https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7400-0746
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Abstract
In Northern Ghana, the microfinance company DKM convinced large segments of the population to give them money based on spectacular rates, only to fail spectacularly and leave many people bankrupt in 2016. Such Ponzi schemes are anything but unusual, in Africa and elsewhere, and have been studied as manifestations of an ever-accelerating neoliberal capitalism. Yet, the affected people remember DKM and its manager fondly, and they have abandoned the wait to get their money back. Instead of exploring economic questions, this paper will explore practices of waiting in the context of the scheme to understand the connection between social relationships and imagined futures. In DKM, actors engaged in deeply social forms of waiting, and these were part of late-modern financial schemes, leading to various forms of synchronization. When the tension between the social and instrumental aspects of this waiting emerged after the scheme’s collapse, actors – in Northern Ghana at least – ultimately decided to preserve their relationships. Looking back, actors speak about this period as a time of hope, a time in which waiting seemed to be over in a more existential sense.
Au Nord du Ghana, la société de microfinance DKM a convaincu de larges segments de la population de leur donner de l’argent sur la base de taux spectaculaires, pour ensuite échouer de façon spectaculaire et laisser de nombreuses personnes dans la faillite en 2016. De tels régimes Ponzi ne sont pas inhabituels en Afrique et ailleurs, et ont été étudiés comme manifestations d’un capitalisme néolibéral en constante accélération. Et pourtant, la population affectée se souvient de DKM et de son directeur avec affection, et ils ont cessé d’attendre de revoir leur argent. Au lieu d’explorer les questions économiques, cet article va explorer les pratiques d’attente dans le contexte du régime pour comprendre le lien entre les relations sociales et les futurs imaginés. Dans le DKM, les acteurs étaient engagés dans des formes profondément sociales d’attente, et celles-ci faisaient partie des régimes financiers modernes, menant à différentes formes de synchronisation. Lorsque la tension entre les aspects sociaux et instrumentaux de cette attente ont émergé après l’écroulement du régime, les acteurs – au Nord du Ghana du moins – ont finalement décidé de préserver leur relations. Rétrospectivement, les acteurs parlent de cette période comme d’une époque d’espoir, une époque où l’attente semblait tirer à sa fin dans un sens plus existentiel.
ORCID
Notes
1 DKM is the inverted acronym of its founder, Martin K. Delle.
2 According to a government report, 87,000 people had deposited GH¢605 million (approx. EUR 110 million) with DKM (see Graphic Online, DKM customers to receive GH¢352 million, 26 September 2017). However, these figures are only about DKM proper, and account for neither the competing schemes nor the subsequent schemes started by DKM.
3 The Tulip craze is generally portrayed as the first speculative mania. However, Goldgar (Citation2007, 7) shows that the event does not fit this description.
4 Names of persons have been changed and names of some companies slightly altered, except for DKM and its founder, due to their notoriety.
5 This paper was made possible with support from the Africa’s Asian Options (AFRASO) project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), and the project Police-Translations (BE 6695/1-1), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). For critical comments, I am grateful to Kurt Beck, Frank Schulze-Engler, Michaels Stasik, the two anonymous reviewers and the participants of the workshop ‘Waiting in Africa’ in Bayreuth. The fieldwork was only possible due to the help of Afra Schmitz, Gabriel Mwini and the Naab family.
6 Less relevant is the connection between agency and waiting, which has been a main concern in academic writing on waiting (see Brun Citation2015; Hage Citation2009, 2).
7 The scheme was based on the ‘airplane model’, which had been invented in the 1980s in the U.S. ‘Diamond Holidays Travel’ (DHT), the predecessor of DHTT, was a copy of an older pyramid scheme, ‘TVI Express’. DHT was founded 2010, probably by an U.S.-American with headquarters in Delaware. Since then, various people from all over the globe, from South Africa to India, have used the business plan, the software and similar sounding names to start new schemes. These schemes always collapse after a few years, as soon as they fail to further increase their membership, their only source of revenue.
8 Their rates fluctuated wildly from 50% to 80%, depending on the need for more customers, competition with other Ponzi schemes and pressure from the Bank of Ghana to reduce them.
9 Imaginaries of easily accessible wealth from abroad are common in Ghana (see Beek Citation2016a, 312). When people heard that I, a European, wanted to talk to them about DKM, many immediately thought that I had been sent to repay them.
10 DKM posters portray DKM as a saviour and allude to religious motives, with slogans such as: ‘I tell you, DKM is the tree, and the fruit is DKM’s products.’
11 ‘Pyram’ and ‘Golden Circle’, two pyramid schemes, had spread to Northern Ghana in the 2000s and failed after several months.
12 Augustine, one of the agents I spoke to, described his work as a regular, nearly boring office job. ‘We were just doing normal banking … it was just a normal corporate thing’. As a sales manager, he looked for ‘targets’, to ‘mobilise’ them and to ‘market’ the company. Also, he portrayed DKM as an entrepreneurial company with flat hierarchies and opportunities to rise fast: ‘Martin always said, you are employed not based on certificates but based on what you can do.’
13 Christine also told me that her agent had hinted at the possibility of a collapse when she last invested money.
14 The time of this realization, like many others of his remarks, was not consistent throughout our conversation.
15 The companies were allowed only a maximum interest of 28% per year. Due to the competition, both continued to promise 50% but only verbally. On the forms, a squared symbol behind the amounts hinted at this.
16 Declared by Bank of Ghana, Notice No. BG/GOV/SEC/2015/05.
17 According to the figures Benjamin showed me, he owed a total of EUR 9 million to more than 10,000 people.
18 While nobody could name someone specifically who had died, several people were said to have suffered heart attacks. Others fell ill in more psychological ways, no longer able to leave their bed. Many more were unable to pay for urgent medical care due to their financial losses.
19 http://www.ghana.gov.gh/index.php/media-center/news/2483-bog-begins-process-to-liquidate-assets-of-dkm-financial-services-terpker (last accessed 30 November 2018). Only DKM was liquidated thusly. The Bank of Ghana refused to reimburse those who had invested in other companies, because these companies had operated illegally or had only had provisional licenses.
20 Thaddeus also has not given up on reclaiming the money. When he overheard that I would be meeting Benjamin, he asked for contact details to go after him.
21 On understandings of wealth creation in West Africa, see Guyer (Citation2004).
22 Instead of focusing on waiting, the paper could also have explored how the actors distribute blame and responsibility after the collapse of DKM. In parallel with different forms of waiting, there are very different rationalities at play here: allocating responsibility through relationships, diffusing risks within financial organizations, assigning blame by judicial processes, etc. (see Corsín Citation2011, 186).
23 While this difference is inherently blurred everywhere (Harrington Citation2012, 393), many Ghanaians seem to think that no boundary exists between legitimate and illegitimate business practices. There is a history of state organizations failing to (re) produce such a boundary. DKM’s case is another instance of this, as the Bank of Ghana never clearly categorized DKM but seemed to try to transform it into a bank, all the while knowing that it was a Ponzi scheme.
24 Only Benjamin narrated the collapse differently. According to him, DKM had no cash left before the Bank of Ghana came in. He even claimed that Martin had bribed the officials a last time to influence them to close DKM’s offices: ‘He wanted it to look like the state was closing him down.’
25 Still, some people seemed to be aware that this explanation was a way to shift responsibility. Theresa, a young investor, remarked: ‘I wanted government to let DKM collapse like the other ones … if it had collapsed like the others, I wouldn’t have blamed government but myself.’
26 Martin generously gifted money to people in need, for medical emergencies, school fees and road repairs. In Ghana, such distribution of wealth is expected of a ‘big man’ but often not adhered to.