Living with Nkrumahism. Jeffrey S. Ahlman
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ones of deep-seated anxieties manifested through persistent fears of local spies, political and social backstabbing, and, most ominously, preventative detention. In this regard, Nkrumahism was something more than the systematized political and social program articulated by the Nkrumahist state apparatus: it was something that had to be lived through, negotiated, and constantly reinterpreted.
Living with Nkrumahism argues that such a framing of Nkrumahism helps reorient how we understand Ghanaians’ relationships not only to the postcolonial state, but also to the expectations and ambiguities that characterized Ghana’s transition to self-rule. Indeed, we can begin to think of multiple “Nkrumahisms” in Nkrumah-era Ghana. Some (but only some) of these clearly had direct connections to the rhetoric and worldview put forward by the institutions—governmental, party and party-affiliated, press, and others—of the Nkrumahist state. Other individuals, meanwhile, invoked the language of Nkrumahism as a means through which to articulate their personal aspirations or frustrations with their current political, social, or economic status, often as a mechanism through which to make claims on the new state. For others, this language served as a way of connecting oneself directly to Nkrumah himself, even if only in rhetoric or performance. Still others manipulated the language of Nkrumahism, and particularly a refashioning of its symbols—the red cockerel, Young Pioneers and Builders Brigade uniforms, and CPP songs—to distance themselves from a party and government from which they felt alienated, a party and government which, to some, was actively seeking to break down the family, community, ethnic, gender, and generational relationships they so prized.
What the archival, social-scientific, and journalistic record of the CPP era does, though, is seemingly ossify a very specific and orthodoxical interpretation of Nkrumahism that purports to explain the presumed successes, failures, and realities of the Nkrumahist project. Among the social scientists of the mid- to late 1960s and 1970s—who, in many ways, have had the last word on the CPP, at least among academics—such a perspective served to highlight both the deficiencies of the CPP government itself and the ruptures between theory and praxis. However, such a framework privileges state orthodoxy, even as it seeks to refute it, in that a state-centered image of the state-citizenry relationship emerges as the primary or even single reference point for understanding the Ghanaian postcolonial experience. This mode of analysis is not unlike the one that guided the CPP’s own quest to systematize Nkrumahist thought and politics in the 1960s. With its centralization of political and ideological power, embodied first in the republican constitution and later in the one-party state, the CPP sought to set the terms of debate, nationally and internationally, on how best to understand the process of decolonization. This included how to interpret what the party characterized as the antiquated, “tribalist” oppositions that, in the 1950s, persistently vexed the CPP, along with the potentialities and shortfalls of the decolonizing citizenry and the power of the state itself. In other words, a relatively static interpretation of the CPP’s own ambitions, aspirations, and deficiencies has often become the guiding construct through which Ghanaians’ postcolonial imaginings are not just engaged with, but understood. Living with Nkrumahism aims to contextualize and historicize the process by which this orthodoxy came together and in turn increasingly came to represent the political, social, economic, and cultural terrain of the early Ghanaian postcolonial experience.
SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY
The study of Nkrumah’s Ghana rests at the interstices of the colonial and postcolonial archive. In doing so, it forces the historian to confront the pronounced shift from the relative wealth of the colonial archive to, as one proceeds through the years after independence, the increasing paucity of the postcolonial archive. In the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD) office in Accra, for instance, the pre-1957 archival record provides a relatively ordered and somewhat detailed accounting of the political actions and decision-making processes undertaken in the lead-up to independence, particularly in the form of cabinet minutes and memoranda. As with much of colonial African history, an even more robust archival record detailing the Gold Coast’s transition to self-rule exists in the colonial metropole, most notably in the British National Archives.53 For researchers interested in the 1950s, the late-colonial archive thus provides insight into debates over subjects including the priorities of the CPP government (and particularly its cabinet) as the colony sought to become a country, British perspectives on Gold Coast decolonization, the changes in administrative infrastructure necessary for the soon-to-be independent state, and, to a lesser extent, the operation of several of the colony’s ministries. In some cases, these records continue into the early postcolonial period. However, increasingly as one advances through the 1960s, any semblance of a stable documentary record begins to evaporate. Files and narratives often lack context. Some are missing. Others may be dispersed or intermingled with unrelated material. Still others have found their way into catch-all collections, two of which dominate PRAAD-Accra’s material on Nkrumah-era postcolonial Ghana: the Files on Ex-Presidential Affairs (RG 17/2/-) and those of the Bureau of African Affairs Papers (RG 17/1/-, formerly SC/BAA/-).54
The state of the Ghanaian postcolonial archive may in part be the result of the nature and decisions of the CPP government at the time, possibly reflecting the changing priorities of the government as it confronted the prospects of self-rule in the age of Cold War. It is also a consequence of the 1966 coup, when the new military government destroyed or confiscated many of the country’s CPP-era files, particularly in Accra.55 The result is a postcolonial archive in Ghana that is fragmentary and dispersed. However, it is also one that, despite the best efforts of the highly skilled and dedicated archivists who oversee its various sites throughout the country, regularly offers occasion to reflect upon the realities of postcolonial governance and the near-continuous budget shortfalls that have plagued this and other Ghanaian governmental institutions over much of the last half century.
At the heart of this book, then, is a struggle to make sense of this fragmentary archival record and put it into conversation with the changing political and ideological framework of Nkrumahist thought, the mechanisms of CPP governance, and the lived experiences of Ghanaians during the period. State- and party-run newspapers and magazines—most notably including the Evening News, the Ghanaian Times, and the Ghanaian—serve as another key resource in this endeavor, augmenting the formal archive with other, public expressions of the institutionalized worldview of the Nkrumah-led government. Moreover, the party- and state-run press was not static. It also was not necessarily Gramscian in its quest for discursive hegemony, but it did continually seek to set the terms of political and social debate in the country through a consistently shifting discursive practice operating under the rubric of Nkrumahism. In contrast to a scholarship that has limited the prominence of Nkrumah-era ideology in midcentury Ghanaian life, I argue that an evolving Nkrumahism served as the backdrop to many Ghanaians’ experiences, as they had little choice but to operate in a political and social sphere in which the CPP increasingly sought to intrude into their political, social, cultural, and economic lives.56 On a day-to-day level, the result was an environment in which many had to gain familiarity not only with the language and vocabulary of Ghanaian pan-Africanism and socialism, but also with its hidden assumptions, values, and norms. In many ways, it was in the press that these assumptions and values were most clearly articulated. In fact, it could be argued that the press—via most newspapers’ daily coverage and editorials—often better exemplifies the moving target that was Nkrumahism during the decade and a half of CPP rule than do the speeches and writings of Nkrumah and other prominent CPP figures themselves. In these party and government publications we find the CPP’s in-the-moment readings of and adaptations to a changing array of local, continental, and international phenomena, including strikes, attempts on Nkrumah’s life, and Cold War intervention in Ghana and elsewhere on the continent.
Juxtaposed with my analysis of the Ghanaian state- and party-run press are a collection of forty-four oral interviews with Ghanaians who were both inside and outside the CPP’s formal party apparatus. Among the most prominent figures interviewed were J. K. Tettegah (d. 2009), who for much of the Nkrumah years served as the general secretary of the TUC, K. B. Asante, K. S. P. (formerly J. E.) Jantuah (d. 2011), Kofi Duku, and Dr. M. N. Tetteh. Among these figures, only K. B. Asante remained an active and prominent presence in Ghanaian public life throughout the duration of this book’s research and writing, while most others had retired and/or were still