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What's in a Drink? Class Struggle, Popular Culture and the Politics of Akpeteshie (Local Gin) in Ghana, 1930–67*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Emmanuel Akyeampong
Emmanuel Akyeampong
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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This article examines the history of akpeteshie (local gin) in Ghana from its illicit origins and widespread distillation in the 1930s to about 1967, when the Convention People's Party – seen as the ‘champion’ of the akpeteshie industry – was overthrown. Akpeteshie distillation proliferated when temperance interests succeeded in pressuring the colonial government into raising tariffs on imported liquor in 1930, just before the onset of a world-wide depression. Urban and rural workers, unable to afford expensive imported gin, became the patrons of akpeteshie. For urban workers, akpeteshie came to underpin an emerging popular culture.

Akpeteshie distillation threatened the colonial government's prior dependence on revenue from imported liquor, raised the specter of crime and disorder, compromised colonial concerns about urban space, exposed the weakness of colonial rule and eventually led the British government into the embarrassing diplomatic position of seeking an alteration of the Saint Germain Convention of 1919 that had banned commercial distillation of spirits in the African colonies.

By the 1940s, akpeteshie had emerged as an important symbol of African grievances under colonial rule. It became entwined in nationalist politics from the 1940s, and its legalization was one of the first legislative acts passed by the independent Ghanaian government. But the overwhelming African support for akpeteshie as an indigenous drink aside, the drink conjured images of class and popular protest that divided Ghanaian society and would unnerve independent African governments. As a cheap drink, akpeteshie became associated with the working-class experience, reflecting the social inequities within Ghanaian society and the undelivered promises of the independence struggle.

Type
Challenges to Authority in the Gold Coast
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , July 1996 , pp. 215 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

References

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44 These were not the only pillars of the new urban popular culture, other aspects included film and sports. But drinking- and dance-bars, with their associated paraphernalia of popular music and comic opera, were particularly relevant to the history of akpeteshie. From the 1940s, highlife bands doubled as concert parties. They staged plays theatricalizing urban life and punctuated with music, the lyrics of which underscored the themes in the play and with the actors as singers. This genre has been dubbed ‘comic opera’ by scholars, but ordinary Ghanaians prefer the term ‘concert’.

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104 PRO, CO 554/127/33522/B. T. Hoskyns-Abrahall, Nigerian Secretariat (Lagos), to Resident Minister (Accra), 9 Aug. 1943.

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108 Collins, , ‘Ghanaian highlife’, 67.Google Scholar Albert Ocran, one of the Sekondi Railwaymen who supported the CPP in its early days, emphasized the relevance of these plays in explaining the nationalist ideology to illiterates. Interview with Albert Ocran, Sekondi, 15 Aug. 1994.

109 See Akyeampong, , ‘Alcohol, social conflict and the struggle for power’, ch. 6Google Scholar, for a detailed study of popular culture and nationalist politics in Ghana. For a study of the political relevance of drinking bars in nationalist politics, see Ambler, Charles, ‘Alcohol, racial segregation and popular politics in Northern Rhodesia’, J. Afr. Hist., XXXI (1990), 295–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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