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The Right of Association in Ghana and Tanzania
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
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Among the rights promised to individuals and groups, the ‘right of association’ frequently appears. It is enshrined in national constitutions, in international declarations and conventions, and in standard references to the liberties and privileges that citizens enjoy. Yet, as this article will illustrate, restrictions on this right have been justified in the name of higher objectives. The right of association, it would appear, is a conditional or second-order right, subordinated on occasion to more pressing rights. The strains of recent independence, regionalism, and labour unrest have brought about limits to the creation of association, whether political or non-political in nature.
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References
page 640 note 1 Cited in Brownlie, Ian (ed.), Basic Documents on Human Rights (Oxford, 1971), p. 21.Google Scholar
page 640 note 2 Ibid. p. 60.
page 640 note 3 Ibid. p. 8.
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page 642 note 1 Ibid. p. 202.
page 642 note 2 Ibid. p. 220.
page 642 note 3 Ibid. pp. 280–1.
page 642 note 4 Ibid. p. 393.
page 642 note 5 Ibid. p. 394.
page 643 note 1 Ibid. p. 407.
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page 647 note 1 The sweeping nature of the Act can most readily be illustrated by quoting its objects: ‘To prevent organizations based on tribal, racial, religious, or local affiliations attempting to secure the return of members to Parliament or to other bodies upon a tribal, racial, or religious basis.’
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page 648 note 1 Ibid. columns 529–30.
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page 648 note 3 By referendum, 29 June 1960, Ghana adopted a Republican Constitution, and Nkrumah became the first President.
page 649 note 1 Austin, op. cit. p. 414.
page 649 note 2 Cited by Bates, loc. cit. p. 421.
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page 653 note 1 Geertz, Clifford, ‘The Integrative Revolution: primordial sentiments and civic politics in the new states’, in Geertz, (ed.), Old Societies and New States: the quest for modernity in Asia and Africa (New York, 1963), pp. 105–57.Google Scholar
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page 653 note 3 Nkrumah, Kwame, Ghana: the autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (Edinburgh, 1957), p. x.Google Scholar He continues, ‘Without discipline true freedom cannot exist.’ In the 1959 paperback edition of this book, Nkrumah modified his wording by referring to ‘measures of an emergency kind’.
page 653 note 4 Madison, loc. cit. pp. 54–5.
page 654 note 1 Ibid. p. 55.
page 655 note 1 International Commission of Jurists, Human Rights in a One-Party State (London, 1978), p. 110.Google Scholar Seminar members also argued that no right of association need be prohibited in a one-party democratic state save that ‘to form political associations other than the ruling party’; ibid. p. 118. The problem remains to define clearly what is ‘political’ and what is ‘non-political’.
page 655 note 2 Ibid. p. 128.
page 655 note 3 Ibid.
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