Opinions of Sunday, 10 July 2005
Columnist: Okoampa-Ahoofe, Kwame
The Enduring Legacy Of Dr. J. B. Danquah ? Part 16
On December 11, 1961, the Convention People?s Party government issued a White Paper in which, among other things, the government purported to justify its arrest and incarceration of Dr. Danquah ? and other leading members of the oppositional United Party ? without the rudimentary benefit of a judicial trial two months previously. Under the pretext of the 1958 Preventive Detention Act, or edict, the government accused the putative Doyen of Ghanaian politics of fanning the flames of high treason by giving boost to a raging labor strike by unionized workers of the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis in the Western Region of Ghana. In the main, the foremost constitutional lawyer of his generation was accused of funding the leadership of the striking workers who, by the way, had a constitutional right to political party affiliation. It may be recalled that the aforementioned labor action was in protest of the government?s fiscal austerity measures, as contained in its latest budget. It is, however, interesting that the White Paper, titled rather paranoically as ?Statement by the Government on the Recent Conspiracy,? insisted that leaders of the United Party opposition in Parliament had illegally instigated the striking workers far in advance of the publication of the 1961 annual budget. What is also significant to recall is the fact that even were the government to be granted the proverbial benefit of the doubt, it still remained that increasingly the economy was exacting a quite unbearable toll on ordinary citizens, particularly those of the salaried middle- and lower-classes. Thus for the government to have insisted that it had to take the seditious instigation of United Party leaders in order for the Sekondi-Takoradi unionized workers to embark on a labor action, as it were, curiously underestimated the intelligence of the strikers.
In any event, among others, the White Paper sought to implicate Dr. Danquah in the following terms: ?One the day following the declaration of the strike, Tuesday, 5th September, J. Kwesi Lamptey visited Kumasi in order to discuss the handling of the strike with J. E. Appiah, Victor Owusu and other members of the Executive of the United Party in Ashanti. By Thursday, 7th September, he was back in Sekondi with a substantial cash advance, provided by Victor Owusu, to assist in financing the strike. A further cash advance was made by Dr. J. B. Danquah, and of these sums[,] one half was paid to the strike leaders as recompense to them for the work that they had done, and the other half was distributed to a number of Market[sic] women, under the leadership of Alice Koomson, who were told to purchase food with it and distribute it free[sic] to the strikers, saying that it was a gift from the Market[sic] women who wished to express their solidarity with the strikers?(Statement On Recent Conspiracy 13).
Needless to say, there are quite a number of gaping potholes in the preceding governmental account. First of all, while the reader is given to understand that strike leader J. Kwesi Lamptey, husband of Alice Koomson, had visited with J. E. Appiah and Victor Owusu in Kumasi ?in order to discuss the handling of the strike,? no such cardinal or geographical location is given for Dr. Danquah. And it is quite obvious that the Doyen of Ghanaian politics was not in Kumasi during the three days in question ? that is, September 5-7 ? otherwise the White Paper would not have simply mentioned the names of J. E. Appiah and Victor Owusu and simply added rather flippantly: ?and other members of the Executive of the United Party in Asahanti.? And since Dr. Danquah was not a member of the Kumasi executive constabulary of the United Party, it is quite obvious that he was not present on the days noted above. And yet, curiously enough, the CPP White Paper brazenly claims that Dr. Danquah had made a substantial cash advance to the striking Sekondi-Takoradi workers through J. Kwesi Lamptey, who does not appear to have arrived in Kumasi by way of Accra ? for nowhere is such mentioned in the White Paper.
Furthermore, except for vague propagandistic effect, the exact amounts of cash purportedly advanced by Dr. Danquah are not stated or disclosed. In brief, it is almost as if the CPP government was counting on the acute gullibility of its audience by simply incriminating Dr. Danquah without putting forth any palpable or concrete evidence. And neither are the purported sums of money advanced by Messrs. Appiah and Owusu disclosed.
Still further, the so-called Statement by the Government on the Recent Conspiracy recounts at length: ?In order to establish a closer liaison between the leadership of the United Party and those whom[sic] now had assumed control of the strike in Sekondi-Takoradi, a meeting was called by Dr. Danquah in Accra. It took place at his house on Tuesday, 12th September and lasted from 7 o?clock until 11 o?clock at night. The leadership of the United Party was represented by Dr. Danquah, S. G. Antor, Obetsebi Lamptey, Kofi Amponsah Dadzie from Cape Coast, the journalist Kwame Kesse-Adu and the General Secretary of the Party, Ekow Richardson. Ishmaila Annan and Atta Bordoh attended as representatives of the group controlling the strike in Sekondi-Takoradi. The financing of the strike was discussed and it was arranged that this should be left to Dr. Danquah and Obetsebi Lamptey. The meeting was assured by the Sekondi-Takoradi members that the strikers had vowed to continue the strike until the overthrow of the Government was secured. / It was clear from this meeting that a certain rivalry was developing between the Executive in Kumasi [who, by the way, had earlier on held their own regional meeting] and the other members of the Executive as to whom[sic] should control the strike, and no Ashanti representative attended the meeting [and neither had any Accra representatives, by the way, attended the Kumasi meeting, for such representation appeared not to have been necessary]. Nevertheless, it was arranged that Dr. Danquah should come to Sekondi to establish closer liaison with the strikers and that in the meantime a Press Statement should be issued in the name of the National Executive sympathising with the strike but not disclosing the connection between the strikers and the National Executive of the United Party. Accordingly, a Press Conference was called at Dr. Danquah?s home on Friday, 15th September and a general statement was made which carefully avoided any reference to the part being played in the strike by the United Party or to the fact that the United Party leadership was in daily touch with the strike leaders and was supplying them with funds?(Statement on Recent Conspiracy 15).
In fact, as the Doyen himself observed in a prison petition to President Nkrumah, dated 13th October, 1961, there had been absolutely nothing clandestine about the above meetings. To be certain, both meetings had been advertised in the newspapers. For needless to say, not only was Dr. Danquah forthright and courageous in his political activities, but he was also knowledgeable in constitutional law, and thus acutely cognizant of his civil rights in a way that his presidential arch-nemesis could not even begin to cognitively approach or fathom. Consequently, for the CPP government?s White Paper to portray the revered Doyen of Ghanaian politics as cowardly, or even timid, and conspiratorial does not square up with known and provable facts. What is clear and certain, however, is that short of the nefarious application of the Preventive Detention Act, the rather psychologically agitated leaders of the Convention People?s Party had no other way of peremptorily and summarily muzzling and permanently silencing the greatest and most fearless opponent. The preceding notwithstanding, to put matters in their proper context, it bears quoting at length from Danquah?s prison petition to President Nkrumah vehemently and masterfully protesting the former?s unlawful detention: ?Representation in respect of Order of Detention dated 3rd October, 1961 and Grounds of Detention dated 7th October, 1961./ I have the honour to inform you that the only meeting attended by both Mr. Ismaila and Mr. Atta Bordor at my premises in Accra in September, 1961, was an Executive meeting of the United Party held on the 12th September, 1961 by telephonic invitation and by notice in the Press. In the absence of the Leader and the Chairman of the Party, I was elected protem Chairman of the meeting. The central subject discussed by the meeting was the demonstration by Railway and other workers against certain aspects of the 1961-62 Budget, together with the general financial [or fiscal] policy of the Government. The several statements on the demonstration issued by the Presidential Commission and by the T. U. C., as well as speeches by Mr. Adamafio and Mr. Tettegah the previous week, were considered in relation to the papers on the Budget and the Economic Survey for the year issued by the Government. We came to the conclusion that the economy of the country had been wrecked by the Government?s incompetent and wasteful fiscal and administrative policies during the period of ten years, 1951-61. It became clear to us that the three Development Plans: - (1) The first Five-Year Plan, (2) The Consolidation Plan, and (3) The Second Five-Year Plan, had been launched and precipitated without the guidance and control of any Planning Commission, and that the policies followed in those ten years had not increased the purchasing power of the people but had [actually] reduced it. Upon those considerations[,] we felt convinced that what the country needed was not probably more taxation but clearer thinking. We took the view that Parliament should be recalled and that Government should be called upon ?to think again,? i.e. to plan afresh under the guidance of a Planning Commission, or failing that, to give up the job of governing as beyond its capacity?(See Dr. J. B. Danquah: Detention And Death in Nsawam Prison. Accra-Tema: Ministry of Information, 1967. 67).
Indeed, it appears that his bold and forthright temperament was what Dr. Danquah?s former political minion and subsequent arch-nemesis held to be veritably insufferable. But that President Nkrumah, relative to the Doyen, was far more likely to engage in the sort of clandestine and conspiratorial activities that the Ghanaian premier accused his political opponents of being culpable of, is clearly corroborated by David Apter in his quite comprehensive and authoritative treatise titled Ghana In Transition(Second Revised Edition). Indeed, as the renowned American comparative, political sociologist and a personal acquaintance of the Ghanaian premier eloquently attests, for most of the CPP?s tenure, President Nkrumah expended considerable budgetary resources on systematically destabilizing other independent African countries whose leaders did not appear to concur with his Marxian socialist ideology. Unfortunately, because his ideology of pan-Africanism appealed to the African Diaspora, as well as other parts of the proverbial Third World fervidly engaged in the anti-colonial struggle, the subversive aspects of Nkruma(h)ism tend to be woefully ignored and even, in some cases, brazenly condoned. To the preceding effect, Apter extensively observes in footnotes: ? ?To those who have suggested that Nkrumah was concentrating his efforts on legitimate freedom fighters from colonial territories, it will be enlightening to learn the names of some of the houses at this [his?] African Affairs Center. There were two Sawaba Houses (for malcontents from Niger), but there was no South African House; a Cameroon House, but no Rhodesian House; and an Ethiopian House, but no Angolan House. And is it not ironic that Nkrumah saw [it] fit to succour and encourage ?freedom fighters? from Ethiopia ? the single country in Africa with a history of independence that stretches back three thousand years.?/ ?But, as in so many other cases, Nkrumah?s determination as to which were not independent African nations was based on the purely personal criterion of whether the leaders of their governments did or did not kowtow to the name Nkrumah. Those who did not, no matter how objectively impeccable was the escutcheon of their independence, became in Nkrumah?s lexicon ?neo-colonial? and thus targets for his subversion.?/ ?Who can doubt the credentials of Jomo Kenyatta, either as a freedom fighter or as the elected leader of a truly independent African nation? Yet Nkrumah?s off-center view of African affairs permitted him to train dissident members of the Kamba tribe who were to form a guerrilla cadre loyal to Oginga Odinga, Kenyatta?s chief antagonist in Kenya.?/ ?The end result of Nkrumah?s egocentric view of African realities is that his guerrilla warfare camps trained more nationalists from independent countries than they did from the imperialist and colonial areas of Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, and South Africa combined.? See Ministry of Information, Nkrumah?s Subversion in Africa(Accra: State Publishing Corporation, 1966)??(Ghana In Transition 393).
It is quite interesting, in view of his deft and ?tactical? fanning of ?tribal? (or ethnic) flames, that President Nkrumah was to enact the so-called Avoidance of Discrimination Act, which sought to summarily proscribe Ghanaian oppositional political parties on dubious grounds of their being exclusively regional or ethnic in membership. Interestingly, in his inexorable bid to causing a summary proscription of the Danquah-Busia-led United Party, Nkrumah would also implicate one of his staunchest long-time associates, Mr. Komla A. Gbedemah, a CPP cabinet appointee, in the unsavory practice of ?tribalism?: ?This principal agent in this [present conspiracy] was Victor Yaw deGrant Brempong[,] who at all material times had been Personal Assistant to K. A. Gbedemah, both when the latter was Minister of Finance and later when he was Minister of Health. A Minister?s Personal Assistant is an official in the Public Service paid by the State but chosen personally by the Minister whom he serves. He is the head of his private office and can have access[,] therefore[,] to all of his most confidential papers. De Grant Brempong had thus the opportunity of seeing not only documents relating to the Ministries in which he served, but also, if his Minister allowed it[,] Cabinet papers circulated to K. A. Gbedemah. When during the President?s absence on his Eastern tour[,] K. A. Gbedemah was a member of the Presidential Commission, deGrant Brempong had access to all confidential material which was submitted to the Presidential Commission?(Statement by the Government on the Recent Conspiracy 10; Italics appear in the original).
In effect, since both Messrs. Gbedemah and Brempong were of Ewe ethnic extraction, and the latter was known to consort with members of the United Party, it stood to reason, in the imagination of President Nkrumah, that Brempong could be legitimately envisaged as a tribal nationalist, just as well as Gbedemah. Conversely, President Nkrumah, with his brazen fanning of tribal animosity all over the African continent, under the specious guise of pan-Africanism, and being of Nzema ethnic extraction, was, somehow, immuned from any tribal tendencies. But, perhaps, what is even more interesting is Nkrumah?s apparent inability to accept the practical fact that his virtual lack of sedulous attention to the primary affairs of the Ghanaian people who elected him as their President had precipitated widespread disaffection, to the logical extent of having some CPP ideological stalwarts cross over into the camp of the more ?progressive? and democratic United Party constabulary. Consequently, in its White Paper, the CPP maintained a facilely dismissive attitude towards its highly positioned defectors: ?In the same way as the Awhaitey conspiracy followed upon the defeat at the polls of the United Party in the Regional, Municipal and Local Elections of 1958, so the present conspiracy followed upon the overwhelming defeat in 1960 of the Opposition in the Plebiscite on the Constitution and in the Presidential elections concurrently. In this case[,] however[,] a new element was introduced by the President?s ?Dawn Broadcast? of 8th April, 1961. Some of those who considered themselves threatened by the limitations which the President proposed on the private fortunes of Ministers and Members of Parliament of the Convention People?s Party, began, shortly after this broadcast, to conspire with those who had been engaged in the Togoland and the Whaitey conspiracies?(11).
Needless to say, the preceding readily gives the lie to President Nkrumah?s insistence that the Ghanaian economy of 1961 was quite robust and almost continentally unbested: ?Ghana is, in national income per head, the second wealthiest country on the African continent. In the wealthiest country, the South African Republic, the per capita income is so unevenly distributed that not only the economy but the whole internal stability of the state is threatened. The fact that this inequality is dictated on a color basis adds to the danger of the collapse of the regime in South Africa and of those Other regimes in Africa, such as the Rhodesian Federation, whose political organization is based upon a copy of the South African system. For this reason, commercial and financial interests which have large stakes in African exploitation are only too anxious to support any subversive movement which would destroy the Ghanaian economy and would prove that Africans were unable to build for themselves a stable society. Provided the Ghanaian economy is allowed to develop along the [Marxist-Socialist or State Capitalist] lines now being adopted by the Government of Ghana, it is likely that the developing [evolving?] prosperity of Ghana will, in itself, be a threat to all those regimes which are based upon the theory that Africans can only be employed as unskilled workers in the service of a minority master race?(Statement on Recent Conspiracy 26-27).
Nothing could be further from the truth; and, indeed, in his historiographical classic titled How Europe Underdeveloped Africa(Howard University Press), African-Guyanese scholar Walter Rodney economically ranked Ghana 14th at about the same period that President Nkrumah was blustering about Ghana being ?the second wealthiest country on the African continent.? Indeed, as Apter aptly observes, there was virtually nothing robust about the Ghanaian economy bequeathed by the government of the Convention People?s Party on February 24, 1966: ?The most important problem of all, and one which remains to confront the National Redemption Council, is the burden of foreign indebtedness, which amounts to approximately $840 million [as of January 1972]. This debt, which the Busia government had in large measure inherited from Nkrumah, was never completely renegotiated?(Ghana In Transition 371).
It is also quite ironic that in purporting to be about the noble business of ?progressive detribalization? of Ghana, President Nkrumah actually assumed what might be aptly termed as the primitivistic status of ?Osagyefoism,? a hardly cosmopolitan and brazen usurpation of traditional Ghanaian, monarchical authority. And such contradiction becomes no less poignant than during those critical moments when the Life-Chairman of the Convention People?s Party screams the loudest at his political opponents, as for instance in explaining external support for the Ghanaian opposition: ?The reasons why conspirators receive a warm welcome in such countries as the Republic of Togo is not difficult to understand. These countries are essentially the places on the African continent where neo-colonialism has its strongest hold and therefore where neo-colonial interests are the most powerful. These interests stand for the balkanization of the African continent[,] they therefore support tribalism, which provides a kind of moral justification for the creation of very small states. Since the United Party in Ghana has always stood for regionalism on a tribal basis, there is naturally an ideological affinity which can be exploited. On the other hand[,] for certain interests[,] the existence of colonialism or neo-colonialism means great financial reward. The intrigues of the mining companies interested in Katanga have been made plain for all the world to see. These interests have, up till now, successfully defied even the United Nations and have created a puppet regime which ensures that their profits will be in no way diminished. The same type of interest which is responsible for the Katanga situation operates throughout the whole African continent. Ghana is a particular object of their venom because it has shown in practice that an African State can exist independent of the political support of foreign capitalist enterprises which have hitherto dominated the African Continent?(Statement on Recent Conspiracy 26).
In reality, Ghana?s was a veritably capitalist economic dependency, as has been amply demonstrated in the preceding installments of this series. Needless to say, most of the debt bequeathed Ghana by the CPP government in February 1966, was contracted from the Aryan capitalist West. But that state capitalism is woefully defective, is eloquently attested by Apter: ?For example, it was discovered that rural decline under Nkrumah was not caused by low investment but rather by high investment in agriculture, which had been a failure. The state farms employing heavy machinery had proved uneconomic. Indeed, they were so badly managed that the result was an increase rather than a decline in agricultural imports. Ghana was one of the few countries which, during the so-called development decade of the 1960?s, suffered an average drop in per capita production and a net per capita income decline?(Ghana In Transition 405-6).
Indeed, in his prison petition to President Nkrumah, dated 13th October, 1961, Dr. Danquah highlights the unnecessarily daunting fact that it had taken the Doyen ten protracted years, from 1951 to 1961, to facilitate the salutary induction of rationality into CPP economic policies: ?Your Excellency, it comes as a source of pride and satisfaction to me that within a fortnight of our [United Party?s] Press Conference, the Government decided to recall Parliament, and you, The President, came out with a policy which, for ten years, Busia and I, and the Party we represent, had been asking your Government to adopt, and which we had recently put forward in our Press Statement of September, 15, namely:-
(1) A State Planning Commission,
(2) A State Control Commission,
(3) A New and Comprehensive Development Plan, and
(4) A Scheme of Priorities.
?In the face of this, namely, that our Press Statement has set the Government to rethink its plans and policies, it came to me as a complete surprise that our highly constructive meeting of September, 1961, should be described by you as ?subversive? and designed to cause the overthrow of the Government of Ghana by unlawful means?(Detention and Death 68).
In our next segment, we shall focus on the contemporaneously nonesuch impact of Dr. Danquah on the evolution and development ? or even devolution ? of modern Ghanaian society and politics.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
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