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KWAME NKRUMAH, DISABILITY, AND REHABILITATION IN GHANA, 1957–66*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2011

JEFF D. GRISCHOW
JEFF D. GRISCHOW*
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
*
Author's email: jgrischow@wlu.ca.
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Abstract

This article examines a rehabilitation program for disabled Ghanaians developed by Kwame Nkrumah's government between 1961 and 1966. Arising at a time when Nkrumah was moving away from welfarism in favor of a ‘big push’ for industrialization, rehabilitation sought to integrate disabled citizens into the national economy as productive workers. Nkrumah's program was preceded by a colonial rehabilitation project during the 1940s for disabled African soldiers. The colonial initiative drew heavily on the British model of social orthopaedics, which equated citizenship with work. This philosophy resonated with Nkrumah's vision of national development based on full employment. Although its economic focus had troubling implications for citizenship and welfare, Nkrumah's rehabilitation program was unique among newly independent African states, and it arguably produced a positive legacy.

Keywords

Ghanadevelopmenthealthwelfare
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 179 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

Research in Ghana for this article was made possible by an Internal Grant from the Research Office at Wilfrid Laurier University. Edward Narh Tawiah provided valuable research assistance in the Ghanaian archives. I also would like to thank David Easterbrook, Curator of the Africana library at Northwestern University, for providing access to the 1954 Report on Begging and Destitution in the Gold Coast, as well as Michelle Guittar (Africana Department Assistant), for the timely delivery of the document. Thanks also to three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

References

1 Major examples include W. Birmingham, I. Neustadt, and E. N. Omaboe, A Study of Contemporary Ghana (Evanston, 1966); Robert Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana; End of an Illusion (1966, New York); T. Peter Omari, Kwame Nkrumah; the Anatomy of an African Dictatorship (Accra, 1970); Philip J. Foster and Aristide R. Zolberg, Ghana and the Ivory Coast; Perspectives on Modernization (Chicago, 1971); Basil Davidson, Black Star: A View of the Life and Times of Kwame Nkrumah (London, 1973); June Milne, Kwame Nkrumah (London, 1974); Yuri Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah (New York: International Publishers, 1987); Kofi Hadjor, Nkrumah and Ghana: The Dilemma of Post-Colonial Power (London: Kegan Paul International, 1988).

2 See, for example, Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 83; Davidson, Black Star, 193.

3 Founder of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind.

4 On this era, see Jeff Grischow, ‘Disability and rehabilitation in late colonial Ghana’, Review of Disability Studies (forthcoming).

5 Anne Borsay, Disability and Social Policy in Britain since 1750: A History of Exclusion (Basingstoke; New York, 2005), chaps. 3 and 6; Anne Borsay, ‘Disciplining disabled bodies: the development of orthopaedic medicine in Britain, c.1800–1939’, in D. M. Stagg and K. Turner (eds.), Social Histories of Disability and Deformity (London, 2006); Roger Cooter, Surgery and Society in Peace and War: Orthopaedics and the Organization of Modern Medicine, 1880–1948 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, 1993), 218–19; Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley, 2001).

6 Gold Coast, ‘Welfare and mass education in the Gold Coast, 1946–51: Report on the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development up to 31 March 1951’ (Accra, 1953), 6–9. During the 1950s, the Annual Reports of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development made no mention of disability policy except for the provision of public funding to the Ghana Societies for the Blind and Deaf. The Ghana Society for the Blind was most active, running a school in Akropong as well as two vocational training centers in Accra and Bolgatanga. Support for the deaf began in 1959, when the Government began to support an experimental mission school. See for example Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1959’ (Accra, 1960), 13–15; Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1960’ (Accra, 1962).

7 Michael Cowen and Robert W. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London, 1996); Jeff D. Grischow, Shaping Tradition: Civil Society, Community and Development in Colonial Northern Ghana, 1899–1957 (Leiden, 2006).

8 Anne Phillips, The Enigma of Colonialism: British Policy in West Africa (Bloomington, 1989).

9 For example, in 1955 the community development expert F. H. Hilliard emphasized the need to protect traditional social structures that bound individuals to the rules of their particular clans or lineages. See F. H. Hilliard, ‘The need for roots’, in F. H. and L. J. Lewis Hilliard (eds.), Perspectives in Mass Education and Community Development (London, 1955), 36–40. As Cooper observes, this project sought to protect peasant production in order to limit the drift into urban wage employment, which could lead to social unrest caused by labor protest. Significantly, colonial officials referred to the transformation of peasants into workers as ‘detribalization’. Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 1996), 23, 58–73.

10 See Richard Rathbone, Nkrumah and the Chiefs: The Politics of Chieftaincy in Ghana, 1951–60 (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), ix.

11 Adoo, J. S., ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, Advance, 41 (Jan. 1964), 25Google Scholar.

12 On the reasons for the multiple elections, see Jean Marie Allman, The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (Madison, 1993).

13 Paul Nugent, Africa Since Independence: A Comparative History (Houndmills, Basingstoke; New York, 2004), 169.

14 Ibid. 27–8, 169.

15 Tony Killick, Development Economics in Action: A Study of Economic Policies in Ghana, Studies in the Economics of Africa (London, 1978), 44–5.

16 The best study of Lewis's contribution to Ghana's development plans is Robert Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis and the Birth of Development Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), chaps. 4–6. See also Omari, Kwame Nkrumah, 100–1.

17 K. Nkrumah, ‘Broadcast on the eve of the second Five-Year Development Plan, 1 July 1959’, in K. Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom (London, 1961), 174.

18 Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 90–1.

19 Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis, 151.

20 Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 101.

21 Douglas Rimmer, Staying Poor: Ghana's Political Economy, 1950–1990 (New York, 1992), 69–70.

22 K. Nkrumah, ‘Address at the first seminar at the Winneba Ideological Institute, 3 February 1962’, in K. Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path (New York, 1973), 178.

23 The close fit between Nkrumah's vision and the development economists was illustrated by a conference held in April, 1963, to discuss the Seven-Year Plan. Attendees included Joszef Bognar, H. C. Bos, A. O. Hirschman, Nicholas Kaldor, K. N. Raj and Dudley Seers. W. A. Lewis also attended but disliked the Seven-Year Plan. See Rimmer, Staying Poor, 1992, 86 and Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis, 187–9.

24 Kwame Nkrumah, Seven-Year Development Plan: A Brief Outline (Government of Ghana, Office of the Planning Commission, 1963), 27. See also Killick, Development Economics, 53–4; Rimmer, Staying Poor, 85–6; Nugent, Africa Since Independence, 170.

25 Killick, Development Economics, 173–4.

26 Omari, Kwame Nkrumah, 102, 450; David Rooney, The Political Kingdom in the Third World (London, 1988), 186.

27 Awooner, K., ‘Kwame Nkrumah: symbol of emergent Africa’, Africa Report, 17:6 (1972), 3–4Google Scholar.

28 Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, 145, 397.

29 K. Nkrumah, ‘Extracts from the Dawn Broadcast, 8 April 1961’, in Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, 154.

30 Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, 161.

31 Killick, Development Economics, 53–4; Rimmer, Staying Poor, 85–6.

32 Just before the conference, the World Bank suggested an investment figure of £450 million. At the conference, Mensah presented a figure of £840 million, which he later increased to £1 billion. Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis, 186–9.

33 Omari, Kwame Nkrumah, 100.

34 Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (London, 1957), xv–xvi. Killick notes that Nkrumah did not operate in a vacuum in promoting rapid state-directed development. To the contrary, his policies reflected the consensus among development economists that a ‘big push’ was needed in developing countries to break out of their poverty trap (Killick, Development Economics, 11, 19). Other African leaders espoused a similar need for state-directed policies. In Tanzania, for instance, Julius Nyerere drifted towards this position during the late 1960s. See Jennings, Michael, ‘We must run while others walk: popular participation and development crisis in Tanzania, 1961–9’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 41 (2003), 184–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing me to Nyerere's remark.

35 Nugent, Africa Since Independence, 168.

36 Smertin, Kwame Nkrumah, 103.

37 Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 104–5.

38 Nkrumah, ‘Broadcast on the eve of the second Five-Year Development Plan, 1 July 1959’, 170.

39 Nkrumah, ‘Extracts from the Dawn Broadcast, 8 April 1961’, 154; R. Green, ‘Reflections on economic strategy, structure, implementation, and necessity: Ghana and the Ivory Coast, 1957–67’, in P. Foster and A. R. Zolberg (eds.), Ghana and the Ivory Coast: Perspectives on Modernization (Chicago, 1971), 246.

40 Nkrumah, Revolutionary Path, 182; Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 113.

41 After a referendum in January, 1964. Rimmer, Staying Poor, 71.

42 Ghana, ‘Seven Year Development Plan: a brief outline’ (Accra, 1964), 1. See also Omari, Kwame Nkrumah, 103; Nugent, Africa Since Independence, 171; E. N. Omaboe, ‘The process of planning’, in Birmingham et al. Contemporary Ghana, 453.

43 Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, 102; Jeffrey Herbst, The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982–1991 (Berkeley, 1993), 20.

44 Hadjor, Nkrumah and Ghana, 79.

45 Nkrumah, ‘Broadcast on the eve of the second Five-Year Development Plan, 1 July 1959’, 169.

46 Nkrumah, ‘Extracts from the Dawn Broadcast, 8 April 1961’, 157–8.

47 K. Nkrumah, ‘Speech at the Opening of Parliament, 4 July 1960’, in K. Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (London, 1961), 240.

48 Nkrumah, ‘Address at the first seminar at the Winneba Ideological Institute’, 176.

49 Nkrumah, ‘Broadcast on Ghana's Seven-Year Development Plan, 5 May 1962’, 187.

50 Nkrumah, ‘Speech to launch the Seven-Year Development Plan’, 190.

51 Baako, K., ‘Nkrumahism in Action’, West Africa, 2293 (13 May 1961), 505Google Scholar.

52 J. S. Adoo, ‘Services for the physically handicapped’, in C. Drake and T. P. Omari (eds.), Social Work in West Africa (Accra, 1962), 95.

53 Accra, Cape Coast, Sekondi, Takoradi, Koforidua, Tarkwa, Dunkwa, Ket and Oda. M. L. Clarkson, Report on the Enquiry into Begging and Destitution in the Gold Coast (Accra, 1955), 1.

54 Clarkson, Report on the Enquiry, 1, 2, 4, 5.

55 Ibid. 10,15.

56 Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, 25.

57 J. Coles, Blindness and the Visionary: The Life and Work of John Wilson (London, 2006), 60.

58 Ibid.

59 Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, 25.

60 Amoako, J. B., ‘Registration of the physically handicapped persons in the Upper Region’, Advance, 32 (October 1961), 57Google Scholar.

61 The RCSB survey estimated that there were 65,000 blind Ghanaians, while hospital records indicated 75,000 physically disabled individuals. In addition, Wilson assumed that there might be 12,000 deaf Ghanaians if the rate was equal to Britain's, and he surmised that 10 per cent of Ghana's 75,000 leprosy sufferers might have had physical disabilities. J. Wilson, Ghana's Handicapped Citizens (Accra, 1961), 6. Interestingly, Wilson did not draw any data from or even refer to the 1954 report on begging and destitution.

62 Good, D., ‘Preliminary results of 1960 and 1961 population censuses’, Population Index, 28:1 (January 1962), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 J. Wilson, ‘Letter to Kwame Nkrumah, 6 December 1960’, in J. Wilson, Ghana's Handicapped Citizens (Accra, 1961), 1.

64 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1960’, 27.

65 Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, 26.

66 Wilson, ‘Letter to Kwame Nkrumah, 6 December 1960’, 1.

67 Ibid.; Wilson, Ghana's Handicapped Citizens, 1.

68 Coles, Blindness, 59.

69 Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’; Amoako, ‘Registration of the physically handicapped persons in the Upper Region’, 57; Amuah, J. C., ‘A National programme for the rehabilitation of physically handicapped persons in Ghana’, Advance, 37 (Jan. 1963), 1Google Scholar.

70 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1962’ (Accra, 1963), 29; Adoo, J. S., ‘Evaluation and projection: rehabilitation of the physically handicapped’, Advance, 42 (Jul. 1964), 26Google Scholar; Amoako, ‘Registration of the physically handicapped persons in the Upper Region’, 58–9.

71 Okyere, D. K., ‘Reminiscences of the rehabilitation week in Brong-Ahafo’, Advance, 33 (Jan. 1962), 67Google Scholar.

72 Amoako, ‘Registration of the physically handicapped persons in the Upper Region’, 59–60.

73 Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, 26; Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1962’, 30; Wilson, Ghana's Handicapped Citizens, 23.

74 Amuah, J. C., ‘Foreword’, Advance, 37 (Jan. 1963), iGoogle Scholar.

75 Adoo, J. S., ‘Planning of rehabilitation’, Advance, 38 (Apr. 1963), 16Google Scholar.

76 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1963’, 31–3.

77 Ibid. 20.

78 Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, 29.

79 Amuah, ‘A national programme’, 1.

80 Adoo, ‘Evaluation and Projection’, 27.

81 Amuah, ‘A national programme’, 1; Adoo, ‘Evaluation and projection’,; Adoo, ‘Planning of rehabilitation’, 14.

82 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1962’; Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1963’, 43; Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, 29.

83 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1963’, 24.

84 Ingham, G., ‘Training of blind women’, Advance, 43 (Jul. 1964), 31–3Google Scholar.

85 Adoo, ‘Services for the physically handicapped’, 109.

86 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1962’.

87 Adoo, ‘Evaluation and projection’; Adoo, ‘The Rehabilitation Services in Ghana’, 29.

88 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1962’, 30; Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1963’, 31–3.

89 Ghana, ‘Employment opportunities for the disabled’, Circular Letter, Establishment Secretary to Principal Secretaries, Regional Commissioners, Department Heads and Public Boards and Corporations, 13 August', in Annual Report Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1963 (Accra, 1966).

90 Adoo, ‘Evaluation and projection’, 28.

91 Acquah, D. A., ‘Rehabilitation success stories’, Advance, 51 (Jul. 1966), 5–18Google Scholar.

92 Adoo, ‘Planning of rehabilitation’, 14.

93 See, for example, Cowen and Shenton, Doctrines of Development; and Grischow, Shaping Tradition.

94 Adoo, ‘Planning of rehabilitation’, 14.

95 Amuah, ‘Foreword’, i.

96 Adoo, ‘Services for the physically disabled’, 102.

97 Okyere, ‘Reminiscences of the rehabilitation week in Brong-Ahafo’, 68.

98 Adoo, ‘Services for the physically disabled’, 93.

99 Ghana had a labor surplus during the 1960s, with significant unemployment and under-employment, but there was a persistent shortage of skilled workers (Killick, Development Economics, 173–4).

100 Amuah, ‘A national programme’, 1.

101 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1962’, 23.

102 Amuah, ‘A national programme’, 2; Adoo, ‘Planning of rehabilitation’, 17.

103 Ghana, ‘Annual Report of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, 1962’, 21.

104 Amuah, ‘A national programme’, 2.

105 Amuah, J. C., ‘Objectives of the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development’, Advance, 50 (Apr. 1966), 9Google Scholar.

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107 Borsay, Disability and Social Policy, 135–7.

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109 Mahama, E. S., ‘Voices of the disabled in Dagbon’, TICCS Newsletter, 35 (Jul. 2007), 13–21Google Scholar; Avoke, M., ‘Some historical perspectives in the development of Special Education in Ghana’, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 16:1 (2001), 29–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Agbenyega, J. S., ‘The power of labelling discourse in the construction of disability in Ghana’, AARE Conference Proceedings (2003), 1–12Google Scholar.

110 Adoo, ‘Evaluation and projection’, 29.

111 Adoo, ‘Planning of rehabilitation’, 14; Amuah, ‘Objectives’, 7.

112 According to John Wilson, who had travelled widely in Africa, the Ghanaian program represented the first instance of an African government tackling disability issues ‘on a comprehensive, national scale’. John Wilson, Travelling Blind (London, 1963), 37.

113 Sylvia Walker, ‘A comparison of attitudes, personnel training needs, and programme priorities relative to the disabled in Ghana and Nigeria’, in Kofi Marfo, Sylvia Walker and Bernard L. Charles (eds.), Education and Rehabilitation of the Disabled in Africa, Volume 1 (Edmonton: Centre for International Education and Development, 1983), 11,19.

114 K. G. Korsah, ‘Integration of health services for the rehabilitation of the disabled in Ghana’, in Kofi Marfo, Sylvia Walker and Bernard L. Charles (eds.), Education and Rehabilitation of the Disabled in Africa, Volume 1 (Edmonton, 1983), 33; Kathryn Geurts, personal communication, 5 Jun. 2011.

115 The Ghana Federation for the Disabled (GFD) and the Ghana Association of the Blind were especially important in the fight to pass the Disability Act. Oduro, Franklin, ‘The quest for inclusion and citizenship in Ghana: challenges and prospects’, Citizenship Studies, 13:6 (2009), 628–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116 Government of Ghana, ‘Persons with Disability Act (Act 715), 2006’, online at: http://www.gapagh.org/GHANA%20DISABILITY%20ACT.pdf.