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“Dark days in Ghana” The disaster
of Feb 24 1966
Kojo Tamakloe
Posted May 28, 2014
It was ghosting aka mining aka campaigning time. That time of
early morning when it is coldest and noise carries . You want to
walk quietly and not shout. Usually the air is also very fresh.
The carbon dioxide of the day before would have drifted up and
reacted with the ozone and produced fresh oxygen. It makes
breathing refreshing. But today it was quite heavy and those
flares followed by loud booms . And there was another one again.
The air which should be light was pregnant with cordite . That
unmistaken smell of sulphur . The boom, boom again . We fiddled
with the “made in Ghana Akasonoma radio”, powered by “Made in
Ghana eveready “ battery. We wanted to drown the sounds with
some music. SHHHHHH came the sound . We tried the SW that got
BBC , and then VOA . No luck . What was the problem ? Then boom
, boom again . We gave it up and wanted to do some “soaking”,
that is garri water . We could not and went to bed frustrated .
Damn it all . We could not make noise as the lights of the
Boarding master had come on. There were scuttles all over as
every one rushed into bed and pretended to sleep . He would come
and through his nasalized accent ask, “ what u doing”? That
meant punishment . At 5.30 am that morning we heard a hoarse
voice that announced the unthinkable . The overthrow of the
legitimate government of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah .
This is how it was described “ The Ghanaian army stages a coup,
overthrowing the pan-Africanist government of Kwame Nkrumah—who
is in Burma at the start of a grand tour aimed at resolving the
conflict. A weak economy, exacerbated by the” deliberate actions
of Western governments to destabilize the country” , had
severely damaged the president’s popularity among the masses.
Additionally, the military was upset with Nkrumah’s cuts to the
defense budget and the declining real wage of army officers. The
coup itself was supported by the CIA, which had maintained
intimate contact with the plotters for at least a year . The
CIA’s involvement in the plot was so close that it managed to
recover some classified Soviet military equipment as the coup
was happening. “
Let us look at how they looked at the coup makers and liken it
to how our Chiefs sold themselves short in the slave era and the
looting of our resources . “Commenting on the recent coup in
Ghana , Robert W. Komer, a special assistant to the president,
says in a memo to President Johnson that the overthrow of the
Nkrumah government was “another example of a fortuitous
windfall.” He gloats over the win noting that “Nkrumah was doing
more to undermine our interests than any other black African”
and that the “new military regime is almost pathetically
pro-Western.” He then goes on to emphasize that the US should
“follow through skillfully and consolidate such successes.” He
explains: “A few thousand tons of surplus wheat or rice, given
now when the new regimes are quite uncertain as to their future
relations with us, could have a psychological significance out
of all proportion to the cost of the gesture. I am not arguing
for lavish gifts to these regimes—indeed, giving them a little
only whets their appetites, and enables us to use the prospect
of more as leverage”. But we rejoiced and went on to do their
bidding
. Behind the scene of the gun holding military was the so called
democrats and law abiding party called the United Party , the
forbears of the NPP. They branded every thing by Osagyefo as
wrong . The 7 year development plan was a “ communist Plan”, the
Volta dam and the energy from it a waste and went about closing
and leaving the factories for which loans had been contracted to
go to waste. The State , they preached should not be producing
goods and services. Individuals would do a better job . But No
individuals stepped up as most did not have the entrepreneurial
ability, capital and skills to run these enterprises . Then they
sent away the labor on the farms, under the ‘aliens compliance
order” and Ghana moved from No 1 cocoa producer to No 5.These
people were given 2 weeks that is 10 working days to establish
their residency or nationality . Of course all had to come to
Accra to do that . An impossible task . Foreign exchange was
scarce so they Devalued the cedi telling us it would boost
exports. We asked ,what exports , as we had closed the
manufacturing units and were importing everything . “ Import
substitution’, became “export substitution” . Production gave
way to consumption. “ Do not worry we know best. We are
Professors from Oxford as compared to the verandah boys” .By
1969 , the so called elite and intelligentsia were fully in
control, Professor Busia as Prime Minister and Akuffo Addo as
President. In spite of the foundation laid , Ghana was in
reverse gear. Cocoa farms gone to weed, queues for “ essential
commodities” . No direction on anything except the privileged
few at the top. Parliament was full of semi literate and
illiterates whose job was to come in big clothes and shout “
yeah, yeah” . Every where was neglect and decay . Busia himself
was heard to say, “ they told us democracy will bring
prosperity, but where is the money”. Mr Joe Appiah a staunch UP
could not stand the discrimination and left to team up with
Attoh Quarshie. But it was the incompetence and the total lack
of direction by these leaders that astounded me. Researchers can
find out from the Ghanaian papers in the archives the sheer
absence of any productive effort from about July 1971 to Jan 13
1972 when the PP was put out of its misery by the then Col Kutu
Acheampong . What a missed opportunity as all that was needed
were 1. Cash to power the industries set up and 2 Better
management . We failed .We failed Miserably This put Ghana in
the wilderness
Today 47 years later , the wounds have not healed and where they
have the scars still remain . By 1983 nearly a million Ghanaians
had to come home from Nigeria as refugees . Ghana “must go” and
some jumped into the sea and drowned out of frustration . The
dream of Greener pasture gone sour. From those working as 2 “
nailla”, to Professors and project managers , town and City
planners to teachers , to shoe shine and dog chain vendors .
Some have since panned out to other parts of the world. China ,
japan, South Pole, North pole and mundane places as USA, UK,
Germany , Italy , Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Papua
New Guinea , Australia, Canada.
So we exchanged our hard earned independence for subservience in
a servitude position. Do we realize it? Nkrumah had a dream of a
proud UNITED Africa. We accused him of being “ambitious” He had
the dream of an industrialized Ghana and Africa. He had the
dream of a high volume of intra African trade . Let us take
stock if his vision is wrong in respect of what we have achieved
so far. If we have not become prosperous , let us accept our
errors and accept the man was correct . Nkrumaism is the answer
, not Supreme Court litigations
The writer Kojo Tamakloe is an Nkrumaist who believes the
solution to Africa’s underdevelopment is African Unity |
