Akufo Addo’s “Property Owning Democracy”

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• Kick 10 years ago

  No comment. Waste of time. You should know what industrilization means to a Ghanaian first before..........

  No comment. Waste of time. You should know what industrilization means to a Ghanaian first before..........

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• Mahmoud 10 years ago

  If J.B Danquah hadn't been born at all patriotic Ghanaians would've still overthrow Nkrumah with or without the help of CIA because, his leftist tendencies had reached a point of no return. The guy was a cold-blooded red sick ...
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  If J.B Danquah hadn't been born at all patriotic Ghanaians would've still overthrow Nkrumah with or without the help of CIA because, his leftist tendencies had reached a point of no return. The guy was a cold-blooded red sickle communist of the Starling, Pol pot and Idi Amin type of wicked human-being.
  
  Every Ghanaian cursed the day that this cunning and dishonest man was invited to join the UGCC as its secretary, and was, and still is, the mother of all traitors in Ghana. It was, therefore, legitimate and even desirable to overthrow that callous, one party state and president for life communist dictator. In fact, I congratulate Kotoka and his friends once again for securing our second independence and delivering us from Kwame Nkrumah; one of the most dangerous human beings that ever lived on the African continent.

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• Close Observer 10 years ago

  The NDC PARTY has NOTHING TO OFFER GHANAIANS, BUT DIVISION AND TRIBAL DISCRIMINATION. THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE SEEN IN GHANA FOR THE 26 YEARS THEY HAVE RULED.
  
  IF THEY CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN GARMENT, WH ...
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  The NDC PARTY has NOTHING TO OFFER GHANAIANS, BUT DIVISION AND TRIBAL DISCRIMINATION. THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE SEEN IN GHANA FOR THE 26 YEARS THEY HAVE RULED.
  
  IF THEY CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN GARMENT, WHAT CAN THEY OFFER THE WHOLE NATION?
  
  Vote the NDC PARTY OUT in 2016.
  
  THEY HATE AND MAKE FUN OF THE PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED. THEY HAVE NO RESPECT FOR ANYONE EXCEPT MEMBERS OF THEIR GROUP.
  
  (1) THEY HATE OUR WOMEN. Calling for a law that will allow them to stone women when they make mistakes. They are not satisfied with stripping our women naked and whipping them on the streets. '3y3 kanea 3y3 haan'.
  
  (2)THEY ARE CONSTANTLY INSULTING THE CLERGY
  
  (3) THEY SCORN THE PHYSICALLY CHALLENGED. Ivor's Greenstreet's condition is constantly made fun of by the NDC PARTY. They said the CRIPPLE MUST STAND UP TO SEE OUR 'GOOD WORKS'. NDC have NO HEART.
  
  VOTE THE PROMISE MANIAC, CLUELESS, NO VISION, IDEAS STARVED AND HOPELESS YOUNG MAN CALLED MAHAMA OUT IN 2016.

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• REM 10 years ago

  Thanks for this, Paul. I am sure many people hadn't seen this four years ago.
  
  But I wished you had provided us with your own comments on the issue. Maybe this will come in a latter piece. It will be appreciated.
  
  The s ...
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  Thanks for this, Paul. I am sure many people hadn't seen this four years ago.
  
  But I wished you had provided us with your own comments on the issue. Maybe this will come in a latter piece. It will be appreciated.
  
  The speech you reproduced here doesn't seem to end properly. Perhaps there's more to it, huh?
  
  And where did you pull it out from?
  
  
  All these about property owning democracy may appear "fine" as a form of intellectual argument but Ghanaians have seen property owning democracy as practiced by the Busia-Danquah-(forget about Dombo) group in practice. It is not funny at all and it's not something many of us will want...

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• Yunah 10 years ago

  You would do well to tell us about the property thievery of your "North" brethren who are the key figures in all corruption cases, eg. SADA, SUBAH, NSC, Akomfem, etc.

  You would do well to tell us about the property thievery of your "North" brethren who are the key figures in all corruption cases, eg. SADA, SUBAH, NSC, Akomfem, etc.

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• Kwame 10 years ago

  In this property owner democracy what is defined as property? Is it the clothes at your back, the shoes you wear, the house some people have or the cars they own, etc. etc.? For us to believe that this was a well- thought ...
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  In this property owner democracy what is defined as property? Is it the clothes at your back, the shoes you wear, the house some people have or the cars they own, etc. etc.? For us to believe that this was a well- thought out concept and not something thought of and written on a toilet paper, we need to define property.

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• Paul 10 years ago

  For readers' information, this speech was nearly 20 pages long. I hope ghanaweb print the rest of the document.

  For readers' information, this speech was nearly 20 pages long. I hope ghanaweb print the rest of the document.

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• REM 10 years ago

  Paul, pls you may post the rest of the speech here in the comments section. Or you may provide a link here if you took elsewhere from the net.
  
  Don't depend on ghanaweb to post it in its entirety unless you re-send it to t ...
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  Paul, pls you may post the rest of the speech here in the comments section. Or you may provide a link here if you took elsewhere from the net.
  
  Don't depend on ghanaweb to post it in its entirety unless you re-send it to them.
  
  Then provide us with your own comments on the speech.

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• Paul 10 years ago

  To accelerate the creation of a property owning democracy in Ghana will also call for some radical measures. For example, between 1920 and 1938 nearly £2500m (£73.9bn in today’s money, using GDP deflator) was invested in ...
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  To accelerate the creation of a property owning democracy in Ghana will also call for some radical measures. For example, between 1920 and 1938 nearly £2500m (£73.9bn in today’s money, using GDP deflator) was invested in domestic construction in the U.K, resulting in about 4.3m houses being built – 1.5m in the 1920s and 2.5m in the 1930s. This meant that by 1939 one family in three lived in an interwar house. 2.5m of the new houses were built privately. This led to competition and a fall in prices and a boom of the mortgage sector as interest rates fell, resulting in a rise in home-ownership from 10% of families in 1914 to 31% by 1939.The Government of the UK, using the 1919 the Addison Housing Act required local government to build houses to be let to poorer working-class families.
  
  Another significant measure, which developed countries everywhere have used is the demolition of slum areas. Slum areas, like Sodom & Gomorroh, tend to be potentially expensive but if only they are cleared. We can learn from others and be bold in clearing urban slums, which generate diseases, crimes and take away the dignity of inhabitants. An estimated 604,417 such slum houses were identified in UK by 1939, resulting in the demolition of 342,940 houses of them by that year. The UK’s 1930 Housing Act (or ‘Greenwood’ Act), for instance, gave local authorities the power to demolish properties that were unfit for human habitation, or posed a danger to health. They also had an obligation to subsequently re-house the tenants, which opened the way to the provision of council housing. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel in Ghana.
  Even by 1992, home ownership were the following in the respective countries, Ireland (82%), Spain 80%, Norway 73%, United Kingdom 67%, Italy 68%, United States 59% and Japan 60%. However, home ownership has grown in these countries because of the high levels of incomes. In Japan for instance, the average price of a home as a multiple of average annual salary was about 8.62, Australia 3.36, United States, 3.00, United Kingdom 6.13, Sweden 2.99 and the Netherlands 1.80.
  
  CHINA’S DEMOCRATISATION OF HOME-OWNERSHIP
  For example, since 1997, China has made a structural shift from social housing, where the state owned and rented out the accommodation of workers to home ownership. As economic reforms deepened in the 1990s, China’s policymakers sought to privatise much of the publicly owned housing stock that had been previously rented from the state or state-owned enterprises (SOEs). According to a survey, in 1997, 36% of Shanghai’s population owned the homes they lived in, and that percentage has now risen to 82%, more than double. Also, 15% of urban Chinese now own second homes. Again, Shanghai leads the pack with 22% of respondents saying they own a second home. According to a study by the Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University, China now has one of the highest homeownership rates in the world, largely as a result of the privatisation of public sector housing. Like, it happened in other more established capitalist states, the policies that promote ownership in China have required a significant commitment of government resources, both on-budget and in the form of forgone revenues from land use rights allocation, taxes and fees. China’s two primary homeownership-oriented housing policies are the Housing Provident Fund (Zhufang Gongjijin) compulsory savings scheme and the subsidised construction of ‘affordable housing’ (Jingji Shiyong Fang). China’s housing policy, like those of most countries, has welfare and homeownership components. Here in Ghana, welfare housing is virtually non-existence, even under a government of professed social democrats.
  
  What has stopped us here in Ghana from implementing the equivalent of China’s Housing Provident Fund, for example? This is a compulsory housing savings plan with employer matching that which is modeled on Singapore’s Central Provident Fund, which, earlier, had led to a significant boost in homeownership there. A Housing Bond was proposed in the 2008 NPP manifesto and the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) recently called for one to be established. Beyond that, I have also proposed a two and half percentage rise in VAT to be ring-fenced for a Social Housing Fund, with particular attention to rural Ghana, the urban homeless and low income earners. In 2009, a total of Gh?97,650,000 was raised in VAT. Gh?121,820,000 is projected for 2010. A 2.5% increment on this year’s projected value would fetch Gh?142,123,333. Imagine how many truly affordable rental homes this can serve, especially if the scheme is contracted to the private sector?
  
  Ghana could depend on experiences from abroad if we are serious about spreading property ownership. In France, for instance, measures designed to facilitate home ownership have obtained some results. The “Home for 15 Euros a Day ” project, based on a charter passed with several partners – developers, builders and financial institutions, is popular among the French people. Reserved for lower income households, for the price of a conventional rent (e.g. 450 euros a month) during 20 years, they can become homeowners of properties valued between 160,000 euros and 185,000 euros, measuring at least 85 sq m and its ground of 250 sq m or more, through tax incentives.
  Encouraging property ownership is one of the easiest ways of widening a nation’s middle class and imbuing a higher sense of civil responsibility in the people. Property owners don’t go about burning down houses. The responsibility of maintaining ownership can drive us all to work harder for ourselves, hence, for our country.
  
  SPREADING WORTH GEOGRAPHICALLY
  I end by giving us something to think about, without emotions, as we leave here. How can we best make our country small, in terms of socio-economic access and make it wider in terms of the areas of vibrant socio-economic activity? Is it not worth considering moving the political capital of Ghana to the geographical mid-belt of the country, say Kintampo, as a deliberate policy to stimulate economic activity in the north, bring the country economically closer, while at the same time, expanding the areas of economic activity to cover a wider area of the country’s geography and people? South Africa offers as a very interesting model, facilitated by the country’s constitutional arrangements. It has three capitals. Pretoria is the administrative capital, Cape Town is the legislative capital, and Blomfontein is the home of the judiciary. As the Federal Republic of Nigeria teaches us, the influence of Lagos as the commercial capital has not at all been adversely affected by the decision in December 1991 to move the political capital to Abuja. It has made a vast area of land that was hitherto of very little economic value become among the most valuable in the world, creating more wealth and expanding the socio-geographical reach of the nation’s wealth. Accra and the rest of Ghana, surely, can also benefit from such a future arrangement?
  
  Thank you.
  
  This speech was delivered at the Teachers’ Hall, Accra, before an audience of TESCON Members from the City Campus, University of Ghana on Thursday, November 12, 2010. The speaker is the Executive Director of the Danquah Institute (www.danquahinstitute.org).

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• LADY INKET 10 years ago

  Away with the rampant and indiscriminate looting democracy of the do called "Better Ghana".

  Away with the rampant and indiscriminate looting democracy of the do called "Better Ghana".

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• Mick 10 years ago

  The proposed property owning to rule a country is salver plate for elite to rule and mass fortune through corrupt practices. We have seen under Koufour administration using that tactic no one had seen that it wrong for sittin ...
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  The proposed property owning to rule a country is salver plate for elite to rule and mass fortune through corrupt practices. We have seen under Koufour administration using that tactic no one had seen that it wrong for sitting President can go into business even buy Hotel. Many were supporting it by saying it is business as usual it not and very bad, going by term many former office holders are very rich men while the country they supposed to have served is very poor and bad shape.

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• Kofi 10 years ago

  Absolute rubbish! a country of 25 million with a modest GDP of about 50 billion dollars half of it stolen by venal civil servants and politicians for their families.Where is the fairness when scholarships are giving to Accra ...
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  Absolute rubbish! a country of 25 million with a modest GDP of about 50 billion dollars half of it stolen by venal civil servants and politicians for their families.Where is the fairness when scholarships are giving to Accra workers children instead of my cocoa farming parents kids?.In Finland,kids are even giving the same box when they are born.Your JB Danquah believed that "stuck up illiterates" like my parents should not have to vote.Nobody will begrudge Apostle Safo if he builds 30 houses.Preach your message to the thieving politicians.Norway has built-up a sovereign wealth of over 800 billion dollars for the benefit of all.What sort of Goddamn property are you talking about?

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• GENERAL DeGAULE 10 years ago

  The property owning democracy in the US was fueled by sub prime mortgages, and in the UK by the massive right to buy of Council houses. Houses built by the State and Local Government.
  
  No body talks about being self suffici ...
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  The property owning democracy in the US was fueled by sub prime mortgages, and in the UK by the massive right to buy of Council houses. Houses built by the State and Local Government.
  
  No body talks about being self sufficiency in food production. What we need is rounded education which equips one for work. A society where rules are enforced and organisations are robust and transparent such that tax revenues are collected and properly accounted for and form a residual platform for national accounting purposes. A reformed political system at both Central and Local Government levels so that legislators NPP & NDC alike do not go on a junket to China to source furniture for Parliament. A society where people do not use religion and politics to pursue personal greed. The list is endless, but more importantly we do not need a leader who is buoyed up by sycophants into believing that he is destined to govern or else or hell will break loose.

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• Mary Ellen Wogan, USA 10 years ago

  Paul, you were my pen pal as a student many years ago. Your excellent writing and thought-provoking commentary continues!! Cheers!

  Paul, you were my pen pal as a student many years ago. Your excellent writing and thought-provoking commentary continues!! Cheers!

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