PRESIDENT MILLS MUST REMEMBER HIS NKRUMAIST ROOTS!

During the fight for independence, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah prevailed over his conservative opponents, because his vision of a united and modern African nation-state, utilizing its resources for the benefit of its own people, as opposed to benefiting foreigners, appealed to ordinary people. His elitist and tribal-supremacist opponents on the other hand, simply wanted the power of the pre-colonial feudal kingdoms revived after the departure of the British colonialists – and used federalism as a cloak to hide their real intentions.

Dr. J.B. Danquah and Co., who were admirers of the elitist English philosopher, Edmund Burke, simply wanted the progeny of the pre-colonial feudal ruling elites to replace the British as the ruling class in the new federal nation-state, which they hoped would emerge after independence – and for the ruling elite to benefit directly from Britain’s continued hold over our resources: by maintaining our close links with the UK and becoming stooges for imperialism and neocolonialism in our country, when they eventually came to power.

Fifty-two years after our independence, we have all come round to the conclusion that we made the greatest advances as a people, in developmental terms, during the Nkrumah-era. If he wants ours to become a fairer and more prosperous society, it is important that President Mills remembers his Nkrumaist roots – and that he uses Nkrumah’s vision of an African equivalent of the egalitarian societies of Scandinavia, as a model for his regime to turn our country into a prosperous nation for all strata of society.

To do so, he must be extremely clever in his politics – and speak softly while wielding a big stick (to paraphrase a famous phrase from US politics). The poverty of thought of most of Ghana’s successive leaders after Nkrumah’s overthrow in 1966 has ensured that we have not been the main beneficiaries of the wealth from the exploitation of our country’s natural resources. For example, if we had control over our gold deposits, would we not be benefiting directly from the high prices of gold today?

Unfortunately, under current arrangements, the benefits accrue largely to the fat-cat shareholders of foreign-owned companies and their local lackeys. If we had control over our gold deposits, could we not have concentrated on turning our gold into gold coins and gold bars, as well as developed a world-class jewelry industry, amongst other things, by now – and would investors worldwide not be beating a path to our door to buy Ghanaian jewelry, gold coins, and gold bars as safe investments to protect their wealth (particularly during times of great uncertainty worldwide, such as now)?

If President Mills were to dispatch the finance minister and the minister for trade and industry to London, to visit Baird & Co., the bullion dealers (http://www.goldline.co.uk/investmentBarsPage.page), it will turn out to be a real eye-opener for his regime – as they will begin to see the real potential of the state-owned Precious Minerals Marketing Company (PMMC). That company could partner the best-resourced of the state-owned Chinese gold refineries to set up a gold refinery here – and build on that to produce gold coins and gold bars locally.

Both ministers will return convinced beyond doubt, that those oligarchs who were rewarded with “gongs” by the British establishment, for delivering our gold mining industry to Western interests (when they succeeded in getting the greedy rogues amongst those who used to rule our nation yesterday, to pass that daft mining law), were in actual fact traitors of the very worst kind, who betrayed our country terribly by their selfish actions (dressed up as the creation of an enabling environment to attract foreign direct investment into our economy’s gold mining sector).

The new National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime must use subtle means to regain control over our nation’s resources. Japan, for example, has gone round the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) rules by simply using creative regulations to keep foreign imports out, when it has needed to do so. We must also use creative methods to regain control over our oil and natural gas industries – before it is too late and we end up in the same situation in which our gold has ended up benefiting foreigners in the name of “direct foreign investment.”

Perhaps we could also use the “Japanese method” to rebuild our industrial base. For example, we need not ban poultry imports directly – but simply decree that for the sake of the health of Ghanaians no chicken meat containing antibiotics can be imported into Ghana. Since virtually all of the global poultry industry pumps chickens full of antibiotics, that would keep out poultry products from most of the nations we currently import poultry products from. Who could utter a word to complain that we are breaking the WTO rules – when all we are doing is seeking to protect the health of Ghanaians?

To help us regain control over our gold, we could simply adopt a policy of continuing to deny the expatriate executives of gold mining companies work permits. That would keep them out of our country for some time – and frustrate their companies’ sufficiently to make them amenable to our demands for new and better agreements, which will eventually lead to our country becoming a destination for investors looking to buy investment products such as gold bars, and the Ghanaian equivalent of South Africa’s Krugerrand gold coins.

Let us revive the various agro-industries built during the Nkrumah-era, too – by giving that task to the District Assemblies, which can use the private public partnership business model, and work with the South African sustainable livelihoods organisation, Sustainable Villages Africa (SVA). If we partnered with SVA, we could turn rural Ghana into prosperous areas that contribute significantly to our GPD, whiles improving the quality of life of rural people. Through that partnership we could focus on developing “fair trade” export markets for our organic agricultural produce, such as organic tropical fruit, in the EU and UK, for peasant farmers throughout Ghana.

One hopes that the new Mills administration will not be like the previous regime – which never listened to free advice from its many critics because it felt we were enemies of our country for criticizing them. Those of us who have advocated for years, for example, that in order for us to make any headway in the fight against corruption, the assets of our leaders ought to be publicly published, so that the general public can get to know their net worth, before and after leaving office, are pleased that President Mills has taken that on board.

That will be a fine legacy for him to leave behind – and even if he does nothing else during the rest of his tenure, he will be remembered till the very end of time: as the leader who forced Ghanaian politicians to publicly publish their assets. That is a truly great legacy for any leader on the planet Earth to be remembered by. Let him also listen to us on subject of the contribution SVA can make to our development - and quickly get SVA into Ghana to work with the district assemblies to develop rural Ghana into some of the most prosperous parts of our nation. After all, it is free advice from patriots, who aren’t giving him any nightmares, scrambling for posts in his administration. A word to the wise…