How corruption’s obstinate, deep, and broad roots in Ghana have defied all its epochs’—from the precolonial to postmilitary democratic era—attempts at exterminating it is a key subject of Corruption, Class, and Politics in Ghana by Ernest Harsch. Harsch x-rays Ghana’s epic battle with corruption, with scientific precision, incisive analysis, and dispassionate objectivity. Corruption had existed in Ghana before the advent of colonialism, growing in ramifications through successive governments as one of the undesirable by-products of nation-building.
Ghana, formerly known as the Gold Coast, was the first West African country to gain independence from Britain in 1957. Composed of a spectrum of ethnic groups, the country is rich in gold and cocoa, and has been governed by a succession of civilian and military regimes until its adoption of constitutional democracy in 1992.
Corruption lacks a universal definition but its manifestations include “extortion, bribery, graft, nepotism, theft, embezzlement, misuse of state property, abuse of public authority to exact payments, privileges, and favors; collusive, crony-like relations between public officials and private businessmen” (11). In Ghana’s context, the country’s national anti-corruption plan for the decade 2015–24 defined corruption glibly as “the misuse of entrusted power for private gain” (11).
Harsch’s argument that corruption is “a symptom of deeper social and political problems” (9) reflects the multiplicity of its provenance. These include political power, patronage, weak state regulatory capacities, unwieldy bureaucratic structures, ethnic bias, social and economic inequalities, as well as market liberalization. Furthermore, Harsch alludes to some strands of neoliberalism and globalization as exacerbating corruption. However, ordinary citizens, who are usually at the receiving end of corrupt practices, emphasized personal traits such as greed, selfishness, and lust for instant riches. This potent cocktail, roiled by the admixture of class and politics, has fueled the insidious encroachment of corruption in Ghana. It is also noteworthy that the fluidity of the nature of corruption, as well as the fact that the anti-corruption fight was dogged by splintered interests and perceptions, posed significant threats to the fight against corruption.
Ghana’s efforts to combat corruption metamorphosed from a local traditional accountability drive to a national reckoning, which incorporated institutional mechanisms and punitive actions. But the book lays an outsized emphasis on the Rawlings military era public tribunals, which, though unconstitutional and at variance with the tenets of the rule of law, achieved greater successes than several of the approaches adopted before and after independence, including since constitutional democracy was restored in 1992. The tribunals leverage the active support of the defence committees and massive public mobilization.
The media also played a crucial role in uncovering corruption through “exposing high-level misdeeds” (265) and “naming government officials suspected of profiting from their positions” (264), resulting in the resignation of several officials.
The involvement of a panoply of state institutions and state-backed nonstate actors in curtailing corruption underscores the fact that the state plays a central role in nation-building and collective social advancement. But as Harsch buttresses, success is not determined by episodic interventions but by sustained and effective engagements.
The book highlights a few initiatives which perpetuate Ghana’s reputation as one of the leading reform-minded nations in Africa: its increasingly credible electoral systems, free media and freedom of speech, the right to assemble and protest, and other liberties. These facilitated Ghana’s political stability, denying it the horror of a civil war, which has ravaged many countries on the continent. Since the dawn of electoral rule in Ghana, its presidential term limit has remained unchanged. The country’s bottom-up approach to fighting corruption, relying on grassroots mobilization during Rawlings’s junta rule, spotlights Ghana’s unique insight into the dynamics of corruption and its capacity for self-generated, internal, novel solutions. Its informed perception of corruption also, by and large, preempted graft in Ghana’s nascent oil and gas industry, sidestepping the worst forms of the resource curse.
Corruption is akin to a high-stakes game in which the poor and low-status citizens always have a high prospect of losing. Despite Ghana’s best anti-corruption efforts, Harsch notes that there was no significant change in the overall living conditions of the general populace. Its impacts entrenched wide social and economic inequalities, spilling over into electoral violence and price manipulations. Corruption permeated every state enterprise, including the judiciary. Staggeringly, “between 2012–2014, losses of public money averaged about $3 billion a year, or three times the total aid Ghana then received” (225–26). The book also stresses that corruption “distorts markets and diminishes the country’s attractiveness for investment” (288). Tragically, corruption and the war on corruption also cost human lives.
Combating corruption requires the buy-in of all sections of society—the political class, the media, law enforcement agencies, civil society, the public and private sectors, and ordinary citizens. Finally, Harsch articulates the hope of Ghanaians that, with “persistence and mobilized public engagement” (282), their vision of “a society free of corruption and injustice” (290) is still within reach. This meticulously researched and clearly written book should make an essential reading for anyone interested in Ghana’s power systems and their impact on corruption within the broad framework of the country’s social, economic, and political history.
