Ghana's PNDC regime: a provisional assessment

Abstract

Even today, President Rawlings of Ghana often departs from his prepared public speeches to perorate on the aims and achievements of the 31 December 1981 'revolution'. Whilst it is understandable that such epiphanies should elicit yawns from much of his audience, it is equally the case that any balanced assessment of the PNDC regime must be grounded in an accurate historical appreciation of the significance and potentialities of the events of that period and in a truly comparative perspective. This was, after all, at least a quasi-revolutionary situation, Ghana's equivalent in many respects of the French revolution. Old hierarchies and patterns of social deference had largely broken down; the military rank and file were out of control, roaming the streets, refusing to obey commanding officers; the organs of people's power were dispensing their own brand of 'revolutionary justice' and challenging established authorities for control both at the workplace and in the community. Central government was in a state of virtual paralysis for a time and there was a very real threat of anarchy. As in other revolutionary situations, any reasonably stable regime which emerged from this vacuum of authority was bound to be fairly highly authoritarian. The remarkable outcome, arguably, was that it did not turn out to be more so. For all the neo-Marxists' angry attacks on the PNDC regime from a supposedly radical democratic position, they themselves could only have presided over a far more viciously repressive regime if they had succeeded in wresting power from Rawlings. With their lack of any very widespread popularity outside the urban centres, their insistence on practising 'class warfare', and their advocacy of policies that would have pushed Ghana into an economic abyss, what else could they conceivably have done?