1. Case Study: Gold Coast to Ghana
March 1-3

2. Gold Coast to Ghana

3. Gold Coast to Ghana

4. Gold Coast to Ghana
Colony of Gold Coast, West Africa: - exemplified ‘moderate’ colony working with colonial power to achieve independence in best possible circumstance - if India ‘Jewel’ in British Empire Crown – Gold Coast ‘model’ West African colony - done relatively well under colonial rule: large middle-class, well-off elite -- both well educated

5. Gold Coast to Ghana Gold Coast to Ghana:
- significant for impact on acceleration of British decolonization (and ‘process’: political parties, constitutions, elections)
- process also revelatory of generational and geographic tensions/conflict
- Nkrumah: both ‘symbolic’ of African Independence, real Pan-Africanist leader Ghana ‘beacon of hope’ for African nationalism

6. Gold Coast to Ghana Video:
Basil Davidson “Africa: Rise to Nationalism – the Gold Coast” [8:20 – 15:50 min]

7. Gold Coast to Ghana
Model British Colony becomes first Independent Nation:
- story of Gold Coast already introduced in several lectures
- relatively well-off colony, based largely on commercialized cocoa; also gold, diamonds
- small educated elite with ties to US and Britain; overall probably most ‘well-educated’ colony in Africa

8. Gold Coast to Ghana
- formed earliest of political parties (United Gold Coast Convention): moderate
- post-war: radicalized by youth CYO
- founder: American-educated, Pan-Africanist influenced Kwame Nkrumah
- following boycotts, servicemen’s March [in which police opened fire] 1948, Nkrumah and followers left UGCC/CYO

9. Gold Coast to Ghana
Founded Convention People’s Party: Slogan: “Independence Now!!”
[Echoed Gandhi's cry for Independence in India]

10. Gold Coast to Ghana CPP under Nkrumah:
- rooted in earlier CYO (youth group)
- also more aware of newly emergent social groups: workers/unions, women, rural communities (farmers, merchants)
- willing to address their needs

11. Gold Coast to Ghana
CPP under Nkrumah: - awareness of ‘modern’ politics
- role of charisma (traded on Nkrumah’s), organizing, advertising, slogans…
- became known as ”Verandah Boys”: moved out of cities, into rural areas, stayed with/spoke with people (slept on their ‘porches’…. hence name)
[Davidson’s ‘Tribalism. . .’ pp 108,9 – ref. to Nigeria but relevant]

12. Gold Coast to Ghana CPP under Nkrumah:
- developed links to wider decolonizing world (e.g. India)
- built up Pan-Africanist influence
- British issued new constitution 1951: provided for local elections, ‘assembly’ to work with British Governor General who oversaw ‘self- governance’ of colony [see Davidson Video ‘Rise of Nationalism’, Add’l Rdgs]

13. Gold Coast to Ghana CPP under Nkrumah: - elections: CPP won 2/3 seats
- Nkrumah in jail but released and invited to form government
- posed dilemma: ‘power’ associated with Assembly purely local yet… presented first step towards ‘Independence’ - was ‘soon’ good enough?

14. Gold Coast to Ghana
“In accepting the British government’s offer of 1951 to make him leader of a … government pledged to an eventual African independence …Nkrumah told his voters:
‘there is a great risk in accepting office under this new constitution which still makes us half-slaves and half-free.’ There would be a great need for ‘vigilance and moral courage’ to withstand the consequent temptations of ‘temporary personal advantage.’ This was because ‘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’. “
[from Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden, pp.162-3]

16. (George Browne, “Freedom for Ghana”, 1952)
Gold Coast to Ghana
“They called us all verandah boys They thought we were just a bunch of toys But we won the vote at the midnight hour Came out of jail and took over power”
(George Browne, “Freedom for Ghana”, 1952)

17. Gold Coast to Ghana
1952: - position ‘Prime Minister’ elected by assembly, created
1954: - elected assembly: full control of internal affairs but governor retained control military and foreign affairs
Assembly itself to be elected directly, rather than (as earlier) through Tribal councils: closer to ‘real democracy’

18. Gold Coast to Ghana
But struggle for independence not only about struggle against British:
- also struggle over what ‘nationalism’ meant
- who was to benefit?
- legacies of colonial administration and economic development played key roles in ‘internal’ struggles

19. Gold Coast to Ghana
The struggle for Independence was as much an internal, civil battle as it was an externally directed one: Gold Coast proved ‘model’ in this respect as well
Battle against: - conflicting views of authority --‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’
- conflicting needs of different regions, ethnic groups in those regions
[see Davidson’s discussion/critique of these issues in “Tribalism. . .”, Add’l Rdgs.]

20. Gold Coast to Ghana
Battle against practices, behaviour generated by colonialism but destructive to independence: - putting forward one’s tribe and/or family in administration: rewarding them when possible – expectation that ‘educated’ son (or daughter) would ‘deliver’ for the tribe in exchange for its support in financing education

21. Gold Coast to Ghana
- shifting burden of taxation, work onto marginal social groups like former slaves and political/economic dependents
- treating whole regions as ‘labour reserves’, whole ethnic groups as ‘workers’, fostering long-term practices of migration

22. Gold Coast to Ghana
After 1954, CPP followed policy of increasing centralization which generated resistance
National Liberation Movement formed:
- based in Asante (central region of cocoa production)
- wanted federalist structure
- more autonomy for different regions

23. Asante (former empire)
Centre profitable cocoa growing

24. Gold Coast to Ghana
After 1954: CPP followed policy of increasing centralization which generated resistance
Northern Peoples Party: - based in north
- largely Muslim, poor - had served as colonial ‘labour reserve’ for commercial agriculture (cocoa) and gold mining
(in south)
Parties worked together to undermine CPP

25. Northern Region

26. Gold Coast to Ghana 1956: New elections held
-testing CPP’s demand for ‘Independence Now’
- CPP won only 57% vote: but that comprised:
- all of the south
-enough votes in Asante, North, Trans-Volta
to hold 2/3 majority - Exacerbated frustration of Federalists

27. Gold Coast to Ghana
British promised to grant independence if passed by 2/3 new assembly: achieved
- March 6, 1957 Gold Coast became ‘Ghana’ [named after famous medieval empire geographically located in Mali-Senegal region]
- first sub-Saharan colony to gain independence
- Kwame Nkrumah: first President of new nation of Ghana

28. Prime- Minister (left) of Gold Coast, 1956
Kwame Nkrumah
Prime- Minister (left) of Gold Coast, 1956
President (right) of Ghana, 1957
[B Davidson, Africa, History of a Continent, (1966), 298]
H. Spodek, The World’s History 2nd ed. (2001), 751]

29. Gold Coast to Ghana: 6 March 1957I

30. Gold Coast to Ghana: Independence in the Market Place
Celebrating Independence: market women played a critical role in the CPP’s victory.
Note the cloth worn by the woman, right foreground.
[from B. Davidson, Africa: History of a Continent, 1966, 301]

31. Opening of Parliament Combined ‘old’ and ‘new’: two medicine men pour sacred oil -- ‘libations’ – and call on the gods to bless the work of the new Parliament (President Nkrumah on the right)

32. Commemorative Stamp

33. Gold Coast to Ghana Independence Day Speech:
- famous for statement that independence for Gold Coast was ‘meaningless’ until all the continent of Africa was free
- echoing principles of Pan-Africanism: Nkrumah tied goals of decolonization
to idea of African Unity
- Ghana ‘beacon’ of freedom for all-Africa

34. Gold Coast to Ghana ‘All African People’s Congress’: Dec. 5-13, 1958
- year after independence, Nkrumah organized Pan-Africanist conference in Accra with theme “Hands Off Africa – Africa Must be Free”
- 300 delegates political parties, trade unions from 28 African countries (almost all still colonized)

35. Nkrumah at ‘All African People’s Congress’, 1958

36. Gold Coast to Ghana
Results of 1956 Elections: additional consequences - Frustration of Federalists exacerbated - CPP encouraged to centralize even more

37. Nkrumah’s Ghana
Culminated in Constitution 1960: Nkrumah became (effectively) President for Life
This Constitution is enacted on this twenty-ninth day of June, 1960 and shall come into operation on the first day of July, 1960.

38. Nkrumah’s Ghana
FIRST PRESIDENT: Kwame Nkrumah is hereby appointed First President of Ghana
[Appendix C]:
SPECIAL POWERS for the FIRST PRESIDENT
(5) For the purposes of this Article the first President's initial period of office shall be taken to continue until some other person assumes office as President.

39. Nkrumah’s Ghana Election of President and Assumption of Office
(I) An election of a President shall be held whenever one of the following events occurs, that is to say-
(a) the National Assembly is dissolved, or
(b) the President dies, or
(c) the President resigns his office

40. Nkrumah’s Ghana THE CABINET:
(I) There shall be a Cabinet consisting of the President and not less than eight Ministers … appointed … by the President.
(2) Subject to the powers of the President, the Cabinet is charged with the general direction and control of the Government of Ghana.
(3) The appointment of a Minister can at any time be revoked by the President.

41. Nkrumah’s Ghana BILLS and the ASSEMBLY:
Every bill passed by the national assembly shall be passed to the President who shall—
(1) signify his assent to the bill (2) signify his assent to only a part of the bill and his refusal of assent to the remainder (3) signify his refusal to assent to the bill

42. Nkrumah’s Ghana
CUSTODY of PUBLIC MONEY (2) The President may, in relation to any department of State, direct that a separate public account be established for the department and that the revenue of the department be paid into that account.  

43. [see Full Text in ‘Resources’]
Nkrumah’s Ghana
JUDGES of the SUPERIOR COURTS
(I) The President shall by instrument under the Presidential Seal appoint one of the Judges of the Supreme Court to be Chief Justice of Ghana.
(2) The Chief Justice shall be President of the Supreme Court & Head of the Judicial Service.
(3) The appointment of a judge as Chief Justice may at any time be revoked by the President...
[see Full Text in ‘Resources’]

44. Nkrumah’s Ghana Non-Alignment Movement 1961:
- Nkrumah: one of six ‘founding fathers’
- sought complete independence from policies, alliances of both East and West
- support for a worldwide union of non-aligned nations as a counter to both East and West power blocs
- ‘freedom’ to seek Ghana’s own path!

46. Nkrumah and Family with Abdel Nasser, 1965. Nkrumah’s wife was Egyptian.

47. Nkrumah’s Ghana Same Year 1961: Visited Soviet Union
impressed with speed of country’s industrialization
saw in it a ‘new model’ for Ghana

48. Nkrumah’s Ghana “Dawn Speech”:
- lashed out at "self-seeking“, "careerist" comrades
- forced resignation of potential rivals, followed by 100s political arrests
- ejected British officers assigned to train his army

49. Nkrumah’s Ghana
1964: 7-Year Development Plan means of putting into practice ideas latter articulated
“ Only under socialism can we reliably accumulate the capital we need for our development and ensure that the gains of investment are applied for the general welfare There is only one way of achieving socialism; by the devising of policies aimed at the general socialist goals . . .

50. Nkrumah’s Ghana The main tasks of the Plan are:
- firstly, to speed up the rate of growth of our national economy.
- secondly, … to enable us to embark upon the socialist transformation of our economy through the rapid development of the State and cooperative sectors.
- thirdly, … to eradicate completely the colonial structure of our economy.

51. Nkrumah’s Ghana
Our aim … is to build in Ghana, a socialist State which accepts full responsibility for promoting the well-being of the masses.
Our national wealth must be built up and used in such a way that economic power shall not be allowed to exploit the worker in town or village, but be used for the supreme welfare and happiness of our people.

52. Nkrumah’s Ghana
The Party has always proclaimed socialism as the objective of our social, industrial and economic programmes.
Socialism, however, will continue to remain a slogan until industrialization is achieved.
Socialism demands a very different kind of planning and economic structure from the type that was evolved by the colonial administration.

53. Nkrumah’s Ghana
It has long been apparent that the administrative machinery which we inherited was not designed for a country working within the framework of an overall plan, and in which the activities of individual agencies of the nation are directed to clearly defined goals of development.

54. Nkrumah’s Ghana
An effective reform of the governmental machinery is therefore needed, if the Seven-Year Plan is not to falter on the inadequacies of administration. The first task in this regard will be to attune more closely, the policies and actions of every agency or organ of Government to the overall national policy as defined in the Seven-Year Development Plan.

55. Nkrumah’s Ghana
It may be that, in the course of the next seven years some of us will from time to time attempt to change the choice of emphasis that we have made and try to direct proportionately more of our national resources into immediate welfare services and proportionately less into agriculture and industry.
It will be the duty of those who are charged with the implementation of the Plan to ensure that these pressures are resisted.

56. Nkrumah’s Ghana Emergence of the One Party, Authoritarian State:
- early tendencies to ‘centralization’ in order to diffuse regional, ethnic and religious differences had become the political model for the One-Party State
- constitution enshrined authoritarianism and likelihood of embedded corruption
- 7-year plan provided resources for both

57. Nkrumah’s Ghana Key to 7-year plan: Volta River Dam Project
- history reflected post-colonial international financial and political environment
- implementation crucial factor in ultimate defeat of ‘Nkrumahism’ - Ghana became ‘model’ of 1960s Modernization/Development Theory: the ‘big project’ … serving needs of Gov’t to make visible impact and foreign Gov’ts to get ‘foot in African Development door’…

58. Nkrumah’s Ghana To Return to Nkrumah’s Historical Account:
 By [c. 1960/2]… it had already become quite clear to us that the only real solution to the reconstruction of Ghana lay in the long run, in the adoption of a socialist and cooperative programme for industry, and the mechanisation and diversification of our agriculture.
Our hopes in this regard lay in the Volta River Project, …

59. Nkrumah’s Ghana
Completion of the Volta Project will enable us to develop the industrial potential of Ghana. Indeed, the possibilities for our agriculture and industry will be completely revolutionised.
First and foremost, the Volta Project will increase by nearly 500 percent, the installed electrical capacity of the country. Nearly one half of this new capacity will be taken up by the aluminium smelter in Tema.

60. Nkrumah’s Ghana
I would like in this context to point out the degree to which the Volta Scheme fits into our chosen combination of a mixed economy with socialist and co-operative goals.
A major part of the scheme is being financed by the Ghana Government; but the American and British Governments have joined in the financing of it, together with the World Bank, and we have had the most helpful and fruitful collaboration with American enterprise in the shape of the Kaiser Group of Industries.

61. Nkrumah’s Ghana Volta River Dam Project:
- goal was to create hydro electricity for country - potential clear and had been since early in colonial era: costs were prohibitive for returns
- need: an industry that could use the electricity to process a locally present resource – in this case, bauxite

62. Nkrumah’s Ghana
- Nkrumah negotiated interest of consortium aluminum producers, headed by US Kaiser Industries
- with industry on board, international financing for dam was forthcoming: built between [note: 7-yr. plan came a year before completion]
- created Lake Volta: world's largest man-made lake, covering 8,502 square kilometers (3,283 sq mi) % of Ghana's land area

63. Nkrumah’s Ghana
The Volta River Dam Project

64. Volta River Dam

65. Lake Volta: Eastern Region

66. Nkrumah’s Ghana
Lake Volta: mostly affected Eastern Region - necessitated relocation 80,000 people
- 700 villages relocated into 52 resettlement villages two years prior to the lake's completion
-most were subsistence farmers, some were fishermen

67. Nkrumah’s Ghana
Insufficient planning resulted in relocation into areas that were not capable of providing for their former livelihoods, traditions
Fertile soils lost, contributing to overall decline (not increase) agricultural production
Soon diseases associated with aquatic weeds along shore, tributaries increased: bilharzia, river blindness, malaria Major environmental, human, health disaster!

68. Gold Coast to Ghana
As recently as 2008 remains social and environmental disaster in need or ‘remediation’
[see ‘Impact Volta Dam’ in ‘Resources’]
Volta Lake, (far left)
Weeds in Lake and Tributaries had to be manually removed using canoes (left and below)

69. Nkrumah’s Vision February 1966:
- while on state visit to North Korea and China, Nkrumah overthrown by well-planned military coup d’etat
- Moscow provided Nkrumah with ‘evidence’ that coup was CIA supported: no proof
- Ghana had now become yet another model for Africa: the Military Dictatorship

72. Nkrumah’s Ghana Case Study: Ghana
- exemplified difficulties of becoming truly independent
Nkrumah key intellectual/spokesperson for Pan-Africanism, socialist ‘humanist’ development, Non-Alignment Movement
- unable to overcome inherent contradictions posed by post-colonial world and cold war politics

73. Nkrumah’s Ghana
- economic legacies of Colonialism (mono-crop –cocoa - dependency, poor infrastructure, lack educational facilities, regional/ethnic ‘inequities’ – economic, social) necessitated external investment - tied to ideas of modernization, development even across the cold-war communications gap: the ‘big’ project

74. Nkrumah’s Ghana
Volta Dam Project in all its facets – political, economic, social, health, environmental – as much part of Nkrumah’s downfall as corruption, authoritarianism
in many ways: symbolized the challenges facing post-colonial leaders and societies

75. Nkrumah’s Vision
Nkrumah’s (1969) statement directed at Africa, unfortunately still has much applicability:
“A recent development in the psychological war is the campaign to convince us that we cannot govern ourselves, that we are unworthy of genuine independence, and that foreign tutelage is the only remedy for our wild, warlike and primitive ways. Imperialism has done its utmost to brainwash Africans into thinking that they need the strait-jackets of colonialism and neocolonialism if they are to be saved from their retrogressive instincts. Such is the age-old racialist justification for the economic exploitation of our continent.”