The Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG) salutes the working people of Ghana on the occasion of the 57th anniversary of independence, recognizing that the day marks a significant milestone in the long journey to national liberation.
Ghana’s independence was a glorious moment in African and world history. It was a major victory of an oppressed and repressed people who had waged relentless struggles to shake off the rapacious might of the British colonial empire and to build a new society in which national wealth was utilized in the fight against ignorance, disease, and all forms of exploitation.
At independence the working people of Ghana defeated the machinations of imperialism in seeking to hand over power to its local collaborators; the big chiefs and colonial comprador elite to continue with the colonial economic relations.
The new pro-working people’s government led by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah embarked upon meaningful experiments in the utilization of public resources for the good of the many and not just the facilitation of foreign extraction and local elite consumption. It created vast state and cooperative network that integrated and industrialized production, which created jobs and facilitated phenomenal growth across the country. It developed realistic relations with global capitalism which led to the construction of the Akosombo Hydro-electric project and the establishment of the Volta Aluminum Company. Massive social investments in education and health equalized and integrated society. It also took affirmative action and mounted rigorous opposition to sectarianism as exemplified in the passage of the Avoidance of Discrimination Act.
At independence, Ghana provided genuine as opposed to rhetorical leadership in the pursuit of a material Pan- African agenda. It established the basis for a huge leap in self- sufficient continental production, trade and socio-cultural relations on the African continent in addition to the creation of a strategic political and military resource centre for the acceleration of the decolonization process.
The establishment of the Non- Aligned Movement (NAM) spearheaded, by the Osagyefo and a few leaders including Fidel Castro of Cuba and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia was meant to insulate newly independent nations from the ravages of the cold war and create favourable conditions for South –South co-operation as a bulwark against imperialist aggression and machinations.
In spite of the challenges that the new Ghana faced it made giant strides in all fields of endeavour and became the envy of even the more relatively advanced countries. For example in the field of education the achievements of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP) far exceeded expectation. According to Ministry of Education statistical data, enrolment in primary schools was 102,138 in 1950, that is before the CPP came to power. This figure increased to 456,290 in 1961 and to a phenomenal 1,137, 495 in 1966. During the period 1951 to 61, enrolment in 12 assisted secondary schools including Achimota and non-assisted schools increased from 6,095 to 9, 882. By 1966 enrolment in public secondary schools had increased to 42, 111. Enrolment in middle schools also increased more than threefold to 267, 434 in 1966. Two university colleges were set up in Accra and Kumasi.
These significant achievements acted as the signpost to the effort to break free from the neo-colonial yoke and provoked the forces of neo-colonialism to activate and participate in the diabolical plan of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America to topple the constitutional and legitimate government of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah on February 24,
1966.
From 1966, the forces of reaction deliberately and systematically reversed the gains of the independence movement and recreated the colonial economic relations of dependency. In the area of production, they embarked upon a policy of de-industrialization, disruption of economic integration, narrowing of domestic production and increasing dependence on imports. They destroyed local, public and private owned enterprises in favour of increasingly deregulating private foreign owned enterprises.
The surrender of agenda-setting and intellectual and policy leadership to the western foreign policy establishment has reached the point where state leadership is unable to even conceptualize a national interest as exemplified most graphically in the recent capitulation to the European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) agenda. The Socialist Forum of Ghana asserts that the EPA cannot serve the interest of the people of Ghana. It will lead directly to major revenue loses, the collapse of local industries and worsen the unemployment situation. We strongly advise Government not to sign on to the EPA but to take firm steps to promote African economic and political integration.
In our view, wave after wave of attack on national constitutions that protect society from rapacious conduct by foreign capital and increasing irresponsible political elite that seeks to intervene irresponsibly in transactions for private gain at the expense of the public interest is what has brought Ghana to its present crisis. The collapse of public schools, public health, housing, transport and social services generally reflect inadequate investment, poor planning, inept management, corruption and a doctrinaire desire to bring the Ghanaian social sector under the direct control of foreign private capital.
Recently, the attack on working people and the poor which was unleashed after the 1966 coup appears to have been intensified by the wave of evictions and demolitions of entire communities without any effort to relocate the affected. Although there are no official statistics to back the claim, the SFG believes that the wealth gap is increasing and with it the deterioration of the conditions of women, children, the disabled and rural poor.
The social cohesion of Ghana is also being vigorously threatened by ethnic divisions promoted largely by the traditional elite and empty politicians who play the ethnic card as a means of diverting attention from the vicious rape of national resources by a parasitic class and its foreign allies. This is compounded by religious and social intolerance driven mainly by the right-wing religious establishment and others feeding off growing insecurity and ignorance in the hope of confusing the masses with false ideas and values to focus their attention on harmless bogeymen illustrated by the increasing hysterical homophobia.
In this process, the very narrow differences between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) are deliberately amplified to create the false impression that they represent the broader spectrum of ideas about the way forward for Ghana. The domination of the political space by the two parties is problematic to the extent that essentially, they all represent status quo-two different arms of the elite that is strangling working people on behalf of foreign masters. Neither articulates the concerns of the masses. Neither offers a scientific understanding of our problems and both pander to the most backward forces in society. Neither offers a programme that solves our basic problems. Indeed neither operates at the level of programmes and in government; they simply implement donor programmes with a few poorly conceived projects. Neither offers ordinary people an active role in designing the future. They all survive because of the absence of an alternate organized vehicle of the working people.
The crisis of neo-colonialism is real and deep but not insurmountable. It is the same challenge that the independence generation confronted and partially defeated. Now as then the only solution is in working peoples’ political self –organization and ability to project an alternative vision of society.
On the occasion of the 57th anniversary of Ghana’s Independence, the SFG says to all progressive forces that it is time to reconnect more directly and politically in campaigns that affect working people’s livelihood and class interest and to build alternatives for the society as a whole.
We salute the architects of our independence and make the pledge that we will continue the struggle to consolidate and expand the frontiers of national independence while working to deepen international working class solidarity.
This is a task which must be accomplished and we dare not fail.