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The Fallacy Of Britain
Leaving Huge Sums Of Money For Kwame
Nkrumah’s Government
By Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, Ph.D
July 03, 2015
Introduction.
There is a fallacy being spewed by naïve
individuals and functional illiterates that
the British colonial government left huge
sums of money for Kwame Nkrumah, which he
wasted. Often some of these Nkrumah’s haters
cite figures from cynical sources on the
internet as their reference point. Sadly,
their abhorrence of Nkrumah, and by
extension the electorate, makes it
impossible for them to conceive the fact
that the African-centered fiscal policies of
the Kwame Nkrumah internal self-government
generated the revenue for the Gold Coast,
part of which was used to finance the
Five-Year Development Plan from 1951 to
1955. As this discourse will show, whatever
money that was “left” at the time of Ghana’s
independence was, in fact, Nkrumah’s
internal self-government’s creation from
1951 to 1956. But in order to dismiss the
notion as baseless that the British colonial
government left huge sums of money for Kwame
Nkrumah, it will be worth the efforts to
briefly interrogate the rudiments of
colonialism.
Colonialism.
Colonialism was a racist as well as evil
system by which the metropolis (such as
Britain) bonded its colonies to itself by
political ties with the primary aim of
promoting Britain’s own economic interest.
Thus the dominant reason for the scramble
and partitioning of Africa at the Berlin
Conference in 1884-85 was for economic
exploitation. The three main features for
the colonization of Africa as the then
Premier of France, Jules Ferry, articulated
in 1885 were: 1.) to have free access to raw
materials of the colonies; 2) to have ready
made markets for the sale of manufactured
goods of the colonizing countries, and 3) to
use the colonies as fields for investment of
surplus capital. Rooted in neo-mercantilism,
the European monarchies and their private
deputized agents confined themselves to
grabbing territories outside Europe “on such
lines as would attract the most possible
precious metals to” themselves. In so doing,
those agents seized and/or captured lands
rich in minerals resources, from the
Americas to India. In the case of the Gold
Coast, the British passed enactments (e.g.,
“The Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890) that
allowed the Crown to cease lands through
dubious treaties, grants, usages, and other
means. Thus, the Act of 1890 allowed the
British monarchy and its agents to secure
“direct or indirect ownership, control and
possession of the land”. In short order,
“The Act” led to extortions and forced
concessions, control, and exploitation of
rich mineral resources. From the Gold Coast,
the British exported the minerals and other
resources to feed British industries (mills
and other industrial plants), then
exported back to the Gold Coast finished
goods and products to sell to the People of
the Gold Coast (Kwame Nkrumah, “Towards
Colonial Freedom”). This method of trade led
to a serious “imbalance of trade,” whereby
more monies and resources were siphoned out
of the Gold Coast as long as the Gold Coast
remained a British "colony", than were
invested in the Gold Coast for the benefit
of its Peoples.
Even the limited infrastructure such as the
railway lines in the Gold Coast (starting
from Sekondi in 1898 reaching Tarkwa in
1901, Obuasi in 1902 and ending in Kumasi in
1903) were laid down to transport minerals
and timber from areas of production to
Takoradi harbour. Social services, such as
the Ridge Hospital was built to cater for
the European expatriates in Accra. And the
scanty health centers in other areas like
the mining communities and Sekondi-Takoradi
harbor vicinity were set up to facilitate
exploitation. In other words, social
services were put in place for Africans
whose labor was directly producing surplus
for export to the metropolis. Even so, a
rubber plantation at Fisher (named after the
British settler-owner Holland-Fischer) in
East Akyem Abuakwa, where bundles of
processed raw rubber were sent weekly to
Takoradi for export to England, had no
health center, school, public lavatory and
other basic amenities. (The rubber
plantation is about two miles away from my
hometown Ettokrom). The underlying
“exploitation without responsibility” thrust
of the British colonialism can be seen when,
in 1943, forty-one Africans were killed in
the Obuasi gold mine disaster without
adequate compensation; as it happened, “the
capitalist offered only 3 pounds to the
dependents of each of these men as
compensation” (Walter Rodney, “How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa”).
In the Gold Coast, the European trading
companies, notably UAC, Cadbury and Fry,
John Holt, CFOA, SCOA, A.G. Leventis, G.B
Ollivant exploited the Africans by
controlling both the price paid for farmers’
cocoa beans and the price of imported goods
from Europe (Walter Rodney). The price of
imported goods from Europe either doubled or
tripled. Profits accruing from this
one-sided export and import trade were
retained by Britain. It was for this and
other reasons that the British Colonial
Government suppressed and/or criminalized
indigenous productions. For example, the
colonial government criminalized the locally
distilled gin (akpeteshi) by characterizing
it “illicit gin.” At Kwabeng in Akyem
Abuakwa, a man in the 1930s, our elders told
us, was arrested by the colonial police and
prosecuted at the colonial court in
Koforidua for making a bicycle with bamboo
sticks.
As well, to suggest that the Britain left
huge sums of money for Nkrumah’s government
meant that the British Government
contributed to the expenditure of the
British Colonial Government. This is also a
fallacy. In the Gold Coast colony, as
elsewhere, the British colonial government
raised its own money from various forms of
taxes and revenues (such as house/property
tax, poll/head tax and income tax) imposed
on the exploited African workers, farmers
and others for the maintenance of the
colonial administration, (including the
Provincial and District Commissioners and
their civil servants). Otherwise, why would
Ofori Atta I, during the WWI, give “eloquent
proof of his loyalty to the Empire” by
“contributing large sums of money to cover
the cost of an aeroplane” (Jarle Simensen,
“Commoners, Chiefs, and Colonial Government,
British Policy, and Local Policies in Akim
Abuakwa, Ghana, Under Colonial Rule”). In
addition to recruiting soldiers, and as part
of its commitment to the British “World War
II Fund,” the Akyem Abuakwa State Council
generated revenue from cocoa export to
finance the Akyem Abuakwa contingent of the
British Volunteer Royal Force put together
to repel the Italian military occupation in
East Africa (Kwame Botwe-Asamoah, “Kwame
Nkrumah’s Politico-Cultural Thought and
Policies”). Also, the Asante “chiefs” made
financial contributions toward three British
warplanes. For his part, “the Chief of
Adanse alone gave ?1,000, 00 toward a third
aeroplane that Ashanti contributed as its
gifts for the prosecution of the war” (K. A.
Busia, “The Position of the Chief in the
Modern Political System of Ashanti”).
The collapse of the British Economy after
Second World War.
In the aftermath of the Second World War,
the British economy collapsed for several
reasons. First, because its industrial
plants were entirely converted to war
production, and partly due to the severe
destruction caused by the war, Britain was
unable to produce enough goods for its
citizens. In this case, Britain imported
more goods than they could pay for with
exports. Second, war time needs also led to
huge losses of merchant shipping to
submarines. Third, the destruction created
the need to borrow loans for massive house
building after the war. Fourth, because of
the destruction of factories and machines,
Britain lost much of its productive
capacity, which resulted in accumulation of
massive external debts—particularly to the
USA. Fifth, due to the conscription for the
war, massive unemployment affected
socio-economic life in Britain. As such,
recruitment and training of workers were
disrupted, thereby having a long-term
adverse effects on the quality of British
workmanship and management. Finally, war
time efforts also had an adverse effect on
Britain’s balance of trade, leading to
inflation. It was because of these and other
devastations of the war in other European
countries that led to the Bretton Woods
Conference in 1944 (see W. K. Hancock, and
M. G. Gowing, “British War Economy” and
Michael J. Hogan, “The Marshal Plan:
America, Britain and the reconstruction of
Western Europe 1947-1952”).
Therefore the British colonial government in
the Gold Coast (now the Republic of Ghana)
was not a philanthropic organization to have
invested in the raw materials (cocoa, gold,
diamonds, manganese, timber and others) and
returned the profits to the Gold Coast, let
alone leaving huge surpluses for Kwame
Nkrumah to “waste.”
The 1951-1955 Kwame Nkrumah Fiscal Policies
and Five Year Development Plan.
In his address on the eve of Ghana’s
independence, Nkrumah pointed out that “when
spending ?124 million during the course of
the” Five Year Development Plan, the CPP
internal self-government “had received ?1 ½
million in aid from Colonial Development and
Welfare Funds. It was not a large
proposition and we had in return made our
contribution to the gold and dollar
resources of the sterling.” He illuminated:
“The Gold Coast has contributed, on an
average, 25% of the net dollar earnings of
the British colonial territories, and,
taking into account our contribution of
around ?9 million a year in gold, in the
five years from 1951 to 1955 in which
the CPP have been in power, the Gold Coast
contributed a net positive balance of ?150
million to the gold and dollar reserves of
the sterling area. It will be seen
therefore, that though the Gold Coast is
small and, by Western standards, not a very
wealthy country, it has made a significant
contribution to maintaining the stability of
the sterling area.” (Kwame Nkrumah, “I Speak
of Freedom”).
At the time of Ghana’s independence,
“Nkrumah had left $500 million of reserves,
accumulated during the colonial period (from
1951 to 1956), in long-term low interest
British securities” (Richard D. Mahoney,
“J.F.K. Ordeal in African”). A major portion
of these reserves resulted from the Kwame
Nkrumah internal self-government’s
nationalization of the cocoa industry in the
Gold Coast Cocoa Marketing Board (GCCMB)
Ordinance (Amendment) of 1951, thereby
making “cocoa revenue [a] common national
property.” It should be noted that in
reaction to the 1951 Gold Coast Cocoa
Marketing Board Amendment, Dr. J. B. Danquah
vehemently opposed the nationalization,
saying that “funds of the GCCMB were not
‘profits’ accruing to government” (Kwame
Ninsin, “The Nkrumah Government and the
Opposition on the Nation State: Unity vs.
Fragmentation”). (Interestingly, the British
Labour Governments of 1945–1951 enacted a
political program based on John Keynes’s
economic theory of collectivism, comprising
nationalization of industries and state
direction of the economy). But “this great
source of productive investment ($500
million) was unavailable (to Nkrumah’s
post-independence government) in 1959”
(Mahoney, “J.F.K. Ordeal in African”).
The above notwithstanding, the CPP
government maintained a budget surplus and a
positive balance of external trade from 1951
to 1955. In 1953-54, for example, 10% of the
gross national product was saved. Thus “the
Government put aside for public development
?1 out of every ?10 worth of wealth
produced.” During the same period, “the
corresponding figure for public saving in
the United Kingdom was just over 3% of the
gross national product,” while that of “the
United States was just under 2%” (Nkrumah,
“I Speak of Freedom”).
By its judicious fiscal policies between
1951 and 1955, Nkrumah’s internal-self
government raised the national income from
?20 million to ?65 million per annum, while
expenditure rose from ?14 million to ?52
million. Besides, the government redeemed
its external debts, whilst the country’s
assets from all sources amounted to nearly
?100 million by 1955 (Nkrumah, “I Speak of
Freedom,”). From these investments and
savings (including dividends derived from
the mining industry between 1952 to 1955),
Nkrumah’s internal self-government designed
its Five Year Development Plan and embarked
on developmental projects (without outside
loans). They included: compulsory elementary
school education, construction of secondary
schools, teacher training colleges,
technical institutes (all under the
Accelerated Development Plan for Education),
hospitals, nursing and midwifery schools,
public health program and centres, roads and
railways, the Adomi Bridge, Tema Harbour,
tarring of Accra to Kumasi and Accra to
Takoradi roads, Kumase College of Technology
and the present University of Ghana campus.
For example, attendance of the teacher
training colleges, nursing and midwifery
schools, Kumasi College of Technology (now
KNUST) and the University of the Gold Coast
were free with stipend.
(As a child in 1952, I saw the conversion of
the feeder road from Accra to Kumase via
Ettokrom to a tarred road covered with
bitumen for the first time; and, my age
group had fun stepping on the freshly sticky
bitumen in the evenings).
Prof. Adu Boahen authenticated the Nkrumah
internal self-government’s outstanding
achievements in the 1950s in Basil
Davidson’s documentary, “The Rise of African
Independence,” when he said: “The 1950s, to
me, were the most important, the most
fascinating period, the period of
independence...... This was a period when
far more was achieved between 1951 and 1954;
[I] saw a pace of development in this
country, which has never [been] seen.”
But the exceptional pace of development
Prof. Adu Boahen spoke about did not only
result from developmental and planned
economy, but it was also due to Nkrumah’s
philosophy of self-determination and
self-reliance (by taking over the country’s
natural resources). As a matter of fact,
Nkrumah’s holistic achievement (in the areas
of educational, socio-economic and
industrial developments) has been recorded
as one of the fastest in a post-colonial
history. Sad to say that these principles of
self-determination, self-reliance and
human-centered policies are what have been
lacking in Ghana’s public policies since the
CIA sponsored military coup of February 24,
1966.
As the foregoing discourse has elucidated,
the $500.00 million or its equivalent in the
British sterling in the British reserves at
the time of Ghana’s independence was the
making of the Kwame Nkrumah internal
self-government from 1951 to 1956.
(We should bear in mind that Kwame Nkrumah
surrounded himself with some of the economic
giants at the time as his advisors; they
included Sir Arthur Lewis, Nobel Memorial
Prize in Economics and the Cambridge
economist, Prof. Nicholas Kaldor.)
In this respect, the claim of huge sums of
money the British left for Kwame Nkrumah’s
post-independence regime is a fallacy and
not supported by historical records or any
economic fact.
June 30, 2015.
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