7 -13 December 2000
Issue No.511
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 7 -13 December 2000 Issue No.511 |
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Ghana put the boot in
By Gamal Nkrumah
Sometimes there are no happy endings. Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, having served the maximum two terms permitted by the Ghanaian Constitution, is now obliged to relinquish power. Taking their cue from the United States presidential election results, Ghanaians are bracing themselves for inconclusive results in the presidential and parliamentary polls scheduled for today, 7 December. Even if, as widely expected, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) wins, the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) is sure to dispute the result, claiming that the vote was rigged, as with previous elections in 1992 and 1996.
If the ruling NDC is being forced to fight old battles, it must shoulder part of the blame. The Rawlings regime has ridden roughshod over the Ghanaian people's wishes. Ghanaians have been forced to endure yet another negative election campaign. Vital issues, such as education and health-care reform, job creation and justice have again been obscured by much mudslinging between the opposition and the government. Traditional ideological polarisation in Ghanaian politics has come into play. Under Rawlings Ghana flung its arms open to market forces. The private sector's access to credit, however, is limited by lending institutions' partiality to NDC-related companies -- a practice that benefits the rich elite. The unprecedented divide between the haves and the have-nots has become alarmingly phenomenal.
It is in this context that the figure of Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah looms large. Finally released from a ban less than a year ago, Nkrumah's Convention People's Party (CPP) will be running in this year's elections. "We don't stand a chance of winning. We are very short of funds," CPP elder Kojo Botsio, a close associate of Nkrumah during the struggle for Ghanaian independence, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "The problem is how to ensure that the wealth of the ruling NDC does not permanently skew the voting in its favour," the veteran politician explained. Small parties clearly have their backs to the wall. There are some Nkrumaists in the ruling NDC, but the CPP has made it clear that it will not back the NDC in case of a run-off.
The NDC's presidential candidate, the incumbent Ghanaian Vice President John Atta-Mills, has come up with an unusual, if not altogether surprising, campaign pitch. Speaking to the London-based weekly West Africa, Atta-Mills was singing a remarkable tune. "[Nkrumah] started some of the policies that we are pursuing: free education, health care, focus on agriculture, African integration, defence of Africa's interests in international relations. I share these policies and, in this light, I can be described as a Nkrumaist," Atta-Mills said. His remarks raised more than a few eyebrows in the Ghanaian capital Accra.
Ghanaian opposition leader John Kufuor tells thousands of his supporters that "Twenty years of {Ghanaian President Jerry] Rawlings rule has brought nothing but misery". The presidential hopeful says that two previous elections in 1992 and 1996 were rigged and that this time round his party will not tolerate any deception
(photo: Reuters)
There is an inexorable logic to this. The NDC has systematically dismantled the education and health sectors. By strictly adhering to the structural adjustment programme (SAP) prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the NDC has ensured that education and medical care are beyond the reach of the vast majority of Ghana's population. The privatisation of the education and health sectors was then seen as a lodestar for other sectors of the Ghanaian economy.
During the 15 years from 1951 to 1966 when socialist Nkrumah was in power, state-owned corporations ran gold mining and the manufacturing industry and set up the transport infrastructure and new port facilities. New hospitals mushroomed, and the few existing ones were fully refurbished. Nkrumah was committed to universal free education and health care. When Nkrumah came to power in 1951, the colonial authorities had barely established 1,000 primary schools. By the time Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966, independent Ghana had over 8,000 primary schools. During Nkrumah's tenure in office, three universities and numerous secondary schools were also established, as well as training colleges for teachers. Affordable housing for all Ghanaians was another of Nkrumah's goals.
More significantly, Nkrumah is credited with stamping out tribalism. Under Rawlings, national unity has given way to tribal cronyism. Rural poverty has led to tribal clashes in northern Ghana. In the south, simmering animosity between the ethnic Ewe minority and the Ashanti people -- the largest Akan sub-group -- has reached boiling point. The NPP is ruthlessly exploiting this dangerous divide to the country's peril.
"Asee ho", the deafening war whoops of NPP stalwarts, are pulling in the crowds in central Ghana, inhabited by the ethnic Akan that make up almost 60 per cent of the country's population. The spectre of tribalism threatens to embroil the country in the kind of violence that has torn apart neighbouring Ivory Coast, where a country-wide curfew and state of emergency has been declared.
Ghana's traditional rulers have held a "peace conference" to stave off a similar fate. But the seeds of ethnic conflict were already sown when former Ghanaian Premier Kofi Busia introduced the Aliens Compliance Order, which led to the disastrous mass expulsion in 1970 of over a million Africans originally from neighbouring countries. Ominously, Busia's Progress Party (PP) was resurrected as the NPP, which seems intent on reintroducing tribal conflict and jingoism.
A Bush victory in America would widely be seen as a good omen for Ghana's opposition NPP, which, like America's Republican Party, is notorious for its right-wing rabidity. This is worrying, not least because the transatlantic agenda is crowded. Topping the list, from the perspective of Africa-US relations, will be the promotion of development and the prevention of lawlessness and disorder in Africa. Ghanaian troops have become internationally distinguished as peace-keepers in places as far afield as Lebanon and in countries closer to home like Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The centrepiece of US-Africa relations is the abominable Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) that ostensibly provides preferential trade benefits to poor African countries but in reality stipulates that they adopt IMF prescriptions piecemeal and institute market-based economic deregulation policies. Rawlings' Ghana has been a star pupil of the IMF and a staunch AGOA advocate. If Atta-Mills is a true Nkrumaist, he must speak up louder against AGOA.
NPP leader and presidential hopeful John Kufuor is no better. He advocates linking the Ghanaian currency, the cedi, to the US dollar. "[In Ghana] the currency has been depending on decisions taken by politicians, and this is not the right way to run the economy," Kufuor recently told West Africa. He also said that he supports integrating the Ghanaian economy into what he termed "international economic circuits." What he didn't say is that Rawlings has already done so.
It is bad form to kick a leader when he is down and bowing out, but an exception can be made for Rawlings. Ghana has come a long way since 4 June 1979 when Rawlings -- then a young Ghana Airforce Flight Lieutenant -- usurped power in a bloody military takeover, ousting the country's military strongman Lieutenant General Fred Akuffo. Rawlings promptly executed both Akuffo and six senior army officers, including two other former military rulers. The bloodshed, not to mention social and economic hardship that ensued, were arguably the worst in Ghanaian history.
The Rawlings glitch is no longer a factor in Ghanaian politics. The once charismatic "Junior Jesus" -- as Rawlings was called by many Ghanaians hailing him as something of a redeemer after his 1979 coup -- has now metamorphosed into a portly and greying autocrat who frequents private clinics in Europe and America, unleashing waves of rumour and alarm about his health. "Twenty years of Rawlings rule has brought nothing but misery," Kufuor recently told the BBC. It is as good a time as any for Ghanaians to put the boot in.
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