $8.00.

AKYEM ABUAKWA AND THE POLITICS OF THE INTER-WAR PERIOD IN GHANA, Communications from the Basel Africa Bibliography 12. contributors who, in addition to those mentioned, include Guy Ezb, William Bibliographien, 1975) 166 pp.

A. K. Ocran, POLITICS OF THE SWORD. A Personal Memoir on Military Involvement in Ghana and of Problems of Military Government. (Rex Collings Ltd., London, 1978) 168 pp. ? 2.50 paperback, ? 5.00 hard cover.

In 1978 at their OAU meeting in Khartoum, Sudan, the Heads of States resolved to establish a Pan-African Force on the lines of the African High Command proposed by the late President Kwame Nkrumah to deal specifically with the problems of national liberation in Southern Africa. Across the Atlantic in New York City, the U.N. declared 1979 International Apartheid Year, and Kwame Nkrumah's Egyptian-born widow, Madam Fathia, accepted a U.N. Gold Award given posthumously to her husband for his contribution to the international struggle to end South Africa's apartheid.

Maxwell Owusu is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a frequent contributor to Africa Today on Ghanaian politics.

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In Ghana itself, with the lifting of the ban on party politics on New Year's day (1979) and the emergence of parties which have declared themselves either as the successor of Nkrumah's Convention Peoples Party (CPP) or as aiming for a socialist state based on the principles of Nkrumahism, Nkrumah can now be said to have been almost completely rehabilitated. Between 1966 when Nkrumah was overthrown and 1972 when Busia's Progress Party regime was displaced by another military coup, spirited efforts, supported by a hostile Western press, were made by Ghana's leaders, including the then Colonel A.K. Ocran whose latest book is here under review, to wipe out the memory and works of a great African who, with all his mistakes (discussed sympathetically in Black Star), was the principal architect of Ghana's, indeed black Africa's, political independence from colonial rule.

Who was this man Nkrumah? What was the nature of the colonial society into which he was born and of Gold Coast nationalism that he so much advanced? What factors local and external contributed to Nkrumah's rise and fall? What were Nkrumah's lasting achievements? And what should be the path of African development - evolutionary or revolutionary, capitalist or socialist? These are some of the fundamental questions that preoccupy the authors, some very eminent, of the books under review.

Basil Davidson, who has written more than a dozen important books on African history and current affairs, provides in his Black Star the most provocative, complete, and interesting delineation of Ghana under Nkrumah. Davidson divides the Nkrumah period broadly into three: (a) the decade of the struggle for power and independence: 1947-1957 - he describes the overlapping sub-period, 1951-1957, as the "years of compromise"; (b) 1957-1960 are considered the great practical achievement and "continued compromise" (p. 158); and finally (c) 1961-1966 are described by Davidson as the "years of bitterness" (p. 96). Much of Davidson's insightful discussion deals with the early pre-independence period. For this period "shaped all the groundwork and achievements of ... [Nkrumah's] life-:.. but also ... [prepared] his downfall" (p. 158). In fact, it could be well argued that the nature of pre-World War II Gold Coast nationalism and the pattern of political agitation established during this period greatly conditioned the character of the politics of the Nkrumah and post-Nkrumah periods.

The pattern is one of political behavior characterized by localism and economic self-interest cutting across ethnic, regional or occupational groupings. This observation is well documented by Dennis Austin (Politics in Ghana, 1946-1960), Maxwell Owusu (Uses and Abuses of Political Power) and many others. Indeed, the very interesting case studies presented in Akyem- Abuakwa and the Politics of the Inter-War Period in Ghana, provide new corroborative evidence from the Eastern Region of Ghana for the continued predominance of instrumental or monetary considerations in Ghanaian political life. The collection of papers in the Akyem-Abuakwa ... volume cover such topics as the "Nationalism" of the 1930s in the Gold Coast (by A.B. Holmes); "Nationalism from Below - the Akyem-Abuakwa Example," and "Crisis in Akyem-Abuakwa: the Native Administration Revenue Measure of 1932" (both by J. Simenson); "The Asmankese Dispute 1919-1934" (by R.. Addo- Fening); "A Note on Coastal Elite Contact with rural discontent before the First World War: the 'Good Templars' in Akyem-Abuakwa" (by J.A. Sarpei); "Rural Politics in the Inter-war Period: Some Comparisons between Akyem Abuakwa and the States of the Central Province" (by R.L. Stone); and "Problems and Perspectives - a theoretical assessment of the issues raised in 72 AFRICA TODAY

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Maxwell Owusu

the local case studies" (by Paul Jenkins). In his concluding remarks, Paul Jenkins stresses that "until we have much

more precise and well-informed analyses of the interrelations of money and politics in this period, we write in ignorance of one of the main bases of political structures" (p. 143). We must look into "the political role of money debt and credit - in all periods of Akan history . . . " (p. 144). Another feature of the political life in this period was the attempt to run such traditional states as Abuakwa under Ofori Atta aided by J.B. Danquah on western rational bureaucratic lines (p. 164).

Basil Davidson rightly sees the pervasiveness of the utilitarian attitude and modernization based on Western liberal political and economic models in Ghana as the critical factors contributing to the rise and fall of Nkrumah, and by implication, to the persistent economic stagnation and the crisis of political legitimacy in Ghana.

It is remarkable that both liberal and radical writers concerned with genuine economic development and democratic political change in African countr ies tend to treat lightly of even ignore the serious problems posed by the vitality of traditional non-economic values. In Ghana an understanding and appreciation of the importance to the masses of traditional values and beliefs, in Max Assimeng's words "serving as springs of man's social conduct in community ... land finding] expression in religion ... folklore, proverbs, and even in sanctions for seeking rectification when the harmony of the community . . ." is impaired, (Traditional Life . . . p. 2) but it is critical for any realistic and practical program of institutional transformation. The very illuminating essays in Traditional Life . .. namely "Ritual in the Social Life of Ghanaian Society" (by E.H. Mends); "The Destiny of Man in Akan Traditional Religious Thought" (by Kofi Asare Opoku); "Aspects of Religion and Morality in Ghanaian Traditional Society with Particular Reference to the Ga-Adangme" (by Joshua N. Kudadjie); "Proverbs and Folktales of Ghana: Their Form and Uses' (by S.A. Dseagu); "Attitudes Towards Health and Disease in Ghanaian Society" (by G.K. Nukunya, P.A. Twumasi and N.O. Addo); and "The Nature of Akan Native Law: A Critical Analysis" (by A. Kodwo Mensah-Brown) are therefore especially welcome.

Put simply, Davidson argues that Nkrumah like the other Western educated groups or elites in Ghana (and elsewhere in black Africa) was caught in a series of "awkward contradictions." For instance, (1) Nkrumah's vision called for a "revolution that should lead to socialism and unite a continent, but he came to power in a colony where a gentle process of reform was accepted by nearly all his fellow countrymen as being quite enough" (Black Star, p. 15); (2) The elite wanted independence, but only if it could be independence "in the British way," shaped on British models, enjoying British approval, and logically fulfilling British interests; (3) Nkrumah asserted the value of African personality but also looked to Europe for guides and good examples (p. 27); (4) Nkrumah was a "man of ideas far more than a man of practical politics" (p. 43) who formed his ideas about Pan-Africanism in the U.S. rather than in Africa. Nowhere is this claim more clearly substantiated than in the collection of writings in Revolutionary Path; (5) The institutions of colonial authoritarianism inherited from the British constituted the "black man's burden" (Black Star, p. 100); and (6) Nkrumah tried to make a revolution without revolutionaries (p. 178).

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As a result of the Nkrumah pre-independence compromise with the British authorities and the "political class" of the professionals, business, and traditional chiefs opposed to his revolutionary ideas, the CPP came to rest on a major contradiction within itself. In a very fine essay in Traditional Life ... entitled "Conflict and Consensus in Ghanaian Politics: The Case of the 1950's," Yaw Manu of the Political Science Department of Legon explores the nature and difficulties of this compromise, which pitted the CPP which symibolized "the plebian mass" against an "essentially intelligentsia class, the latter believing, as it were, in liberal ideals and constitutionalism; the former in prescriptive statuses and collectivism" (p. 93). Max Assimeng's "Methodological Africanism: Bresi Ando As An Episcopus Vagans" in the same volume discusses critically the contradictions between bourgeois nationalism, socialism and methodological Africanism "a mental framework . . . dominated by an underlying assumption which stipulates that Africa, and Africans' interest, should be the principal guideline in interpreting values and derived social behaviour" (p. 54). Though it was the support of the mass of the ordinary people which gave the party its strength, the CPP became increasingly a "traders' party with a traders' attitude to politics" (Black Star, p. 125, my stress). The party lost contact with the masses and degenerated into rampant careerism, self-seeking, self-perpetuating oligarchy, corruptiorn and opportunism. The CPP became a party of privilege. Nkrumah was forced to stand alone and in that solitude he fell (p. 125). In 1961, as Davidson notes, the government's crackdown on the Sekondi-Takoradi railwaymen's strike, when no less than nineteen trade unionists were put under the notorious Preventive Detention, demonstrated clearly that as a "popular party, the CPP had declared war on itself " (p. 177), a viewpoint supported by Richard Jeffries' recent work Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana on the Sekondi-Takoradi workers. Jeffries argues that the illegal strike of the railway workers expressed a far reaching disillusionment with the Nkrumah regime.

After 1963, instead of broadening the base of the power structure in line with a true radical policy, Nkrumah continually narrowed it to himself. His Flagstaff fHouse saw the establishment of "secretariats" which duplicated the civil service and weakened the latter. As Ocran argues in The Politics of the Sword, Nkrumah's answer to every problem was not to study it and seek expert advice but to establish yet another secretariat, board, commission or corporation believing that the mere existence of these would solve the problem (pp. 36-38). The Politics of the Sword is particularly revealing as an ex-soldier turned Oxford trained lawyer's view of Ghanaian politics.

The extent to which the emergence of this "administrative jungle" contributed to widespread political instability is the focus of Professor Le Vine's illuminating analytical work Political Corruption . . . and of Professor K.E. de Graft-Johnson-'s interesting contribution, "Corruption and Modernization in Ghana" in Traditional Life ... It is significant that de Graft- Johnson's definition of corruption (pp. 165-166) is very close to Le Vine's notion of political corruption (pp. 3-7 and p. 37) and that he comes to a conclusion similar to Le Vine's idea of "incipient culture of corruption" when de Graft- Johnson says that "widespread corruption has produced its own accommodations and satisfactions within the Ghanaian social structure" (p. 180). Both agree also that corruption in the Ghanaian context is "very wasteful of resources," "impairs peoples' faith in the established order," and "is a major cause of political instability. . . " (de Graft-Johnson, pp. 180-181).

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The endemic spoils system of which political corruption is an unmistakable ingredient is also the subject of Amu Djeloto's unflattering and appropriately titled Money Galore. Ocran, one of the colonels who led the coup against Nkrumah and was later a member of the 1969 Presidential Commission naturally devotes sections of his poorly written and sloppily edited book to the question of bribery and corruption, and correctly sees corruption as the fundamental problem of Ghanaian political leadership, civilian or military.

All the characters in Money Galore, Kofi Kafu, Nutor Vuga, the permanent secretary; Madam Odofo Lamptey and Auntie Salamatu, the rich and powerful market women; Anson Berko, Rev. Opia Dan Sese; party thugs like Nee Otu Lamptey, Ofori Nortey, Amega, Old Mills-Blankson, etc., are very familiar. They are all corrupt or corruptible. Earlier on in the book we find the practical and incorrigibly corrupt Anson Berko admonishing Benjy Baisi, the dutiful, struggling high school headmaster thus "I have always told you that in this country if you devote your time and energy to the service of the state you either be pushed aside, ignored, ridiculed, harassed or ruined. It's the thieves and crooks who get on" (p. 66). They are also presented realistically as ultimately anti-socialist (pp. 83-84), a picture quite consistent with Ocran's amusing categories for Nkrumah's party officials and functionaries - caricatured as either affluent socialists, comfortable socialists or suffering socialists (The Politics of the Sword, p. 48), and reflective of the awkward contradictions of CPP government described by Davidson. Abraham Kofi Kafu; the central character of Money Galore is a frustrated high school history teacher who wants quick money and power. He enters politics without resigning his school post. At 32 as Minister of Internal Welfare in the Liberation Party's govern- ment, the welfare of the nation and of his constituents naturally take second seat. With an M.A., Dip Ed. from London University, he believes that only "in- tellectuals" like him have the right to rule Ghana. He spends his time either plotting to "settle old scores" with enemies, gambling or entering into adul- terous relationships. In the end he is accidentally killed by his watchman Bukari, as Amega and Ofori Nortey, unscrupulous middlemen, party thugs and smugglers call on him at home to demand the money he owes them. The book ends with a bloodless coup d'etat.

Yet as Davidson convincingly argues in Black Star and Ocran insists somewhat ironically in The Politics of the Sword, the overthrow of Nkrumah or any civilian regime for that matter by the armed forces could not solve the basic problem of the society which Nkrumah inherited and his tyrannical rule exacerbated. Military rule is no solution to the neocolonialist problem (Black Star, p. 199). Davidson places part of the blame for Nkrumah's later "degeneration" into authoritarian rule at the doors of his political opponents whose "anti-democratic attitude" and "irresponsibility" (p. 100) drove Nkrumah to extremes. According to Davidson the basic problem is that the multi-party system on the Westminster or liberal parliamentary model would not work in the Ghanaian circumstances. The reinstallation of the Westminster system by the late Busia regime provided as much. Davidson seems to suggest that a socialist one-party system, shorn of the "bureaucratic degeneration of the CPP" (p. 210) alone would be viable. For as he points out in his Epilogue, it was "the decay of the C.P.P. as a party of the people" which accounted for the popularity of the military coup of 1966.

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As Ghana prepares for general elections in mid-June, 1979, to return the country once more to a multi-party parliamentary, presidential system in July, the critical question is whether a multi-party system could be transformed into a socialist one-party state through genuine electoral victory, or whether as Nkrumah argues in the very provocative collection of his numerous works in his posthumously published Revolutionary Path, only an armed struggle - revolutionary warfare could bring about a genuine socialist state. Between 1966 and 1970 Nkrumah became increasingly convinced of the class nature of the African struggle between the "forces of reaction and the forces of progress" between the liberals and the socialists. The question is whether Ghana, with an economy crippled by staggering, sky-rocketing inflation, and the activities of a "Kalabule" ring of smugglers' syndicates, gamblers, political opportunists, self-seekers and an assortment of crooks is ready to take, or could it be jolted onto, the revolutionary path to socialism which Nkrumah relentlessly called for even from his deathbed in Bucharest. Or will Ghana choose to stagnate, tossed about from economic crisis to economic crisis in the evolutionary trap?

Of the seven books under review, the two which deserve very close study by Ghanaians, indeed the African reading public and leaders, are Nkrumah's Revolutionary Path and Davidson's Black Star. For their provocative and controversial conclusions and recommendations are likely to preoccupy rightly or wrongly future generations of serious-minded Africans.

As a footnote, Black Star contains a number of irritating misprints and errors. The late K.A.B. Jones-Quartey appears on p. 29 as K.A.P.... .; Komlah Gbedemah's first name is consistently misprinted either as "Kombo" (p. 66) or "Komlo" (pp. 68, 78, 87, 111, 146, 180). Republic of Upper Volta is rendered "Volta Republic" (p. 182) and William Ofori Atta appears as "Oforo" Atta (footnote p. 183).

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