Who Knew the Minds of the People? Specialist Knowledge and Developmentalist Authoritarianism in Postcolonial Ghana

Abstract

By the mid-1960s, local-level development workers in Ghana were expected to act as the eyes and ears of the state, reporting on ‘the minds of the people’ and explaining their reactions to President Kwame Nkrumah's project of socialist reconstruction. This articles argues that through mass education, social welfare and community development plans, both the late colonial and early independent state sought to make its presence manifest in the everyday lives of its citizens, to bind them to a broader vision for their country, and to present their successes to the outside world. By identifying some of the competing models of social development that were promoted by British, Ghanaian and African-American experts in the aftermath of independence, this article investigates the role of specialist knowledge in the developmentalist authoritarianism which is often presented as a generic legacy of the colonial state in Africa.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the financial support of the Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Scheme for this research. I would also like to thank Keith Shear, Insa Nolte, Tom McCaskie, Lynne Brydon and the two anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions.

Notes

Mireku Yeboah, Assistant Mass Education Officer (MEO) for South Mamprusi, June 1965, NRG 10/1/19, Public Administration and Archives Division (PRAAD), Tamale, Northern Region, Ghana.

P. K. Amponsah, MEO, Community Development Division Monthly Report for July 1965, Western Dagomba District, NRG 10/1/19, PRAAD Tamale.

Mass Education Officer, Saboba District, Monthly Report for Oct. 1965, NRG 10/1/19, PRAAD Tamale. For a recent study of the Konkomba people of Saboba, see Talton, The Politics of Social Change.

Mamdani, Citizen and Subject; for one example of the many critiques of this literature, see Young, ‘The State and Politics’.

Burton and Jennings, ‘Introduction: The Emperor's New Clothes?’.

Cooper, ‘Possibility and Constraint’; and Lonsdale, ‘Power and Resistance’.

Burton and Jennings, ‘Introduction: The Emperor's New Clothes?’.

Scott, Seeing Like a State, esp. Ch. 7.

Branch, Defeating Mau Mau.

Ferguson, Expectations of Modernity.

See, for example, Miescher and Tsitaka, ‘Hydro-Power’; and Allman, ‘Nuclear Imperialism’.

Cooper, ‘Africa's pasts’, 322.

Elsewhere, I have attempted a more detailed case study of mass education in Kwaso, Ashanti Region, during the 1950s. (Skinner, “It brought some kind of neatness.”) The nature of the archival sources does not favour (although perhaps does not preclude) a similar approach to the 1960s.

Gold Coast, ‘Plan for Mass Literacy’.

The Institute of Education in London acted as a clearing house for information about mass education around the world. Practitioners were invited to share and compare their experiences in the Mass Education Bulletin (later renamed Community Development Bulletin).

Jennings, “‘We Must Run”’ and “‘A Very Real War”’.

See below, Section V.

du Sautoy Community Development; and Batten, Communities and their Development. The University of Manchester's Department of Adult Education offered Diploma courses in Adult Education and in Community Development, and Certificates in Community Development. Course outline in RG 11/1/211, PRAAD, Accra. Peter Hodge also began his career in Ghana and went on to become a lecturer at the London School of Economics, publishing on various aspects of social work and training.

Abloh and Ameyaw, ‘A Historical Perspective’; and Amedzro, Globalization. For a more critical perspective, see Dorvlo, Essays, Ch. 1.

See in particular du Sautoy, Community Development (produced by a former expatriate director of SWCD).

Skinner, ‘“It brought some kind of neatness”’.

Dorvlo, Essays, 22–23, notes that self-help projects have differential benefits. Thus a feeder road might be constructed by communal labour but it cannot simply be assumed to benefit the poorest: the individuals and households which already have agricultural produce to sell may derive the most immediate benefit.

Jennings, ‘“A Very Real War”’ makes this argument for Tanzania, while I make a similar argument for northern Ghana in ‘From Pentecostalism to Politics’.

Cooper, ‘Possibility and Constraint’, 171.

Rimmer, Staying Poor, 76–77 illustrates the downward shift in world cocoa prices from 1958 to 1965, although he also argues that rising output had the potential to ease the effect of price changes on government revenue. Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis, 153–58 also explains how Ghana's sterling reserves depreciated in value in the late 1950s, and how, by 1962, overseas surpluses had been exhausted.

CPP, ‘Programme for Work and Happiness’, 3.

Ghana, ‘Seven-Year Development Plan: A Brief Outline’, 14. According to Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis, 159–67, Lewis also advised Nkrumah to reduce spending on social services and to prioritise productive investments, but this advice was subverted by cabinet ministers who wanted to secure large budgets for their own departments.

Ghana, ‘Seven-Year Development Plan: A Brief Outline’, 26.

The plan was particularly concerned to explain the key role to be played by the growing pool of middle-school leavers (both male and female), indicating that, in order for government to recoup its heavy investments in extending formal education at the primary and middle school levels, school leavers must be put to work as ‘middle-level manpower’ at the heart of an industrialising economy.

Ghana, ‘Seven-Year Development Plan: A Brief Outline’, 27. The pie charts included in the Brief Outline indicate that in the period 1951–59, education accounted for 13 per cent of total expenditure, health 4 per cent, and ‘other social services’ 20 per cent. The projected expenditure in the new Seven Year Plan was: education 14 per cent, health 7 per cent, and ‘other social services’ 7 per cent.

Dorvlo, Essays, 36, notes that the department faced budget cuts in 1957/8 and in 1963.

Ghana, ‘Seven-Year Development Plan: A Brief Outline’, 26.

Gbedemah, ‘It will not be “Work and Happiness …’

See Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana on Nkrumah's ‘faulty’ understanding of state ownership; Rimmer, Staying Poor on the political mismanagement of resources; Killick, Development Economics on poor advice; and Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis for a reassessment of these debates.

Compare Owusu-Afriyie, ‘Official Opening Address’ with CPP, ‘Programme for Work and Happiness’, 18.

CPP, ‘The Constitution’, 22. Dunn and Robertson, Dependency and Opportunity, make a somewhat similar argument about the instrumentalism of local elites, although they do so from a rather different perspective!

See, for example, the lists of projects in Brown, ‘Politics in the Kpandu area’; and further examples in Nugent, Smugglers, 212–18.

This phrase is borrowed from Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs.

Rimmer, Staying Poor, 70 argues that the Central Committee was essentially enacting the will of Nkrumah and had little independent influence after 1962. The Party's mechanisms for internal democracy (e.g. the Party Congress) were weakened in the 1960s.

M. N. Tetteh began his working life in the People's Educational Association, which was modelled directly on the Workers' Educational Association in the UK. In the 1960s, however, he went to the USSR for training and became a leading organiser in the CPP's Young Pioneer movement. See Tetteh, The Ghana Young Pioneer Movement, xxix–xxxv. The evolution of ‘women's work’ is so interesting as to merit a separate and more detailed discussion. On the National Council of Ghana Women, see Manuh, ‘Women’; Tsikata, ‘Women's political organisations’; and Prah, ‘Chasing Illusions’.

CPP, ‘The Constitution’, 9.

CPP, ‘The Constitution’, 10.

‘Research into Party's Activities’, Evening News, 8 July 1963, 6.

See for example ‘Help to Educate the Masses’, Evening News, 2 Aug. 1963, 7; and similar articles in Evening News 23 July 1963, 7; 9 Oct. 1963, 7; 19 Oct. 1963, 7 (which indicates that the district education secretary will now be a paid position); 21 Nov. 1963, 3; 26 Nov. 1963, 7.

I develop this argument in greater detail in ‘“It brought some kind of neatness”.’

Report on the National Adult Literacy Campaign, Northern Region, NRG 8/9/43, PRAAD Tamale.

Ibid., 2.

CPP, ‘The Constitution’, 23.

Ibid., 22.

Ibid., 24.

Nkrumah, ‘Guide to Party Action’, 10.

Ibid., 10.

‘Village and Town Committees Must Respect the People’, Evening News, 5 Oct. 1963, 2.

Amonoo, Ghana 1957–1966, 148–49.

These boxes were used to improve the quality of drinking water.

Jopp, Ghana 1957, 36–43.

A five-person UN delegation visited Ghana in 1963, and the party newspaper gleefully reported its conclusion that ‘African Countries Should Emulate Ghana's Self-Help Projects’, Evening News, 9 July 1963, 6.

Rimmer, Staying Poor, 69–86.

Evening News, 9 July 1963, 6.

Evening News, 6 July 1963, 6.

Amonoo, Ghana 1957–1966, 148–56.

Nkrumah became known as Osagyefo (meaning ‘redeemer’ in Twi), and was always referred to by this ‘title’ in party propaganda. See for example ‘Osagyefo donates more cement’, Evening News, 10 July 1963, 6—this refers to a project at Deduako, Ashanti.

Nana Yaw Frimpong II, Omanhene of Ahafo and chairman of the local branch of the CPP, was therefore photographed ‘leading the self-help team’ in a project at Kukuom (‘Self-help Spirit Grips the Villages’, Evening News, 25 July 1963, 6). Similarly, Nana Essandoh VII, Omanhene of Nkusuku was lauded for launching the town committee's three-year development plan (Evening News, 18 June 1965, 6).

J. H. Mensah, cited in Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 111.

Tawia Adamafio, CPP general secretary from 1960–62 outlines the Party attitude to civil servants in By Nkrumah's Side, 70–76.

Emphasis in original. Quainoo, ‘Community Development’, 70–71.

Ibid., 72.

du Sautoy, Community Development.

Interview with Mr Oduro Kwateng, former mass education assistant, Akropong-Ashanti, 9 March 2004. I am grateful to Isaac Kwabena Frimpong for organising this interview.

du Sautoy, Community Development, 69.

Ibid., 70.

Demonstration techniques were also used by private companies which marketed consumer goods to Ghanaian women in the 1950s and 1960s. See Murillo, ‘Market Relations’.

Amonoo, Ghana 1957–1966, 8–9.

Eileen Younghusband was instrumental in writing the third of these UN reports and in designing a training programme that was delivered in Swansea, Wales, to overseas students from 1953. See Younghusband, ‘The Nature of Social Work’.

For examples of religious language and analogies with mission work, see this author, ‘“It brought some kind of neatness”’.

Emphasis in original. Omari, ‘Training and Research’, 112.

Ibid., 114. These were the Certificate and Diploma courses in Social Administration, offered at the University of Ghana. Andrew Lochhead became the director of the Swansea training courses after 1960, and he also visited Ghana in 1963. See Lochhhead, Changing Assumptions and A Reader in Social Administration.

Omari, ‘Training and Research’, 113.

Drake, ‘Reflections’, 96.

Gaines, American Africans, 91. Busia was a longstanding opponent of the CPP, and shortly after his departure from Legon he went into political exile. Busia and his Progress Party won the elections of 1969, three years after the coup that toppled Nkrumah. Peter Hodge, who also lectured in social administration at Legon, departed in 1959. He became a lecturer at the London School of Economics before moving to Hong Kong. In 1962, however, he returned to Ghana to participate in this seminar.

For a biography of Read, see Whitehead, Colonial Educators. See also the Mass Education Bulletin and the Community Development Bulletin for examples of the synthesising work of the Institute of Education.

This culminated in Davis' publication of Deep South in 1941.

Drake, ‘Some Observations’, 161.

Whitehead, Colonial Educators.

Gaines, American Africans, 49–50.

Drake, ‘Social Problems’, 31–32.

Ibid., 32.

Ibid., 32.

Ibid., 33.

Ibid., 33.

Ibid., 33.

Drake argued in scholarly journals that, in the context of Rhodesian UDI and South African apartheid, African leaders' adaptations to constitutions in the mid-1960s were in less urgent need of critique than US foreign policy in Africa. See Drake, ‘Democracy on Trial’.

Allman, ‘“Let Your Fashion be in Line”’ describes Drake's anti-authoritarian and gender-sensitive report on female nudity in northern Ghana. The ‘social advancement’ campaigns that targeted nudity, female circumcision and scarification are of considerable interest and merit a more detailed discussion than I can provide here, but I hope to return to this topic in my future research.

Towards the end of his life, Drake indicated that due to ‘qualms’ he had discarded several attempts to write a book on Ghana in the Nkrumah years. Drake, ‘Reflections’, 99.

Scott, Seeing Like a State.

The level of insight provided here cannot compare with that achieved by Tom Yarrow in his ethnographic research with present-day Ghanaian development workers. See Yarrow, ‘Life/History’ and ‘Negotiating Difference’.

Interview with Nana Adjei Turum, Oyokohene and former mass literacy exams officer, Kokofu, 29 April 2004. I am grateful to Mr P. Owusu Donkor for organising this interview.

Admittedly, Nana's experience as mass literacy exams officer was mainly in the 1950s—1952 to 1959. He resigned in order to contest the Kokofu stool, but was unsuccessful.

Leonard Dorvlo, who was a practitioner of mass education before becoming a researcher, also commented on the significance of the blue and white uniform in distinguishing staff from the police and army, which people associated with compulsion. Dorvlo, Essays, 16–17.

Interview with Mr Oduro Kwateng, former mass education assistant, Akropong-Ashanti, 9 March 2004. I am grateful to Isaac Kwabena Frimpong for organising this interview.

Ibid.

Minutes of the Meeting of Literacy Officers from the Various Ministries, held at Tamale on 20 January 1966, NRG 8/9/43, PRAAD Tamale.

For the role of the Department of SWCD in campaigning on standards of politeness, see the editorial in Evening News, 18 July 1963.

Interview with Fati Seidu (formerly Beatrice Acquaye, MEA) and J. Y. Fuseini, Tamale, 14 September 2008. I am grateful to Hamza Yussif Kuyini for organising this interview.

Interview with Comfort Appeadjei, former cook at the rural training centre, Kwaso, 10 March 2004. I am grateful to Isaac Kwabena Frimpong and Mr P. Owusu-Donkor for organising this interview.

Interview with Mr S. K. Manu, former adult student, Kwaso, 27 Apr. 2004. I am grateful to Isaac Kwabena Frompong and Mr P. Owusu-Donkor for organising this interview and for acting as interpreters.

See above, note 3.

P. K. Amponsah, MEO, Community Development Division Monthly Report for March 1966, Western Dagomba District, NRG 10/1/19, PRAAD Tamale.

Cited in Biney, ‘Kwame Nkrumah's Political Thought’, 92–3.

Ibid., 98.