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Between Nkrumah and neoliberalism

The AIAC Podcast

Mon Mar 17 2025

Summary

The AIAC Podcast: Between Nkrumah and Neoliberalism
Hosted by Africa Is a Country
Release Date: March 17, 2025

Introduction: Setting the Historical Context

In the episode titled "Between Nkrumah and Neoliberalism," hosted by Saeed Husseini under the Africa Is a Country banner, the discussion delves deep into Ghana's political and economic evolution. The conversation is anchored around two pivotal events: the recent election of former President John Mahama and the 59th anniversary of the 1966 coup that ousted Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and a prominent Pan-African leader.

The Nkrumah Era: Ambition and Industrialization
Timestamp: [05:01]

Jeky Tano begins by highlighting the dynamic yet turbulent period under Kwame Nkrumah’s leadership. He notes, “The Nkrumah period was crammed with significant changes politically, socially, and economically” ([06:16]). Nkrumah aimed to transition Ghana from a primary commodity-based economy, dominated by exports like gold and cocoa, to a more diversified and industrialized nation. This involved establishing state monopolies in key sectors, guaranteeing prices for farmers, and investing heavily in domestic processing facilities—efforts that laid the foundation for Ghana’s industrial growth.

The 1966 Coup and Transitional Turmoil
Timestamp: [19:05]

The conversation shifts to the aftermath of Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966. Tano explains that the coup was largely driven by economic struggles and opposition from entrenched sectors who felt marginalized by Nkrumah’s state-led economic policies. He states, “the social conflict introduced by this agenda of privatization meant that the chaos would and instability would ensue” ([22:24]). The subsequent military regimes attempted to stabilize the economy through privatization, often leading to increased corruption and economic disparity.

Rawlings and the Neoliberal Shift
Timestamp: [31:48]

Tano discusses Jerry Rawlings' rise to power, emphasizing that Rawlings was a product of the ongoing crises rather than the Nkrumah model itself. He remarks, “Rawlings is a product of the Nkrumah model going into crisis” ([31:48]). Rawlings’ administration marked a significant shift towards neoliberal policies, including extensive privatization of state assets. This move was intended to attract foreign investment but resulted in widespread economic dislocation and increased inequality.

Privatization and Socio-Economic Consequences
Timestamp: [44:15]

The episode delves into the ramifications of privatization under Rawlings. Tano explains how state monopolies were dismantled, leading to job losses and weakening of traditional labor structures. He notes, “the degree of rollback and its social dislocation was immense” ([55:43]). The privatization efforts facilitated the enrichment of a new elite while exacerbating income inequality, highlighting a stark contrast from the more equitable distribution during the Nkrumah era.

Current Political Stability vs. Growing Inequality
Timestamp: [60:02]

Despite the economic challenges, Ghana has maintained a semblance of political stability. Tano points out that this stability is misleading, as it masks deep-rooted inequalities. He asserts, “the ratio of the highest paid person did not end twice the lowest paid person... has now grown to 89 to 1” ([60:16]). This significant increase in income disparity illustrates how neoliberal policies have favored the wealthy, leaving the majority of the population struggling.

The Role of Trade Unions and Social Movements
Timestamp: [67:56]

Tano criticizes the fragmentation and weakening of trade unions and social movements, which once played a pivotal role in challenging economic disparities. He states, “There's a growing critique which says that all these people belong to the same class and they are wrong” ([67:32]). The decline in organized labor power has led to a lack of cohesive social movements capable of demanding substantial economic and social reforms.

Comparison with Regional Developments in the Sahel
Timestamp: [86:52]

The discussion briefly touches upon recent political upheavals in the Sahel, noting similarities with Ghana’s struggles. Tano emphasizes that while movements in the Sahel have garnered popular support by challenging foreign influence, they often fail to present viable alternatives for local empowerment. He observes, “the agency in society that can be animated by such a process is actually being short circuited by this new government” ([88:47]).

Conclusions: Potential Paths Forward for Ghana and Africa
Timestamp: [98:11]

In concluding the episode, Tano underscores the necessity of rebuilding popular power and unified social movements to counteract the entrenched neoliberal structures. He advocates for grassroots initiatives that can harmonize diverse social and economic interests, stating, “Progressives should begin to grapple with... the nitty-gritty of the fact that our economies have a certain structure” ([76:51]). The conversation ends on a cautionary note, warning against simplistic admiration of political figures like Rawlings and Rawlings’ successors, and instead calls for a more nuanced understanding of power dynamics and a concerted effort to foster genuine societal transformation.

Notable Quotes:

Jeky Tano on Nkrumah's Industrialization Efforts:
“The Nkrumah period was crammed with significant changes politically, socially, and economically” ([06:16]).
On Privatization’s Impact:
“The degree of rollback and its social dislocation was immense” ([55:43]).
Addressing Income Inequality:
“The ratio of the highest paid person did not end twice the lowest paid person... has now grown to 89 to 1” ([60:16]).
Critique of Fragmented Trade Unions:
“There's a growing critique which says that all these people belong to the same class and they are wrong” ([67:32]).
On Rebuilding Popular Power:
“Progressives should begin to grapple with... the nitty-gritty of the fact that our economies have a certain structure” ([76:51]).

Final Thoughts

This episode of The AIAC Podcast offers a thorough analysis of Ghana’s historical and contemporary political economy. By juxtaposing the visionary but tumultuous Nkrumah era with the more stable yet inequitable neoliberal period under Rawlings and his successors, Jeky Tano provides listeners with a critical lens to evaluate the limitations and consequences of current governance models. The discussion not only sheds light on Ghana's internal dynamics but also draws parallels with broader regional challenges, emphasizing the need for unified, grassroots-driven movements to forge a more equitable and empowered future for Africa.

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Transcript

William Shorkey (0:17)

Hello and welcome to the Africa Is a Country podcast. My name is William Shorkey and you are listening to this, which is Africa is a Country's Destination for analysis on current affairs in Africa and in the world from a left and Pan African perspective. This is another special episode guest hosted by a West Africa regional editor, Saeed Husseini of the Nigerian Scam, and today he'll be interviewing Jeky Tano to explore Ghana's historical trajectory, its place within the broader West African economy, and the structural challenges facing its democracy. This discussion is anchored in two significant moments. First, the recent election of John Mahama, who returns to the presidency after previous electoral defeat, as well as the 59th anniversary of the 1966 coup that overthrew Nkrumah. These events frame the contradictions of Ghanaian politics. While the country remains a beacon of democratic stability in the region, the persistence of economic crises and environmental struggles and labor fragmentation raises pressing questions about the direction of its governance. Jake Attano, a socialist activist, researcher and development economist, brings a sharp historical and political economy lens to these questions. Together, Husseini and Tano reflect on Ghana's shift in class dynamics, the evolution of its two party system, and the broader lessons for the African left. They also touch on the Sahel's recent political upheavals in their implications for Ghana and the region. At a time when mass protest and state repression are shaping new political realities across the continent, this conversation offers a critical reflection on how Ghana's history might illuminate the possibilities and limits of progressive transformation today. Without further ado, here's Saeed and Jeky. Enjoy.

Saeed Husseini (2:51)

So today we thought we would take a break from the Nigeria centristism, if that's a word that has plagued us recently on this podcast channel, to have a conversation about a slightly saner and more stable country to our west, albeit one with its own scams. As we'll discuss as the show progresses, I'm speaking of course about our dear neighbor Ghana. I think two big events frame our conversation today. On one hand, the 24th of February that's two days before we're recording, marked the 59th anniversary of the coup that overthrew the renowned anti colonial pan African intellectual statesman Kwame Nkrumah. On the other hand, the conversation is taking place only a couple of months after the inauguration of John Mahamad, Ghana's new president, who is in fact a former president that has returned to power to replace the party that denied him his initial re election bid. Both events seem to reflect two poles of Ghanaian history. One could see on one hand, a turbulent and inspiring post colonial period marked by statesmanship, ambition, intrigue, betrayal, and on the other hand, a more stable, but maybe a bit disheartening political present marked by predictable pattern of democratic alternations and a seemingly frozen economic crisis. So is this a fair characterization of the Ghanaian story? How might an examination of Ghana's political economy help us understand its political present, including Ghana's role in ecowas, the politics of anti Galamse protests, and the future of the Ghanaian two party system? These are the kinds of questions we have in mind today. And we're very excited to be joined by a very able interlocutor to tackle these questions. None other than Comrade Jackie Tano, who is a social activist, educator and researcher and a development economist based in Accra. Comrade, we're really grateful that you've made the time to join us today. So thank you for being here.

Jeky Tano (6:16)

Yeah, well, I mean, I think in your intro you said that that period was a dynamic but turbulent period. It reminds me of what someone said, that there are decades when nothing happens and then there are days when decades happen. In other words, the Nkrumah period was crammed into the Nkrumah period where a lot of significant changes politically, socially and economically. And one of the most important aspects of that is what you just mentioned, which is the kind of concerted attempt to Break from the structures, the very narrow structures of monocultural, monocropping, primary commodity, export dependence that the colonial order had locked all of our economies in Africa into, and that there was a concerted effort in the Nkoma period to move away from that and to do so. Primarily, one of the cornerstones, you know, the key mechanisms for trying to do so, was this effort at industrialization. You're perfectly right, dude. I think that's a fair enough characterization. Now you ask to what degree that succeeded. Well, first of all, just to take a brief moment to kind of highlight a number of the changes that ensued as a result of this orientation or path that Nkrumah pursued. The first thing, of course, is that it's required as a prerequisite, the state monopoly of a domestic dimension of that same primary commodity export economy. So whether it was cocoa, there was a lot of heavy state investment in it. Farmers were given guaranteed pricing so that there's a price, a floor for, you know, of income floor for all farmers. It wasn't just the cash crops, the export crops, but food, everything, that kind of the whole agrarian structure. But its heart was of course, the foreign exchange export earning sector, which had been dominated before then by European merchant houses and so on and so forth. So a monopoly was established in terms of the investment, in terms of the buying, the internal trading, warehousing, grading, agricultural extension support, upgrade, all that kind of stuff, along with an ecosystem of research institutions and so on and so forth. Okay? And alongside that, also that monopoly allowed the fact that, you know, a steady assured supply could go into domestic processing. So industrial plants were set up to process cocoa in various stages for various purposes. Chocolate factories, cocoa, cocoa butter, cocoa oil, things like that. Okay, so that prerequisite of trade monopoly, internal trade and investment monopoly was one dimension. Then on the back of that was a regime of intervention in agriculture, where state led interventions in terms of inputs and pricing. And, you know, and so on was also. And then that's a third leg was the uptake, you know, the industrial concerns as a domestic off taker of some of the products, so that it's not everything is exported in its primary, you know, unprocessed state and so on and so forth. And a lot of it fed right back into finished production domestically and so on. So this, in a sense was the real, was the picture, a microcosm of what was attempted. Of course, there are some things which go without saying would have been necessary in that process, which is the state monopoly of finance, because you cannot have the state financing all of this. If it does not have public banking, development, banking, under national control, which are policy instruments of the government, and so on. So from that point of view, I mean, a lot of innovation took place. I mean, even your most traditional economists, like Schumpeter and so on and so forth, will always say, as we all learnt even from school in a theoretical sense, that when you have structures that are missing in an economy, when you have late development and attempts to bridge that gap, both the necessity and the room for institutional innovation is stronger, okay? And therefore, you know, words that have become fashionable now, disruption and so on and so forth, when in fact at this point in time, nothing of any great significance is being disrupted. In those days that was a fairly serious and far going disruption. Okay? So that's one dimension of it. And I think that it also meant that the overall pattern and rhythm of the economy did not depend only entirely or unduly on the external sector, on the export sector, because you have all this domestically means that domestic growth, domestic investment, domestic demand, domestic consumption, gained in importance in terms of their weight in overall growth, for example. It would also mean that their weight in overall income and therefore savings and therefore investment, all that cycle and the nexus, interconnection between all that was strengthened. So from that point of view, you could say on paper at least, that it was a progressive intervention, which was one that went against the structures that existed. From that point of view, it was innovative, it was radical in that sense, it was countercyclical, it was not going against the trend, it was bucking the trend and therefore was important. At the same time, obviously we have to say that the levels of coordination which is required institutionally, policy wise and in terms of bringing the interests of different groups, traders, farmers and so on, into greater consonants. The level of coordination that that requires, requires a degree of state and institution building that if you leave everything to the free market, you don't necessarily require. Okay? There are great advancement in a lot of some of these structures and coordination and domestic institutional capabilities, whether it's the banking sector, whether it's in local government and so on and so forth, which cannot. I think we tend to overlook some of those soft elements, soft infrastructure elements, which I think, you know, now that our region is in such chaos, we should ought to be reminded of their value. Okay? So I think that's what I mentioned. And in sourcing, let me end on two points. This aspect of the discussion. In sourcing, two things were significant once you had this element of new skills being brought into the economy, in terms of the Domestic, you know, the spectrum of domestic capabilities, new institutions being brought into play, new levels of harmonize, attempting to harmonize interest and so on and so forth. And the fact that domestic economic activity was a far more weightier aspect of national economic growth than it is today, for example, or was in the period preceding the Nkrumah period, then you have to say that the welfare levels of society. You mentioned welfare. The welfare levels of society would necessarily have to increase.

Jeky Tano (13:03)

If local consumption is necessary, first of all, to attract the kind of skills and train and stabilize a skilled workforce which can power this manufacturing and industrial transformation, it requires a great deal investment in the people who are going to do the work. If at the same time the economy depends more on the domestic population and their consumption needs to keep growing, then you can't rely on simply immiserating people driving people's consumption right to the bottom. The race to the bottom cannot, no matter what your will is. If you are true to the economic policy paradigm that you're pursuing, then in addition to investing in the skills and standards and therefore having some degree of dignity of labor and so on and so forth, and an upward trajectory in terms of skills, incomes and consumption capacity, purchasing power of the domestic population necessarily must be something that you can't ride too roughshod over. Okay, that's a big contrast to where we are today, because I think that we are in an era where. I'm not saying exploitation did not exist. Every capital process necessarily involves exploiting workers, whether we like it or not. In whose benefit, under whose control are just as important questions. But we are not dealing with that just yet. The point I'm making is that the contrast between then and now. I know we will talk about now a bit more, but. But the fact is that now we depend more on cheap labor, on deregulation and informality and so on and so forth. And to do that, you need. You need necessarily to degrade the labor. Okay, so. So that is the. So that is the difference in the economic pattern and its implication. Okay, poverty existed then. Yes, definitely. The gaps in society, the inequality in society, and the degree to which there was a relatively speaking upliftment of the working and laboring classes as a whole. I'm not saying out of benevolence or whatever, as a necessary attendant part and a logical, you know, dimension of the. Of that increment policy kind of took place. So from that point of view, you can't say that they were important changes in the economy. I've already said that. But politically and socially they were also changes as well. I mean, if you are increasing the weight of the urban classes, as well as the weight and social importance of the technological and managerial strata of the national workforce, it's a very different thing from what you have today. Okay, I remember when we were growing, when I was growing up, when I was a kid, if you were kind of, you know, banker or big trader with lots of supermarkets, I have to say, social status, you may be richer by your social status was not necessarily that much more greater than somebody who is simply an engineer working in a public sector organization has been a real reorientation in that point of view, as well as the fact that if you have a stable, relatively decently paid urban workforce growing in numbers year to year to year, its political weight also shows trade unions become of greater significance and other associational types of professional associations and so on and so forth. Their weight in national affairs and in social affairs and the leadership that their ideas and their areas of interest encompass are more decisive than today when everybody's fragmented, looking at their own little corner and, you know, trying hard, falling over themselves to prove that they're not being political about the most political things that exist. I think you would have a greater potential, you know, participation from below society, even if in cases where you had one past institute and so on, I think you had a lot of that. Whether it succeeded or not is another question. But I'm saying this is the number one. This is the orientation that prevailed. Dramatic and turbulent period. Like you actually said, it was a period of great innovation and big ambitious steps which are rooted also responding to real aspects of our reality as some of the most important aspects. And given the weight of that reality, it was necessary to be that bold and ambitious and so on. And in the process, I'm saying that there were social dynamics which also could have been very progressive. You know, the rise of the attention paid to education and skills, the growing social weight of urban workforces, professional associations, so on and so forth. I think those are. Those would be some of the most salient aspects of that period. And above all, above all, the fact that economic growth did not rely as much as it does today on weakening labor, cheapening wages, impoverishing farmers, and so on and so forth, which, whichever way our governments speak today, that is the reality. And I hope I were able to demonstrate that in the course of the conversation that is the prevailing rally today. So it is a very stark difference from then to where we are now.

Jeky Tano (22:25)

So given the degree of public investment that had gone into the Nkrumah agenda in terms of the economic structures that I mentioned earlier, and given the fact that they were important sources of growth and so on the subsequent post, Nkrumah, you know, leadership did not try to dismantle that completely, okay. What they tried to do was to diversify it. So, for example, privatize some of them, transfer some of that into their own private ownership. Okay. And also transfer some of that into foreign international Private ownership which will be the basis of a new partnership with them, greater investment from abroad, so on and so forth, because the economy was also beginning to struggle, okay? So that kind of privatization enabled both the personal and private enrichment of sections of the elite in Ghana. Enrichment from the states, but done in a legal way. Privatization is legal, okay? And also at the same time, to use that mechanism of privatization to have a rapport, more a renewal of links and ties with global capital. So it would include, you know, a deal with the imf, but also a deal with foreign multinational companies taking over some of the key strategic industries that Nkrumah had tried to develop. So, but by a lie that if you like that state catalyst based, that state led or, you know, that agenda of light and other manufacturing, state provision of key, you know, infrastructure like energy and so on and so forth, by and large, I don't think it was fundamentally dismantled, okay? But it led to a political problem for those people. It meant that the same numbers of urban workers and their associations and all their power was not directly affected by the. They were not necessarily weakened by the group. But all of a sudden you have privatization. And privatization means you have to clean up the books of enterprises, you have to lay off workers, you have to tighten, you know, you know, I mean, you have to kind of. Yeah, you are redirecting resources from the more broader public domain into more private. From that point of view, workers suffer. So the political turmoil was intense. You know, the structures that could have opposed that agenda had not been weakened in any way. And yet the new regime and its priorities directly clashed and whether I liked it or not, was directly attacked those interests as well. And that is one of the reasons for the degree of instability throughout the 1970s, especially in Ghana. Okay? Because the 1970s could have been otherwise. I mean, it's not. I don't think it's simply fortuitous that at the end of the civil war in Nigeria, there was, you know, at least for the early go on years, up until some late 90s, there was some degree of boom. It's not fortuitous. The fact is that that was on the back of the rise of global commodity prices like oil.

Jeky Tano (25:52)

Area joined at some point and so on. But you had the same thing, you know, less advanced efforts in the same direction in every single commodity that counted. International cocoa organization, international coffee organization, those were real things that existed. And every foreign power had to contend with that. That cluster of interest around which Africa and other global south primary commodity producing countries were beginning to, you know, if you like, encroach on the terms that had previously been unchallenged by Western and transnational interest and so on and so forth. So you have to ask now, if in that period cocoa was getting record prices, then it was. Gold was getting record prices and it was how come then the turmoil and the economic collapse in Ghana, and I'm saying the roots of that is precisely what I've just said before, that the social conflict that was introduced by this agenda of privatization, okay, meant that the chaos would and instability would ensue. One side or the other had to win. It couldn't. So when the people overthrew Nkrumah, in a sense, there was a continuity regime from the military rulers to the civilian government, the Second Republic, all the way to 1972, when there was a countervailing coup d'ta by others who in the first thing they did was to appease the same working classes and so on and so forth in a period when the kind of, you know, economic crisis that had tried to be resolved in the pre neoliberal free market, we had not. It hadn't resolved. So basically, I don't want to complicate the conversation too much, but I'm trying to say the underlying economic crisis was not resolved. And the political settlement kept jumping from one faction to the other without resolving the crisis, okay? And most of all, the most important factor in that crisis is that the weight of those who opposed dismantling the state sector had not. It was socially and politically undiminished. That would pose a problem for any government that will come to be given in the circumstances. And that's why we tottered along from crisis to crisis to crisis throughout the 1970s. It didn't mean that the edifice or the foundations produced by Nkrumah were thriving. On the contrary, they were getting more and more deteriorated and whittled down and distorted and corrupted. But they were in place and they were decisive. You see what I'm saying? Their capacity to block the space was there. Their capacity to move the country forward was not being enhanced. Okay, so you had a real degree of stagnation and so on and so forth. And one example of that is that, you know, given the fact, as I said, the role of state investment and state finances and so on and so forth, it kept going higher and higher without producing the results. In fact, when global prices, as Nigerians would know very well, when There was a first recession, a crash in 1979 which brought all the Nigerian boom to a juddering halt. And then there was another crash in 1982 which led us to our debt crisis and all that. But without going into those details, the fact is that in that period of the downturn which every African and third world government suffered from, Amehwa, in effect, it was a global recession anyway, so everybody kind of suffered from it anyway. In that period, for example, public investment grew. I mean, now when you have a crisis, the common sense has become that then the public should cut back an expenditure, isn't it? And balance the books. That was the opposite in those days. It was an opposite mistake. In fact, in 1978, 1979, I think public government investment in the economy was 28% capital investment. I don't mean huge. That's almost Southeast Asia standard. The fact that it wasn't in new technology and therefore, or new sectors and therefore the economic diversification and a new dynamism wasn't introduced that does not. That one, you could say is a wrong choice in terms of policy focus. The point I'm trying to make is that even when economies are in tatters, the idea that there cannot be public investment, resuscitate and regenerate and renew the path of economic revival is totally false. And in fact, in the big countries in the world, we have seen that since the global financial and economic crisis of 2008, 2009, when their governments have spent money bailing out everybody. In our case alone, we are told that, no, you are an exception, that when you are in trouble, squeeze your people more and more and more. I think we should come to the point where we refuse totally to accept that as a theoretical or even more importantly, as a practical political, you know, a reality that we have to contend with. Part of our turning at the corner of where we are today has to be to reject those kind of those falsities which are now being enshrined as some, you know, theological common sense that God given that no one can, no one can challenge. It's totally false.

Jeky Tano (33:56)

So from 1977, which is when this union government we call the union government, the anti union government campaign, became a national mass democratic campaign, okay? Or it gave room to all the recycled politicians, including some of those who had been banned and jailed for corruption or exile. Or all of them had leeway because the professional associations, the lawyers, the human rights people there, plus crucially the trade unions were on board. The trade unions were so crucial at that point in time because they were the ones who gave it a mass flavor. And they were the ones who tested the structural capacity of ordinary people. So who displayed, testing the structural capacity of people to basically stop the state, the state in its tracks. I remember when working, there was a series of power cuts which were engineered by the electrical workers, electricians, electricity workers, unions, okay? And sometimes they will leave the power on for hospitals, you know, critical civic infrastructure, and they'll turn the power off in the most powerful military backs. I mean, this is a clear statement, wow, no one dare do that today. This was a military government, no one false republican, liberal. But that, that was the stakes that was so high and so on, so forth. And this disaffection against the military attempted to perpetuate itself also seeped it from the civilian sector into the military itself, right? So the ranks and the junior officers who had been cut off from all the largest of political office and so on, began to imbibe and reflect the civic discontent that was out there, okay? And the idea that they were lumped in with their generals and bosses and their own internal oppressors as the opprobrium and target of public ridicule, opposition, anger, hatred, for some of them, it was a bit too much. And there's also something that I think all of us have to accept. Middle class people, especially middle class intelligence, those who are without money, especially like you and me perhaps, okay? A lot of us feel deeply affected and embarrassed by the chaos, the corruption, the venality of our state and institutions. We take it more personally, more viscerally than Maybe any other section of the population, you understand me? I mean, there's no time to go into the psychology of social classes. But I'm trying to say there are people who lament, you know, you would have gone to school, your colleagues from the States, from Asia, from Europe for. So there are no better, no words than you people, you know what I mean? And yet here we are sitting over in this. There are people who, who would think that, yeah, we are in this situation because of these greedy plutocrats who are, you know, whatever, and therefore they feel very strong. And I think in that element, in even the state sector, there are those who lament the question of efficiency and, you know, political interference, whether it's in the military or the civic, civic bureaucracy. You will find those elements, I'm quite sure. And you find, you know, because that's, that's why we keep seeing people who come up from the military, for example, with the coup d'etat and promising to clean up everything. It's not simply some empty talk. There's a deep impulse, I think, in that. And I think someone like Jay Rawlings was that type of character because you had young officers, you know, your Sankara types and so on and so forth in many African military and civic bureaucrats, the unelected part of the state, you know, basically, who felt the degeneration in the same way as their civic and didn't have them the freedom to act the same way. Okay? And for them, in an era of coups where the fashion of revolution and whatever changed, you could be the worst person. Idiom. Said he was a revolutionary, for example. I mean, you could be the worst person, call himself a revolutionary. You know that.

Jeky Tano (37:29)

Oh, well, terrible. That's really. I listened to that IBB book launch download. I thought that was a shocking reconstruction of history in a way that. Anyway, that was deeply boring. Anyway, so basically you had all these elements coming to me. So it's the radicalization of that middle class sentiment and those below it, the working classes and so on and so forth, which I think pushed the military to the brink. When you have such a degree of upset in society, it causes a crack in the top edifices themselves. The kind of confidence in what they're doing. Crack. Some feel we should repress people, we should shoot them down more. Others feel, no, this is the time to back up and give some concession. You see what I'm saying? The monolith that they have, it cracks. And in fact, in the case of Ghana, it did, because in 1978, the general who was head of state was overthrown in a palace school, okay? And in that process, the new leader, the new general, I mean, his deputies who took over and so on and so forth, who were all army chiefs and whatever and so on and so forth, announced that they will be now opening to civilian rules. That's how the Third Republic came into being, okay? On the mass pressure against the UNICOV idea, okay? But clearly they were. These were people hoping to recycle the old politicians. And they haven't given the old politicians the leeway backing, can retire peacefully and go back and deal with their, you know, enjoy their wealth without changing anything. The problem for them, however, was that in the military and in the civilian, everybody in the old guard who had the leadership of this anti union government thing were satisfied with that solution because now they would be in power directly, right? But for the rest of the population, the lower orders, they were not satisfied with that solution because what does that give me? Just the right to put a paper in a box every four years. That's not nearly as good as continued. And they smelled, they smelled this concession of government and they interpreted rightly as a weakness, that these are people are being weakened. So let's go after them. Okay, so you had. I'm not saying they had a clear plan of let's go after them. To go where? Which direction? I'm not saying there was such a. I'm trying to say this concession, instead of it quietening down the social table, exacerbated it.

Jeky Tano (40:55)

The election that brought the third Republican president was called Lehman Lehman to power, was the lowest ever voter turnout in the country's history. 26%. 26%. Because before that election clearly the kind of recycled politicians and their old language and their own vision of society was outwarded at best. And people were finding new ways, you know, to establish, for example, you know, all kinds of insurgent institutions from below. It didn't crystallize into a full blown agenda, but you see pockets of it in some critical strategic areas and so on, so forth. It is in that context that a section of the junior ranks and the junior officers in the military led by Rawlings revolted against the generals saying that you can't simply hand over, we are going to engage in a house cleaning exercise before you go. This is the source of Rawlings being catapulted international prominence in May, June 1979. The elections were supposed to be June 1979 and after that was the. The third republic was supposed to be inaugurated. We always tail Nigeria in these matters. You know, Your coup was January 66. We had ours in February 66. You were shifting to civilian rule in October 79 or whatever it was when Obasanjo was handing over to Shagari, which were in the same, you know, kind of at the same time kind of thing. So basically just before the election when everybody, everything is geared towards this vote of this eruption in society and an eruption which gives expression to popular participation or the makings, the possibility of possible participation and a popular intervention in national politics which no election can provide. No election result can give people the same power and level of participation and the same self determination as to what had preceded the election. So the election itself and what it promised and what it could deliver was already still born by the time it came into being. All the lower orders who were discontented identified with Rawlings as a manifestation of that total. Do you understand me? They saw him as part of that turmoil. Sorry, that's part of that upsurge and the representative of that aspect. Okay, I think the story of the Third Republic briefly tells so. Because the point I'm making leads to the conclusion that by the time the Third Republic was born, it had no power. The only way the Third Republic could have had power was to smash the trade unions, smash the military junior ranks. Do you understand? Restore all the hierarchies, privatized. It simply could not do that. In fact, their party was the successor to the Kwame Karma Party. So they tried to cloak themselves in that veneer of radical state intervention at a time when the state was in no position to do that. And that in fact, the order of the day was to have smashed back all those insurgent people to restore even profitability, you know, administration, administrative authority, managerial authority to get the economy going. You needed to settle the class question. They were absolutely in no position to do that. In fact, every time they beat a hint of the oh, no, the way the inflation has run rad, we need higher interest rates or we need devaluation. Their own party voted against their budget. Repeated. Because everybody was scared.

Jeky Tano (45:38)

And in the event, that is what seemed to happen. I use the word seemed with emphasis because Rawlings, while he was being persecuted by the new government as a symbol of all this that was going on, you know, he had a lot of popular support. At the same time, his life clearly was in danger. Okay? Lots of pressure, lots of repression, all kinds of, you know, all these security type things. And so. And the discontent in society simply would not go Away students were up in arms, trading up in the government. Every day was a crisis throughout the territory and eventually Rawlings and co take over at the end of 1981. Now even the those who took over, the composition of those tells you how non existent the state powers at the time. Rawlings had been decommissioned from the military, so he was not in the army and the armed forces. Okay? It was eight people who led this thing. None of the eight people were in the military. Half of them were civilians. Now how does such a thing happen? People who are not, you know, they go over and no one opposes them, they take over and before long, once they announced, everybody you know, you'd expect, because the coup could have been crushed within three minutes or less. So it's important to ask them why didn't people do it right, the ranks, you know, that kind of thing. And in the end, they all came out in support. So did the students, so did the trade unions and so on. So let's go back to the issue. The issue is that the social crisis had not been resolved. And it could only be resolved one way or the other. Either all this insurgents is smashed back so that the order of things is restored in some degree and the system as is can start working again. And through that you eventually get some regeneration. Okay. Classical way in which that could happen is that some section of the top of society which was being, you know, pushed back by all this, will react and bring about this counter, counter movement. Okay. We had the curious situation that there were Rawlings who brought about the counter movement. Rawlings came to power with all the support of these people, actually, which put him in a unique position to be the one to smash back this movement. Am I making sense?

Jeky Tano (57:02)

Well, well, yeah, success in this, you know, when you started off by saying, you know, we have a stable government, but it's more boring now. Well, it's more stable for some. It's more stable for some. No, yes, generational ruling class that we're talking about Israel. Yes. The guy who just left the presidency, his father was President John Muhammad, who is now president. His father was in the first Nkrumah government, Baomiya, who he defeated in the last election. His father was Muhammad's father's colleague in the first. I'm saying these are not people who arrived on the scene like rawlins did in 1979. These are old ruling class people who came from the old chief class. That's where we are back again. There's almost an element of, you know, your South Asian dynastic. You know, Indira Gandhi succeeds Nehru and you know, Bangladesh, all those people who succeed, therefore we are back to that level. But at what price of instability for the rest of us is the question that has. And all that speaks to is that, that yes, all that growth has taken place, but the grab, the share of the growth that has gone in two directions. Sorry, three directions. One is outside the country because throughout all this mining and other boom. And that one is a story across Africa. And in fact the Angad, the UN Conference on Trade has published at least two or three different research elements in the 21st century which, which show how in the period of the commodity boom, especially that's 2002 up until 2014, 2015, the amount of share surplus in Africa that went that the transnationals took unparalleled. Not even the colonial period was matched by that. But the, the local elements who participated in in absolute terms also gained a loss. Even if their relative share was smaller. They also gained a lot. That's why we have all this real estate boom, financial speculation, you know, all that kind of stuff. And therefore inequality is as rife as ever. I mean Nigeria may have in 2018 overtaken India to become the country with the biggest absolute numbers of poor people in the world. Even though India is what? 7 times the population of Nigeria? 6, 7 times the population of Nigeria. Nigeria overtook India. But Nigeria's wealth today in absolute tense is higher than ever. Last three weeks or last month the latest world inequality report data came out and in Nigeria the top 1% similar to Ghana, top 1% control about 33% of all wealth in this site. That's the same as Ghana. Now Ghana was the kind of country where. Let me give you a statistic which tells you how far the change has come. At the beginning of the Rollings period precisely because of this turmoil and stalemate and so on. So inequality was at its lowest ever. Now I'm not making a judgment as to whether that's good for society or not. I'm simply stating in mind. So if you take for example in the public sector, the areas where you know, entrenched power was because it was a state led economy at the time, the ratio of the highest income to the lowest was 1.7 to 1. Now that is no ratio, 1.71. The highest paid person did not end twice the lowest paid person.

Jeky Tano (63:37)

So Rawlings would have been a military person who brought this? Well, it was a military gun. There are a lot of civilians in and around the government. In an extreme way, okay. In, I mean, in a very prominent way, the ndc, which was Rawlings own party, succeeded. Obviously they were going to continue. But everybody else has come. And it goes back to the original problem that I posed, that it was a question of resolving who will win in society. Do you push back this insurgency and this claim for more welfare, more even if it's unprofitable for, you know, or you reimpose and Rolling succeeded in reimposing the old order and creating room for new sources of growth to emerge. Okay. And in the process, the groups that I'm saying began, began to reflect collective aspirations all got demobilized. Okay? And I don't mean it in a purely quantitative way because I don't actually accept that. So, for example, trade unions are supposed to organize working people. Now working people include those who are part time jobs or looking for jobs. You understand, there's no reason why the vast pool of informal sector people who are in and out of work or precure should not be part of the trade unions. So the fact that trade unions have failed to mobilize them, that one is the political failing of the trade unions. They can't be saying that structural adjustment led to unemployment. So Ana Meza, we can actually. The people who depend on their own autonomous, self sustaining subsistence agriculture, which you can say they're not out of the way for, are dwindling all the time. Most people in our countries, their only chance of any serious life would be any decent life would be a proper wage paying job, you know, so the working class socially and has grown, it doesn't diminish. So there's no excuse on the part of the trade unions. But I just thought I should make that point. But we need to back the point for now. The point I'm trying to make is that it's a reflection of where trade unions and students and so on in the previous period. And this would be true for Nigeria and many other countries when people fought, they always fought not simply in their own immediate sectional interest, like my pay rise and so on. Of course they did, naturally. And why not? But they also always had a vision of what society should be and how their immediate fight was related to that.

Jeky Tano (67:57)

It leaves the field clear for the political elite who are the ones with the best organization. They have honed their election, you know, hoovering machinery to a high degree and are prepared. In the era of privatization, they're a bit less afraid of showing their wealth. In fact, their wealth is a sign of their efficiency and whatever else. And they're prepared to buy votes. They're paired to regulate. They can't do everything only because there's no contestation which matches them at the level of the systemic. Everybody fights them in the macro. All the struggles you've mentioned is True, they are there, they are Israel. But they're all fragmented, macro, disconnected, localized, sectional. And the thing that will transform the landscape is the moments that they can be brought together. I'll give an example and I'm saying that possibility exists all the time. Last year, for example, before the election, there were three moments when the government was stopped entirely in its tracks. Now this was a government which, you know, had become quite insensitive to opinion and would ride roughshod. I mean, its ability to basically go for its agenda was the most ruthless, single minded you can think of. Yeah, okay, it did all that. And yet when it came to a number of things which were relatively important to it, for example Galamse, I mean the government, this government likes them, sorry, the last government, this the scale of domestic capital going into Galamsey, small scale mining, those who can't compete with the industrial transnational dominated sector. The fact that all those concessions were given to them, the fact that all this liberalization was given to them. The fact that there was a boom in the mining economy as a result of the commodity boom. So again, let's come to the realization that where we are is a result of the success, not the failure, the success of capitalism in Africa. Neoliberalism in Africa, that is the fruit we are picking now. Okay, so it is the success of all that, that other side. But if all this money is being made at and these people have levels of technology and skill where they cannot mine for the far too difficult to reach tailings of the mine in riverbeds, then why can't, you know, in the desperate unemployment that we have, people will do anything for a livelihood. Why can't we rally a few of them, get a level of some degree of low level technology, have the chiefs give us some land protected by the military and then we go and dig more and more gold and make money. Of course, why not? It makes perfect sense from that point of view. Okay, so the government license far more artisanal miners, small scale miners than ever before. I mean, I think when it came to part about 200 or so, my figures may not be exact, but there are two or so license. In its six or seven years it licensed about 3,000 more. And in his last month it's last. But last week alone it license hundreds of. Between January 2 and January 7, when it handed over power, it licenses about 300 more. But it tells you that the configuration of power, both economic and political, which is fused at the level below government in the local areas is profile it goes very far and this coexists with, let's say, the conflicts between headers and livestock and pastoral communities and let's say settled agriculture, the kind of thing we see in the middle belt in Nigeria, for example. Now we know, for example, that those conflicts have killed more people than let's say, Boko Haram. That's a fact.

Jeky Tano (76:52)

And that is an elected committee. And we can do it by direct democracy. We can remove people, no chief involved, no mp, no police chief, no district appointed. It is our own popular assembly, that we are popular parliament, people's parliament, that we are doing with asserting our control over natural resources. It will change the landscapes completely. Yeah, you know, so. And this is the kind of thing that progressives should begin to be grappling with. Okay? Not simply the big, big slogans and so on so forth, but the nitty gritty of the fact that our economies have a certain structure. Those structures give privilege to certain areas and discrete type of activities. Those activities are demobilizing and fragmenting and dividing everybody else. We have to have something concrete and specific about those activities, number one. But we also have to do so in a manner that is able to provide a basis for uniting other interests around them. And in the process of getting those interests around that how we harmonize that interest. The type of innovation that I was referring to, the Nkrumah period, will be nothing compared to what I'm saying. But then Chroma innovation, don't forget, was a top down innovation. This one will be rooted in popular initiative, coming from below and building the widest possible unities up initial. And you can work into it every type of social agenda that you have. The equality of women, for example, the empowerment of youth. You can work in ecology and environmental protection. You can do all of that in that process. Okay. Is it possible? I think it's feasible. Because you see, despite the apparent hegemony of the political parties, you know, when you mentioned that John Muhammad lost the election in 2016 by a record number of votes. And then eight years ago, the man hasn't done anything different. He's the same old man and he wins by a record number of. Is that stability of volunteers? The wild swings like that is not stability.

Jeky Tano (78:44)

The fact is that people are so disaffected and they. They move on mass to try and punish an incumbent for lack of alternative. It's the main and immediate beneficiary will be the opposite will be those who are organized to take advantage of the benefit from it. That will be the position for now. Okay. But I think we should scratch the surface a bit more and the scale of rejection of the government, the previous government actually creates problems for John Mahal. Now these are two people who are. I'm saying there's a unity around over neoliberalism for decades now. What is John Muhammad's agenda that is different. We can talk about some difference, but in reality, this is a country facing debt, okay? Therefore, its borrowing costs, its financial credibility in international capital markets is low. So its borrowing costs are going higher and higher. The main interest of the previous government is the same as the main interest of this government, which is that we will generate enough credibility so that the credit rating agencies will improve our credit rating so that our borrowing costs will go lower and we can return to borrowing cheaply abroad. That's the agenda. Now for that to happen. No, it has to be the agenda. They have not built the alternative domestic public financing institutions that Nkrumah had. They hadn't, okay? In fact, the only way you can attract foreign finance is by having high domestic interest rates. Because the foreign finance will borrow abroad cheap. It comes to make profit. Here it goes. Yeah, but that high domestic interest rate cripples genuine investment in genuine production. Production. So the idea is it's a sleight of hand. We will borrow cheaply abroad, then we'll use that to stimulate local activity despite the crippling domestic inflation. Tell me how that makes sense. It can make sense if you are an investment banker and you are getting as the previous finance minister was. And you are getting a pile of money on the bond itself. You know, I mean, because you are an issuer, you are part of the infrastructure and so on and so forth. You get your commission and so on. It can make sense if in the process of building all these, these bonds, some investor in some ppp, so called public private partnership in some major infrastructure investment in energy or roads, and so come and you are the broker between it. Yeah, it makes sense. But at whose cost? I'm saying that when you have a degree of rejection of what that previous government was, that ordinarily should create problems and be a constraint on the Mahama types to pursue the agenda that they want to pursue. But if the rejection is not analyzing those things, the narrative about White who lost is simply corruption is not the underlying long term neoliberalism which has nothing to do with corruption. Corruption can go this way or that way. Minimize or not minimize. You may be corrupt, I may be corrupt, or you know, maybe you are more supposedly God fearing than me, so by accident you are not corrupt. Even if you are not corrupt and you are sitting on an agenda aiming to bring the country back to cheap borrowing abroad, inevitably you are going to squeeze me.

Jeky Tano (82:52)

On the one hand there's that, but on the other hand it's also the fact that people still have a belief in the political process. Because most people in Africa, in Ghana, are too desperate to have individual solutions to problems. You and I talking here. Maybe if we were critically ill, between us, our own savings and our own friends and family and colleagues, we can gather some money to go abroad for some treatment, right? Or go to the most expensive private medical care in Nigeria or Ghana or vice versa. For a majority of the population, that individual option is not. Is non existent. It can only be a social and a public solution at that. You get clean water to get clean. So from that point of view, people cannot afford to lose hope in politics and social solutions and so on. So the possibility is always there. It is the subjective agency who will do what to begin to give coherence and direction in however small way. Who will do what to embed a real radical ecological agenda in the student movement. Who will do what a real welfare agenda which is equalizing in the women's movement. Who will do what to bear a real anti exploitation thing. And who will teach the trade union that to be sexist and to be, you know, so and so it's not in your benefit to be sectarian around religion and ethnicity is not that one? It takes real agency to bring back. That's the agenda that I think we face in Ghana and it's the agenda you face in Nigeria. The agenda we face all in Africa. In that sense, yes, Africa is a country because we have one agenda to fight and that is the regeneration of popular unified alternatives. But real alternatives from below. We won't get it overnight. But if we have that perspective, we can begin to make inroads in a system which despite instability, is extremely fragile. And that fragility, unfortunately threatens all of us. Okay, we look at what is happening in the Sahel, we look at the rise of xenophobia. Even South Africa, supposed to be the one with the deepest, if you like, political culture from below in Africa in recent, because of its recent fight, relatively recent fight with apartheid. Look at the xenophobia in the last election, Zuma and Co, the Zulu vote. I mean, look at the degeneration of the anc. I mean, at least in Kruma and Co, you can say they were. They did some stuff for a decade or two and then things went bad. And so they see in no time and under no pressure, look at where they went, you know, I mean, and meanwhile they're doing all this with the trading notes in their pocket. I mean something, something really new is required, you know, and it's not Tinubu or John. Mama.

Jeky Tano (92:48)

So this is all the subterranean currents that are taking place and with it is the new, you know, interventions in Africa by different foreign interests. If you replace France with Russia, how is that a step forward? I'm not saying France is better than Russia. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that imperialism is not about one country and the policy of one country. Imperialism is a system where the global powers compete. It is the competition of global powers. So it is a system. It's not one government or one president or one country. If you say I'm opposed to the United States imperialism, the only way to be properly opposed to United States imperialism is to be opposed to all imperialism because it's not the United States, it will be somebody else. So it is a system, not a choice by some one government. So you're opposed to France because of your own colonial. Fine, great. But shouldn't that lead you to oppose all imperialism rather than allow Russia to come and hold your bauxite reserves And Ukraine and Russian conflict is now being fought on your own soil with devastating consequences for community and no one. The press cannot even report it properly. What is. No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The degradation and devaluation of our expectations. The same fragmentation that I'm talking about in terms of Ghana, Nigeria and so on, where a vision that. An all encompassing, potentially unifying vision from below that can seek the transformation of society in the big sense and at the same time begins to enact it in the small, localized, more networked way domestically that is totally absent from any of the adulation that is being given to this. Okay, so I'm not in favor of Tinubu and Akufuado and Makisal and Alasan Watara saying that AES countries should be ostracized and they. And they are prepared to be the frontline shock troops for NATO to do so. I'm not in favor of that. But that in no way suggests that the AES path is a path to popular power and democracy in their own countries, let alone a model that it will unite the democratic aspirations of increasing numbers of West African citizens is not true. For having come as far as we have come with all the experimentation and the costliness of that experiment implementation. If in 2025 we are celebrating something that would have found unacceptable in 1983, which is when Sankara came to power, did we go forward or do we come back is a pale imitation of Sankara then? I don't think that in 2025, because in. If Sankara was accepted acceptable in 83, it doesn't mean he ought to be acceptable in 2025 if that was the same model that he's bringing. Right?