Voters in the West African nation of Ghana repudiated the right-wing government of President Nana Akufo-Addo with a historic, massive win for the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in elections this past Saturday.
The NDC’s candidate, former President John Mahama, resolutely defeated Mahamudu Bawumia, Akufo-Addo’s vice president, of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). The Electoral Commission of Ghana announced on Monday that Mahama won 56.6% of votes, while Bawumia secured only 41.6% of the total.
Mahama’s margin of victory was the largest in 24 years, and voter turnout in the mostly peaceful elections was 60.9%.
On Sunday, Bawumia conceded that Mahama had won “decisively” and “the people have voted for change.”
The NDC also routed the NPP in parliamentary elections, likely securing a two-thirds majority, though results are still being tabulated in several constituencies.
Mahama served a previous term as Ghana’s leader when he won the 2012 elections. He is the first former Ghanaian president to return to power after an unsuccessful re-election bid.
Mahama’s running mate, Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, will be the first woman vice president in Ghana’s history. A well-respected academic, Opoku-Agyemang, was a Minister of Education in Mahama’s first term as well as Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, one of the nation’s leading higher education institutions.
Mahama and Opoku-Agyemang will be sworn into office on Jan. 7.
This was the first election in which the presidential candidates of both major parties hailed from northern Ghana. Historically, the predominately Muslim North has been economically and politically marginalized while southern Ghana continues to possess most of Ghana’s economic wealth and political power.
Though Mahama is a Christian, Bawumia would have been Ghana’s first Muslim president if he had prevailed. Bawumia was also the first non-Akan presidential candidate of the NPP, which garners support mostly from the Akan ethnic groups, including the Asante, who inhabit much of southern Ghana.
By contrast, the NDC has always selected presidential candidates that represent different ethnic groups from across Ghana – namely the Ewe, the Akan Fante, and the Gonja – and the party attracts voters nationwide. In fact, Mahama won 13 of Ghana’s 16 regions in Saturday’s elections.
Western observers and mainstream media often claim there are no major ideological differences between the NDC and the NPP, but their programs are rooted in radically opposed political traditions.
The NPP traces its origins to the elite, western-educated African professionals who sought to reform, rather than end, the British colonial system during the height of African anti-colonial struggles in the 1950s. They even petitioned their colonizers to postpone independence when it became clear a mass-based, anti-colonial movement, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), would take power.
The CPP was co-founded by the renowned socialist and Pan-Africanist leader Kwame Nkrumah, who organized farmers, workers, market women, and students in the struggle for independence.
Read more about Ghana’s fight for independence in Kwame Nkrumah, by Yuri Smertin, available from International Publishers.
In 1957, the Gold Coast, as it was then known, became the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win back its independence. The new nation was named after the ancient West African empire of Ghana, and Nkrumah became its first prime minister, and later president.
The forebears of the NPP opposed the CPP’s programs of rapid infrastructural and industrial development and assistance to liberation movements across the African continent. In 1966, with the support of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, those reactionaries overthrew Nkrumah, ushering in a period of political chaos and economic decline.
Ghana’s “lost decade” ended thanks to the 31st December Revolution in 1981, under the leadership of Ft. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, who resurrected the socialist and Pan-Africanist policies of Nkrumah. After a transitional period of revolutionary rule, the Fourth Republic was established in 1992, democratic elections were held, and Rawlings, as the NDC’s presidential candidate, was voted into power and served two terms.
Since then, the NDC and the NPP have governed the nation for 16 years each. A version of the CPP still exists, but it is a small and inconsequential party, as most Nkrumaists support the democratic socialist NDC.
Though western governments and media outlets initially hailed Akufo-Addo when he took power in 2016 – partly because he promoted the ahistoric and neoliberal argument that Africans themselves were to blame for the continent’s problems – his two terms as president have been characterized by widespread corruption, economic collapse, and political arrogance.
Under Akufo-Addo’s administration, the number of Ghanaians living in extreme poverty has continuously risen while hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on vanity projects, such as a controversial, uncompleted Christian cathedral in the capital of Accra.
Last month, Akufo-Addo unveiled a ridiculous statue of himself in the western city of Sekondi. According to reports, local residents toppled the statue following last Saturday’s elections.
Mahama is a Soviet-educated historian who published a critically acclaimed autobiography, My First Coup d’Etat: Memories from the Lost Decades of Africa, in 2012. The coup referred to in the title was the right-wing overthrow of Nkrumah, a catastrophic event that awakened the young Mahama’s political consciousness. His father, who was an official in Nkrumah’s administration, was jailed for one year by the coup-makers.
In July 2012, Mahama, then the nation’s vice president, abruptly assumed the presidency when the immensely popular president, John Atta Mills, unexpectantly died. Addressing parliament at his rushed swearing-in ceremony, Mahama stated: “I’m personally devastated, I’ve lost a father, I’ve lost a friend, I’ve lost a mentor and a senior comrade. Ghana is united in grief at this time for our departed president.”
After completing the remaining months of Mills’ presidential term, Mahama won the December 2012 elections and served one term before conceding to Akufo-Addo in the 2016 polls.
Ghanaians are now looking to Mahama and the NDC to again stabilize the economy, create jobs, build infrastructure, reduce the cost of living, and end the infamous, illegal, small-scale mining of gold – known as “galmasey” – that has polluted forests and water bodies in the country. A comprehensive plan of action, titled “Mahama’s First 120 Days Social Contract with the People of Ghana” has been issued by the NDC to “re-set” Ghana.
Despite being Africa’s top producer of gold and the world’s second largest exporter of cocoa, as well as possessing large reserves of oil, meeting the expectations of Ghanaian voters will be challenging.
In the existing capitalist global economy, the prices of commodities and terms of trade are not determined by producers in the underdeveloped world but by western markets. Many African countries like Ghana are burdened by inordinate debt payments for loans issued by western financial institutions.
As Nkrumah argued in his classic book, Neo-Colonialism: The Highest Stage of Imperialism, African nations achieved political independence, but they remain economically dominated and exploited by their former colonizers.
Domestically, Ghana is suffering its worst economic crisis in decades thanks to the stealing, mismanagement, and ineptitude of the outgoing NPP government.
In an acceptance speech on Monday night, Mahama declared: “This mandate represents a call to action. These last eight years have witnessed some of the darkest periods in our governance, leaving scars on our national psyche. The journey ahead will not be easy, but we are determined to reset this nation and bring it back on track as the Black Star of Africa.”
The incumbent party’s defeat in Ghana continues a trend across Africa this year, as opposition parties have also prevailed in elections in Botswana, Mauritius, Senegal, and Somaliland. The exception is Namibia, where Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, the candidate of the ruling socialist South-West Africa People’s Organisation, won elections earlier this month. She made history, too, as the first woman president of the southern African nation.
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