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The Youngmen and the Porcupine: Class, Nationalism and Asante's Struggle for Self-determination, 1954–57

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Jean Marie Allman
Jean Marie Allman
Affiliation:
University of Missouri
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Extract

This article examines the origins, background, composition and policies of the National Liberation Movement, a mass political organization founded in Asante in September, 1954. The central aim of the NLM was to advance Asante claims for self-determination and to oppose the CPP in their advocacy of a constitutional settlement with the British colonial government–a settlement that would bring about a unitary government in an independent Gold Coast [Ghana]. The analysis developed here places the ‘youngmen’ of Asante, the nkwankwaa, at the centre of these events. It is argued that this somewhat enigmatic group was the catalyst behind the formation of the NLM and the resurrection of Asante nationalism that it represented. The nkwankwaa forged a dynamic popular front of resistance in Asante to what they termed the ‘black imperialism’ of Nkrumah and the CPP. In exploring the pivotal role of the nkwankwaa in the rebirth and reconstruction of Asante nationalism, the discussion addresses the legacies of indirect rule in Asante, the importance of cocoa, the development of class, and the ambiguous role of Asante's political intelligentsia. Most crucially, it is suggested that the political development of the NLM turned upon the struggle within Asante between the nkwankwaa and the Asantehene (backed by the chiefs and Asante's political intelligentsia) over the very definition of ‘nation’ and of ‘self-determination’. Thus, the article highlights the historical conflicts and contradictions within Asante society–contradictions which were softened by but not subsumed within Asante nationalism, and conflicts which were distorted, but not overshadowed, by the resilience of Asante Kotoko in the face of the centralized state. The reasons for the tenacity of Asante nationalism lay not in the struggle between Asante and what was to become the Ghanaian state, but in the unresolved struggles within Asante society.

Type
Politics in the Late Colonial Period
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , July 1990 , pp. 263 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 This article, a version of which was presented at the 1988 meeting of the African Studies Association in Chicago, is based on research carried out in Ghana and Great Britain under the auspices of a 1983–4 Fulbright—Hays Dissertation Year Fellowship and a 1988 Grant-in-Aid from the American Council of Learned Societies. I would like to thank Ivor Wilks, Basil Davidson, Tom McCaskie, John Rowe, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod and David Roediger for their suggestions and comments on my broader and more lengthy examination of the NLM. See Allman, J., ‘The National Liberation Movement and the Asante struggle for self-determination, 1954–1957’ (Ph.D. thesis, Northwestern University, 1987).Google Scholar

2 For detailed descriptions of the inauguration, see Pioneer, 20 September 1954 and Daily Graphic, 20 September 1954.

3 See, for example, Amamoo, B., The New Ghana (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Apter, D., Ghana in Transition (Princeton, 1972)Google Scholar; Austin, D., Politics in Ghana, 1946–1960 (London, 1964)Google Scholar; Bing, G., Reap the Whirlwind: An Account of Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana from 1950–1966 (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Bourret, F. M., Ghana: The Road to Independence,1919–1957 (London,1960)Google Scholar; Bretton, H., The Rise and Fall of Kwame Nkrumah (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

4 While it would be impossible to offer a full listing of works on pre-colonial Asante, a representative sampling might include: Arhin, K., ‘Rank and wealth among the Akan’, Africa, LIII, i (1983), 2–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., ‘Peasants in nineteenth-century Asante’, Current Anthropology, XXIV, iv (1983), 471–80; Dumett, R., ‘The rubber trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the nineteenth century: African innovation and market responsiveness’, J. Afr. Hist., XII, i (1971), 79–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewin, T., Asante Before the British: The Prempean Years,1875–1900 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1978)Google Scholar; McCaskie, T. C., ‘Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history (to the close of the nineteenth century)’, Africa, LIII, i (1983), 23–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem., ‘Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history (the twentieth century)’, Africa, LVI, i (1986), 3–23 and idem., ‘Ahyiamu—“A Place of Meeting”: an essay on process and event in the history of the Asante State’, J.Afr.Hist., XXV, ii (1984), 169–88; Rattray, R. S., Ashanti Law and Constitution (New York, 1969Google Scholar; 1st edition, London, 1911); Schildkrout, E. (ed.), The Golden Stool: Studies of the Asante Center and Periphery, LXV, i of the Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Tordoff, W., Ashanti Under the Prempehs,1888–1935 (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Wilks, I., Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge, 1975)Google Scholar; idem., ‘Dissidence in Asante politics: two tracts from the late nineteenth century’, in I. Abu-Lughod (ed.), African Themes: Northwestern University Studies in Honor of Gwendolyn Carter (Evanston, 1975), 47–63 and idem., ‘The Golden Stool and the Elephant Tail: an essay on wealth in Asante’, in Dalton, G. (ed.), Research in Economic Anthropology, 11 (1970), 1–36.Google Scholar See, also, Wilks, I. and McCaskie, T. (eds.), Asantesem: Bulletin of the Asante Collective Biography Project, I–XI (1975–1979).Google Scholar

5 Coast, Gold, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Representational and Electoral Reform [Chairman: Van Lare] (Accra, 1953).Google Scholar

6 See Gold Coast, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 4–17 November 1953, passim.

7 Austin, , Politics, 201Google Scholar. See also, Pioneer, 8 May 1954 for an account of local CPP officers’ discontent over Nkrumah's appointing of candidates.

8 As Nkrumah wrote, ‘I called these people “rebels”. Firm action had to be taken. It was vital that the Party should not be allowed to become disorganised or to be weakened by the split that this would ultimately bring about’: Nkrumah, K., Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (London, 1957), 208.Google Scholar

9 For the debates surrounding the passage of the Cocoa Duty and Development Funds (Amendment) Bill, see Gold Coast, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 12–13 August 1954. In 1953–54, the producer price per ton of cocoa stood at £134.40, while the average selling price obtained on the world market was £358.70. See Beckman, B., ‘Government policy and the distribution of cocoa income in Ghana, 1951–56’, Cocoa Economic and Research Conference, Proceedings (Legon, 1973), 285.Google Scholar

10 Baffoe, E. Y., ‘Cocoa price agitation’ (Kumase, 1954).Google Scholar Copies of this leaflet and others were given to the author by Osei Assibey Mensah. They have been placed on deposit in the Melville J. Herskovits Memorial Library, Northwestern University.

11 Pioneer, 4 September 1954.

12 For a summary of national integration theory, see Geertz, C., ‘The integrative revolution: primordial sentiments and civil politics in the new states’, in Geertz, (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New York, 1963), 109–30Google Scholar. See also, Apter, Ghana; idem., ‘Ghana’, in Coleman, J. S. and Rosberg, C. (eds.), Political Parties and National Integration (Berkeley, 1965), 259–315Google Scholar; idem., ‘The role of traditionalism in the political modernization of Ghana and Uganda’, World Politics, XIII (1960), 45–68; idem., ‘Some reflections on the role of a political opposition in new nations’, Comparative, Studies in Society and Hist., IV (1961), 154–68; Austin, Politics; idem., ‘Opposition in Ghana: 1947–1967’, Government and Opposition, II, IV (1967), 539–55.

13 See, especially, Fitch, B. and Oppenheimer, M., Ghana: End of an Illusion (New York, 1966), 59–60.Google Scholar

14 See Rathbone, R., ‘Businessmen and politics: party struggle in Ghana, 1949–1957’, J. Development Studies, IX, iii (1973), 390–401Google Scholar. See also Rathbone, , ‘Opposition in Ghana: the National Liberation Movement’, Political Opposition in the New African States (University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Collected Seminar Paper Series, No. IV), 29–53Google Scholar; idem., ‘Politics and factionalism in Ghana’, Current History, lx, ccclv (March, 1971), 164–7; idem., ‘The transfer of power in Ghana, 1945–1957’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1968).

15 The etymology of the term ‘nkwankwaa’ is somewhat murky. Its root is undoubtedly ‘nkoa’ which can be translated as ‘subject’ or ‘commoner’. But as Busia noted, nkwankwaa was often used synonymously with mmerante (literally, ‘young men’). Clearly, nkwankwaa has come to have a very specific meaning—much more limited than ‘commoner’, and transcending, in many cases, the chronological or generational designation of mmerante. (During the 1950s, the youngmen active in the NLM ranged in age from twenty to fifty.) See Tordoff, Ashanti, 374 ff. and Busia, K. A., The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti (London, 1951), 10Google Scholar ff. In reference to the nineteenth century, Wilks defines nkwankwaa as ‘literally “youngmen” and sometimes translated as “commoner”’. Wilks, , Asante, 728.Google Scholar

16 Wilks, , Asante, 535.Google Scholar

17 Ibid. 535–9 and 710–11.

18 Ibid. 535. Unfortunately, more precise data on the early nkwankwaa are not available. As Wilks points out, ‘The leaders…in the early 1880's, as is appropriate to a movement which although popular and mass-based had necessarily to be organized in secrecy, are not identified in contemporary reports’ (p. 535). Thus, it is difficult not only to pinpoint the nkwankwaa's origins in time but to examine their specific social and economic grievances.

19 Ibid. 530.

20 For a brief description of the Council or kwasafohyiamu, see Wilks, , Asante, 540.Google Scholar For additional interpretations of the tumultuous events of 1880–4, see Lewin, , Asante, 69–76 and 115–16Google Scholar, and McCaskie, , ‘Ahyiamu’, 169–89.Google Scholar

21 Wilks, , Asante, 710.Google Scholar

22 Great Britain, Colonial Reports, Ashanti, 1923–4, cited in Tordoff, , Ashanti, 204.Google Scholar

23 Tordoff, , Ashanti, 375–82.Google Scholar

24 Ibid. 268.

25 Tordoff, , Ashanti, 365–9.Google Scholar

26 Asante Confederacy Council, Minutes of the Second Session, 23 January 1936.

27 For discussions of the role of the Nkwankwaahene, see Busia, , Position, 10Google Scholar and Tordoff, , Ashanti, 373–4 and 383.Google Scholar

28 Two years before the AYA was founded, Fortes was in Asante completing his ‘Ashanti Social Survey’. He observed that, despite the formal prohibition of the nkwankwaa ten years earlier, youngmen's associations and self-help groups (modeled on the nkwankwaa organizations) continued to give expression to the ‘opinions of commoners’. See Fortes, M., ‘The Ashanti Social Survey: a preliminary report’, The Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, VI (1948), 26–8Google Scholar and esp. 26 ff.

29 It is interesting to note that the four AYA members who played the most pivotal roles in the founding of the NLM—Kusi Ampofu, Sam Boateng, K. A. M. Gyimah and Osei Assibey-Mensah—were all journalists by trade.

30 This is not to suggest that in the Asante of the 1950s there were four neatly packaged social classes or groups—the chiefs, the asikafo, the nkwankwaa and the ahiafo. The categories were not mutually exclusive, particularly with reference to the chiefs and the ‘big men’ or asikafo. Many chiefs, particularly the Kumase Divisional Chiefs (nsafohene), were wealthy landowners with an economic base in cocoa, transport and trading. At the same time, many of the asikafo aspired to traditional office and much of their wealth and power depended on maintaining a close relationship with, and courting the favours of, the traditional ruling powers. In an article dealing with wealth and political power in the nineteenth century, but with applicability to the twentieth century, Wilks notes that ‘the analytically distinct categories of the office holders (amansohwefo) and the wealthy (asikafo) are, in terms of actual membership, largely overlapping ones; that is, office holders became wealthy through the exercise of their office, and persons of wealth acquired office through the use of their money’. Wilks, , ‘The Golden Stool’, 17Google Scholar and passim.

31 This is a paraphrasing of Nkrumah's famous statement, ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom, and all things will be added unto you’. Pioneer, 5 March 1949. See also Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 25.

32 As Dennis Austin so perceptively argued twenty-five years ago, ‘those who saw the conflict that was arising between the farmers and the government as one affecting the rights and interests of Ashanti, were also ready to see the chiefs as still the most potent symbol of Ashanti unity’. See Austin, , Politics, 259.Google Scholar

33 Pioneer, 6 September 1954.

34 West Africa, 11 December 1954, 1161. This article contains a brief biography of Bafuor Akoto.

35 Kumase State Council, Minutes, 11 October 1954.

36 See Daily Graphic, 30 October 1954 and 6 November 1954. See also Public Record Office, Colonial Office [hereafter, PRO, CO.] 554/804: ‘A Resolution by the Asanteman Council Praying for a Federal Constitution for the Gold Coast’, dd. Kumase, 21 October 1954.

37 Having experienced considerable power under the indirect rule system of the 1930s and 1940s, the chiefs foresaw their authority and their power being increasingly undermined by the centralization strategies of the CPP, the creation of local councils to assume the duties and functions of the old Native Authorities and the refusal of the CPP to incorporate a second, Upper House into the independence-bound parliament. As Arhin writes, ‘they regarded Nkrumah and his party as parvenus, usurpers of power from the legitimate heirs to the British’. See Arhin, K., ‘Chieftancy under Kwame Nkrumah’, paper presented at the Symposium on the Life and Work of Kwame Nkrumah, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana (Legon, 27 05–1 06, 1985), 5.Google Scholar

38 As Richard Wright so eloquently observed of J. B. Danquah — the personification of the old guard: ‘He was of the old school. One did not speak for the masses; one told them what to do’. See Wright, R., Black Power (New York, 1954), 221.Google Scholar

39 PRO, CO. 554/1276: File Minute, dd. 17 May 1955.

40 Cited in Rooney, D., Sir Charles Arden-Clarke (London, 1982), 159.Google Scholar

41 The ‘Ashanti Zone Internal Security Schemes’ were authored by the Chief Regional Officer in Asante. All copies of the ‘Schemes’ were to be destroyed by fire immediately after they were read and digested by district officers and members of the Ashanti Zone Intelligence Committee consisting of representatives of the colonial administration in Asante, the Police and the Army. Fortunately, one of the ‘Schemes’ survived—No. IV, dated February, 1957. That ‘Scheme’ suggests that the first concerted security plans were developed in 1954, then updated in 1955 and 1956, to deal with the threat posed to security by the NLM. The ‘Schemes’ included detailed information on intelligence gathering and on evacuation plans, noting that in the event of ‘civil war or guerrilla war’ the scheme would be superseded by a central plan devised in Accra. See National Archives of Ghana, Kumase, Regional Office Administration/2842: ‘Ashanti Zone Internal Security Scheme’, dd. Kumase, February, 1957.

42 Pioneer, 23 March 1955; West Africa, 26 March 1955, 279.

43 J. Allman, Field Notes: interview with K. A. M. Gyimah (FN/9/1), dd. Manhyia, Kumase, 20 July 1984, 73.

44 The Action Groupers were formed in October, 1954, shortly after the murder of the Movement's Propaganda Secretary, E. Y. Baffoe, by a member of the CPP. Three youngmen—Sam Boateng, Frank Tawiah, and Kwaku Danso (a.k.a. ‘Burning Spear’)—were instrumental in organizing the group. It was first led by Fred Sarpong, a journalist, but after he became involved in publishing the NLM's newspaper, the Liberator, the Groupers were taken over by Alex Osei. See Allman, Field Notes: interview with Sam Boateng (FN/6/1), dd. Adum, Kumase, 3 July 1984, 39–40 and interview with Alex Osei (FN/3/1), dd. Asante New Town, Kumase, 26 June 1984, 11–14.

45 Kendrick, A., ‘Growing up to be a Nation’, New Republic, 23 04 1956, 15–16.Google Scholar Cited in Manu, Yaw, ‘Conflict and consensus in Ghanaian politics: the case of the 1950's’, Conch, VI, i–ii (1975), 103.Google Scholar

46 Allman, Field Notes: interview with N. B. Abubekr (FN/16/1), dd. Akowuasaw, Kumase, 28 July 1984, 127.

47 N. B. Abubekr recently remarked that if anyone needed money, ‘they simply went to Bafuor Akoto and he gave them money…Our knowledge of our accounts was limited only to that…We didn't know how much we had and we were not told what expenditures there were and all that’. See Allman, Field Notes: interview with N. B. Abubekr (FN/16/2), dd. Akowuasaw, Kumase, 10 October 1984, 189.

48 For Kusi Ampofu's reactions to Amponsah's appointment, see Allman, Field Notes: interview with Kusi Ampofu (FN/24/1), dd. Asante New Town, Kumase, 15 October 1984, 198. For the reactions of other youngmen, see Allman, interview with N. B. Abubekr (FN/16/1), dd. Akowuasaw, Kumase, 28 July 1984, 127.

49 Despite the Asantehene's support for the Movement, he frequently let it be known that he distrusted the youngmen. On the occasion of the Asanteman Council's endorsement of the Movement, he rebuked the youngmen for the ‘vilification, abuses and insults levelled against him…when the Self-Government wave started’. He was outraged that the youngmen felt they could force him to come out with a statement in support of the Movement. This, he declared, ‘showed disrespect. It was an insult, disgrace and shame’. See Pioneer, 22 October 1954. A year later, disturbed by what appeared to be a reign of the rabble on the streets of Kumase, he denounced those youngmen who had broken the law. He claimed that ‘he felt sorry for those few Ashantis who would not understand the issues at stake…for [whom] the ideas of good and right had no meaning. He decided that no ex-convict should have the privilege of shaking hands with him’. See Council, Asanteman, Minutes, 28 10 1955.Google Scholar

50 Woodward, C. V., ‘Comments on the panel, The Strange Career of Jim Crow Revisited’, American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL (12 1986).Google Scholar

51 Murray, R., ‘The Ghanaian road’, New Left Review, XXXII (07/08 1963), 70.Google Scholar