Liberia: a virginity that was De-flowered

Notes

1. 
   Arusha Peace Accords, 1993 is about power-sharing agreement reached between the Hutus and Tutsis in this northern Tanzania city . It was also an important melting point for the country’s first President, Julius Nyerere’s, socialism ideology.
   
2. 
   Notes taken on museum tour in November 2010.
   
3. 
   Ibid. many of the minds that drafted these “Commandments “ and later committed them into operation were leading Hutu intellectuals.
   
4. 
   Notes taken on tour in Nov 2010 but also see chapter 10- Post Crisis Africa pp198-200 of Gordon Brown’s book, Beyond The Crash-Overcoming The First Crisis of Globalization, London, Simon and Schuster, 2010.
   
5. 
   See page 198 of Gordon Brown’s Beyond The Crash.
   
6. 
   Press reports posted on Kigail Memorial after the genocide.
   
7. 
   Meisler, Stanley, Kofi Annan-A Man of Peace in a World of War (New York: John Wiley &Sons, Inc, 2007).
   
8. 
   Anyidoho, Kwami, Guns Over Kigail ( , 2007).
   
9. 
   Cruvellier, Thierry, Court of Remorse- Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Madison: Wisconsin Press, 2006). The book was translated into English by Chari Voss and is under the Critical Human Rights title of the University of Wisconsin Press. Crusvellier, a journalist like his translator, Voss covered the daily trials in Arusha from 1997 to 2002 and were inspired to do this book together.
   
10. 
    The IRDP which is located in central Kigail has been supported in its activities by the Aid agencies and governments including: Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and also the International Development and Research Centre (IDRC), UNDP etc. Among others, it has in its Dialogue and Consensus published (with the Interpeace): Democracy in Rwanda (2005); History and Conflicts in Rwanda (2006); Building Lasting Peace in Rwanda: Voices of the People(2003).
    
11. 
    The International Development Association of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund report, Joint Debt Sustainability Analysis was issued in 2010. Thanks to Maxwell Afari formerly a special assistant at the Bank of Ghana and now senior economist with the IMF for sharing this document with me. See in particular the Introduction to the document.
    
12. 
    Spens-Black, Hannah, Rwanda-The Rising Star (Kigail: Great Lakes Communication, 2010). This is a government sponsored publication looking at Rwanda from 2003-2010. It also spells out the vision of the government extending to 2020 popularly known as Vision 2020.
    
13. 
    Ibid., see particularly the pp9-13 and pp24-30.
    
14. 
    Kamola, Isaac, “ Coffee and Genocide- A Political Economy of Violence in Rwanda” in Transition 99. The magazine published by the W.E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard is a quarterly publication from Indiana University Press.
    
15. 
    Ibid., p69.
    
16. 
    Black Gold directed by Marc Francis and Nick Francis is reviewed in Transition 99 magazine . It looks or follows the journey of Tadesse Meskela who manages the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union which was founded in 1999 and is today the biggest fair-trade coffee producer in Ethiopia.
    
17. 
    See Rwanda-The Rising Star. pp28-30
    
18. 
    Donald Kaberuka’s quotation here is on page 24 of Rwanda-The Rising Star.
    

Two books have influenced my view of the Ivory Coast (the Anglophone name for its French version of Cote d’Ivoire; ). The first is a comparative study of post-colonial state building, The West African Wager: Houphouet versus Nkrumah ¹ written by the American journalist , Jon Woronoff ; the other, a travelogue and more famous, The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro ² by the master, V.S. Naipaul first published in The New Yorker in 1984 . It’s about the writer’s impressions of the former French colony and in particular about the breeding of crocodiles in an otherwise obscure palace ground - the birth place of Houphouet-Boigny later turned into the capital, Yamoussoukro about 240km from Abidjan. He wanted to make a fantasy land of his village, what a British journalist called, a “jungle capital”. This village of not more than 15,000 but currently in 2010, 200,000 people was to replace Abidjan as the capital.

First things first. 1957 was an important date in the history of de-colonization in Africa. Kwame Nkrumah at 48 years had led the Gold Coast to a new state of Ghana. He would become the toast of many of the liberation movements especially after his December 1958 All-African Peoples’ Conference which brought many of them to Accra, the capital. He had through the parapets made many anti-colonial statements in many a believer’s ear, “We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility.” Pilgrims would come to Accra famous among them Nelson Mandela and other ANC officials. They came to be inspired, to be trained in Marxist thinking and in guerilla warfare and also money for the struggle. Others, like W.E. B. Du Bois and George Padmore came to stay and to help the new nation. From afar it brought Martin Luther King Jnr. and other civil rights leaders in the 1960s when the Movement was driving to its final destination in the US.

As part of his independence speeches , Nkrumah had said:

“The success or failure of our efforts to make Ghana into a prosperous and happy State will extend far beyond the frontiers of Ghana itself. A failure on our part would have tragic consequences for other African terroritories strieving towards independence. We must not fail! We shall not fail!” ³

But not everybody was impressed. One of them, another elite African educated leader, Felix Houphouet-Boighy, later President of independent Ivory Coast from 1960. Like many of his kind in French colonial Africa, there was no hurry for independence as they, supposed to lead their people to independence were themselves part, because of the French policy of assimilation, of the legislative arm of the its government in Paris. Houphouet- Boighy at 52 was also leader of his country. He waited for Nkrumah to officially visit Abidjan barely a month after Ghana’s independence in April 1957 to bet him on the routes to development:

“Your example has not ceased interesting us… your experiment is very tempting….But because of the human relations that exist between the French and Africans, and given the imperative of the century…..the interdependence of peoples…..we felt that it was perhaps of greater interest to attempt a different experiment from yours, the only one of its kind: a Franco-African Community based on equality and fraternity. France’s enlightened self-interest, but especially its keen sense of humanity, have led to it to seek with us, actively and sincerely, the achievement of a new community.” ⁴

These exchanges were not just bilateral in nature and venue. Houphouet-Boighy happened to be a member in 1957 of the French delegation to the UN General Assembly meeting in New York which Nkrumah would attend.

He took again the argument to him there. He wished in his speech that Nkrumah would have “prompt and complete success” for Ghana’s independence “but” he explained, “we wish, in a spirit of healthy emulation, to conduct our own experiment” ⁵- to go for French-African community, a modified form of colonialism some imputed, to political independence. His argument was that colonialism was so brutal in its wickedness of under-developing Africa that any post-colonial state by 1957 (including of course Ghana) did not possess a viable economic gravitas to survive. He dismissed for good measure any such independence as “nominal”.

Thus, began the story of the famous West African wager. Two different routes to post-colonial development- Nkrumah’s seek ye first the political kingdom and everything else will be added to thy. It had been state industrialization- what became known in the 1960s as import substitution industrialization in Ghana. The reverse in the Ivory Coast was agricultural revolution- feed the people and be assured of food security even as you concentrate on cash crops both for export and for the industries that should emerge later. Here were two economies with similar cultural characteristics and different means to an end.

Culturally, certain ethnic groups in Ghana trace their ancestry to Ivory Coast; a journey of 5 hours by road from the western part of Ghana, 3 hours by a speed-boat from any of the river outlets from Cocody in Abidjan and 40 minutes by air travel. To this day, the Nzemas in western part of Ghana where the boarder divides the two countries share family heritage- speak the same language, inter-marriages, engage in cocoa farming; the Asantes of the ancient kingdom of Ghana and the Akans of southern Ivory Coast and Yamoussoukro centuries before the major migration took place, shared histories of ancestor knowledge and trade in especially textiles. By the 2000s it was estimated that between 800,000-900,000 Ghanaians were residents- permanent and non permanent of the Ivory Coast. Many were small holder-cocoa farmers, peasant traders and operators of “chop bars” or traditional restaurants. But a good number of the women were also associated with prostitution at one time so rampant decent women traders were indiscriminatly associated with it.

The high point of this cultural solidarity and exchange in recent times was when Houphouet- Boigny sent a large retinue of senior chiefs and traditional leaders (in attire and customary attitude the same as many of the Akan stock in Ghana) to attend the funeral of the late king of Asante, Otumfuo, Opoku Ware II and to perform certain Akan rituals on behalf of the people of Ivory Coast in 1998.

Besides the cultural affinity, the underlining theory of the pact taken by Nkrumah was that in the early stages of development when there are low industries, finance for industrial expansion was critical and should come from the surpluses derived from agriculture. Nkrumah was also interested and in fact adopted the socialist model of development which had underneath it a robust ideological disposition of anti-imperialism- what he thought had been capitalist exploitation of not only labour but the natural resources of the Gold Coast and colonial societies. This coincided with keenness in import substitution industrialization from the beginning. But some critics at the time, including his own advisor, the St. Lucian economist, W.A. Lewis (later winner of the Noble Prize in economics) thought was not the best approach. For with a population of about 5 million at independence, Lewis had written a report about industrialization in Ghana in 1953 saying that it was too early to adopt such a policy. Ghana’s labour was expensive because of its small population. Not that there was no counter argument to this but because the policy would later fail, this argument stands. Nkrumah’s position had led to a huge expansion of state enterprises such that by 1966, 53 of them were in existence with 12 boards. Public service had also populated from colonial era number of 98,000 to 250,000 over the same period. Infrastructural development were abundantly visible from primary and secondary schools to health –care centres and universities and the creation of the industrial city, Tema and the building of Akosombo Dam. Meanwhile the economy had expanded by about 19 percent due mainly to its exports of cocoa and gold (with high world market prices in the 1950s and ‘60s). Other minerals and commodities were not exploited as these. The economy was also never diversified. The reserves at the departure of the British were over 250 million pounds.⁵

Houphouet-Boigny on the other hand had little natural resources but tropical forests and fields by the 1960s.He encouraged the importation of labour from the surrounding neighborhood- Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana and elsewhere to supplement its 1960s population of 3 million. The migrant labour would dominate the cocoa and coffee plantation fields and would soon make Ivory Coast the biggest producer of the commodity in the world. Other agricultural products would include pineapples and palm oil and cashew nuts. Its port would become the busiest and one of the biggest in West Africa. He Encouraged less formal education at this point an act that consciously or otherwise delayed any challenge to his authority contrary to the case in Ghana where Nkrumah encouraged free and compulsory education for all and was impatient to Africanize the civil service so that Ghanaians and Africans could be in charge. Good as the policy was it also made it difficult to create a subservient middle class in Ghana as the case was in the Ivory Coast. The University of Abidjan- federal in nature was established four years after independence in 1964. It would be 30 years before another at Bouake. Otherwise nationals had to go to Dakar or Paris for training and capacity acquisition. He used French technicians, advisors, administrators (thus still unbraiding of the colonial ties) in public administration in what critics may call the creation of a neo-colonial state. So long as people were well fed, got what they wanted in life, there was little complain about issues of governance. The weaknesses of the inherent leadership traits were not noticed.

It was that which gave Houphouet-Boigny the room for fantasy projects. Paris, which mattered to many francophone leaders, was happy for him and that mattered so much for the man it refered to as “the sage of Africa”. Abidjan to this today is beautiful in many parts- the Cocody residential area and the Plateau Centre are encircled by lakes and rivers like central Geneva and the business district so well- manicured landscape. It attracted the share-holders of the African Development Bank to site its headquarters here even if in some pockets, they dwell alongside urban slums.

When V.S. Naipaul came here in 1984 he was obviously impressed with what he saw especially in the leader’s home village. The artificial lake in his elaborated palace with ponds of crocodiles, the five star hotel-Hotel President obviously named for himself; and to keep his hold on his people a mighty white mosque in rivalry to those in North Africa; the construction, (to world uproar in some quarters) of the largest Basilica, Our lady of Peace- bigger than St. Peter’s in Rome, seating 7,000 people and at the conservative estimate of 300 million dollars. It only affirmed that indeed governments and not individuals built national monuments. ⁶

Though these have been subjected to economic analysis somehow, it had in criticism been the same as ancient monuments. When the Great Wall of China was been built at such huge cost to the Song Empire rulers and in labour terms, millions of people were starving. The Tajal Mahal in Agra, western India took decades to be completed again the cost of cruelty to labour extremely high. Today, they are wonders of the world. Whole economies are built around them.

The trouble is if the vision dies young. Almost 27 years after his first visit, Naipaul went again (on a major visit to Africa for his 2010 book, The Masque of Africa- Glimpses of African Belief. ⁷ Interestingly Kwame Anthony Appiah had asked if I could be his guide in Ghana but missed it because Naipaul, who had won the Nobel in Literature in 2001 had postponed his travel and I was travelling elsewhere.

He had titled the chapter on Ivory Coast, The Forest King, after Houphouet-Boigny as indeed many things and issues about this country are equated to his name. He had noticed on a visit to the cathedral that, “Elsewhere, between one column of the porch and the outer skin of the dome a fair-sized piece of stucco had fallen off, revealing the metal armature. Much complicated scaffolding would be needed before that could be put right; perhaps it never would be. It was possible that this was how it would be nibbled away, this piece of vainglory of the forest king.” ⁸

It could only become that if the possibility becomes a likelihood and the edifice fails to become a lasting monument. But it looks like failure is far away. Standing on the 11^th floor of the Hotel President which overlooks the Bascilica in 2011 it was still a glorious edifice in my eyes.

But oil explorers who would come over in the 1970s to attempt diversification of the economy would leave right about the time the prices of cocoa and coffee would slide in the world market. This was also the period of consciousness and frustration as the economy experienced difficulties and the people knew that there could be post-boom –a burst of the cocoa economy which would affect their lives.

The first results of the Wager between the two countries would not however be long in coming- February 1966. Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown in a popular uprising even if on hindsight future generations would be divided on this and the reasons according to the military were basically political-economic ones (external interest and the role of the Americans discomfort with Nkrumah’s ideological disposition towards the East or Soviet bloc). The balance sheet according to Jon Woronoff was a victory for Houphouet-Boigny. Nkrumah could only be in real power for 9 years but his ideological competitor would stay for 33 years only death ( by prostate cancer at 88) separating him from the love of his people who to this day sound his horrific and in even extreme cases shed tears at the mention of his name.

By 1966, the foreign policy and economic development direction of the two countries were pointers to something. According to the Economic Survey of Ghana (1967),⁹ Nkrumah’s development plan was never achieved and in 1959 Ghana had its last surplus. From 1959 onwards, the deficit according to the Government’s own publication, in the balance of trade grew apace, nearly doubling from 1963 to 1965 to reach a figure of over $100million. The country found it very difficult to pay for its imports and its debt rose swiftly. Its foreign liabilities catapulted from $16.3 million in 1961 to $395million in 1966 while foreign exchange assests with banking system dropped from $197 million in 1961 to zero in 1965 and worst to $-45million in February.

If these were bad news the Economic Survey of Ghana even at the time Nkrumah was still in power was bold enough to write: “ In 1965, the rate of growth of GNP was 0.2 %........was the poorest ever achievement of the economy since statistical data on the GNP was complied in 1950. It is doubted if this record has been broken by any peace-time year with the exception of the period of the Great Depression.” ¹⁰

The Ivory Coast on the other hand was financing its development plan, at that time ,development planning been the fashionable economic model in many economies. Investment rose rapidly from $81million in 1960 to $190million in 1965. There was no doubt that it was making great efforts and investment took more than 15% of total resources in 1960 and 18% in 1965. The economic growth rate was 12% compared to the negative indicators in other aspects of Ghana’s.

Almost 40 years after Woronoff’s publication, much has happened. The conclusion to his book has been partly prophetic: “In the end Houphouet-Boighy seem to have chosen the right goal and given the people what they wanted most….bread. Even those who grew nostalgic for Osageyefo in post-coup Ghana, who missed the warmth and excitement, had to admit that things would have been alright, “if only we didn’t have to eat every day.” Maybe nine times out of ten, this goal prevailed, the concrete and palpable was wanted. Nine years out of ten an Houphouet would win. In the tenth year, however, there might be an upheaval and with it a Nkrumah.”¹¹

Of course, when Woronoff wrote, Nkrumah was out of power. Thus, his win in the literary sense here is about his economic ideology of state intervention, socialist model of development prevailing. State intervention and some form of socialist thought did play a major role in the restoration of economies of Europe after the second World War in the mid 1940s. Since then it has been a catalyst in restoring economic balance more than of itself standing as a functionary agent for growth; it became atavistic in the 1980s to 2000 when liberal thinking, markets and monetary economices triumphed. It became relevant again as a restoring balance mechanism in the financial crisis, the first major one in globalization from 2007 starting with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the US and other European banks that followed shortly; a situation which has restored Keynes creditability of the importance of state and the markets(in joint efforts) in our time.

As will partly be seen shortly and in other devoted (topics on Ghana) elsewhere, Nkrumah’s win over Houphouet was in a political sense (since variants of his economic ideology glared from Nkrumahism from 1979 has not been successful in Ghana). By allowing the development of political consciousness or been forced upon him by a vibrant opposition to his regime, political succession and alternatives to growth and development had always existed in Ghana. It never existed in the Ivory Coast under the over three decades of its founder.

If Houphouet-Boigny won the first wager, the second after his demise was one of danger, almost an obliteration of what makes the Ivory Coast and Abidjan a delight.The success of that victory was also the seeds for its later instability and leadership troubles. His politics was a carefully calibrated dictatorship even monarchial . It did not prepare in any serious way a succession plan. Henri Konan Bedie succeeded him and won election in 1995 against a weak opposition. Like Houphouet-Boigny, Bedie attempted to consolidate his power through brute force but it was also at a time that in much of West Africa, people and movements were challenging entrenched political leadership. While Houphouet-Boigny for over three decades concentrated efforts at unification of the country using immigrant skills and labour for productivity, Bedie attempted to undo this with ‘Ivorite”- a concept to de-citizenise immigrants’ dominance in all aspects of the economy and public service- especially in politics and the army. In the event it affected people of Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea origins. This touched on sensitive nerves including the northern Muslim, Alassane Quattara former Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the West African Central Bank who was suddenly declared a citizen of Burkina Faso his mother having come from that part they said. Interestingly, when Houphouet –Boigny died it was Quattara who had left the IMF and was serving as the country’s Prime Minister who made the announcement of his death to the nation and famously declared that the Ivory Coast had been orphaned.

The Ivorite application was in the army-again a large number of them originally non- Ivorians. It led to the first coup in 1999 that brought Robert Guei to power and led Bedie into exile in France. Elections were later held and Laurent Gbagbo, a history professor who had started his opposition politics and led trade union protests before Houphouet –Boigny died was elected over Guei. Quattara, a Wharton School of Business trained economist was disqualified for not been an Ivorian and so could not contest for the office. This led to violence and eventually a civil war from September 2002 (having started when Gbabo was in Italy) and had to return home. But the Government had lost the northern part of the country to rebels especially the city of Bouake many of whom supported Quattara though the rebels were led by another norther, Guillaume Solo (later to be made a compromised Prime Minister). But Guei, depending on who you spoke to, had died along with others in this second coup attempt. A year after, Gbagbo and the rebels agreed to a series of national unity accords first the Linas-Marcoussis Agreement (in January 2003) the Accra III Agreements(July 2004), Pretoria(April 2005) and finally the Ouagadougou Political Agreement (March 2007) which re-affirmed the previous ones and also the resolutions of the UN Security Council.

Disagreements, killings, based on ethnic and political clashes and involving Ivoirians, immigrants and France would continue along these courses until October 2005 when Gbagbo’s mandate expired. Kufuor had been central in many of these, came to know the protagonists very well and earned their confidence in the negotiations. But it was impossible to hold another election to elect new leadership because there was no disarmament. And so Gbagbo through his own intrigues had to hang on till 2010 for the elections.

But much had happened in between. The Ivory Coast with a population of 21.1 million by 2010 had for a long while been West Africa’s richest country and was also a truly pan African spot for integration with a third of the population in the 1980s been foreigners in different professional and occupational pursuits. In the course of the crisis, the economy had shrunk by over 1.5 % within 2002-2003 and rate of growth until 2008 was 2.2% from over 8% that it was before the war. This was even far from the 1970s when the Gross Domestic Product peaked at 360 percent. The non governmental organization, Global Witness, estimates that more then $58 million of cocoa proceeds were diversified by the government, rebels and individuals to prosecute the war. Looking at the porous nature of the west African boarders and the non functional cocoa institutions during the war, it is possible the figure could be higher- through smuggling to the neighbours.