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Peasant Politicisation and Economic Recuperation in Ghana: Local and National Dilemmas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Gwendolyn Mikell
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Extract

There is increasing evidence in Ghana, as well as in other African countries, to suggest that the relationship between rural production and nation-state politics is more complex than has been realised. In the late 1970s, it appeared to some analysts that global market fluctuations, continuous rural extraction and exploitation by the state, disdain for traditional institutions, and ‘urban bias’ had so ravaged Ghanaian rural producers that they were continuing to distance themselves from the state and its vaunted political economy. This peasant behaviour, although symptomatic of deep economic and other socio-cultural problems, was viewed as creating a basis for political instability within which riots, coups, and social disorder occurred with great frequency.1 Political scientists generally downplayed these complex socio-cultural factors, and argued that it was lack of political integration which failed to correct the fragmentation and incoherence within the newly independent states, and which made political stability and national development impossible. Here seemed to be another example of the ‘chicken and egg’ phenomenon, in which politics and economic stability were so inextricably interwoven that it was not feasible to have one without the other.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 455 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

Page 455 note 1 Mikell, Gwendolyn, ‘Ghanaian Women, Rural Economy, and National Stability’, in African Studies Review (Los Angeles), 27, 3, 1986, pp. 67–88,Google Scholar and ‘African Women Within Nations in Crisis’, in TransAfrica Forum (New Brunswick), Summer 1983, pp. 21–33.Google Scholar

Page 456 note 1 This nnoboa labour category was not discussed by Hill, Poly, Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge 1963), and has seldom been analysed in other studies of cocoa-farming communities.Google Scholar However, according to Arhin, Kwame, ‘Economic Differentiation Among Ghanaian Migrant Cocoa Farmers’, in Research Review NS (Legon), 4, 1, 1988, pp. 10–18, nnoboa was very important in the maintenance of farms in the Central and Western Regions, and I found that it continues to be relied upon in Brong-Abafo today.Google Scholar See Mikell, Gwendolyn, Cocoa and Chaos in Ghana (New York, 1989).Google Scholar

Page 457 note 1 The tendency of rural producers to attempt to remain within an ‘economy of affection’ (primarily local and ethnic), within which the state cannot control or exploit their actions and resources, has been stressed by Hyden, Goran, ‘Prospects and Problems of State Coherence in Africa’, in Rothchild, Donald and Olorunsola, Victor (eds.), State Versus Ethnic Claims: African policy dilemmas (Boulder, 1983).Google ScholarChirot, Daniel, Social Change in the Modern Era (Orlando, Florida, 1986), pp. 118–19,Google Scholarmentions the grievances which peasants around the world have had against prevailing capitalist systems, which disrupted their own pre-capitalist or lineage/communal types of economic organisation and village solidarity, and concludes that it is contact with the export sector which provides the incentive for peasants to act as a class. The Ghanaian case suggests that in the aftermath of colonial pressures, peasants began to engage willingly in cash-crop production in order to serve their own individual interests, and that they sought to weave these new capitalists patterns together with their previous emphasis on the importance of the family and the community.Google Scholar

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Page 461 note 1 Although scholars — such as Hyden, loc. cit. p. 74 — emphasise the problems facing the ‘soft state’ because it does not control the means of production, they also point out that the operation of market forces within such states can generate incentives for peasants to participate in ways that move them out of the ‘ethnically-based’ economy of affection. In Ghana of the late 1970s, it was clear that withdrawal from the market was a rational decision for many peasant farmers, and unrelated to ethnic/local factors.

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Page 463 note 1 Prior to 1961, the Brong, Ahafo, Dormaa, Kukuom, and other ethnically-mixed constituencies had faced the problem that profits from their lucrative cocoa and timber industries were drained off in ‘tributes’ which they owed to Ashanti and Kumasi chiefs, by virtue of their early political conquests. The Dormaahene and others had promised Brong loyalty to Nkrumah and the C.P.P. if he guaranteed them economic security through regional autonomy. But the people of Brong-Ahafo were ill-prepared for the prolonged challenge to their economic and political autonomy which continued into the 1970s, as shown by Mikell, op. cit.

Page 463 note 2 Kimble, op. cit. p. 274. See also, Drah, F. K., ‘The Brong Political Movement’, in Arhin, Kwame (ed.), Brong Kyempim: essays on the society, history and political of the Brong people (Accra, 1979), pp. 119–70.Google Scholar

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Page 464 note 3 This trend was rationalised by reference to the traditional system which had been widely utilised in cocoa farming, known as abusa, whereby a hired labourer was given one-third of the crop. See Hill, op. cit.

Page 465 note 1 See Agyeman-Duah, Baffour, ‘Ghana, 1982–6: the politics of the P.N.D.C.’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 25, 4, 12 1987, p. 621. He points out that Rawlings's experience with the exaggerated enthusiasms of the P.D.C.s is not unique, and that in neighbouring Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara also had to politically rein in the C.D.R.s and attempt to involve them in national development. See also, Skinner, ‘Sankara and the Burkinabé Revolution’.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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Page 467 note 4 ‘Ghana: Rawlings on “changing situations”’, in ibid. 7 March 1988, p. 431. See also, ‘Authorities Seize Ivory Coast Bound Cocoa’, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, West Africa, Washington, D.C., 3 May 1988, pp. 19–20.

Page 467 note 5 ‘Ghana: the export package’, in West Africa, 18 January 1988, p. 73.

Page 468 note 1 ‘Investors Bid on Coffee, Cocoa Plantations’, F.B.I.S., West Africa, 22 January 1988, p. 21, and ‘World Bank to Assist Economic Recovery Programme’, in ibid. 10 May 1988, p. 14.

Page 468 note 2 ‘Year Six of the PNDC’, in West Africa, 11 January 1988, p. 30.

Page 468 note 3 ‘Ghana's Divestiture’, in ibid. 27 June 1988, pp. 1152–3, and ‘Massive Exercise to Cut Back Civil Service’, F.B.I.S., West Africa, 1 July 1988, p. 11.

Page 468 note 4 It is hardly surprising that many Ghanaians have reacted to the contradictions between the P.N.D.C.'s initial ‘revolutionary’ rhetoric and its later unabashedly capitalist manipulations of the economy. According to Balandier, op. cit. p. 88, such ideological and practical fluctuations are probably unavoidable, since new African states have to deal with a ‘dynamic reality’ in which conflicts, disputes, and struggles are ever present.

Page 469 note 1 ‘Recognise Basic Rights’, in West Africa, 11 April 1988, p. 641, and ‘Labour Views and Choices’, in ibid. 2 May 1988, p. 775.

Page 469 note 2 ‘The Management View’, in ibid. 6 June 1988, p. 1012.

Page 469 note 3 Cf. Owusu, Maxwell, ‘Politics Without Parties: reflections on the Union Government proposal’, in African Studies Review, 22, 1, 1979, pp. 89–108. In a fashion reminiscent of the Acheampong experiment, the P.N.D.C. held local elections in 1988 which did not offer the public a choice between competing political parties at the national level, but sought to institutionalise itself by creating local-level participatory structures.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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Page 470 note 2 ‘The District Blue-Print’, in ibid. 9 November 1987, p. 2199.

Page 470 note 3 ‘Mixed Results’, in ibid. 3–9 April 1989, p. 510.

Page 471 note 1 Bentsi-Enchill, loc. cit.

Page 471 note 2 ‘Growing the Grassroots’, in West Africa, 25 January 1988, p. 124. See also, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report, No. 1 (London, 1988).Google Scholar

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Page 472 note 3 Ibid. pp. 5–10. See also, ‘District Assembly Elections End’, in West Africa, 13–19 March 1989, p. 416.

Page 472 note 4 Rawlings was unperturbed by the issue of any further elections, or the links between local elections and national policies. He stated that the rôle of the Government was to act as a catalyst, ‘trusting the good sense of the people to arrive at an appropriate system… It is not for a handful of people in Accra to say when and how, or even if regional and national assemblies should be established.’ See ‘Cue for District Assemblies’, in West Africa, 20–26 March 1989, p. 456.

Page 473 note 1 The problem of ethnic coalitions in government is an old one for Ghana, and dates back to the problems between Nkrumah and the National Liberation Movement in Ashanti, as well as the determination of the Brong to reassert their separate identity and political influence. Although the P.N.D.C. headed by Rawlings has eschewed ethnic conflict, there have been criticisms about its ethnic composition. For example, in his 1988 Danquah Memorial Lecture in Accra, A. Adu Boahen talked about the pervading culture of silence, called for an interim national coalition by February 1989, and expressed concern about the domination of the P.N.D.C. by the Ewes. The Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report, No. 2, 1988, p. 12.

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Page 474 note 2 ‘The Cocoa Conundrum’, in West Africa, 6–12 March 1989, p. 350. Ghana is scheduled to reach its 300,000-ton rehabilitation target for cocoa by 1991. But with the slump in the world market, production may have to be cut back in order to induce price stability, thus raising questions as to who will subsidise the affected farmers.

Page 474 note 3 Ghana's Pamscad, which was endorsed at a meeting of donors in Geneva, February 1988, aimed to create 40,000 jobs over two years, to help communities implement labour-intensive self-help projects, and to provide basic health and education needs. Donors include Austria, Britain, Canada, Japan, the United States, West Germany, the World Food Programme, Unicef, and U.N.D.P. See The Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report, No. 2, 1988, p. 13.

Page 475 note 1 Rawlings has stepped up his overtures to western powers for assistance. The Washington Post, 20 January 1989, p. F25, reported that he used the occasion of President George Bush's inauguration to send Ghana's congratulations, assurances of continued co-operation with the United States, and invitations for business investments in several priority areas of the economy, i.e. agriculture, manufacturing, construction, and tourism.

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Page 478 note 3 At a recent meeting of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, the participants acknowledged that the medicine of Structural Adjustment was sometimes more devastating than the actual malady it was designed to correct. Hence their commitment to search for authentic solutions which combined macro-economic frameworks with micro-social perspectives that were more compatible with the experiences of their countries. See the foreword by Adedeji, Adebayo in African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programs for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation (U.N.E.C.A., 1989).Google Scholar

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