Introduction

By 1992, the nation of Ghana was both on the verge of a transition to democratic governance and the tail end of a people’s revolution popularly referred to as the December 31st Revolution. The revolution which started with the military coup of 31 December 1981, was led by former president of Ghana, Jerry Rawlings. Born in June 1947, Jerry Rawlings was Africa’s first military leader who succeeded at executing two consecutive coups in 1979 and 1981 respectively.¹ He was largely described as a charismatic populist mystic,² who possessed a potent, almost messianic belief in his ability to control events in Ghana.³ Upon the success of his first coup on June 4th 1979, Rawlings formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) government to govern Ghana under military rule. The motivation behind his implementation of the June 4th coup stems from his personal frustration with the rampant corruption and moral decadence that had befallen Ghana since the toppling of Ghana’s First President, Kwame Nkrumah from power in February 1966. However, the AFRC government was short-lived, spanning the period June–September 1979. The period was generally referred to as a “house cleaning.”⁴ Upon handing power to the democratically elected President Hilla Limann in September 1979, Rawlings embarked on a forced retirement on the campus of the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra. Following what the Ghanaian press would characterize as another blatantly corrupt government, Rawlings was motivated to lead a second military coup on December 31st, 1981 that toppled President Limann from power. In his view, he was now certain that what Ghana needed was a battle that would be waged not simply against “corruption” but against a larger structural problem that constantly reproduced economic decadence in Ghana, hence the need for a “revolution”.⁵

Generally, the revolution aimed at establishing a form of participatory democracy that would ultimately transfer power and authority to the people in such a way that the common person could participate in decision-making in Ghana.⁶ Consequently, Rawlings formed the revolutionary PNDC (Provisional National Defence Council) government and embarked on a comprehensive effort to achieve economic recovery for Ghana. Due to the progress of the economic recovery plan charted out by the PNDC government during the revolution, the World Bank proclaimed Ghana to be an African success story in the early 1990s.⁷ However, this paper argues that this success story was the result of a tranformation from the initial left-wing, anti-imperialist styled revolution launched in 1982 into a self-induced counter-revolution.

To attain a robust understanding of revolutions, an understanding of the phenomenon of counter-revolution is imperative. Infact, Nick Bisley contends that ‘counter-revolution’ is an often-overlooked characteristic of revolutions.⁸ Consequently, this article borrows from Bisley, a working definition for ‘counter-revolution’ as an effort “to overthrow a revolutionary state.”⁹ Bisley also avers that social revolutions involve the eruption of violent change in the social, political, and economic structures of a given state through a rapid insurrection from below that advocates an integrative aspirational ideology.¹⁰ Since Bisley emphasizes the significance of an ideology to the evolution of a revolution, it is important to establish the ideological framework upon which the December 31st Revolution initially propelled in 1982 by the PNDC government. While Agyeman-Duah notes that the PNDC government initially desired socialism for the December 31st Revolution,¹¹ an article published in a Ghanaian national newspaper Daily Graphic suggests that the PNDC initially reneged on explicitly communicating any ideological direction for the revolution.¹² Nonetheless, a document published by the PNDC government in May 1982 described the initial phase of the revolution as an anti-imperialist, anti-neocolonialist revolution that aimed to establish popular democracy in Ghana.¹³ Hansen further asserts that this initial phase was characterized by a ‘progressive posture’.¹⁴

According to Konings, the progressive posture of the revolution encompassed a general notion held by progressive groups in Ghana. These groups collectively claimed that the precarious living standards of the masses and Ghana’s under-development was attributive to continuous imperialist exploitation perpetuated by multinationals and their local comprador agents. Konings further asserts that Ghana’s progressive movement aimed at establishing a socialist society in Ghana that would allow for the utilization of people’s power in usurping internal and external exploiters of the working class.¹⁵ However, the PNDC regime also advanced populism- “a seamless ideology emphasizing ‘masses’ rather than ‘classes’…”.¹⁶ Thus, while the progressive posture of the revolution generally advanced an ideological viewpoint emphasizing ‘class struggle’, the revolution also pursued a populist objective that placed emphasis on organizing the ‘masses’. This struggle for ideological hegemony by diverse left-wing and right-wing groups in Ghana at the inception of the revolution later contributed to the heightened ideological incoherence between the government and the people as the revolution advanced.¹⁷ This is because at the initial phase of the revolution, every form of imperialist, colonialist-style rhetoric was harmoniously regarded as “counter-revolutionary” both by the people and by the PNDC government officials. Nevertheless, with the PNDC’s adoption of neoliberal free market discourses for economic recovery from 1983 onwards, a disruption of this harmony ensued. This resulted in the PNDC government’s systematic suppression of imperialist and neocolonialist rhetoric during the revolution. Ghanaian political scientist, Mike Oquaye corroborates this thought as he asserts that at “the time when the international dimension propelled a progress of change in Ghana, the regime’s repressive policies and measures stifled virtually every voice of dissent.”¹⁸ He further avers that Rawlings described his own regime as a “culture of silence”.¹⁹ The PNDC would later expand this “silence” as the basis for the propagation of a ‘counter-revolutionary revolution’ which acquired for Ghana, the status of an African success story in the early 1990s by the World Bank.

Revolutionary Cleavages During the December 31st Revolution

Rawlings’ PNDC government was initially cautious as regards immediately declaring an ideological direction or commitment for the December 31st Revolution. Rawlings’ reason for this declaratory caution is unclear, but according to Herman Lutt’s brilliant analysis published in Ghana’s Daily Graphic on the ideological question that surrounded the December 31st Revolution in Ghana, Lutt believed that the fears for any hasty declaration of commitment to any global ideologies erupted because of the possibility that it would erupt into unhealthy outcomes which would disturb the peace of the public as well as the revolution itself. Lutt further asserted that an ideology encapsulates three elements namely worldview, norms, and values and that any system of thought which captures these three elements cannot escape the conclusion that it is undergirded by an ideology.²⁰ According to Lutt’s analysis, pre-revolutionary postcolonial Ghanaian society was laden with corruption and vices that were repugnantly prevalent. Some of these vices include uncontrolled speculation in foreign exchange rates, tax evasion and inflation, misappropriation of government/corporation assets and increasing prices of commodities. The survival of the average Ghanaian had become onerous as there was a steady downturn in the standard of living. To respond to this socioeconomic and political downslide in Ghana, the December 31st Revolution erupted.

Further, Lutt contends that the December 31st Revolution aimed at improving Ghana’s balance of payments status by placing checks on exports. It also pursued policies aimed at preferentially considering enterprises and industries that possessed greater percentages of Ghanaian shares as regards international investment agreements on joint projects. The revolution questioned the validity of numerous assets (some of which were frozen), imposed on a curfew to check unscrupulous public behavior, called tax evaders to book, enforced price control, exposed “kalabule” (hoarding and profiteering) and controlled the distribution of goods, thus ensuring the maintenance of profit margins within reasonable ceilings due to multiple intermediaries in these sectors. These amidst several measures to enforce and uphold values and norms according to an appreciable public morality during the revolution represented a worldview which necessitated the reconfiguration and preservation of the stability of Ghana within the global economic comity of nations. Consequently, Lutt wondered in what he called a “disillusionment”, how the revolution could be said to have erupted without ideological underpinnings if it inherently captured the basic elements of an ideology. In his conclusion, the December 31st Revolution was founded on an “implicit” ideology that was not explicitly declared.²¹

As regards leaning on foreign ideologies to drive the revolution, the leader of the revolution, Jerry Rawlings emphasized the fact that he bore no disdain for foreign cultures. Rather, he envisioned a society whose passions and interests were turned inwards to develop its own mechanisms from within. He contended that the revolution aimed at resolving Ghana’s socioeconomic problems using the experiences and cultural background of Ghanaians as a basis for the fulfillment of the revolution.²² In other words, Rawlings’ image of the future Ghanaian society was one in which all the people of Ghana would become highly politically conscious to the extent that they would have direct influence on policies designed for man and nation. To attain this image of the future, Rawlings further believed that the Ghanaian people needed to refrain from relapsing back to dependence on foreign abstract ideologies that were unrelated to their unique experiences and circumstances.

Further, although Rawlings had earlier encouraged ‘genuine’ foreign investors not to detest Ghana because it has assumed “revolutionary status”, He however noted that Ghana’s relationship with other countries during the revolution would depend on the extent to which that relationship allowed Ghanaians to remain free to choose for themselves and decide their destiny.²³ He further asserted that previous relationships with other countries had undermined the sovereignty of the nation by entrapping Ghana’s identity in such false slogans of ‘friends of the East or West’. He believed that it was necessary for the chains of this entrapment to be broken. More so, his emphasis on “genuine” as regards the development of friendship with foreign investors in Ghana reveals his belief that foreign domination of Ghana has over the years played a significant role in pillaging the nation and its people of their wealth and dignity. Nonetheless, since Rawlings’ PNDC government entered aid agreements with revolutionary countries like Cuba, Iran and Libya during the early phases of the revolution, Rawlings’ caution to embracing foreign investment for support of the December 31 Revolution seemed to exempt nations that had anti-imperialist, progressive, revolutionary histories. In other words, the early days of the revolution prior to the adoption of IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) aid in 1983, was characteristic of circumstances that sustained populist, anti-imperialist, revolutionary rhetoric in government circles at the time.

In corroboration with this thought, the PNDC government adopted a Draft Policy Guideline in May 1982 amidst the discordant debates surrounding the need for an explicit ideology to drive the revolution forward.²⁴ Among other issues raised, the draft branded the initial stage of the revolution as the ‘national democratic phase’. This phase, the document revealed, was to be identified as an anti-imperialist, anti-neocolonialist phase of the revolution, with the objective of instituting popular democracy.²⁵ This phase spanned the period from January 1982 to March/April 1983. In analyzing both the nature of anti-imperialism which the Draft Policy Guideline stipulated, and the factions that constituted the PNDC government at the time of its drafting, it becomes discernible that Rawlings’ perception of the “brand of anti-imperialism” attached to the character of this national democratic phase of the revolution contrasted that which some other members of the PNDC envisioned. In one of his quotes highlighted in his 1983 speech-collection, he stated that “Ghana’s revolution is not a carbon-copy of any other revolution.”²⁶

In other words, Rawlings envisioned an “original” anti-imperialist revolution that was “non-aligned” to any of the global revolutionary ideologies at the time. He eschewed identifying the December 31 Revolution with any global ideological bloc. He however, like his “Brother”, Muammer Gaddafi who initiated the September 1, 1969 al-Fateh revolution in Libya, simply envisioned a revolution that would continually struggle against the manoeuvres of imperialism using the authority of the Ghanaian people.²⁷ More so, Rawlings asserted that ideology was not a yardstick in deciding which classification of countries (eastern or western) should or should not be regarded as friends, partners, or investors during the national democratic phase of the revolution.²⁸ He believed that while meaningful assistance to the attainment of the objectives of the revolution would massively gain from foreign companies in the areas of skills, technological input, management and capital, such anticipated dependence ought not be a socioeconomic and political sine qua non for branding the revolution with slogans of an eastern or western-style revolution. As a result, he was cautions and reluctant in his personal speeches to ideologically append labels to the revolution.

Thus, ideological clashes between factions in the PNDC government erupted when the PNDC government hinted at a shift towards an IMF/World Bank sponsored Economic Recovery Programme in 1983. Konings refers to these factions in the PNDC as the “petty bourgeoise”.²⁹ The Economic Recovery Programme in question was initiated to allow the nation to embark on a journey of recovery from the economic wounds of military adventurism in Ghanaian politics over the years.³⁰ The programme however proved problematic to the progressive movement in Ghana at the time of its adoption because during the period, the average Ghanaian consciousness had come to perceive dealings with the IMF, the World Bank, or other multinational institutions as either “counter-revolutionary” or “anti-people”.³¹ This is because, the earlier IMF-recommended devaluations of the Ghanaian cedi by these financial institutions in the 1970s had appended a negative, detestable image to these international financial organizations among Ghanaian progressives. This historical precedent would later hunt Rawlings and the PNDC government in their pursuit for efficient alternative strategies to proceed with the nation’s economic recovery from 1983 onwards. This is so because the PNDC’s adoption of the IMF and World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) aid for Ghana’s economic recovery in 1983 raised many eyebrows in Ghana as to whether the revolution was being “betrayed”.

Boafo-Arthur further explains why a large segment of the Ghanaian masses felt betrayed by the PNDC governments adoption of the IMF and World Bank’s SAP aid. He notes that the PNDC government’s initial rhetoric communicated a socialist-inspired worldview as the basis of the people’s revolution that was launched on December 31st, 1981. As a result, the government’s economic strategy consequently became highly questionable with the PNDC’s neoliberal policy shift to adopt the IMF/World Bank sponsored structural adjustment programmes by April 1983.³² This economic shift eventually heightened the clashes that erupted between the PNDC’s petty bourgeoisie factions, eventually leading to resignations of some founding members of the PNDC government. Nonetheless, it seems that the PNDC membership had been split along ideological lines prior to the adoption of the IMF and World Bank’s support for Ghana’s economic recovery efforts because according to an editorial on the Ghanaian Daily Graphic newspaper, the Economic Recovery Programme was reportedly launched already by December 1982.³³

Since, the IMF/World Bank got involved in the economic recovery plan by April 1983, it suggests that some of the original members of the PNDC who harbored socialist worldviews might have been aware of what they might have perceived to be a betrayal of the socialist-inspired peoples revolution that was ongoing in Ghana. Some of the PNDC’s founding members who resigned vehemently opposed the shift to the IMF/World Bank for economic recovery aid because such a move was interpreted as a contradiction of the revolution’s worldview and a betrayal of the Ghanaian people. The resignations were so virulent to the extent that only two (Jerry Rawlings and Adjei Boadi) out of the seven original members of the PNDC remained in the government by December 1982.³⁴ Even though Rawlings’ disdain for identifying with any of the global revolutionary theories remains unclear, his admonishment of Gaddafi’s Third Universal Theory for its “practicality” in one of his speeches hints at the fact that he disdained the ambiguity of existing global revolutionary theories. In his opinion, Gaddafi’s Third Universal Theory delivered the level of clarity and practicality required of a theory that could serve as a guiding force for tackling Africa’s problems.³⁵ Rawlings seemed to desire pragmatism over theoretical affiliation to drive the revolution in Ghana, hence, his openness to acquiring assistance from financiers situated in any established ideological bloc on the globe. This point is important in understanding the nature of the ideological disparities that existed among the petty bourgeoise in the PNDC during the national democratic phase of the revolution. Rawlings’ disposition to decline loyalties to any ideological blocs for the revolution offers some explanation for the resignations of several PNDC founding members.

To further understand the ideological lines that were drawn by the petty bourgeoisie in the PNDC government, James Petras’ two alternative approaches to organizing society through mobilization politics offers brilliant insight.³⁶ These two approaches are the “corporatist” and the “collectivist” approaches. The corporatist approach entails a situation “whereby the government controls and directs lower-class associations and links them with existing economic elites in an attempt to encourage collaboration for national development” while the collectivist approach entails a situation “whereby class-conscious political actors communicate a radical political culture among lower-class individuals in order to mobilize their support and to undermine existing elites as the first phase towards the creation of a collectivist society.”³⁷ The two dominant factions which greatly impacted the evolution of the national democratic phase of the revolution were firstly, those who yielded to the ideology of national populism and were loyal to the chairman of the PNDC, Jerry Rawlings. The other faction which opposed the national populists within the PNDC yielded more towards a socialist ideology that propagated a continuous class struggle in Ghana with the aim to ultimately establish working class hegemony in Ghana.³⁸

Since both factions were essentially nationalist, the ideological disparity that existed in the PNDC government can be interpreted to have been between two factions of “anti-imperialists”. The first faction of the PNDC’s anti-imperialists were the national populists who sought to transform society by firstly cultivating people’s power, and then using the power to drive the proliferation of participatory democracy that would naturally uproot the systems that maintained imperialist exploitation in Ghana. On the other hand, the other faction of ideologues in the PNDC sought to establish a kind of anti-imperialist revolution that would alter the relations of production, uproot the privileges of the upper classes through a continuous class struggle and finally enforce a hegemony of the “working class” in virtually all productive sectors of society. Among the objectives of this faction of the leftist petty Bourgeoise in the PNDC was “the establishment of a political power bloc representing a broad social spectrum but under the leadership of the working class and its organizations, and the creation of an ideological and legal framework corresponding to the proposed structural changes.”³⁹ This is clearly evident in the mannerism with which the defence committees and other revolutionary populist organs that were set up by the PNDC government conducted their operations at the work places and the regions by mid-1982. During this period, the initial membership of the Interim National Co-ordinating Committee (INCC) was dominated by Marxist proponents and progressives who directed and supervised the activities of the defence committees. Their operational methods were characteristic of a usurpation of top management and leadership in several productive sectors in Ghana. The Defence Committee operations placed heavy emphasis on displacing leaders at “top management positions” under the guise of indefinite leaves or suspensions.⁴⁰ The usurpation of top management in diverse productive sectors of the economy was done with the objective of overturning “supposed” exploitative production relations with the aim of establishing a form of dictatorship or hegemony of the working-class across the public and private institutions in Ghana. This objective would naturally clash with the Rawlings faction in the PNDC government which pursued a class harmonization in pursuit of the same populist objectives which its leftist opposite sought to also achieve within the government during the December 31st Revolution.

Conclusion

The term ‘revolution’ transmits meanings beyond the initial violence that it seemingly encapsulates. However, Ghana’s experience with revolutions is peculiar because every instance of military coups in Ghana from 1966 to 1981 was subsequently termed a revolution. This suggests that even when Rawlings called for “nothing less than a revolution” after he led Ghana’s sixth military coup on New Year’s Eve of 1981, postcolonial Ghanaian society had earlier incubated an ongoing revolutionary consciousness even prior to his first successful coup on June 4, 1979. Even more interesting is the term ‘counter-revolutionary revolution’. Following Eugen Weber’s understanding of a counter-revolution not as an opposite revolution, but the opposite of a revolution,⁴¹ it therefore suggests that a counter-revolutionary revolution implies “an opposite revolution, one totally aligned with the definition of a revolution propelled in this article, but equally distinct from the opposite of the revolution it initially intended to counter. Events which transpired during the so-called December 31st Revolution in Ghana clearly highlight several instances showing that Ghana was indeed undergoing a ‘counter-revolutionary revolution’ from 1983 onwards. That is, the PNDC regime adopted a counter-revolutionary identity that did not simply embark on the opposite of the nationalist, anti-imperialist, anti-neocolonialist, populist, socialist-oriented revolution it initially launched. But even further, it spearheaded a distinct opposite revolution that advocated a “fiscal ideology” which determined the source of finance that would propel the regime’s same people’s revolution from 1983 onwards. Infact, the emergence of Ghana as a success story of the World Bank policies required that the PNDC’s counter-revolutionary fiscal ideology become the new foundation of the December 31st Revolution. In other words, the PNDC regime eventually represented everything counter-revolutionary to the initial ideological tenets that ushered in the December 31st Revolution in the first place in Ghana. Consequently, towards the tail end of 1992, the original revolutionaries, the marginalized and unemployed Accra youth, the town residents, the trade unions, and students who represented the social mechanism upon which Rawlings’ December 31st populist revolution initially propelled, joined forces with other oppositional groups to eradicate the PNDC regime through a democratic revolution in 1992 by elections at the pools but still failed.⁴² Rawlings would later lead Ghana’s fourth republic under democratic governance until 2001.