Now 50, Ghana looks back with pride and pain

Michelle Faul

ACCRA, Ghana — Ghana’s president pleaded with young Africans not to attempt dangerous and illegal journeys to the West and instead stay home to help develop a continent still struggling 50 years after his country became the first sub-Saharan African nation to break from Europe.

In dwelling on the aspirations and desperation of young Africans in his March 6 Independence Day speech, President John Kufuor squarely faced the sense of disappointment that has haunted celebrations that earlier featured a laser show and an actor reliving the emotional moment 50 years ago when the late independence leader Kwame Nkrumah declared Ghana “free forever.”

“I make a plea to the youth of Ghana and Africa. Your continent and its nations need your energy, your dynamism, your creativity and above all your dreams,” Kufuor said, warning them against “perilous journeys across the Sahara desert and in flimsy boats on raging oceans.”

Last year saw an increase in immigrants going by sea, some in the flimsiest of fishing canoes, from West Africa to Spain’s Canary Islands, a gateway to Europe. About 31,000 reached the Canaries in 2006 — five times as many as in 2005. Many, though, died during the passage.

The government of this country of 22 million has been preoccupied not only by how to stop young people from leaving, but by how to lure home the more than 5 million Ghanaians living abroad, mostly in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States.

Ghana’s Ministry of Tourism and Diaspora Relations says the U.S. has more Ghanaian doctors than Ghana and Britain has more Ghanaian nurses. The ministry says the latest hemorrhage consists of teachers, most headed to South Africa.

Kufuor said he understood why so many were leaving a continent plagued by poverty, conflict, disease and poor governance. But he said Africa was making progress.

Those who stayed, Kufuor said, “will find that what we achieve together here will be far more fulfilling and satisfying than anything you can do elsewhere in the world.”

Kufuor, though, missed his chance to address young people directly. He failed to show up as scheduled earlier last Tuesday at a park where a young people’s independence celebration was held. No explanation for Kufuor’s absence was made.

Over the past 50 years, Ghana has been mired in political repression, military dictatorship and poverty, as have many of the nations that followed it to independence. Hopes were raised in 2000, though, when Ghana saw its first peaceful and democratic changeover of government.

“To realize Nkrumah’s dream, we need to be constantly asking the question: ‘Are we really free?’” said Nicole Amateifio, a university student who joined Independence Day celebrations outside Nkrumah’s mausoleum. “Fifty years ago we got freedom and independence, but we are still not really deciding the issues for ourselves. I still think there’s too much influence on our policies from abroad.”

Nkrumah, independent Ghana’s first leader, dreamed of pan-African power that would free blacks from reliance on whites.

Today, Kufuor would be happy to see the country leap the gap from poor to middle class, while the urban poor dream of a steady job and coming home to running water and electric lights. The gap between hopes and reality is felt across the continent.

Modern-day Ghana was part of the Gold Coast that soon became the Slave Coast as Portuguese and Danes set up trading posts there in the 1400s.

Britain gradually colonized what became its Gold Coast colony in the 1800s, putting down successive rebellions until finally defeating the Ashanti kingdom in 1902.

When Nkrumah began pressing for independence, Britain was demoralized by its loss of the Suez Canal and gave in without a fight.

It was just the first gust in what British leader Harold MacMillan called the “wind of change” that saw dozens of African nations freed from British, French, Portuguese and Spanish colonizers over the following two decades.

Nkrumah embarked on massive industrialization, opening numerous state-owned factories. He also introduced free education and health care.

But his projects and widespread corruption nearly bankrupted the nation and, facing opposition, he became paranoid and dictatorial, imprisoning opponents. He declared Ghana a one-party state, arguing political pluralism divided the populace on tribal lines.

In 1966 he was overthrown in a military coup. Nkrumah died in exile in Romania in 1972. His body was flown home to be buried in his home village, and in 1992 has was reburied with military honors in the capital, at the park where he declared Ghana’s independence from Britain.

After the coup that toppled Nkrumah, Ghanaians found the soldiers no better governors than the politicians. By the 1980s, savvy visitors to Ghana brought along everything they needed, including toilet paper, knowing little would be on the markets here.

Democracy was restored by Jerry Rawlings, the instigator of two coups in 1979 and 1981, who organized and won elections in 1992 and again in 1996 when he defeated Kufuor. Limited by the constitution to two terms, he handed power over to Kufuor, victor of the 2000 polls.

Rawlings liberalized the economy and a painfully slow but gradual improvement ensued.

According to the World Bank, the number of Ghanaians living below the poverty line has dropped from more than half the population in 1990 to about 37 percent today.

(Associated Press)