Ghana Against Corruption

For the past 30 years Ghana has set an example for the durability of its democratic political system. Elections in December 2024 only reinforced that image, especially at a time of military coups in some nearby countries, including Niger, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. Well before the final count, the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) tactfully conceded defeat, allowing a smooth transition to a new government led by John Mahama.

The main issue prompting voters was the poor state of Ghana’s economy, a decisive factor in electoral defeats around the world. Yet concern over corruption was a common complaint as well. Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC) made the issue a recurrent theme in its campaign; his victory was followed by the immediate launch of a new body charged with investigating ‘stolen loot’.

In the wake of their defeat, the outgoing NPP resorted to finger-pointing – and some acceptance that graft may have played a role. Arthur Kobina Kennedy, a party gadfly, accused the NPP’s leadership of spending recent years in office ‘looting public coffers’ and urged his colleagues to return to the supposedly upright example of its founding fathers.

Historically, Ghana’s elites have blamed civil servants for succumbing to the temptations of office, but the country’s battle with corruption has a history that extends far beyond its independence in 1957. The Asante empire was the strongest of Ghana’s precolonial states. By the end of the 18th century it covered territory that now includes parts of Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo. It governed through a hierarchy extending from its ruler, the Asantehene, who sat on the Golden Stool in the capital, Kumasi, to village chiefs. Asante grew wealthy from gold mining and trade, enabling some chiefs to enrich themselves enormously.

Local chiefs were important authority figures in precolonial Ghana. The most durable guards against their abuse of power were the commoner-led asafo companies, warrior groups (from the Akan sa ‘war’ and fo ‘people’) who, especially in the coastal areas populated by the Fante people, helped ensure civil order. If need be, the asafo could depose a chief in a process known as ‘destoolment’. Some removal ceremonies entailed asafo members seizing a chief and bumping his buttocks on the ground three times. According to the Ghanaian anthropologist Maxwell Owusu, asafo companies ‘had a sacred duty to safeguard the interests of the wider local community against rulers or leaders who misused or abused their power’. Such excesses contributed to the destoolment of Kofi Kakari as Asantehene in 1874.

British wine

Britain annexed Asante as a crown colony in 1901, proclaimed a protectorate over the kingdoms of the Northern Territories, and, after the First World War, occupied a portion of the former German colony Togoland, thus fixing the Gold Coast’s boundaries. British rule rested on force and bureaucracy, but they could not govern directly everywhere. In 1880 the colonial office proclaimed that, since the administration in Accra was unable to extend its authority to ‘the inaccessible wilds and impenetrable forests of the interior’, the powers of chiefs should be strengthened.

That form of ‘strengthening’ was a particular one. Chiefs who bridled at implementing unpopular policies were simply deposed. Favoured chiefs were protected. The issue became acute during the early 20th century, when surviving asafo companies destooled scores of unpopular chiefs. Alarmed, governor Gordon Guggisberg authorised chiefs to weaken troublesome asafo companies. The number of destoolments fell to just three in 1925 and 1926, down from more than 100 in the previous two decades. In a commentary on Britain’s policy of indirect rule, the Gold Coast Independent asked: ‘Is it any wonder that selfish and avaricious Chiefs who have greedily drunk of this new wine, have become intoxicated?’

Patron Nkrumah

Most accounts of the fight led by Kwame Nkrumah to attain independence, as Ghana, in 1957 focus on the political aspects of that struggle: building a mass following and forging the Convention People’s Party (CPP). But beyond the lofty rhetoric, Ghanaian politics under Nkrumah also had a mundane, even seamy, side. CPP officials had access to significant financial resources, which they used to lay the foundations of a formidable patronage machine. In 1961 Nkrumah addressed the problem, reminding CPP officials to ‘not use their party membership or official position for personal gain or for the amassing of wealth’, accusing some of ‘aiming to become a new ruling class of self-seekers and careerists’. Crackdowns followed. A few of the most visibly corrupt leaders were forced out, including a minister, Krobo Edusei, who had permitted his wife to import a gold bed. Yet the party remained a patronage machine. After a February 1966 military coup ousted the CPP and left Nkrumah, then visiting China, in exile, some 40 different commissions of inquiry provided considerable evidence of the extent to which financial irregularities had permeated his government.

House cleaning

The junta that ousted Nkrumah was preoccupied with pro-Western policies and uprooting the CPP. It organised elections in 1969, won by K.A. Busia’s Progress Party, which vigorously pursued their own brand of patronage politics clothed in a laissez-faire ideology that glorified self-interest. Busia, a former sociology professor, was aware of the problems that brought, remarking that, aside from himself, ‘there is not a single honest person in my cabinet’.

A serious economic crisis triggered another coup in January 1972. A junta led by Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius Acheampong started out with a range of progressive-sounding policies and permitted the reburial of Nkrumah, praising the late president as a ‘great leader’. But Acheampong’s rule soon soured. As protests spread, his regime became authoritarian. Top officers engaged in corrupt activities, popularly known as ‘kalabule’ (‘keep it quiet’). Faced with growing discontent, Acheampong’s colleagues dumped him in a desperate bid to restore order.

It failed. Ghana experienced two more military coups, on either side of a brief civilian interregnum. Leadership of both coups came from ordinary soldiers who exploded out of their barracks with extreme anger over their superiors’ rampant corruption and crass plunder. The key figure in both was a young air force officer, Jerry John Rawlings.

Rawlings came to public attention when he appeared in court after leading a failed mutiny in May 1979. He justified that action by ‘talking about widespread corruption in high places’. Before the trial could conclude, soldiers broke him out of detention in early June, created a new Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), and named Rawlings its chairman. The AFRC announced that it would relinquish power following already scheduled elections, but first there would be a ‘house cleaning’. Acheampong and seven other officials were shot by firing squad in Accra, for crimes of corruption and abuse of office. Boisterous street demonstrations demanded more executions.

The ‘house cleaning’ ended in September when the AFRC gave way to an elected government. Rawlings warned the new president, Hilla Limann, against trying to ‘put out the flames of moral regeneration’. Limann did little to pursue anticorruption measures and instead took reprisals against Rawlings, who swept back into power with another coup on the last day of 1981. He immediately dispelled any idea that this second takeover would be a replay of the first: ‘I ask for nothing less than a revolution.’ In one of his first speeches as president, Rawlings declared:

We have talked a lot about corruption. We are not claiming that corruption is the fundamental problem of the country but it has to be admitted that it is so pervasive and deep-seated in the country that its elimination has become a necessary precondition for the functioning of the system, let alone its change.

Rawlings permitted ordinary citizens to play an active role in rooting out corruption, led by hundreds of new government-sanctioned People’s Defence Committees (PDCs). As a PDC spokesperson, K. Gyan-Apenteng, put it: ‘Corruption is the product of a social system and enriches a minority of the people whilst having the opposite effect on the majority.’ Alluding to Ghana’s traditions of resistance, activists sang asafo war songs and beat ritual asafo drums.

Moneycracy

Rawlings’ newly minted NDC won Ghana’s multiparty elections in 1992. Barred from running by a constitutional term limit, in 2000 he stepped aside. In elections that year the opposition NPP won, with a smooth transition of power.

As elsewhere, Ghana’s democratic system has flaws, mainly due to the inordinate influence of money. As the political scientist Kwame Ninsin suggests, the two main parties have an ‘elite consensus’, taking turns at the helm in order ‘to control the state for private accumulation’. Other Ghanaians have used the term ‘moneycracy’. Fortunately, the same 1992 constitution that overlooked the risks of money politics also created various independent monitoring institutions. They include the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, which annually hears thousands of citizens’ complaints and has made exposures leading to the downfall of several ministers. Year after year, Ghanaians vent their grievances on the streets: ‘Say no to corruption!’ has been a frequent slogan. Throughout Ghana’s history, ordinary people – and some of their leaders – have shown that they abhor theft and fraud. And in fighting both, they can draw inspiration from a deep well.

Ernest Harsch’s latest book is Corruption, Class, and Politics in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2024).