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Divide et Impera: Civilian Control of the Military in Ghana's Second and Third Republics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Extract
An earlier contribution to this Journal addressed itself to the question of how Kwame Nkrumah tried to subordinate his military forces to the civil authority of the Convention People's Party during the Ghanaian First Republic, 1960–6.1 It was argued that the pattern of objective control inherited from the British colonial authorities was cast aside in favour of an entirely new subjective mechanism: ‘This involved the orchestration of a programme of military diversification in which new security organisations were formed and existing ones split up’.2 Thisarticle will continue that theme by examining how civilian politicians attempted to confront the same dilemma in the Second and Third Republics during 1969–72 and 1979–81, respectively.
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References
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page 635 note 1 For a discussion and interpretation of these events, see Hansen, Emmanuel and Collins, Peter, ‘The Army, the State, and the “Rawlings Revolution” in Ghana’, in African Affairs, 79, 314, 01 1980, pp. 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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page 636 note 1 Africa Confidential, 21, 1, 2 01 1980, p. 2.Google Scholar
page 636 note 2 Both officers, one a former A.F.R.C. member, the other attending a course at the Staff College, Camberley, requested anonymity.
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page 640 note 5 The full background to this episode is explained in a section entitled ‘The Okai-Koi/Koda Affair’, in Oquaye, op. cit. pp. 160–2.
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