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Spiders of the Market

Ghanaian Trickster Performance in a Web of Neoliberalism

Indiana University Press

From State to Market

The History of a Social Compact

This chapter explores the historical and economic situations in Ghana to provide some background that should make it easier to understand contemporary practices derived from Anansesem. The events discussed can be broken down into three chronological periods. During the first period, from the 1940s through the 1960s, Ghanaians rallied behind the ideologies of anti-colonial nationalism and pan-African communitarianism. These populist movements led to the rejection of British colonial rule and resulted in the creation of Ghana as an independent nation in 1957. The country's new leaders built a stateoriented economy that, in contrast to colonialism, was morally idealized as nonexploitative. Ghanaians saw themselves as having established a social compact in which legitimacy was granted to a government that defended the interests of the people. The state, more so than the market, was viewed as the primary mechanism of economic development and social well-being.

From the 1970s through the 1980s, however, after a period of escalation of economic crises and multiple regime changes, neoliberal economic policies were introduced in Ghana that broke with this understanding of the state. The government lifted many of its regulatory controls on the economy, auctioned off state-owned enterprises, and eliminated public subsidies. Many considered these new "austerity measures" a breach of the postcolonial social compact. Ghanaians feared a move toward a neocolonial reality, in which the government no longer protected the public interest and instead regressed toward its former role as a conduit for exploitation. These economic policy changes were never fully accepted by the public, leading to a crisis of legitimacy for the state. The military regime that held power in Ghana during the 1980s was able to enact the unpopular changes (at the behest of international finance institutions) by aggressively repressing protest and through the sheer inertia of power. But this inertia did not last.

A third era began in 1992, when the tide of discontent in Ghana forced a transition from military rule to democracy. The political calculus in this new era was decidedly different from that of the 1980s. The tension between the economic policies desired by international financiers on the one hand and Ghanaians' postcolonial expectations of their government on the other hand could no longer be handled with violent repression. The state struggled to find new ways to reconcile these incompatible demands. In the wake of democratization, Ghana's cultural traditions and performances, which politicians have always used in one way or another, acquired a new centrality in efforts to legitimize unpopular policies and manage public opinion.

FROM THE POSTWAR BOYCOTT TO POST COLONIAL CONSOLIDATION

After World War II, long-simmering opposition against British colonial rule began to rise to the surface in what was then called the Gold Coast region. A central locus of discontent was the colonial administration's export control regulations, which were tailored to favor large, expatriate-run companies. African merchants felt unfairly displaced by the controls, and the public was increasingly disillusioned by the falling wages and high prices that resulted from these monopolistic practices. In January and February of 1948, opposition leaders organized a boycott of expatriate-run businesses in an attempt to force them to lower their prices. When this economic boycott did not produce the desired changes, people angrily filled the streets to protest the colonial administration's policies. Meanwhile, at the same time as this boycott, African ex-servicemen were marching to petition the governor about their own grievances. These soldiers had received less remuneration than their British peers during the war, and they had returned home with expectations for better jobs, a war bonus, gratuities, and pensions that the colonial administration turned out to be unwilling or unable to fulfill. Police barred the soldiers' march to the governor's office, and a British officer opened fire on the group, killing three of them. As news of the killings spread, the crowds already gathered in the streets vented their fury by destroying cars, looting goods, and burning expatriate shops. These protests are considered by many to be the point at which the road to Ghana's independence became a political reality.

In the wake of the February 1948 protests, a relatively unknown activist named Kwame Nkrumah rose to take up leadership in the movement against colonial rule. Educated in the Gold Coast, England and the United States, Nkrumah had worked as a schoolteacher before becoming involved in politics. In 1947, he was recruited to become the organizing secretary of a new party called the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), which combined the talents of the colony's primary opposition leaders. The UGCC advocated the transfer of governmental authority into native hands "in the shortest possible time." The colonial administration quickly blamed the UGCC for orchestrating the February 1948 protests, and Nkrumah was detained for a month along with the UGCC'S other principal leaders. These experiences, combined with the colonial administration's portrayal of the UGCC as a "communist conspiracy" during a time of rising Cold War tensions, led to an internal break within the party. Under the original leadership of J. B. Danquah, the UGCC took pains to distance itself from any radical leftist associations. Kwame Nkrumah, however, emerged from jail even more convinced of the necessity for leftist pan-Africanism, so the UGCC leaders distanced themselves from him as well.

In a 1947 essay, Towards Colonial Freedom, Nkrumah described colonialism as the result of an imperialist expansion driven by the need to secure raw materials and cheap labor for European industries (as well as creating new markets where the generic products of such industries could be dumped for a profit). He characterized the unequal treatment of Africans not as an incidental, temporary state of affairs but as one aspect of a larger structural problem. Racism, in other words, was an excuse for capitalist exploitation, a political instrument that was used to help ensure cheap labor and to justify the repatriation of profits extracted from Africa. The result of this system, Nkrumah argued, was not true progress in Africa but rather the destruction of native crafts and home industries. Due to colonialism, Africa had become a "distorted," nonmanufacturing economy focused only on primary exports, starved of modern know-how, and turned into a dumping ground for overpriced goods. Nkrumah argued that colonialists' claims of trusteeship and tutelage in Africa belied their true objective of economic exploitation; hospitals merely served to keep colonial laborers fit for work, schools were designed to produce only trading clerks rather than thoughtful citizens, and roads and railways were built to ease the extraction and export of resources.

In light of this outlook, Nkrumah's aspirations were toward "complete and absolute independence" for Ghana, along with structural transformations to eliminate inequality and poverty. As the other leaders of the UGCC were distancing themselves from such broad economic arguments, Nkrumah was questioning whether his vision was compatible with the sensibilities of the lawyers and merchants who formed the backbone of the UGCC party. Nkrumah was determined to establish a broad political base among the working classes — especially the growing legion of semiliterate elementary school dropouts who were trooping en masse to the Gold Coast's urban centers in search of government work or private clerical positions. These individuals faced extremely limited employment opportunities. They became part of a swelling urban underclass, taking refuge in slums and on the porches of roadside trading houses, earning the nick-name "verandah boys." Without sufficient connections or literary skills to obtain well-paying positions, yet educated enough to aspire to city jobs, this social cluster formed a natural reservoir of frustrated ambition. It was common for verandah boys to seek self-improvement in debating clubs, literary circles, and various youth movements. Nkrumah, along with other anti-colonial organizers, used these outlets to sharpen the frustration of the youths into a broader political view of national independence.

For a time, Nkrumah continued his organizing efforts in parallel with Danquah and the other UGCC leaders. Due to the party's unwillingness to discuss structural economic issues, however, in June 1949, Nkrumah formally split with the UGCC and formed a new organization, the Convention People's Party (CPP). The CPP'S platform included a demand for self-governance "now" (in contrast to the UGCC'S "shortest possible time"), and the party promised to work for an improved society in which Africans "shall have the right to live and govern as a free people." Lured by the prospect of radical change and by Nkrumah's populist message, commoners flocked to the party. The success of the CPP initiated a rapid shift in the Gold Coast's oppositional politics, with a smaller, older, and mostly male alliance of the African bourgeoisie giving way to a broader, fiercer, and gender-inclusive coalition of traders, artisans, civil servants, teachers, workers, and farmers. Nkrumah encouraged his followers' expectations of rapid change, promising that if self-governance were achieved, then a new African "paradise" could be established within ten years.

Emboldened by its growing popularity, the CPP instituted a "People's Representative Assembly" and called for general elections to create a new government. In January 1950, the party attempted to force the hand of the colonial administration by organizing widespread nonviolent demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience. The administration once again arrested Nkrumah, along with other CPP leaders, but this only increased the party's legitimacy in the eyes of the masses. Eventually, confronted with internal protests and international pressure, the British were forced to accept constitutional modifications that allowed for native representation in the Gold Coast. In the next general election, the CPP won an overwhelming majority of the legislative seats. Forced to reckon with Nkrumah's popularity, the colonial administration released him from prison in 1951 and created a diarchy of sorts, installing Nkrumah in the newly invented position of prime minister. From this point onward, the colonial authority's involvement in practical affairs of state began to diminish, leading ultimately to the formal recognition of Ghana as an independent nation on March 6, 1957.

In his role as prime minister, Nkrumah was immediately thrust into the precarious position of needing to make good on the extravagant expectations that his anti-colonial campaign had raised. He remarked at the time, "We cannot tell our peoples that material benefits and growth and modern progress are not for them. If we do, they will throw us out and seek other leaders who promise more. And they will abandon us, too, if we do not in reasonable measure respond to their hopes." Nkrumah recognized that improvements in the people's welfare — better health services, quality education, and the availability of water and electricity, among other benefits — were the achievements by which he would be judged. He therefore set out to confirm the new government's legitimacy in the eyes of the public by investing heavily in infrastructure. Adopting the main elements of the "ten-year plan" of infrastructure spending that had already been put in place by colonial authorities, Nkrumah accelerated the time frame on these improvements to five years and nearly doubled the projected spending. He then went on to pursue a "shopping list" that included the construction of a hydroelectric dam; a new harbor; several bridges; a large, modern hospital; an expansion of road and train networks; telephone lines; water supply projects; the development of agricultural enterprises; new housing; and new schools and colleges. His administration provided housing loans, free child education, and overseas scholarships for courses of study that were not available locally. Under Nkrumah and the CPP leadership, the government mandated a 30 percent increase in the wages of unskilled workers. It also greatly expanded the size of the civil service and considerably "Africanized" the higher ranks of governmental administration that had previously been dominated by whites.

During the initial years of Nkrumah's leadership, the Ghanaian economy was in a good position to absorb the costs of rapid development. The world price of cocoa, Ghana's main export, was trending upward at a breakneck pace — from £190 per ton in 1948–1949 to £467 per ton in 1953–1954, and then dropping slightly to £352 per ton in 1957–1958. The prices of other exports were booming as well. Governmental revenues, mainly from export taxes, nearly quadrupled from 1948 to 1952 and continued to rise throughout the 1950s. In addition, the colonial administration had accumulated extensive Sterling reserves during many years of export surpluses. Nkrumah felt that these revenues and surpluses should be reinvested in the common good, and indeed, between 1951 and 1959, he was in a position to do just that. His massive expenditures could be seen as politically expedient in that they bolstered his image as a leader who could quickly provide a greater measure of prosperity for his people. However, Nkrumah's policies also stemmed from his long-standing conviction that Ghana's economy had structural faults that were likely to perpetuate poverty and that were in need of serious redress. He had always viewed political independence as merely a path-clearing event for economic decolonization — an opportunity to remove the economic "distortions" that had kept the benefits of material progress out of the reach of the majority. In his own words, Nkrumah believed that independence by itself "does not change this world. It simply creates the right political atmosphere for a real effort at national regeneration."

As Nkrumah's administration continued to lead Ghana into the 1960s, his policies became more explicitly socialist, shifting toward a broader goal of economic "rebalancing." The centerpiece of this era was a "seven-year plan," released in 1962, which decreed "a period of economic reconstruction and development aimed at creating a socialist society." Industrialization was at the heart of the plan, as Nkrumah continued to believe that establishing local manufacturing capacity was the key to Ghana's future. As long as the country's economy revolved around exporting raw resources, it would remain in a state of financial dependency, susceptible to price fluctuations and extortion. In order to make the drastic transformation from a colonial economy to a balanced modern economy, and to ensure that the benefits of economic growth would be fairly distributed to Ghanaians, Nkrumah believed that the planning authority of the state had to overrule the immediate logic of the international marketplace.

Nkrumah probably understood that his move toward investing in local manufacturing capacity would not have the same quick payoff as his earlier investments in public infrastructure. While new schools, hospitals, and running water had a tangible appeal, the long-term goal of economic self-sufficiency required a leap of the imagination. Nkrumah may have also realized that he was running out of time and resources to enact his vision. After peaking in the late 1950s, the world price of cocoa had collapsed, falling from £352 per ton in 1958 back to a low of £170 per ton by 1962. Burgeoning revenues were no longer available to keep pace with increasing spending, and the real fruits of a shift toward a balanced modern economy would take decades or more to arrive. Embarking on an ambitious plan of long-term industrial development was politically risky among a population whose expectations had been whetted by a quick spate of export-funded welfare projects.

However, Nkrumah believed that he could engage with Ghanaian's postcolonial values. In a sense, he was asking Ghanaians to expand the scope of their social compact, considering not just the value of immediate material improvements but also the long-term, sustainable future of the continent. Nkrumah made a moral argument for a socialist future by invoking concepts of fairness, authenticity, and autonomy. He suggested that the refusal to invest in a sustainable future would leave Ghana mired in the backwaters of an alien and exploitative economic order. A failure to regulate capitalist profiteering would undermine the egalitarian promise of the anti-colonial movement. Such a fate would be a betrayal of "the personality and conscience of Africa," which in Nkrumah's view was a traditional ethos rooted in communitarianism — the "duty to support one another and make the happiness of others a condition for the happiness of oneself." It would not be proper for a conscientious African to tolerate conditions of rampant inequality or to allow private profiteers to pillage the community's resources.

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Excerpted from Spiders of the Market by David Afriyie Donkor. Copyright © 2016 David Afriyie Donkor. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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