Truth Without Reconciliation. Abena Ampofoa Asare
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African Studies.’”61 By 1969, the NLC had succeeded in managing a transition back to civilian rule, including commissioning a new constitution and holding parliamentary elections. The Progress Party, led by Kofi Busia, emerged victorious and Ghana returned to civilian rule.
1969–1972
Just as Kwame Nkrumah’s government was undone by the Cold War’s exigencies, Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia’s government also capsized on the shoals of an unfavorable global political economy. The similarities were not lost on Nkrumah, who penned an open “letter of consolation” to Busia dripping with schadenfreude. “My dear Kofi, I have just heard on the air that your government which came to power barely three years ago has been toppled by the Ghana Army…. Most of the evils of which my government and I were accused … were apparently the same reasons that motivated the army takeover of your regime.”62 Although Nkrumah and Busia charted entirely different courses, in the NRC archive’s narrative, they both made Ghanaian people victims of their broader economic and political agendas.
In contrast to Nkrumah, Busia unreservedly sought to work within the economic constraints set out by the Cold War’s politics. His belief that sharing the economic vision of the Western nations would translate into material support for Ghana was sorely tested during his short tenure as prime minister. When Busia attempted to service Ghana’s debt according to the stringent austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank he “managed to alienate virtually all those groups who had first given [him] enthusiastic support: the intellectuals, the trade unions, students, wage earners, businessman, lawyers and judges, and most critically Ghana’s military officers.”63 There is perhaps no clearer evidence of Busia’s miscalculation than the words of his own finance minister, J. H. Men-sah, who publicly distanced himself from the austerity policies even while signing the loan documents. “It is impossible to convince any Ghanaian that public money should be spent on paying such debt rather than on developing the country,” he stated in the closing days of the Progress Party regime.64 As fuel, food, and transportation prices rose, Busia finally suspended the deep austerity measures championed by the global lending institutions. As the World Bank and the IMF withheld relief and limited lending, Ghana’s economic distress only increased, and Prime Minister Busia was left to twist in the wind.65
The NRC archive’s stories about the Busia era describe the human suffering that accompanied the austerity policies of late 1960s Ghana. Joseph Broni Amponsah, a former policeman, came to the NRC to complain about forcible unemployment during the Progress Party years. Although Amponsah claimed that he was dismissed because of his hard-hitting investigation of election irregularities, legal research done by the NRC staff found that his dismissal was intelligible in much more mundane ways.66 Amponsah was among the Apollo 568, a contingent of civil servants summarily and abruptly dismissed in 1972.67 While the Busia government insisted these cuts were a straightforward and necessary means of cutting government expenditure, many of the victims, like Amponsah, claimed they were targeted because they acted with integrity and nonpartisanship in their respective roles.
The distress of the Apollo 568 found a voice in the court case E. K. Sallah v. Attorney General. Ghana’s highest court agreed with Sallah, a dismissed civil servant who insisted that this mass layoff was illegal. The court ordered the Busia government to rehire Sallah and pay him damages but the prime minister balked, refuting the ruling in a televised national address. “No court, no court,” an openly defiant Busia insisted, “could compel the government to employ or redeploy anyone it did not wish to work with.”68 A government that campaigned on upholding the rule of law, accountability, and strong institutions was openly flouting Ghana’s judiciary. A public outcry ensued and Busia was criticized for abandoning liberal political principles for the sake of expediency.69
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