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‘IF YOU TROUBLE A HUNGRY SNAKE, YOU WILL FORCE IT TO BITE YOU’: RETHINKING POSTCOLONIAL AFRICAN ARCHIVAL PESSIMISM, WORKER DISCONTENT, AND PETITION WRITING IN GHANA, 1957–66

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2021

Nana Osei-Opare Open the ORCID record for Nana Osei-Opare [Opens in a new window]
Nana Osei-Opare*
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Fordham University
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Abstract

My aim is twofold. Highlighting the value and importance of African archives in the construction of postcolonial African histories, I first reject what I call ‘postcolonial African archival pessimism’: the argument that postcolonial African archives are too disorganized or ill-kept to be of much, if any, value in configuring postcolonial African histories. Second, primarily through petition and complaint letters, I examine how Ghanaian workers protested racist and abusive workplace environments, government malfeasance, stagnating wages, and unfair dismissals in Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana. These archival gems illuminate how workers made claims to and performances of citizenship and reminded the state of their importance, politically and practically, to building the Ghanaian project. From Ghanaian and British archives, I seek to complement histories that highlight the centrality of African workers — through their letters and feet — in articulating the contradictions and aspirations of postcolonial African states.

Keywords

GhanaWest Africalabourarchivespostcolonialcitizenshipracism
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 59 - 78
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I want to thank Andrew Apter, William H. Worger, Robin D. G. Kelley, Vivian Chenxue Lu, Stephan Miescher, Richard Rathbone, Matthew Quest, Sarah Balakrishnan, and the two anonymous JAH reviewers for their insights and constructive criticisms on earlier versions of this article. This paper would have been much poorer without their assistance. I am also grateful to Gregory Mann for his helpful comments and support during this process. I would also like to thank UCLA's International Institute and UCLA's History Department for their financial assistance. Throughout the article I employ American English spellings, unless referring to book or article titles. Author's email: [email protected].

References

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3 PRAAD-Sekondi WRG 24/2/325, letter from O. Ayepa Amoah to Regional Commissioner, 1 June 1962.

4 PRAAD-Sekondi WRG 24/2/325, letter from O. Ayepa Amoah to NBC Employers Union, 29 May 1962.

5 The government established the brigade in 1957 to absorb surplus labor; see Rimmer, D., ‘The new industrial relations in Ghana’, International Labor Review, 14:2 (1961), 207Google Scholar.

6 Ibid.

7 PRAAD-Sekondi WRG 24/2/325, Amoah to Regional Commissioner, 1 June, 1962.

8 Ibid.

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17 I include people working for the Brigade in this definition. For a greater discussion on the demographics of workers on state farms, see Lambert, K., ‘“It's all work and happiness on the farms”: agricultural development between the blocs in Nkrumah's Ghana’, The Journal of African History, 60:1 (2019), 40–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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20 Peil, Ghanaian Factory Worker, 6.

21 B. Grier, ‘Pawns, porters, and petty traders: women in the transition to cash crop agriculture in colonial Ghana’, Signs, 17:2 (1992), 304–28. Unpaid labor was a feature of the colonial and postcolonial Ghanaian governments. Furthermore, local chiefs gathered these individuals to ‘fund’ small-scale development projects; see A. Weimers, ‘“When the chief takes an interest”: development and the reinvention of “communal” labor in Northern Ghana, 1935–60’, The Journal of African History, 58:2 (2017), 239–57.

22 Peil, Ghanaian Factory Worker, 4.

23 Other scholars have engaged non-African archives in conjunction with postcolonial African archives to produce transnational African histories. I embraced this approach in N. Osei-Opare, ‘Uneasy comrades: postcolonial statecraft, race, and citizenship, Ghana-Soviet relations, 1957–1966’, The Journal of West African History, 5:2 (2019), 85–112; see also M. A. Bedasse, Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization (Chapel Hill, NC, 2017); J. Allman, ‘Phantoms of the archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi pilot named Hanna, and the contingencies of postcolonial history writing’, American Historical Review, 118:1 (2013), 104–29; E. Burton, ‘Navigating global socialism: Tanzanian students in and beyond East Germany’, Cold War History, 19:1 (2019), 63–83.

24 A. Tsuruta, ‘Expanding the archival horizon: American archives for researching postcolonial Rwandan history’, History in Africa, 44 (2017), 265–83; L. White, ‘Hodgepodge historiography: documents, itineraries, and the absence of archives’, History in Africa, 42 (2015), 317.

25 Others have relied on nonelite personal collections to circumvent the problems of the colonial and postcolonial archive. See K. Skinner, ‘Local historians and strangers with big eyes: the politics of Ewe history in Ghana and its global diaspora’, History in Africa, 37 (2010), 142; S. Miescher, ‘The life histories of Boakye Yiadom (Akasease Kofi Abetifi, Kwawu): exploring the subjectivity and “voices” of a teacher-catechist in colonial Ghana’, in L. White, S. F. Miescher, and D. W. Cohen (eds.), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Indianapolis, IN, 2001), 162–194.

26 While scholars like John Straussberger have seen value in local African archives in writing political histories, they argue that postcolonial African governments — as in the case of Guinea — are actively destroying documents. See J. Straussberger, ‘Fractures and fragments: finding postcolonial histories of Guinea in local archives’, History in Africa, 42 (2015), 299–307.

27 S. Mazov, ‘Soviet aid to the Gizenga government in the former Belgian Congo (1960–61) as reflected in Russian archives’, Cold War History, 7:3 (2007), 426; B. Shechter, The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Ithaca, NY, 2019).

28 S. Daly, ‘The survival con: fraud and forgery in the Republic of Biafra, 1967–70’, The Journal of African History, 58:1 (2017), 129–44.

29 K. Bruce-Lockhart, ‘The archival afterlives of prison officers in Idi Amin's Uganda: writing social histories of the postcolonial state’, History in Africa, 45 (2018), 245–74.

30 Hart, ‘Motor transportation’, 187; C. J. Korieh, ‘“May it please your honor”: letters of petition as historical evidence in an African colonial context’, History in Africa, 37 (2010), 84, 87; S. Moroney, ‘Mine worker protest on the Witwatersrand, 1901–1912’, in E. Webster (ed.), Essays in Southern African Labour History (Johannesburg, 1978), 37–9, 41.

31 O. Coates, ‘“The war, like the wicked wand of a wizard, strikes me and carry away all that I have loved”: soldiers’ family lives and petition writing in Ijebu, southwestern Nigeria, 1943–1945’, History in Africa, 45 (2018), 73.

32 F. Cody, The Light of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India (Ithaca, NY, 2013), 172.

33 Korieh, ‘“May it please your honor”’, 84, 87.

34 S. Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity (London, 2003), 2.

35 Korieh, ‘“May it please your honor”’, 98.

36 R. L. Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis and the Birth of Development Economics (Princeton, 2006), 112–13.

37 K. Nkrumah, ‘Independence speech’, in K. Konadu and C. C. Campbell (eds.), The Ghana Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, NC, 2016), 301.

38 K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (New York, 1963), 119.

39 C. L. R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghanaian Revolution (London, 1977), 170.

40 Nkrumah, Africa, 97.

41 Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis, 154–9.

42 Ghanaian Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Accra (PRAAD-Accra) ADM 13/2/40, minutes of the Standard Development Committee, 26 and 29 July 1957.

43 Nkrumah, Africa, 101; S. Miescher, ‘“Nkrumah's baby”: the Akosombo Dam and the dream of development in Ghana’, Water History, 6:4 (2014), 341–66.

44 Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis, 159.

45 TheNational Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA) LAB 13/1409, inward telegram to Commonwealth Relations Office, 19 Apr. 1960.

46 Nkrumah, Africa, 101.

47 L. de Witte, The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba (London, 2001).

48 A. Biney, ‘The legacy of Kwame Nkrumah in retrospect’, Journal of Pan African Studies, 2:3 (2008), 139.

49 D. Rimmer, ‘The crisis in the Ghana economy’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 4:1 (1966), 1–32.

50 Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis.

51 D. Rooney, Kwame Nkrumah: Vision and Tragedy (Accra, 2007), 256.

52 ‘The party and employment’, The Party Chronicle (Accra), 7 Aug. 1963; ‘Party vigilance’, The Party Chronicle, 27 Aug. 1963.

53 Rooney, Kwame Nkrumah, 258.

54 Ghanaian Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Cape Coast (PRAAD-Cape Coast) RG 1/13/1, vol. 4, ‘Osagyefo's message to the nation on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the party’.

55 West Africa, 12 May 1962.

56 ‘Let's serve Ghana now’, The Party Chronicle, 27 Aug. 1963.

57 Nkrumah, Africa, 107.

58 Momoh, ‘Popular struggles’, 164.

59 Sackeyfio-Lenoch, ‘Ghana Trade Union Congress’, 208.

60 Jeffries, Railwaymen of Sekondi, 26.

61 R. B. Davison, ‘Labor relations in Ghana’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 310:1 (1957), 138.

62 Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 120.

63 G. M. Carter, ‘The Gold Coast: a future dominion?’, International Journal, 9:2 (1954), 141–3.

64 Ahlman, Living with Nkrumahism, 121. Rolf Gerritsen, however, dismisses the notion that the CPP ever ‘controlled’ the TUC; see R. Gerritsen, ‘The evolution of the Ghana Trades Union Congress under the Convention Peoples Party: towards a re-interpretation’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 13:2 (1972), 229–44.

65 TNA LAB 13/1347, letter from F. S. Miles, 23 Dec. 1959.

66 TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960; PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/3843, letter from E. A. Cowan, General Secretary/Treasurer to the Union of Catering Trades of Trades Union Congress-Ghana, 25 May 1964.

67 TNA LAB 13/1347, letter from F. S. Miles to R. B. Dorman, 16 Dec. 1959; TNA LAB 13/1347, letter from E. M. Melles to Wallis, 13 Oct. 1958.

68 TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960.

69 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor and Minister of Labor and Co-operatives, 7 Mar. 1958.

70 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 29 Sept. 1958; PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, H. Takoradi to CIDPDL, 28 Sept. 1958.

71 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, letter from R. K. A. Gardiner, 1 Oct. 1958.

72 TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960.

73 TNA LAB 13/1409, report from L. Bevan to C. D. M. Drukker, 27 Aug. 1960; TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960.

74 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/1275, letter from H. G. Leeke, an official at the United Africa Company of Ghana Ltd., to the President of the National Maritime and Dockworkers Union, 21 Apr. 1958.

75 TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960.

76 TNA LAB 13/1409, report from L. Bevan to C. D. M. Drukker, 27 Aug. 1960.

77 ‘Accra workers demonstrate for better pay: they hoot and boo at president's statute’, Ashanti Pioneer (Kumasi), 4 Aug. 1960.

78 ‘All workers must join a trade union’, The Daily Graphic (Accra), 26 Aug. 1960; TNA LAB 13/1409, report from L. Bevan to C. D. M. Drukker, 27 Aug. 1960.

79 The Daily Graphic, ‘All workers must join a trade union’.

80 TNA LAB 13/1347, E. M. Melles to Marsh and Wallis, 25 Feb. 1959.

81 TNA LAB 13/1347, E. M. Melles to Marsh and Wallis, 23 July 1959; TNA LAB 13/1409, ‘May Day speech of John K. Tettegah, secretary-general of the Trades Union Congress of Ghana, delivered in Accra on Friday, 13th May, 1960’, 13 May 1960.

82 TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960.

83 The Ghanaian archives also have stories of workers refusing to pay their union dues; TNA LAB 13/1347, Marsh and Wallis to E. M. Melles, 23 July 1959.

84 TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960.

85 TNA LAB 13/1347, E. M. Melles to Marsh and Wallis, 25 Feb. 1959.

86 ‘T.U.C. talks of the workers’ enemies’, The Daily Graphic, 20 Sept. 1961.

87 Jeffries, Railwaymen of Sekondi, 71, 76.

88 Despite this law, the Ghanaian archives are replete with stories of government complaints that employers were knowingly hiring individuals without a registration certificate for more than a month.

89 Ghanaian Public Records and Archives Administration Department, Tamale (PRAAD-Tamale) NRG 9/4/23, letter from the Commissioner of Labor to all government departments, all corporations, the Ghana Employers Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Buildings Federation, 11 May 1962.

90 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 9/4/23, Commissioner of Labor to all Regional Labor Officers, 16 May 1962.

91 TNA LAB 13/1347, letter from E. M. Melles, 23 Apr. 1959.

92 TNA LAB 13/1409, memorandum from F. S. Miles and T. W. Keeble to J. O. Morton, 4 Nov. 1960.

93 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8/30/11, Principal Personnel Officer to F. S. Alhaji, 16 June 1962.

94 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8/30/11, A. S. Alhaji to the Principal Personnel Officer, 20 June 1962. Nkrumah created the Ghana Young Pioneers to ‘inculcate a respect for discipline and order into the country's young men and women’ and as an organization to absorb surplus labor; see Ahlman, J. S., ‘A new type of citizen: youth, gender, and generation in the Ghanaian Builders Brigade’, The Journal of African History, 53:1 (2012), 87–8, 99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8/30/15, S. Fianoo to the Minister of Industries, 10 Oct. 1964.

96 Ibid.

97 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8/30/11, A. Moshie to the Personnel Officer and to Mr. Darko, 28 June 1962.

98 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8/30/11, Secretary to the Regional Commissioner to A. Moshie, 11 July 1962.

99 PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8/30/11, W. J. J. Odoteye, Deputy Superintendent of Ghana Police to G. A. O. Donkor, Superintendent of Ghana Police,15 June 1959.

100 Ibid.; PRAAD-Tamale NRG 8/30/11, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 15 June 1959.

101 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, report from I. N. Yankah, 16 June 1959; PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, W. J. J. Odoteye, Deputy Superintendent of Ghana Police to G. A. O. Donkor, Superintendent of Ghana Police, 15 June 1959.

102 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 13 Dec. 1957.

103 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 11 Mar. 1958.

104 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, ‘Strike of employees of Gliksten (W.A.) Limited’, letter to Commissioner of Labor, 16 Oct. 1958.

105 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 11 Mar. 1958.

106 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, letter from the D/S to the Minister, 9 Oct. 1958.

107 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 17 June 1959.

108 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, letter to the Commissioner of Labor, 16 Oct. 1958.

109 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Secretary to the Regional Commissioner to manager, Messrs. Gliksten's (W.A.) Ltd., Dwenase, 24 Oct. 1958.

110 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Secretary to the Regional Commissioner to manager, Messrs. Gliksten's (W.A.) Ltd., Dwenase, 29 Oct. 1958.

111 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to the Commissioner of Labor, 13 Dec. 1957.

112 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, ‘Strike of employees of Gliksten (W.A.) Limited’, letter to the Commissioner of Labor, 16 Oct. 1958; PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM/23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 11 Mar. 1958.

113 PRAAD-Cape Coast ADM 23/1/2745, Regional Labor Officer, Western Region to Commissioner of Labor, 11 Mar. 1958.

114 PRAAD-Sekondi WRG 8/1/259, T. Moshie to Managing Director, 16 Sept. 1963.

115 PRAAD-Sekondi WRG 8/1/259, K. Yankah to District Commissioner, 18 Sept. 1963.

116 Nkrumah, K., Dark Days in Ghana (New York, 1968), 114–5Google Scholar.

117 Boone, C., ‘Rural interests and the making of modern African states’, African Economic History, 23 (1995), 1Google Scholar.

118 Ochonu, M. E., ‘Elusive history: fractured archives, politicized orality, and sensing the postcolonial past’, History in Africa, 42 (2015), 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship, 5.