The origins and the case for preventive detention in Ghana
- Friday 23 January 2009.
By Ekow Nelson and Dr. Michael Gyamerah

For all the criticism Nkrumah received from much of the western press and the opposition in Ghana, he did not kill any political opponents; neither did he massacre groups of people opposed to him. Indeed in his often cited work (by the CIA no less) - ‘Ghana without Nkrumah-The Winter of Discontent’ - Irving Markovitz says under Nkrumah “Ghana was neither a terrorized nor a poverty-stricken country”.

As with the familiar narrative of Nkrumah’s critics, the argument soon gravitates toward detention without trial. The Preventive Detention Act (PDA) was passed into law in 1958 after years (starting in 1955) of what we will today describe as acts of terrorism. In this regard the PDA is not dissimilar to the wave of anti-terrorist legislation that has been passed in many countries in the world since September 11, 2001....

No one has suggested Nkrumah was perfect and had no faults. Dr. Conor Cruise O’Brien, ex-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana (who died only recently) and himself a vehement critic of Nkrumah and supporter of the 1966 coup and its plotters provided a more objective assessment (The London Observer on 27th February 1966) after Nkrumah was overthrown: “His dream had been a great one, his belief in his mission was strong, his talents many; his actual achievements were considerable -the Volta Dam and the smelter, a greater expansion of the education system and an extraordinary effervescence of buildings, some of it useful... He was not cruel, or militaristic, or racist. He took over the British colonial structure, which was essentially authoritarian like all colonial systems, and retained the powers of past Governors, including the power to replace troublesome chiefs and detain fractious citizens. There was nothing novel about these things; what was novel and objectionable” to his critics, O’Brien’s concludes, “...was that it was an African who was doing them.”......

....More