Historical Parallels
In 1948, soon after the end of WW2, the ruling United Party in South Africa, led by General Smuts lost a key election to Dr Daniel Malan’s National Party in a whites only election. Blacks could not vote, but they cared about the result and preferred the United Party which, under Smuts’ leadership, had enlisted South Africa on the side of the Allies in WW2 whereas the National Party had sympathised with Nazi Germany.
More significantly for the Blacks, Malan’s Nationalists based their campaign on a platform of ‘Apartheid’ which literally means ‘apartness’. They sought to codify in one oppressive system, the laws and regulations that had kept Black Africans in an inferior position to whites for centuries. The often haphazard segregation of the past three hundred years was to be consolidated into a monolithic system that was diabolical in its detail, inescapable in its reach and overwhelming in its power.
In response to this powerful threat the ANC sought a new radical and more activist direction to protect the rights of the Blacks. These changes did not come without internal upheaval. Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and A.P. Mda met privately with Dr Xuma, then chairman of the ANC , at his home in Sophiatown and explained the need for dramatic change in direction from a docile legalistic approach to one marked by more mass action, passive resistance, protest demonstrations along the lines of Ghandi’s non violent protests in India in 1946.
Dr Xuma was given an ultimatum to either support the proposed programme of mass action or to face a challenge to his chairmanship. The group sponsored one Dr J.S. Moroka, who was then enrolled as an ANC member. Mr Xuma was defeated and Moroka was elected president-general of the ANC with Walter Sisulu also elected the new secretary general and Oliver Tambo elected to the National Executive. Mandela had, earlier in 1947, been elected to his first post in the ANC as an Executive Committee member of the Transvaal ANC. Thus was the foundation stone laid for the ‘cracking’ of the apartheid system.
Thus, by this democratic shift in power, was set in motion a series of seminal events, by the most visionary of Black leaders, probably considered inexperienced in their time, which led eventually to Black majority rule in today’s South Africa. The road to freedom would take the group of leaders through the epic court battles of the Rivonia trial and lead to the incarceration of Mandela at the age of 46 in 1964, along with Walter Sisulu.
Modern Parallels
As the NPP prepares to go to the polls to elect a successor to President Kufuor it is worth bearing in mind the strong parallels that can be drawn between events of more than half a century ago and those in Ghana today. Just as Black South Africans were engaged in a titanic struggle for basic freedoms against a system that regarded them as inferior, Ghanaians are engaged in a tremendous endeavour to develop their country and to give themselves and successive Ghanaians a better chance at competing successfully in a globalising world economic order that regards the black African’s contribution as inferior. A positive outcome to this struggle will go a long way to uphold the proposition that Black Africans can run their affairs to the benefit of all their people and in the face of the considerable threats with which they are faced, both from the adverse weight of history as well as an often harsh economic system which places a lower value on the economic output of Africans.
Just as the ANC, the primary vehicle for articulating the hopes of Blacks, was faced with a dramatic choice between a docile acceptance of circumstances and a rupture with ‘safe’ thinking, the NPP, the primary political vehicle in Ghana for articulating the hopes of Ghanaians, is faced with a choice between action and ‘stasis’ masquerading as experience.
The challenges facing Ghana, and for that matter most of Africa, are often blurred to the ‘political elites’ and the habitués of internet chat rooms. Recent crises have helped to strip away any veneer of doubt as to the depth of the challenges. The recent electricity supply problems in Ghana as well as the impact of the floods have drawn attention to the woeful state of the country’s infrastructure and its inability to sustain the most basic quality of life never mind an industrial base to provide economic empowerment.
In health, education, water, energy, transport and telecommunications and agriculture, it is self-evident that the basic infrastructure of the country has not advanced very much beyond the blueprint laid down in the Guggisberg era from 1920 – 1927 notwithstanding the efforts of Nkrumah and those who came after him. The basic infrastructure was put in place for a population of no more than 4-6m compared to the current 22m growing at about 3% per annum and heading towards 30m in 8-10 years. Fifty years after the glorious dawn of independence, more than fifty percent of the nation’s budget is funded by the largesse of international donors. This is a nation that, through successive leadership failures, had, at the time of President Kufuor’s accession to office, become more dependent than it had ever been on foreign aid, a sad consideration when celebrating a golden jubilee. President Kufuour deserves credit for getting the bulk of the debts written off, but as we celebrate their cancellation, we should not forget that, the act of debt forgiveness did not represent past success, but rather, an inability to overcome past challenges.
The challenges of genuine economic empowerment that feeds through to rising incomes as well as infrastructure development frame the key issues in the NPP election. The country cannot hope to provide sustainable development for its people simply by doing what it has done in the past fifty years. We were heading in the wrong direction until Kufuour’s government began the change in direction that was badly needed. The country’s people are badly in need of effective and far reaching change that builds the infrastructure, equips the ordinary people with the requisite skills to increase personal incomes and imbues them with the wherewithal to take on the global challenge posed by Europe, The US, India, China, Brazil etc. This change requires a leader with a clear and compelling vision, and the necessary delivery capability, who is able to ‘carry’ the people with him or her as, together they navigate the complex and far reaching changes required.
Having a vision of where to lead a people does not guarantee that they will arrive at the preferred destination. That takes delivery and execution skills allied to proven political and mobilisational skills with not a little courage. As with South Africa back in the 1940s, it also calls, above all, for leaders who grasp the scale of the change required and the fundamental importance of dynamism, action and a step change in the intensity with which the battle is fought. It calls for a credible leader who makes the case for change and has the delivery skills requisite to the task in hand.
Looking at the NPP candidates, only two of them have the proven political skills and they are Nana Addo and Dan Botwe. The proven track record of staking out a national political objective on the basis of well articulated fundamental values, followed by practical mass action to persuade and carry a critical mass of constituents to attain a stated objective is clear on the CVs of both these candidates. Of the other front-runners, The Vice President has no such political pedigree and little is known of his record as a man of political courage, planning, organisation and action. This is probably because none exists. All that is known is the fact that he was one of many who helped to finance the NPP during the days of opposition in the Rawlings era.
Alan Kyeramateng ‘s CV is similarly devoid of any sense of having been involved in political leadership as defined previously. A lot is made of the time in office serving Kufuor’s administration in a number of high profile positions. This points to some technocratic skill and the ability to exploit access to those in power, but should never be confused with the pure political skills and courage needed to ‘carry’ a party and a people through the profound changes required against a determined opposition.
More damagingly, there is little that can be gleaned by way of a distinct vision from any of these so-called ‘frontrunners’. Claims of empowering Ghanaians economically and providing them with cash on the back of tourism and the re-heated policies of the last 50 years have a stale feel to them and seem to be ideas that have been borrowed from the past.
All the other candidates, from Hackman Owusu Agyeman, through Osafo Marfo and Dr. Apraku to Effah Darteh and Owusu Ankomah also seem to be peddling a devaluing political currency with a sense of ‘going back’ not forward. Kwabena Agyapong, Boakye Agyarko and Kobina Kennedy do present forward looking agendas of sorts, but they simply haven’t got the depth of party connectedness required to mount a serious campaign. Making noise on the internet is a far cry from persuading party activists in Lawra, Nandom, Pusiga, Asiakwa, Suhum, Berekum, Agotimeh and Akpafu that you truly represent their enduring interests and priorities.
Nana Addo’s pedigree through the days of Kumepreku, PMFJ and service to the party is well documented and provides ample testimony to his proven political leadership. Dan Botwe’s courage from fighting the early Rawlings regimes through to the reviving of the NPP’s footprint nationally across 22,000 polling stations and, recently, demonstrating considerable courage and skill to set out his stall in persuading the party in 2005 to support a more effective candidate for Chair rather than the President’s choice, was a supreme example of steadfastness under fire and strategic political leadership of the kind that has been outlined. If one were to discount the claims of politically inexperienced businessmen and technocrats who are opportunistically taking advantage of the media exposure that comes with their appointments, the battle lines should become clearer and that is: a straight choice between Nana Addo, representing the ‘old school’ steady approach redolent of Dr Xuma of the ANC in 1948/9, versus the ‘change’ candidacy of Dan Botwe promising to usher in a period of ‘rupture’ with the ‘stasis’ of the past and focused empowering leadership aimed at addressing the priorities of the people and the fundamental challenges facing the country.
Politically, these are the only two credible candidates and of all the candidates, Dan Botwe is the only credible change candidate. With him, there is a freshness and newness and a sense of being ‘untainted’ by the problems of the past. The choice then crystallises into a simple one: Can Dan Botwe make the case for change from the relatively stable, but fragile platform established by President Kufuor and carry the party with him? Or can Nana Addo make the case for steady progress towards the future? Given the scale of the challenges facing the country, the argument for steadiness sounds like an argument for ‘stasis’ of the kind that truly empassioned leadership rejects. If Ghana is to set herself on the path to irreversible progress, the case for change must be made and made now. Dan Botwe has a case and it’s a strong one. Let the battle be joined.