When Dancers play Historians and Thinkers - Part 22

In his comprehensive narrative of modern Ghanaian history, titled Politics in Ghana: 1946-1960 (Oxford UP, 1964), prolific and authoritative British scholar Dennis Austin eloquently and definitively debunks the widespread postcolonial myth of Kwame Nkrumah having been a singularly seminal influence on the modern Ghanaian political landscape: “True, the officials might doubt whether there would be any final advance to so remote a goal as independence within their own term of office. But 'self-government' was recognized as a legitimate (if premature) demand long before the post-war nationalist movement appeared on the scene. Indeed, in the sense that African leaders participated in their own government, the movement towards local autonomy in the Gold Coast may be said to date from the earliest years of colonial rule – from 1850, when the first African unofficial members were appointed to the first legislative council of the southern Colony. The pace of reform in these early decades was extremely slow – interrupted at the beginning of the century by the addition of Ashanti and the Northern Territories, pushed forward by the First World War, interrupted again by the economic depression of the 1930s, and then urged forward at a quicker pace by the Second World War – but by 1946 it was possible to see some form of home rule as a not too distant prospect. By this date, too, a large part of Asia had begun to move towards independence. Ceylon, Burma, and India were almost free, and the effect of this vast upheaval within the empire was beginning to make itself felt not only on local African leaders but in Colonial Office thinking in London and among the officials of the West African Coast. It was hardly necessary, however, to look overseas in order to justify the renewal in the 1940s of the movement of reform; there was ample evidence in the territory itself to support such a decision. For by 1946 the Gold Coast had acquired many of the prerequisites which it was then thought necessary than an independent state should possess. The number of children attending school, the degree of urbanization, the spread of road and rail communications, the increase in external trade, and the vast improvement in government revenue as world commodity prices climbed to heights unimagined before the war – all pointed in the same direction” (Politics in Ghana 3-4).

And on the crucial question regarding whether Nkrumah was, indeed, a suigeneris political thinker or merely, albeit suavely, followed in a long chain of sovereignty-minded statesmen and women, Austin poignantly and authoritatively recalls: “At first sight, the problem may be thought hardly worth discussing. It is not unusual for colonial governments to be surprised by nationalist demands – indeed, it might be said that it is their nature to be overtaken by such a fate – and since 1960 single-party republics have become the rule rather than the exception in Africa. Why, then, should it be supposed that the gold coast would be different? Because for a long time the Gold Coast was thought to occupy a special place among the British African territories. Among the handful of educated leaders in the Colony area there was a level of political sophistication, and a history of nationalist argument, of a degree unusual even in West Africa. In central Ashanti region, African self-government, of a highly developed order of political achievement, existed for more than two centuries before British rule was imposed at the end of the nineteenth century. And by 1946 the country as a whole possessed a number of advantages over its less fortunate neighbors – advantage of size, wealth, educational attainment, administrative skill, and an air of confidence and stability – all of which seemed likely to enable it to achieve an easy transition to self-government. Thus Martin Wight concluded in his study of The Gold Coast Legislative Council in 1946 by remarking that 'the Gold Coast people find themselves the pioneers of political advance and the touchstone of political competence in Africa' – a verdict endorsed by Margery Perham in her preface to Martin Wight's book, and the period of colonial reform inaugurated during the war years was generally accepted as evidence, not only of the pioneering road taken by the Gold Coast, but of the ability of its leaders to move along a path of modern reform. Hence the astonishment of the officials at the riots which occurred in 1948, and at the speed with which a radical nationalist movement – embodied in the Convention People's Party – took shape the following year” (Politics in Ghana 2-3).

And also regarding the much-purveyed Nkrumaist myth that the relatively cohesive organicity of Ghanaian cultures was the singular imaginative handiwork of the proverbial African Show Boy, Dennis Austin provides a more scientific and objective narrative: “It was possible to add to this growing infrastructure of national unity an important factor. Unlike most African colonies, the Gold Coast had an important central group of chiefdoms whose peoples spoke a common language and shared similar customs. Of the 4-5 million peoples in 1948 – the date of the first post-war census – some 2-3 million were of Akan origin and spoke related dialects – asante (or twi) in Ashanti, brong in the Western Ashanti chiefdoms, akwapim-twi in the hills behind the Accra plains, fante in the western Colony chiefdoms. Thus a substantial area of central and southern regions of the country shared a common culture” (Politics in Ghana 6).

In sum, implies the former political scientist of the University of Ghana, credit for the country's political cohesion represents the collective genius of its indigenous inhabitants, dating back to at least a half-millennium, or 500 years. And of particular significance, as the erudite author of Politics in Ghana aptly points out, is the nonesuch cultural sophistication of the country's Akan populace. Indeed, the widely perceived great envy of the Akan people by many a non-Akan Ghanaian, indigene or immigrant, may be seen to stem from the preceding fact, invariably and interminably remarked upon by many a Western and African visitor or tourist to the country.

The preceding notwithstanding, a plethora of stentorian claims – or special pleadings – have been made for Kwame Nkrumah and his pseudo-socialist and eponymous ideology of “Nkrumaism.” Nonetheless, in his indisputably authoritative treatise, Politics in Ghana, Austin effectively puts the lie to such vacuous claims by vehemently observing that the democratic political culture of decentralization privileged Akan societies among the ranks of modern civilized polities. In other words, by obstinately and hermetically attempting to impose Soviet-class method of unitary governance on Ghana, Nkrumah and his so-called Convention People's Party (CPP) had actually regressed the enviable political sophistication of Ghanaians, particularly Akans, almost irreparably. The forgoing observation, in essence, puts into sharp relief Nkrumah's well-known and well-recorded animosity for influential Akan chieftains as well as erudite and formidable Akan statesmen and politicians like Drs. J. B. Danquah and K. A. Busia, both of whom attempted to progressively marry Akan traditional political institutions with that which were inherited from the Western colonial administration: “Like many African systems of government, Akan rule rested on a broad measure of decentralized authority – a characteristic masked in part by the vesting of great symbolic power in the chief. In practice, power was exercised by the chief and his counselors through a finely spun web of subordinate authorities held together by kinship ties and bonds of fealty between the paramount chief, divisional (or 'wing') chiefs, and village heads. Even within the Ashanti Confederacy there was a large measure of devolution of authority, and an ever-shifting balance of power between Kumasi and the outlying capitals of Ashanti chiefdoms. The asantehene possessed rights of overlordship in respect of war service and jurisdiction (though not in landholding); but the individual Ashanti chiefs had their 'palatine privileges,' and each lesser chief within the circle of authority of his superior was a center of power in his own right. In pre-colonial times, 'decentralization was the keynote of divisional administration – as it was indeed of the administration of the Confederacy as a whole.' Throughout the Akan-speaking area, both in Ashanti and the south, the authority of the chief was tempered by the need to gain the consent of these intermediaries before it could be effective” (Politics in Ghana 18).

But even more significantly, Austin meticulously debunks the gaping Nkrumaist myth – albeit one that, tragically, carried with the bulk of a largely illiterate electorate – that the institution of the monarchy cavalierly and routinely flouted the human rights of the downtrodden and the underprivileged, popularly known as “commoners” or, in cynical Nkrumaist parlance, “Verandah Boys.” Rather, notes the longtime political science professor of the University of Ghana, the democratic organicity of traditional Akan system of governance fully and jealously guarded against any attempt to flagrantly breach the integral rights and responsibilities of all members of society, regardless of one's specific station or status in life: “Akan had the further distinction, however, of being grounded on a more popular conception of government than was perhaps the practice in African societies. The commoners, as well as the counselors, or 'elders,' not only had rights of their own, but were able to exert some measure of control over the chief. Admittedly, the successor to a vacant 'stool' had to be chosen from among the members of a royal house, and the process of selection of a candidate was begun by the Queen Mother – usually the aunt or sister of the former chief – who brought forward one of the eligible 'royals' for approval by the elders, that is, by those who held important stools within the state. But the 'king-makers' had to be careful not to go against any strong expression of popular disapproval. And if, once installed, the new chief misbehaved beyond a certain point, particularly if he 'abused the elders' by persistently opposing their advice, he might be 'destooled,' or forced to abdicate….The authority bestowed on him, though of a sacral nature and derived from his position as an intermediary between the living and the ancestors, could be withdrawn; whereupon – having been destooled – he lost the divinity he had acquired through his office unless he was re-elected. This distinction between the office and the office-holder could also be seen in the attitude adopted towards the 'royals' of a Stool before their election or after their destoolment. The potential chief lived a matter-of-fact life: a 'royal' might be a farmer or trader or (in more modern times) a motor mechanic or schoolteacher one day, and a chief (perhaps [even] a paramount chief) the day after” (Politics in Ghana 18-20).

In a striking comparison between the morally and politically regressive cult of personality which prevailed under Nkrumah's tenure and the general dynamics of the relationship between a traditional Akan monarch – or chieftain – and the ruled, Austin amply demonstrates how Nkrumaist leadership protocol egregiously violated the modern conventions of human rights, whereas traditional Akan political protocol studiously upheld both the theoretical and practical dimensions of human rights. Thus, this author's longstanding contention that Kwame Nkrumah's assumption of the title of “Osagyefo” (Lord-Protector of Ghana) was at best farcical and at the worst a brazen attempt at Akan cultural degradation is fully supported by evidence: “ 'Proceedings to destool a chief' in Ashanti – it was recorded – 'might [and still may] be inaugurated [initiated?] by any commoner…. He would conduct an insidious campaign among the populace, until public opinion compelled the Elders to act. The chief would then be tried [but] if his accuser could not prove his case he would, in olden times, almost certainly have been killed.' Chiefs were destooled, not only in the Akan states of the Colony, but in Ashanti: but it was an undertaking not to be entered upon lightly. And the task was made more difficult in that the very structure of an Akan chiefdom imposed limits on the ability of the commoners to act: because the power of the chief was distributed among a number of subordinate authorities, criticism of his rule also had to be indirect…. Such were the broad outlines of the division of power within Akan society in pre- and early colonial times. In sum, the chief was a powerful, even awesome figure; but he was subject to limits on his freedom of action. His subjects were free men, whose rights in the land they farmed were inalienable (except by themselves). They served the chief in time[s] of war and in respect of such communal services they might be called upon to perform; they obeyed him not least because his authority was exercised more often than not indirectly, and because they saw the chief, and the Stool he represented, as both the guardian and symbol of the well-being of the state as a whole” (Politics in Ghana 20-21).

And here, we hasten to recall the fact that as an initially elected Prime Minister, and later President, Nkrumah so systematically undermined the Ghanaian Parliament that on the eve of his overthrow, the civilized and democratic concept of “checks-and-balances” was virtually nonexistent in Ghana. And to be certain, during the final parliamentary elections – in 1964 – shortly prior to his landmark overthrow, Nkrumah is reliably reported to have personally – with the marginal input of his minions – selected all 198 candidates listed on the ballot and promptly announced their “election” or “unopposed reelection” without any polls having been conducted (see elsewhere in this series).

Interestingly, as Austin colorfully recalls, if only for the patently farcical dramaturgy that it represents, having attained his leadership legitimacy by consenting to a democratic system of selection or appointment, Nkrumah then, almost abruptly, proceeds to perennially entrench himself and his rule by invoking the very concept of “African Communalism,” which his megalomania prompted him to reject earlier on, in order to expediently validate his one-party ideology: “As the CPP government asserted its sovereignty, the opposition (re-grouped as a United Party) crumbled, and the 1957 constitution was revised drastically by being shorn of its regional assemblies and constitutional safeguards. Then, in June 1959, Nkrumah revived a claim which had been allowed – perforce – to lapse. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the CPP, a large party rally in Accra was told: 'Comrades, it is no idle boast when I say that…the Convention People's Party is Ghana. Our party not only provides the government but is the custodian which stands guard over the welfare of the people.' The corollary to this claim was drawn a year later by John Tettegah, general secretary of the Ghana TUC, who was reported as telling a local party rally that 'those who sit outside the ranks of the CPP forfeit their right to citizenship in the country. For it is only within the CPP that any constructive thing can be done for Ghana…. It was noticeable, too, that the CPP leaders were unwilling to rely on the natural operation of what was said to be a liking for political uniformity within a communal society. On the contrary: they made a determined effort after 1957 to impress their authority on the country, partly through symbolic acts (and in the introduction of stamps and coins bearing Nkrumah's profile), more particularly through harsh measures of a legal and administrative nature, including the use (from 1958 onwards) of a Preventive Detention Act. They were very successful. Whereas in March 1957 the opposition was a solid feature of the political landscape, three years later it had all but disappeared as an organized force. CPP control over the country was almost complete, through the use of government-sponsored organizations like the Ghana Farmers' Council, the Ghana TUC, the National Co-operative Council and the Women's League; and in April 1960 Nkrumah was given almost 90 percent of the votes against Dr. J. B. Danquah in the election for [the] presidency. The single party was virtually in existence. But to argue from this mortal decline in the fortunes of the opposition a principle of African politics was to ignore the actual course of events between 1957 and 1960. Part at least of the explanation of the withering away of the United Party lay in the determination among the CPP leaders to see [to it] that it was blighted; and the outcome of the 1960 plebiscite reflected far more the power of the government to secure [or securing?] the results [that] it wanted than an accurate measure of the degree of support for one side or the other” (Politics in Ghana 31-35).

In other words, observes Austin, Nkrumah, though pontifically staking an epiphanic claim to “African Communalism,” nonetheless, pursued a flagrantly individualistic policy of self-aggrandizement that was wont to immitigably alienate the opposition, such as causing his profile to be imprinted on stamps and etched on Ghana's monetary currency. Then also, matters were not helped by his shamelessly rigging elections in order to achieve his desired aims, rather than the actual representative – or democratic – aims and desires of the electorate at large. Thus, where traditional “African Communalism” may be aptly envisaged to have organically evolved over a long period of time, the Nkrumaist brand, or version, for some curiously unexplained reasons (other than, of course, a pathological penchant for power), had to be strong-armed into constitutional reality.

For Austin, perhaps, the greatest problem in having Kwame Nkrumah lead Ghana to independence inhered in the fact that Nkrumah woefully lacked the kind of intellectual puissance – or gravitas – to have enabled himself to critically appreciate the far-reaching implications of suiting political theories with practice. Couple the preceding with the putative fact of Nkrumah lacking the requisite capacity for political criticism, and Ghana's fortunes on the eve of her sovereignty becomes even bleaker: “At a parliamentary level (Nkrumah added): 'Minority right would be respected. Opposition members in the Assembly would be able to raise questions which seemed to them in the national interest. The Opposition would have a guaranteed proportion of representation on the Standing Committees and Select Committees of the Assembly. In matters of great national importance…a tradition should be established that the Prime Minister of the day should consult with the Leader of the Opposition to secure, if possible, a concerted policy.' In practice, most of these safeguards disappeared. The CPP brooked no bounds to its rule, and – in reply – the opposition began to move in the direction of conspiracy. Hence the clumsy attempt of 1958 to finance an armed coup d'état. Thus, by 1960 – so the critic of CPP rule might conclude – the use of 'emergency measures of a totalitarian kind,' and the clandestine activities of the opposition, had produced a situation which each side was able to claim had justified its actions: namely, conflict between a powerful ruling party closely identified with every aspect of public life, and the remnant of an oppressed opposition many of whose members were prepared to endorse any means by which the government might be overthrown. Neither argument, in the writer's opinion was an adequate explanation of the post-independence period. The CPP case was too self-righteous: concentrating on the mote in its opponent's eye[,] it ignored the beam in its own. The plea for conciliation, on the other hand, ignored the history of the pre-independence struggle and misjudged the room for maneuver which existed between the two parties. To see the history of these years in better perspective, other considerations have to be weighed: in particular, the influence on events exercised by Nkrumah (and the nature of leadership provided by him); the nature of the CPP and its attitude to the power [that] it had acquired; and the nature of the times in which these political struggles were conducted” (Politics in Ghana 38-40).

And further and, even more significantly, Austin notes: “Consider, for example, Nkrumah's own background and character. It is difficult to believe that the moderate statements (quoted earlier) which recognized the need for an opposition, stemmed from conviction. They hardly tallied with the self-portrait drawn in the Autobiography and subsequent speeches, where he emerges as a leader singularly lacking in tolerance either of views other than his own or organizations opposed to those under his control. Brought up early in life as a Catholic, and profoundly influenced later in America by the writings of Marcus Garvey (the Negro Zionist), he spent his student days in London (he says) in search of a 'formula by which the whole colonial question and the problem of imperialism could be solved' – reading 'Hegel, Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mazzini' in the process. There was little interest, or liking for liberal views, so far as one may judge from his Autobiography. Moreover, his understanding of the nature of authority was at the level of emotion and organization rather than ideas (whether liberal or illiberal); although nominally interested in theories of imperialism, his primary aim was 'to learn the technique of organization [for]…I knew that whatever the program for the solution of the colonial question might be, success would depend upon the organization adopted.' He had – as his kindest critic has said – 'the kind of intellect at the same time organizing and practical, which enabled him to absorb, and turn to practical use, bits of theories that came his way and seemed likely to fit the context of the Gold Coast – collecting ideas and storing them against the future, as a squirrel collects and stores nuts. The essential eclecticism of this approach is worth stressing” (Politics in Ghana 40).

The “Kindest critic” in reference was the scholar Thomas Hodgkin. In any event, it is quite interesting to observe that in seeking to dramatically break with the monarchical past, for Nkrumah had actually vowed to run recalcitrant chiefs out of the country, ironically and temperamentally speaking, Nkrumah appears to have been far more conservative and ideologically primitive – or better yet, regressive – in his outlook, to speak much less of outright political incoherence for someone who presumed to shepherd his people and their country into the glorious political kingdom generously endowed with an economic cornucopia. In sum, notes Austin, no leader, on the critical eve of Ghana's declaration of sovereignty from British colonial rule, could have been any more woefully under-prepared for governance than Kwame Nkrumah.

Once again, Austin, far more definitively than any authoritative student, or scholar, of postcolonial Ghanaian politics takes up the history of the much-maliegned Ga Shifimo Kpee (or the Ga Native-Rights, or Standfast, Organization). And just like the infamous Kulungugu episode, the author of Politics in Ghana recalls the fact that the GSK was originally integral in aim and objective with the brutal operations of the CPP against its opponents – both palpable and perceived – and thus thoroughly rendering any cynical attempt to fault the political opposition for the alleged terrorist activities of the GSK as largely and indisputably untenable. To this effect, therefore, Austin writes: “The [Ga Shifimo Kpee] revolt especially was a great shock to the CPP. It took shape in the capital, in Nkrumah's own constituency, from within the party's own ranks. And like the Ewe and Ashanti and northern parties, it broke a fundamental commandment of the governing party – that 'tribalism' should have no place in an independent Ghana: attempts by the Ga leaders to defend what they claimed were important local interests were brushed aside therefore as indefensible, for CPP dogma was perfectly clear (to the leaders) on this point. Parties, by definition, were national organizations; local associations, whether deliberately or unwillingly, were subversive elements in the national life of the country, and needed to be dealt with ruthlessly. ….In 1957 many of the [CPP] leaders, and most of the rank and file, were calling for retribution rather than reconciliation, and the support given by the opposition to the Ewe revolt [against the geopolitical integration of Transvolta Togoland into Ghana] and the Ga Shifimo Kpee (which was [then] brought into the opposition alliance) fed this desire for revenge on the part of the CPP. It confirmed the general belief among the leaders in [of?] the need to eliminate their opponents, and strengthened their indifference to the harshness of the means adopted” (Politics in Ghana 44-45).

In sum, barely three years after Nkrumah had been voted Prime Minister of Ghana, the CPP had begun rapidly crumbling. And by 1960, the African Show Boy had to crudely run the organized opposition, literally, aground and underground in order to lay claim to an electoral landslide: “The reality was different. For the CPP had 'swept the polls' during the 1951 election because it had been carried forward on a great wave of nationalist excitement; but the apparently similar triumph by Nkrumah in the presidential election of 1960 was reached only after opposition to the party had been crushed by the full weight of government power. The forces at work at independence which combined to produce the new republic may be summarized. Firstly, Nkrumah's own belief in, and taste for, autocratic rule of an extreme personal nature. Secondly, an initial willingness among the CPP rank and file to accept such a lead, since it matched both their own assessment of what was needed after the 1954-6 struggle and their understanding of the nature of political power. Thirdly, the rash behavior of the opposition, allied with (fourthly) the uncertainties of the political scene in the immediate post-independence months. And, fifthly, an extreme reluctance among the CPP leaders – arising partly from their nationalist origins, partly from the uneasiness with which they contemplated the situation at independence – to admit the legitimacy of any rival political group to themselves. None of these forces need have been of decisive importance…. Other ex-colonies in the past were able to preserve liberal, constitutional forms despite social and cultural differences at least as great as those which troubled the CPP leaders after 1949. And not every nationalist government in the newly independent states has felt it necessary to deny the right of minorities to form their own party groups” (Politics in Ghana 46-48).

Also, a lot of students of mid-twentieth century Ghanaian history, including even the most experienced and prominent, have often confused the original movers and shakers of Ghana's independence movement – the United Gold Coast Convention – with the sub-group of prominent agitators for independence who came to be known as “The Big Six.” In reality, while, indeed, the foundational membership of the UGCC overlapped with that of “The Big Six,” these were hardly one and the same. In his quite comprehensively researched treatise, Politics in Ghana (1964), Dennis Austin lists the original membership of the UGCC's Executive Committee as follows: “Foreward (by A. G. Grant) to the UGCC's The 'P' Plan issued in January 1952. The leading members of the Convention were A. G. Grant, timber merchant, chairman; R. S. Blay, lawyer, vice-president; J. B. Danquah, lawyer, vice-president; R. A. Awoona[sic] Williams, lawyer, treasurer; W. E. Ofori Atta, graduate teacher; E. A. Akufo Addo, lawyer; J. W. deGraft Johnson, lawyer; Obetsibi [sic] Lamptey, lawyer. Later John Tsiboe, newspaper proprietor (Ashanti Pioneer), and Cobina Kessie, an Ashanti lawyer, were added from Kumasi” (Austin 52).

Similarly, it has often been routinely suggested by some ardent supporters of both Danquah and Nkrumah that the former had received and, indeed, accepted the latter into UGCC executive committee membership lock, stock and barrel – or almost absolutely without any reservations whatsoever. In his authoritatively researched treatise, Politics in Ghana: 1946-60, Austin, once again, offers a totally different perspective: “Indeed, some of the members of the Working Committee sensed this difference between them and Nkrumah at their [very] first meeting. Although the lawyer R. S. Blay expressed the hope 'that Mr. Nkrumah would use the Convention as if it were his own organization,' his attitude was not shared by the whole Committee. Danquah, in particular, was suspicious. He asked Nkrumah how he was able to 'reconcile his active interests in West African unity (through the West African National Secretariat) with the rather parochial aims of the United Gold Coast Convention,' and Nkrumah had to assure the Committee, saying that he 'believed in TERRITORIAL BEFORE INTERNATIONAL solidarity.' He was questioned too about his use of certain 'catch phrases' – in particular, the word 'Comrade' – which the Committee members feared 'might arouse the suspicions of the public as well as officialdom regarding the political connections of the Convention with certain unpopular foreign forms of government.' This initial uneasiness was set aside later, and Danquah and Nkrumah campaigned together in the name of the Convention. But the Committee never quite overcame their ambivalence towards Nkrumah – hoping to use him, ready to accept (ready also to deny) what he might do in their name but possessed of a growing fear of what he might do without them” (Austin 54-55).

If, indeed, the preceding may be aptly deemed to be in consonance with the objective realities of temporal events, and the avid student of the period has little reason to doubt, or question, the preceding, then it does appear that critics and students of both the Danquah and Nkrumah camps who depict the former in terms of an unsuspecting – or faultily trusting – statesman may aptly appear to do so with a view to throwing into sharp relief subsequent dramatic turn of events leading to Nkrumah's split with the executive membership of the UGCC and, in hindsight, his opportunistic and ruinous – to speak much less of the counterproductive – formation of the so-called Convention People's Party (CPP), whose profound blighting of the postcolonial Ghanaian political landscape continues to reverberate more than a half-century after the fact. And so in almost every sense of the expression, the advent of Nkrumah on the Ghanaian political landscape was strikingly akin to the proverbial handwriting on the wall.

Interestingly, much ado, or fanfare, has been made by his staunch and fanatical supporters regarding Nkrumah's purportedly creative genius in the real of progressive ideas. In his comprehensive classic, Politics in Ghana: 1946-60, Dennis Austin provides quite a different picture indicating, in fact, that Nkrumah's genius lay almost squarely in the unenviable realm of “ideational theft,” that is, the unscholarly, unconscionable and outright opportunistic stealing of the ideas of his intellectual betters, or superiors, and then shamelessly passing them off to a largely unsuspecting, unsophisticated and illiterate public as his own: “Thus it would be possible to plot a graph of events from the 1948 riots to the middle of 1949 in which the UGCC and the youth associations would be seen as starting from a common point but, month by month, event by event, diverging more and more widely; and by June 1949 the two lines on the graph would be far apart. At length, on 11 June, the Working Committee tried to stir itself. It issued the text of two resolutions: (1) membership of the CYO and the UGCC were incompatible; (2) Nkrumah was to be 'served with charges' because he had disregarded 'the obligations of collective responsibility and party discipline,' had published opinions, views, and criticisms in the Evening News, 'assailing the decisions and questioning the integrity of the Working Committee,' and had undermined the Convention, abusing its leaders and stealing its ideas. At long last, too, the report appeared of a Committee or Inquiry into Headquarters Organization: appointed in August 1948, the Committee now produced 25 pages of transcript containing detailed recommendations for strengthening the Convention under a new general secretary and nine assistants. The report was still-born. And once again, for the last time, the UGCC leaders were outmaneuvered. The CYO had met earlier in the month at Tarkwa, the mining town in the western province, where 'the discussions that took place,' says Nkrumah, 'lasted for about three nights and proceeded into the early hours of the morning. During the conference the more experienced members of the youth movement – Gbedemah, Botsio, Dzenkle Dzewu, Krobo Edusei – had stressed the need to make a clean break with the UGCC; a younger section, led by Kofi Baako, Kwesi Plange, Saki Scheck, evidently believed that the Convention still commanded wide support and, therefore, that the CYO should insist on Nkrumah's reinstatement as secretary in order to capture the UGCC from within. Eventually a compromise was reached: a new party should be formed, but one that would retain the name 'Convention.' And on Sunday, June 12 1949, at the Arena meeting ground in Accra, before an audience of about 60,000 people, on behalf of: 'the CYO, in the name of the chiefs, the people, the rank and file of the Convention, the Labor movement, our valiant ex-servicemen, the youth movement throughout the country, the man in the street, our children and those yet unborn, the new Ghana that is to be, Sergeant Adjety [sic] and his comrades who died at the crossroads of Christiansborg during the 1948 riots, and in the name of God Almighty and humanity' Nkrumah announced the formation of a 'Convention People's Party.' Kojo Botsio became its secretary, K. A. Gbedemah its vice-chairman and Nkrumah its chairman” (Politics in Ghana 84-85).

Even more intriguing is the story regarding the founding of the “Ghana National Colleges,”
by the executive membership of the UGCC, to cater to the educational needs of high-school students expelled from school by the British colonial administration for participating in the 1948 riots. While ardent Nkrumaists and Nkrumacrats attribute this forward-looking idea to the singular and purportedly spectacular vision of the African Show Boy, in a footnote on page 81 of his book Politics in Ghana: 1946-60, Dennis Austin insightfully notes, with relevance reference to Bankole Timothy's eponymous biography on the Show Boy that: “The idea [for the Ghana Schools and Colleges] was first put forward in the Working Committee of the UGCC.” It is, therefore, hardly surprising that among the salient charges brought against Nkrumah by the executive membership of the UGCC – on the eve of Nkrumah's split with the original 'Convention' Party and the thievish founding of the so-called Convention People's Party (CPP) was, as abstracted above, Nkrumah's apparent pathological penchant for abusing the UGCC leadership, in addition to brazenly “stealing its ideas” (Politics in Ghana 84).

But even more telling, as subsequent events were to indicate, once Nkrumah had successfully lied and stolen his way into the august seat of Ghana's governance, was the vindication of the UGCC charge that the African Show Boy lacked the kind of moral discipline required for the effective management of a statal institutional apparatus.

It is also equally interesting to learn that even up to their first major electoral victory in 1951, in fact, also an electoral first on the entire African continent, Nkrumah and the rest of the CPP leadership were vigorously campaigning for victory almost solely on the strength of the achievements of the UGCC, as the following Certificate-of-Martyrdom welcoming the prison release of one of their “Comrades” glaringly indicates:

AKUA ASAABEA GRADUATES FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF JAMES FORT PRISON
Know ye, by all these presents, that our worthy Sister and Compatriot, Miss Akua Asaabea hath this 17th day of July in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifty, in the third year of Ghana's

Campaign for Self-government, been admitted a Graduate of the University Of James Fort Prison after having successfully completed a course in 'Patriotism'…and that henceforth she shall have full power to append after Her name, the insignia, 'P.G.' (Prison Graduate)

That Nkrumah would broadly generalize the UGCC's struggle for the country's re-assertion of her sovereignty as “the third year of Ghana's [rather than the CPP's] campaign for self-government, was an eerily striking foreshadowing of even more sinister things to come, especially once the CPP appeared to have comfortably entrenched itself in the country's seat of governance. And here must also be recalled the fact that on October 17, 1949, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, Nkrumah's right-hand man, had been convicted and sentenced to a six-month jail term for “publishing false news,” the colonial equivalent of Criminal Libel conviction in the postcolonial era, for using Nkrumah's Evening News to malign the Arden-Clarke government (Politics in Ghana 86). In other words, with the CPP top hierarchy in action, many an unsuspecting Ghanaian citizen was, more or less, dealing with professional liars and diehard criminals.

But, perhaps, the most objective comparative portraits of the UGCC and the CPP on the eve of Ghana's maiden national election in 1951, is presented by Dennis Austin as follows: “Finally[,] the UGCC Plan for the Nation urged the electorate to 'elect to the new Assembly the best men for the job, the best men in the true sense, irrespective of party, tribe, religion and class.' In general, there was very little difference (except in the language used) between the CPP 'Goal' and the UGCC 'Plan,' and it was both the strength and weakness of the UGCC leaders that they stood close (yet opposed) to the CPP. They, too, demanded self-government – indeed, they could claim to have started the post-war nationalist movement, and by 1950 Danquah in particular could look back over more than twenty years of political agitation since he returned to the Gold Coast as a young barrister in 1928. The UGCC lawyers were 'patriots,' therefore, even if they found it difficult to accept the age of the 'common man.' In challenging the CPP, however, they were on difficult ground, for it was not easy to see why the demand for 'Self-Government Now under Nkrumah' should be less desirable than that of 'Self-Government in the shortest possible time under Grant or Danquah. If the bid was for self-government, the more radical section of the nationalist movement held all the cards: indeed, it had stolen the pack. The intelligentsia also found it difficult to explain why they should suddenly ally themselves with the chiefs, their former rivals in the Colony. It was true that the Akan chiefs were not quite the 'feudal overlords' of CPP propaganda: in theory, at least, they drew their power from the people, and as the [British colonial officials] transferred their approval from the chiefs of an indirect-rule system to the new CPP administration, the theory became closer to [the] practice. (Hence the alliance of the young men and the Ashanti chiefs at the end of 1954 in the NLM). But the position was different in 1950-1. The election was popularly seen as a challenge to colonial rule of which the chiefs had hitherto appeared as local agents, and the conservative element in the UGCC was inevitably – if unduly – emphasized by its alliance with the local state councils of chiefs and elders” (Politics in Ghana 138).

In sum, the sole advantage that the Nkrumah-led CPP appears to have had over the more ideologically sophisticated UGCC pertains more to the former's devious capacity for hyperbole, and reckless and opportunistic capitalization on the impatient pulse of the proverbial average Ghanaian for the urgent, or immediate physical, or corporeal, removal of the British colonial administrator. Of course, shortly after he had been sobered by the political realities on the ground, as it were, rather belatedly, Nkrumah would radically, albeit quite cynically, revise his ideological perspective vis-à-vis the Ghanaian political landscape, by recognizing the far-reaching institutional apparatus of Western colonial imperialism, a phenomenon which he was to term as “Neocolonialism.” But, once again, as was characteristic of the African Show Boy, such recognition was more a matter of subterfuge for gross administrative incapacity, on the part of Nkrumah, than the sheer realization, or epiphany, of an astute political theorist.
And on the preceding score, we must make bold to emphasize George Alfred (Paa) Grant's memorable characterization of Nkrumah's politics of brazen opportunism, only if one is to meaningfully appreciate later political developments precipitated by Nkrumah's CPP on Ghana's postcolonial landscape: “By June 1949, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, expatriated [repatriated?] by the Convention [i.e. UGCC] in 1947 to take up the secretaryship, had for reasons that are now obvious to all, so sabotaged the effort of the principal leaders of the Convention and so discredited me and all my principal colleagues that he was able to mislead the masses to follow him…. He filched our name, our 'S. G.' [i.e. Self-Government] policy, our branches and even our colors – to establish a separatist group – the Convention People's Party….” (Politics in Ghana 151).

The preceding maugre, Austin's persistent tendency to routinely characterize the CPP as the party of “Nationalists,” or simply as “the Nationalist” vis-à-vis the author's characterization of the seminal – or foundational – leaders of the UGCC merely as the “intelligentsia,” is not very meaningful, particularly when one also takes into consideration the fact that, till the end of his active political career in Ghana, Nkrumah never ceased predicating his “revolutionary” and “nationalist” achievements on the auspicious and salutary foundations of the UGCC, as previously remarked vis-à-vis the inscription on the mock certificates “awarded” the CPP's so-called Prison Graduates.

In recent years, some Ghanaian writers and critics who have been engaged in the perennial discourse on political corruption – or misprision – either out of sheer ignorance or abject lack of forthrightness – or honesty – have tended to give northern Ghanaian politicians a facile and patronizing pass. This, almost undoubtedly, may be largely due to the relatively low percentage of northern politicians in cabinet positions. In his treatise, Politics in Ghana, however, Dennis Austin details the sad case of Mr. J. A. Braimah, a cabinet member in Nkrumah's transitional administration, though not a CPP parliamentarian, who, troubled by rumors of rank corruption among top government officials, confessed to a stunning personal instance of the same: “The contrast between the party as a revolutionary movement of African socialists, and as a dominant partner in the 1951 administration, was all too evident. Many of its leading figures had settled down in office, as ministers, Assembly members, officials of the Cocoa Marketing Board, and party secretaries. Rumors of corruption and malpractices circulated freely, centered in the belief that money and favors were changing hands between foreign contractors and the party leaders. The stories grew throughout 1951 and 1952 and were investigated eventually by a Commission of Inquiry when J. A. Braimah confessed to the Governor that as Minister of Communications and Works he had accepted £ 2,000 from Aksor Kassardjian, an Armenian contractor working in the north. Long before the Commission was appointed[,] tales similar to those recounted by Braimah were being discussed in the country. The refusal of the CPP Ministers to live in the bungalows provided for them in [on?] the outskirts of Accra, the large houses which they built and drew rent[al] allowance for in town, the flamboyant class of living of many of the party members, stories of the need to buy contracts from ministers and ministerial secretaries, and the failure of an Anti-Bribery and Corruption Committee were produced as evidence of the distance the party's leaders had traveled from the early days of 1949. The danger had been foreseen by Nkrumah himself who had pointed out that there was a: 'risk in accepting office under the new constitution which still makes us half-slave and half-free …. The temptation there is that it is easy for one to identify oneself with such a constitution and thereby be swayed by considerations of personal temporary advantage instead of seeking the interests of the people. Hence we call for vigilance and moral courage, to withstand the evil maneuvering of imperialism. Now bribery and corruption, both moral and factual, have eaten into the whole fabric of our society and these must be stamped out if we are to achieve any progress' These were stirring words, but many found it difficult in 1952 to see what was being done either about the 'evil maneuvering of imperialism' or the bribery and corruption. Moreover[,] there were several stories of [on?] how the Prime Minister himself had borrowed £ 1,800 from A. Y. K. Djin (chairman of the Finance Committee of the CPP) via Ohene Djan (a ministerial secretary) to pay for the importation of a Cadillac” (Politics in Ghana 164-5).

It goes without saying that the preceding stunned and grievously offended public sensibilities, particularly when Mr. Braimah, of the Northern People's Party, confessed because, perhaps, the most distinguished northern politician of the time, scion of a well-regarded royal family, had also regarded himself boldly and fearlessly as one who stood squarely on the merits of parliamentary issues that came up for debate and voting upon, rather than the vagaries of partisan loyalty. It comes, therefore, as hardly any surprise when Austin further intimates that much of the electoral popularity of the CPP stemmed from the indiscriminate willingness of Nkrumah and his minions to cavalierly breach the code of ethics that ought to have distinguished Party activities, in particular finances, from the operation of public corporations, whose finances liberally found their way into CPP coffers. Needless to say, such prejudicial and deleteriously collaborative state of affairs – involving the colonial administration and the CPP – almost definitively ensured that the organized opposition would wither almost overnight: “Thus the Armenian contractor Aksor Kassardjian told the Korsah Commission in 1953 that 'he had given all £ 200 in separate sums of £ 100 each to the Convention People's Party.' Before the same Commission[,] Nicholas Paidoussis – a Greek contractor – testified that he, too, had subscribed. Ohene Djan (when ministerial secretary to the Ministry of Finance and Chairman of the Central Tender Board which approved the issue of contracts) had told him (said Paidoussis) that 'all other companies and firms had given generous donations or contributions to the party'; so he had handed Ohene Djan a cheque for £ 100. Many of these minor transactions were of course gifts to influential party members in the hope of government favors, but some may have spilled over into party funds in the form of general donations to ensure goodwill. A much stronger ally, however, than the Lebanese and Syrian community had already appeared at the end of 1952, when the 'Coca Purchasing Company' (CPC) was established by the government as a subsidiary of the Cocoa Marketing Board with an authorized share capital of £ 2 million. Originally designed to challenge (and eventually replace) the large overseas buying firms, it was empowered the following year (August 1953) to relieve what was believed to be a chronic indebtedness on the part of the cocoa farmer. A Loans Agency began to issue individual loans to farmers within a limit of £ 150 and then (by February 1954) £ 1,500 until by September 1954 the government had approved the release of funds to the Company via the Marketing Board to the extent of £ 1, 900,000. This was an impressive sum, and critics of the party were quick to point out the close relationship between the CPP and the CPC. A. Y. K. Djin, for example, was acting managing director of the Company [i.e. CPC] and chairman of the finance committee of the CPP; Martin Appiah Danquah, a director of the company, was general secretary of the party's ancillary organization, the United Ghana Farmers' Council. Without exception, the directors of the company were leading party figures. The nature of the relationship between the CPC and the party [i.e. CPP] was expressed in characteristic terms by Krobo Edusei in the Assembly early in March 1954: 'The CPC is the product of a master brain, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, and it is the atomic bomb of the Convention People's Party. As honorable members are aware, the Prime Minister in his statement to the CPP told his party members that organization decided everything and the CPC is part of the organization of the Convention People's Party.' It was difficult to estimate how much or how little the party drew from such sources. The (Jibowu) Commission of Inquiry into the Affairs of the Cocoa Purchasing Company (appointed in 1956) concluded that CPC vehicles had been used by the CPP for electioneering, and that some of the Company's funds had gone towards ' securing votes from farmers prior to the election on 15 June 1954.' At the very least, the network of agents and buying stations which the Company established with the help of the United Ghana Farmers' Council must have relieved the party of a great deal of the burden (and expense) of propaganda in the cocoa areas. Access to funds of the Cocoa Purchasing Company, and to those of the newly created public corporations like the Industrial Development Corporation, did not stop the leaders calling for greater efforts from the members themselves – it was clearly in the interests of party organization to do so – and Gbedemah told the fourth annual delegates' conference in Tamale in August 1953 that they still lacked sufficient funds to fight the forthcoming second general election. It was announced that the sale of party badges, contributions from the assemblymen, membership dues, donations given at party rallies, had brought the party's finances to £ 4, 255, but that not less than £ 30, 000 would be needed for the second general election. In fact, by June 1954 (the date of the election) sufficient money had been acquired. The party was well equipped with lorries, propaganda vans, and paid agents; glossy, colored portraits of Nkrumah framed to form a country-wide election poster were printed and imported from abroad, and Gbedemah was able to issue a cheque for £ 5,200 to the Attorney-General to meet the £ 50 deposit of the party's 104 candidates” (Politics in Ghana 172-4).

Yet, it is very interesting to observe that only six years later, in 1960, then-Prime Minister Nkrumah could readily issue a parliamentary edict preventing Dr. J. B. Danquah, his main opponent in the presidential election, from having access to such public propaganda facilities as the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and even Danquah's own United Party's mobile vans as well as other campaign facilities. Indeed, some of his sympathizers and lackeys have tried to excuse Nkrumah's grossly undemocratic behavior by vacuously claiming that the resident British Governor-General, the Earl of Listowell, had not complained!

The preceding grim portrait of the “mainstream” Ghanaian politician in the wake of independence notwithstanding, to fully appreciate the persistent moral ambiguity of the postcolonial Ghanaian politician, Austin provides this striking, albeit mordantly unflattering, picture of the CPP's panoply of pioneering leaders on the eve of Ghana's declaration of sovereignty from England: “The heroic role played by the leaders in 1949-50 was increasingly difficult to sustain as they sat in their ministerial offices; many were corrupt, none (from the Prime Minister to the local party officials) had emerged unscathed from the Korsah Commission Report on Braimah's resignation. The leaders were under attack from rebel candidates in [among?] the constituency executives, the party as a whole was challenged by the opposition alliance of the Ghana Congress Party, the NPP, the MAP, and the Togoland Congress. Yet the ruling party retained a number of very great advantages. In the first place, Self-Government was still a rallying cry. Indeed, the very sight of the large houses and cars owned by the ministers and party executives was a token of the more generous (and more widely distributed) benefits that it was hoped would follow independence. And although the charges of corruption leveled at the CPP were generally accepted as valid, they did not offend the public at large to anything like the extent the opposition hoped. Secondly, wealth (in Ghana) did not necessarily bestow status: the CPP was still a commoners' party. Despite their houses and cars, its leaders had not ceased to talk the language of the village market and the urban housing estate; their appeal to the ordinary man for support still carried weight – particularly in view of the renewed activities of the small intelligentsia group and their conservative-looking allies. Thirdly, the CPP had the advantage of its three and a half years in office – an asset of inestimable benefit which invested the leaders with all the authority of a successor government; and many who had no particular love or distaste for the party were prepared to accept its rule as an established fact. The change was noticeable in the attitude of the [European] officials. They now looked kindly on the CPP as the only organization to which power might conceivably be entrusted, and it was they who urged on Nkrumah the need to bring to a conclusion negotiations for the continued employment of overseas officers [or British expatriates] in the public service, the establishment of a local Ghana Army, and the ending of the United Kingdom trusteeship over Togoland. Thus the stage had been reached when the nationalist leaders, the colonial officers, and the United Kingdom government were all in agreement, and when the forthcoming election was seen as the last act of an unexpected partnership which thereafter (it was assumed) would be dissolved” (Politics in Ghana 194).

Indeed, the apparent general acceptance on the part of the British colonial administrators, that the CPP and its “Nkrumaist” travesty of modern African leadership were to determine the collective destiny of Ghanaians for quite a considerable while into the future was, needless to say, rather dispiriting. In our next segment, we shall closely examine Dennis Austin's analysis of the transitional period (1951-1956) leading up to Ghana's independence, particularly the dire implications entailed in Ghanaians, at large, being shepherded by a governmental machinery whose chief, or principal, operators and functionaries did not appear to either remarkably appreciate democratic culture or even regard the rudimentary imperatives of human right as being integral to governance in a modern, civilized society.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., teaches English and Journalism at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is the author of twelve books, including “Dr. J. B. Danquah: Architect of Modern Ghana” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@aol.com.

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