Dr. JB Danquah
Whenever Dr. Joseph Boakye Danquah -- the "doyen of Gold Coast politics" is mentioned in relation to Ghana's history, his activities are usually limited to those in the party political field.
Yes, it is true that he and Paa Grant were the brains that first thought of forming a political movement called "the United Gold Coast Convention" [UGCC] in 1947. But before that, Dr. Danquah had been at the forefront of many struggles aimed at ensuring that the Ghanaian people, especially the cocoa farmers (whose production of cocoa for export formed the backbone of the country's economy) were adequately compensated for their cocoa.
He used his newspaper, the "Gold Coast Times" to advocate greater Direct participation for the farmers in the processes leading to the PRICING of the cocoa produced in the Gold Coast.
He used to travel all over the country to listen to the farmers in order to be able to represent their VIEWS accurately to the colonial Government. In fact, I saw him (when I was a mere child) come to Asiakwa, my hometown, to INTERACT with the people.
I was impressed because I didn't expect the great "Lawyer Danquah" to have the time or inclination to visit our small town.
More importantly, I saw the women of the town, including my own mother, removing
the top part of the clothes they wore (in the style known as 'mmienu ne kaba') and spreading the top cloth FOR HIM TO WALK UPON!
To them, he was too precious to be allowed to walk on the bare ground -- shoes though he wore.
That was a uniquely gracious == and beautiful--- tribute to the contribution he was making to make life better for them and their families (even though he didn't know them personally).
The fact was that without an income from cocoa, our people were as poor as a church mouse!
The few imports they needed -- kerosine, some food items and textiles -- could only be bought if one earned a good income from the cocoa one helped one's husband to grow and harvest. School fees and hospital costs were all defrayed with cocoa money.
And yet one never knew how much the "cocoa price" would be from one season to the next. One waited anxiously in ignorance until, just before the cocoa was harvested, the Government in Accra announced that the price would be (say twelve shillings) per load of 60 pounds.
They never told the people how much the cocoa was being sold for, in Britain, America and those European countries that used cocoa to manufacture chocolates and sell the chocolates at a high price where they were.
If a cocoa farmer had had to pay labourers to help him, land therefore the announced price would not meet his production costs, that was just too bad!
Of course, the price had to be accepted whether the Gold Coasters liked it or not, for THEY HAD NO USE FOR THE COCOA THEMSELVES!
They did not eat cocoa. They couldn't manufacture even beverages with it. They had been conned into thinking that cocoa farming was a profitable enterprise. But it was organised to make the cocoa farmer A PERMANENT PRICE-TAKER.
The farmer utilised his most fertile land to produce cocoa. Yet his income from it was a matter of speculation. From season to season and year to year.
The farmers could NOT sell their own cocoa to countries other than those in which the British directed our cocoa exports. This was the case even for countries that might have wanted to pay us a higher price.
(Who would pay a better price than the British, anyhow? They would buy from the British, who bought the cocoa from us. In fact, the British cocoa dealers made a nice profit by way of "commission" when they bought cocoa from us and sold it to other countries! In the words of football fans, "we woz set up to be robbed right and proper!")
American cocoa purchasers were particularly useful to the British because, in those days, there was no free market in currency sales. Britain led something called "The Sterling Area", and if a Gold Coaster wanted to import something from, say the "Dollar Area" or the "franc zone", he needed A PERMIT FROM THE COLONIAL AUTHORITIES in order to be able to import the goods that were produced outside the "Sterling Area"!
Our cocoa brought in dollars but we were restricted from using dollars. Hence the preponderance of British motor vehicles, for instance, in colonial Gold Coast -- Austin, Morris, Humber, Hillman, Bedford and Albion --etc.
But bad as this economic dictatorship was, what annoyed Dr. Danquah and the other Gold Coast intellectuals was that the LOCAL cocoa trade was also monopolised almost entirely by British firms, who bought cocoa from Gold Coast farmers and shipped it to the indispensable chocolate manufacturers
in both Britain and other industrialised countries.
One British company, the United Africa Company (UAC) was particularly well-placed to make huge profits from Gold Coast cocoa. For UAC also owned a big share of the shipping system through its affiliated company, Elder Dempster Lines.
So Gold Coast cocoa producers were basically the unacknowledged "labourers" (I won't say slaves because that's too loaded a word!) of the UAC.
So much did our people resent the fact of being overwhelmed by the UAC with regard to both the import and export trades (what with its numerous retail outlets and cocoa purchasing centres) that Ghanaians used the term "UAC" as a synonym for -- WITCHCRAFT! Yes, when a person felt that "a coven of witches" in his extended family had "conspired" to send him or her to an early grave, their favourite euphemism was "Those UAC fellows in my family *(wink! wink!) have ganged up against me! I am done for!"
Dr. Danquah and some of the intellectuals he associated with in Ghana youth organizations and other bodies wanted Gold Coasters to be allowed to set up companies in to buy cocoa, and sell it to agents they would select by choice, in the UK and elsewhere, to sell it for them.
Guess what the colonialists said: only companies that had established trade relations with overseas companies and could demonstrate that they had deployed a turnover of a particular sum (I think it was 10,000 pounds per year) would be allowed to do that. Of course, no Gold Coaster-owned businesses could certify that they had such a turnover! And so, of course, the idea died.
So angry did Gold Coast cocoa farmers become in those days at the cheating they experienced at the hands of the British colonial administration that from 1937 onwards, the farmers often burned their cocoa rather than sell it to foreign firms under the existing conditions.
Burning cocoa rather than selling it was a wanton act of rebellion. So when people talk of the peaceful way in which Ghana gained her independence, they don't know what they are talking about.
The British, on the other hand, knew perfectly well what they were up against: they never used the term "burning of cocoa crops" to describe what was happening but called it a "holdup" of cocoa exports! They didn't wish to spread the idea of burning crops when the price for them was too low in the colonial world, did they?
Verbal gymnastics or not, Danquah and his colleagues carried on educating the cocoa farmers to realise that they could possibly obtain a better price for cocoa elsewhere in the world but that they were being denied access to that market.
Actually, I doubt whether they would have had a better deal even if they had been allowed to sell directly to the world market. The British, you see, wielded quite a big clout in international trade in those days, and the Americans and the Europeans would not have wished to ruffle their feathers too much.
Anyway, once they had formed the UGCC in 1947, the Gold Coast politicians used the unfair cocoa trade practices as one of the main planks of their agitation against British colonial rule. They had an unanswerable case and that's why when the trade boycott (launched by Nii Kwabena Bonne) got going in 1948, it became unstoppable and soon turned into a general strike. The rest is, of course, history.
Independence for the Gold Coast, the UGCC argued when invited to make its case at the Coussey Commission would bring a better and fairer economic system. The Commission agreed with that in principle and recommended the implementation of a new Constitution that would lead the Gold Cost to independence as the new nation of Ghana.
But on the cocoa issue, the British, clever as they were, tried to short-circuit the demand for a fairer pricing system, by establishing a "Cocoa Marketing Board" for the Gold Coast. Through it, they said, Ghana's cocoa sales would be done in such a way that when the world price was high, part of revenue would be kept in the UK and INVESTED there to earn profits, which would be used to top up the price paid to Gold Coast cocoa farmers, when the price fell "too low" once again.
There were contentious issues regarding the WAY this Cocoa Marketing Board would be operated, to be sure. But once the British had set it up it became a sort of "deus ex-machina" which has been used by ALL Governments in the country since the Board's inception in 1949, as a means of grabbing cocoa farmers' money to finance many of the Governments' operations.
Indeed, the current Ghana Cocobod has retained most of the totalitarian methodologies employed during colonial times.
For instance, it presents an annual “operating allowance" demand to the Government that is almost always agreed to.
It carries out projects some of which should be the responsibility of the Central Government.
Furthermore, it buys fertiliser and insecticides needed to protect the cocoa crop and resells it to the farmers at what it claims are "subsidised prices".
There is no doubt that some of Cocobod's purchasing practices are regarded by many people as too opaque. This view is strengthened by the fact that currently, a former chief executive officer of the Board is undergoing a criminal trial, in respect of the allegedly inflated price of an overseas order made by the Board about a decade ago.
Nevertheless, the Board's delicate and complex relationship with the Central Government continues to enable it to enjoy powers that may not necessarily be exercised on behalf of the cocoa farmers for whose benefit the Board ostensibly exists.
Questions about the Board that the Ghanaian populace generally has refrained from asking include:
Why should a Government-controlled Board MARKET COCOA (the product of private citizens) on their behalf, in a capitalist (!) economy, whether the citizens like it or not?
Does the American Government sell US grain, beef, or aircraft and automobiles on behalf of the producers?
Similarly, does the Government of France sell French wine on behalf of French wine producers? etc?
Finally, why does the Ghana Cocobod have to borrow money from overseas lenders every year to finance local purchases of cocoa? Who brokers these loans and how much of the interest on them is paid to the brokers as a commission (if any)?
Are the farmers regularly given adequate information about the financial operations of the Board? If not, why?
Every year the Ghanan Cocobod borrows a large sum of money from overseas banks to buy cocoa from Ghanaian farmers. These loans attract interest.
I am sure that if Dr. JB Dahquah had not died in miserable circumstances whilst DETAINED WITHOUT TRIAL at Nsawam Prison on 4 February 1965, he would have prevailed upon one or two Governments in Ghana (with whom he would have been on generally amiable terms) to stop the practice of cheating the largely illiterate community of cocoa farmers by entrusting their welfare to bureaucrats instead of allowing them to control their incomes like everybody else in the country.
Alas, Akuafo kanea no adum! (The lamp of the cocoa farmers has been extinguished!)
And people still do what they like with cocoa farmers' money!
Do rest in peace, JB. Some of the children of the farmers whose paths you illuminated with the LAMP OF YOUR MIND will be inspired by your undying spirit to fight on till the Ghana cocoa farmer is treated as a free economic agent as farmers everywhere in the free world.
